Too Far to Say Far Enough: A Novel (24 page)

Heart still slamming, I found my son at the bistro table. He was swinging his lanky legs and looking everywhere but at me.

“Where’s Flannery?” I said.

He didn’t answer until Kade poked him.

“Out,” he said.

“Out? Out where?”

His Adam’s apple went up and down so hard I could almost hear it scraping his throat.

“Look, bro,” Kade said, “if you know, you gotta tell us. She could get into serious trouble out there.”

Desmond catapulted himself out of the chair and paced to the sink and then to the refrigerator and back. Kade opened his mouth, but I put my finger to my lips. Finally Desmond stopped with his back to the pantry door. “I was puttin’ the dishes in the dishwasher,” he said. “And I thought she was cleanin’ that nasty pan in the sink.”

I nodded him on.

“But then I turned around and she was just about out the door. I axed her where was she goin’ and she jus’ said, ‘Imma be back. I got to go do something. Cover for me.’”

I’d have bet my Harley she called him Desi somewhere in there.

“But I wasn’t gon’ cover for her, Big Al.” Desmond’s voice shot out of man-range, up into scared-boy territory. “I was just thinkin’ for a minute how much she gon’ hate me when she finds out I busted her.”

“She’ll get over it,” Kade said. “Did she tell you where she went?”

“Desmond,” I said, “where is the Hot Spot?”

He lost three inches against the pantry door.

“Remember what I said: If the time came when I really needed to know, you were going to have to tell me.”

“Corner of Sevilla and Valencia.”

“You won’t regret this, bro,” Kade said to him.

I was on my way to the door, phone in one hand, my boots in the other. “Desmond, stay here,” I said.

“I think I’d better come with you,” Kade said.

“Okay—” I pressed a hand to my temple. “Then, Des, I’m calling Mr. Schatzie to come over in case you need a grown-up. You can call Mr. Chief if you want.”

He didn’t argue.

“Lock the door. Don’t let anybody in.”

When I got a nod from him I bolted out with Kade on my heels.

“Let’s take my car,” he said. “If she’s there she’ll hear the Harley and maybe run.”

Under any other circumstances I’d have called Kade a chicken heart. He had ridden with me one time and swore he’d never do it again. But at this point, there was no sign of my sense of humor. I called Owen and got in Kade’s Mazda.

“I can’t deal with this kid anymore,” I told him as we wove our way from Palm Row toward Valencia. “Adults are one thing, but I’m not equipped to handle kids, not girls anyway. And definitely not this girl.”

“You know if you actually catch her in the act of … soliciting … you’re not going to have much choice but to turn her over to—”

“Are you speaking as my attorney?”

“It’s what Chief would tell you.”

“Wait, what’s the address again?”

“Valencia and Sevilla. This is the way, isn’t it?”

I stared through the windshield. “That’s where the church is—where I used to go.”

Kade swerved onto Valencia Street and into a now vacant Flagler College parking lot where he turned to look at me. His clear blue eyes were heading toward angry. “You think Desmond was feeding us a line to give Flannery time to—”

“No. He’s never even been there. It just blows me away that this kind of thing could be going on right in front of the dad-gum
church
.”

Mind still reeling, I scanned Valencia. The always-quiet avenue was lined with magnolias that even in mid-September were thick and shiny with leaves. I couldn’t see Flagler Community Church, but it was there, ignoring the world from behind its Henry Flagler opulence. Just like it always had.

“Let’s leave the car here and walk down,” I said.

I went for the door handle, but Kade put his hand on my arm. His skin was clammy. “I’m thinking we should call Nick Kent.”

“Can’t.”

“So we’re going to do what if somebody pulls a knife?”

“I don’t know, but I can’t sit here any longer.”

That was truer than he could know. The Nudge was so strong I was surprised I wasn’t halfway down the street already.

“You coming?” I said. And then I got out of the car and took off toward the corner.

Kade caught up and took my elbow, for all the world as if he were escorting me to the opera. When we were almost to Sevilla, he squeezed my arm and pulled me out of the bright circle cast by the streetlight.

“I see some people down there,” he whispered.

“How many?”

“Maybe four.”

“
Big
people?”

Even in the shadows I could see him grinning. “Nah. They actually do look like kids.”

I nodded. That was what Desmond had told me before: it was a place for kids to hook up.

“Do you see Flannery?” I said.

Kade shook his head. “There’s a girl, but that’s not Flan’s hair.”

I pulled away and hurried toward the corner, staying out of the lights, hugging the line of trees. A veil of Spanish moss hit me in the face and I brushed it behind me. Kade muffled an epithet.

By the time I reached the street sign I could see the figures Kade was talking about. A girl only slightly taller than Flannery, and two guys, both gangly and slope-shouldered like wannabe basketball players. They stood with their hands jammed in their pockets, the way men wait for women outside a ladies’ room. Impatient, but not aggressive.

Their heads were turned toward the girl, but she faced away from them, hands working the air like she was hell-bent on convincing someone of something. I felt Kade’s restraining hand on my shoulder, but I took another step forward, and there she was, in the shadows: Flannery, just as hell-bent from the other direction.

“He’s after us, Tango!” she said. “You have to come with me!”

“They don’t even know where we are,” the other girl answered.

“New York accent,” Kade whispered to me.

“Yes, they do. I told you—”

“Hey, are we gonna get any action or what? We got the cash.”

That came from one of the boys, who moved just far enough out of the shadows to expose a pimpled face and a hard mouth.

“Just chill,” Tango said. “I’ll be right there.”

Flannery grabbed her wrist. “No! Come back with me and you’ll be safe. I swear.”

“What do I look like? You’ll just come back and take my clients.”

Tango jerked her hand away and pulled it behind her head in a fist. Flannery cringed.

“Hey, all right—girl fight!” the other kid yelled.

“We have to stop this,” I hissed to Kade. “Get Flannery.”

Kade was on the two girls just as Tango set herself up for another try at Flannery’s face. He put both arms around Flannery and turned her away. I attempted the same move with Tango and was rewarded with a bite on the wrist. When I jerked loose and lost my balance, she shoved herself against me and we both went down. She scrambled to her feet and stuck her foot in my chest, hurling obscenities through it all.

“Hey, who are you?” one of the boys called out, voice indignant.

From the ground I saw Kade hold up his open wallet with the hand that wasn’t holding onto Flannery. With a string of expletives, both boys took off across the street and disappeared into the churchyard. Tango looked down at me, spit like a snake, and went screaming after them. But not before I got a full view of her perfectly round, exquisitely chiseled face.

“You okay, Allison?” Kade said.

It was no surprise to me that Flannery was limp in his arms. If his being here for this wasn’t a God-thing, I didn’t know what was.

I pulled myself up and examined the teeth marks in my arm. Beyond us a siren began to wail, and so did Flannery.

“Kade,” I said, “take her to Sacrament House, okay? I’m going to stay here and tell the police what goes down here.”

“How are you going to get back?”

“I’ll figure it out. I’ll call Chief.”

Kade looked at me over the top of Flannery’s head. “I don’t like leaving you here.”

“Oh, gee, Kade, what can happen?” I said. “I’m right in front of a church.”

Sometimes sarcasm really did hold me together.

Kade half carried a strangely silent Flannery to the car. I was standing there listening to the sirens shriek toward me and figuring out just how I was going to explain why I knew about the Hot Spot, when I heard footsteps pounding toward me from the direction of the church.

Did those hormonal little morons have some coconuts or what? They were coming
back
?

But when I turned, ready to take them on, I saw that it wasn’t one of Tango’s clients but a man in perhaps his late thirties who jogged like he did it on a regular basis. His hair was cut close to the head that jutted forward, on alert.

“Hey,” he said, “everything all right out here?” The accent hailed from someplace deeper South than north Florida. Alabama, maybe, or Mississippi.

I waited warily until he got closer and I could see concerned brown eyes and a plain wooden cross bouncing on his chest as he came to a halt a few feet in front of me.

“I heard some commotion,” he said. “Those cops on their way here?”

“Sounds like it. And you are?”

“Yates Chattingham.” He put out his hand. “I’m the pastor here.”

I let my hand stay in his for no longer than three seconds. “The
new
pastor,” I said.

“Been here just over eight weeks.”

“Not long enough to know you have child prostitutes out here doing business with the local boys.”

The brown eyes expanded. “Apparently not. I had no idea.”

“Well, now ya know. What do you think you’ll do about it?”

He shook his head.

I shook mine too. “Nothing is not the correct answer, reverend. The correct answer is: ‘We have girls in our community who are desperate and neglected and unvalued enough to stoop to this? We’d better help them!’” I narrowed the space between us. “Just let me warn you, Mr.—Cunningham, was it?”

“Chattingham—”

“You’re not going to get any support from your congregation on this. They’re going to tell you this isn’t the business of the church, which is why you won’t find me sitting in one of your pews on Sunday mornings like I did for seven years. You want to know what drove me out?”

He nodded.

“It was the indifference. I hope it doesn’t drive you out too.”

I cocked my head. The sirens faded toward the bay.

“I guess they weren’t headed here,” Yates Chattingham said. “Would you like to come in for some coffee? Maybe talk about this some more?”

“No. I have to talk a wounded child out of the crazy tree.”

“At least tell me your name,” he said.

“Allison. Allison Chamberlain. But if you want to stay here very long, don’t mention that to your flock.”

I left him standing there and stomped off down Valencia Street.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Although I was only wearing shorts, a sleeveless T, and a pair of flip-flops, I was marinating in my own sweat before I reached the traffic light at Cordova and King. The evening itself was cool; I was not. Even with a blister forming where the thong of my shoes cut between my toes, both my speed and my anger continued to ratchet up. Several notches for spoiled teenage boys with too much money and not enough supervision. Several more for the cops who never saw it going down and the members of Flagler Community Church who, bless their hearts, wouldn’t know it was going down if they walked right into it. At that proximity some of them probably had.

But the rest of my rage I reserved for myself. The questions slapped me with every flop of my rubber soles on the brick sidewalk.

Why hadn’t I pushed Desmond before to tell me where the Hot Spot was?

And how could I have let that little Tango girl get away? The fact that I’d have needed a black belt to hold onto her was beside the point. Why didn’t I run after her and tackle her and drag her to Sacrament House before she caught up with those junior jackals?

I finally noticed the foot pain as I passed City Hall, and kicked off my flip-flops to carry them the remaining block to Palm Row. But the real ache, the one forming smack in the middle of my gut, didn’t subside. That one was for Flannery.

I had seen the manipulative “bite me” blankets she stayed hidden under. She’d made sure I didn’t miss those. And yeah, I’d lifted the corners of those covers and gotten a few glimpses of her fear and shame. But the capacity to care, and the courage to act on it—she’d kept those completely under wraps until I witnessed her begging Tango to come with her to my house. Even when Tango reared back to slug her, Flannery had done nothing more than cringe.

I stopped at the corner of Cordova and Palm Row, shoes still in hand. My eyes closed and I searched behind them for Tango’s face. Round. Beautifully childlike. And without a mark.

Not a green and yellow bruise like Flannery’s, not a single laceration or scratch such as the ones Flannery was still healing from. Not a sign that Tango had been in a fight with her just five days before.

Either Tango wasn’t the one who’d tried to rearrange Flannery’s facial features, or Flannery had simply stood there and let her do it. From what I’d just seen, I was inclined to believe the latter. But nobody could have convinced me of that an hour ago.

I ran barefoot the rest of the way, Flannery-pain still tearing at me. Just as I’d instructed Desmond, the side door was locked, and I’d barely started knocking when Chief was there opening it. His big safe shoulders brought my heart rate down a few beats per second.

“Where’s Desmond?” I tossed my flip-flops under the table and grabbed my motorcycle boots.

“Taking a shower.”

“Good. Okay—I need to put on some jeans. No, I’ll just ride in my shorts—”

“What are you doing, Classic?”

“I’m going over to Sacrament House.” I shoved my feet into the boots and flipped through the keys on the hook until I located the one for the Harley. “Kade took Flannery over there after we found her at the Hot Spot, trying to get Tango to come back here with her.” I stuffed the key in my shorts pocket. “Tango chose two teenage johns over us and took off. Do you mind staying with Desmond until I get back?”

Chief put himself between me and the door. “I can’t let you do this, Classic.”

“I’ve got to get over there!”

“Then I’ll take you. If you get on that bike in this state, you’ll get yourself killed.”

“I can’t leave Desmond here by himself.”

“Owen’s still here.” Chief’s eyes crinkled for a second. “He said he’d guard the front door if I’d take the back.”

I shoved my hair into a messy bun. “Okay, okay. I’ll tell Owen and we’ll go.”

“I’ll tell Owen. You go get long pants and a jacket.”

I didn’t tell him I’d given my jacket to Flannery, who was currently wearing it. I went to the laundry basket on top of the washing machine and pulled out some still-damp Levis and one of Desmond’s Harley sweatshirts. Chief was waiting for me next to the Road King when I joined him. He put his hands on my shoulders.

“Breathe, Classic.”

I started to deflate. “I think I’ve really messed this one up.”

“Then breathe deep.”

I sucked in air, but the look he gave me was all I needed.

I climbed onto the bike behind him and rubbed a new round of palm sweat on my thighs. Chief took my hands in mid-wipe and wrapped my arms around him.

“Hold on,” he said.

This isn’t fair,
I wanted to say to him. But I needed to hold on far too much to go there now.

I did breathe, so that when we pulled up to the curb on San Luis Street and Mercedes waved to us from the window of Sacrament One, I could at least hope I would know what to say to Flannery. As for exact words, God wasn’t providing any yet.

When Mercedes let us in, only Jasmine was in the living room with Kade and Flan. Someone had turned on the eclectic pair of lamps and lit a candle on the cable spool repurposed as an end table. An untouched mug of tea was next to it, and Flannery was wrapped in the blanket I recognized from Rochelle’s bed, although Rochelle herself wasn’t present. Another sensitive move on somebody’s part.

“I told Ophelia and Gigi to stay over at Two with Zelda,” Mercedes said. “She still goin’ back and forth between havin’ it together and fallin’ apart.”

I knew that dance.

“Sherry?” I said.

“At the hospital with her daddy. Miss Hank gave her cab money to get home.” Jasmine’s eyes bore all the signs of an afternoon of weeping. “Miss Angel, is it true what Zelda said, ’bout them pictures on the walls?”

“Jasmine, this ain’t the time,” Mercedes said.

I thanked her with my eyes and sat on the edge of the chair Jasmine was leaning against on the floor so I could squeeze her shoulder. “We’ll get to that later. How are you doing, Flannery?”

I didn’t really have to ask. The child’s face was so pale it bordered on blue and her tiny fists stroked the tops of her legs. Even with Kade beside her on the couch with his arm stretched across the back she still looked as if any passing person was likely to snatch her up and cart her off. Or perhaps punch her in the face.

But it was her eyes that looked the most wary as she pointed them straight at Chief. He was perched on the arm of Mercedes’s chair, face at ease. Mr. Rogers couldn’t have been less threatening, but Flannery shrank under Kade’s arm.

“You ready to talk now?” Kade said to her.

“I was, but …”

Chief nodded and stood up. “I need to get back to Desmond. Kade, can you make sure Allison and Flannery get home?”

“On it, Chief,” Kade said.

Flannery visibly relaxed when she heard the Road King rumble down San Luis. I still had no idea what that was about, but it was so heartbreakingly like Chief to know what to do with it.

Kade looked at Flannery. “Okay?”

She gave the front door one more scan and tucked back the curls that seemed to have doubled in the night air. “I haven’t been totally telling the truth,” she said.

I looked at Mercedes, but she didn’t respond with an
mm-mmm.
We all waited.

“I did have a pimp. The same one as Tango. In Jacksonville.” Flannery shook her head. “I didn’t pick him. He picked me. I didn’t even want to be a prostitute.”

“Don’t nobody make that they career choice.”

Flannery glanced at Mercedes and then turned her gaze to the fists that had to be rubbing her skin raw by now. “That first day I was here, you told me I had choices, but I didn’t. He had total control over my life. I don’t care what anybody says, I couldn’t just walk away, because I didn’t have anywhere to go.”

“Ain’t nobody judgin’ you here, baby girl,” Jasmine said, voice thick.

Mercedes came forward in her chair until her knees touched Flannery’s. She stopped both of the pink fists with one hand.

“You think I don’t know what it’s like? I was in a trap, same as you, only worse because I got in it for drugs. That man forced you, didn’t he?”

“Yes.” I was surprised Flannery left her hands where they were, smothered by Mercedes’s. “So I
didn’t
have a choice.”

“Then how did you get here?” I said.

“Sherry and Zelda. They didn’t give me a choice either.”

“No, I mean how did you get to St. Augustine from Jacksonville?”

I watched her press back into the sofa, but Mercedes pulled her forward. She was on the coffee table now, and her eyes were as latched onto Flannery as her hands.

“You start holdin’ back and you lost, honey,” she said. “We not gon’ force you, but don’t pass up the chance for us to come alongside, now.”

My worry about knowing what to say had been completely pointless. Even Kade couldn’t make this kind of progress with Flannery. I obviously wasn’t the only one God gave words to.

Flannery talked straight to Mercedes, as if the rest of us had left the room. “He put us, Tango and me, on a private plane with two clients. He called them clients like it was a real business.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“We were supposed to spend the week here with them, but they got totally wasted the first night in the hotel so while they were passed out, we got away.”

“You see?” Jasmine said. “You stronger than you think.”

Mercedes jiggled Flannery’s hands. “Where did you go?”

“Tango knew that there was a Hot Spot. She found out about it on Facebook or something, I don’t know. We were going to try to find out where it was so we could … make enough money to get a bus ticket.” Flannery let her head fall back, and I could see how hard she swallowed before she went on, eyes closed to the misery. “I have a great-uncle in Fort Myers. I thought we could go there, but we needed money.”

“So you tried to find out where the Hot Spot was,” Kade said.

“She thought she could find it from what she picked up on Facebook and we were, like, basically just wandering around, when, this police car went by and I flipped out and ran. I thought Tango was behind me but she wasn’t. I got so lost, and when I tried to call her, my cell phone was dead.”

So far the pieces fit together, but I could see spaces where several more were missing.

“You’re doing great, Flan,” I said. “Keep going.”

She shrugged the shoulders that had surely grown smaller since she’d last told me to butt out of her business. “That’s mostly it.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Mercedes said, “’cept for the part where you got picked up by that pimp in the first place. He come to your house?”

We didn’t get the expected, “Hello! No!”

“I don’t remember how it all happened exactly,” Flannery said to her lap. “I was messed up, and he said he’d take care of me and make sure I had everything I needed. More than I needed.”

“And he done that at first, right?” Jasmine said. An unusual anger tinged her voice.

“I was like his little princess. Pedicures and clothes and the cell phone. Any lessons I wanted. Other stuff.” I saw her neck tighten. “I don’t even want to talk about that. It just grosses me out.”

“And then?” Mercedes said.

Flannery closed her eyes again. “And then he just turned into somebody else. I wouldn’t even be doing anything wrong and he’d just slap me or do whatever, and I’d try to figure out what I did so he’d change back into the way he was before.”

“That’s a big dog barkin’ there,” Mercedes said.

Flannery looked at her, eyes puzzled.

“Ain’t never gon’ happen, baby girl. All that slappin’ around and takin’ over your life, that’s the real pimp. The treatin’ you like a queen, that ain’t nothin’ but a act.”

“Did that happen to you?”

“For ’bout ten minutes ’fore he throwed me out on the street and tol’ me I wasn’t gon’ get a fix till I brought him back some john money.”

“I didn’t get no princess treatment at all,” Jasmine said, “but now Geneveve, she did.”

“Who’s Geneveve?” Flannery said.

“Desmond’s mama before Miss Angel. Sultan had her believin’ he was gon’ marry her and take care all her problems and then next thing you know, she on his leash like the rest of us, only worse.”

“What happened to her?”

Before I could stop Jasmine she said, “He killed her.”

Flannery’s face went dead. I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and make her believe that couldn’t possibly happen to her. Kade was already going in that direction as he let his arm slide to her shoulder. But it was Mercedes who said what needed to be said.

“Maybe that pimp you had, maybe he’s not as evil as Sultan. But once they get thinkin’ they own you, you can’t never trust they gon’ just let you go. Miss Angel and all of us, we’ll try to protect you, but the best thing you can do is know God loves you.” Flannery’s gaze headed for her lap again, but Mercedes tilted her fragile chin with her brown fingers. “And you got to let us see the real human being God put inside you.”

Flannery collapsed against Kade. We couldn’t push her any further tonight. I believed everything she told us, but I also knew she’d left some large chasms in her story. I just hoped she wouldn’t fall into them before we could close them up.