George Pelecanos: The Way Home

“Why did you hit him, then?” said Moskowitz.

“I was angry,” said Chris. “It wasn’t what he said so much as how he said it. Actin like he was smarter than me.”

“And what did he say to you?”

Chris shook his head. “I don’t remember.”

“God,” said his father.

“Unfortunately,” said Moskowitz, making a show of glancing at his watch, “I’ve got to get to an appointment. Will you walk me out, Tom?”

“Let’s go.”

“Amanda,” said Moskowitz, taking her hand and squeezing it as he rose off the couch. “Chris. You’re to stay here in the house unless otherwise directed. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Don’t worry. We’ll get through this.”

Bob Moskowitz and Thomas Flynn walked to a Mercedes sedan parked on Livingston. Moskowitz stowed his briefcase in the trunk, shut the lid, and leaned against his car.

“Talk to me, Bobby,” said Flynn.

“Honestly?” said Moskowitz. “This is going to be a challenge, to say the least. Individually, a few of the charges are minor, but compounded they are significant. That, together with the fact that Chris has a history, will give the impression that the incident follows a pattern of violent, reckless behavior. There’s the robbery of the locker room, the fights at the school. He has that assault-and-strong-arm arrest and the possession charge on his record as well.”

“That was a while back.”

“It’s there. You have to remember, people were seriously injured because of his alleged aggression and negligence on the night in question. That woman’s back injuries alone appear to be the kind that will plague her for the rest of her life. The boy whose nose Chris broke? His father was a major donor to our own D.C. Council member. Unfortunately, the events made the news and now Chris will be tried, in effect, in the public eye.”

“What are you getting at?”

“We’ll aim to get some of the charges reduced or thrown out. But I’m almost certain that something’s going to stick. What I’m going to recommend to you… Well, hear me out. You’re going to need to keep an open mind.”

“Go ahead.”

“The US attorney is making a hard push on this one because of all the publicity. Chris is not going to walk. The best thing we can do for him is plead guilty on some of the charges. I mean, we can roll the dice and go to trial, but a conviction in court can result in a stay in an adult prison. Juvenile jail is not the worst that can happen to him.”

“My boy’s going to jail?”

“Possibly. If so, I’d say that it would be for a relatively short period of time.”

“You’re talking about that place for juvenile offenders the District’s got.”

“Pine Ridge,” said Moskowitz. “I’m telling you it’s possible. Of course, I’m going to try to prevent it.”

“That’s all black kids out there, isn’t it?”

“I’m guessing it’s about ninety-eight percent, yes. The rest are Hispanics.”

“They wouldn’t send a white kid from this neighborhood to that place, would they?”

“It’s rare. But it has happened. There’s only one facility that houses D.C. juveniles who habitually commit these kinds of crimes. He’s not exempt from serving time there because he’s comfortable and white.”

“I can’t…” said Thomas Flynn, his voice trailing off.

“There’s something else you need to prepare for,” said Moskowitz. “We’ve only discussed the criminal aspect of this. There will probably be some litigation in civil court as well.”

“Meaning?”

“You’re going to be sued, Tommy. Your insurance company, sure, but probably you as well. All those people who got hurt or whose cars were wrecked because of Chris’s actions? They’re going to claim negligence on your part for letting a boy with Chris’s history get behind the wheel of an SUV that you bought for him. It’s convoluted, but there it is.”

“Can they do that?”

“My brethren are probably lining up to feed at the trough as we speak. They’ll certainly try.”

Flynn opened his mouth to speak but said nothing. Instead he shook his head.

“I know this is rough,” said Moskowitz, putting a hand on his friend’s arm. “It all seems insurmountable right now. But look, I see this kind of trouble in families all the time. They get through it eventually. You will, too.”

“Let me ask you something, Bob. Your oldest son, how’s he doin?”

“He’s fine,” said Moskowitz.

“I’m asking you, where is he in life right now?”

Moskowitz looked away. “He graduated high school a couple of months ago. He’s headed to Haverford in the fall.”

“Don’t tell me to look on the bright side.”

“Tommy-”

“Everything’s fucked,” said Flynn.

Amanda Flynn made Chris a sandwich while her husband and Bob Moskowitz stood talking outside the house. She did it quickly, so as not to annoy Tommy. Tommy would say that Chris, who could take a vehicle his father had bought him and use it to lead police on a high-speed chase, who could punch out a kid in a parking lot for no reason, who could cause a woman to go to the hospital taped to a stretcher, who could carry around a pound of marijuana in his car, who could manage to get kicked out of public high school in the District, who could quit church and sports and everything else, could certainly manage to make a sandwich for himself.

Amanda did not see it that way. She looked at Chris, knowing all that he had done, and saw a young man who had been locked up for a day and night, who was confused and ashamed, who had to be hungry, who needed to be fed. Thomas looked at Chris and saw failure and an insurmountable problem. She saw her little boy. Amanda thinking, With everything he’s done, he’s still my son.

“Here, honey,” she said, putting a turkey and Swiss on white down in front of him, mayonnaise, lettuce, no tomatoes, his sandwich, how he liked it. A glass of apple juice, Chris’s preferred drink, set beside the plate.

“Thanks, Mom.”

As Chris ate, Amanda looked through the living-room window and watched Bob Moskowitz drive away. Thomas Flynn stood on the lawn momentarily, checking the beeper hung on his belt line, replacing it, rubbing at his face. Then wheeling around and walking heavily back toward the house, sullen, his eyes to the ground. Amanda saying a wordless prayer that he would not enter their home and immediately explode.

Flynn came through the door. He looked at Chris, eating a sandwich off a TV tray, and shook his head in disgust. He looked at Amanda and sharply pointed his chin toward the center hall stairway. She followed him up the stairs.

It came to Amanda, when she was trying to “understand” Tom in moments of tension and conflict such as these, that it must be odd for her husband to have to act like an adult and deal with adult problems in the home in which he had grown up. Walking behind him up the stairs, she imagined him as a little boy, taking the steps two at a time, going up to his room to play or to wrestle with his big brother, Sean, now a Boeing executive in Chicago with whom he had little communication. She wondered if Tom, alone at night with his private demons, talked to his parents, whose spirits surely were in this house, and in his desperation sought their help.

It wasn’t difficult to imagine him as a child. She had known him since their days at Blessed Sacrament, the Catholic school at Chevy Chase Circle that went from K through eighth. They were boyfriend and girlfriend through high school, and had married against her parents’ wishes when Thomas was twenty and she was nineteen. Her father was dismayed that she was making this decision at so young an age and openly discouraged her from marrying a young man who had no intention of going to college.