Blood Ties (2 page)

Hagstrom switched the speaker off again. “Know him?”

“Yeah.”

Hagstrom waited. “And?”

“Gary Russell,” I said. “He's fifteen. Last I heard he lived in Sarasota, but that was a couple of years ago. What's he doing here?”

“You tell me.”

“I don't know.”

“What's he to you?”

I watched Gary shift uncomfortably in the folding chair they had him on. The knuckles on his left hand were skinned; his jacket had a rip in the sleeve. The dirt on his face didn't hide the bags under his eyes or the exhausted pallor of his skin. As he moved, his hand brushed the Fritos bag, knocked it to the floor. Conscientiously, automatically, he picked it up. I wondered how long it had been since he'd had real food.

“He's my sister's son,” I said.

This small room was too close, too warm, nothing like the crisp fall night the cab had driven through. I unzipped my jacket, took out a cigarette. Hagstrom didn't stop me.

“Your sister's son, but you're not sure where he lives?” Hagstrom's eyes were on me. Mine were on Gary.

“We don't talk much.”

Hagstrom held his stare a moment longer. “You want to talk to him?”

I nodded. He stepped into the corridor, pointed to a door a few feet away. He backed off, so that I was the only thing Gary saw when I opened the door.

Gary stood when I came in, so fast and clumsily his chair clattered over. “Hey,” he greeted me, his fists clenching and opening, clenching and opening. “Uncle Bill. How's it going?”

He was almost as tall as I was. His eyes were blue, and under his skin you could still see a hint of softness, the child not yet giving way to the man. Otherwise we looked so much alike that all the mirrors I had seen that face in over the years rushed into my mind, all the houses I'd lived in, all the things I had seen in my own eyes; and I wanted to warn him, to tell him to start again, differently. But those were my troubles, not his. You could look at him and see he had his own.

I pulled out a chair, nodded at the one he'd dropped to the floor. He righted it and sank into it.

“It's going great, Gary,” I said. “Nothing like getting up in the middle of the night to come see your nephew in a police station.”

“I'm . . .” He swallowed. “I'm sorry.”

“What are you doing here, Gary?”

He shrugged, said, “They say I tried to rob this guy.”

I waved my hand, showed him the walls. “Not here. We'll get to that. What are you doing in New York?”

He picked at a dirty fingernail, shrugged again.

“Your folks here too?”

“No.” Almost too low to hear.

“They know where you are?”

“No.” He looked up suddenly. “I need to get out of here, Uncle Bill.”

I dragged on my cigarette. “Most people in here say that. You run away?”

“Not really.”

“But Helen and Scott don't know where you are.”

He shook his head.

“You still live in Sarasota?”

Another shake.

“Where?”

No answer.

“I can find out, Gary.”

He leaned forward. His blue eyes began to fill. With an effort so desperate I could see it, he pulled himself back under control: boys don't cry. “Please, Uncle Bill. It's important.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Get me out of here. I didn't hurt that guy. I didn't even take anything off him.”

“No?”

He spread his hands; a corner of his mouth twisted up. “He didn't have anything.”

“Why are you here?”

“Something I got to do.”

“What?”

“Something important.”

“What?”

He dropped his gaze to the table and was silent.

I sat with him until my cigarette was done. Once he looked up hopefully, like a kid wondering if you'd stopped being mad at him and were ready to play catch. His eyes found mine; he looked quickly down again.

Wordlessly I mashed out the cigarette, got up, opened the door. Hagstrom stepped out of the observation room at the same time, and I knew he'd been listening to what we'd said.

Back at his desk in the squad room, Hagstrom brought us both coffee in blue PBA mugs. “I checked you out,” he said.

I drank coffee.

“Your sheet: five arrests, one conviction, misdemeanor; interference with an officer in the performance of his duties.”

“You want to hear the story?”

“No. That officer was kicked off the Department the next year for excessive use of force. You also did six months twelve years ago on a misdemeanor in Nebraska.” He shook his head. “Nebraska, for Christ's sake. Where is that?”

“In the middle.”

“You think your sister still lives in Sarasota?”

“Even though the kid says no? Maybe. Helen and Scott Russell. Street has a strange name . . . Littlejohn. Littlejohn Trail.”

Eyes on me, Hagstrom picked up his desk phone, dialed Florida information. I worked on the coffee. After a while he put down the phone again. “No Helen Russell, no Scott, no Gary, anywhere in the Sarasota area.”

“They move around a lot.”

“You got any ideas?”

I shook my head. “Sorry.”

“This is your sister?”

I didn't answer.

“Christ,” Hagstrom said. “My brother's an asshole, but I know where he lives.” He finished his coffee. “I wondered why the kid wasn't afraid you'd call his folks.”

I had nothing to say to that, so I just drank coffee.

“Mike Dougherty, lieutenant, Sixth Precinct?” Hagstrom said. “Says hello. Says he's a friend of yours.”

“That's true.”

“In fact, you seem to have a lot of friends on this Department. Especially for a guy who's been picked up half a dozen times.”

“Five.”

“Whatever. You're Captain Maguire's kid.”

I took out another cigarette, lit it, dropped the match in a Coke can Hagstrom fished from his trash. I made myself meet Hagstrom's eyes. “That's true too.”

“I never met him. Leopold did.” He tipped his head toward the man who'd been typing when I first came in and was typing still. Leopold looked up, surveyed me silently, went back to work.

“What I'm saying, Smith, I hear you're okay.”

I finished my coffee. “I never heard that.”

That got a snort from Leopold. The third guy, off the phone now, looked up from the sports page of the
Post
, went back to it.

“This kid,” Hagstrom said. “Your nephew. He's fifteen?”

“That's right.”

“If I put him in the system now, he'll have a hell of a time getting out.”

I nodded; I knew that was true.

“We'll find your sister, but Child Services will have to check them out. Wherever they live now, they'll contact the child protection agency there. There'll be an investigation. He'll be here, in Spofford, while that happens. Even if they send him home, they'll start keeping records. He have brothers or sisters?”

“Two sisters. Younger.”

“Your sister and her husband—they abuse these kids? That why you don't speak to them, maybe?”

The question was asked with no change of manner. Hagstrom sipped his coffee and waited for the answer.

“No,” I said.

“That the truth, Smith?”

“Yes.”

“So why'd the kid run away?”

“You heard him. He says he's got something important to do. He also says he didn't run away.”

“When I was his age, ‘something important' only meant a girl. Or a football game.”

“Could mean the same to him.”

“Does he do drugs?”

“I haven't seen him in a while. But he doesn't look it.”

“True.”

Hagstrom studied me, making no effort to hide it. I finished my cigarette and shoved it in the Coke can. The cop with the paper flipped the pages. The other kept typing. Somewhere else a phone rang.

“I'll release him to you if you want him.”

“All right.”

“I never did the paperwork. What he said, he didn't take anything from that wino? It's true. I got no reason to hold him, except he's a green, underage kid who doesn't even know how to pick his targets. A wino on Thirty-third Street, jeez. Will he tell you where his parents are?”

“I don't know. But I can find them.”

I took Gary in a cab to my place downtown. He slipped me worried sideways glances as we moved along near-empty streets. For most of the ride he said nothing, and I gave that to him. Then, as the cab made a left off the avenue, he shifted his large frame to face me on the vinyl seat. “Uncle Bill? Who's Captain Maguire?”

I looked out the window at streets I knew. “Dave Maguire. He was an NYPD captain. My uncle.”

“My mom's uncle too?”

I nodded.

“I never heard about him. All these cops, it seemed like he was a big deal.”

“He was.” That was about as short an answer as I could give, but he didn't drop it.

“I heard them say you were Captain Maguire's kid. What does that mean?”

I turned to him, turned back to the window, wished for a cigarette. “When I was just about your age I moved in with Dave. For the next couple of years I kept getting in trouble and he kept getting me out. It got to be a joke around the NYPD. Dave was the only one who didn't think it was funny.”

Gary gave a thoughtful, companionable nod; this was something he understood. After a moment he asked, “Did you?”

“Think it was funny?” I asked. “No, I didn't.”

He was quiet for a while. As we turned onto my block he said, “You moved in with him, like you mean, instead of living with your folks?”

“That's right.”

“Did my mom too?”

The cab pulled to a stop. “No,” I said.

I paid the cabbie, unlocked the street door, had Gary go ahead of me up the two flights to my place. At this hour, on this street, there was no one else. Even Shorty's was closed, everyone home, sleeping it off, getting ready for another day.

Upstairs, I showed Gary where the shower was, gave him jeans and a tee shirt for when he was done. The kid in him had stared around a little as the cab stopped and he realized this street of warehouses and factory buildings was where I lived. He gave the same wide eyes to my apartment above the bar, and especially to the piano, but he said nothing, so I didn't either.

I made a pot of coffee and scrambled four eggs, all I had in the house. When he came out of the bathroom, dirt and grease scrubbed off, he looked younger than before. He was wiry, long-legged, and he didn't quite fill out my clothes, but he came close. His shoulders were broad and the muscles in his arms had the sharp, cut look lifting weights will give you.

I watched him as he crossed the living room. The circles under his eyes seemed to have darkened; they looked as though they'd be painful to the touch. He'd found Band-Aids for his knuckles. I saw a bruise on his jaw.

“Hey,” he said, his face lighting up at the smell of scrambled eggs and buttered toast. “I didn't know you could cook, Uncle Bill.”

“Sit down. You drink coffee?”

He shook his head. “Uh-uh. Coach doesn't like it.”

I poured a cup of coffee for myself, asked, “Football?”

“Yeah.” He dropped into a chair, shoveled half the eggs onto a plate.

“What position?”

“Wide receiver,” he said, his mouth already full. Then he added, “I don't start yet,” to be honest with me. “I'm just a sophomore, and I'm new. This school, they're pretty serious about football.”

I looked at his broad shoulders, his muscled arms. “Next year you'll start.”

“Yeah, I guess. If we stay,” he said, as if reminding himself not to get too sure of things, reminding himself how many times he'd started over and how many times he'd have to. I had done that too.

“You used to play football, Uncle Bill?” he asked, reaching for a piece of toast.

“No.”

He glanced up, clearly surprised; this was probably heresy, a big American man who hadn't played football.

“We left the U.S. when I was nine and didn't come back until I was fifteen,” I said. “Your mom must have told you that?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said offhandedly, but a brief pause before he said it made me wonder how much he did know about the childhood Helen and I had shared.

“The rest of the world plays soccer,” I said. “Not football. I played some soccer, basketball when we came back, and I ran track.”

“Track's cool,” he said, seeming relieved to be back on familiar ground. “I run track in the spring. What events?”

“Longer distances. I started slow but I could last.”

“Track's cool,” he repeated. “But except when you're running relay—I mean, it's a team but it's not really a team. You know?”

“I think that was why I liked it.” I brought a quart of milk and the coffee I was working on over to the table. “Take the rest,” I said, pointing at the eggs. “It's all yours.”

“You sure?”

“I don't eat breakfast at four in the morning. You look like you didn't get supper.”

He ate like someone who hadn't eaten in a week; but he was fifteen, it might have been two hours. Between bites, he said, “Thanks, Uncle Bill. For getting me out of there.”