The Broken Window

Arthur Rhyme had given up being scared of the Lats, who were ignoring him anyway. And he knew the big fuck-you black guy wasn’t any threat.

It was the tattooed white guy who bothered him. The tweaker-what meth-heads were apparently called-scared Arthur a lot. Mick was his name. His hands twitched, he scratched his welty skin and his eerie white eyes jumped like bubbles in boiling water. He whispered to himself.

Arthur had tried to avoid the man all yesterday, and last night he’d lain awake and in between bouts of depression spent a lot of time wishing Mick away, hoping that he’d go to trial today and vanish from Arthur’s life forever.

But no such luck. He was back this morning and seemed to be staying close. He continued to glance at Arthur. “You and me,” he once muttered, sending a chill right down to Arthur’s tailbone.

Even the Lats didn’t seem to want to hassle Mick. Maybe you had to follow certain protocols in jail. Some unwritten rules of right and wrong. People like this skinny tattooed druggie might not play by those rules, and everybody here seemed to know it.

Ever’body know ever’thing round here. ’Cept you. You don’ know shit…

Once he laughed, looked at Arthur as if recognizing him and started to rise but then seemed to forget what he’d intended and sat down again, picking at his thumb.

“Yo, Jersey Man.” A voice in his ear. Arthur jumped.

The big black guy had come up behind him. He sat down next to Arthur. The bench creaked.

“Antwon. Antwon Johnson.”

Should he make a fist and tap it? Don’t be a fucking idiot, he told himself and just nodded. “Arthur-”

“I know.” Johnson glanced at Mick and said to Arthur, “That tweaker fucked up. Don’t do that meth shit. Fuck you up forever.” After a moment he said, “So. You a brainy guy?”

“Sort of.”

“The fuck ‘sorta’ mean?”

Don’t play games. “I have a physics degree. And one in chemistry. I went to M.I.T.”

“Mitt?”

“It’s a school.”

“Good one?”

“Pretty good.”

“So you know science shit? Chemistry and physics and everything?”

This line of questioning wasn’t at all like that of the two Lats’, the ones who’d tried to extort him. It seemed like Johnson was really interested. “Some things. Yeah.”

Then the big guy asked, “So you know howta make bombs. One big enough to blow that motherfucking wall down.”

“I…” Heart thudding again, harder than before. “Well-”

Antwon Johnson laughed. “Fuckin’ wit’ you, man.”

“I-”

“Fuckin’. Wit. You.”

“Oh.” Arthur laughed and wondered if his heart would explode right at this moment or would wait till later. He hadn’t gotten all of his father’s genes, but had the faulty cardiac messages been included in the package?

Mick said something to himself and took an intense interest in his right elbow, scratching it raw.

Both Johnson and Arthur watched him.

Tweaker…

Johnson then said, “Yo, yo, Jersey Man, lemme ask you somethin’.”

“Sure.”

“My momma, she religious, you know what I’m saying? And she tellin’ me one time the Bible was right. I mean, all of it was exactly the way that shit was wrote. Okay but listen up: I’m thinking, where’s the dinosaurs in the Bible? God created man and woman and earth and rivers and donkeys and snakes an’ shit. Why don’t it say God created dinosaurs? I mean, I seen their skeletons, you know. So they was real. So whatsa fuckin’ truth, man?”

Arthur Rhyme looked at Mick. Then at the nail pounded in the wall. His palms were sweating and he was thinking that, of all the things that could happen to him in jail, he was going to get killed because he took a scientist’s moral stand against intelligent design.

Oh, what the fuck?

He said, “It would be against all the known laws of science-laws that have been acknowledged by every advanced civilization on earth-for the earth to be only six thousand years old. It would be like you sprouting wings and flying out that window there.”

The man frowned.

I’m dead.

Johnson fixed him with an intense gaze. Then he nodded. “I fuckin’ knew it. Didn’t make no sense at all, six thousand years. Fuck.”

“I can give you the name of a book to read about it. There’s this author Richard Dawkins and he-”

“Don’ wanna read no fuckin’ book. Take yo’ word fo’ it, Mr. Jersey Man.”

Arthur really felt like tapping fists now. But he refrained. He asked, “What’s your mother going to say when you tell her?”

The round black face screwed up in astonishment. “I ain’ gonna tell her. That’d be fucked up. You never win no arguments ’gainst yo’ mother.”

Or your father, Arthur said to himself.

Johnson then grew serious. He said, “Yo. Word up you din’t do what they busted you fo’.”

“Of course not.”

“But you got yo’ ass collared anyway?”

“Yep.”

“The fuck that happen?”

“I wish I knew. I’ve been thinking about it since I got arrested. It’s all I think about. How he could’ve done it.”

“Who’s ‘he’?”

“The real killer.”

“Yo, like in The Fugitive. Or O.J.”