Risking It All

by Nina Darnton

  “Did he threaten you? Did he tell you he’d hurt you if you told anything about him?” the cop asked.

  Danny vigorously shook his head. “No.”

  “Because if he did, we can protect you.”

  Danny looked at Marcia. His face had taken on a blank expression, the kind he’d had a few times since his mother’s death when he was trying with all his might to control his emotions. “I don’t know anything, Marcia. I swear. I want to go back to my room.”

  “If you won’t talk to me here, Danny, I’ll have to take you down to the police station.”

  Now Danny let go and began to cry. “I don’t want to go to jail. I don’t want to go to jail. I didn’t do anything.”

  Marcia squeezed his hand. “You won’t go to jail, Danny, don’t worry.” She stood up and turned to Mick Kellicut. “I think that’s enough. You don’t have any reason to take him to the police station. He doesn’t know anything, he’s told you that, and I haven’t heard anything to make me think you have any proof to the contrary. I have to ask you to leave.”

  Kellicut rose. “This guy Julio is dangerous,” he said. “You’d all be better off if we found him. We’ve spoken to Raul and he said they both saw him a few weeks ago and Danny was alone with him for a while. We think he might have given Danny something, asked him to hide something for him. Maybe he can help us.”

  “He says he can’t. I believe him. Please leave.”

  When he was gone, she turned to Danny. “He may be back, Danny. He’s a cop. You can’t lie to a cop. It’s a crime. So when Jeff comes home we’ll need to talk to him and tell him what happened. He’s a lawyer, maybe he can give the right advice.”

  Danny cried harder, his words broken by sobs. “No, please, no, don’t tell Jeff.” He sniffled. “He’ll make me leave. He won’t let me live here anymore.”

  “He won’t do that. Haven’t you seen how much better things are with him lately?”

  Danny’s sobs were diminishing. He wiped his eyes. “Yeah,” he said uncertainly.

  “Okay. So he’ll try to help, just like me. But you have to do your part and that means telling us the truth.”

  Danny took a deep breath and nodded. “I wanna go now. Can I go?”

  “Yeah. Go wash your face and try to calm down.” She called Jeff while he was out of the room and left a message. “Come home as early as you can tonight, please. We have a…” She hesitated, looking for the right word. “We have a situation,” she finally said.

  30

  When Jeff came home, Marcia tried to fill him in as calmly as possible. She knew how excitable he could be, especially on any subject concerning Danny. She recognized and appreciated his recent efforts, but she understood how shaky they were, how easy it would be for him to return to his former prejudices. There’s probably a part of him that would be relieved, she thought. He could tell himself he wasn’t such a bad guy—he’d tried, after all, but the kid was just beyond help. She knew that while her instinctive reactions were always to give Danny the benefit of the doubt, his were exactly the opposite. In that regard, he didn’t disappoint. The idea that a policeman had come to his home to question someone he was responsible for about a criminal investigation worried him and confirmed what he’d been saying about the boy all along. He called Danny, who’d been hiding out in his room claiming he had a lot of homework, into the living room and interrogated him like a hostile witness. Danny approached like a death row convict taking his last walk—his shoulders slumped and his progress infinitesimally slow. It was all Jeff could do to refrain from grabbing him and pulling him into the room. When he finally got there, he stood facing Jeff, his eyes glued to the floor. Jeff told him to sit down and he did. He rested his hands on his knees, which were slightly shaking.

  “Okay, Danny, Marcia has told me everything. I know that a police officer came here today because he wanted to question you. The police are looking for a dangerous criminal and they had reason to believe you might have some information that would lead them to him. Marcia told me what the officer asked when he was here. He didn’t think you answered truthfully, she said. So now you’re going to look me in the eye and tell me what you refused to tell him.”

  Danny was shaken by this dramatic return to the old Jeff and his hostile suspicions. At first, he was frightened and barely able to look up, let alone look directly at Jeff. “I didn’t refuse,” he said practically under his breath, still staring at the floor.

  “No? Then you told the cop what he wanted to know?”

  Danny looked at Marcia. “No.”

  “So you refused.”

  “No.” He looked at Marcia again. Why wasn’t she helping him? “I didn’t know.”

  “Stop looking at Marcia. She can’t help you now.”

  Danny looked down again and in spite of himself, he felt his eyes fill with tears, which shamed him.

  “Crying isn’t going to help you either,” Jeff said.

  Danny couldn’t stop the tears. “I know. Nothing helps me. Nothing ever helps me!” he screamed between sobs. He started to run out of the room but Jeff grabbed his arm and forced him back.

  “Jeff, stop it,” Marcia shouted. “You’re terrifying him. You don’t know what he knows. He’s not a goddamn career criminal and you can stop interrogating him like a lawyer setting him up.” She put her arm around Danny and led him to the couch. He sobbed into her shoulder until, by sheer force of will, his sobs subsided and he pulled away. “Danny, listen, you could be in real trouble here. I can help you sometimes at school and even here at home,” at this she shot an angry look at Jeff, “but if you lie to the police and they find out the truth, I won’t be able to help you. Do you understand?”

  Danny nodded, taking deep, heaving breaths.

  “Try to calm down. It’s okay. We want to help you. Jeff wants to help you too, he just doesn’t know how.” Danny stole a furtive look at Jeff, a look that made it clear that he knew Jeff didn’t want to help him, that he believed Jeff just wanted to get rid of him.

  “So, tell us. Did Julio say anything to you that might suggest where he went?”

  Danny shook his head.

  “What did he talk to you about?” Jeff asked.

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You need to try,” Marcia said.

  “He said he helped me when Raul didn’t want to be my friend anymore.”

  “Why didn’t Raul want to be your friend?” Jeff jumped in.

  “His mother told him he couldn’t.”

  “And Julio told him he shouldn’t listen to his mother.”

  “Yeah. He said that’s not what friends do.”

  “So he reminded you that you owed him, right?”

  “No.” Danny shook his head vigorously. “He said he was my friend.”

  “Your friend, right. And did he ask you if you were his friend?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I said yeah.”

  “And did he ask you to prove it?”

  “No.”

  “Raul told the police Julio was alone with Danny recently. They think maybe he tried to get him to hide something for him,” Marcia said. Jeff watched Danny carefully. He saw him swallow and bite his lip and look pleadingly at Marcia.

  “He gave you something, didn’t he?” Jeff accused sharply.

  “No.” He shifted in his seat. His right knee bobbed up and down. He didn’t know where to look and his eyes darted around the room.

  “He told you to hide it for him, didn’t he? He told you that’s what a friend would do.”

  Danny didn’t answer. The questions were coming fast, one right after the next, giving him no time to think.

  “Danny, if what he gave you is illegal and you hid it you are an accomplice, do you understand what that means? It means you are part of his crime, you can go to reform school. He isn’t your friend if he asked you to take that kind of chance for him.” Danny remained silent. “I’m talking to you, Danny,” Jeff said s
harply. Do you understand what I’m saying?” Jeff’s tone was harsh and he wasn’t paying attention to what effect his words were having on Danny, but Marcia was.

  She saw that Danny was hunched over, his body jerking and shifting. His knee was bouncing up and down and he didn’t seem to know how to control his movements. He was more frightened than he’d ever been but he was still more scared of Julio than he was of Jeff or even of the police.

  “Jeff, he’s shaking. Stop. He’s terrified, can’t you see that? Maybe this Julio threatened him.”

  “Did he?” Jeff asked. “Did he threaten you, Danny?”

  Danny lost control. He got up and paced up and down, he was crying again and hitting himself in the face, and finally Marcia tried to stop him but as she approached he accidentally hit her instead of himself. Jeff ran to him and held his arms behind his back. Marcia pushed Jeff violently away. “Leave him alone!” she shouted. “Danny, it’s okay, it’s okay, you can go to your room and try to calm down.”

  He ran away as fast as he could. She turned to Jeff. “What the hell is the matter with you? He’s a child, Jeff. Do you get that? He’s a child. You can’t treat him like that. It’s abusive.”

  Jeff recoiled. “Abusive?” He looked at her with derision. “That’s a little bit of an exaggeration, don’t you think?”

  “Not that much, actually. And like most abuse, it didn’t work. He can’t respond when you talk to him like that. It paralyzes him. I think Julio threatened him and he’s so scared he can’t break his promise not to tell. And he’s frightened if he doesn’t he’ll get arrested and we will abandon him. It’s an untenable choice for a twelve-year-old boy. And that’s if he actually knows something, if you’re right and he did get a package and did hide it, which isn’t at all certain.”

  Jeff seemed to be lost in thought, barely registering what she said. “If he hid it, he must have hidden it here somewhere. I mean, where else? School would be too risky, I think. Anyway, we can start here.”

  “Start what?”

  “A search. We’ll take the house apart if we have to. Better us than the police. They can get a warrant if they think it’s here.”

  Marcia covered her face with her hand for a few seconds. It was a futile attempt to withdraw from the madness of the situation, but it did help her to regain some modicum of control. She nodded slowly. “Where should we start?”

  “You know him better than I do—where do you think he’d hide something?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t have any idea. Maybe his room?”

  “Wouldn’t he know we’d check that out first?”

  “I don’t know if he’d think it through that much. Maybe he feels safer there than anywhere else in the apartment.”

  Jeff started to walk down the hallway. “Are you coming?”

  “I’d rather not. Does it really need both of us?”

  “Probably not.” He stopped when he got to Danny’s door. Danny was inside, still traumatized, and Jeff didn’t relish either forcing him to leave or searching with him there. He walked back to Marcia. “If I were him and trying to hide something I think I might do it in Griffin’s room. He would think that would be the last place we’d look.”

  “Maybe, but I doubt it. There aren’t many hiding places in there. Under the crib? In Griff’s closet? Where could he put it?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe under Griffin’s mattress.”

  She shook her head. “Are you suggesting that I wake Griffin up so you can search under his mattress? This is getting ridiculous.”

  “It was ridiculous the moment you insisted that an eleven-year-old boy from a different culture whom we barely knew join our family,” he snapped.

  “Oh, please, Jeff.” She turned toward the front door. “If you are going to start that again, I’m going out.”

  “No. I’m sorry. Don’t go. Please.”

  She turned back. “So what now? Can we at least wait until the morning before we carry on this search? Nothing will be gained by doing it tonight. Let’s wait until tomorrow when Berta is here to take care of Griffin and Danny is at school. Can you go in a little late? It’s a workday for me, but I don’t have any morning meetings and I’ll call Julie and tell her I’ll be late.”

  Jeff seemed to be considering her proposal and after a bit, he agreed. She could see him visibly struggle with his emotional impulse to settle this mess instantly and his rational understanding that tomorrow would indeed be a better time. The rational solution won, but at a cost. Without another word, without even looking at Marcia, he entered the bathroom and started getting ready for bed. He didn’t say anything else that night, simply went into the guest room, climbed into bed, turned over and fell asleep. Marcia noticed this, of course, but had little inclination to challenge it. She was grateful for the respite and climbed into bed wondering if he had really been able to fall asleep. She doubted she could. She took a minute to marvel bitterly at how he had managed to turn this into anger at her, but telling herself she should have expected it, she tried to sleep.

  She tossed fitfully and felt like she had just fallen into an exhausted sleep when Griffin’s morning cry awoke her. She didn’t hear Jeff going to get him so she dragged herself out of bed and stumbled to his room. She picked him up, trying to speak cheerfully to him in answer to his big smile when he saw her, and started her morning routine. She was feeding Griffin his oatmeal when Jeff joined her in the kitchen. “Good morning,” he said, smiling at Griffin, who banged his spoon on his high-chair tray in reply. “He says, ‘Good morning, Daddy,’” she said. At least we’re trying, she told herself, trying to find something positive to start the day. She offered Jeff a bowl of oatmeal, which he accepted. Danny had still not appeared, so she cracked the door of his room to see if he was awake. She saw him sprawled on top of his sheets, his blanket on the floor, his pillow tossed aside. He was still dressed in the clothes he wore yesterday, sound asleep. She entered the room sadly, understanding that he’d probably been up most of the night, and shook him gently. “Time to get up, Danny. School today.”

  “Do I still have to go to school?” he murmured, rubbing his eyes.

  “Yes. Of course. You always have to go to school.”

  “But even if I go to jail?”

  She frowned and reached out to touch his arm. “Oh Danny, you’re not going to go to jail. But you will need to help us. Maybe you can think about it today and realize you can trust us. And if you do you won’t have to worry. No one will hurt you, not Julio and not the police and certainly not us. So get up and get dressed really fast and come in the kitchen for a bite to eat before you leave, okay?”

  After Danny left and Berta arrived to take Griffin, Jeff and Marcia looked at each other. “Well, where do we start?” she asked.

  “You’re going to help?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let’s check Griff’s room.”

  It didn’t take long. They searched the closet and the chest of drawers, rummaging under Berta’s neatly folded and well-organized assortment of baby clothes for some box that didn’t belong there. They lifted Griffin’s mattress, but found nothing hidden there either. They even checked the bottom of the diaper pail, emptying the soiled Pampers into a plastic bag to see if anything was hidden on the bottom. Finally, satisfied, they left the room.

  “He’s clean,” Marcia said as they left. “I guess the baby isn’t the perp.”

  “It’s not funny, Marcia.”

  “I know,” she said.

  Next was Danny’s room. It was in greater disorder than usual. Clothes were piled on the floor, the bed was in the same disarray she had seen when she woke him, the towel he’d used that morning was on top of the pile of clothes. They began by picking up each article of clothing. Jeff would toss the ones he picked up aside, while Marcia folded each item and made a pile on the floor. They checked the bed, looked underneath it, picked up parts of the rug that were visible under the desk or in the corners, looked through all the drawers, as they had in Griffi
n’s room, searched the bookshelves and then turned to the closet. They sifted through the dirty clothes and balled-up pieces of paper he had thrown on the floor, Jeff mumbling about what a pig the kid was and Marcia saying he was a typical twelve-year-old in that regard. They searched the closet shelves where he kept games, opening Clue and Scrabble and the few other games he had and looking inside. When they had finished, they glanced upward and saw a sweater thrown on top of the closet on a shelf they couldn’t reach. Jeff grabbed hold of the sleeve and pulled it down. Under it, pushed to the back, they could see more clothes and a blanket bunched up. They pulled at it and the pile spilled out, revealing underneath a carton about the size of a small orange crate. Jeff pulled the desk chair over, stood on it and lifted the carton down. Marcia noticed she was holding her breath. She knew this might be it, and she was scared.

  They saw right away that the box was full of the treasures of his childhood. Understanding instinctively that it contained his memories, all that he had left of his life with his mother, they both handled everything very carefully. There were photographs of him and Eve, a framed award he’d gotten for good behavior in third grade, a trophy for baseball, a commendation for a science project, drawings he’d done that his mother had saved and he had taken with him when he moved away. On the bottom of the carton in the corner was a smaller box, sealed with masking tape. The tape was applied all over in tight strips. They looked at each other.

  “We need to open this,” Jeff said. Even he sounded worried.

  “I know.” She headed out the door. “I’ll get the scissors to cut the tape.”

  Jeff hesitated. “I’m not sure we should,” he said. “There might be evidence we’ll mess up—prints, DNA, I don’t know.”

  “Maybe it’s not that, Jeff. Maybe it’s something from his childhood. Something precious he wanted to keep safe.”

  He looked at her and saw that she knew better, that she was expressing a hope, not a belief.