The Glamorous Life 2 (21 page)

A couple of minutes later the inevitable happened: a forty-two-yard touchdown grab by Shaun Suisham. The play sucked the air, and life, slam out of the entire stadium, including Lynx. He was too outdone and wanted to kick himself in the ass.

The score put the Steelers up 24-20. Everyone looked at the person beside them, incredulously with an I-can’t-fucking-believe-this expression etched onto elongated and stunned faces.

Believe it.

When the clock hit zero, Lynx sat and looked at it for a minute as if somehow more time was going to miraculously appear on the clock. But it didn’t work that way. The game was over, and, like clockwork, the fans rushed the exits as if they were trying to escape a bad dream. Tailgaters mourned the loss in the parking lot. Anyone crazy enough to think that football was “just another game” didn’t get it. From New York to California and Minnesota to Texas, fans ate, slept, and defecated for their respective teams. Marriages were ruined over the game of football, and if his wife found out about the fifty grand he’d just lost, not to mention the other paper, his may be ruined. Or she may just kill him.

Lynx was slowly shaking his head in utter bewilderment when his phone rang. He didn’t need to look at the caller ID to know who was calling. It was the people he’d just lost another fifty Gs to, the same people that he was now into for $165,000.

He released the grip on Nya’s hand to face the music on the end of the phone.

Nya stood by her father, rubbing her stomach. “Daddy, my stomach hurt.”

“Mine too, baby girl, mine too,” he repeated to his daughter as he put the phone up to his ear. “Hello?”

“Daddy … I … think, I might have ate too much.” Nya stood beside her father rubbing her stomach.

“… Yeah, I know what the numbers are.… You’re gonna get your paper”— with a lump in his throat, he reiterated— “all of it.”

“Daddy, I…” Since he was still talking on the phone she swallowed her words. She knew her manners and she exercised them by trying to politely wait for him to finish his call.

From behind her someone bumped her. When Nya turned to see who’d pushed her an ocean of bodies washed past. An old white lady, trying to push past her, and said, “Excuse me, darling,” then kept on shoving her way through the crowd and pushed her even farther away from her daddy.

No longer able to see him, Nya tried calling out to him. “Daddy!” She was bumped again. “Daddy!”

She couldn’t see him anymore, and boy was she scared. The poor child was too short to see over the crowd; the crowd was too thick to see through.

Again, she screamed: “Daddy!”

He grabbed her hand. “I gotcha,” a man said.

That wasn’t her daddy’s voice. Nya looked up at the face of the man holding her hand. It was painted purple, like hers. “Who’re you?” She tried to snatch her hand away, but he was holding on to it too tight.

“I’m going to help you find your daddy,” he said, leading her away from the crowd. She tried to lock her knees together, then her legs and feet fell to the concrete, hoping she’d be super-glued to the concrete so she couldn’t move, but the man was too strong for her.

Bambi, Nya’s mother, had told her never to go anywhere with someone she didn’t know, and not to talk to them either.

“I don’t know you,” Nya said, trying to wrench her hand away from his grip. “Let go of me.”

He tried to convince her that he was a friend of the family, but Nya didn’t believe him. Strangers told lies.

“I’m going to fall out on the ground and scream if you don’t let me go.” She’d learned that at school and she was about to follow up on her promise when the stranger said he wanted to show her something that he’d gotten from her mother. The mention of her mother got Nya’s attention.

“You don’t know my mother,” she accused. “Stranger danger,” she screamed, but nobody paid attention, so she yelled at the top of her lungs, “Stranger danger!”

“Sure I do. She told me to give you this.”

It was a silk scarf, a red one.

“That’s not my mother’s…”

The stranger pressed the red scarf against her nose. It was wet with something that smelled sweet. Then, suddenly, she fell asleep.

The chloroform would keep her out for at least an hour. The stranger picked up what looked to be his very sleepy daughter into his arms. The makeup on both of their faces helped with the charade and, just in case anyone did get suspicious, it concealed his true identity.

29

“Nyy-aaah!”

Lynx yelled out his daughter’s name again and again and again, spinning in circles in search of her. “
Fuck!
” He didn’t see her anywhere. He’d only taken his eyes off Nya for just a split second to answer the phone, and just that quick, she was gone. Vanished.

“Nyy-aaah!”

People started to stare.
Who you talking to, Daddy? Mama say when you talk to yourself, people may mistake you for crazy or stupid. I don’t want people to think you are.

Nya’s voice continued to echo in his head as Lynx randomly stopped a man wearing a #20 Ed Reed jersey.

“Excuse me, my man? But have you seen a little girl, about this tall?” Lynx held his hand waist-high. “Long, black pigtails and raven-colored ribbons in her hair? Face painted purple?”

Lynx noticed that the man’s face was painted purple also. And so were the three young boys’ that were with him. Hell. Half the damn stadium had painted their faces for the game.

The man seemed empathetic to Lynx’s situation, or maybe the look that Lynx saw in his eyes was just sympathy, one parent feeling sorry for another’s misfortune. Whatever the emotion that he may have felt, the man shook his head.

“Can’t say that I have,” he said, and dropped his head. “Sorry.”

There was no time to be sorry. A lot of other folks were going to be sorry.

Lynx quickly moved on to the next closest person, then the next … and the next … and the next … With each person he asked, Lynx became more desperate. And more frantic with every “no.” He began to run into the nearest ladies’ restroom like a mad man screaming Nya’s name

Lynx startled a lady who was on her way out. “Did you see a little girl in the there?”

The woman shook her head, and he strode past her.

“Nyyaaahhh,” he desperately called out, praying that she was in one of the stalls.

Women shot him nasty stares, fused with a few choice obscenities. A two-hundred-pound, trigger-happy blond chick dug into her purse for a can of mace, but slowed her roll when she saw the I-got-no-problem-with-putting-a-foot-up-your-ass look on his face.

Luckily, he made it in and out of the restroom without anyone getting hurt. After roughly forty-five minutes of fervent searching Lynx found himself inside a police precinct. Primarily used to detain finger smiths (pickpockets) and other types of thieves, bush-whackers (perpetrators of assault and muggers), and junkies (illegal pharmacists), the in-house precinct was built on one of the sub-levels. A policeman behind a desk was unceremoniously pushing papers while chowing down on a roast beef and pickle sandwich. The name tag pinned to his uniform read
OFFICER MCELROY
. “What can I do you for?’ said Officer McElroy with a mouthful of the stinking processed sandwich meat.

It hurt to say it. The five words burned the lining of Lynx’s stomach en route to his mouth. “I can’t find my daughter.”
The shit didn’t even sound right,
Lynx thought.
You’re supposed to lose keys, maybe your cell phone, but not your child. Never your child.

Officer McElroy said, “Pretty nice trick you managed to pull off there. I wish I had that problem with my wife.” The man couldn’t have been more callous if he tried.

Surely the cop didn’t understand what he was saying or maybe Lynx wasn’t clear on the way he was conveying what he was trying to say.

He still had not digested the words that had just come out of his mouth when he had to cough those same words up again. “My daughter is missing. I can’t find her.” And the words tasted bitter coming out the second time.

“How long has she been missing—your daughter?”

At this point, the police in general and Lynx had a long history of not seeing eye to eye, and this comedian in blue wasn’t doing much to change that.

Lynx took a deep breath to keep from snapping. His going off on the man wasn’t going to help the situation any. He looked at his watch. “It’s been nearly an hour now. Maybe a little less.”

“And where was the last place you saw her?” McElroy asked.

Lynx explained to the officer how Nya was right by his side when they were leaving the stadium—on entry level—when he took his eyes off her for a second to answer the phone.

Derisively, Officer McElroy mumbled, “I see. The phone, huh? I don’t even know why you people carry those things around glued to your ears. What did you do before?”

You people.
Lynx thought about straightening this lazy, sandwich-eating moron. Lynx was about to respond when the simple cop got to the issue at hand.

“Did you try paging her over the PA system?”

Lynx had gotten a lady from the information kiosk to page Nya three times. After no luck, she was the one who had suggested Lynx try the precinct.

“Yes, I have,” Lynx said.

“And?”

And.

“The fuck do you mean?
And.
If I’d found her I wouldn’t be here. I’ve looked everywhere,” Lynx said, getting more upset than he already was. “I want an APB put out on her. I want people looking for her. What’s the name of that shit they do for those white kids that go missing?” He snapped his fingers with the answer to his own question. “Amber Alert. I want a fucking Amber Alert issued.”

Unmoved by Lynx’s situation, or his demands, Officer McElroy said, “I understand your anxiety; however, I do know how to perform my F-ing job.”

Praying for the strength and discipline to keep from wrapping his hands around this asshole’s neck, Lynx held his tongue and kept his hands deep in his pockets.

“Now let’s try this again,” Officer McElroy continued, “I’m gonna need a description: Age? Height? Weight? And the clothes she was wearing when you last saw her?”

Lynx gave McElroy what he’d asked for, glad to be finally getting somewhere.

McElroy keyed the necessary information into a computer that sat on his desk. “Do you have a recent picture?”

“Sure.” Lynx got one from his wallet. It was of Bambi and Nya at Nya’s cousin’s birthday party. He handed it to the officer. “Will this do?”

In the photo Nya and Bambi were dressed alike in yellow dresses and big floppy hats.

“Pretty girl you got here,” said McElroy, smiling at the picture.

“Thank you.”

His eyes still on the photo, McElroy cracked, “Yeah, your daughter is cute too.” Then he laughed like the shit was too funny.

It happened real quickly.

Lynx shut McElroy up by slamming his fist down his throat hard enough to loosen a couple of his teeth. Immediately the jokes came to a screeching halt.
Should’ve whipped his ass.
Lynx thought about the jokes while pounding McElroy a few more times for good measure. Two other policemen rushed in from the back room when they heard the commotion. Too bad for McElroy they didn’t show up quicker.

“What the hell—” one of them shouted.

McElroy’s partners in blue wasted no time breaking up the lopsided fight, giving Lynx a few well-placed wallops with their nightsticks in the process.

30

A black SUV sporting
tinted windows hugged the middle lane of I-495, heading north. The driver of the SUV went by the name Big Jack for obvious reasons: he was six four and a cheeseburger short of weighing 275 pounds. His partner Mo rode shotgun.

Mo turned to Big Jack. “You sho she ain’t dead?”

Big Jack put a Rick Ross CD in the deck. He wasn’t a big fan of the artist as a person (the fact that dude was a correctional officer before becoming a gangsta rapper was hard to overlook), but he liked the music the guy put out.

Once Big Jack found the track, he said, “She’s still breathing, ain’t it?” as if Mo had asked a stupid question.

“That shit can kill a person that small, if you use too much,” Mo said in defense. “She ain’t no good to a nigga dead,” he pointed out.

Big Jack would have preferred not to have used the strong anesthetic at all, but he had no reason not to believe the girl when she told him that she would fall on the ground and scream if he didn’t let go of her hand. That would have been no good.

Mo looked in the backseat.

Nya was still unconscious. A black scarf around her eyes, just in case she woke up before they reached their destination. But like Big Jack said, she was still breathing. Mo could see her little chest moving.

31

“Yoooooo,” he called out
nonstop, Lynx demanded his one phone call. “I have a right to call my attorney,” he said. “This is against my constitutional right.”

Finally, an officer wheeled a portable jack down the hallway and parked it outside of Lynx’s cell. “You got ten minutes.”

The contraption looked like a pay phone welded to a skateboard. The metal cord attached to the receiver was about half the length of his arm. So short he would have to squat down and lean against the bars for it to reach his ear.

Lynx assumed the necessary position and instead of calling his lawyer, he dialed his wife, Bambi.

“Hello.”

“Bambi.”

“Lynx?” There was a pause before she asked, “Who phone are you on?” Before he could explain, she asked, “How far are y’all from home?”

This was going to be more difficult than he thought it would be. And he thought it would be god-awful.

He said, “I need for you to sit down. Are you sitting?”

“What’s going on, Lynx? Just spit it out.” He was sure that she probably thought the call was about him being late again. It seemed like this was what the majority of his calls were about nowadays.

He paused for a second, then said, “I’m still in Baltimore.…”

“You know it’s a school night,” she shot back, wanting Nya to get her proper rest and not be cranky in the morning or unproductive at school.