“You’re the man who saved me,” three-year-old Mona said during a lull in the conversation.
“That’s right,” Eric told her. “This is Uncle Tommy.”
“T’ank you, Uncle Tommy.”
“What would you like to do after you get out of here, Thomas?” Dr. Nolan asked.
“I don’t know. The doctor said that they lost my cart. Everything I had was in there. I had pictures of Monique and my blank book with my writings. I’d like to find that if I could.”
“But what would you like to do?”
“What you mean?” Tommy squinted for a moment, remembering the brightness that had driven him away from elementary school.
“Do you want a job? Do you want to go to school? Where would you like to live?”
“Could I stay with you guys for a while?”
“Of course,” Dr. Nolan said. “As long as you want.”
“Yaaaaaa,” Mona sang.
That afternoon the police were dispatched with a warrant to arrest Thomas Beerman, aka Bruno Forman. They sent Pittman and Rodriguez because the officers could identify the young con-man escapee.
“Thomas Beerman,” Officer Pittman announced. “You are under arrest.”
“No. I didn’t do anything. I, I saved the little girl’s life.”
“You presented yourself to the police with fraudulent identification and you escaped from the juvenile facility where you were being detained.”
For Thomas the facility was a long-ago dream. He couldn’t imagine that they would send him back there now that he was reunited with his family.
“No,” he said.
“No,” Dr. Bettye Freeling repeated. She was standing at the door to Thomas’s room. “This is my patient, and he is far too weak to be moved.”
“We have a warrant for his arrest, ma’am,” Rodriguez said with an apology in his voice.
“I’m a doctor,” she replied. “This is my patient, and you cannot take him without my permission.”
“It’s pretty clear-cut,” Nathan Frear, the lawyer, said to Minas Nolan and his son.
They were in Frear’s office at the top floor of a Westwood office high-rise.
“He was convicted of assault on police officers in an attempt to keep them from their duty. It says that he was part of an organized group that opened fire on the officers trying to arrest them.”
“He was twelve,” Eric said. “He didn’t even have a gun.”
“But he was part of the group, and he was convicted under a law devised to dampen gang activity.”
“But he wasn’t part of a gang. He was twelve and nearly homeless. He was just trying to stay alive.”
“All of that evidence was presented in court,” Frear said. “The judge still found him guilty.”
“What will happen if he goes to trial?” Minas asked.
“Either he’ll be returned to the juvenile authority or, more likely, he will be sentenced as an adult and will serve the full term of the original sentence plus whatever else the judge might want to tack on for his further crimes.”
“What crimes?” Eric asked. “All he did was save my daughter from Drew.”
“He lied to the police; he escaped from custody. He committed identity theft by using a Social Security card that belonged to Bruno Forman. The prosecutor might even try to implicate him with the man who killed your girlfriend. After all, Drew Peters used Thomas’s cart to block the door and keep you from saving your wife.”
Frear was tall and extraordinarily thin. His dark-blue suit was made from the finest material, and his aqua tie had a ruby tack that held it perfectly in place.
“That’s crazy,” Minas said. “He’s just a boy.”
“He’s a man,” Frear corrected, “homeless and black. A convicted felon, an admitted drug dealer, an escapee from a state institution, and there’s even some evidence that he was involved in the slaying of a customer of his, a Raymond ‘RayRay’ Smith.
“I can take the case, but it’s going to be very expensive. And without remarkable luck, he’s looking at anywhere from six to ten years in a maximum security prison.”
Bettye freeling could keep the police from taking Thomas for three more weeks. Minas decided to retain Frear. The initial fee was fifty thousand dollars. The lawyer visited Thomas twice but received little help from his client.
“I just took a walk,” Thomas said, answering Frear’s question about how his escape occurred. “I just meant to go around the block, but then I kept on walking. It was such a nice day, I remember. The sky had those big white clouds that everybody likes so much.”
When Frear wanted to know about the shooting, all Thomas could recall was Tremont coming out with his Uzi and the police opening fire.
“He went crazy, I think,” Thomas said. “He was mad that the police wanted to be messin’ with him.”
“Did you know about the Uzi?”
“Sure. We all did.”
“Did you know that it was against the law to have that weapon?”
“Tremont was the law in that alley,” Thomas said. “That was the first time I ever saw a cop down there in the three years I worked for him.”
“So you worked for him for three years?” Frear asked.
“Yeah.”
Frear decided not to put Thomas on the stand.
Raela, in the meanwhile, emptied a special account that Kronin had set up for her. Using her ATM card, she took out five hundred dollars a day for twenty days.
She spent the afternoons helping Eric with Thomas’s physical therapy and the evenings sleeping with Eric in his childhood bed.
Her mother and father threatened to call the police, but she knew they wouldn’t. Eric’s father told his son that Raela was too young, but after a few dinner conversations with the dark-hued girl, he gave up his arguments.
Minas Nolan blamed himself for Christie’s death because he made Eric move out. He wouldn’t kick his son out again.
Raela spent long evenings talking to Ahn and Minas. She had read thousands of books since the age of eight. She was considerate and mature. She helped with the dishes and explained that she and Eric would be married one day soon.
“He needs me,” she said to Minas one evening while everyone else was in bed.
“Eric doesn’t need anyone,” Minas replied. He was embarrassed by the mild note of contempt in his voice.
“No, Dr. Nolan,” Raela said, sounding more like fifty than fifteen. “He’s afraid of people. He thinks everybody is too weak and that if he isn’t careful he’ll hurt them. He blames himself for you losing Mama Branwyn. He even thinks that he caused Tommy to get lost.”
Minas felt the weight of her words in his chest. He realized, maybe for the first time, how closely physical heart disease was connected to the emotional heart. The girl was telling him a truth that he’d always avoided. He knew that Eric had been forced to carry the weight of his broken heart. He knew that his son had lived with Christie because he hadn’t wanted to hurt her.
“How do you know all this?” he asked the child.
“Because I’m just like him,” she said. “Or almost. My life has been just like his, only I don’t worry about people like he does.”
“Why not?”
“Because.”
“Because what?”
“Because you can’t save anyone.”
“I save people all the time,” the doctor said, wondering at his need to argue with the child.
“But when people die on your operating table, do you believe that they were going to die with or without you?”
After that evening Minas could not remember if he’d answered her question. He’d lost eight patients under the knife. Eight lives that he could not save. He’d forgotten most of their names and didn’t attend any of their funerals. He’d washed his hands vigorously after every failure, gone home and got into bed. He wondered how a child knew all of that.