I sat for a minute with the pad on my lap, the end of a charcoal against my lips, looking around the room for something to sketch. Not much—I chose the lamp, standing on the cluttered desk in the corner, up against the wall, leaning over the pile of books and papers like it might learn something.
The charcoal moved across the newsprint quickly at first, long arcs that swooshed across the paper and sent a little shiver up my hand and my arm to my neck. I shook once and smiled, then kept going. The lamp took shape quickly, looking eager and a little tired. The clutter was a treat to draw, all shadows and shapes in dizzying perspectives. I was hovering over the pad, leaning close to the newsprint, where I could smell the paper—a little musty but clean, like a glass of water that sat on the nightstand overnight—when the apartment door slammed shut, with its familiar metallic sound and dainty click of the automatic lock, then the deep thud of the deadbolt.
I sat up straight and looked down at my pad, and then I realized: I’d been sketching you, really. I mean, I’d drawn the lamp, and the chaos on the desk, but I’d given it your soul. I’d given that lamp your optimism, your bright face looking down on all that havoc. I pulled the sketch off the pad and rolled it up, stashed it in the back corner of my closet for safekeeping. Then I wished I had been sketching on paper a little heavier than newsprint, hoped it would somehow survive, but guessed that it wouldn’t.
…
Who knows the last time I’d been alone in that apartment. I kicked around for a while, checked out the fridge, made an egg sandwich for myself. I didn’t get out of there until almost noon, right after I finished a can of beer and had flipped through all the TV channels enough times to remember how stupid they are. When I got outside, the sun was high and deadly hot. I shielded my eyes and wanted another beer.
“Kid!” It was Konny. She was across the street, sitting on the stoop, alone—waiting for me. And she was pissed off.
Konny got up when I stopped in front of my building. The B-48 roared down the street between us, then she stomped across. The earth probably trembled beneath her.
“Hi.”
“First of all, Kid, what the fuck?” was Konny’s opener. “I haven’t hardly seen you since this new kid showed up.”
“Scout?”
“Yeah, Scout,” she said, snarling, spitting out the name. “Are we doing a little repeat of last summer?”
“Shut up, Konny.”
“Okay, I’ll shut up, right,” Konny said, thick with snark, and my chest burned a little at the thought of her using it against me. “In that case maybe you can tell me why the fuck the police have been to my parents’ place, asking about the fire at the warehouse.”
“Huh?”
“Huh is right,” Konny said, stepping a little closer to me, all six feet in high-heeled stomping boots of her. “There’s a goddamn APB on my ass right now, did you know that? You did, didn’t you?”
“No!”
“Do you think I’ll be able to keep my job and my goddamn apartment if the cops start showing up at the comic shop, asking about me? What the hell did you tell them, Kid?”
“What do you think I told them?” I said. “They wanted to know all about the night of the fire, so I told them…. I told them I was with you.”
Konny’s jaw went firm and she looked at me hard. “I have to get to the store to open up.”
Then she turned and stomped off.
I watched her walk away for a minute, then jogged after her. “Wait.”
“I can’t wait. I just said, I have to open the store.”
“Then I’m coming with you,” I said, struggling to keep up.
“Fine, come. Guilt is a wonderful thing for our friendship, huh?” she said, smirking, softening a little at the edges, I hoped.
The comic shop isn’t far across Meeker from my parents’ place. We rounded the corner onto Metropolitan, though, and stopped short.
“Shit,” Konny said after she turned the corner onto Metro. “They’re here now.”
She was right. An unmarked police car was idling in front of the comic shop. “It’s no big deal,” I said. “They just have to talk to you. They’ll probably track down Ace too.”
“Ace?”
I shrugged. “I just popped off every name I could think of,” I said. “Everyone I knew who maybe had seen me that night.”
Konny looked down at me. I swear, her body cast a shadow across my face. “I thought you weren’t even trying to dodge this rap. I thought you weren’t denying anything. Why the alibi?”
“I never denied it. They asked me where I was that night, and I told them. They asked who I saw, and I told them that.” Konny’s eyes narrowed at me a little. She was furious, but I could tell it was at least a little phony, just for show. “That included Ace, at the park. Remember?”
She took her eyes off me and peered back at the shop. “Yeah, I remember that. The little shit.”
“Let’s just go,” I said, taking her wrist. She let me lead her a few paces, then we walked side by side the rest of the half block to the shop.
“Well, isn’t this a picture,” one of the cops said as we walked up. His head was clean shaven, and I knew he was one of the cops who brought me in that first day of summer. Plus he seemed to recognize me. He smiled and said, “Two birds, one stone.”
The other one dragged his eyes from Konny’s astonishing physique to look me up and down. “Well, one bird, anyway. What the hell is that?” He nodded at me.
The bald one quieted him with a hand on his shoulder. “That’s Kid, our fire starter,” he said, watching me, and his smile fell. “We were planning on visiting your parents after seeing Konstantyna—I presume?—here, but this ought to save us the trip.”
“Konny. Can I open the store?” Konny said. She threw her hip, it looked like to the second cop’s delight, and held up her key ring.
The bald one nodded once. “You better,” he said. “We’ll talk in there. Kid, get in the car with Officer Stivic till we’re through. And Stivic, be nice.”
I watched Konny as she unlocked the gate then reached down to grab the bottom and toss it up. Stivic was ogling like crazy. I’d have worried about getting into the car with him alone, but I had a feeling I wasn’t his type. He opened the back door for me, and I slid in and leaned on the far door.
“So, Kid,” he said, heavily accentuating my name. “Haven’t been home much?”
I caught his eye in the rearview mirror but didn’t reply. He let out a chortle, then shrugged. “You’ve lived on the street. You look tough enough. I’m sure you’ll be fine anyway.”
I clenched my jaw and tried not to respond, but I couldn’t hold it. “What are you talking about?”
“You gotta know social services is coming in on this thing,” he said. “You ain’t slept at home since we found you at that little bar on Franklin, am I right?”
“I slept at home last night!” I spat back at him. “I always sleep at home … practically.”
He grinned at me, real big, in the rearview. “Am I supposed to believe your dad, or am I supposed to believe you?”
“You want me to answer that?”
He laughed at that for real, like it was the funniest thing ever. “Sure, Kid.”
“Then me, believe me. I slept there last night. Come on, I don’t want to go into foster care or a home or something. What good would that do?”
He turned in his seat to get a look at me. “You’re sixteen years old, and you’re looking at prison time, I’d guess, once we get this whole thing figured out. And you’re sitting here worrying about foster care? Social services? Kid, you’ll be lucky if you end up in a group home at this point, understand me? That is, unless there’s something you want to tell me about the fire.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I let myself slump back in the seat and sulked until the bald cop climbed into the passenger seat a few minutes later. Konny stood in the open doorway of the comic shop, leaning on the jamb, and watched as we drove away.
&
nbsp; I figured we’d head to my place, so the cops could talk to my folks. “My parents won’t be home yet,” I said. “Dad will be at the plant until six at least, probably till eleven for the time and a half.”
“That right?” said the cop driving, the one with hair, the one with eyes—for sixteen-year-old Polish girls.
“Mmhm. And Mom’s shift always goes long at the hospital. And they’re both impossible to get on the phone. I doubt either of them will be around before eight at the earliest.”
We were stopped at a red light, crossing over into Greenpoint from Williamsburg. When it turned green, we moved under the BQE onto McGuinness, but at Meserole we turned left, toward the river and the precinct.
“You’re taking me to the police station?”
They didn’t answer. Didn’t even flinch. But we pulled up to the station into one of those funny diagonal spaces that make that street such a pain in the ass for everyone else. Then the bald cop pulled my door open and grabbed my elbow. “Let’s go.”
His humor was gone. I barely had time to lift each foot as he pulled me up the stone front steps and into the station. Once inside, my chin barely reached the booking desk. I’m sure there’s some psychological reason to have the desk so freaking high. The officer at the desk held my fingers tight enough to hurt, and though I wouldn’t have squirmed, I found I wanted to and did try to pull away, which only made him grip harder. I guess that’s what they call a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“So this is the kid who burned the old warehouse down?” he said as he gave my left ring finger an extra tug. “My father worked in that warehouse, did you know that?”
“No,” I said. I knew he probably wasn’t really asking me.
The cop just gave me a long flat look. He was an ugly man, really: bad skin, thin hair of several tones of black and gray, streaked back with its own grease. His nose was bulbous and poxy, like he had some Dark Ages infection or a plague of boils or something. He went on to ask me lots of questions: “real” fullname, address, sex. It began to dawn on me I might not be leaving the station this time, unless it was to be transferred to a real jail or something.
“Anyone you want to call?” He got up from his stool and came around the desk to take my arm and lead me through a swinging door toward the back. He deposited me on my feet against a white screen. Soon he was saying, “Look right,” “Look left,” “Straight ahead.”
I stared at him across the top of the camera. It wasn’t a boxy thing on a stand, like you see in movies. It was on a desk, and it was very modern-looking. I could see at an awkward angle the monitor, and each snap he took showed up right there on the screen, in full color. He barely glanced at me.
“My parents are at work,” I said. “Neither of them can really take phone calls.”
He didn’t look up from the computer. He just asked me again: “Anyone you want to call?”
I could call Fish’s bar, but I guess I knew how that would look to the cops. I didn’t know how to reach Jonny, or anyone else, except Konny at the comic shop. I went with that.
“They arrested me.”
“Shit.” She inhaled and sighed loudly.
“What did they ask you?”
“You know, just where I was that night and stuff. I couldn’t remember much. I remembered walking with you and seeing Ace, and then you running off. And I told them I sat with you on the curb while the warehouse was burning, and about Fish walking us away from there.”
I nodded, then realized she couldn’t see me. “I don’t think I’ve talked to you on the phone since we were maybe ten, Konny.”
She laughed a little, then said, “So what are you going to do?”
I lowered my head and my voice. “Would you run down to Fish’s? Or call over there?”
“Don’t you want your parents?” she asked. “I could—I don’t know. I could go down to the plant. It’s right around the corner.”
I imagined Konny walking into the fish-packing plant, through the stench like a wall—and through about fifty Polish men, ages eighteen to eighty, I bet.
“Like he’d come to my rescue,” I said. “Please? Just let Jonny know if he’s around, or Fish if she can find him, I guess. Okay?”
Konny was quiet for a minute.
“Okay?” I said again.
“And Scout?”
I pictured your eyes and then your mouth. And your cheek as you chewed on that egg sandwich, jutting just a little, your lips pursed tight together. The plum after the first bite you took from it, its flesh redder than blood, juice on your fingers.
My head went even lower, and my voice, as my shoulders went up, pressing the old black handset hard against my ear. “Okay.” It was barely a whisper.
Konny didn’t reply, so I said another thank you and a goodbye and hung up.
The ugly cop wasn’t watching me or listening. He couldn’t have cared less. I shifted in the big wooden chair he’d put me in, next to an officer’s desk and an open window, made escape-proof only with a heavy metal lattice. “I’m done.”
“That’s great,” he said without looking up. Then I just sat some more.
…
Detective Blank turned up within the hour. I don’t think anyone called him in on my account. He just happened by. When the desk cop caught him up, and after he’d spoken to the shaved-head one, he sat down at the desk by the window with me.
“Is this your desk?” I asked him.
“Sure,” he said. “So what’s going on today?”
I shrugged. “Well, I got arrested. How are you doing?”
He smiled a little. “You have a lawyer? Does your mom or dad have a lawyer or a friend who’s a lawyer?”
I shook my head.
“An attorney will be provided for you by the City of New York, all right?”
I nodded.
“Social services is going to talk to you,” he said. “A woman named Ms. Weinberg is in the interrogation room waiting for you. She’s a good lady; she’s worked with this precinct probably a thousand times. You’ll like her.”
“Okay,” I said.
“You want anything?” he asked. “Water?”
“How about a Coke?”
He smiled at me. “There’s a machine in the basement. I’ll get someone to run down there and grab one for you, okay?”
“Thanks.”
He nodded and started away. When I didn’t follow, he turned around. “You should come with me now.”
“Oh,” I said, getting up. “Sorry.”
He led me to a room down the hall—the interrogation room, but not the same one I’d been in with my parents. Inside was a small woman with long dark curly hair—beyond curly: kinky. She was looking through a folder—my file, I assumed—and sipping from a can of Tab.
The detective led me to a chair and I sat, then he stepped out. Ms. Weinberg said my name.
“Please call me Kid.”
“Okay, Kid it is,” she said. “I’m Ms. Weinberg. I’m a county social worker. It’s nice to meet you.”
She took another sip from her Tab and leaned back in her chair, legs crossed. “So?”
My eyes darted in my head. I wondered where my Coke was, if it was coming at all. “So what?”
She smirked and tried to toss her hair. It didn’t budge. “Sew buttons. So did you start this warehouse fire? The whole city is dying to know.”
“Come on.”
“This was a big story,” she insisted. “It’s a mystery, and no one can move on razing the remains and building up the waterfront until it’s solved. So did you?”
“Does it matter what I say?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I’m here. You’re here. The whole NYPD thinks I started the fire. Just ask the ugly guy at the booking desk. He just met me and he thinks I’m public enemy number one or something. He hates me. No one will believe me, and honestly I’m not sure I even care.”
“You don’t care?” she asked, already not believing me. I just shrugged, so
she went on. “Maybe you’re right,” she said. She uncrossed and recrossed her legs. “Maybe no one will believe you. But the point is, from the point of view of the police, the case needs to be settled so the city can move on. Know what I mean?”
“That easily? Lucky for the city, huh?”
She laughed, and I let myself smile.
“Kid,” she went on, leaning forward, “I’m here for you. Yes, I represent the county, but I got into social work because I want to be helpful to people like you. That’s truth. Will you tell me some truth?”
“Okay.”
“Did you start the fire?”
I took a deep breath and looked at the mirror behind Ms. Weinberg. “This is between you and me, right?”
“That’s right,” she said with a nod. “I’m not a police officer. Everything you say is confidential unless you tell me otherwise.”
“Good,” I said. “No.”
“No what?”
“I didn’t start the fire.”
She looked at me, long and hard. “Are you sure? Remember, it’s all confidential.”
“You don’t believe me,” I said.
She put up her hands and smiled. “I do, I do. Take it easy. You didn’t start the fire. Done and done. But that’s not the only reason we’re here.”
“It isn’t?”
She shook her head and took a sip from the Tab on the desk, using the opportunity to glance at the open folder next to it. “The police have picked you up at … a local bar? No name?”
I shook my head. “That’s Fish’s place, on Franklin.”
“Fish?”
“She owns it. She’s a great person. She cares about us.”
Ms. Weinberg nodded, more at the folder than at me. “I’d like to meet her. Why do you hang around in a bar? You’re only sixteen.”
“It’s a long story.”
“I’m not in any hurry.”
I laughed at that. “I don’t know if I feel like telling it.”
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