Children of the Knight (50 page)

M
AYOR
V
ILLAGRANA
’
S
generously appointed office was, at the moment, a bit crowded. In attendance for this latest King Arthur meeting were the mayor, of course, City Council President Bernie Sanders, several council members, Police Chief Murphy, Sergeants Ryan and Gibson. They had been debating how best to deflate the positive publicity being generated by Arthur and his efforts.

“How the hell should I know what to do?” the mayor responded, annoyed with the direction this discussion had taken. “Nothing like this has ever happened before.”

“It is most unprecedented, even by Populist movement standards,” Council President Sanders replied.

Villagrana’s most mysterious supporter and campaign contributor had called again today, demanding to know what was going to be done to this upstart, as Arthur had been called. What would the mayor do about it? This man, whose real name Villagrana didn’t even know, expected action, but what could he do without pissing off the voters?

“Why is one man so popular?” he threw out, not expecting an answer.

But Ryan had one. “Maybe cuz he’s doing everything the people elected you to do.”

Villagrana cast Ryan a look that would’ve cracked a camera lens. “Out of line, Sergeant Ryan. You were brought in here because you’ve had the most contact with this joker, not to be a smart ass!”

Gibson flashed his partner a “what the hell’re you doing” look, and then said, “This whole crusade of his is nothing but a time bomb waiting to explode in his face. With that many kids, and especially that many gangbangers, something will go wrong. We just have to wait for it.”

Ryan shook his head vigorously. “Sergeant Gibson is wrong. The only way it’s gonna explode is if
we
fumble the ball.”

Council President Sanders asked, “What do you mean, Sergeant?”

Ryan had thought about this, quite a lot actually, since that encounter at the pizza place. You could learn a lot from a man by the way he does or doesn’t look you straight in the eye, and Ryan felt he had a better understanding of Arthur from their brief time together.

He didn’t know what it was, but somehow this case had caused him and his partner to shift poles. For whatever reason, this time
he
was the more reasonable one.

“This guy’s making real changes for real people out there, and now they’re gonna demand that kinda action from us. We better be ready to deliver the same or more when the time comes, or else
we’re
the bad guys.”

Villagrana suddenly got a wily look in his eyes, and he snapped his fingers. “I know! We’ll get some of those kids of his to paint a mural for the city, right here on one of the downtown buildings. We’ll give ’em the paint, talk it up in the press, steal a little of his thunder. It’ll be our goodwill gesture.”

“Aren’t we just throwing him a bone?” asked Sanders, and the other council members nodded in agreement.

The mayor laughed that phony PR laugh he’d practiced ad nauseam so he could master it in front of a camera. “’Course we are, Bernie. But I agree with Sergeant Gibson. This entire crusade is gonna collapse under its own weight, and then we’ll look that much better when we step in to clean up what’s left.”

Ryan flashed a disgusted look Gibson’s way as his partner received a slap on the back from the mayor. Gibson had a very smug look on his face, which reminded Ryan why his partner had done a one-eighty on this case.

Immediately following the debacle at Round Table, Ryan and Gibson had been formally removed from the “Arthur matter,” as the Chief called it, and were told to focus strictly on gang activity. But that had been the problem—gang activity had slowed considerably. Just how many gangbangers might have joined up with Arthur was impossible to determine, but apparently those who hadn’t were taking a watch and wait approach to the king and his crusade.

Gibson in particular spent most of his time sulking and brooding over the embarrassment of their failure. And to add insult to injury, he’d been stunned to see the footage from Watts, with his own son affirming allegiance to Arthur. Ryan had tried to help him through it, but the exchange had become a bit heated.

Ryan had walked into the station that day, swigging his antacid, and spotted Gibson staring intently at the flat-screen TV, the other officers silently watching with him. Ryan almost gasped aloud when he saw Justin but said nothing until the news story played out, and Gibson killed the volume. A couple of the officers patted him on the back, but Gibson didn’t respond.

“I’m sorry, Gib,” Ryan said, and he meant it. Not just about Justin joining Arthur’s crusade, but because Justin had virtually admitted on TV that he’d been selling drugs. “What’re gonna do?”

Gibson wilted into his desk chair in despair, his shoulders sagging. “How, Ry, how did I lose my own son?”

“This job,” Ryan replied, sitting on the desk beside his partner. “It killed both our marriages, and now it’s killing your kid.” Gibson looked up sharply, but Ryan wasn’t done yet. “You know what this whole Arthur business has shown me?”

Gibson shrugged.

“That maybe
I
been wrong about kids all these years. You neglect ’em or abuse ’em, they go bad. But you give ’em a purpose, and they seem to shine.” He’d said this almost to himself, as the realization had struck him. Maybe he’d actually been wrong….

Gibson, however, flared with anger, his eyes bulging, his mustache bristling. “You tellin’ me I’ve been neglecting my own kid?”

Ryan shrugged. “Not on purpose. But you’ve been so obsessed with keeping other people’s kids out of gangs that you’re missing out on your own.”

“Back off, Ryan. You’re outta line!” Gibson hadn’t wanted to hear that. He’d vowed to be a good father, to
be
a father, to
not
be absentee, like his old man had been.

Ryan gazed at the younger man intently, his craggy old face more serene than usual. “Don’t you see, Gib, what this Arthur’s trying to teach us, all of us, the good men like you and the narrow-minded jerks like me?”

Gibson raised his eyebrows.

“That every kid needs individual attention and a helluva lot of it, or else they’ll go to the streets to get it. And that’s when we get involved, but then it’s too late.”

Gibson didn’t respond at first, digesting for a moment Ryan’s observation.

“Hell, Ry, you’re the guy who wants to throw ’em in prison at age ten and toss the key.”

Ryan sighed. His partner was right. That’s how he’d always thought. Yet somehow this whole Arthur crusade-thing had… done
something
to him, something that had knocked him clean off the rigid perch he’d resolutely inhabited for so long. “As much as an old fool hates to admit it—” He sighed heavily. “—I think I was wrong.”

Now Gibson felt like he was the bad cop and Ryan the good. “This guy’s violating every law in the book, Ry. And he’s made us look like chumps.
You
sound like you admire him.”

Ryan looked his partner right in the eye. “I do, Gib. And I’m almost beginning to believe what you said that day.”

Gibson had looked confused. “What’d I say?”

“That he might really
be
King Arthur.”

He’d patted the startled Gibson on the shoulder and ambled off to the men’s room. Damned ulcer was killing him.

T
HE
day following Ryan and Gibson’s meeting with the mayor and his cronies, the “Mural Project” press conference got set up without a hitch. Helen, who knew how to contact Arthur by cell, had relayed the mayor’s proposal to him and asked if he could attend with however many kids wanted to be part of the mural undertaking.

Arthur informed her that he would be in a place called Panorama City doing restoration with the main body of his knights, but he would send those kids who wished to take part in the project, and they could then begin.

With Lance nowhere about, Arthur asked Esteban and Reyna, Lavern, Luis, and Enrique what they thought of the mayor’s idea.

Reyna made a rude gesture and said, “That guy’s an ass—my bad, Arthur, he’s a jerk and a phony. I seen him on TV enough to tell. If he’s doing this it’s cuz he thinks it’ll make
him
look good.”

Arthur nodded. Sounded like the authority figures of his own day.

Enrique liked the idea of creating a gigantic mural “so the people wouldn’t forget what we done for them.”

Esteban agreed with Reyna about the Mayor. “He don’t care about no one ’cept himself,” he told the king. “But I think Sir Rique be right. How long you think it’ll be ’fore the people forget what we done and go back to their old, careless, selfish ways, huh? I seen it happen in my own ’hood lots a times.”

Luis and Lavern agreed. For a twelve-year-old, Lavern not only had prodigious drawing and painting and archery skills, but a very level head on his shoulders. “The mayor prob’ly be doin’ it to make hisself look good, but if it helps our crusade shouldn’t we be doin’ it?”

Arthur smiled at the small boy with the Michelangelo hands. “Ye doth be wise beyond your years, Lavern. It be settled, then. You, Enrique, and Luis gather whomever you wish and meet with this mayor at the appointed time.”

Lavern grinned, and they set off to do the recruiting.

Arthur noted a pensive look on Esteban’s face. “What be troubling thee, Sir Esteban?”

Reyna leaned forward, her forehead crinkled, wanting to know. Esteban just shook his head, as though clearing cobwebs. “Not sure,” he began hesitantly. “A feeling that the mayor and his homeboys are up to something, like they want to bring us down.”

Arthur placed a hand on the boy’s brawny shoulder and grinned. “It doth be the nature of men like him—the do-nothings, to hate and despise men like us—the doers,” he explained. “It hath ever been so throughout human history. I have no doubt he doth seek my destruction and the ruination of our crusade.”

That worried Esteban and Reyna. “What will you do to stop him?” she asked, her well-trimmed brows furrowed with anxiety.

“As long as we please the people, we shall win,” Arthur replied.

Both teenagers nodded, but their fears remained.