"The trolls? That's all you had to say."
"Don't let them hear you call them that."
CHAPTER THREE
Wayne got the phone call at 7:30 in the morning. A wave of unruly locks fell onto his face as he reached for the phone. His mattress groaned in protest as he rolled over. Typically, he didn't take calls that early because clients had to respect the boundaries of his life. As much as he might have cared about them, he wasn't at their beck and call nor was he their taxicab, nor their nursemaid, nor their errand boy. Their lives were steeped in (mostly self-created) drama and he had to carve out rest from it or be forever caught up in it. Kay sniffed at the back door, pawing quietly to be let out. Wayne poured food into his bowl and refilled the water bowl. He opened the back door and stared at his phone. "One missed call. Parker." He always checked the messages left on his voicemail. The frantic-edged voice of Parker Griffin trembled through the poor connection of the cell phone.
"Hey man. You got to ring me back. Someone dropped a body on my block."
Wayne sighed. He wouldn't have time to run into the offices at Outreach Inc. and his mouth watered for the taste of too-strong coffee sweetened with honey if he was lucky (donations were down and they hadn't been able to buy sugar in a while). Two phone calls later, and he was on his way to the address Parker gave him. The other call had been to the office to let them know it was going to be one of those days.
The battle for Parker's soul had been waged in earnest for the last year. Parker was one of the many boys on the cusp of manhood who could go either way. Extremely intelligent, Parker's laconic drift through his daily routine belied his eyes which little escaped and keen mind which analyzed street scenarios with the acumen of a political strategist. Wayne only wished that Parker could imagine himself as anything but destined for street soldiering. Wayne would get him into a GED program; Parker would nearly finish, then drop out. He'd get him into job training; he'd nearly finish, then drop out. He'd get him a job, he'd nearly get through probation and then quit. Yet there was something special about Parker – a desperately clung-to innocence or the measure of something salvageable or maybe he simply saw a bit of himself in the boy – that made him keep trying. All Parker needed was to sink his hooks into the straight life and not be tripped up by the lures of short cuts and the promise of easy cash.
Every war demanded an enemy and in this war the enemy came in the form of Junie Walker. As Wayne approached, Junie smiled stupidly, high on whatever he'd managed to get a hold of that morning. The skin of his face stretched tight over his skull. Wayne took the measure of the man in one meeting. A would-be soldier not nearly as competent as he aspired to be. If Wayne could spot that Junie was losing his own battle with the needle, surely Junie's employers had to know that he was a catastrophic fuck-up waiting to happen.
Parker led Wayne down the alleyway, the path suffering from the erosion of green as grass sprouted in the many cracks of the sidewalk. Bushes – more branches than leaves, brown and long unpruned – overtook fences. A gap-toothed grin of missing slats, the remaining posts of the wood fence were either broken or spray-painted with the latest gang tags. ESG. Treize. The letters ICU within a circle. MerkyWater. Non-stop traffic ground along the road, dogs marked their trespass in harsh barks, and air-conditioning units barreled along like over-worked engines. Wayne stalked the too-familiar scene as if he were home.
"He's in there." Parker stopped short and pointed to a trash can.
"He?" Wayne asked, still studying Parker. He was troubled, though neither Parker nor Junie set off any survival alarms. However, Parker's posture bothered him. The careless shrug of his shoulder. The faux deference to Wayne. No, there was something calculated about this performance.
"The dead dude."
Wayne pulled the lid free from the bin. Arms and legs sprouted up, a potted plant of limbs. He jumped back, holding the lid as a shield. Inching forward again, as if at any moment the limbs might snare him, Wayne risked peering into the garbage can again. A naked black man was folded into the container. His head cocked at an unnatural angle, a small entry wound dotted his forehead. Bruised purple with a burned black rim, a small-caliber gun had done its work close up. Wayne couldn't help but note that his knees were ashy. Funny the things the mind chose to lock on to. A hard heart had to have walked up on this man whether he was in the life or not and ended him. Wayne searched Parker's eyes, but no longer saw any hope in them. Only a deadened hardness.
"The police are going to have some questions," Wayne said, not knowing what to do with the lid. He needed to make some phone calls, yet he didn't feel right covering the man like he was inconvenient trash. Nor leaving him exposed to all passers-by.
"You got my back though, right?" Parker asked.
"As long as you didn't have anything to do with this." Wayne continued to stare into the trashcan.
"Cool."
Junie skulked off, fading into the background of the alley, a rat scavenging for food in a dumpster then scuttling for cover when exposed. Suspicions aside, Wayne wouldn't give him up. To be known as a snitch would cost him the trust of all the kids he worked with. Every day he'd wonder if it'd be worth it if only to rid the world of a Junie or two.
Tying them up for hours, the police had plenty of questions for both Wayne and Parker. They had more questions, more for Parker especially, but were satisfied enough to let them go. Wayne had time to make the afternoon drop at Outreach Inc., a ministry for homeless and at-risk teenagers, so he swung by his house to get Kay. On the television – which he'd left on so that Kay wouldn't get lonely – the news reported that on the other side of town, six year-old Conant Walker had been shot while standing in front of his kitchen window. The day just kept getting better and better. He pushed past the crowd flanked by IMPD officers; onlookers – though not witnesses, as the interrogating uniforms found out – to the latest murder scene. The intersection of 10th and Rural marked one of the city's highest crime areas, yet he ambled about as if he wasn't a walking anomaly against the neighborhood backdrop of decay and violence. Kay tugged against the leash to get a better sniff of the area, but Wayne kept it taut. He knew better than to let the Rottweiler stray too far or to let him get past his guard. Even as he selected him from animal control, he was warned that the dog had no hope of being socialized. He'd been rescued – if rescued was indeed the proper term – from a dog-fighting ring. Abused and taunted for as long as he drew breath, his personality was mercurial on his best days. No, his fate was his scheduled euthanasia, for his sake and the public's. Wayne adopted him without hesitation. If Wayne didn't believe in redemption and hope, there was no point in him taking another breath.
Wayne graduated from Indiana University with a major in Computer and Information Science and a minor in Psychology and joined the staff of Outreach Inc. right out of school on the recommendation of his Bible study leader. As a case manager, he did a little bit of everything, but mostly what he did was build relationships with the teens and early twentysomethings who were his clients. Drop night was when Outreach Inc. provided meals and activities for their clients to get them away from their situations. It was a safe night off the streets for the kids. Funny how they still thought of themselves as kids even though most were in their late teens.
The Neighborhood Fellowship church building offered free space for Outreach Inc. The burnt brick facade, once a public school with the design sensibility of a penitentiary, overlooked 10th Street onto an abandoned gas station with a gravel lot.