Jeffery Deaver - Hell's Kitchen

“Flaggin’ and saggin’. You know.”

Pellam laughed. “Your jeans aren’t hanging down to your knees, my man. And I’ll give you ten bucks you flash me some real crew signs.”

But the boy knew them and gestured broadly. Pellam had no idea what the signs meant but they looked authentic. In an L.A. crew Ismail’d be considered a perfect T.G., tiny gangster. He slipped him the ten dollars, hoping it would go for food.

“Thanks, cuz.”

“How’s your mother?”

“Dunno. She gone. My sister too.”

“Gone? What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “Gone. Ain’t ’round the shelter no more.”

“Where’re you hanging?”

“Don’t got no place. Hey, whatchu looking, Pellam. You giving me the eye like that.”

“Come on. There’s somebody I want you to meet.”

“Yeah? Who?”

“This woman.”

“She a fox?”

“ I think so. I don’t know how you’ll feel.”

“Why you wanna introduce me to yo’ bitch, Pellam?”

“Watch the language.”

“No way.”

“Ismail.”

“No motherfuckin’ way,” he grumbled.

Pellam clamped his hand down hard on the boy’s arm and dragged him into the Youth Outreach Center.

“Ismail, stop the swearing.”

“Yo, cuz, I know what that bitch want. Man, she try to run a drag on me…”

“What’s his name?” Carol Wyandotte asked, unfazed by the little ball of angry child in front of her.

“Ismail.”

“Hello, Ismail. I’m Carol. I run this place.”

“Yo, you a slob bitch and I ain’t staying here-”

“That’s it, young man,” Pellam barked.

He responded, surly, “You keep that white bitch way from me.”

Pellam thought he’d try the soft approach. He said calmly, “Ismail, look, some people don’t think that’s a very nice word to use.”

“Okay, okay.” The boy looked contrite. “I ain’t say ‘white’ no more.”

“Very funny.”

“Oh, he doesn’t mean ‘bitch’ that way,” Carol said matter-of-factly, rocking back and studying him. “It’s just verbal window dressing.”

“Don’t be telling me what I mean, bitch.”

Pellam snapped, “You want to be my friend or not? Watch your mouth.”

The boy crossed his arms and dropped sullenly onto the windowsill.

“His mother and sister’ve vanished,” Pellam told her.

“Vanished?”

“From the shelter,” Pellam explained.

“Ismail, what happened?”

“Dunno. I come back and they gone. Dunno where.”

The boy had spotted a stack of comic books in the corner. He began flipping through an old issue of X-Men .

“Anything you can do for him?” Pellam asked.

Carol shrugged. “We could call SSC, Special Services for Children. They’ll place him in an emergency home in twenty-four hours. He’ll run away in twenty-five. I think we should keep him here for a few days, see if his mother shows up… Ismail?”

The boy looked up.

“You have a grandmother?”

“Hey, you don’ know shit. The whole everbody got a grandmother.”

“I mean, who you know.”

He shrugged.

“Where’s yours live?”

“Dunno.”

“Either of them? How about aunts? Anybody else?”

“Dunno.”

It hit Pellam hard that the boy didn’t know ny of his relatives. But Carol calmly said, “You like those books? We’ve got a lot of them.”

He snorted, said defiantly, “Shit. I could ’jack myself a thousand motherfuckin’ comics, I wanted to.”

Pellam walked over to the boy, crouched down. “You and me, we’re friends, right?”

“I guess. I dunno.”

“Will you stay here for a while? And not make any waves.”

Carol said to him, “We’ll help you find your mother.”

“I don’t want her. She a cluckhead bitch. Doing rock all the time. She put the rush on all these guys, make some money. Mother fuckers , you know what I’m saying?”

Pellam offered, “Just stay for a little while. For me?”

He put down the book. “Okay, fo’ you, Pellam, I do that.” He eyed Carol. “But listen up, bitch-”

“Ismail!” Pellam shouted. “Once more, and I’m cutting you loose.”

The boy blinked in surprise at this outburst. He nodded uncertainly.

Carol said to the boy, “We’d like you to stay. There are some kids you can hang with. Go on in the back. Ask for Miss Sanchez. She’ll find you a bed in the boy’s dormitory.”

He looked at Pellam. “I come see you?”

“It’s not a prison,” Carol told him. “You come and go as you like.”

Ignoring Carol, he said to Pellam, “We hang in the ’hood together, cuz?”

“I’d like that.”

Ismail’s dark, contracted eyes appraised the dim office. “Okay,” he muttered, “but nobody better be dissing me, you know what I’m saying?”

“Nobody’ll dis you here,” Carol said.

He looked at Pellam with eerily adult eyes and said, “Later, cuz.”

“Later.”

He disappeared into the back, pushing through the door like a wild west gunfighter.

Carol laughed. “So what’re you doing out on these mean streets? Aside from playing social worker.” She glanced down at her Harvard sweatshirt, brushed some dust off with her pudgy fingers. The gesture made her seem both strong and vulnerable at the same time.

“Just walking around. Looking for camera angles. Looking for people to talk to. You hear anything from Alex?”

“Nothing, sorry. He hasn’t been back, nobody’s seen him. I asked around.”

Neither of them said anything for a minute. A teenage girl, very pregnant, walked through the lobby, cradling a stuffed Barney dinosaur toy in her arms.

Carol poked her glasses up on her nose and exchanged a few words with the girl. When she was gone, Pellam asked the social worker, “You interested in another cup of politically incorrect coffee?”

A brief hesitation. Pellam thought she was pleasantly surprised. But it might have been something else.

“Well, sure.”

“If you’re busy…”

“No. Just let me change. Give me two minutes? I was schlepping boxes around all day,” she added pologetically, shaking dust off her sleeves again.

“No problem.”

She vanished into the backroom. A young Latino woman appeared, nodded to Pellam and took over desk duty.

Carol appeared a few moments later; a loose green blouse had replaced her sweatshirt and black stretch pants, the jeans. She wore short black boots, instead of the Nikes. The woman at the desk glanced at the outfit with surprise and muttered a indiscernible response when Carol said she’d be back later.

Outside she asked, “You mind if we stop by my apartment? It’s only four blocks. I forgot to feed Homer this morning.”

“Cat, boa constrictor or boyfriend?”

“Siamese. I named him Homer Simpson. No, not the one you’re thinking of.”

“I was thinking of the character in Day of the Locust ,” Pellam responded.

“Well,” Carol said, surprised. “You know it?”

Pellam nodded.

“I had my cat first. Then they came up with that cartoon show on TV and I wished I’d called him something else.”

Pellam felt one those little bursts in the gut when you find someone who’s moved by the same obscure work of art as you are. Pellam had seen Day of the Locust twelve times and could see it another twelve. So, Carol was a kindred soul. “Donald Sutherland’s role. Great film. Waldo Salt wrote the script.”

“Oh,” Carol said, “It was a movie? I just read the book.”

Pellam had never gotten around to the book. Well, they were distant kindred. But that was all right too.

They turned south, the rush-hour traffic jammed the street, the yellow cabs interspersed between the battered trucks and cars. Horns honked constantly. The heat had unleashed tempers like geysers and occasionally one driver turned on another with rageful gestures. No one seemed to have the energy, though, for any physical damage.