C H A P T E R • 13
He walked faster and I refused to run to keep up. By the time I got to his fancy sedan, he was waiting at my passenger door.
“You are the most annoying woman,” he said. “But I’ve missed talking to you.”
I was probably revved high enough to talk some trash but I hung back and stalled. I looked at the face I could still sketch with my eyes closed. Then I turned away.
“You’re not even going to try, Pearl?”
“Have you forgotten we already did try?”
When we got in, he threw his hat in the back, and when he started the car, the music went up. It was Prince. “1999” reminded me of a summer once when our spaces were filled with us loving and much of the noise we both made was laughter.
“I hate you were probably right. You needed to go to California to make your movies. But now you’re home.”
“Harlem’s where I’m from. Home is not where you’re from. It’s where you’re at. I only got these three weeks because my movie is in postproduction. In fact, I’ll have to catch up with the dialogue re-recording for the film when I get back. People, a lot of people, are counting on me.”
“Your father went downtown and did his corporate thing. But he came back home to Harlem. Harlem pulled him back.”
My eyes started to fill up. Never knew when it was going to happen, when the grief would check in. But the tears still didn’t fall.
“I cannot forgive him and his so-called wife for not letting me know how sick he was.”
“I don’t think any of us knew how sick he was. And I’m glad I don’t have to take sides between you and Viola, who is his widow, by the way. Not so-called anything. I’ve been impressed, actually. First she took in her sister’s kid and then she looked after your father.”
“I can feel gratitude at the same time I feel everything else I feel about that woman, but it’s easier from a distance.”
“You know, you can act here. Broadway is here.”
I laughed. “It would certainly be better than the Tar Baby story I’m acting in now.”
“Tar Baby story?”
“I’m fighting against this family responsibility, and I feel like Brer Rabbit, who was kicking at the tar baby to get free of it. And I have one foot already stuck.”
I watched him laugh by the light from the myriad scanners and indicators arrayed in front of him. I used to love to make him laugh.
Then I followed his gaze through the tinted window to the long stretch of St. Nicholas Avenue down the hill in front of us over the pulsing, lighted dashboard.
“This is how it happens,” I said. “When you have all this technology, these sirens and lights and radios, and of course the gun, you’re not out on the street and you don’t feel like one of the people. And I guess you’re not supposed to.”
“One of the people? Out on the street? Please! I’m so much a part of the street there’s a crosswalk on my back.”
“That would mean you got out of the car. Does that happen?”
“I always did, even before I became the CO of the 28th. And we all do now. Commissioner Lee Brown and Mayor David Dinkins are taking us back to community policing. Commissioner Brown calls it Park, Walk and Talk. We get out of the car for one patrol hour during each shift.”
“Do the men like it?”
“Some of them love it. I know it gets stale in the car. It did when I did it. But some of them have gotten lazy and don’t want to walk. I don’t think it’s going to last. There’s an undercurrent of resentment about a black mayor and a black police commissioner commanding mostly Italian and Irish cops to police people they fear and even hate. It also happened when Ben Ward was the police commissioner and started community policing with the Community Patrol Officer Program. That didn’t last.”
“Walking in the street might impress a bad apple or two,” I said. “But it’s going to take radical upheaval to make systemic change. I’m going to put that in my article.”
“Wait! I need this conversation and anything else we talk about when you’re not being a reporter to be off the record. Otherwise, I’ll keep it to myself like I usually do and I’ll miss this rare opportunity to hear myself talk.”
“I’ll listen. I’ve missed talking to you too. About everything. But, off the record, how can you work with these racists? Is it all about the pension?”
“Couple of things. If we didn’t work with racists, where would black people work? Up north, they clean it up. But if we’re inside we know. And the other thing is being a policeman does offer a good pension. It has been a route to the middle class. Sanitation is hard work and we can’t be firemen. Being the head of the 28th allows me to call out the violence and disrespect. Sometimes it makes a difference. I was able to direct one of the men to join the military where he might find job satisfaction if he sees real combat. Mostly we don’t join the force to be soldiers but that’s what they expect now.”
He turned left on 125th Street and slowed down to cruise. Most of the shops had closed behind the rolled-down metal gates, displaying the dancing, strutting images painted by Franco the Great. Because even the whites and Asians who own the stores know it’s a black thing.
Tribes of people took pictures of each other—usually all black, all white or all Asian, not mixed, not diverse. They clustered in front of the scenes painted on Woolworth’s and the Colonel’s and Puppy’s and places to buy synthetic hair, T-shirts, sneakers, and music and the things to play it on, and in front of the Victoria Theater and Harlem’s historic Apollo Theater.
“So, you know everything. Who’s at the Apollo?” I asked him.
“It’s Amateur Night.”
“Wednesday. I forgot.”
“Plenty happening on Amateur Night at the Apollo.”
Next door to the theater, Hector was doing a booming business photographing tourists in front of their choice of six-foot painted velvet and canvas backdrops of album covers and cartoons. A pile of them were folded on the sidewalk. Six were taped with gaffer’s tape on the tall chain-link fence along the vacant lot next to the Apollo theater, offering the ominous faces of men and the half-naked bodies of women. Tasmanian Devil carried a gun.
“You’ve got to be tough to ride Hector’s fence at night,” I said. “Barney went in when the kids went home.”
“There are always young people on the street. And someone’s child will get home tonight because we’re out here.”
It stopped me. “If your cops can see it’s someone’s child under his suspicious colored skin.”
“Suspicious. That’s the word. The uptown crews are targeting each other and they look like they’re going to make some real trouble all the time. They do it on purpose. And the gangs are only one kind of violence. Don’t forget booze and drugs and passion and greed and despair. You know. And this isn’t Hollywood, Pearl. But we get it done. Most of the time it’s nothing but stupidity. And we need people to give us all the information they have.”
“Right. And how often do people in this community give you all the information they have?”
“You’d be surprised. Everybody has some attitude about talking to the police, until it’s someone they know or something they want or some beef they can’t handle alone. Really. You’d be surprised. And it’s easier when we’re face to face, on the street.”
“Do you want to tell me what you said to Tom Sawyer, the rookie who was manhandling Heavy just now?”
“I was talking to the veteran. The rookie is learning. The veteran has to unlearn. This is a conversation we’re having with each other.”