Jesse made an involuntary noise, a loud sigh. Bump hesitated, as if not sure whether it was a signal of impatience or empathy. Jesse had to say “Please,” egging him on.
“So,” he continued. “But the worst moment for us? In fourth grade after he developed the verbal thing? They came to us, said, ‘He can’t be in the school anymore. We know he can’t help it, but it’s just too disruptive to the class.’ They said—” Bump clenched his teeth, blinked away rage. Another reporter approached, read his face, and stepped off without a word. “They said, ‘It’s not fair to the other students.’” He made a raw, throat-clearing noise, an alternative, Jesse knew, to other, more embarrassing articulations.
“But let me tell you something about this kid. He’s like a car that sputters and rattles and jerks all over the fucking road until it hits a highway and, you know, you get it up to seventy-five, eighty miles an hour? And all of a sudden it’s riding smooth as glass, riding like a Rolls. That’s Terry. With all the honks, squeaks, jerks, this kid…” Bump started counting off: “He’s a brown belt in karate, he’s an all-star Little Leaguer, he’s in the goddamn glee club of all things. And now this. Tonight. National TV. The kid gives a performance makes me and my wife so fucking proud we won’t sleep for a week.”
Jesse smiled, said to herself, Brenda Martin.
“Sweetest kid in the world, Terry, but on this show he plays some sick, vicious son of a bitch? I swear to you, we saw that? We didn’t want to let him back in the house. He is very, very good.”
“Yeah,” Jesse said mindlessly.
“Well, I’ll tell you.” Bump folded his arms across his chest. “I know we got to talk turkey on this thing here, but let me just… let me tell you what kind of kid he is. He’s in sixth grade this year, right? Now, we had to take him out of that other fucking school. We shopped around, put him in one, that wasn’t so hot either. Now we got him some place down by us. It’s pretty good, teachers, kids… Anyways, earlier this year, Dateline NBC did a segment on Tourette’s. It was pretty damn good, like demystified it, explained how, like, there’s a short in the chemical relay system from the brain to the body, and, you know, wherever the pressure builds up, there’s your twitch, jerk, whatever. So we liked it and we got a copy of the show through our Tourette’s association. Anyways, last October? We get a call from Terry’s teacher. I’m thinking, Oh shit, here we go. She says to me, ‘I’m just calling to see if it’s OK with you if Terry shows us the tape,’ and I’m like, what tape? The kid took it on himself to bring in the segment, wanted to show it to his classmates and have like a little talk with them about these things they’re gonna see him do all year.
“I’m like, ‘Yeah, I guess.’ And I get off the phone, go into his room. I say, ‘You sure you want to do this?’ He says, ‘I have to do this.’ I say, ‘Do you want me or Mommy to be there?’ He says, ‘I can handle it.’ I’m standing there thinking about it. I say, ‘What if I want to come in. Not for nothing—I have no doubt you can do it yourself—but what if, as your dad, could I just see you do it?’”
“Of course you can,” Jesse said, speaking as the son, then catching herself and flushing with embarrassment.
“So I go into the school. He shows the tape and they have some pretty raw stuff, hard stuff on it, and the kids are, like, nervous. Some are laughing, but nothing mean, and after the lights go up, there’s my son.” Bump wiped the bottoms of his eyes. “He’s right up there, says, ‘So if you hear me in class this year making noises, yelling out words, or dropping to my knees or twisting my head or whatever else I might do, I just want you to know that I don’t mean anything by it, I can’t help it, and what you just saw on the video is the reason why’ And I’m back there, I swear I’m so, so… I’m gonna explode, and then he does it one better. He says, ‘Sometimes? When I’m in bed at night? I think, Why me? Why did God give me this problem? And the thing is, I don’t know why. He just did and I have to accept it. Thank you for listening to me.’” Bump quoted his son with a hoarse flutiness.
Jesse opened her mouth to say something—it was time to say something—and just began to sob. She stood there on the tracks, her body folding over itself as if put together with a series of hinges, and yielded to an alarmingly helpless bleating.
Bump, at first taken aback, awkwardly patted her shoulder, then became somewhat cool.
“You’re killing me here,” she managed to get out.
“You know, Terry’s story, it’s kind of like dope,” he said. “It makes you feel a certain way in the moment, gives you like, a certain sense of commitment, but the next morning, you can wake up like, What the hell was that all about?”
He had it all wrong, but she was unable to set him straight. She had either gotten inside the boy or the boy had gotten inside her—when these things happened, she never knew which way it went, but she was always grateful, in a pained way, for the communion. And no, it wouldn’t last until morning; that was part of what the tears were about too. On the other hand, her tears had always been treacherously anarchic; no footage of the Holocaust or the Middle East or Africa ever brought them out, yet she was unable to sit through the most bathetic comedy or melodrama without having to wipe her eyes before the lights came up.
“Well, here’s the deal,” Bump murmured. “I want his story known. I want the goddamn world to know who my boy is. Now, I’ll try to help you out on this thing we got right here, but if you say to me you’re gonna write about Terry and you’re gonna do it by a certain time and you don’t deliver?”
“I’m fucked,” Jesse muttered, sounding like she had a cold, breathing through her mouth. She avoided the faintly curious stares of the other reporters.
“Nah, you’re not fucked.” He shrugged, then leaned in close. “I’m not gonna do anything, I’m not gonna say anything. I’m just gonna know that you used my son to get over on me. And you’re gonna know that I know that about you.”
“Fair enough.” Another glottal mutter. Her eyes were almost swollen shut.
“All right, all right,” Bump said testily, as if fed up with the excessiveness of her reaction. “What do you need?”
“What don’t I know?” She blew her nose, still having to breathe through her mouth.
“It’s pretty much what you heard.”
“She a suspect?”
One of the fence kids lobbed a water balloon onto the tracks, and it landed without breaking.
“Let’s put it this way.” Bump grunted as he stooped for the balloon, then bobbled it in his hand. “Sixty-five percent of all children reported missing have been abducted, or done away with, by the adult who came in to report the kid missing in the first place.”
“So.”
“So sixty-five percent.”
She realized that he didn’t really know shit about what happened out here tonight.
“Where’s she now, BCI?”
“Probably.”
“With Lorenzo?”
“Probably.”
“Where they going after that?”
“I don’t know.” He lobbed the water balloon at the fence, dousing the kid who had thrown it over. “Home, jail, Grandma’s house—you know how these things go.”
“You’re gonna be humping on this all night?” Jesse stole a peek at his wristwatch: one-thirty
“Most likely.” He yawned.
“You’re gonna be in touch with Lorenzo?”
“Sure, that’s how we do.” Bump caught another water balloon, whipped it back into the fence discus-style. The kids stood their ground, wanting to get soaked.
Jesse slipped him one of her business cards.
“I would just like, I would just like to be somewhere before she gets there.”
“Done deal.” Bump pocketed the card and began walking down the tracks, abruptly mock charging a section of the fence that was thick with fingers. The kids on the other side called out to him, laughing. Jesse wondered what it would be like to have a kid, lose a kid.
7
Af
ter leaving Brenda with Pierre at BCI, Lorenzo returned to Armstrong, heading for Martyrs Park, hoping to catch Miss Dotson again in her window. Almost there, he caught sight of Leo Sullivan talking to Roosevelt Tyler in the breezeway of Three Building. Tyler was one of Lorenzo’s least favorite jugglers, a kid who made decent money out here running his little crew yet still found time for the odd mugging—mainly, Lorenzo guessed, because he liked it.
Leo had his hand on the wall over Tyler’s shoulder and he was leaning in close, Tyler turning his head this way and that, a pained smile on his face, as if Leo had bad breath. Lorenzo strolled up to take in the show.
“This one’s flesh and blood, Tyler, you hear me?” Leo said. “Now, until we get this guy? Nobody’s making dime one out here, you understand? We’re here to stay. We’re setting up walking posts, doing stairwell runs, the whole nine yards. But. You ever play Monopoly? You know that get-out-of-jail card? Somebody gives me a good name, we’re talking a lifetime pass here.”
Tyler stopped fidgeting. “For real?” he drawled.
“Lifetime.” Leo bowed his head in affirmation.
Lorenzo resented Leo’s just coming in from Gannon and offering deals like that to Tyler or anybody else in these houses, but he felt the trade-off would be worth it. Besides, a guy like Tyler would manage to screw up in such a way that Leo wouldn’t be able to come through with that free ride no matter what he promised in the here and now.
“You hear what he said?” Tyler asked Lorenzo.
“I heard it. I don’t like it, but I heard it.”
“Huh.” Tyler pushed off from the wall, looked from Lorenzo to Leo, back to Lorenzo, then headed into the building.
“So what’s happening?” Lorenzo eyed the media glow up on the tracks.
“What’s happening?” Leo took out a comb and carefully swept back his thinning hair. “What’s happening is we’re acting like the biggest bunch of pricks you ever seen. People are gonna be fuckin’ desperate to get us out of here.”
“Just don’t let your Klan sheet show.” Lorenzo was three-quarters kidding; Sullivan a decent-enough individual.
“I always tuck mine in. You know that.”
“You guys keepin’ your hands to yourselves too?”
“Hey.” Leo stepped back, hands up. “Danny was out of line and he’s gone. He knows he was out of line too. So how’d she do?”
“Nothing so far. You got nothing out here?”
“Zip. The three monkeys. You think you’ll get some prints off the handbag?”
Lorenzo hissed in defeat. “That thing was patty-caked flat. But listen.” He scanned the blockades. “I need an exit corridor. I got to talk to some of my people and I got to do it off the site.”
“Sure.” Leo joined Lorenzo in surveying the turf. “How ’bout Gompers on the Two Building side? I’ll tell my guy. Just have your people say they’re with you.”
“Awright.” Lorenzo turned to go.
“Hey, Council,” Sullivan called after him. “I don’t like us being here any more than you do.”
Entering Martyrs Park, Lorenzo paced the perimeter of the crime scene in delicate, anxious circles. Brenda Martin’s handbag was no longer there, and he assumed—he hoped—that it had been removed by the right people. A few yards away, his eye caught a dull glint reflected off a bronze dedication tablet bolted to a thick tree trunk at eye level and featuring the solemn profiles of Martin, Malcolm, and Medgar. Martyrs was a shithole but that plaque, stolen twice, returned twice, had remained pristine since 1969, and there was always some kind of flower arrangement at the base of the tree.
Working his way to the edge of the park that lay directly beneath the Lamb Pen windows of Three Building, Lorenzo squinted up at Miss Dotson’s apartment, trying to assess the nature of the illumination in there, whether she was still awake or just using the TV as a night-light. The hour was starting to tell on him, and he began to sway with the slight breeze that soughed through the sneaker trees at his back. He was lost in his thoughts when a disembodied “I’m right here” shattered the ambient rustle. Miss Dotson’s voice, low and concrete, spooked him into a laugh.
The elevators in Three Building were sort of working, but Lorenzo, as always when headed for any of the first five floors, opted for the stairs. On the second-floor landing, he passed a kid whispering rhymes into a minicassette, humping his shoulders to his beat. He grinned with embarrassment as Lorenzo stumbled past him, already gasping for air.
The door had been left open for him, and the first thing he saw as he came into the apartment was a body sprawled on the kitchen floor: Curious George Howard. He was one of Miss Dotson’s grown grandkids, most likely kicked out of his mom’s apartment and using this one as a flop until he could get back in her good graces. George was twenty-one going on twelve, lying there dead asleep in the greasy stifle, a nubby couch pillow under his head. From the back shadows of the one-bedroom layout, Lorenzo could hear the snoring of two younger grandkids, the twin boys of another daughter, both of them evidently sharing the bed with Miss Dotson until their mother got back on her feet.
Lorenzo came into the small living room and sat on a plastic-sheathed sofa beneath a wall-to-wall photo gallery of family members—daughters, sons, grandchildren, great-grandchildren—one third of them dead. Miss Dotson sat opposite in a corduroy recliner, watching a be-your-own-boss infomercial and smoking a cigarette.
“How you doin’, darlin’?” Lorenzo was eager to get to it, but he knew the pace of these things.
“How’m I doin’?” Miss Dotson kept her eyes on the TV, her voice a monotone mutter. “I ain’t lettin’ them get in my kitchen. Says they want to take out the ’frigerator, cabinets. Says they’s lead in the paint.” She waved a bony hand in dismissal; Lorenzo eyed the impossible burnished knobs, sculpted by arthritis. “Says they put it in, in nineteen hundred and fifty-five. I says, if I ain’t dead of lead paint in here by now, I ain’t going out that way.”
She took a drag, fanned away the smoke, still not looking at him. “I want you to tell them I don’t want no new ‘frigerator, cabinets, all of that. Just let me be.”
The interviews always went like this, everyone having a hidden agenda. Lorenzo had learned the hard way to withhold any promises until he had gotten what he came for.
“Miss Dotson. You know something about what happened down there?” he asked mildly, as if he had all night to kill.
“Yeah, I seen something,” she told the huckster on the TV.
“Did you see something?” Lorenzo pointed both index fingers to the floor. “Or you saw something?” He touched his temples.
Miss Dotson was widely respected for her visions, which had been coming to her, as it was told, since Good Friday of 1933. Standing in a bakery that day holding her father’s hand, she had seen in the display case not pastries but a riot of black roses. She knew right then her father would be dead within the year.
“Which.” Lorenzo smiled, waiting.
“Well, I don’t trust my eyes no more, so you know it’s better if it comes to me from on the inside.”
“OK.” Lorenzo pushed his glasses up his nose, willing himself to be open-minded. “What you see?”
“How ’bout my kitchen,” she murmured, still not looking at him. People said Miss Dotson never looked anybody in the eye, because she was afraid of what she would see for them, for their future.
“Hey.” Lorenzo laughed. “You know how I do for you, right?”
There was a snuffling, shifting commotion coming from the kitchen, and suddenly Curious George appeared, sleepwalking his way to the bathroom, hands up inside the belly of his T-shirt.
“What you see, darlin’…” Lorenzo asked again as the bathroom door closed.
“He’s with the father.” Miss Dotson stubbed out her cigarette and nodded to herself.
Lorenzo jerked to the edge of the couch. In all that time with Brenda, he had never gotten a solid location or any hard information on the guy. Berating himself, he reached for
Miss Dotson’s phone. “You know where the father’s at?” he asked quickly, not so much because he believed in the supernatural but because it was such an obvious possibility. He started punching in Bump’s cell phone, not wanting to do this one over the radio.
Miss Dotson gave a gravelly laugh, then answered him in a gentle chiding tone. “You never been to Sunday school? Lorenzo. Where’s the father at?”
Lorenzo hung up the phone middial, feeling a mixture of relief and irritation. “You mean the Father,” he said, chucking a thumb toward her ceiling.
Miss Dotson briefly flicked a glance at her wall of tragedy. “That’s how I see it.”
The toilet flushed, and George came shuffling into the living room stopping to stand in front of his grandmother’s TV and adjust the drawstring of his sweatpants.
“Big Daddy, can I tap you for five?” Lorenzo looked at him with irritation. Curious George was tall, light-skinned, and sloe-eyed, in and out of trouble since he was a little kid and Lorenzo had first come to work.
“What about that job interview you was supposed to go on last week?”
“I went.”
“And?”
“They was like two hundred guys there. I stood in line for two hours, man.”
“Yeah? And how about Action Park?”
“Action Park?”
“Action Park. I got that all set up for you, and don’t tell me no stories either.”
Freedomland Page 14