The Bridge (6 page)

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Authors: Solomon Jones

BOOK: The Bridge
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“The little girl?” he said, looking down at the pad as he wrote the last few words of the description he'd just been given over the air.
“No. Sonny Williams.”
The officer stopped writing and looked up from the pad. “Where'd you see him?”
“He was goin' up in the elevator a couple minutes ago,” Lily said. “He somewhere upstairs.”
She gave him the clothing description that Janay had given her. The officer wrote it down, then called it into radio, along with Sonny's last-known location.
The radio crackled to life. “Six-A, have 611 and 613 go inside that building and search the top floors,” a sergeant said. “I'm en route.”
With the shift change about to take place, 6A was the only sergeant available in the district. He had a five-minute ride from City Hall to the projects. Cars 611 and 613 were the only ones available. But since they were already outside the building asking questions about Kenya, getting upstairs quickly wouldn't be a problem.
 
 
 
When he got off the elevator at the twelfth floor, Sonny walked down the darkened hallway, inhaling the dank air that escaped from
the open doors along the hall. Many of the apartments had been empty for over a year, and the Housing Authority had done little to secure them.
Doors swung from hinges that had rusted almost completely away. Chipped and peeling paint rolled from cinder-block walls like giant palm leaves. The apartments were like abandoned crypts—burial grounds that played host to the project's deepest secrets.
Names had been burned onto the ceilings with lighters and matches. Others were scrawled onto the walls with spray paint. Sonny moved past all of it, oblivious to the stories told by the dingy walls and crumbling floors.
He moved with purpose, walking out into the stairwell and up a short flight of steps to a chain-link fence held shut by a flimsy chain and lock. Pulling the fence back to create an opening, he squeezed through and trotted up the steps to the roof of the building.
He opened a scarred metal door, and swirling rooftop air rushed into the hallway. Muted voices floated skyward as people made their way outside. It was after seven-thirty, and the working folk in the projects were coming out from behind the locked doors, where they routinely spent their Friday nights. Which meant that Sonny didn't have much time.
He crossed the roof quickly, stepping over torn tar paper, then zigzagging between two vents until he reached a brick, chimneylike structure that protruded about three feet into the air. There was a rusting iron grate on the side of the brick chimney. Sonny reached into his waistband and removed a screwdriver, then stuck it between the brick and metal and began to pry.
There was a squeaking sound. A puff of red dust rose into the air and disappeared as the brick began to loosen. Sonny pried harder, pulling the grate out just enough to work his thick fingers into the space. He dropped the screwdriver and pulled. The grate gave way with a muffled pop, and Sonny dropped it before reaching into the chimney.
His face contorted into a determined grimace as his arm disappeared into the hole. He pressed himself against the bricks and reached down, his fingertips brushing against the top of a canvas bag. When he tried to grab the bag, it slipped and fell on a pile of leaves and trash that had been stuck inside the chimney for years.
Sonny pulled his arm out from the chimney and began to remove the bricks, overpowering the crumbling cement that had held them in place since the building was constructed. He reached into the space once more, and had just managed to grab hold of the bag when he heard the metal door to the roof creak open.
Sonny put his arms through the straps on the bag, hoisted it onto his back, and pulled his gun. Then he leaned against the chimney and peered around the bricks. Suddenly, the cool rooftop air seemed stifling.
 
 
 
“Six-eleven on location,” the officer said as he walked out onto the roof with his gun drawn.
His partner, whose gun was also drawn, came up behind him. “Six-thirteen on location.”
The two went in opposite directions—611 walking toward his left, 613 moving straight ahead. They had decided to start at the roof and work their way down, hoping to complete the search as quickly as possible. After all, it had been a long night.
After shuttling back and forth with disturbances and prisoner runs from twelve to seven, they'd spent the rest of the morning questioning neighbors about Kenya's disappearance.
The officer from car 613 was especially tired. He had seen too much since being assigned to the sector of the Sixth District surrounding the projects: murders over less money than he made in an hour; twelve-year-olds peddling vials of poison to their neighbors; mothers too young to finish middle school.
What he saw was enough to reinforce the beliefs he'd tried so
hard to forget after growing up in the city's largely white Northeast: Niggers live like animals. And they should be treated like animals. All of them.
He knew that hating them was wrong. But it was hard for him not to do so. Especially when he saw children like Kenya disappear in the abyss, dying while their parents, aunts, and uncles smoked their lives away.
“Friggin' idiots,” he mumbled to himself as he made his way toward the middle of the roof.
He walked past the first vent and stepped over the torn tar paper that Sonny had passed just a few minutes before. He passed the second vent, absently wondering if he would get overtime if the search stretched past eight. He walked toward the chimney, and paused as the stillness of the morning seemed to thicken.
He stood there for a moment, feeling like something was wrong. As he passed the chimney, he found what he had sensed. Or rather, it found him.
Sonny reached out from behind him, throwing both arms around the officer's neck and squeezing. The officer struggled mightily, and managed to plunge an elbow into Sonny's midsection.
Sonny let out his breath in a great whoosh, but refused to let go. The officer's finger tightened around the trigger of his gun. A shot rang out. Sonny pushed up from his legs and forced the officer's head into the brick wall. Then he ran.
The other officer spotted him as he ducked between the metal vents.
“Stop!” he said.
Sonny kept running, reaching back and shooting in the direction of the cop's voice.
The officer shot and missed, and Sonny dived toward the metal door at the end of the roof. The officer shot again as Sonny slithered along the ground and reached up toward the metal door. He pulled
it open and crawled through, then struggled to his feet, ran down the steps, and popped through the twelfth-floor fence.
The cop started to give chase, then thought about his partner. He ran toward the brick chimney in the middle of the roof and found him—his head covered in blood and his breathing ragged.
“Six-eleven, officer down. Get me some help up here,” he said into his radio.
“Six-eleven, what's your location?” the dispatcher said.
“We're on the roof of the goddamn building!” he said, growing angry as he watched the blood trickle down his partner's face. “Send me some help!”
“East Bridge Housing Project. Assist the officer, police by radio,” the dispatcher said over all bands before calling Fire Rescue.
“Six-A, I'm on location,” the sergeant said into his radio, running out of his car and heading into the building. “Six-eleven, where's that male we were searching for?”
“He just left the roof. Shots were fired and he escaped on foot through the door that leads to the twelfth floor.”
As cops listening to the transmission scrambled to get out of morning roll call, and the sergeant went in through the front of the building, Sonny made his way down to the first floor.
Then, as sirens wailed in the distance, he disappeared out the back entrance of the building and ran toward the morning sun.
The streets surrounding the Bridge were in chaos. Though the assist had lasted only a few minutes—long enough for the injured officer to be brought down to a waiting Fire Rescue- vehicle—police still drove with swiveling heads and eyes stretched wide, desperately searching for Sonny.
Dozens of them rolled through the streets, riding slowly and then accelerating, cruising to the end of one block and turning recklessly onto another.
The people in the projects watched the drama from behind closed doors and windows, waiting with bated breath for the other shoe to drop.
They knew in the back of their minds that something was missing from the scene. They just didn't know what.
But Lynch knew. Even as he and Wilson left Central Detectives in an unmarked car with Judy's sordid tale swirling in their minds, he knew.
Still, he remained silent as they rode west on Vine Street—the northern border of Philadelphia's Chinatown. Wilson did the same because, like Lynch, she was wondering if the search for Kenya was in vain.
They had already spoken by radio with the officer who had spent
the last two hours driving Daneen in circles, and arranged for him to bring Daneen to Eleventh Street. They would meet her there and take her back to Central Detectives to file a missing person's report. In the back of their minds, they were praying that Kenya would come home on her own. Because if she didn't, statistics said she wasn't likely to come home at all.
Lynch turned onto Eleventh Street and tried not to think about that. Instead, he thought of Judy's willingness to talk, and idly wondered if the Bridge would give up its secrets as easily. Of course, Lynch knew the answer. The streets would never surrender Sonny. Rather, the worn concrete would crack open and hide him in its bosom, like a mother protecting its child.
If the case dragged out, there would be noise about Kenya's disappearance. But it wouldn't be long before the people of the Bridge resumed living by the rules—rules that said if the wind blew, everyone bent, because it was the bending that allowed them to stand.
These were the same rules that caused the working people in the projects to labor to get out while pretending not to see the ones like Sonny. After all, they'd grown from the same concrete as he, in such close proximity that they could smell each other's breath in the morning.
No one could hide in such a place. Not even Sonny. But while Lynch knew that there was no love lost between Sonny and his neighbors, he also knew that very few of them would talk. Lynch had grown from the concrete, too, and he remembered the rules as well as they did.
He was cursing those rules when an alert tone from the radio broke the silence between him and Wilson. He reached down to adjust the volume just as the dispatcher uttered the name he had been waiting to hear.
“Flash information on Sonny Williams, black male, fifty-two years, wanted for an assault on a police officer within the last five minutes. Williams is six-foot-two, dark-complexioned, with brown
eyes, black hair, and a mustache. He's wearing a white, short-sleeved shirt, blue jeans, and black sandals. He was last seen on the roof of the East Bridge Housing Project. He made his escape on foot. Direction unknown. Use caution. This male should be considered armed and dangerous. This is KGF-587. The correct time is 8:10 A.M.”
Lynch flipped on the car's lights and punched the accelerator to the floor.
Wilson grabbed the radio and screamed into the handset. “Dan 25, we're en route, coming north on Eleventh from Spring Garden.”
“Six-A,” the sergeant said over the radio. “I'm on the roof at this location. I've got a neighbor saying she saw that male go out the back of the building heading toward Eleventh Street.”
After that, dozens of voices exploded over the radio, and it was difficult to understand any of them.
“Dan 25, we're on location,” Wilson said, adding her voice to the commotion as Lynch flew past Poplar Street and slowed to a stop at the rear of Judy's building.
They were cruising slowly, each of them looking out their respective windows, watching for movement. Lynch didn't see anything, but Wilson heard a rustling at the rear of an abandoned car they'd just passed.
She tapped her partner and pointed to the sound, then pulled her gun and leveled it out the window. She had never fired her weapon in the line of duty before, and the thought of it caused her palms to sweat. The gun felt slippery in her hands, so she squeezed the butt and hoped she wouldn't drop it.
Her breath began to come faster as Lynch stopped the car. Both of them got out, pointing their guns at a pile of trash in back of the abandoned car.
There was a sudden movement. Someone stood up and ran toward them. Wilson tightened her finger on the trigger. It was almost too late by the time Lynch realized what was happening.
“Stop!” he said sharply.
Daneen pulled up short as she saw the guns pointed in her direction. Wilson let out a heavy sigh as she lowered her gun to her side. All of them looked at each other and tried not to think of what could have been.
Daneen was the first to speak.
“Where y'all been?” she said, feigning calm as she reached for the door handle. “I been waitin' for twenty minutes. Anything coulda happened to Kenya while y'all got me out here wastin' time. I ain't—”
“Shut up, Daneen,” Lynch said, reaching for his car door. “I probably care more about Kenya than you do, and I hardly know her.”
Daneen got in the car and closed the door. “You don't know me either, Kevin,” she said quietly. “Not anymore.”
As they got into the car, Lynch and Daneen locked eyes as Wilson watched them both. When Lynch's glance turned into a stare, and Daneen turned away red-faced, he quickly dropped his eyes to the floor. For a moment, nothing moved except their thoughts.
Then something flew toward the curb, ahead and to their left. They swung around to see what it was, and a green Mustang darted out in front of them, its tires screaming against the asphalt.
Lynch gripped the steering wheel tightly. Then he pounded the pedal into the floor.
And with that, the chase began.
 
 
 
Sonny looked in his rearview mirror at the blue Chrysler and instinctively reached for the bag of money he had taken from the roof. Nothing mattered more at that moment than the money. Nothing, that is, except escaping.
When he looked up from the bag and saw a police car screeching to a halt in front of him, Sonny swerved and skidded, slamming against a parked car. Then he spun the steering wheel furiously, the
tires of the Mustang kicking up white smoke as he drove north on Eleventh Street.
He was going ninety miles per hour as he passed through a neighborhood called Yorktown, with its neat homes and striped awnings welcoming him into its midst. When he looked back again, the Chrysler was closing fast, flying through the residential streets with abandon.
Sonny didn't know his pursuer, but he was going to test him. Because catching Sonny would cost at least one life. And Sonny didn't care to whom that life belonged.
He spun the wheel suddenly, turning right on Oxford and plunging head-on into the street's one-way traffic. He dodged one car, then clipped another, causing it to spin out of control. The Chrysler didn't stop, but stayed close behind Sonny, plunging in and out of the traffic like a needle threading a seam.
At Tenth, Sonny turned left, barely avoiding an oncoming police car. When he looked back again, the Chrysler was upon him, banging against his bumper, pushing him toward the parked cars along the side of the street in an effort to make him stop.
Sonny didn't plan to stop. He found a space between the parked cars, jerked the steering wheel, and took to the sidewalk, skidding to avoid a child on a bike as he approached Montgomery Avenue. He made a hard left there, slammed the accelerator to the floor, and entered yet another of Philadelphia's one-way streets.
He looked in his rearview mirror again. The Chrysler was losing ground. He tore his gaze away from the mirror and peered through the windshield. There was a building to his right—Temple University's police station. He raced past it and onto the dormant campus.
As he approached Broad Street, a police car skidded to a halt one block ahead of him, blocking Montgomery Avenue. Sonny had a split second to react. He turned to avoid the car and zigzagged through the streets of Temple's campus. Then he raced through a
student parking lot and crossed Diamond Street, blazing past the rear of a large church on the corner. There, he turned right, dodging Susquehanna Avenue's oncoming traffic before disappearing into a maze of tiny one-way streets.
When he looked into his rearview mirror again, the blue Chrysler was gone.
In a few minutes, Sonny would be, too.
 
 
 
“Six Command,” the captain said over J band—police radio's main frequency. “Break off the pursuit. I repeat, break it off.”
A dispatcher repeated the command, and the wailing sirens that had filled the air just moments before petered out and fell silent. In their absence, there was a strange calm, the kind of quiet that rushes into a space that has just played host to devastation.
The streets of North Philadelphia were accustomed to such silences. They followed every tragedy the neighborhood hosted—from the Columbia Avenue riots to the Ridge Avenue gang wars.
The chase that had just spilled from Central to North Central Division, with Twenty-sixth District officers joining in from their Girard Avenue headquarters, was devastating. The utter confusion and spotty communication between the officers had made a bad situation worse.
Two Sixth District officers called into radio to say that they were “involved,” meaning that they had been in auto accidents. At least one child had been injured trying to avoid the speeding cars, and was on her way to Temple Hospital. Sonny had sideswiped two cars and caused two more accidents as drivers had tried to avoid him. A fire engine and a rescue vehicle were on the scene of one of the accidents, prying a man from his car.
Someone had to answer for all of that. And Lynch knew who that someone would be.
“Six Command to Dan 25, meet me at Broad and Cecil B. Moore,” the captain said over the radio.
“Dan 25, okay,” Wilson said into the handset before turning to Lynch. “You know he's gonna tear you a new one, right?”
“Somebody need to,” Daneen said from the backseat.
Lynch clenched his teeth and ignored Daneen. Then he drove down Montgomery from Thirteenth—the spot where he'd lost Sonny—and hit Broad Street. Before he even got there, he could see the captain's face burning crimson against his starched white shirt.
Lynch parked his car, then got out and walked over to Captain Silas Johnson, the commanding officer of the Sixth District.
“You wanna tell me what the hell just happened here?” the captain said.
“We were just about to take our complainant back to Central, and—”
The captain walked over to Lynch's car and looked inside.
“You had a civilian in your vehicle during a pursuit?” he asked incredulously.
“That's the complainant, sir,” Lynch said as he walked over to stand beside the captain. “Her name's Daneen Brown. She called me this morning to tell me her daughter was missing. I thought it would just be a matter of finding the child. But it turned out to be a little more than that.”
“So you know this complainant.”
“You could say that.”
“I don't want to hear that ‘you could say that' bullshit. Do you know her or not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you involved?” the captain asked, allowing the question to linger long enough to make Lynch feel uncomfortable.
“No, sir.”
“And who's this?” the captain said, nodding toward Wilson.
“Detective Roxanne Wilson, sir,” she said, getting out of the car.
“From Juvenile Aid. Lynch called me this morning to help him out on this.”
“I see,” the captain said, staring at Lynch, who returned the glare for a few seconds before looking away.
“Where's the child now?” the captain asked him.
“We don't know yet, sir. But we're holding her aunt back at Central. The suspect in the pursuit was the aunt's boyfriend, Sonny Williams. We have reason to believe that Williams knows where the girl is.”
“And what reason might that be?”
“The aunt and a neighbor said he was molesting her.”
The captain mulled the answer for a few seconds, then pulled Lynch aside, leading him away from his car. Daneen and Wilson looked on for a moment, then turned to watch a news van fly past them.

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