Lowboy Part 6

There was somehow no question, Lateef would say later, of leaving her at the Department. She took it as a given that he'd bring her. It's certainly not unheard-of, he reminded himself, following her almost bashfully into the hall. She might easily prove useful, if only to make a positive ID. But what struck him most, both then and afterward, was that the agreement was entirely unspoken: it was as natural a thing as turning off the light. He'd no more have thought of stopping her than of leaving his wallet or his .38 behind.

She led the way downstairs and out of the building, not once looking back to see if he was following, and crossed Centre Street without a moment's hesitation, stopping only at the entrance to the lot. He didn't ask how she'd known where his car would be: he no longer expected her to act like a complainant. He was gratified, how-ever-even slightly relieved-when she swept confidently past his car.

"Just missed me, Miss h.e.l.ler. Behind you on the left."

She'd chosen a patrol car at random and was standing at the driver-side door, her arms crossed at her waist as though she expected to be cuffed. "That one?" she said, with obvious disappointment. "The little green hatchback?"

"The little green sport utility sedan."

"Does it even have a siren?"

"Excellent mileage." He unlocked the pa.s.senger-side door for her. "A pleasure to park."

She kept quiet until they were on the West Side Highway. "You're not a family man, apparently."

"Why do you say that, Miss h.e.l.ler?"

"This car of yours. It's spotless."

He said nothing to that, only smiled and shrugged his shoulders, and she seemed appreciative of the silence. She tilted her seat back and closed her eyes. He felt the urge to watch her but resisted it. At the stoplight at Thirty-fourth Street she sat up with a start, as though her name had been called, and fixed her gray eyes wonderingly on his.

"That sticker on your b.u.mper. Is it true?"

He squinted at the stoplight. "What sticker would that be, Miss h.e.l.ler?"

"Does this thing really run on soybean oil?"

He caressed the dashboard lovingly.

"Will would admire you for that."

"Would he? Why?"

"Global warming is his allconsuming pa.s.sion. That's how the world is going to end, you know."

"No argument there," Lateef said, switching lanes.

She opened the glove compartment and saw the gun inside and pushed the compartment shut. "I'm surprised you didn't know that, come to think of it. You must not have read Will's case file very closely."

She was looking away from him as she spoke, watching the numbered cross streets arcing past. She was milder now, less strident, more composed. The arrogance had been leached out of her voice. Because she's been asleep, he decided. She'll be arrogant again soon enough. But he found himself telling her the truth regardless.

"I have no access to your son's case history, Miss h.e.l.ler. The files on all minors are sealed at sentencing. I'd have to call in all my favors just to see it." He sighed. "To be honest, I doubt whether I have that much pull."

For the better part of a minute she said nothing. Lateef kept his eyes on the road, feigning indifference, but even so he could tell that he'd astonished her. Finally she took hold of the rearview mirror and tipped it until their eyes met. "What the f.u.c.k did you have in that folder?"

"A clipping from the New York Daily News Daily News."

"But how?" She shook her head in disbelief. "If you weren't allowed-"

"I happened to remember your son's case. It's part of my job to read the paper, ridiculous as that may sound."

Fifteen minutes earlier she'd have risen to the occasion, made some joke about not seeing him do much else, but this time she said nothing. They were coming to the intersection of Amsterdam and Seventy-second. She waited until he'd made the turn onto Amsterdam, then said in a disinterested voice: "You'd have more luck with your witnesses, Detective, if you stopped treating them like political prisoners."

He let his eyes rest on the city bus in front of them. "You're not a witness, Miss h.e.l.ler. You're a complainant. And I treat everyone who lies to me the same way."

She blinked at him. "What do you mean by that?"

"You told me that your son had no friends but his grandfather, no interest in anything but comic books. When obviously he was spending time with that girl."

She tilted her head out of view.

"Why didn't you mention the girl to me, Miss h.e.l.ler?"

"I didn't think she was important."

"I'd have to disagree. I think she is."

She started to answer him, then stopped herself. When she spoke again her voice was strangely m.u.f.fled. "Will's not a murderer, Detective. Will is a boy with an illness."

He frowned at her. "I wasn't aware the girl was killed, Miss h.e.l.ler."

"She wasn't killed," she said quickly. "Emily is fine." Both her arms were braced against the dashboard. "Could you slow down, Detective? We're practically up that bus's m.u.f.fler."

"We don't have all the tea in China," Lateef said gravely, but she didn't seem to hear.

"It's incredible that Emily wasn't killed," she said after a time. "Her head came down an inch from the third rail. The 6 was less than a stop away, just a few hundred yards uptown, but they managed to get the signals switched somehow." A taxi rolled past them and she watched it pa.s.s. "By the time they took Will away she was already in a bed at City Hospital."

"Did she testify at your son's trial?"

"She refused to testify. She told everyone she'd jumped of her own volition." Violet shook her head. "No one believed her, of course."

She leaned forward and rested her head against the dash. Lateef kept quiet for the length of four full blocks, determined not to rush her. He knew the rest was coming and it was.

"Try to imagine, Detective, what it's like to have a child-" She stopped in mid-sentence and straightened in her seat. "What it's like to have a child, only one, and to feed that child all of your own old ambitions. It's wrong for other parents, of course, but you feel different, free to indulge yourself, because your child is very close to perfect." She arranged her hands more precisely in her lap. "It isn't only because you love him that you think of him this way. He's gentler than most other children are, more self-contained, more independent. As far as anyone can tell-teachers, neighbors, even other children- he's also a good deal smarter. He takes your life over completely."

They were coming up to Eighty-second Street, just three blocks from the sighting, but Lateef made a slow right and lifted his foot off the gas. She seemed neither to notice nor to care.

"Then picture what came next," she said. "Picture everything I've told you happening."

After that she stopped talking and dug the heels of her palms into her eyes. He circled the block at a leisurely pace and brought them back to Amsterdam without a word. Her crying didn't alarm him; just the opposite. It was proof that something had fallen away between them. A barrier had been removed, not through anything he'd said or done, but simply because her son had been sighted alive. She's saving her strength now, Lateef thought. Saving it for what's coming. She knows better than to waste it all on me.

"Emily was a remarkable girl," she said when she was done. "She was taller than Will, the way girls that age often are, and she had lovely dark hair that always hung straight down into her eyes. A tomboy, I suppose you'd say. I never understood what brought the two of them together: it's so odd for a fourteen-year-old girl to give a younger boy the time of day." She smiled to herself. "Will had begun to be handsome, but it wasn't just that. There was something between them."

Lateef pulled up at Eighty-fourth and Columbus and let the motor idle. "Did your son think of her as his girlfriend?"

"I asked him the same question. It got me grounded for a week."

"Had Emily been told about his illness?"

"She knew about it." She tapped a fingernail against the dashboard. "Everybody knew by then."

He considered that for a moment. "And it made no difference to her?"

"It didn't bother her at all. She made a point of telling me." She drew in a deep breath and made a face. "I suppose she must have thought it was romantic."

"I'm guessing that you didn't like her much."

She smiled at him. "You should ask Will's therapist about that, Detective. Ulysses S. Kopeck, MD. He'll tell you about my unfortunate fixation on my son."

"I don't get along with that kind of doctor," Lateef said, killing the engine. "They always seem to think I'm paranoid."

"Do they really?"

He nodded resignedly. "Apparently I view everyone as a suspect."

She gave a laugh, then stopped herself, as if at a sudden memory. "Kopeck was right about me, though, in spite of everything. I've always asked more of Will than I should have."

"All mothers ask things of their sons."

"I asked more."

Something in her answer made him uneasy. "What sort of things, Miss h.e.l.ler?"

"You have to understand that I came to this country more or less by accident, from one day to the next. Aside from Will's father, I didn't have a friend in the world. I had nothing." She shifted slightly in her seat. "You're wondering what this has to do with Will."

Lateef didn't answer.

"I hadn't planned to have a child-Alex had three kids already, with his first wife-but when Will was born I became a different person." She hesitated. "Does that make sense?"

"Different in what way?"

She brought her knees together. "I'd expected to need Alex more once the baby was born, but the truth was I needed him less. I felt like a dead body brought back to life, and it was Will who had done that, not Alex. I had everything suddenly instead of nothing." She shook her head slowly. "From the day he was born I told him every thought that flitted through my head: I talked to him for hours on end. It never occurred to me to keep the least thing from him. I needed a friend-an equal, an adult-and I brought Will up to play that role for me." She let her eyes rest on Lateef. "Will had no say in any of this, of course. It never would have occurred to him to object. That's what I mean, Detective, when I tell you that I asked too much of him."

Lateef said nothing for a moment. "It must have been hard for you when Emily came along."

"It was very hard for me."

"What did you think of her?"

She stared out at the curb. "I didn't know what to do with Emily. She confused me. I treated her the way you treat your complainants."

"Poor Emily."

"The first time Will brought her over, I thought she'd been sent by the school to make sure he got home. She was terribly excited to be mixed up in something so serious." She bit her lip for a while. "Will was still functioning then, still able to go to school most of the time. He left the two of us in the kitchen and went straight to his room and shut the door. I didn't know what to think. I was about to thank Emily for escorting him home when she smiled at me, like any other girl with a crush would do, and told me that she'd met Will on the train. She was a perfectly normal-seeming teenager, polite and well-spoken, but there was something desperate in the way she looked at me. What could this girl want from us? I thought. I asked her what Will had done, still thinking that something must have happened, but she just looked down at the floor and said, 'He didn't have to do anything, really.' I don't know which of us was more embarra.s.sed." She took another deep breath. "She ended up staying the night."

Lateef raised his eyebrows. "In your son's room?"

She smiled. "You're forgetting my possessiveness, Detective. I made a bed for her out on the couch."

"What about the girl's parents?"

"I called them, of course. Emily asked me not to but I insisted. I was expecting trouble-a few awkward questions, at least-but her father couldn't have cared less. He told me that it happened all the time."

"Not the possessive type, apparently."

"Not so much," said Violet. "Shouldn't we be getting out?"

"Of course," he said, fumbling with his seatbelt. "After you, Miss h.e.l.ler."

She waited for a bike to pa.s.s, a model citizen, then opened her door and eased out gracefully. Lateef stayed in the car a moment longer, frowning at his reflection in the driver-side mirror. You're flirting with her, he said to himself. The idea depressed him. He often joked with his complainants, especially the difficult ones, but in this case it brought no advantage. Watch yourself, Professor White, he thought. You've already made at least one joke too many.

It turned out he needn't have worried. She was standing on the curb with her arms crossed against the cold, oblivious to the looks of pa.s.sersby, waiting impatiently for him to join her. The women looked her over as they pa.s.sed, letting their eyes linger on her loose and charmless clothes; the men simply stared at her face. When he finally followed her out of the car, he realized that she'd been trying to speak to him.

"What was that, Miss h.e.l.ler?"

"I don't want you to misunderstand what I've told you, that's all." She turned away from him as she spoke, glancing down into a grate beside her feet. "I may have aggravated my son's illness-I won't deny that-but I didn't cause it."

"It's my understanding that schizophrenia is caused by genetics," Lateef said carefully.

"They don't have a clue what it's caused by," she said, hunching over. "They don't know a G.o.dd.a.m.n thing."

"That's not true, Miss h.e.l.ler." He coughed into his fist. "They've done tests that show an electrical difference in the brain. And they have medication to treat it, like any other illness of the body. The Thorazine, for example, that your son was taking-"

"Thorazine!" she said fiercely. Her back was turned on him now but he could picture her contemptuous smile regardless. "Do you know how they discovered Thorazine, Detective? By mistake. They were using it as a tranquilizer in surgery." She nodded to herself. "They have no idea why Thorazine works, or Clozapine, or any of their other silver bullets. Schizophrenia might as well come from eating powdered sugar."

"It isn't caused by needy mothers, though. No one's made that claim for years."

She looked at him now. "I aggravated my son's condition, Detective Lateef."

He didn't know what to say to that. He looked around vainly for Officer Leo Martinez, Twenty-third Precinct, who was supposedly working the corner. Violet had already turned back to the grate. He felt awkward behind her, stifflimbed and useless, a feeling he generally reserved for his days off. One of the benefits of his work was that it made no allowance for awkwardness: awkwardness was an Upper East Side luxury. His father had told him that once, and he'd laughed at his father, but the idea had stuck. And now he'd been reduced to the role of observer-worse than that, of witness-and his work had failed to offer him protection. The moment pa.s.sed quickly, but it left him bewildered. His irritation at Martinez mounted. I'll make that boy hop when he gets here, he thought, and the idea brought him comfort of a kind.

"Is this the grate?" Violet said suddenly. "This one here?"

"I'm not sure, to tell you the truth. The on-duty officer-"

"There's a room down there," she said.

"What do you mean?"

She bent down and brought her face close to the grate. "A bed with some clothes on it. A little blue suitcase."

Lateef squatted next to her. "I wouldn't call that a bed," he said, feeling more ineffectual than ever. "A comforter, that's all, or some kind of-"

"This is it," she said, touching the grate with her fingers. "This is where Will was seen."

Just then a boy in a uniform appeared around the corner, tearing a packet of Dutch Masters open with his teeth. The uniform seemed too big for him, cut for someone less dainty, and in spite of his painstakingly nurtured mustache he barely looked old enough to smoke. He grinned when he saw them and held out a hand to Lateef. "Detective!" he said, looking past him at Violet. "Very nice to meet you. Thanks for coming."

"Officer Martinez?" Lateef said, keeping his hands in his pockets.