Color of Justice

by Gary Hardwick

  Robert pushed away the beer and started to get up from the table. Danny saw water in his eyes, and now he knew the world was ending for sure. Robert Cavanaugh had never cried in his life, even when his family was falling apart from his alcoholism.

  The old man turned his back on his son and moved to the doorway. Danny wanted to grab him, to plead with him to give him the terrible truth that he so desperately needed. Just then Robert turned around to his son, his eyes now clearly filled with tears.

  “I did it,” he said. “I killed your mother.”

  Bellva could not take her eyes off the gun the man in front of her held in his hand. He pulled the gun down away from her face, then kept it in front of him, still partially inside his coat as if he’d been taught to do so.

  “You don’t need to be on this street today,” said the man in the puffy coat.

  “I need to see the man,” said Bellva. She choked on the words.

  “Man ain’t seein’ no hos. Bounce.”

  “This ain’t about no fuckin’. It’s about bid’ness.”

  “What kinda bid’ness you got, bitch?” Puffy Coat laughed. And now sure of her harmlessness, he put the gun away.

  Bellva was getting angry, but it didn’t pay to mess with these thugs. They had no respect for themselves let alone some drug-addict prostitute.

  “I’ll tell him in person,” said Bellva. “You tell him that it’s Bellva. You tell him that and see how fast he comes outta that house.”

  Puffy Coat looked at Bellva and he could see she did have something to say, but more important, she was desperate. He checked out her ass and legs, then brought his eyes back to hers.

  “You wax my shit and I’ll tell him.”

  “What?” said Bellva before she could stop herself.

  “Suck my dick,” said Puffy Coat. “I’m sho’ you familiar with how it’s done, bitch.”

  Bellva looked at the young man with contempt. She knew from experience that if she did it, he would just laugh at her then send her away, and she’d never get to the man she needed to see. She was not tough like many of her friends in the profession. She didn’t carry a knife or a gun and if a man gave her trouble, she usually cried and ran off. But this was too important to be timid. She had to make this thug respect her. And there was only one way to do that.

  “Fuck you,” she said.

  “Then get yo’ stank ass off dis block,” said Puffy Coat. He opened his coat to show her the gun again.

  Bellva didn’t move. His obvious dependence on the gun told her that he was inexperienced. A real killer took it out only when he intended to kill, and then it was the last thing you saw. Puffy Coat had shown it to her twice and she was still alive. He could be intimidated if she did it right.

  Bellva took a step toward him and to her surprise, the man moved back.

  “You throw me off this street and you can be the one to tell your boss how you fucked him out of a score. Maybe he’ll kill you, or maybe he’ll make you suck some dick.”

  Puffy Coat looked at the woman before him and saw the determination in her eyes. Bellva saw the hardness in the man’s eyes fade. He didn’t really have the stomach to shoot her. Whatever his job was, it didn’t involve thinking or making his boss lose money.

  “Come on, bitch,” he said. Then he turned and walked toward a house.

  Bellva followed, smiling a little. Even though he had called her a bitch, the way he said it dripped with respect.

  She followed Puffy Coat to the house and was patted down for a weapon. Something was up, she thought. There was more than the usual security here and the faces were new. Bellva walked inside the house and waited by the door. Soon, the Locke came out, munching on a candy bar, looking at her with curiosity.

  “What the hell you doin’ here, woman?” he asked. He looked pissed, as if she had interrupted something important.

  Bellva knew the man well enough to know that it didn’t pay to beat around the bush with the Locke.

  “I know where John Baker’s money is,” she said.

  Danny followed his father into the living room. Robert sat on the sofa. Danny took a chair next to him. His knees were weak and he almost collapsed into the seat.

  Danny sat there for a while looking at this man he’d known all his life as if seeing him for the first time. He felt sorry for him, and at the same time he wanted to pound him for what he’d done. Part of him wanted to leave, to go and forget what he’d heard. But it was too late. The truth was here and now he had to have all of it.

  “Why?” asked Danny. “Were you two having trouble?”

  “You got your answer. Just go,” said Robert.

  “You confess to a murder, my own mother, and I’m supposed to just walk out and have a cup of coffee? No. I demand to know why you did it.” Danny took a moment, then added, “And when you’re done, I’m going to arrest you.”

  Robert’s face didn’t change at this statement. He shifted on the sofa as if he were about to get up, but he didn’t.

  “Your mother took a bunch of pills,” said Robert. “She sat in the bathroom for a half hour and just waited, all the while slipping deeper and deeper into darkness, I suspect. Then I heard her fall down on the floor.” Robert’s face took on a scared look as he relived it. “I ran up as quickly as I could and there she was on the floor, out like a light. She wasn’t moving, but I thought I felt a pulse, just a faint one. She wasn’t going to make it, you see. No ambulance would get here in time to save her. I tried resuscitation, but it didn’t work.”

  And now Robert was crying, trying not to lapse into sobs. He pushed his face into his hands and for a moment he was gone. In his place was a broken old man who had done the unthinkable and could not live with himself. Finally, he raised his head and wiped his face.

  “I ain’t never been a good Catholic,” Robert continued, “but your mother was, and I knew what she’d done was a sin, and she’d never get into heaven if she died like that. I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it. I dragged her to the staircase and I pushed her down. Then I called Tim Lester and made sure he was on the case to help me. I didn’t want Father Cullen to know she’d tried to take her own life. So, you see, I didn’t have a choice. God will forgive me for killing your mother, but he’d never forgive her for killing herself.”

  Danny moved over next to his father, who looked like he’d lost his mind, like a man who had just one hand on reality. He put a hand on his shoulder and he could feel him still trembling.

  “Dad, she was probably already gone, you didn’t—”

  “Yes, I did!” yelled Robert. “If I didn’t, your mother ain’t in heaven, and I failed her again. I don’t accept that. I killed her.”

  Danny didn’t say anything for a long time, and the silence between them was good, like all the silences they’d shared over the years.

  “I’m sorry,” said Danny. “Look, you should come and stay with me for a while. You can’t be alone at a time like this.”

  Robert laughed his bitter, half-crazy laugh again. “You don’t get it, do you? There’s more. Don’t you want to know what kind of pills she was taking? Pills for depression, Danny. For five years she took them.”

  Danny was speechless. His mother had never been a happy woman. She was consumed by worry and totally dependent on religion to hold her together, but he never suspected she was so badly off that she needed medication.

  Robert got up and walked over to a table and pulled out a drawer. He took out a thick book and tossed it to Danny. It was his mother’s diary. A pink-and-white book with frilly trim on it. On the cover was written “LC.” Toward the back, there was a yellow Post-it, marking a passage.

  “She started writing in this thing about a year ago,” said Robert. “The pain I talked about was not the truth of knowing what I did. It’s the truth in here.” Robert pointed at it as if it were Original Sin. Then he walked out of the room, leaving Danny with his mother’s last words.

  Danny didn’t know how long he stared at t
he diary. When he finally opened it, he went to the marked passage and heard his mother’s voice, clear, and terribly sweet:

  By the time anyone sees this I will be gone. I know it’s a sin, but I am past caring about that. Each day I wake up, and my first thought is of dying and how much better it would be if I was not here. I can’t bear the awful pain I feel each day, the pain of knowing that my life has meant and continues to mean nothing.

  Thirty years of it I’ve spent trying to make sense of my choices, and all I have to show for it is memories of a drunk husband, two lost sons, and all the paths I never walked down. Robert’s drinking killed part of all of us, and I’ve never been able to get my part back. I lost my first son to crime and drugs and hatred. He is dead to me now.

  It drove me to despair and kept us living in the heart of a city that was hostile to us, that didn’t want us. I know we’re supposed to love all men no matter what their color, but there are things that people do that are awful and beyond the reach of the Lord’s hand.

  Each day my son would come home, bruised and crying, beaten by black kids because we could not get away from the legacy of hate in this city. Soon he embraced black people and their ways for fear that he’d never survive, and that decision turned him away from what our family was and into something that I didn’t understand. I have no grandchildren and I wouldn’t want any from either son. And that may be the most terrible thing of all.

  Danny almost dropped the book. He and his mother had rarely talked about any of this. She was a woman who obviously learned to suffer in silence. Danny thought about his talks with Gordon and his question concerning how Danny felt about himself. The doctor had somehow sensed the truth. He wanted to know if Danny felt about himself the way his mother had, if he resented being so imbued with a culture that was not his own.

  Danny heard a faint rustling and saw that he was wrenching the pages in his hands that he was reading. He wanted to burn the diary, watch it turn to pretty black ashes and fly away on a current of air, but instead he forced himself to continue.

  Danny is a policeman like his father, has the same hardness of his father, the same coldness, and worse he’s not really like us at all, not the happy son I always imagined I’d have. He’s like all those black people he grew up around. He sounds like them, feels like them, and I can’t stand it. We used to argue about it, but I gave up. In the end, he loved them more than me.

  Danny lives in sin with a black woman who I cannot bring myself to like. You always think your son will marry a younger version of you. Not in my case. She is a good person, but she is not me. She is black and my heart breaks to say it, Father, but I can never love her.

  All of my friends show pictures of their grandchildren, pretty little girls who look like them, or little boys who are wild and lovely. I have nothing. The poison in this family has killed my hope and my heart, and some days I just want to rip it out of my chest and squeeze it until it stops beating.

  I have nothing to hold on to, nothing to keep me here on God’s good earth. Please pray for me, pray that my soul will be released from wherever it goes when you take God’s most precious life from yourself.

  Danny stared at the pages, trying to will the letters to disappear, but there it was, his mother’s will and testament to her life of pain, denial, and regret.

  His mother had taken her life in part because of what he was, what he’d always felt was special. Danny thought of all the times his mother had fought with him over the way he spoke and his choice of friends and women. He never thought he was doing anything more than standing up for himself. He wished he could take back a million things he’d said and done.

  He thought about the killer, his terrible campaign against a color of skin, and his mother’s despair over his internal color. He wanted to wrap himself into a ball and close in, draw into himself until there was nothing left, until he was gone and none of this had happened. And finally, most terribly, he thought that surely he had killed his mother as much as his father thought he did.

  Danny got out of the chair and lay down on the floor. He felt a cool draft settle over him. His father was right, he thought. The truth was a terrible thing, and the pain resonated through him like the shock of being born.

  He saw himself standing on the edge of great void. But it wasn’t a hole, it was the shadow of life, the terrible painful truth of the world, and in it were his mother’s life, his innocence, and all of his hope, swirling like lost children.

  Bellva sat down and munched on a handful of candy. The Locke eyed the desperate-looking girl and smiled. There was something wonderful about a woman who would do anything to get what she wanted, he thought.

  “What money?” asked the Locke. “I thought John Baker was just a trick to you.”

  “Johnny had money,” said Bellva. “Money he stole from some people on the Internet. He was skimming and hiding it from his wife and everybody.”

  “How much money?” asked the Locke. He took a seat next to Bellva.

  “Johnny said it was over a million dollars. When he knew that his company was fucked, he got scared. He was planning to leave his wife.”

  “And marry you?” asked the Locke with derision.

  “That so hard to believe?” asked Bellva. “Johnny and me had an understanding.”

  The Locke looked at Bellva with unmistakable disgust in his eyes as if he was repulsed by the idea that she thought of herself as desirable. “Where did he keep the cash?” he asked flatly.

  Bellva stiffened in her seat. This was the moment she dreaded. She was shaking and that moment she wished she had gotten high before she came inside.

  “I can only show you,” she said.

  “Don’t trust me?” asked the Locke. He put his hand on her thigh and squeezed. “Me and you been close, girl. You don’t trust a man you used to fuck?”

  “I did that with a lot of men,” said Bellva. “Don’t mean nothing. I can only show you where it is. We split it fifty-fifty. It’ll be easy.”

  “No,” he said.

  “No?” Bellva’s face showed her shock. “But it’s a lot of money, and you don’t gotta do nothing for it.”

  “See that’s my problem,” said the Locke. “Ain’t nothing for free in this world, least of all a million dollars. It’s too good to be true.”

  “The money’s real,” said Bellva adamantly.

  “Oh, I believe you,” said the Locke. “It’s the easy part I got trouble with. If it was easy, your ass would have that cash and be on a bus out of town.”

  “Well, there is kind of a hitch,” said Bellva.

  “Uh-huh,” he said. “And for that I want a bigger cut. Seventy-five percent.”

  “What?!” Bellva stood up and just as quickly he pulled her back down.

  “Don’t you even think about trying to pull some hard shit on me, bitch,” said the Locke. “I’m the king of hard shit and you ain’t got it in you. Now here’s what’s gonna happen. Tomorrow me and you is gonna go to where that money is and get it. And we’ll split it just like I said and you’re gonna be glad that I don’t leave your ass in a garbage can somewhere. And tonight, you’re gonna stay here and take care of me.”

  “Wait,” said a man’s voice from behind Bellva.

  She turned to see a big man emerge from the back of the house.

  “That money is mine,” said Reverend Bolt. Bolt’s men walked in beside him, menacing.

  “Get out of here,” said the Locke.

  “No,” said Bolt. “That money was stolen from me. It’s the reason I came here to borrow from you.”

  “And you will,” said the Locke. “Right after you get your ass out of here.”

  “Who is this?” asked Bellva.

  “Nobody,” said the Locke. “Just be cool.” He turned an angry face back to Bolt.

  “Young lady,” Bolt said to Bellva, “come with us.” And with that, Bolt’s men grabbed her.

  “Ain’t this a bitch,” said the Locke. “Do you think I’m gonna let you get ou
t of here with her—?”

  Bellva recoiled from the touch of Bolt’s deacons as the first gunshot sounded. It was a big boom like a cannon. The Locke ran across the room so fast Bellva was amazed behind her fear.

  Bolt and his men all drew their guns. The Locke ran to a closet as Bellva heard more shots and screaming from the front of the house. Bolt and his men pulled her toward the back of the place.

  The Locke grabbed a rifle as the first man came through the door. Bellva hit the floor as the bullets flew. She covered her eyes and screamed until her lungs were empty. She heard more shots and a body hit the floor hard. She heard the pleading of the Locke’s voice, then another loud boom. More bodies fell then she heard Bolt yell, then someone else fell hard beside her.

  Silence.

  Bellva saw only darkness. Her hands shook violently as she pulled her legs into her chest. She was afraid to look, afraid she’d open her eyes and see only the barrel of a gun in her face, a flash, then the sweet hereafter.

  She heard voices, but they were a mumble to her as someone trashed the room around her.

  Suddenly her hands were pulled from her eyes. She was crying and so her sight was blurry. She wiped the wetness from her vision. First she saw bodies all around her covered in blood then she focused on the angry face of Muhammad Bady. He was joined by two other young men.

  Next to her, she saw Bolt with a wound in his leg but very much alive. Muhammad walked over to Bolt and smiled.

  “Your sons have come to take you home, Daddy,” he said.

  Jim Cole didn’t know who’d be ringing his doorbell at the ungodly hour of two in the morning. The young lady who slept next to him rustled under the covers and smacked her lips as he got out of the bed. He threw on his robe and grabbed his service revolver from the nightstand. The bell rang again.

  “It’d better be God or his son,” he mumbled as he checked the gun and put a bullet into the chamber.

  He moved through the house barefoot, the coldness of the floor sending waves of reality through his body. He walked into the living room and carefully approached the front door as the person on the other side rang the doorbell again. He stood so that his visitor could not see his figure through the little glass windows at the top of the door. He eased his frame by the wall, then slowly moved to the peephole. He was still half asleep and had to focus a minute before he saw who it was.