Freedomland

by Richard Price

  Backing Mary against the cool stone of the shadowed underpass, Lorenzo rested his hands on her shoulders. “All right, look, I’m gonna send someone over to Juvie, find out what happened, OK?” He exuded a reassuring calm that was a lie.

  “He should have lit his fires up on the Bowl with the rest of them,” she started in again. “He’d be free as a bird.”

  “Yeah, I hear you, Mary. I hear you,” he said briskly. “But here’s the thing. I do something for you, you got to do something for me. I cannot have you out here hopping around like Christ on a stick, gassin’ up people’s heads.”

  Lorenzo heard shattering glass, saw shards and nuggets skipping past the rear ends of the police cars. “You got to keep your mouth shut,” he pressed on, talking fast now, desperate to get those cars out of here, “’cause I promise you, all you’re gonna be doing is bringing down more grief than you already got now.” More glass, maybe tossed down from an apartment window. Lorenzo braced for the sound of slammed car doors, the cops on the move.

  “Lorenzo, I don’t even believe he did it.” Her voice was more intimate now, plaintive and aggrieved. “They say he got a tire on fire and rolled it into that Chinese restaurant on Easter Avenue.”

  “A tire?” Lorenzo said, thinking, Aggravated arson.

  “That doesn’t sound like him, Lorenzo.”

  “That doesn’t sound like anybody,” he said, then added, “Excuse me,” and left her in the underpass, heading for the cop cars, Mary’s voice echoing out from the stone-lined hollow, “He’s a scapegoat, Lorenzo.”

  As he came within conversation range of the cruisers—Lorenzo wanting to be hooked up on the radio with whoever had ordered them in—both cars abruptly clicked into reverse and, sweeping backwards in a half arc, shifted gears again and shot out of Hurley Street, flying up the hill that flanked the Bowl. Lorenzo was only partly relieved, the cars moving too fast to indicate a simple withdrawal from post.

  Turning to Hurley, his anxiety grew stronger. The cul-de-sac was deserted now, the Bowl too. Then he saw them, the last of the street crowd racing into the breezeway of One Building up on Gompers, people charging into the lobby almost single file, like the tail of a mouse disappearing into its hole. By the time he had huffed his way up the slope, the lobby of the building was so thick with people, all of them seemingly barking and shouting, that he had to use his bulk and his elbows to force his way in through the door. He knew that somewhere in this teeming mob were at least four uniforms and a crew of medics, given the vehicles scatter parked in front of the building, but he couldn’t see them.

  The focus in the lobby seemed to be the elevator banks, people hopping in place and shouting out a dozen variations of what sounded like “Get him out.” Spying a flash of blue, Lorenzo heard some cop, young, white, bawl back at them, “We got, to wait, for the mechanic!” Bulling his way deeper into the crowd, he finally caught sight of the elevator doors, both closed. A half dozen cops were attempting to clear some breathing space for themselves and the two medics there, a small wedge of air. The press of humanity was so dense that most people could only maneuver vertically, bouncing and bellowing, “Get him out!” over and over. The cops looked scared; the volunteer peacekeepers from the Invictus and Aspira organizations were as trapped as anyone else.

  “We have, to wait, for the mechanic!” that same young cop bawled through cupped hands. “We don’t, have, the key!”

  “Then use the white key, motherfucker!” a deep male voice boomed from the back of the crowd.

  A teenaged girl slipped into the cleared semicircle, slid in behind the cops and medics, and, pressing her body against one of the closed elevator doors, began hysterically jiggling in place, sobbing, slapping the unyielding greasy metal as if whoever was trapped on the other side could just open up and let her in. Again and again she brayed out a single name, Lorenzo fearing that, given the intensity of her trembling, the trapped party was her child. The cops nearest the elevator doors were too outwardly focused, too frazzled to take notice of her, only one of the medics giving her the once-over.

  Some of the off-duty volunteers finally made their way to the clearing and began to push people back, but other police, late-arriving uniforms, were piling in from the breezeway pushing people forward. Lorenzo was beginning to feel crushed. The sobbing girl continued slapping the elevator door, howling over and over, “Barry!” He could hear it clearly now. “Barry!” Scanning his mental directory, Lorenzo came up with three Barrys, none of them children.

  “The mechanic, is on, his way!” That same cop, slowly bellowing it out, over and over, no one listening.

  “Who’s in there?” Lorenzo said loudly to those squirming and hopping around him. “Who’s stuck?”

  “Stuck!” one of the teenagers responded, turning to him with a look of half-crazed disdain. “Nobody’s stuck. Motherfucker’s up there on the ninth floor, push for the elevator, door opens, nigger’s talking left, walkin’ right, and steps in to the shaft. The mother-fuckin’ elevator ain’t there, nigger, drops. And now he’s in the black land. Nine motherfuckin’ floors, layin’ there all bust up in the basement, nine motherfuckin’ floors…Nobody stuck.”

  “Who…?”

  The girl continued to slap the elevator door, howling “Barry!”

  “My boy Watrous,” the kid said. “Barry Watrous.”

  Lorenzo winced, knowing the girl now. Stephanie Watrous—her other brother had been killed just a few weeks back.

  “Get him out!” Someone was booming it right in his ear, spraying the side of his face.

  Lorenzo saw one of the Aspira volunteers, now up front, and catching his eye, gestured for him to take Stephanie out of there, up the stairs, anywhere but here. The cops by the elevators continued to push people back, while the cops still arriving from the street continued to push people forward. Lorenzo was wheezing like a bagpipe now, unable even to reach for his asthma spray. His own physical distress made him even more fearful for the rest of the crowd, fearful of their being smothered in here but also of their getting free, dispersing into the night with all this rage.

  “Do something!” Lorenzo saw one of Barry’s aunts pop out of the crowd, fists knotted at her side, a fat vein wriggling at her temple. “Pretend he’s white.”

  “If you don’t back up,” a fear-fucked uniform said, thrusting a finger in her face, “you’re going in.”

  Lorenzo shut his eyes, this asshole having just threatened the dead boy’s aunt, who was so stunned by this response that she simply walked away.

  “The mechanic, is on, the way!” that same cop howled. “We can’t get in without the key!”

  Lorenzo saw one of the medics light up a cigarette, probably meaning no disrespect, the guy having nothing to do except watch the needle climb higher and higher on this pressure cooker. But it looked bad, him lighting up in front of the crowd, really bad, and Lorenzo saw two of the man-boys in the crowd react, breast-stroking their way forward, eyes on that medic. Lorenzo raced them, got there first, held them off with one hand, snatched the butt from the medic’s lips with the other, the guy gasping in surprise, looking at Lorenzo as if he were just another D-Town goon.

  In or out: there was no one in charge, and Lorenzo frantically tried to make the right call, wanting to keep the rage in here contained, or eject it into the street, the night, this night. He opted for an exodus, the crush just too dangerous.

  “Get them out,” he megaphoned over the heads of the crowd to the cops at the door, not sure any of them heard him. “Get them out!” No one in charge, his directive mingling with the crowd’s chorus of “Get him out,” a barnyard swirl of words vaporizing into the sopping air.

  And then the mechanic arrived, just popped out of the front lines of the crowd, jockey-sized, sleep-smeared, his hair sticking out in unbrushed spikes. He seemed immune to the chaos, still groggy as he slipped into the clearing, a toolbox in one hand and a heavy key ring in the other.

  “Don’t do nothing yet,” Lorenzo said, cr
ouching down to put his lips to the mechanic’s ear. “Get them out!” he then boomed as loud as he could to the cops in the rear, waving everybody back with both hands, not wanting an open elevator shaft added to the mix, envisioning a forward surge, people pressing in to see the body at the bottom of the shaft, Barry Watrous lying twisted and mangled around the huge shock-absorber coils down there.

  Either the mechanic didn’t hear him or the guy just wanted to get back to bed, and within thirty seconds of his arrival the elevator doors were open. Lorenzo turned, ready to wring this little bastard’s neck, but what he saw framed by the opened door froze him in place, froze everybody in place. A hush came over the lobby punctuated by whispered awe, nonwords and groans.

  The car that failed to meet Barry Watrous on nine had never left the ground floor. The impact of the body plummeting from that height had driven the car downwards, half its length, so that its roof, which now supported Barry’s broken body, was at eye level with those who had been standing, shoving, shouting in the lobby.

  Barry lay sprawled almost gracefully on his back, one leg twisted beneath him at a cartoon angle, his throat arched, his chin thrust upward, lips slightly apart, eyes shut, a flung hand now at rest, palm-out across his forehead in an attitude of almost languorous repose. His stunning proximity to the crowd had Lorenzo and everyone else struck dumb. The body lay before them like an offering, a tableau—a death for your contemplation, death itself for your contemplation, death displayed, death arrayed, death in all its inert majesty in all its terrible absoluteness, death in your face, in your eye, a death to take your breath away—and for a long moment the air, what little there was to begin with, went out of the hall, no one talking, no one walking, the only signs of insistent life being the medic, quietly reaching in and feeling for a pulse in Barry’s throat, and a seemingly sourceless ripple coursing through the unresisting crowd as the small mechanic worked his way, like a cat through tall grass, toward the lobby door and home.

  The mechanic’s exit brought Lorenzo back into focus: the elevator had killed someone, and there was no way that guy was going back to bed. Lorenzo began shoving his way toward the door, and a moment after that the rest of the lobby crowd came alive, too, with a rising mutter and buzz, people once again on the move, most of them heading for the street now, taking long last looks at the body on their way out, reentering the night and all its possibilities.

  Lorenzo was no longer worried about Armstrong’s going off. Barry Watrous had taken the wind out of these houses, and he knew that for at least the next few hours Armstrong would grant both itself and the city a temporary stay of execution. The Crime Scene Unit, the county homicide squad, and a team from Emergency Services joined the uniforms and the medics still inside the lobby, and Lorenzo headed outside, mingling with the tenants in front of the building, a delayed weepiness now peppering the crowd, a low male drawl of mournful reflection.

  As he was looking around for the retreating mechanic, Lorenzo heard someone out of his sight lines say, “Brenda Martin,” just floating it out there, Lorenzo thinking, Brenda Martin, then having to say the name out loud to himself before he could remember who she was.

  28

  Jesse sat in the 4:00 A.M. waft and blear of a hot-sheet motel room and stared at the bubble-gum-blue screen of the laptop propped on the otherwise untouched bed. For the first time in days, Jesse was alone.

  Three hours earlier, she had left her brother at the Medical Center. Ben was to be kept overnight, not for his slashed cheek but for exhaustion. In the surgery room, he had played dumb with the cops, affecting that overpolite, almost slavishly accommodating side of himself, but Jesse knew that, in this case, he was blowing smoke, knew that what was operating in him then was the Ben who paid the bills by serving subpoenas, the side of him that advertised itself on a business card as a “personal threat consultant,” a stalker of stalkers, a counterintimidator of ex-husbands, ex-boyfriends, and any other type of restraining-order violator out there on the street.

  A few weeks or months from now, Ben would have his payback on the boxcutter-wielding son of a bitch who had carved his face. The guy was destined for a hospital stay of his own, and although Jesse had no problem with Old Testament-style revenge, she didn’t want to hear the details in advance, so she left her brother in the general-surgery room before the painkillers could make him chatty.

  Now, with both her brother and Brenda tucked away for the night, with the streets finally quiet, Jesse had no choice but to get down to that most dreaded and much-delayed aspect of the job, the committing of thought to print. Jose needed both her piece on the Friends of Kent ordeal and the second installment of her vigil diary. He had asked her to come into the paper tonight and work at her cubicle, said he’d wait for her till whatever hour so they could have at least one face-to-face on this story. But Jesse liked Jose better over the phone—disembodied, omniscient, guiding, the good father—and she didn’t want to go home to that jerry-rigged, flavored-coffee-reeking rip-off bachelorette. So she had checked into the Tunnel-View Motel in Jersey City, was trying to bang it out here, working under the light of the high-powered incandescent bulb that she always carried in her bag, squinting through her own smoke at the vacant gleam of the screen, but it just wasn’t happening.

  She could have blamed her lack of progress on many things—the voidish hour; the distraction of the hooker one room over, headbutting the shared wall and tonelessly lowing, or the East Indian motel manager, walking back and forth in his carpet slippers past her ground-floor window, coming off both aloof and curious. Jesse speculated that she was probably the only woman he had ever rented a room to who didn’t earn her living with her mouth.

  She could even have blamed her stall on Jose, who over the years had paper-trained her to write without personality or intimate observation. But the blank screen was about none of that. It was about Brenda. And it was about herself. Having begun this forty-eight-hour emotional car wash, drunk on intimacy and identification, Jesse had then pulled an abrupt about-face into anger and disdain, deciding that she had been lied to, manipulated, conned. These negatives were tricky for her to negotiate, given that she felt guilty of the very same hustles, and now here they were at the end of the ride, she and Brenda, and it just wouldn’t come.

  The hooker on the other side of the wall said either, “You’re so big” or “You’re a pig.”

  Jesse checked the time: four-fifteen. She reached for the phone.

  “What.” Jose picked up, sounding sleep-stuffed, pissed.

  “Listen.” She held the receiver to the wall above her headboard for a brief moment, the woman on the other side back to halfheartedly moaning.

  “Jesus, that’s my wife. Where are you?”

  “The No Tell Mo Tell.”

  “Why. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  “I’m shy,” she said, feeling better now.

  “You’re almost finished, right?”

  “Almost.”

  “You hear about the kid who died in Armstrong?”

  “No.”

  “Elevator accident. Fell something like twelve stories.”

  “Jesus.”

  “They’re making a movie about it. You know what it’s called?”

  “Shaft?”

  “Very good.”

  “So what’s the score?” she asked.

  “Eighteen. Arson, assault, disorderly, you name it. You hear about the kid who rolled a burning tire into the Chinese restaurant?”

  “Is that a joke?”

  “Nope.”

  “How’d they take the elevator accident at Armstrong?”

  “Buggin’,” he said. “But it stayed in-house.”

  “So, eighteen?” Jesse closed her eyes, fell asleep for a second.

  “I’m telling you, we’re like one lockup away from a riot. Come tomorrow night? It’s gonna be like playing catch with a water balloon out there.”

  Jesse stared at the luminous blue sea of nothing propped on the bed. “So
what’s the early line on her,” she asked.

  “Criminally negligent homicide. Draw three to five—serve three or less if people forget, the full five if they don’t.”

  “They’re doing a bedside arraignment?” Jesse’s yawns came down on her like snow.

  “Yeah, but get this—they’re doing a video feed of it into the court.”

  “From the hospital?” Jesse jumped, knowing instantly that she had to see that footage to kick out the jams on this piece, commit to a stance. “I thought they only video booked from the jail.”

  “She’s a very special girl, our Brenda.”

  “I guess so,” Jesse said evenly, needing her, feeling the old pull, but keeping it to herself.

  “So it’s going OK?” Jose inquired about the writing, sounding leery.

  “Yeah, I’m almost done,” Jesse said quickly.

  “You’re not thinking of going to the arraignment, are you?”

  “No time,” she murmured, not wanting to hear him say, Don’t.

  “Well, maybe you should,” Jose said, coming on paternal and knowing now. “You know, like a wee hair of the dog.”

  At eight-forty-five in the morning, after little sleep and less writing, Jesse stood at the rear entrance to the Dempsy County judicial processing court, one of a long line of anxious reporters trying to secure a pass for Brenda’s arraignment. The county clerk charged with overseeing the press passes was a frazzled, heavyset woman in matching coral top and slacks. She stood over a rickety card table that supported a joint-compound bucket filled with color-of-the-day buttons. There were more reporters than available seats, and the woman seemed prickly and overwhelmed. Jesse and most of the others familiar with this kind of situation knew that this lady was to be coddled and humored; any rudeness or ill temper on her part was to be swallowed with a smile. Jesse also understood that the same delicate obeisance would be required once inside the courtroom, the court officers on duty today under the fluorescent ceiling panels subject to the same high-pressure crankiness as this lady was out here under the climbing sun.