A Hole in the Universe - Mary McGarry Morris [30]
The blaring siren filled the house. “It’s my father’s ladder,” he shouted, licking his cut and following her onto the porch, repeating it until she turned. “But I don’t know where they got it from. It wasn’t where it used to be, in the garage.”
“No, it’s mine!” She said Dennis had given it to her a few years ago. She kept it out back in the bushes against the foundation.
Searching the yard, the police found only flattened grass directly below the broken window. These were different cops from the earlier pair. One was black and the other Hispanic. Sleepy-eyed neighbors watched from their porches and open windows. The few who came out onto the sidewalk were men.
“Just in case,” Mrs. Jukas said as she put a nitroglycerin pill under her tongue. She’d had a heart attack last Christmas Day, she told Officer Pierce. He was black, a short, trim man whose erudite manner and hint of a British accent seemed to calm her. He suggested she spend the rest of the night with a friend or relative. “If I leave, they’ll be in here like rats.” She gestured down the street. “That’s what happened on the corner.” She told them how old Mr. Velez fell and broke his hip in the first snowstorm last winter. After a month in rehab he came home to find junkies cooking coke on his table, his kitchen ankle-deep in garbage.
“Yes, well, as they say, nature abhors a vacuum,” Officer Pierce conceded wearily.
Mrs. Jukas’s head snapped up. “That’s not nature! They’re worse than animals. They’re dead inside. In here,” she said, tapping her chest, “they’re dead. My husband used to tell me what the war was like. And now I look around, the house on the corner, the two behind me. And now even my own bedroom, and it’s just like he said, the fires and the glass breaking in the middle of the night. It is, it’s like a war, and here I am in the middle of it. Never ever in a million years did I think I’d end up like this.” A sob tore through her voice. “I’m afraid to leave my house, and I’m afraid to stay.”
Officer Pierce put his hand on her shoulder. “Maybe if someone could stay with you, for the rest of the night, anyway.” He raised his eyebrows at Gordon. “Maybe your neighbor here.”
“No!” she cried. “Absolutely not!”
CHAPTER 5
A booming drum pulse heralded the purple Navigator’s approaching splendor. The gilded hubcaps flashed in the damp morning light like spinning knives. The SUV stopped, and the sudden silence seemed amplified. Ronnie Feaster’s driver climbed down from his high perch in black, unlaced sneakers. He was a huge young man with ribbons of fat curled round the back of his shaved head. Large gold hoops dangled from both ears. Feaster glanced up at Gordon, who had just stepped onto his porch, and gave a brief salute. The side door of the SUV opened on a woman who clung to the frame with both hands. She peered down at the road as if from a dizzying precipice. “Come on! Get out!” the driver demanded. He grabbed for her, but she kicked and pushed him away. Feaster’s eyes held Gordon’s over the long brown cigarette he was lighting.
“Leave me alone! Leave me the fuck alone!” the woman screamed through the early-morning quiet as the driver pulled her out.
In the tenement across the way, the front door opened. The frizzy-haired girl ran wobbling down the steps on thick platform shoes laced up her skinny ankles.
“Jada! Jada!” the woman bellowed.
“You leave my mother alone, Polie!” the girl shouted. Her fists pummeled his beefy back as he dragged her mother out onto the street. The girl reared back and kicked him in the knee. Howling, he gave the woman a shove that sent her staggering into a heap. The girl was trying to pull her mother to her feet when he limped up and hit the back of her head so hard that she collapsed across her mother’s legs.
Feaster flicked his cigarette out the window. He smiled at Gordon. The driver reached into the van and pulled out a short, knobby club.
“Jada! Jada!” the woman wailed as he came closer. “Get up! Get off me!” she screamed.