Magic Street (13 page)

"We didn't know how bad hurt he was at first," said Ceese. "We thought maybe he was just drunk on the lawn."

"Where was this?" asked the cop, and from then on he was all business, taking notes, and then taking their names and addresses. When it was all done, and he was about to leave, he said, "You know why I believe your story?"

"Why?" asked Mack sincerely, since he didn't think he'd believe it himself.

"Because you'd have to be six kinds of stupid to make that shit up. Cause it's going to be so easy to check. First call is to this Professor Williams."

"We don't know his number at Pepperdine, sir," said Ceese.

"I'm a policeman, a highly trained professional. I am going to use that subtle instrument of detection, directory assistance, and find out the number at Pepperdine, and then I'm going to ask the nice lady who answers the telephone to connect me with Professor Williams. Meanwhile, I think I'll hold on to these car keys, since they might be evidence if things turn out wrong."

"So you don't believe us," said Ceese.

"I mostly believe you," said the policeman.

"If you take the keys, how will we get home?"

The cop laughed.

Ceese explained. "If he doesn't get the right answer from Professor Williams, then we won't be going home."

The cop winked and they followed him out into the corridor, where he pulled out a cellphone and called directory assistance and then talked to the Pepperdine switchboard and then must have got voicemail because he left a message asking Professor Williams to call him about a matter concerning his Mercedes automobile and then he said the license plate number.

"Of course not," said Ceese. "He's a professor. He's in class, not in his office."

"But where does that leave me?"

"Well, you could ask Miz Smitcher," said Mack.

"Who's that?" asked the cop.

"His mother," said Ceese.

"He calls his mother 'Miz Smitcher'?"

"He's adopted," said Ceese. "And Miz Smitcher was never one for taking a title she hadn't earned. So she taught him to call her Miz Smitcher like all the other neighborhood kids."

The cop shook his head. "The things that go on in Baldwin Hills." He got a little simpering smile on his face. "I didn't grow up with money like that."

"Neither did we," said Ceese. "We grew up in the flat of Baldwin Hills."

"That like the flat of Beverly Hills? Half a million's still a hell of a lot more than I had, growing up."

"So that's what this is about," said Ceese. "You're giving us a hard time after we brought a crime victim to the hospital, not because you think we did anything wrong, but because you don't like our address. How is that different from rousting us because we're black?"

The cop took a step toward him, then stopped and glared. "Well, I guess we're definitely having a ride to central booking and getting your names down in the records. The kid, he's a juvenile, but you—Cecil, is it?—I guess you'll be just another black man with an arrest sheet."

"So you get a little power," said Ceese, "and it turns you white."

"All that race talk, that's not going to help you much in the county jail, my friend," said the cop.

"Everybody we arrest has a master's degree in victimization."

And that was the moment when Word Williams showed up. "Sir," he said.

The cop whirled on him, ready to be furious at just about anybody. "Who the hell are you?"

"I believe you're holding the keys to my father's car," he said. The way Word talked, like an educated white man, made the cop's attitude change just a little bit. Less strut, more squint—but not a speck nicer.

The cop tossed the keys in his hand. "I wouldn't know," he said. "Who's your father?"

"Dr. Byron Williams, a full professor at Pepperdine University and a noted poet. He called me on his cellphone and told me that Ceese and Mack were taking an injured homeless man to the hospital in his car. He asked me to trade cars with them and get his car cleaned."

The cop had that smirk again. "So I guess everybody in Baldwin Hills is really close friends with each other."

Ceese rolled his eyes.

But Mack answered him sincerely. "No, sir, most people only know their neighbors. I may be the only one who knows everybody."

The cop just shook his head. "Why am I not surprised by anything anymore?"

"Perhaps you'd like to call my father," said Word.

"I already did, but he didn't answer his phone."

"His cellphone?"

"How will I know it's really him?"

Word looked at Ceese. "You must have really pissed this man off. Look, I'll give you his cellphone number. But call the Pepperdine switchboard, ask for the chair of the English department, and then ask her if this is indeed Professor Williams's cellphone number. You'll know she's really the department chair, she'll confirm the number, and then we'll be square, right?"

"Just give me the number," said the cop. He dialed it, without bothering about the switchboard and the department chair. After a minute of listening to Professor Williams, he handed the keys over to Word, with a faintly surly thank you. He didn't so much as say goodbye to Mack and Ceese.

When the cop was out of earshot, Word turned to them and said, "That's how people with petty authority always act. When they're caught being unjust, the only way they can live with themselves is to keep treating you badly because they have to believe you deserve it."

"He was nice enough at first," said Mack.

"No he wasn't," said Ceese. "He just acted nice."

"But that's what being nice is," said Mack. "Acting nice. I mean, if you're really nice, but you act mean, then you aren't really nice, you're really mean, because nice and mean are about how you act."

"Is he going to law school nights?" asked Word.

"No, he's so young he thinks the world ought to make sense," said Ceese. "So you want me to drive home whatever car you drove here?"

"I had a friend drop me off," said Word. "I mean, I can't drive two cars home."

"How we going to get home?" asked Mack.

"Your mom, I guess," said Ceese.

"She doesn't get off till late in the afternoon," said Mack.

"I'll find your mom, get her keys, drive her car, and then come back and pick her up after work," said Ceese.

"No, no," said Word. "Let me take you. We're practically neighbors."

Mack didn't know why that felt wrong to him, but it did. Something about Word made him uncomfortable. Which was crazy because nobody ever spoke ill of Word.

Ceese had his own reasons for declining. "We kind of want to stay long enough to find out what's happening to Mr.... the guy we brought here."

"Mr. what?" asked Word, smiling. "I thought he was a homeless guy. You know his name?"

"No," said Ceese.

"We had to call him something," said Mack. "So I started calling him Mr. Christmas."

"He look like Santa Claus?"

"More than Tim Allen does, yes sir," said Mack.

Word laughed and slapped Mack lightly on the shoulder. "Mack Street. I've seen you walking through the neighborhood your whole life, but I don't think I ever heard you say a word."

"I say lots of them," said Mack. "But mostly when people ask me questions."

"I guess I never thought you knew something I needed to find out," said Word. "Maybe I was wrong."

What Mack was thinking was: You never heard a word from me, and I never felt a dream from you.

That wasn't so unusual—there were plenty of people in Baldwin Hills who never had a wish so strong it popped up in a cold dream. But there was something about Word that said he had a lot of strong wishes, a kind of intensity about him, especially when he looked at Mack. Like he was just the tiniest bit angry at Mack but he was holding it inside. Or maybe he was really angry, and he was barely holding it in check. Something like that. Something that made Mack wonder why a guy with so much fire inside never showed up in a dream.

"No," said Mack. "You weren't wrong. When people ask me stuff, all they find out is I don't know anything much."

"I think," said Ceese, "a lot of them hope that Mack knows good gossip, wandering around the neighborhood like he does. But see, he doesn't tell stories about people."

"What?" said Word.

Mack leaned around Word to see what Ceese was looking at. But Ceese grabbed him by the collar and pulled him back, so all Mack caught was a glimpse. It looked like an alien out of a sci-fi book they made him read at school. Like a big ant. Only when he thought about it, he realized it must have been somebody dressed in black, with a black helmet. Like a motorcycle rider.

Word turned around, but too late. When Mack looked, the alien or motorcycle rider was just turning away, so when Word turned, the corridor was empty.

Mack didn't like it when Ceese acted weird, and he was sure acting weird now, gripping Mack's neck so hard it was like he was trying to break a pencil with one hand. So Mack tore away and took off up the corridor the other way, to ask the nurse at the counter what was happening with the man they brought in.

"I don't know if I should tell you," the nurse said. "You're not his next of kin or legal guardian."

"Well, I was sure his guardian when he needed somebody to find him in the bushes and carry him to safety," said Mack.

"You carried him?"

Mack shrugged. Didn't matter whether she believed him or not. "He wouldn't be here if I didn't hear him in the bushes."

"You're Ura Lee Smitcher's boy, aren't you?"

Mack nodded.

She nodded, too, and picked up the phone.

A few minutes later, Miz Smitcher was down there with them and hearing their story. "I guess we just want to know what's happening with the old guy," said Ceese, when they were through telling just enough of the truth to avoid having to spend time with a psychiatrist.

So Miz Smitcher went off and got permission from a doctor, on the basis that these were the boys who found the man, and she'd be with them. Pretty soon they were in a draped-off space gathered around the man's bed. His leg was in a cast and his chest was wrapped up and he had a needle stabbing the back of his hand, connected up by a tube to a bag hanging from a hook.

But the cast and the wrappings and the sheet were all so clean that it was actually an improvement. And seeing him asleep like that made Mack feel safer somehow. Not that he'd felt all that threatened when Puck was awake. But then, maybe he had felt a little bit afraid, but just didn't admit it to himself.

Talk about fire. Talk about intensity. It's like he thought he was Superman and he was going to use his X-ray vision to bore a hole right through the man's head.

"Did you know him?" asked Mack.

It took a moment before it registered on Word that Mack was talking to him.

"Me? No."

"But you saw him before."

Word shrugged.

"Then why do you hate him so bad?"

Word looked at him, startled, and then laughed. "I never heard you were crazy."

"Then you haven't been paying much attention," said Ceese.

Miz Smitcher looked at them like they were all crazy. "Let's leave this poor man alone," she said, and ushered them all out.

Word drove them home, with Ceese sitting in the front seat beside him and Mack in the back, looking for bloodstains, but there wasn't anything at all.

"You cleaned this up pretty good," said Mack.

"There wasn't much to clean," said Ceese. "He didn't bleed much."

"Dad's still going to make me get the car detailed," said Word. "He hates that guy. Wants every trace cleaned off."

"So your dad knows him?" asked Ceese.

Word shook his head. "Nobody knows him. But he came to our door once. I let him in. And then he left again."

"You let him in?" Ceese asked. "A guy like that, in your house?"

Word nodded. "My dad thinks I don't remember. Nobody else in the family even remembers.

And for a while I didn't—for an hour or so. Then it all came back to me. Mom was sick in the bedroom, and Dad got home and went in there and then that guy came to the door and... I let him in."

"What did he do?" asked Mack.

"I don't get it," said Mack. "If you wanted to stop him, how could you also not want to stop him?"

"You can't imagine it till it happens to you. All of a sudden it's like you don't even have a vote on what your body does and thinks and feels. You can think about how you don't want to do it, but at the same time, all you want in the world is to please that son of a bitch."

Mack could see Ceese stiffen a little.

"Come on, Ceese," Mack said. "You said 'son of a bitch' in front of me often enough."

Word gave a sharp little bark of a laugh. "Sorry."

"I just didn't realize this man's been around so long," said Mack. "How long ago was it?"

Word laughed again. "How old are you?" he asked.

"Thirteen and two months," said Mack. "Since the day I was found, anyway, and Miz Smitcher says I couldn't have been born very long before that."

"Then that man came to our house thirteen years and two months ago," said Word.

Mack thought about that for a minute. And added into his calculations the way Ceese was glaring at Word.

"So he had something to do with me, too, is that what you're saying?" asked Mack.

"Let's just say that when he came to our house, he had all kinds of empty grocery bags on his belt and in his pockets. But when he left, there was a baby in one of them."

Mack felt a rush of feeling, like his blood was trying to move to different parts of his body all at once. He was a little faint, even.

"And you didn't say anything?" said Ceese softly.

"Nobody would have believed me," said Word.

"Why not?" said Ceese.

"Because my mother wasn't pregnant an hour before," said Word. "But I caught a glimpse of her through the door and her belly was swollen up and... who's going to believe that? Especially when she didn't remember it even happened, half an hour later? She swelled up, had the baby, and forgot all about it in about two hours. You don't believe it even now."

"Yeah," said Ceese. "We do."