Black Fridays (19 page)

I didn’t know what had caused this sudden release. These kinds of thoughts floated through the back corridors of my mind all day long—sometimes I thought I dreamed them—but I never shared them. With anyone. Except now I had with Skeli—twice.

“Sorry.” I tried to stop myself.

“No, it’s okay. Go on.”

“But there are all sorts of zigs, zags, false starts, and downright mistakes along the evolutionary highway. For every genius, there’s scores of kids who will live out their lives in institutions.”

I stopped and took a few long breaths.

“The Kid is not in that camp. Right now. But I’m scared all the time. I take him to school every morning and I see some of those other kids. And I see their parents. Some broken, some angry, some obsessed with diets, or vaccines, or chemicals in cleaning products, trying to find some reason, some explanation for why their kid is the way he is. And, yes, a few who are joyful, taking each moment or connection with their strange child as a gift. And I wonder, after another five or ten years, what kind of parent I will be.”

Skeli took my hand. It helped.

“What do I know? I’ve been doing this for two weeks! And I’m always fighting with that Pinocchio thing in my head. You know? When will he turn into a real boy? And I know that way is madness. Evil. I have to stay focused on getting him to grow up to be himself, that’s all. Just the way you would with any child. Only with him, the range of who he will be is a lot scarier.”

I’d scared her off, I was sure. Too much. Too fast. Still, she kept my hand in hers. She was trying.

She looked at him again. The rocking had stopped, the eyes fluttered. He was coming around.

“He is a very lucky little boy. To have a father like you.”

For a moment, I was dumb. Kindness unnerved me; I had grown used to living without it.

“Thank you,” I heard myself croak. “But I think I’m the lucky one.”

“Ketchup!”

Skeli jumped again, recovered quickly, and handed him the bottle.

“I’m sorry. I don’t normally do this. Really. I’m actually a very reserved, quiet kind of person. I don’t know why I keep dumping all my deepest thoughts and darkest secrets every time I see you.”

She stifled a laugh. “I think that’s one of the sweetest things anyone has ever said to me.”

“Oh, shit!” I said. The Kid had produced a small lake of ketchup that was now overflowing the banks of the plate. He was focused on the slow ooze of color and had no awareness of the mess spreading across the table.

Skeli followed my eyes and without a word, or a thought, she grabbed for the now near-empty bottle.

“Oh, no . . .” she said.

“I wouldn’t do—” I said.

“NNNNNRRRRGGG!” screamed the Kid. The tug-of-war for the bottle was over in an instant. Skeli lost. The bottle flew, spraying red droplets across the wall and ceiling.

I reached for the plate of fries. Too late. With a sweep of his arm, the Kid sent the doused fries off his end of the table.

“No, Kid. NO!” I wasn’t getting through. His screech would have split atoms. His body was exploding—thrashing, kicking, gnashing his teeth, and scratching out at Skeli and me.

The two cabbies were staring at us, trying to figure out why these awful parents allowed their child to throw such a tantrum. The waitress was screaming something in Spanish. I didn’t need it translated.

“Follow me!” I yelled at a terrified Skeli.

She heard and nodded.

I threw my arms around the Kid and pulled him to me, then I stood up and ran for the door, his legs and arms thrashing, still wailing at full volume. “He’s sick! Out of my way!” I yelled.

The waitress jumped back.

I was out the door and down the block. The Kid stopped fighting me, then went limp and began moaning. I stopped and waited for Skeli to join us.

“Jesus Christ, Jason! Does this happen often?” She noticed the soft moans. “Is he all right?” She had flecks of ketchup in her hair and across her brow.

“He’s fine,” I muttered. “Listen.” I was angry, embarrassed, and disgusted.

“’Nilla. ’Nilla,” the Kid moaned.

“What is it? What is he saying?”

“He wants ice cream,” I said.

“JESUSCHRIST! Ice cream? Ice cream? Are you kidding me? He wants goddamn ICE CREAM!?” She stood, hands on hips, her head jerking forward to emphasize, her words tumbling all over each other as she practically spit them at me.

She looked taller when she was angry.

“Look at this!” she yelled, showing me her bare arm. There was a little red half-circle of bite marks. “He bit me!” She suddenly found that to be funny. Hysterically funny. She doubled over laughing.

On the whole, I thought she was taking it pretty well.

“’Nilla.”

“In a minute,” I said, without thinking.

Skeli laughed harder.

“So, if my kid bites you, does that mean you won’t see me anymore?”

She was laughing so hard, she was snorting for breath.

“Just don’t tell me we can still be friends, okay?” I continued.

She inhaled sharply and held it. It worked.

“So, other than that, how was dinner?” I asked.

She smiled. “I can’t remember a more romantic evening.”

“Care for some ice cream?”

“Jason, you are a very sweet man. I am going home and wash this ketchup out of my hair. Then I will clean my wounds with vodka, and drink the rest.”

“’Nilla.”

“Quiet,” I said.

“’Nilla!” he said louder.

Skeli was no longer laughing, or angry or frightened. She looked like she was making a decision. A hard one.

“Does this kind of thing happen often?”

“Define ‘often,’” I said. I refrained from telling her that this had been only a minor tantrum.

“Good night, Jason.” She kissed my cheek. It felt like a good-bye kiss. “I’ll call you.”

“Can I get you a cab?”

“Get him some ice cream.” She turned and walked away.

“’Nilla,” the Kid moaned.

THE CITY HIDES
the darker aspects of its history.

For a hundred years or more, Five Points had been a disease-ridden slum, run by gangs like the Roach Boys and the Dead Rabbits, producing such luminaries as Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano, and Al Capone. There is a park there now, a few blocks from my parole officer’s office, where municipal workers sit and eat their lunch on sunny days.

Lincoln Center replaced the tenements where the Jets and the Sharks murdered each other with knives, bricks, and zip guns, in an uglier, more violent world than Bernstein or Sondheim could have imagined.

Hell’s Kitchen is now called Midtown West. Morgan Stanley had their offices there for a while.

And the point where Broadway crosses Amsterdam at Seventy-second Street—the view from my couch—is the gateway to New York’s Upper West Side. The refurbished and expanded subway stop covers two tiny plots of land—Sherman and Verdi squares—that together were once known as Needle Park, the largest open-air drug market south of 110th Street. Forty years ago, two men in gray suits sitting on a park bench would have been an impossible sight.

I didn’t even notice them.

The Kid was vastly more sensitive than I to the unseen, or barely observed. I thought I had a New Yorker’s strong street sense, able to identify the mumbling schizophrenic who would attempt to extort a dollar, or scream saliva-dripping curses at me if I refused. When a well-dressed man or woman blocked the subway door for no discernible reason, I instinctively placed a hand over my wallet and looked around for the pickpocket partner. But the Kid carried a sixth sense; he had the instincts of a twice-beaten dog.

He dropped the ice cream cone in the middle of Amsterdam Avenue and began grunting and flipping his hands.

It had already been a very long night.

“Oh, God. Please, Kid, be cool. Give me five minutes to get you home.”

He switched to a long, chilling whisper of a howl, too quiet to be heard across the street, but penetrating enough to stop you in your tracks.

Then he bolted.

I yelled and took off after him. Pointless. I had never seen him run. My stiff-kneed, awkward little boy whom I had seen trip over a crayon was like a fluid explosion, bursting, dodging, and bursting again, transformed into a three-foot-tall forward receiver. I was both terrified and insanely proud of him. I pushed to catch up.

Out of the corner of one eye, I saw the two men jump up from a park bench on the dark side of the park and race to cut him off. They were big, dressed in gray suits, white shirts, and ties and wore heavy black shoes. I thought they didn’t have a chance of catching him.

We sped along Seventy-third toward Broadway. The light turned red. Traffic sped downtown on the single available lane. The Kid was trapped. He spun around and faced me, mouth open, still quietly howling, tears pouring down his cheeks. But he stopped. He stayed in control. He did not cross Broadway without a grown-up.

“Good going, Kid. You are the best! You rock, son.” I was crying, too.

I heard the pounding feet of the two suits as they approached, and ignored them. The Kid was dancing, leaping into the air and landing on alternate feet, as though the pavement was scorchingly hot and only by remaining suspended would he not be burned to cinders.

“Hold up, Stafford.” One of the two suits took my arm and pulled me around. He was definitely older and grayer than me, and had run farther, but he wasn’t winded at all, and he had that ex-military look that said he welcomed the challenge to do it all over again.

“Who the fuck are you?” I tried to shake him loose. He had a strong grip. “Get your hands off of me!” How did he know my name? “What the fuck is this?”

We were beginning to draw a crowd. New Yorkers may have seen it all, but they are always ready to stop and watch it all over again.

“No more running,” he said. His grip eased and I wrenched myself free.

The other suit arrived. He was younger, but huffed as he ran—he was carrying an extra twenty or thirty pounds, all around his middle, like an inflated inner tube.

“Fuck! I know you!” They were the two men who had followed me from Brooklyn the night before. “What the hell is this? What do you want?”

The light changed. Traffic stopped. The Kid had behaved himself for as long as he was capable. He took off like a shot.

“I got him,” the younger one said. He reached forward and surprised both me and the Kid by snagging his arm.

The Kid’s body whipped back and forth like a snake.

“Take your fucking hands off my child!” I moved to intervene, but the first suit grabbed me again. “And fuck you, too, Sarge!”

The other man pulled the Kid to him, wrapped both arms around the Kid’s torso, and held him to his chest—face-to-face.

Even if I had wanted to, there was no time to warn him. The Kid is an instinctual fighter. When threatened, he runs. When trapped, he attacks. The Kid grabbed the man’s nose with one hand and an ear with the other. Then he lunged with his head and sank his sharp little five-year-old teeth in the man’s face.

The man screamed like a girl and dropped the Kid, who hit the ground running and darted across Broadway.

“Ah, Christ!” the older one said. His grip loosened just the tiniest bit and I was gone, too.

The Kid darted between two parked cars and kept running in the street. I lost time making the same move. Behind me I could hear the slap, slap, slap of heavy shoes as the two suits tried to catch up. I pushed myself harder and began to close on the Kid.

I almost caught him. It took me a stride and a half to make the same turn. He ran out across the street and I bellowed without even thinking, “NO! Bad Kid!” A pair of taxis were racing to make the light at West End.

“NO!” I screamed. I managed to stop myself from hurtling out in front of them.

The first cabbie saw the Kid and hit his brakes—the guy behind was completely unprepared. The squeal of rubber on road climaxed in the thud of cushioned bumpers meeting at speed.

The Kid was gone. The suits were closing on me. I ducked between two parked cars and headed for the curved driveway entrance of the Ansonia. The Kid was just ahead, headed for the doors. He would have to stop long enough to plan his navigation across the black-and-white-tiled entranceway—I’d have him.

But he surprised me again. He cut back and kept running, past the driveway and up the block toward West End. I pushed myself harder. The Kid was quick and nimble, but he still had the stamina of a five-year-old boy—a manic five-year-old boy, running in terror, but still I’d be able to catch him on a long, straight run.

The alleyway behind the Ansonia dips down to an underground parking garage, and then continues and connects with Seventy-fourth Street on the other side. You have to know it’s there or you’ll miss it. The Kid found it. He barreled down the steep incline, cut to the right at the bottom, and disappeared into the garage.

I was right behind him. As I took the turn through the entryway, I looked back over my shoulder. The suits hadn’t reached the alley yet. The Kid and I were gaining.

I stopped inside the door and listened. No sound. The Kid had stopped running and gone to ground. I looked around. The attendant was nowhere in sight.

“Kid!” I tried to be both quiet and heard. No answer.

Once the suits realized where we had hidden, they’d have us trapped. One to cover the entrance and one to watch the elevator. I didn’t want to confront those two in that dark, solitary cul-de-sac.

I hurried through rows of expensive foreign sedans, giant SUVs, and sleek sports cars, whispering, “Kid! Kid!” in a plaintive, worried voice. At the back of the last row was a silver Rolls-Royce Phantom, guarded by a phalanx of orange rubber safety cones. And next to it, attempting to levitate high enough to see inside, was my son.

He saw me and grinned like a jack-o’-lantern. He threw both arms in the air and pleaded, “Up. Up. I pick you up.”

I was afraid that if I told him “No,” I would have another tantrum on my hands and the suits would be all over us.

“Okay. Okay. But we have to be very quiet. Can you do that?”

He nodded so hard I thought his head would fly off.

“All right. Sssshh.” I picked him up and let him look inside. “But when Jason says to hide, we have to get down and be very quiet. Okay?”

If I made it all a game, maybe he would cooperate and I could get him to make a dash for the elevators. I watched the doorway, while he wriggled in my arms.

I heard footsteps coming down the alley. Two sets.

“Okay, bud,” I whispered. “Time’s up.”

He squirmed in protest as I put him down, but he did it quietly. I pulled us into the shadows behind the big car.

“Come on. Now we run.”

His face went blank. His fingers began to flutter.

I ducked down. Everything depended upon the Kid maintaining control. I could do nothing to help him. He was either going to come out of it quietly and we would have a chance at avoiding discovery, or he was going to start acting out again and we were screwed.

“Stafford!” It was the one I had called Sarge. He seemed to be in charge. “No more running. It’s time to talk.”

They were working their way down the farthest row, the chubby one darting back and forth like a bird dog.

Just out of sight, around the end of the row, the elevator doors opened. A moment later I heard another man’s voice.

“Can I help you gentlemen?” It was more a challenge than an offer of assistance.

Sarge approached him. “We’re looking for a man and a boy who ran in here just a minute ago.”

“There ain’t no one been in here, sir. I would have seen them on the closed circuit. Only ones is you and your friend there.”

I peeked up over the rear end of the Rolls and watched. The garage attendant had arrived—a tall, sixtyish, stern man in a white shirt and black bow tie. The suits had their backs to me. They were double-teaming him with a barrage of questions. I couldn’t hear their side of the conversation, but the man didn’t seem to be at all bothered by them.

“This here is private property, sir.”

They didn’t like that. The older one argued.

“Well, you take that up with management, sir. I don’t get paid enough to make those kind of decisions.”

They made some more noise. The attendant wasn’t impressed.

“Offices open at eight a.m.”

There was another flurry of angry words.

“That’s as may be, but you gentlemen will have to leave. Now.”

I took a quick look at the Kid. He was maintaining.

The two suits gave up—begrudgingly. They walked slowly and deliberately back out to the alley and, after a momentary conference, turned right and were gone.

I took the first full, deep breath in what felt like a very long time.

“Kid,” the attendant called. “You come on out now.”

The Kid’s eyes fluttered and he relaxed. His fingers stopped tapping. He was back.

I stood up and followed my son out into the light.

The man looked me over appraisingly. I must have passed whatever test he was running.

“You must be the boy’s father,” he said. “Your son is a friend.”

The Kid walked up to him. “Hello, Mr. Samuels,” he said in his deadpan, robot voice.

“Hello, Kid.”

“That girl who minds him been bringing him down here afternoons. To see the cars. Your boy knows his cars.”

Heather had found the perfect field trip for my son—an elevator ride from home.

“I owe you one,” I said. “Thanks for getting rid of those two.”

He held up a hand. “Like I say, the boy is a friend.”

“I think they’ve been following us. They started chasing us when we crossed the park.”

Samuels gave me a questioning look. “They never said who they were?”

I hadn’t given them a chance. “Things were a little chaotic.”

“They just flashed me their badges. They’re FBI.”

That shook me. What could I have done to draw the attention of those guys?

I didn’t have a complete answer, but the image of a bagful of casino chips spread across my bed immediately came to mind.

Samuels swiped his pass key for the elevator and stepped back to let us board.

“Good night, Kid. You watch out for your dad here.”

“Good night, Mr. Samuels. Thank you.”

As the doors closed, I realized that may have been the longest single stream of words my son had ever uttered without mentioning cars.

—

I DIDN’T HAVE
to read the Kid to sleep, he was out before his head hit the pillow. But each time I lay down, my body tensed and my mind raced in full-out flight mode.

The front door locks were secure—I knew because I got up and checked them three times. The third time because I had convinced myself that I had only dreamed the two prior. Each time I got up, I paced the living room, wishing I could flutter my hands and control my terrors. I gravitated to the windows overlooking Broadway and stared down at the nearly empty streets, my concentration fading as exhaustion took over. Then I dragged myself back to bed to begin the cycle all over again.

$233,000. The chips. From the moment I had looked into that black gym bag and let myself once more buy into the illusion of easy money, my world had changed. Angie was threatening lawyers and other forms of mayhem in order to reclaim the Kid. The FBI was stalking me—no,
chasing
me—through the streets. My continued freedom was contingent on my staying well clear of those kinds of people. The Kid’s future, I believed with all of my soul, depended on me—my presence and my ability to keep him free of Angie. It was all in jeopardy.