The Right Wrong Thing

by Ellen Kirschman

  It’s like a job interview. Omari, who is sixteen, is a high school junior, member of the marching band, a C+ student, and an avid churchgoer. After high school, he wants to join the army and learn computers. Rashan has an almost identical bio, except that he wants to go into the air force and be an airplane mechanic. Their presentations are stiff and halting, their eyes darting back and forth between me, their grandmother, who has clearly orchestrated this event, and their mother. I drift between listening to their words and studying their faces, charting every feature, looking for a bump in the nose, a narrow chin, steep cheekbones, a high forehead—anything that would resemble my father. Somewhere there is a white ancestor in all their lives, but short of DNA testing, I doubt we are even distantly related. Their closing remarks are short eulogies to Lakeisha, how much they looked up to her and how much they miss her. Small drops of sweat drip off their newly barbered heads. It is a weak performance, and we all know it. They haven’t proven anything. Still, neither one seems capable of an aggressive act like murder. In this family, it is the women who are powerful and full of rage.

  “I expected to meet Darnell here today, as well,” I say.

  “Darnell don’t come in this house. He’s not welcome here,” Ms. Gibbs is suddenly engaged. “He beat her. She pregnant and he beat her.”

  I turn in my chair to face her. The sun is blazing through the sliding glass door to the balcony, striping the room with bars of white. “If you are so concerned, were so concerned for her safety, why did you throw her out?”

  Ms. Gibbs stands up. “I told you once. I did not throw her out. We had a fight and she left. Took my car. She could have stayed. But she stubborn, she wouldn’t do what I told her.”

  “And what was that?”

  “Get rid of Darnell.”

  “I don’t think this is relevant to Dr. Meyerhoff’s interests.” Bernstein is now standing.

  Althea Gibbs cocks her head, glaring at her mother. “I told you her interests ain’t my interests. My interests are my boys. Lakeisha’s gone. I can’t get her back. But I’m not going to lose my boys.”

  “And I’m not going to lose my grandsons. That’s why I asked Dr. Meyerhoff here to meet them. I’ve explained that to you once. She can help us.”

  “Yeah, you explained it. It still wrong. Those boys should have been on a plane to Atlanta, to stay with their aunt.” She looks at me directly for the first time since I’ve been here. “You think she’s gonna help us? You crazy.”

  The boys are sitting stock still in their chairs. There are tears running down Rashan’s face. He is too frozen to wipe them away. Omari is lost in the swirling pattern of his placemat.

  “I agree. This interview isn’t very helpful.” I turn to the boys. “Do you know anything that could help me find out who killed Officer Spelling?”

  They shake their heads no in unison.

  “They already told the cops that, about a million times,” Ms. Gibbs says.

  “What about Darnell?” I ask them.

  “They don’t know nothing about him. They don’t run with him. He older. I won’t let them. Bad enough their sister did.”

  “But they were arrested together.” I remember Manny, his face bright with excitement, bursting into the staff meeting to announce “three in custody.”

  “No way. They all picked up the same night. I don’t know where they got Darnell, but my boys were at church for game night. The police already checked.”

  * * *

  Dr. Bernstein calls me the first thing the next morning. I recognize her phone number and debate letting her call go to voice mail, but at the last minute I pick up the phone. Stupid move.

  “I apologize for my daughter’s behavior yesterday. She is genuinely fearful for her children, as am I, only she doesn’t handle her emotions with much equanimity.” I wonder if Bernstein ever talks like an ordinary person instead of a dictionary. “Nor were my grandsons entirely truthful. After you left I spoke to them. Darnell has dropped out of sight again. I don’t know how my grandsons know this, but they told me you could find him at 1704 Travis Avenue in East Kenilworth where he is staying with friends. “

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Omari and Rashan looked up to Darnell when he was dating Lakeisha. They had no other male role models. Their sister loved him, so they loved him too. That’s why they didn’t tell you where he lives. Darnell has influence over my grandsons. As you saw, they’re rather passive. Comes from being raised by a domineering mother who controls every aspect of their lives. The police are going to believe that Omari and Rashan, in some way, helped Darnell murder Officer Spelling. In which case, he is the only one who can exonerate them.”

  “If you are so sure Darnell is guilty and you know where he is, call the police.”

  “Unlike my grandsons, who are good boys and would do whatever the police asked them to do, Darnell would fight the police or run away. In either case, I can almost guarantee that he will be killed. I don’t like him but I don’t want his blood on my hands. He will talk to you because he doesn’t know you.”

  “I was in the police station the night he was arrested.”

  “I’ll take the chance that he was too preoccupied watching the officers who beat him than he was looking at you.”

  “So you want me to convince Darnell to confess to something he may or may not have done in order to save your grandsons from suspicion? And you won’t call the police yourself because you’re afraid Darnell will be killed in the confrontation?”

  “Exactly.”

  “No. Absolutely not. It’s too dangerous. Darnell is dangerous, you said so yourself. If you want to talk to him, you do it.”

  “I would if I were a younger woman, but I’m not. In fact, I’m at the age where I’m seriously contemplating moving to a retirement community. I understand your mother lives in such a community near Morro Bay. Perhaps I’ll pay her a visit to see if she likes it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  1704 Travis Avenue is an apartment building, not a house. It’s built like a motel, three stories high, ten apartments to a floor. Darnell Taylor is bunking behind one of those thirty doors, and I have no clue which one nor what I would do if he opened the door and saw me standing here. A sharp wind blows across the parking lot from the bay. On the street behind me, a long line of cars, caught in the evening commute, their headlights reflecting a light rain, inch slowly toward the East Bay Bridge. This end of East Kenilworth—wide, flat and open to the water—is the last affordable real estate in the Bay Area. Small, tidy, working-class bungalows are slowly being replaced by gargantuan homes, built from lot line to lot line, closed off to the neighbors by ornate, electrified, wrought iron fences. I imagine the residents, instant millionaires from Silicon Valley, barely old enough to be living on their own, roaming through the empty rooms of their faux palaces, trying to fill homes big enough for ten, their enormous mortgages precariously balanced on the undulating waves of an uncertain economy.

  A door opens on the first floor and a large, older woman steps out holding a leaking bag of garbage. She stops when she sees me, her eyes alert. I don’t fit in and people who don’t fit in are mostly here to cause trouble: bill collectors, social workers from Child Protective Services, and the police.

  “Excuse me,” I say. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I’m looking for a young man—”

  She steps back into her apartment. “Lo siento, no hablo inglés,” she says as she closes the door. Better to spend the evening with a smelly bag of garbage than risk running into a stranger.

  This is crazy. I should leave. Frank’s at his house, cooking posole, a savory stew of hominy and chicken with chili peppers that he roasts by hand and grinds into a sauce. His favorite cooking show is on the TV, one he’s seen so often he could recite it by heart, a glass of wine is in his hand. He is totally in his element while I am totally out of mine, freezing my butt off in a dark parking lot in a drizzling rain in the “wrong” part of town. I should
call to tell him I’ll be late, but then he’ll ask where I am and I don’t want to tell him because he’ll tell me what I already know, that I should get the hell out of here while I can.

  Why do I think Charla Bernstein would actually follow through on her threat to tell my mother that she and my father had an affair? What if they did? Is it worth my getting killed over? An image rises, my father and Charla Gibbs Bernstein, both of them young and beautiful, wound together by their passions for each other and for the fight to overcome oppression. True? Not true? I don’t know and at this moment it doesn’t much matter. What matters is my mother. There is no way I am going to let Charla Bernstein break my mother’s aging heart. I’ll do this for her and her grandsons and then I’ll tell her to go to hell.

  A car whips into the space next to where I’m standing. All four doors open at once and four young African American males get out, bang their doors shut, and head wordlessly toward the steps. Much to my surprise, they are ignoring me.

  “Pardon me,” I say. They turn around in unison and stare. “I’m looking for Darnell Taylor. Do you know him? Or where he’s staying? I am an associate of his attorney and I have some important information for him.” It is so dark now that Darnell could be standing right in front of me and I wouldn’t recognize him.

  One of the boys steps forward, the first non-synchronized move anyone has made. “You police?”

  I laugh, a phony fearful tinkle. “No. As I said, I’m working with his attorney.”

  “What his attorney’s name?” a voice asks from the back of group. I can’t see his face but I know I’m being tested.

  “Chester Allen.”

  The boy, man, whatever he is, closest to me steps back to the group for a confab. All I can hear is a low buzz. He steps forward again. “Why we gonna help you? You going to pay us?”

  “You’re not helping me, you’re helping Darnell. If he doesn’t get this information right away he’ll be in trouble. Big trouble. And so will you for interfering with a legal process.”

  “You a process server?”

  “Yes, I am.” I’m not even sure what a process server serves.

  “Leave it with me. I’ll give it to him,” the tallest boy says.

  “He has to sign it himself, and I have to witness his signature. Or he could come to the police station and do it. Something I doubt he will want to do since he appears to be avoiding the police.”

  There’s another short confab, and the tall boy takes a step in my direction. He looks around and lowers his voice.

  “You didn’t hear this from me. He in 3C. But he ain’t home now.” I look up, almost all the front-facing windows on the third level are dark.

  “Do you know when he’ll be back?” There’s yet another buzz from the group.

  “He be at home during the day, sleeping. He work at night.”

  “Thanks,” I say and turn toward my car which is parked at the sidewalk.

  “Watch yourself now.” The voice follows me. “This neighborhood ain’t safe at night.”

  I don’t know whether that’s a concerned warning for which I should be grateful or a not-too-well-disguised threat.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Frank is irritated with me. He’s trying to hide it, but I can tell. He’s sitting in a chair watching a young Julia Child make duck confit. The half-empty wine bottle on the counter means he’s several glasses of wine ahead of me.

  “Sorry, I couldn’t help it…something at work. Couldn’t be delayed. Did I ruin dinner?”

  “Not a problem. Posole holds, so does salad. Take your time.” His voice is clipped and flat. His eyes never move from the TV.

  I can’t stand it when we have these silent fights.

  “So, how was your day?” I ask.

  “Okay. Nothing special.”

  “Get that job you bid on the other day?”

  “Look, Dot. You don’t have to try so hard. You’re late. I’m pissed. That’s all. Let’s eat.” He switches off the TV, walks into the kitchen, picks up a long-handled wooden spoon and takes the lid off the posole, releasing a cloud of fragrant steam. “You could have called.”

  “I’m sorry. You’re right. I should have called to say I would be late.”

  “So why didn’t you?” My stomach tightens, getting ready for a fight, not a bowl of posole.

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I was busy.”

  He whacks the spoon on the counter splattering drops of red on the wall. His face is a scowl. “I can take waiting for you. I don’t like it, but by now I know you well enough to know that your work comes first. I love cooking and I love cooking for you. What I can’t take is being shut out. So, are you going to tell me what’s going on? I’m not stupid, you know.” He rinses a sponge in the sink and wipes down the wall behind the stove, his lips pressed into invisibility.

  We are like half a dozen couples I’ve seen this week. The wives begging to be included, wanting to know what’s going on at the police department, why their husbands come home from work with that “look” on their faces. The more they pursue, the harder their husbands pull away. Cops have a long list of reasons not to talk. They think only other cops understand what they go through at work. They want their homes to be sanctuaries, un-contaminated by the tragedy and cruelty they see every day. And they have secrets—some official, some personal. Psychologists have only one reason. Client confidentiality. Charla Bernstein, Althea Gibbs and her sons, and Darnell Taylor, are not my clients. I pour myself a glass of wine. The only reason I’m keeping things to myself is to avoid getting grief.

  “I tried to find Darnell Taylor.”

  “Who?”

  “One of the boys suspected of killing Randy Spelling.”

  Frank slams the lid down on the posole. “Alone? You went alone to see a suspected murderer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why didn’t you take an officer with you?”

  “The department doesn’t know I’m involved.”

  He sits down on a metal stool at the end of the counter. “Just how involved are you and why?”

  I sit on the end of his couch, facing him and take a sip of wine. “It’s a long story,” I say.

  “I have all the time in the world,” he says, wiping his hands on his denim apron. “The posole will hold.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  I have two cancellations in a row. Ordinarily I’d be upset at losing therapeutic momentum with my clients, not to mention the loss of fees. But today I’m relieved to have time in the afternoon to catch Darnell before he goes to work. 1704 Travis looks different in the daylight. There’s a small playground to the side with slides and a sandbox. Six or seven young children are chasing each other under and over a multicolored jungle gym. Two women, probably day-care workers, watch from a bench, calling out warnings in Spanish. A fight erupts between two boys and one of the workers rises reluctantly to separate the two tearful combatants. It is the woman I met the day before, putting out the garbage. She grabs the two boys by their shirt backs and walks them to the bench for a time out. She sees me and says something to the other woman. I wave. She turns away.

  I walk up the pebbled concrete steps to the third landing. The door of 3C is scratched and needs paint. I ring the doorbell and when no one answers after six rings I knock, hard and loud. Still no answer. A door to my left opens a crack and then shuts. I walk over and knock. “Go away,” a voice says.

  “I’m looking for Darnell Taylor in 3C.”

  “Nobody there,” the voice says. “It’s empty. You want to rent. See the manager in 1A.”

  I most certainly do not want to rent and I feel badly for anyone who has to live here. I head back to my car in search of a piece of paper and a pen to leave a note on the door. A car comes down the street blasting music so loud I can feel the vibrations from half a block away. It pulls into the parking lot, the tires shrill against the pitted concrete surface. The music stops and just like yesterday, all four doors o
pen at the same moment, only this time, in the daylight, I can see who I’m talking to.

  “Darnell not home?” The tallest one asks. They are standing side by side as though linked together by an invisible rope. They are wearing identical gold pendants and chains around their necks, black hoodies, baggy jeans, and enormous shoes in phosphorescent colors, the laces untied.

  “You his probation?” another asks.

  I smile, trying to look anything but scared. “Hello again. As I explained yesterday, I’m an associate of Chester Allen, Darnell’s lawyer.”

  “Darnell kill that lady cop?” one of them asks.

  If I say yes they’ll go into protective mode, do something rash to keep me away from their friend. “No,” I say. “Not his style.” I tried to sound as cool and confident as I can, even though I’m doing everything possible not to pee in my pants.

  “He’s a murdering piece of shit.” The tallest one steps forward a foot. “Somebody mess with his baby mama, he’d do a beat down. Don’t care if it a woman or a cop.”

  “Or a woman cop, she be the prize pig.” This is apparently very funny because there’s a lot of hand slapping and high fiving going on between the three shorter boys.

  “Zip it.” The tallest one says. The other three instantly fall silent. “You want to know where he works at?” he says.

  “That would be helpful.”

  “McDonald’s. 4th and Lyman Avenue.”

  “Thank you. I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

  He pauses for a moment. “We rap as 1704T. Darnell, sometime he our bouncer.” He reaches into his pocket and my heart shudders. “Here,” he says and shoves a crumpled piece of paper into my hand. I start to put it in my pocket, and the tall one tells me to read it. I flatten it out against my thigh. It’s a flyer for their next appearance. “We opening for Bad Boy Wunder. Gonna be awesome. Drop by,” he says, “If you dare.” Everyone laughs.

  I walk to my car, slowly, pretending my legs aren’t shaking. I want to look back in the worst way, see if they’re following me, guns out, switchblades drawn. I risk a small peek after I lock the car doors. The parking lot is empty and all the apartment doors are closed.