“HELLS no!” Murphy yelled through the bedroom door from the unfolded futon, his foster siblings ringing him like a tribal
council. “I’m watching Michael Jackson!” MTV was playing the top 100 music videos of all time, he screamed, and there was Dick Clark and the Three Stooges marathon too. Besides, what use was his runty ass in fending off crack-crazed looters?
Marvin chuckled. “Murph—think of it as an adventure. You like cop movies, right? The cop TV shows?”
That was well documented. Murphy watched every police reality show on television, had memorized all five
Dirty Harry
films, the four
Lethal Weapons
, the three
Beverly Hills Cops
,
Robo-Cop
,
Bullitt
, even the
Police Academy
series, often quoting entire multipart scenes verbatim at the dinner table—though the boy’s underlying motives for watching police-oriented programming (to study their methods, learn their tricks, and one day beat them at their own game) weren’t even evident to Murphy himself.
“You gonna let us put up a tree house?” Murphy asked, winking to the other boys huddled round.
“We can talk about that later.”
“How about some candy? For dessert? For everyone?”
Marvin huffed at this, the nagging that never ended, how somebody had wanted something from him every two minutes for the past ten years. “Not now!” he shouted.
“I wanna see Michael Jackson!” Murphy threw back. He kept
Thriller
on his Discman at all hours, bonded to the star by irregular childhoods and insecurity about their appearance. The all-time music video countdown was a critical bellwether for the new century, he informed Marvin; if the King of Pop didn’t win, the conspiracy was on, no one could be trusted, and he’d be forced to take it out on the furniture.
“We’ll tape it. C’mon, this’ll be fun. I’ll give you your own walkie-talkie, and a billy club if you’re good.”
“Michael Jackson!”
After a few minutes of repeating the arguments to each other, Marvin Ahn shouldered open the door and hauled Murphy down to the car. They drove three blocks to the store, where Murphy
soon lost walkie-talkie and billy club privileges for screaming the lyrics to “Beat It” while parading up and down the parking lot like a mad ghost, his ultrashort haircut appearing unsettlingly close to premature baldness in the mystical, century-changing gloom, his off-key falsetto haunting shoppers and employees alike. The platoon of shop owners yelled at him to pipe down, stuff his ugly-ass piehole, go back to the carnie camp he came from, but Marvin stepped in and sensibly explained:
“Think of it this way, gentlemen—he’s a walking alarm. Nobody’s going to mess with our stores with him out there rousing the dead.”
The boy’s head popped in the doorway, shouted out the opening lines to “Billie Jean,” and vanished.
“Bullshit excuse,” replied Tasos Mitrakos, who was Greek, rude, and an excellent barber when sober. “You couldn’t control him even if you knew how.”
“Patience,” Marvin insisted, but a fuse activated in his liver and he begrudgingly recognized that Tasos was right.
Midnight slipped away without mayhem or looting bandits, all glass plating intact and free from graffiti, electricity still functioning, siren free. Murphy sang “Thriller” twenty-one times from when they started keeping track at 10:30, giving comic-store owner Ben Marg the betting pool win. Graciously he plowed his winnings right back into their New Year’s celebration, sparkling cider and packaged cakes from Marvin’s store, pickles and sandwiches from the deli, tambourines from the Music Emporium, toothbrushes from the commuter dental office. After sitting on the curb for a while and listening to the festivities, even Murphy came in for a Dr. Pepper, whereupon he stumbled on pile of hangers from the dry cleaners which he used to sculpt wire figurines of cops and robbers and guns of all sizes.
The car worked on the first try, the ride home was uneventful, and the immediate perusal of the videotaped countdown confirmed that “Thriller” had been selected as the number-one music video of all time. June Ahn, who’d moved most of her
vintage tables into storage but ran out of time for her Pembroke set, shook like a set of maracas when the announcement came on.
The next morning at 7 AM, Marvin Ahn drove to the store and parked in a field of shredded candy wrappers. Black spray paint scarred the sign for Ahn Minimarket: a loopy FUCK, a meandering YOU, a bulging AHN. The window frames were ruptured and glass shards mined the floor. A flock of pigeons clumped in the doorway, pecking on burst packages of chips. Kalamakis’ barber pole stuck out of a soda cooler. Lumps of gum were nailed to the ceiling and the candy aisle was empty. Marvin Ahn tiptoed into the punctured storefront and past ransacked shelves, leaking refrigerators, a smashed hot-dog-warming machine. The cash register was gone and the safe sprung, the only clean spots in the place. Along the inside walls, more graffiti spooled from the floor to just about the height where an eight-year-old boy could reach.
LIVE! LIVE! LIVE! LIVE! LIVE! LIVE! LIVE! LIVE!
The effect upon Marvin Ahn was oddly uplifting. A believer in the power of positive thinking, he found himself nodding to the affirmative message for a few seconds until he went behind the counter and saw the framed photographs of his parents back in Korea rubbed out with spray paint. He called the cops—“How did you guys miss this mess? You blind or something?”—and briefly wondered if the “Live” message could implicate some kind of left-wing health food movement, his fat- and cholesterol-heavy snacks scapegoats for the entire fast-food industry.
Investigator Rodriguez and Officer Bindle came by the house in the afternoon. June made coffee and warmed up some muffins.
“We think it’s an inside job.” Rodriguez peeled off a muffin top and nibbled the perimeter. “That safe was opened—nothing broken at all. All the pins are intact, meaning somebody knew the combination. They also knew how to disarm the security system, climb up to the surveillance cameras, and spray-paint them
without getting caught on tape. But getting into the safe so easy—that’s the clincher.”
“All the employees got alibis,” Bindle said. He was shaped like a surfboard, lean and tall with coarse features that suggested regular childhood beatings. “No witnesses neither.”
Marvin silently thanked his insurance broker for convincing him to up the coverage the previous fall. “No leads at all?”
“One thing. We figure you’re coming out pretty good on insurance. And not much in the way of alibi for the middle of the night.”
“Please,” Marvin whined. “Tell me you’re not doing this.”
“Let’s have a talk at the station.”
“Can it wait? The repairmen are coming in half an hour and—”
He felt Bindle behind him, six foot eight, 240, clipped mustache and pebble eyes, no capacity for sarcasm. A regular at the Ahn Minimart, his proclivity for Hostess products had earned him the nickname “Cop Cakes” among the night-shift guys. “Let’s go.”
At the station Marvin talked fast and passionately, detailing his commitment to rapid-sale merchandising, the recent renovations at the shop, his charitable donations, his work as a foster parent. Rodriguez bought it hard, and even Bindle started coming around when Marvin mentioned the ruined photographs of his recently deceased parents. The report from the county treasurer’s office came in as they were standing up to leave.
“Everything kosher?” Marvin asked, anxious to check on his repairmen before they ate his remaining inventory.
“Could be,” Rodriguez says. “Your tax records got flagged.”
“What?”
“Nineteen ninety-eight payroll. Know a Su-Jung Kim?”
“Yeah, she works for me.”
“You didn’t pay her payroll taxes. Same for Diane Wing, Jao Park, five or six others.”
“Let me see that.” Rodriguez slid over the papers, the names and numbers circled in red. “I’ll have to check with my accountant.”
“Not a big deal,” Rodriguez said. “You’re free to go.”
A month later, 80 percent of the store’s staff was laid off to free up cash for back taxes and penalties. Marvin and June retained only a heavyset brother-sister duo from Kensington who accepted minimum wage, a pair so emboldened by their scarcity that they treated the minimarket as their personal buffet, snarfing chips and hot dogs and ice-cream treats whenever they liked, often clocking out with a bag of free victuals to last them until next shift. Hiring trustworthy employees wasn’t easy in the minimarket cash game, where profit margins closely tracked the amount of time owners were on the premises; without loyalists manning the registers, Marvin and June spent nearly all their conscious hours sleepwalking around the shop.
No one objected when Murphy loaded up on candy and set to work on the tree house the boys had always wanted in the towering oak out back, lugging home overstock from the lumberyard and reusing nails from neighbors’ fences while Michael Jackson moonwalked in his Discman. He was handy and patient when it came to making things, able to wait for weeks as projects formed from pieces. At night he snacked on a feedbag of mini chocolate bars and watched
COPS
and
LAPD: Life on the Beat
, documentaries on famous criminals, heist flicks, drug-bust exposés, police procedurals. Within weeks an extensive library of law-enforcement-oriented media accumulated in Murphy’s bedroom, their retail value far exceeding his allowance.
After making a series of court appearances, negotiating a repayment plan, and settling a good chunk of their debt, the Ahns hired back two cashiers and took a day off to decompress. On their first day home, they didn’t find Murphy’s videos, stowed beneath a pile of shoes in his closet, but the big-screen television in the boys’ bedroom was hard to miss. “Wow,” said June, her matchstick hips curving onto Murphy’s futon, which had been
widened and repositioned alone beside the window, made up in satin police-blue sheets and four fluffy pillows and a much thicker mattress than June remembered. “Nice TV.”
“Yeah,” Murphy said, slumped on his bed and sipping Pellegrino through a curly straw. Two of the younger boys watched carefully from the top bunks, suited up in tight haircuts and authentic Redskins jerseys like real, if miniature, gangsters.
“Thirty-two inches?”
“Forty-two.”
“Hmm.” She nodded. “Pretty big.”
“Bigger than the one downstairs.”
“You know, I think you’re right.”
They watched a minute of music video, Michael Jackson yelling and playing racquetball on a spaceship. “Did you win a sweepstakes?”
“Nope.”
“Murphy.” Her pigeon hand locked onto his shoulder. “Where did you get this?”
“My real family sent me some money, and I bought a TV with it. OK?”
In the distance a cellphone rang, a MIDI version of a semi-popular R&B song. “I’ve been a foster parent for fourteen years,” June began, “so don’t think you can—”
Murphy pulled a black plastic log from his pocket. “Yeah? Cool. Be right down.” The phone beeped off. “Gotta go.”
“Hold on. We need to talk about where you got this television. And the cellphone.”
“Circuit City. But I gotta go, my uncle’s outside.”
“Your uncle.”
“My real uncle. He called a couple weeks ago, while you guys were working.”
“I see. I need to meet this uncle.”
“Fine.”
One of the boys helped Murphy into a puffy Knicks jacket June had never seen before while the other held open the door.
Out in the driveway, a scuffed-up ’82 Chevy Caprice grumbled and popped. A scrappy rat-tailed alcoholic-type leaned out the window, his smile a slice of rotten melon, his eyes bulbous and untrustworthy, his skin the color of Gouda cheese, wearing a denim tuxedo with cigarette packs loaded in every visible pocket. He laboriously pushed open the door, releasing the stench of water rot.
“Hey there, Murph!” The man got out, shut an eye, and shot a finger gun at Murphy. “Ma’am,” he nodded.
“Who are you?” June asked.
The man chewed his cheek and spat brown saliva onto the road. “Name’s Russell Taylor.”
“My uncle,” Murphy announced.
“Nice to see you,” June said, wondering how Murphy’d put the poor schmuck up to it. “You’re about a decade late.”
“Huh,” Russ Taylor said, not a fan of her tone. He was about to reach back to his junior boxing days to educate her about proper manners, when the kid got his attention with furious arm-waving and he decided the heck with it, mulligan. “My sister was Marisa Taylor, Murphy’s mom. I was in jail when Murph popped out, couldn’t take him in. Tell you the truth, finances what they are, can’t do it now neither. But I did give him some money the other day, help out a little.”
“Really.”
“We’re going to catch a flick and a milkshake. Care to join?”
“Uncle Russ!” Murphy kicked a stick and cracked it with his heel.
June laughed. “I need to see some identification.”
“You bet. Wouldn’t want you to think I’m part of some kiddie sex ring or nothin.” He took a plastic wallet from his jeans jacket and pulled out a Maryland driver’s license, peeling at the corners. Russell Taylor, Rockville, Maryland.
“I’m going to copy down your license number and address,” June said, “and run it with the police. That OK?”
Russell Taylor grabbed at his ID and missed badly, falling back on his heels with an arrhythmic bob. “Hang on a second,” he spluttered, “I ain’t done nothing wrong.”
“If you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.”
“Chill, Uncle Russ,” Murphy said. He’d circled behind the stranger, June realized, and was holding him by his belt.
“Shoot, taking my nephew out for a flick’s tougher than busting out of prison. Not that I know anything ’bout that.” Russ chuckled and spat on the sidewalk, then came inside for a diet soda while June went to the den and called the station. Ex-con was right, battery and domestic abuse, but he’d been out and clean for five years. Looked like Murphy too, the same dermatology problems, chronic impetigo and acne. Unbelievable, but the story held up. She reminded Murphy to take his skin medication, nothing rated R, home by seven. They piled in, the Chevy chucked alive, and Russ Taylor rounded the corner in the direction of the Cineplex.