Butchers Hill

Sal scowled, folding his arms tight across his chest as if to keep Tess from peering into his heart, his soul. 'Now you sound like the psychologist at Penfield. Everyone always poking at me, wanting to know why, why, why. Some dude from the University of Maryland even wanted to write a paper on me. ‘Sal H. A Success Story in Spite of the Odds.''

'Did he?'

'Hell, no. Mr. Pearson said he wasn't going let them turn me into some damn syndrome. I'm just a kid, just myself, you know. You can't take me apart and find the answer to all the world's problems. They made me feel like some freak.' Sal put on a Massachusetts accent, in apparent mimickry of someone, and stroked his chin. Was he playing the social worker, the psychologist, or just some generic busybody? 'My God-a black male who thinks! Who wishes to better himself! What could it possibly mean?'

'They meant well,' Tess said, somewhat defensively. After all, she had been asking the same thing in a slightly different fashion. 'If they can figure out why you succeeded, maybe they can help other kids.'

'Sure.' He gave her the superior look again. 'Maybe I succeeded because I'm special. Isn't that an option?'

'Oh you're very special. Public speaker, star student, and a little burglar in training, hanging halfway out my bathroom window.'

'I told you. I wanted to know where Eldon was.'

'Yes, but did you come down here to ask me, or to search my office for that information? If you really wanted to see me, you could have made an appointment.'

'I don't think Mr. Pearson would let me see you.'

'Probably not. How did you get away from Penfield, anyway?'

'We had a field trip to the National Aquarium and the Columbus Center this morning. I grabbed a cab and came over here. When I saw all those reporter types out front, I decided to go around the alley way.'

Good story, smoothly told. But that was Sal Hawkings's particular talent, wasn't it? Thinking on his feet, making things sound smooth and plausible.

'Tell me about the car, Sal.'

'It was a Checker cab, nothing special. Polish dude at the wheel, barely spoke English, had some lame-ass radio station on.'

He couldn't be that dense. It was almost as if he knew the question was coming, and had a dodge prepared. 'Not the car that brought you here. The car that was turning onto Fairmount Avenue the night Donnie was killed.'

'I don't know what you're talking about.' The answer was prompt, too prompt. It was if Sal had learned a part so well that he could still slip into it on a moment's notice, the way Tess could recite the memorized dialogues from junior high French class after all these years. Bonjour Jean, comment vas-tu? Dis donc, ou est la biblioteque?

'Luther Beale told me there was a car and two shots, shots he didn't fire. Yet none of you mentioned the car, or any other gunshots. You all told the same exact story, with the same details. But Luther says Destiny and Treasure had already rounded the corner, and even Eldon's back was still to him when he started firing. You couldn't have all seen the same thing.'

'He's a damn liar. We wouldn't do that, okay? We were a posse, we stuck together, we wouldn't abandon one of our own. We ran afterward, after Donnie was dead, because we were scared. Who wouldn't be? He was going to kill us, too.'

'And there was no car?'

'No car, no second shooter, no O. J. Simpson, okay? That's why the old man's killing the rest of us, you know, because once we're all dead, there won't be anyone to contradict his sorry lies, and he wins. But he did it. He's just gonna have to learn to live with that, the way we had to live with Donnie's death and the way they broke us up, sending us to new families.'

Sal grabbed his knapsack and began throwing in the items Tess had spread out on her desk. Tess let him have everything except the Kipling, which she hugged to her chest. She suspected it was the one thing he wouldn't leave the office without, and he did look anxious when he saw it in her hands.

'You don't see a lot of kids reading Kipling these days, although in my day, we had to memorize reams of it. But I guess Penfield is kind of old-fashioned.'

'Gimme that. It's mine.'

She flipped through the pages. The old color plates were quite beautiful, if a little worse for wear. There was the female of the species, so much more deadly than the male, the road to Mandalay and, of course, good old Gunga Din. 'Merry Christmas, Love, Grandmere,'' was inscribed on the frontispiece. Tess guessed that faded, cursive inscription had not been written to Sal. Both the book and the handwriting were at least forty years older than he was.

'That's mine,' he repeated, his voice a childish whine. 'It's the first book I ever owned, it was a gift from Mr. Pearson. At Penfield, the poetry is all those modern guys, Kunitz and Cummings and Merwin and shit. I'd rather read this.'

'I'm not sure I'd agree with your assessment of modern poets, but I am impressed if you read Kipling for pleasure. You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din.'

Sal looked at her sullenly, hand outstretched. Probably he thought it was a racial slur, non-PC at the very least, likening him to the faithful water boy. She handed him the book and he brushed its spine before putting it back in his knapsack, as if her touch had contaminated it in some way.

'How will you explain the cut on your head when you join up with your class at the aquarium?'

'I'll think of something,' he said, shouldering his book bag, checking the brass fastener to make sure the Kipling was safe inside, then taking his shoe from the windowsill.

Tess had no doubt of that. It was all too clear that Sal Hawkings could think on or off his feet. She watched him go, his right topsider still squishing a bit.

Chapter 21

Uncle Donald worked fast when he had something to do. Tess and Jackie were instructed to meet him Monday morning at his office in the Department of Human Resources. The destination made Tess nostalgic, for the agency was housed in the old Hutzler's, once the city's grandest department store. Ten stories high, so full of things to buy and covet that it had a second building to the south to catch the overflow. Tess had bought her first makeup here, cutting school and taking the #10 bus downtown. By today's standards-department stores with grand pianos and marble floors and espresso bars-the old Hutzler's wouldn't seem quite so grand. But something caught in Tess's throat when she saw what it had been reduced to, just another state office building with flimsy walls and little warrens of offices.

'Let's take a walk,' Uncle Donald said when he met them in the lobby, clipboard in hand.

Glancing at his watch, he led them to the Light Rail stop around the corner and sat on the benches, the ones designed so homeless people could never stretch out along their length.

'As soon as I started making inquiries, I was told there was a judge,' Uncle Donald began. 'He does this for a fee, usually.'

'How much?' Jackie asked.

'Ten thousand dollars.'

'I have that.' And Jackie actually took out her check book and her Mont Blanc pen. No ordinary Bics for Jackie. Uncle Donald put his hand over hers before she could start filling it out. Tess could just imagine what she might have written there. Pay to the order of judge-so-and-so. Ten Thousand Dollars. For: just a little bribe.

'It's strictly a cash business, dear. Besides, I said he usually does this. When I told him of your situation, he said he can't help. See, all he can do is unseal the original birth certificate. But you know what's on that, right? And there's nothing that connects the original birth certificate with the second one issued.'

'Another dead-end,' Jackie said bitterly. 'From everything I've learned, it sounds as if my daughter could find