I stand in front of Christy’s condo and hope she isn’t pissed it’s after midnight. She was a night owl in college, but aren’t all students, completing papers or studying for exams? Maybe I woke her out of a good sleep. Tim’s hand in mine gives me the smallest measure of hope.
On the third-floor landing, Christy opens the door, and doesn’t look at Tim and me with anything other than concern.
“I’m sorry for showing up late like this, girlie, but I—”
“It’s fine. It’s fine,” Christy responds and ushers us in. “I was working on some late-night social media stuff for Dad. He’s hopeless with it.”
She glides through her living room in gray yoga pants and a Vampire Weekend T-shirt.
Her third-floor condo is laid out like something you’d see in magazines, a light gray sectional, an ivory patterned oversized seat and matching throw rug ornament a sitting area, right off a galley kitchen. A modern painting of an elephant on the east wall perfectly complements the modern furniture and surroundings of her posh living room. Christy and I sit on the sofa. Tim takes the chair.
“I just need a favor...well two,” I begin. “We have a flight in the morning, and I can’t quite go home right now. So could Tim and I just rest here? We’ll be out in a few hours. I promise.”
Christy nervously laughs. “Really? Is that all? That’s not a problem, Layla. It’s a pull-out sofa. Geez, I thought you were going to ask me to do something like help you bury a body.”
“Well, I said I needed two favors.”
“If you need help with that body, then I might have to change my clothes.” She chuckles again, but I don’t laugh along with her. Christy’s eyes slightly narrow. “What do you have up that sleeve of yours, Layla? What’s the actual favor, the one that means something to you?”
“Your dad knows a lot of people. Has access to information that might take me a while to get.”
“True,” agrees Christy. “Dad has to have dirt on just about everyone. It’s his stock and trade.”
“Well, I don’t need dirt, really just a name and an address. Holden Walters. He was a cop, back in the ’70s, probably retired. We think he may have information.”
“For Ruby?” guesses Christy.
I glance at Tim, who gestures for me to answer Christy. “Not exactly. It’s just something for me, but maybe in the end it can help a lot of people, including Ruby.”
“Okay, Layla.”
“I owe you, girlie. I really do. I’ll owe your Dad too, but I’ll figure something out with that.”
“You don’t owe me. And you don’t owe my dad. I’ll make sure of that.”
I lie awake on the pull-out sofa in Christy’s condo. Tim’s muscular arm is draped over my waist as he softly snores in my ear. I close my eyes and nod off, but only in brief interludes. When I manage a few moments of rest, I dream about Ruby. Clips of us: playing, running, laughing. Then there’s black and her face fading away.
A muffled voice wakes me out of a light slumber. Christy opens her bedroom door and walks toward the kitchen starting the coffee machine. She whispers, “Just put him on the phone, Karen. I know he’s there, and not with my mother, and I’m certain he doesn’t want my mother to know where he actually is.”
I keep my eyes closed. Christy walks back into her bedroom and gently closes the door.
Buzzing around her beautifully decorated condo as if it’s the middle of the day and not the early morning, Christy offers us drinks and food. Tim and I continuously decline. I just need resolution, not a strawberry and kale salad she got from Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods or some other chic grocery chain that doesn’t have a location on the South or West Sides of the city.
Tim stands against the wall leading to the kitchen, the soft gray of the curtains in the living room create a strange, but magnetic contrast to his brown skin. I steal a glance at him, or two or three.
A ping from Christy’s BlackBerry steals my attention away from Tim.
“Finally!” exclaims Christy as she makes her way to the laptop sitting on the countertop of her kitchen. She opens her email and the file attached from her father. And there before me is everything I can know about Holden Walters.
There are two pictures: one as a determined dark-eyed officer, full lips frowning with a policeman’s cap firmly fixed to his neatly trimmed afro; the other one as a tempered older man. White hair dispersed like errant snow among his onyx mane framing high cheekbones encased in skin the color of mature clay. He’s a handsome guy who aged well. Kind of an everyman, Denzel Washington type.
I notice the difference in his eyes. The most striking feature, they’re more hopeful than the younger cop in the fuzzy color photo from a few decades before. I don’t know why this causes me to smile, but I do. Maybe I’m seeking any light in an otherwise nightmarish few hours.
Also in the folder is information about his organization, Uplifting Chicago Youth. The office is in a Hyde Park street storefront with colorful painted handprints bleeding into the glass of the windows. His home address is also included, and isn’t very far from that office, a walkable distance.
“If we leave right now, Tim and I could make it to his house in half an hour,” I say. It’s not the best wake-up call, but maybe Holden Walters would be getting ready to head out for the day. Maybe he’s an early riser with a few minutes to talk and help me shape a past from the almost forty-year-old picture in my hand.
Before leaving, I give Christy a bone-crushing embrace, hoping it conveys my gratitude for her help and commiseration about the dysfunction between fathers and daughters. She smiles in a bright way with sad eyes.
“Thank you for everything,” I say.
“Anytime,” she replies.
Outside of the condo, crisp air smells like gasoline. Our flight leaves in a few hours, and our journey finds itself back to the part of my city I know best, the South Side. Of course it’s the place where all of this will come together and I will get my answers.
“You ready?” Tim asks.
“Of course not, but I’d rather know something bad than keep pretending there’s nothing on the other side of all of this.”
We climb into his truck and head toward Hyde Park.
I’m willing to dismantle everything I was taught, everything I know for the truth. Ultimately, this could forever break my church and my family into a million parts. I still have no idea what to do with the information once I have it.
Tim turns on the radio. I hear the unmistakable poetic, bare guitar chords of “Redemption Song” and Bob Marley sings.
“Stop thinking about what you’re going to do,” Tim says. “Just learn to live with the decision you’ve already made.”