Samaritan Read Free Page A

the “Be a Leader, Not a Follower” speech altogether, Nerese was winging it this afternoon, almost free-associating.
    Trailing mike cord, she walked off the stage to stand before the students in the front row.
    “You.” She pointed at a big lunk slouched so low in his seat he seemed to be melting, the kid shave-headed with small turned-down ears. “Come on up here . . .”
    That was enough to make the others cut loose with another twist-and-shout session, the boy tentatively rising to his feet half-smiling and fake-limping down to the police in front.
    She had picked a giant; six-four, -five, towering over her self-consciously, muttering “Shut up” to his classmates in the seats.
    “What’s your name . . .” She had to rear back to make eye contact.
    “Jamiel.”
    “Shamiel?”
    “Jamiel,” then, “Shut up,” again to the seats.
    “OK now,” holding Jamiel by the elbow as she addressed the others. “I’m on patrol, I come up on Jamiel here in an alley and he’s up to no good. But it’s just me and him . . . All things being equal, who do you think’s gonna come out that alley like nothing happened. Who . . .”
    Some of the kids got all thinky and quiet, trying to suss it out as if it were a trick question, others spinning out to new heights, Nerese ignoring the ruckus. “Who . . .”
    “You?” one girl said cautiously, the others tentatively agreeing, the alternative way too obvious.
    “All things being equal, you think
me
?” She curled a hand against her chest. “
Hell,
no. Look at this ol’ boy! He can kick my behind up one side of the block and down the other . . .”
    Jamiel started rocking, a hand covering his face.
    “Look at him! What do you think, they teach us some supersecret karate moves? Do I look like Jackie Chan to you?”
    The kids turned into popcorn.
    “Look at him, and look at me. But now, and this is why I’m telling you the female is the far deadlier of the species . . . Because all things are
not
equal, and if it’s just me and him in that alley? I’m gonna do whatever I have to do to survive. If I got the time? I’ll get on my radio, call out the troops. But if I don’t? I’m goin’ right for Baby Huey,” patting the holstered Glock on her belt. “See, a male cop, he might be all macho, thinking, Yeah, I’ll take this kid down with my bare hands, and all that. But me? Unh-uh. I can’t take him like that. And I
will
survive . . . The female, boys and girls, is the far more deadlier of the species . . .”
    The PA speakers affixed to the balcony booped loudly, signaling the end of the period, and the kids began to file out of the auditorium, not one of them even looking back at her over their shoulders.
    “You’re welcome,” she said out loud but not really put out, seized as she was by the irresponsibility of her own crackpot lecture, once again proving to herself that you could say anything you wanted in this school system—in this city, most likely—because no one ever really listened anyhow.
    She had never considered herself a sour or even pessimistic individual before, and she hoped after retirement she would come back up to the light, but these last few months of endgame assignments were just straight up kicking her ass.
    Coming off the stage with her Crime Doesn’t Pay slide show in a Waldbaum’s shopping bag, she noticed a gray-haired gent in a shiny suit sitting by himself toward the rear of the auditorium, and as she made her way up the aisle he rose to greet her.
    “Detective Ammons?” The guy offered his hand, Nerese faltering as she stripped the gray from his hair, filled in a few facial creases.
    “Mr. Egan?”
    “Yeah,” cocking his head. “Do we know each other?”
    “Mr. Egan.” Nerese brightened. “I was in your English class like twenty-odd years ago. Nerese Ammons?”
    “Nerese?” he said tentatively, not remembering her.
    “I
loved
that class. I’ll never forget, you read us parts