Checkmate (5 page)

There was a police officer on the top step.

“All clear,” he said to Uncle Guy.

“Okay, stay together,” Uncle Guy said. “We’re only going to be here a minute or so.”

We all got out and Officer Riley locked the van, which was kind of funny because it said
NEW YORK CITY POLICE
right on the side and I didn’t think anybody would break into it. Then Uncle Guy led us into the building.

The place was dark and dingy and the stench of urine was strong enough to make me want to throw up. Bobbi reached over and took my hand. Uncle Guy walked up the stairs slowly and I could feel my heart beating even faster as the stairs creaked beneath my feet. Kambui, LaShonda, and Cody went right behind him, with me, Bobbi, and Sidney after them. Riley followed us and I knew they were protecting us.

We heard a noise and Bobbi jumped. A tall, thin man with a tattoo on his face came down the stairs. He had a pit bull on a leash and when he saw us he pulled the dog close to his leg.

“Move against the wall,” Uncle Guy said to the man, and he did.

I didn’t want to look at the dude as we passed and I don’t think anybody else did, either.

We stopped on the second floor in front of a door at the end of the hallway and Uncle Guy motioned for us to move in close. The hall was dimly lit and spooky. Bobbi, who was usually smiling, looked grim as she moved against me.

“Okay, as I said, we’re only going to be here a minute and then we’re going to move on,” Uncle Guy said.

I looked at Officer Riley. He was looking serious.

Uncle Guy pushed the door open and stepped inside. A moment later a light came on and we saw it was a small bathroom.

“Look around,” Office Riley said.

It was funny, but we were just about too scared to look inside. None of us wanted to step into the bathroom, but after a while we all did.

The room was small, with a bathtub against the far wall. There was a toilet that had some kind of dark stuff in it that I didn’t want to think about, and a small sink that was mostly yellow and chipped. The smell was kind of bad and it was dirty, especially the bathtub. There were crumpled advertising brochures in the tub and a torn, dirty cigarette pack lying on the greenish stain that led to the drain.

“Before this building was upgraded they used to have one bathroom per floor,” Uncle Guy said. “It’s a lot better now, with most of the apartments having their own bathrooms. Okay, we ready to leave?”

We were and Riley led us back downstairs and out onto the street. There were people on the street who looked at us as we got into the van. They looked like poor people.
Down-and-outs. When Riley was back in the driver’s seat, Uncle Guy handed us an envelope.

“Take the pictures out,” he said.

We took out three pictures. They were of a girl who looked twelve, maybe even younger. She was white, kind of cute, with dark brown hair and a pretty smile. The pictures were of her near a Christmas tree. The house she was in looked nice. One of the pictures showed one end of a piano. There were porcelain elephants lined up on it.

We passed the pictures around and then gave them back to Uncle Guy when he reached for them.

“These are the pictures her family gave us when we were looking for her,” he said. “That bathroom is where we found her body.”

It was, like — whoa! My whole body felt numb and none of us said anything as the van moved away from the curb.

Uncle Guy and Riley started talking as we pulled off. Riley said the pictures were copies, not the originals. Uncle Guy looked at them again. He was talking about what they could do with digital pictures.

We went to one more place. It was a vacant lot near 181st Street across from a used furniture store. Uncle Guy had us walk to a corner of the lot. There were broken
bottles, tin cans, a picture frame with images of an angel watching two kids cross a bridge, a woolen sweater, and newspapers strewn around. I found myself looking for signs a body had been there, but I didn’t see any.

When we got back to the van Uncle Guy showed us another picture. It was a teenage black guy. He looked a little like Kambui. There was a clipping with the picture about how he had scored twenty-two points in a basketball game.

“He was a nice kid,” Uncle Guy said. “He had a scholarship offer to go to North Carolina A&T. His parents are nice people, too. The father worked — where’d he work, Riley?”

“Was that the big guy who worked at Bellevue?”

“Yeah, that was him,” Uncle Guy said. “Never understood how his kid could mess with drugs. Just never understood how a good kid with that much potential …”

“It’s always like that,” Riley said. “You trace the DOAs back and you find a sweet kid somewhere along the line. It’s always like that.”

I knew that DOA meant dead on arrival. I felt a little like crying.

Uncle Guy took us back to 125th Street.

“You guys can keep the pictures if you want,” Riley said. “We have the parents’ permission.”

We didn’t want them.

“There’s professional help available if anybody has a drug problem,” he said. “We know that it’s a medical problem and there are people who can deal with it. On the other hand, I have more pictures if anybody needs to see them.”

We all hugged each other before we split up. Bobbi was the most shook up and I asked her if she wanted me to take her home.

“No,” she said. “I’m good. Just got some thinking to do.”

Sidney thanked me and said that my uncle was pretty cool. We were standing in front of the train station on St. Nicholas Avenue.

“I think I need to do a lot of thinking, too,” he said. “Maybe I should just drop out for a while and get my head together.”

“My uncle said that there’s medical help available,” I said. “You want me to talk to Mr. Culpepper?”

“I think he hates me,” Sidney said. “You ever see the way he looks at me?”

“He doesn’t hate you,” I said. “He really wants you on the chess team.”

“I think he hates me,” Sidney said as he turned toward the subway stairs. “I gotta go.”

I
have decided that I do not like white people!” LaShonda was shouting into the phone again.

“Yo, baby, what’s wrong?” I asked.

“Zander, I am
not
your baby and I am
not
your mama so don’t go calling me out my name,” LaShonda said at the same earsplitting decibel level.

“Okay, so what is happening, Miss LaShonda Powell?”

“They are up-and-downing me,” she said. “This morning the weatherman tells me that it’s going to be nice out. Then when I get to school I see it’s starting to rain.”

“And he was white?”

“No, he was black, but that don’t matter.”

“Okay.”

“Then Miss Ortiz looks me right in the face and tells
me that I don’t get extra credit for turning my essay in on time even though I was one of the
only
ones — can you spell
only
? — who turned theirs in on time.”

“That’s not a downer,” I said.

“It is when you got a C on it and was hoping for some extra credit to push you up to a B,” she said.

“Okay.”

“Okay? Okay?”
LaShonda’s voice went up in pitch. “Then the bad stuff started happening. I got to the house and there was a letter waiting for me — which is good news because I don’t get much mail — and it’s from
LaFemme.
I think it’s just a letter saying my poem has been rejected as usual but they’re talking about publishing my poem.”

“In
LaFemme
?” I asked. “That’s great news. That’s, like, really big-time.
LaFemme
is the biggest new magazine out there. They’re actually going to publish you?”

“If I cut down on the lines of my beautiful poem!” LaShonda said. “They’re talking about me reading something on Shakespeare and his sonnets. Man, this was a poem I wrote when I came back from that bathroom where that girl died. I can’t just cut stuff like that.”

“You going to tell them no?”

“How am I going to do that when they’re offering me a hundred dollars and saying they’re going to publish me in
LaFemme
?” LaShonda said.

“You got to do something,” I said.

“Well, what I’m working on is hating white people,” LaShonda said. “They’re probably white over at that magazine, right?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But you must have wanted to write for it or you wouldn’t have sent it over to them.”

“True, but that doesn’t change anything,” LaShonda said. “And I knew you wouldn’t understand because you’re a guy.”

“Why don’t you just look on the positive side of things?” I said. “If you get published in
LaFemme,
everybody has to give you your propers. Plus you cop a Benjamin. It all sounds good to me.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” LaShonda said. “When another white dude shows up in my American dream. Sidney got busted again.”

“Get out of here!”

“If I’m lying, I’m flying!” LaShonda said. “Bigmouth Phat Tony called Kambui and told him that this chick he was going out with from the DR — and I don’t believe it
because he’s too ugly to have a girlfriend — told him that a guy from our school got picked up trying to buy drugs on Avenue B and everybody thought he was an undercover cop because he looked so white and a real undercover cop busted him.”

“So how you know it’s Sidney?”

“Phat Tony said she described him. He was white and he said he went to Da Vinci.”

Okay, so it sounded like Sidney. I told LaShonda I would check it out and she asked me if I would help her cut her poem down.

“I thought you said you weren’t going to cut it down,” I said.

“If I sell out will you still like me?” she asked.

What was I suppose to say behind that?

“Yeah,” I said.

Okay, so I was getting uptight about the whole Sidney thing. The Cruisers were sending out a lifeline and my man was steadily cutting it into pieces. What was up with that?

We had talked to Sidney and the conversation hadn’t really gone anywhere. We had gotten my uncle Guy to show us some scary-ass things and they had scared me half
to death and everybody, but Sidney was still going strong on the drug scene. I was thinking about him maybe sitting in a jail cell looking through the bars, or maybe some big guys looking to beat him up or even have sex with him. I had seen some hard things on television.

What I knew was that I was lost. I didn’t know what to think.

Mom came home. She was all made-up in her I’m-not-wearing-makeup outfit. She looked hot, which I didn’t like because I didn’t like thinking about my mom as looking hot even though it was her job.

“How you doing?” she asked, taking off the big floppy hat she was wearing.

“Not too good,” I said. “I think my friend got busted for drugs again.”

She stopped in the middle of the room, turned her head toward me, and sort of stretched out her neck like she was really peeping into me. “You want to talk to your father about this?”

“No.”

“It might be best,” she said.

“He know more about drugs than you do?”

“I doubt it,” she said. “He knows more about coffee, though. What happened?”

“LaShonda said that Kambui said that this girl said that she heard that Sidney got busted.”

“How many people did that message go through?” Mom asked. “Did you call his house?”

I shrugged and gave her a head shake. She picked up the phone and handed it to me.

I didn’t really want to call Sidney because I didn’t want to hear any more bad news about him. But then I was thinking about what Moms would do and I knew she might call my father. She was always afraid that she wouldn’t do the right thing and that he would go to court and get an order or something saying I would have to go out to Seattle, Washington, and live with him and his new wife and their daughter. I was getting just about big enough to say I wouldn’t do it and maybe run away but I knew it would mess with Mom if I ran away. I was getting to be sorry that I felt bad for Sidney. Which was lame. Which was big-time lame.

I dialed Sidney’s number. If his grandfather answered the phone I thought I would speak in a West Indian accent
and tell him that I was from the credit bureau and wanted to speak with Sidney. Then he would tell me if Sidney had been arrested. If his grandmother answered I would tell her that I was doing a survey of schoolkids around the country and wanted to speak to Sidney. She would like that.

“Hello?” His grandmother.

“Hello, I’m doing a survey of New York City students —”

“Hello, Alexander,” his grandmother said. “How are you doing? Fine, I hope. I’ll call Sidney.”

Busted. I thought about hanging up, but I was glad that Sidney wasn’t in jail.

“Hey!” Sidney.

“What happened, man?”

“I was really down, Zander,” Sidney said. “I had to get some chill pills.”

Chill pills?
Sidney was slipping into the vocabulary too easily. It was like he was on the scene and
playing
the scene at the same time. I don’t know why I thought there was more to the Sidney story than he was telling, but I did. It was just a feeling. But it was a strong feeling.

Okay, so sometimes I’m just cool, and sometimes I feel really talented, and sometimes I feel gifted in a roundabout kind of way, and sometimes I’m simply awesome. I was lying in bed thinking about Sidney when I also started thinking about this poet Miss Ortiz told us about named François Villon. Villon was a poet but he was also a crook and a street dude. He was in jail for years and also was condemned to death a couple of times. He was smart, and he was a writer. The writing changed his life, made him a respected dude in French literature instead of just a murderer and a jailbird. Oscar Wilde had also been in jail, and Malcolm X. I was thinking that if I got Sidney to write about his problem it could put a new perspective on it. I called Bobbi.