Samaritan

by Richard Price

  The kid looked calm, made eye contact with this Ray Mitchell, curtly nodding in thanks, but there was also something congested in his expression, something unlearned, and it made Heinz instantly regret his decision to help.

  Mitchell steered the kid across the lobby to introduce him to his arresting officer, the guy at least savvy enough to do that.

  “Salim? This is Detective Heinz. He’s the one that called the judge for you.”

  Salim nodded, not offering his hand. Heinz extended his own, though, the kid having no choice but to take it. Heinz squeezed.

  “Something happens to your godfather here, you know who I’m gonna look for first, right?”

  “Uh-huh,” the kid said neutrally, avoiding eye contact.

  Well, he couldn’t squeeze this kid’s hand forever. And the fact of the matter was, if this Salim here was intent on doing mayhem on Mitchell, there was almost nothing Heinz or anybody else could do to stop him, really.

  “And you best show up for your court date,” Heinz said. “Because if they have to issue a bench warrant? I’m gonna execute it myself.”

  More bullshit, the kid lighting a cigarette.

  “When do I get my vest back,” he said.

  “Never. It’s illegal.”

  Salim hissed like a leaking tire.

  “Thanks.” Mitchell shook Heinz’s hand. “Thank you for your help.”

  Heinz, standing just inside the doorway, watched the two of them step to the street, the kid getting into the guy’s car without a word, as if the ride was a given.

  Mitchell walked around to the driver’s side, hesitated, then, using the car roof as a desk, wrote something on a scrap of paper.

  He came back into the building.

  “Listen, I don’t know you, you don’t know me. But if there’s anything I can do for you—and I mean anything . . . Here’s my name and number. Please.”

  “All right,” Heinz said, shaking his hand. “Thanks.”

  He could tell the guy really meant it. In fact, he intuited that if he were to take him up on it, called him for say, a loan, a piano, a year’s supply of Pampers for his son, it would put him over the moon. Not that Heinz ever would call—the night was fucked enough as is.

  If anything should happen to this Mitchell . . .

  He had really put himself in a potential jackpot tonight, would remain in that precarious state for who knew how long, all because of his Seagram’s-fueled impulse to “help out”; to see what would happen.

  At the very least, he had squandered a valuable favor chit with the judge.

  He watched as Mitchell finally took off, the kid in the shotgun seat lighting himself another cigarette and staring straight ahead.

  Fucked.

  It was definitely that time again. Heinz took out his wallet, shuffling through credit cards, business cards, PBA courtesy cards, looking for White Tom Potenza’s phone number.

  Ray and Salim sat parked in front of Salim’s mother’s building on Tonawanda Avenue as the sun began to climb above the defeated block of six-story walkups and unfenced lots, two mini-marts posted at opposite ends of the street like lookouts.

  Ray’s grandparents had lived in this very same building for nearly a quarter of a century, from the late 1940s through the early 1970s, but he didn’t share this information with Salim because he didn’t think his protégé here would give a shit.

  They had been sitting in silence like this for slightly more than an hour, Ray deciding to take Salim’s disinclination to leave the car as some half-assed form of apology.

  Last night, despite whatever pressures were driving him, Salim had been unable to bring himself to do more than squawk and sputter, had in fact, simply marched out of the apartment when asked to. Ray, once first his fear then his self-disgust had subsided, had been moved by that and so felt reasonably unembarrassed to be here now.

  “So what did you really need the money for,” he asked almost apathetically.

  “I told you,” Salim said.

  “Give me a break . . .”

  Salim exhaled. “Michelle’s cousin Busy? I told you how she had got him on my ass after we had that fight? Nigger comes up to me yesterday, says he wants a thousand dollars or he’s gonna take my life.”

  Ray had no idea whether this scenario held any more truth than last night’s vendor’s license story.

  “You believe him?”

  “I did when he said it to me, yeah, but I don’t really know. It’s like, people say they’re gonna do shit, but . . .” Salim shrugged, and Ray took his cue from that.

  “Maybe you should have said something about it to that cop.”

  Salim just stared at him.

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I got to raise the money,” Salim said blandly.

  Ray stared straight ahead. Don’t you do it . . .

  “Well, you have the T-shirts, right?”

  Salim hesitated for a beat. “Yup.”

  “Well then, there you go.”

  They sat there and pondered the crusty-eyed street slowly coming to life around them.

  “Can I ask you something personal?” Salim said. “How much was my bail.”

  “Twenty-five hundred.”

  “Yeah, see.” Salim clucked his tongue. “I’m really sorry about last night, I was in fear for my life and I really din’t have no choice but to come to you, but if you had lent me the thousand? You’d’ve saved yourself fifteen hundred dollars, you know what I’m saying?”

  Ray laughed. “Always looking out for me, huh?”

  “Nah, I’m just sayin’.” Salim shrugged, and the car returned to silence.

  It had been a raw and freaky evening, though, and as the sun continued to climb, striking first the rooftops then slowly working its way down brick by brick to the street, a fatigue headache or possibly something else began to set up house in Ray at the same incremental pace.

  “I need to go home,” he finally said.

  Salim exhaled long and slow, then nodded in acceptance. “All right,” the words as hushed as the hour.

  Eyes narrowed against the growing brightness, Ray stared straight ahead.

  Salim opened the car door and stepped out onto the street. But then, as if belatedly struck by an unspoken demand, unspoken plea, he abruptly ducked back into the car and extended his hand.

  “Yo, Mr. Mitchell, thank you.”

  And Ray was happy.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Richard Price is the author of six previous novels, including the national best-sellers Freedom land and Clockers, which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1999 he received a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His fiction, articles and essays have appeared in Best American Essays 2002, the New York Times, the New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, Esquire, The Village Voice, and Rolling Stone. He has also written numerous screenplays, including Sea of Love, Ransom, and The Color of Money. He lives in New York City with his wife, the painter Judith Hudson, and his two daughters.

  ALSO BY RICHARD PRICE

  The Wanderers

  Bloodbrothers

  Ladies’ Man

  The Breaks

  Clockers

  Freedomland

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Copyright © 2003 by Richard Price

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York . Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.

  www.aaknopf.com

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered

  trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Price, Richard.

  Samaritan / Richard Price.

  p. cm.

  1. Police—New Jersey—Fiction. 2. Victims of violent crimes—Fiction. 3. High school teachers—F
iction. 4. Policewomen—Fiction. 5. New Jersey—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3566.R544 A78 2003

  813'.54—dc21 2002069378

  eISBN: 978-1-4000-4063-6

  v3.0