John noticed that they were speaking in the same hushed tones they used in the police pied-à-terre years before.
“How do you feel about me now?” he asked. He would have touched her but his wrists and ankles were chained together preventing him from raising his hands more than a few inches above his lap.
“I don’t feel anything about you.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I was the senior officer on the Lorraine case.”
“That’s not it,” he said using his most professorial tone. “You could have passed your notes on, let a junior cop come out here.”
“Did you waive extradition because of me?”
“Not you sitting here but it was time to come home and you’re part of home.”
“There’s nothing between us,” she said.
John smiled at the attempt.
“I think about you,” he confessed. “You taught me about physical love. Sex, sure, but love too. A man’s first love never leaves him.”
“Are you going to talk about that at your trial?”
“No,” he said, thinking that this was very much like Carlinda’s worry, “never.”
“It was just a fling anyway,” she said, tossing her hair as she used to do. “I mean I was wrong because you were underage but you were so sweet...”
John swiveled his head to see her profile as she talked.
“... You were doing your father’s job and going to school,” Colette went on. “You didn’t have a mother around to look after you...”
She turned to look at him.
“... I guess I loved you a little.”
“Yeah,” he said feeling like that sixteen-year-old boy again, the boy who cried because he needed her so much.
“But I knew we couldn’t stay together.”
“Why not?” young Cornelius Jones asked.
“You were just a boy and I was with Harry... we were engaged.”
John winced.
“What happened with Lorraine?” she asked.
“I don’t want to talk about that.”
“The judge and the prosecutor are going to ask. Your defense attorney too.”
“The last thing you told me was that you were going to a fertility clinic. Did you have a baby?”
Colette’s expression changed from caring to something nervous, vulnerable.
“Yes,” she said.
“Boy?”
“Christian.” The name called up a smile to her lips. “He’s just now seventeen.”
“You remember the day we met? You were with your partner. What was his name?”
“Tom Pena.”
“Yeah. I was scared and you were beautiful.”
“Did I tell you I was pregnant with Chris?”
“Just that you went to the fertility clinic. It was the day you helped me get dad out of the hospital.”
“I didn’t even think you paid attention to me back then. I mean all you wanted was sex all the time.”
“You too.”
“Why didn’t you fight the extradition? You could have beat it.”
“My mother found out where I was and came to live with me. While she was there I was her son and your lover, my father’s student and caretaker. It was like I had turned it all off but everything was still there inside me.”
She put a hand on his arm, saying, “When they ask you if you killed Lorraine say no.”
“I understand,” he said.
“I thought I had rid myself of you, CC. I thought when I broke it off that I could be with Harry.”
“Don’t you love him?”
“Yes. Of course I do. But I never forgot you. There was something so sweet about the way you surrendered but you were, still are, the strongest man I ever met.”
“Do you have a picture of Christian?”
Colette gave him a look both contemplative and worried. She took a cell phone from her purse, turned it on and flipped around until she’d found something.
It was the photograph of a teenage boy from the waist up. His caramel-colored face resisting the camera, a space between his front teeth, a skateboard hugged to his chest. He smiled, being forbearing about yet another photograph.
“He looks a lot like my father,” John said, “only with our skin.”
“His father doesn’t know. The doctor told me the test showed that Harry was unable to have kids. He gave me the report to show him but I never did.
“I’ve never forgotten you, CC. I see you every morning.”
27
Thinking about his son John lost track of the rest of the journey. Colette spoke to him in the same hushed tones. He answered her but his mind was orbiting the idea of an heir. Before now, Cornelius and then John had been an only son lamenting the loss of his parents. But now there was a child of his own blood that came from Naples, Italy, and backwoods Mississippi to the Lower East Side via Jimmy Grimaldi.
For the first time the death of Chapman Lorraine took on meaning other than guilt. The landlord’s death brought Cornelius and Colette together. His blood consecrated the life of his son Christian.
At Kennedy Airport Colette and Sergeant Christo turned John over to court officers who were tasked with transferring him to Rikers Island.
Colette whispered, “Be strong in there, CC. I’ll make sure they look after you.”
He was moved from airport to van, van to prison intake. At Rikers he was photographed and fingerprinted, searched for weapons, provided with a dark yellow uniform and then brought to one of the smaller holding cells.
“Lieutenant Van Dyne don’t want your hair messed,” one guard said. “She says she don’t want the judge to feel sorry for your sorry ass.”
John’s cellmates were three men — one white, another black and a small umber-colored man who looked to be Puerto Rican.
The big black man had a smile that was both friendly and hungry.
Blocking John’s view of the other two inmates he asked, “What’s your name?”
“John... um, Cornelius.”
“Hello, John Cornelius. My name is Andre.” The big man held out a hand. When John reached out, Andre gripped hard and pulled him close.
“There’s a set of rules we live by in here, JC.” Andre’s breath was hot on the side of the ex-professor’s face. “You’re gonna be my friend and I will protect you from these other motherfuckers here. And you see over there?” Andre gestured toward an empty corner of the cell.
“That’s gonna be our private place,” the big man continued. “Whenever we’re over there you will do whatever I tell you to do. When we’re over there we will be alone, just you and me. Nobody’s gonna hear you and ain’t nobody gonna come.”
John glanced over at the other two men. The white man turned his head away. The shorter, broad-shouldered Puerto Rican watched dispassionately as if Andre and John were two competing creatures in the wild.
Andre took John’s chin with powerful fingers applying pressure until the young man’s eyes were again on him.
“Don’t look at them.” He shoved John toward the private corner. “They ain’t gonna help you. They cain’t. Now lemme see some dick.”
John wondered at what moment he would take Andre’s life. He might get beaten, even raped before the chance offered itself but the time would come... soon.
“I ain’t got all day, John Cornelius.”
“Hey, Andre,” a voice with a Spanish lilt said. “Leave him alone, man. He my homey.”
“This ain’t none’a your business, Velázquez,” Andre complained.
The much shorter Puerto Rican stood up from his cot. “I said leave him alone. I ain’t tellin’ you again.”
“Not till I get me some. You can have him then.”
“I will break your head open like a melon.”
Andre hesitated a second, two... then pushed John away. He went to the cot that the Puerto Rican had vacated and sat down heavily.