But, instead of the hostile—even violent--reaction that I feared, the young man smiled rather winningly and said, “You here for my little sister?”
I wasn’t sure he really meant his little sister or whether that was some kind of gang parlance. I just nodded, but Aliana smiled widely and held out her hand, which the young man stared at but didn’t touch as he gestured toward us to enter.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The youth breezed by and away, leaving us standing in the doorway. I glanced in and saw that the apartment was very tidy and comfortable-looking with the sort of furniture that could be bought at the local stores: Leon’s, Bad Boy, The Brick.
We stood there for what seemed quite a long time.
“Should we call out for Kezia’s mother?” I asked.
Aliana shook her head. “She’s not likely to be here. The woman works pretty much twenty-four/seven. Apparently she only comes home to sleep.”
Before I could comment on that difficult fact, the door was yanked wide open and a familiar young voice demanded, “What you doin’ here?”
Aliana took a very tiny step forward. “We came to see how you’re getting on.…”
The girl’s face was unreadable as she said, “I’m getting on fine. How come you have to check on me or whatever?”
“We were just thinking about our conversation of the other day and we decided to drop by….”
I had to laugh at the expression on the girl’s face at that announcement. She was no fool. She’d heard lines like that before, that was for sure. However, she just bowed her head and said, “Okay.”
“Do you mind if we come in?”
I kept silent. Though I had interviewed and counselled many young people, I strongly felt that females responded more naturally and easily to other females. I seldom articulated this idea, however. Or, for that matter, any ideas that might be seen as gender prejudice.
The girl glanced around as if there were someone else there, perhaps someone whose permission she sought. But there was apparently no one else in the apartment.
“Okay. I guess it’s okay if you come in. You could sit on the couch if you want.”
Aliana sat at one end of the long sofa, I sat on the other end, and Kezia took a chair opposite. Not surprisingly, the conversation got off to a slow start. Questions about school elicited the remark, “I don’t always get there.” Questions about hobbies, about reading, about helping to keep the apartment in such a nice state, met with pretty close to dead silence interrupted by the occasionally uttered monosyllable.
When I finally found my tongue and ventured to ask a question, I got a surprising and encouraging reaction. “The young man we saw at the door seemed quite friendly,” I began, “is he a friend of yours?”
The girl could only be described as bursting into smiles, smiles that seemed to enliven her whole body. She straightened from the slouch that she’d sat in and bolted upright.
“Yeah, he’s my friend all right. That’s Jojo. Old Jojo is my best friend. He’s my brother. I mean he’s my real brother. So I knowed him since we was born. And in all the time, he never did nothin’ bad to me. He be my good brother.”
“I understand you have two other brothers?” Aliana asked carefully.
Kezia’s fists closed on her knees but she still sat forward as though she really wanted us to hear what she had to say.
“They are not so good,” she said. All the warmth, the spontaneity was gone from her voice, and the intensity of her posture fled as quickly as it had come. “They against each other and us.”
“What do you mean, Kezia?” I asked gently.
She looked up at me and I could see her trying to make up her mind as to whether she should trust me.
“You the old guy that used to live by the river?” she asked.
I had to smile. “One of ‘em,” I answered.
“Did you live down there in the winter? Like when the ice was there?”
“Yes, Kezia. I lived there all year long.”
“In the snow and that?”
I had no idea what this was all about. I glanced at Aliana who smiled and nodded and looked so reassuring that I felt I’d tell her anything she wanted to know myself.
“To tell the truth, Kezia, in a lot of ways, I liked winter down by the river more than any other season.”
The girl’s dark eyes seemed to light up. “Yeah? Like what do you mean? You musta been pretty cold down there, sleeping near the river in the snow.”
“Well, the thing I liked best was how quiet it always was. Lots of days there were no loud sounds at all. No people. No animals. No birds. Not even the sound of the river under the ice…”
“Didn’t you get lonely or scared or anything like that?”
Something about the innocence of the question touched a deep chord in me. “Kezia,” I said, “I’ve been more scared and lonely in the presence of other people than I’ve ever been when I’ve been alone.”
“See,” the girl said after a moment’s thought, “that’s one of the things that’s bad about my two brothers. They just so damn noisy! Always swearin’ and yellin’ and rappin’. Plus they tease me and my good brother until we feel like smashing them, but we never touch them. Otherwise, we be hurt bad! You see, those two brothers are enemies. They belong to gangs that hate each other. Sometimes they kill each other. And I get afraid that my brothers might….”
As if she realized she had said too much, the girl cut the conversation. “What are you doin’ here?” she asked again.
Aliana came to the rescue, carefully asking “Is it true, Kezia, that you haven’t been in school in quite a while?”
“Boring. School is too boring.”
At the mention of school, my eye settled on a desk against one wall, a desk littered with books and papers, as if someone studying there had been suddenly interrupted. I fought the urge to ask the girl whether her “good” brother was studying and going to school. But I kept my peace. For two people to be questioning the girl would be too much like an interrogation.
“Are you afraid to go to school?” Aliana gently asked.
“Hell, no!” the girl answered so emphatically that I knew she was lying. “Anyway, I can learn more here by myself than at any dumb, stupid school.” She looked over toward the books and papers. “My mother, she got to work three jobs, so me and my brother are alone here most always. We study together. Sometimes the other two come here and tear up our papers. Once they even set fire to our books, but mostly, they don’t come around. So me and my brother, we can work on our own projects.
“My brother, he got an iPad that some rich guy in the church give him.” She lowered her voice. “It’s hid so nobody can get it. But I don’t need no iPad. I got a libary card and I can get all the books I want and even use the computer there if I stand in line. And they didn’t even make me pay when my brother burned one of the libary books, and when he cuts up my libary card, they just give me another one. And she—the libarian—even lets me keep the card right there where it’s safe in her desk instead of taking it home.”
I stood and moved toward the table, not sure what I expected to see, but not expecting what I did see. Instead of juvenile and graphic novels or books about movies or music, all the books seem to be about the weather. “Are you studying about climate change?”
“No,” Kezia said, “Snow and ice. A person can read them, just like you read a book. Ice and snow, they can tell you things you couldn’t learn in other ways. They can answer questions. They can even tell the future.”
I hid a smile. “Is that so?”
“Your future?” Aliana asks quietly.
“Yes. My future. My future as an author. The future of my book, Fifty Recipes Made With Snow.”
“You are working on your book?” Aliana and I said simultaneously, not even trying to act unsurprised.
“Yes. I sure am. And I’ve even done research on it. I went on a field trip put on by a youth group thing and the man running it was Mark.”
“Mark Hopequist?” Aliana asked.
“Yes. He was the leader. They said he leads a lot of groups and he knows a lot about the city. He told us all sorts of things about what winter is like in the valley.”
She looked at me. “I bet you know those things, too. Anyway, I learned a lot on that field trip. I even learned that secret from Mark. He told me a secret that he didn’t tell anybody else.”
I smiled at this child-like revelation. Again I worried about what it might mean. But I forgot about it when Aliana gave me a phone number for Mark and he agreed to a meeting.
CHAPTER TWENTY
We met at a Tim Hortons down the street from police Headquarters, though I had been diligent in remembering that I wasn’t supposed to utter a word about current police business.
“I’m happy to learn that you and Aliana are willing to help Kezia,” Mark began, shaking my hand and offering me a seat in the crowded coffee shop before he disappeared.
He returned with two large coffees, which I took to be a good sign. By the time we finished those, we’d have had plenty of time to talk.
He slid his lanky body into the seat across from me. The place was buzzing with conversation. It was almost hard to hear his voice, which seemed soft for so large a man. “I’m really sorry to hear that she isn’t going to school,” he began. “That’s one of the things we worked on. She’s a clever girl, but she has a hard time settling down and concentrating on one thing at a time.”
“Aliana has the same concern,” I said. “She did question the girl a little on that matter.”
Mark nodded. “I have a great deal of respect for Aliana. And if she’s doing a story on how gang membership affects families, I’m happy to help. In the time that I spent working with youth, it was one of the major issues I had to deal with.”
“One of the things Aliana is interested in,” I commented, trying to find an angle that would be helpful to me, “is how police officers who might be otherwise engaged in more uh—dramatic—work find helping children and teens exciting enough.”
Mark’s handsome features softened at this question, which gave me a sense of relief. I didn’t know whether I’d overstepped any bounds in asking it, but he seemed eager to answer.
“It’s an old cliché, you know,” he said. “The idea that helping people is the most exciting thing a cop can do.”
I thought about the officers I’d seen at Queen’s Park the other day. Their black face masks. Their helmets. The broad shields that covered all of their bodies, except their hands, which bore their raised batons.
“I don’t think it’s much of a cliché anymore,” I said. “I mean I don’t think people feel that way. I think most people feel that fighting criminals is what the police are supposed to be doing….”
“Sure. But helping kids is a good way to fight criminals. Especially when you’re talking about kids in danger of falling prey to gangs.”
“And that’s the case with Kezia, isn’t it?” I asked. It wasn’t a trick question. Like Mark, I had quickly seen what a clever girl Kezia was.
“She’s in a bad position,” Mark answered. “Has been for a long time. I don’t know how much she opened up to you, and I wouldn’t discuss her like this except that Aliana convinced me that it was okay, since you’re going to keep an eye on the kid.” He glanced out the window where crowds of people rushed by the corner of College and Yonge, an intersection packed with stores, coffee shops and directly across the street, a branch of the criminal courts. “She’s got three brothers. One’s as straight as a rod. A real good kid. But the other two…” He shook his head.
“She did tell me a little about them,” I said. “Something about them being in rival gangs.”
Mark looked sharply up. “I’m surprised,” he said after a moment’s thought. “I’m surprised she told you about them. It’s a good sign, actually. If she trusted you that much right away maybe you can give her a boost. Get her to go back to school.”
I felt guilty. My real interest wasn’t Kezia at all, much as I wished the kid all the best. My real interest was Mark, and I could already see that he wasn’t your average Toronto cop. I really wondered how he mustered the toughness needed to do the job. Even to give somebody a traffic ticket would require more negative authority than this man seemed capable of marshalling. Unless he had another personality beneath his very pleasant manner.
“Anyway,” Mark went on, “helping kids like Kezia was the most exciting police work I ever did.” He glanced down and seemed to study the coffee cup he held between his large hands. “I know how that sounds. But I never been a body-and-fender man, myself.”
“Unlike some people?” I ventured.
Mark glanced up as though he knew I meant someone in particular. His gaze hardened and the smile left his face. I saw in that moment, that he was all cop after all.
“I’m sure you realize I’m not at liberty to discuss any other officer.”
“Of course,” I said, trying to sound as if that were the last thing I would ever imagine doing. I cleared my throat and changed the subject. “If you found working with the young people so rewarding, why did you leave?”
“I left because of the wife,” he said. “She was terrified that working with young people put me in a position of vulnerability. She’s a social worker and she knows how a lot of these kids—especially the girls—act out. She kept telling me that all it would take to ruin our lives would be for some girl—or even a boy—to accuse me of misbehavior.”
I knew what kind of misbehavior he was talking about.
“Yeah, the wife accepts that my being a cop entails a lot of risks. But to be falsely accused by a young person—that’s a risk she won’t take.”
“But as a social worker, doesn’t she face the same sort of risk?” I asked.
Mark finished his coffee with a gigantic gulp before he answered. “Heck no. She only deals with old people.”
I didn’t see fit to comment on that observation. I almost mentioned Kezia’s remark about the secret. But I thought better of it. It seemed nothing but a casual aside that probably had no real meaning. I was sure that someone as clearly competent and aware as this man would not have made an inappropriate disclosure to Kezia.
I tried to recall the few things that Aliana was able to share about Mark. “I understand that you come from a long line of cops and that you had a career in banking before joining the force.
Mark laughed. “That’s correct. And let me tell you, compared to being a banker, being a cop is a walk in the park.”
There was a moment of silence then and, embarrassed, I couldn’t think of what to ask about aside from what I was longing to ask about which was, of course, the Juicer.
“You know,” Mark finally said, “helping the homeless was just as satisfying as helping children, but it turned out to be even riskier.”
“You mean The Juicer?” I dared say.
“Can’t say anything about him,” Mark replied. “Except that he was a sorry man with a future that contained nothing but further suffering.”
I realized that this might have been something Queenie had known too, though it didn’t stop her from helping the man.
Mark stood and held out his hand for me to shake. His grip was powerful. I could easily imagine how much it would hurt if a man with his obvious strength were to wield a baton against fragile bones. But his demeanor, his whole way of carrying himself, his way of speaking—all of it was so gentle, so controlled, so basically benign—that I couldn’t imagine him harming—let alone killing--anybody. The very thought embarrassed me and I hoped my face showed nothing of my feelings as he said goodbye and headed off on College Street toward Headquarters.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
When I got back to my car, which I’d parked in the public lot underneath a nearby hotel, I found a note on the windshield.
At first I thought it was some sort of ticket, though I couldn’t imagine why I would get one. But as I got closer to the car, I saw t
hat it was a folded piece of white paper that turned out to be a small sheet of the hotel’s stationery.
My fingers shook a little as I unfolded the note. In handwriting that was firm and clear, it said, “If you’re as smart as you think you are, you’ll stay out of things that are none of your damn business.”
My mind sped back to the moment in which Aliana and I had jumped out of the way of the flying glass from the window shattered by gunfire. We’d heard nothing more about that, and I was fairly sure that we wouldn’t hear anything. Unfortunately, random gunfire in the downtown core was not such a rare occurrence that it would elicit a great deal of investigation.
But the note was a different kind of threat. It was personal. I glanced around. The parking lot was huge with several levels reaching down deep beneath the building. For someone to know which car was mine and where exactly I had put it could only mean that someone had followed me. Perhaps they had known that I’d met with Mark, maybe even overheard our conversation. Not that they would have learned much from it, I was sorry to reflect.
I refolded the note and put it in the glove box. The thought of going to the police occurred to me. Of course it did. But I didn’t want to complicate matters. And I wanted to think about the note for a while. The tone didn’t seem familiar, but it did seem distinctive, as if I could almost picture the type of person who would use those words.
In the end, I decided to leave the car where it was and to walk back up onto the street and over to police Headquarters to try and see Matt West
I wasn’t sure Matt would even talk to me. I imagined he was extremely busy these days as Deputy Chief, supervising the vast security detail that would be necessary with world leaders about to descend on the city in preparation for the world affairs summit.
I had to deal with the front desk, and the men on duty there were pretty sure Matt wasn’t available without an appointment made well in advance.
Don't Forget You Love Me Page 10