The Bridge: A Novel

by Solomon Jones

  In the bedroom where Kenya normally slept, there was the stench of unwashed women, sweaty men, and dirty sex. Smells that a nine-year-old should never know.

  There was a chest of drawers against one wall. The closet, or what was left of it, had no door. Clothes were piled inside in cardboard boxes.

  The single twin mattress in the room had no box spring, and was covered with a single, dirty sheet. On the wall above it, across from the window, an old faded picture of Daneen hung from a cracked frame on the wall.

  Lynch took the picture down and fingered its edges as Darnell, dressed in a towel, walked in behind him.

  “That’s Kenya picture,” he said as he reached into one of the boxes for a change of clothes. “Funny thing about kids. No matter what they mother do to ’em, they still love ’em. Still wanna be with ’em, no matter what.”

  Lynch put the picture on the chest of drawers and walked back into the living room as Darnell got dressed.

  Two minutes later, they were on their way downstairs to talk to Lily.

  The old man never apologized, never acknowledged his threat to kill Judy. He simply directed two of the guards to take Sonny and Judy from the living room to the basement, where Sonny retrieved the backpack he’d taken from the Bridge.

  It was a fluke that Sonny had come to the house at all. He’d wanted to leave Philadelphia. But when he tried to drive the old man’s station wagon to the Ben Franklin Bridge, and into New Jersey, he could tell that the car was on the verge of breaking down.

  With Port Authority police posted on the bridge, he couldn’t take that risk. And because there was nowhere else for him to hide, he turned north on Fifth Street, drove as far as Germantown and Allegheny, then walked the back alleys to Darien Street.

  He still cared about Judy, in his way. And he didn’t want to think of what could have happened had he not been there. So as he and Judy were led through the basement to a set of rickety wooden steps, he tried not to.

  The guards stood by as Sonny climbed the steps and pushed against one of two heavy metal doors. When he opened it, Sonny stepped up through an old loading bay. Judy followed him, and they heard a metal bar slide into place behind them, locking the doors shut.

  Sonny grabbed Judy’s hand and took her through the alley that ran behind the houses. At the end of it, he entered the backyard of the corner house. When Sonny knocked on the door, it was opened by a man with hooded eyes.

  “Five dollars,” he said in a gravelly voice.

  Sonny gave him fifty.

  “I’m goin’ upstairs,” he said. “I don’t want nobody comin’ up there, understand?”

  The man looked at the fifty, stepped aside, and reached into his pocket for a key.

  “Third room to the left. Works on the windowsill …”

  Sonny and Judy were past him before he finished, climbing the stairs of the shooting gallery as nodding heroin addicts ignored them in favor of their hazy realities.

  When they reached the room, Sonny pushed Judy inside and locked the door. Then he wheeled on her with an open hand, ready to unleash his wrath.

  But when he looked at her, he froze, because the Judy who stood before him was someone he didn’t know. She was a woman torn between heartbreak and anger. A woman unable to speak, because words had failed her.

  His hand dropped to his side as she stood there, looking at him with eyes that said everything her mouth couldn’t. It was a look of unyielding heartbreak. A look that went well beyond tears, because tears could never capture the depths of it.

  He lowered his eyes and looked away, then sat down on the bed and placed his head in his hands.

  She sat down next to him and asked the question she’d wanted answered for the past two days.

  “Why, Sonny? Why you have to do it like this? I woulda gave you everything I had. You ain’t have to do it like this.”

  He stood up and pulled back the sheet that covered the window in lieu of a curtain.

  “I ain’t mean for all this to happen,” he said, looking across the rock-strewn backyard to make sure no one was approaching.

  “Look at you, Sonny. You can’t even sit down ’cause you scared somebody gon’ run up on you. Is that what you wanted? Well, here it is. Life on the run.”

  He turned with fire in his eyes.

  “You wanna know what I wanted, Judy? It’s real simple. I wanted the money. I wanted to get out the Bridge for good and never look back.”

  “You was already out the Bridge, Sonny. You had another place somewhere in town, plus you had your li’l hoe up in Fairview. I’m the one needed to get out. You think I wanted be up in that li’l stinkin’-ass apartment sellin’ five-dollar caps?”

  “So why didn’t you get out, Judy? I damn sure ain’t stop you.”

  “I was waitin’ on you,” she said, raising her voice.

  “Well, you shouldn’ta waited on me.”

  “Yeah, I see that. I saw it when the cops came, and you left me to clean up the mess.”

  They both fell silent as the truth filled the space between them.

  “So tell me, Sonny,” she said sarcastically. “What exactly was it that you ain’t mean to happen?”

  Sonny was almost ready to spring. But when he looked at Judy, the hurt in her eyes calmed him.

  “Look, Judy. You keep tryin’ to make me into somethin’ I ain’t. Tryin’ to make me somebody that’s gon’ love you. I ain’t that guy. I’m a hustler, and love just ain’t in me.”

  “No, I think it’s in you,” Judy said with an acid voice. “It just ain’t in you to love no full-grown woman. You can only love little girls.”

  “So what that’s supposed to mean?” Sonny snapped angrily.

  “I think you know what it mean,” Judy said firmly. “I just ain’t know what it meant. Not at first, anyway. I ain’t wanna believe it when I heard about the little girl in the trash bin, ’cause I couldn’t imagine that you would do some shit like that. But then I saw you with Kenya. Saw the way you was always tryin’ to have her all up under you. The way you was always givin’ her things.

  “After while, it seemed like you was more interested in her than me. I ain’t want to believe it, but I knew, Sonny. I knew, and I ain’t do nothin’, ’cause I thought the money was gon’ keep it from matterin’. But I shoulda knew better than that, too. I shoulda knew you couldn’t lemme have a little somethin’, ’cause all you ever did in your life was take. You took me, and you took Kenya. And then you took the one thing that was supposed to make the hurt go away. You took the money.”

  She started to cry then, the tears rolling silently down her face as she glared at him. As she did so, her love for Sonny began to transform into hate.

  Sonny saw it as her jet-black eyes—eyes like Kenya’s—turned from shining black pearls to hard, flat coal. It was as if the light in Judy’s eyes had finally disappeared. And it had taken Sonny to make it happen.

  “You think you know a whole lot more than you do,” Sonny said, looking down at his hands. “But the only thing you know ’bout me is what I let you see. You never got that, Judy. All I let you see was the hustler, ’cause that was enough for you. All you needed to know was I was gon’ make some money—that I was gon’ let you hope for somethin’ different.

  “You talkin’ ’bout you ain’t leave the Bridge ’cause you was waitin’ on me. That’s bullshit. You was scared to leave. Scared to just pack up and get yo’ ass out the projects, ’cause you ain’t never seen nothin’ else but that. You was scared to go someplace where you woulda been just what you is—a little black nobody from North Philly.

  “You ain’t stay there waitin’ for me, Judy. You stayed ’cause you could walk around there and pretend you was somebody. ’Cause people would look at you, and say, ’That’s Sonny woman. Don’t mess with her.’ You stayed there ’cause you ain’t know no better. Even worse, you ain’t want no better. Not for real.”

  “That’s a lie, Sonny, and you know it. All them times we talked about what we was g
on’ do with that money—how we was gon’ just leave and not look back—you know I wanted to leave, but you ain’t care, ’cause you ain’t know how bad it was for me there. You could never know how bad it was.”

  “You right. I could never know ’cause I ain’t come up in the projects, Judy. I come up off the street. I come up in a time and a place where you was either gon’ learn to be a man real quick or you was gon’ get took. So I decided I was gon’ be the one doin’ the takin’.

  “They ain’t have all this stuff like they have now—social workers and whatnot. So when they caught me robbin’ old men out West Philly, they sent me to one o’ them schools. One o’ them places where the bad boys go to get worse.

  “I come up in places where we had to fight just to eat, where you wore the same clothes ’til they fell off you, where the big boys took the little ones and made ’em they bitches at night.”

  Judy looked at Sonny, and he stopped for a moment, sitting silently as if he was reliving what his childhood had been.

  “I ain’t never had a chance to be a child, Judy. I ain’t never eat no ice cream or buy no penny candy. Ain’t never had no new clothes or funny toys. Ain’t never had no friends. All I had was me and my fists. But you ain’t know that, ’cause all you ever wanted to know about me was how much money I was gon’ bring in so you could keep pretendin’ you was gon’ leave out the Bridge one day.”

  Sonny’s words struck a chord in Judy. She almost wanted to comfort him. But she didn’t quite know what to say.

  “Maybe you right, Judy. Maybe I don’t know how to love no woman. Maybe all I know how to do is love little girls. But whatever you seen me doin’ with Kenya, whatever you heard about me doin’ with any child, it was always about givin’ them what I never had.”

  He reached out and took Judy’s chin in his hand, then stared intensely at her eyes.

  “I ain’t never touched Kenya,” he said. “Ain’t never do nothin’ to her but love her. I guess I could do that ’cause I saw a whole lotta me in her. I saw what she been through, and I saw how it turned her into a hustler. I guess I was tryin’ to show her that she ain’t have to be that. She could just be a little girl, and somebody would love her anyway.

  “I thought you could see that, Judy. But I guess I was wrong. All you could see was how you wasn’t gettin’ all the attention you thought you should. And you took it out on Kenya. Now she gone, and you ain’t even bother to look for her.”

  “Neither did you,” she said. “You the one claim you love her so much. But I ain’t see you breakin’ down no doors tryin’ to find her. You was too busy takin’ my money.”

  “No, you was too busy worryin’ ’bout the money,” Sonny said.

  “Kenya your flesh and blood, not mine. And while everybody runnin’ around talkin’ ’bout I had somethin’ to do with whatever happened to her, you come runnin’ to find me.

  “Well, you found me, Judy. And you ain’t even ask me ’bout Kenya, even though you claim I was molestin’ her. First thing out yo’ mouth is ’bout some money. So who really the selfish one, Judy? Who really the one don’t care ’bout nobody but theyself?”

  “I ain’t gon’ let you turn this around and make it about me,” Judy snapped. “I ain’t the one took the money and tried—”

  “You can have half the money,” Sonny said. “But Kenya still missin’. And unless you know where she at, I don’t see how you can sit here and not even say nothin’ about tryin’ to find her.

  “So I want you to look me in my face and tell me, right now. Do you know what happened to Kenya?”

  Judy looked down at her feet as the tears began anew.

  But before she could answer Sonny’s question, there was a knock at the door of their room.

  Sonny pulled his gun. Then the doorknob began to turn.

  Chapter Eleven

  Lily had spent the better part of the past two days wondering why the police hadn’t questioned her. After all, she was more of a mother to Kenya than Daneen, Judy, or anyone else had ever been.

  But the police weren’t doing all they could, in her opinion, to find Kenya. They hadn’t gone door-to-door in the building where she lived. And they hadn’t gone door-to-door in the rest of the neighborhood.

  Worse, their investigation seemed to be more about finding Sonny than finding Kenya. But with Sonny still on the run, and Judy a fugitive as well, their options were running out.

  So when the knock finally came on Sunday afternoon, she wasn’t surprised. That is, until she opened the door and saw Kevin Lynch standing in the hallway with Darnell.

  She paused for a moment, her eyes darting from one to the other before she opened the door wider.

  “Come in,” she said.

  Lynch walked in. When Darnell tried to follow, Lily held out a hand to block him.

  “Lily, I—”

  “Look, I know Kenya your niece, Darnell. And I’m sorry she missin’. But I can’t keep bein’ around you and havin’ you all up in my house. If Kevin wanna talk to me ’bout what happened, that’s fine. But we ain’t got no more words, Darnell. I said what I had to say, and so did you. That’s it.”

  He stood there, hoping that Lily would change her mind. When it became clear that she wouldn’t, he turned to leave with a finality that hadn’t been there before.

  Lily closed the door, then leaned against the wall and let out a long sigh.

  “What was that all about?” Lynch asked.

  “It’s personal,” Lily said. “Have a seat and try to ignore the mess. It’s been a long coupla days.”

  He walked around the coffee table and moved the hair grease and brush from the couch before he sat down.

  “Can I get you somethin’?”

  “No,” Lynch said. “I really just came to talk with you, and hopefully your daughter, to get a little bit of detail on what happened Friday when Kenya came down here.”

  Lily looked at him and smiled in spite of herself. “I’m sorry, Kevin. It’s still hard for me to believe you a cop,” she said. “I still remember when you was livin’ on the third floor—how your grandmother used to try and keep you outta all the mess that went on ’round here.”

  “Yeah,” Lynch said softly. “That seems like another lifetime.”

  “But you look good, Kevin. I’m glad you could come back to help with this. I know that mean a lot to Daneen.”

  Lynch didn’t respond. He didn’t want to talk about Daneen.

  “Far as what happened Friday,” Lily said. “The only one who could tell you about that is my daughter. And I’ma be honest with you. I really don’t want her doin’ a whole lotta talkin’. You start talkin’ ’bout people like Sonny—people that’ll kill you soon as look at you—and I start gettin’ real nervous ’bout havin’ my daughter name comin’ up as some kinda witness or somethin’.”

  “I understand. But I just want to ask her a couple of questions. It won’t take long.”

  “No, you don’t understand. If I let Janay talk to you, I don’t want her name comin’ up in no files, and I don’t want nobody comin’ ’round askin’ her to testify.”

  “Lily, whatever she says won’t go any further than this room.”

  “You a cop, Kevin,” Lily said. “You can’t keep what she tell you to yourself.”

  “Well, that’s not exactly true,” Lynch said with a sigh. “I was suspended this morning.”

  There was a moment of awkward silence, and then came the inevitable question.

  “Why?” Lily asked.

  “You heard about Judge Baylor, right?”

  “They blamin’ you for that?”

  “Somebody had to take the fall. And since I was the one who started the chase, I got elected.”

  “So if you suspended, what you still here for?”

  Lynch paused, then started to give her a simple explanation. But then he realized that there was no easy answer.

  “I guess I’m here for a lot of reasons,” he said haltingly. “But mostly, I’m here for Ken
ya. It seems like there was so much stacked up against her that there was nothing she could do to make it right. And she didn’t have much help, either. Her mother could’ve been more than she was, but she didn’t want to. Her father—or at least the man Daneen said was her father—died trying to be something he wasn’t. And then when it all fell apart, Kenya had to come to live in a place that, for all intents and purposes, was a crack house.”

  He smiled uneasily, then fixed his eyes on Lily.

  “I’m here because I can relate. If some things had happened just a little differently, my life could’ve been just like that.”

  Lily nodded, remembering the circumstances under which Lynch had come to the Bridge.

  “But we’re not here to talk about me,” he said quickly. “We’re here to find Kenya. And if Janay can shed some light on what she did Friday afternoon, maybe she can help us do that.”

  Lily was quiet as she made her way to a chair and sat back to consider what Lynch had just told her. She responded without looking at him, almost as if she was talking to herself.

  “Janay all I got,” she said. “And I can’t see her gettin’ mixed up in this. I done already lost Kenya to this place. I ain’t gon’ lose my baby, too.”

  “Lily, it won’t leave the room,” Lynch said. “Nobody ever has to know that Janay told me anything. I just need a starting point. Please. Let her give me at least that.”

  Janay came in from the bedroom and stood against the wall. She looked at her mother with a silent plea in her eyes. Underneath it was a hurt too big for a child to carry.

  When Lily saw that, she knew there was no other choice.

  “Come here, baby,” she said, extending her hand as Janay came to her. “Tell Mr. Kevin what y’all did on Friday. Try not to leave nothin’ out, ’cause he need to know everything he can if he gon’ find Kenya.”

  Janay began to speak. Lynch listened intently. After a while, Lily joined in, adding the details that she could. As they spoke, they were all immersed in Kenya’s reality.

  It was as if Kenya was telling her story for herself.