The Fire This Time

by S. Frederic Liss

  “I’m Detective George Harriman. Please open the door.”

  “I hear you fine enough,” Gideon said.

  Mabi knew Harriman from the police file the Trojans compiled–round face, balding with a fringe of rust colored hair, razor burn on his cheeks and throat, a gold crown on one of his molars, top left side.

  “We needing to be knowing all this shit?” Spider once asked.

  Mabi shook his head. “Fact we can get it is what counts.”

  For a few dollars and some occasional blow or smack, Beaujolais Wine fed Mabi inside information about the police department and acted as an intermediary between Mabi and Ugolino when money had to change hands. Someday, to keep her honest, he would have to fuck her; but, if he was lucky, she’d be killed in the line of duty and he’d be rescued.

  “Ever see one of these before?” Harriman held one of Levy’s skull-caps in front of the peep hole. “Jews wear them to their church.”

  “No Jews here,” Gideon said.

  “You could see better if you opened the door.”

  “Listen. If I tell you a hen it dip snuff, you’ll be finding the box ’neath its wing.”

  “Is Mabi here?”

  “No Mabi here.”

  “If you see him, ask him to give me a call.” Harriman stuck his card into the crack between the screen door and its frame.

  “Don’t be holding your breath.” Gideon watched him down the stoop, across the sidewalk, and into his car.

  “How come you lied?” Hannah asked. “No frizzly chicken going to shield you if the man finds out you lied.”

  “You messed up in that Sullivan business, boy?” Gideon said to Mabi.

  “Nothing but a game of chess.”

  “A real shame the way he grabbed the cross,” Hannah said.

  Gideon said, “If the Jew gets off, they be nigga hunting.”

  “No worry,” Mabi said. “I’m alibied up with al-Saffah.”

  “When you going to outgrow that foolishness?” Hannah asked.

  “At least I know the meaning of my name,” Mabi said.

  Gideon shoved Mabi toward the back door. “Your gang it’s calling.”

  “Your son he’s answering.”

  CHAPTER 11

  TUESDAY, APRIL 21, 1981

  -1-

  Hannah Wallaca, Silvy Thomas, and Cealy Thomas waited in the Wallaca kitchen for Mabi to telephone from the court-house. They marked time like generations of black women before them who awaited word on the outcome of court proceedings before white judges involving their men-folk. Nothing distracted them. Not the game shows on the television flickering in the corner. Not the magazines, Ebony and Jet and Essence, neatly stacked in chronological order, strips of paper bookmarking Hannah’s place in each. Not the heat seeping through the window screens. Not the frizzly chicken hanging in the door and swaying when the fan rotated in its direction.

  “Why Lord are You taking so long?” Cealy wailed.

  “Can’t be rushing Him,” Hannah said.

  “I’m blessed you two not pacers,” Silvy said, “but you better lace up your patience shoes ’cause it’s only ten twenty-five and Mabi said court don’t start ’til ten o’clock assuming the judge shows up on time which he usually don’t. Mabi says they do arraignments first, then plea-bargains, and bail hearings last. He won’t be calling ’til ’round one o’clock.”

  “How you figure that?” Cealy asked.

  “They lunch-break at one and white judges don’t fancy working after lunch.”

  “Get respect,” Hannah said.

  “Only for what’s deserving it,” Silvy said.

  Which now excluded Mabi. Silvy blamed him and only him for Badger being arrested, but in front of Cealy and Hannah she praised him to the heavens to ease their hearts and minds.

  The way Badger was growing up sickened Silvy. At first, Mabi was a big brother to him; but, by letting him run with the Trojans, he was just another ass-bad influence. Coming home full of bragging about this, bragging about that, Badger was more and more like Spider who still scared her dry in the middle of her period. We should move back south, she begged her mother, but she couldn’t convince Cealy who still prayed every day her man’s conviction would be reversed and he’d be released. As the morning ticked on, Silvy, Cealy, and Hannah settled into silence, afraid to speak out loud because, as Cealy put it, their voices might wake the devil and turn him against Badger.

  “Who’s going there?” Hannah yelled from the kitchen when the doorbell rang.

  “Hush up!” Cealy whispered. “Maybe they’ll go ’way.”

  Silvy peeked. “Some Betty Crocker.”

  “Satan sent.” Cealy clasped her hands and shook them.

  The woman knocked on the screen door, which was locked against the outside world by a latch-key hanging loose in the wooden frame. “I’m Maddie Devlin.” She held her Board of Bar Overseers card up to the screen. “I’m an attorney with Suffolk County Legal Services.”

  Silvy gripped the edge of the inside door which had been left open to catch a breeze. “You whites slower than two mules pulling opposite ways. Badger’s hearing it be this morning.”

  “I’m looking for Mabi,” Maddie said. “Is one of you Hannah Wallaca?”

  “No Mabi here,” Silvy said before Hannah could speak. “Why you looking for him anyhow?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “If cat ate your tongue, it sure ate mine.” Silvy started to close the inside door.

  “Wait.” Maddie said. “I’m defending Avram Levy and I need to find Mabi.”

  Silvy said, “If you want Mabi so bad, go see Stilts, the daytime barkeep at Blackbird’s.”

  Hannah slapped Silvy’s hand off the doorknob. “Why you needing to see Mabi?”

  “This about my baby?” Cealy swayed in small arcs. Hannah steadied her with an embrace and held her up. Silvy slammed the door, then walked Cealy back to the kitchen, sat her down in a chair, and put her feet up. Hannah gave her a glass of cold water and Silvy wiped the sweat off her forehead with a damp paper towel. Hannah looked at Silvy with mournful eyes that sagged with a lifetime of tears.

  “Bumper Sullivan and Chelsea, they linked,” Hannah said.

  “No more than sausages after they eaten,” Silvy said.

  “A mother knows.”

  “Hush up,” Silvy said. “Too many blacks been killed by suspicions. Let’s save judgment ’til we get some true facts.”

  The phone rang and Silvy rushed into the pantry.

  “What’s he saying?” Cealy leaned her head in close.

  Silvy turned away, holding the receiver flat against her ear, staring at the kitchen cabinet where Jim Ed had carved his initials, JEW, when he was a kid. “We had company name of Maddie Devlin,” she told Mabi. “She was looking for you, but I sent her to see Stilts.”

  Silvy hung up the phone. “Judge recessing so it’ll be a while yet.”

  No one spoke. No one moved. In their stillness, each prayed God would hear and respond.

  An hour later Mabi phoned to say Badger was denied bail.

  -2-

  Professor al-Saffah welcomed each new incident of anti-Semitism as a revelation of the jihad inscribed in the book. Boston’s African-American community ignored the implications of Bumper’s Brigade, happy to watch whites beat up on each other for a change. Mabi, however, understood sooner or later the public would blame the police for not stopping the violence and the cops would scapegoat the city’s street gangs, especially the black gangs, for crimes committed by the Brigade. Boston worked that way. A lynching with due process and Mayor Charlie weeping on the TV was still a lynching.

  “Lay your ear on the street,” he told Scorpion. “Learn who them muthas be.”

  Scorpion reported back there was no Bumper’s Brigade. “People just cherry-picking the name. Copy-catting. You better educate Detective Harry-man the Trojans not Bumper’s Brigade.”

  “He too dumb to be educated.” Mabi preferred more direct commu
nication. He decided to send word to Ugolino through Beaujolais Wine. She hadn’t passed on any interesting police gossip lately and he was tired of paying her for nothing more than her tongue hanging out her mouth whenever she saw him.

  That evening, the six o’clock news reported several new incidents, swastikas burned on lawns or painted on synagogues, cemeteries vandalized, each one as original as what came out of a Xerox machine. After dinner, Mabi night-aired it on a neighborhood stoop, holding court, the steps his throne, the street his throne room. Two pairs of eyes, Spider’s on the roof above, Scorpion’s across the street, stood lookout as the neighborhood paraded before him: Jerry Keller, called Jerry the Juicer because he squeezed every last penny out of people who owed him money, and Frankie Lions, nicknamed Hathaway when he started wearing a black eye patch after losing an eye when his fixings flamed up unexpectedly, arguing because each claimed the right to book policy in the E Street housing projects; Sweet Cassie, a skeezer who’d been trying to raw dog it with Mabi since he was Priam; Jesse dribbling a basketball he could slam dunk even though he was only thirteen. A ball of crumpled newspaper landed on the stoop. Mabi glanced at Scorpion who gave him the finger with his left hand, a signal the man was coming. “Yo!” Mabi announced. “High five ol’ blue dick, Harry-man the Singing Detective.”

  “Is there someplace we can talk?” Harriman asked.

  Mabi spread his arms railing to railing across the stoop.

  “Ever see this before?” Harriman showed him Levy’s skull-cap.

  “Show it ’round.”

  “In New Orleans,” Jerry the Juicer said. “When my granddaddy died, the horn players who funeralized him wore little hats like that.”

  Harriman dangled the skull-cap in Mabi’s face. “Ever see it?”

  Mabi laughed. “You ain’t jive-assing me into confessing I seen what you found at the murder scene before you just showed it to me. I ain’t no ship’s fool.”

  “See anyone at Capablanca wearing one the night Bumper was murdered?”

  “The Jew.”

  “Where’d you go after you left Capablanca?”

  “Asked and answered.”

  “I’m asking again.”

  “I’m not answering again.”

  “Humor me.”

  “Say something funny.”

  “A ride downtown funny enough?”

  “Split my ribs laughing.”

  “We can talk here or we can talk downtown.”

  “Television cop shows, that where you get your training? Hill Street Blues? Nah. You more the Kojak type. Without the lollipop. If you watched them shows you’d know you take me downtown I can false arrest your ass so bad I’ll be buying head with your pension.”

  “How do you think this skull-cap ended up in the Capablanca library?”

  “It crawled in through the bathroom window.”

  “Levy says he’s missing one like this.”

  “Shit, if he told you some brother snatched it off his head on the Red Line, would you fucking arrest every black who rides the T?”

  “Every last fucking one,” Harriman said. “What’s the street say about Bumper’s Brigade?”

  “When Chief Stereo tells you to round up the usual suspects, we ain’t them.” No need funneling the word through Beaujolais Wine, Mabi thought.

  “Stay visible. I may want to talk to you again.”

  “Us darkies melt into the night.”

  Jesse dribbled away from the stoop, gathering speed with each stride. The others followed, Cassie snapping her fingers, Jerry the Juicer and Hathaway still arguing.

  “You and Spider go ahead,” Mabi said to Scorpion. “I’ll catch you up at Blackbird’s.”

  Alone on the stoop, Mabi closed his eyes to the neighborhood parade. Grandmas, none; grandpas, none; aunts and uncles, none; cousins, none; brothers and sisters, none; parents, none. The Trojans, not enough; memories of Jim Ed, not enough; Silvy, sweet Silvy, not enough. Allah, not enough. He wished he could read Hannah’s mind, wiretap her brain. Maybe she’d ’fess up to Silvy, but he couldn’t go knee-walking back to Silvy for help, not while he was so deep in her shit. Thinking strung him out like he was skanked. He felt as boxed and buried as Bumper Sullivan.

  Mabi took a back route through alleys and yards to the block where Gideon and Hannah lived, to their building. He pounded on their door.

  “Why you raisin’ the dead?” Hannah asked.

  “Where’s Gideon?”

  “Show your father some respect.”

  “Who says he’s my old man?”

  “The devil’s in you, boy,” Gideon said from the living room.

  Mabi barged past Hannah. “You be the one full of nothing but demons and devils. Me? My life’s full of nothing but nones. Grandmas, none; grandpas, none; aunts and uncles, none; cousins, none. Brothers, none. Moms and dads, none.”

  “Gideon!” Hannah shouted.

  “Talk’s the devil’s work, woman,” Gideon said.

  “Stop hiding behind voodoo shit,” Mabi said, fronting Gideon.

  “You going to blow me away if I don’t talk?” Gideon shaped his fingers into the profile of a gun. “Shit, you nothing but a once upon a time comic book super hero who never had no fucking super powers.”

  “Gideon!”

  “Boy’s got a quivering hand stuck up his ass.”

  -3-

  Later that night, Mabi dispatched Spider to Silvy. “Tell her I been jumped by six cops who pistol-whipped the life out of my ass. Tell her I beat up worse than you ever seen. Tell her I dying and crying for her like a baby for its momma.”

  Mabi waited. If Silvy drove, she’d be there any minute. If she ran, maybe five or six; walked, eight or ten. He glanced at his watch. Three minutes. Traffic on the street, trucks, horns, car doors slamming, brakes screeching, rubber peeling, always traffic. Four minutes. People arguing over a parking space. He wiped his forehead on his pillowcase. Five minutes. Maybe she had to dress. Maybe her old lady’s siggin’ about the hour. Maybe she tripped down the stairs and busted up her head. Six minutes. A cunt came on TV reviewing some fly movie. Her skin darkened. Her long blonde hair kinked up into tight black curls. Freestyling, she morphed into a horse, bust out big with Silvy’s face pulling a beer wagon. If you’re not fucking sadder but wiser by now, the voice-over said, this one’s not for you. Six minutes, eight minutes, twelve minutes, fifteen, he lost track. The second hand moved round and round, from the one to the two to the three, now past the four and five, over the six, seven and eight, then ’cross the nine and ten, to the eleven, back to the beginning.

  Cops surrounded him, hundreds, each with Silvy’s face. He punched at them, right, left, right, left, until one punched back so hard his eyes popped out of his head and he fell back on the bed. All the faces vanished except one which stood over him like Achilles over Hector in the fucking comic book which once upon a time was his yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

  “You ain’t started dying yet.” Silvy slipped her belt off her jeans and looped it around her hand. “You gonna wish you were jumped by every white-ass nigga-hating cop in Boston.”

  She whipped him, grunting each time the belt cracked his head or shoulders. The leather abraded his skin, the buckle lacerated it. He covered his eyes and gritted his teeth so he wouldn’t bite off his tongue. He timed the rhythm of the blows, shifting his arms to free up his hands, and waited. Finally, when Silvy’s fury spoiled her aim so the belt glanced off his arm, he grabbed it and ripped it away so fast the buckle tore open the palm of her hand. She screamed and he took her wrist and pressed hard against the veins and wrapped her hand in a bandage to stop the bleeding.

  “I needing your help,” he said.

  “Badger he rotting in jail and you asking for my help. Fuck you!”

  “Don’t stretch my strings. They ’bout ready to snap.”

  “Crackle and pop.”

  “I need to take Hannah somewhere and she’s not likely to go without you.”

  “Fuck you!�
�

  “African Meeting House. Tomorrow.”

  “Fuck you!”

  “To learn her some history.”

  “If you’re fixing on raping me, rape me already; but stop your nigga jive.” “I ain’t no fucking rapist.”

  “You something worse.”

  “When I was a kid, I asked Gideon and Hannah what ‘Wallaca’ meant and they said nothing. I asked why I have no grandmas, no grandpas, no aunts, no uncles, no cousins, and Gideon gave me that goddamn comic book. I went out and made me a name and I made me a family. Then, I met al-Saffah and Allah and I made me a Father, too. But, that ain’t enough. Hannah she’s holding back some truth Gideon won’t let her tell me. I figure if I take her where it’s full of black history, I can break into her mind. She won’t go if you don’t and she won’t talk if you not there. You owe me this much.”

  “I owe you nothing. You owe me Badger.”

  “You want to shit me out your ass, fine. Leave if you’re burning to. Badger be staying where he be. Life be going on.”

  “That the price for you helping Badger?”

  “Cheap enough.”

  “What guarantee I got?”

  Mabi opened the drawer in the night table beside the bed. “Take my nine.” He tapped his chest over his heart with his fist, then the side of his temple with his fingertips. “Guarantee enough for you?”

  The muscles in Silvy’s face relaxed. The glare in her eyes softened. She took a deep breath, a cleansing breath, and exhaled slowly, silently, a gentle breeze compared to the previous storms. She reached out and turned Mabi’s head toward her so she could look him directly in the eye. “Learning this secret, it make you Leroy again?”

  Mabi put his arms around her and they swayed gently. He loved her and couldn’t stomach her acting so Miss Ann. If he could make her understand, maybe he could melt her down a little. He felt like one of the children in her Sunday school class needing comfort after being scared awake from a nap by dreaming the devil. Feeling her against him, listening to her breathing, smelling her sweat, that’s all he needed, that’s all he wanted. Later, she could decide if her life lay with his. If it didn’t, he’d rewrite that fucking book ’til it said what he wanted.