Cragged face, red bow tie, black porkpie hat. Horace T. Grant. Of course it was.
I was about to raise my hand and shout out, “Hey, Pork Chop,” when Horace T. Grant did something strange. He looked at me, raised one eyebrow just enough to let me know he recognized my face, and then turned back to the board without a word.
Well now, I know how to take a hint, and I remembered what Horace had told me about anonymity as he devoured his chickenpox muffin, so I didn’t yell out or wave or even wait there for him to look again my way. I turned back to the bar, nodded at the too-tall bartender with the shocking white hair who was giving me the eye, and slipped back outside, where Isabel still waited at the door.
“She’s not answering,” said Isabel.
“She’s not there,” I said.
“Maybe the buzzer’s broken.”
“It’s not broken. Did you try the door?”
She looked at me, looked at the door, pressed it open.
We climbed the stairs, dark and damp, the smell of stale beer and cigarettes leaking in from the bar, and reached a painted wooden door on the second level.
Isabel rapped the door lightly with her knuckles. Rapped it again.
Nothing.
I knocked less lightly, pounding at the wood with the bottom of my fist. “Ms. Rose,” I yelled. “I am Daniel’s court-appointed lawyer. We have come for a court-ordered visit. Ms. Rose, you need to open up.”
Nothing.
“She’s not here,” I said.
“But she promised. She said she was waiting for us.”
“She doesn’t want us in her life. Or maybe, more interestingly, somebody else doesn’t want us in her life.”
“Too bad,” said Isabel, taking out a phone.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m calling the judge. She’ll issue a bench warrant.”
“And then what? How soon do you think the police will get around to looking for her? And when they do start looking, and if she does get picked up, then what? What happens to Daniel?”
“What would you have me do?”
“Follow me,” I said.
“Where to?”
“Just follow.”
I climbed down the steps, pushed through the front door. Isabel hesitated a moment before following.
At the corner Horace was leaning against the brick wall of the bar, a chessboard and box in his hand. I walked by him without so much as a nod. I knew where I was going, I had already traced the route on a map in my office. I turned right, turned left at the next intersection.
These were all row houses now, more in disrepair than those on the commercial street, cracked porches, peeling paint, trees shriveling in the little plots of land between the cement of the sidewalk and the asphalt of the street.
And there it was, a quiet house on a quiet block, shades drawn, lights out, nothing.
“Go on up and knock,” I said to Isabel.
“Who’s in there?”
“Go on up and see.”
She gave me a look, as if I had grown antennae, as if I had transformed before her very eyes into a different species, and then headed up the stoop. This time I followed her. From inside we could hear a television going.
Isabel rang the buzzer, waited a bit, then rapped her knuckles gently on the door. She looked at me, I showed her a fist, she gave the door a bang.
A woman answered, T-shirt and jeans, short dark hair, dark eyes, a crying baby on her hip. With the door opened, she shouted into the house, “Turn down the damn TV,” before turning her attention to us. “What you want?” she said angrily, and then grew quiet when she took in exactly who was there before her, Isabel with her suit and briefcase and me standing beside her.
“Hello, Julia,” said Isabel.
“Crap,” said Julia Rose.
23
Daniel Rose slumped on a couch in the living room, his fists balled, his features impassive, his stare intent on the cartoon playing on the television set. He was a stocky, towheaded kid with pale skin and slip-on sneakers, and he was doing his best to ignore me, which is pretty much par for the course with my clients.
In the kitchen Julia Rose and Isabel were having a face-to-face. Isabel was not too pleased with Julia or her explanations. Julia’s friend had to run an errand, and so Julia had been forced to watch her baby daughter, which was why she hadn’t been at her apartment that day or the other times Isabel had tried to visit. Julia had no way to get to the parenting sessions she had promised Isabel she would attend because she couldn’t find the bus schedules. Julia had missed her appointment with the doctor because Daniel was too sick to go out.
There was a technical legal term for what Julia Rose was shoveling to Isabel. The whole scene was enough to weary a saint, and I wasn’t a saint, so instead of letting her toss shovelfuls onto me, I’d left the kitchen and sat myself beside Daniel on the couch.
“Daniel,” I said, trying to speak over the sound of the television, “do you know what a lawyer is?”
Daniel stared at the screen and said nothing. I was tempted to switch the TV off so he’d give me his full attention, but if I switched it off and he ran away screaming, that would end my chance to speak to him that day. And I didn’t mind that the sound of the television was keeping our conversation private from Julia in the kitchen. So I waited for him to respond to my question. When he didn’t, I answered it for him.
“A lawyer is someone who helps people who might be in trouble. I’m a lawyer.”
No response, no reaction, but he did chuckle at a pratfall on the screen.
“Today, Daniel, the person I’m here to help is you.”
I waited. No response. I hadn’t had much real experience with children, and I wondered if a four-year-old kid could understand anything I was saying. Probably not. I was about to give it up and go back to Isabel’s conversation with Julia when Daniel, still staring at the television, finally spoke.
“You talk funny.”
“Well, you look funny.”
I thought he’d laugh at that, or smile at least, but he didn’t. He tightened his lips and kept his gaze glued to the television. I licked the scab in my mouth. How do you talk to kids anyway?
“The reason I talk funny,” I said, “is that I lost a tooth. You want to see?”
He nodded.
I opened my mouth, pulled down the edge of my lower lip so the gap was clear. He turned to look at it, nodded, turned back to the television.
“Did it hurt?” he said.
“Not really.”
“I didn’t do nothing.”
“Anything, son. You didn’t do anything, and I know that.”
“So I’m not in trouble.”
“But you still might need a lawyer, and that’s why a nice judge lady hired me to help you. How does your mother treat you?”
“Good.”
“Well. She treats you well. That’s good to hear. Does she give you enough food?”
“Yeah.”
“Does she give you baths?”
“Sometimes.”
“Does she read to you?”
He shrugged, twisted up his fingers.
“Does she ever hit you?” I said.
“When I’m bad.”
“How often are you bad?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does it hurt when she hits you?”
“Not really.”
“Do you like watching TV?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you watch a lot?”
“My mother lets me.”
“Do you ever play with friends?”
“I don’t know. I’m watching.”
“So am I, but we can still talk.”
“I can’t hear.”