Choke Hold

Chapter 2

2

Bones’ c***k about teaching stung because Eli had been considering doing just that. He wasn’t thinking about changing professions. He’d just take on some volunteer work to keep himself out of the bars, as the expression goes.

Eli had met Vince Dipego at the Police Youth League, a community outreach program sanctioned by the department. At the PYL gym, cops and kids played basketball. Social workers and public defenders occasionally got tapped as subs for the overworked cops, and that’s how Eli happened to be on the court one night. Dipego, a parole officer, had reached out to him about doing some pro bono legal work. He declined at the time because he was working for free too much already. Most of Eli’s paying clients weren’t paying.

You could say Eli was bored. That was partly it. As for whatever free time he could manage, dating seemed like asking for grief. He wasn’t retired from the game, but just now he wasn’t about to go scouting. As many workaholics do, he nursed the faint hope that he’d collide with a new prospect in the performance of his daily professional routine. A few times, he’d thought about calling Keiko on impulse. But asking for more rejection was no plan at all. And dialing drunk, in the wee hours when he was most inclined to try, might help him say what he felt but would not win him her sympathy.

No, Eli’s motivations had more to do with his accidental meetup with Ramon. Here was a kid, lived in his neighborhood, he’d never met. What kind of prospects did this boy have? Was he learning anything at school? What did he want to be when he grew up, and how wildly unlikely was that goal for him in this town, in this society? Had he ever been approached by a gang member? Did he know anyone who was in a gang? Or serving time?

When would it be too late for him?

“So what kind of trouble do you want to get into?” Vince asked Eli on the phone when he called.

“What’ve you got?” Eli asked (bravely, he thought).

“I’m assuming you still don’t want to do legal counseling, and you frankly suck at basketball.”

“Guilty and guilty.”

“What’s driving this?”

“I want to know these kids better,” Eli said. “I had a run-in with a young one the other day. I’d like to help him, but I don’t know how. Seems like I need to see where he could be headed before I go charging in there. You know how, if you don’t know what you’re doing, acting with good intentions can make things worse? My high-school English teacher freshman year was the chairman of the department. He’d spent years teaching seniors, and he saw how screwed up they were. So he decided he’d take over the freshman classes – correct their mistakes before those became bad habits. But he could only do that because he’d already spent time with the seniors, seen exactly where they were challenged.”

From Vince came an audible sigh. “Well, if you think you’re going to change the world, think again.”

“Isn’t that what you’re trying to do?”

“Never mind me. I get lots of double overtime and great benefits. What do you expect to get?”

“I get to wear myself out even more than usual. Then maybe I can skip the sleeping pills.” Eli wasn’t on drugs, at least not yet, but he did spend too much time watching movie reruns on late-night TV.

“No girlfriends in the picture?” Vince was smiling, Eli was sure.

“How do you know, and why do you care?”

“Because women tend to not only keep a man busy, but they spend enough of his money that he’s desperate to earn more. A guy in a committed relationship doesn’t go looking for volunteer work.”

“Again, guilty,” Eli said. “Come on, there must be something.”

“Sure,” Vince said. “I’m just trying to qualify the request, you might say. So, just to be clear, this is not about meeting women?”

“Is that what you do at A-A?”

“You don’t get to jerk my chain, Lazer,” Vince chuckled. “I just need to know where you’re coming from.”

“I told you,” Eli said. “I don’t know enough to make my request more specific.”

“Funny you should bring up English composition,” Vince said. “You any good at that?”

“I can spell. Hell, I can type.”

“But can you tell a story?” Vince wanted to know. “I mean, without gulping down two drinks first.”

“I can manage. Sure.”

“I’m not connected with the kids in the youth camps or the ones on probation. Different department. And besides, when it’s kids, some of the higher-ups get their panties in a twist about whether you’ve got a teaching certificate. But, for some of my guys, we’ve got this halfway house. Mostly young guys, mostly convicted of nonviolent crimes. They’re not kids anymore, but they messed up before they could get any work experience. And if you ever do tutor the younger ones, it won’t do you any harm to understand what they could face when they get older. Out in the world, what are they going to do? Wash pots or bus tables. Unless they decide, what-the-hell, they’ll go back to grand theft or selling dope. The best thing we can do for them is push them to get their GED, high-school equivalence. We need instructors for English comp and math. I presume you suck at math.”

“It wasn’t my best subject.”

“Nor mine. But we got a guy for that. Chinese, what else?”

“So, you want me to teach English comp?” Eli asked.

“Storytelling, my man. You ask them to write something on current affairs, news headlines, you’re going to get blank looks and blanker paper. But you ask for their story – they all got stories – you might get something.”

“Sounds like therapy.”

“Damn straight. You get them to open up, you might find out a lot more than whether they can spell.”