John hesitated, looking past the guy’s angry black face. Finally he said, “Maybe. But I know what I know.”
Andre turned to the boys with a wide-eyed sneer. “There’s that fuckin’ maybe again. Real strong! Where you dudes get this whimpo-fag? He can’t learn you nothin’.”
Eric eyed Jimmy, and they moved to Andre’s side, each taking an arm. “Com’on, man,” said Eric, “leave him alone. The game gonna start again.”
As they tried to move him away, Andre freed his arms with a flourish. “Mark, why you hangin’ around with this white turd? You come and see me tomorrow. I got somethin’ for you.”
Mark looked up from the floor. “Okay.”
With a vehement nod, Andre said, “All right, later, man.”
He began to move away with Eric and Jimmy but stopped to glare back at John. “Dumb, limp-ass cocksucker!”
John said nothing, and within seconds he had lost Andre, with arms around his boys, in the crowd.
Chapter 18
An old black woman with a three-year-old boy by her side picked up a Free Press from the stack on the stand near the counter. Shaking her head slowly, she scanned the front-page headlines. One said: “Gang Warfare: The Toll Rises.” And another: “400 Teachers to be Laid Off.”
Taking the boy by the hand, she moved to the bulletproof, plexi-glass enclosed counter, opened a small door and placed a dime and a quarter on the turntable arrangement operated by the young Chaldean behind the counter. Folding the paper into her cloth shopping bag and taking a firmer hold of the little boy’s hand, she walked to the door.
Emerging from the Party Hearty, the woman and the boy were on the same street corner that Eric Garner and Jimmy Long had been working. Today three different 13- and 14-year-old boys were selling on the corner. One of them had his head inside an old Saab stopped at the curb. The other two were straining to look nonchalant as they gazed up and down the street.
“Hey, how about Safety Blitz?” asked the Saab’s fat white driver.
“Fuck no,” said the boy with his head in the window. “We the Vices, man. We got better shit, and this here’s our corner now.”
As the woman and the boy rounded the corner, they moved too slowly to avoid getting bumped heavily against the wall of the store and nearly knocked to the sidewalk by four well-pumped older teens carrying baseball bats on their shoulders. They were laughing as if they were headed for a ball field in the neighborhood.
“Hey, watch out, Grandma!” said one of the four amid more laughter.
Turning the corner and without hesitation, they set upon the three youngsters who were selling. The boy with his head in the Saab uttered a weird high-pitch scream when he was smashed in the back with a bat. The second youngster fell quickly from a blow to the head, and the third, in a bright yellow windbreaker and yellow gym shoes, took off running into the field next to the Party Hearty. Two bat-wielding enforcers were in swift pursuit.
The Saab at the curb squealed off with the first boy lodged in its window and still screaming. When the car screeched to a halt, the boy fell to the street and was immediately attacked by the muscular fellow who had cracked his back and who now delivered a number of vicious blows to the kid’s legs, arms and head. As the Saab again screamed away, the old woman limped fast down the walk, nearly dragging the small boy, who had turned to watch the mayhem with large frightened eyes.
Chapter 19
The principal’s outer office at Lincoln was bustling at the start of another school day. Teachers burdened with papers and supplies stopped in quickly to pick up their mail. One secretary loudly admonished a sullen boy who had again failed to deliver a permission slip. Another tried to calm an irate parent on the phone. Sara Whitaker was working at a filing cabinet when John walked in carrying his overloaded briefcase.
Sara gave him a half-hearted smile. “Morning, John. She’s waiting for you. Go right in.”
He told himself not worry about the smile. “Thanks.”
At the open door to an inner office he looked in and knocked lightly on the jamb. Dr. Eunice Carter, a large, handsome black woman, looked up from behind her desk, smiled, rose and motioned John into the room. The wall behind her was covered with framed certificates, plaques and other mementos of a long, successful career in education.
“How are you, John?” Dr. Carter’s smile quickly faded as she moved to close the office door and pointed to a chair in front of her desk. “Please sit down.”
Nervous now, he sat and said, “Thank you.”
The principal returned to her desk. “I know you have a class to meet, so I’m not going to drag this out. I just didn’t want you to hear this from anyone else, before I talked with you.”
He nodded stiffly with the briefcase in his lap. Some kind of dread seemed to be forming in his stomach.
Dr. Carter held his gaze for a second, then looked down at her desk. “As I’m sure you’ve seen in the news, because of the sorry financial state of this school district, on Tuesday the Board sent out four hundred layoff notices. It grieves me to tell you that your name is on one of them.”
Despite the nerves and the dread, John was stunned. “Mine? I have...but this is my third year. I have three years in. I...”
He stopped, bewildered, feeling his heart pound.
Dr. Carter continued in a voice that was tired, kind and tinged with anger. “The cuts went deeper than anyone expected. And there’s nothing fair about this. You’re a superb teacher, John, absolutely wonderful with these children. If our all teachers were like you, this system would have no problems. But there’s simply not enough money. And I guess the Board and the Superintendent wanted to demonstrate what they hope will be seen as fiscal responsibility.”
“But why don’t they call another millage election? Once people understand...”
Dr. Carter interrupted. “Look, John, with all the accusations in the papers of mismanagement and incompetence, some of which, I have to say, are well-founded, they’re not going to try again for another millage increase until at least November, until people have a chance to see the impact of these cuts.”
“But what am I gonna do?” He leaned forward in the chair, trying to control the whine in his voice. “Teaching is everything to me. I’m a teacher, and these kids need me.”
“Of course they need you.” Dr. Carter’s tone was both soothing and implacable. “But because of seniority they’re going to have someone else next fall. The fact is that things are tight all over this state. And you may have to relocate at some considerable distance if you want to keep teaching.”
“Keep teaching!” His voice was nearly cracking. “What else would I do?”
“You’re a very talented young man, John. There are lots of things you could do.”
John screamed, “Like what!” Then startled and shamed by his loss of control, he dropped his head and stared at his briefcase.
Dr. Carter said nothing. After a few seconds he got to his feet and spoke softly. “I’m sorry, Dr. Carter. I’m just losing it here. Thanks for your kind words. I’ve got a class waiting for me.” He turned and left the room before Dr. Carter could say anything else.
In the outer office he moved quickly past Sara Whitaker. “John?”
He said nothing and emerged from the office with his legs feeling almost numb. Turning a corner he moved up a stairway and grabbed the railing, wondering if he would make it to the top. Two students were running up the steps ahead of him and passed old Marlowe, the famously incompetent math teacher, who was heading down.
“Hey, John, how’s it going?”
He acknowledged the greeting with barely a nod.
So why did the despair he was feeling now make him think of Notre Dame? Of course, it was the fiasco with Gala.
The university had gone coed more than a decade earlier, and so there were more than a few females walking around this former male bastion. But the odds still favored the girls, and he had felt especially fortunate in his sophomore year when he met Gala
Simone. Even the name had enthralled him, and the speed with which he had won the heart of this lively, dark-eyed beauty had made him feel 10 feet tall.
For his major he had wavered between journalism and education, but Gala was headed for the ed school, so that settled the matter. During that summer he had visited the girl and her family at their home outside Indianapolis and hit it off beautifully with everyone. As they started their junior year in many of the same classes together, a life full of love and meaning seemed to be unfurling with the girl of his dreams.
That she was a good Catholic girl in a day when such creatures were increasingly hard to find had only made her an object of greater appeal. And at the same time, that she had allowed him to touch her breast over her blouse and bra as they were necking on that warm early October night had seemed astonishingly generous.
And then came the unmitigated disaster of Robert Birch.
A tackle on the football team, Robert was also in their classes, an almost absurdly large fellow with a big handsome head, and John watched as his own beautiful future had slowly crumbled into dust. The official end had come one sunny spring day with the banal words, “John, I’m sorry, Robert and I have decided to be a couple.”
In their senior year he’d been treated to the gut-wrenching spectacle of Gala and Robert in love. Robert was the starting right tackle that fall, Gala graduated with honors and John was invited to their wedding in June.
Along with the humiliating loss of his virginity, his senior year had also marked the loss of his faith. Among many other reasons, life with no God seemed to make much more sense than one with a God who dabbled in betrayal.
Chapter 20
A happy din filled the room, with a number of students out of their seats and talking loudly, as John walked in and dropped the briefcase on his desk.
“All right, settle down. Everybody in their seats.”
This rare, sharply angry tone stopped the noise quickly, and within seconds everyone was seated quietly at their desks. With a quick sweep of the room he found Eric Garner’s desk and three or four others empty. Trying to re-compose his face to get through this class, he walked to one of the big, old wood-cased windows and stared down at the schoolyard.
“Okay,” he said with his back to the class, “get out your grammars. In about five minutes, after I take roll, you’ll have that quiz on subordinate clauses I promised you yesterday.”
There was some grumbling, but it stoppped when he turned with a scowl. Turning back he gazed out the window again. With his navy Tigers cap twisted to one side, its brim tilted up, Eric Garner was running diagonally across the large playground toward the school building. As he approached a rusted old backboard and bare-rimmed basket he took a couple of phantom dribbles, tossed up an imaginary hook shot and shoved his fist in the air. Then he trotted into the narrow parking lot immediately behind the school.
Having tracked Eric’s progress across the yard, he only now he spotted another kid in the lot, a boy in a bright yellow windbreaker and yellow gym shoes, crouching behind a large black Chrysler two cars down from his Camaro. The boy was obviously marking Eric’s route toward the school. When John finally saw something glint in the crouching boy’s hand, Eric was almost up to the Chrysler.
John moved suddenly to lift the big old schoolroom window and screamed, “Eric, watch out!”
Eric stopped, looked up at John in the window and then down at the boy who was standing now a few feet away, holding a gun rigidly in both hands and pointing it directly at Eric’s chest.
Eric spun and dashed away, but there was only a moment’s pause before the boy in yellow pulled the trigger, and a loud crack echoed in the schoolyard. Eric was slammed against the fender of the Camaro and slumped to the ground. John watched the boy in yellow race out of the parking lot and disappear around a corner of the school building.
Chapter 21
On one of the Detroit’s many hopeless commercial strips—empty storefronts, dilapidated one-and two-story office buildings in desperate need of tenants, and boarded-up gas stations with tall weeds sprouting from cracked cement—Susan Cole parked her four-year-old VW Rabbit in front of a building that looked like it once housed medical offices. Now it served a few small, mostly failing businesses. Carrying a McDonald’s bag, she entered the building.
Inside she wrinkled her nose at a strong urine smell and walked quickly through it down a hallway lit badly and in need of paint. She stopped at a door with a sign that said, “Charles Watts, Private Investigator.” Opening the door she entered a small, bare reception area with a couple of chairs and a coffee table covered with magazines—People, Sports Illustrated, Time, Woman’s Day—all at least six months old.
“Charlie?”
His voice came from the inner office: “Yeah, I’m here.”
She moved to the office door and looked in. This room at least had a few framed photos on the wall: Charlie a dozen years younger in shoulder pads and the number thirty-four on his football jersey; Charlie in a police uniform standing with his hands on his hips in front of police headquarters; Charlie with two other narcotics officers posing behind a table covered with white powder and drug paraphernalia.
There were two chairs in front of an old metal desk, behind which Charlie sat pouring over a file folder.
“Busy?”
He looked up. “Not really. Just faking it.”
She moved to give him a warm kiss and put the McDonald’s bag on the desk. “Well, it’s looking a little better.” She gazed around the room. “The pictures help. Of course, if you spent less on all your electronic gadgets, you could afford a more impressive office.”
“They’re not gadgets, they’re tools, and they help me do my job.” Charlie looked in the bag. “Where’s yours?”
“I ate in the car. I have a meeting at 2.”
“You have too many meetings.”
“All part of the job.”
Charlie frowned. “The thing is, what I need is not a more impressive office. Just a break from one of those big insurance companies. You know, I told you about those worker’s comp cases where the guy says working on the line ruined his back, and they want to know if he goes bowling at night or whatever. If I had somebody at one of those companies throwing me cases...”
He stopped and listened to the sound of the outer-office door opening and closing. Nodding at Susan, he got up from the desk. “Well, Miss Cole, I’ll get on this right away. I should have a full report for you tomorrow afternoon.”
She smiled, then put on a mock serious air. “Thank you, Mr. Watts. I can’t tell you how impressed I am with the quality of your work.”
He walked her out of the office. “I’ll be in touch shortly. Goodbye now.”
“Goodbye, Mr. Watts.” As Susan moved through the reception room to the door, she passed a white man in his late 20s, wearing the rough clothes of a construction worker. He stood by the door unmoving and looking uncomfortable.
“Mr. Baker?” asked Charlie.
“Yes, I’m Marv, ah...” The man was already at a loss for words, but Charlie with a friendly smile reached to shake his hand and usher him into the office.
“Charlie Watts. Come on in and have a seat, and we’ll find out how I can help you.”
Marv Baker ducked his head nervously and took a chair in front of the desk. Charlie sat behind it, opened the McDonald’s bag and removed a Quarterpounder, fries and a diet Coke. “Would you mind,” he asked, “if I ate my lunch while we talk? I’m so jammed up with work at the moment, this is all I have time for.”
“No, go right ahead.” Marv seemed pleased to have something he could say without groping for a word.
“Probably buying myself a heart attack here with all this red meat, fat and grease. Now you said on the phone you’re concerned about your wife?”
“Yeah, she’s, eh... Well, Cherry’s a beautiful girl and, eh...Well, here, I have a picture of her.” He stopped, pulled out a wallet and fumbled a while before finally extracting t
he small photo. “I’m not really sure how to talk about this. Here, that’s Cherry.”
Charlie reached across the desk, took it by the edges so as not to stain it with burger grease and looked at it closely. “Yes, she’s very attractive.” He placed the picture on the desk next to the Quarterpounder box.
“Yeah, well, as I say, I’m not sure anything’s going on, really. Maybe I’m just imagining things.”
“What kind of things, Marv?” Charlie spoke between bites of the burger. “Do you mind if I call you Marv?”
“Oh, no, that’s okay.”
“Good. So what kind of things we talkin’ about, Marv?”
“Well, I’m not really sure, but she’s been goin’ out a lot at night lately, and even in the afternoon, when I call she’s never there. And...” He faltered again.
“And you’re concerned,” said Charlie, “that she might be seeing someone else.”
“Yeah, I’m concerned.” Marv Baker looked thoroughly defeated.
Chapter 22
The good-looking blond in her early 20s slammed the front door of the bungalow shut, let the aluminum screen float closed behind her as she moved quickly down the porch steps and front walk. On this hot, hazy June day, the woman wore backless heels, a tight, white short skirt and a thin, sexy top. With a stride that would grab any male eye, she walked to a middle-aged green Ford Escort parked on the street and got in.
As she closed the car door, Charlie in a rusted white Nova several houses away, moved his hand to the ignition. When the woman started the Escort, Charlie turned the key, and when the Escort pulled away, the white Nova followed.
He kept a discreet distance as the woman rolled out of her post-war northeast side Detroit neighborhood and turned right onto the broad and busy lanes of Gratiot Avenue. She was headed toward the suburbs.
Admission of Guilt (The detroit im dyin Trilogy, Book 2) (The Detroit Im Dying Trilogy) Page 6
