Under Siege (19 page)

After a while the kids came out. Each of them was carrying a little brown paper bag. Yocke watched them disappear into the projects.

A few minutes later the cops began dribbling out. When the lieutenant came out he ignored Yocke and climbed into the passenger seat of a cruiser. The uniformed officer with him got behind the wheel.

Yocke saw the man coming a block away. With his hands in his jacket pockets, his head up, he walked rapidly in this direction. He’s coming here, Yocke decided, and watched him come. About fortyfive, he had short gray hair. His chocolate skin was stretched tight over his cheekbones and jaw.

The man looked at the cop and Yocke and went up the three steps and through the door without pausing.

Yocke leaned on the little railing that protected what had once been grass. The temperature had dropped at least five

and the sky was grayer. He was wondering whether should return to the office or try to get back inside when a of min struck him. He set off through the projects, back toward the car. Droplets of rain raised little puffs of dirt beside the empty sidewalks. He met a policeman coming the other way. The officer had his pistol in his right hand, down by his leg, and was talking on his hand-held radio. He ignored Yocke.

The pool car was still intact. All four wheels still attached, the windshield unbroken, the doors still locked and closed. Another miracle. Yocke drove slowly through the projects as rain spattered the windshield. On impulse, he went back to the church and parked in front. All the cops were gone.

Yocke locked the car and went inside.

In the foyer he paused and listened. The door to the day center was still open and he could hear voices. He walked toward it.

The young woman who had comforted the children was crying on the shoulder of the man Yocke had seen enter, the man with the gray hair and the skin stretched tight across his face.

“You a reporter?” the man asked.

“Yes.” Yocke looked at the children’s chairs, decided they were too small, and lowered himself into a cross-legged position on the floor.

,eaI want you to write this down. Write it down and write it good. It’s all the writing that Jane is ever gonna get.”

Yocke got out the notebook.

“Jane Wilkens was the mother of my children. Had two kids by her. We never lived together. Asked her to marry me years ago but she wouldn’t. She knew I used to be on heroin and if I lived around these damn projects, I’d go off the wagon. But she couldn’t live anywhere else. This was where her work was, these kids. These kids were her work. She was trying to save some of them. “She grew up in the Jefferson projects, but got herself out. Got an education. Got a scholarship to George Washington

and got a degree in biology. Went to Pennsylvania and got a masters. She worked for a couple years as a microbiologist, then gave it up and came back here to this church to run the day care. Work with the kids.” “Why?”

“You been in those projects? Really looked? Try to imagine living in there. No privacy, walls paper thin, kids abused and hungry, trash everywhere, light bulbs out, doors kicked in, liquor sales out of one apartment and crack out of another, the white women from the suburbs buying theirs down on the streets, the smell of shit and piss and filth and hopelessness. Yeah, it stinks. It gets in your nose so bad you’ll never get it out. I smelled it again coming down the street this evening.

“So the kids are growing up in this manure pile, growing up like little rats, without love, without food, without anybody to hug them. Jane wanted to give them what their mamas couldn’t. She wanted to give them a little love. Maybe save a couple. Can’t save ‘em all, but maybe save a few. Their mamas-all strung out, head nursing, whoring, whatever will turn a dollar to get the stuff from the numberone man.”

“She took two kids to the emergency room last week,” the young woman said. “One was starving to death even though she was eating-eating here, anyway-and the other had a bacterial infection of the lungs. Jane did things like that all the time.”

The man shook his head, faintly irritated. “But Jane never tried to shut down the trade,” he said slowly, “never interfered with anybody’s addiction, never passed judgment, never talked to the police. She just tried to save the kids. The kids…”

“What’s your name?”

“Name’s Tom Shannon. I work for the city. Drive a street sweeper. I’m president of a chapter of Narcotics Anonymous. guest chapter in the city. Me, I try to do what I can to help the people who want to help themselves. I tried to get a chapter started over here in the Jeffersons, but there wasn’t no interest. You gotta want to help yourself.

“Maybe that’s what’s wrong. Jane was trying to save a few the kids and I was trying to save the grownups that wanta themselves, and nobody was doing anything for all these people who are locked in the cycle. Nobody was attacking the trade. So the trade killed Jane.”

“A man killed Jane.

“No, the crack trade killed her. That guy who pulled the trigger, he was an addict and a dealer. He had it on him. So he ran from the cops. And he shot Jane because she was standing in front of him screaming. No other reason. She was just there. All the people who are making money from the crack business killed her as sure as if they pulled the trigger. They don’t give a damn who they hurt. They don’t give a damn if the world blows up, as long as they get theirs. They killed Jane.” The young woman was sitting by herself now, drying her eyes, listening to Tom Shannon. He was looking straight into Yocke’s eyes.

“Now I’m telling you and you can write it any way you want, but I’m not going to be a victim anymore. Jane was a victim and I was a victim. No more! I’m not going to be a victim anymore!”

Bernie, this is Jefferson Brody. I got it! The widow signed.”

“Glad to hear it, Tee.”

“She was reluctant but-was

“Yeah. Ya did good. I thought you would. That’s what I told the guys. Tee screwed the pooch but he’ll make it good. Wait and see.”

“I appreciate-was

“Send me the papers. I’ll be talking to you in a few days.”

“Bernie, have you found that woman? I’d-was

“Working on that, Tee. I’ll be in touch.”

The phone went dead on T. Jefferson Brody. He cradled the receiver and sat staring at the dark cherry paneling on his office walls. He had had to pay Mrs. Lincoln $450,000 for the checkcashing business, but now didn’t seem to be the time comto lay that on Bernie. Although Bernie was a good client, he had his rough edges.

The black bitch with the big tits who had conned him and robbed hiih-she was going to pay. T. Jefferson Brody intended to teach her a lesson she would never forget. And that little weasel ambulance chaser who helped her. He rubbed his hands together as he contemplated his revenge. But that would have to wait. He buzzed his secretary on the intercom. “Hilda, get me Senator Cherry’s office, please.”

“Yes, Mr. Brody.”

Thanos Liarakos completed the paperwork at the hospital’s administration office, then took the suitcase to his wife’s room on the third floor and helped her select an outfit from it. She made only one or two swipes at her hair with a comb and didn’t bother with makeup or lipstick, although they were in the case. Liarakos said nothing. She was dressed and nervously pacing the room when a nurse arrived with a wheelchair for the grand exit.

“Where are we going?” Elizabeth asked, finally, when they were in the car.

As if she didn’t know. Liarakos muttered, “To the airport.”

“You mean we’re not even going by the house so I can say good-bye to the children?”

“Oh, can it, Elizabeth! You talked to them this morning on the telephone and they’re both in school right now.”

“Well, I just wanted to see my home again for a few minutes. And I need some other outfits.”

“I packed exactly the outfits you told me to pack.”

“I forgot a few.”

“You’re going to the clinic now. Right fucking now!”

“You are a bastard.” He pulled over to the curb. The driver behind honked and gestured as he went by. Liarakos paid no attention.

“You can get out here or you can go to the clinic. Your choice.”

“I don’t have any money.”

He put the transmission in park and stared out the window.

“Oh, Thanos, you know how much I love you. You know how much I love the children. I’ll leave the stuff alone. I promise! Tell you what, darling. Let’s go home and put on some soft music and I’ll put on that gorgeous neglige you got me for my birthday. I’ll show you just how much I love you.” She caressed his arm, then his hair. “Darling, it’ll be just like it was when we were first married, on those Sunday mornings when there were just the two of us. Oh, Than-was

“You don’t know what this costs me, Elizabeth. You really don’t.”

“Darling, I-was

“You don’t have any idea!” He pushed her hands away.

“You don’t love me, “she snarled. “You’re just thinking of your precious law practice, what your boss might think. Well, by God, I-was Liarakos reached across her and opened the passenger door. dis.ou.” She began crying. He sat watching the traffic flow by, his face averted, his right hand on the wheel and his right shoulder up.

She was still sobbing uncontrollably when a police cruiser pulled up alongside. The officer twirled his finger. Liarakos rolled down his window. “Move it, Mac.”

He pulled the lever down into drive and got the car into motion. Beside him Elizabeth blew her nose on tissues and continued to sob.

Traffic on the expressway to Dulles rolled along at slightly illegal speeds all the way to the airport. Liarakos parked and

got the suitcase out of the trunk. He came around the car and opened the door for Elizabeth. She made a production out of blowing her nose one last time and stuffing the tissue paper into the trash bag hanging from the cigarette lighter.

He took her arm and guided her toward the terminal. “I’ve got five dollars and seventy-two cents in my purse.”

“You don’t need money at the clinic.”

“But what if I want to get my hair done somewhere else? And I may need to take a taxi to the clinic.”

“They’ll meet you at the airport. They have all the other times. Remember?”

“But Thanos, what if they don’t? I’ll be stranded. Give me a hundred to cover incidentals.”

“Elizabeth, for Christ’s sake! You’re just making it harder on both of us.”

“You have no idea how difficult this is for me. That’s the problem. You only think of yourself. If you love me, think about me! I’m your wife, or have you forgotten?”

“I haven’t forgotten.” He gave the ticket to the agent and checked the bag. “Window seat, please.”

“Just Mrs. Liarakos?”

“Yes.”

The agent gave them the gate number. “Boarding in fifteen minutes.”

“Thanks.”

They waited near the gate. Liarakos stood by the windows where he could see the shuttle buses going back and forth to the airplanes. Elizabeth walked away and found a seat by herself.

He watched her reflection in the glass. Every movement she made was like something from an old memory that you remember with pain. In the past when she had a moment she would remove her compact from her purse and check her reflection, touch up her hair, see that her eye shadow and lipstick were just so. Not today. She just sat there with her purse in her lap, her hands resting upon it, while she idly scanned people coming and going and sitting and reading.

When they called the plane Liarakos escorted her to the gate agent and handed him the ticket. He leaned toward her and whispered in her ear. “Get well.”

She glanced at him, her face neutral, then went through the door into the shuttle bus.

He went back to the glass and watched her through the bus windows. She didn’t look back at him. She sat staring straight ahead. She was still sitting like that when the passenger door closed and the bus pulled away.

That evening Captain Jake Grafton informed his wife that Lieutenant Toad Tarkington was getting orders to the staff of the Joint Chiefs, just as he desired.

“That’s very nice,” Callie told Jake. “Did you have to twist many arms to make it happen?”

“A couple.”

“Does Toad know yet?”

“Not yet. I think they’ll tell him in a day or two.”

“You’ll never guess who stopped me after class today to chat.”

Jake Grafton made an uninterested noise, then decided to humor her and take a stab at it. “That commie professor, ol” what’s-his-name.”

“No. It was that Washington Post reporter, Jack Yocke. He thanked me for the party and

Jake went back to today’s newspaper think-piece on Soviet internal politics. For generations the forces at work inside the Communist Party had been Soviet state secrets and the subject of classified intelligence summaries that circulated inside the U.s. military. Those summaries had been mere guesses made by analysts based on poor, fragmentary information. Now the Soviets were baring all with an abandon that would make even Donald Trump blush.

As he mused on this curious miracle, Jake Grafton became aware of a questioning tone in his wife’s voice, which had risen in pitch. “Say again, dear?”

“I said, Jack suggested you and he have breakfast some morning. Would you like to do that?”

The captain scanned the column to find his place.

“Well, why not?”

He lowered the paper and scrutinized his wife, who was poised with a ladle in one hand, looking at him with one eyebrow raised aloft. He had never been able to figure out how she got one eyebrow up but not the other. He had tried it a few times in the privacy of the bathroom with no success.

“We are not friends or social acquaintances. We haven’t said two dozen words to each other. And I have no desire to know him better.”

“Jack is a brilliant, socially concerned journalist whom you should take the trouble to get to know. He’s written an excellent book that you would enjoy and find informative: The Politics of Poverty. his

“He wants to pump me on what’s going on inside the Pentagon. And there’s absolutely nothing I can tell him. It’d be a waste of time for both of us.”

“Jake . .

“Callie I don’t like the guy. I’m not about to waste an hour listening to him try to pump me. No.”