Slow Motion Riot (7 page)

With all these confidences going
back and forth, Maria and I have built up a good relationship. She always shows
up for office visits and I get her appointments with Job Corps counselors. I've
even gone with her to their offices a few times to make a good impression on
interviewers. I convinced her to stay in school during days and work nights to
make money. I also gave her my home phone number, which is what I'd do for any
other client, of course.

The one thing I can't get her to do
is move out of the apartment where she still lives with her family. Every time
I see her, I bring up the subject.

"No, no, no," she always
says. "It's not so easy as you think."

She's afraid what her uncle might
do if she left. He's capable of coming after her with a gun—he's on probation
himself for assault with a deadly weapon. There is also a strong possibility
that he might start fucking Maria's eleven-year-old sister. My solution is to
get Maria moved out of the house so she can get her life together and then help
me start violation proceedings to put her uncle away.

But when I start talking about the plan
again, Maria shudders and turns toward the wall. "It's not so easy,"
she says once more.

As usual, I write down my home
number on a slip of paper and give it to her. "Call me," I say.

After dealing with Maria, I go to
the bathroom and splash cold water on my face. Trying to take my mind off her.
It'd be nice to go by the legal department and check up on that other girl I'm
interested in, but there's no time. So I go down to the other end of the hall
to get a cup of coffee. I find Jack Pirone holding court around the coffee
machine with two other probation officers listening with bemused expressions.

"Look," Jack says.
"It's Judas Baum! How you doing, Judas? How's the gold and silver exchange
these days?"

"Leave me alone," I say
sullenly, picking up a Styrofoam cup.

"What's the matter, Judas? You
look depressed."

"I'm all right. Just let me
be, Jack."

"Client getting you
down?" asks one of the other probation officers, a tall guy named Lloyd
Bell, who has no hips and ebony skin like an African statue.

"Something like that," I
say, pouring the remains from the tepid coffeepot into my cup.

"I was just telling him that
he shouldn't take this shit so personal," Jack tells Lloyd. He turns back
toward me, once again affecting a concerned look. "Steven, we see so much
human misery and suffering coming in and out of here every day. When you've
been around as long as I have, you find a way to deal with that pain."

"What do you suggest?" I
say, sipping the coffee and tasting the grounds.

Jack grows contemplative. "I
remember a few years ago, the wife and I shared a house with some people on
Fire
Island
. It was early in the summer. There were hardly any other
people around, let alone lifeguards. Some of the other people we were with
immediately went out into the water. But there was a strong undertow that
day." He becomes very still and his voice takes on a hushed tone.
"One of our housemates went out there. And he never came back. We hardly
even knew him."

Lloyd looks at Jack and shakes his
head with a sigh. "Shit happens," he says.

"I remember a number of us sat
around the fire that night, talking about it." Jack pauses, allowing for
the impact of his sad story. "And we laughed like hell."

Lloyd and the other guy start
chuckling along with Jack. A stumpy, older woman with bright red hair scowls at
them as she pushes by. I shake my head. "I don't know, Jack," I say.
"I don't find some of this shit too amusing."

"Then you should lighten
up." Jack raps me on the arm with his knuckles. "Otherwise, you'll
end up like Tommy Markham."

"What's the matter with
Tommy?"

"Nothing," Jack says,
wiping his hands on the front of his shirt. "He's just an old sap, who
don't have nothing going for himself except the job. You know he's retiring,
right? We're having a farewell party for him at Junior's in
Brooklyn
tonight. You should come."

For a couple of seconds I think
about whether I could ask the girl from the legal department to come with me,
but then I consider what these parties are usually like and decide I shouldn't
risk it. I crumple my coffee cup and throw it in the trash. "Does this
mean I'm forgiven for going over to the Field Service Unit?" I ask Jack.

"No," he says.
"You're still Judas, but you're still my old student."

"I'm still in the union
too." I start to go.

"Hey, Baum," Lloyd Bell
says loudly. "You got this Darryl King on your caseload?"

"Yeah. What about him?"

Lloyd strokes his goatee with two
fingers. "Sounds like a pretty bad guy."

I take two steps toward Lloyd.
"Why do you ask about him?"

"I got his homeboy Bobby 'House'
Kirk as my client."

The name is familiar from Darryl
King's file, but I don't remember the exact details. "Who's Bobby
Kirk?"

"Bobby the House was one of
Darryl's partners when they robbed that gas station," Lloyd says in a
languorous voice, opening the story up to the group. "They hang out at
Playland on
Times Square
sometimes. Bobby's what you'd
call a mean motherfucker. He's about six foot four, 280 pounds, and he has a
serious attitude, man. He once tore the door of a subway car off its hinges while
the train was moving..."

"Why?" I ask.

"No one knows," Lloyd
says with a shrug. "All I know is Bobby 'House' Kirk's got his name
written in gold across his knuckles, and he once dangled another kid out a
window at Spofford. And he's scared shitless of Darryl King."

"So what you're saying,"
I say, "is that Darryl's gotta be really bad."

"That's what I'm saying."

A few minutes after
four o'clock
, Darryl King stumbled out of the
bedroom in his underwear. His sister's five-year-old daughter, LaToya, was in
the next room, watching a Yogi Bear cartoon on television with the volume
turned all the way up.

"Yo, turn that shit
down," Darryl told her.

"Mommy said I could
watch," the little girl said, her words whistling through the space in her
front teeth.

"And I said, turn that shit
down, I got a headache." Darryl frowned and sat down in front of the
couch. His niece leaned back on his bare legs.

Paint was coming off the walls in
sheets and there were rat-pellets all over the apartment. Wires stuck out from
the baseboard where the phone jack used to be and urine seeped in under the
front door because someone had taken a piss out in the hall again. There was
another puddle in the corner where the ceiling had fallen in the week before.
No one from the city had come to fix it, so the King family didn't care anymore.

On the television screen, Yogi Bear
was giving his protege Booboo a set of careful instructions about what to do in
their next adventure. Yogi then turned and walked right smack into a tree
trunk, flattening his entire face.

"Yo, what's up with that
bear?" Darryl said.

LaToya squealed with delight and
shook her pigtails. She had a sweet gap-toothed smile and a light in her eyes
that no one else in the family had. "He funny, Dooky!" she said.

"He's not funny," Darryl
said. "He be acting ill."

He leaned forward to nuzzle her
head affectionately. A clarinet played on the sound track while Yogi sat on the
ground watching stars go around his head. Darryl and his niece laughed as the
bear jumped in the air and his feet whirled like propellers. The sun was
corning through the broken window and an opened pack of Oreos sat on the table.
Next to it was the Rolex he'd taken off the Spanish guy in
Times
Square
last night. Only one small dot of blood marred the glass
over the dial. He was starting to feel better now.

LaToya suddenly whipped around to
look at him. "Grandma says don't miss your pointment," she said in a
high voice.

His face coiled up. "Moms said
I got an appointment?"

"She say be downtown."

"For my probation
officer?"

She smiled widely and nodded up and
down vigorously. "And what if I don't wanna go?" he asked her.

She made an angry face and balled
up her fist like she was going to clobber him. "You better."

"Shit." He grabbed her
fist and stood up. "You don't have to tell me nothin'. I'm all ready for
my appointment."

He hopped around on one leg, doing
karate kicks and kung fu chops, like he was warming up for a big fight. LaToya
just stared at him. In the bedroom down the hall, something fell over and one
of Darryl's children started crying. Darryl tried to ignore the sound for a
minute, turning back to the TV screen.

Yogi Bear had just run smack into
another tree and now he was desperately trying to straighten out his snout
again.

"Bear must be on the
pipe," Darryl said.

After getting all worked up about
Maria, I'm grateful that the next appointment is somebody I don't know. A
skinny kid with hair down to his ass and studded leather wristbands. His name
is Gary DeStefano and he plays bass in a heavy metal band called Sodomy and
Gomorrah
.
He's on probation for breaking a beer bottle over another musician's head
outside a bar.

"There's a lot of frustration
and anger in our music, you know," he explains, sinking so far down in his
chair that he's almost looking straight up at the ceiling. His legs are splayed
out before him like octopus tentacles.

"Why're you so
frustrated?"

" 'Cos we're not too
good," he says after giving it some thought. "People don't understand
how hard it is to play your instrument when you're wearing eighty to one
hundred pounds of fur and armor."

"I'll bet." I start to
take notes.

"And what's really like a
bitch is moving it around between gigs, you know."

"Where do you play?"

"Around. Wherever. L'Amour's
in
Brooklyn
and
Queens
. CBGB's.
You know that place?"

"Sure." I smile.

"The place is a dive,
dude,"
Gary
says. "And we
once even opened for a crucifixion."

"I beg your pardon?" I
put my pen down.

"Oh yeah," says
Gary
,
happy to have any kind of audience. "We were playing to a biker club in
Bay Ridge and after we were done they decided to have a sacrifice. I guess they
really liked us or something. So they got this kid, you know. And they got him
to put on a harness and a hood. And they put him up on a cross."

"You're kidding," I say,
trying to keep my mouth from falling open.

"I'm not. He wanted them to do
it too, you know. He was like this really weird dude. Anyhow, they whipped him
and put a votive candle up his butt. Which was okay with him, you know. He
liked it. And then, you know, they brought him across the street..."

I can't decide whether I'm appalled
or fascinated. "While he was still on the cross?"

"Oh yeah, absolutely. They
carried him on the cross across
Fourth Avenue
.
It was like
midnight
and there was
some traffic, but the cars waited for them to go by. So, anyway, they brought
him across the street to the clubhouse and they began the ritual, you know.
They started the music and a couple of guys dripped blood into a cup. And they
were really gonna do it. They were really gonna like crucify him... But at the
last minute they decided to spare his life."

"And how did you feel about
all of this while it was going on?" I ask, leaning forward in my chair.

"Wow," says
Gary
.
"Like I was really glad we didn't have to follow that act."

As the day winds down, I find
myself tensing up. I scream over the phone at a car thief who got a job at a
parking garage and I take a call from a client's mother, who says her son is
shooting heroin again. What am I supposed to do?

I'm not sure if it's the new field
assignment or the seven cups of coffee jangling my nerves. My stomach is
cramping itself into a ball. I hate these days on the emotional roller coaster,
going from angry to sorry to hopeful and then back again. Still the clients
keep coming. By
7:30
, I've speeded
myself into a numb blur and I can't remember what anyone said. My limbs feel
heavy and useless from sitting here all day.

The old anxieties start to creep over
me: You're not helping anyone. You're wasting time. You're burning out. Life is
passing you by.

Outside my cubicle, I hear the
sounds of briefcases shutting, footsteps in the hall, voices grumbling down by
the elevators. I don't want to stay here much longer, but I'm not quite ready
to go back to my cubbyhole on Avenue B. I sit at my desk, staring up at the
photograph of the beach landscape, as though I could will myself into the picture.

Sometimes I don't think I
understand my clients at all. I only see them for a fleeting moment, less than
1 percent of their time. And once they're out of my sight, they're going on
with their lives while I'm still stuck in here, beating around the inside of my
skull. I wonder if the things we talk about in here mean anything to them after
they leave. Sometimes I wish I could just break down the walls and find out for
myself.

It's a little late to be worrying
about all that now, though. I clear off my desk and get ready to head out the
door when I hear something strange out in the hall.

At first it's a faint, high-pitched
tone. It gets a little louder and I recognize the sound as violins. The strings
begin to swell and a police siren wails. There's a silence and then the beat
kicks in. The joyless, insistent rhythm grows louder and louder outside the
cubicle. Somebody is coming for me. A young man's voice cuts in, ranting in
angry rhymes. "Don't try and outgun me/And this is a threat/There ain't
been a motherfucker who can do that yet."

He comes in. A solid-looking black
kid with dark eyes that glimmer like precious stones under his heavy brow. I
wonder if he dressed specially for the occasion to intimidate his probation
officer. He hasn't just embraced the racist stereotype— he's perfected it as
the ultimate "fuck you." He wears a black Kangol hat, Guess jeans,
ropes of gold chains around his neck as well as rings on his fingers, and a
brand-new pair of Nikes with the tongues sticking out at obscene angles. A
beeper for phone messages is clipped to his waistband. He cradles a black
forty-eight-inch-long Sony radio cassette player in his arms as tenderly as a
mother would hold a child. Its silver knobs and panels gleam from loving care
and maintenance, and a rapper keeps declaring his virtues from its huge
speakers. The rhythm pounds in my ears.

He glares at me defiantly, but
doesn't say anything at first. An overpowering sweet, musky smell fills the
cubicle.

"What can I do for you?"
I say.

When he still doesn't answer, I ask
for his name.

"Darryl King," he says in
a small nasal voice.

"Have a seat, please."

I got my work cut out for me, I
think, as he throws himself down into the new chair replacing the one Jack
Pirone broke. While I search for his file, Darryl mutters along with another
rap song, putting special gusto into the line "Sucker-ass nigger I should
shoot you in the face."

"Yo, where's this at?" he
asks, looking at the picture of the beach landscape on the bank calendar.
"You live there?"

I ignore him and look at his record
once more. "I see you've got like almost a dozen arrests in the last year
or so."

He doesn't respond at all.

"Would you mind turning that
radio down a little?" I say in a reasonably friendly voice. "I've got
a little bit of a headache."

He leaves the radio on and keeps
glaring at me.

"Hey, Darryl, what's the
problem? Turn the radio off. I wanna talk to you."

He finally snaps it off. By now,
most sensible people are long gone and the lights are dim around the rest of
the office. Darryl looks past me and farts powerfully. There's something
strange about this guy. He's clearly not happy to be here, but he doesn't seem
to be in any hurry to go anywhere else.

"You know you're coming in
here a little late in the day," I tell him, trying to maintain an even
tone.

He shakes his head and makes a disgusted
ticking sound with his mouth, as if I'd just told some outrageous lie about
him. "Man, why you clockin' me?" he says. "I don't have time for
this shit."

I find the pink office slip about
what time he was supposed to come in and slide it across the desk to him.
"What does that say?" I ask.

Without even looking at it, he
shoves the slip right back at me.

"It says you were supposed to
be here yesterday morning," I say, picking the note up and putting it in
his file.

Darryl becomes very still. At first
I'm not sure if he heard what I said. "Fuck that shit," he says finally.

"Fuck your shit," I say.
"What's your excuse?"

Darryl looks away from me and
bursts into hysterical giggles, as though he's sharing a joke with a small
invisible friend in the corner. I write "Inappropriate responses" on
his evaluation sheet and make a brief notation that he might have smoked crack
before coming in here.

My instinctive reaction is to be a
little nervous. But my job is to try to turn him around. They used to have a saying
in my social work program: Everybody likes the easy victims. The people you can
really feel sorry for, because they haven't done anything wrong. The little
kids with AIDS. The sweet-tempered homeless woman. The forgotten old man in the
nursing home. But it's the hard ones that count for more sometimes. You know
the people I'm talking about. The ones who spit in your face and really dare
you to give a shit.

So in spite of all the voices in my
head telling me to get away from this guy as fast as I can, I force myself to
give him another chance. I look him right in the eye without saying anything
for a moment. I remember how Tommy Markham said Darryl had tried to intimidate
him during their interview, and I wonder if he might be putting on an act for
me too.

"I think we're getting off on
the wrong foot here," I say, trying to get some warmth into my voice.
"I just wanna get some sense of what's going on in your life now."

He draws his head back skeptically
and a little fold of skin appears under his chin. "Why?" he asks.

"So I can find out why you're
doing these things."

"What things?"

"The things that brought you
here. You know. Robbing the gas station." I check his rap sheet.
"This arrest for assault with a deadly weapon. Burglary. More
robbery..."

"Arrests." He hisses the
word. "Not convicted."

"Yeah, yeah, I know," I
say. "The only guilty plea is on the gas station robbery. But you know
what I'm talking about, even if you're not getting caught."

His eyes sweep across the ceiling
as if he's barely hearing me, but I go on anyway. "You know, a lot of
people would look at your record and say you're just a bad guy and they should
lock you up," I tell him. "But it's not my job to judge you like
that, necessarily."

Darryl just looks at me. Though he
doesn't say it, the word "sucker" hangs in the air as vividly as a
neon sign.

"You don't know me," he
says in a slow, belligerent voice. "You don't know what I can do with my
mentality." He puts a little polish on the last word to show he's good at
picking things up.

"All right. Let's get to know
each other then."

He folds his arms and half closes
his eyes.

"I see you have a
Harlem
address on your arrest report," I say. "Do you live with your
parents?"

"My mother."

"Your parents divorced?"
A form question.

Darryl smirks. "They were
never married."

"Where's your dad now?"

The smirk disappears. "I
dunno," Darryl King mumbles.

I light a cigarette and ask for a
daytime phone number for his mother.

"She was here before. You
could've asked her..."

"She dropped you off?"

"She was seeing her
officer..." he murmurs.

"Uh-huh. She's on probation
too?"

"She was framed, just like
me."

"What was the charge?"

"They say she stab Mark,"
Darryl says.

"Is Mark her current boyfriend
or something?"

"No. Mark my friend at the
projects. He fifteen."

Another note: "Home
environment not condusive to rehabilitation." I correct it to
"conducive." His answers seem to be getting less composed as they go
along. I might not have gotten an honest response out of him yet, but the act
is definitely slipping. Maybe I can get through to this fucker. "So why
would she want to stab your friend?" I ask.

"Homeboy tried to get bad with
me," he says impatiently.

"Why?"

"See, Mark got mad 'cos he say
I throw his mother down the steps. Right? He threatened me with violence. So my
moms don't like him."

I'm not sure what to believe now.
"Let's back up a second," I say. "Why did you throw Mark's
mother down the steps?"

"Bitch say I get her pregnant.
She say I threw her down the steps. I don't. No arrest, no indictment, no grand
jury. Nothin'."

I give the Silly Putty in my pocket
a squeeze and try to stay cool. Jack says that if they see they've gotten to
you emotionally, you're no longer an effective probation officer. But if I
don't get myself psyched-up, I don't see how I'm ever going to reach this guy.

The beeper goes off on his
waistband, but he doesn't bother checking to see what number is on it. He just
starts acting agitated, like he already knows who's calling him.

"What's that?" I ask.

"My fuckin' job, man," Darryl
says absentmindedly.

"What job?"

He stops and gives me a
disingenuous smile. "I don't be discussing that. The court didn't remand
me. I'm in your custody for supervision, not investigation," he says,
slipping into the practiced legalese he's learned through years spent going in
and out of the criminal justice system. "You don't be asking me questions
like that. You ain't no cop. You're just a social worker, that's all. I know
what time it is."

"Oh no? Well I disagree."

"Well, suck my dick."

He folds his arms across his chest
and defiantly puts his feet up on my desk.

"Would you mind putting your
feet down?" I say to him.

"Why should I?"

"Because I asked you."

His feet remain on top of my paper
tray. "I'm comfortable," he tells me.