“Where is the father now?”
“In prison. I don’t know where.”
“So the boy left Hurston.”
“In fact, Andre returned to us when he recovered. We have a fund for such cases, but they rarely work out. Without the involvement of the parents, without that partnership, despite our efforts, mine and, in Andre’s case, Mr. Amaral’s, it is very, very difficult for the student. After a while, we had to transfer Andre to public school. It was best for all, given the situation.”
She reached and tapped a button on her telephone. She instructed Miss Oliver to send in Delroy Henry.
The student entered and gently closed the door. He waited for instruction. When Williams told him to sit, he did so. He folded his hands in his lap.
Williams said, “Mr. Henry knew Andre. Mr. Henry?” “Yes, ma’am.”
“Please tell Mr. Orr what we spoke about earlier.”
Henry shifted in the chair to face me. “Andre started out in my brother’s class.”
“Here or in public school?” I asked.
Williams answered, “Here. Mr. Henry’s brother now attends Xavier. On scholarship.”
“And where is Andre now?” I asked.
“Mr. Henry?”
The boy, who had seemed so self-possessed when I first met him, now seemed uncomfortable, almost nervous. “He’s on the street.”
“He has no family?”
“No, sir. He used to live with his aunt, but she ain’t seen him.”
“Mr. Henry,” Williams scolded.
He bowed his head. “Sorry, ma’am.”
“Do you ever see him?” I asked.
“I see him now and then. But he never comes around.”
“Do you have any idea where he’s living?”
“No,” the boy replied.
I decided to try another way. “Do you know if he’s been in any trouble? I mean, has he been arrested?”
“No,” Henry said, shaking his head. “I don’t think so.”
Williams interrupted. “Mr. Henry, you can tell Mr. Orr what you told me this morning.”
I said, “Is there some question of confidentiality?”
The boy looked at me.
“I won’t give you up,” I said. “I’m not a cop.”
He looked at his vice principal, then at me. “People say Andre is a prostitute.”
“Do you know where he works?”
“I don’t know where,” Henry replied, “but he’s on the street. He’s out there.”
“Is someone keeping him? You know what I mean?”
“Mr. Henry could not know such a thing,” Williams said, barely concealing her disgust. But it didn’t matter: She was irrelevant now.
“He’s out there,” Henry repeated, with a gesture.
I paused. He was telling the truth, and I appreciated how discomforting it might be for a young teenager to have to talk about this in front of his vice principal, this vice principal. But I decided to press a bit, on the chance that he could bring me even closer.
“Is there any way I could see him?” I asked.
“Not that I know about,” Henry said.
“I saw him Tuesday at 135th and Malcolm X. Would I see him there again?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. He doesn’t come around.” He suddenly smiled. “You can’t hang at 135 and X for too long without someone asking you what up.”
“Indeed,” Williams echoed.
“Yeah,” I said, “I’m too tall.”
“Now, Mr. Orr—”
I waved my hand as I stood. “I understand.” I said to Henry, “Can you tell me why they call him Montana? Is he in a gang or something?”
“Naw,” Henry replied. “It’s from the movie about the gangster. Scarface. His name was Tony Montana. They call him Montana because of the scar on his face.”
“That’s cold.”
Henry shook his head. “He gave himself that name. He likes that scar. He likes the whole thing with his father and his mother getting killed. It’s like Hollywood. He used to say it made him hard.”
“Did it?”
“Naw. He’s a boy. That’s why he’s a ‘ho’ now.”
“Mr. Henry!” Williams shouted. “I am going to need to speak to you, young man.”
I thanked them both, shook hands with Henry and, as she glared at the sheepish teenager, Williams. As I left the office, I could hear her lecturing him, hectoring him, even through the closed door.
I nodded goodbye to Miss Oliver, who responded silently but sympathetically and then returned to her typewriter.
I left the small suite, turned right and went along the corridor, passing carefully printed words on construction paper, excerpts from Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and Seraph on the Suwannee, and tributes to Anthony Davis, Fiorello LaGuardia, Garth Fagan and Johnnetta Cole. From behind a closed door, I heard echoes of ringing words of praise; to my left, through the window in the door, I saw a young girl, seven years old at most, beaming, bowing politely in front of her classmates.
Good for you, I thought. You did it.
The guard was waiting for me, arms crossed, outside his cubby of an office.
He said nothing. He stared at me, and he didn’t blink.
I was going to say something, but didn’t. I left.
And so I had this, I thought as I paused in the gray light on 125th: Brown is killed in an area used by hookers to service low-budget clients; Montana, who’s somehow compelled to follow Brown’s body to the grave, is a male prostitute. Too neat, I told myself. I headed to Malcolm X.
To kill time, I picked up a copy of the Sporting News at a small cigar shop, and thought about making my way to lunch at Sylvia’s, the cliché move for a white man in Harlem. I started walking south, going past brownstones on the shady side toward the Park. I’d enter, I thought, near the Harlem Meer and waggle by the Conservatory Gardens to the exit at 97th, where it’d be easier to grab a cab.
I was thinking about the chances that a few early ducks would be at the Pool—Bella did a paper on the White-Fronted Duck, which seemed an unimaginative name to me, then and now—when an unexpected idea popped. I pulled out the cell and dialed.
She told me to come now. She had a lunch date at 1 P.M. With Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations.
SIX
Sharon Knight had an office no bigger, no better equipped, than what a middle manager on the way down might have at a small brick-and-mortar. But there was no mistaking her authority, regardless of her austere, bureaucratic surroundings. It was deeply ingrained, deeply personal: Here was a woman who knew herself and was completely at ease with the knowledge. Only people impressed with bluster and sophistry could misunderstand.
This natural aura, this sense of command, was the root of her success. As a prosecutor, Sharon was a winner: passionate, resolute, direct and with a record any D.A. in the country would be proud of. And she was media savvy. Thus, she was well respected by the city’s white, liberal establishment and by the African-American business-political axis that yielded considerable influence on the Democratic Party’s left and center. A Giuliani aide once tried to deride her by calling her “a poor man’s Janet Reno.” AI Sharpton struck back with “your boss hasn’t succeeded in making every sister poor.” Refusing to play the race card, Sharon instead praised fellow Harvard alumna Reno, focusing on her stint as state attorney in Dade County, and pointedly offered to meet the aide to present her accomplishments. Ever since, the Times has floated her name as a candidate for every office, city and state.
“I’m a prosecutor, Terry,” she once told me. “Wanted to be one since I learned there was such a thing.” She jabbed her finger hard on her desk. At about 240 pounds, with close-cropped hair and alluring brown eyes a shade darker than her unblemished skin, Sharon Knight knew how to hold all the light in a room.
I said, “You ought to make them think you’re doing them a favor by staying here.”
She winked at me.
“I know Everett Langhorne,” she said.
“Seems like a good man.”
She let my comment hang in the air. Instead of answering, she leaned on her elbows and said, “Let me anticipate your question: Can I get the police to cooperate with you?”
“Hell, no,” I replied. “When a livery driver gets killed? I’ll get along better without them.”
She suppressed a smile.
“What I want to know is if you’d be comfortable getting me some information on someone.”
“And this has something to do with the murder of brother Brown?”
‘“Brother Brown’?”
“It’s an expression, Terry,” she said dryly.
“I know. I just haven’t heard it since the ’80s.”
“I’m dating myself, in other words.”
I said, “None of us is getting younger, Sharon.”
“No, but this conversation might be speeding up the aging process.” She drummed her fingernails on the hardwood desk.
I told her about the explosion, about Judy, Beck and Lin-Lin.
“You’re working two cases at once.”
“This one’s a favor. The gallery owner was Marina’s agent.”
“I see,” she said, her voice softened by an undercurrent of sympathy. She looked at her thin, silver wristwatch and stood.
“Two at once, Terry. A bit ambitious, wouldn’t you say?”
I left the hard chair. “I’m just going where I’m going, Sharon. I might’ve thought about it, but every time somebody tells me to stop, I run the red. You know?”
“Your devil’s your angel.” She tamped down the long, wide skirt and ample jacket of her dark blue suit and absently tapped at the black pearl that lay beneath the open collar of her blouse. “We could all use a bit of your perseverance, I suppose. Your dedication. To whatever it is.”
I reached for the black coat that hung on the back of her office door and held it for her.
She turned, began to button the coat and nodded toward a small pad on her desk. “Give me the name. I’ll see what I can do.”
I grabbed a felt-tipped pen from a cup and scribbled the short name on the sheet. When I handed the paper to her, she didn’t look at it. She folded it and reached for the doorknob.
“Where to?” I asked, as she opened the door.
“The Ambassador Grill.”
“Nice.”
“Better than a sandwich at the desk,” she said, as she stepped into the corridor and began to move toward a secretary’s cubicle. Someone in the distance had a radio; someone nearby had heated leftover Chinese in a microwave.
“Thanks, Sharon,” I said. My time was up.
She turned. “You need a lift, Terry?”
I told her no.
She nodded, then said, “Be careful. A deep breath every now and then.”
I said OK.
I stopped at the Delphi for lunch. I saw no one I knew, which suited me fine, and I ordered a turkey club. By the time the blue-eyed waitress slid it onto the counter in front of me, I was surprised to see it. Daydreaming, I’d forgotten what I’d ordered. I’d started out thinking about Montana and how his father had failed him, shifted to Beck and Rosenzweig, thought about Bella and went somewhere else; once again, I’d floated to Marina’s side. A walk along the Rio Guadalquivir after a visit to the Museo Artes; tapas and too much reserva rioja in an open-air square behind the cathedral in Santa Cruz: in Seville, for an exhibition of her work, and time to grow together.
I finished the sandwich, dabbed away the mayonnaise and put $10 under the water glass. Sated, feeling not at all guilty about the extra bacon, I made my way into the shadows on West Broadway and decided to go south, to go to Greenwich via Thomas, for no other reason than to do it a different way. I reached Hudson as a wave of cars, vans and taxis roared by, and I thought I saw someone I recognized in a passing cab. She was a young woman, dark-haired with a round face, and I placed her instantly and thought, coincidence. Ninety minutes ago, I’m in her boss’s office…And then I remembered her name. Julie Giada, another of Morganthau’s army of prosecutors. I had good feelings about Julie, but couldn’t remember why. More than likely, it was because she was on Sharon’s team.
I came to my place along the west side of Greenwich, which was typically quiet on a chilly mid-afternoon, though not so quiet that I could nudge myself back to Seville. When I turned the corner onto Harrison, I saw it right away and I knew it was no coincidence that I’d seen Julie. Sticking out of my mailbox was a large manila envelope, curled just so to fit under the locked box.
I opened the envelope to find a photocopy of a computer printout: name, address, charge, disposition, sentence. Precisely what I needed.
I put the paper back into the envelope and tucked it under my arm. Ninety minutes. Christ. And as I punched in the security code to the lock on the front door, I knew what that meant, beyond confirming what I’d suspected. It meant Sharon Knight was going to stand by me. And that would mean something the next time Luther Addison tried to get me to go home.
Bella came into the living room and handed me the handset of the cordless phone. She beamed. I knew it was Diddio on the other end.
I put the tattered copy of Conrad on the coffee table.
With enthusiasm, Diddio announced that the ’70s group Yes was playing that night at the Beacon. “It’ll be a pisser. Art rock by geriatrics.” He sang, badly, in a cracking falsetto, “‘’Cause it’s time, it’s time in time with your time and its news is captuuuuured … for the queen to use!’ Heh-heh. Let’s go. We’ll bring Gabby. OK?”
“You tell her already?” I looked over at Bella, who continued to glow.
He hesitated. “Can I lie?”
She’s got homework, I thought, and she needs sleep, and we’re seeing Harteveld tomorrow.
Finally, I said, “I may bail.”
Bella clapped her hands. She jumped in place. I think she squealed.
Four hours later, we walked in stubborn silence through the darkness toward the TriBeCa Grill to flag a cab, and took one from two briefcase-toting men with ties at half-mast. Our dour driver nodded at my suggestion that he take Tenth until it became Amsterdam to avoid the bottleneck on West.
“You’re angry,” I said. “You want to let D see you pout, that’s all right with me.”
The taxi swept past a weed-covered lot south of the Javits Center.
“You started it. You’re in one of those moods of yours,” Bella insisted, her arms folded as she sat as far from me as possible in the broad seat. “So I’ll keep to myself.”
She wore a black beret, her faded denim jacket over a black, long-sleeved t-shirt, patched jeans and her green-and-red bowling shoes. I caught a glimpse of one of the frail patches on her jeans, and realized it was clipped from her baby blanket: I recognized the small, cheerful, innocent bear with outstretched arms. Diddio helped her patch her jeans, and he’d sewed the yin-yang on the beret. I’d been in the other room.
“And I don’t pout,” she continued. “I don’t like it that you made me rewrite my essay because you were mad at something. Or was it because Dennis asked me to go?”
I shook my head. “That essay was beneath you, Bella, and you know it. Thomas Paine deserves better. The American Crisis is a masterwork. You rushed so you could go to the concert.”
“I don’t like history as much as you, Dad,” she said. “And you should’ve waited dinner for me.”
“Maybe.” I ate the carciofi alla romana while Bella rewrote. “It’s not easy motivating you. Besides, you ate.”
“Leftovers.”
She was impossible to argue with; the times that try men’s souls, indeed. I kept the braised artichokes warm, and I served them, in their sauce of lemon, white wine, garlic and fresh parsley and mint, over linguine. She ate while I showered.
“Don’t be mad at me,” I said. “B
e mad at you.”
We rode in silence, heading toward the land of Singer, Civiletti’s Verdi and Zabar’s sable. We entered the mid-40s, coming to a halt across from a Hess station where scores of taxis queued for cheap gas.
She continued to stare out the window. When the traffic light went green, we pressed on and approached an empty horse-drawn carriage, its weary engine slowly clopping toward its stable. I noticed that Bella brightened for a moment at the sight of it, before she remembered she was angry. She immediately resumed her frown, and continued to stare at the tenements, the corner bars, the rusted gates on drab storefronts.
I looked east and saw the lights of the Broadway theaters; the eight o’clock curtains had been raised, and the streets were empty.
“You won’t show up tomorrow,” she said finally. She’d found her rejoinder.
“I’ll be there,” I replied. “Don’t nag.”
But she was right to push; I knew she was right. I’d blown off other meetings with the unbearably smug Elizabeth Harteveld, with her judgmental glares over gold bifocals, her forced equanimity, her faux compassion, nod, nod: “How awful for you.” Harteveld manipulates, distorts, misinterprets. With a wave of her glittering Cross pen, from her green leather club chair, she dispenses opinions about things she cannot possibly know, and they are based on the faulty notion that people belong to one or another category, that there are a certain number of types, and behaviors are predictable and, thus, easily altered, or at least alterable. With me, she prattles. I learn nothing. I tend to myself.
But I concede this: Bella returns to me as if unburdened. There is an unmistakable lightness to her, and she brims with a kind of radiant optimism. She bounces. I think it’s unnatural, because Bella has lived through what I have and there is no source of brightness there, I can assure Elizabeth Harteveld. But I don’t think it’s all bad and I am grateful that Bella responds. Perhaps it’s nothing more than having the chance to talk with a woman the same age as her mother would be; or maybe Harteveld can enlighten a clever twelve-year-old. Maybe she can deceive her into optimism. But it’s good for Bella to feel better, and it is a pleasure to see her smile.
Closing Time Page 9