The Good Boy

by Schwegel, Theresa

  “Well, we didn’t.”

  “You ain’t been listening to me!” She sits back against the cage, splays her legs and folds her arms. “It’s getting goddamn uncomfortable back here. I’m gonna need a milkshake or something.”

  “A milkshake? I can get you a milkshake. Your brother, no. Can’t get him. And I’m fucking sorry.”

  “Didn’t you hear what Dezz said? Elgin’s gone ass-out.”

  “Dezz? As in Desmond Jenkins?”

  “No, motherfucker, Desmond Tutu.”

  “That was Desmond?” The tall boy. Pretty, like his aunt. Walked away when told.

  Elexus looks at him in the rearview. “For a five-o, you ain’t too observant.”

  “What did Desmond say, exactly?”

  “What I just said! Elgin came up this way looking to get his car back. Cee turned him out—that thankless little fuck, think he some kind of loan shark. I wish you’da let me back you up—nobody would’ve stopped me—”

  “What do you mean, get his car back? Mizz Redbone is there. We parked right next to it.”

  “Lil Cee’s got the car now, is what Dezz said. Elgin had to give it up since Cee and them—his supposed-to-be brothers—quit on him. Said they was tired of bailing him out.”

  “How long has Carter had the car? A day? A week?”

  “You think I know? I feel like a week’s passed since you put me back here. I think it’s time we go see Elgin, and then you let me the fuck out of here.”

  “You know where he is.”

  “I told you: he’s ass-out. On the street. Off the grid. Set up under some train tracks, Dezz said.”

  “El or Metra?”

  “Don’t know, but can’t be too far, since he left out of here.”

  Pete starts the car. “There’s a lot of track around here.”

  Elexus says, “I hope there’s a Mack-Donald’s, too.”

  * * *

  Two vanilla milkshakes and three hours later, they’ve been by every inch of track from the river to West Town, snaking back and forth between the Metra lines along Hubbard and Kinzie. No Elgin.

  Pete turns on the squad’s headlights, realizes it’s late. He thought someone would’ve called by now—Sarah at least—but it’s been so quiet even Elexus has lost interest in bitching at him; she snores softly in the back.

  Pete wonders where to pin hope. If Elgin has really gone homeless, why wouldn’t he be talking ransom instead of respect? Why would he go off the grid instead of getting on Pete’s radar? And why did the Hustlers turn him out?

  The only good reason Pete can come up with is the one he can’t let himself believe, and that is that no money and nobody can fix killing. Elgin could be hiding because Joel and Butch are already gone.

  Pete’s waiting on a train at May Street and he’s thinking about driving straight into it when Elexus wakes up.

  “Hey,” she says, and startles him, if only because she sounds like a normal person. She doesn’t look normal—her wig off-kilter, her eye makeup turned to smudged circles—but the drugs must’ve run their course, because as she leans against the window and looks out, Pete sees sadness come clean through. He knows it; he feels it, too.

  The train passes, trailing off toward the last bit of daylight.

  Elexus says, “None of this would have happened if Ervin was still around. With Ervin, there was an order to things.”

  “Like following a map.” Pete finishes his shake, puts the car in Drive and rolls over the tracks. No map.

  * * *

  “There he is,” Elexus says, “there’s Elge!”

  Pete slows the squad to a stop next to an improvised camp on the sidewalk under the bridge on Oakley Avenue. He shines his beam spotlight over palette stacks and city garbage cans and milk crates and collected junk, but he doesn’t see anybody.

  “Up there,” Elexus says, her hand through the divider so she can point one long fingernail out to the street ahead of the bridge: in the shadow between streetlights, there’s a guy pushing a blanket-covered shopping cart toward them. His hair high on one side.

  Pete kills the headlights and when he does, Elgin spins the cart and starts in the other direction, making a break for it.

  Pete gets his gun from his duty belt on the passenger seat.

  “You gonna let me out of here now what the hell?” Elexus asks in one question, because of the gun.

  Pete doesn’t answer. He gets out.

  “Elgin Poole,” he calls out between long, controlled strides, his gun arm stiff, barrel toward the pavement.

  Elgin pushes the cart a little faster. He doesn’t look back.

  “One of us is going to catch up with you,” Pete says. “Keep running, it’ll be the one in the metal jacket.”

  Elgin slows at the threat, but keeps on pushing; the way he leans into the cart must mean the load is heavy, or else he’s gone weak.

  “I know you know who I am,” Pete says, gaining ground. “I’m looking for my son.”

  Elgin turns his head to cough, wet and strained. By the streetlight, he looks so worn thin that he hardly resembles his booking photo. His half-fro is all frizz, the high side dried out at the ends and held up by natural grease instead of product.

  “I just brought DeWilliam Carter within an inch of his life and he gave me your name,” Pete lies. “You think I’m going to let you walk away from me? Tell me where to find my son.”

  Elgin stops, turns the cart on its back wheel, and faces Pete from about ten paces. His eyes have no shine, and his once-famous smile has gone rotten from the pipe. “Yeah, I know you, Officer Murphy, K to the nine. You the one who finds the brother he wants for the crime, you and your big bad dog. So okay, I did it. There’s my confessional. Arrest me.”

  “You did what?”

  “You ain’t got that part worked out by now?”

  “Tell me,” Pete says, finding the gun’s trigger.

  “Oh no. You come to me and you can’t find him? I ain’t going to help. Now you going to arrest me, or what?”

  “I don’t want to arrest you,” Pete says, “I want you to talk.” He takes a step forward, his mind a step ahead of that.

  Elgin looks around, maybe for an out, but all the neighborhood’s warehouses, distributors, and packing plants are fenced in and locked up, lights out for the night. There’s no place to go for help, and help doesn’t come this way unsolicited. That’s probably why he came here in the first place: nobody looks, nobody sees.

  “Elgin,” Pete says, letting off the trigger and putting his hands up, the gun’s barrel skyward, “tell me what happened to my son.”

  Elgin sneaks a hand under the blanket into the cart’s basket as he begins to roll forward and he says, “All I got to tell you, Officer, is fuck you—” and then he pulls the blanket up off the basket at the same time he shoves the cart toward Pete.

  When Pete turns the junk-piled cart out of the way it tips over and its wood palettes clatter to the street and then Elgin is coming right behind, tangled in the blanket and veering toward Pete as though he, too, is on swiveled wheels, and when he raises a fist, something gripped there, Pete has no choice: he assumes a shooting stance, aims center mass, and fires.

  Before Pete hears the crack of the gunshot, he knows he is wrong.

  And as Elgin turns and goes down, the glass crack pipe thrown from his hand and shattering on the pavement, Pete knows Elgin didn’t take Joel. He wasn’t bent on revenge. He didn’t want trouble. He just wanted to stay high.

  And Pete, he just needed a bad guy.

  28

  Joel’s watch read 03:43:08 just before the display fritzed, batteries dead, so he can only guess it’s after 4 A.M. when a delivery truck rumbles through the alley. The sun isn’t up yet and he had planned to wait for it, but when the truck turns out to the street and Joel hears the slap of a newspaper on someone’s front stoop, he climbs down from the garage roof. The news is out.

  He catches up with the truck on Washtenaw Avenue, the driver out throwing
papers to the beat of whatever he’s listening to through his earbuds.

  “Excuse me,” Joel says, three times before the driver hears.

  “What you want?” he says, unsurprised, tugging out one of the buds.

  “I’d like to buy a paper,” Joel says, his last dollar in hand.

  “I don’t sell papers, man.”

  “But you have a whole truck full of them.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t sell ’em. You got to go to the store or somethin.”

  “The store—the store isn’t open yet. I have money.”

  “Shit, man,” the driver says, waving the bill away. “I can’t. Just wait till I move on and take one off a stoop or somethin.” He throws his last paper and turns back for the truck.

  “But I’m not a thief.” Joel says, on his heels.

  “I ain’t either. I told you, I don’t sell papers. If I take your dollar, then I got to steal a paper to sell to you.” He climbs up onto his seat. “Sorry, man. This’s my job. I ain’t about to lose it over a dollar.” He puts the bud in his ear and the truck in gear and goes, fumes from the tailpipe his goodbye.

  Joel returns to the house where the driver left his last paper. It sits on the top step, its blue plastic sleeve gleaming green by the streetlight.

  There are no lights on in the house. He wonders if anybody’s awake, or if anybody’s home. Or, like at his house, if somebody’s just going to bed, or just about to get home.

  He looks at his watch—he forgot: there is no time. There is just now.

  “I’m not a thief,” he says again, and wedges his last dollar in the screen door before he takes the paper.

  He goes back to the garage and climbs up to the roof and peels the sleeve off the paper. The sun is a pink promise in the east sky as he unfolds the pages.

  And finds himself. The front page.

  The headline: MURPHY’S LAW—BROKEN?

  The photo is last year’s school picture, taken at the same time as Owen’s. Joel remembers he didn’t want to wear the shirt and the photographer kept telling him to tilt his chin and also to look at this fuzzy red thing on top of the camera, so basically he looks like he’s cross-eyed. And stupid. Owen’s picture turned out better.

  Beneath the headline it says:

  As officer faces litigation, son goes missing

  Joel Murphy, 11, was reported missing by his mother on Saturday afternoon. He was last seen at home, asleep, on Friday night.

  Detective Beauvais Colton confirms a witness saw Joel walking with his father’s K9 dog, a German Shepherd–Belgian Malinois mix named Butch, on the 2000 block of West Sunnyside around 2 A.M. Saturday. No other sightings have been confirmed.

  Joel’s disappearance comes on the heels of civil charges brought against his father, Officer Peter Murphy. Ja’Kobe White, 19, alleges he was bit by Murphy’s K9 in an unprovoked attack. White has filed suit against Murphy as well as the Chicago Police Department for harassment, excessive force and wrongful arrest.

  According to White’s attorney, David Cardinale, the attack stems from Murphy’s previous contact with the White family. Last year, Ja’Kobe’s mother Trissa White attempted to sue Judge Katherine Crawford. Murphy served as Crawford’s protection.

  Trissa White garnered national attention when she blamed Crawford for her son Felan’s death. Juan Moreno, a convicted felon who was before Crawford on a drug charge, was released and went on to shoot and kill Felan White. Ervin Poole, 28, was also killed. Moreno was convicted of both murders and is currently serving time.

  After the murders, Crawford defended her ruling: “Bail was determined against the charge. I could not tax Moreno for anything pre-dated or ancillary. I am sorry for the White family, but I am a judge. I am not a psychic.”

  Please turn to page 6

  Besides the part about his own disappearance, Joel doesn’t understand most of what he reads—it might as well be in Spanish—but one thing is clear: the judge is mixed up in this, too.

  Joel turns to page 6 and finds a photo of his dad with Judge Crawford. They are looking at the camera, but they are not smiling.

  Son is missing, cop is quiet

  Continued from page 1

  As a result of Trissa White’s campaign against Crawford’s record of “lenient” rulings, Crawford received multiple death threats. When her home was vandalized, Murphy was assigned her protection.

  Soon after, news broke of their alleged affair.

  That’s when Officer Murphy’s legal problems began. In the weeks following, Trissa White alleged Murphy verbally threatened her. Those assault charges were denied. Tribune photographer Oliver Quick sustained injuries when Murphy struck him as he attempted to photograph Crawford. Murphy was charged with aggravated battery; the matter was settled out of court.

  It is not known whether the pending lawsuit will see trial.

  In the meantime, detectives continue to follow leads in Joel’s disappearance.

  “So many things have happened,” said Sarah Murphy, Joel’s mother. “We just want him home.”

  Officer Murphy declined comment.

  Joel turns back to the front page and reads it all over again—not because he doesn’t understand the story, but because the reporter doesn’t. How can he mention the Whites and the Pooles and not the Redbones? What about Zack Fowler? What about the shootings?

  And why does it seem like Joel’s dad is the bad guy?

  He gets down from the roof and goes back to the house on Washtenaw. His dollar is gone, but he leaves the paper anyway, because he’s the one who’s got the real news.

  He hopes the judge is ready for it.

  29

  Elgin is facedown in the street when Pete approaches, kneels, and tucks his gun in his waistband. He assesses the damage and finds a black hole in his jacket where the bullet entered his shoulder; there is no blood.

  “Elgin,” Pete says, and turns him over on his back. His jacket falls open; Pete sees no sign of an exit wound. The bullet either lodged in bone or ricocheted inside.

  “Elgin,” Pete says again, hoping for a response, but shock is already setting in, and it’s firming fast: he lifts his head to look at his shoulder, but sees no evidence as to why he can’t lift his arm. He wipes the street grit from his cheek and he is confused by the blood seeping through from road rash, like tears. He looks up at the dull sky: no answers there, either.

  Then he looks up at Pete, and he knows. He licks his lips and he says, “Fame musta gone to your head, too.”

  “Tell me where my son is,” Pete says, as though he could still hang this whole thing on a lie. A lie he’d built. One that dismissed him from any responsibility.

  Elgin doesn’t respond, because the pain takes over, and he gives in.

  * * *

  “One, two—” and on three, Elexus helps Pete sit Elgin up.

  “I ought to kill you, you stupid son of a bitch motherfucker,” she says, either to Pete or about Elgin. She’s been yelling at both of them since Pete let her out of the back: Elgin was stupid for charging at Pete—what did you expect, Elge, a motherfucking hug?—and Pete was just plain motherfucking stupid.

  Pete only let her out because he needed her help; she only agreed to help because she wants her brother alive. Though she wants to kill him. She’s in shock; she just goes on ranting while Pete tells her what to do.

  “Help me get his clothes off,” he says, keeping Elgin upright as Elexus peels off his dirty white jacket.

  “Tear your skin right from them thin bones, too, you stupid son of a—”

  “Hold him there,” Pete says, a pair of shears shutting her up as he cuts Elgin’s shirt off from the front, the stench of old sweat indicating it hasn’t come off in a while.

  “Can you see?” Pete asks her; they’re working by the squad’s interior lights—he’d dragged Elgin to the sidewalk and parked the car next to him, a shield from any passing cars. Fortunately, this street isn’t much of a shortcut let alone a destination, and nobody’s come by.
r />   “I can see this is a goddamn atrocity, you stupid—”

  “An accident,” Pete says. “It was an accident.”

  “I ought to kill you both.”

  “You said that.” Pete tosses the shirt aside and retrieves a gauze patch from his first aid kit to cover the entry site. “Put pressure there and hold him steady,” he tells her, so she secures one hand under his left arm and around his chest and the other against the patch.

  As Pete starts a roll of gauze to secure a sling, Elgin’s head falls back on Elexus’s chest. Pete lifts Elgin’s arms, one a dead weight and the other immovable, as though something’s broken—his scapula, probably. Since he can’t find an exit wound, he figures the bullet hit bone and mushroomed, and that’s what did the damage. The problem is, it’s impossible to say exactly what kind of damage.

  Once the gauze is anchored, Pete coils it in half-inch overlaps around Elgin’s shoulder, tight but not tourniquet-tight. Elexus keeps pressure on the wound until she realizes she has blood on her shirtsleeve. A lot of it. “What the fuck, you stupid goddamn mother—”

  “Hold on,” Pete says, back on his heels to look again, because there must be an exit wound, but what he finds is blood all over the right side of Elgin’s face. Pete uses the discarded shirt to wipe Elgin’s mouth and blood leaks from his nose; it must’ve started bleeding when they sat him up.

  “It’s his nose. Lean him forward.” Pete takes Elgin by the shoulders and lets the blood fall to the sidewalk between them. “Jesus,” he says, because he’s afraid Elgin will choke, and he’s even more afraid the blood is a result of the bullet.

  Elexus stands up, steadies her brother between her knees, and reaches a hand around to pinch his nose. “Elgin always getting these,” she says, “ever since he was a kid. Worse now, since he likes to blow blue.”

  “Coke is it for you Pooles, I take it?”

  “I don’t know what does it for Elge anymore,” she says, running her free hand over the shaved side of her brother’s half-fro. “Stupid motherfucker.” Somehow, this time, she makes the term sound endearing.

  Pete cleans up the blood, wipes down his gun, and bags the waste. Then he puts everything in the trunk with the first aid kit. He spreads a blue tarp over the bottom of Butch’s cage, throws Elgin’s jacket inside, and hangs a Mylar blanket over the open back door.