The Bridge

by Solomon Jones

  “And if you think I’m playin’ with you, I’ma show you what a real ass whuppin’ look like you come in here with another baby. You understand me?”

  Tyreeka nodded as she tried to choke back the tears.

  “Now, where Kenya at?” her mother said.

  Tyreeka looked up at her, confused. “I told her to come in here and ask you if she could spend the night. She ain’t come?”

  “No, she ain’t come,” her mother said sharply. “She ain’t go with you?”

  “No,” Tyreeka said, sniffling as the pain of the beating began to set in. “She came back in the buildin’ when I was talkin’ with the boy. Did somethin’ happen?”

  “You don’t know,” her mother said, searching her daughter’s eyes for her usual lies. “Do you?”

  “Know what?”

  “Kenya missin’,” she said softly. “Ain’t nobody seen her since she left you last night.”

  Tyreeka reached into her pocket, pulled out the crumpled fifty-dollar bill she’d brought back, and threw it on the floor.

  Suddenly, the money was worthless. All that mattered was the dull ache that came with knowing her friend was missing.

  She cried in silence, then folded her arms across her chest and tried to squeeze the grief away.

  With each line of the missing person’s report, the reality of Kenya’s plight set in, and Daneen’s grief grew that much deeper.

  While going through Kenya’s description yet again, she realized that her daughter was nine years old, and the years Daneen had lost to addiction had cost her the chance to be her mother. To tuck her in at night. To tell her right from wrong. To whisper the secrets that little girls keep. To know her.

  Daneen didn’t know her own child. And that, more than anything, caused her grief to explode in shoulder-shaking, snot-running, soul-stirring sobs. Tears that came not from her eyes, but from that place down deep, where lost years reside.

  Kevin Lynch put down his hatred for Daneen when he saw her pain. He forgot about all of it, and he held her, right there in the squad room. Feeling her that close to him stirred something, though he didn’t know what.

  The other detectives turned away, embarrassed by his display of humanity. But Lynch was undaunted. He held on until the last tear had dropped. And then he let her go.

  Daneen seemed to grow older after that. The energy that had filled her daylong search seemed to leave her. She looked worn, and Lynch could see it in her eyes.

  When she finished filling out the report, he told her to go home and get some rest. She protested, arguing that she needed to stay until they found her baby.

  Lynch told her that she could do more to help if she got some sleep. She argued for a few minutes more, but eventually relented, because she knew that he was right.

  When he offered her a ride to her boyfriend’s house, she refused it. She didn’t want Lynch to meet the man whom she was seeing. And besides, she thought the forty-minute bus ride from Center City would give her a chance to think things through.

  By the time the bus passed the transportation center at Broad and Olney, she was struggling to stay awake. The fatigue of the past day was set firmly in her bones, along with the deep, emotional toll of Kenya’s disappearance.

  She knew she couldn’t go on without at least a few hours’ sleep. She only hoped she would be able to get it.

  When she got off the C bus at Nineteenth and Cheltenham, it was eight o’clock, and dusk swept across the border between Philadelphia and the suburbs of Montgomery County.

  As she began the three-and-a-half-block walk to her boyfriend’s house on Seventy-third Avenue, she tried to imagine what her life would have been had she been born on the other side of the county line.

  Not that it mattered. Her life was what it was—a trash bin stuffed with people who were nothing more than empty husks. The ones who had used her, and the ones she had used. The only person who had ever really mattered to her was Kenya. And there were too many times when she hadn’t mattered either.

  Daneen tried to put that reality out of her mind as she turned the corner and walked up to the house. When she climbed the steps, fumbling in her pocket for her keys, the door swung open and her boyfriend Wayne was standing there, looking down at her with suspicion, his slight paunch pinched beneath the too-high waist of his pants.

  “Thanks,” she muttered, walking past him.

  He closed the door and eyed her warily as she flopped onto the couch and flung her forearm over her bloodshot eyes.

  “They find your daughter?” he asked in a clipped tone.

  “No.”

  “And you here?” he said with raised eyebrows.

  Daneen didn’t respond right away. She didn’t want it to escalate into something it didn’t need to be.

  She uncovered her eyes and regarded Wayne. He looked tired. His eyes, beneath his glasses, were ringed with circles. And his thinning, salt-and-pepper hair stood on end, like the stubble that sprouted from his face.

  “Wasn’t nothin’ else I could do today,” she said in measured tones. “Kevin told me I should come home and get a few hours’ sleep, then maybe come back and help with the search tomorrow.”

  “Oh, Kevin told you that, huh?” he said sarcastically. “What else Kevin tell you?”

  “Look, Wayne, I really ain’t tryin’ to go through this right now. My baby missin’, and I’m tryin’ to hold it together. I need you to help me do that.”

  “If you needed my help so bad, why you call Kevin and run down to the projects with him? Why you ain’t ask me for my help if you needed it?”

  “I’m askin’ now, Wayne,” she said calmly, refusing to be drawn into a fight. “Can you let me rest for a few minutes please? I just need to rest for a few minutes.”

  “Why?” he said, throwing out the word like an accusation. “You been up all night?”

  She dragged herself to her feet and faced him with a hand on her hip.

  “Yeah, I been up all night, Wayne, fightin’ my aunt and the rest o’ them no-good bitches down the projects, tryin’ to find out the truth. I gotta come home and fight you, too?”

  He didn’t respond. Rather, he watched the way her lips moved when she spoke. The way words flowed from her mouth and cascaded down the curves of her body like water.

  He watched her, and the blood rushed to his loins.

  “No,” he said, walking over to Daneen and folding her in his arms. “You ain’t gotta fight me, too. I want you to find Kenya. And I wanna help you do that. But I just need to know where you are. When I ain’t hear from you …”

  He let the words trail off. He didn’t want to give voice to his greatest fear—that the stress of it all would drive her to use crack again.

  “I’m here, baby,” she whispered. “Don’t worry. I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

  But even as she surrendered to his embrace, Daneen’s mind was back at the Bridge. Minutes later, when she drifted off to sleep, she dreamed first of Kenya.

  And then she dreamed of Kevin Lynch.

  Chapter Nine

  As Saturday spilled into Sunday, the voices recounting Kenya’s disappearance grew louder. And as the whispers gave way to shouts, lies and truth locked horns in a pitched battle in which neither could prevail.

  Before long, Kenya was more than a missing little girl. She was a cause—the kind that people grab hold of and refuse to let go.

  Though the people of the Bridge had seen murders and beatings and lives torn apart by the heartless acts that were commonplace in the ghetto, Kenya’s disappearance was different. Like everyone in the Bridge—from the smallest child to the oldest adult—she was small and frail in the scheme of things. And yet, she’d learned to make her way in a world where the odds were stacked against her. Kenya’s disappearance made everyone realize that they, too, were vulnerable. That anything could happen to them, and no one would care. It made them afraid.

  But the fear only lasted until the shock of Kenya’s disappearance spun into grief, and
then anger, and then something beyond emotion. Something dark, and primitive, and ugly.

  Because, in truth, there was a part of it that was strangely delicious. The part that was so scandalous, so utterly barbaric, that it was like chocolate in people’s mouths. And every time they spoke of it, they wanted to add another piece to what they’d said. To do anything to taste it again.

  So after the preachers alluded to Kenya in their Sunday morning sermons, and parishioners retold the story in their homes and in their cars, their children rehashed it on the concrete where they played. Reporters reshaped it on the airwaves and in print.

  By Sunday afternoon, everyone in Philadelphia had a take on Kenya’s disappearance. The voices were everywhere.

  In the beauty salon: “Child, you know that girl Tyreeka know more about this than what she sayin’.”

  “Girl, I heard she was messin’ with Sonny, too.”

  “And Dot, with her li’1 fast ass, she holdin’ the money for him ’til he come back for it.”

  In the barbershop: “That boy Kevin Lynch, he in on it, too. That’s why he was chasin’ Sonny so hard. Didn’t give a damn ’bout nobody, not even Judge Baylor.”

  This last was indicative of Baylor’s stature within the Bridge. Because he had always been a man of action, even perceived indifference toward him was an offense approaching sacrilege.

  Baylor’s willingness to step beyond the bench, beyond the rhetoric, beyond his comfort zone, made him a hero. Not only in the projects, but throughout the city.

  For that reason, the tears now being cried over Baylor came from black men he’d convinced to leave drug corners, from white widows whose husbands’ murderers he had sentenced, from political strategists whose careers were linked to his impending run for district attorney.

  In truth, it was only because of Baylor that Kenya’s disappearance was important to anyone other than her neighbors and family. Her fate would not have mattered had it not spilled outside the confines of the projects and snatched a hero.

  Though Sonny had injured two police officers and Judy had injured a third, though Kenya was an innocent child at the center of the storm, only the judge’s death made her real to most people.

  Were it not for that, the search for her would never have gotten as far as it did.

  It was that thought that ran through Kevin Lynch’s mind as he sat outside his captain’s office at the Sixth District, waiting to be called inside.

  They’d phoned him at home that morning, awakening him from his first bit of rest since early Friday morning, when he’d received the call from Daneen. When they ordered him to come into the district, he knew immediately that it was about Kenya.

  In a little more than twenty-four hours, he’d watched her become a symbol for all that was wrong with the city, and with the department, and with the world. Now, there would be more symbolism. And Lynch would be at the core of it.

  The captain stuck his head out of his office. “We’re ready for you,” he said, waving Lynch inside.

  As Lynch entered, he saw inspectors on either side of the captain’s desk. Behind them, there was a stenographer.

  “Have a seat,” the captain said, averting his eyes from Lynch’s as he walked into his crowded office and sat down.

  “I asked the inspectors to come down this morning so we could hold this here,” the captain mumbled. “I know it’s kind of awkward to have everybody down here on a Sunday. But I figured today would be good, because I didn’t want to have to do it in a public way.”

  “How considerate,” Lynch said sarcastically.

  “Detective Lynch,” one of the inspectors said as he pulled out a sheaf of papers, “I’ll get right to it. We’ve reviewed the radio transcripts from the pursuit yesterday morning. We’ve also spoken with several of the officers and street supervisors who participated.

  “What we’ve found is that you clearly violated procedure. You engaged in a high-speed chase while traveling in an unmarked vehicle, placed citizens in danger by refusing to break off the chase when it was clear that it had ventured into a residential area. And the speeds you reached, while traveling against the tide of traffic on one-way streets, were clearly dangerous, both to yourself and to the passengers in your vehicle.

  “Further, you engaged in this chase while transporting a witness.”

  “The bottom line,” the other inspector said, “is that we’re giving you a thirty-day unpaid suspension with intent to dismiss.”

  Lynch’s head began to swim. But even as his mind groped for words, his mouth began to speak.

  “That’s a little harsh for a procedural violation, isn’t it, sir? I mean, I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours looking for this little girl. And there was no excessive force or anything with the chase. I just—”

  The captain slid a copy of the Sunday Inquirer to the edge of his desk, and Lynch fell silent. The top half of the front page was filled with a picture of the fatal accident. Judge Baylor’s bloody face was visible behind the car’s shattered windshield. Lynch’s police academy picture was in an inset photo. Next to it was a mug shot of Sonny Williams.

  The headline read, “Dying to catch him: Baylor dead after deadly police chase.”

  The captain turned to the stenographer. “Don’t type this,” he said.

  Then he turned to Lynch. “Son, if that judge had died in some other kind of accident, and you were at fault, that would have been one thing. But this …”

  He paused, searching for the right words to describe what had happened.

  “This was just plain bad judgment. This man is dead because you didn’t think about what you were doing. You just reacted. And sometimes, not all the time, mind you, but sometimes, you have to do a little bit more than react.”

  Lynch stared hard at the captain, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  “I’m sorry, Kevin,” the captain said. “But for what it’s worth, I still think you would’ve made a hell of a lieutenant.”

  The captain turned to the stenographer and nodded.

  “Detective Kevin Lynch, badge number 65943, it is the decision of this board that you are suspended for thirty days without pay. Further, you are—”

  Lynch dropped his badge and gun on the captain’s desk and stood up. “I’m what?” he said sharply. “You can’t tell me what I am any more than you can tell me what Kenya was. But this isn’t about her, is it? Not to you anyway.”

  “Look, Detective—”

  “No, you look,” he said, backing away from the captain’s desk until his broad shoulders filled the doorway.

  “You can sit here and act like this is all about procedure and right and wrong, but we all know that’s bullshit. A little girl is missing, probably dead by now, and all you care about is covering your ass. Dragging me in here on a Sunday so you can hold a neat little press conference tomorrow morning and say you handled it.

  “I guess the next thing you’re gonna tell me is that Kenya Brown is a priority to you. Well, save your breath, because I grew up in the projects. I saw more niggers die than a little bit. Saw the cops come along and scrape up the bodies and never come back until the next one. So don’t tell me this is about the rules, because I know better.

  “You can make me the fall guy, blame me for the judge, do whatever you wanna do. I don’t care.

  “But if you plan on sending somebody down to the Bridge to look for Kenya Brown, you tell them I said to stay the hell outta my way. Because I’m gonna find that little girl, badge or no badge. And when I do, I want you to do me a favor.”

  He paused to look each of them in the eye.

  “I want you to blame me for that, too.”

  Lynch stomped into the parking lot and stood next to his car, unsure of what to do. He was too angry to drive. So he opened the door, reached into the glove compartment, and took out a half-empty pack of Newports.

  At that moment, he didn’t care that he’d quit smoking months before. If the nicotine would calm the rage that rumbled in his gut,
it was worth the risk of returning to his pack-a-day habit.

  He lit one of the cigarettes and inhaled deeply, waiting for the rush. Instead, the stale smoke choked him. He began to cough violently. Moments later, when his coughing spell was complete, Lynch smiled in spite of himself.

  He couldn’t even smoke right. That’s how bad his life had become. He wondered how it had come to this. How he had managed to jeopardize the career he loved for a child he had never really known and a woman he had grown to hate.

  It was a question whose answer was rooted in a time when they were innocent. A time before children could go missing in the projects.

  Lynch and Daneen had known each other even before they knew themselves They’d played together as preschoolers, making mud pies from the packed dirt in the vacant lots near the projects. They’d gone on outings with the youth group from the church across the street. He’d chased her through the building’s halls, playing catch-a-girl-get-a-girl.

  But as he and Daneen grew older, they grew apart. He started to explore the world outside the Bridge. She confined herself to the world within it.

  By the time they were thirteen, they’d become polar opposites. Kevin Lynch went to private school on an academic scholarship, and Daneen played hooky, seeking education of a different sort.

  He tried to remain close to her, but the things she began to do drove him away. He heard about her smoking marijuana, then snorting coke, then lying on her back in an empty project apartment as the boys from Poplar Street pulled a train—three of them having sex with her, one after the other.

  By the time he got to high school, Kevin Lynch had abandoned Daneen. His only remaining friend was Tyrone Jackson, a boy from Eleventh Street who was a basketball star at nearby Ben Franklin High School.

  Kevin and Tyrone did everything together. They tried beer for the first time, went to dollar house parties, talked to girls, tried manhood on for size to see what it felt like.

  It felt good.

  Daneen went on with her life, dropping out of school and leaning on her street savvy to survive while taking full advantage of her most stunning attribute—her looks.