Authors: Solomon Jones

The Bridge (10 page)

BOOK: The Bridge

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“So why are you protecting him?” Lynch asked.

Dot laughed. It was a bitter sound. “Is that what you think?” she asked in disbelief. “Look at my face, man. Look at it and tell me why the hell I would be protectin' Sonny.”

“'Cause you fuckin' him, that's why!” Daneen shouted angrily.

“Wait a minute,” Lynch said, jumping in.

“No, I'm not waitin',” Daneen snapped. “I been ridin' around with y'all all day tryin' to find my daughter. Sonny know where she at, Dot know where Sonny at. And she gon' tell me somethin', or I swear 'fo God, I'ma hurt her.”

Dot smiled in spite of herself. She was past being afraid of pain. “Oh, it's funny?” Daneen said, lunging at Dot as Lynch pulled her back.

“Yeah, it's funny. It's funny that you sound just like your aunt.” Lynch and Wilson exchanged puzzled looks.

“What aunt?” Lynch asked.

“Judy,” she said. “Sonny woman.”

“Are you saying you saw Judy this morning?” Lynch asked.

“She came right after I called 9-1-1,” she said nervously. “I looked out and seen her, but I ain't recognize her, 'cause she had on this cop uniform. Then when I opened the door, she came in here trippin'. Said she knew all about me and Sonny and started askin' me all these questions. Then when I ain't tell her what she wanted to
know, she started â¦ Well, anyway, she said somethin' 'bout Sonny takin' somethin' that belonged to her.”

“Did she say what it was?” Lynch asked.

“No,” Dot said quietly.

“But you're sure she came here looking for Sonny and saying that he took something from her?” Lynch asked.

“Yeah.”

“And do you know where she was going when she left?”

“No, but Iâ”

“Thanks Dot,” he said. “You've been helpful.”

As they walked out the door, Lynch relayed Judy's latest known location to radio.

After disappearing into the brush along the river, Sonny picked his way through the man-size weeds, hoping to go far enough downstream to avoid the K9 units that would soon join the hunt.

He made it as far as South Street, where he scrambled up the side of the muddy riverbank, dragging the money-filled backpack behind him.

Had he known that he was in the very spot where a priestess had only weeks before paid homage to the river goddess Oshun during the yearly Odunde festival, perhaps he would have prayed to her.

If not to Oshun, then to someone, because there was no way that Sonny would make it out of the city without divine intervention, especially after assaulting two police officers.

But Sonny wasn't one to pray. As far as he knew, the only god he needed was strapped to his hip, ready to rain fire and brimstone on anyone who got in his way. But if there was a bigger god than that, and he could help Sonny to San Juan, he would gladly accept the help.

But as far as he was concerned, he was more deadly than he'd
ever seen God or anyone else be. And at that moment, as he jogged along the South Street Bridge, mud-covered and panting, Sonny looked every bit as dangerous as he thought he was.

His expression was fixed somewhere between madness and fear, his eyes darting nervously about him, searching for a car that would allow him to move faster. When he didn't find it, he began to run, taking to the street and threading in and out of traffic to the tune of blaring car horns and shouted profanities.

He ignored it all, running harder as he approached Graduate Hospital on the corner of Nineteenth and South.

When he reached the hospital's door, he abruptly stopped and limped into the lobby, with mud and sweat sticking to his clothes like dung. The guardâa young black man who looked uncomfortable in his blue security blazer and clip-on tieâlooked up from the television behind the half-moon-shaped security desk.

“Can I help you?”

“I'm looking for the emergency room,” Sonny said, wincing as if he was in pain. “I had a little accident down by the South Street Bridge.”

“So I see,” the guard said, staring at Sonny with increasing curiosity. “Go down the hall, make a left, and follow the signs. You can't miss it.”

“Thanks.”

Sonny walked away, his limp even more pronounced. The guard called after him. “Yo.”

Sonny stopped and turned around slowly.

“You look real familiar, man,” the guard said, dragging out his words as he tried to jog his memory. “Seem like I seen you somewhere before.”

“Probably not,” Sonny said, grabbing his knee. “Lotta people look like me, though. You probably got me confused with somebody else.”

The guard stared at him a moment longer. “I guess you right,” he said, his eyes dropping to Sonny's knee. “You better go 'head and get that leg looked at.”

Sonny turned around and made the left toward the emergency room. A doctor walked past him, greeting him with an absentminded grin. A nurse hurried away from her station with a patient's chart on a clipboard. An orderly passed by the empty nurses' station pushing a wheeled cart filled with soiled linen.

When the orderly turned down a nearby hallway, Sonny followed him. The man opened a locked linen closet and pushed the cart inside. Sonny slipped behind him and grabbed the door before it could close.

The man turned around, irritated. Taking in Sonny's disheveled look, he dismissed him as a patient.

“The emergency room's that way,” he said, then returned to what he was doing.

Sonny didn't respond. He shut the door behind him, reached into his waistband for the gun, and smacked the man on the side of his head with it.

The man went down, blood seeping from a widening gash near his temple. Sonny reached into the linen the man was sorting, tore a strip of cloth from a sheet, and tied it around his mouth. He tore another strip and tied his hands. Then he bent down until he was just inches from his face.

“Any clothes in here?”

The man nodded toward a cart on the other side of the closet. Sonny looked inside and saw what he needed. He stripped quickly, stepping out of his mud-stained clothes and into a clean set of surgical scrubs.

Sonny placed the gun in the backpack, then stood over the terrified man for half a secondâlong enough to frighten him into a silence they both understood he should maintain. Sonny left the room, locking the door behind him, leaving the man bleeding on the floor.

Walking quickly through the halls, he followed signs to the parking garage, took the elevator down to the lower level, walked to the
darkest corner, and began trying car doors. Within moments, he was inside a black Maxima.

Breaking the steering column, he reached down and tried to hot-wire the car. There was a spark, and nothing else. Sonny looked at the display to see if the engine or battery indicators were lit. They weren't, so he felt along the bottom of the dashboard, looking for a kill switch. When he didn't find one, he tried the wires again. This time, the engine cranked.

Sonny shot out of the parking space and whipped the car through the underground lot, following signs to the exit. When he found it, the crossbar was down. Sonny considered ramming through, but decided against it, and stopped at the cashier's booth.

A bored-looking woman in her midthirties sat twisting a single braid of hair around her thick, brown finger. When she heard the car pull up, she held out her hand without looking at Sonny. He rolled down the window, reached into his bag and offered a twenty-dollar bill.

“I lost my ticket, so I'm not sure how long I been here,” he said, thrusting the money into her hand. “But I guess this should cover it.”

The woman started to respond, but fell silent when she glanced at him. From his face, her eyes made their way along the driver's side door, to the baby's car seat in the back, and then back to Sonny.

She had worked in the hospital parking lot for more than a year. She knew who owned the car, and it wasn't Sonny. When the reality of it struck her, she was suddenly afraid.

“1-1 might be able to see what time you checked in if you give me your plate number,” she said nervously. “Might save you a couple dollars.”

“You don't have to do that.”

“It's all right,” she said quickly. “Just give me a second.”

As she scrambled for a pencil with shaking hands, the phone in her booth rang. She answered, and as she listened to the guard at
the front desk tell her that a wanted man was loose in the buildingâa man he'd seen on the news that very morningâthe blood rushed from her face.

When she looked at Sonny again, his gun was pointing out the driver-side window.

“Hang up the phone, open the gate, and you'll live,” he said calmly.

Seconds later, the car sped out of the parking lot.

Lily banged on Tyreeka's mother's door with curses poised on her lips. But when the door swung open, the self-righteous anger that had sent her running down the stairs began to melt away.

Hattie Johnson stood in the doorway wearing a look that Lily had seen in so many of her neighbors' faces. It was neither fatigue, nor sadness, nor frustration, but a combination of all three. It was the kind of look that came when tears no longer would, when the reality of the projects sank down to the very marrow of the bone.

“Is Tyreeka here?” Lily asked, her voice more timid than she meant for it to sound.

With three knee-high grandchildren grasping at her legs and the television blaring in the background, Hattie fixed her glazed, tired eyes on Lily.

“I ain't seen Tyreeka since ten o'clock last night,” she said, her eyes showing a spark of anger. “But when I do, she gon' wish she ain't have to see me at all.”

Lily stood in the hallway with Darnell and Janay, looking and feeling uncomfortable. Hattie was about to step aside to let them in, but then she glimpsed Darnell, and the look and smell of crack gave her pause.

“If y'all don't want nothin' else â¦” she said, and started to close the door.

Lily reached out and held it open.

Hattie looked at her expectantly. The spark of anger was gone, replaced by fatigue.

“We tryin' to find Judy's little niece, Kenya,” Lily said. “Ain't nobody seen her since last night.”

Hattie's dead eyes came alive again at the chance to gossip. “I heard about that,” she said in an anxious, conspiratorial whisper. “Heard they took Judy outta here in handcuffs this mornin', and they lookin for Sonny. They think they did somethin' to the child or somethin'?”

“I don't know,” Lily said, looking up at Darnell, who stood quiet and still beside her.

“But from what we heard, Kenya was with Tyreeka last night,” Lily continued. “I'm not tryin' to get in your business or nothin', but if you could tell us where Tyreeka went when she left here, it might help us find Kenya.”

“Honey, if I knew where Tyreeka was at, I would be draggin' her home myself,” she said, grabbing one of the children who had wandered too far into the hallway.

“'Cause if she think she gon' do what her sister did and stick me with her baby,” she added, her lips twisting with attitude, “she got another thing comin'.”

Just then, Tyreeka's twenty-week-old daughter screamed. She was sitting in the middle of the living-room floor, strapped in a tiny, padded rocking chair with curdled formula dribbling down her vomit-soaked sleeper.

The screaming continued for a minute straight. Then the baby settled into a low-pitched, constant whimper.

Lily looked at the child with concern.

“Don't worry 'bout her,” Hattie said, reading her expression. “She all right. She just loud.”

Lily didn't look convinced. But she continued anyway.

“So, you don't know if they was together at all?” she asked.

“I just know I told Tyreeka to go to the store and get some cereal so I could put it in this baby's bottle and put her to sleep. I mean, I knew she wouldn't come right back. But I ain't expect her to stay out all night.”

“Okay,” Lily said, sighing as she turned to leave. “I ain't mean to bother you.”

“Wait a minute,” Hattie said, calling Lily back. “There was one thing.”

“What's that?”

“My cousin came up here last night. I guess she called herself tellin'. She told me Tyreeka wasâ”

Hattie turned around when she heard Sonny's name on television. They all stopped to listen.

BOOK: The Bridge

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