Time Bomb

“Memory!”

“I like to play too,” I said. “Sometimes for fun and sometimes to help kids when they’re scared or worried.”

Return of silence. The teacher fidgeted.

“Something very scary happened today,” I said. “Right here in school.”

“Someone got killed,” said a dimpled girl with coffee-colored skin.

“Anna, we don’t know that,” said the teacher.

“Yes,” insisted the girl. “There was shooting. That means killing.”

I said, “You’ve heard shooting before.”

She nodded with vehemence. “Uh-huh. On my street. The gangbangers drive by and shoot into the houses. That means killing. My papa said so. One time we had a bullet hole in our garage. Like this.” She measured a space between thumb and forefinger.

“My street too,” said a crew-cut boy with an elfin face and bat ears. “A dude got killed. Dead. Boom boom boom. Inna face.”

The teacher looked ill.

A few of the boys began to pantomime shooting using their fingers for guns and half-rising out of their seats.

“Sounds scary,” I said.

A boy laughed and shot at a girl. She said, “Stop it! You’re stupid!”

The boy swore at her in Spanish.

“Ramon!” said the teacher. “Now you just settle down. Let’s all of us settle down, class.” Her glance at me said Where’d you get your degree?

I said, “It’s fun to play shooting, because it makes us feel strong. In charge- the boss over our lives. But when it really happens, when someone’s really shooting at us, it isn’t too funny, is it?”

Headshakes. The boys who’d laughed hardest suddenly looked the most frightened.

I said, “What do you guys understand about what happened today?”

“Some dude was shootin’ at us,” said the Asian boy.

“Tranh,” said the teacher. “We don’t know that.”

“Yeah, he was shootin’ at us, Miz Williams!”

“Yes, Tranh. He was shooting,” she said. “But we don’t know who he was shooting at. He could have been shooting into the air.” A look to me for confirmation.

“He was shooting at us,” insisted Tranh.

I said, “Do any of you know what happened to him?”

“He got shot?” said the girl named Anna.

“That’s right. He got shot and he’s dead. So he can’t hurt you. Can’t do anything to you.”

Silence as they appraised that.

The boy named Ramon said, “What about his friends, man?”

“What friends?”

“Like if he’s a homeboy and the other homeboys are gonna come back and shoot us again?”

“No reason to think he’s a homeboy,” I said.

“But what if he’s a stoner, man?” said Ramon. “Or a cholo.”

“Who is he?” asked another girl, chubby, with black Shirley Temple ringlets and a quiver in her voice.

Twenty faces, waiting.

I said, “I don’t know yet. No one does. But he’s gone. Forever. You’re safe from him.”

“We should kill him again!” said Ramon.

“Yeah! Kill him! Shoot him with a twenty-two!”

“With a Uzi!”

“Push his face inna pizza so he don’t breathe no more!”

“Push his face in ca-ca!”

The teacher started to say something. I stilled her with a glance. “How else could you hurt him?”

“Kill him!”

“Cut him up and feed him to Pancho- that’s my dog!”

“Shoot him, boom, inna balls!”

“Ay, los cojones!”

Laughter.

“Boom!”

“Cut him up and grind him up and feed him to my dog!”

“You don’t got no dog, Martha!”

“Do so! Got a real mean pit bull and he’ll eat you!”

I said, “Shoot him, stab him, push his face down. Sounds like you guys are really mad.”

“Yeah, man,” said Ramon. “What you think, man? He try to kill us, we gonna kill him back!”

“We can’t kill him,” said the chubby girl.

“Why’s that?” I said.

“Because he’s big. We’re just kids. We got no guns.”

“That’s dumb,” said Tranh. “We can’t kill him ’cause he’s already dead!”

“Kill him again!” shouted someone.

“Find out where he lives,” said Ramon, “and kill his fuckin’ house!”

The teacher said, “Language!”

The chubby girl didn’t look reassured. I said, “What’s the matter?”

“Actually,” she said, “we can’t do nothing. We’re kids. If people wanna be mean to us all the time, they can.”

“Honey, no one wants to be mean to you,” said the teacher.

The chubby girl looked at her.

“Everyone likes you, Cecelia,” said the teacher. “Every-one likes all of you.”

The chubby girl shook her head and began to cry.

***

By the time I finished, the rain had abated. I made a stop at Linda Overstreet’s office, but it was locked and no one answered my knock. As I left the building I saw Milo in the yard, near the cordoned storage shed. He was talking to a slim, dark-haired man in a well-cut blue suit. He noticed me and waved me over.

“Alex, this is Lieutenant Frisk, Anti-Terrorist Division. Lieutenant, Dr. Alex Delaware, the clinical psychologist who’ll be working with the kids.”

Frisk checked me over and said, “How’s it going, Doctor?” in a tone that let me know he didn’t much care.

“Fine.”

“Good to hear it.” He flashed a barrel cuff and consulted his Rolex. He was young and tan, the dark hair permed in a neat cap, and wore a mustache that had taken a long time to trim. The blue suit was expensive, the shirt Turnbull & Asser or a knockoff. The tie that bisected it was heavy silk patterned with dancing blue parallelograms on a background of deep burgundy. His eyes matched the parallelograms; they never stopped moving.

He turned to Milo and said, “I’ll let you know. After-noon, Doctor.” He walked away.

“Spiffy dresser,” I said. “Looks like a TV cop.”

“Young man on the way up,” said Milo. “Masters in public administration from S.C., good connections, D-Three by the age of thirty, promoted to loot three years later.”

“Is he taking over the case?”