There was something about the way she answered that felt evasive. I pressed her.
“Nothing else you can think of?” I said.
Hunter shrugged.
“Hunter Morgan,” her mother said sternly.
Hunter looked plaintively at her mother, who prodded her with a nod.
“Well, sometimes Tinsley would say she’s coming over, but then she’d decide to hang out with Chopper instead of coming here.”
“And who is Chopper?” I asked.
“Tinsley’s boyfriend,” Hunter said, raising her eyebrows with a smirk.
“You don’t approve.”
“Chopper isn’t exactly someone who Tinsley could bring home,” Hunter said, looking down at her hands.
“Why is that?”
“Because Chopper comes from the West Side.”
Which I knew right away was code for “He’s black.”
3
THE DREAM WAS BACK. I stood in the shallow end of the empty pool, staring at the shimmering reflection of my face in the cold water. My neck was curved forward beyond horizontal, and I could feel the burn of the hot sun on my skin. I tried lifting my head, but the pressure was too strong. I couldn’t see Marco’s fingers, but I could feel their strength, and my mind drifted to thoughts of what they must’ve looked like. They were long and forceful, their grip on my head firm and controlling, like an athlete palming a basketball before going up for a dunk. Every time I struggled to move my head to the side to avoid the water hitting my face, those fingers tightened and brought me back, bending my neck even farther, my nose now wet from the small waves dancing along the water’s surface. Was Marco going to kill me? He was my favorite counselor at camp. I admired him so much. Didn’t he know that?
The chlorine. Its caustic scent traveled up my flared nostrils and permeated my brain, the intensity causing my stomach to tighten and the back of my throat to convulse. I could hear voices and yelling. There were many of them, but I couldn’t make out their words—only Marco’s. “You better fuckin’ listen to me from now on! I’m gonna teach you a lesson.” He kept screaming the words, each time his voice getting louder and angrier, my heart racing faster.
My legs, thin but strong for a boy my age, were growing tired under his weight on my back. I had lost track of how long he’d had me in the water as my focus abruptly shifted from my reflection in its surface to thoughts of drowning and the fact that no one who was watching was brave enough to jump in and help me.
Then it happened. He pushed me under. He caught me off guard, so I wasn’t able to close my lips fast enough. As the water rushed into my mouth, its coldness shocked my teeth. Water surged up into my nose, and I reflexively thrashed my head from side to side, desperate to clear my airways. My muscles tightened and my entire body felt reinvigorated. I was to learn only as I got older about the fight-or-flight response the body immediately goes through when faced with an acute stressor. Sudden biochemical changes occur at the cellular level that prepare you to either fight or run away from danger. You don’t think; rather, your body just jumps into action.
I tried to wiggle him off my back, but he was too heavy. I tried lifting my head out of the water, but the grip of his hand was too strong to break. I tore at his arm pressed against my chest in a wrestler’s hold, but my wet hands were no match for his muscular, hairy forearms. I was a strong swimmer even as a twelve-year-old, stronger than kids much older; in the water I found comfort and joy, not fear.
But now above me, the voices and screams were gone. Under the water, I was in total silence. I saw my mother’s face in front of me and heard her cheering me on to fight. I searched for my father but couldn’t find him. It was her voice that spoke to me, calmly and confidently. “You are strong. You are a terrific swimmer. Do what you’ve been taught how to do.”
I reached up and raked my fingers across Marco’s hand gripping the back of my head. At the same time, I rolled my right shoulder up to shift his weight and throw off his balance. His legs were wrapped around my waist, but this left him vulnerable to any torque I could generate from what strength remained in my legs and the quickness of the movement in my shoulders. The maneuver worked. He reacted to regain his dominance, but he released the pressure of his lock on my chest and head just long enough for me to bring my head above the water.
I lurched up in my bed, staring into the darkness. My breathing was heavy. Tears fell down the side of my face. I felt relieved and lost at the same time. The rush of oxygen filled my lungs as I took in deep inhalations. My attacker was no longer there. Finally, I was safe.
“WHAT THE HELL DO you want?”
The reliably gruff commander Rory Burke pulled up a chair, cleaned off the seat with the back of his cap, and sat down. He was a big, middle-aged man, his muscles a little more rounded than they’d been during his bodybuilding heyday some twenty years ago, but they were still big enough to fill out his eternally crisp white shirt. He never suited up in a protective vest like other, reasonable police officers and wore a jacket only when the temperatures plunged well south of freezing. Even then, he didn’t wear gloves. He was the son of immigrants, tough as they came and a man of his word. Burke had been my direct supervisor when I was on the force. Since then, he had worked his way up through the ranks and was now running the South Area Detective Division. He was also a man who saw little use for pleasantries.
“I ordered you the usual,” I said, tossing back a few salt-and-vinegar chips and chasing them down with some ice-cold root beer. We were sitting in the back of a Potbelly Sandwich Shop on Roosevelt Road in the South Loop, just around the corner from my office. I could see Burke’s unmarked car idling on the street next to a fire hydrant. Gibbons, his driver, sat behind the wheel with his sunglasses on, watching a steady stream of young coeds from nearby Columbia College walk across the street.
Burke, who once was my commander when I was a lowly patrolman, might’ve ascended into the department brass, but the title and big office hadn’t changed a thing about him. He was a throwback, still the same cop who had ridden thousands of patrols in Englewood, a tough place to earn stripes when you were a big white officer with an Irish name stamped on your shield. He never cut corners and was as fair a man as you could find in a city built on backroom deals brokered in dark rooms and dimly lit bars. Burke was the one who had convinced me to settle my lawsuit against the city for constructively terminating me after I refused to go along with a cover-up. He told me that I was a good cop, but good cops weren’t always an asset to the department, and if I stayed, I would always have a target on my back.
Ten years later not a day went by that I didn’t think about the case that had ended my career. A call had come in about a suspicious teen in an alley off Eighty-Seventh and South Eggleston, acting erratically. Patrol car pulled up. Officers jumped out, screamed at him to stop running, then proceeded to empty five bullets in his back. They had tried to say that Marquan Payton had come at them aggressively and wouldn’t heed their warnings to stand down. But none of the forensics made sense. The kid was unarmed, and the officer who murdered him had a history of using excessive force when it came to young black men.
But it had also been an election year, the mayoral race was getting tighter each week, and the city was already a powder keg, given the increase in police brutality complaints over the previous year. Another suspicious police shooting would be like putting a torch to a heap of dry kindling. It also would be a disaster for Mayor Bailey’s reelection bid, the first time in a decade he had faced a real challenge from a well-liked alderman from Logan Square. The Fifth Floor sent the commander of the detective division the directive to bury the case.