Crusader

by Edward Bloor

  Mr. Archer looked at Griffin, who cleared his throat and spoke in a formal way. "Hugh Mason, I am arresting you under the Florida Hate Crimes Statute." Griffin pulled out a small laminated card and started to read him his rights. "You have the right to remain silent—"

  But I interrupted. I nearly shouted at him, "Wait a minute! He didn't do it."

  Griffin looked at me in surprise, then his eyes narrowed. I think he was about to go back to reading from his card, but then Mr. Archer broke in, "Yeah. Wait a minute, fellas. I want to say something, too."

  Griffin put the card down. Mr. Archer held up a manila file. "Hugh? I have your records here, from your time with us. They're not much, but they do tell me something. Also, I have talked with my son about you." He looked at Griffin. "My son is Hugh's history teacher and his football coach."

  Mr. Archer came around the desk and stood next to Hawg. Hawg was blinking, like a trapped animal in a cage. Mr. Archer told him, "Hugh, my son said you were a real honest kind of guy. He didn't think you would be involved in criminal activity."

  Hawg answered in a quavering voice, "No, sir, I would not."

  "I asked him about African American members of the football team, and he said you got along with them very well."

  "Yes, sir. That's a fact."

  "But I must inform you that I'm releasing your file to the sheriff's department, and it does contain a racial incident."

  "What?"

  "You did get into a fight with black students on your first day at our school. And you did use racial slurs."

  Hawg thought back. He asked Mr. Archer, "You talking about that thing in the cafeteria?"

  Mr. Archer peered through his bifocals at the file. "I believe that's where it happened. Yes."

  Hawg's voice got stronger. "I was standin' in line at the soda machine. These boys figured they didn't have to wait in line like me. I told em they did."

  "Well, Hugh, apparently you told them some other things, too."

  "Hey, they think you're supposed to be scared of em because there's four of 'em and because they're black. Well, that don't happen where I come from. They got all these white boys down here runnin' scared. I ain't scared of em. I said I'd take em one at a time or all at once. I hit one, and the other three jumped me. Then the damn dean came around the corner, grabbed me, and let them go."

  Mr. Archer listened closely. He answered, "All right. But whatever happened, it's classified as race based in our file."

  "It was race based, all right. They jumped me because I was white."

  "That was a very serious incident, Hugh. I nearly had to put the whole school on alert, and you know what that means."

  "Yes, sir."

  I don't think Mr. Archer knew what to do next, so he looked at Griffin. Griffin said, "We can read Hugh his rights in the car, sir. Or at the station, if you would prefer that."

  Mr. Archer was clearly upset now. He said to Griffin and Officer Dwyer, "No. We need to step next door and discuss this."

  The three men stepped out. Hawg looked at me and hissed, "Roberta, what the hell's going on here?"

  "They think you've been doing stuff to Sam, and to Sam's car, and to Crescent Electronics."

  "What? Why?"

  "Because you had that fight with him at Arcane. You called him that racial name."

  "He called me a race name, too. Or don't nobody remember that part?"

  I held up my hands, shoulder high.

  Mr. Archer opened the door. "Hugh, we're telephoning your father right now."

  "My stepfather."

  "Yes, of course. He will meet us at the police station."

  "What for?"

  Mr. Archer looked pained again. "Hugh, you will have a chance to present your side of this case. I promise you that. Your stepfather needs to know that there are two sides to this story."

  "Sir, my stepdaddy don't want to hear my side of nothin'. He knows I'm tellin' the truth, but he don't want to hear it. He's got a new wife down here, and she don't want me around. That's the whole damn deal right there. That's why I gotta get back up to Georgia."

  Mr. Archer's big head tilted to one side. He turned around and called over to Mrs. Biddulph, who was watching the proceedings from the front desk, "Mrs. Biddulph, I'll be accompanying Hugh this morning. Take over for me, please."

  She answered, "Yes, sir."

  Officer Dwyer approached Hawg with a pair of handcuffs. Mr. Archer asked him, "Now, is that really necessary?"

  "It is, sir. It's regulations. I'd get written up if I didn't do it."

  Griffin told Officer Dwyer, "Go ahead to the car, Deputy. I'll be another few minutes in here." Griffin caught my eye and jerked his thumb toward the time-out office.

  I walked in, and he closed the door behind me. He stood in front of the sign that reads, IF YOU'RE SO SMART, WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE? and waited for me to speak.

  I demanded to know, "Didn't you get our page? We paged you!"

  Griffin shook his head. "No, I didn't get any page. And who is 'we'?"

  "Sam and me. We know who did it. We saw him from the window of La Boutique de Paris." I lowered my voice instinctively. "It was my uncle Frank."

  Griffin's mouth twisted up into a disbelieving smile. "Your uncle Frank?"

  "We saw him, Detective! With our own eyes."

  "Saw him do what?"

  "He had a can of red spray paint. He was sneaking around the mall with it. And ... and! Sam caught him on videotape."

  "Caught him doing what?"

  I stopped. I felt myself getting flustered. "He ... he was about to spray paint on Sam's window. That's what."

  "Did he?"

  "No. He saw the video camera and he ran away."

  Griffin looked down at the ground, thinking to himself. Then he started thinking out loud. "So your uncle was outside Crescent, after hours, with spray paint."

  I answered triumphantly, "Yes!"

  "That changes things."

  "Yes!"

  Griffin looked me in the eye. "But, Roberta, it doesn't prove anything. There's a difference." He explained, "You saw your uncle last night, but no crime was committed last night." He suddenly glanced at his watch.

  I said, "No. Not last night, but—"

  Now Griffin was all business. "But nothing. Listen, Roberta. Here's how it works: The department spent the time and money to place me in the mall, and they expect a result. This is the result. An arrest. That's a serious thing, but it's only a part of the process."

  "But ... how can you arrest the wrong guy?"

  Griffin pointed a big finger at me. "You know that Hawg has been the prime suspect from the start. He got into it with some blacks at Memorial. He called one the ‹-word. He got into a shouting match with Sam, with witnesses, where he used a racial slur. He even purchased red spray paint from Lombardo's. Hawg has placed himself in this predicament. He has made himself the prime suspect."

  "But Hawg didn't do it. Don't you know that now? Uncle Frank did it."

  He chose his words very carefully. "I now believe that that is possible. And if Hawg didn't do it, I will find that out. Once he's indicted, I can do a full investigation—physical evidence, fingerprints, alibis, witnesses. All of that. If there's no real case against him, the department will not proceed."

  "What about Uncle Frank? Will you proceed against him?"

  Griffin's eyes took on an odd expression. He said, "That's tough to say. Colonel Frank Ritter has never been a suspect at all. He's an army veteran, an officer, a business owner. The only thing we have against him is that his niece and Sam were alone in a dark spot in the mall one night and thought they saw him."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah. And maybe the windows were a little foggy."

  "What? What are you talking about?"

  "Maybe the windows were foggy because things were getting hot between you two."

  "Cut it out!"

  "Hey, that's nothing compared to what a lawyer would do to you in a courtroom."

  I told him, "
You are sick." I looked away, embarrassed, but I guessed that was Griffins point. I pulled myself together and asked him, "So what's going to happen to Hawg? Is he going to get hurt?"

  "Come on, Roberta. What do you think we have down there, a medieval torture chamber? I'm gonna take him to a nice office building. I'm going to buy him a soda, give him a doughnut, and let him tell his side of the story. He'll go before a judge, he'll be arraigned, and he'll make bail. He'll be home before supper. Heck, he'll probably be back at the mall."

  "Then what?"

  "I don't know. Maybe the judge will slap a peace bond on him."

  "What's that?"

  "It's a court order. He won't be allowed to go within a certain distance of Sam. Like a hundred yards. They use peace bonds a lot now—for stalkers, wife beaters, things like that. They might fix an electronic device on him, too, to make sure he keeps away." He held up his watch to me. "I have to take him in now. I will talk to you again as soon as I can."

  I stayed in the time-out room for a few minutes after Griffin left, trying to make sense of his words. When I was ready to go back to class, I walked out into the office. That was when I saw Ironman. I immediately thought, Oh no. Did he see all of this?

  I stopped and regarded him closely. He seemed the same as always, just sitting there grinning nervously. I concluded that he hadn't seen anything. I said, "Hey, what are you doing here?"

  "Waiting for Mrs. Biddulph."

  "Are you here for RDT?"

  "No. My PE teacher says I got head lice."

  "Oh no. Where did you get that?"

  "I got no idea."

  Mrs. Biddulph hurried back into the office from somewhere, so I said, "See you," and left.

  I went back to Journalism II. Mr. Herman was speaking about the Pulitzer Prizes. I slipped in quietly, just as I had left. If he noticed me, he didn't let on.

  WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON

  I brought an overnight bag with me to work. Ever since Griffin's appearance in the carport, I've been afraid to be at home alone. Tonight I was planning to have dinner with Mrs. Weiss and to stay over there, but first I had to make it through five hours of work with Uncle Frank.

  I hung out at the register with Karl for a while. Uncle Frank stayed in his office, as he's now accustomed to doing. At around five, Ironman walked in wearing a black baseball cap. The cap had the words BITNER FAMILY REUNION on it.

  Karl looked up from a copy of PC World and asked him, "What's with the hat, dude?"

  "It was two ts."

  "Huh?"

  "Bitner. It was supposed to have two is in it. Bittner. They wouldn't take the hats."

  "No, doofus. I mean, why are you wearing it?"

  "I had to have my head shaved. They said I got head lice."

  This bit of information spurred Karl to immediate action. He dropped the magazine and hurried into the back to tell his father.

  Uncle Frank burst out through the office door. He honed in on Ironman like a guided missile, barking at him, "No way you got head lice here."

  Poor Ironman shriveled under the power of this accusation. Karl came up behind him and pulled off his cap. Ironmans head was completely shaved. He looked like one of those concentration-camp victims in the old newsreels.

  Karl stuffed the cap back onto Ironman's head. "Whoa. Keep that thing on, dude. At all times."

  Uncle Frank stared at Ironman's head with extreme distaste. He added, "It didn't happen here," then turned and walked slowly back to the office.

  I took a break at five o'clock and walked down to Crescent. As I had hoped, the early news was playing on their wall of televisions. Several employees were gathered around the VCR. I joined them and asked, "Is Sam here?"

  A guy answered me enthusiastically, "No. Sam was on the local news. On Channel Fifty-seven. We got it all on tape. Watch."

  He walked over to a VCR and pushed in a tape. The wall of TVs filled with images of Sam. He looked upset. He was busily dodging the microphones thrust into his face by reporters.

  I asked the guy, "Can you turn the sound on?"

  "Sure." But by the time he did, the scene had shifted. Ray Lyons was on the screen. He told a girl reporter, "I deplore these hate crimes. As soon as I heard that an African American businessman was being harassed at one of my malls, I got involved. I demanded a full investigation from the state's attorney. And as a senator I will push for tougher legislation against such crimes."

  I didn't know Sam was African American. I'm sure he didn't, either. I was hoping for him to come back on the videotape when, miraculously, he appeared "live" at my elbow. He said, "We need to talk." Sam took off into the mallway, so I followed. He turned and said, in a low voice, "I had a chat with Griffin today."

  "So did I."

  "When?"

  "This morning."

  "Okay. I just got off the cell phone with him. This is the latest: Your uncle had an alibi ready about last night."

  "He did? What?"

  "He said he was making a bank deposit."

  "But that's a lie."

  "It is and it isn't. It seems he slipped over to the ATM right before we saw him. And he has a deposit slip to prove it. "Sam looked at me knowingly. "For one hundred dollars."

  I stared at him for a moment, then finally admitted, "I don't get it."

  Sam pointed inside Crescent, at the line of people at the cash register. "Is your business really that bad? I don't make deposits under a thousand dollars. And I sure don't make them alone, in the middle of the night. I think your uncle came up to the Crescent window ready to spray the paint. Then he saw the camera, and he switched to Plan B. He went to the ATM and deposited what he had in his wallet."

  "Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense to me." Sam started to walk off. I asked him, "So what happened with Hawg?"

  Sam looked like he didn't want to talk about it, but he said, "The judge barred him from being within a hundred yards of me or my place of work, and that means within a hundred yards of the mall. They're putting an ankle bracelet on him in case he tries to come here. Basically, he's under house arrest. He can only go to school and back home until the trial."

  "That's terrible."

  "It could have been worse. Ray Lyons didn't want to let him out at all. He told the reporters he wanted to see Hawg in adult prison. 'So he can get what's coming to him.'"

  "Oh, my god."

  Sam looked back at the line at his register. "Listen, I have to get some work done. This has been driving me nuts. I can't let my business fall apart."

  "Okay."

  But Sam felt compelled to say one more thing. He added, "I'm going to try to see that justice gets done here, Roberta. I believe in justice."

  I walked back to Arcane. Now I was more determined than ever to avoid Uncle Frank. That wasn't hard, since he stayed in the back for the rest of the night. Griffin was wrong about Hawg, though. He never showed up at the mall.

  When nine o'clock finally drew near, I asked Kristin, "Can you cover for me tonight on the checklist?"

  "Do you think that's a good idea? After the head lice business? My dad will be mad."

  "I don't care."

  Kristin looked at me, genuinely shocked. "Roberta, what has come over you?"

  "Nothing. I just want to get out early tonight."

  Kristin held up a can of lice spray. "Yeah, sure. Go for it."

  I wound up back at Mrs. Weiss's condo, watching the Travel Channel with her. It was a program called Europe's Capital Cities. About ten minutes into it, Mrs. Weiss commented, "Those cities are still there, Roberta. Berlin, Vienna, Warsaw. Maybe you'll get to visit them."

  "I hope so."

  "You won't see many Jews, though. In that sense, Hitler succeeded. He set out to rid his society of us, and he pretty much did it."

  After the program, Mrs. Weiss continued on this theme. "My mother and father found themselves in a society that didn't want them. I was eight years old, but it didn't want me, either. I had an aunt in New York, so they sent me with a one-way ticket to v
isit her. They had no intention of bringing me back.

  "Letters started coming to my aunt—Can you keep Isabel for a while? The Nazis are causing trouble. And then, Can you keep Isabel for a while longer? We might be losing our business. And finally, Isabel has to stay there. We have no house now. The bottom line was that I never saw them again."

  "What happened to them?"

  She muttered, "What happened? My father took the path that a lot of Jewish men in Germany took. He shot himself through the head."

  I gasped. "Oh, my god."

  She explained, "There was a government riot against Jewish shops called Krystallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. It was November 9, 1938. They smashed the glass of Jewish-owned businesses all over Germany. That made my father sick to his soul. He never recovered. He shot himself a week later."

  "What about your mother?"

  "My mother was the stronger one. She would not give up. She wouldn't do the Nazis' dirty work for them." Mrs. Weiss looked up proudly for a moment, but then she started to cry. "The truth is, they never did kill her. They probably would have. Near the end they were killing every Jew they could get their hands on. A frenzy of murdering. But they didn't get to kill her."

  I asked a stupid question. "Were you lonely without her?"

  "Pshht! Lonely? I cried myself to sleep for five years. I dreamed of her nearly every night. All I had of my mother was her letters. Her letters and her recipes! She wrote out a favorite recipe, by hand, in each letter. When the recipes stopped coming, I knew."

  "You knew she'd died?"

  "Yes. I knew when it happened. I just knew it, inside me. It would be years before I found out how it happened."

  Mrs. Weiss paused. I didn't know if she wanted to go on or not. I asked, "Do you want to tell me about it?"

  She did. Mrs. Weiss leaned forward and whispered dramatically, with her eyes open wide, "A person is not really gone until everyone who knew them is gone. I got a letter one day, when I was still living in New York. Harry and I had just gotten married. A lady named Mrs. Freund said that she knew my mother."

  Mrs. Weiss sat back and continued quietly, "This woman knew her at Bergen-Belsen, the camp where my mother died. She asked if she could meet with me and talk. Of course I said yes. We met in the city, at a restaurant. I was very surprised when I saw her. Mrs. Freund was about my age. She had been just a little girl in the camp, like I would have been. And she survived.