Samaritan

by Richard Price

  Freddy could be heard now, an indistinct complaint, rising and falling from the kitchen.

  Nerese bowed her head until she could master herself.

  “And here’s something else you should keep in mind, Nelson. Whatever you tell me, as long as it’s truthful? It can’t hurt anyone.” Nerese straight-out lied. “Because we can always fight the truth with the truth . . . ,” shifting now into double-talk, “but we can’t fight the truth with a lie.”

  The kid was all eyes, waiting.

  “OK. Now. Your mom told me you came home from school sick one day about two, two and a half weeks ago. You remember that day?”

  “Yes.”

  “When was that. Do you remember what day of the week? Maybe something special happened that day in school, maybe something you remember watching on TV that night. I mean obviously it wasn’t on a Saturday or a Sunday but . . .”

  “I don’t remember,” Nelson said. “I’m sorry.”

  “No problem, no problem.” Nerese waved it away. “I probably couldn’t’ve remembered either. But you do remember coming home sick one day back about then.”

  “Yes.”

  “What was wrong with you?”

  “I was sick.”

  Again Freddy’s muttered risings and fallings.

  “What kind of sick.”

  “What?”

  “Headache, nauseous, flu . . .”

  Nelson just sat there open-mouthed for a moment, then said, “Headache,” as if picking the word from a hat.

  This stunk.

  “Did you tell your teacher?”

  “No.”

  “Did you leave school early?”

  Nelson shook his head no.

  “When you left school that day, where’d you go?”

  He stared at her.

  “Did you go home?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just like any other day.”

  “Yes.”

  “So what time would that have been?”

  “Four?”

  “Four. OK. Four. Was anybody home when you got here?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I just went to bed.”

  “You just went to bed. You didn’t look for your mom or dad to tell them how you felt?”

  “My mom was in school. She goes to school until night.”

  “OK. That’s an answer. How about your dad? Was your dad home?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t remember.”

  I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t remember—all better than Yes, he was home, which would at least give Nerese something to pick at, chip away at; and better than No, No being the magic word, No being catching Freddy in a lie. Any lie would do.

  “So you don’t know if your father was home.”

  “I guess so.”

  “You guess so. You guess so, Yes? Or you guess so, No?”

  “I just went to my room.”

  Nerese must have been coming off angrier than she thought, because the boy then blurted almost pleadingly, “You said if I don’t remember I should say I don’t remember.”

  “He’s doing what you asked,” Freddy snapped, unable to resist, addressing her from his absurd hiding place behind the kitchen wall.

  At the sound of his father’s disembodied voice, Nelson flinched as if bitten. “I think I came home at five.” Granting his dad an extra hour to come and go unobserved.

  “At five,” Nerese said heavily. “Not at four.”

  “Yeah. Yes.”

  “I thought you were sick.”

  “I was.”

  “And you didn’t come right home?”

  “I tried to but I missed my bus.” The kid was begging now, reverse-blooming into a little old man before her eyes.

  “Nelson, listen to me,” Nerese said, struggling to keep the rage behind her teeth. “What I want to do . . . What . . . Nelson, I really want to get out of here. What I want more than anything in the world right now, is to get up, shake your hand and walk out that door, see you later, alligator.”

  Nerese let that hang for a bit, the boy downcast and wretched, his eyebrows arching with grief.

  “But in order for me to do that, I need your help. I need for you to tell me who was or wasn’t here when you came home from school on February seventh, that’s a Tuesday two weeks and five days ago, the day that you got sick. I need to know what time you got home, who was in the house when you walked in, who wasn’t, what time whoever wasn’t here finally came in the door, if anybody left this house once you came home or did everyone stay put for the evening. I really need for you to think back and try your hardest to recall these things. But that’s all I want from you, Nelson. Nothing more than that. Then our business is done, OK?”

  “OK.” Avoiding her eyes, but she wasn’t feeling it yet, this kid being sold on the fact that it was OK to rat out his father, even indirectly; and in a further effort to get him to that place, she became counsel for the defense.

  “You know, wait, hang on, before . . . I just, I just want to say to you, about Mr. Mitchell getting assaulted like he did?” She lowered her voice, hunkered forward. “Man, I have been doing this for twenty years and I can pretty much guarantee you that I am most definitely going to find out who did this to him.”

  She continued to inch forward, dropped her voice even lower.

  “You know why?,” waiting for his eyes. “Because whoever hurt him did it out of anger, and people who do things out of anger make mistakes.

  “This wasn’t the act of some criminal mastermind. Whoever did this, they didn’t even take anything, steal anything. This was the act of someone who for a single heartbeat simply let their emotions get the best of them.”

  Nerese waited again; the boy was staring at his hands, but he was listening.

  “In fact, the way I’m thinking about it? Mr. Mitchell, he must have done something to hurt this person so bad, that they just lashed out, probably didn’t even know they had something in their hand, didn’t even mean to hurt him.”

  Nelson slowly lifted his blurry eyes to her; Nerese, feeling him on the verge of buying it, prayed that Freddy couldn’t pick up this change in vibrations. But even if he did, and busted up the interview, the crack in the door would still open a little wider: Nerese then needing to know what he was so afraid of.

  “Now, like I said before, emotional people, they’re not thinking with their heads, they’re thinking with their hearts, and when something like this goes down, they make mistakes.

  “We’re going to find evidence, we’re going to find witnesses, we’re going to find something or someone that’s going to give this person away . . .

  “But I’m going to tell you something else, Nelson . . . Right here and now I’m willing to bet you”—Nerese emptied her pockets, counted bills, poked coins—“twelve dollars and sixty-two cents that when we catch up to this individual and I finally get a chance to sit down and hear their side of the story? I guarantee you that they’re gonna say, ‘I never meant to do it, I never meant to hurt him, but that guy, he just made me so angry, he just made me so mad, he made—’”

  “He did,” Nelson said in his swallowed voice, his eyebrows rising but his gaze fixed on his own clasped hands.

  “What?”

  “He did.”

  “Who did.” Nerese unthinkingly rose to her feet, taking a half-step toward the kitchen, toward Freddy.

  “I’m sorry,” Nelson called out tearily to his father who appeared from around the wall as if to meet Nerese head on.

  “Stop,” Freddy bellowed, pointing a finger at his son. “You don’t say another word.”

  Nerese and Freddy were face to face in the dining alcove now, her movements mirroring his, blocking his forward progress.

  Although she was dying to clock him on the spot, Nerese couldn’t quite get his attention, Freddy speaking over her shoulder to his son as if she were an inanimate barrier.

  “Come here,” he barked at the kid, hot-eyed.

  “I’m sorry,�
� Nelson said again, weeping openly now.

  “You go near that kid, God as my witness,” Nerese up on her toes, up in his face, her head twisted to bore into Freddy’s eyes at some crazy jailhouse angle.

  “Come here now.” Freddy was ignoring Nerese and her homicide eyes, then, shifting gears, took a step back and reached for the wall phone; no doubt about to lawyer up right in front of her. Nerese scrambled for something to say that would convince him to put down that phone.

  “He taught me catch,” Nelson wailed from the couch. “He bought me books, he showed me stuff, he told me stuff and then he didn’t want to see me anymore. What did I do?” Nelson began rocking, his eyes blistered with grief.

  “What?” Nerese said faintly. She turned to face the kid, forgetting about Freddy, who hung up the phone mid-dial, then moved past her before she could stop him.

  “You keep your mouth shut,” he said, grabbing his son’s wrist. But Nelson snatched his arm free with surprising speed and violence.

  “Get away from me!” Nelson nearly shrieked then scrabbled to his feet. “What did I do! What did I do!” crying to Nerese, to his mother. Danielle stood in the dining alcove now, speechless, gripping the back of a chair with both hands.

  Nelson.

  Nerese stutter-stepped in place, a little dance of disorder, the information still hovering.

  Nelson.

  Did his parents know this all along?

  No, Nerese decided. They were as poleaxed as she was. Freddy was just the first to grasp what was going on here, first to fly into action.

  “I’m going to need for you to leave my home,” he said, nearly chest-bumping her backward to the door.

  “Hang on, hold on . . .”

  “Now,” his breath in her face.

  Nerese abruptly dug in, so that he had to lurch to a stop.

  “Yeah, you lay a hand on me. I’d like that.”

  Nelson was gone.

  “Where’d he go . . .”

  Danielle, still in a daze, still working things out, wordlessly tilted her chin to the rear of the apartment, and Nerese found herself on the move.

  Although she had never set foot in this house before, somehow she was the one who wound up leading Danielle and Freddy to Nelson’s room. It was narrow and fairly austere: two Eminem posters and a small plank-and-cinder-block bookcase half-filled with creased paperbacks and some extraterrestrial action figures.

  The boy was sitting on the edge of his bed, his shoulders slumped, his hands between his knees and his face to the wall.

  The three of them stood in the doorway as if his misery had set up a force field.

  “I don’t get it,” Nelson said, his face still averted. Then he turned to them, singling out Nerese and peering beseechingly into her eyes. “What did I do?” The boy as open-faced to her now as he had been closed off before.

  At last, Danielle moved to her son. But as if animated by the threat of her touch, Nelson vehemently came to life, rearing away from her and swatting the air between them.

  “Take him out of here,” Freddy said to his wife as he once again reached for a phone, this one on Nelson’s small desk.

  “Hold on,” Nerese said quickly. “Did you hear me read him his Mirandas? Because I don’t believe I did, but if you’re calling a lawyer right now? Reading him his rights is gonna be the next thing out of my mouth, and then everybody’s got a problem.”

  Freddy hesitated, desperately trying to figure out Nerese’s play.

  “Just hang up the phone, Freddy.” Nerese saying it as if the receiver were a gun. “Hang it up. You don’t like what I’m about to say, you can get right back on the line.”

  Freddy stood there, the receiver tentatively feathering its way down to the desk.

  “Just hang it up.” Saying it as carefully as if she were talking to a jumper on a ledge. “Please.”

  Freddy’s indecision pulled the room into a momentary silence, which was abruptly broken by his son.

  “It’s your fault!” Nelson exploded at his mother. Danielle flinched, then glared at her husband, passing it on; Nerese thinking, While you’re at it, don’t forget Ray.

  “Nelson.” Nerese knelt down before him on the edge of his bed, looking up into his eyes. “Nelson.” Reaching up and clearing away the tears with the sides of her thumbs. “Nelson, listen to me. You tell me what happened that day. You tell me how this all came about. You be truthful, you make me a believer . . .”

  Racked with nervous exhaustion, he unwittingly cut loose with a spectacular yawn, then rubbed his eyes, Nerese sensing that if they all decided to tiptoe out of there, he’d be unconscious in two minutes.

  “You make me a believer, Nelson.” Nerese squeezed his knee to keep him in the room, then looked at the parents. “And I think we can call it a day.”

  Chapter 31

  Nelson—February 7

  The off-key blare of the intercom brought Ray in from the terrace, where, legal pad in hand, he had been thinking about a writing assignment for the kids. The class after this next one tomorrow would fall directly on Valentine’s Day and some of the challenge titles bouncing around in his head were “Dating Game,” “Blind Date” and “Prisoner of Love,” although nothing as yet had made its way onto paper.

  “Yeah?” He leaned into the speaker, the scratch pad tucked under his arm.

  There was no answer, just the ambient sound of outside, scattered and lax.

  “Yes?”

  The caw of a careening gull, and faint open-mouthed breathing.

  “Yes?” Ray thinking, Freddy. “Who is this.” Thinking, 911. He turned to reach for the phone.

  “It’s Nelson.” The kid’s voice came through thin and plaintive, Ray envisioning him down there with Freddy’s hand on the back of his neck.

  Ray retrieved the portable phone, then returned to the intercom.

  “Let me talk to your father, Nelson.”

  Again the noisy silence.

  “Let me talk to your father,” he repeated, then waited for some confirmation before he put through a false alarm and made a complete horse’s ass out of himself: a basso murmur, a mutter, a heavy shuffling tread, anything.

  “You tell him—”

  “It’s Nelson!” the boy’s voice breaking high with frustration.

  “Nelson, give me your phone number.”

  “What?”

  “Give me the phone number of your home.”

  Freddy picked up on the second ring and Ray killed the call without a word.

  A moment later, rising from the murk of the stairwell into the river light streaming into the hallway from Ray’s open apartment door, Nelson’s face appeared, vaguely swollen, his features both puffed and slitted with sullen determination.

  And once again, he was carrying the baseball glove.

  “What’s up, Nelson?” Ray asked lightly, casually blocking access to the apartment.

  “I want to stay here.” The kid’s voice was reedy but determined.

  “What?” Ray blinked.

  “I want to stay with you.”

  “Nelson, no, you can’t.” But then, absorbing the kid’s misery, he took it down a peg, “You can’t, Nelson, I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t want him to be home,” Nelson declared, clutching the doorknob and dipping into an emphatic crouch.

  Unconsciously wincing, Ray reached out and lightly touched the boy’s arms, nudging him upright again.

  “What happened,” he asked. “Did anything happen?”

  “Stay out of my sight,” Nelson said.

  “What?” Ray took a step back into the apartment. Nelson followed him in.

  “You go to school, you come home, you go to your room, you do your homework, you come out, you eat your dinner, you go back to your room. You stay out of my sight.” Nelson aped his father as if possessed, then dropped onto one of the couches.

  “Why?,” Ray asked. The only reason he could imagine was that Nelson had been a witness to Freddy’s being cheated on.


  “I didn’t do anything!” Nelson wailed, hitting his leg with the baseball glove.

  Ray had never heard or seen him so nakedly expressive before, and it carried some of the slightly repulsive shock of seeing the puniness of a turtle extracted from its shell.

  “Nelson, you have to go home,” Ray said as gently as he could, easing himself down on the couch next to him.

  Nelson sank deeper into the upholstery, his face clenched with resolution.

  Ray anxiously batted the narrow gap between his own knees with the writing pad, then flipped it to the floor.

  “You have to go home, Nelson,” he said, laying a hand on the kid’s shoulder as if it might be hot.

  Nelson started to cry, a stingy high-pitched keen.

  “Look,” Ray began, then just faded. “How did you get here?” he asked. “Did you take a bus from school?”

  But Nelson had gone off into some deeper permutation of his own blues and Ray might as well have been talking to himself. “Nelson . . .”

  “Everybody hates me,” he wailed abruptly through those ruined lips, Ray taken once again by how much this almost-thirteen-year-old boy was still so much a child.

  “Nobody hates you, Nelson.” Ray put a hand on his arm. “But you have to go home.”

  “I want to have a catch,” he announced desperately, but with a knowing touch of hopelessness; the kid apparently not so immature that he didn’t in some way understand the bottom line here.

  “We can’t, sweetheart.”

  “Why not,” Nelson demanded of the far wall, still refusing to meet Ray’s eye.

  “Nelson, I’m sorry, but your parents are your parents.” Then, “Does anybody know you came here?”

  The kid refused to answer, his face bunching up again, blurry and red, as he mutely railed against the desolating unfairness of it all.

  “I want to see your baseball cards again,” he declared.

  “My what?” Ray took his head out of his hands. “Hey, I’ll do you one better.”