Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead (21 page)

“It's me,” I said. “I had a dream.”

I hung up.

We started our careers as detectives by solving the mysteries in our own homes. Where was Kelly's mother going at quarter after one every afternoon? To the liquor store, as we found out. What did Tracy's dad keep in the mysterious box under his bed? Bondage porn, photographs I wished I'd never seen. And who was my mother making such mysterious calls to after my father fell asleep at night? We found out it was my father's brother.

It wasn't long before we had proven Silette's first rule of solving mysteries: most people don't want their mysteries solved. Including us. But it was too late for us to stop.

Next, we started solving mysteries in the neighborhood. There was no shortage of crimes, but the solutions weren't very challenging. Everyone knew who'd shot Dwayne. Everyone knew about LaTisha's dad. The problem wasn't solving the crime. The problem was that no one cared.

As we got older we spent hours on the subway. From the Cloisters to Coney Island, New York was ours. It cost seventy-five cents for a subway token, and a can of Krylon was two bucks. And turnstiles were easy to jump, and spray paint was easy to steal. We rode the trains and left our mark where we could. Some kids lived or died for graffiti. We just wanted to leave some evidence we'd been alive.

New York was our own private mystery. Like children alone in the woods, we followed our trail of crumbs wherever it led us. No one looked for us. Nobody missed us. Our only encounter with adult authority was the cops, and all they ever said was
Pour it out, Put it in a paper bag
, or
Put it out
.

Together we wrote graffiti, together we bought records, together we combed thrift shops for clothes and books, together we bought nickel bags of weed and pints of vodka on Myrtle Avenue, together we faked the age on our bus passes to sneak into shows, together we rode the subway to the end of the line, together we met other kids like us—a whole city of kids like us, from neighborhoods and houses they wanted to be away from as much as possible.

But there was one difference between us and the other kids we met. We had read
Détection
. They hadn't.

By 1985 we'd started reading the papers and watching the news and trying to solve the crimes we read about. That year more than a thousand people were murdered in New York City. There were one or two shootings a week in our neighborhood alone.

But the city at large, we found, wasn't so different from our neighborhood. Sometimes the problem wasn't cracking the case. It was finding someone to care after you cracked it.

“The clue that can be named is not the eternal clue,” Silette wrote. “The mystery that can be named is not the eternal mystery.”

T
HE NEXT DAY
I drove to the park on Annunciation and Third again. In front of me was the big white truck with a cherry picker I'd seen around the city. I still didn't know what it did. I looked at the license plate; it was covered with mud. I tried to catch sight of the people inside but I couldn't make much out, just two people in white jumpsuits. At Josephine it made a right turn and I didn't follow.

The park on Annunciation was supposed to be a playground. No one was playing in it. But the same boys were hanging out, trying to sell the same drugs. One of them was small and had great big dreadlocks. I knew it was Lawrence.

I parked and went over to Lawrence and introduced myself. Lawrence had flawless dark skin and a good-looking-enough face, but his best feature was his hair, which cascaded out and around him in well-tended locks like those of Shiva, the Hindu god. He wore tremendously large pants with an equally disproportionate gun in the waistband and a huge T-shirt that had a picture of a dead boy on it.
HUSTLER
4
LIFE
, the T-shirt said under the picture of the boy. In the cold I saw goose bumps on Lawrence's perfect brown arm.

I shivered as we stood and looked at each other. Nearby, his friends, concealing enough weaponry to subdue Fallujah, watched us. I was glad for the .38 tucked into my jeans.

Lawrence sneered at me. Only a mother could think Lawrence
was innocent of anything. As far as I was concerned everyone was guilty of everything. Especially Lawrence.

“Can I buy you lunch?” I asked. “It's kind of cold out.”

Lawrence shook his head and didn't say anything. He was playing it tough.

I was tougher.

“It's about Vic Willing,” I said softly. “The lawyer.”

Lawrence pulled his lips together. He still didn't say anything.

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Don't talk to the crazy lady about the lawyer.”

He didn't say anything. But his eyes were dying to talk. The story was strong. But Lawrence was stronger.

“So I'm gonna guess,” I said. “I'm gonna guess what happened between you and Vic Willing.”

Lawrence looked sideways, ignoring me, setting his jaw. But he didn't leave.

I watched Lawrence. He stood tall and erect, but his back was stiff and rigid; it was bravado, not pride that held him upright. His shoulders pulled forward in a self-protective gesture. He stuck his hands in his pockets so I wouldn't see how hard it was for him to keep them still. I measured his rate of breath and the depth of his inhalations: fast and shallow. I looked into his eyes and read the marks on his irises. I studied his tattoos. In addition to the usual gang and neighborhood markers, a zipper was inked across his neck; it screamed
suicidal ideation
.

It wasn't a hard tale to read. Just an old, sad one. One I knew better than I wanted to.

“Vic heard about you from your mother, Shaniqua,” I began. “She asked him some questions and told him all about you. And he offered to help. And he
did
help, didn't he? Got the charges dropped, got your record cleared. And he was so
nice
. He was about the nicest, coolest guy in the world. Right?”

Lawrence said nothing.

“Just like everyone said he was,” I went on. “And after the case was over, he didn't leave. Not like—well, like just about everyone else except your mom, right? Vic didn't leave. He stuck
around. And he was probably a good friend at first. Interested in you, listened to you, gave you good advice.”

Lawrence kept his eyes fixed on a spot on the other side of the playground and clenched his jaw. His chest puffed out like he was ready to fight.

“But then one day,” I said, shivering, “he wasn't so nice anymore, was he? He wanted more. He told you it was okay, that everyone did it. He wanted—well, he wanted sex. And when you said no, at first that was okay. He said it was fine. You didn't have to do anything you didn't want to do. And you could still be friends, right?”

Lawrence didn't move a muscle. But shiny little pools formed in the corners of his eyes.

“But he wouldn't stop trying. He wouldn't let it go. He took you to nice places. Bought you things. But he wouldn't stop trying. He said you could still be friends. And you wanted to still be friends. But he wouldn't stop. He just
wouldn't stop
.

“And then one day he laid down the law. He wasn't asking anymore. He
told
you. You get with the program, or he would get the charges reinstated. Murder two—that's a big one. No one in the world wants to go to Angola for that kind of time.” Of course, it was unlikely Vic could bring the charges back once they'd been dropped. But there was no point in telling Lawrence that now. “So you did it,” I went on. “You—”

Lawrence shook his head.

“Uh-uh,” he said, his voice full of emotion. “No. We did
not
—no.”

He made a strange motion with his head and sighed, turning his head toward the park, avoiding my eyes.

I didn't say anything.

“I just watched,” Lawrence mumbled. “He liked to have someone watching. Some other boy did the . . . you know.”

“How old were you?” I asked.

“Fourteen,” he muttered. “Thirteen and then fourteen.”

His eyes were glued on something twenty feet in the distance. It started to rain, almost as if he had made it happen by staring hard enough. I didn't think Lawrence just watched.

We stood in the rain and tried living with what I'd just said.

Neither of us liked it very much.

If there was a cure for self-loathing, I'd give it to Lawrence, after taking a sip for myself. But there is no magic potion. Everyone has to find his own way out. Everyone has to carve his own road through the wilderness.

But sometimes, maybe, you can leave a clue.

“When it happened to me,” I said, “I wanted to die.”

Lawrence kept his eyes fixed in the distance.

“I mean,” I went on, “I really, really just wanted to die, you know? To be honest, the only reason I didn't do it was because I was scared. Scared of what would happen after, scared of dying. And then, of course, I hated myself for being scared, too, so there was that. Then I found this book. And this guy, in this book, he said something I thought was really smart. It kind of changed things for me. It kind of like changed everything, like changed my whole life.”

I looked at Lawrence. He was still looking away. In the inner corner of his left eye, a well of tears shook and then broke and streamed down his face. He froze, trying to pretend they weren't there. Fast food wrappers and empty soda bottles rattled on the ground around our ankles, driven by the wind.

“In this book,” I went on, as if we both weren't crying, “this guy, he says, ‘Be grateful for every scar life inflicts on you.' He says, ‘Where we're unhurt is where we are false. Where we're wounded and healed is where our real self gets to show itself.' That's where you get to show who you are.”

Lawrence turned and looked at me. He didn't say anything. But he looked at me like he was drowning and I was holding out a rope.

“From here,” I said carefully, “you can go anywhere you want. Anywhere in the whole world. You don't ever have to be the same person you were yesterday. The same things will have happened to you, but you don't have to be the same person.”

Lawrence laughed and pretended he didn't understand what I meant.

“This story,” I said, “
your
story—it doesn't have to be the
story where the victim dies alone and broke in a hotel room on Canal Street. It doesn't have to end at Angola. This can be a story where no day is ever this boring again. I mean, you've already lived through the worst possible outcome of any risk. You've really got nothing to lose.”

We looked at each other for a long minute.

“I think you crazy,” Lawrence finally said, laughing, choking back tears.

“I am,” I said. “Officially. Come on. Let me buy you lunch. I'll tell you about it.”

“Yeah,” Lawrence said. “Okay.”

We walked up to Parasol's and got roast beef sandwiches and root beer and laughed some more until neither of us was crying. We didn't talk about Vic or the case. I just told Lawrence stories. I told him about the time the state of Utah had me declared officially insane. I told him a few stories about Brooklyn and then I told him a few about the rest of the world: Paris, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, San Francisco. I told him about solving mysteries and going crazy and getting kicked out of a tattoo convention in L.A. and being banned from the Sands in Vegas for life.

There are no coincidences. Just opportunities you're too dumb to see, doors you've been too blind to step through.

And for every one you miss there's some poor fucking soul who's been left behind, waiting for someone to come along and show him the way out.

O
NCE, WHEN I WORKED
for Constance, a friend of hers showed up at the house with a dozen or more little children. He was an Indian, the witch doctor from the White Hawks. He wasn't in costume, but I recognized him from Saint Joseph's Day, when we'd seen him performing in the park. He'd worn white that day, with a headpiece three feet high, and long synthetic braids coming down each side of his face. The man was fifty-ish and had a mean face—if he hadn't been in the company of a group of kids who adored him, he might have scared me. But the children clearly worshiped him; they ran around and climbed on top of him and crawled over him. They all called him Uncle, although I was fairly certain that none of them were related. The kids were unruly and not terribly clean and I figured they were system kids—fosters, group home children, or street kids.

I had no idea what they were doing there. They all went out to the garden, where Constance grew her herbs, the most dangerous kept behind a locked gate. The children gathered around the man and he took out a tambourine and began teaching them chants. I'd been in New Orleans long enough by then to recognize the Indian songs, even though I didn't know what they meant. But I was surprised that Constance knew all the chants without missing a beat, and taught along with him.

I watched them for a while and then went back to work, sift
ing through files. We were working on the Case of the Missing Miners and I was researching the genealogy of the mine owner, Alfred Stern—which turned out to be a waste of time because the miners, in the end, were never really missing at all. Just misplaced. When I needed a break I went in the kitchen to get a drink. Constance was sitting at the table with one of the little boys, reading his tea leaves. The boy beamed; her attention was like a life vest to a drowning child.

“When the time comes,” I heard her say to the boy, “you'll know it. Okay?”

The boy nodded, smiling. Constance reached over and rubbed his head.

“Remember,” she said. “Remember this.”

I went back to work. The man and the kids stayed until dark. After they left, Constance and I cleaned up together, picking up half-full glasses of lemonade and plates of cookie crumbs from around the house. Constance answered my question before I asked it.