Now what?
Stay here and watch the red dot? That didn’t make much sense. But if he drove in and tried to track Adam down, he might move again.
Mike stared at the red dot.
He clicked the icon that would tell him the address. It gave him 128 Tower Street. He clicked for the address link. It was a residence. He asked for a satellite view-this was where the map turned into exactly what it sounded like: a photo from a satellite above the street. It showed him very little, the top of buildings in the middle of a city street. He moved down the block and clicked for address links. Nothing much popped up.
So who or what was he visiting?
He asked for a telephone number to 128 Tower Street. It was an apartment building so it didn’t have one. He needed an apartment number.
Now what?
He hit MapQuest. The START or default address was called “home.” Such a simple word yet suddenly it seemed too warm and personal. The printout told him it would take forty-nine minutes to get there.
He decided to drive in and see what was what.
Mike grabbed his laptop with the built-in wireless. His plan, as it were, was that if Adam was no longer there, he would drive until he could piggyback on someone else’s wireless network and look up Adam’s location on the GPS again.
Two minutes later, Mike got into his car and started on his way.
15
AS he pulled onto Tower Street, not far from where the GPS had told him Adam was, Mike scanned the block for his son or a familiar face or vehicle. Did any of them drive yet? Olivia Burchell, he thought. Had she turned seventeen? He wasn’t sure. He wanted to check the GPS, see if Adam was still in the right area. He pulled to the side and turned on his laptop. No wireless network detected.
The crowd outside his car window was young and dressed in black with pale faces and black lipstick and eye mascara. They wore chains and had strange facial (and probably corporeal) piercings and, of course, the requisite tattoo, the best way to show that you’re independent and shocking by fitting in and doing what all your friends do. Nobody is comfortable in his own skin. The poor kids want to look rich, what with the expensive sneakers and the bling and what have you. The rich want to look poor, gangsta tough, apologizing for their softness and what they see as their parents’ excess, which, without doubt, they will emulate someday soon. Or was something less dramatic at play here? Was the grass simply greener on the other side? Mike wasn’t sure.
Either way he was glad Adam had only taken to the black clothes. So far, no piercing, tattoos or makeup. So far.
The emos-they were no longer called goths, according to Jill, though her friend Yasmin had insisted that they were two separate entities and this led to much debate-dominated this particular stretch. They grazed about with open mouths and vacant eyes and slacker bad posture. Some people lined up at a nightclub on one corner, others frequented a bar on another. There was a place advertising “nonstop 24-hour Go-Go” and Mike couldn’t help but wonder if that was true, if there was really a go-go dancer there every day, even at four A.M. or two in the afternoon. How about on Christmas morning or July Fourth? And who were the sad people who both worked and frequented such a place at such an hour?
Could Adam be inside?
There was no way to know. Dozens of such places lined the streets. Big bouncers with earplugs you usually associate with either the Secret Service or Old Navy employees stood guard. It used to be only some clubs had bouncers. Now, it seemed, all had at least two beefy guys-always with a tight black T-shirt that exposed bloated biceps, always with a shaved head as if hair were a sign of weakness-working the door.
Adam was sixteen. These places weren’t supposed to let anyone in under the age of twenty-one. Unlikely Adam, even with a fake ID, could pass. But who knows? Maybe there was a club in this area that was known for looking the other way. That would explain why Adam and his friends would drive so far to go here. Satin Dolls, the famed gentle- men’s club that was used as Bada Bing! on The Sopranos, was just a few miles from their house. But Adam wouldn’t be able to get in.
That had to be why he came all the way here.
Mike drove down the street with the laptop in the passenger seat next to him. He stopped at the corner and hit VIEW WIRELESS NETWORKS. Two popped up but both had security features. He couldn’t get on. Mike moved another hundred yards, tried again. On his third time, he hit pay dirt. “Netgear” network came up with no security features at all. Mike quickly hit the CONNECT button and he was on the Internet.
He had already bookmarked the GPS home page and told it to save his screen name. Now he brought it up and typed in his simple password-ADAM-and waited.
The map came up. The red dot hadn’t moved. According to the disclaimer, the GPS only gave you markings to within forty feet. So it was hard to pinpoint exactly where Adam was, but he was definitely close by. Mike shut down the computer.
Okay, now what?
He found a spot up ahead and pulled in. The area would be kindly described as seedy. There were more windows boarded up than containing anything resembling the glass family. The brick all seemed to be a muddy brown and in various stage of either disintegration or collapse. The stench of sweat and something harder to define clogged the air. Storefronts had their graffiti-splattered metal hoods pulled down in protection. Mike’s breath felt hot in his throat. Everyone seemed to be perspiring.
The women wore spaghetti straps and small shorts, and at the risk of seeming hopelessly old-fashioned and politically incorrect, he wasn’t sure if these were just teenage partyers or working girls.
He stepped out of his car. A tall black woman approached and said, “Hey, Joe, want to party with Latisha?”
Her voice was deep. Her hands were big. And now Mike wasn’t sure “her” would be accurate.
“No, thanks.”
“You sure? It would open up new worlds.”
“I’m sure it would, but my worlds are open enough as it is.”
Posters of bands you never heard of with names like Pap Smear and Gonorrhea Pus plastered any free space. On one stoop, a mother propped her baby on her hip, sweat glistening off her face, a bare lightbulb swinging behind her. Mike spotted a makeshift parking lot in an abandoned alleyway. The sign said ALL NIGHT, $10. A Latino man wearing a wifebeater tee and cut-off shorts stood by the drive, counting money. He eyed Mike and said, “What you want, bro?”
“Nothing.”
Mike moved on. He found the address that the GPS showed him. It was a walk-up residence jammed between two loud clubs. He looked inside and saw about a dozen buzzers to ring. No names on the buzzers-just numbers and letters to indicate each.
So now what?
He didn’t have a clue.
He could wait out here for Adam. But what good would that do? It was ten o’clock at night. The places were just starting to fill up. If his son was here partying and had directly disobeyed him, it could be hours before he came out. And then what? Would Mike pop out in front of Adam and his friends and say, “Aha, got ya!” Would that somehow be helpful? How would Mike explain how he ended up here?
What did Mike and Tia want out of this anyway?
This was yet another problem with spying. Forget the obvious violation of privacy for the moment. There was the issue of enforcement. What do you do when you find something going on? Wouldn’t interfering and thus losing your child’s trust do as much or more damage as a night of underage drinking?
Depends.
Mike wanted to make sure his boy was safe. That was all. He remembered what Tia had said, something about our job being to escort them safely to adulthood. It was true in part. The teen years were so angst-filled, so hormone-fueled, so much emotion packed in and then raised to the tenth power-and it all passed so quickly. You couldn’t tell a teen that. If you could hand down one piece of wisdom to a teenager, it would be simple: This too shall pass-and it would pass quickly. They wouldn’t listen, of course, because that’s the beauty and waste of youth.