tortured.”
“Ben didn’t do anything to anybody,” said Chris very quietly.
“I believe he’s answered the question, Detective Bryant,” said Moskowitz.
“Right.” Bryant closed her notebook and dropped it into her purse. “We’ll speak again. In the meantime, I’ll leave you good people and let you have some peace. Have a blessed evening.”
“You do the same,” said Thomas Flynn.
He and Moskowitz walked her outside. Moskowitz was seeking a few words with her away from Chris, and Flynn intended to ask about the procedure involved in the release of Ben’s body. He wanted to know how he could get authorization to gain possession of it.
Chris stayed in the living room, rubbing behind Django’s ear. Soon Katherine joined him, kissed his mouth, and sat close to him on the couch.
When Flynn reentered the house, he went to his bar cart in the dining room and poured himself several fingers of Jim Beam. He killed the drink quickly and poured another. He saw Amanda looking at him from the kitchen.
“What?”
“Easy with that,” said Amanda.
Flynn tipped his head back and drank.
Out on the street, far down Livingston from the Flynn home, two men sat in an old black Mercury. They were waiting for the man called Chris to emerge from the house that doubled as the business office for Flynn’s Floors. They intended to follow him. They wanted to see where he lived.
TWENTY-ONE
The funeral service for Royalle Foreman, nineteen, was held at a large Baptist church on Nannie Helen Burroughs Avenue in Burrville, in the 50s in far Northeast. Ali and Chris arrived early, pulled into the parking lot, and sat in Juanita Carter’s black Saturn, letting the air conditioner run. They talked about Ali’s conversation with Detective Bryant earlier that morning, and they spoke fondly and bitterly about Ben. They were in no hurry to get out and stand in the summer heat by the front door of the church, where a line had already formed.
“Looks like it’s gonna be full,” said Chris.
“Royalle touched a lot of people,” said Ali. “He played football for Ballou before he dropped out, and he shined. That right there gets you some positive notoriety. He had a charming smile on him, and he was funny. People liked Royalle.”
“What happened?”
“The usual. Peers pulling him down. No one at home strong enough to keep his head in the books or tell him to stay indoors at night. He was a repeat offender. Possession first, then sales. Nonviolent stuff, but after multiples they’re gonna lock you up. He did a little time with the hard boys out at Pine Ridge. Did a second jolt on a parole violation, and that set him up with new contacts and problems. I was tryin to work with him, and I did find him some employment. I had him with this auto body dude I know, as an apprentice. But Royalle couldn’t stay out his own way. He had some kind of long-standing beef with someone, over a girl. Last Saturday night a car, three deep, rolled up on him in while he was walkin to his aunt’s house, where he stayed. He took one in the neck and bled out right on the sidewalk. Another bullet had eyes for a row house window. Kids in there had the presence of mind to get down on the floor when they heard the first pops.”
“City kids learn young,” said Chris. “The police know who did it?”
“No witnesses. I’m guessing that some of the young men at this funeral know who was in that car, and who the shooter was. But they won’t talk to the police.”
“They’re gonna settle it themselves.”
“No doubt,” said Ali. “You know, I went to court and pled for lenience on behalf of Royalle before they sent him back to the Ridge a second time. I was tryin to get him into this charter high school they have now, where the kids eat and sleep on the premises.”
“Like a boarding school?”
“Exactly. Gets the boys out of their environment but doesn’t put them into a prison environment. Judge wouldn’t listen. I guess he was reading those editorials in the newspaper about how the juvenile justice system is letting too many bad kids back out on the street. You know, ‘I grew up black and poor, and now I’m a professional journalist. You have to be extra tough on these boys and keep them locked up. I made it; why can’t they?’ All that bullshit. No question, some boys, the gunmen and killers, they do need to be jailed and off the street. But Royalle wasn’t one of those boys. Juvenile prison just kept him low.”
“They’re letting them in,” said Chris, watching the line move.
“Yeah, let’s go.”
They walked across the parking lot, now nearly full. Chris and Ali wore sport jackets over open-necked shirts and jeans, in the medium range of dress for those who had come to the funeral. The majority of the attendees were young, some in suits, others in T-shirts bearing Royalle Foreman’s likeness with mentions of love, the Lord, heaven, and RIP.
In the lobby, Chris took a program and looked up at the memorial wall adorned with more than a hundred photographs of deceased teenagers and young adults from across the city, victims of shootings and other violent acts. Ali tugged on Chris’s jacket, and the two of them walked into the sanctuary, where female ushers were handing out Kleenex and paper fans to sweating mourners. A large video screen was set up behind the pulpit and altar, and on it was the image of Royalle Foreman lying in an open casket. Gospel music played through a PA system. A receiving line had formed, and a woman in it was crying loudly.
A minister stood in the pulpit and leaned into a lectern’s microphone. “Please turn off your cell phones. And please, let me remind you, there is no drinking in the parking lot.”
Chris stood in a pew beside Ali. He closed his eyes and said a silent prayer. He was not religious, but he felt, in an uncomplicated way, that there had to be something higher, some reason that he and the people he loved were here and alive, and others had been taken. In his mind he saw Ben, a dog beside him, both of them walking in a field, the dog’s tail switching back and forth, Ben smiling. It should have made Chris happy to envision his friend this way. But instead his thoughts went to violence, and he found that he was no longer speaking to God but fantasizing about murdering the men who had murdered Ben.
“No,” said Chris very softly.
Not in church.
Ali had an appointment to meet with Ken Young, the most recent director of the District’s Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, and Reginald Roberts, the superintendent of Pine Ridge. Because it was Young’s day to visit Pine Ridge, Ali had planned to meet them both out there. Chris, after a bit of prodding from Ali, agreed to come along. He knew that Ali wanted company. Also, he did not want to go back to his apartment and be alone with his thoughts.
They drove out to Anne Arundel County in Maryland. The facility was less than thirty miles from the city, but it was country, with stretches of highway running past woods, the occasional new housing community, warehouses, government agencies, and company headquarters. It felt a world away.
Ali turned off the two-lane and went down a long road that wound back into more country and dense stands of trees. Chris felt a sense of dread creep up on him. He wondered if Ali, who made the trek out here regularly, still felt it, too.
“No pines,” said Chris.
“None that I ever seen,” said Ali.
They passed the site of the new facility, which was close to completion. A Democratic senator from Maryland had fought the building of it, as had representatives of neighboring residential communities, arguing that the D.C. jail for youths should be located in the District of Columbia, but they had failed, and construction had gone on as planned.
“Ken Young put some of the boys to work on the crews here,” said Ali. “A lot of it was straight labor, but a few of them apprenticed with tradesmen and carpenters. When they get out, they’ll have skills. The new facility is
