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Chapter 24
Charles agreed to one additional stake out on the condition that the situation seemed safe. They met up at Stewart’s again because it was only a few blocks from the storage place on Greenkill Avenue.
“Did you bring some means of defending yourself?” Charles asked, which was one of the additional bits of caution they’d discussed on the telephone.
Timothy began to open his knapsack, but paused, first answering the question with a question.
“What’d you bring?”
Charles opened his own knapsack so Timothy could look inside.
“Baseballs?” Timothy asked. There were three of them.
“Mm hmm.”
“What good are baseballs?”
“Timothy, batters wear helmets for a reason,” Charles said. “My fastball clocks in at an average of 53 miles per hour. You know what kind of damage tightly-wrapped cowhide can do at 53 miles per hour?”
Timothy nodded his head thoughtfully at Charles’ reasoning.
“So, what did you bring?” Charles asked.
Timothy opened his knapsack and was about to pull the item out in plain sight, but Charles put his hand on Timothy’s wrist and prevented him from doing so.
“A meat cleaver? T-Bird, are you crazy?” Charles said, looking around to make sure no one else had seen it. “You can’t go around carrying a meat cleaver.”
“You know what kind of damage a meat cleaver can do?” Timothy asked. “A lot more than a baseball.”
“That may be true, T-Bird. But, a cop searches my bag and finds three baseballs, you know what I get busted for? Being on my way to baseball practice. A cop finds you carrying around a meat cleaver? That’s criminal intent,” Charles said. “That’s two steps shy of premeditated murder.”
Timothy thought back to his alibi the day he’d skipped school.
“What if I’m on my way to practice?” he asked.
“Practicing what?”
“There’ve been axe throwing competitions since the colonial days,” he said. “I read about it.”
“Timothy, nobody is going to believe a ten year old is on his way to an axe throwing competition. Besides, no offense, a guy your size pulls out a meat cleaver? Guy like Grafton’s gonna grab it right out of your hands and use it against you...”
Timothy had run out of arguments.
“I’ll keep it in my bag,” he said, somewhat dejectedly.
They saddled up and pedaled up Greenkill.
Their destination was close to the rail yard. A narrow side street led across the train tracks to an old brewery from the days when the small city had made its own beer. Timothy had never been back here before. Apparently they’d converted the brewery to some sort of storage space, because inanimate objects didn’t mind so much being rattled by passing trains.
The open gate had a sign reading:
“Gate Closes at 5”
Charles noted that just inside the gate was some kind of sensor embedded in the road so that an exiting car could trigger the gate to open. He subtly jumped up and down on the sensor. Probably they weren’t heavy enough to trigger it, but it was only 3:30. They were pretty sure to be out by 5 at any rate.
Charles checked the receipt they’d found in Grafton’s garbage.
“D-17,” he read aloud, holding the receipt up against the fading numbers painted on the old brick brewery.
Seemed like it should be pretty straight forward, but once they got beyond the first building, they found a rabbit warren of smaller buildings made of corrugated metal. The place had been expanded pell-mell over the years. The alleys between the buildings were maze-like, no straight route leading anywhere.
Even with the number right in Charles’ hand, they took a few wrong turns, got slightly lost, but eventually found themselves standing in front of D-17.
Timothy tugged on the padlock. If Charles had nixed the butcher’s knife, he probably wasn’t going to be too thrilled with the improvised explosive Timothy was also carrying in his knapsack, so he decided not to mention it.
Charles, meanwhile, got down on one knee to check the well-worn tire tracks in the dusty alleyway.
“These are old,” he said, “I don’t think Grafton’s been here yet.”
It occurred to Timothy that even though Grafton had told his brother on the phone that he’d been coming to the storage place on Thursday afternoon, he still might not show up. He didn’t seem the most reliable person.
But just as they were trying to figure out where they might conceal themselves before he arrived, they heard it: the unmistakable sound of the Mustang, creeping its way through the storage facility.
The sound of the engine was ricocheting all over the place, and they themselves had gotten turned around more than once, it was impossible to know from which direction the Mustang would arrive.
Frantic for a hiding place, Timothy checked a pile of old crates next to Grafton’s unit, but there most definitely wasn’t room for two boys and two bikes.
Charles, looking quickly at all the other units, noticed the one directly across from Grafton’s didn’t have a padlock on it. He pulled open the heavy garage-type door as quickly as he could.
Inside was an odd collection of junk, probably cast-offs from abandoned units the storage facility had yet to figure out what to do with.
“In here,” Charles said.
There was just enough room to wheel their bikes inside and get inside themselves. Pulling the door down from the inside, Charles jammed an empty beer can underneath to keep the door open a crack, maybe an inch. Trying not to knock anything over in the dark, he and Timothy got down onto their bellies and peeked out.
The Mustang pulled up and stopped just past D-17, so Timothy and Charles still had a strained view across to Grafton’s unit. They expected he would hop out of the car at any moment. But he did not.
For whatever reason Grafton remained in his car, he’d yet to cut the engine. In fact, he revved it a few times reflexively.
The tailpipe of the Mustang was right there, almost level with the crack under the garage door, through which Charles and Timothy were trying to breathe.
Each time Grafton revved the engine, a fresh burst of carbon monoxide came pouring under the door and into Charles and Timothy’s faces. Charles waved his hand repeatedly, desperately trying to fan the bad air back out through the crack as it filled their small hiding space.
“Try not to cough,” he said with a hoarse voice.
But Timothy did start coughing, and so did he. When Grafton finally cut the engine, somehow they were both able to stymie their coughing, but their eyes were still watering like crazy.
The car door opened. From the waist down, Grafton could be observed walking into the scene, still wearing his soiled dishwasher’s pants and slip-resistant shoes.
With a jangling keyring, Grafton bent down to unlock the padlock. In the moments it took him to figure out which key and how to insert it, Timothy got his first good look at him in the daylight in fairly close proximity.
His face was pockmarked in places, his hair greasy, and he seemed to have more creases in his forehead than a man his age should have.
Once he figured out the lock, he pulled the door open with considerably less effort than it had taken Charles, and proceeded to pull out seemingly random boxes and pile them in the alleyway for inspection.
He went through one box, then another, then another.
“Shit, where the fuck is it?” he said aloud, unaware that anyone was watching him.
The convulsions in Timothy’s lungs from the carbon monoxide had finally abated, but in the rush to conceal himself, he’d lain down uncomfortably interspersed with his banana saddle bicycle. His back was starting to spasm slightly, making him want to adjust his position, but he didn’t dare move.
Grafton’s search, meanwhile, was growing more frantic. More boxes were being roughly pulled from the storage unit, but he couldn’t seem to find what he was looking for.
“Mother fucker,” he said to himself, standing there looking at the useless mess he’d just made. He started throwing the boxes back into the unit, seeming to give up the search for now.
Of course, the boxes now didn’t fit as neatly as when he’d first arrived, so he started kicking at them to make them conform to the space until he was finally able to yank the door back down and get it closed.
He fumbled with the lock, but managed to get it secured, and pulled hard on it to make sure it held.
He stomped back into his car and was surely just about to slam the car door closed when Timothy, who could not remain still a moment longer, adjusted his body slightly.
Some kind of domino effect occurred, the slight movement of his wedged ankle unmoored a pile of boxes which sent some metallic object on top crashing down onto the concrete pad.
Grafton’s car door did not close.
His feet could be observed, slowly, walking back into the picture. Only this time he was holding something: a baseball bat.
“Who’s there?” Grafton called out, apparently uncertain from which direction the sound had come.
Timothy and Charles were both holding their breath again, waiting for the door to be maniacally pulled open, their hiding space revealed. Why did he have to listen to Charles? Why didn’t he have his meat cleaver gripped tightly in his hand at the ready?
Grafton suddenly took a violent swing at the crates piled next to his unit, where minutes before Timothy and Charles had considered hiding. The crates exploded into splinters. Several mice, who had been hiding within, scurried in all directions.
Grafton could be heard chuckling, as if to be saying to himself, Oh, it’s just a few mice, but the next moment he called out:
“Next time it’s your head, mother fucker,” as if he somehow did know someone had been watching him, and the only reason they weren’t dead was because he hadn’t noticed the unlocked unit across from D-17.
Grafton got into the Mustang and started it up. With a bonus blast of monoxide, he peeled out, leaving Charles and Timothy momentarily asphyxiated one last time until the dust had cleared.
Charles waited until the sound of the Mustang had faded completely before reopening the door so they could creep back out into daylight.
“Damn, that was a close one,” he said.
He closed the door of the unit they’d been hiding in. As they slowly pedaled down the alleyway, Charles was trying to figure the way out, but Timothy was looking back at D-17, knowing the final answer to the puzzle remained within, if only he could find it.
The two of them got lost again, finding themselves in the E section instead of on the way out, but they doubled back and soon the exit gate was within their sight.
It was still well before 5, the gate was open, they rolled right through.
The sound of an approaching freight train was growing louder and louder. Looking way down Greenkill, they could see its light still over a block away, its bell ringing, the ground just beginning to vibrate underneath them.
“C’mon, we can make it,” Charles said.
They sped up, and got back over the tracks with ten seconds to spare, before the slow moving train rumbled past and cut the old brewery off from the rest of the city.
When they got as far as Stewart’s, Charles pulled over in the parking lot.
“Timothy, do you know who Jim Ryan is?” Charles asked.
“He’s the Chief of Police, isn’t he?”
“That’s right. And he’s also a close personal friend of my family,” Charles said. “If we walk into his office on Monday afternoon and lay out the case we’ve built against IPM, I know for a fact he will act on it immediately...the story will hit the paper by Tuesday and, one way or the other, IPM will be held accountable for what’s going on at that quarry.”
“What about Grafton?”
“I don’t know yet, maybe he was involved, maybe he wasn’t...but if the guy we’re following is a killer like his brother? I think it’s high time we leave this aspect of the case to the professionals.”
Charles scanned Timothy’s face to see if any of this was sinking in then added:
“Why don’t we take the weekend to pull together what we have so far, then you and me will head into the station Monday after school, what do you say?”
Timothy didn’t say anything at first. He felt like if they couldn’t present some hard evidence, when it came to Ken, IPM was going to get away with murder. But he also knew that Charles was probably right, if they didn’t get the toxic dump information into the right hands before IPM’s proposed expansion was rubber stamped, they were probably going to get away with that too.
“Well, I guess I’ll see you over the weekend,” he conceded, pointing his bike toward Wall Street, figuring Charles would likely continue riding straight up to Hilltop Meadows at this point. But Charles turned toward Wall Street too.
“Why don’t I ride you home?” Charles asked.
Timothy could think of a reason or two, but kept them to himself as they continued together toward Warren Street.
# # #
When they got to Timothy’s house, Timothy broke the party up quickly so he wouldn’t have to invite Charles inside.
“Guess I’ll come up to your house tomorrow,” he called to Charles, already beginning to carry his bike up the stairs.
Just then, Timothy’s mom came out the front door.
“Oh, hello Charles, how are you doing?” she called down to Charles, who was still standing on the sidewalk.
“Fine, Mrs. Miller, how are you?”
“Very well, thank you for asking. How’s your mother?”
“She’s fine, thank you.”
“Glad to hear it.”
Timothy was frozen in the middle of this exchange, still standing on the steps holding his bicycle.
“Well, I’d best be going,” Charles said.
“Would you like to stay for supper? It was so nice of your mother to invite Timothy that one night.”
Where was this coming from? Timothy’s mom NEVER invited any of his friends to stay for supper. Of course, this was largely because Timothy never brought any friends home, but this was beside the point.
“I’m sure Charles has stuff to do at home,” Timothy cut in.
“Actually,” Charles said, “I’d love to stay for supper, that would be lovely.”
Timothy’s brain was melting like a box of crayons left inside a hot car.
“Great, I’ll go inside and tell Cathryn,” Timothy’s mom said.
“Will my bike be safe out here?” Charles asked Timothy.
“You better bring it onto the porch,” Timothy said wearily, “and chain it to the leg of the sofa...”
When they went inside the house, Cathryn was at the stove crumpling potato chips into the tuna casserole.
“Cathryn, this is Charles,” Timothy’s mom said.
“Oh, hello Charles, I think we spoke on the phone once.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Charles agreed, even though Timothy had said it was his mother.
If Charles thought any of this was at all weird--the pink walls, the vintage decor, the unexplained woman at the stove--he didn’t betray it on his face for a moment. He just continued smiling like being invited into their home was the nicest thing that had happened to him all week.
“May I just use your phone for a moment?”
“Sure, Charles, it’s right there on the back wall.”
Charles winked at Timothy in a conspiratorial fashion, even though the plot to torture Timothy was entirely Charles’ idea. The galley kitchen had never felt so crowded in Timothy’s entire life.
“Hi mom...is tonight still your bowling night?” Charles said. “You wouldn’t mind if I stayed for dinner at Timothy’s then...yes, she invited me...great, I’ll see you when you get home.”
Both Timothy’s mom and Cathryn looked over to Charles expectantly.
“All settled,” Charles announced happily.
“Great,” Timothy’s mom said. “Timothy, you want to take Charles upstairs and show him your room?”
“No,” he said, a little more forcefully than seemed appropriate. “I mean, we’d rather set the table.”
“Because I can set the table tonight...” she offered.
“No really, Mom, I want to set the table,” Timothy insisted. “I really want to show Charles our drinking glass collection.”
Timothy’s mom’s eyes squinted from perplexity. She’d heard some pretty creative excuses for not wanting to do chores in her day, but whatever reverse psychology she assumed was at play here was beyond her comprehension.
Timothy led Charles through the swinging door that opened to the dining room.
“It took me a year going to Carroll’s to collect these,” Timothy said, committing to his stated purpose.
He took the glass tumblers from the hutch and placed them onto the table one by one, each featuring a different cartoon character.
“I collected some of these too,” Charles said, going along with whatever.
“You can pick anyone you want. I’m usually Yosemite Sam, but you can use it if you like, I don’t care.”
“That’s okay, I’d prefer Sylvester. That is, if no one objects.”
“That should work just fine,” Timothy said, placing Sylvester in front of the guest space on the table, and Yosemite Sam in front of his own.
Timothy proceeded to set the rest of the table in slow motion, letting the chore expand to fill the maximum amount of time and space before dinner was served.
“So Charles,” Timothy’s mom said, shortly after everyone had taken at least one bite of their tuna casserole, “how did you and Timothy meet, anyway?”
“We met at the field right up the street here,” Charles said. “I happened by with some other friends of mine and, I guess you could say Timothy and I just hit it off.”
Charles smiled across the table to Timothy. As excruciating was the overall experience of having his worlds collide at the dinner table, Timothy was heartened that Charles’ first stated reason for their association was true friendship. He managed to smile back.
“And you go to the junior high school?” Cathryn asked.
“I do indeed. It’s a fine school, I think Timothy will do very well there.”
And so it continued, with pleasantries much like these, Charles all the while exhibiting the flawless table manners Timothy’s mom maintained were part of the social fabric that held a family together. In short, despite (or perhaps adding to) Timothy’s discomfort, he charmed both his mom and Cathryn.
It seemed like Timothy might get through this alive.
And then:
“Is there a bathroom I could use?” Charles asked.
“It’s upstairs,” Timothy’s mom said.
Please God, no.
Charles took his napkin from his lap and wiped his mouth.
“If you’ll excuse me,” he said, and headed upstairs.
“He is so nice,” both Timothy’s mom and Cathryn said to Timothy once Charles was out of earshot. They clearly meant to express both that they were impressed with Charles, and with Timothy as well for having scored such an impressive friend.
Dinner was wrapped up shortly after Charles came downstairs. And, although there was nothing like pineapple upside down cake, his mom did produce a fresh box of Freihofer’s Chocolate Chip Cookies, whose presence in the house was either an extraordinary coincidence, or proof positive that Timothy’s mom and Cathryn were sometimes holding out on him in the dessert department.
“I’ll clear the table,” Cathryn said, “that way you guys can spend a little time together before Charles has to go home.”
“You wanna walk around the block?” Timothy asked.
“Sounds good to me.”
Charles waited until they were halfway down the street before he turned and said:
“Timothy, you didn’t tell me your mom was gay.”
Timothy was so mentally blindsided that such words could come so blatantly out of Charles’ mouth, he almost didn’t know what to say.
“My mom is not gay,” he said.
“Then who is Cathryn?”
“Cathryn is her roommate.”
Charles shook his head.
“I saw the upstairs of your house. Cathryn is not your mom’s roommate.”
“She is,” Timothy insisted, “she sleeps in the third bedroom.”
“Timothy, that’s the guest room, there are macrame pillows on the bed. No one puts macrame pillows on their own bed. Besides, I looked in your mom’s bedroom.”
“You looked in my mom’s bedroom?”
“You don’t have to be a detective, there are two sets of slippers in there, one on either side of the bed...”
Timothy hid his face in his hands. He could barely bring himself to look into that bedroom. The fact that Charles had looked in there and saw their slippers? It felt like someone had pried open his chest, like at age ten he was actually going to have a heart attack.
“Timothy, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“How would you know?” Timothy said. “I know your dad died and everything, but he was a hero, not some...”
Timothy stopped talking. He had instantly regretted saying anything about Charles’ dad, which seemed really out of bounds, but on some level there was truth in what had flown out of his mouth. Not in terms of a loss that couldn’t be measured, but a story that could be talked about openly, with pride.
They both stopped walking. Charles thought for a moment about what he was going to say, and when he did speak, it was almost a non sequitur.
“Remember that day those kids called me Oreo?”
Timothy was still looking at the ground.
“Do you?” Charles asked again.
“Yeah, I remember.”
“You know why they called me that?”
“No.”
“I’ll tell you why...they were insinuating that I’m black on the outside but white on the inside. They were trying to make me feel bad, but they failed. You know why? Would you like to know who I am on the inside?”
This seemed a rhetorical question, but Timothy said, “Yes.”
“I’m me, that’s who. I’m the person my dad raised, I’m the person my mom is still raising. And you know something? I love my parents. I’m glad they raised me exactly the way they did. I wouldn’t be any other way.”
Timothy looked up to Charles.
“Do they call you that a lot?”
“On and off. And, like I said, I’ve been called a hell of a lot worse by people who think I’m too black, but I’m not even going to get into that...the point is, Timothy, you can’t spend your life worrying about what other people think of you...
“What I said tonight at dinner? I meant it. Yeah, this investigation has been way more interesting than baseball practice, but the best thing about it? has been hanging out with you. And if I could wish one thing for you, it would be the strength not to give two shits about what anybody else thinks of you, because you’re a great guy, and I’m proud you’re my friend.”
Charles reached out and put a brotherly hand on Timothy’s shoulder. Like the time Charles and his mom had held his hands when they’d said grace, there was something true, and strong and loving about having the weight of Charles’ hand reassuringly resting on his shoulder like this.
Timothy looked up at Charles briefly. His gaze was hard to hold at this moment, his feelings were so raw. He’d heard every word Charles had said, and on one level, he knew that what Charles had said contained some truth.
It would be quite another thing to put this truth into practice.
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