The Fall (4 page)

Waverly nodded. “Of course. But if you think of anything . . .”

But she was already out of her chair, turning for the door. “Got it,” she said.

•  •  •

W
HILE THE TWO
inspectors were at Anlya’s home, and since she had her own room, as long as Nellie didn’t object, they decided to check it out.

It was not large. The wall across from the door had the room’s only window, covered with white lace. Under that window squatted a three-drawer oak dresser with a runner of more white lace. On the lace, Anlya had framed pictures of a smiling young black man and a snapshot of a slightly older—mid-twenties?—white guy on a beach somewhere with the inscription, “All My Love, G.” Also on the runner were a collection of small colorful beach stones in a jade jar; three votive candles, never lit, on small red plates; and an empty teak box. In lieu of a closet, Anlya had a wardrobe with a mirrored front along the right-hand wall. Her backpack, stuffed with schoolbooks, class binders, tennis shoes, a couple of pairs of plain white underwear, and a light sweater, huddled in the corner.

She
had made her bed, pulling up a pale green comforter with the wrinkles patted out and squared off at the corners. The pillow was fluffed, perfectly centered on the bed, and covered with a lacy white case. Three books sat on a bedside table made out of cinder blocks and driftwood. A poster of Nelson Mandela hung on the wall over the bed’s pillow; on the remaining wall, she had two other posters, Beyoncé and Obama.

Of the books on the bedside table, two were paperbacks—one of the
Twilight
books and Maya Angelou’s
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
—and the other, at the bottom of the stack, was a leather-bound hardback. This turned out to be a diary and, from the looks of it, one that she’d written in nearly every day.

May 6, 2014

I decided that if I wanted him to really know me, and really love me for who I am, I had to tell G. all about what really happened with L., how far it went.
G. needs to know that I’m damaged goods, not so that he can forgive me, since it really wasn’t my fault and there’s nothing to forgive, but just so he isn’t under any illusions, thinking I’m all young and don’t know what it’s really all about. I mean, the whole thing of having to be eighteen to be legal shouldn’t really apply to me since everything that could happen already has happened, and when I was fourteen and fifteen.

I’m just still so surprised and happy that I have these feelings of wanting to get together with G., that I’m not just sickened and turned off forever by the idea of sex because of how it was when L. was hounding me. I feel like I’ve come out the other side of this nightmare, that some kind of real life is going to be possible, that some righteous man might find me attractive and worthwhile.

I’m going to tell him tomorrow. How I really feel. Not have him need to guess about it anymore. We have a real date and we’ll be alone and I know it won’t scare him off. If he needs to wait until I’m eighteen, okay, we’ll wait, but at least he’ll know for sure where I stand and we can take things from there.

Maybe
we can even start living together when my time runs out here.

Hopes and more hopes.

•  •  •

“I
’LL TELL YOU
what,” Waverly said as they got into their car after they’d finished their search, “I’d like to have a talk with this guy L., not to mention G.”

A
BE
G
LITSKY WAS
a lifelong policeman, and even in plainclothes, all six feet two inches of him looked it. He weighed two hundred and twenty pounds and came across as rock-solid, no-nonsense, more than a bit sardonic. He’d been everything from patrolman to Homicide lieutenant to deputy chief of inspectors, and for the past few months—after a squabble with Vi Lapeer, the chief of police, had led to his resignation—he’d been nominally under Wes Farrell’s command as an inspector with the DA’s Investigative Division. Abe’s father was Jewish, his mother had been African-American, and he split the difference about equally between them, with milk chocolate skin, kinky hair, blue eyes, and a prominent nose. Easily trumping all of his other distinguishing characteristics was the slash of white scar that ran top to bottom through his lips, which he let people believe was the result of a knife fight sometime in his misbegotten youth, although its true source had been a grade school playground accident on the climbing bars.

Glitsky’s wife was Wes Farrell’s administrative assistant, Treya. At the close of business, Wes came out of his door to find Abe sitting on the edge of Treya’s desk.

“You busy?” Wes asked.

“Just putting some moves on this babe here.”

Wes said to Treya, “If he’s harassing you, I can have him arrested.”

“He hasn’t crossed the line yet. I’ll let you know.”

“Can I borrow him for five?”

“Ten if you want.”

“Hey!” Glitsky said. “Do I get a vote here?”

Farrell held open his office door. “I doubt it,” he said. “Inside. Please.”

•  •  •

I
N THE INNER
sanctum, the door closed behind them, Glitsky picked up a handy football and tossed it absently hand to hand. “What up?” he asked.

Farrell got right to it. “You’ve heard about the young black woman who got killed last night at the Stockton tunnel?”

“Sure. Thrown off, I understand.”

“Right.” Wes ran down the details and concluded with a little riff on the quality of Juhle’s staff, particularly Waverly and Yamashiro, and his confidence in them. By the time he finished, Abe had stopped tossing the football and lowered himself onto the arm of one of the love seats. “It sounds to me as if they’ve got everything under control.”

“I’m sure they do.”

“Okay?”

With an embarrassed smile, Farrell said, “I haven’t run this by Juhle yet, but if he’s good with the idea, what if I asked you to assist in this investigation?”

Abe frowned. “You want to tell me why? I mean, it’s not like I don’t have my own cases. Besides, I used to be the boss of these guys, even Devin. It might be a little awkward. Why would they need a DA investigator? And why, specifically, me?”

“I’ll bet you can guess.”

“The obvious strikes me as pretty offensive.”

“That’s a good call. But sometimes ugly has a place.”

“And this is one of those times?”

“As a way to deflate Liam Goodman and his ilk? Yes.”

Glitsky made a face. “Really? And me because I’m half black?”

“Not just that.”

“No? What’s the other part, then?”

“You’re a good cop. Everybody respects you.”

“Nice try, Wes, but not true. Vi Lapeer, our very own chief of police, hates me and thinks I’m a menace.”

“Okay. Not her. But everybody else. If you join the team, this office is actively aiding Juhle and the PD. So they won’t be able to pick us apart as two separate entities.”

“Which we are.”

“Yes, but evidently, we—and by ‘we,’ I mean all of law enforcement in the city—don’t care about justice for crimes perpetrated against black
people. We don’t put enough priority on finding and convicting the people who committed them. Finding is the cops. Convicting is us. Not really related, except in the public consciousness somehow, and putting you on the team addresses that issue. In fact, takes the teeth right out of it. We’re all in it together, trying to get and convict the bad guys.”

“The idea that we don’t care about crimes against black people? That’s nonsense.”

“I know it is. But it doesn’t stop people from believing it.”

“People believe in Santa Claus, too.”

“True,” Wes said, “but not as many.”

M
AX’S AUNTIE
J
UNEY
was, in his opinion, the world’s best person. She was a couple of years older than her messed-up sister, Sharla—Max and Anlya’s mother. He’d been living with her in her tiny walk-up on Broderick ever since CPS had taken him and his sister from their mother and her boyfriend, who themselves had been embroiled in mind-altering substances and domestic violence as a way of life.

Max had some vestigial good feelings for his mother, but no recollection at all of his birth father, Daniel, and no
good
memories of his common-law stepfather, Leon, who was psychologically unbalanced, a crackhead, an alcoholic bully, and not least by a long shot, a child molester who had several times forced himself sexually on Anlya, threatening to kill her if she told, right under Sharla’s nose.

Just over three years ago, Leon and Sharla had broken up, and shortly after that Leon had been arrested for the murder of one of his homies in a bar fight; he had been found mentally incompetent to stand trial. Since then he’d been institutionalized in the state’s care at the Napa medical facility, where he would remain until he was found competent to face a trial, which Max thought unlikely because Leon was a complete whack job. Max believed that Leon being in custody made the world a better place. Leon had screwed up not only his and Anlya’s life but his mother’s as well, with drink and drugs. Sharla might never recover. At least Max had given up on believing she would.

But now he was building a good life with Auntie Juney, and in spite of all the awful stuff he’d endured, he considered himself one of the truly blessed. The only thing he sometimes still felt bad about, even a little guilty, was Juney taking him in and not Anlya. He knew that at first, when CPS had come to Juney as next of kin and asked if she would
please consider taking the children for a day or two until they could find a permanent placement, Juney hadn’t wanted to take either of them. He couldn’t really blame her. After all, a single childless high school dropout working the perfume counter at Sears didn’t exactly bring home huge money. Neither did taking on a foster child—$761 a month wasn’t close to what it cost to raise a teenager in San Francisco. Without some serious budgeting, lots of bulk foods, corner-cutting, and plain old doing without, it couldn’t be done.

But Juney had taken them both in that first night. Anlya had been far more traumatized than Max. She’d curled in a blanket and cried quietly, silent and withdrawn. Max, wanting nothing more than to protect the twin sister he so loved—the closest person to him in the world—helped Juney prepare the mac and cheese and Oscar Mayer dogs for dinner, brewed tea for Anlya to sip, got her settled on the couch, and took the floor for himself. Before going to sleep, he had sat up talking to Juney for hours, adult to adult—though he’d been only sixteen and she thirty-seven or so—about what they were all going to do, how they would survive.

He hadn’t been kissing up to her, trying to get the one possible spot at Juney’s one-bedroom apartment—if there was one—for himself. It had never entered his mind that the system would separate twins.

And then on day three, the social workers had located an open room at the McAllister Street home, an all-girls’ place not a half mile away. Anlya could move in there and be safe, surrounded by other girls and young women. Though it broke his heart while they were moving her, Max had been able to put a brave face on it, ignore his emotions, pretend that what was best for Anlya would be best for everyone, even if it meant the two of them splitting up.

They’d find a place nearby for him soon. Anlya should go to the new home while it had a room for her.

Back at Juney’s apartment, after Anlya was gone, his auntie had come up behind him as he, tough and silent, had stared out the window, arms crossed, at the street down below. She’d put her arms around him and rocked him and told him it was okay, and he’d stood there leaning back against her, already about her size, and let the tears silently roll down his cheeks.

The next day, she called CPS and told them she’d keep him.

Now, a year and a half later, Thursday afternoon, he sat on their front stoop, waiting for his ride downtown.

He had beaten the odds already by getting this far. Who was to say his run of good luck might not continue? Especially now that he had a plan and a smart, dedicated friend to help him execute it. A bit of unbelievable, extraordinary luck.

It was weird, he thought as he waited for Greg Treadway—counting on him, believing in him, considering him a friend. It made no logical sense. Greg was ten years older and as white as Walt Disney. He had degrees from Berkeley and Stanford and now a job with Teach for America at Everett Middle School in the Mission District.

For the past fifteen months, he’d been Max’s court-appointed special advocate, or CASA. When they’d first met, Max wasn’t inclined to give Greg the time of day. He didn’t need another social worker in his life, meddling. He and Auntie Juney had worked out their life together with very little help from anybody else. Why did he need a CASA, whatever the hell that was? Besides, these people, they were just doing their job, going through the motions, padding the résumé. It wasn’t like they really cared or got involved emotionally or personally or anything like that.

Max had been spouting off in this vein to Greg when he came by to introduce himself. Why did they need him? Everything was working out all right without him. Max wasn’t about to start believing that people like Greg or any of the CASAs really cared about him—it was just a job to them, and most of the time they mucked things up. How much did they pay Greg, anyhow? Maybe they could just give that money directly to him and Auntie, where it would do some good in the real world.

“Actually,” Greg had said, “it’s a volunteer position. I don’t get anything for it.”

Which turned out to be true.

A CASA was exactly what the name said it was: a person who helped make sure that foster kids got treated fairly in family court. They were the voice of these kids, who typically couldn’t afford and wouldn’t get assigned an attorney, unless they had committed a crime. But if some bureaucrat decided, for example, that Auntie Juney’s wasn’t the right place for Max and he should be in a group home, he could bring his argument to Greg Treadway, who would help him plead his case before the court.