Jude Read online

  She picked up his champagne glass and held it out to him. “Let’s drink to that.”

  13

  WHEN ANNA ANNOUNCED her intention to run for mayor, the press attention reminded Jude of when he first came to live with his mother and of the media blitz that followed. It seemed so long ago now. Only a little more than a year. Only a lifetime.

  Jude knew this move would ultimately take Anna even further away from him, but she wanted it, so Jude was determined to do his best. He might not actually be able to help her, but at least he could make an effort not to hinder her.

  With that in mind Jude resolved not to take Nick to the projects to buy. This time he’d stand up to him and just say no. He waited for Nick to ask, but it turned out that he didn’t have to worry. R. J. was as good as his word, and he set up a pipeline straight into Benton’s hallowed halls—and it was Nick who agreed to play the middleman.

  In a certain respect Nick had always played the middleman—when Jude had taken him to buy, he’d brought back a supply for everyone. But Nick was smart. He didn’t want to buy too much at one time, and he didn’t want to be seen going to Jude’s old neighborhood too often, so their access had been restricted. Suddenly Nick’s crew had access to as much as they wanted, and where they had once kept it to weekends and the occasional after-school high, now they started snorting in the bathroom before lunch, after gym, between classes. They were high all the time.

  Jude saw it, noticed the signs, and he used it as a way to distance himself. It was almost a relief to be alone again. It made it easier to deal with what was going on at home.

  The media splash was big after Anna announced, and the reporters dug up all the old stories—the trial, the kidnapping, Jude’s return. The difference was that now it was just background; the real news was Anna’s work. Instead of camping out on the lawn, the reporters hovered around her office and the courthouse, speaking to her employees, to her detractors, to everyone who might have an opinion. Everyone except Jude.

  He had been dreading the attention, but now that it hadn’t materialized, instead of being relieved, he felt curiously forlorn. He found himself skimming every article for a mention of himself or his father. It came up less and less.

  The topic of choice was debating how the race would shape up. Mayor Deberry was an old, grizzled veteran who talked like a mob boss and had fought his way into the office by tooth and nail. He played to win and wasn’t squeamish about fighting dirty if he had to. The last two elections had ended up deep in political mudslinging.

  Local news was slow, so the papers filled the space with speculation about the upcoming election. There were a couple of skirmishes between Anna and the mayor, played out in the pages of the Hartford Courant, but they were on topics like taxes and education. For two months the candidates stuck closely to the safe, uncontroversial political issues. The articles observed that Anna was playing it very straight, and reported that the incumbent’s staff had advised him to go along with it. If she kept purely to issues, his incumbency would carry the day by a comfortable margin. The papers started predicting a tame election race in the upcoming year.

  As with so many predictions, it was wrong.

  A COUPLE OF MONTHS later, just after the spring break, Jude was on his way back from lunch when he rounded a corner and hit a crowd of kids milling around the hallway. There were several teachers trying to corral the students into classrooms, but every time the teachers turned their backs, the kids slipped right back out of the rooms they had been ushered into. The first lunch period had just ended, and more students were arriving by the minute on their way from the cafeteria to their classes.

  Curious to see what was stopping everyone, Jude shouldered his way through the crowd until he could see a row of desks that had been pulled from a nearby room to form a barrier across the corridor. There was a policeman standing on the other side.

  “Back into your classrooms, now,” the officer was saying, though without appreciable effect. The students near the desks weren’t budging. Jude pushed his way closer until he could see down the hallway to where another cop was unrolling crime scene tape. He was cordoning off the boys’ bathroom. There were other policemen in the hallway tending to a group of students. Jude recognized Toby, one of Nick’s closest friends. Toby was trying to shield his face, though by the shaking of his shoulders it was obvious that he was crying. There was a cop bent over him with a comforting hand on his back. A few steps away there was Brian, another member of the crew, not crying but looking white and shaken.

  “Does anybody know what happened?” Jude asked.

  One boy looked around. He was in Jude’s class, and he had once asked Jude if he could interview him for the school newspaper. Jude thought his name was David or Davis or something.

  “It’s your friend Nick.”

  “What about Nick?” Jude asked, his stomach flip-flopping.

  “Well, they’re saying that he’s dead.” The kid could hardly keep a straight face as he said it, the statement was so outrageous.

  “Dead?” Jude repeated.

  “Yeah,” the kid confirmed. “They say he just fell over and started spazzing out. Like he had a fit or something. Isn’t that wack?” he said, trying to elicit some sort of reaction from Jude.

  But Jude simply turned and started to fight his way back through the crowd. The word was traveling quickly, and there was a relentless pressing toward the barrier of desks. The teachers were shouting for the students to turn around and go back to the cafeteria, but everyone except Jude seemed to be going in the opposite direction. The corridor was filled with the noise of hundreds of students talking excitedly, spreading the news. The roar of all those voices bouncing off the hard, slick walls came crashing down on him like a waterfall. Jude started using his elbows to get away from the crushing mass of bodies. Some of the kids got an elbow in the ribs and turned to confront him, but when they saw who it was, they thought better of it.

  Jude escaped the throng and slipped into a classroom. There were only a few students inside, mainly grouped around the door. Once he got past them, he was able to sink into a desk in the back corner of the room. He put his head down on his arms and closed his eyes. He heard someone say, “Look at Jude. A kid’s dead, and he’s taking a nap.”

  But he wasn’t sleeping. He was thinking of what would happen when his mother found out. There was no way his name wouldn’t come up. She’d never forgive him.

  14

  JUDE REMAINED IN the classroom until teachers came through and herded the students into the auditorium. The principal made a brief announcement that there had been an “accident” and they would be sending the students home early.

  Jude got off the school bus at his stop. Then he walked a block to the public bus stop and caught the next one headed downtown. From there he used a pay phone on the corner to call R. J.’s beeper. He had to beep him five times before R. J. called him back.

  Jude picked up the pay phone after barely one ring.

  “Who the hell is this?” R. J. said.

  “It’s Jude,” he whispered.

  “Why you whispering, man?”

  Jude didn’t know. When he spoke next, it was in a normal tone. “R. J., I think Nick overdosed at school today.”

  “Aw, shit,” R. J. said. “Shit. I knew it.”

  “Knew what?”

  “I thought I might have given him the wrong stuff. Some of the junkies came to me complaining that my product was crap and didn’t have no heroin in it. I musta given Nick the street cut.”

  “How much did you usually mix the stuff you sold him?” Jude asked.

  “I stepped on it till there wasn’t barely nothin’ left in there. I just told him to snort, like, triple the dosage, and even then it barely gave them a buzz.”

  “And how pure was the street stuff?”

  “I sell good shit. It’s the purest you can get.”

  “And Nick snorted at least three times the regular dosage.”

  “Damn,�
� R. J. said. “He gonna be all right?”

  “R. J., he’s dead,” Jude told him. “And I don’t know if he told any of his friends who was supplying him.”

  “I told him he better keep his big mouth shut.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t know what he said or didn’t say. I just wanted to give you the heads-up. You might want to lie low for the next few days.”

  “Are you kidding me? I’ll be going on a little vacation tonight, I think.”

  “I don’t know if you need to leave town,” Jude said dubiously.

  “He was a rich white boy, right? No offense, but he wasn’t one of the scholarship students or nothing, right?”

  “Yeah, right,” Jude said.

  “Then I’m outta here. The shit is gonna hit the fan with this one.”

  Later Jude wondered how R. J. knew, and he didn’t.

  “I owe you big-time, man,” R. J. said. “I’d better get moving. Catch you later.”

  “Yeah. Later.” Jude hung up the phone and walked back over to the bus stop.

  It was still only two when Jude got back to the house, and Dolores was vacuuming in the living room when he came through the front door. She saw him pass by on his way to the stairs, and she switched off the machine.

  “What, did you get tired of school? Decide you had enough?” she called out.

  Jude just kept going, and after a moment the vacuum started up again.

  He realized that he had left his book bag at school, so he couldn’t do any work even if he wanted to. He thought about going to the boxing gym, but somehow that didn’t feel right. So he lay down on his bed, and the next thing he knew, he opened his eyes and it was dark outside. He must have been asleep for hours.

  “Jude,” a voice said. He blinked and lifted his head. The light from the hallway silhouetted Anna’s figure in the doorway.

  “What time is it?” he said groggily.

  “It’s late. It’s past midnight,” she said.

  He rubbed his eyes and sat up on the edge of the bed.

  “You still have your sneakers on,” Anna observed.

  He rubbed his face. “Yeah. I don’t know, I just fell asleep.”

  “Well, no wonder. You must be … I can’t imagine what today must have been like for you.”

  “What?”

  “With what happened.” She stepped into the room, and she must have caught his puzzled expression by the light from the hallway. She snapped on the desk lamp. “With Nick Hackley. He was in your class. Was he a friend of yours?”

  “How do you know about what happened?” he asked, his mind still slow with sleep.

  “I’m the DA, remember?” she said.

  “But you don’t usually hear about these things this fast, do you?”

  “This isn’t a usual case.” She sat down in the desk chair next to the bed. “We’re going to be working closely with the police on this one to make sure that everything’s done right.”

  “I guess,” he said, uneasiness blooming in his gut.

  “I’ve been talking to reporters for hours now.”

  “Reporters?” he repeated.

  “It’s a big story, and the reporters want to talk to me because I’ve been vocal about the drug policy. These drugs are destroying lives. How are we—” She stopped abruptly, made a small gesture of apology. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to lecture. I really just wanted to come in and see how you were.” She put a hand on his arm.

  “How I am?” he echoed.

  “They’re organizing a talk tomorrow at your school to help everyone deal with what happened, and afterward you’ll break up into discussion groups, but we’re also encouraging parents to talk to their kids. I wanted to make sure we talked.”

  This would have been the moment to confess to her. He knew he should tell her everything, but the light, comforting hand on his arm stopped him. He couldn’t bear the image of her snatching it back as if she couldn’t stand to touch him. So he said, “I’m okay.”

  “You sound upset. You sure you don’t want to talk about anything?”

  “I’m fine,” he repeated.

  “Okay.” She stood up but didn’t make a move to leave. “Jude …”

  He thought it was all up then. He thought she was going to ask him if he had something to do with it, and he resolved that if she asked, he would tell her. She didn’t. She said instead, “I hope … I mean, you wouldn’t do drugs, would you?”

  “No,” he said.

  She smiled in relief. “I didn’t think so. I was pretty sure that you wouldn’t have anything to do with them, but I wanted to make sure.”

  It was worse than he could ever have imagined.

  THERE WAS AN assembly the first thing the next morning. First the principal got up and explained what had occurred—as if there were a student in that auditorium who didn’t know. Then a doctor spoke to them about the physical dangers of drugs. He was followed by a volunteer who worked in a clinic for addicts and talked about what drugs did not just to your body, but to your life. They capped everything off with a speech from a counselor about expressing grief, and they assigned the students to discussion groups to talk out their feelings.

  In the afternoon the students were sent back to class, but the discussions continued. Each teacher felt a need to address it—none felt comfortable diving back into trigonometry or the history of the Reformation after the morning’s activities.

  What Jude found most interesting were the questions. The most frequently asked was “Why?” In Jude’s opinion, it was a stupid question without an answer, but the teachers gamely tried to answer it anyway. “Bad things sometimes happen to good people.” “God’s will.” And Jude’s favorite: “Sometimes it’s hard to see all the reasons at first, but as time passes you will come to understand why it happened.” That just meant that as time went on people would come up with justifications. In his old neighborhood they answered the question truthfully. There they just shrugged and said, “Shit happens.”

  The second most popular question was “Who is responsible?” It seemed to Jude that since Nick was the one who had snorted the heroin, he was responsible, but as the day progressed Jude realized that there had to be a scapegoat, and it couldn’t be Nick. He was already dead, so there would be no one to punish and no one to blame.

  As time passed, it was this second question that turned out to be the most pressing. The papers chewed it over daily, and the police were working overtime. They were concentrating their efforts on trying to discover where Nick had gotten the drugs. Jude heard the updates from Anna—that is, on the days she got home before he went to bed.

  Jude kept waiting for his name to come up. Every night he waited for Anna to say something when she reported the day’s frustrations. He was sure she would hear it from someone. With a case this big everything was certain to come out eventually.

  15

  JUDE AND ANNA WERE just sitting down to breakfast Friday morning when Harry stormed in. They heard his car screech to a stop outside, heard the front door slam, heard his footsteps almost running along the hallway. When he appeared in the doorway, his face was red and he was out of breath.

  “Have you read this morning’s paper?” he demanded.

  “We just sat down to breakfast,” she replied. “I was about to—”

  “Well, read this!” and he slapped the front page down on the table in front of her.

  “It can’t be that bad,” she said.

  “You tell me. Because I don’t know what the hell to think.” He was pacing the kitchen, and he hadn’t even so much as glanced at Jude.

  Anna frowned. “Jude, get Harry some coffee, will you?” she said, and picked up the paper.

  Jude wanted to read the article, but he got up, filled a mug with coffee, milk, and sugar, and handed it to Harry. He quietly retreated to the back of the kitchen to get out of the line of fire.

  “The son of a bitch,” Anna said. “That political, backstabbing liar.”

  Then Jude knew it must be
something to do with the mayor.

  Right after the death of the student the mayor’s office had come out with a rare show of support for the DA’s office in general, and for Anna in particular. She mentioned to Jude that she was surprised and gratified that the incumbent had risen above his politics and had gotten behind the cause. Harry was there at the time, and he said that it was a brilliant strategic move. The mayor wasn’t going to benefit from going up against Anna and her popular, tough-on-drugs policy. The man knew the public didn’t want to see the mayor and the DA jockeying for polling points when they should be working together on what was obviously a threat to the city’s youth.

  But even Harry didn’t foresee the possibilities of the mayor’s position. When a week had passed and there still hadn’t been any significant headway in tracking down the dealer who was responsible, the mayor was able to begin expressing concern about the way the case was being handled. It began with just a quote here and there, but it escalated every day that went by without an arrest.

  The mayor’s campaign had begun the past Monday, exactly a week since the accident. By Thursday he was hinting that maybe the DA wasn’t as tough on crime as she claimed. Today—Friday—he dropped the bomb.

  As Harry and Anna talked, Jude gleaned the contents of the article, and he understood the reason for Harry’s panic. The opening punch was a knockout. It said that undisclosed sources hinted that the lack of progress in the investigation wasn’t the fault of the police, but that it stemmed from impropriety on behalf of the DA’s office.

  He knew what they must be referring to, and he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it. He had assumed that eventually someone would tell Anna. He hadn’t considered that the mayor’s office might get the information first. His brain froze. He couldn’t think.

  “What the hell is all this about?” Anna demanded.

  “I was hoping you could tell me,” Harry said.

  “You think I’ve got something to hide?” Now Anna’s neck flushed up to her jaw. “You believe this crap?” and she threw the paper at him. It fluttered to the floor between them.