Crooked Numbers (13 page)

“Did you explain the situation?”

“I tried, but … Shit, it didn’t exactly look good. And the guy who assaulted Angel…?”

“Yeah?”

“Three weeks away from his eighteenth birthday. Twenty-one days later, and we ain’t having this conversation, Mr. Donne. But because I ‘assaulted a juvenile’—who’s got about three inches on me—I get taken in and charged, while my boy has to wait around the precinct.”

“Shit,” I said.

“Yeah,” Rosario agreed. “Shit. I’m just lucky they let me go with a DAT.”

Desk Appearance Ticket. I guessed the judge didn’t consider Mr. Rosario a genuine threat. He did catch a break there. Get some judge in a bad mood, or one who doesn’t like school safety officers, and you’re spending the weekend behind bars.

“What happens now?” I asked.

“I’m on suspension,” he said. “Without pay. That’s the first thing what happens now. I gotta meet with my union rep and one of their lawyers tomorrow. I don’t wanna go with the union’s lawyer, but how the hell am I gonna pay for one on my own?”

“That’s what we pay dues for,” I said, going for a little brotherhood-of-union-guys thing. “All right. Keep Angel home today, but walk him in tomorrow. He misses too much school, and you’re just making a bad situation a little bit worse.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess you’re right. And thanks for calling. For checking up on Angel. I appreciate it.”

“Not a problem. Good luck tomorrow.”

“I’m gonna need all the luck I can get, Mr. Donne.”

*

Uneventful days are few and far between in my new line of work as the school’s dean. This Monday was one of them. Maybe it was the snow falling or the temperatures dropping, but the school was subdued all day. No kids running the halls, no small parties in the bathrooms, and not one teacher sent an unruly student to my office. I was able to catch up on the paperwork from last week’s incidents and accidents, make a couple of phone calls to homes of kids we hadn’t seen for three consecutive days, and drop by Elaine Stiles’s office to see if our school counselor had any kids she needed me to touch base with. She didn’t, so we had coffee as I filled her in on Angel’s situation.

“Suspended without pay?” she asked.

“That’s what he told me. I think normally they would’ve just reassigned him, away from any kids, but with the video all over the place now, they had no choice.”

“Damn.” She took a sip of coffee. “Maybe we should take up a collection. Help them get through the next few weeks.”

“I’m not sure how Mr. Rosario would respond to charity. He seems like the proud, self-reliant type.”

Elaine nodded. “We’ll have Lizzie handle it,” she said. “No one says no to her.”

I smiled as I thought of Elizabeth Medina, our parent coordinator. She was everything a job like that in a neighborhood like this needed: a college-educated Latina with two public school kids of her own and who took shit from no one. I reached into my pocket and pulled out two twenties.

“You can start off with that,” I said, handing Elaine the forty bucks.

“Thanks.” She opened the drawer to her desk and put the money inside an envelope she labeled
ANGEL
’
S FUND
.
“How was it at Dougie’s house yesterday?”

“Not bad.” I told her all about it, including details about Allison and the walkie-talkie I’d found in Dougie’s desk and brought with me to school today.

“You took a date?” Elaine asked. “To a memorial service?”

“It wasn’t a date, Elaine. She asked to come, and I said yes.”

Elaine gave me a look as if she didn’t quite believe me. “Whatever,” she said, sounding more like one of our kids than I’m sure she wanted to. “What are you going to do with the walkie-talkie?”

I told her Edgar’s idea. “In fact,” I added, looking at my watch, “if I leave now, I can get up there by three thirty.”

“Be careful,” Elaine said.

“Of what? I’m just taking a little trip uptown.”

“Your little trips sometimes lead you to places you don’t want to go, Raymond.”

Even though I’d never told Elaine the full story of how I had helped Frankie get home a year and a half ago—how deeply involved I’d let myself get and the laws I’d broken to get there—I think she knew I was holding something back.

“I’ll be fine, Elaine. Thanks. And thanks for the coffee. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Have an uneventful afternoon, Ray.”

IF YOU LOOK AT THE NEW YORK
City subway map, you’ll see that if you want to get from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to the Upper West Side of Manhattan, all you have to do is jump on the L train, transfer at Eighth Avenue to the C, and you’ll be there in only forty-five minutes. Maybe less. Five miles.
Geo
graphically.

Demo
graphically, the Upper West Side might as well be on the other side of the world. It is an area where real estate is valued by the square foot, not by how many people you can squeeze into a two-bedroom apartment. Doctors and lawyers are your neighbors, not professionals you go to on really bad days. In this part of the city, the first sign of spring is not robins, but women on cell phones suddenly walking alongside their own babies’ strollers, as women whose skin is a few shades darker push their children for them.

As I made my way around pockets of tourists and a school group outside the Museum of Natural History, I remembered the field trips we used to take to the museum when I was in school. How we had traveled by yellow bus all the way from Long Island to see dinosaurs, gemstones, and mannequins depicting early America. I didn’t appreciate it back then. Even when I was working in the classroom and took my own students, I was too busy keeping an eye on them to fully enjoy the museum.

I headed south toward Dougie’s school, Central Park on my left. Looking over at the snow-covered trees in the park, I could almost understand why people spend so much of their hard-earned money to live here. Almost.

I took Dougie’s walkie-talkie out of my bag and turned it on. I tuned to the first channel and got static. As I got closer to the school, I flipped through the channels every half block or so, getting nothing but white noise. When I got to the corner of the block where Upper West Academy was, the static changed to silence. I pressed the button to talk. “Hello?” No response. “Hello?” Nothing. I was about to try again, when a kid on a skateboard rode by about a foot in front of me.

“Gotta watch yourself, mister,” he said, as he raced over the curb and into the traffic of Central Park West. He looked back from the street and showed me his middle finger. He then skillfully skated between two parked cars, jumped the opposite curb, and disappeared into the park. Young, invincible, and stupid. We all were at that age.

I was about to turn the corner toward the school, when a voice came over the walkie-talkie. “I said ten-five.”

Cop talk.
Whoever it was wanted me to repeat my message. I hoped I hadn’t gotten the police frequency. I maintained radio silence, hoping the speaker would say something else. I thought he sounded too young to be a cop.

“Ten-five,” the voice said again. Definitely a kid.
Good.
“What’s your twenty?”

I pressed the
TALK
button and stated my location.

“Ten-four,” he said. “Cross over to the park side, and I’ll meet you there. Over.”

I waited for the light to change and did as instructed. The sidewalk on the park side was busy with people, many taking pictures. A few folks were holding out peanuts, trying to get a squirrel to come in for a close-up. I figured them for Europeans. They didn’t have squirrels over there and, unlike New Yorkers, found them to be quite photogenic. I looked up and down the sidewalk and saw no one carrying a walkie-talkie. I took off my book bag and was about to lean against the stone, waist-high wall that separated the park from the sidewalk, when a voice behind me said, “Who’re you?”

I turned to see a kid—fifteen, maybe?—on the other side of the wall. He was wearing a white baseball cap over his long, brown hair. Around his neck hung a pair of binoculars, and he was holding a walkie-talkie in his right hand. Edgar’s bird-watcher. He adjusted his eyeglasses and gave me a good look-over.

“How did you get Robin’s walkie-talkie?” he asked.

“Who?” I asked.

“The walkie-talkie.” He pointed at it. “How did you get that? I gave that to Robin. You are not supposed to have that.”

“I don’t know any Robin,” I said. “I got this”—I held up the radio—“from Douglas Lee’s mother. Do you know Dougie?”

The kid took off his hat, looked up, and scratched his head, emphasizing how hard he was thinking about my question. “I do not know Dougie,” he said. “I know Robin, and that is his walkie-talkie. How did you get it?”

I stepped closer to the wall, and the kid took two steps back, almost slipping on the snowy dirt. He grabbed onto a tree, frightened. I held up my hand, signaling I’d stop moving toward him. I was starting to sense something else about this kid.

“It’s okay,” I said and watched as the kid squinted at me from behind his glasses. “I’m a friend of Dougie’s—Douglas Lee? I used to be his teacher.” I took a breath. “He goes to … he went to school right down the block. Upper West Academy.” I pointed behind me. “He was killed last week.”

The kid squinted harder and put his whole body behind the tree. “I go to Upper West Academy, and I do not know Dougie. I know Robin, and you have his radio.” He shook the tree. “Why do you have Robin’s radio?” he asked loudly. “Where is Robin?”

I took the walkie-talkie and clipped it on my belt under my jacket. Some of the passersby stopped and looked at me. I smiled that everything was okay, and they smiled back. I doubted they spoke English, which was good. I turned back to the kid.

“What’s your name?” I asked. “Mine’s Raymond. Raymond Donne.”

“You do not need to know my name, Raymond Donne,” he said, his voice getting higher. “Why do you want to know my name?”

“When you’re having a conversation, it’s polite to know the name of the person you’re talking with.”

“We are
not
having a conversation, Raymond Donne. I asked you a question, and you have not answered. Why do you have Robin’s radio?”

This could go on all day.

I waited a few seconds before speaking again. “You go to Upper West?”

“Yes,” he said. “But I should not have told you that.”

“And you don’t know Douglas Lee? Dougie?”

“I told you I do not.”

“Well,” I said, “the walkie-talkie I have belonged—” A thought came to me. “What does Robin look like?”

The kid thought about that and moved from behind the tree. “Why do you want to know what Robin looks like? You should know. You have his walkie-talkie.”

“I think, maybe, the kid you’re calling Robin is the one I’m calling Dougie.” I waited as he considered that. “Tell me what Robin looks like.”

He squeezed his eyes completely shut. “He is African–American. Black. He is taller than I am by five inches. He was just starting to grow a mustache, and he is my best friend at the school, and that is his radio.” He opened his eyes again. “What does Dougie look like, Raymond Donne?”

I nodded. “Pretty much like Robin, I’m afraid.”

“Why does that make you af—?” He stopped himself. “Oh. You said…” He looked up into the trees and held his breath. When he let it out, he said, “The school told us one of the students had been killed last weekend. That was the name they used, but I did not know Douglas Lee. I know Robin.” He closed his eyes again.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I think Robin was Dougie.”

“And he is dead?”

“Yeah.”

He stepped out from behind the tree and turned off his walkie-talkie. Then he removed his baseball cap and placed it over his heart. “I am not sure why people do this,” he said looking at me.

“Me, neither,” I answered. “Are you okay?”

“No,” he said. “I am not okay. You just told me my best friend at school is dead. I thought he was out sick. Why would I be okay?”

“You wouldn’t be,” I admitted. “It’s just another thing people say in a situation like this, I guess.”

He took a step toward me and the wall that separated us. “Have you had a lot of situations like this, Raymond Donne?”

I nodded again. “Too many, I’m afraid.”

He clipped his radio to his belt, came all the way to the wall, and put his hands on the stones. “You seem to be afraid a lot. Do you know that?”

I had to choose my words very carefully around this kid. “I’m not, really,” I explained. “I guess it’s just something I say too much.” I took a step closer to the kid. “What is your name, by the way?”

“Elliot,” he said, trusting me a bit more. “Elliot Henry Finch.”

I stuck out my hand. “Raymond Donne. Raymond.”

He looked at my hand. “I do not shake hands with people,” he said matter-of-factly. “And you have already told me your name.”

I dropped my hand. “I guess I did.” Something occurred to me. “Are you involved with Finch’s Landing? I saw a card in Dougie’s desk.”

For the first time since we met five minutes ago, Elliot Henry Finch smiled. “That is me,” he said proudly. “It is a website I started. I took the name from my last name and also
To Kill a Mockingbird.
Have you read it?”

“A couple of times,” I said.

“Me, too,” he said. “Thirteen times, to be exact.”

This kid was nothing if not exact. Then why …

“Why did you call Dougie ‘Robin’?”

He shook his head and lifted the binoculars that were hanging around his neck. “I am into birds, Raymond.” He didn’t add “duh,” but he might as well have.

“I can see that,” I said. “But why ‘Robin’?”

He climbed on top of the stone wall and threw his legs over the side. As he sat there, I got a much better view of his eyes behind the glasses. They were moving from side to side, up and down, like he didn’t want to miss anything. They settled down before he spoke again.

“Robins,” he explained, “are a generalist species.
Turdus migratorius.
” He chuckled to himself on the last part.

“I understood the word ‘robins.’”