The Bridge: A Novel

by Solomon Jones

  Daneen sat still for a few seconds, then looked at Wilson for the first time. When she spoke, it was with a quiet certainty.

  “I can’t tell you what Kevin feel,” she said. “I can only tell you about me. I don’t love Kevin. I never did. But I know him. Not the way a woman know a man. I know him the way you know somebody you watched grow up. Somebody you seen change in front o’ your face. He seen me change, too.

  “I guess he the only one left who can see me for who I used to be before …”

  She paused, trying to remember the point when everything changed.

  “He the only one who knew me, really knew me, before everything. So yeah, I think Kevin probably the only one who can help me with this.

  “Far as everything else that’s goin’ on with us, that’s somethin’ we gon’ have to work out down the line.”

  As she spoke, she watched Lynch speak to a gray-haired cop in a white shirt, then walk back toward the car. A news van pulled in behind the barricades that had been set up, and a reporter ran to the edge of one of them, calling Lynch and pointing to the car.

  He waved the reporter away and got in.

  “What did that guy from Channel 10 want?” Wilson asked, nodding toward the reporter.

  “He wants to talk to Daneen,” he said. “I told him no. Not yet, anyway.”

  Daneen didn’t want Lynch speaking for her, but she knew that she wasn’t ready to talk to the press yet. So she sat quietly in her seat and listened.

  “I just talked to the inspector who’s running the scene,” Lynch said. “He told me he wants us to stay down here. But we’re not going to be a part of the search. He wants South Division to handle it, along with whatever special units he might need to call in.”

  He turned to Daneen. “He wants you to be here in case they need someone to talk Sonny out of wherever he’s hiding.”

  He paused for effect.

  “You’re the closest thing to family he has left.”

  Not that it mattered. Sonny wasn’t looking to hear from family.

  Judy descended the steps of the motel, then took to the sidewalk and lowered her head like she was struggling against the wind.

  Her battle was not against the elements, however. It was against recognition. If she could hide her face long enough to make it to Germantown and Erie, she could pay a hack taxi driver to take her to the places where Sonny might hide.

  She was going to carry out the plan she’d had in the back of her mind since escaping police custody and going to Dot’s apartment.

  She would confront Sonny for all he’d done to her. She knew how it would play out, because she’d seen it, time and again, in her mind: the slap she would deliver with the accusation, the startled expression that would fill his eyes, the feeling of triumph as she took back what was hers.

  The moment would be sweet. In order to taste it, though, she would first have to find him. And she was determined to do that.

  Judy made her way up Germantown Avenue, skirting the racks of detergent and baseball caps that littered the sidewalks outside the discount stores.

  As she drew closer to Erie Avenue, the stores were replaced by greasy spoons, and then by bars. Shoppers no longer made up the crowds. Instead, there were commuters, anxious to make the connections that would take them to a safer part of town. Addicts and dealers stood along the periphery, mingling with the hustlers who took up their stations outside the infamous Eagle Bar.

  Nearly everyone on the corner fit easily into a category. But Judy, walking up the avenue in jeans and sneakers, defied categorization. Even in her current state, she was too beautiful for Broad and Erie. And anyone who looked at her could see that.

  “Hack cab,” a man said as he spotted her approaching the corner.

  She half looked at him, barely taking in the greasy jeans and filthy T-shirt that hung on him like an old man’s skin.

  “How much you charge me to go down Ninth and Indiana?” she asked quickly.

  “Five dollars.”

  “I might wanna go a couple other places, too,” she added.

  “My car right over here,” he said as he walked toward a green Chevy. “We can work all that out later.”

  He turned the key and the motor barely cranked. When it did, it lurched into gear and bounced down the avenue, its engine sputtering with the effort. Judy didn’t notice. Her mind was filled with recollections of Sonny.

  While most of them were of heartbreak and deceit, she held on to the ones that made the pain seem less real. She was caught in the throes of such memories when the car sputtered again, bucking and jumping before the engine stalled.

  The driver cursed and turned off Germantown Avenue, using the car’s momentum to ride down the slightly inclined street.

  “I gotta run in this garage for a minute,” he said, parking the car. “Guy got my jumper cables in there. I be right back.”

  He walked around the rear of the car and was gone.

  Judy looked up and down the street, which was filled with closed factories, abandoned houses, and broken glass. The voices from the avenue that had been so close just moments before sounded like they were miles away.

  Judy reached for the door handle just as the driver returned.

  “What’s wrong?” he said, smiling as he reached into his pocket for the car keys.

  “I think I’m gon’ walk,” Judy said nervously.

  “No,” he said, pulling a knife from his pocket. “I think you gon’ gimme my damn money.”

  Judy froze, looking down at the sharp blade and then at the driver’s bloodshot eyes.

  “Now!” he said, lunging toward her with the knife.

  She hurriedly reached into her pocket and peeled off one of the bills she’d taken from the police officer’s wallet.

  “No,” he said as he grabbed her hand. “I want all the money you got.”

  She threw the rest of the bills at him, then cringed against the car door, waiting for what she knew would come next.

  He fingered the money and glanced at her, wild-eyed. “Get out,” he said quickly. “Hurry up.”

  Judy didn’t hesitate. She opened the door and ran up the hill, stumbling to get away from the car. She expected him to run, too. He didn’t. And as she made her way to Germantown Avenue and looked back, she saw the reason why.

  The flame from the lighter danced and flickered as he sat in the car and lit the pipe. Then his face disappeared behind white smoke as his eyes grew wide with the crack rush.

  Judy watched him for a split second, then turned and ran back toward the motel. She had lost precious time. Now she needed to regroup.

  Once he was inside the house, Sonny walked through the kitchen, with its dated fixtures and grease-stained pots, then the dining room, where dozens of ceramic and glass souvenirs teetered on rickety wooden tables.

  When he passed through to the edge of the living room, he saw a couch along one wall, a television against another, and an old man sitting in a battered armchair across the room. He was wearing work pants and a flannel shirt buttoned to the neck. Surrounded by man-size stacks of dry, rotted newspapers, he was holding a pistol. And it was pointed at Sonny.

  It took a second for everything to register. Sonny looked at the gun, then at the old man.

  The man stared back, squinting as he took in the filthy green hospital scrubs and the bulging outline of the gun that was tucked into Sonny’s waistband.

  “Why don’t you put that gun on that couch right next to you,” he said, the words spilling over his bare gums as he pointed the gun.

  Sonny hesitated. The man cocked the hammer of his revolver and placed his left hand under his right to support it.

  Sonny knew the man was serious. He reached into his pants, pulled his gun out slowly, and placed it on the couch.

  “Now before I bust a cap in yo’ ass for breakin’ in my house, I want you to tell me somethin’.”

  The man sat back in the chair, still pointing the gun.

  “Did you do it?
”

  Sonny didn’t quite know how to respond.

  Seeing his confusion, the old man nodded toward the television. Sonny looked, and saw live pictures of the bedlam taking shape around them.

  Police cars darted from South Street to City Hall. Police officers erected barricades. People gathered to gawk. And a television reporter tried to summarize it all.

  “As you can see from these pictures from Chopper-6, police are moving to isolate Williams in the area of Broad and South,” the reporter said, speaking as the pictures filled the screen.

  “We’ve also heard from police sources that transportation hubs will see increased patrols in case Williams—now wanted on numerous charges including vehicular homicide in the death of Judge John Baylor—tries to leave the city.

  “Williams first eluded police as they sought to question him in the disappearance of a girl who has now been identified as nine-year-old Kenya Brown. The girl’s aunt, Judy Brown, is also being called a fugitive, and she, too, is being sought for questioning in the child’s disappearance.”

  The old man hit the off button on his remote. He studied Sonny as the grief took hold, then sat back and watched him for a few minutes more.

  When Sonny finally managed to croak a response, the only word his mouth would form was her name.

  “Kenya,” he said, choking on the sadness that enveloped him.

  His eyes grew moist, and a chill ran through his body. He vacillated between anger and grief, and in that moment, came to know emotions that had always eluded him.

  The old man watched the feelings take hold. He could remember a time when his own eyes had filled with those tears. But that didn’t make Sonny right.

  He reached for the telephone on his end table with one hand and held the pistol with the other. Both of his hands were trembling—with palsy, with fear, with weariness.

  “I’m sorry ’bout the little girl,” he said, squinting to read the numbers on the old black rotary phone. “But whether you did somethin’ to that child or not, you still ain’t got no business in my house.”

  Sonny watched as the man dialed the number 9. He squinted again to find the number I, and Sonny pounced.

  He dived forward and rolled on the floor, traversing the ten feet that separated them in two seconds as he bowled into the chair. The man squeezed the trigger. The ancient revolver jammed. Sonny knocked it from his hand and watched it spin across the hardwood floor.

  The old man looked up into Sonny’s eyes, terrified. Sonny stood up, grabbing the man’s collar, and snatching him up from the floor. He stood him against the wall and spoke in a menacing whisper.

  “Listen, man,” he said, gulping air. “I ain’t tryin’ to hurt you. All I’m lookin’ for is a way outta here. You gimme that, and you ain’t never gotta see me another day in your life.”

  Sonny’s grip on the man’s collar was too tight, making his breath come in shallow gasps. He struggled to speak as he pointed to a hall closet.

  “Coat,” he said in a raspy voice.

  Sonny eased his hold on the man’s shirt. “Where? What coat?” “Go in that closet over there and get my blue raincoat. I got a old raggedy Mercury station wagon out front. The keys should be in the coat.”

  The old man rattled on nervously as Sonny dragged him over to the hall closet.

  “The car don’t go past twenty-five, but it might get you ’cross town,” he said quickly. “I guess it’s enough gas in there to make it that far. I ain’t drove it in a long time, but it’s a good car. It still run.”

  “Shut up,” Sonny said, taking the coat out of the closet and rifling the pockets.

  He found the keys, a hat, and reading glasses.

  “Anybody else in here?” he asked.

  The man shook his head from side to side and watched Sonny nervously.

  “Good,” Sonny said, pushing the man into the closet and turning the lock.

  “Hey,” the old man said, his voice muffled by the closed door. “Don’t leave me in here, man. I’ll die in here.”

  Sonny ignored him, walked back over to the couch and picked up his gun and backpack. Then he donned the coat and hat and walked out of the house.

  The news about Kenya was still there in his mind, bleeding like a fresh wound.

  Fifteen minutes after Sonny ran from the corner of Clarion and South, the police set up checkpoints where the identifications of pedestrians and motorists were scrutinized and run through the national law-enforcement computer system.

  They called in K-9 units to search through the dozens of vacant houses that dotted the area. They collaborated with housing police to search the high-rise apartments in the Martin Luther King Housing Project.

  They even used four-man teams to conduct a door-to-door search of the twenty-block area they’d cordoned off.

  With all of this in place, the inspector in charge was confident they would find Sonny. He put a SWAT unit on standby for what he expected to become a barricaded-man situation, with Sonny armed and holed up in a house, possibly holding hostages.

  Lynch, Wilson, and Daneen were placed close to the staging area on the corner of Broad and Lombard, one block from South Street, in case Daneen was needed to help negotiate a surrender.

  But after eight hours of searching, it was clear that Sonny had escaped again. And as they stood there watching it all unfold, Lynch, Wilson, and Daneen knew, like everyone else, that their chances of finding Kenya were growing slim.

  “I think I’m going to take the complainant back to Central to file a missing person’s report,” Lynch told the Fourth District captain, who’d returned to the corner for the third time to check on his officers.

  “Yeah, it doesn’t look like anything’s gonna come out of this,” the captain said. “Damn shame I had to have my officers waste a whole day on this project bullshit.”

  “I don’t know that anything’s a waste when a kid’s life is on the line,” Lynch said, hesitating before adding the obligatory, “sir.”

  Before the captain could respond, Lynch walked away, waving for Wilson and Daneen to come with him. They all got in the car as Lynch angrily slammed the door.

  “Wilson, I’m taking Daneen back to Central.”

  “What do you mean, taking me back?” Daneen said, her voice rising in a panic. “I ain’t leavin’ here ’til they find Sonny.”

  “Daneen,” Wilson said firmly, “they’re not going to find Sonny right now. He’s gone. The best thing we can do now is have you file the report. In the meantime, we’ll keep searching for Kenya.”

  “Yeah, but Sonny—”

  “He’s gone, Daneen,” Wilson said again, louder this time.

  The hopelessness of it took hold, and Daneen sat back in her seat, her eyes lost in the reality that came crashing down.

  They rode back to Central Detectives in silence.

  When they arrived, Wilson left them there, took her own car, and went home to rest and regroup before rejoining the search.

  Daneen and Lynch took the long walk upstairs to document the hardest truth Daneen had ever faced.

  It was five in the afternoon when Tyreeka got off the subway at Broad and Fairmount, carrying shopping bags filled with all the label-laden trinkets of ghetto fashion.

  She’d spent the day downtown at the Gallery Mall, replenishing her wardrobe with the $300 the drug dealer had given her in exchange for her night with him. After the sneakers she bought, the money didn’t pay for much—two pair of jeans and three shirts. But she’d tried to make it stretch, buying an outfit for the baby and saving $50 for her mother to make up for leaving her twenty-week-old with her.

  She climbed the stairs to their apartment and opened the door.

  “Bitch, where you been?” her mother said before she made it inside.

  Tyreeka turned around. “I was—”

  The first slap knocked her backward. She stumbled and hit her head against the door.

  “I don’t wanna hear no lies from you, Tyreeka,” her mother said as s
he grabbed her daughter by the neck.

  “Now, I’ma ask you one more time. Where you been?”

  Tyreeka reached up and pried her mother’s hand loose. “I … can’t … breathe,” she said, pushing her mother away from her.

  Her mother’s eyes widened, and she charged, hitting Tyreeka in the side of the head with a tightly balled fist.

  The girl fell hard against the wall. Tyreeka’s baby heard the ruckus and began to cry. The other children her mother was watching ran from the bedroom to see what was happening. They found Tyreeka cowering in the corner with her mother standing over her.

  “Y’all get back in that room ’fore you get some o’ this, too!” she yelled.

  When they did, she turned on her daughter and snatched her up from the floor.

  “Listen here, Tyreeka. You don’t let these little boys buy you. That’s why you got that baby in there now, ’cause you out here bein’ a hoe.”

  “Mom, I wasn’t with no boy!”

  She smacked her hard across the jaw, knocking her down again. Tyreeka scurried backward like a crab.

  “Don’t lie to me. I just left the boy a hour ago. He stood right out there on Twelfth and Parrish, tellin’ everybody how he gave you a couple dollars and sent your li’l dumb ass home.”

  “Mommy, I—”

  “Shut up! I’m talkin’.”

  “Mommy, I just wanna give you—”

  She picked her daughter up and threw her against the wall. “I said shut up!”

  She started to speak in short bursts, punching Tyreeka each time she paused.

  “I told you. About goin’. With these damn boys!” she yelled. Tyreeka was curled up in a ball by then, trying in vain to block the blows.

  “I ain’t gon’ tell you that shit no more!” her mother screamed, punching her one last time.

  Tyreeka’s neck snapped back with the blow. And as tears mixed with the blood that oozed from the cuts on her face, her mother stood over her, then crouched down and spoke softly in her ear.