Tough Lessons Read online

  Tough Lessons

  By Chris Freeman

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1004

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © Working Partners Two 2013

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email [email protected].

  First Diversion Books edition August 2013

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-114-0

  1

  It was Yomi who spotted Eddie first. The big man was down on one knee outside his apartment, hand pressed against the door frame as if trying to climb to his feet. The retired policeman looked like he had been felled by a low blow. Yomi and his father, Joseph, wouldn’t have seen him at all if they had trusted the lift in the Highbridge Project but no one was foolish enough to use that these days. Instead, they always took the stairs and, from the open landing on the floor below, they could see the old guy, slumped on his knees like a beaten prizefighter.

  “What’s wrong with Uncle Eddie?” asked Yomi, genuine concern in the boy’s voice.

  Joseph Soyinka glanced down the corridor at the stooped, silver-haired figure and immediately thought heart attack. His son was already running toward the old man, calling his name and Joseph started after him. He was a tall, athletic man, who could cover the ground quicker than most men of forty-one. But then, hearing Yomi, Eddie calmly turned his head and raised his free hand in greeting, and Joseph immediately slowed his run to a walk, relief flooding through him. Eddie grasped the door frame with his other hand and rocked back and forth until he finally succeeded in hauling himself shakily to his feet.

  “I thought you were having a coronary,” said Joseph as he drew nearer. He wanted to chastise the old man, but it was hardly Eddie’s fault that Joseph worried too much over him.

  “Me?” answered Eddie incredulously. “Are you kidding?” He wasn’t looking at Joseph. He was already engrossed in a mock boxing match with Yomi. “I just got that stiffness in my joints, is all.” He held up a hand to block the excitable blows of the twelve-year-old with his palm. “You’re more likely to succumb than me, my friend, with your life, all that stress and pressure, sitting on your ass in that cab all day.”

  “Thanks,” said Joseph, as he watched Eddie finally succeed in his aim of knocking Yomi’s Yankees cap from his head.

  “Hey!” said the boy. “Don’t handle the merchandise, Eddie.” But he was laughing along with his honorary uncle.

  “What are you doing out here on your hands and knees anyhow?” asked Joseph, and then he stopped abruptly because the reason suddenly became all too clear. “Oh,” he said, as he surveyed the once-pristine door of his friend’s apartment. The white door had been defaced by graffiti, a huge, lurid symbol daubed on it in red paint. Joseph could clearly make out the letters CK with a downward arrow at the end.

  Though the symbol meant nothing to him, it had an ominous, threatening look. Some of the paint had run and the surplus had rolled down the length of the door in little streams that looked like streaks of blood. “What the hell is…”

  “Kids,” said Eddie, too quickly. “Ain’t nothing.”

  “Looks like something to me,” said Joseph, as he surveyed the handiwork uneasily. “Is this a gang tag?”

  Eddie just shrugged, as if it was of no consequence to him who had defaced his door but the concern in his eyes told a different story. “Just some punk with a spray can who can’t pass a door without messing it up.” He opened his palms as if that was sufficient explanation for the huge, red symbol on his front door.

  Strange how they passed everybody else’s on your floor, but yours was the only door with graffiti, thought Joseph. Why would they target Eddie? Not many in their South Bronx project knew Eddie Filan used to be a cop back in New Jersey, but maybe the gangs had discovered the truth. It seemed that almost forty years enforcing the law on the other side of the Hudson could have earned Eddie a little unwanted attention from the gangs. Joseph doubted it though. There was more to this. He was sure of it.

  Joseph’s friend nodded at the brush and the pot of white paint at his feet. “I’ll have it gone in no time. I was going to paint the door anyhow so it makes no difference to me.”

  “Still…”

  “It ain’t nothing, Joseph, quit worrying.” There was a mild rebuke in the words and Joseph decided it might be time to drop the subject. “Anyhow, where you guys going on this cold morning?”

  “School,” answered Yomi, and he pulled a face.

  “Ah yes, remind me to light a candle for the poor teachers of Antoinette Irving Junior High.”

  “Why?” asked the boy.

  “Because they have to force an education into the thick skulls of no-mark, little kids who wanna be any place but there, that’s why,” and he grabbed Yomi, wrapping a pasty arm round his neck, and pretended to bang his fist into the laughing youngster’s head to illustrate his point.

  “Come on, Yomi. We’re going to be late,” Joseph called out, and then he asked Eddie, “You want to call in for dinner tonight? There’ll be more than enough for three.”

  “Oh, I don’t want to be no trouble,” said Eddie.

  It was always the same, thought Joseph. Two or three times a week they went through this elaborate ritual. Eddie wanted to come to dinner and they wanted to have him there, but it was always a struggle to get him to agree.

  “We’d be glad to have you,” Joseph assured him, and before Eddie could bring up the subject of paying his way, he added, “We’ll provide the food. You bring the whiskey. That okay?”

  Apparently it was. Eddie seemed happy with this arrangement. He had been happier still to complete the education of his friend from Lagos when he first introduced him to the unequalled joys of Irish whiskey. “Never Scotch, Joseph,” he would caution. “That’s inferior witches’ brew made by heathens in skirts. You’re lucky I met you in time to give you that piece of sage advice before you strayed from the path of righteousness and were lost forever.”

  For Joseph, the numbing effect of a large glass of whiskey at the end of a long day was often what he needed. On some nights he couldn’t sleep at all; others saw his rest disturbed by nightmares from the old country. The whiskey dulled the pain and helped to keep the memories at bay. Apara would have understood that, God bless her good soul.

  Joseph stole one last glance at the tag on his friend’s door. The sight disturbed him, because it could surely mean only one thing. One of the many gangs that were slowly taking over the Highbridge Project had singled Eddie out, putting their very own mark of Cain on his door and no one else’s. What would happen to the old man next—a bit of petty vandalism, a break-in, or worse? Joseph made a conscious decision to put those thoughts from his mind, as he coaxed his son along the corridor and down the next flight of stairs.

  From the moment they arrived at Antoinette Irving, it was clear this wasn’t going to be a normal school day. The four police cars, parked at odd angles in front of the school, were testimony to that. One thing was certain: they weren’t here to investigate the junior high school’s truancy record.

  The squad cars had been abandoned right outside the front door, their lights flashing madly. One officer stood guard over them while the others were occupied by whatever was going on inside the main building. He was the unlu
cky one, forced to stamp his feet and clasp his gloved hands together like he was applauding something, as he tried to stave off the cold from the New York winter’s most unforgiving day so far. Around the cars, a gaggle of parents stood talking animatedly among themselves. Some clutched their kids, as if the danger might still be present, but Joseph could tell from the demeanor of the officer standing outside the old fifties-built, gray stone building that this was no Columbine-style siege, with mad gunmen still on the loose. This was a crime scene.

  Something very serious had to have happened inside the school. The way the cops had sent four cars instead of one, the level of urgency displayed by leaving them so hastily, in a seemingly random manner, meant something major was going on inside Antoinette Irving. He doubted very much if any of its eight hundred students would be entering the school building today.

  As Joseph eased his cab into a quiet corner of the car park, he told Yomi to stay close. The wide-eyed boy nodded, though his gaze stayed on the two grim-faced police officers who walked out of the school to confer with their colleague. They were all dressed in the same standard-issue quilted jackets in an effort to keep out the chill. Yomi seemed more interested in the standard-issue sidearms that hung from their belts. All of them carried the Smith & Wesson 5906 semiautomatics that cops in New York had favored for years now. Eddie was a big fan of the 9mm semiautomatic, pouring scorn on the new breed of policemen who preferred lighter, showier models like the Sig Sauer and the Glock. There was a brief discussion while the officers reached agreement, and then they fanned out in an attempt to ease the concerned parents and their bewildered children back to form a wider perimeter outside the ancient school.

  As Joseph and his son drew closer, they passed a pretty little girl from Yomi’s class. Laura Williams was a sixth grader like his son. Her long, honey-colored hair was half hidden by a woollen bobble hat, there were tears streaked down her face, and both of her arms were wrapped tightly round her bright-red school bag, as she clutched it to herself. It looked like she was worried someone might steal the bag, but Joseph knew that wasn’t it. He had seen people in shock before and Laura Williams was hugging her bag for comfort. Her father, Merve, stood dumbly by her side, a hand on her shoulder, as if he had no idea how to console his little girl. He looked pale, perhaps even in shock himself. But what had he heard? Then Joseph spotted Emilio Romero, another father who lived on their project. He walked by with his young son, having evidently decided there was no point in hanging around.

  “Somebody sliced up a teacher,” he told Joseph indelicately, making no attempt to lower his voice, despite the presence of their children. Romero sounded almost gleeful, like he couldn’t wait to be the one to impart the grim news to others.

  Joseph’s thoughts instantly turned to his son’s teacher, Brigitte, but, before he could ask Romero which teacher had been sliced up, the man was gone. Please, he thought, don’t let it be her, and the old, all-too-familiar feeling of dread settled over him. He scanned the building anxiously, his eyes settling on the room Brigitte De Moyne used to mark homework at the end of every school day, a room he had been in recently. There were three large glass windows here that overlooked the car park. Joseph noticed the one at the far end had been defaced, but this wasn’t graffiti and there were no gang tags here. He peered intently at the long, red, vertical mark that was smeared down the inside of the window. Even from this distance it couldn’t be anything but blood.

  2

  “Stay with me,” said Joseph firmly and he steered his son toward the rear of the school. Though he far from relished the prospect of bringing a twelve-year-old onto a crime scene, Joseph was damned if he was going to wait outside with no news of Brigitte while his anxiety continued to grow. Since he couldn’t be sure whether the attacker was still around, he wasn’t letting his son out of his sight, leaving Yomi standing in front of the school in the South Bronx on his own. Joseph skirted along the side of the building, around the corner that looked out onto the playing fields. The grass on the football pitches, between the school’s two main buildings, had been frosted white and the water in its pond frozen hard over night. You could probably walk across it in safety now if you chose to. Joseph led Yomi to a side door that opened out onto the sports fields. There was no police presence here and the door was unlocked so Joseph quickly opened it and they went inside.

  Father and son walked down a wide, empty corridor with a heavily waxed floor that was lined on either side with metal lockers. Dominating one wall was a glass display case that held sporting trophies from a more illustrious era. The junior high took its kids from the surrounding area and, to the eternal shame of its principal, the fifth to eighth graders of this neighborhood seemed to view sport as something inflicted on them rather than a noble pursuit to be strived at for its own sake. There were no famous sportsmen and -women among its notable alumni, only a soap star, a newsreader, and a convicted serial killer, the latter being easily the most talked about.

  Joseph knew his way around the building from the parents’ evenings he’d been encouraged to attend, although at Antoinette Irving they always seemed pretty stunned when anyone showed up. He was heading for the office Brigitte used for marking homework. Joseph had slowly come to know the teacher well and they had struck up a friendship as Yomi progressed through the school.

  Joseph rounded the corner, his son a yard or two behind him, struggling to keep up with his father’s stride. They were immediately confronted by a small group of police and shocked school staff who were standing around looking helpless. They were in a large, open area that had the main door of the school building on one side and a row of classrooms on the other. Joseph’s gaze shot past them to one of the schoolrooms. It had two glass panels in the door, separated by a horizontal wooden strut, and, like the window he’d seen earlier, they were both smeared with blood. It looked like someone bleeding heavily had fallen against them. Joseph’s gaze went to the floor outside the classroom. There were distinct drops of blood on the tiny wooden tiles and larger splashes on the pale-cream walls. It appeared that somebody had been stabbed in the corridor and had desperately tried to reach the sanctuary of the classroom? Instinctively, Joseph used an arm to prevent Yomi from getting too close, but his son could not have failed to see the telltale signs of the attack.

  “How’d you get in here?” Principal Decker demanded, as if Joseph’s presence in the school building was a personal affront to him. Decker was a tall, thin, serious man who wore wire-framed glasses over his long nose and sported a permanent frown, in case you’d forgotten how much responsibility rested on his bony shoulders. He considered Antoinette Irving to be his own personal fiefdom and, though he knew Joseph as one of the few parents to attend the extracurricular activities he was always so anxious to promote, he now evidently viewed him as little more than a trespasser.

  “Who’s he?” demanded a police officer before Joseph could answer the principal’s question. It was asked as if Joseph wasn’t standing right there in front of them both.

  “One of our parents,” answered Decker, making the last word sound like an irritant. Decker always managed to convey the feeling that he could run the school exactly as he wanted if it wasn’t for the intrusion of meddling parents and their inconvenient children, who insisted on turning up there each morning to ruin the well-ordered structure of his day.

  The cop advanced on Joseph and said, “Arms in the air.”

  Joseph complied, and the cop patted him down for weapons. He seemed satisfied when he didn’t find any. Thankfully he didn’t bother to pat down Yomi, who seemed quite alarmed at the prospect, but who wouldn’t be scared of cops at his age?

  “It don’t matter.” The cop was speaking to Decker. “We gonna need to speak to everybody.” Then he addressed Joseph directly once more. “Just stand back and don’t touch nothing, you hear?”

  Joseph ignored this. “What happened?”

  “Teacher been stabbed,” said the cop routinely, like he�
��d been telling people all morning.

  “Serious?” But Joseph knew the answer already.

  “Dead,” said the cop.

  Joseph wanted to ask who was dead but his mouth had gone dry.

  “Joseph?” the voice was soft, female, puzzled, and coming from the side of the room.

  Joseph turned to see Brigitte De Moyne standing there in front of him, completely unharmed. Relief flooded through him.

  “Brigitte, I thought…” and he didn’t need to finish the sentence for she understood immediately.

  “I use the adjoining room,” she said, and he realized in his concern that he had been mistaken. Hers was the next window along. He put his arm round his son’s shoulders and coaxed Yomi toward Brigitte, putting a little distance between them and the flustered principal, steering his son away from the blood on the walls in the process.

  At school, Brigitte De Moyne tied up her long hair, wore little makeup, and sported the practical, sexless clothes she favored for teaching but she was still an undeniably attractive woman. A brunette in her midthirties who was able to turn heads even now, judging by the way the cop was looking at her.

  “Who then?” asked Joseph.

  “Hernando Lopez.” She said it sadly, and Joseph got an instant image of the diminutive math teacher, a popular and gentle soul who nonetheless seemed eminently capable of controlling the tougher kids he came up against on a day-to-day basis.

  “That’s terrible. What happened?”

  “They are saying someone got into the building after everyone else had gone home and stabbed Hernando. I can’t believe it, Joseph; he was such a nice, sweet, gentle guy. They found his body this morning. He’d locked himself in the room…” Perhaps she was too upset to put it into words or maybe it was the presence of Yomi that prevented her from finishing, but the implication was clear. Someone had knifed the teacher in the corridor. He had managed to escape to his classroom but only succeeded in delaying the inevitable. Hernando had bled to death in his own classroom.