The Waste Lands (Page 62)

Jake hadn’t seen her coming, and for a moment his mind froze. Without thinking about what he was doing, he reached into his pocket and closed his hand around the silver key. His mind cleared immediately, and he felt calm again. “My group is upstairs,” he said, smiling guiltily. “We’re supposed to be looking at a bunch of modern art, but I like the stuff down here a lot better, because they’re real pictures. So I sort of … you know . . .” “Snuck away?” the teacher suggested. The comers of her lips twitched in a suppressed smile.

“Well, I’d rather think of it as French leave.” These words simply popped out of his mouth.

The students now staring at Jake only looked puzzled, but this time the teacher actually laughed. “Either yon don’t know or have forgotten,” she said, “but in the French Foreign Legion they used to shoot deserters. I suggest you rejoin your class at once, young man.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you. They’ll be almost done now, anyway.” “What school is it?”

“Markey Academy,” Jake said. This also just popped out. He went upstairs, listening to the disembodied echo of foot-falls and low voices in the great space of the rotunda and wondering why he had said that. He had never heard of a place called Markey Academy in his life.

HE WAITED AWHILE IN the upstairs lobby, then noticed a guard looking at him with growing curiosity and decided it wouldn’t be wise to wait any longer—he would just have to hope the class he had joined briefly was gone. He looked at his wristwatch, put an expression on his face that he hoped looked like Gosh! Look how late it’s getting!, and trotted back downstairs. The class—and the pretty black teacher who had laughed at the idea of French leave—was gone, and Jake decided it might be a good idea to get gone himself. He would walk awhile longer—slowly, in deference to the heat—and catch a subway. He stopped at a hot-dog stand on the comer of Broadway and Forty-second, trading in a little of his meager cash supply for a sweet sausage and a Nehi. He sat on the steps of a bank building to eat his lunch, and that turned out to be a bad mistake.

A cop came walking toward him, twirling his nightstick in a complex series of maneuvers. He seemed to be paying attention to nothing but this, but when he came abreast of Jake he abruptly shoved his stick back into his loop and turned to him.

“Say-hey, big guy,” he said. “No school today?” Jake had been wolfing his sausage, but the last bite abruptly stuck in his throat. This was a lousy piece of luck … if luck was all it was. They were in Times Square, sleaze capital of America; there were push-ers, junkies, whores, and chicken-chasers everywhere . .. but this cop was ignoring them in favor of him.

Jake swallowed with an effort, then said, “It’s finals week at my school. I only had one test today. Then I could leave.” He paused, not liking the bright, searching look in the cop’s eyes. “I had permission,” he concluded uneasily. “Uh-huh. Can I see some ID?”

Juke’s heart sank. Had his mother and father already called the cops? He supposed that, after yesterday’s adventure, that was pretty likely. Under ordinary circumstances, the NYPD wouldn’t take much notice of another missing kid, especially one that had been gone only half a day, but his father was a big deal at the Network, and he prided himself on the number of strings he could pull. Jake doubted if this cop had his picture . . . but he might very well have his name.

“Well,” Jake said reluctantly, “I’ve got my student discount card from Mid-World Lanes, but that’s about all.”

“Mid-World Lanes? Never heard of it. Where’s that? Queens?” “Mid-Town, I mean,” Jake thought. God, this was going north instead of south . . . and fast. “You know? On Thirty-third?” “Uh-huh. That’ll do fine.” The cop held out his hand. A black man with dreadlocks spilling over the shoulders of his canary-yellow suit glanced over. “Bussim, ossifer!” this apparition said cheerfully. “Bussiz lil whitebread ass! Do yo duty, now!”

“Shut up and get in the wind, Eli,” the cop said without looking around. Eli laughed, exposing several gold teeth, and moved along. “Why don’t you ask him for some ID?” Jake asked. “Because right now I’m asking you. Snap it up, son.” The cop either had his name or had sensed something wrong about him—which wasn’t so surprising, maybe, since he was the only white in the area who wasn’t obviously trolling. Either way, it came to the same: sitting down here to eat his lunch had been dumb. But his feet had hurt, and he’d been hungry, dammit—hungry.

You’re not going to stop me, Jake thought. / can’t let you stop me. There’s someone I’m supposed to meet this afternoon in Brooklyn . . . and I’m going to be there.

Instead of reaching for his wallet, he reached into his front pocket and brought out the key. He held it up to the policeman; the late-morning sunshine bounced little coins of reflected light onto the man’s cheeks and forehead. His eyes widened.

“Heyy!” he breathed. “What you got there, kid?”

He reached for it, and Jake pulled the key back a little. The reflected circles of light danced hypnotically on the cop’s face. “You don’t need to take it,” Jake said. “You can read my name without doing that, can’t you?” “Yes, sure.”

The curiosity had left the cop’s face. He looked only at the key. His gaze was wide and fixed, but not quite empty. Jake read both amazement and unexpected happiness in his look. That’s me, Jake thought, just spread-ing joy and goodwill wherever I go. The question is, what do I do now? A young woman (probably not u librarian, judging from the green silk hotpants and see-through blouse she was wearing) came wiggle-wob-bling up the sidewalk on a pair of purple f**k-me shoes with three-inch heels. She glanced first at the cop, then at Jake to see what the cop was looking at. When she got a good look, she stopped cold. One of her hands drifted up and touched her throat. A man bumped into her and told her to watch where the damn-hell she was going. The young woman who was probably not a librarian took no notice whatever. Now Jake saw that four or five other people had stopped as well. All were staring at the key. They were gathering as people sometimes will around a very good three-card-monte dealer plying his trade on a streetcorner. You’re doing a great job of being inconspicuous, he thought. Oh yeah. He glanced over the cop’s shoulder, and his eye caught a sign on the far side of the street. Denby’s Discount Drug, it said.