Freedomland

by Richard Price

  When Lorenzo pulled up to the main jailhouse steps, which now led to nothing but their own height, he saw Army Howard out front sitting on the open tailgate of an old pickup truck, still wearing his Perry Ellis America warm-up suit from the night before. As Lorenzo approached, treading his way through small chunks of jail, Army flicked his cigarette into the debris. “Hey, boss,” Lorenzo said, clasping Army’s hand upright, as if they were going to arm wrestle.

  “’S up.” Army yawned into his fist and leaned back against the edge of a coffee-table-sized object in the truck bed. It was covered with a filthy children’s blanket printed with dinosaurs.

  “What you got there?” Lorenzo tilted his chin toward the mystery. Army looked right, left, right again, then lifted the blanket, revealing a jagged chunk of the 1909 cornerstone, the letters NTY JAIL carved deep into the granite face.

  “Get outta here.” Lorenzo’s voice went high, trailing off with surprise.

  Army replaced the blanket, lit another cigarette. “My brother-in-law’s on the demolition crew. I got this here sold to two cops and a prison guard.”

  “Together?”

  “Separate. Paid me three hundred each up front.”

  Lorenzo laughed, a guttering sound. “Sounds like a Army special…”

  Army nodded. “Yeah, I’m gonna tell ’em somebody else got it first but I can buy it from them, but you know three hundred ain’t enough, so how high can you go? Give it to the winner.” Army smiled distantly and patted the stone under the blanket. “Yeah, it does sound like a Army special, don’t it? Sounds like a Army classic.”

  “Yeah.” Lorenzo stared down at his shoes, pacing himself. A water bug crawled over the rubble, a last tenant.

  “Shit, man,” Army drawled, “been in this joint so many damn times? I feel like selling this thing to my own self, you know, like a, a keepsake or something. Like the last laugh, you know what I’m saying?”

  Lorenzo idly kicked what looked like a tooth. “How you doin’ otherwise?”

  “How’m I doin’?” Army shook his head. “Not too good, not too good. I got me bills longer’n train smoke. You know Sheryl? The one I got on Boulware Street? She thinks I’m fuckin’ around on her, so she goes into Western District, tells Valentine I robbed her at gunpoint, and now this time I can’t fuck around. I had to go get me Rosenfeld. I ain’t takin’ no chances with Legal Aid, ’cause you know Valentine. He’s been lookin’ to put me away from back in the day, you know what I’m sayin’? And Rosenfeld, he gets his money up front. So there’s that, awright?”

  Lorenzo nodded sympathetically.

  “Yeah, and then my wife, Pauline? She wants to have another goddamn baby, can you believe that? The woman is forty-two years old, doctor says she can’t have no baby. I tell her we got one grandchild livin’ with us already, what you want with another kid now for?” Army hissed in disgust. “So, you know, next thing I know I’m out somewheres in Bayonne, go to this clinic where they get you pregnant? You know, they take some eggs, take your sperm. Hey” Army waved it off. “I don’t even want to talk about it. Woman’s forty-two years old, she’s a goddamn grandmother, but you know, that’s what she wants, so… We did it three times, right? You know, three implantations? That’s three times fourteen thousand dollars. Fourteen thousand dollars times three. And it ain’t even worked, but they’re, like, ‘Pay up,’ and I’m, like, ‘Yeah, I’ll give you your money. Come to the baby’s first birthday party, I’ll have a check for you,’ you know what I’msayin’? I mean, you go into a restaurant, do you pay before or after the food comes, right? And, like, I don’t even hear no pots bangin’ in the kitchen yet, so…”

  “I hear you.” Lorenzo smiled at his own shoes.

  “Yeah, an’ so now I got this motherfuckin’ collection agency on my back, and, damn, you ever deal with those people? So, like, I got that—Sheryl, Valentine, Rosenfeld, my wife, my granddaughter’s sick ‘n’ shit. Too much, too much. An’ alls I got right now is a nickel and a nail, and the nail don’t spend, so you know I had to close up the motherfuckin’ store. Can’t pay the delivery bills, can’t pay the rent, had to shut it down before the landlord kicked me to the curb, you know what I’m sayin’? An’ so now, like, where am I gonna run this shit here?” Army took a pair of red translucent dice from his pocket, rattled them loosely in his fist. “This the cash machine, right? And, like, I ain’t even got a setup for this now, no backroom, nothin.’”

  “You know what my moms used to say?” Lorenzo knuckled down a yawn. “‘The world don’t owe you nothing but hard times and bubble gum—’”

  “‘And it’s fresh out of bubble gum,’” Army said, finishing it up for him.

  “Yeah, you got your problems.” Lorenzo read some graffiti off the exposed back wall of a third-floor prison cell: EL HA RECUSITATO.

  Lorenzo grunted one last time and then got into it. “So, you hear anything?”

  “About what, last night?” Lorenzo settled in with a heavy-lidded nod. “Yeah, you know what I heard? I heard I did it.”

  “I heard that too.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t think you were calling me just to listen to my problems. No, I didn’t do it. Sorry.”

  “How come people say you did?”

  “You know what I think? I think my goddamn nephew’s been talking that shit about me again.”

  “Curtis?”

  “Naw, the other, Rudy, my sister’s kid. That boy gets two beers in him, he’s got me robbing Fort Knox. Tells people all kinds of shit ’cause he, like, idolizes me all the time, you know? I tell him, ‘Don’t idolize me, idolize your teachers, ’cause if you want to make it in this world you got to know how to speak it, spell it, and read it.’”

  Lorenzo dug a toe into some sky-blue plaster, watching a chunk of brick molt off the southwest corner, skip its way down the jagged edge of the facade, picking up speed with every hit, and finally dive twenty feet out from its last bump, landing in a mound of wet Masonite.

  “I tell him, ‘You want to see the light at the end of the tunnel? You got to keep your nose to the grindstone.’” Army lit a third cigarette. “It’s got to be Rudy.”

  Lorenzo unfolded a copy of the flyer and passed it over. Army glanced at it. “Yeah, I saw this. Huh. You know who this looks like? Looks like my cousin George. Don’t that look like George Howard?”

  Lorenzo took back the flyer, carefully folding it in quarters. He had seen Curious George dead asleep on his grandmother’s linoleum last night. “So you didn’t hear—”

  “Nothin’.”

  “How about Rudy? Where was he at last night?”

  “Rudy? He’s in a wheelchair, Lorenzo.” Army laughed.

  Lorenzo snapped his fingers, chagrined. “I’m mixing him up. Awright, so nothin’?”

  “You know who I’d tell.” Army slid off the tailgate and slammed it shut.

  “I had an uncle was in demolition,” Lorenzo said, eyeing the blanket-draped cornerstone. “You know what he called it? Making sky.”

  Army walked around to the cab. “Put a positive spin on it, huh?” He slipped into the driver’s seat, stuck his head out the window. “Yo, Big Daddy.” Lorenzo turned to him from his car. You want to buy this? I’ll give it to you right here and now, five hundred dollars.”

  Lorenzo considered it for a second, then passed. “Naw, man, it would be too much like taking my work home with me, you know what I’m saying?”

  Army laughed, a lazy bark, then pulled out.

  Bobby McDonald’s office was hung with a bizarre combination of sunset paintings, crime scene photos, and action shots of his son banging under the boards for Our Lady of Solace high school. Dressed in a cheap wheat-colored sport jacket and chinos, Bobby sat on the windowsill. The prosecutor, Peter Capra, sporting a steel-gray three-piece suit, sat, knees crossed, on a nubby brown-and-yellow couch.

  Coming into the room less than an hour after meeting with Army, Lorenzo felt awkwardly underdressed in jeans and a black T-shirt that read PRESS ON. He had
no idea where to position himself and finally settled for leaning against the wall nearest to the door, his arms folded across his chest.

  “How she holding up?” Capra asked, stubbing out a cigarette.

  “Bad.” Lorenzo tightened his mouth for emphasis.

  “Bad, like tragedy bad?” It was Capra again; Lorenzo was pretty sure that Bobby would say next to nothing.

  “Bad, like banged up—you know, emotional.” Lorenzo inadvertently hit the wall switch behind his back, blinding everybody with fluorescence.

  “Sorry,” he said, flicking it off, telling himself to relax.

  “She talking to you?” Capra again.

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Anything worth hearing?”

  “Not, you know…” Lorenzo moved to the edge of Bobby’s desk, perched there for a while.

  “Is she a piece of shit?”

  “How do you mean?” he said. Then, reflecting for a second, “Not, no. I don’t think so.”

  “So, like, you don’t see her hanging tough on this story.”

  Capra’s cell phone rang inside his jacket. He slipped a hand in and killed the call, waiting on Lorenzo.

  “Well, not, you know—once again—if it is a story. But no, I can’t see her holding out for too long, no.”

  Bobby squinted out his window. Lorenzo knew how much he hated surrendering his office like this.

  “Can you see her giving it up to you?”

  “Hey.” Lorenzo laughed nervously. “We just met.”

  “You like her?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Capra lit another cigarette. “You feel for her.”

  “Yeah.” Lorenzo fanned away the first waft of smoke. “I do.”

  “Good.” Capra nodded. “So, OK. Why don’t we set up a kind of two-pronged offensive here. You let us worry about the jacker, the car, the witnesses, and you stick with her. You know, keep her talking.”

  Lorenzo hesitated for a moment, not sure if this signaled a promotion or a demotion. Capra looked to Bobby on the windowsill. “Yeah?” Bobby nodded. It had clearly been a done deal between them before Lorenzo ever walked in the door.

  “What if she’s telling the truth?” Lorenzo asked, folding his arms across his chest again.

  “That’s why we’re doing a two-pronged offensive. Cover our bets.”

  “Would you rather be working the jacker end?” Bobby said, speaking up. “You want to pass her off?”

  Lorenzo thought about it, decided that he wanted to be where the action was on this one. “No, I’m good. I can, I’m good.”

  “Do you want any help with her?” Capra offered.

  “No,” Lorenzo said, thinking, Too many cooks. “No. I mean, maybe, but not yet.”

  “Because as you can well imagine…” Capra stubbed out his second cigarette. “We have people waiting in the wings. I mean, they’re camping out on line for this one.”

  “What, FBI?” Lorenzo said, the final drift of cigarette smoke making his lungs flare.

  Capra nodded. “So what do you think?”

  Lorenzo experienced a surge of possessiveness—she knew more than she’d been saying, and he would definitely have it out of her.

  “The FBI, can you keep them away?” He looked to Bobby for backup or approval, but his boss’s gaze was directed out the window again.

  “You think we should?” Capra asked mildly.

  Bobby finally turned back to the room and tersely nodded to Lorenzo. It was a craved-for gesture of support that somehow boomeranged. Lorenzo panicked momentarily, much as he had the night before in the hospital when he first realized the enormity of the potential fallout from this situation.

  “How about can you give me just today?” he said.

  Bobby and Capra looked at each other. “OK.” Capra shrugged. “We can play it by ear.”

  “And can you do something else for me?” Lorenzo said, feeling stronger now. “Can you get all them cops out of Armstrong?”

  Capra took a deep breath. “Lorenzo, you remember five years ago in the Powell Houses they shot the principal of Twenty-eight School?”

  “I was right there,” Lorenzo said. He had hoped Capra wouldn’t compare that situation to this one.

  “Guy was just walking.” Capra proceeded to lay out the tale, ignoring Lorenzo’s claim to having been on the scene. “Bang, out of the blue. Nine million windows—could have come from anywhere, right?”

  “I was there.”

  “We closed off the houses, and what happened. Three hours, that’s all it took. The jugglers brought us that knucklehead on a silver platter. Three hours.”

  “Yeah, well, number one…” Lorenzo eased off the edge of the desk, checked his watch. “It’s been fourteen hours, OK? And number two, there very well might not be any knucklehead to bring this time.”

  “Well, what if there is?” Capra countered lightly.

  “No.” Lorenzo smiled through his anger. “I don’t see nothing good coming out of this blockade you got goin’ on over there.”

  “No, I hear what you’re saying,” Capra said mildly, Lorenzo reading it as Tough shit.

  Bobby stared at his shoes, outgunned.

  “Well, can you at least get Gannon out?” Lorenzo said.

  “I tell you what.” Capra sucked his teeth. “Get her to talk to you.”

  A few minutes later, still smiling, still angry, Lorenzo left Bobby McDonald’s office, feeling like the prosecutor was doing to him what the cops were doing to the Armstrong Houses.

  Lorenzo rolled up to Brenda’s apartment house a little before noon and had to wade through the shooters, head down, hands up, nothing to say. Ben came out of the vestibule and helped clear a path to the door. Inside the building, Lorenzo gave him the once-over: gray marble forehead, mouth slightly ajar, a flutter in the hands. He saw the angry cuff marks on the wrists. Ben put his hands behind his back, embarrassed.

  “What happened?” Lorenzo said.

  “Nothing.”

  “The brother?”

  “I’m good.”

  Lorenzo decided not to pursue it; they were in Danny’s town now. “You here all morning?”

  “No big deal,” Ben answered with fatigued chirpiness.

  “I’m gonna get her out of here for a while, so you go call it a day, all right?”

  “You taking her?” Ben said quickly. “How about Jesse?”

  Lorenzo shrugged, thinking, No way. “We’ll play it by ear,” he said, not wanting to give Ben a negative answer. He started to climb the stairs, then couldn’t resist. “It was the brother, right? Danny?” He ducked down so Ben could see him halfway up the stairs.

  Ben blushed, turned away. “I’m good.”

  When Lorenzo entered the apartment, Brenda was sitting on the edge of the convertible, tense and expectant, hands in her lap, waiting for him. She had on fresh clothes, even a touch of makeup, but looked baggy and rumpled. Jesse did too—clean clothes, a little mascara, but somehow disheveled. Lorenzo needed only one look at her to know that, much like himself, she didn’t have shit; otherwise she wouldn’t be standing there like a human corkscrew, hugging herself, glaring at the floor, most likely racking her brains for a pitch that would allow her to hold Brenda’s hand through the coming day.

  “What’s going on?” Jesse asked, looking off, not sufficiently armed to make eye contact with him yet.

  “We’re out there humpin’,” he said, feeling sorry for her, then turning to Brenda. “Did you get any rest?” He was just asking to be polite.

  “Cody,” Brenda whispered.

  He caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror and saw that he didn’t look so hot either, the three of them turning this room into a 4 A.M. Greyhound terminal. “Brenda? What I’d like to do is take you back to the houses, take a look at the scene in the daytime. Maybe we can talk a little more, go over some details.”

  Brenda nodded, then slowly, carefully hung headphones around her neck, the padded earpieces coming to rest on her collarbone. Sh
e took up a Discman and a zippered CD case, rose to her feet, but lost her balance, flopping back to a sitting position. On the second attempt she finally made it up. Lorenzo watched her, thinking she should be going berserk right now, assaulting him with questions, on her knees praying, anything other than this moving around as if she were made of fractured glass, Lorenzo thinking, It’s here, right here.

  “Can I speak to you?” Jesse asked, walking into the kitchen area and waiting there as he gestured for Brenda to hang tight.

  “So what’s shaking out there…” Jesse asked tonelessly playing with a spatula.

  “Brick wall,” Lorenzo said. “What happened to your brother?”

  “Tried to play doorman with Danny Martin.”

  “Whoa.” Lorenzo yawned. “Excuse me.”

  “Yeah, Danny came up here, got into a shout-out with his sister, went back down, and I guess he just changed his mind, cut Ben loose, and took off.”

  “Other fish to fry,” Lorenzo said. “Anything I should know about that shout-out?”

  Jesse shrugged. “Guy’s all buffaloed.”

  “Buffaloed,” Lorenzo repeated.

  “Yeah, it’s been pretty wild around here,” she said tensely, flipping the spatula into the sink.

  “Yeah, huh?”

  “I’m not blowing my own horn or anything, but I have to say, if I wasn’t on my toes, like, nonstop? You’d probably be needing a body bag this morning.” She finally raised her face to him. “I can keep her functional.”

  “I can’t do it, Jesse. You know that.” He smiled to soften the cutoff, seeing in the pouches and crevices of her exhaustion a glimpse of the old woman to come.

  “Are you bringing her back here?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “You can’t say, because…”

  “I can’t say.” His smile shrunk a little.

  “Yeah, well, she said some interesting stuff last night.” Jesse picked up a box of Lucky Charms.

  “Like?” Lorenzo was too tired for this.

  “I can’t say.” Jesse looked him in the eye again.