The Lightning Rule (7 page)

The dispatcher on the police band frequency sounded bored. Since leaving the hospital, Emmett had been listening to his radio for signs of trouble and heard only the average chatter. The television crews that set up camp on various corners surrounding the Fourth Precinct hadn’t caused quite the commotion originally anticipated, so the responding officers from the Traffic Division were redeployed. Cleanup at the Fourth Precinct had commenced, and extra sanitation workers were called in for assistance. Otherwise, nothing out of the ordinary was going on. That was as foreboding to Emmett as the calm that preceded a storm.

He parked on Boyd Street, a block between the Hayes Home Housing Projects and the police station. He had the ominous sense that this case was anything but cut-and-dried as the coroner had suggested, and he was intent on talking to Ambrose Webster’s relatives before the rally that evening, before any more trouble could start. Webster’s address was in the building closest to where Emmett parked. He headed, instead, to the apartment building farthest away.

The Hayes Home Housing Projects was a small city unto itself. Spread over a five-and-a-half-acre hunk of land, its towering tenements and signature smokestack figured prominently into the city’s skyline. Up close, the compound was imposing. His years in the Robbery Divi
sion had brought Emmett to Hayes on too many occasions to count, and he had chased and lost his fair share of suspects until he memorized the project’s layout, its blind spots, pass-throughs, and exits. There was no cover and no place to hide. Anything other than trash that wasn’t nailed down disappeared. The basketball backboards were stripped of their hoops and nets, the benches were missing slats, and even the trees seemed to be short on leaves.

Because the grounds had more square footage of cement than grass, every noise was magnified. The rhythmic
whap whap
of a handball game throbbed through the brick ravines that ran between the apartment buildings. It was a familiar sound from Emmett’s past. Handball was a game he had mastered during his stay at Saint Andrew’s on the Hudson. On Thursday afternoons, the regular work assignments were suspended, and novices were given the run of hundreds of wooded acres as well as the softball field and the handball court. Playing had been an escape for him, an opportunity to sweat out the stuffiness of constant prayer and piety. He missed the game. That was all he missed about the monastery.

Rounding a corner, Emmett came upon a group of teenage boys cheering on two friends pitted against each other in a handball match. They were whipping the rubber ball back and forth at lightning speed. The wall acting as their backboard was part of the building where Emmett needed to go. For them, handball was probably an escape too. Maybe not from prayer or piety, but from everything else. He would have liked to watch them for a while. He thought better of it.

Emmett walked toward them at an unhurried pace, carrying the paper bag that held Ambrose Webster’s effects. He was practicing a Jesuit exercise known as “custody of the senses,” keeping the body, bearing, and voice under strict control. The dictum had dual purposes. The first was to cultivate a modest composure befitting a priest, the second to prevent the adolescent novitiate from barreling through the abbey hallways shouting their lungs out. The objective was not to exude confidence but rather to emit an air of placidity and self-possession, which would render a person practically invisible. At the moment, custody of the senses came in handy. It had been less than twenty-four hours since
the riot, and Emmett preferred that the teenage boys not notice him. He glided smoothly past the teens, undetected, and went directly to a fire door on the side of the building, not the main entrance. When he was there last, the lock had been knocked out. It still wasn’t fixed.

The fire door opened into a stairwell. From the bottom, the view up the staircase was dizzying. Emmett needed to go to the ninth floor, and the elevator wasn’t an option. When they weren’t out of service, the elevators ran in slow motion and were puddled with urine. The lightbulbs were busted or stolen, forcing passengers to ride in the dark at their own peril. Between nine flights of stairs and the elevator, Emmett chose the stairs.

The climb should have winded him. He was too preoccupied about being spotted as a cop to pay attention to the burning in his legs or the reek of broken sewage pipes. Health inspectors in charge of enforcing sanitation codes were paid off by the landlords to overlook citations, so the pipes were never fixed, and litter accumulated in every nook and crevice, the trash facilities inadequate for the high number of tenants. The garbage continued to pile up, a testament to perseverance—the landlords’ as well as the tenants’.

When Emmett got to the ninth floor, two women were chatting in the hallway. They passed the stairwell, then went into separate apartments. Once they were gone, he sped along the graffiti-covered corridor and knocked on the door to an apartment at the end of the hall. Nobody answered. Emmett knocked again, harder. Voices were echoing from the bottom of the stairs, hooting and shouting, toes bounding up the steps. Emmett assumed it was the kids who had been playing handball. He wasn’t afraid of them. He had the badge and the gun. What gave him pause was the possibility of a scuffle breaking out between a policeman and a bunch of black teenagers in the wake of last night’s fireworks.

At the opposite end of the hallway was another set of stairs. The elevator Emmett had been avoiding was in the middle. If he was going to make a dash for either, he would have to move fast.

He knocked one last time. The door inched open. Behind it was the forlorn face of Otis Fossum. Emmett had banked on him working nights and sleeping days, as he did when Emmett visited to try and persuade
him to come flip through mug shots to see if he recognized Vernon Young’s assailant. Fossum had refused him flat out. Emmett was counting on Otis not to refuse him again.

“Mr. Emmett,” he said with a drowsy sigh. He was dressed in a cotton robe. A hole dotted the sleeve. “Knew I’d be seeing you sooner or later. I’s just hopin’ it’d be later.”

“Are you going to invite me inside, Otis?”

Fossum heard the voices. They were getting closer. Emmett could feel them like wind on his neck.

“I’m thinkin’ it might not be too good fo’ me if’n I do. Might be worse fo’ you if’n I don’t.” He let Emmett through and shut the door behind him as the teens crested the staircase.

Otis was thinner than when they first met. His robe hung from his shoulders the way it would from a hanger, the fabric rippling at gusts from an electric fan circulating the hot air. The heat was packed into the tiny apartment as tightly as the furnishings—a pair of armchairs, a sagging sofa, and a kitchen table with a visibly uneven leg that was propped with matchbooks. Tenants paid thirty dollars extra per month on top of their rent for junk furniture that the landlords wouldn’t remove. If the renters got rid of anything, they were billed.

“I know my manners and I know I should ask you to sid’ down, but part ’a me’s wishin’ you won’t be stayin’ long.”

“I’m not here about Vernon.”

“You’re not?” That made Otis more leery.

“I need a favor.”

Fossum chewed the inside of his cheek, ruminating. “You did me one, Mr. Emmett. S’pose I owe you for it.”

Emmett wasn’t insulted that Otis didn’t refer to him as “Detective” or even “Officer.” Coming from him, dropping the title was a sign of respect.

“I have a new case. It’s a boy from here, from Hayes. His name is Ambrose Webster. Do you know him?”

“Project’s a big place, and I work nights. Don’t see many folks real regular.”

Fossum led an inverse existence. He slept when the world was
awake and worked while it slept, preferring the privacy that provided. His voice was gravelly from lack of use, his eyes unaccustomed to sunlight. Regular life didn’t suit him. Emmett thought that was why Otis looked so much older than he was. Fighting nature had taken a toll.

“This boy, he was kil’t?”

“He was, and it’s important I speak with his family and get some information from them. They may not open the door for a policeman though, especially after what happened yesterday. I wanted to see if you would come with me.”

“What’s the catch?”

“There is no catch.”

“I go with you and that’s all?”

“That’s all.”

It was and it wasn’t. Emmett never had to notify the next of kin before. Vernon Young had no living relatives outside of a sister, who Emmett had tracked to her last forwarding address in St. Louis. When he called, the phone had been disconnected. He sent a letter and received no word back. Ambrose Webster would be his first. Having Otis along wouldn’t guarantee that the family would talk to Emmett, but at least it saved him from having to go alone.

“I quit that place, the dry cleaner’s,” Fossum told him. “Couldn’t go there after what happened to Vernon. I work fo’ a floor waxing company now. We go into the buildings at night when no one’s ’round. The work’s not hard and you can’t mess up. Sometimes at the dry cleaner’s I’d burn the collars on the shirts. I hated havin’ to tell my boss. That’s what’s nice about this job. Don’t have to give nobody no bad news.”

Emmett was about to deliver the worst kind of bad news. In all the classes he took at the monastery and the academy, nobody had ever taught him the right way to tell somebody that their loved one was dead. There was no right way.

Otis Fossum didn’t utter a single syllable until they reached Ambrose Webster’s apartment. He was too nervous to talk.

“I ain’t done nothing like this befo’.”

Neither have I, Emmett thought. Saying as much would have sent Fossum running for home.

“What do I gotta do?”

“You knock and say you have a policeman with you, that he came to the wrong apartment and that he’s looking for Ambrose Webster. You’ve got to act like nothing’s wrong so they’ll open the door. Understand?”

Otis nodded solemnly, collecting himself. He took a deep breath and knocked.

“Who is it?” a female voice demanded.

Fossum recited his line. “I live, uh, downstairs. This here policeman came to my door by mistake, asking ’bout Ambrose Webster. I told him he lived here.”

His delivery was rocky, but it did the trick. The locks clanked and the door opened, three chains jangling between the jamb. An elderly black woman stared out at them. Only one eye, half her face, and a slice of her chest were visible between the door and the frame.

“Where is he? Where’s Ambrose?” All of her toughness had sloughed off.

“I’m Detective Martin Emmett. Are you his mother, ma’am?”

“I’m his grandmother. What’s happened?”

“Would it be all right if I came inside and spoke with you?”

She hesitated, then undid the chains.

“Thank you, sir. For your help,” Emmett said to Otis, pretending they weren’t acquainted.

“That be all, Officer?” Fossum was reluctant to leave.

“Yes. That’ll be all.”

Emmett had wanted Otis there for his own selfish reasons. Fossum had played his part. Emmett had to let him go. Mrs. Webster closed the door and relatched the chains.

The apartment was as small as Fossum’s, though tidier. A framed picture of Jesus hung on the wall, staring benevolently down onto a sofa with a lace doily laid over the back. The plumbing from the floor above had leaked through the ceiling in a brown stain, ensconcing the empty light fixture in a dark halo. In its place, a bare bulb hung from an extension cord. Faulty wiring was rampant in the entire complex. Fuses blew continually. Every month the fire department was called out because of overloaded circuits, one of a multitude of daily hazards faced by the occupants of Hayes Home.

“Tell me your name again, Detective?” Mrs. Webster was clutching the neckline of her housedress as if she had been caught disrobed. Without the door between them, Emmett saw that her other eye was cast milky white by a cataract. She couldn’t see out of it. Before he could repeat his name, her good eye meandered to the bag in his hands. She pursed her lips and her chin quivered. She knew.

Mrs. Webster went weak and faltered onto the sofa. She drew in a sharp, pained breath but wouldn’t cry, not in front of him. Emmett couldn’t tell if it was because he was a cop or a white man or a stranger or because he was all of those things.

“When?” she asked.

“Last night.”

She was holding herself together so tightly that she began to shake.

“When Ambrose didn’t come home, I thought he was with Freddie, that maybe he slept at his place. Freddie’s his friend. He stuck by Ambrose when the kids would make fun, call him names. Ambrose is simple, you see,” Mrs. Webster explained, confirming Emmett’s suspicion. “His mama was a junkie. She was on the stuff when she had him. Doctor’s said his brain didn’t grow right because of it. She couldn’t take care of him. So I did.”

“Where’s his mother now?”

“Downtown somewhere. South Broad or Washington.”

South Broad and Washington streets were known prostitution drags. Mrs. Webster referred to them as though they were on another planet. She wouldn’t admit whether Ambrose’s mother was her daughter. Emmett assumed she was. Unwed mothers were banned from the projects, and if a child was born out of wedlock while a woman was a resident, she was subject to summary eviction. The irony was that public assistance was intended to be exclusively available to families where one parent, usually the father, was absent and the children depended on the mother for care. The system was as defective as Hayes Home’s wiring.

“Did she visit Ambrose?”

“Not in months.”

“What about his father?”

“Ambrose never knew his daddy. Neither did his mama for that matter. Made me grateful Ambrose was too slow to know better.” Old anger flared, then faded as fast as it had come, overtaken by memory. “Ambrose was always big for his age, and he walked on his toes. He would wear out the tips of his shoes. Feet that size, it was a miracle to get sneakers that fit ’im. Sometimes I’d wonder if his daddy did that too, walked on his toes, or if it was on account of Ambrose being how he was. Kids would tease him for it and he’d take it. He wouldn’t fight back. He didn’t understand what they were doing. But Freddie wouldn’t let anybody talk down to Ambrose. He was small, got picked on too. ’Cept when he and Ambrose was together, nobody’d say boo to ’em.” Mrs. Webster smiled at that small triumph.

Emmett hated to take the smile from her. “When did you last see your grandson?”

“Yesterday morning when he was leaving for summer school. Teacher’s told me Ambrose couldn’t learn like normal kids. They kept him, though. He was quiet in class, no trouble to them. He could read some. Not much. Same as most kids these days. I thought if he got a diploma, he could get a job at a factory maybe. If you showed Ambrose how to do something, he could repeat it real well. He enjoyed going to school, being around people, watching and listening to them talk. Mostly, he wanted to be wherever Freddie was. When Ambrose didn’t come home, I didn’t think much of it. Freddie’s mama don’t got no phone. I couldn’t call to check on him. I just figured Ambrose would come back once he got hungry for supper.”

A stillness settled over Mrs. Webster. She had taken custody of her senses with such exquisiteness that she ceased to tremble. “How did he die?”

The impassive face of Jesus was gazing at Emmett from above the sofa, awaiting his answer along with Mrs. Webster.

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

If Emmett could spare Mrs. Webster the details of her grandson’s death, he would. He hoped she wouldn’t press for them. When she didn’t, he realized she was sparing herself.

“Can you give me Freddie’s address? I’d like to speak to him.”

Emmett handed her his pad and pen, and she wrote out the information. He put his phone number on a separate sheet. “This is my home number, Mrs. Webster. You can call me whenever. Day or night. Okay?”

She took the paper. He doubted he would hear from her.

“These are some of Ambrose’s things.” Emmett held out the brown paper bag to her. The bloody clothes and shoes had been retained as evidence, leaving the movie pass, the house key, and some pocket change, a life distilled to so little. Mrs. Webster gazed at the bag, unable to touch it. Emmett set it on the sofa beside her.

“I’m half blind, Detective, but I see plenty. I know what Ambrose did and didn’t do. He was no thief and no junkie. Whatever happened, believe me, he didn’t bring it on his’self.”

Emmett did believe her. That was what bothered him.