A BEAM OF SUNLIGHT SOUTHEAST OF THE LAUNDROMAT rises from behind a nearby tree and warms the side of my face. I check my phone: 9:45 a.m. The morning is creeping forward.
Time to throw Melanie a quick bone.
I refresh my laptop and hit Enter to start diving into Per’s files. This time, though, the Wi-Fi bars blink between none and one before flatlining completely. Oh no. I forgot to plug the MiFi in when I left the city, and I must have drained the remaining power by leaving it on when I was driving through town. Now what?
I look up at the façade of the Law Office of Roberts, Hollings, and Associates. If Barbie Mitchell is the administrator now, what are the odds that she’s done nothing to update any of the computer systems she inherited from Wanda, including the internet password? Knowing her capacity for sophisticated thinking back in our Mt. O days, I’m going with enormously high. I hover over the Wi-Fi dropdown menu, click on the network “Roberts,” type in my ID as “intern” and my password as “starsandstripes.”
I’m in. Thank you, Barbie. May your closeted husband bring you a thousand years of marital bliss.
Their system is slow, but on Sunday morning, I’m the only one using it. I can download everything I need from the server to my laptop.
“Going through the files now,” I text Melanie. “Lots of detail to comb through. More soon.”
Almost immediately she texts back a thumbs-up emoji. Any expression of approval from Melanie, no matter how slight, sends a rush of pleasure and accomplishment through me that feels like medicine. See, I tell Uncle Christopher in my head, I’m not a screw-up. Melanie Dwyer thinks I’m good. It’s the same conversation I imagined throughout college, every time I got an A on a paper, or a compliment from a professor. See? See? Can you see me yet?
Senior year, when my advisor asked about my ideas for the future, I had only one. I was going to law school. Four years at Harvard had introduced me to forms of power I never imagined existed back in Thebes, but I knew from looking at who held that power and how many generations back it went that those avenues would not be available to someone like me. I’d been exposed to two kinds of power growing up: the domineering, in-your-face power of my uncle, and the cool, analytical power of lawyers. I could gain access to only one of those without going back to the world of Christopher King. Law school merely required everything I already did well: ace tests and make grades.
I set my phone alarm to ping at eleven as a reminder to send Melanie an update. Then I log out of my identity on the borrowed internet server. They really should be changing their passwords every six weeks, not every seven years. Maybe I’ll offer that nugget to James Hollings as some parting advice from the desk of a big-city lawyer.
With Melanie placated for now, I can turn back to the task at hand: Bashiir Abdi’s information about my brother.
I pull out of my parking space and I’m about to head around the corner to the police station when I pause. Before I meet Bashiir, I should know more. Instead of turning, I keep going straight, toward the other end of town. The area where Bashiir and Paul and Paul’s wife have been living. I’ll see for myself if there’s anything there that could lead me to my brother—or any information I can use as leverage, if need be.
Two blocks down, the houses begin to look more weather-beaten, with peeling paint exteriors and slatted blinds drawn over the windows. The stores here are closed. The farther from the center of town I go, the more boarded-up buildings appear in between the few businesses scattered about: auto repair, hardware, pizza place, gas station. I’m the only person out right now and it’s beginning to feel eerie.
I turn right, and I immediately see why.
Police tape is everywhere, binding off the entrances to the side streets. Stray electric-yellow ribbons reading CAUTION! DO NOT CROSS! litter the sidewalks, some with muddy shoeprints marring the words. Just beyond the barricade, a small fleet of King Family Construction vehicles sits dormant: backhoes, tractors, transport trucks, the works. The jowls of one of the bulldozers gape wide open.
The Somali neighborhood.
I can’t get any closer in my car, so I park where I am and cross the street, lifting a tangle of police tape up so I can duck underneath. I walk slowly through the deserted area. A large warehouse-like building covered by pale green aluminum siding dominates the block, facing off against the row of machinery. Black X marks have been spray-painted on the bottom third of the walls about six feet apart; I recognize the pre-work of my uncle’s crew when a building is slated for demolition. Windows with smoky glass panes line the upper third of the warehouse. There are no doors or indications of use I can see here. I continue walking up the block, picking my way past somebody’s lost right sneaker, a Vikings cap, and a deep blue headscarf with gold fringe threaded through. Signs of chaos, people rushing about, trying to leave? I stop in front of the cap and nudge it with my foot. If only I knew what I was looking for. Any of this could be evidence. Any of it could tie back to Paul.
A quick Google search shows little of use: Trouble at local construction site, details unclear seems to be the consensus across the few Thebes-focused online news patches. Someone’s dark and blurry cell phone camera footage, no faces, and a lot of ambient noise.
My uncle appears to be as good as his word: Paul’s name is nowhere to be found—at least for now. Not helpful for my personal search. But after seeing the fury on the faces of the sign wielders at town hall, I wonder if Christopher might be doing right by my brother after all. Protecting him.
I put away my phone and walk around to the next corner, farther off the main street, where the warehouse continues. Here is where the building reveals itself. Murals swirling with color dance up the wall, Peace in perhaps a dozen languages and alphabets, painted in the shape of a giant heart. A globe surrounded by hands of all hues holding each other in a circle. In another setting I would brush it off as kumbaya art, but the contrast to what I’ve seen so far gives the murals a remarkable glow. Fingerprints of humanity for the first time.
A white cloth banner hangs over the door of the building: SOMALI-AMERICAN COMMUNITY CENTER, and a bulletin board is mounted to its right. I come closer so I can read the proliferation of fliers thumbtacked here: English conversation classes 5:30 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays. Women’s basketball league. Bocce courts open daily 9 to 7. Communal supper schedule. Most appear to have the information printed in both English and Somali. A smaller sign at the bottom of the bulletin board says, ENTRANCE FOR MASJID AROUND THE CORNER. So this is an all-purpose building: house of worship, cultural center, gym. And this is the building slated to be destroyed first in the King family Big Dig.
“Hey, lady! You’re not supposed to be here.” A deep male voice appears out of nowhere. I whip around, my heart pounding.
It’s John Joseph. Crew boss for King Family Construction and former tormentor of my cousin Harrison. He’s wearing an orange security vest over a white T-shirt that barely contains his brawn.
“Don’t you know there’s a police-ordered evacuation of this area?” He strides toward me, then stops when he sees who I am.
“Yes, it’s me,” I say. “Are you with the police now or are you just acting in your capacity as a concerned citizen?”
John shakes his head slowly. “Do yourself a favor and leave,” he says. “I don’t know why you’re in town, but I know what your uncle told me to do and that’s keep this area swept. There’s a twenty-four-hour curfew in effect.”
“Seems to me from the business over at town hall that’s a pretty selectively enforced curfew, Mr. Joseph.”
“Curfew is for the police action area only. For the safety of the residents.”
“Well, I think everyone in town would be a lot safer if there was a curfew on the people waving hate signs, not on the people trying to pick up a little bocce game on a beautiful morning.”
He’s implacable.
“If you don’t walk away, I will be required to alert the police. If the police find a disturbance, they will probably extend the curfew. That will be on you, Miss King.”
I can see why my uncle relies on John Joseph for his biggest jobs. This guy is the perfect henchman. I would keep pushing him just for the joy of doing battle, but I believe his threat about calling the cops is not an idle one. I doubt that my arrest would be a good look for Melanie, especially when I’m already trying to work my way back into her favor after my gaffe this morning.
“Lovely to see how well the citizens of Thebes take care of each other,” I say as I turn to leave.
“We take excellent care of the citizens of Thebes,” he replies. “Our actual citizens deserve nothing less.”
I force myself to keep walking away from him, to keep my feet moving one step at a time until I’m back behind the wheel of my car. Only when I’ve put a stop sign and a flashing yellow light between myself and John Joseph do I fully exhale.
What frightens me about his parting words isn’t his anger. It’s his complete lack of anger. This isn’t an emotional issue for him, it’s a deeply held value.
________
Thebes’s police headquarters gleam. Its scrubbed white clapboard front, the preponderance of yellow pansies dotting the entryway with their overwhelming cheeriness, evoke the elementary school that it used to be rather than an edifice of law and order.
The gray cinderblock town library next door looks like a jail.
I pull my car into the police station parking lot, right next to the only patrol car—the only other car at all—parked there. This Bashiir guy might be locked up inside, but the surround doesn’t exactly look like a deterrent for hardened criminals. It would be far more dangerous to try to escape from the library by the looks of the moldy, sodden wooden steps leading up to its front door. A row of abandoned scaffolding hangs off the side of the library building. As I get out of my car, I see the hand-scrawled sign taped to the library door: Closed for the summer.
WELCOME! says the printed sign on the police station door. WE ARE HERE TO SERVE THE PEOPLE OF GREATER THEBES. Perhaps the kids come here to hang out since the foreboding library clearly doesn’t want them.
The sun is higher in the sky now. Another reminder that the clock is ticking on my work for Per.
I push open the door of the police station and a delicate little bell jingles. So genteel. I had to go to Boston police HQ several times as part of my clinical work in law school. Now that was a place to be reckoned with. You knew there was a system at work. Whether it was corrupt or benevolent, it was formidable.
A small entry desk, like a teller station at a bank, welcomes me.
“Hold on, be right there!” a female voice calls from somewhere in the back.
I hear the tinny sound of a radio station coming from the direction of the voice—some cheeseball pop music that bounces around like what I imagine the soundtrack to Izzy’s thoughts would be. My phone buzzes—a text from Harrison.
Where did you go?????
Before I can reply, the woman whose voice I heard emerges, holding a plastic bin filled with hanging file folders. She’s wearing standard-issue police blues, the shirt stretched across her chest in that unflattering way of clothes designed for men and adapted for women. She looks about fifty, with broad shoulders and a teased helmet of very red, very dyed hair.
I shove my phone back in my bag and stand up straight in my best lawyer posture.
“Good morning, Officer”—I look at her badge—“Schmidt.”
Schmidt. Mrs. Schmidt who taught home ec at Mt. O? Whose daughter, Brandi, was in my class?
She squints at me.
“Why, it’s Antonia King as I live and breathe!” She sets her folder box on the countertop and puts her hands on her hips. Her shirt buttons strain even more with the shift.
“Hello, Mrs. Schmidt. I didn’t know you were on the police force.”
“Strictly overtime front desk assistance. Do you remember my daughter? She graduated from the police academy a few years ago and works for Sheriff Ringwald now. She got me into a training program and onto the job—can’t do anything on a part-time teacher’s salary anymore, you know.”
When we were juniors, Brandi regularly stole her mother’s key ring from out of her purse and invited anyone with access to alcohol, including Harrison, to party in the home ec room after school was closed. One time, Harrison convinced me to come along. The image of Brandi, stripped down to her pink bra and a miniskirt, standing atop one of the sewing tables with a fifth of whiskey in one hand and a Coke bottle bong in the other singing “Hit Me Baby One More Time” doesn’t exactly scream future law enforcement officer.
“And how is Brandi?”
Mrs. Schmidt purses her lips and nods, exactly the way she used to when holding up some exemplary pillowcase or banana bread made by one of her students to show the rest of us how it was done when it was done right. “Every mother deserves a daughter who grows up and makes her home nearby,” she says. “Isn’t your aunt ever so lucky she has her darling Isobel!”
And I’m having more and more fun with every Thebes reunion.
“Yes, she is, Mrs. Schmidt. And I’m ever so lucky to see you right now. I’m here to visit someone being held here—Bashiir Abdi?”
The self-satisfied look dissolves: a wary, disapproving frown replaces it.
“Well, I know you aren’t a family member. Only family members are allowed. What business do you have with him anyhow?”
“I’m his lawyer.” The lie comes out of my mouth before I can stop it. But I haven’t come all the way to Thebes to be stopped from finding out what happened to my brother by the woman who taught me that you mix dry ingredients separately from wet ones. Although that is, I must admit, useful information.
Her eyebrows shoot up in the air. I see her take in my absolutely unlawyerly outfit.
“Well, now, dear . . . I’m not one hundred percent sure—I’m only a desk officer—but I do think I can’t let you in without proof that you’re really here to represent him . . .” She says him as if she’s talking about an alien. And I don’t buy her fake self-deprecating “Oh, I don’t know” crap for a second. She wants to give me a hard time. I’m not going to give her the pleasure of my concern.
“Of course! You are so good at your job, Mrs. Schmidt. I totally understand, and how could you look at my outfit and think, This is a serious lawyer?”
I can mince and be girly with the best of them.
Mrs. Schmidt audibly sucks air between her teeth as she gives herself permission to let me see her judge my T-shirt and shorts.
“Now that you mention it . . . you’re not exactly dressed for success.”
Internally I roll my eyes eight thousand times. Externally I sparkle. “I know. I just had to drive back to Thebes from the Cities so quickly this morning. Now, where is that thing I’m looking for . . .” I make a big production of rummaging in my bag, like I’m a bit scattered and silly, just the way I remember Mrs. Schmidt likes girls to be. “Aha! Here we go!”
I place my membership card to the Minnesota Bar on the desk counter. “Mrs. Schmidt, does this work for you?”
Mrs. Schmidt takes her sweet time perusing the card, turning it over front to back, looking for anything that might seem irregular.
“I’m not usually in charge of lawyer visits,” she says, “but there’s a lot going on today. One of ours was hurt last night. As you know since you’re here for . . . him.”
“Yes, I am, Mrs. Schmidt. And as you know, the law states that we’re all innocent until proven guilty in our country.”
She cocks her head and narrows her eyes.
“I always wondered, dear—do you see this as your country? I mean, your uncle and aunt are saints to have raised you and your brother like they did, but is someone who wasn’t born here ever really an American at heart? I mean, your brother has made his loyalties clear . . .”
I visualize Mrs. Schmidt’s face melting down her neck into a bubbling pool of liquid ignorance that leaves nothing behind but her shockingly red hairdo while I remind myself that she is the gatekeeper, not the goal. I have not returned to Thebes to create a problem—I’ve returned here to solve one.
“I’m an American,” I manage to say. “And I have a client inside your building. May I see him please?”
She reviews my bar admission card again, just in case there was something she missed the first time I suppose, such as “Provisional License Only, Due to Murky Eastern European Heritage Designed to Confuse Sheltered Dingbats” but seeing nothing on either side that gives me anything other than legitimacy, Mrs. Schmidt waves me through the metal detector. After a cursory bag check, I’m in.
THE SINGLE JAIL CELL IN THEBES’S POLICE STATION HAS long been used as a way station for staggering drunks after midnight, when the only bar in town, the Meister Brew, announces last call and the gentlemen find themselves wandering up and down Main Street until a patrol car picks them up. We all knew that even as kids. When any one of the guys was employed by King Family Construction, Uncle Christopher would get a 6:00 a.m. wake-up call from the station.
“Isn’t he kind to take care of everyone like that!” Harrison said after one particularly heavy morning-after when three King Construction workers had been hauled in after beating each other up on the town green. “He always pays their bail.”
“Oh, very kind,” I responded. It was the summer of my internship and I was armed with all kinds of stockroom-floor secrets from James Hollings. “You do know that the money comes out of every single employee’s paycheck, right? He calls it ‘buying in to health care benefits’ and takes it off the top. In fact,” I continued, still convinced I could sway Harrison to see his father through my eyes and wrest my cousin from the lure of the family business, “look at your own pay stub. If you haven’t.”
“You’re wrong,” he muttered at the time, but I never heard back from him on the issue to the contrary, so I assume I was right and he was avoiding telling me so. And avoiding what it might mean to his vision of a future working for his father.
Soused belligerents. Oxy addicts wandering the streets in the cold, looking for shelter. The occasional teenaged shoplifter getting a life lesson from their parents. That’s who usually ends up here. Anyone who commits a crime deemed more than a nuisance violation is taken to Athens. They have a real jail there, and, I assume, real police officers as desk minders, not high school home ec teachers making an extra buck on the weekends. This reassures me as Mrs. Schmidt buzzes me through the back door toward the wing with the jail cell. The warrant out for my brother’s arrest could result in nothing more than a slap on the wrist. And if this guy Bashiir was going to be charged with anything more dangerous than disturbing the peace, it hasn’t happened yet. Either they’re holding him here until they can prove something they haven’t proven, or the issue is lack of bond money.
So when I turn down the corridor toward the cell, I’m surprised to see a police officer—a real police officer this time—sitting on an orange plastic chair next to a gray metal door. He’s armed.
“Good morning,” I say, determined to make the probably highly unusual appearance of a poorly dressed young female lawyer visiting her client in jail on a Sunday morning seem routine. “Bashiir Abdi, please.”
The officer, paunchy and pale, with sand-colored hair sticking out in all directions from under his cap, doesn’t bother to move from his slouched position in the chair. He barely even glances up at me, but I note, uncomfortably, that his right hand has shifted from his lap to his weapon.
“That’s the only one we got in here,” he says. “Can’t miss him.” He absently rubs his thumb and forefinger over the shining metal handle of the gun in its belt holster.
“Okay. May I see him, please?”
The officer lets out a long sigh, as if I’ve disturbed him during a very important meeting. With himself. Slowly he takes his hand from his gun, places it on his knee, and groans as he leans forward to stand up. A small shower of crumbs falls from his uniform onto the floor at his feet. The remains of a blueberry muffin.
A large ring of keys hangs from the left side of his belt. He shakes his head as he unhooks it and riffles through the assembled options until he lands on a large square key.
“That’s a bad one there,” he says—whether to me or to himself I’m not sure. But I sense an opportunity, so I jump in.
“How so?” I ask.
This time he looks directly at me. “They say he was one of them who got rough with the sergeant. You can’t trust any of these Africans to follow our laws.”
“Oh really?” I ask, still using my innocent girl voice. “I came in from out of town. I don’t know anything about what happened.”
“They bit the hand that fed them is what happened.” He spits like the words are another round of muffin crumbs he wants to shake out of his system. “The whole lot of them started a riot in town last night. It got ugly real fast. Or that’s what I heard. Wasn’t my shift but Sarge and Pfeffer were on so they took it. All I know is that Sarge is in the hospital and they brought in this one,” he gestures his head toward the gray metal door, “so I’m guessing he’s the thug who hit Sarge in the gut with a bat.”
“Wow,” I say. And I mean wow—as in: Wow, the local cop really shouldn’t be saying all of this to someone he doesn’t know, because he’s revealing what could be extreme prejudice against my fake client, and if I were really his lawyer, this guy could be ruining any chance of an indictment. But I leave it at that and assume he will draw his own conclusions about my meaning. Which he does, clearly, as his next words to me are a warning.
“Be careful with that guy in there,” he says.
I keep quiet, as per Melanie’s reminder that silence can be a lawyer’s greatest weapon. Let him think I’m hanging on his every word if it means he’ll turn that square key in that big lock and escort me behind the gray metal door.
He does. He gives me significant looks from beneath his sandy hair as he opens the door. I glance at his name tag, and whisper “Thank you, Officer Hansen” in a sweet-as-pie-at-Sunday-supper voice. He holds up a warning finger in response. I nod with so very much appreciation. My true appreciation comes when he gestures me in, and I hear the door shut behind us. I know once he brings me to Bashiir, he’ll be watching on the video monitor I saw outside on the table near where his chair was placed, but I also know it’s permitted for him only to watch, not listen. I can live with that.
The outer cell area still looks like the former kindergarten classrooms that long ago took up the space here. I was one of the students in Class A—which I recognize as the left side of the visiting room, where a plastic table and four chairs and a water cooler now reside. Harrison was in Class B, to the right. That’s where the holding cell is now. Its door is shut and only the row of small rectangular windows at the top of each let in any light. The cinderblock walls around me and the doors itself are all painted industrial green. Twenty years ago, the walls were lemon yellow, and always covered with masking-tape-hung sheets of construction paper decorated with handprint Thanksgiving turkeys, or cotton ball–bearded Santas, or pressed wildflowers from the prairie in spring.
I see myself, just turned six, alone in the corner of Class A sitting on the floor, tracing patterns with my finger on the frayed edge of the red-and-blue polka-dot rug that marked the border between the “group time” area and “time out” area. Aunt Evelyn started me a year later than most of the other kids so I could make up for the first three years of my life speaking no English. I was labeled “slow” because my past was unknowable. I didn’t help matters by refusing to speak to anyone the first few months of school. I was far from slow—I understood everything and was already five steps ahead of not only the others in Class A but the teacher as well, an old lady named Mrs. Firth, with blue hair and frosted pink lipstick that crusted into large horizontal flakes on her wrinkled lips and shed onto her blouse in distracting patterns.
The good side of Aunt Evelyn’s decision to hold me back was that I was the same year in school as Harrison, who is six months my junior. When Class A and Class B came together for recess, Harrison always found me and stayed valiantly by my side during what would otherwise have been unbearable experiences like Duck, Duck, Goose or Red Rover, Red Rover. The other children became accustomed to calling Harrison to “come over” to their Red Rover line and seeing him grab my hand and make me run across the playground with him. These games were utterly senseless to me, but I could tune out the noise they created in my head by just knowing recess was when Harrison and I were together.
“Batman and Aquaman” he’d whisper to me. Sometimes it helped.
Back in Class A, Mrs. Firth learned that I wouldn’t cause any trouble if she ignored me. It was the best option for both of us. My spot in the corner was my refuge. Large blond children wandered over to stare at me at first, but after some time, I was an anonymous, if odd, fixture in the firmament, like the one fluorescent ceiling light, three from the center, that buzzed and crackled and flickered on and off no matter how many times the bulb was changed.
I turn away from my dark, hunched, six-year-old self with her knees drawn into her chest and look at the green cell door. The guard is still checking me out to make sure I’m capable of handling myself in the face of a hardened criminal or whatever he thinks is happening here today. I play the part.
“I’m ready, Officer,” I say, looking demurely down at my feet, then squaring my shoulders as if I’m bracing myself to have my delicate sensibilities shattered.
Hansen loves the authority he believes I’ve given him. He nods and places his hand back on that gun for the clearly extreme danger the situation presents. At the holding cell, he raps on the door. Without waiting for a response, he unlocks the door and pulls the large metal handle open to expose a narrow room, painted the same industrial green as everything else. A small metal sink and open toilet occupy one corner. A tiny window hugs the ceiling line, sealed off by iron bars but large enough to meet federal standards for humane treatment of prisoners. In the other corners lie three metal cots the length and width of coffins with a thin vinyl-covered camp mattress adhered to the top of each. At the farthest possible point from the door, the back of Bashiir Abdi curls away from us. He leans against the wall, knees drawn up on his narrow cot. His head is bowed forward between his shoulders, exposing a sliver of bare neck above his shirt collar.
My kindergarten self recognizes his stance immediately. He could be me. I’m looking in a mirror across time.
“Abdi, you got a visitor,” Hansen shouts, even though he’s about ten feet away from Bashiir.
Slowly, Bashiir unfolds himself, his legs emerging first to plant on the floor, the knobs of his elbows straightening. He’s long-limbed, skinny, taller than I thought he would be from the way he took up as little space as possible in the corner of the bed. Finally, he turns to look at the policeman. His brown eyes are ringed by dark circles. Lack of sleep? He blinks.
When Hansen steps back from the door, Bashiir sees me. His expression remains unchanged, but his body language shifts—he sits up straighter, braces his hands against the side of the concrete slab. He recognizes Paul in me, I can tell. He knows who I am. A small chill runs down my spine. Never before have I been seen first as belonging to someone, as a family member who looks like I’m part of the group. More than myself. Always the first reaction to me, wherever I’ve been, is a question. Who is she? Where is she from? How did she get here? Bashiir is reacting to me like I’m not a question, but an answer.
“Hi,” I say. I instinctively want my brother’s housemate to like me. “I’m Toni.”
A quick, small nod from Bashiir. He’s handsome, despite the heavy look about his eyes and the unshaven stubble dotting his chin. Medium-dark skin, close-cropped hair, heavy eyebrows. If I saw him walking down the street, I’d look twice. I swipe at my still-impossible hair, wilder than ever without the cap I left in the car. He looks better after a night in jail than I do right now.
“Do you wish to receive this guest?” The officer is reciting off of a script now.
“Yes,” says Bashiir.
“Stand up.” Hansen pulls a set of handcuffs off his belt and gestures to Bashiir to walk toward him. Bashiir is a good six inches taller than him at least. He puts out his hands willingly but averts his gaze over Hansen’s head and away from me as he submits to the humiliation of having the cuffs snapped on his wrists, the clink of metal gear teeth closing as Hansen turns the key to lock his hands together. I’m embarrassed for Bashiir that this is happening, and that his friend’s younger sister is a witness. He’s perfectly calm though as he allows himself to be led to the plastic table in former Classroom A, and he doesn’t flinch when Hansen reaches up and pushes his shoulders to indicate he should sit in the folding chair beside him.
I slide into the chair opposite Bashiir at the table and look back at the officer.
“Okay, thanks!” I say with a falsely chipper inflection.
“You’re welcome,” he responds. Then he pulls out a chair at the head of the table, plops himself down, withdraws his gun from its belt holster and places it in front of him, barrel aimed squarely at Bashiir, although the weapon lies sideways, and the safety stays on.
This is not what I had planned.
“We’re all set, Officer,” I continue. “You can leave us now.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t think so, miss. This is for your own safety. You never know with his kind what risk you’re taking.”
His kind. I flash a quick look to Bashiir to make sure he knows that I have no delusion about my safety and who is in fact at risk here. His almost imperceptible shrug and slight half roll of his eyes tells me this drill isn’t new to him.
Time for me to stop playing girly for this jerk and start being the lawyer I am. I pull out the Minnesota Bar Admission card and place it on the table by Hansen’s gun. Ante up.
“Seeing as I’m Mr. Abdi’s attorney, I have the right to privileged communication with my client.”
I sneak another glance at Bashiir to see how he’s receiving the news of his representation. I’ve surprised him. And it doesn’t appear to be the good kind of surprise. He glowers at me from under his eyebrows, but he doesn’t say anything to the contrary. I take that as a small victory.
Hansen’s doughiness quadruples in irritability as he looks from me to Bashiir and back again. I can hear the burbling stereotypes ricochet from one side of the empty cavity that should hold his brain to the other: But she’s a white girl! And he’s a terrorist! Does. Not. Compute.
“Antonia King, associate, Law Offices of Grogan, Dwyer, and Lenz, Minneapolis.” I add my business card to my bar association membership. I see your gun, Officer, and I raise you two legal affiliations.
“Abdi,” he shouts again, even though this time all three of us are seated around a small table together. “Is this your lawyer?”
Bashiir is weighing his options, I can tell. But how many does he have? He’s in handcuffs. And it doesn’t look like anyone else is waiting in line with Mrs. Schmidt to see him on a Sunday morning. Please, I think silently, holding Bashiir’s gaze. Please, please, please . . .
“She’s my lawyer.”
I smile broadly at Bashiir. He does not smile back.
I’ll deal with that next.
“You heard my client, Officer. Kindly leave the premises.”
He has no choice, and he knows it. He takes back the gun and stands up.
“If you say so, miss,” he says. “But don’t you worry, I’ll be right there on the other side of that door if you need me. Right there!” He points with two fingers at the hallway. I can only imagine he’ll be glued to the visual monitor looking for any signs of proto-terrorist behavior so he can swoop in and save my life.
“Duly noted.”
Hansen backs out of the room until he reaches the door and has no choice but to turn around. The door clangs shut.
________
Alone with Bashiir. Finally, I’m through the Thebesian obstacle course of small-town gorgons I had to slay to arrive at this moment. A thick silence settles around us. Bashiir’s eyes are lowered, looking at his own hands in cuffs on the table in front of him.
I want him to speak first. I want him to be relieved to meet me, to see me—now that we’re alone I’m ready for him to pour out all the information he has about my brother and tell me he knows where Paul has gone, what he’s doing. More than anything, I want him to tell me that Paul is safe.
He remains quiet.
The longer he says nothing, the more anxious I grow. I don’t have time for this. I have to get out of here and find my brother and then I have to get back to work. This is Paul’s world now, not mine. While seeing his roommate in custody tugs hard at my sense of the injustice wrought upon him by this backward town, feeling sorry for Bashiir won’t get me what I need.
I lean forward across the table.
“Bashiir,” I say. “I regret having to meet you under these circumstances.”
He looks up. This close to him I can see his eyes are bloodshot from lack of sleep. But his gaze is strong. And it isn’t warm.
“You’re not my lawyer,” he says softly. His English has a faint musical accent.
I hate having to begin with an apology, but here we are. “I’m sorry for lying,” I say, “but it was the only way I could get in here to see you and the only way we can talk in private. I need to know what happened last night for real. I need to know where my brother is and what he’s done.”
Bashiir’s shoulders slump a bit, but he keeps his steady gaze on me.
“Paul warned me about you,” he says.
Warned?
“What do you mean?”
He shakes his head slightly.
“Toni,” he continues, “do you see where I am? Do you see what’s happening? I am literally in chains in front of you. I have been arrested on charges that I know to be unjust. Honestly, what I could use the most right now is a good lawyer.”
“So here I am,” I practically leap out of my seat toward him. “You’ve got exactly what you need.”
Bashiir continues to shake his head.
“A good lawyer would come in here to represent me. You have no intention of doing that. You used the circumstance of being a lawyer to bypass the law. Your goal is getting what you want, not giving me what I need. Paul was correct.”
“Correct about what?”
“He said you were self-absorbed. That you forget where you come from and only care about where you’re going. And he did warn me. He warned me not to trust you.”
His words are a slap across my face. Now I’m the one slumping in my seat. Paul and I have had a version of this argument since I left for Harvard, but I never thought it was between anyone but us.
“Excuse me,” I say. “I understand that my brother is your friend and housemate. But you and I have only just met. You sound pretty judgmental for someone who’s known me a total of five minutes.”
“And the entire five minutes have been about you manipulating the police officer to get what you wanted. Impressively, though, I do have to add.”
Well, there’s that.
“Let’s be real: he isn’t exactly a tough target.”
Bashiir is amused, just a bit. “True.”
He has a sense of humor. I can move him. I know I can.
“Maybe I was being manipulative,” I concede. “But maybe there’s something useful for you in it as well. What if we can help each other? And what if I’m pushing hard because I’m genuinely afraid for my brother?” My voice cracks when I say that out loud. At this point, I am afraid. With a single word, Bashiir could either calm my fears or confirm them. But he isn’t giving an inch. His face is stony, his shoulders stiff. Whatever he knows about Paul, he isn’t going to trust me until we can make some serious headway. My hopes for a five-minute info-gathering visit are down the tubes.
Regroup, Toni. Make it work.
“Okay, I’m going to be direct with you,” I say. “I came to Thebes because our Uncle Christopher called to tell me Paul was missing. At first, I wasn’t sure if the situation was serious. He’s been picking up and disappearing since I was a teenager. But lots of things look fishy now that I’m here. I don’t know what or who to believe. Paul might have problems with my decisions—I definitely have problems with his—but when it comes to trust, I guarantee he’d take me over Christopher any day. So that’s what I want: Paul’s side of the story. And you’re the only one I know who might have it. So please . . .” I hear my voice starting to break a bit again. “Bashiir, please. How can I help you so we can help each other?”
Bashiir is silent. Only the buzz of the air-conditioning unit in the corner window fills the void. I can tell that he needs me to be silent too, so I hold my tongue.
Paul used to say that I used up all my quiet in childhood, leaving me with nothing but opinions and the will to have them known. I would prove him right by smacking back with some retort like “At least opinions don’t get me suspended from school. Graffiti on the walls though? Maybe you’d be better off with more opinions and less desecration of property.” The same fight, always. Who was making a real difference in the world—the one who talks or the one who acts? And now: all this trouble over a few chain stores coming to town. How bad could it be, really? There are jobs at stores. Did Paul think about that? Not that I’d ever tell my uncle to his face, but I do give him some credit for caring about the local economy.
Bashiir is taking his time. While he does, I use the opportunity to look him over a bit more. Who is this person living and breathing a daily life with my brother? His clothes give away nothing. A tan short-sleeved collared shirt with a black windowpane check. Jeans. Tennis shoes. He wears three bracelets on his left wrist—a twine braid, a row of black beads, and another colorful braided one, all of which are tied closely so the ring of the handcuffs runs up and down over them when he moves. A longish scar on the inside of his right forearm that looks like it’s from some time ago by the shiny pucker and mild discoloration. Aside from the overnight stubble, he wears a very neat, small beard just at the bottom of his chin. My first impression holds. He’s handsome.
“Here is the thing,” he says at last. “What if I don’t have what you want? What if I don’t know where your brother is right now any more than you do?”
“Were you with him last night? At any point during the protest?”
“I was.”
“Then no matter what, you have more recent information than I do. Maybe with what you know about Paul, and what I know from my uncle, you do have something I want?”
Bashiir goes silent again.
I’m starting to get antsy, but I remind myself to stay calm. This is not a person who responds to pressure, that much is clear. Despite my irritation, I respect that about him.
“Okay, what might I have that you want?” I ask. “What if I actually offer to be your lawyer for real? Like you said, it sure looks like you could use one. Don’t you want to get out of here? Have they officially charged you with anything yet? They only have thirty-six hours to do so before they have to release you, but what if I can help you get out sooner?”
He’s shaking his head again.
“I definitively do not want you to be my lawyer.”
“And why not?”
He laughs. “You seem to have a fundamental lack of understanding about why I’m here. You don’t know anything about me. You don’t know anything about my community, despite the fact that your brother is my roommate. I’m not a criminal, I am a human being who participated in a peaceful demonstration against what I believe is a heinous and deliberately aggressive act of destruction against that community—and that’s an act committed at the hands of your family. Why would I trust you to represent me?”
“Paul is part of the same family and he’s on your side.”
“Paul renounced everything to do with the King family and King Family Construction. He lives by his word.”
“I have nothing to do with them anymore either. Christopher tried to get me to come back and be the attorney for the company, but I refused. And he cut me off financially because of it!”
“Not the same. You’re on the outside because you refused what they wanted, which was to have you on the inside, advocating on behalf of all that they do. Paul is on the outside because he objectively assessed the way that the King family runs its business and decided it was counter to his deeply held beliefs. He chose to live in Thebes and fight on behalf of his beliefs. You traded one fancy lifestyle for a different fancy lifestyle. Fine. That’s your right. But the person who makes that choice is not the person I want to be my lawyer. I’ve done nothing wrong. I know as well as you do that I cannot be held here beyond the legally allotted time. I would rather wait in that cell for another day than compromise my values by giving you the power to speak on my behalf.”
Ouch. I liked him better when he was silent.
My phone alarm vibrates from my bag. Time for my next check-in with Melanie. Every minute I’m not working on the Per Olufsen case is another minute that I’m risking my precarious first-year associate status, another minute closer to the time when Melanie taps another new lawyer to take over my research and do it better, faster, smarter . . .
I sigh and fold my free hands on the table across from Bashiir’s cuffed ones.
“Tell me about yourself,” I say.
His skeptical affect doesn’t change.
“Look,” I continue, “you don’t have to like me. You don’t have to retain me. But we both love my brother.”
He softens. Got him.
“I’ll start,” I offer. “Okay, here’s something that nobody in the world knows about me other than Paul.” The old kindergarten room takes me right back. “From the time I was three until I was six, I pretended that I barely knew how to speak English. But I did. I understood everything.”
“Ah,” says Bashiir, “you learned how to manipulate people quite young.”
I laugh. “That’s one way to look at it.”
“I bet that worked well for you.”
“They all thought I was stupid, until I was ready to show them I wasn’t.”
“The immigrant’s secret weapon.”
“Really?” I’m genuinely startled. I thought it was just my own ornery personality asserting itself young in a family where I instinctively knew that self-protection would serve me.
“When I started at St. Cloud State, I was nearly fluent. But other Somali upperclassmen taught me a good trick to get through paperwork for university services and financial aid and the like was to smile and shrug when they asked you any questions, as if you didn’t understand. The staff were so accustomed to us—and none of them bothered to learn any Somali, of course—they would rubber-stamp us through the processes.”
“I only know English. Paul remembers a little Serbo-Croatian. But I was too young, none of it stuck with me.”
“Do you remember anything?” Bashiir asks.
The boots. The sleeve. Night terrors. Shaking outside of Paul’s bedroom door in the dark.
“No.” I can’t help the rigidity that comes back into my voice. Bashiir takes note. I feel him trying to will me to meet his gaze. But I can’t. I won’t. We fall into silence again. This time, though, it feels more companionable from his end, less contentious. Now I can take the time to breathe myself back to the present. I’m a lawyer. I’m this woman, not that girl. I am in a police station here in Thebes, not in a kindergarten classroom, not under a dirty cot in Sarajevo. I’m in control.
“What about you?” I ask Bashiir. “How old were you when you left Somalia?”
“I was twelve. My mother, my older sisters, and I fled Mogadishu in 2001 because of the war. We traveled on foot to Kenya.” His voice is calm, as if walking to another country to escape his death was just a childhood story. “We lived in a refugee camp there until my oldest sister got a student visa to go to Germany in 2004. My middle sister married a Kenyan man and brought me and my mother to live with them until I got a visa to come to the U.S. to attend St. Cloud State. So, I’m eight years here in Minnesota.”
“No other family in the U.S?”
“None. But the Somali community is family. We open our doors to each other always. I haven’t been alone since I arrived.”
“Why did you move to Thebes?”
“I got a job in Athens. There aren’t many of us here compared with the Cities or even St. Cloud, but we are enough to make it a home.”
“What do you do?”
“Computer systems engineering. I went to St. Cloud to study it in particular. I even got my certification before I graduated.”
“I have no idea what that means in real life.”
“It means a lot of things. But for me, I create computerized video surveillance programs. My company supplies most of the local businesses between here and Athens with programming and monitoring.” He gestures with his chin up to the blinking green light over the door. “I wrote code for the program that records what that camera is looking at right now.”
“Ironic.”
“Very. I programmed the video system your uncle’s business uses as well.”
The new cameras installed around Christopher’s property. This isn’t some random brag about the work he does in Thebes. He’s given me an opening, a connection. Whether on purpose or not.
“Two-minute warning!” Officer Hansen’s voice cracks over the intercom.
“Bashiir,” I say. “You might not trust me. But please, don’t be shortsighted. I can help you, and I know you can help me.” I rustle around in my bag for a pen. All I can find to write on in the mess of junk I managed to bring with me is an old grocery store receipt from who knows when. I smooth out its crumpled edges and quickly write my cell phone number on the back. I push the receipt across the table.
“Take it before that dumb cop sees you. Call me if anything changes. Like your mind. Or your circumstances.”
He looks at the piece of paper like it’s an insect of unknown origin—will it bite? Sting? Fly away? Open its wings to reveal some magical pattern imprinted by nature in glorious colors?
“One minute!” Hansen’s voice weighs in again.
“Just take it,” I say.
He reaches out with his cuffed hands for the receipt and, with a sigh, shoves it in the front pocket of his jeans.
I lean toward him. “So?” I whisper.
He shakes his head.
“You are not my lawyer.”
“But Paul. What about Paul?”
Officer Hansen bangs through the metal door.
“Time’s up.”
I reach one last time across the table, but as soon as Hansen unlocks his wrist from the table, Bashiir stands, turns his back to me. He walks back to his cell unbidden.
The only person who can help me find my brother would rather be locked in a jail cell than partner up with me.