Details at Ten (11 page)

“Did Alexander and his brother get along?”

She smiled. “Alexander loved him some Simon. And Simon loved and kept a lid on Alexander.”

“You said Simon’s death was Alexander’s fault.”

“One day Alexander went to the store for Simon. Alexander got into a fight with one of the boys on the other side of the park. They came to blows and Alexander got stomped when the boy’s friends jumped in the fight.”

Audrey stopped rocking and cradled her elbows with the palms of her hands. “I wasn’t home, but they tell me Alexander grabbed Simon by the shirt on the porch, shook and begged him to go back with him to keep the others away while he got back at the boy. Why did Simon go? That wasn’t like Simon. But Alexander convinced him that it wasn’t a fair fight and that he should take up for him like he did all the other kids in the neighborhood. But that damn Alexander had gotten a gun from one of his bad-boy friends and didn’t tell Simon. And it turned out that Alexander wasn’t the only one with a gun. One of those other boys had a gun, too. Simon was shot and killed right there in that park like a dog.”

“What about Alexander?”

“Shot in the leg; still favors it on the right side.” Audrey chuckled to herself. “Gave him a cool walk. Don’t you know kids around here on both sides of the park try to imitate that walk? Kids are something, aren’t they?”

“Has Alexander felt guilty about his brother’s death all this time?”

“Yes, he has. It did something to him, that guilt. It turned into a low-down meanness after while. But I feel guilty too. Maybe I didn’t help. I should have paid a little more attention to Alexander after his brother died. I was nursing my grief and he just grew up wild. When he got damn near grown and started getting into serious trouble, I let him stay here as long as I could but … a Christian person has a conscience and can’t tolerate too much wrong even if it is her own child doing it. But I really do believe that Alexander has been fighting and looking for revenge ever since his brother’s death.”

“Revenge against whom?”

Audrey stood up and walked slowly over to the large picture window, not saying a syllable until she leaned against the wall. “Against the world, himself, me, I think, for loving Simon just a little more.”

“I’m curious. Back up a little if you can. What was the fight in the park over? The one that got Simon killed?”

Audrey leaned down and slowly fished out a can. “Over a can of pop.” She opened it, took a long sip, then shook her head before looking out the window again.

“You know there’s a little girl missing and Alexander and his gang are involved. He could help the police get her back safely. Her mother is worried and the child is only six. Please, Mrs. Darrington, do you know where Alexander is?”

Audrey shook her head no.

“Please,” I begged. “I know it’s hard to tell—”

“I don’t know anything. If I did, I would say just to save that little girl. I know what a mama feels like when her child is gone.”

Suddenly a shadow slipped across the right side of Audrey’s face. She turned to the window, and her eyes got wide with fear.

I saw it coming, glass and fire spinning end over end. The hair on the back of my neck prickled.

Audrey screamed. I jumped off the couch and reached for her. The picture window shattered. My hands shot out in front of my face as pin-needles of glass came flying my way.

I heard a boom and a whoosh!

When I uncovered my eyes, Audrey was on the floor, her hands over her head. Broken glass was everywhere and the curtains were blooming with flames. I yelled, “Fire! Fire!” The flames were the tortoise and I was the hare.

I spun on the hardwood floor and kicked over the cooler with my heels. The ice and water gushed out and doused the flames eating at the baseboard.

Audrey was screaming and backing away on the floor. I grabbed a broom standing in the corner and knocked the curtain rod—flames and all—out onto the front porch through the shattered window. The elderly man tending the community garden turned his hose on the porch and the flames gurgled and belched like a thirsty animal.

As the flames died down, I had a panicked thought. Where’s Audrey? I spun around and she was cowering in the corner, blood all over her face. A cruising squad car hit the brakes in the middle of the street. One of the police officers jumped out of the vehicle and was now jackknifing through the crowd that stood gaping at the raggedy opening of the picture window.

The police officer asked, “What happened?”

Someone said the car was black.

Someone said it was dark green.

Someone said there were three teenagers in the car.

Someone said it was two teenagers and a kid.

Someone said they yelled “Bandits Rule!”

Someone said they yelled “Motherfuckers!”

Someone said it was an M-80 that was thrown through the window.

Someone else said it was a bunch of firecrackers in a bottle.

The bomb and arson squad got down to the real nitty-gritty. They said it was gasoline in a mayo jar with duct tape around the seal and a greasy rag for a wick.

Apparently the Bandits had tried to get revenge against the Rockies by firebombing Little Cap’s mother’s house. They had hoped to kill somebody. By the grace of God they hadn’t.

Audrey would live, but she would have an ugly scar from the three-inch gash on her forehead. She was trembling when she was put into the ambulance. It took about twenty minutes for Doug to get there. He looked at me with a vicious scowl. “What are you doing here?”

“Selling Mary Kay so I can get a pink Caddy?”

“A smart mouth will get you in bad,” he snapped.

My grandmother used to say that.

“Georgia, how’d you find out about Little Cap’s mother?”

“I’ve got sources,” I lied. I started to say I’m nosy and I’ve got eyes but too much smart mouth really will get you in bad-and I was in enough bad already.

“Don’t play me, Georgia. Don’t ever fuckin’ play me.”

“You owed me, Doug,” I said, and didn’t even blink.

After about five seconds of our stare-down, he relented. “Are you okay?” Doug held his belligerent tone like Patti LaBelle holds that last note on “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

“Yeah, just tired and shaken up. I gave the other detectives my statement. Things are getting hot, huh?”

“For real.”

“Doug, you guys have got to find Butter. Things are getting too hot-they might just decide to …”

Doug nodded because he understood far too well.

I used my cell phone to call the station. I had them rush a crew out to shoot the scene. This would be the top to my story tonight at six when I updated Butter’s case. I would talk to Butter’s family, too, and likely be live from their house. I had the lead story.

Or so I thought.

I
got big-footed—the ultimate insult to a TV news reporter.

After my crew got finished shooting video of the scene and a quick interview, I trailed them back to the station. It was now about 1:00 in the afternoon.

I didn’t feel like getting hit flush in the face with some mess so I decided to call one of my girls at the station to see what the buzz was. I knew people were talking about me: one for iging the page this morning and two for being at the house when it was firebombed.

Journalists are natural humbuggers. It’s the curiosity in them. It’s the energy and creativity in them. It’s the daily burden of always having to be factual and prompt within seconds for their jobs. Something will happen in a newsroom, something big or small, the taste of it will get in folks’ mouths, and, like a bad cold, it spreads from one person to another, almost invisibly, with speed and power and no common cure.

I knew they were dogging me today with all that was going on with this story so I called my friend Clarice, who is a researcher on the assignment desk and always has the scoop. I called her direct line and listened to her cigarette-roughened voice: “Channel 8, we get you the news first!”

“It’s me, girl.”

“Georgia,” she whispered. “Are you okay? I heard about what happened! I was worried to death!”

“It was crazy but I’m fine. I’m on the way in now. Listen, what’s going on there at the station?”

“No,” Clarice said, cutting me off. “I haven’t heard about that organization.”

Somebody must be standing around her desk and she couldn’t talk. So I did the talking. “Clarice, I got some negative pub in the
Defender
today, plus I blew off a page this morning. I need to know if the do-do is hitting the wind machine or not.”

“Well, what I can do is this,” she said in her same even-toned voice. “In a few minutes, I’ll go back and check my mailbox for your organization’s press kit, then I can talk to you at length about whether or not it would be a story our station might cover, how’s that?”

That was a little sister secret code we had. That meant that Clarice was going to go float around the newsroom and hear what people were saying about what had happened this morning when I didn’t call in. Then Clarice would meet me in the back office where the staff mailboxes and schedules were posted. It was out of the way and had very little traffic.

I entered the building from the rear. I was waiting at our designated meeting spot for less than five minutes when Clarice walked up and said, “Hey, Georgia.”

Clarice’s physical appearance is juxtaposed with her personality. Her gritty voice and outgoing personality do not match her dainty body. Clarice is a petite person: little hands, little feet, size 6 dress, about five-two, and delicate features. She likes to sit at her desk, legs crossed, leaning forward with her elbows on the desk, poring over some AP wire copy with a cigarette smoldering nearby in some wacky, freebie ashtray that came in the mail. Clarice was working a cigarette butt now.

She said, “Made the paper, huh?”

“I know! I couldn’t believe they dogged me like that.”

“I think that sometimes print journalists like to take a swipe at broadcast journalists because we pimp so many of their stories. You know how sometimes we let them break the story and then we hop on it later and don’t always give them credit. This is just a little payback. I don’t think it’s personal.”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” I said. “It still stings though. But listen, tell me, what’d you hear?”

“Some people talking around the assignment desk were saying that you got beat on the story yesterday—”

“Beat! I did
not
get beat!”

“Ssssh!” Clarice said, taking a long pull off her cigarette before dropping it on the tile floor and putting it out with a twist of the toe. “Do you want someone walking by to hear?”

I lowered my voice but not my rage. “Clarice, I knew that the Rockies had Butter!”

“Well, why didn’t you put that in your story?”

“Because Doug asked me not to. He asked the whole family to keep a lid on it because he thought leaking information would make it harder to find Butter! But Reverend Walker didn’t cooperate.”

“Who is Doug?”

“Doug Eckart. He’s the detective working the drive-by and he’s also trying to help find Butter.”

“Wait a minute! I was helping do some research for a piece about two months ago and I had to go out and interview a cop. He turned out to be a fine brother. He was tall, reddish brown, long lashes, fine eyebrows, and … and—”

“That was Doug!”

“Yeah, and as I recall he’s single—I didn’t see a ring or anything, never mentioned a wife. So after this is over, are y’all going to get a little
thang
going?”

“Don’t start.”

“C’mon, tell me!”

“Clarice, I’m trying not to put my business in the street.”

She grinned. “Well, just think of me as a dead end, it’s not going anywhere. C’mon, I’m your girl, remember?”

“Yeah.” I smiled. “You are. And yeah I like him. There’s just something about him. He’s good-looking, he seems real dedicated, we’ve been flirting, but so far on the romantic tip there’s nothing for certain …”

“Yet.” Clarice winked at me. “A brother that fine, you’ve got to be trying to hook up with him, huh?”

“Well, I’m still trying to get over Max, I don’t need any drama!”

“Doug could be the break you need! It’s not like good-looking, working brothers pop up in a sister’s life every day now. I think you should—”

“Clarice, get off that and get down to the gristle. What did they say about me not coming in when I was paged?”

“Well, they started dogging you out, saying that you didn’t answer the page because you were embarrassed about getting beat on the story and getting dissed in the paper.”

“Who said that?”

“This one and that one. Now what I’m going to tell you next is really going to make you angry. Don’t go off, okay?”

“Do I ever go off?”

“Off the deepest of ends and with more regularity than Correctol!”

“Shut up! But … I promise.”

“Okay. They’ve big-footed you.”

I got big-footed. Big-footed meant that they kicked one reporter off something important and put the person considered the bigger star on the story. “With whom?”