by David Arnold
Detective Ron nods at me, his eyes landing on my face. In a matter of seconds, I see the forced casualness, the attempted internal explanation, followed by the nothing-to-see-here smile, and finally—the slow look-away.
If I had a nickel for every slow look-away . . .
“What’s up?” says Mendes.
“It’s not good,” says Detective Ron, totally avoiding eye contact with me now.
“Ronald, what?”
Judging from Mendes’s tone, I’m guessing Detective Ronald is the Hackensack Police Department’s resident Frank. He does seem to have a certain French poodle quality about him.
“We keep calling,” says Ron. “She doesn’t answer.”
Across the hall, I catch a glimpse of Mad’s yellow hair in the door window. It’s crazy: you can miss just about anything when it belongs to the right person. Mad is my right person, ergo, I miss her hair and her shoes and her just-about-everything, pretty much.
“Leave a voice mail?” asks Mendes.
“Tried. Her in-box is full.”
I feel a sudden dryness on the back of my tongue, a twitch in my ear, a mighty aplombness in my belly. I knew they were trying to get ahold of Mom, but the reality of seeing her here . . .
When she shows up, she’ll just have to wait. I’m not stopping now.
“Okay, keep trying,” says Mendes. “And let me know the minute you reach her.”
On his way out the door, Detective Ron gives Mendes a peculiar smile. Over the years, I’ve become something of an expert smile-reader, as if my own inability to grin affords me a heightened awareness of others’.
. . .
. . .
“So,” I say. “Detective Ronald.”
“What about him?” asks Mendes.
“He’s your bitch, isn’t he?”
Mendes crosses her arms, says nothing.
“Question,” I say. “Does he just relish being the dude outside the door? To be honest, I always thought it was a bit of a chump’s errand, you know? Hey, you know what you’d be perfect for? Sitting. In the hallway.”
Mendes unclasps the manila folder in front of her, pulls out a few sheets of paper. She flips them upside down, folds her hands across the top.
“Vic, have you ever heard of touch DNA?”
. . .
“No.”
She picks up her pen, holds it in the air. “We’ve been sitting here for just over an hour. During that time, my body has shed roughly thirty thousand skin cells. Now let’s assume only a fraction of those cells transferred from my fingers to this pen—maybe .01 percent. So about three hundred dead skin cells. Or we could be extra conservative and cut that by a third. Let’s say one hundred of my dead skin cells are on this pen. Do you know how many cells a lab needs to develop a person’s DNA profile? Seven, maybe eight. That’s touch DNA.” She slides the envelope across the table. “We pulled DNA off the murder weapon, compared it to nuclear DNA also found at the scene, then ran the results through what’s called the Combined DNA Index System—CODIS, for short. It’s an FBI database that contains DNA samples of known felons.”
She slides a photo of a man across the table. I don’t know him, or at least I don’t think I do. He’s so badly beaten, it’s hard to tell. The picture is a close-up of his face, his wounds and bruises so severe, you might think you were looking at a fresh corpse.
“Who is this?” I ask.
Mendes sips her coffee. “When they arrived in the States, Baz and Nzuzi were categorized as M4 refugee minors, meaning they had no relatives here and knew no one. They were placed in the foster care system almost immediately, with a family in Syracuse. Things go well for a number of years—Baz graduates high school, moves out, gets a job at a local electronics store. Eventually he meets some bad dudes who get him mixed up in their shit. The family says they’re done. They have a biological son and don’t feel they can trust Baz anymore.”
“You said he moved out.”
“He did, but Nzuzi was still there, so Baz was coming around all the time. So once the Syracuse family bows out”—Mendes nods at the photo in my hand—“Thomas Blythe steps in. Single father, decent home, decent job. Eventually the care is approved by Catholic Charities. By all accounts, Mr. Blythe did the Kabongos an incredible kindness, taking Nzuzi in.” She reaches out, taps the photo. “And this is how Baz repaid that kindness. Beat him within an inch of his life.”
. . .
“So he is alive, then?” I ask.
Mendes slides another photo across the table. In this one, Thomas Blythe is in a hospital bed, half a dozen machines around the room, tubes running along (and into) various parts of his body. His face appears to have healed for the most part, though there are some visible scars.
“This photo was taken a couple of months ago by a nurse who takes care of him. He’s in a coma, Victor. On life support. If you call that living.”
I am an eternal blank page.
“What makes you think it was Baz?” I ask. “This man—”
“Thomas Blythe.”
“He’s in a coma, you said. So we can’t know what really happened.”
Mendes slides the third and final sheet of paper across the table. This one is very different from the first two. Across the top, it states in bold lettering, CRIMINAL HISTORY REPORT. Below that, Baz’s face stares up at me. It’s him, but it’s not. There are no smiles from his mouth or his eyes. It’s a cold photo, gray and hard, hard and heavy, heavy and horrible. Baz-in-the-photo doesn’t require the truth, or speak of the provision of the Living God. Baz-in-the-photo doesn’t take the bread off the burger, or quietly pass on soda. Baz-in-the-photo breaks my heart.
To the left of his picture, a list of descriptions includes sex, race, place and date of birth, height, weight, and identifying marks.
“This is what I meant when I said he fell in with some bad dudes,” says Mendes, tapping a line halfway down the page. Prior convictions. There is only one: Grand larceny in the fourth degree (“Suspect stole a Lexus LS 600 value est. over 150K . . .” ). “That’s a Class E felony,” says Mendes, “which accounts for his DNA landing in the CODIS database. As I understand it, there was a bit of leniency with sentencing, considering he had no priors, but he did serve the minimum of one year in prison.”
Do you need help? Did you hurt anyone?
Baz’s questions weren’t conjured from thin air; they were pieces of his past. His no-stealing rule, too, now carried far more weight.
The document goes on to say Baz had been suspected of being involved in one case of assault and battery, and another case of kidnapping.
Mendes reaches over, picks up the picture of Thomas Blythe, stares at it while she talks. “There was no sign of forced entry into Blythe’s apartment. Nothing was stolen. No instrument or weapon was used in the assault of Mr. Blythe, and the wounds were consistent with those of a fist. Repeated and forceful blows by someone who possessed great strength. And I would guess—plenty of rage.”
Fingernails. Push. Deep into the skin of my right forearm.
Push and hold.
Harder now.
I am an old habit.
“Baz Kabongo is not who you think he is, Victor. And he’s counting on you to be a follower. To be his follower. He’s counting on you to be stupid. I’m counting on you to be smart.”
Mendes’s voice is dull, fuzzy, like she’s speaking through a walkie-talkie from some far-off land.
A bad connection from Singapore.
I stare at Baz’s rap sheet, my eyes focusing on a single word. “Kidnapping?” I say.
. . .
. . .
“Victor. Did Coco ever talk about her father?”
(SEVEN days ago)
MAD
“It’s a tattoo shop,” said Baz.
Vic sipped his soda intentionally, angling the
rim a bit off-center. “What is?”
“Hang me from the Parlour. The Parlour is a tattoo shop—a friend of ours works there. It’s not far. We can head over when we finish eating.”
We sat in the back corner booth of Napoleon’s Pub, wedged between a pool table and a dart board, talking about Vic’s list and drinking sodas (except Baz, who always ordered water). Vic was nestled next to Coco and Zuz on one side of the booth, and I sat with Baz on the other.
“I still think we should have gone to White Manna,” said Coco. A Hackensack institution, White Manna was famous for its sliders. Just hearing the name of the restaurant conjured a Pavlovian response in my salivary glands; unfortunately for us, White Manna management had little patience for shenanigans, especially ones involving a short redhead stealing fries off the plates of other customers. “Best sliders this side of the Mississippi.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Have you ever been to the other side of the Mississippi, Coco?”
“I don’t need to. White Manna is the best, and you know it.”
“Well, you should have thought about that before you decided to go around jacking other people’s fries off their—”
As if on cue, a plate of steaming cheese fries appeared on the table before us. “Okay, guys, here you go. My world famous pepper jack fries.”
Margo Bonaparte was exactly as outlandish as her name suggested. She wore rain boots no matter the weather, tight-fitting bright-colored pants, and long pigtails (which looked more like flappy dog ears than hair), and seemed to have an endless supply of old Beatles T-shirts. Margo’s father, Hubert Bonaparte, was the owner of Napoleon’s Pub, so she could do pretty much what she wanted.
Except Baz. She couldn’t do Baz no matter how bad she wanted to. Currently, Baz was seeing Rachel-something, a girl he worked with at Cinema 5. Apparently they had things in common—namely movies and baseball—making her different from the others. Baz usually had a girlfriend, though they rarely lasted, and they never came around. He and Rachel ate out a lot, stayed at her place sometimes, and occasionally went to Trenton to catch a Thunder game. I could hardly blame Baz for keeping serious separation between his love life and Greenhouse Eleven.
“You lose my number again, Mbemba?” asked Margo Bonaparte. As far as I knew, Margo was the only one who used Baz’s full name. She pulled a pen and a slip of paper from her apron, wrote her number down, and handed it to him. “I swear, you’d lose that beautiful head of yours if it weren’t attached.” Then, to the rest of us: “Burgers okay? I can bring salads, too. We got an overload of lettuce in the last shipment, it’s all gonna go bad soon. But, oh! Guys. Listen. You have to save room, okay? I’ve got a special treat for dessert. Promise me.”
We assured Margo that we would save room for her special treat, and off she went, pigtails flapping behind her.
“But guys,” said Coco, in a singsong voice. “Listen. We simply must save room.” She stuffed a forkful of cheese fries in her mouth, continued to talk with her mouth full. “Freak show, that girl. Still. What do you think, Zuz? She got some ice cream back there?”
Zuz snapped once.
Despite the name of the establishment, the only thing French about the place (other than its fries) was the trademark greeting of its waiters and waitresses. “Bonjour, mes petits gourmands,” which translated to, “Hello, my small gluttons.” In a Venn diagram where set A = {People Who Speak French}, and set B = {Regular Patrons of Napoleon’s Pub}, the intersection = {Basically No One}. Napoleon’s Pub was preposterousness personified, which probably explained why we liked it so much.
The fries were gone in no time, and a few minutes later Margo brought the salads. It had been a while since our last Chapter, so we ate in silence for the most part, each of us acclimating to the presence of another person at the table. Once done with the salads and cheese fries, we passed around the two items from the urn: the letter and the photograph.
I read a portion of it aloud. “‘You and Victor are my North, South, East, and West. You are my Due Everywhere.’” What I wanted to say was, This is the sweetest fucking thing I’ve ever read, but all that came out was, “Doris is your mother?”
Vic nodded, and I read aloud the locations on the list. “‘Hang me from the Parlour, toss me off the Palisades, bury me in the smoking bricks of our first kiss, drown me in our wishing well, drop me from the top of our rock.’ Well, the Parlour we know. The Palisades are the cliffs, I assume.”
Baz nodded. “That one should be easy enough. We can get there from Englewood.” He looked across the table at Vic. “Do you have any idea about the other three places?”
“No,” he said, staring into his empty glass.
I passed the letter across the table; Coco grabbed it with cheesy hands and read it out loud between bites. When she got to the closing, she paused. “‘Till we’re old-new.’ What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s something they used to say,” said Vic. “I don’t really— I don’t know what it means.”
Vic’s mannerisms, the tone of both language and body, suggested some deep embarrassment, as if we’d just broadcast his personal diary throughout the country. Though there was something intensely personal about the letter, his father’s “Terminal Note.”
Zuz passed the Polaroid to me.
“Who put these things in your father’s urn?” asked Baz. “And why would they do such a thing?”
“Mom must have,” he said. “The list, the photo, the ashes. She needed to keep all of him together, I think. Everything in our house is different now. But those things are still him. Those things haven’t changed.”
In the photograph, Vic’s parents are on a rooftop, the familiar skyline of New York City behind them. There was a fair resemblance between Vic and his parents, but I wondered how much stronger it might have been were it not for the wall of hair he hid behind like a shield, a divider between himself and the world around him.
“They look really happy,” I said, looking back at the picture.
Vic pushed his glass away, reached across the table, took the Polaroid out of my hands. Just then Margo appeared with a tray full of burgers, setting a plate in front of each of us. She disappeared with an “Au revoir, mes petits gourmands,” but I barely heard her. I watched Vic as he stared at that Polaroid in his hands, and I wondered what he was thinking.
VIC
I bet Mom asked a complete stranger to take this picture. She was always doing that, asking strangers to take photos.
Strangers stared hardest.
It was a real problem for me.
“They were happy,” I said. “We were happy.”
I was happy.
Now? Shit. Singapore.
I put the photo down, stared at the burger in front of me. The weird waitress was gone, but no one was eating. I thought about what Baz had said, about the Parlour being a tattoo shop, and in my Land of Nothingness I saw two compasses pointed at each other. So we never get lost, Dad used to say.
I knew Baz was right about it being a tattoo shop. It made so much sense. Which meant we would calmly finish our food and make our way to the Parlour, where I would begin a process whose end was the end. Dad’s end.
And I felt like this: a shaken bottle of champagne; an angry volcano tired of humans building silly little houses on my arms and legs like I didn’t exist, like I couldn’t wipe them out whenever I wanted. I felt full of fiery things, and icy things too, things that bubbled and boiled and popped, things that begged for liberation.
“Mom and Dad started dating in high school,” I said. “Got married in college.”
I needed to be empty.
I needed someone to pour me out.
“They always said, ‘We fell in love silly young.’ And I really miss that, you know?”
I looked around the table. None of them seemed fazed, which made me want to give my bubbles and anger to thes
e kids who would listen, kids who would finally fucking listen and see me for me, and not some statue on a street corner, holding a sign that says, Look at me, don’t look at me, look at me, don’t look at me, over and over, but it’s never over; it goes on forever, this desire to be both seen and unseen.
“Mom and Dad had all these sayings, all these sentences only they understood. Till we’re old-new. I have no idea what that means.” I was crying now—rare, but not impossible. I relished the moisture, and thought, Yes, this makes sense. Get it out, get it all out with the lava and the champagne. Liberate all things. “There are times when I think I knew him better than anybody, and then times when I feel I never knew him at all. And now it’s too late. And he . . . fucking promised me”—I shook myself up until the cap popped off, fizz, fizz, bubble, bubble, pop, take a breath now—“when I was little, Dad promised he’d never leave. He taught me how to think with my heart, how to hear the whispers—the really mean ones—how to take those and make myself stronger, how to be a Super Racehorse, and not some silly sideways hug. Well, how is he supposed to do all that when he’s dead?” I grabbed a nearby napkin, wiped the liberation from my face. “And now the whole stupid world has moved on, including my mom, who I barely even recognize.”
. . .
. . .
. . .
Say it.
I am Northern Dancer, sire of the century, the superest of all racehorses.
. . .
Do it.
. . .
“Dad died of pancreatic cancer.”
. . .
Five words I’d never said before.
The first two were the only ones that mattered.
. . .
“He died two years ago.” Again, the first two words rendered the others pretty impotent. “Mom just got engaged. To someone who thinks Tolstoy wrote The Brothers Karamazov.”
. . .
. . .
“He didn’t write it?” asked Coco.
The table breathed for the first time in what seemed like hours. I looked at Coco, tried to smile with my eyes, but I couldn’t be sure it worked. “No, Coco. He didn’t.”