said?
And then there were the things Mentayer didn’t say. Like why didn’t she ask me what caused me to be concerned about Markus now? And why did she blow up at me? Why did she say she’d never heard from me? It’s true that after a few years of not hearing from her, I stopped writing. It hadn’t been a conscious decision; my drinking had gotten out of control, and my relationship with Frank was pretty much over even though we hadn’t yet divorced. I do remember thinking that Mentayer must have moved on. I didn’t think she cared if she heard from me or not.
Something’s not right. Something doesn’t make sense. What is it?
Mentayer said Markus was going to be okay, and then, in the same breath, she said the school was going to be okay, too.
Then it hits me. I’d been so upset by her anger that what she said next hadn’t registered with me. The reason P.S. 457 was going to be okay was because the CSCH Corporation was building a charter school in its place. Really?
I punch in J. B.’s number on my phone.
“Harrell here.”
“It’s me, Sylvia. I have to see you. It’s about the dead body they found in the Bronx.”
“Has it been identified? Was it who you thought it was? Markus, was that his name?”
“I talked to Mentayer LeMeur. She’s Markus’s sister. She says her brother is fine.” I rub my forehead, squeeze the skin together with my fingers.
“But?”
“I don’t know. Something’s not right.” I stop, careful not to betray Mentayer by questioning her veracity. “She told me the CSCH Corporation is building a school to replace P.S. 457. What are the odds?”
“There are no—”
“Coincidences. I know.”
~
We meet for lunch an hour later at the Higher Ground and Spirits Café, a favorite haunt of mine from when I was in graduate school. I’ve always liked its funkiness, but today its idiosyncratic décor is of no interest to me.
“You must be relieved about Markus,” J. B. says.
I close my eyes, and images of the impoverished world of the Bronx appear, as vivid as ever: what I left behind, who I left behind, Markus walking into his uncle’s apartment building, waving good-bye for the last time, my not walking in with him to make sure he was safe, never finding out what happened to him. Still not knowing where he’s been all these years, what he’s been doing. I open my eyes. “The past isn’t the past,” I say to J. B. “It’s right here, right now, whether I like it or not.”
He looks at me askance. “What do you mean? Where is Markus now?”
“That’s the thing. I don’t know.” I grip the edge of the Formica tabletop with my hands. “And why hasn’t there been any news about the body?”
“They probably haven’t identified it yet,” J. B. says.
“Mentayer said Markus was fine, but I’d feel better if... ” I pause, take a breath. “Why wouldn’t they have identified that body yet? It shouldn’t be that difficult.”
“After so many years,” J. B. says in his matter-of-fact journalistic manner, “it actually is. It’s hard for forensic pathologists to identify remains when there’s not enough skin intact to get fingerprints. They can x-ray the teeth, of course, and compare them with previous dental records. DNA testing of the bone fragments is possible, too, but the DNA would have to then be compared with the DNA of family members.”
“So why don’t they do that,” I say.
“At this point, unless they can narrow the suspect pool, looking for family members would be like looking for a needle in a haystack, or more like many haystacks. It’s still possible, but more likely to be done if the police had some idea about the boy’s identity first. Then they could use forensic testing to either confirm or deny their suspicions.”
I think about what he’s saying. The dead boy could be any one of thousands of boys in the Bronx. I suppose if there was a list of every boy who went missing in the Bronx thirty or forty years ago, that could narrow it down, but unless the police had a way to at least make some educated guess about who the boy was, it’s unrealistic to think they would consider it worth trying.
“Why would the police care about a boy who died decades ago anyway,” I say. “Why invest the time and money on some poor little black kid from the Bronx?”
“Why are you so invested in this, Sylvia, now that you know Markus is fine?” He pauses and gives me a meaningful look that stops short of a scold. “Sylvia,” he then goes on, “if for some reason you still think the body might be Markus, you should let the police know. Do you know something?”
“I don’t. I don’t know anything. His sister says he’s fine.”
He raises both eyebrows.
“And how would I contact the police anyway,” I say. “Make a cold call to 911? No one will listen to me. Besides, I don’t know anything.” My foot starts tapping, and I press down on my knee to stop it.
“You know you don’t believe Mentayer.”
My stomach goes into spasm from the betrayal I’m about to commit. “I still don’t know what happened to Markus,” I say. “Mentayer was angry at me for calling, and I can’t shake this feeling that she doesn’t know what happened to Markus either. I think it’s strange that neither of us even mentioned the dead body on the phone.”
J. B. leans toward me, an intent look on his face. “It’s also strange that the article in the New York Times never mentioned the fact that the dead body was discovered on the CSCH building site. That might not seem unusual on the surface, might not even be considered to be a relevant fact. Except that Daniel Leacham, who’s an award-winning journalist with a reputation for being thorough, wrote the article. And I know he’s written several articles about CSCH in the past. So why didn’t he mention CSCH in the article? It isn’t plausible that he didn’t know.”
“What are you implying?”
“It’s curious, that’s all.”
“Call him,” I say. “Ask him.”
“I already did,” he says. “He was pretty evasive, but he piqued my interest when he said something about CSCH being an exposé waiting to happen. This is getting interesting, don’t you think?” He falls silent, and there’s an air of concentration about him, a tension in the air that I recognize as his suppressed excitement at the potential discovery of a new lead. “That’s why I’m going to New York,” he says at last.
“I’m going with you,” I say without skipping a beat. “I have to know if that dead boy was Markus, because if it was, then his death is my fault.”
FOUR
Winter 1967
Even though P.S. 457 was bleak and overcrowded, a physically and emotionally violent place, the energy of my thirty-five eight-year-old students lightened the building’s
