Puzzlement shadowed Frank's face.
"Thing is, that road's always there. Even if you get off it, it doesn't mean somewhere down the line you don't find yourself right back on it. And damned if you know how you got there."
She looked out the window. The sedan was gone. A woman in a grey skirt suit and black boots walked briskly along the sidewalk. Power haircut, full leather briefcase. A lawyer? Frank wondered, on her way home? Husband, two kids, and a nanny, Frank bet, watching her until she stepped out of view. Clay had a clock that ticked quietly. Frank listened to it over the moan of a city bus. Behind her, he asked, "Do you ever feel like you're on that road?"
"Sometimes."
"Are you on it now?"
Below, the bus farted thick black smoke. The city was switching to electric soon. That would be good.
"I feel like I'm on the curb."
Tic, tic, tic.
"What does the road look like from there?"
A delivery truck idled at the light. Frank thought of her father, how dark his hair had been. It was thick and curly on his arms and had tickled her face when he held her. Sometimes she'd give anything to feel that arm around her again. She closed her eyes against the window, grateful for its coolness against her forehead.
"Looks like where I've been."
Clay let her sit with that before asking what was the best thing that happened to her that week.
She tweaked her mouth into a deprecating line.
"Had dinner with a nice lady."
Clay's smile was warm and he urged, "Tell me about that."
Feeling silly, she briefly described dinner with Gail, adding, "It was nice. She's easy to talk to. Smart. And funny. Pretty, too."
Remembering her conversation in the car with Gail, she added, "She keeps it real. I don't see much of that."
"Are you going to see her again?"
Frank almost said sure, but she'd learned there were no guarantees in life.
"Probably. We run into each other in a professional capacity."
"I meant in a personal capacity, like having dinner again."
"Hadn't thought about it," Frank admitted.
"Well, consider it," Clay advised, ending their session.
As always, he left Frank with something to chew on. And as always, she was glad to be out of his office and back on the street where she knew the rules.
Chapter Sixteen
Frank cheerfully presented Claudia with another box of donuts. Sleepy and rumple-haired, she pulled a cheap robe around herself and let Frank in. The baby began crying and Gloria screamed from her bedroom. Something about jodida cops and harassment. Claudia started to make coffee, but Frank took the pot from her hand.
"No, no," she said, exaggeratedly solicitous. "Let me. You sit down. Have a donut."
Half asleep, Alicia stepped into the kitchen, coming to when she saw the pink box on the table. She was the only one who liked Frank's early morning visits. She sat at the table, mooning over the unopened box. Alicia's eyes gleamed when Frank lifted the lid. The little girl examined the donuts, and maybe because she was getting more comfortable with Frank, she asked, "Why you don't bring syrup ones like the other policia!"
Claudia hissed at her grandchild to be quiet and jerked her from the chair. Swatting her bottom, she gave the girl a push into the living room. A moment later the television blared. Her grandmother yelled at her to turn it down.
"What other policia, Claudia?"
"El negro," she said quickly. "He brung donuts the other day."
Frank poured them both coffee, putting milk on the table for Claudia. Waiting until Claudia was adding the milk to her cup, she said, "Tell me about the heroin."
Claudia dripped milk on the table, glancing up into Frank's attentive blue eyes. She grabbed a sponge out of the sink and swiped angrily at the spill, then picked up her cup and stood with her back to the counter. Frank watched her like a snake tracking a mouse.
"Tell me about the heroin," she repeated.
"What heroin?"
Frank laughed, "Damn, Claudia, you think the police are so stupid they don't know you're serving out of here? What I want to know is if you're chippin' again."
Claudia looked disgusted. "I give that up a long time ago."
"What about the kids?"
"They don't mess with that stuff. That's the devil's candy. I kill 'em myself before I let them shoot up."
"But you let them sell it."
Claudia held Frank's gaze. "Sometimes," she admitted.
Frank considered a curious paradox of ghetto morality. You could do shit to strangers, other gangs, even your friends, but never to your gang or your family. They were blood. But it was perfectly okay to fuck up everybody else. Frank had seen the rationale time and time again, that if someone was stupid enough to use it, why shouldn't someone else be smart enough to hustle it? Claudia admitted none of them used smack and she didn't want it near her, yet she felt no compunction about dealing it and addicting other people. This blind eye to suffering was a common survival technique in communities with few resources and intense competition.
"Who do you sell to?"
"Gente. Whoever's looking," she said, flipping her tangled hair behind her shoulders.
"You sell to Fifty-first Street Playboy's?"
Claudia shook her head, "I don't know who that is."
"You have a steady clientele?"
Frank realized she didn't understand, and amended, "You have regular customers."
"Sometimes," she shrugged.
"I want their names. I want to know where they live."
"Mierda," Claudia snorted. "No se eso."
Frank went along with a cool smile.
"You're telling me you deal to strangers?"
"No son stranjeros, pues, pero no sabemos sus nombres propios o dirreciones."
"In English."
Claudia started chewing on the flesh around her nail. Claudia denied much involvement in dealing, saying it was infrequent. When Frank asked how she supported three children and two grandkids, Claudia cited child aid and welfare.
Alicia sidled back to the kitchen table and Frank pushed the donuts toward her. She grabbed one and ran off with it. The child looked healthy and well fed. The shelves behind Frank were well-stocked and she'd noticed when she took the milk out, that the refrigerator was full. You didn't see that too often in government aid homes.
Claudia's nails were ragged from chewing, but her hands were smooth. She thought about the junk food wrappers and pizza boxes scattered perpetually in the living room around toys and piles of CDs and Nintendo cartridges. Frank knew there was more then welfare coming into this house. She stared at Claudia, deliberately making her uncomfortable as she gauged her best angle of attack. At length, as Claudia ate away more skin around her nails, Frank asked, "How many more, eh? How many more have to die because you're afraid to tell me the truth?"
"I got nothin' to do with it," Claudia defended herself.
Disgusted, Frank shook her head.
"How can you say that? People are dying, Claudia. Your blood, your family. For Christ's sake, someone killed your daughter and you know who and you won't let me help, so don't tell me it's got nothing to do with you. Christ" Frank swore again. "If you know who's doin' this and you ain't done nothin' to stop it's like you've pulled the trigger on your own daughter! You killed your own flesh and blood Claudia, now you're just sittin' around drinkin' coffee while you're waitin' to see who gets it next."
Quivering, Claudia hissed, "So I should die, too? Eh? Who's gonna look after my babies? Who's gonna look after Alicia and the gran'babies if I'm not here, eh? You tell me that! You cops come in tryin' to run everybody's lives like you know what's goin' on, and you don't know nothin'," she spat. "All you fuckin' jura, all you want is it your own way — what's good for you. And you come in here tryin' to tell me what I need to do. How to protect my family. Fuck that. You don't know. Where are you at three-thirty in the morning when he comes knockin' on my door? Eh? How much do you care then? You don' know nuttin' about what I need to do. You don't know nuttin' about keepin' my chil'ren safe. Don't you be tellin' me what I need to do. I'm doin' what I need to do!"