Samaritan

by Richard Price

  “I don’t know either,” Nerese said, seeing that dead phone receiver skittered across the room from its base. “How about the outgoing call before that?”

  “Before that? To a Frederick Martinez, 3355 Taylor Street. Went out roughly fifteen minutes earlier.”

  “Fifteen?” Nerese closed her eyes and saw Freddy standing over Ray’s body and calling home to tell Danielle where he was, what he’d just done—Nerese then thinking, At least he didn’t leave him lying there with a toothbrush in his heart. “What else you got,” she asked.

  “What else?” Sugar enjoying himself. “How about eighteen outgoing phone calls to the same number in a three-hour period four days before the assault.”

  “What was the number?”

  “To a Carla Powell, 1949 Rocker Drive.”

  “Eighteen?”

  “That’s what I said. But the first seventeen were under ten seconds long, the last one for over a minute, so it sounds like a bunch of no-one-home-but-the-answering-machines, and then maybe on the eighteenth, he finally got someone to pick up or he finally decided to leave a message . . .”

  Nerese thought it through, imagined Ray desperate to reach Danielle about something a day or two before her husband’s release from jail.

  “What else, anything else?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you there, Neesy.” Sugar cleared his throat. “I have to say, it’s some of these incoming calls that are truly gonna ring your bell.”

  Twenty minutes later, Nerese pulled into the narrow driveway of Freddy and Danielle’s house, a brick two-family set in the midst of a cookie-cutter row of the same, the street monotonous but well maintained, part of a larger encircling neighborhood of Dominican, Puerto Rican and Filipino homeowners, house proud to the bone.

  Although she was there ostensibly to interview the kid, Nerese was also hoping to get a first look at Freddy, see what she would be up against when it was time to go at him hard.

  The trick here tonight would be to get Nelson to contradict at least a few details in his mother’s account of the evening in question and to do so in her presence without her pulling the plug on the interview. The other needle to thread was to pull this off without letting the boy get wind of what this was all about: his mother’s infidelity, his father’s violence, the possible—no, most definite—return of said father to jail. Nerese could handle rage, bluster and deceit; innocence was tricky.

  As she climbed the exterior stairs to the upper apartment, she saw that the living room windows were dark save for the shifting light show of the television playing inside. She took that for a bad sign, intuiting that she was about to be stood up.

  It was the boy who came to the door on the third ring, barefoot and open-faced, still more of a child than an adolescent. He stared at Nerese without the presence of mind to either say hello or ask her her business.

  “Hey, you must be Nelson.” She smiled. With a nod, the kid silently acknowledged the ID, still not sure what to do or say.

  Behind him, at the far end of the living room, the TV light bounced restlessly off vinyl fabric protectors, making the furniture wink and gleam in the semidarkness.

  “I’m Nerese. Are your parents home?”

  “Unh-uh.”

  “No?” Grinning through her irritation. “Do you know where they are?”

  “My mother’s . . . I don’t know where she is.” Nelson’s voice was muffled and small, as if he weren’t used to speaking.

  “And your dad, do you know where your dad is right now?”

  He shrugged, turned his head to briefly eyeball the TV, see what he was missing.

  Nerese took out her ID and shield.

  “Nelson?” Turning him back around. “I’m with the police department?”

  The kid’s mouth dropped open as if on a hinge, Nerese having to put some extra incandescence in her smile to keep him from freaking.

  “I was supposed to meet your mom here now. Did she say anything about me coming by? Nerese Ammons? Detective Ammons?”

  “No.” The word like a fishbone in his throat.

  Nerese’s anger grew along with the wattage of her smile—the kid right here, so easy to work on, but she couldn’t say a thing without Danielle present, anything he said . . .

  “You OK, honey?”

  The boy was leaning into the frame of the open screen door now, his hand clutching the inside knob.

  “Nelson?”

  “What.”

  She gave him her card. “You tell your mom to call me as soon as she gets in, OK? Tell her . . .” Nerese faltered. Tell her what? What kind of veiled threat or ultimatum could she deliver via Danielle’s son?

  On the other hand, the hell with it. Armed with the incoming calls on Ray’s phone, she finally felt confident enough, prepared enough to just call Freddy’s PO and compel him to have a sit-down, with or without Danielle or this kid here as a prelim.

  “Nelson, does your mom have a cell phone?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

  Nerese shrugged amiably. “OK. Well you tell her to call me as soon as she gets in tonight, OK?”

  The boy just stared at her.

  “All right, then.” Nerese touched his hand, then turned to leave.

  “Why do you want to talk to her?” he asked when Nerese was halfway down the stairs, his voice barely audible.

  Nerese turned and climbed back up, in order to look him in the face.

  “She’s helping me with some work I have to do.” Then, unable to resist, “So it must be nice having your dad home again, huh?”

  The question seemed to distract the kid from his own anxiety. Nelson shrugged sullenly and looked at his own shoes, guileless in his resentment.

  “Have you guys been doing stuff together?” Nerese on thin ice now.

  Shrugging again, the boy looked away, and in the gleam of the streetlight, Nerese found herself studying his face, something off in it . . . Not in his expression but in the face itself. Finally she zeroed in on his lips; they were riddled with the whitish pin dots of recently removed stitches, and the lips themselves were somewhat lumpy and swollen, as if someone had bashed him in the mouth a few weeks earlier.

  “You have an accident?”

  “What?”

  “What happened to your mouth?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, unconsciously covering his lower face with his hand.

  “Someone hit you?”

  “No.” Nelson jerking his chin into his chest in disdain at the absurdity of her conjecture.

  The phone rang from inside the apartment. The boy went to get it. Nerese held the screen door open, but remained on the porch.

  The TV was on a straight sight line with the front door, Nerese watching some white hip-hopper lunge around a stage like a lewd hunchback, one hand squeezing his own balls.

  Nelson came back to the door. “I have to finish my homework.”

  “Was that your mom just called?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you tell her I was here for our meeting?”

  “I forgot.”

  Chapter 26

  Ruby and Nelson—February 1

  Ray thought it might have been a big mistake to bring Ruby into his apartment with Danielle and Nelson already there, but upon entering, Ruby looked right past Nelson, who was curled up in a corner of a couch watching MTV with the sound off, to Danielle set up on the terrace; Ray relieved to see the unguarded smile on his daughter’s face.

  Danielle was sitting with her back to them, apparently embroiled in another fifteen-rounder with her mother.

  “Just respect my wishes. Respect . . . That’s not your problem. That’s not . . . Thank you . . . Thank you.” Muttering, she killed the call, then half turned to finally see them standing in the living room.

  She was smoking; Ray knocked off balance by that, recalling her “The body is the temple” speech from earlier in the week.

  As Danielle stepped inside, Ruby once again reflexively til
ted toward her, wanting to be embraced, but this time the hug she received was perfunctory, as if Danielle were a hostess greeting late arrivals at an already packed party. “How you doing, sweetheart, you doing good? Good. You’re so pretty,” then began to puff and pace, both Ray and Ruby disappointed that she hadn’t made more of a happy fuss.

  “I’m just smoking out on the terrace, is that OK?” asking for the house policy, pushing him ever further away.

  “Inside, outside, whatever.”

  “Oh, Ruby!” Danielle wheeled to her. “Did you meet Nelson?”

  At the sight of this other kid, Ruby took a step back and cocked her head like a bright-eyed bird.

  Nelson jumped up, spun on his heel and, facing away, made some odd improvised karatelike moves.

  “You all right?” Ray asked Danielle.

  “These teachers, it’s like no one has a life outside the classroom. No one has any other responsibilities.”

  Without another word, she went back out on the terrace.

  Nelson sank back into the couch, returning to soundless MTV while Ruby pointedly gathered up all her Buffy and Angel tapes from around the television and removed them to the back bedroom.

  And so, within a minute or two of introductions, everyone had dispersed into their own furious cover activities, Ray left standing there as solitary as the statue out in the bay.

  He followed his daughter into the rear of the apartment, where she was now ordering and reordering her tapes around the TV at the foot of the bed. Before opening his mouth, he scanned the room for any evidence of his thing with Danielle, saw nothing but a bottle of baby oil on the nightstand; innocuous enough.

  “You want to have a catch?”

  Ruby shrugged, not looking at him.

  “Yeah?”

  “I said I don’t care.”

  Ray went to his closet, pulled out the two gloves and a softball.

  “C’mon.” He marched out of the room, determined to reclaim her.

  At the front door he saw Nelson half-buried in throw pillows and, despite his intention to reaffirm to Ruby that she was his be-all and end-all first last and always, Ray just didn’t have the heart to exclude the poor guy.

  Both kids followed him out onto the lawn as if under court order to do so.

  Danielle, seated almost directly above them on the third-floor terrace, threw a short wave, then dropped back into her work, Ray’s portable phone propped upright on a stack of books.

  Taking Nelson by the wrist, Ray walked him backward to a spot facing the building—no more river balls—and tucked his own glove under the kid’s arm.

  “Ruby, just back up.” Not daring to touch her right now, he waved her off until she was about fifty feet from Nelson, tossed her the other glove, then backpedaled himself to create an equilateral triangle.

  “Ruby, I’ll throw to you, you to Admiral Nelson over there, Nelson to me.” Ray choosing that arrangement because without a glove he couldn’t handle his daughter’s whip-crack delivery. Ruby was an unthinking natural, all her graceful lankiness effortlessly clacking into place with each rocketlike release.

  Nelson on the other hand, was still pushing the ball rather than throwing it.

  “OK, let’s go, nice and easy, OK?”

  His phone rang on the terrace. Danielle snapped it up as Ray waited for her to yell down to him, but instead she took it indoors, the call apparently for her.

  “Nice and easy,” he said somewhat distractedly, tossing the ball horseshoe-style to his daughter who lackadaisically snatched it out of the air, turned to Nelson and offered up her own baby-speed lob; but the boy, as if undecided between dodgeball and catch, simultaneously stuck out his glove and curled his body as far away from the throw as possible, the ball sailing past him untouched.

  As he turned tail and began chasing after it, Ray saw that his daughter was studying him again with that same beaky bird-stare she had given him up in the apartment.

  Danielle came back to the terrace without the phone, talking to herself so loudly that Ray could almost make out the words, and when he returned his attention to the kids, he saw that the ball was now at his feet; Nelson’s throw not quite making it.

  The phone rang again from inside the living room, Danielle saying, “Motherfucker!” clear as a bell, slapping closed her book and reentering the apartment.

  “Nice and easy,” Ray said, flipping the ball to his daughter, who then once again lobbed it to Nelson, who then once again did his flinchy dance and ball-chase. Ray’s gaze went from Ruby’s clinical squint up to the empty terrace; Danielle’s voice raised in anger now came from inside the living room.

  Nelson’s second toss made it to Ray on the fly this time, the boy going up on his toes with suppressed excitement.

  “Gettin’ there, Nelson. Just keep your body turned like I showed you.”

  Ruby impatiently gestured for the ball, snapping her empty glove like a lobster claw. Ray threw it to her sidearm, then looked up to the empty terrace again—just for a second—but when his attention returned to his daughter, it was already too late.

  Ruby’s long right arm hung motionless straight over her head, the hand clutching the ball tightly curled at the wrist. And before Ray could shout out her name to stop her, she whipped that arm back and out like a bolo, a slingshot, stepping beautifully into the explosive release. Nelson seemed to be daydreaming, squinting at the clouds at that moment, and the ball caught him square in his mouth. The blood burst from his lips, leaping out in a perfect corolla of droplets.

  The three of them just stood there for a second, Ray’s eye peripherally catching Danielle back on the terrace. Then Nelson dropped to his knees, alert but stunned, his pale yellow sweatshirt, his chin and his teeth awash in blood.

  Ray had no idea how Danielle could have made it from the third-floor terrace to her son on the grass faster than he himself from just a hundred feet away, but she did, skidding up to Nelson on her knees, sitting behind him in her bra, her formerly white pullover sweater pressed to his shattered mouth to stanch the flow.

  “Stay there,” he barked at her, then raced upstairs, emptied the ice compartment of the refrigerator into a bath towel and flew back down to the lawn.

  “Put your sweater back on,” he said, shoulder-butting her away.

  There was enough ice in the towel to keep a corpse fresh, and he had to dump most of it out on the grass.

  “Let’s go.” Ray and Danielle helped Nelson to his feet, the three of them race-walking to her car; it wasn’t until they had almost cleared the parking lot that he remembered Ruby, who was still standing on the lawn.

  The ER of the Dempsy Medical Center was miraculously quiet. Nelson and Danielle were sent to the trauma room after only a half-hour wait. Ray and Ruby were allowed to stand in the hallway directly outside the door.

  Neither kid had said a word since the injury: Nelson seemingly too stunned, his eyes as wide and round as poker chips; Ruby’s muteness having an air of melancholy defiance, which Ray was not prepared to breach.

  The sting of the Betadine made Nelson cry out and fall backward off his stool, the exhausted-looking East Indian doctor who was working on him flinching as if someone had sneaked up from behind and shouted in her ear; not a good sign. And when she reached for the synthetic catgut and suturing needle, Ray signaled for Danielle to tell the doctor to hold off and then come out to the hallway.

  “Listen, I don’t think you should get him stitched up in here,” he murmured. “Let me call this plastic surgeon I know.”

  “Plastic . . . Whoa.” Danielle held up a staying hand.

  “Listen to me, listen. When Ruby was three she fell off a swing, and her bottom teeth went right through her lip. We rushed her to an ER just like this, got her sewn up by some overworked resident, the guy did her up like he was basting a dress and she wound up looking like she had marbles inside her lip. She had to have two more surgeries just to repair the botch job of the first butcher. Remember that, Ruby?” Ray hated the false
chirpiness in his voice but was still unable to confront the inappropriateness of his daughter’s sullen coolness.

  “Anyways, this guy who finally fixed her up? He said when it comes to a child’s face you never, never get it done in a chop shop like this. I still have his card, he’s just over in Gannon.”

  “The money.” Danielle winced.

  “Not your problem.”

  “Plastic surgeon,” she said.

  “Look, this doctor here? She’s got the bleeding stopped, the cuts are disinfected. Just get him and we’ll go.”

  Danielle returned to the trauma room and Ray began sorting through the business cards in his wallet.

  “Dad?” Ruby said in a small, troubled voice.

  “Yeah, Ruby.” Ray wide open to her.

  “We left the softball in the grass.”

  By the time they were on their way back to Little Venice from the office of the plastic surgeon, Nelson’s lips were Sambo-sized, the tissue trauma converting them into rubbery tires so inflated that the kid couldn’t open his mouth. It would be impossible for him to go to school for the next few days, Ray thought, unless he was immune to derision.

  “I can’t say enough how sorry I am,” he addressed Danielle via the rearview mirror.

  Sitting next to him in the shotgun seat, Ruby studied the passing scenery.

  “Hey”—Danielle shrugged—“you’re a man, he’s a boy. Somebody’s got to teach him how to catch and throw a ball, right?”

  Until that moment it had never occurred to Ray that she assumed that he was the one who had done the damage.

  By the time they got back to the apartment complex it was dark, but Ruby ran unerringly to the spot on the grass where the softball had last come to rest, as if she had been thinking of nothing but that from the moment they took off for the hospital.

  Upstairs, she disappeared into Ray’s bedroom as Danielle collected her schoolbooks from the terrace and replaced the portable phone in its cradle.