Double Trouble (37 page)

Flaherty shook his head, then a light came on. “Wait a minute. Marcia married a lawyer. What did you say the boy’s surname was?”

“Coxwell.”

Flaherty grinned, even as he looked amazed. “No shit? One of them in here.” He whistled through his teeth. “I would have made more of a show of it if I’d known.”

“James Coxwell is his dad.”

“Well, doesn’t that take the prize. Was this his idea?”

“No, mine. I’ll never forget this place.”

He squeezed my hand in a paternal way. “But it steered you straight all these years.”

“It did. I never wanted to see the inside of a cell again.”

“Crude but effective, that’s what I say.” Flaherty nodded and looked around the station. “James Coxwell, you say. Now there’s a family of legal eagles. Is he the one said to be going to the DA’s office?”

I nodded. “News travels fast.”

But Flaherty was remembering something. “He took me apart in court once, had me wondering whether I even knew my own name. He’s good, dangerously good—it’s fine news to have him on our side. He’s tough about people following the rules, and there are those who don’t appreciate being told their job, but it’s the respect for the law that marks the good guys.”

Before I could comment, he leaned forward and tapped my knee with a heavy fingertip. “Here’s another thought for you. You take that boy to see his father in court one day, especially now as he’s on the right side.”

“That’s a good idea. I’ll do that.”

“It’s an education.”

“I’ll bet.”

“All right then, Mary Elizabeth. I’ve got to walk my beat, but it was a delight to see you again. You ever need my help again, you let me know. And you give my best to your father.” He stood and smoothed down his shirt. “You still remember the way?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Larissa will go down with you, let him out when you’re ready.” He gestured to a statuesque black woman in uniform, who glanced up at the sound of her name and smiled at me.

“Maybe I’ll go down now,” I said, sparing a glance at the clock. What a soft touch I’m getting to be. It had been barely twenty minutes.

Flaherty touched my shoulder. “You never get another chance to make a first impression, Mary Elizabeth,” he counseled quietly. “Let him wait the full thirty.”

* * *

I did.

Larissa walked down to the lock-up with me, then hung back, letting me talk to the kid more or less alone. He was the only guest of this particular hotel of the State of Massachusetts at the moment, either because the streets had gotten less mean or because it was early in the day.

He looked small and young.

He glanced up when I strolled along the corridor, then looked down at his shoes. He was clearly relieved to see me and just as clearly determined to hide that relief. I leaned against the opposite wall and let the silence stretch long.

“When I was twelve,” I said finally. “I stole a lipstick.”

There was a flicker of interest from the boy behind the bars. “Lame,” he whispered and I smiled.

“You bet. I took it from the nickel and dime store at the corner. It’s not there any more. I not only had no money but I wasn’t allowed to have any make-up until I was thirteen. But I wanted that lipstick. I was sure it was just the right color for me, maybe even that I deserved it. I thought it would be cool to steal something. I was sure I’d never get caught.”

“But you did.”

“Not by the store. They never had a clue.”

He looked up, curious despite himself.

“Someone ratted on me.” I spared the kid the detail of who that person had been. You can work it out—I painted that line down the middle of the bedroom right after I got out of the big house. I’m sure my parents despaired of me then. “And Flaherty came to the house. I thought he was visiting my dad, but he zipped those handcuffs on me just like that. And then he walked me all the way here. I thought I would die because all of my friends saw us.”

Jimmy turned to face me, interested now.

“They left me there all night.”

“All night?” he squeaked.

“It was a different time, Jimmy. We thought the world wasn’t nearly as dangerous then as we do now, and lots of people thought kids needed tough lessons.” I crossed the corridor and leaned against the bars beside him. “And I wasn’t alone?”

“You were in here with crooks?”

I smiled. “A pair of old hookers. Prostitutes. They talked about a lot of stuff that I didn’t understand but maybe you would. One of them fell asleep and then the other one came to talk to me. I was scared but I wasn’t going to let her see that.”

He watched me avidly.

“She told me about her life, about her father raping her and about getting kicked out in the street when she was nine. She told me about searching for food and being alone and being cold and selling her body to get something to eat. She had this voice that was all gravelly, from cigarettes and who knows what else. She told me a lot of the things she’d done, most of them illegal, and then she took my hand.” I shook my head, remembering. “I thought she was about a thousand years old, you know, and she smelled.”

He shuddered. “I wouldn’t want her to touch me.”

“I didn’t either, but I didn’t want to act like I was scared.” Jimmy nodded understanding. “So I let her, and her touch was so gentle, even after what she’d been through. Even though she talked so tough. She said to me -” I coughed up my best impression of that voice “`I bet you don’t feel too blessed tonight, do you kid?’”

“When I said no, she smiled and squeezed my hand. ‘But you are and don’t you ever forget it. I wish someone had loved me enough snatch me back from the edge.’”

Jimmy stared up at me for a long moment before he looked away. “Am I supposed to feel lucky now?”

“Don’t you?”

He didn’t look up and he didn’t answer me. I beckoned to Larissa, content with incremental progress, and she unlocked the door. “Don’t you let me see you back here again,” she said sternly to Jimmy as he walked free.

Jimmy didn’t say anything but he was thinking about it. He retrieved his toy from the front desk, and gave it a hard look before he tucked it away.

The first class at Maralys U was making headway.

* * *

Next stop was Meg’s to check on progress for The Dress, of which there had been none. She had prominently displayed the last of James’ suits, on my request, with not just the price on the tag but James’ name on it. Jimmy noticed—the kid was literate, after all—but said nothing. His eyes did widen at the price and he stayed quiet long after we left.

“You buy used clothes?”

“All the time.”

“Isn’t that kind of gross? Knowing that someone else wore it first?”

“Well, it’s been cleaned. And what’s the difference between your cousin’s hand-me-downs and someone else’s?” I held up a hand. “Wait, don’t tell me, you never got hand-me-downs.”

He shook his head.

“Trust me, they’re awful. Picking what you want is way better.”

He smiled at me and I thought it was time for a break. We passed under the golden arches, which pleased him no end. “How come we never go to your place?” he asked when we were eating.

“Bite your tongue.” I stole one of his fries. “You think I’m going to let someone with sticky fingers into my cave? Wrong-o, Calypso.”

“I’ll bet you have cool stuff.”

“Very cool stuff. Repent from your wicked ways and we’ll talk about it.”

Even lab rats get the occasional piece of cheese, or at least a whiff of it, right? We went to see Tracy, who’d lined up the nickel tour of the lab just for us. They didn’t show us the really hot stuff, but it was enough to intrigue technically-inclined Jimmy. Phyllis walked him through her contract operation, talking to him as if he was a potential recruit, which thrilled him no end. She reminded me of a beta test she wanted me to help with later in the month.

“Mind your p’s and q’s,” I told Jimmy “and I might let you help with the beta-testing.”

“What’s that?”

“The last test of software before it’s shipped. We try to break it, to find the mistakes and weaknesses in the code.”

“Cool!”

“As long as you’re not the one who has to fix it. That can become a bit of a drag.” I gave him a steady glance. “I’d have to pay you, of course, but I don’t hire crooks. Nobody does.”

He looked at me hard. “Do I get a chance to do better?”

“There’s always a chance to do better. Hurry up, we’re late.”

We went from there to a seminar that Lydia was helping to organize. It was part of a program associated with one of the hospitals, which did a lot of facial surgery on children. The idea was to help kids look past the deformities of other children, and thus to be less aware of their own. I guess it’s supposed to build self-esteem. Lydia had suggested that we drop in, but I really wasn’t prepared for the children.

No. What I wasn’t prepared for was the sight of their ravaged little faces.

It broke my heart. There is a nasty little impulse that lives on in all of us, maybe a residual of the reptile brain that’s still wired in. It makes our guts jump when we see another of our species that isn’t within bounds of tolerance of mutation. It makes us understand why sparrows will peck the sick one to death. It’s an ugly urge, all the more so because you can’t just cut it out and be rid of it.

It’s not civilized, but it’s still there. It will probably always be there, lurking in all of us.

I surprised at how hard it lunged for my throat. So many kids, so many anomalies. We arrived when they were taking a play break—as planned—and, like kids everywhere, they were making a heck of a racket. All the same, I had to sit down and mentally wrestle my reptile.

Jimmy was silent.

I watched the kids and realized that they were either freed of the ugly urge or had gotten over it. Maybe looking in the mirror every day at a cleft pallet in the process of repair or an inoperable tumor gives you greater tolerance. Maybe we could all get past it if we tried. I looked hard and saw the way they smiled as they played, the way they shouted and ran, just like all other kids, and focused on that.

Lydia came over as soon as she saw us, wearing a great big smile. “Oh, it’s going so well,” she enthused. “Here’s my new theory—we need to be reminded once in a while that we’re not alone, in order to be better people.”

“Works for me.” I shared my FedEx theory—well, with some editing for little ears—and she thought for a moment before she nodded.

“I like it. It has potential.”

Jimmy scanned the room, then looked up at me. “What are we doing here, Auntie Maralys?”

I smiled and lied. “I thought you might want to play with some new kids.”

He held my gaze, assessing me in a startling echo of his dad’s manner. Then he nodded and looked back at the kids. I swear he thought I thought he’d buckle, and he was determined to show me wrong.

The kid had pluck. Jimmy marched right up to small boy, the only kid not bouncing around. The boy just sat hunched over alone in the middle of the floor. I saw the port wine birthmark that covered most of the boy’s face.

What Jimmy saw, I realized a moment later, was that the kid had the same handheld toy that Jimmy had stolen. He was alone, not because of the mark on his face, but because he was playing that game with such concentration that it excluded everyone else in the room. I was humbled, because I had overlooked what Jimmy thought was the most intriguing quality of this kid.

Lydia and I exchanged a glance, then sidled closer.

“Is that one of those new ones?” Jimmy asked, then named the model.

“Yeah,” the other kid said, not even looking up from the game. His attitude was dismissive, as if Jimmy’s presence might affect his game. “My dad bought it for me.”

“It’s supposed to let you play interactively.”

The kid shrugged, attention fixed on the game. “Yeah.”

“Does it work?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anyone else who has one.”

“Neither do I,” Jimmy said. The other kid looked up and Jimmy pulled his toy out of his jacket. “Wanna play? That is, if you feel lucky.” They grinned at each other, then the other kid sobered as he scanned Jimmy’s face.

“So, what’s wrong with you?”

Jimmy gave me an impish look. “I have an attitude problem.”

“Me, too.”

They giggled together as if this was the funniest thing in the world, then put their heads together. No doubt they had to load up the same game, then get the units to acknowledge each other. They worked diligently at it, pointing out things to each other to get it done ASAP.

I had a humungous lump in my throat.

In no time at all, the two forgot everything except what fun they were having. They were squared off like storm-troopers, firing away at each other. They frowned in concentration, they bit their lips, they shouted with glee when they made a hit and they laughed.

Some of the other kids gathered around and Jimmy passed his toy to another kid when it was time for a new game. The other boy did the same, and the kids formed organically into teams, Jimmy and the first boy telling the current team captain how to play. They didn’t even look up at each other, or stare at each other’s faces.

The game was everything, it broke down barriers and brought them all together.

You’ve got to love technology. Those barriers were down because Jimmy marched out there and shared. I had to look away. I was so proud of him, so touched by his choice.

He’d trumped my ace, that kid, gone one better in showing me what he was really made of. I thought my heart was going to explode it was pounding so hard.

Lydia gave me a hug from behind and I held fast to her hands, not trusting myself to speak. “Hey, Maralys, time for a new theory.”

“What?”

“You’re a natural, girly.”

I looked back at her. “A natural what?”

“A natural mom. You reached inside that kid and -” she reached out with a fingertip “- and you touched him, Maralys. You really
touched
him.”

She smiled at me and I smiled back, feeling like a great big sap. I wondered then whether I really could do this parenting thing. I wondered then whether it wasn’t a given that I’d let James and the boys down, sooner or later.