A Walk in the Park
Champ and I walked through the park and across Ninth St. toward the river. I told him that I wanted to stop at Students for a Free Tibet to let them know what was going on. He was leery. He told me that he'd level with me. He had an outstanding violation for jumping a turnstile and that if the cops got involved, they'd take him in. As suspicious as I was that Champ had done more than beat the subway fare, I assured him again that I was not calling the cops. I did call Deirdre, though. I wanted her to know where we were heading. I wasn't sure it was the right decision, I said, but I saw no alternative.
Champ and I discussed a lot of things as we headed toward the river. He did most of the talking. He told me that he had been in the army. He said he'd come from a large family, and his father would beat the shit off out the boys when they did something wrong. His twin sister was a junkie who was always stealing from him until she had overdosed and died. He thought we should drop a nuclear bomb on Afghanistan to wipe out El Qaeda. What did I think?
We crossed the footbridge over the FDR Drive and walked south along the park path. Few people were out. It was a blustery day, the wind swooping in from the river. The longer we walked, the more I began to question what we were doing. I had played softball in the park ten years before, but my memory of a band shell was vague. I checked a pocket street atlas I'd brought from home, but it only showed swings, baseball diamonds and a tennis court. I told Champ that I hoped we weren't being set up. He resented this. I assured him that I wasn't suggesting that he was setting me up. Of course, I wasn't sure of that either.
I was walking even faster than my normal quick pace. Champ kept up, wheezing from the cigarettes he seemed to light continually. He talked more about his past. He had owned his own plumbing business in New Jersey, he said. His partner, who was a crack addict, had cheated him out of it by failing to keep appointments while Champ had been in prison. When he got out, there were no customers left. He also mentioned his wife, Maria, who was strung out on drugs, he said. They were divorced. They had two kids, an eight-year-old boy who looked just like him, and a younger girl. Champ said he had given Maria everything - a house in Pennsylvania, a good TV, and all the appliances she could ever want. When he'd come home after a full day of work trying to build his business, followed by a night of moonlighting, he expected her to at least serve him a cup of coffee. Even that simple task seemed to be too much for her, Champ said. Then she'd get out of bed in the middle of the night and start cleaning everything obsessively, he said, because of the drugs she took.
I asked him about his jail time. It was a bad rap, he said. He'd been minding his own business when he saw a guy beating up a woman outside a bar in New Jersey. He told the guy to stop. They got into a fight. He punched the guy in the ribs. The ribs cracked and punctured his lung and he died. Because he had been a boxer, Champ's hands were considered a lethal weapon, and he had been convicted of manslaughter. Then he almost got killed in jail when a black guy stabbed him in the neck with a shiv — he stopped to show me the wound — while he was playing poker. The motivation had something to do with cigarettes. He also told me that his partner had shot him several times. He wanted to show me these wounds, too, but I was beginning to feel numb to his tales of woe and just kept walking.
We passed two Latino youths who looked to be about twenty. One was pushing a stroller. I assumed a baby was in it but didn't look. As soon as they went by, Champ asked me if I had another $20. He wanted to ask them if they'd seen Chaos and Carrick. I pulled a bill out of my pocket. He called after them. At first, they were suspicious. Then Champ told them that I was the father of a seventeen-year-old girl who had run away from home and that I just wanted to get her back. This seemed to click with the one not pushing the stroller, a tall young man with smooth skin and a sweet face. He said that two guys and a girl who fit my description were sleeping in the back of the band shell. He'd seen Carrick around, he said. He had no idea how young she was, and said he understood why I was doing what I was. He said his name was Danny. He offered to come with us. We tried to figure out what to do about the $20. The guy with the stroller wanted a cut of it even though he wasn't accompanying us, but Danny didn't seem to trust him to split the money later. I was reluctant to pull my wallet out of a concealed pocket of my jacket, but I did. I gave the guy with the stroller $10, and Champ told Danny he'd get the other $10 after we were sure that Carrick really was where he said she was. That seemed to be okay with him.
We got to a wire fence on the north side of the band shell, which was in terrible shape. Champ suggested that he and Danny look inside the structure, and that I wait by the fence alone. They were afraid Carrick would take off if she saw me coming. They went through a rip on the river side of the fence, and stopped at the wall of the structure for a few seconds. As they walked back, I could not discern from their expressions what they'd seen.
“She's there,” Champ said, his voice trailing off, as if there was a hitch. My heart raced - part joy, part anxiety. Then, like a soldier who'd been behind the enemy lines, Champ described the scene. He said the three of them were asleep under some blankets on a raised platform.
“It's not stable, Tommy,” he said. “It could collapse at any time.”
Champ then turned to Danny and told him he could go, handing him a $10 bill from the money I'd given him earlier.
Danny shook his head.
“I want to make sure this man gets his daughter back,” he said.
Champ started to get agitated. He asked me what I wanted to do. I didn't really trust anybody at this point. But I figured having two people around was better than one, so I said Danny should stay.
“I think it's better if I go in alone, though,” I said. “I'm going to make it clear to everybody that I don't want any trouble. I just want Carrick to come home with me.”
I felt like I was in an outtake from the movie Traffic, which I'd seen recently. The protagonist, played by Michael Douglas, discovers his addicted teenage daughter turning tricks in a squalid hotel room to support her habit. I hoped that it would not come to a fight, as it had with Douglas's character, or that I'd face a weapon. But I also felt a foolish confidence, as if the righteousness of my mission would protect me.