Free Drumsticks by Charlotte Carter Page B

that for the moment. You know what I told you about my assignment over on Twelfth Street.”
    â€œHomicide unit. Dead kids. Rap music stars.”
    â€œThat’s right. You see this little girl here? She was going with the last one to die—Black Hat. But he wasn’t hardly a star. He was a kid with a regular old name—Kevin Benson—who was some kind of gofer for the big guns at the recording company. A wannabe. He and this little girl—Felice Sanders—were supposed to be married.”
    Connection! I let out a big breath. Was this what the karmic synchronicity was all about? Not my father but some kid at his school?
    But wait a minute. So what? This girl went to Stephens. What did that have to do with anything?
    I asked Leman the same question. “So this rap kid had a little white girlfriend who went to my father’s school. What difference does it make? You don’t think she killed him, do you?”
    â€œOf course not. From what I been able to gather, she was crazy about him.”
    â€œAnd besides, she’s not at the school anymore. She already graduated, right?”
    â€œRight. I had no idea where she went to school before now. It had no bearing on anything. But I decided yesterday to interview her again, tie up some loose ends.”
    He seemed to hesitate there.
    â€œAnd?” I said.
    â€œThe thing is, in the time since I last talked to her, she ran away from home—or at least that’s how her mother put it. The point is, we can’t locate her now.”
    â€œOh.”
    â€œNow, since you found this yearbook, it brings me to another way you can help me out.”
    â€œOh?”
    â€œYeah. And in exchange I’ll keep in touch with Loveless—see what’s happening with the Ida Williams case. And keep him from eating you alive.”
    â€œYou want me to go to Stephens and talk to my father about Felice.”
    â€œYou got it, Cue. See what kind of dope you can get me on her. Did she hang with a particular group? Is there somebody she might have stayed friends with, moved in with? Stuff like that. We got limited manpower at the Twelfth Street squad. We’re looking for the girl, but we got a thousand other things to do. But you, you got an in there at the school, see, what with your father being the chief. It may be a waste of time, I don’t know. Just nose around a little bit, which oughta be second nature to you.”
    Better to waste your time than mine . That’s what he was saying. But I pretended not to recognize it. I needed the pipeline to the Ida Williams investigation that only he could provide. And I sure as hell didn’t want Loveless to eat me alive.
    All I said was “Hey, I’m in there.”

CHAPTER 8
    It’s Easy to Remember
    I remember writing a poem once and showing it, at my mother’s urging, to my pop. I must have been nine or ten.
    He was impressed by the fact of it—and told me as much—but he had to be honest, it wasn’t very good. However , he added, that wasn’t the important thing. The important thing was, he knew I was capable of better.
    For the next three weeks, whenever he came home from work he’d have a different library book for me—the Langston Hughes reader, collected Emily Dickinson, a little leather-bound edition of Jean Toomer’s Cane , etc.
    I never touched one of those damn books. And I was nineteen before I tried to write another poem.
    My pop is kind of a stick.
    He was an excellent provider. Tireless. Upstanding. Rational. Fair. Generous even—I mean, it was Pop who paid to have my friend Aubrey’s appendix removed; her own mother was at a poker tournament in Jersey when Aubrey collapsed. So, I’d have to concede that he usually means well, but he is an unregenerate stick.
    Making my peace with that—without benefit of a shrink—has been a pretty long haul. It did not help matters that in the middle of the process, he