Даниэла Стил - Neighbors

By eight o’clock, Meredith couldn’t stand it any longer. Her head was throbbing from where she had banged it earlier in the day, when she went to rescue Tyla, but she didn’t care. “Can’t we do something?” she asked Charles. Anything would have been better than just sitting there, imagining all the terrible things that could happen to Will. Charles had called his police contacts several times, but so far there was nothing. The squad cars on the streets and patrolmen on foot were on the lookout for him, but no one had seen him. They had checked the homeless shelters and free kitchens, and had combed the homeless camps South of Market.

“We can drive around ourselves if you want,” Charles offered, “but we’re no smarter than the cops. Sooner or later, someone will see him. He can’t just disappear into thin air.” But they both knew that children did every day, never to be seen again, if they’d fallen into the wrong hands. If he had gotten into a car with someone, he could be anywhere by now, even in grave danger, or dead.

The news stations were going to mention him at eleven, and show his school picture, which Tyla had given the police, but at six o’clock, they thought it was too soon. There was still the possibility that he had gone to a friend’s house, someone Tyla hadn’t thought to call, and he would come home on his own eventually. It was Charles’s fondest hope, that this was all a misunderstanding, but in his heart of hearts, he didn’t believe that, and his thoughts were running along the same anxious lines as Meredith’s and Tyla’s. But he didn’t want to make the situation worse by admitting it to them. “Why don’t we look around South of Market,” he suggested to Meredith. “Maybe we’ll get lucky. He may be hanging around a fast-food place, hoping someone will give him something to eat.” The thought of Will hungry and pawing through the garbage at McDonald’s made Meredith feel sick. And one of the dangers in San Francisco was that ordinary neighborhoods drifted into bad ones with no boundaries and no warning. The high-end downtown shopping district at Union Square, with all the most expensive shops, was only a block away from the Tenderloin, where most of the drug deals went down, and it was full of addicts and flophouses. The shopping complexes and malls of Market Street were two blocks from one of the most dangerous streets in the city, where people got shot almost every day. Benign neighborhoods and newly trendy areas were cheek by jowl with projects, where juvenile delinquents roamed, looking for trouble. And it was all in a small, compact area. If Will wandered into any of it, he was visibly an innocent, and could get very badly hurt or even killed.

Meredith went to put on jeans and a heavy sweater, and sneakers, and Charles went to change too. Meredith told Tyla what they were doing. Daphne was fast asleep on the bed next to her, and Tyla was staring at the TV, without seeing it. She realized even more acutely now how stupid she had been to go and meet Andrew alone at their house, and if Will suspected it, or overheard her agreeing to it, how terrifying that was for him. Thank God he had called Charles before he ran away, or she might be dead by now. And Will probably feared she was, and was afraid to know.

Meredith whispered to her that they were going to drive around for a while, and Tyla whispered back “Thank you,” while she stroked Daphne’s hair. She’d been thinking about Andrew’s hearing the next day, and second arraignment, and what Charles had said about their not letting him out on bail this time, and she realized it was just as well. He was too dangerous to be loose on the streets, or hiding his violent nature under a thin veneer and seeing patients. She understood more than ever now that he was a very sick man.

Until his recent attack on her, Tyla had always felt guilty for making him angry and part of her believed him that it was her fault. She no longer did. She understood now that he would have beaten her whatever she did, or no matter how perfect she was. He had a pathological need to punish her for crimes she didn’t commit, maybe for his own mother’s sins against him when she abandoned him as a child. Whatever it was, Tyla knew the problem and the danger were bigger than all of them, and even bigger than Andrew himself. He had a demon in him that nothing could stop. Maybe Will had understood that sooner than she did, even though he was a child.

Meredith and Charles left the courtyard, with Charles at the wheel of her car. It was an unassuming, ordinary SUV that wouldn’t draw attention in the area South of Market, where drug deals went down, homeless people roamed, people slept in doorways, and the worst element preyed on one another, and had lost all hope. It pained Meredith to think of Will there.

“Do you carry a gun?” Meredith suddenly wondered, as they drove south across town. It had never occurred to her before, but in his line of work, providing high-powered security, it wouldn’t have surprised her. He smiled when she asked.

“This isn’t Texas and I’m not a cowboy,” he teased her. “Some of the men I employ do, if that’s what a client wants, but I prefer not to. I’ve been armed at times, but I’d rather rely on my wits than a weapon. Why? Do you want me to?” He was surprised. She was such a peaceful person.

“No, I’m glad you don’t. I just wondered.” But they both knew that many of the people in the underworld and desperate element of the city did, even children Will’s age. A twelve- or thirteen-year-old could buy a stolen handgun for twenty-five dollars, if he had the money, and many did. Will would have no idea how to deal with kids like that, and he looked ripe for the picking, with his neat haircut and clean clothes.

They crossed Market Street a few minutes later, with crowds of late night shoppers and bums on the streets. The Tenderloin ran parallel to it, with drug deals happening in every dingy doorway and on every corner. They crossed Mission Street, and Charles followed a zigzag pattern on a grid, going up one street and down another, up one avenue for a while and then down the next. There were heaps of garbage in the gutter that looked like lifeless forms, and humans crumpled in doorways who looked like refuse, until they moved, and drunks and drug addicts unconscious on the sidewalks. The police used to pick them up and send them to a hospital, or to jail for the night, but there were so many of them now, that for the most part they stayed on the streets. A few looked like they’d set up house with shopping carts and cardboard boxes, a mangy dog, or a couple of cats. It made Meredith’s heart ache to see them. It was hard to even determine age or gender on the streets, with people filthy, bundled up, with matted hair and dressed in whatever they had found to wear.

“God, it’s depressing down here,” she said, and he nodded. “I hope he’s somewhere else.” She couldn’t imagine Will surviving for a night there.

“We can drive out to the Panhandle in Golden Gate Park later, if you want. That’s where all the teenage drug addicts and runaways are, but he won’t fit in there either.” It was at the edge of the Haight-Ashbury, the home of the flower children in the sixties, and it had degenerated severely over time. It was mostly just filth and drugs now, and ravaged people who had fallen on hard times, and runaways whose lives at home were even worse than risking their fate on the streets. Charles said that the young ones tended to band together, and could be violent if they felt threatened. The police tended to leave them alone, as long as they didn’t bother passersby or hurt one another. Many of them were on hard drugs.

Charles made a point of stopping at every food place, and Meredith ran inside, and even checked the bathrooms, and asked if anyone had seen him. She had a photograph of Will with her to show them, but no one had seen him.