Samaritan (37 page)

On the other hand, Ray thought, despite the scars and traumas of her younger life, despite her current catalogue of ailments both physical and mental, Carla, much like White Tom and most likely his ex-dope-fiend wife, Arletta, had somehow emerged in middle age in possession of a certain battered presence; had emerged as a rock for others, a bulwark against her family’s disintegration—picking up the ones that fall off the back of the truck, Danielle had said—had emerged as so much more than a mere survivor.

Yet despite their hard-fought victories, Ray often sensed an air of fragility around people like these, a distinct possibility that they could just as easily come apart again as not. Recalling White Tom’s advice to never take his eye off the Darkness, he imagined that their only defense against this coming to pass was an acute awareness of their condition; Carla, Arletta, White Tom and all the others like them endlessly needing to itemize for themselves what and who would be lost if they ever gave in.

Watching Carla make her way through the projects, Ray initially had no intention of talking to her—she’d most likely freak, about the loan, her daughter, his assault—but finally, he just couldn’t help himself and called out her name.

Either she didn’t hear him or she recognized his voice and just kept walking. Ray watched her head down the hill, waiting for her to disappear into his old building before taking the same path to get to his car.

Once he was on the move again, he saw a tall elderly white woman coming up the hill toward him with a small bag of groceries, both of them slowing down as they closed the gap, hesitatingly checking each other out.

She was Dolores Rosen, chalk white and papery now, the mother of one of his childhood friends, another of the stranded ones; everybody coming out of the woodwork today. But not wanting to stop and talk, not wanting to be the kid again, Ray simply walked on without acknowledging her, but catching out of the corner of his eye, as he did, her tentatively outstretched hand.

Chapter 30

Interview—February 27

Pulling into the narrow driveway of the brick two-family house on Taylor Street, Nerese looked up and saw Freddy and Danielle waiting for her on the small porch outside their second-story apartment, the light streaming out of the living room window directly behind them casting their joined silhouettes monstrously large against the facades of the identically constructed brick two-families across the street.

As she trudged up the short flight of cement stairs they watched her, silently tracking her progress like cats.

“Whoo,” she huffed, hand to chest, putting it on a little. “So . . .”

“Here’s the deal,” Freddy said, looking away from her. “You want to talk with him, fine. But we’re both in there with you.”

“No.” Nerese shrugged. “Here’s what my boss’ll go for. Me and the boy alone. His mother could be in the next room listening in, but she’s got to be out of his sight. And frankly, I would prefer for you to not even be in the house, OK?”

“Right.” Freddy snorted. “Who do you think you’re talking to with that ‘And frankly’ crap. Forget it. I’m there.”

“Well, if you insist on being around then you have to be outside the room with your wife. Anything you hear me say rubs you the wrong way? You’re free to come in and stop me. But, and here I’m using that ‘And frankly’ crap again, frankly, unless you have something to hide, I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

Danielle nodded in agreement but Freddy shook his head in emphatic rejection.

“I’m in the room.”

Nerese took five, studying the solid street of blue-collar houses, an unidentifiable waft of third-world dinner floating past her from up the block.

“Look.” She slowly turned her eyes to him. “I need to clear you. You need to get cleared. Do you honestly think anything out of that boy’s mouth is going to be worth a damn to me with you sitting right next to him?”

Freddy and Danielle’s apartment was overstuffed, spotless and far too bright; two chandeliers in sight of each other going full blast; one suspended above a seven-piece living room ensemble, the other hanging over a dining table in the adjoining alcove, this L-shaped common room almost chased free of shadows.

Nelson sat dwarfed in the middle of a high-backed royal blue couch, beneath a painting of the Last Supper which was illuminated by two small bulbs, an electrical cord nakedly kinking down from the bottom of the picture frame until it disappeared behind the boy’s head.

He seemed slack with dread, sitting there slouched down and gape-mouthed, staring at Nerese with bottomed-out eyes, his hands lying lifelessly, palms up, on either side of him.

Although they could both hear his parents shuffling restlessly in the kitchen beyond the dining nook, the boy seemed completely focused on Nerese, who sat facing him, perched on the edge of a coffee table, their knees almost touching.

“That’s healing up nice,” Nerese said, tapping her lower lip.

Nelson stared at her as if she hadn’t spoken yet.

“I doubt you’re even going to have a scar.”

Again the nonreaction, the kid most likely bracing for the bad stuff, deaf to any small talk. Nonetheless Nerese kept it up, needing something, a smile, a blink, some tip-off as to how Nelson was put together.

“You a Steelers fan?” She nodded at his oversize black-and-yellow jersey.

“What?”

“Pittsburgh.”

Nelson looked down at himself as if someone else had dressed him this morning.

“Nelson, my name’s Nerese. Do you remember me? I was here two nights ago, we talked a little at the door?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” She smiled. “You know why I’m here?”

“Yes.” Once again that clipped wariness, Nerese thinking, This kid has been prepped, has been warned, and is now terrified of fucking up.

She turned to look behind her, see if Freddy or Danielle had popped into his sight line, then angled herself on the coffee table so that she could keep an eye on the wall between the kitchen and dining alcove.

“I’m trying to find out what happened to Mr. Mitchell a few weeks back. Or Ray. What did you call him?”

He shrugged, said something that didn’t quite make it past his lips.

“I didn’t hear you, sweetie.” Leaning in.

“I didn’t call him anything,” he said.

“But you heard about what happened to him, right? Somebody came into his house, hurt him bad enough to put him in the hospital. You know that, right?”

“Yes.” His eyes briefly moved past her to the wall shielding his parents.

“Anyways”—Nerese touched his knee to get him back—“I have a hunch, Nelson, that you can help me find out who did this to the guy just by answering a few simple questions. Are you up for that?”

“OK.” His mouth remained open after the response.

“And by the way,” touching him again. “He’s fine, Mr. Mitchell. Pretty much fully recovered, just doing his thing, so right now it’s mainly just me being curious as to what happened, OK?”

“OK.”

“All right then. Now. Before we start? I have to lay down some ground rules. Well, really just one. And that is, whatever I ask you? It’s very important that you tell me the truth.
But,
telling me the truth means, other than saying what you know? It also means that if I ask you something and you
don’t
know the answer? Then you say to me, ‘I don’t know,’ or ‘I don’t remember.’ The
worst
thing you can do is to make something up because it’s what you
think
I want to hear, OK? Even if you’re doing it because you’re a great kid and you’re trying to help me, that one little lie will make everything else you say sound like a lie and next thing you know I can’t find my behind with two hands and a road map, OK?”

Freddy could be heard now, an indistinct complaint, rising and falling from the kitchen.

Nerese bowed her head until she could master herself.

“And here’s something else you should keep in mind, Nelson. Whatever you tell me, as long as it’s truthful? It can’t hurt anyone.” Nerese straight-out lied. “Because we can always fight the truth with the truth . . . ,” shifting now into double-talk, “but we can’t fight the truth with a lie.”

The kid was all eyes, waiting.

“OK. Now. Your mom told me you came home from school sick one day about two, two and a half weeks ago. You remember that day?”

“Yes.”

“When was that. Do you remember what day of the week? Maybe something special happened that day in school, maybe something you remember watching on TV that night. I mean obviously it wasn’t on a Saturday or a Sunday but . . .”

“I don’t remember,” Nelson said. “I’m sorry.”

“No problem, no problem.” Nerese waved it away. “I probably couldn’t’ve remembered either. But you
do
remember coming home sick one day back about then.”

“Yes.”

“What was wrong with you?”

“I was sick.”

Again Freddy’s muttered risings and fallings.

“What kind of sick.”

“What?”

“Headache, nauseous, flu . . .”

Nelson just sat there open-mouthed for a moment, then said, “Headache,” as if picking the word from a hat.

This stunk.

“Did you tell your teacher?”

“No.”

“Did you leave school early?”

Nelson shook his head no.

“When you left school that day, where’d you go?”

He stared at her.

“Did you go home?”

“Yes.”

“Just like any other day.”

“Yes.”

“So what time would that have been?”

“Four?”

“Four. OK. Four. Was anybody home when you got here?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I just went to bed.”

“You just went to bed. You didn’t look for your mom or dad to tell them how you felt?”

“My mom was in school. She goes to school until night.”

“OK. That’s an answer. How about your dad? Was your dad home?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t remember.”

I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t remember—all better than Yes, he was home, which would at least give Nerese something to pick at, chip away at; and better than No, No being the magic word, No being catching Freddy in a lie. Any lie would do.

“So you don’t know if your father was home.”

“I guess so.”

“You guess so. You guess so, Yes? Or you guess so, No?”

“I just went to my room.”

Nerese must have been coming off angrier than she thought, because the boy then blurted almost pleadingly, “You said if I don’t remember I should say I don’t remember.”

“He’s doing what you asked,” Freddy snapped, unable to resist, addressing her from his absurd hiding place behind the kitchen wall.

At the sound of his father’s disembodied voice, Nelson flinched as if bitten. “I think I came home at five.” Granting his dad an extra hour to come and go unobserved.

“At five,” Nerese said heavily. “Not at four.”

“Yeah. Yes.”

“I thought you were sick.”

“I
was.
”

“And you didn’t come right home?”

“I tried to but I missed my bus.” The kid was begging now, reverse-blooming into a little old man before her eyes.

“Nelson, listen to me,” Nerese said, struggling to keep the rage behind her teeth. “What I want to do . . . What . . . Nelson, I really want to get out of here. What I want more than anything in the world right now, is to get up, shake your hand and walk out that door, see you later, alligator.”

Nerese let that hang for a bit, the boy downcast and wretched, his eyebrows arching with grief.

“But in order for me to do that, I need your help. I need for you to tell me who was or wasn’t here when you came home from school on February seventh, that’s a Tuesday two weeks and five days ago, the day that you got sick. I need to know what
time
you got home, who was in the house when you walked in, who wasn’t, what time whoever wasn’t here finally came in the door, if anybody
left
this house once you came home or did everyone stay put for the evening. I really need for you to think back and try your hardest to recall these things. But that’s
all
I want from you, Nelson. Nothing more than that. Then our business is done, OK?”

“OK.” Avoiding her eyes, but she wasn’t feeling it yet, this kid being sold on the fact that it was OK to rat out his father, even indirectly; and in a further effort to get him to that place, she became counsel for the defense.

“You know, wait, hang on, before . . . I just, I just want to say to you, about Mr. Mitchell getting assaulted like he did?” She lowered her voice, hunkered forward. “Man, I have been doing this for twenty years and I can pretty much guarantee you that I am most definitely going to find out who did this to him.”

She continued to inch forward, dropped her voice even lower.

“You know why?,” waiting for his eyes. “Because whoever hurt him did it out of anger, and people who do things out of anger make mistakes.

“This wasn’t the act of some criminal mastermind. Whoever did this, they didn’t even take anything, steal anything. This was the act of someone who for a single heartbeat simply let their emotions get the best of them.”

Nerese waited again; the boy was staring at his hands, but he was listening.

“In fact, the way I’m thinking about it? Mr. Mitchell, he must have done something to hurt this person
so
bad, that they just
lashed
out, probably didn’t even know they had something in their hand, didn’t even
mean
to hurt him.”

Nelson slowly lifted his blurry eyes to her; Nerese, feeling him on the verge of buying it, prayed that Freddy couldn’t pick up this change in vibrations. But even if he did, and busted up the interview, the crack in the door would still open a little wider: Nerese then needing to know what he was so afraid of.

“Now, like I said before, emotional people, they’re not thinking with their heads, they’re thinking with their hearts, and when something like this goes down, they make mistakes.

“We’re going to find evidence, we’re going to find witnesses, we’re going to find something or someone that’s going to give this person away . . .

“But I’m going to tell you something else, Nelson . . . Right here and now I’m willing to bet you”—Nerese emptied her pockets, counted bills, poked coins—“twelve dollars and sixty-two cents that when we catch up to this individual and I finally get a chance to sit down and hear their side of the story? I
guarantee
you that they’re gonna say, ‘I never meant to do it, I never meant to hurt him, but that guy, he just made me
so
angry, he just made me
so
mad, he made—’”

“He did,” Nelson said in his swallowed voice, his eyebrows rising but his gaze fixed on his own clasped hands.

“What?”

“He
did.
”

“
Who
did.” Nerese unthinkingly rose to her feet, taking a half-step toward the kitchen, toward Freddy.

“I’m sorry,” Nelson called out tearily to his father who appeared from around the wall as if to meet Nerese head on.

“
Stop,
” Freddy bellowed, pointing a finger at his son. “You don’t say another
word.
”

Nerese and Freddy were face to face in the dining alcove now, her movements mirroring his, blocking his forward progress.

Although she was dying to clock him on the spot, Nerese couldn’t quite get his attention, Freddy speaking over her shoulder to his son as if she were an inanimate barrier.

“Come here,” he barked at the kid, hot-eyed.

“I’m
sorry,
” Nelson said again, weeping openly now.

“You go
near
that kid, God as my witness,” Nerese up on her toes, up in his face, her head twisted to bore into Freddy’s eyes at some crazy jailhouse angle.

“Come here
now.
” Freddy was ignoring Nerese and her homicide eyes, then, shifting gears, took a step back and reached for the wall phone; no doubt about to lawyer up right in front of her. Nerese scrambled for something to say that would convince him to put down that phone.

“He taught me catch,” Nelson wailed from the couch. “He bought me books, he
showed
me stuff, he
told
me stuff and then he didn’t want to see me anymore. What did I
do
?” Nelson began rocking, his eyes blistered with grief.