They Don't Play Stickball in Milwaukee by Reed Farrel Coleman Read Free Book Online Page B

was nine, to L.A. when she was eleven, and finally to New York when she was fourteen.
    â€œI was kind of an army brat,” she said sadly, “but without the support of others with the same fate. At least army brats have the base. Then, when I was seventeen, my father was given his big promotion and called back home.”
    â€œYou stayed?”
    â€œWhat choice did I have, really? I wasn’t Japanese. I wasn’t American. I was both and neither. I had no good friends here, but I had none there. My family in Japan were strangers to me. In America at least, there is room for misfits. At home—listen to me—sorry. In Japan, a misfit is treated like a protruding nail. It is hammered down. I will not be hammered down.”
    â€œI can see that. You’re pretty brave,” I said.
    â€œNo, Dylan. Only people with choices can be brave.”
    I asked again, as I had the night before, if she knew any other of Zak’s friends who might be able to help. The answer was unchanged. She and Zak guarded their friendship jealously. They did not mix in the other’s circle. She asked if she could check in with me. I said that was a silly question. I asked if we might dream again. She said we would have to see what the night would bring. We left it there.
    I went down to the local pancake house and had a breakfast that would have made my Uncle Saul jealous. Uncle Saul was the only man I knew who could have lunch while still eating breakfast. He had also consumed enough scotch whiskey to float an aircraft carrier. It worked for him. Saul was eighty-four and looked like sixty. Who needed bran and mineral water?
    Somewhere between the cheese omelet and the corned beef hash, I managed to read the local paper. It was pretty much what you’d expect: two pages of local news, two pages of national and international news off the wire, an editorial about zoning variances, and twenty-three pages of advertisements.
    I was about to put the paper down, when I overheard two guys who seemed to be groundskeepers from the college angrily discussing somebody named Jones. Their anger had a nasty racial bent. “Crack-pushin’ nigger” topped the list of their favorite phrases. “Black bitch is just like her daddy” was a close second. I turned back to page three of the Riversborough Gazette. The headline read: “JONES JURY SELECTION TODAY.”
    Valencia Jones was big news in Riversborough. A freshman last year, Ms. Jones was stopped for a broken taillight as she was leaving town at Spring break. In spite of the fact that both her license and registration were in order, the cops searched her vehicle. In Riversborough, apparently, black face plus BMW equals reasonable cause. Their search netted two vials of a drug the cops were calling Isotope. Relatively cheap and easily produced, Isotope was a far more potent chemical variant of LSD. The paper said that the cops said that one of the vials found in the spare tire compartment of Ms. Jones’ car contained enough Isotope to dose all of New York City. But since you can never believe what you read or what cops say about drugs, I figured there was enough Isotope in the vial to dose the Bronx. Anyway you cut it, that’s a lot of stoned New Yorkers.
    But beyond the drugs, the validity of the search, and the inherent racial baggage, there was Valencia Jones herself. As the paper pointed out in at least three instances, Valencia Jones was the daughter of the late Raman “Iceman” Jones. Until someone introduced him to the business end of a 9mm, the Iceman had controlled the heroin traffic between Stamford and Hartford, Connecticut. So, despite her exemplary scholastic record, her oft-stated desire to distance herself from her father’s heinous life, and vows of innocence, no one seemed inclined to believe her. Her mother had even encountered difficulty finding a lawyer to take the case. No doubt my friend Larry Feld was previously