Pulling into the Hurley Street cul-de-sac, he saw the mayor’s Town Car pulling out—the chief of police, in his own ride, bringing up the rear—and remembered being told earlier this morning, by another cop outside Brenda’s hospital room, that after last night’s press conference and arrests, the theme around town today would be Open City, Dempsy setting itself up like one big civic workshop, putting on a show for both the locals and the press. There was to have been a tenants’ meeting with the mayor and the chief of police at Armstrong this morning, that one apparently just having come to an end; a Keep Cool workshop for the teenagers here; a Stop the Violence rally at Roosevelt; an all-faiths interracial healing session at Saint Michael’s; a meeting of Invictus for black cops; a meeting at City Hall to begin the process of setting up a civilian review board for police conduct; and, later, a visit to Miss Dotson’s apartment, the mayor and anyone else he could intimidate or persuade going to make peace with the family of Curious George Howard.
As Lorenzo began trudging toward Five Building, toward his childhood bed in his childhood bedroom, he envisioned the entire trick-bag day as a high-stakes version of Brenda’s Fruit Salad game, all the hitters in town endlessly passing one another in the elevators, the hallways, the parking lots, heading in or out of meetings—all of it, as far as he was concerned, wall-to-wall horseshit.
“My name is Isaac Hathaway and I’m here, today, because I love you.”
This opening declaration came from the ground-level day-care room off to the side of the elevators in Five Building, and Lorenzo reluctantly dragged himself across the lobby to get a peek inside. He saw roughly two dozen Armstrong teenagers and a few of the younger kids sitting in a wide circle facing the speaker, a thirtyish-looking light-skinned black man who had the scrubbed, ego-chastened look of the ex-addict, ex-jailbird a few years into Recovery. His cheap short-sleeved button-down shirt and slacks were starched, fresh, anonymous, and he was bright-voiced and clear of eye, but an unnatural dent marked his left temple and a six-inch knife scar lay like a blanched leech inside his forearm.
“Let me say that again.” He paused to wait out the wisecracks, the embarrassment. “My name is Isaac Hathaway and I’m here, today, because I love you.” The guy beamed at them, the boys sniggering. “I love you, I love you, I love you.” Isaac Hathaway methodically went around the horn, Lorenzo furious, immediately realizing that someone had fucked up and arranged a Self-Esteem workshop instead of a Keep Cool workshop, somebody always fucking up like that around here.
“I love you, I love you, and I even love the brother sittin’; under the window pretending he’s asleep over there.” Hathaway’s voice carried a heightened buoyancy now as he gestured toward a glower-faced fifteen-year-old leaning up against the wall. The boy’s name was Daniel Bennett, and as Lorenzo watched him sitting knees to chin, he was suddenly gripped by a disturbingly powerful desire to march over and smack Daniel—not a bad kid—on his head.
“But most important,” Hathaway said, then paused. “I love me.” He withstood another wave of sputtery ridicule, Lorenzo still standing in the doorway fuming.
“See I’m from here. I’m from here just like you. But I don’t live here now. Unh-uh. Unh-uh. I got me a house. I got me a small house over in Jersey City. It’s small, but it’s mine. I got me a wife, a son, and I got me a roof over my head. I got out,” he said, grinning at them. “I got out. And you may ask me, ‘How’d you get out, Isaac? How’d you do it?’ And I’ll tell you. I got out because I got me an education. Did I go to Twenty-two School like you all? No. Me? I went to the school of hard knocks. Let me show you my diplomas.” Hathaway held up the knife-scarred arm. “Here’s my bachelor’s degree.” He stared at them, the kids attentive now, half smiles of interest on their faces. Hathaway removed his tie and unbuttoned the front of his shirt, popping out his left shoulder, touching a starred bullet wound. “Here’s my master’s.”
“Ho!” one of the boys barked. Lorenzo was disgusted: this type of show-and-tell invariably backfired, the kids always winding up jazzed instead of “woken up.”
“And here”—he lifted the belly of his shirt to reveal another long vertical knife scar above his navel—“here’s my Ph.D.”
“Damn!” All the boys were grinning now, the girls speaking to one another behind a screen of hands.
“Either you change,” he announced, “or you ex-pire.”
“You change your new tire,” one wiseguy whispered loudly, cracking up the kids nearest to him.
“Now, we’re gonna get into something here, but first I want to know who you are, so I want you all to go around the horn, tell me your name, and after you say your name? I want you to say, And I love myself.’ OK? I’ll go first, ’cause I love saying how much I love myself, so my name is Isaac Hathaway and I love myself. G’head—this girl first.”
“Excuse me,” Lorenzo exploded, paralyzing his audience. “I got to go, but I would like to give you kids some tips on the next few nights out here. I’d like to give you some tips on survival. No theories, no speeches. Facts.” Prowling the room, Lorenzo glared at them. “Facts. The police, is angry. The police, is scared. And the ones you’re gonna see around here tonight? Tomorrow night? They don’t know you. They don’t know what’s in your head, who your mother is, if you’re a good kid, bad kid, all they know is they’re living on the edge of their own nerves, just like you.
“Freeze means freeze. It don’t mean take another step. It don’t mean wave your arms. It don’t mean turn your back, and it don’t mean show your girlfriend how brave you are. Freeze means freeze. Listen to the police officer, because you just might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.” Lorenzo was bellowing, his voice cracking. “Any way a person can die, I’ve seen it, and I’m tired of it. I’m tired of going to autopsies and funerals of kids who look just like you. You want the best advice for these next few days? Stay home. Watch TV. Read a book. Don’t mess up. Thank you.”
“Thank you,” Isaac Hathaway said with a cautious positiveness. Angry to the point of tears, Lorenzo finally left the room.
A moment later, Lorenzo found himself prowling the breezeway enraged by that useless workshop and enraged at Longway De Lauder, Curious George, and at himself. He was enraged, too, at the cops, at the idea of the cops who would ring these high-rises again at nightfall—wired, scared, ready for anything, expecting the worst—those kids in there having done nothing to merit the danger of this armed edginess but having the misfortune, in the wake of Brenda’s hoax, to call this place home.
Pacing, livid, liberated, Lorenzo finally hopped off the fence, coming down on Longway’s side, thinking, The rev is right; it’s their goddamned turn.
30
After Brenda’s video arraignment, Jesse took off in Ben’s car, heading for the medical center to check in on him. She dreaded the visit, knowing he would fall all over himself to take the blame for his own slashing, offering her a free pass on that one, a pass she’d most likely accept.
As she rolled along JFK Boulevard, the loud, dull crack of something thrown at the car had her swerving wildly, then whipping the Chrysler down side street after side street, and it wasn’t until she pulled into the medical center parking lot that she ventured a glance at the fractured star that had been her brother’s passenger-side window. Jesse was sure that Ben would figure out a way to take the blame for that one too.
Climbing the broad steps leading to the main lobby, she ran into Willy Hernandez, the cop whom she had last seen safeguarding the double-shooting crime scene on the night she first met Brenda. Willy was descending the steps, his left hand thickly bandaged.
“What happened to you?” Jesse asked, welcoming the delay.
“I’m in Roosevelt last night. You know, the volunteer peacekeeper thing?” Willy stood with his feet planted on separate steps. “I’m there all goddamn night, tense as a motherfucker, right? But we keep it all tucked in—no violence, no arrests—straight through till sunup. I go home? Within like, five minutes o
f stepping into my own house, I break a freakin’ juice glass, wind up filleting my palm. Fifteen stitches, I’ll probably never play the violin again.”
“Jesus,” Jesse said, not really listening. “You OK?” Willy just stared at her. “So what’s the word on tonight?”
“Tonight?” Willy shrugged. “Word is we might be ducking us a bullet. Word is they’re taking it out of town.”
“Who is.”
“Longway, some others. They’re gearing up for a march into Gannon, if you can believe it.”
“No.” Jesse put that one on hold.
“And me,” Willy said, “I can’t decide if that’s fucked up, or I’m fucked up for thinking that’s fucked up.”
After Willy continued on his way, Jesse decided to forestall her visit further by taking a seat on the hospital steps and returning to work on the second installment of her diary piece. Her desire to put off seeing Ben made her unself-consciously productive for once, lost in her own written voice. She wrote, and rewrote, for close to an hour, just banging it out, the work only coming to a halt when she saw Paul Rosenbaum, Brenda’s lawyer, exit the building, flanked by aides and trailing reporters.
Rosenbaum made his way to the lowest landing and then came to a halt, holding his briefcase to his chest like a schoolgirl as the reporters who had been following him—Jesse among them now, and others coming up from the street—formed their usual packed wedge, the lawyer smiling patiently as he waited for his audience to settle in. “What’s going on here is both grotesque and inhuman,” he began without preamble. “There was no homicide. The police, looking for a scapegoat to blame for their own unconscionable and racist misconduct, have keyed in on the one person who suffers most horribly and inconsolably as a result of this tragic accident.”
As if he was unaware of the infernal racket of the lunchtime city around him, Rosenbaum’s delivery was both soft and measured, and after realizing that they were missing half of what he was saying, the reporters became perfectly still in order to catch his words—still and attentive. Jesse knew Rosenbaum well enough to recognize that this was a calculated act on his part, this choosing a clamorous setting to deliver half-murmured words, gently forcing his audience to truly listen to what he had to say and, by extension, to slow down in their rush to judgment.
“Our office has been deluged with more letters and phone calls regarding the plight of Brenda Martin than for any other client we have ever represented… And I would have to say, some of the, the outpourings, some of the offerings that have come our way constitute the most heartrending and compassionate missives I have ever read or heard in my life.”
He came to a full stop, slowly scanning his audience, face by face, throwing Jesse the briefest smile of recognition.
“However,” he continued, “to those, who have been writing obscene letters, writing death threats, phoning in death threats…” He paused again, the crowd motionless. “If you’re trying to, to, make her feel any more miserable than she is now… If you’re trying to make her suffer, any more than she is suffering now…It is not a productive expenditure of your time.
“Over the last four, hellish days she has been desperately, desperately trying to, to fend off the reality, of her son’s death. But as of yesterday, her last illusion has been exploded… And the place in which she now dwells, is unspeakable.
“Consider, consider the endurance required by her illusion, the, the enormity of it. Consider the great number of people caught up in the web of this illusion. Consider the chain reaction of grief, and pain provoked by this most desperate of desperate fantasies.” Rosenbaum came to a dead stop again. “And then consider the engine of denial, that drove this tortured woman, as she struggled to confront the loss of the most precious person in her life.”
Jesse, fighting to hold on to her detachment, told herself she was impressed. Most lawyers would have ducked the carjacker scam; Rosenbaum was embracing it.
“At present, she is shunned by family by friends, and by those quarters of the community to which she has dedicated her entire adult working life. From the hospital, later today or early tomorrow, when they deem her, healthy, she will be transferred to the Dempsy County jail and put in isolation—put in a six-by-fourteen-foot cell, under twenty-four-hour video surveillance reinforced every fifteen minutes around the clock by guard visitations. She will be issued paper clothing and perhaps given a Bible.
“They call this protective custody, but both the guards and inmates will subject her to incessant verbal abuse. Her food will be spat in, and she will hear through the ventilation ducts of her cell a constant stream of threats and taunts from the other cells, which are linked by the air-conditioning system of the prison. A perennial favorite, for tormenting accused child killers,” Rosenbaum said, taking another searching pause, “is the imitating, of a baby’s cry.”
Jesse knew this but flinched nonetheless. She heard someone grunt in sympathy.
“But nothing, nothing that they can inflict on her comes anywhere near what she will inflict on herself for not being able to save her son’s life. They will put her in protective custody and say it’s for her own welfare. But physical violence, mental violence, even the possibility of violent death, will be nothing compared to the torment of living the rest of her life without her son.
“Homicide…” Rosenbaum tasted the word, the outrage. “Homicide. We will prove in court that the death of Cody Martin was accidental, but I will tell you something. The crushing sense of guilt this woman is now beginning to experience is like a slow-motion homicide unto itself.
“I understand the district attorney has decided not to ask for the death penalty, but if he changes his mind, let him rest assured, that if he’s looking for an executioner, Brenda Martin will be happy to pull the switch herself.” Rosenbaum took a step back from the wedge. “The prosecutor’s office should be ashamed of itself. And I hope to see all of you at the trial.”
As the presser shifted into Q and A, Jesse wandered off. There would be no trial, Jesse betting on a plea deal, criminally negligent homicide still the odds-on favorite. But Rosenbaum was right: manslaughter, reckless endangerment, homicide, criminally negligent or not—what difference would it make? Brenda would be her own jailer, and a merciless one at that. As the group interview droned on, Jesse suddenly felt a cold whistle of panic in her belly, felt in some vague way responsible for Brenda’s agony. She and Brenda, they had played each other, Jesse told herself, each working the lie they needed to put forth in order to get over. It was a straight swap.
“Jesse.” Rosenbaum’s voice jerked her around. “I liked what you wrote about being alone with her. I’m sure it wasn’t an easy experience.” He was smiling as if glad to see her, his presence exuding a mild air of moral benediction every bit as proprietary as Karen Collucci’s scorched-earth briskness. “She asks about you,” Rosenbaum said.
“What do you mean…” Jesse was excited by this news but also wary, braced for some kind of pitch here, some kind of setup.
“You were kind of her only friend.”
“Huh.” Jesse sure of it now, deciding that he was softening her up, wanting her as a witness for the defense. She wondered if Brenda had told him about her fictional child, had to tell him, this prissy, self-righteous bastard who had busted Jesse on her shit once before, this moral blackmailer with his soft-steel humanism.
“Are you OK?” he asked.
“Never better,” she said, and giving Rosenbaum her back, she trotted up the remaining steps to the hospital entrance. A visit with her brother suddenly felt like the least of all evils.
The rental TV mounted over Ben’s hospital bed was turned to CNN, which was rolling earlier footage from outside the arraignments court, the reporters interviewing anyone wearing either a jacker T-shirt or a Cody button. Jesse’s entrance caught Ben by surprise, and despite the fact that he was hooked up to an IV, he bolted upright in bed, scrambling for the remote, knowing how his sister couldn’t abide hearing the words.
He blushed, embarrassed, and touched the broad square patch on his stitched cheek. “It was my own stupid fault.”
“Aw fuck you.”
“Why fuck me?” He seemed bewildered rather than hurt.
“Just…” Jesse felt sick. “Never mind.”
A silence came down on them as they stared rigidly at the CNN report with unseeing eyes. “You know, Jesse,” Ben finally said, “if I ever got mad at you like you get mad at me, you’d break like glass.”
Numbed by Ben’s words, his even-toned observation itself provoking a demonstration of its truth, Jesse quickly mumbled, “I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m just saying…” Ben retreated.
“I’m sorry,” Jesse repeated, feeling self-revulsed, weak, her eyes filling with tears.
“Jesse, c’mon, I didn’t mean anything.”
A silver twitch coming off the screen took her out of her self-pity before she could examine it, CNN now showing an amateur video of Brenda and Cody hanging together in the Study Club.
“Jesus,” Jesse exhaled, leaning into the side of her brother’s bed.
The shaky footage, still on mute, showed mother and son seated at a table, side by side, working on the construction of a glue-sloppy Popsicle house. Brenda, hunched over the child-height table, kept flicking a self-conscious eye toward the camera as older kids darted in and out of the background. Cody, oblivious, frowned at the task before him, occasionally scratching his nose or touching his mother’s arm. Brenda’s every gesture, glance, twitch of the mouth or the eye, in light of recent events, seemed freighted with menace.
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