The Bridge

by Solomon Jones

  Perhaps most telling, streams of old folks still left the afternoon service at the church on the corner outside the projects, dragging children behind them as they returned to homes far from the projects.

  He watched them as they walked down the church’s concrete steps. A father holding hands with a girl in a yellow dress. A boy with a crooked clip-on tie, following his mother. A lone girl from the projects holding her grandmother’s hand as she returned to a reality far different than that of the other parishioners.

  Lynch took it all in, then got out of his black Monte Carlo SS, locked the door, and looked up at the high-rise. Against the bright, blue, afternoon sky, the place that had seemed so tall and imposing when he was a boy was now simply ugly.

  He wondered if the ugliness had taken hold since Kenya’s disappearance. But as he walked inside and began to climb the steps, he knew that it had been there for quite some time.

  He could feel it in the frightening stillness that rose up through the pissy stairway fumes. It was more than the normal quiet of a Sunday afternoon. It was an entity—one that assaulted everyone who dared to come back to it.

  Those who had sense would listen to the stillness, knowing that what they felt wafting through the air of the East Bridge Housing Project was death—plain and simple.

  But Lynch wasn’t one to listen to such things. He believed only in fact, and hoped to find it in the apartments and hallways of the Bridge. But before he could find it, he had to be found.

  “Kevin!” Darnell said, calling after him as he reached the third-floor landing. “Wait a minute!”

  When Darnell caught up to him, panting and doubled over, he smiled and spoke as if they’d never lost touch.

  “I was comin’ from ’round back, lookin’ for my niece, and I saw you get out your car. I thought maybe I could help.”

  Lynch regarded Darnell’s withered appearance with a mixture of sadness and anger. He could smell it on him—the days-old stench of crack. Yet Darnell stood before him like nothing was wrong.

  “You’ve been doing more than looking for your niece,” he said as he worked his eyes down Darnell’s filthy clothing. “What the hell happened to you, man?”

  Darnell’s smile faded. It was replaced by a hardness that Lynch didn’t remember seeing in his eyes before. “Life happened to me, man. Simple as that.”

  Lynch turned and resumed walking up the steps. “Yeah, well, I’m sorry to hear that. But I’ve got a little girl to find.”

  Darnell followed him, refusing to be dismissed that easily.

  “So do I,” he said firmly. “That’s still my niece, Kevin. My sister baby. And if you really wanna find her, it shouldn’t be about me. It should be about Kenya.”

  Lynch looked at Darnell again, closer this time, and decided that he was right.

  “Did you see your niece before she left the house Friday night?” he asked, stopping on the steps.

  “Yeah, I saw her,” Darnell said, looking around uncomfortably. “But this ain’t the place to be talkin’. I think we need to go to Judy place or somethin’.”

  Darnell walked past Lynch, then turned around, waiting for him to follow. After a moment’s hesitation, he did. By the time they sat down in Judy’s apartment, and Darnell began painting the sordid details of Kenya’s life, Lynch could see it all playing out before his eyes.

  Chapter Ten

  On Friday, Kenya had begun her day by rolling off her bare twin mattress on the bedroom floor. She pulled her rumpled nightshirt down past her knees and stepped over Darnell and his girlfriend, Renee.

  They had spent the last few days smoking, and they were clothed in the week-old funk of the streets.

  As Darnell stirred and turned over to watch her, Kenya tiptoed to the window. She pulled back the tattered shade and the sun beamed in through the window, along with the sound of children’s voices coming from the Twelfth Street playground. Their laughter moved in time with the rumbling bass of a passing car, and Kenya smiled.

  “Kenya, what you lookin’ at?”

  Judy was standing in the doorway wearing her favorite robe. Her hands were in her pockets, holding on to the treasures Darnell and Renee and every other addict so desperately sought.

  “I was trying to see if Janay and them was outside.”

  “You know you ain’t goin’ outside like that,” Judy said, fixing her eyes on Kenya’s nightshirt.

  “I know,” Kenya said with an attitude.

  “Who you talkin’ to?”

  Kenya checked her tone.

  “I was gon’ ask you if I could go outside, Aunt Judy,” she said sweetly.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought you said,” Judy mumbled.

  “Well, can I?” Kenya asked. “Please?”

  Judy glared at her great-niece.

  “You got five minutes to get in that bathroom and wash up, girl,” she snapped. “It’s some cereal in the kitchen. Make sure you eat before you go out.”

  Kenya grabbed some clothes from the dresser drawer, bounded over Darnell and Renee, and ran quickly down the cramped hallway to the bathroom.

  Darnell peered down the hallway and saw her emerge from the bathroom in a striped beige T-shirt, cutoff denim shorts, and sneakers. He listened as she went into the kitchen and ate something.

  He saw Judy walk into the kitchen as Kenya finished. Then Kenya was out the door.

  According to Darnell, that was the last her family saw of her before nightfall.

  Lynch sat looking at the floor, trying to understand what it was to live in a place where life was worth less than a hit of crack.

  “Do you always listen to Judy’s conversations with Kenya?” he asked, still looking at the floor.

  “They was standin’ in the bedroom doorway, and me and Renee was layin’ on the floor. I couldn’t help hearin’ it.”

  “How does Kenya feel about you lying around listening to everything she says?”

  “Kenya hate me,” Darnell said simply. “But it ain’t got nothin’ to do with me listenin’ to her or watchin’ her. I think I remind her of her mother. We look a lot alike, we sound a lot alike, we both smokin’.

  “I mean, Daneen doin’ better now, but she was bad as me ’bout a year ago. That’s why Kenya had to move here in the first place. Human Services took her from her mother.”

  “But is there more to it than that?” Lynch asked. “Is there something that might have made her want to get away from here—to get away from you or somebody else?”

  “Look around,” Darnell said. “Who wouldn’t want to get outta here? You left, didn’t you? You was smart, right? Well, Kenya smart, too. She know the streets better than most people twice her age. She have to. ‘Cause Daneen used to make her fend for herself when she was smokin’. I guess that’s why, when Kenya moved down here, she learned what it was about pretty quick. She looked at me, and she seen the truth. Seen it real clear. On some days, I was her uncle. But mostly, I was just some nigga helpin’ her aunt make money on the same shit that kept her from makin’ it to school most days.

  “Tell you the truth,” Darnell said, looking Lynch in the eye, “I think Kenya looked at me and seen what she could turn out to be. And I think that scared her to death. I know it did. ’Cause it scared me, too.”

  “And what about Sonny?” Lynch asked.

  “What about him?”

  “You said Kenya knows the streets. Did she see what Sonny was about, too?”

  “You gotta understand somethin’ ’bout Sonny. He ain’t the same with kids as he is with everybody else.

  “Now, I heard about that little girl they say he raped and killed back in the day. And I still don’t know if that’s true. But I do know this. He treated Kenya like she was his granddaughter. Always buyin’ her this, buyin’ her that, takin’ her places, playin’ with her. And like I said, Kenya ain’t slow. She saw what Sonny was about, and she knew to leave him alone when he was doin’ business. But when he had time away from the hustle, time away from Judy, him and Kenya
was tight. Sometime I think they was too tight.”

  “But was he molesting her?” Lynch asked pointedly.

  “I don’t know,” Darnell said. “Kenya told some people Sonny was touchin’ her—told some other people he was havin’ sex with her. But I’m not sure about that now. The more I think about it, the more I think that mighta been a lie to get attention—to make people feel sorry for her. Kenya’s a sweet girl. She just lies sometimes to get attention.

  “But then again, watchin’ the two of ’em together, I could see how people could think somethin’ was goin’ on. It was times when Sonny acted like he would rather spend time with Kenya than Judy. And Judy ain’t like that. She ain’t like that at all.”

  “Did they ever argue about that?”

  “I don’t know about all that. But I do know that Judy just up and kicked Kenya ass for nothin’ the other day. Not bad enough to leave no scars. Just enough to get a message across.”

  “And what message was that?”

  “She wanted Kenya to stay away from Sonny. That’s what it was really about. ‘Cause Sonny had took Kenya downtown to get her some clothes Thursday. When they came back, Kenya put on one o’ the new shirts Sonny bought her. I think that got to Judy. It was like Judy was waitin’ for a reason. And when Kenya ain’t give her one, Judy just made somethin’ up. Said Kenya had stole one o’ her shirts and wore it.”

  “So do you think it’s possible that Kenya got angry with Judy and ran away?”

  “Anything possible,” Darnell said. “But I still think the person y’all need to look at is Judy. Whatever Sonny did to Kenya, he wasn’t tryin’ to kill her. He wasn’t tryin’ to get rid of her either. But Judy was. She just ain’t want her around no more. And she was willing to do whatever she had to do to get her outta here.”

  Lynch sat back and wondered if Judy was capable of such a thing.

  The battered wooden door Judy had walked through was six-inch-thick reinforced steel on the other side. And unlike the world she’d left outside on Darien Street—with desperate addicts and ruthless dealers vying for their very lives—the place where Judy now stood was contrary to anything she could have imagined.

  A black marble coffee table sat atop an intricately designed Oriental rug. The walls were mirrored, and the ceilings were dropped, with recessed lights shining from the stonelike tiles.

  Burly men stood at either end of the living room, holding Uzis. The woman who had answered the door was similarly armed, and was joined by another woman as she lifted Judy’s hands to search her.

  Unbeknownst to Judy, this house was headquarters for an operation that controlled four nearby corners and the dealers who worked each one. Manned by a security crew and the manager who gave orders at the behest of the Dominican, the house handled only large quantities of cocaine. And only for a select few clients.

  As Judy tried to take it all in, an older man sat silently on a crushed-suede couch, regarding her with a hint of a smile. When Judy had been searched, he patted the seat beside him, directing her to sit down. Looking around with an air of nervous uncertainty, she complied.

  “You Pablo?” she asked in a self-conscious whisper.

  “No I’m not,” he said, smiling. “But it’s a pleasure to meet you, Judy. Pablo wanted you to know that he’s sorry about your missing niece. But our business relationship with Sonny, and of course, with you, has been very fruitful. We want to help you however we can. So tell me what you want, and we’ll see what we can do.”

  She looked around at the people in the room, unsure of what to say.

  “Tell me what you want,” the man repeated slowly. He was no longer smiling.

  “I want Sonny,” she said nervously. “He got somethin’ belong to me, and I thought y’all might know where I could find him.”

  “I see,” the man said, placing a finger on his chin as he leaned back to contemplate her request. “Well, I’m afraid I can’t help you there. Sonny’s been one of our best clients over the years, and even if we did know where he was—and we don’t—we couldn’t tell you. We just don’t do business that way.”

  Judy fixed her eyes on the man and tried to gauge his interest in her. She didn’t see any. In fact, she thought she saw mild contempt. But she made her plea in spite of it.

  “I just want to talk to him,” she said, trying not to sound as desperate as she felt. “I don’t know what Sonny told you about me, but I’m not here to hurt him. And even if I was, how could I? Like you said, the business relationship been good over the years. Y’all made a lotta money, just off what we moved down the Bridge. That couldn’ta happened without me.

  “Now, I just wanna talk to Sonny. I want him to look me in my face and tell me why he did what he did. I just need you to point me in the right direction.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible,” the man said sternly. “But I’ll tell you what. If you leave now, we’ll forget you ever came here with the police looking for you. We’ll forget the risk you posed to our business, and we’ll let you walk out alive. If not …”

  The guards on either side of the room leveled their weapons at Judy.

  She wanted to get up, but she was frozen. She tried to move, but was too afraid of what might happen if she did.

  One of the men raised his gun and took aim. Tears streamed down Judy’s face, and her breath came in quick, shallow gasps. The guard’s finger tightened on the trigger.

  “Wait a minute,” a voice said from the dining room. “Lemme talk to her.”

  When he walked in and Judy looked up into his face for the first time in days, she realized that her desperate search wasn’t about the money at all. It was about the man standing before her.

  Sonny. It had always been about him.

  Daneen had to force herself to stay at Wayne’s house for as long as she did. She spent half of Saturday night tolerating his clumsy touch, and the other half slipping in and out of a restless sleep.

  By Sunday morning, when the first gray light crept through the bedroom window, she was ready to leave. But she didn’t. Wayne made love to her and fell asleep, dozing well into the afternoon. Daneen was wide awake. Each time she tried to get up, guilt pushed her back down. It told her that she had never been a mother to Kenya, that no matter what she did from that point on, her daughter’s disappearance would be on her head.

  It told her, in short, that she was nothing. She tossed and turned for a long time, believing that.

  Eventually, she turned to Wayne. But Wayne wasn’t much of a communicator. The only thing he knew of her was how her skin felt against his. To him, that was all that mattered.

  Since they’d met at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting two months before, he’d lavished her with attention. But not the kind that she wanted. He didn’t talk to her. Rather, he talked at her, like a father to a child. He thought that because he had been clean for ten years, he could make every decision for her. He treated her as if she needed to be protected and was incapable of thinking for herself.

  At first, that made her feel secure. She needed more than that now. She needed love. But she had no idea of how to give or receive it. Because in all her life, she’d never really known love. Not even for Kenya.

  Knowing that left her more alone than she’d felt in a long time. It was that loneliness that caused her to slip out of bed and into the shower. When she finished, she padded back into the bedroom, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, then tiptoed over to the bed and took a few dollars from Wayne’s pants pocket.

  Looking down at him as he slept, she saw a vulnerability that made him seem almost handsome. She smiled when she saw it, and hoped that her departure wouldn’t change that part of him.

  Reaching into the pocket of the jeans she’d worn the day before, she took out the house key and placed it on his nightstand. Then she walked down the stairs and out of the house, intent on doing the one thing she thought would give her peace.

  Kevin Lynch sat on Judy’s dingy couch, looking for the underlying truth in what Darne
ll had told him. But Lynch didn’t see it. Not in what Darnell said about Sonny, or about Judy, or even about himself.

  Lynch knew even before Darnell had begun to speak that Judy’s home was no place for a child. After listening to Darnell, he didn’t know any more than that. But if he was to have any chance of finding Kenya, he needed to go deeper, because Darnell’s revelations had only scratched the surface.

  “Do you know where Kenya went when she left here Friday morning?” Lynch asked.

  “Same place she always go,” Darnell said. “She went to Lily’s.”

  “Well, I need to talk to her. She still on the fifth floor?”

  “Yeah, she on the fifth floor. Her and her daughter, Janay. You want me to go down there with you?”

  “You got something else to do?”

  “No,” Darnell said, getting up from the tattered armchair where Judy normally sat. “But lemme take a quick shower first.”

  “Why, you trying to impress somebody?”

  “Nah,” he said, avoiding Lynch’s eyes as he walked toward the bathroom. “It’s gon’ take more than a shower to do that.”

  Lynch grunted in response. Then he got up and walked slowly through the apartment, trying to get a feel for what life was like there.

  A pot of grease languished on the stovetop, next to a half-filled can of recycled Crisco. Above it was a grease-spattered clock. A counter ran alongside it, and a kitchen table with four scratched metal chairs stood against the back wall.

  Dozens of burnt matches littered the living-room floor, along with empty caps, broken coat hangers, and metal pipes. Between the couch and chair that sat on opposite sides of the room, there was nothing. But along the wall, there were milk crates for Judy’s nightly guests.