more.
It had taken months of patience to bring her out of herself, to earn her complete trust. We had it now. Trust, loyalty, unconditional love. She was happy, much more outgoing and better socialized, with a bright future ahead of her. But she was still young and fragile; not enough time had passed for her wounds to fully heal. If we pushed her too hard, punished her too severely, we could drive her right back into that inner twilight world. We could lose her again.
And yet a thing like this, drugs, misplaced loyalty… we couldn’t just ignore it or tiptoe around it. I glanced again at Kerry. Her expression said she was thinking along the same lines.
She said, “Emily, I know you understand why we’re upset, why we’re asking all these questions. Don’t you have anything to say?”
“I’m sorry.”
“For bringing drugs into this house.”
“Yes. I swear I’ll never do it again.”
“Well, that’s a start.”
“Are you going to search my room again when I’m not home?”
“Not if you don’t give us any cause to.”
“I won’t. Is it all right if I have the box?”
“… What?”
“Not what’s in it. Just the box.”
“Why? Does it have some special meaning to you?”
“No. May I have it?”
“To do what with?”
“Give it back.”
“To who?”
“The person it belongs to.”
“So you know who lost the box.”
“I… Yes.”
“And you told this person you found it.”
“Yes. But not that I opened it.”
“Are you going to say that we did? That we know about the cocaine?”
“No, but I won’t lie if I’m asked. May I have it?”
“No,” I said, “you may not.”
Emily started to say something, changed her mind. There was misery in her expression now, as if her emotions had begun to give her physical pain. Half a minute ticked away, during which time Shameless the cat wandered in and hopped up next to her. She clutched at him, pulled him close-something warm and furry to hang on to. Then, in a small voice, “May I be excused now?”
I melted a little. It wouldn’t do any of us any good to keep her sitting there, keep hammering at her to no avail and watching her suffer. “All right, go ahead, but we’re going to talk again later. I want you to think about telling the whole story when we do, think very hard.”
“I won’t break my promise, Dad. I can’t do that.”
Up and out of the room she went, carrying Shameless, her steps slow and not quite steady. I had the feeling that as soon as she was inside her room with the door shut she would start to cry. Soundlessly.
Kerry said, “Oh, Lord. You think she really did find that box?”
“She said she did and she doesn’t lie.”
“Then who is she protecting? Some boy?”
“I hope not.”
“She’s only thirteen. What if she’s gotten herself involved with somebody older? What if she’s already started having sex-”
“Hey. Don’t go there.”
“Don’t tell me the thought hasn’t crossed your mind.”
“… All right. But you be the one to ask her if it comes to that.”
“I will.”
“She won’t admit to anything if it means breaking her promise.”
“Oh, Lord. That damn teenage code: don’t break promises; don’t snitch.” Kerry leaned across the table between our chairs, touched my hand. Her fingers were cold again. “What’re we going to do?”
“I don’t know. We can’t force her to talk to us; we can’t threaten her-you saw the way she looked.”
“Calling up her friends’ parents or talking to her teachers isn’t the answer, either. All that’d do is open up a huge can of worms, with no guarantee of results.”
“And turn her against us, drive her back inside herself.”
“Well, we can’t just pretend this didn’t happen,” Kerry said. “We have to get to the bottom of it. We have to do something. ”
Something. Sure. But what?
7
JAKE RUNYON
Since his relocation from Seattle to S.F. he’d spent a lot of time exploring and learning things about the city’s neighborhoods, particularly the ones that presented potential dangers when you had to venture into them after dark. Dolores Park, the hub of the upper Mission District residential area, was one of these.
The park, two blocks long, one block wide, had steeply rolling lawns, acres of shade trees, winding paths, tennis courts, soccer field, kids’ playground, dog-play area. People came from all over the city on weekends to take advantage of its attractions. In the late eighties and early nineties well-off Yuppies, lured by scenic views of the Mission and downtown and an easy commute, had bought up and renovated many of the old Victorians that rimmed the park.
Nice neighborhood… until the drug dealers moved in.
Pot sellers at first, targeting the students at nearby Mission High School, then another, rougher element dealing heroin, coke, meth. As many as forty dealers had been doing business in Dolores Park day and night in those days, Bill had told him. And where you had hard drugs, you also had high stakes and violence; Runyon had seen it happen in Seattle when he’d been on the job there. One year there’d been eight shootings and two homicides in and around Dolores Park. Plus the fire-bombing of the home of a young couple who had tried to form an activist group to fight the dealers. Plus muggings, burglaries, intimidation of residents.
The SFPD and the city’s park police had finally cracked down, cleaned the dealers out of the park and out of the Mission Playground down on 19 ^th Street as well. Things had been quiet and stable again for a while. Then new problems started up. First it was homeless people camping in the park at night, panhandling aggressively by day. Then, recently, large groups began showing up on weekends and holidays, sanctioned and unsanctioned by the city: peace rallies, loud music festivals, freewheeling private parties that spawned public drunkenness, rowdy behavior, seminude sunbathing, loads of strewn trash, and damaged facilities and park property. The residents were up in arms again, for all the good it was doing. Most of them reportedly stayed out of the park on weekends and especially at night. Even with the hard-core dealers and homeless people gone, Latino gangbangers from the Mission and other lowlives still prowled it and muggings were not uncommon.
Few people were out on the lawns and paths when Runyon parked across the street on 19 ^th. Too cold today, with the sea wind bringing in late-afternoon fog that hid the cityscape views behind tattered folds of gray. The Queen Anne Victorian that belonged to Arletta and Coy Madison was two doors down, its blue-on-blue paint job bright and fresh looking. Runyon went up the stoop, rang the bell. ID’d himself to the woman’s voice that came through a speaker box.
There was a long pause before she said, “All right, I’ll come down.” She didn’t sound too happy about it.
Pretty soon the door opened on a heavy chain and a narrow eye peered out at him through the aperture. He
