by Tim O'Mara
“You have a lot of experience with cops, Mr. King?”
“Give me that bullshit. I grew up in this neighborhood. I was getting rousted by the cops when you was still playing Little League with all your little friends out in the ’burbs. Yeah, Mr. Donne, I got plenty experience being looked at like I’m lying. But you ain’t no cop anymore.” He slid his chair gently under the table. “So I guess I’ll be going now.”
“Lisa got that bruise from somewhere, Mr. King,” I said again.
He stopped and then turned back.
“I know what you people say,” he said. “Folks don’t change. Some asshole hits his wife once, well, he’s just gonna keep on hitting her.” He took a breath. “I did hit my wife. Once.” A small smile crept onto his face. “You don’t do nothing hurtful to that woman twice. She threw my ass out and told me not come back. Ever. And she meant it.”
I stood, the safety of ten feet and the table between us, my heart still beating a bit too fast.
“What’s your point, Mr. King?”
“You know why people don’t change?”
“Tell me.”
“’Cause they ain’t got no reason to. Plain and simple. They ain’t got no reason.” He slapped his hand against his chest. “That’s what makes me different. I got a reason. And I’m changing.” He stopped for a few seconds, deciding whether to keep the conversation going. “After a few months outta the house, I called my wife. Said, ‘What’s it gonna take? You let me back home?’ And she told me.” He held out his thumb. “‘Stop drinking.’ I said I could do that.” He extended his forefinger. “‘Get some counseling.’ I’m doing that.” The middle finger. “‘You don’t never raise a hand to me again.’ I said I could do that, and I’m keeping that promise. I am keeping that promise.” He turned the fingers into a fist and placed it over his heart. “That woman and those girls? That’s my reason to change. I almost lost them once, and that’s not gonna happen again.” He filled his chest up with air and let it out slowly. “You can either believe that or not. That’s up to you all.”
We stood there, looking at each other. I was waiting to see if he’d leave, now that he’d had his say. He was waiting for me to challenge what he said.
“I didn’t call you in here to cause you grief or bring any more trouble into your house, Mr. King. But my first responsibility here is to Lisa.”
He nodded. “Mine, too. I’ll find out where she got that bruise and…”
“And what?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Yet. But I will protect me and mine.”
“You understand we’re required by law to call in any suspicion of abuse.”
“Figured you’da done that by now.”
“I wanted to talk to you first.”
That seemed to surprise him. “And what’d you decide?”
Good question. You gave a good speech, I thought. But, like you said, I’m used to people lying to me.
“We’ll let you know,” I said.
“You do that,” he said and headed toward the door just as Elaine Stiles was coming in. It took her a moment to realize who he was.
“Oh, Mr. King,” she said. “I thought I had missed you.”
“You did,” he said as he slipped past her and out of my room.
From the doorway, Elaine gave me a questioning look.
“That went well,” I said.
She stepped over to the table. “What happened?”
I went over the conversation with her. How I started with Lisa’s grades and ended with asking about the bruise above her eye.
“Ray,” she said when I was done, “did you talk to him as a teacher?”
“As opposed to what?”
“The cop thing you do.”
“What cop thing?”
She shook her head. “You squint your eyes just a touch and lean forward. Then you lower your voice and talk. Real. Slow.”
“You’ve seen me do this?”
“Whenever you feel the control is slipping away and you have to take it back.”
“Elaine,” I said, “with all due respect, don’t talk to me like I’m one of the kids.”
“I’m not,” she said. “I’m just asking how you spoke to him.”
“I told him about our concerns and our responsibility to call in any suspected abuse.”
Elaine waited before going on. I grabbed a couple of paper towels and wiped up the coffee from the table and the floor.
“Do you think he hit Lisa?” she asked.
“Are you asking me as a teacher? Or as someone who does that ‘cop thing’?”
“Come on, Ray. I didn’t mean any—”
“He said Lisa told him she got that bruise from a volleyball in gym.”
She smirked. “Lisa’s biggest risk in gym is getting a paper cut.”
“I told him that. That’s when he got defensive on me. I don’t know, Elaine. There’s a part of me that thinks he’s being straight. My gut says no, he didn’t hit Lisa.”
“Is she in today?” I nodded. “I’ll talk to her. See what she has to say now that we’ve met with her dad.” The bell rang. “I’d hate to make that phone call and we’re wrong.”
“Or,” I pointed out, “we don’t make that phone call and we’re wrong.”
“Yeah,” Elaine said. “There’s that, too.”
The sound of kids filled the hallway. I walked her back to the door.
“It’s been a long year, Mr. Donne,” she said.
I thought about Frankie. “It’s been a long two days, Ms. Stiles.”
“Yeah. Let’s talk before you leave?”
“Absolutely.”
She turned and headed down the hallway as my students started to gather outside my door. Elaine took Lisa by the elbow and led her away. Eric Simpkins had a big grin on his face as he stopped in my doorway. He held out his hand to bump my fist.
I ignored the gesture.
“Take out your Lit books,” I said, ushering the kids into my room. “I want to see the Whitman homework out on your desks. Now.”
*
The final bell of the day had rung, the kids were gone, and I was standing at my desk going through Frankie’s notebook, page by page, when Elaine walked in.
“Lisa told me that she got the bruise when she was hanging around with a group of neighborhood kids. They’re older, her parents don’t want her hanging around with them, so she made up the volleyball story.”
“You believe her?”
“No,” she said. “I called her mom, you know, a kind of end-of-the-year, let’s-all-get-through-this-together conversation. I mentioned the latenesses and the absences, asked how things were at home, and she said fine.”
“So…”
“So if she’s right and things are fine, a phone call to Children’s Services will screw with these people’s lives. The girls will be removed. You want to talk about gut feelings?”
“Go ahead.”
“It’s not perfect at the King house, but the family’s working. I don’t want to ruin any progress they’ve made if we both have doubts that her father hit her.”
I sat down at my desk and turned a few more pages in Frankie’s notebook. “What if we’re wrong?”
“I don’t think we are. We’re both kind of good at this sort of thing.”
“Yeah.”
I turned to the back of the notebook and looked at the picture of the house and the real estate ads.
“Anita’s house,” Elaine said.
“You know it?”
“Frankie talks about it in our sessions. He loves that place.”
“So does his sister,” I said. “There was a drawing of it on the fridge at her dad’s place. Looked just like the photo.”
“You know,” Elaine said after a few seconds of silence, “that’s come up in our talks. Frankie said that house was the place he felt the safest.”
I pointed to the cut-outs from the newspaper. “He’s already planning to buy a house.”
Elaine smiled. Maybe for the first time that day.
“Hey,” she said, “the police would know about Anita, right? About the house? From talking to his grandmother.”
“I don’t know.”
“We know about it.”
“We know Frankie better than the cops,” I reminded her.
She thought about that for a few seconds. “Shouldn’t we … bring it to their attention?”
“We?”
She smiled again. “You.”
“Detective Royce—the guy assigned to the case—said if I thought of anything that might be of use, I should call him.” I reached into the back pocket of my bag and pulled out his card. There were two numbers listed. One was the precinct, the other a cell phone.
“You’ll call him?” Elaine asked.
“This is something.”
“It is.”
“The precinct’s kind of on my way home.” If I walked five blocks out of my way.
“You want a ride?”
“No. I’ll be fine.”
“Call me,” she said, “and let me know what happens.”
“Nothing’s going to happen, Elaine. I probably won’t even get to talk to him.”
“Call me anyway. Or we’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Okay,” I said as I stood up. “Let’s talk tomorrow.”
After she left, I carefully removed the tape from around the picture of Anita’s house and put it in my book bag. It probably would be a wasted trip, I told myself. Royce may not even be there, and what would I do then? “Hey, I’m Ray Donne? Used to work here. Now I’m a schoolteacher, and I was wondering…”
Before I could talk myself out of going, I went to the back closet to get my jacket and umbrella. I was glad to have the umbrella. No way I wanted to walk back into my old house looking like a cripple.
And who knew? Maybe it would finally rain.
Chapter 8
I WAS STANDING ON THE OTHER side of the avenue, outside the Korean deli across from the precinct, finishing up a pint of water, wondering how you could possibly make a profit selling a dozen roses for eight bucks. I made little circles with the bottle and watched as my last sip went around and around. When that last sip was gone, I stood there, figuring out to the nearest tenths place how much one orange would cost if five went for a buck nineteen.
“You want nickel back for that?” I turned to see the owner of the place. Back when I used to come here five days a week, he’d be behind the cash register at seven when I got my morning coffee and then again at six when I’d grab a paper to take home. If he recognized me now, five years later, he didn’t let on. Funny how that is in this city. You see people every day, on the street, at the deli, and never know their names. Then you fall thirty feet, and your whole life changes.
“Excuse me?”
“You redeem.” He pointed to the empty bottle. “Five cents.”
“No,” I said. “Here.”
I handed it to him. As he took it, he kept his eyes on mine.
“How come,” he finally said, “you not work here no more?”
“You remember me?”
“Oh, sure.” Big smile now. “Large coffee, three sugars, very little half-and-half.”
“Wow,” I said. “I’m a teacher now.”
“Ah,” he answered, as if that explained it all. “Good job.”
“Yeah.”
We looked at each other for a few seconds, and when neither one of us could think of anything else, he said, “You take care.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You, too.”
After he went back inside, I faced the building I was afraid to enter. Still the same dull, grayish green bricks, the same smog-frosted windows on the second floor. I remember being able to see out but never being able to see in.
The front door opened and shut every thirty seconds or so. Strangers in uniform going in; strangers in civilian clothes coming out. I wondered what my chances were of Royce coming out, saving me from going in. Having already waited for twenty minutes, I knew the answer. I crossed the avenue.
The closer I got to the front door, the more I began to question the visit. What did I have? A photo of a house a hundred miles north of here. That should be enough to keep a dialogue going for a whole five seconds. Then what? Cops are territorial by nature, and that’s with their own kind. I was a schoolteacher now. Royce was not going to discuss the case with me because he liked me. Shit. Maybe he didn’t even like me.
“Hey,” someone said from behind me. “You going in or what?”
Before I could turn, a guy in jeans and a T-shirt and with a bag slung over his shoulder reached around me and opened the door. As it was closing, I stepped forward and held it so it wouldn’t shut. I took a deep breath and walked through.
Everything seemed smaller, like the first—and only—time I returned to my old high school. I moved aside as two young Hispanic officers breezed past me, two kids who couldn’t wait to hit the streets. A familiar smell hung in the air as the door shut behind them. I took a few more steps in to get away from the activity of the front door area. The uniformed officer working the front desk was so engrossed in his paperwork that I could have just walked past unquestioned: left to the lockers, right to the administrative offices, or a buttonhook upstairs to the detective squad. I chose to check in.
The cop at the desk was busy, but not with official business. He was tapping a pen against his folded copy of the Times, opened to the crossword. He had a phone cradled between his neck and shoulder. I had the feeling he might have forgotten it was there. After a half minute of me standing there holding my umbrella in front of me, he acknowledged my presence.
“Help ya?” he asked without looking up.
“I’m here to see one of your detectives,” I said.
“Nature of complaint?”
I went for humorous. “It’s too damned hot.”
Now he looked up. “Nature of complaint.”
“I don’t have one. I’m here to speak with Detective Royce about a case we … regarding a case he’s working on.”
“You working?”
“Not as a cop,” I said. “No.”
“Okay. Didn’t mean to offend you. Sir.” He slid a clipboard in front of me and spun it around. “Sign in.”
I took the pen that was attached to the clipboard by a string and put down my name, time, and destination. When I finished, I turned it around.
“Okay if I go on up?”
“I have to let the detective know you’re here.” He punched a button on the phone in front of him. “Might take a few.” He looked back down at his puzzle. I did the same. Reading upside down was just one of the skills I had picked up in the classroom.
“Ten across,” I said.
“What about it?” His eyes were still on the puzzle.
“You’ve written ‘aviary.’”
“Yeah?”
“Should be apiary,” I said.
“The difference being…”
“Birds are kept in aviaries. Bees are housed in apiaries.”
He considered that for a while and said, “Guess that works.” With the phone still between his ear and shoulder, he changed the v to a p. “That’d make eleven down pine and not vine.” He decided to look up at me again. “Whatta you? One of them upside-down-reading nature lovers?”
“No,” I said. “Just know the difference between the birds and the bees.”
He pressed another button, or the same one, and, getting no response, he took the phone and hung it up. His head was still cocked to the side. Maybe that’s why he was at a desk and had to live that way for the rest of his life.
“You know where ya going?” he asked.
“I’ve been here before,” I said. “A long time ago.”
“Then by all means.” He gestured toward the stairs like a bored game-show host. “Go right on up.”
“Thanks.”
“Thank you,” he said, and went back to his puzzle.
I turned to go upstairs
and watched as two uniforms escorted a very unhappy man with his hands cuffed behind him down the stairs. Besides the cuffs, what caught my attention—and the other reason the man may have been unhappy—was the recent black eye he was sporting. He mumbled something about “fucking cops” and “my fucking eye.” The officer on his right jerked the man’s arm.
“Keep fucking yapping, Julio,” the officer said. “Could be a rough ride to the courthouse.”
Shit. I turned back to the desk to avoid eye contact.
“Holy fucking shit,” Jack Knight said. “Raymond Fucking Donne.”
“Jack,” I said calmly, turning to face the voice from the past.
Jack looked me up and down and smirked, like I’d failed inspection. He let go of Julio’s arm and took a step toward me.
“What the fuck brings you down to the old house? Registering a citizen’s complaint?” He turned to his partner. “This here’s Raymond Donne, Hector. We used to work the same streets. Back when we all spoke English.”
I looked at Hector and gave him a sympathetic nod.
“I speak English, Jack,” he said, as if this weren’t the first time.
“Yeah,” Jack said. “But not as a first language. Whyn’t you take Julio out to the car, Hector. I’m gonna catch up with my old bud here for a few minutes.”
Hector led Julio out the main door, and Jack turned back to me. “Tell me your uncle didn’t pull some strings and you’re not fucking coming back to the job, Ray. Please.”
“No, Jack. I just swung by to see if fucking was still your favorite adjective.”
Jack shook his head. “Still the fuck—still the wise guy. Heard you was teaching now.”
“You heard right,” I said.
“That figures. Always trying to help people. Never did quite have the fucking balls for this job, did ya, Raymond?”
“Whatever,” I said. For Jack, helping people and being a cop were mutually exclusive. I motioned with my head at the door Hector and Julio had just gone through. “I see you’ve still got that gentle touch with suspects, huh?”
Again, Jack smiled. “Julio’s not exactly the most coordinated of civilians. He banged his head while being escorted back to the precinct.”
“Good to see you, Jack,” I lied. “Try to stay out of trouble.” I got a few steps toward the stairs before Jack grabbed my arm.
