C H A P T E R • 24
I had to do the perp walk through a gauntlet of paparazzi at the 28th Precinct. I must say, I finally understood the impulse to put a coat over your head.
But my training and natural instincts kicked in, and I gave them a little smile, tossed my hair and squared my shoulders. Because I was posing, they caught me at it again and again. It didn’t take long for someone to recognize me.
“Lt. Knight! Over here!”
“You’ve got something for him,” one reporter said and shot his finger at me in Lt. Knight’s trademark wisecrack. They all laughed.
“Thought you were a good guy.”
I gave them the poster smile and would have stopped. But the police kept pushing me along, rather roughly actually. I suspect there’s some resentment about cops who get a ridiculous salary and a happy ending. I left a message for Attorney Robinson who wasn’t in the office when I called.
It appeared the big counterfeit movie bust happened while I was climbing on and off my spy box. The Hollywood militia were bragging about breaking a piracy ring in West and Central Harlem, Washington Heights and the South Bronx where they discovered duplicating machines and bootlegged copies of current hits, like Godfather III, Ghost, Home Alone, Misery and last year’s Driving Miss Daisy and Last Stop Harlem.
I wrote it all down.
It took a while to straighten things out, longer than it would have if the police had been willing to cut me some slack. The only message the detective who questioned me conveyed to me directly was that he was in charge and I was in trouble. Too bad it wasn’t my friend Officer Stanley. At least we wouldn’t have had to go through all the preliminaries.
He said, “Miss Washington, I’m tempted to lock you up just to teach you that you don’t have a role here.”
“Don’t you worry. The only role I’m playing is journalist. Being arrested was an accident—yours and mine.”
I didn’t tell them about Bobby Bop. It felt like information I might be able to use. Maybe for a newspaper story when I got back. And I didn’t leave the police station because I wanted to see about Al and because of my fascination with characters, probably the fascination that I turned into being an actor.
Thank goodness I didn’t have the gun.
They gave me back the little pocket camera, and I didn’t use it to take a picture of somebody’s grandmother named Pinkie and her daughter being booked for selling drugs. But I did shoot the confiscated movie loot and the crowd of camera people.
That’s why I was there when Adrianne showed up. They allowed her to go into the back and let me go with her.
Al stood up and shouted at me. “Did you have anything to do with them being there. Did you bring them?”
“Hardly. I had no idea. I’m just finding out about this business of yours.”
“Your employers should be able to help get you out of here,” Adrianne told him.
“I’m waiting for Reverend Garrison,” Al said. “I called his office and they said he was coming.”
“Why don’t you leave word you’ll be at the newspaper office?” I asked. “We’ll see if we can speed things up.”
“I prefer to wait for the reverend.”
“He’s a busy man. It may take a while.”
“He said he was coming,” Al said.
“First, how do you feel?” Adrianne said before I could continue arguing with him. “Then tell me what they’ve been asking you. It will give me an idea of the direction the investigation is taking.”
I trusted Adrianne to get what Al was saying, while I let my mind chew on how my real life in New York was beginning to remind me of the make-believe I had left back in California.
They suddenly glanced over at me, pulling me back.
“It’s hard for them to believe that people can change,” Adrianne said.
I wouldn’t have thought they had enough in common to be so intimate. She was gentle with him, and he was talking a lot but low enough to keep what he was saying between them. I felt left out, and I left them to it.
When Adrianne joined me in front she said she was going to wait, in case the reverend didn’t make it.
“You care about him,” I prodded.
“I just want to make sure they don’t traumatize him. They’re used to him being an addict. He’s not anymore.”
I decided to wait with her, and we were still there when the reverend arrived. He came in bellowing: “Where is he? Why won’t you allow these men their recovery?”
You wouldn’t guess he had an explosion like that in him. It happened when he started preaching too, all power and perfect pitch.
A young policeman stood up to confront the reverend and to block his entrance into the back. “You’ll have to wait to talk to Carter.”
The sergeant intervened and put his hand on the cop’s shoulder. “Al Carter’s in the back, Reverend Garrison,” the sergeant said. “Maybe he can tell you why he can’t stay out of trouble.”
“Maybe you can tell me why you target the men in this community.”
“Target is not the right word. Try keep an eye on or even attend to. That’s how we do our jobs. Keeps you all safe and keeps us alive.”
“The reverend is doing the Lord’s work today,” Adrianne said as we watched him fussing at the police.”
“Is it the Lord’s work that has him taking the coins out of his Harlem bank that are meant for redeveloping and growing the community?”
“Gary and the rest of the board are not the enemy.”
“But he’s not a hero.”
She looked at me. “Yes. He is. Yes, they are. They’re not perfect. But they’re taking care of business.”
“TCB,” I said. “But without respect.” Feeling a little proud of myself for making the Aretha Franklin reference, I slipped away without answering any more questions about Lt. Knight, action figure.
A shaft of sun emerged through the rain clouds. It was startlingly. I wondered why police stations in New York don’t have windows? Is it because they’re afraid people will jump out? Or are they the fortresses they appear to be, built with civil insurrection in mind? I turned around to look again and discovered the whole top of the wall was filled with windows. Weird. It had felt so dark.