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Chapter 10
Timothy had been up to Hilltop Meadows before, mostly for birthday parties, either Brandon’s or one or two other friends. Those times, he’d always been driven there by his mom.
This was the first time he’d ever ridden his bike to Hilltop Meadows.
Distance-wise, this bike ride was more-or-less on par with his ride to the quarry. If anything it was easier, because it didn’t involve skirting along the shoulder of a state highway.
Just the same, it felt like a significant journey because here he was, heading to a place previously only accessible via a ride from mom, but now doing it under his own power.
Leaving his own neighborhood of mostly older houses, Timothy was soon pedaling through an adjoining neighborhood more firmly rooted in the 20th century. Not long after that, toward the edge of the city’s grid system, the houses became post-war.
This gradual transition from one style of house to another had never been as apparent when his mother whisked him by quickly in the car. At pedal speed, Timothy began to wonder if the gulf between Hilltop Meadows and his own neighborhood was really as wide as he’d imagined. Maybe it was a matter of degrees.
But when the sidewalks petered out, the front lawns expanded with a certain rolling grandeur that matched the gentle curves of the Hilltop roads. No, this wasn’t just a slightly better neighborhood. This was a different reality.
Rolling to a stop at the end of a particularly tree-lined cul-de-sac, Timothy double-checked the address on the calling card as he looked up the long driveway. The mailbox read: Lambeau.
Must be the place.
Timothy walked his bike up the drive, then along the walkway that meandered across the well-manicured lawn to the main door. He leaned his bike against the front step, locking it would be presumptuous in a place he was not yet sure he’d be welcome.
Well, here goes.
He rang the doorbell. Somewhere inside was a pleasant chiming.
Catching his somewhat wild appearance in the reflection of the storm door, Timothy patted down his long hair with his palms, pushing it back behind his ears as best as he could.
The woman who answered the door looked vaguely like Brandon’s mother in style and appearance.
“Yes?”
She didn’t seem overly suspicious, likely she was used to kids Timothy’s age collecting for their little league or paper route.
Timothy cleared his throat. He hadn’t thought what he might say if Charles Lambeau, Jr. didn’t answer the door himself. Asking if Charles Lambeau, Jr. were here would certainly sound weird, he decided to abbreviate immediately.
“Is Charles here?”
“Uh, yes...who should I tell him is here?”
“Timothy Miller, Jr... I mean, Timothy.”
He was not, in fact, a junior, but was more nervous than he thought. The fate of the investigation was hanging in the balance.
“Just a sec,” she said, leaving the storm door closed but the inner front door open. Not initially inviting, but not closing him out either. “Charlie...Timothy’s here.”
When Charles arrived at the door, he had a quizzical look at first, but as he opened the storm door he quickly recognized Timothy as the boy he’d stood up for a couple of days before.
“Oh, hey Timothy,” he said. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah I, uh, hello. Everything’s fine, I just had a...a little project I thought you might be interested in.”
“A little project?” Charles said, laughing. Then he looked past Timothy and saw his banana saddle bicycle leaning up against the front step. “You rode your bike all the way up here because you want to do a little project with me?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Well, come on in.”
As Charles opened the storm door, Timothy looked back at his bike lying there.
“It’s okay,” Charles said, reading his mind, “it’ll be safe out here.”
As Timothy walked into the front hallway, the first thing he saw was a prominently placed portrait of Charles Lambeau, Sr., the same photo he had seen in the paper. It was framed along with a variety of formal memorial tributes apparently connected to his death in the line of duty.
“That’s my dad,” Charles said proudly. When he saw Timothy continuing to stare at the photo, he added, “I know what you’re thinking, why is he white and I’m black?”
“No, I mean yes but, I saw his picture in the paper yesterday.”
“Yeah, he did a lot of volunteer work at the Youth Center, that’s why they named it for him. Anyway, I was adopted, in case you’re wondering. That’s why my parents are white and I am black.”
Charles said this quite matter-of-factly, as if he’d had to explain this to people twice his age on more than one occasion.
Timothy continued to stand staring at the memorial portrait, not knowing what else to do.
“Come on,” Charles said. “Come to my room and you can tell me about your little project.”
Unlike Timothy’s old-fashioned house, Charle’s was a split-level, so you only had to climb six steps to be upstairs. The whole house had wall-to-wall carpeting. Everything looked so new, and there was a very fresh smell in the air from a variety of tasteful cleaning products.
Charles’ room was at the end of the hallway. It too was carpeted, and had a very adult look about it. Charles’ desk almost looked like a teacher desk. He even had a double bed.
Timothy examined the small collection of sports trophies and academic achievement awards on Charles’ shelf.
“You play baseball?” Timothy asked.
“I’m a pitcher,” Charles said. “Babe Ruth League, one or two games a week, plus practice here and there.”
There were a few more photos of his dad, and some pictures cut out of magazines of bands Timothy was only vaguely familiar with.
“You like Zeppelin?” Charles asked.
“Uh, I don’t know them real well...”
“What grade are you in?”
“Fourth,” Timothy admitted sheepishly.
“Fourth, huh... I guess we got a few years to get you up to speed...”
Charles walked Timothy through the other band photos, taking him on a quick musical tour. Hendrix, Aerosmith, Sly and the Family Stone...
“These here are my personal favorites at the moment,” Charles said. “Thin Lizzy, the lead singer is both black and Irish.”
Timothy just shook his head.
“How do you find out about all this?” he said, “all I have is an alarm clock radio.”
“What station you listen to?”
“WBPM.”
The local pop station.
“Timothy, it’s not the radio, it’s the station,” Charles said, and scribbled something down on a piece of notepaper. “Here, you need to start listening to WPDH out of Poughkeepsie.”
Timothy looked at the numbers 101.5 like Charles had just written down a top secret code. Who was this magical person and how had he come into his life?
“Why did you stand up for me the other day?” he found himself asking suddenly.
“I don’t like seeing people get picked on,” Charles said. “And besides, you seem like a cool guy.”
Charles had volunteered at the youth center a bit himself, he knew a few tricks about how to make kids younger than him feel good about themselves.
“So,” Charles said, “tell me about this little project.”
This was the moment Timothy was waiting for and, with Charles’ vote of confidence, he was ready to do the job.
Ripping open his knapsack, Timothy removed the exhibits one-by-one and carefully arranged them on Charles’ bed, until the assemblage resembled what he’d had pinned to his bulletin board.
“It’s an investigation, actually...”
“An investigation, really?”
Charles was careful not to sound too condescending, even though this seemed like a highly imaginative game that Timothy was laying out for him.
Timothy just kind of let loose all at once, he really didn’t know where to start.
“So, the sample kit wasn’t good enough, it couldn’t tell me if it was phosphorus or benzedrine, but it definitely said the water was contaminated, and I followed the brook myself just to make sure that it’s coming from IPM, and it is, because now IPM owns the quarry...”
Charles continued to nod his head thoughtfully, as if he was following all this, as if any of Timothy’s crazy story made sense.
“...but I can’t tell if they’re really dumping chemicals because the gate’s locked, so I need to get in there, plus I still have to figure out how they murdered Ken, I mean, I know who murdered Ken, but I have to figure out how his murder connects the benzedrine in the water--”
“Wait a minute,” Charles cut in, “who’s this Ken guy, and what’s all this about a murder?”
Now Timothy had his attention.
“Ken is a guy who lived on my street. He’s the one who did the water test, the real water test, and figured out there were toxins in it. He was the one who connected it to IPM and was about to contact the D.E.C., that’s why they had him killed.”
“Okay, slow down here, let’s start at the beginning...”
Charles had Timothy walk him through the entire story in an order that made a bit more logical sense. It took a bit of redirection here and there to keep Timothy on track, but Charles knew from his dad that you never underestimated the truth of someone’s story just because they were in an excitable state.
“So you’re saying that this Ken guy had tested the water in the brook and found specific toxic chemicals in it linked to IPM?”
“Yes.”
“And Ken was just about to turn the test results in when he was... when he died?”
“That’s exactly what happened.”
The whole time Timothy was talking, Charles had scanned the so-called evidence on his bed that had at first seemed like a fantasy. But using his own imagination to replace each amateurish element with something more professional, he began to see it, the underpinnings of an actual police investigation.
Who knew, maybe the K.P.D. was conducting a similar investigation at this very moment, or perhaps Timothy had a window into something they had missed simply because they weren’t in the right place at the right time?
“You know Timothy,” Charles said, “you might just have something here.”
# # #
When Timothy and Charles met up next it was at Dietz Diner, Charles’ idea.
Timothy was in front of the diner chaining up his banana saddle when Charles rolled up on an actual 10 speed. It had two sets of hand breaks, handlebars that gleamed like metallic ram horns in the sun, and more gears than Timothy could imagine using.
“That’s a nice bike,” Timothy marveled.
“My mom says I’ll grow into it,” Charles said, taking a high hop off a frame slightly too large for him. He locked it up next to Timothy’s.
Charles and Timothy walked into the diner together.
“Hi Charles,” the waitress said. Charles smiled and waved in return.
Man, this guy was like a local celebrity.
Plopping down into a booth by the window, Timothy immediately began flipping through the tabletop jukebox, which he’d had occasion to play, having eaten here before with his mom. Being here in the diner with a friend and no parent was another first.
“You two young men need menus?” the waitress asked. She was wearing a uniform that looked like it was from the 1950s, but without the beehive hairdo that some of the older waitresses still had.
“I know what I’m having,” Charles said. “You need a menu, Timothy?”
“No, I know what I’m having too.”
He figured he’d just order whatever Charles ordered, but the plan fell flat when Charles waved an open palm toward him, politely suggesting that, by all means, Timothy should order first.
“Go ahead,” Charles said.
Timothy looked around the diner. It wasn’t exactly mealtime. He saw some men sitting at the counter, they all had coffees.
“I’ll have a cup of coffee,” Timothy said.
“You will?” the waitress asked, with the same playfully surprised tone Charles had used when Timothy first told him he had a little project.
“Yes,” Timothy confirmed.
“Did you want cream and sugar with that?”
“No, I’ll take it black.”
Timothy had read in his Real Men’s Guidebook that real men always drank their coffee black. Charles flashed a brief look of disbelief, but he was starting to learn to take aberrations in stride when it came to Timothy.
“Okay then,” the waitress said, “and for you, Charles?”
“I’ll have a vanilla ice cream.”
“One vanilla ice cream, one coffee...black,” the waitress repeated, writing it down on her pad. “Back in a minute.”
And she was.
As she set the vanilla ice cream down in front of Charles, he made sure to first make eye contact when thanking her, then looked to his ice cream like, Come to Papa.
Timothy, meanwhile, looked at the black coffee she set before him like, What have I done?
“The first spoonful is always the best,” Charles said, savoring a mouthful of ice cream with deep satisfaction.
Timothy needed both hands to lift the heavy white porcelain mug to his mouth. The first sip was hot and bitter, his face contorted as it crossed his lips.
“You sure you don’t want milk and sugar with that?” Charles asked.
“It’s fine,” Timothy croaked, sort of like after he’d smoked his first cigarette. “I drink this all the time.”
Charles decided to take him at his word and continued to enjoy his ice cream, pausing to speak again when he was about halfway finished.
“So, did you bring that water sample?”
Timothy had been tasked with getting a fresh sample from the stream. He’d wisely used one of the more professional-looking plastic bottles from his home test kit, instead of the oversized Prell bottle.
“It’s right here,” Timothy said, producing the sample from his knapsack, handing it across the table to Charles.
Charles held it up to the light.
“The foam’s kinda disappeared,” Timothy said, “but it’s still a little green, if you look hard.”
“Yes,” Charles agreed, squinting at the sample, “definitely a green tint.”
Charles made sure the lid was screwed on tight before putting it into his own knapsack.
“I talked to my science teacher, Mr. Carlson,” Charles said. “He’s gonna let me use the science lab to run the test. And, get this, he’s gonna give me extra credit!”
Timothy hadn’t thought much about the specifics of junior high beyond the basic idea that he would be going there one day, but it was starting to sound like a magical place.
He took another few sips of black coffee. It tasted like it was getting more bitter by the minute, but a Real Man certainly wouldn’t order a black coffee and then not drink it.
“Another thing,” Charles continued, “I swung by the police station to check out the report from that bar fight.”
“You can do that?”
“Anybody can. I mean, you can’t see the whole police report, but they keep some stuff available for the beat reporter, that’s how the paper gets their info.”
“This is amazing...” Timothy said.
When he asked Charles to help him, he had no idea the world was going to start opening up so vastly and quickly.
He took another swig of coffee, not connecting his consumption of the strong black fluid to the fact that he was wiggling in his seat, his right leg starting to swing back-and-forth repeatedly.
“You mind aiming that foot in another direction?” Charles asked.
“Oh, sorry,” Timothy said, not realizing he’d started to kick Charles in the shin.
“No problem. Anyway, you’re definitely right, there’s something fishy about that case. The report had all this stuff that was scribbled out, like there’s something they don’t want people to know about.”
Unbelievable. If Timothy had any doubts before, he was now absolutely convinced they were onto something.
Charles finished his ice cream. As Timothy painfully downed his coffee to the grounds at the bottom of the mug, the waitress stopped by to see if they needed anything else, then dropped the check.
Timothy emptied the pile of change from his pocket onto the table.
“I got this one,” Charles said.
“Oh, thanks,” Timothy said, trying to sweep his change pile back into a cupped hand without spilling it all over the floor.
Looking at what was obviously the contents of Timothy’s piggy bank, it occurred to Charles that if they were to meet regularly, the diner might not be the most fiscally responsible location from Timothy’s perspective.
“You know,” Charles said, “we don’t always have to meet here, sometimes I can come by your house.”
“No, my house is...under construction,” Timothy blurted out.
“Under construction?”
“I mean we’re, like, fixing it up. Stuff all over the place. I can just come to your house.”
“That’s quite a long bike ride.”
“I don’t mind, I need the exercise.”
“Okay,” Charles said, leaving the tip, “we’ll figure something out.”
Back outside, the pair unlocked their respective bicycles, then rode off slowly together along Green Street to bypass the busier streets uptown.
They rode alongside each other, Charles on the left on his oversized 10 speed, Timothy on the right on his little banana saddle. In this configuration, if they were in a police cruiser, it would almost be like Charles was driving while Timothy rode shotgun.
“My dad used to like that restaurant,” Charles said, pointing to the old Hoffman House on the corner, Kingston’s oldest restaurant.
Timothy had never eaten there himself, but he figured he’d throw out a little factoid, just to stay in the conversation.
“I think Franklin Roosevelt’s family lived there back in the olden days,” Timothy said.
“Really?”
“Well, it doesn’t say so on the sign, but I read it in a book somewhere.”
“How do you like that...I didn’t know Kingston had any presidential connections.”
“Oh, tons, right on this street alone... right up here is where George Clinton used to live, he wasn’t President, but he was Vice President under Jefferson,” Timothy said, “and then of course we have all the Van Burens on the next block...”
Timothy proceeded to regale Charles with a whole array of details about the various stone houses on the street, and how the townspeople had fled to Hurley that fateful night in 1777 when the British set fire to the place.
“If the British burned the place, how come all the houses are still here?”
“They’re made of stone, they just had to rebuild the insides,” Timothy said, “but if you go inside some of them you can still see the fire marks.”
Timothy was kind of surprised that Charles didn’t know any of this. He figured that because Charles knew so much about other things that he would know everything.
They continued to pedal slowly along, Timothy giving Charles an historical tour, until they hit the red light on Main Street. At this point, it was time for Charles to head up the hill toward Hilltop Acres, and for Timothy to continue to working class Warren Street.
“Well, see you, Charles,” Timothy called out as Charles rode off.
“See you, Partner,” Charles replied.
[click here to continue to Chapter 11]
p.s. If you missed the livestream of the Green Kill show, you can now watch it for free on YouTube, here’s the link:
I’m so happy that Timmy has a partner in crime (fighting).
The birth of The Affogato Crime Team.