Back of Gail’s place? Nothing.
Nothing is weird.
Nothing is….
I cut through the alley to the front, climbed to the steps to the front door and rang the bell.
Took Gail a couple of minutes to answer. When she opened the door I understood why Ivy wanted me to help her.
Gail was one of the broken ones. One of those women who have been so comprehensively beaten down by life, by circumstance, by financial disappointments, by obligations, by missed opportunities, by fractured families and fair-weather friends that she was one step away from being no one at all. Pale, thin, almost translucent. You could look right through her and see that the world would be here if she up and died and that everything would look the same. Like that.
Except…
Except there was fresh hurt in her eyes, and hurt is an immediate thing. It’s now. Especially when it’s stitched to the fabric of that phenomenon called motherhood.
That whole mother thing? Guys can sympathize but they can’t really empathize, and it’s not just ‘cause we have different plumbing. There’s something about a mother –a good one, mind you, not some organic machine that drops a kid after nine months of inconvenience. What that something is, I don’t know. I saw it in my mom, and in my grandmother and a couple of my aunts. There’s a certain change. Maybe it’s spiritual, maybe it’s supernatural, maybe it’s only chemical. I don't know and don’t pretend to know. But it’s there. This woman had it.
Maybe it was the only real spark of life left in her, but it was there.
She was a mother who was desperately afraid for her kid.
I’ve met that kind before. A two person pack. Mom and kid. Sometimes the mother –the woman—would let life and circumstances and men push her around and knock her down and drain her dry. Some of those women were so broken they didn’t care enough about themselves to duck a punch or file a police report. It’s heartbreaking, because that level of defeat is itself a product of systematic abuse.
But go after their kid?
Fuck, man.
If there’s anything they can do, they’ll do it. If they need to bite your throat out with their teeth, yeah they’ll go right for the jugular. All that stuff about a mama bear protecting her cubs? It’s not bullshit and it’s not myth.
The fracture line comes when the ferocious need to protect their young is on the other side of not knowing how.
That was Gail North.
“Ivy sent me,” I said when she opened that door.
She looked up at me with haunted blue eyes.
“Are you Sam Hunter?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m here to help Toby.
4
We sat in the living room. She called it a parlor. A little touch of the old fashioned that I found charming.
The room was small. A second-hand couch with indifferent springs, two big old but comfortable-looking armchairs with lots of pillows, a coffee table that matched none of the furniture. A nice TV. When she caught me looking at it, she smiled.
“From Ivy.”
I nodded. Ivy played down how close they were so I wouldn’t think this was a charity case or an emotional 9-1-1. Fair enough. I might have passed.
On the floor in front of the TV was a stack of DVDs. Finding Nemo, Lion King. Like that. Old titles, probably bought second hand or in a lot on Ebay. Nice for the kid, though. Maybe nice for the women, too. All of the relationships were uncomplicated and the good guys always won in the end.
She offered me coffee but I settled for water. It was tap, but I’m a long way from being a snob. I sat with the glass cradled between my palms and tried to look earnest and resourceful.
“Did Ivy tell you what was happening?” she asked.
“She told me some. Enough to get me here.”
“She show you the pictures?”
“She did.”
Gail nodded.
Those pictures. Boy oh boy.
“Let’s start at the beginning,” I said. “How long’s this been going on?”
“A few months.”
“How many months?”
“Three. Almost four.”
“How many attacks?”
“I…don’t know.”
I cocked my eyebrow. “You don’t know? How’s that work?”
Gail pushed a wisp of brown hair out of her eye. “Toby…he…he didn’t…”
“He didn’t tell you right away?” I suggested, and she nodded.
“But I started putting it together, you know?” said Gail.
“No, tell me what you mean.”
She licked her lips again. The tension must have been drying her mouth out. That or it was a regular nervous tic. “After I, you know, found out. I mean, after I saw those marks, I started asking him.” She turned away, momentarily embarrassed. “Actually I grilled him. I was pretty loud about it.”
Her face turned slowly back toward me, but there was a flinch buried beneath a fragile smile. Like she expected me to hit her. Or accuse her.
“You were scared,” I said. It’s not like me to take someone off the hook or to make it easy for them to talk. Comfort isn’t part of my job description. Except when it is.
I guess it’s fair to say that I did not for one moment believe that Gail North was hurting her son. Not for a half a moment. If I did, we’d be having a whole different kind of conversation, woman or not. Everybody has buttons. I have mine. Not like I came from a bad home or anything. I didn’t. My parents were the best. I have a big family. Cousins and aunts all over the place. No, it’s not that.
You see, before I started working private cases I was a cop. Not here in Philly. Back in the Twin Cities. A court-appointed psychologist once told me that I was too emotionally involved in my work, particularly when it came to domestic violence cases. I kept getting written up for being too rough with rapists and baby rapers. With wife beaters and child abusers.
Everyone has their thing.
I don’t give much of a wet shit about someone selling crack or rigging poker machines. I’m not Elliot Ness and I’m not Captain Avenger.
Take an electrical cord to a pregnant woman? Send a kid to Emergency five times in eight months? Yes, we could have problems.
It’s what got me shit-canned from the job.
Can’t say I’ve made progress with what that therapist called ‘action steps’ since.
So, no, I looked in Gail North’s eyes and I heard her voice, I smelled the chemicals in her skin and could taste the raw fear in the air, and I knew.
She wasn’t hurting Toby. And she hadn’t beaten the story out of him.
“I kept after him about it, though,” she said. “He didn’t want to talk about it. But I guess I wore him down. I figured it out. From times he said he wasn’t feeling good. Times I thought he was sick or something, but I think he was hurt. And other times, when I saw bruises. At first I thought it was kids at school. He just started first grade. But now I know that’s not what it was.”
“How many times?”
“Ivy and I spent a whole night on it. Trying to do the math.” She licked her lips again. “Maybe seventeen times over fifteen weeks. About every six days.”
Six days.
Every six days.
Going back nearly four months.
Christ. The kid must be in hell.
“Always in his bedroom?”
She shook her head. “No. It happened in my bedroom, too. And a couple of times in here.”
“How were they getting at him?”
She had no answer to that. Or none she wanted to say out loud.
“Did you ask Toby?” I asked.
“He doesn’t like to talk about it. Actually, he won’t talk about it.”
“Why didn’t he want to talk about it?”
She looked away again. This time I saw her eyes fill with tears and that’s what she didn’t want me to see.
“They said not to.”
I waited.
“They told him that h
e wasn’t allowed to tell anyone.”
“’They’?” I asked. “Who are they?”
I watched her face in profile. I saw a tear break and roll down over her cheek.
“He…he…”
But even with all of her need, Gail couldn’t actually speak the words. She shook her head. And then buried her face in her hands. The sound of her sobs were like punches that hit me in the chest over and over again.
I wanted to go over there, gather her in my arms and shelter her from this. I wanted to tell her it was all going to be okay. That all her problems were over now that I was here.
But I’m not that big a liar.
There are some things I can fix. Lots of things I can’t.
“Gail,” I said, and even my own voice sounded hoarse, “look at me.”
It took her a while. It cost her a lot. But she did.
“Tell me what you think is happening.”
Her eyes were big and filled with shadows. She shook her head.
“Gail, if this is happening here, then why don’t you move?”
She flinched. You have thought I’d raise an angry fist.
“I—I—.”
“Go on,” I coaxed, “you can tell me anything.”
“I did move.”
“What?”
“Before we came here, I had a three unit place in Kensington. Before I had Toby.”
“And…?”
“Someone killed my two cats.”
I said nothing.
“A couple of times they’d be hurt and I thought they were getting out somehow. But then I found Whiskers and he was all torn up. He was right in my bedroom and he was all torn apart.”
I said nothing.
“A few months later Spooky died, too. Someone had…had…” She shook her head refusing to describe the carnage. I didn’t need the details. She took a steadying breath. “A year later I got a dog. A puppy.”
She left it there. Point made.
“Who’s doing this?” I asked.
“That’s just it –there’s no one.”
I nodded. “Then tell me what’s doing it, Gail.”
She started to turn away again. Stopped. Pulled a crumpled tissue out of her pockets, dabbed at her eyes and stared down into it.
She began to say a word.
“Mon—.”
A sound stopped her.
There was a door beside the TV. It opened and a small, pale, round face peered out.
Big blue eyes. Lots of freckles. A scuffle of brown hair.
Toby.
5
You want to say that all kids are cute, that they’re adorable. That they are beautiful.
Toby wasn’t any of that. He was just a kid. No better or worse looking than anyone else’s kid. His skin was a little splotchy and his mouth was too small. Maybe he’d grow up to be a movie star, but probably he wouldn’t. He’d grow up to maybe work at a convenience store. Or maybe he’d deal weed. Or maybe he’d wriggle his way into community college. He was from this part of town and there weren’t a lot of Harvard alumni here. Not a lot of NASA math geeks.
Ordinary folks. Maybe on the poor side of ordinary. Maybe on the slow side of average. There’s no crime in it. You play the hand you’re dealt. We all do.
The crime is when someone steps on them because the don’t seem to count.
That’s one of my buttons, too.
“Toby—?” I said, hoisting a smile onto my face. I’m not a good looking guy, either. I’m shorter than average size, thinner than average weight, plainer than average looks. Like Toby, I guess.
Gail looked up and hastily wiped away her tears, slapping on one of those fake it’s-all-okay smiles. She held out a hand and waggled her fingers toward him.
“Hey, baby, come on in. It’s okay.”
The kid hesitated, his eyes darting from her face to mine.
“It’s okay,” she repeated. “This is Mr. Hunter. He’s a friend of Ivy’s.”
That did it. The kid pushed the door open and stepped into the living room. God, he was a scrawny little thing. Tiny Tim without the limp. He ghosted into the room, made a wide circle around me and glued himself to his mother’s side.
The transformation in Gail was immediate and heartbreaking. Heartwarming, too, in its way. As Toby pressed up against her that mother fierceness was suddenly in the room with us. She wrapped her arm around him and pulled him close and kissed the top of his head. Right then if a three hundred pound trucker with a tire iron had come after Toby she’d have gutted him like a trout.
Mothers, man. Gotta love ‘em.
I said, “Toby, would it be okay if I looked at your bruises?”
His eyes got huge. He shook his head and pressed closer to Gail’s side.
“Toby, honey…,” she said. “It’s okay. Mr. Hunter’s going to help us.”
“N-no…,” he murmured, turning away from me.
“It’s okay…,” she soothed.
“They don’t want me to.”
They again.
“Who, baby?” asked Gail, stroking his hair. “Tell Mr. Hunter who said not to tell?”
“They did. They said not to. They said I shouldn’t. They said bad stuff was going to happen if I told.”
“Nothing bad’s going to happen,” I said. “Not anymore.”
He shook his head. “They said that they’d do stuff if I told.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Bad stuff.
“Who?” I asked gently. “Who doesn’t want you to tell?”
“Them.”
I took a breath. “Toby, where are they?”
He pressed closer. Shut his eyes.
“Toby, if you want me to stop them you have to tell me where they are. How are they getting in?”
He said something very faint, very small.
I don’t know if his mother heard it, or if she heard whether she understood. I have really good ears. I heard it.
Toby said, “They’re always here.”
“Where are they?” I asked.
Maybe it was something in my voice, or maybe being that close to his mom gave him a splinter of courage. Hard to say. He didn’t say anything, didn’t come right out and say it, but he pointed. To the coat closet by the door.
Then to his open doorway.
I turned and looked.
I could see past the bed and the little desk and the rickety chair. The chair was pushed up against the closet door. Stuff was piled on it. Not because the kid was sloppy.
No. Because the kid was smart.
Trying to be smart.
Weighing the chair down.
Making it harder to push.
Making it harder to open the bedroom closet.
I said, “Jesus.”
I stood up and turned toward the bedroom.
“Wait!” said Gail. “What are you doing?”
I shrugged. “Nothing much. Going to take a look in Toby’s closet.”
The boy spun around in his mother’s arms and stared at me in total terror.
“No!” he shrieked. “You can’t!”
“Why not?” I asked.
“They won’t like it.”
“I don’t care what they like, kiddo. You shouldn’t either.”
“But they said they’d—.” He stopped short, unable to voice whatever threats he’d heard.
“Maybe it’s not up to them.”
“But they said….”
I turned back to him and smiled. “They said. Okay, they said. Sure. And maybe that was scary. Maybe that scared you and your mom, and maybe that’s been scary for a long time. But here’s the thing, Toby, and I need you to understand me, okay? Can you try?”
He nodded. It was a tentative, uncertain nod, but it was there.
“Sometimes even the big, bad scary things have other this they’re afraid of. Like bullies. Most bullies are afraid of something. They teach you that in school?”
He nodded more easily. Bullies were something ordinary an
d he could stand on the firmer ground of that concept.
“They,” I said, pointing through the open doorway toward his closet, “are just like bullies. They go after you ‘cause you’re little. You know what that tells me? It tells me they’re scared. They don’t come out of your mom’s closet ‘cause they know she’d kick their butts.”
Gail gave me a frightened look as if she thought I was suggesting she do something heroic and dangerous.
She was a mother fighting for her kid’s life in the best way she knew how. That was heroic and dangerous enough. I grinned at them both and I showed a lot of white teeth.
Most of the time my teeth are just like regular teeth.
Until they’re not.
I didn’t show them fangs or fur or any of that, but maybe for a moment they both saw the wolf looking out of my eyes. They recoiled, but they didn’t actually turn away.
“There are a lot of scary things in the world,” I told them. “And some of them are on your side.”
Toby’s mouth opened and it took him a few seconds to speak.
“But…but…they have claws…”
I could feel the muscles of my face, the ones that kept my smile warm and friendly, tighten. Just a bit.
“Lots of things have claws,” I said.
Then I turned and went into Toby’s bedroom and closed the door.
6
Alone now.
Standing in front of the closed closet door.
The bravado and the bullshit? That’s for the clients.
Some of it’s real enough. A lot of it is conman patter you dish out to make the shills think you know everything and it’s all copacetic.
In my line of work almost nothing’s copacetic.
You lie to the clients all the time.
Not because you’re running some kind of scam to bilk them out of their savings. Nah, it’s not like that. I may not be on the side of the angels but I’m not a total dick. No, for me the conman stuff, the trash talk is because you need them to leave you to it. You don’t want interference. And you sure as hell don’t want them to try and come along for the ride. If you have to protect someone while doing your job, then your attention is split and your life expectancy is for shit.
I stood there in from of the door and I could feel the shakes start.
Some of it was fear, and yeah, I was scared out of my fucking mind. I had no real idea what was behind that door. Only vague guesses and none of them were sane. None of them promised a happy day for me or the people I came here to protect.
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