Dark Eyes Part 2

"s.h.i.+t!" she said, angry with herself for letting it happen.

"What?" Jake asked, looking concerned; it was not normal for the crew to see Wally caught off guard, which she obviously had been.

"My ID is gone, and most of the emergency money."

"How?" asked Tevin. "When's the last time you went in there?"

Wally tried to remember. "Two weeks?"

No one had to say it: two weeks ago was right around the time they had sent Sophie away.

For Wally, the ID was the bigger loss. The expensive fake was like a visa to the young adult attractions in the city-bars, mainly, or maybe the occasional rave if she could sc.r.a.pe the cover charge together-and the times when she hadn't had a good ID she had often felt confined, even claustrophobic. Of course, there were plenty of places where underage kids could talk or sneak their way in, but to Wally that felt too much like asking permission. And she hated that. Hated.

"s.h.i.+t," said Jake. "f.u.c.kin' Sophie."

Tevin opened his mouth as if to object, but changed his mind. There was no defense for the girl.

The crew moved on. Another ten minutes and they were within shouting distance of the 131st Street Smoke Shop, on the corner of Fredrick Dougla.s.s Boulevard, where by chance they met up with Panama himself; he was lumbering his way back to the shop, carrying a big greasy bag from the Harlem Papaya, containing at least three hot dogs piled high with onions and peppers and dripping with mustard.

"Little sister," Panama greeted Wally in his low growl, ignoring the others in the crew but taking notice of the two large boxes in their shopping cart.

The man called Panama was large-wide and tall with enormous, powerful hands-and wore short-sleeved Hawaiian-themed s.h.i.+rts year-round, today with a layer of gray, long-sleeved thermals underneath, his long hair woven in a thick braid that ran halfway down the length of his back. Panama stepped toward the shopping cart and, glancing around first in case anyone might be observing him, looked inside both of the cardboard boxes.

"Espresso machines?" he asked Wally.

"Brand new," she confirmed. "Swiss. A complete station, two servers, molded copper casing-that's an upgrade. Retail is seven thousand."

"Retail." Panama snorted, as if offended by the very concept.

"We'll take fifteen hundred," said Wally.

Another snort from Panama.

"Ha. We gonna see," he said. "They can take 'em round back."

The group walked together the final distance to the smoke shop, where Jake, Ella, and Tevin peeled off, wheeling the shopping cart toward an open garage door at the west end of the shop where two of Panama's men waited, ready to take delivery of the machines.

Wally followed Panama into the small smoke shop and all the way through to a back room office, where a.s.sorted stolen goods crowded the s.p.a.ce in stacks that reached nearly to the ceiling. Panama sat down at a cluttered desk and opened his greasy bag, purring at the sight of the unwrapped hot dogs. Wally sat down on a small folding chair opposite the desk. A second chair, empty beside her, reminded Wally that Sophie had sat beside Wally during most of these meetings. It was Sophie, with three years on the street and all the experience that came with that, who first introduced Wally to Panama.

The big man set his food aside for the moment, picked up his cell phone, and began calling. He carried on brief discussions with several unnamed parties, then set down the phone and picked up his first hot dog.

"Three hundred," he said.

"h.e.l.l no," said Wally. "Looks like I'll have to shop 'em around."

"Yeah, guess so," Panama said, speaking through a full mouth. "If you don't mind walkin'. Course, they already in my garage."

"You go to six hundred, that's fair," said Wally, feeling the pressure of having the cash and ID stolen, needing to make up for that loss for both herself and the crew.

Panama didn't reply to the offer. "Where you jack 'em, anyways?"

Wally just shrugged. A restaurant on Columbus Avenue had shut its doors after only a few months in business; Wally and the others had cased the place as a possible crash site and found the espresso machines still sitting inside the gutted shop, unopened. Panama didn't need to know any of that, but this was a chance for Wally to use a strategy she had learned from Nick, a way to avoid getting ripped off by sc.u.m like Panama: always dangle the next deal, even if it was total bulls.h.i.+t.

"I can't tell you where I got them," she said, "but there might be more, if you can move these."

"Oh, Panama can move 'em. ..."

"Something else," Wally said, changing the subject. "I lost my good ID, the one your guy Train cut for me last summer."

Panama set down his hot dog, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and shook his head. "My man Train is unavailable for the next twelve to eighteen months. I got a few good places I use. There a place up in Queens, an old Russian shop in Brighton Beach is pretty good, or these Nigerians in Jersey City ..."

"Brighton is good."

From memory, Panama dictated an address in Brighton Beach, and Wally jotted it down. She would need to skim at least two hundred dollars off the sale of the espresso machines to pay for a new ID.

"I can't go lower than five hundred on the machines," Wally finally said. "I'd look bad to my crew."

Panama considered this with a skeptical look on his face.

"You take some cards in trade?" he suggested. Panama had a connection for cards that added minutes to prepaid cell phones, something about scamming FEMA disaster relief. Whenever there was a natural disaster in the country, the relief agency pa.s.sed out prepaid cell phones to victims, plus cards to recharge the minutes. Within days, Panama would have a new s.h.i.+pment of the phones and cards off the black market. He would sell or trade them to Wally and the crew for twenty cents on the dollar, which they could turn around for double on the street.

"Yeah, cards could be part of it ..." Wally tentatively agreed, already starting to feel the buzz of closing a profitable deal.

"Tell you what ..." Panama reached inside his desk drawer and pulled a small box with the logo of a cell phone manufacturer on the side. He opened the box and pulled out a s.h.i.+ny new smart phone with a large touch screen in front. He pa.s.sed the phone to Wally, along with its small portable charger.

"I can be generous, go three hundred on the 'spresso machines," Panama said. "Plus some phone cards that you can b.u.mp to two hundred on the street, if you hustle. And you keep that smart phone, thrown in. That a clone, got a thousand minutes on it. You can sell that, get a hundred easy. If you want to keep it, though, I maybe got some business opportunities comin' up in the next few weeks, might be right for you. This way we can be in touch."

"What kind of opportunities are we talking about?"

"Don't worry 'bout it. Good money. I gonna call you when we ready to go."

When Wally emerged from the smoke shop, she found the others waiting on a stoop two doors up.

"We got three hundred cash," Wally said to the group.

"What?" Jake protested. "That's bulls.h.i.+t."

"Take it easy," Wally said. "That's plus phone cards that we can sell for maybe two hundred downtown. All together that's a good score."

They nodded in agreement, though Jake still looked a little ticked off.

"Here's the thing, though," Wally said. "I gotta replace my ID. So that's two hundred of the cash, right there."

The others didn't question Wally's need to replace the lost ID, and they knew the turnover on the cards would be pretty easy. Wally dug into her pockets and pulled out the wad of tens and twenties that Panama had paid her. She kept two hundred and pa.s.sed the rest to the others, along with the packet of phone cards.

"You guys get started on selling the cards, okay?" Wally said.

"Sure. Where are you headed?" Tevin asked.

"To get the ID. And some personal stuff."

The others didn't object. By now they were used to the boundaries that Wally had erected around her personal history. Everyone in the crew had their own secrets, and they respected hers.

The four of them walked to the subway station at 134th Street and grabbed the C train downtown. As they rode, Jake brought out his MP3 player and, on cue, the others each plugged their own earbuds into the "splitter" that allowed them to listen in on the mix together. The first song was a techno-house remix with a sort of hypnotic effect that almost caused them to miss their transfer at Columbus Circle. Jake realized it first and nudged the others; Tevin, Ella, and Jake waved goodbye to Wally as they hopped off and headed to the 3 train that would take them to Times Square.

Wally stayed on the C. As the train pulled out of the station, leaving her crew behind, Wally sighed, feeling relieved, and even spread out on the bench a little, expanding her personal s.p.a.ce. Her crew relied on her leaders.h.i.+p so much that Wally sometimes felt trapped under the weight of their expectations. When she was out in the city by herself, Wally reveled in the sense of freedom and possibility. More than once, Wally had imagined where she might end up if, one day, she stepped onto a train alone and allowed herself to keep riding, all the way to the end of the line and beyond.

Wally got off the train at the Port Authority and walked to Harmony House, a resource center for homeless youth on 41st Street. She went immediately to the women's washroom-an impersonal, almost industrial s.p.a.ce-and signed in to use a shower. The attendant gave her a clean towel and the key to an individual, prefab plastic stall, fairly clean but water-stained yellow from years of heavy use; the tight s.p.a.ce reeked of the bleach that the Harmony staff used every night to fight back the crud. Wally eagerly stripped down and stepped under the strong, hot stream of water, the steam quickly filling up the stall. She soaped and rinsed herself twice, imagining the stink of Panama's oniony hot dog breath was.h.i.+ng off her and swirling away down the drain. When the soaping was done, she stood under the hot stream, unmoving, soaking up the heat until the six-minute timer ran out and the water turned off on its own.

Wally dried off, grabbed a clean pair of underwear from her shoulder bag, and put the rest of her clothes back on. At the communal row of sinks, six of them side by side on a sagging fibergla.s.s counter, Wally stood with several other girls-all around her age-brus.h.i.+ng their teeth with the plastic-wrapped brushes provided by Harmony and putting on makeup in front of polished metal mirrors that had graffiti messages scratched into them: Rico does Juanie right, MS13, Sandra is a b.i.t.c.h. There were dispensers on the wall with free pads, which the girls grabbed by the fistful and stuffed in their bags. From one of the toilet stalls, there came the sounds of a girl quietly weeping. No one paid any attention.

One or two of the girls at the sinks looked fairly healthy and put-together; when they finished with their routines, they could probably pa.s.s for regular teens, girls with homes and families and futures. The rest were showing the signs of their difficult street lives. Wally brushed and dried her hair under a hot blower and tied it back in a stub of a ponytail-all her shoulder-length hair would allow-and checked herself out in the mirror. Which one was she, hopeful or hopeless? Staring back at her was a reasonably healthy girl of sixteen, acceptably clean and strong and well fed. Wally could still pa.s.s for happy, and she felt encouraged.

Wally's mascara had washed off in the shower. She pulled out her small makeup bag and began with her eyelashes, striving for the same dark, trashy look that she and Ella had so happily perfected. Soon Wally noticed another one of the girls at the sinks was staring at her intently. The girl was big and heavy-she had at least forty pounds on Wally-with a neglected look, her hair greasy, her face clouded over. One of the hopeless.

"What the f.u.c.k are you looking at?" Wally said. Hesitation was weakness.

"You ain't buy that," the girl said in a Bronx sneer, nodding at the tube of mascara Wally was applying.

The girl was right. Claire had given it to Wally at the end of their most recent visit, stuffing the tube into Wally's bag as she walked out the door. Chanel. The one tube was worth more than all the other girls' possessions combined, and then some. The girl had to believe that Wally had stolen it.

Wally knew how it would go.

You want it? Come get it, she would say. The girl might hesitate, caught off guard by Wally's aggression, but she wouldn't be able to back down in front of the other girls. She would make a move, and Wally would turn her body to the side, crouching down low into an athletic position as she had been taught at the dojo. When the heavy girl was within range, Wally would throw her left fist forward in a feint, then slam her right fist up into the girl's solar plexus. The girl would drop to the floor of the bathroom, shocked by the terrible pain, panicked and struggling to breathe, afraid that she might be dying.

Imagining the outcome did not make Wally feel strong, only sad for the clueless, desperate girl standing before her.

"Take it," Wally said, tossing the mascara to the girl.

The tube of Chanel was never Wally's anyway, not really. She and Ella found their own makeup in dollar store bargain bins, and that was just fine with Wally. She grabbed her bag and left the bathroom, brus.h.i.+ng past the startled-looking girl who now clasped a fancy new tube of mascara in her hand. In the hallway, Wally headed for the exit and was almost out the door when she heard her name called out from behind. She turned to find Lois Chao, one of the Harmony House caseworkers, walking quickly down the hall toward her, waving a small piece of paper in the air.

"Hey, Wally," Lois said, a bit breathless when she caught up with Wally. "How are you doing?"

"I'm good, Lois," Wally answered curtly, hoping to discourage her from offering a pep talk of some kind.

"You look like you're in a hurry," Lois said, reading Wally exactly, "but I told this detective I would give you this. So here."

Wally took the business card from Lois. The name on it was Detective Atley Greer, NYPD, 20th Precinct. Lois watched for Wally's reaction and saw the look of concern.

"It didn't seem like an emergency or anything," Lois rea.s.sured her. "He said he just was looking for information on something. You want to use my office phone?"

"No need. Thanks, Lois."

"Okay. Stay safe, Wally." Lois turned away and headed back down the hallway.

Wally's first impulse was to ignore the message-what good could possibly come from calling a cop?-but her curiosity was piqued, and she remembered that her new smart phone was set to block her number, so there was no risk to her. Wally dialed the number on Detective Greer's business card. The phone rang three times on the other end, then went to voice mail.

"Uh ... hi," Wally spoke into the cell phone. "This is Wallis Stoneman, returning your ... I mean, responding to the message you left for me at Harmony House. I'm not clear what this is about but ... maybe I'll try you back later."

Wally hung up, suddenly feeling lame for making the call. Maybe I'll try you back later? Her own words sounded weak to her, and that p.i.s.sed Wally off. There were a bunch of reasons a New York City cop might want to speak with her, and an emergency situation with Claire was far down on that list. Wally put the detective out of her mind and headed back to the Port Authority, where she boarded the Q train for Brighton Beach.

THREE.

Everyone in Wally's crew knew she was adopted, but Ella was the first one she'd told about it. On a very hot day in July, Wally and Ella had walked in cutoffs and tank tops to the lake in Central Park, where they climbed down the Hernshead rock to the lakesh.o.r.e. They took off their shoes and soaked their feet in the cool but slightly algae green water.

"I wasn't cut out for this," Wally said, fanning herself, the fair skin of her cheeks flushed pink.

"For what?"

"Heat. I'm from Russia," Wally said matter-of-factly. "It's always cold and gray there. As far as I know."

"Your parents are Russian?"

"Yeah. Well ... no. Not my American parents." Wally hesitated a bit, suddenly regretting that she'd brought up the subject at all.

"You mean, you're adopted?"

"Yeah."

"From Russia?"

"Uh-huh."

Ella thought about this for a moment.

"You don't know who your actual parents are?"

"No."

Wally looked at her friend and could see that her imagination was already working overtime. Magical thinking was Ella's specialty.

"Cool ..." Ella finally said.

"You think so?"

"Oh yeah. You could be, like, secretly a Russian princess or something."

"Hmm. I don't think they make those anymore."

Wally leaned back against the rocks and closed her eyes, happy to let the subject drop. She had spent a lot of time questioning her origins-had once been obsessed with it, even-but dwelling on those issues had never done her any good. The questions that had been swirling around in her brain for the past six or seven years-Who am I? Where do I belong?-had never been answered, and the resulting frustration had played a large role in her rift with Claire, her adoptive mother.

"Did you always know?" Ella asked, not ready to let go of the subject. "I mean, your parents told you about being adopted, right?"