“I have an appointment with Denise Williams,” I said.
He had a small, square microphone pinned to his open-collared shirt and, stepping back, he whispered into it.
I heard the crackle, but not the words, of the reply. He instructed me to step inside the building and I stood near his office. Not much more than a large closet, it contained a mahogany table, an old-style wood swivel chair and three small TV monitors; it looked like the cameras were trained on the front and back entrances and the small parking lot in the rear. He reached in, withdrew a wandlike metal detector and ran it around me. When the thing didn’t buzz, he returned it to the table.
“Your escort will be here in a moment,” he said.
And in seconds a boy appeared. About the same age as Bella, and about her height, he was neatly attired in a white cotton dress shirt, black slacks and dark, rubber-soled shoes. He seemed very serious, well disciplined, and he greeted the imposing guard with a mannerly tilt of his head before turning his attention to me.
“Mr. Orr, I am Delroy Henry.” He thrust his hand at me and gave me a firm, businesslike handshake. As he spoke, he held my gaze, suggesting a confidence I was not accustomed to in someone his age. “I will escort you to Mrs. Williams’s office.”
And off we went, down the immaculate corridor. Classes were in session on either side of the hall and doors were shut, but a glance through the windows revealed rooms filled with about a dozen or so students not unlike smaller, younger versions of Delroy Henry, in both their youthful interpretation of business apparel as well as their sobriety.
“First through fifth grades are on this floor,” Delroy offered, “and the administrative offices. Sixth through eighth upstairs.”
From what I could see, all the students were of African descent, as were the teachers, who seemed a serious, enthusiastic lot, at least from my cursory appraisal as I walked with young Mr. Henry.
“I can answer any questions you may have,” he said.
Between the classrooms were cork boards covered with photos clipped from magazines, handmade illustrations and maps, students’ poems and essays and handicraft celebrating Americans, blacks and whites, Asian and Hispanic, of significant achievement. The emphasis was on educators, scientists and artists: I recognized most white faces on the boards—Horace Mann, Jonas Salk, John Singer Sargent, Robert Frost, Robert Kennedy—as well as some of the black ones: Mary McLeod Bethune, who I knew had influenced New Deal policies; George Washington Carver, Toni Morrison, Wynton Marsalis and Rita Dove. But many others were strangers to me until I read the summaries of their achievements beneath the photographs: the scientist Charles R. Drew, who devised a storage system for blood plasma; Phillis Wheatley, poet and slave; John Sengstacke, a newspaper publisher. The summaries had been written by the students, and had the kind of charm only kids’ work can, wherein all facts are treated with equal gravity and proclamations are made with unbridled enthusiasm. One student had declared breathlessly: “When I grow up I am going to be like Countee Cullen,” and had added six exclamation points to the pledge. But the work was thorough; I was about to tell Henry I’d learned as much about African-Americans during our brief walk than during my eight years in elementary school and four years of high school. But I decided against that.
“These are all very good,” I said.
“Thank you.”
“Did you do any of them?”
“All students participate in all projects,” he replied.
We passed a water fountain. It emitted a low buzz, a warm hum.
I asked, “Do you like Countee Cullen?”
“Yes, but he is not my favorite. I agree with our teacher Mr. Allen, who says he is too derivative of Keats.”
“I see.”
“Do you know Countee Cullen, Mr. Orr?”
The question seemed to have a bite to it, as if Delroy Henry expected me to say no. But I knew Cullen’s work; I’d read “Copper Sun” and his novel One Way to Heaven. Walter Riley, a teammate and fellow history major at St. John’s, insisted I study the Harlem Renaissance if I was going to concentrate on turn-of-the-century New York.
I replied, “All Romantic poets are derivative of Keats.”
We made a left turn at the end of the corridor and arrived at the principal’s office. Henry rapped on the beveled-glass-and-wood door, which was opened by a stout, matronly woman in a cream blouse and dark skirt. Behind her was a small anteroom between the offices of Everett Langhorne and Denise Williams. I noticed a thick, wooden fence with a swinging door, a remnant from the building’s banking days. I imagined that this suite once belonged to the bank’s president, its manager and their attentive assistant.
“Miss Oliver,” Henry said, “this is Mr. Orr.”
“Thank you, Mr. Henry,” she replied. “You may be seated now.”
He squeezed by her to enter the reception area.
She nodded politely. “Right this way, Mr. Orr,” she added and held back the door for me to pass.
Denise Williams remained at her desk as Miss Oliver closed the door behind me. With a flip of her thin hand, she suggested I sit.
The small office was sparsely but neatly furnished: an old, attractive sofa to my left, a small table to my right on which rested scores of color-coded folders, a row of three-ring binders and a computer printer that was linked to the CPU under Williams’s desk. Her monitor and keyboard were to her left; apparently she was using the computer as I arrived, culling information from reports that had the official drabness and stern uniformity of government documents. As I looked at the papers, she reached over and hurriedly rearranged the stack near the keyboard, flipping over the top sheet. I thought nothing of it, and instead imagined that a vice principal must spend a great part of her day filling out an endless supply of such forms.
I noticed that the bright screen saver scrolled the phrase “Education/Articulation,” followed by a quote from Zora Neale Hurston. As I began to read the Hurston quote, Williams reached down and snapped off the computer.
“I wasn’t finished,” I said. The spindly arms of spider plants covered the ledge of the window behind her.
“You have questions about a boy that used to attend our school, Mr. Orr?” she asked tartly. “We’re very busy.”
I’d suddenly begun to feel as if I were a student here, accused of some unnamed infraction, who had been summoned to the vice principal’s office. “Is it something I said?”
“Have you been treated rudely, Mr. Orr?” she asked, peering sternly over her glasses.
“‘Rudely’ isn’t it, no. It’s more like too efficiently.”
“Excuse us for being efficient.”
“I don’t know if this needs to be difficult, Ms. Williams.”
“So now we’re difficult. Efficient and difficult.”
“‘Curt,’ I think, is another word.”
“The word you’re looking for is ‘uppity,’” she said.
And I felt the electric charge, the red rage, and my eyes tightened. But I said nothing. I stood, held up my hand, opened the door and walked out through the swinging gate, passing Miss Oliver, who didn’t look up from her electric typewriter, and Delroy Henry, who, startled, withdrew as I blew by.
I went quickly, silently down the corridor. Seething, I moved purposefully, trying to contain my raw anger. I avoided looking into the classrooms, where diligent students were at work. I didn’t want to disturb them. It wasn’t for me to let them know their vice principal was a practiced race-baiter, a rank racist.
“One moment,” the well-built guard said firmly. He positioned himself between me and the exit, the wash of light on 125th.
I moved toward him, stepping in to let him know I’d accept a challenge. Now we were face-to-face; I could feel the heat of his breath, and see the thin red veins in his eyes.
I said, “Unless you’re ready to pull that nine, I suggest you let me slide.”
“I have to detain you,” he said firmly as he tapped the small microphone and speaker
near his collar.
“Step aside, friend.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I can have a squad car here in two minutes, Mr. Orr.”
“Do what you want,” I said. “I’m gone.”
As I moved around him, he grabbed for my left arm and caught my sleeve. I snapped free and, regrouping, squared myself for the fight. He was a big man and fit. I’d have to strike first: It would have to be the midsection.
I heard a voice behind me, feminine, urgent. But I didn’t turn.
“Mr. Orr, no, wait.” It was Denise Williams, and she understood that there was about to be a brawl in her school, and unless the guard dropped me quick, it was going to be nasty.
She may even have realized that it was she who had pushed it to this point.
“Mr. Reynolds. In your office,” she commanded.
I watched him. He was confident. He was breathing fire through his nose, and his fists were clenched tightly at his sides.
“Mabry,” Williams whispered, “please. The students.” And at that quiet, desperate plea, Mabry Reynolds stepped back with a military snap. He held me in his gaze until Williams came between us.
I told myself to relax. But my heart continued to leap against my chest, and I could feel the fever at the back of my neck.
Williams placed her hand on Reynolds’s arm and instructed him to step outside. He looked down at her, nodded and did so, neither eagerly nor reluctantly. His confrontation over, he simply adjusted his belt with its Beretta nine, and went. But he didn’t go far, remaining at the front door, his broad back toward us. I noticed he was leaning against the glass, keeping the door ajar with his heft, as if he wanted to hear me approaching, or listen to what I was about to say.
“Mr. Orr, if we could return—”
“Are you—”
“Mr. Orr—”
“I came to you in good faith.”
“Granted; I may have misunderstood,” she said lamely.
“You knew what you were doing.”
“Can we continue this in my office, please?”
“Why? You’ve thought of a new way to call me a racist?”
“I didn’t—”
“You did.” I added sourly, “You must be a big disappointment to Dr. Langhorne.”
“Touché, Mr. Orr,” she replied. “Now, can we go back to my office?”
I took a breath and tried to think of Aubrey Brown, his frail body slumped in the front seat of the battered Buick, his skull smashed, his eyes empty; and the angelic-looking boy with the savage scar, peeking tentatively into the funeral home, scowling at me. And then I saw a baby in the oily water between subway tracks.
“All right,” I said.
And we went along the corridor, Williams’s heels clicking on the pristine floor, as we ignored tales of pride and accomplishment.
She settled behind her desk. “I suppose I was a little put off by the idea that you assumed we would help you investigate one of our former students,” she said, as she began to recover.
Or maybe it was the nagging stack of the government forms, or something a tardy student had said, or the way the sun rose that morning: to the east, very early in the day. She still didn’t like me. Only a vague sense of obligation told her to bring me back; or perhaps she was afraid I’d tell a tale that would embarrass her or the school. But I could feel that she wanted to dismiss me as quickly as possible, though not as abruptly as before.
But I didn’t care what she wanted. I wanted to know about the boy Henderson said was called Montana, the boy with the scar.
“I’m still not sure we should be doing that,” she added.
“I’m looking into a murder,” I said. “This young man may have nothing to do with it. He just keeps turning up, like he’s following the body.”
“I see.”
I explained, telling her about Aubrey Brown and his lonely life; Montana’s visits to Henderson’s place and the cemetery, and about the police and what they did not find. As I spoke, I noticed that my right leg had stopped shaking. Involuntary tremors: the aftereffect of aggression unreleased. After a game in high school and college, if my playing time hadn’t been enough, if I hadn’t gotten to mix it up the way I liked, I’d tremble until I got to the shower and, sometimes, after that.
When I finished, she nodded and said, “His name is Andre Turner Junior, and he was a student here until about four years ago.”
“So Montana—”
“He wasn’t known as Montana here.”
“All right,” I said. “You’re saying Turner dropped out in, what, the fifth grade?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
I shook my head in confusion.
She replied, “I’m thinking of the best way to tell you about Andre.”
His story, she said, would explain why he was no longer at Hurston Elementary and why he was now beyond their arc of influence. I thought of him: his dreadlocks and shaved temples, baggy jeans, the red stocking cap. He was a Hurston boy no more; trendy pop culture had its talons in him now. He might still be reading Alice Walker and Countee Cullen, but now his peers and the media told him how to behave.
Williams said Turner had been brighter than most boys his age. His parents, both of whom had successful careers downtown, insisted he excel in academics and were adamant about his attending private school.
“He met the entrance criteria and was accepted,” she added.
“What are they, exactly? The criteria.”
She lifted her hands from her green blotter and counted on her fingers. “His parents had a commitment to academic excellence; he demonstrated the fundamental intellectual capabilities we require, scoring well on the qualifying exams; he found financial support—”
“Financial support? Tuition is that high?” She’d said Turner’s parents had successful careers; he was an executive with Fox, she a partner in an advertising agency. I wondered why they’d have to seek outside funding for their son.
“Actually, tuition is one dollar per year per student. We require that parents participate in our underwriting program by securing donations to our general fund. They are our fund-raisers, essentially.”
“An interesting system,” I said.
She nodded. But she didn’t care whether I thought it was interesting or not. “It is imperative that we have the support of commerce and industry as well as the community.”
I noticed that she had mentioned several times the role of parents in the school. I asked her about that.
“It’s the core of Dr. Langhorne’s philosophy: Family background has a greater impact than the school experience on many of the objectives we are trying to achieve. Dr. Langhorne has promoted this ideal since the mid-’60s.”
“He sounds like a special man.”
“Dr. Langhorne is a special man,” she replied proudly but pointedly, as if working alongside a visionary had permitted her to absorb his brilliance.
She returned to Andre Turner Jr. He had adjusted well, she said, and had been doing his work, more or less, neither distinguishing himself nor falling behind. In the second grade, he began to drift, as she put it, and was occasionally disruptive.
“The second grade can present a challenge to someone who might be immature,” she said. “It is the time when academics truly take precedence over socialization. But with Andre it was more than that. He became lethargic, introverted. He simply stopped achieving. His teacher, Mr. Amaral, tried to reach him, but…” She shook her head.
At Hurston Elementary, she reported, parents met with their children’s teachers once a month. “Mr. Amaral and I discussed this with the Turners and they said they would work with their son.”
“Did they?”
“He managed to do enough to be promoted to the third grade in the spring, but Mr. Amaral deserves credit for that, entirely. He worked with Andre. Here, at his own home on Fort Washington Avenue. Weekends at the library.”
“Dedicated,” I offered.
“We are here for the student
s,” she announced.
I managed to keep quiet.
Williams continued. At the first parents’ meeting of the new school year, Andre’s mother was absent, she said, for the first time. “We discovered that his parents had separated over the summer and Andre was downtown with his father. Shortly thereafter, Mrs. Turner went to family court to secure her right to return to her life at home with her son.”
“I assume she won.”
“Yes, and Mr. Turner was instructed to surrender Andre, which he did.”
She was telling me more than she needed to and she wasn’t hesitating. I began to suspect that she wasn’t revealing any confidences, that Andre Turner Jr.’s story was a matter of public record. This tale wasn’t about to have a happy ending.
“But he returned.”
“Not immediately, but yes, and he was arrested for assaulting his wife. And then came the allegations. That he had been abusing Andre.”
“Abusing? Sexually?”
“Yes,” she replied directly. “Mr. Turner was arrested again and the story was well publicized. It was said he was granted a leave of absence from Fox. But in fact, he was fired.”
“And?” I asked.
“And a year later Andre Turner killed his wife.”
I flinched. “Christ. How?”
“Stabbed her to death. At her apartment.”
“And Andre saw this?”
She nodded sadly.
I ran my finger along the side of my face. “The scar—” “Exactly. He tried to save his mother.”
“Christ.”
“It was terribly disruptive for all of us.”
At least that for Andre Jr., who must’ve been about 10 years old at the time. The enraged father, the terrified mother, the glistening knife, screaming, swearing; the blood, the slash across his face, pain, burning pain, his mother’s death; the death of his protector, his future. “The horror,” said Kurtz. If he only knew.
Closing Time Page 8