The Juvie Three (12 page)

DaSilva shrugs. “Then I'll arrest you. But I doubt that's it. Most of our lives aren't that dramatic.”

Says who? For John Doe, it's all drama, all the time. What if he has no health insurance? Does he have a bank account? A home? In New York or in Timbuktu? How will he know where to go when he's discharged? What will he wear? These borrowed hospital scrubs are his only clothes. The emergency room staff threw out the bloodstained T-shirt and gym shorts they found him in.

When that pretty volunteer, Roxanne, asks how he takes his coffee, he can only stare at her blankly. He has no idea. For all he can remember, he might not even drink coffee.

Roxanne favors him with a dazzling smile as she fills his cup. “In that case, you're our dream customer. You can't say the coffee's bad if you don't know what it tastes like when it's good.”

She's a great kid, but all the forced cheeriness is starting to get on Healy's nerves. Smiles from the doctors, the nurses, the orderlies, the volunteers. It's one thing to stay positive, but it's a little insulting to his intelligence. His life, whatever it was, is in shreds. Grinning isn't going to change that.

The boy who calls himself Gecko leans over and whispers, “Try it black with one Sweet'N Low.”

Healy frowns. “What, you've got psychic powers?”

Gecko can be a bit of an oddball—friendly one minute, quiet and withdrawn the next, like he's hiding a deep dark secret. “Something like that,” he mumbles evasively.

The kid has at least one thing going for him: Roxanne. They don't seem to be officially dating, but no one can miss the way they look at each other.

Not that the patient is minding their business. Still, when your entire life has been erased in the blink of an eye, on top of all your other problems, you're bored out of your mind. You need something to think about. Around this place, the only entertainment is the soap opera of Gecko and Roxanne. He throws out a few feelers, but all the two teenagers will cop to is what great friends they are, and how much they respect each other's volunteer work. True, they could be hiding something. Then again, maybe sweet kids like that are just too shy to make a move.

“Well, when I was your age,” Healy tells Gecko meaningfully, “I would have been madly in love with her.”

His brow clouds. The truth is, John Doe has absolutely no idea what he was like at Gecko's age or any other. For all he can tell, he was disgorged from the Great Space Ark and teleported to earth, his mind a blank slate.

Gecko Fosse is on the couch in the staff lounge of Yorktown Medical Center, making out with Roxanne and not thinking. The not thinking part is crucial. He's not thinking about the fact that Healy's memory shows no sign of returning. He's not thinking about the fact that his entire life sits on a foundation that doesn't exist. And he's especially not thinking about the fact that the blame for all this lies with him—and Arjay and Terence.

Just as he was able to edit “getaway” from “driver” when he was behind the wheel, he can separate his first experience of having a girlfriend from the disastrous events that made it possible. A few closed doors away, poor Healy is being wheeled in for yet another ultrasound, CT scan, or MRI. But all it takes is one taste of the strawberry flavor of Roxanne's lip gloss, and he's lost in the strange yet wonderful world of the two of them.

“Get a grip,” she murmurs into his lips.

“
You
get a grip.”

“No—
you.
”

“You!”

A grip on reality is impossible for Gecko, so he substitutes a physical grip on Roxanne. It works okay, so long as you're good at not thinking.

Their relationship takes place entirely inside Yorkville Medical Center. Their moments together have to be stolen between the dozens of tasks the overworked nurses always seem to find for them. Gecko is amazed at Roxanne's uncanny ability to come up with recreational uses for the ordinary things found in a hospital ward. Leaky IV bags, no longer usable, make excellent squirt guns; two wheelchairs in a secluded hallway virtually beg to be drag raced. She lets him into her secret game of nicknaming each patient after a historical figure. The man in 740 becomes Julius Caesar because his narrow fringe of hair resembles a laurel wreath. Nostradamus can always predict what kind of cookies will come with the tea cart. There are General Patton, Elvis, Mother Teresa, Peter the Great—the list goes on.

The one patient who is immune to all this is Healy. Roxanne catches on quickly that, for Gecko, John Doe is untouchable. There is something different about the way Gecko views the occupant of room 704, and her instincts tell her that she shouldn't even ask about it.

Gecko knows that he'll never “get a grip” on what's happened to Douglas Healy. And no amount of strawberry lip gloss is ever going to change that.

Arjay squeezes the tube, carefully tracing a bead of caulk around the lip of the basin.

Mrs. Liebowitz peers over his shoulder. “When did you learn all this?”

The big boy shrugs. There are classes in juvie, but in adult prison, they teach you a trade. “You'll have to use the bathroom sink for a day or so to give the silicone a chance to cure.”

Terence sticks his head into apartment 4A. “Telephone, dog. Guy says his name is Rat Somebody.”

Arjay caps the tube. “It won't leak anymore, ma'am.”

Mrs. Liebowitz frowns at him. “Arjay—”

He stops at her door.

“How's Mr. Healy making out with the three of you? I—” She hesitates. “I haven't seen him around much.”

He swallows hard. “Social Services has him buried in paperwork. Just knock if you have any more problems with the sink.” He runs across the hall to 4B.

“You Arjay?” asks the voice on the phone.

“That's me.” The guitarist ad! Who else would call this number and ask specifically for him?

“What are you, like, twelve?”

“I'm nineteen,” he lies. He may sound young, but at six foot five, he'll have little trouble passing for older in person.

“Be here in twenty minutes. Five forty-one East Sixth.”

Arjay scribbles it down on the back of an envelope. “What apartment?”

“You'll know.”
Click.

When Mrs. Liebowitz looks out her window a few minutes later, she sees Arjay in full flight down Ninety-seventh Street, his guitar slung over his hulking shoulders.

Raw punk blares from the open windows, filling the street as if the row house is a three-story speaker. No wonder the caller didn't bother to provide an apartment number. Find the source and you've found the band.

As Arjay climbs the broken stairs, the physical effect of the music on his body increases. The drumbeats are concussion bombs, the guitar chords a stomach-churning buzz. The thrum of the bass can be felt below the gum line. It's even better than the Green Zone. Anyone can go to a show. This is
inside.

The door is missing. In its place hangs a large grease-stained New York Rangers jersey, cinched curtain-style with electrical tape. Arjay pushes through for his first glimpse of the band. They stop playing at the sight of him, generating a pulse of sudden quiet that nearly knocks him over.

The three young men are pale and death-camp skinny. I probably outweigh the whole group! he thinks. With the drum kit thrown in for good measure.

The singer scowls at Arjay's guitar. “What the hell is
that
?”

“It's what I learned on. In jail.” He has a sense that his stint in Remsenville, the greatest tragedy of his life, might somehow enhance his credibility with the skeptical band members.

The singer shrugs out of his electric and offers it to Arjay.

His fingers move experimentally over the frets. To his great relief, everything feels familiar to the school guitars he's been practicing on with Mr. Cantor. He strums an air chord.

“Helps if you make contact,” the bassist offers.

He plucks a high E and is startled that the resulting note comes not from the instrument itself, but from the speakers. It bears little resemblance to the cheap, tinny amplifiers in the Walker music room. He tries a C chord and is rewarded by an authoritative blast, louder than he expected, distorted and powerful.

It sounds like rock and roll.

He can't help grinning. “It's great.”

The singer is losing patience. “We don't give lessons. Can you play?”

“I can play.”

And now he believes it.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

One thirty a.m. Terence time.

The streets are quiet, but the avenues are still lively. New York City is all about choice. It's your call whether or not you want to be in the middle of the action.

Tonight, Terence has a specific destination in mind—a high-rise apartment building on East 105th Street, close to the river.

He's scoped the place out in daylight. Big—thirty stories, maybe thirty-five. Not the projects exactly, but definitely not the high-rent district. And as he suspected, dark and deserted at half past one in the morning.

Keeping to the shadows, he searches for the spot he scouted before. Jackpot. A row of quarter-circular iron bars block access to a narrow, street-level basement window. At some point, a car or truck must have backed into this protective cage. Three of the pieces have been torn free of the brick.

Terence pulls a crowbar from under his jacket and goes to work, prying the iron arches away from the wall. Then he smashes the glass and squeezes feetfirst through the window frame, dropping to the concrete floor.

It's a laundry room, smelling faintly of motor oil, detergent, and lint. He navigates the maze of idle washers and dryers, smirking through an obstacle course of very large women's underwear strewn on the cement. Finally, he's in the main hallway. He passes the furnace, several storage closets, and a reeking trash compacter. At last, a heavy metal door. He tries the handle. Locked.

No problem. From his pocket he produces a small plastic card—Douglas Healy's library card, to be precise—and deftly inserts it into the frame by the knob. There is a click, and the door swings wide. The elevator is directly in front of him.

Cake.

He rides to the twenty-seventh floor and follows the corridor, his sneakers barely touching the carpet. The Ninja Walk. That's what his dogs back in Chicago called it. They had to give him props for that, even if they never appreciated anything else he had to offer. Soundless movement, like the wind.

Apartment 27B is locked with a dead bolt. No problem. He takes out a flathead screwdriver and a thin piece from a nutcracker set. Good picks, nutcrackers. Only dental instruments make better burglar tools. He's inside in three minutes.

The apartment is a disappointment. It's
nice.
Terence was expecting something a little more
Boyz in the Hood.
Oh well, doesn't matter. This isn't about the crib. He's here to make a statement.

He advances cautiously, unfolding a small piece of paper from his pocket. Now to find the right bedroom…

The lights flash on, and he wheels to see varnished wood and the Louisville Slugger logo speeding toward him. In a burst of survival instinct, he ducks and feels a breeze as the home run swing passes half an inch over his head.

A middle-aged woman wrapped in a voluminous flowered nightgown has him cornered in the hallway.

“You picked the wrong house to rob, little man!” She seethes, her eyes wide and bulging. “You want my diamond necklace? My ruby slippers?”

“It's not like that—” Terence tries to explain.

“Why? Because I'm the one holding the bat?” The woman shoulders the Slugger for another cut, and that's when Terence makes his move. He springs forward and somersaults under the swing, rolling up onto his feet behind her.

He's reaching for the knob and a highlight-film escape when the door is thrown open, and he collides with a familiar razor-cut.

“You!” DeAndre exclaims in shock.

“Call her off, man, she's going to kill me!” Terence croaks.

“Call
who
off?”

“The crazy lady!”

The sight of Terence and DeAndre together draws a gasp of horror from the woman's lips. “You hurt my boy, and I'll splatter you all over that wall!”

“Nobody's getting hurt, Mama,” DeAndre says. “I know this yo.”

She lowers the bat, but only slightly. “DeAndre Rhodes, how many times have I warned you about the jailhouse trash you call friends? Fine people who break into houses at—” She stares at the kitchen clock. “Where do you get off rolling home at two o'clock in the morning? As long as you live under my roof—”

“I got
busy
, Mama.” DeAndre snatches the paper from Terence's hands and peers at the note.

Impressed? You should be.
Terence

DeAndre is disgusted. “I hope
you
know what you're talking about, yo, 'cause I must be missing something.”

Terence shuffles uncomfortably. “Mind taking this outside?” He gestures meaningfully in the direction of DeAndre's mother.

She shakes the Slugger threateningly. “Don't you act like I'm a blind woman, DeAndre! I got no respect for the life you've been leading! I can use this bat on you too!”

Her son ushers Terence into the hall. “Get some sleep, Mama,” he tosses mildly over his shoulder. “Remember your blood pressure.” He turns murderous eyes on Terence. “I could carve you up like roast beef! What jury's going to convict me after you threatened my mama?”

“More like your mama threatened me,” Terence mumbles.

“That why you came here? To play Bad Boys of Comedy?”

“To make a point!” Terence counters. “Look how easy I got into your crib. You could be waking up tomorrow with this note on your pillow!”

“So?”

“So I got talent! You
need
me, you and your crew. That last score—pretty sweet, right? Plenty more where that came from.”