“And your father?” she said.
Man, she was persistent. “I didn’t know the man. I’d see him on the street sometimes, but the only time I had any real contact with him was one time when I was twelve and Aunt Reba called him to come discipline me.” Catherine waited for me to go on. “He took a bat to me, broke my jaw, and I promised not to steal anymore. I didn’t hear from him until I was grown. He only lived four blocks away, but you know, that’s the way it is in Harlem.”
“Yeah, I know,” she said. “Your world is your block, especially when you’re a kid. Shoot, that’s why I want to get out now—Harlem suffocates. It wraps itself around you and won’t let you go. I’m dying here.”
Puzzled, I looked at her to see if she was kidding. I said, “Harlem is what I’m used to. It’s home to me. Besides, I can’t think of anyplace else I’d rather be.”
“You’re in a box, Amos, and you’re all tied up. There’s a world of possibilities outside of Harlem, you know.”
The way she moved the word Harlem around in her mouth grated on me, but I didn’t argue with her. Catherine kept looking at me, and after a pause, I went on with my story.
“Anyway, after the bat, I’d hear about my father and his goings-on—his women, his drinking, and big-timing, and he’d hear about me, my fighting, thieving, and trouble-making, but we were both glad to steer clear of one another. My aunt was more than overjoyed when the police picked me up and deposited me in a state prison. She probably dusted her hands together and said, “Good riddance.” Hell, I don’t blame the woman. I was sullen, angry, and nobody’s child. I wouldn’t have wanted to raise me either.”
I saw disappointment register in Catherine’s eyes. “Jail?” she said.
I gently reminded her. “One out of four, remember. Yeah, a state prison, which I have to admit did a superb job of raising me. I had an intensive life course, and I learned my lessons well. When I was twenty they drop-kicked my ass out of there.”
“Why were you ... ?”
“You don’t want to know,” I said.
“Oh,” she answered.
Our dinner arrived, and after that we ate in silence. I chewed over more than my food, and I’m sure she did, too. I hated to admit that our first date wasn’t much of a success. Mr. Smooth here turned out to be too big of a lump for Catherine to swallow. Well hell, I wasn’t used to lying. She fell asleep over dessert, and I took her home.
At her doorstep, she apologized for falling asleep and blamed it on her schedule. I tried to make her feel better by not disagreeing with her. And then, the oddest thing, she asked me for my phone number.
It wasn’t until I jumped into Baby parked at the curb that I realized that I was supposed to ask for her phone number. Oh well, Mr. Smooth. I flipped on the tape deck. Okay Sam, me and you. Sing it, bro’, sing it—
“... a cha-a-nge is gonna come ...”
Chapter 9
Monday morning I kept my promise to Patty and took her to the Social Services office. What a zoo. I ended up cussing out three orangutan clerks and one social caseworker, species unknown. From the size of her overbite I suspected she descended from a vicious breed of rodent.
I became convinced of it after she accused me, out of the blue, of being the father of Patty’s child. Without so much as a by-your-leave, she pushed some papers at me to fill out. I explained to her as rationally as I could the error of her thinking. She shoved the papers at me again and gave me an ultimatum. Pissed me off big time. I told her where she could stick her papers and watched as she ground her horse teeth together while the veins in her Cro-Magnon cranium popped and slithered like snakes across her wide forehead. Still, I was cool, until she started screeching at me like a hyena and called for security.
Then I lost it. Me and her went at it, tit for tat, bony for fat.
I talked about the social welfare system and included her mama. She called me a scum-of-the-earth pig who didn’t have a mama. I called her a buck-toothed-bitch-in-heat-who-wished-she-could-snag-a-man-so-she-could- be-a mama. It went on like that for a while. Patty didn’t say a word and stood trembling beside me. I kept propping her up so she wouldn’t disappear through the cracks in the floor.
Well, don’t you know, a crowd gathered. People cheered and jeered. Soon the entire fifth floor of the Social Services office building was in an uproar. An old woman leaning on a walker attached herself to me and bounced her walker up and down with glee at all the commotion. Out of the corner of my eye I saw three rent-a-cops rush toward me, but two beefy brothers with linebacker shoulders stopped them dead in their tracks.
A supervisor type, and a Barney Rubble look-alike, flew out of his office, and elbowed his way through the crowd. I’ll give him this—Barney-boy tried to calm things down, but the social worker wouldn’t stop shrieking. Truth be told, I was going pretty good too.
Barney’s head revolved like the door at the Waldorf-Astoria as he simultaneously attempted crowd control and made an effort to hush the two of us up. He tsk-tsked and tut-tutted in all the right places, as he managed at last to herd the three of us into his office and shut the door.
Above the continuing tirade of the caseworker, I explained things to Barney, best as I was able. He finally suggested that Bertha (that was her name) take a break. She turned zit red and spat out something about male chauvinist pigs who stuck together, and huffed off.
A welcome silence billowed through the office. Barney smiled. We bonded. He assured me that all he wanted to do was avoid a Monday morning riot. “That wasn’t asking too much, was it?” he said. He asked what it would take to make me happy. I told him what I wanted. The man was righteous.
Patty had a check in her hand when we left the office. We waved to the crowd and even got a few high fives.
That done, it was time to think about me. I had a decision to make. I dropped Patty off at the hospital again and made my way home—by way of New Jersey. The long drive settled me and gave me time to think. I slipped in a Miles Davis tape and chilled. By the time I pulled up in front of home-sweet-home a couple of hours later, I knew what I had to do. Could I do it? That was the question.
I stroked Baby’s leather-covered steering wheel one last time and sprang from the car, prepared to TCB—take care of business. When I made my mind up to do something, I did it.
Hold that thought, and later for the business. Across the street I saw cops swarming like maggots in front of my other brownstone. I recognized Detectives Bundt and Caporelli. They were shooting the shit on the front stoop, smoking cigarettes, while six police techs busted their butts to heft a large tarp-bundled object into the rear of a waiting police van. Another cop stripped yellow tape from the premises while the rest of the boys in blue loaded odd items of police paraphernalia, carpenters’ tools, picks, and shovels into radio cars. Seltzer was smack in the middle of them, getting in the way. I signaled to him, and he ambled over.
“Look like you back in business, boss.”
“You think?”
“Sure. Cops are leaving. Won’t see them fellows no more. Oh, uh, before I forget, a guy come by looking for you. Must’ve known something. Asked about renting the basement front.” He shoved a scrap of paper at me with a phone number on it.
“He know about the skeleton?”
Seltzer made a raspberry with his lips. “He don’t give a rat’s ass. What he care about some skeleton?”
“Some people ... superstition, you know.”
“What somebodies you talking about? Yourself?”
I slipped the paper into my shirt pocket and avoided his question. “I’ll take care of it. How’s the back apartment look? How big a hole we got?”
The cop cars pulled off, and I stopped and waved good-bye. Sure as hell going to miss them.
“Well, the hole ain’t the size of Texas, but it ain’t no Rhode Island neither. Maybe Tennessee, I reckon.”
I shuffled my feet. Seltzer’s version of geography wasn’t what I wanted to hear, and I cut to the chase. “How mu
ch?”
“Got to replace a four-by-twelve, plaster, paint ... Don’t worry, I can do the job cheap.”
“You sure? Because this bank”—and I pointed to myself—“has run dry.”
I passed him a credit card that was legit, from one of those financial institutions that pushed it on people with homeowner status, but which I had never used.
See, everything I ever bought was always cash money. You didn’t do street transactions with a credit card. So I had no use for credit rip-offs. If there was one thing I was good at, it was math, and I sure as hell could compute interest. The bank vig was higher than the vig on the street. It didn’t take no genius to figure that out. If you ask me, credit wasn’t nothing but legalized thievery from poor folks who don’t know no better. I sure as hell knew better, but desperate times ...
“Here,” I said to Seltzer. “Use it for supplies. I trust you. Get it back to me tomorrow.”
Seltzer pushed the card away. “What’s that? I don’t want nothing to do with no writing. Looky here, I’ll tell you what you need and you can pick up the dang supplies yourself. That way, won’t be no problem.”
I smiled. Seltzer wasn’t fooling nobody, but you had to understand him. He was no different from the brothers I had done time with. Stuck in that middle passage—street-wise, dog-smart, but not able to read, and not able to make the jump to opportunity.
Take Slew-Foot Reggie for example, an ex-con and numbers runner, able to carry hundreds of numbers around in his head, but couldn’t fill out a job application if his life depended on it. One thing I did, I put my time to good use in the joint—got the equivalent of a college education with all the books I devoured. Reading was the one thing that motivated me to finally get wise, and stay out of solitary confinement—because, hell, in solitary, the guards wouldn’t let you read.
Well, maybe you could read the Bible. Read it from cover to cover, and back again. Not because I was a believer, but because it was there, although I’ve always had a healthy respect for things I didn’t understand. But I guess that tells you how many times they had my ass in solitary. I knew the Bible well.
My man Seltzer was smart in his own way, talented too, and I recognized his talent, but I couldn’t give the cat the satisfaction of knowing it. Damn straight, what’s the fun of that? So I called him a no-good trifling blankety-blank, too lazy to pick up some piddling supplies. I said, “Make a list and give it to me.”
He frothed. “Make the list your own damn self.”
“What? I got to do everything? You got a tree stump for a brain?”
He bristled and bucked and said at least he had a brain. What was my excuse? I laughed. My buddy. I could count on Seltzer. Exchanging insults made us both feel good. Cleansed somehow. Not like with the social worker. Thinking about her gave me hives.
“Well,” I said as Seltzer stood waiting, “don’t you have something to do? Admiring my good looks ain’t what I’m paying you for, so get to stepping.”
Seltzer hoisted his balls at me, told me to kiss his black ass, and went back to work. I chuckled and watched him go.
From behind me I heard the tip-tapping of a cane coming down the brownstone’s steps, and turned to see Mr. Evil himself.
“Hey, Zeke. Need a few words with you,” I said.
Zeke hurriedly shoved open the low iron gate with his cane, spoke not a word to me, and took off in the direction of Sixth Avenue as fast as his spindly legs could carry him.
I watched his retreat and shook my head. I wasn’t made of the stuff to chase an old man down the street. But I was going to make it a point to corner his narrow butt tomorrow and squeeze rent out of him, or begin eviction proceedings. I inwardly shuddered at the paperwork involved. But that was my job now—landlord.
Well, first things first. I walked through the gate and paused by the tree that still bugged the shit out of me. The words NIGGER LANDLORD were still recognizable on the tree trunk. Seltzer hadn’t been able to make them disappear. He whitewashed over the letters, but the fluorescence of the paint bled through. And if that weren’t enough, the oak’s roots had given me the finger by buckling the concrete leading up to my stoop—another something to take care of.
A summer breeze lifted a branch of the tree, and a tentacle of the old oak scratched my cheek. Did that tree talk back to me?
Huh. I touched my cheek. Superstitious? Maybe Seltzer was right. I barked at the tree as I mounted the steps. “Screw you, too,” I said.
In the same moment, Wilbur came out of the door and ran smack into me. “Ooh, Mr. Brown, I heard that. Was that an invitation or a promise?” he said.
“Easy, Wilbur, easy.” I stepped back and gave him a wide berth. Today Wilbur was not subtle. He had on a purple and scarlet outfit, with a fringed purple scarf, and wore platform-heeled shoes as high as a woman’s. Under one arm, he carried a teddy bear with a big red bow.
“Hi-hi, Mr. Brown.”
I sighed. Every day Wilbur tested my tolerance level. Today I thought seriously about throwing him over the railing.
“One ‘Hi’ is plenty, Wilbur.” I raised my eyebrows at the bear cuddled in his arms. He noticed.
“Oh, this? This is Buddy Bear. Isn’t he sweet? I’m taking it to Josie in the hospital.”
Okay, so I didn’t toss him. I informed him that I had dropped Patty off at the hospital a couple of hours ago.
He asked, “Did they find out what’s wrong with little Josie?”
“Suspect malnutrition. Running more tests to make sure.”
“That doesn’t sound right.”
“What doesn’t sound right?”
“Malnutrition. Patty would go without food herself so she could feed that baby. She took good care of Josie, I know she did. You think she’s going to be all right, Mr. B.?”
“We’ll find out soon enough. Don’t worry, Wilbur. The baby is in good hands.”
“Winnie upstairs? She was always giving that baby food. Me too. Couldn’t be malnutrition. No, no, Mr. B.”
“Okay, okay, Wilbur ... give it a rest. The doctors will find out.”
“I’m taking myself over there right this minute. It pains me to know Josephine’s in that hospital all by herself.”
“Patty’s there, Wilbur.”
“Well, I know that, but we’re family in this building. All of us except, uh, you know.”
“Zeke?”
“Child, you hit it, but you ain’t heard it from these lips.”
Which translated into Wilbur’s being ready to spill all. “What’s Zeke’s problem?”
“Well ...”
I waited. Wilbur was primed.
“See, at first when I moved in, I thought it was just me, ’cause you know, but no—Zeke hates everybody. Maybe the man was disappointed in love.”
On “love” Wilbur batted his eyes and placed a hand over his heart. My own eyebrows shifted a notch higher.
“But when you took over the building, he got really testy—agitated, you know. Between you and me, I know it was him who did that.” Wilbur pointed to the tree. My eyebrows stretched to my hairline and I exploded.
“You saw him?”
“Not exactly, but that same paint stayed right there in the hallway outside his door for two whole weeks. It sure didn’t belong to me. I guess you missed it.”
True, I hadn’t made the climb to the third floor in those first few weeks after I took over the building.
“What burr does Zeke have up his butt about me?”
“Child, don’t get me to lying. I don’t have a clue. You don’t know?”
Wilbur leaned forward and waited for a gossipy tidbit to drop in his ear. It wasn’t going to happen. I stood my ground. Wilbur sighed, and moved to the next subject.
“Oh, Mr. B., did I tell you I baked an apple pie?”
“That right?”
“Uh-huh. If you like ...” And then Wilbur’s voice plummeted an octave, and he winked. “If you like,” he repeated, “I’ll drop you off a piece.”
“Talking about pie, Mr. B. See ya.” Flinging his scarf over one shoulder, he laughed again and flounced down the steps.
Wilbur was pulling my chain, I knew it. I unlocked the door to my office. Damn hermaphrodite. But hell, the man could burn. No lie. That I could testify to. I looked forward to his pie.
I entered the office, plopped into my swivel chair, let my head fall back, and stared for a time at the ceiling. A water stain stared back at me. God, it was only Monday. I let out a sigh; then I summoned the will and pitched forward and rifled through the Rolodex on my desk and pulled out a card with Herman Brubaker’s name on it, a Cadillac dealer I had been doing business with for the past ten years.
I reached for the phone and suddenly choked—this was going to be damn hard. I sat for a full minute, receiver in hand, dial tone insistent and vibrating through my fingers. Overhead, Winnie’s stereo played; the bass boomed and the ceiling pulsed in rhythm to the thumping of my heart. Courage, I said, and dialed Herman’s number.
Herman picked up on the second ring. Over the wires I heard him stuff his gut, lips smacking. Can there be a more disgusting sound than a human sucking on a bone? I cut short his description of what he was eating and got to the point.
“Herman? Unloading my car. What’ll you give me for it?” I waited until his coughing and hacking subsided, and asked again. Since it wasn’t my usual trade up, he hem-hawed before he gave me a figure.
When I heard it I demanded to know what fool in what universe he thought he was talking to. I told the scuzz I’d be at his car lot in thirty minutes and left him with, “Eat your chicken before I get there, Herman, or I’ll stuff it down your greedy throat and you’ll really choke.”
Satisfied with my finesse and persuasive skills, I slammed down the receiver, leaned back in my chair, fingers laced behind my head. See, when you argue with a man—everything’s simple.
Chapter 10
The phone was ringing off the hook in my apartment as I entered my bedroom and threw myself across the bed. I let it ring and squirreled my body deeper into the covers. I was depressed. The money for Harry now burned a hole in my pocket and I could smell the smoke. I lay face down, and began a purple dream. I was in a poker game. The cards and chips levitated and flew through the air. Harry was furious with me. He pulled out a bottle of rum from underneath the table and chased me across the George Washington Bridge, the bottle of rum in one hand, and a shot glass in the other, screaming at the top of his lungs. I was terrified. It must have been rush hour because cars were stalled bumper to bumper across the length of the bridge. I jumped in and out of successive cars, tried to start their engines, and not one turned over. Grilles upturned in smiles, the cars laughed. I was desperate.
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