Nelson held up seven fingers, Ray wondering if the kid had a speech defect.
“When I was in seventh grade, a lot of our classes, we were set up in squares of four, you know, four desks in a block, the students all facing each other. They still do that?”
The kid nodded yes.
“Anyways, in seventh-grade math? I was such a pain in the ass, I was so disruptive, the teacher took my desk out of the square and put me alone right under the blackboard, you know, facing the whole class, so she could keep an eye on me, keep me from contaminating anybody with my behavior. Can you believe that?”
“That’s like . . .” Nelson began, then quickly shut himself down, Ray surprised by the thrill he felt just getting the kid to say those two words.
They sat in silence for another moment, Nelson studying his untouched food and Ray wondering why he always resorted to sad-sack stories of his own childhood to get on the inside with kids.
Danielle and Dante returned to the table, Dante flinging himself sullenly in his chair, his downturned lips tight as a drum, a residual sparkle of tears in his lashes.
“I swear,” Danielle said, “I told my sister-in-law when she was pregnant with this one, ‘Do the cops a favor, swallow a pair of handcuffs now.’”
The waiter dropped a check on the table but left before Ray could give it back to him with a credit card.
He pulled the gold AmEx from his wallet and left it face up on the tab.
Nelson glanced at the card, then did a double take, abruptly leaning forward and gaping at it fish-mouthed.
“Ma!” More a gasp than a word.
Snatching the card off the bill tray, he buried his mouth in his mother’s hair, a cupped hand shielding his whispered words from the table.
Danielle nodded, took the card from Nelson and carefully placed it back on top of the check.
“You know what he just said to me?” she asked softly, tapping the oval-framed profile of the AmEx centurion. “He just said, ‘Ma. That’s one of the guys who killed Jesus.’”
Near ten o’clock, he pulled the car in front of Carla’s building, Danielle in the passenger seat, Nelson and Dante in back.
Directly overhead, the PATH train tore apart the night. Ray sat there thick-witted, adolescent, wanting to kiss her at least—but the presence of the kids made it unthinkable.
Even so, there was a swollen moment of inaction, of expectation, of avoiding each other’s eyes . . .
Dante opened his door and hopped out, followed by his cousin, neither one of them saying a word to him or even looking his way.
But Danielle remained in the car, frowning at her nails, working something out. Ray began to lean across the stick shift.
“You don’t want to come upstairs.” It was a statement, not a question, and it checked his timid progress.
“No, I guess not.”
He ducked down and twisted his head up in order to see if Carla was on fifth-floor window patrol up there, but he couldn’t get low enough.
With nothing to lose, he tried to kiss her again, get his nose up in that vanilla-scented hair.
“Wait here.” She opened her door. “I’ll be down in five.”
She disappeared into the building without a backward glance.
Wait here: Ray sitting there now, stupid with shock, trying to do the math; Carla’s daughter, but thirty years old, a mother. Down in five. He tended to get up two, three times a night, walk around, take a leak, write down the odd dream. He couldn’t, just couldn’t fall asleep without reading. Wait here. The car smelled of her, smelled like panic. She had been frowning at her nails, something else was going on with her; something having nothing to do with him. He’d come way too fast; how could he not? It would be over before it started; Ray already working on what to say after, how to make it up to her.
He was halfway across the stick shift again, lost in her scent, when she abruptly opened the passenger door, making him jerk back in surprise.
“Hey,” she said, then exhaled heavily, free of the kids, of Carla too, maybe.
“I like your terrace,” she announced, staring straight ahead.
“Yeah, no,” Ray said. “Me too.”
She had put on fresh lipstick, her mouth glistening with it.
They drove back to Little Venice in taut silence, as if the trunk were packed with nitroglycerin, both of them staring straight ahead, Ray not knowing fuck-all about what was going on in her head, and not intending to ask until it was too late.
The first time all evening Ray became truly aware of Danielle’s blackness, or her nonwhiteness, or her whateverness, was in the long moment before he could find his keys—his old-bat next-door neighbor, Mrs. Kuben, with her usual uncanny timing, opened her own door a crack as if some phantom had rung her bell, then, apparently shocked by the sight of Danielle, she just stood there flatfooted, lost in her own surprise, before finally reclosing her door without even acknowledging Ray’s presence.
There was no dirty look, no blatant hostility or disapproval, just naked disorientation; Danielle saying nothing about it, just pursing her lips and briefly closing her eyes as if exhausted.
Reentering his apartment, Danielle instantly turned it inside out with her child-free presence—her touch, her glance, suffusing everyday objects with both life and menace.
Standing with her back to him in the middle of the living room, she slipped out of her red bolero jacket and, with the languid purposefulness of a toreador, extended her arm to drop it on a chair, Ray understanding right then that whatever was about to go down would be all her play.
“Do you want a drink?” he said, just to say something.
“No thank you.”
She pulled back the sliding glass door and stepped onto the terrace as if stepping into a shower, Ray easing on out after her.
For the second time this evening they stood alongside each other, leaning forward against the guard rail and staring out this time at the Statue of Liberty, glowing frog-belly white and encircled by foam-flecked waves.
Upriver in the opposite direction, the floodlights behind the financial district skyline had been turned off for the night.
It was cold, the city-borne breeze damp and acrid, still dense with dread after all this time, but the swollen silence between them was interesting enough to keep him out here like this until the sun came up.
He inched his arm along the rail until there was contact. She didn’t pull away.
He became aware of a faint tremor in his jaw.
She exhaled heavily through her nose.
“Do you think if we stared hard enough at that statue we could get it to levitate?” He had said it four times to himself before saying it out loud.
“What?” She finally looked at him, a faint smile of incomprehension playing across her face.
“Do you think . . .” he ran out of breath. “I’m no good at this.”
“Good at what . . .” Teasing him.
“The, the international playboy routine.”
“International, huh?” she said, then turned so that her back was to the rail.
She took his left hand and placed it on her belly, which was full and round and solid. She then unsnapped the top button of her jeans for him while slipping her other hand between his legs, seeking the heated outline within the folds and creases of denim.
In a daze of sensation Ray imagined he could feel the tint of her skin through his fingertips. He dropped his hand into her curls and she thrust herself outward to meet his touch; hard bone sheathed in a padding of flesh.
She roughly rubbed the flat of her hand over the thickness between his legs and there they stood, hip to hip, but facing in opposite directions, like tango dancers awaiting the music, working on each other in fiercely minute circles.
The lack of eye contact combined with the furtive urgency of their touches shrank the enormous night into a stolen pocket of dark.
She kept grinding against his fingers, until, faintly growling, she suddenly lurched forward like a drunk, bringing her free hand to his shoulder for balance.
Ray, knees trembling like jackhammers, didn’t know whether to concentrate on her hand or on his own.
Once again, he was afraid to fuck—he’d go off in a heartbeat—and, thinking You first, he dropped to his knees, mouth pressed to her belly, both of his hands now trying to gently ease her tight jeans down below her hips.
At first she was still swoony, not sure where he went, what was going on, but she figured it out fast enough, said, “No,” brought him back to his feet, tugged on his belt as if to cut him in half and, before he could start any negotiations, had him in her mouth, Danielle down there balanced on her haunches, the crook of one arm between his legs as if holding him up, the flat of her hand splayed against the small of his back pushing him forward into her rhythm.
He felt that to touch her hair or her shoulders as she worked on him would be a violation. He let his head drop back and gawked at the stars until the hand on his spine slid back down to between his legs, cupped his balls, one finger grazing behind and he went off; holding onto the terrace rail to take the pressure off his bubbling legs.
Still perched on her haunches, Danielle wiped her mouth with a flick of her thumb and said as if to a third party, “We know he can dish it out, let’s see if he can take it.”
“Me?” Relaxed now, Ray was happy to oblige.
“What?”
“Me?”
“No,” she said.
“Then who . . .”
A half-hour later he drove her home, then came back to the terrace, the over-rich scent of her still hanging in the air, as palpable as breath.
Chapter 13
Nerese—In the Field—February 16
Nerese sat in the outer lobby of the Hopewell Houses management office on the same heavily varnished municipally issued oak bench that she had sat on twenty-nine years ago on the day of her arrest as she waited and waited for her mother to come pick her up. Sat there on that same damn bench and in her discomfort and boredom rediscovered the room, taking in the long familiar, now half-century-old framed architect’s drawing of the about-to-be-built housing project, the hypothetical landscape peopled with white Bob and Betty tenants and never-to-be-planted trees—then studied the wall hangings that spoke of Hopewell in the moment: the Gunbusters Anonymous poster, the No Pit Bulls notification, the buoyant group photo of Hispanic kids clustered around some monkey bars, the legend beneath declaring YO TENGO ASMA PERO ASMA NO ME TIENE A MI; and the stunned-looking teenaged football player—a dead ringer for her son—cradling a baby above the warning: AN EXTRA EIGHT POUNDS CAN KEEP YOU OFF THE TEAM.
A PATH train roared by overhead. Nerese watched it through the heavily paint-glopped iron window grilles. Flushing toilets and running water could be heard from various apartments above the office. She hated this place, always had.
Mr. Rodriguez, the projects’ current manager, came out of his office to meet her; a small stocky man sporting a parted mustache, wire-rimmed glasses, a button-down dress shirt—the outline of his undershirt visible through the fabric—and a tie patterned with the logo of the Dempsy County Housing Authority.
Nerese’s greatest asset as a detective was her ability to make anyone feel like she was so damn glad to finally meet them—victim, perp, witness; it came across in her eyes, her laugh, her body language and especially her smile, but this guy Rodriguez had his own smile—that of a career stonewaller, tight as a crab’s ass. Nerese knew to save her wattage; the only thing she’d be walking away with here today was a tension headache.
“Powell . . .” Rodriguez frowned as he punched the name into his computer, acting as if he’d never heard of these fifty-year Hopewell tenants.
“Anything you could tell me . . .”
“Apartment again?”
“Five C, Six Building,” she said evenly.
The office itself had cinder-block walls painted a glossy sky blue; four desks and a large blackboard that served as a work-order chart. Besides Rodriguez and Nerese the only person present was a heavyset black woman wearing a rust-colored pantsuit and a bright African head wrap, this individual standing over a rear desk and filing time cards. Nerese read her as a tenant exchanging labor for rent credit.
“You know I grew up here,” she said to the manager.
“Oh yeah?” Rodriguez murmured, like he could give a shit. “Powell, Carla,” he announced, studying the screen. “Pays rent on time. No complaints, no . . . What are you looking for?”
The tenant-worker at the corner desk caught Nerese’s eye, shook her head, Nerese not sure how to read the gesture.
“Can you tell me exactly who’s living there?”
“Powell, Carla . . . Powell, Reginald.”
Nerese knew Reginald was the son that had just died.
The other woman rolled her eyes, Nerese reading her now as dying to blab.
“Two minors: Powell, David, and Powell, Dante.”
“She have a daughter living there?”
Rodriguez was a long time studying the screen, said, “Nope . . .” just as the woman behind him nodded yes. Nerese winked at her, then thanked the manager for his time.
Standing outside the management office, Nerese idly watched the kids on the netless basketball courts at the far end of the block-square Big Playground, a lot of these boys her son’s age, although Darren was more into soccer, a sport that put her straight into a coma.
Scanning the buildings around her, she caught sight of a floral crucifix suspended over the entrance of Eight Building, the browning of the petals telling her someone had been killed there maybe three, four days ago, Nerese trying to remember the name from the report sheets—Aretha, no, Aurora Howard; five days ago, stabbed by the ex-boyfriend, once again demonstrating that an Order of Protection was about as effective as a string of garlic.
Nerese spotted the tenant-worker from the management office exit the building and slowly make her way over, the woman firing up a cigarette, not looking at her until she was in conversation range. “She in trouble, Carla?”
Nerese shrugged. “Not with me, she isn’t.”
“This about Reggie?”
“Who?”
“Her son, died last month.”
“First I’m hearing of it.”
“Because that was drugs.” The woman removed a fleck of tobacco from the tip of her tongue.
“Yeah, huh?”
“That boy’s been breaking his mother’s heart since he was a child, and now it’s broken in half, although anyone around here not deaf dumb and blind could of seen that one coming clear as a bell.”
“How about the other kid?” Nerese asked.
“Which other . . .”
“I just know one. There’s more?”
“Well, she’s got the other boy, he owns a drugstore down in Maryland. She did real well with him, although I believe he married a white woman.”
“And the daughter, right?”
“Yeah, Danielle.”
“Danielle.” Nerese nodded.
“Danielle’s doing good too. Got a job, goes to college. Only has the one child herself, a boy Nelson, because the doctors messed up the delivery, had three-four operations after that, wound up with a hysterectomy at nineteen years of age, God have mercy, finally won a one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollar settlement about six years ago? Not that any of it’s left.”
“Unh,” Nerese grunted, thinking, The shit people know.
“But Carla, she’s two for three with her kids, that’s more than most these days except for me. I’m three for three, two boys in the Air Force and a girl at Dempsy Community, transferring to Rutgers-Newark in September on full scholarship, and I mean
full,
” taking a satisfied drag on her cigarette, Nerese saying, “All right,” throwing her an admiring smile, thinking, Darren would be lucky to get accepted to the University of Pizza Hut—then thinking, Air Force . . .
“So, Danielle, she does or doesn’t live with her mom. I couldn’t tell in there.”
“Yeah, well, you couldn’t tell in there because Rodriguez don’t want to know about it. Man makes a ostrich look curious. Yeah, she’d been living with Carla for about six months, just left maybe ten, twelve days ago, but she’ll be back.”
“Left for . . .”
“For to go back with her husband now that he’s out.”
Out.
“What’s his name again?” Nerese squinted helplessly.
“Freddy.”
“Yeah, Freddy. Freddy . . .” Snapping her fingers.
“Martinez. Just say, ‘What’s the name of the guy Danielle’s married to, because I don’t know it.’”
Nerese laughed, always appreciating dryness in people.
“What was he in for?”
“Same thing he’s always in for. He’s a college graduate, too, can you believe that? I mean, he’s a nice guy and all, you know, a gentleman. Lets the ladies out the elevator first, holds the door for you, always says hello, good evening, good night. You know what his problem is? He’s educated but he doesn’t have the drive. And then he sulks because the world don’t beat down his door with job offers. Then he goes and puts his business on the street. Then he sulks about how much money he’s making
that
way, him with his college degree, how ironic and whatnot.”
The woman rolled her eyes again; Nerese feeling so close to it now, the situation laying itself out like a highway.
“Anyways,” she yawned into the side of her fist. “Freddy, he got out about two weeks ago, so Danielle moved back in with him a day or two after that. They live over his mother; she owns a two-family brick on Taylor Street, although she’s mostly in Atlantic City these days with her sister, rents out the top floor to her son and his family, but I have to tell you I’m kind of surprised at how quick she got back with him this time, because normally when Freddy gets out of County? On the average it takes her three, four days just to even start talking to him again, OK? He usually has to go and leave all kinds of phone messages for her on Carla’s machine, make all kinds of promises, put on a suit, circle some job ads in the paper, show up at her work over in New York or at Carla’s apartment; let her yell at him until she goes hoarse, takes it, you know, ‘You’re right, you’re absolutely right, give me one last shot,’ et cetera et cetera, but you know, living with Carla is no picnic either, they’re always on each other’s case those two, so this that and the other, once he’s out she can usually hold him off for a week, ten days, if she’s really pissed, two weeks one time, but then she always gives in and goes home, you know, goes right back to square one squared, see you back in Hopewell in about nine months.”
Nerese made a grateful enlightened noise. She had nailed it, Ray taking up with a jailbird’s wife a few weeks before his release. If love was war, then Ray was shaping up as one of those hapless recruits accidentally shot and killed with his own gun while still in basic training.
“So what’s this all about?” the woman finally asked.
“I’m sorry.” Nerese shook her head as if addled. “What’s your name?”
“Brenda. Brenda Walker.”
“Hey Brenda, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Nerese Ammons.” She handed her a detective’s card.
The woman took a moment to study it, then asked again, “So what’s this all about?”
“Nothing, really. There was an incident awhile back. Someone in the family might’ve witnessed it.”
“Witnessed, huh?” Brenda Walker drawled, then, despite the stonewall, got right back into it. “See, Danielle, you know what her problem is? She’s no dummy, but she’s been running with Freddy since she was fifteen years old. That’s half her life, had a child together . . . She just don’t know any other way than but to be with him.”
Nerese nodded, thinking, Not exactly.
“Well, Brenda, let me ask you, what’s he like, Freddy? Other than sulky.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. He got a temper?”
“Actually,
she’s
the one with the temper. I think he’s a little afraid of her, if you ask me.”
“Does he ever get physical?”
“With who,
her
?” She laughed. “Yeah, I’d like to see that.”
“How about with anyone else?”
“Freddy? I assume push comes to shove he can take care of himself, he’s been in County enough times, in fact there was that incident in there, but if he’s got a fuse, it’s a long one as far as I can tell.”
“What incident in there?”
“Oh. You never heard? OK, about two years ago? This other inmate had come at him in the showers with a knife or a shank or whatever they call it but Freddy was the one walking away breathing on two feet.”
“No kidding. What happened to the other guy?”
“Dead,” Brenda Walker said without drama, removing another shred of tobacco from the tip of her tongue.
“No kidding,” Nerese repeated lightly, walking around herself in a tight circle.
She decided not to push for details; there were other people for that. “And their son, what’s his name again?” Then she added quickly, “And this time I really did forget.”
“Nelson. Twelve, thirteen, kind of smart, quiet, does what he’s told.”
“Let me ask you, you say it usually takes about a week, two weeks, for Danielle to move back in with him, right?”
The woman nodded.
“You have any idea why this time around she moved back in so fast?”
“I couldn’t really say.” Brenda Walker flicked her cigarette into the bushes. “Fact is, I don’t really know the family all that well.”
Instead of heading back to her car, Nerese decided to take a walk around the outside perimeter of Big Playground until she came upon Eleven Building, where she found herself reflexively scrutinizing the approximate section of brick face upon which she had done the deed, spray-painted “White Bitch,” so many years ago, searching now for any faint trace of the crime, but the surface was so weathered and defaced that it was impossible to tell what she was looking at here.
The White Bitch referred to had been Miss MacGowan, her seventh-grade homeroom teacher. The class, a low-expectations vocational-track group, was composed almost exclusively of black and Hispanic kids, a rowdy already defeated bunch, but Nerese, placed there primarily because of her legendary brothers, was the teacher’s pet; fastidious, dependable and attentive, everything the others, and the other members of her family, were not—and Miss MacGowan had on more than one occasion nearly gotten her killed by using the example of her deportment as a cudgel to pound the other kids into feeling worse about themselves than they already did.
Endlessly picked on, provoked and ridiculed in the schoolyard and cafeteria, Nerese steadfastly refused to rise to the bait until the one time she simply lost it, bloodying a boy’s nose for him and nearly tearing his shirt in half.
Returning to her homeroom after an hour’s wait in the administration office followed by a terrifyingly choleric fifteen-minute chewing out by one of the assistant principals, Nerese had instinctively moved to Miss MacGowan’s desk at the front of the room for some vague token of support or sympathy. The acidic bitch, however, knocked her on her ass with a sour smirk and a jerk of the head to the rest of her zoo, saying, “And I thought I had one that was different.”
Five days later, six blocks from school and three towns over from Miss MacGowan’s home, came the impulsive vandalism, Nerese back then barely aware not only of why she had done it, but even of White Bitch’s identity.
Turning her back on Eleven Building now, she faced the twenty-foot-high chain-link fence that bordered the north end of Big Playground, draped that day, as she recalled, with a mute pop-eyed brace of Hopewell kids; Nerese trying to recapture, as Ray had courtesy of his brain damage, how quickly they had transformed themselves into a gleeful crew of young shitheels, streaming out of the basketball and handball courts to jeer and dog her every step of the way once it became apparent that she was in police custody.