The Way Home

TWENTY-SIX

Chris Flynn sat shirtless on the edge of his bed and used one hand to pop the joints of the other. He had turned off his cell and had no landline, but now there was an incessant knocking on his apartment door. His van was on the street, so he couldn’t pretend that he was not at home. He walked to the door and opened it. Katherine stood in the hall. She was lovely and agitated. Angry even, for her.

“You don’t want to see me?”

“I do,” said Chris. “Come in.”

He stepped aside to let her pass. She came into the apartment and he followed her to the living room.

“You want a beer, somethin?”

“No, I don’t want anything.”

Chris pointed to a chair. “Sit down.”

She sat, and Chris took a seat beside her.

“What’s going on with you?” said Katherine.

“I need to be alone, is all.”

“Your eyes are dead.”

“It’s because of Ben. I’m all fucked up behind it.”

“Something’s happening with you and it goes beyond Ben’s death. I need to know what it is. You’ve never shut me out like this before.”

Chris stared down at the hardwood floor. Katherine had him. They were going to be together forever, and she was the one he could talk to. She was a piece of him and she wouldn’t do him wrong. He looked her in the eyes.

“It is about Ben,” said Chris. “I know who killed him.”

“ How do you know?” said Katherine carefully.

“It was two men. They came to visit me, right here in my backyard. They killed Ben over the money that we left in that house. It was theirs. They must have tried to get Ben to talk about who took it.”

“Do you know who took it?”

“A guy named Lawrence. We were locked up with him at Pine Ridge. Ben got drunk and told Lawrence about the money, and Lawrence went back and stole it. The two men strong-armed the lady who owns the house. That led them to Ben, and me.”

“And this Lawrence. He still has the money.”

“Yes.”

“If you know who these men are, why haven’t you called the police?”

Chris looked away.

“Chris.”

“I’m not gonna do that,” said Chris, his voice hoarse. “Me and Lawrence, we’re gonna take care of this ourselves.”

Katherine got up abruptly and went to the kitchen. She stood over the sink and cupped her hand and ran water into it, drank while the other hand held her strawberry blonde hair back behind her head. Chris watched her splash her face with water. She reentered the room, walking with purpose. Her cheeks were flushed and brightly freckled, and her green eyes were wildly flared. She sat beside him and grasped his hand.

“Say what you’re going to do, Chris. Not that jailhouse bullshit talk, either. When you say you’re going to take care of it, what are you talking about? Murder?”

“It’s the only way.”

“What about an arrest and conviction? The right way. The way that doesn’t make you a killer and a candidate for prison.”

“I can’t. Ben didn’t give me or Lawrence up. Ben stood tall-”

“ Stop it.” Katherine squeezed his hand tightly. “Listen to what you’re saying. This isn’t you, Chris.”

“There’s two of me,” said Chris. “There’s the person you think you know, and the one who’s still inside me. The boy who did dirt and got schooled in that jail. The one you never met.”

“I’m in love with the one I met. I could never love someone who deliberately took a life, not when there was a more reasonable option. I couldn’t be with him or have his child. Do you understand that?”

“Yes. But I got to do this.” He held her hand tightly. “Stay with me tonight.”

Katherine pulled her hand back and stood out of the chair. She looked down at him and her lip quivered, but she held on and turned and stepped away. She headed for the door.

“Don’t tell my father,” said Chris.

Katherine left the apartment, shutting the door behind her without another word.

She drove straight to the Flynn home on Livingston Street. She cried on the way there but put herself back together before she arrived. After Flynn opened the door, Django bumped against her excitedly and followed her steps closely as she came into the house. Flynn was talking to her, but she was not responding, and he could only go with her, out the back door, onto the deck overlooking the yard. Flynn shut the door, leaving Django on the other side of the glass.

“What is it, honey?” said Flynn, joining Katherine at the rail. “Did you and Chris have a fight?”

She told him of their conversation in the apartment. By now Amanda had come downstairs, but as she moved toward the back door, Flynn raised his palm and she saw the look on his face and stayed inside.

“I knew he was mixed up in something,” said Flynn, when Katherine was done.

“But he wasn’t,” said Katherine. “Someone else stole that money. A guy named Lawrence. Not Chris, and not Ben. The trouble came to them after. They were trying to do right and walk away from it. It came to them. Chris hasn’t done anything wrong. Not yet.”

Flynn pushed a shock of black hair off his forehead. He recalled the day at Mindy Kramer’s house, when he’d accused Chris and Ben of botching the job. Whoever had taken the money, that Lawrence fellow, had messed up the good work they’d done. It wasn’t them being lazy or sloppy. Chris had been telling the truth that day. As he tended to do, Flynn had assumed the worst about his son.

“Well, it’s simple,” said Flynn. “I’ve got to stop him. What he’s saying he’s gonna do, that’s not him. It never was him. He was a stupid, selfish teenager, and he made mistakes. But he couldn’t kill anyone. He won’t.”

“You should call the police, Mr. Flynn.”

“I can’t do that. Not until I speak to him. I don’t know how far he’s gone down the road. If anyone’s going to call the police, it has to be him. I’ll speak to him and talk him down. I can do that.”

“If you think that’s the way.”

“I know it is. Yes.”

Flynn hugged Katherine. He was perspiring, and she could smell the alcohol on his breath and in his sweat.

“He won’t answer your phone call,” said Katherine.

“I’m going to go over there,” said Flynn, stepping back. “Stay here with Amanda for now.”

“Okay.”

“Thanks for coming here, Kate.”

“It’s Katherine,” she said gently.

“Katherine. Right.”

They walked into the house where Amanda was waiting.

“Chris is all right,” said Flynn. “I just need to speak with him. Katherine will explain.”

Amanda started to say something, but Flynn embraced her clumsily and kissed her on the mouth.

“Don’t worry.”

“Call me,” said Amanda.

He nodded, grabbed his keys from a bowl on the kitchen counter, and headed out the door.

Romario Knight lived in a middle-class home in Hillcrest Heights, across Southern Avenue, which ran between the District and Prince George’s County, Maryland. Knight’s street was quiet and he kept to himself. He was a bachelor who occasionally brought women home and had friends over on Redskins Sundays. He looked like any man in his thirties who went to work and made a modest living. By day, Knight wore a uniform as a meter man for the gas company. He was also a gun dealer who serviced the Southeast trade. Knight’s clients came to his place of residence after being screened by third parties.

Lawrence Newhouse stood with Knight in the downstairs rec room of the Hillcrest home. A huge television set, couches and chairs, and a wet bar filled the room, and Redskins memorabilia covered the walls. Knight wore a Sean Taylor jersey and he filled it out. He was a huge man who, even when in shape, had always been fat. In the years he played high school ball in PG, he was known, alternately and randomly, as Papa Doc and Baby Doc. He had the curious distinction of carrying the nicknames of both the father and the son.

Lawrence had put the word out with a boy at Parkchester he reckoned would have such connections, and soon Lawrence got a call on his cell and then was met by another young man, who checked him out, issued some barely veiled threats, and gave him instructions. In the course of a few hours, Lawrence was here, purchasing guns.

A large and a small revolver, a couple of semiautomatics, and boxes of ammunition were laid out on a card table. The weapons still had serial numbers and if confiscated would be traced back to legitimate gun stores in Virginia, where they had been originally purchased by straw buyers.

Lawrence stood beside Knight, looking down at the weapons, experiencing that curious sensation of excitement and dread some men feel in the presence of guns.

Lawrence had shot a boy many years ago. Had he killed the young man, Lawrence’s punishment would have been more severe, but the wound was not fatal. Lawrence could barely remember why he had done the thing. Some slight, real or imagined, had sent him after the boy with a Taurus. 38, a true Saturday night special, because Lawrence knew he couldn’t settle it with his hands.

“What’s that?” said Lawrence, pointing to a small auto pistol with a chrome finish and a laminated wood stock.

“Davis thirty-two,” said Knight.

“Does it work?”

“It ain’t gonna blow up in your face, I don’t think. I mean, shit, you said you wanted the cheapest thing I had.”

“It’s for my partner. I’m askin, will it stop a man?”

“I’m not even about to answer that. The Davis is a gun and it shoots bullets. That’s all I can say.”

“Okay. I’ll take that.”

“You said you wanted a revolver for yourself.”

“Autos jam.”

“They been known to.”

“What you got?”

“I brought out a couple pieces you might like. S and W’s, both. There goes a thirty-eight, right there.” Knight pointed to a short-barreled Chief. “Smith and Wesson make a nice product. You can’t go wrong with that.”

Knight’s voice was unenthusiastic. Lawrence knew he was about to be stepped up to the larger, more masculine-looking weapon set beside it. He knew, but he couldn’t help asking the next question.

“What about that big boy right there?” said Lawrence.

“Go ahead and pick it up,” said Knight.

Lawrence lifted the gun off the table. He hefted it and turned it in the light. It had a stainless finish, a six-inch barrel, and rubber, finger-molded grips. It felt right in his hand.

“Three fifty-seven combat magnum,” said Knight. “That’s a pup right there. You squeeze the trigger on that boy, it’s like shootin a full can of beer at a thousand miles an hour. Make a nice hole goin in and a mess goin out. It’s gonna kick, too. I don’t know, you might want somethin more manageable for your body type… ”

“I’ll take it,” said Lawrence.

“You gonna need some bullets, right?”

“Not a whole box.”

“I only sell bricks.”

“What about a shoulder rig for this one? I can’t be putting this monster down in my dip.”

“I can sell you that, too.”

“How about throwin it in?”

Knight laughed through his teeth and shook his head. They negotiated a price, and Lawrence paid him from a roll he had in his pocket, then stashed everything into a daypack he had brought with him.

Walking to the basement steps, Lawrence said, “Where you get all this Redskins shit, man?”

“Shows. The Internet.”

“You go to the games?”

“Not anymore,” said Knight. “I hate that stadium.”

“We gonna do it this year?”

“Not this year. But we will.” Knight put his hand on Lawrence’s shoulder at the front door. “You don’t know me, man. We ain’t never met.”

“I heard that,” said Lawrence.

He walked to his Cavalier, parked on the street.

After repeated knocks on Chris’s door with no response, Flynn was let into the apartment by Andy Ladas, who had an extra key. There was nothing there, no note, no notepads to rub that would reveal the secret message, no telltale signs left behind to let Flynn know where Chris had gone. It occurred to Flynn that he knew little about Chris’s life as an adult. He was not familiar with his hangouts, his haunts, or the locations of the homes or apartments of his closest friends.

He did have Ali’s number logged into the address book of his cell. He phoned Ali, got him, and filled him in on the latest events. Ali said that he would try to contact Lawrence; he had his number and knew where he lived. While Flynn waited in the quiet of Chris’s apartment, he helped himself to a beer, drank it quickly, and had another. By the time he was headed for a third, Ali phoned him back.

“Lawrence wasn’t answering his cell,” said Ali. “I went over to where he stays and talked to his sister. He’s been out the apartment all night. She hasn’t seen or heard from him.”

“Can you get away for a while?” said Flynn. “I want to look for him. Two sets of eyes and all that.”

“I can meet you,” said Ali. He told Flynn where, a halfway point on Riggs Road, near South Dakota Avenue.

“Twenty minutes,” said Flynn.

They drove the streets for hours, but they didn’t find Chris.

He had checked into a motel high on Georgia Avenue, in south Silver Spring, just over the line into Maryland. Though it was near the niceties of the new downtown, it had a Plexiglas reception area and the requisite male hooker, dressed and made up as a female, lounging in the lobby. It was not a plastic-sheet flophouse, but it was close.

What it did have was a covered garage. Chris had tucked the van far back inside, well out of view from the street, before he checked in.

He had a duffel bag with some clothes in it, and his shaving kit. He had not bought any alcohol or weed to smoke. He wanted his mind sharp and clear. His thoughts were grim and clouded, and he needed to see through them to some kind of light.

He had turned on his cell, and its ring tone sounded frequently. The calls were from his father, Ali, his mother, and Katherine. He let them go to message. Eventually the calls stopped.

He lay on the double bed of the stark room, watching television but not watching it, thinking. He had used the remote to get ESPN, and now there were highlights of a bicycle race, many men wearing tight shorts and colorful jerseys, navigating a twisting downhill road, and some sort of accident where several bicycles went down. He did not follow the sport, could not identify this particular race, and was uninterested. He had never been a fan of biking. As he reached his teens, he had thought it was nerdy and lame.

His father used to strap him into a seat on the back of his bike and ride him all the way down to the Potomac on the paved trails of Rock Creek Park. He had been very young and his memory was sketchy, and he had not thought of it at all in a long while. What he remembered, mostly, were flashes and sensations. Sun streaming down through the trees. The wind on his face and in his hair. The feel of his own smile. On those rides, when he got up a good amount of speed, his father would sometimes reach behind him and squeeze Chris’s hand, reassure him, tell him that everything was going to be all right.

I am not someone who could kill a man. There is nothing in my past and nothing inside me that would allow me to do that. Ben couldn’t, and neither can I.

Ben had tried to help Lawrence. Ben had seen something in him that others couldn’t see. If Ben were alive, he’d stop Lawrence from what he had planned. Chris knew this. It was on him now to act for Ben.

He relaxed and fell asleep.

His ring tone woke him up. He looked at the caller ID on his cell and saw that it was Lawrence.

“Yeah,” said Chris.

“It’s me,” said Lawrence, his voice gravelly. “We about to do this, son.”

“All right.”

“I set it up. Got us some iron, too.” Lawrence listened to silence and said, “You still with me?”

“Where we supposed to meet ’em?”

“I’ll tell you face-to-face. You and me need to hook up and lay it out.”

Lawrence gave him the time and the spot. Chris said he’d meet him there and ended the call.