“And that’s what Friends House is all about?”
“We’ve helped more than three hundred people in less than a year. That’s a lot of people.”
“What happens when the money runs out? You going to kill another dealer?”
He kept walking but looked over at me. “If we have to.”
“What happens if I tell the police what I know?”
“Somehow, I think you’re a better man than that.”
We walked another block. Babies cried. Couples argued. Music played too loud. In front of us a homeless man crouched with a bottle of wine in a doorway. Warren knelt down to him and said, “You know where you should be, Clinton. Now, you git, hear me?”
“Charlene there?” the man asked, his face buried somewhere in a dusty dark stocking cap and several days growth of beard.
Warren grinned. “She’s waiting for you, Clinton. You’re her favorite.”
Clinton grinned back. He had no teeth.
“Now, git. It’s suppertime,” Warren said.
Clinton struggled to his feet and moved off in the direction of the shelter.
After another block of silent walking, Warren said, “You know how this neighborhood has changed over the past fifteen years?” He was being rhetorical, of course. “Back then, we were poor and were angry and we had a lot of resentment toward white people — but we didn’t prey on each other. Not very much, anyway. Then the drug dealers appeared in our midst and—” He shook his head. His rage was visible. “Now in the neighborhood, we have two kinds of slavery — we’ve got black skin and half our children are hooked on crack cocaine.”
“So you killed him?”
“He was a sonofabitch, Mr. Parnell. He took some of his drug money downtown and bribed a judge into helping him get custody of his two kids. Charlene’s a hardworking, decent woman and she’s raised those boys well. You know the kind of lifestyle they would have seen with their father? All his thugs and whores? Charlene came to me and I knew then that was the only way to stop him.”
“Where did the money come in?”
He shrugged. “Well, when you’ve lived in the neighborhood as long as I have, you see just how many people need help. I have to turn them away in my store. I can’t give everybody credit or I’d go broke myself. So I had the idea for a place like Friends House for a long time, even went to talk to some politicians about it but got nowhere. So then I thought — Well, we waited until a night when John Wade was making a drug deal and we shot him. He had a lot of money in his car.”
We had reached the steps of a massive stone Catholic church whose spires seemed tall enough to snag the passing silver clouds.
“I’m sorry Tommy found out,” Warren said. “When I saw him that night, standing by the door while we were counting the money — you know, Charlene and me and the two girls you met — I knew he’d heard what happened.”
“Making it right with him is going to be difficult. Killing his father and all.”
“Maybe when he’s a little older, he’ll understand why we had to kill him. What kind of parasite his father and all drug dealers are. How they prey on their own, how they take the last ounce of hope and dignity from people who have very little hope and dignity to begin with.”
“You’re going to kill more so you can keep Friends House going?”
“As the need arises, Mr. Parnell; as the need arises. And as far as I’m concerned, we’ll be doing the neighborhood and our society a favor.” He put his hand out.
He had a firm grip.
“You know what you’re asking me to do?” I said.
“I know.”
“Conceal evidence from the police.”
“Maybe if you lived in the neighborhood, you’d understand my point of view a little bit more.”
“I’m going to have to think about it. I’ll call you later tonight and let you know. I really don’t feel right about this. I spent my life as a law officer.”
“It’s not easy for any of us, Mr. Parnell. But it’s something that needs to be done.”
The two guys in the next room were watching a country-western cable channel and remarking on how big the women’s breasts were. The guys seemed almost appealing right then, juvenile and naive and clean-cut. A long way from a neighborhood where you had to make judgments on predators so that others could live.
I called Faith and she put Hoyt up to the phone and he babbled a few of those squeaky wet two-year-old noises that can break your heart when you’re alone and far away and then I told Faith how much I loved her and how much I missed her and that I would be coming home tomorrow.
“So how did it work out?” she said. “Was Carla DiMonte involved in the murder?”
“Huh-uh. I’ll call Carlucci tomorrow and tell him.”
“You sound fired.”
“Yeah, I guess so, hon. Long day.”
“Well, maybe you’ll get a good night’s sleep for once.”
“Hope so. Love you, hon. Very much.”
I sat five minutes in the room with two quick cigarettes and a can of beer and then I looked up Warren’s number in the plump red Chicago phone book and called him.
“I’m kind of nervous, Mr. Parnell,” he said. “I mean, a lot’s riding on your answer.”
“Some of these dealers may catch on to what you’re doing and come after you.”
“I’m willing to take that chance.”
“Then I wish you luck, Mr. Warren. I wish you a lot of luck.”
“You’re going to keep our secret?”
“I am.”
“God bless you, Mr. Parnell.”
“I just hope Tommy can understand someday.”
“We’ll all say prayers for that, Mr. Parnell. We’ll all say prayers.”
Afterwards, I went over to the set and cranked up The Honeymooners. It was the episode where Ralph confuses a dog’s terminal diagnosis with his own.
There’s an especially moving scene where the great Gleason sits at the shabby table in the shabby little apartment and tries to make sense of the things that composed his life. And can’t.
I thought of Phil Warren and what he was doing and how wrong it was yet how right it was, too.
Some things you can’t make sense of, I guess; some things you just can’t.
Bless Us O Lord
I usually think of Midwestern Thanksgivings as cold, snowy days. But as we gathered around the table this afternoon, my parents and my wife, Laura, and our two children, Rob and Kate, I noticed that the blue sky and sunlight in the window looked more like an April day than one in late November.
“Would you like to say grace today?” my mother said to four-year-old Kate.
Kate of the coppery hair and slow secretive smile nodded and started in immediately. She got the usual number of words wrong and everybody smiled the usual number of times and then the meal began.
Dad is a retired steelworker. I remember, as a boy, watching fascinated as he’d quickly work his way through a plate heaped with turkey, sweet potatoes, dressing, cranberry sauce and two big chunks of the honey wheat bread Mom always makes for Thanksgiving and Christmas. And then go right back for seconds of everything and eat all that up right away, too.
He’s sixty-seven now and probably thirty pounds over what he should be and his eyesight is fading and the only exercise he gets is taking out the garbage once a day — but he hasn’t, unfortunately, lost that steelworker’s appetite.
Mom on the other hand, thin as she was in her wedding pictures, eats a small helping of everything and then announces, in a sort of official way, “I’m stuffed.”
“So how goes the lawyer business?” Dad asked after everybody had finished passing everything around.
Dad never tires of reminding everybody that his youngest son did something very few young men in our working-class neighborhood did — went on to become a lawyer, and a reasonably successful one, too, with downtown quarters in one of the shiny new office buildings right on the river, and two BMWs in the family, even if one of them is fourteen years old.