There was no bathroom that I could see but he had a chrome sink filled with dirty dishes. This was a poor, uneducated man’s home, replete with the earmarks of poverty in the twenty-first century. There was a brand-new laptop computer and an Xbox on the desk amid the empty pizza cartons, Avengers comic books, and reams of lined paper, either scrawled upon or waiting their turn.
“Nice computer,” I said.
“Chrystal gave me that stuff.”
“That was nice of her.”
“She just wants me to stay away, so she gives me stuff not to feel guilty.”
“Who were those guys?” I asked.
“Big Boy an’ Two Dog,” he said. He pulled out a metal-and-vinyl folding chair from a corner and set it out for me.
He plopped down on the cot and said, “They give me some weed to sell but the cops busted me and took what I had left and all my money. But, you know, them two expect to get paid, or kick somebody ass.”
I had yet to sit down. I was still wondering what I could hope to get out of this hopeless brother.
The shack smelled of Tally, that hint of rot that you might find in the wing of a hospital where they put the patients who can’t pay.
I sat and asked, “What does Chrystal have against you? You’re both artists.”
“You like my drawings?” he asked.
“They have a lot of power. Portraits mainly, huh?”
“I like faces. Sometimes I ride the subway all day long and just draw one face after the other. They got every race in the world right down on the F train.”
“That why you have problems with Chrystal?”
“What you mean?”
“Maybe she thinks you’re competing with her,” I suggested.
“The last time I went to her house some kind of silverware went missing,” he said. “I didn’t steal it. What I want with some old forks and spoons? Probably one of the servants did it, but they blamed me ’cause when I come around is the only time they check.
“But you right about that art, man. It was me who first asked Dad if maybe I could have a welding set to copy comic-book characters on steel. He got it for me but then, after a while, it was Chrystal doin’ it all the time. She hogged it up and now she famous, married to some rich white man, and blamin’ me for a thief.”
To punctuate his dissatisfaction Tally took off his fake snakeskin jacket and dropped it on the splintery floor. His black T-shirt showed off arms that were thin and unencumbered by muscle. His milk-chocolate lips hung down in defeat.
“So you wouldn’t know where she went or how I could get in touch with her,” I said.
“We don’t talk. Shawna said that Chris went on a vacation or somethin’.”
“She tell you that four or five days ago?”
“I’ont know, man,” he complained. “Neither one’a my sisters care about me. Shawna just wanna use you an’, an’, an’ Chrystal don’t wanna hear from ya.”
“Chrystal gave you the computer and games.”
“But she don’t care. All she got to do is leave a note with that Mr. Pelham. She don’t even have to go shoppin’, just tell him what to buy an’ where to bring it. And he don’t come himself. They got that white niggah Phil to bring it out here. He just call on the cell phone and I got to run outside to pick it up from his limo.”
I could see the kid’s point. I understood his sister’s position, too. The thing I didn’t know was about my employer.
“What’s your problem with Shawna?” I asked.
“Why?”
“She hired me and you said that she must not really care and is tryin’ to do something I don’t even know about,” I said. “I don’t wanna be used any more than you do.”
“Shawna smile in your face, call you her best friend, and then, when you tell her sumpin’, it be all ovah the street before you could sneeze. She jealous an’ spiteful and won’t even visit her own mother in the hospital. If she got hold of that green-and-red necklace she prob’ly stoled it. Prob’ly stoled that silverware, too, and then told Chrystal it was me. I bet she did.”
I wondered. The words indicted Shawna but he delivered them in a way that seemed... insincere. I was sure he knew more but this was neither the time nor place for a full interrogation.
“You know you can’t stay here, Ted.”
“Why not?”
“Because Big Boy and Two Dog will be back.”
Tally glanced at his one door and I suppressed a smile.
“Where I’ma go?”
“I got a friend in the Bronx got a pool hall needs cleanin’ and a room for the janitor. I could get him to let you stay there for a week or two. In the meanwhile I got a lawyer that can represent your case.”
“Why you wanna help me, man?”
“I was hired to do a job by a woman you say I shouldn’t trust. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not just taking your word on that, I have my own suspicions. So I might need you to help me later on. The only way I can be sure you will is if I help you now.”
15
I called my lawyer, Breland Lewis, and informed him about Tally.
“Have him get in touch tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “Shirley will take down the information and make his appointment. I’m sorry, LT, but I’m due in court in a few hours and I still have notes to pull together.”
Breland was in a rush but I didn’t mind. I never like talking to lawyers — even when those lawyers are my friends.
“Whatever you say, LT,” Luke Nye told me over the airwaves.
“What’s it with this kid?”
“Don’t leave out your fancy silverware,” I replied.
After that we put the Xbox and computer, some comics, and a ringed notebook of lined paper in a suitcase. Tally hauled his luggage four blocks to a limo service, where I paid the driver up front for the long drive to the Bronx.
As I watched the beat-up, dark-green Caddy drive off I wondered if Tally would be at Luke’s when I needed him — if I needed him. He was a lost cause, even by my standards. I kinda liked the kid.
I stood out in front of the hole-in-the-wall limo service for a few minutes, thinking about the young man and his life, such as it was. America was tethered to its lineage by a frayed rope made up of millions of young men and women like him. It wasn’t any wonder that so many of these youth had no notion of their history and no hope for a future except what they were told by the TV.
This notion felt very important at that time. I must have seemed a little cracked standing under the hot sun in a dark suit, sweating and staring at the empty street.
Finally I decided to walk to my next meeting. The task, I felt, would be some kind of penance for my abandonment of so many youngsters like Tally.
It was a nice day and so there were hundreds of people ambling and power-walking, running and biking across the Brooklyn Bridge. They spoke French and Mandarin, Spanish and Russian, with English accents and southern drawls. Bicycles whizzed by my right side as lovers holding hands unconsciously nudged me into the bike lane. Joggers weaved in between the tourists and lovers, and every sixth or seventh stroller was chatting on a cell phone. The sky bloomed with clouds over the dark, sinewy East River, and my dome was beaded with sweat.
The bridge always made me happy. Tally and Two Dog and Big Boy would live or die, but the bridge would still be standing, connecting the world with a history that cannot fade.
Pristine Enterprises Retirement Community was on Rector Place, in the center of Battery Park City. It was a pink-and-clear-glass building that took up half a city block. The front desk was round with a raised floor that allowed the copper-skinned receptionist (whose nameplate read D. DIAZ) to sit in a swivel chair instead of standing on her feet, cultivating varicose veins and bad knees.