Harlem Redux

by Persia Walker

  That admission was all Baker needed. A master at verbal savagery, he scourged David with ridicule, contempt, and innuendo. He twisted David’s words and interrupted his answers. He took obvious pride in putting him to the verbal lash. David took the flogging with dignity. He gritted his teeth and bore it, but that only incited Baker to more. Nevin tried several times to object, but David signaled him to sit down. He would not cringe or dodge or deny, but gradually, despite his determination, his strength left him. The merciless brutality of the questions—the inflexible manner in which he was allowed to answer—all wore him down. Like a bullwhip, the questions came faster, fell harder, cut deeper, and dealt a sharper sting. He was virtually being flayed alive. His admissions, like blood, began to pour from him.

  “So in effect you lied to the courts?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lied to your clients?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lied to your colleagues and friends?”

  “Yes! Yes!”

  “And once back here, when asked what you’ve been doing, you said—”

  “I said nothing—”

  “You let people believe you’ve been working for the Movement, but this too was a lie?”

  “Yes, a lie.”

  “And isn’t it true that you would be back in Philadelphia if it weren’t for your marriage? Wouldn’t you still be deceiving? Concealing? Living your lies?”

  “I would be living—another life. Yes.”

  Baker moved in for the kill. “The fact is, Mr. David, you’ve lied to your family and friends, to your clients and colleagues, day after day, month after month, year after year—for four years. Do you know what the truth is anymore? Do you even care?”

  David gripped the railing of the witness stand. “I give you my word. I didn’t kill—”

  Baker slammed his fist down. “Why should we believe you? Why should we trust you? Why, when it seems that you do nothing but lie?” He looked at the judge. “No more questions, Your Honor. We are finished with this witness.”

  Nevin stood. “Redirect, Your Honor?”

  Richter nodded.

  Nevin leaned on his desk—the onlookers leaned forward in their seats. With a sonorous voice, Nevin intoned: “This then is the truth: That you accused Jameson Sweet of having killed your sister; that he said to you: ‘I will not let you send me to prison. I’d rather die first,’ that you left him alive, and when you returned he was dead?”

  “That’s what happened. That is the truth.”

  “On your oath before God?”

  “On my oath before God.”

  “Thank you.”

  Nevin sat down heavily. His kind face was grave. The cross-examination had been damaging. There was no doubt about it. The judge dismissed David with a curt nod. David stood stiffly. The stares of the jury seemed to burn into his back as he walked to his seat.

  “You did well,” Nevin told him. “You did fine.”

  Baker’s summation was delivered with consummate skill. He reminded the jury that it was the defense that had introduced the possibility of a second powerful motive, “David’s obsessive belief that Sweet killed his sister,” and that it was a Negro civil rights official who had brought police attention to the racial aspects of the case. David McKay’s own people saw him as a traitor to the Negro race and a shame to humanity, Baker said. In bringing in a verdict of guilty, members of the all-white jury need not fear accusations of racism. They need not be concerned with allegations that David lacked a fair trial. Nor would the fine city of New York suffer claims “against its reputation as a place of refuge for the honest and hardworking, no matter what their shade or hue.” None of these matters need concern the jury. What the jury did need to consider was the calculated cruelty of the crime and the deceitful personality of the defendant.

  “Through his words and deeds, David McKay has shown himself to be an opportunist, a chameleon who changes colors the way others change clothes. He lies and thinks nothing of it. He abandons his family and thinks nothing of it. He sees a good friend burned to death, stands by, and does nothing about it. Would such a man stop at murder? I think not.

  “David McKay is a spoiled Negro. A spoiled Negro? Two terms some would say are mutually exclusive. But there it is. He had more than any decent Negro could hope for; yet he wasn’t satisfied. Cowardice, greed— would a man with such qualities stop at murder? I think not.

  “Jameson Sweet, on the other hand, was a hardworking man, a good example to Negroes everywhere. He overcame daunting disadvantages to become an attorney. He was a giving man, a brave man, dedicated to making life better for his people. He was a loving husband who patiently nursed his ailing wife––only to be cut down by her self-serving brother.”

  Baker leaned on the rail separating him from the jury. He looked each member of the panel in the eye, taking his time. His normally stern visage was softened by the hint of a sad smile.

  “It’s up to you,” he said. “You have the power to make David McKay pay.” He raised his fist and brought it down on the railing in an intense, silent blow. The touch of compassion in his expression was gone, replaced by one of hate. “Make him pay! Make him pay! MAKE HIM PAY!”

  Nevin paced slowly, thoughtfully, back and forth before the jury box. An impressive figure and a gifted speaker, he had inherited his father’s eloquence as a Baptist preacher. Nevin knew exactly what he wanted to say. His slow pacing was meant to give the jury members time to recover from the dark emotions stirred by Baker’s speech. Every trial attorney knows that the fight for the jury’s vote entails a battle for its heart as well as its mind, the first often superseding the other. When Nevin sensed that the jury members had settled down, had focused on him, he began.

  He opened by thanking them for their time and patience, and he expressed confidence that they would reach a fair and well-considered verdict. As he moved to the core of the matter, his tone was conversational, reasonable, and quietly but intensely passionate.

  “Evidence,” he said. “Evidence. That is the crux of the matter. Remember: In this country, a man is innocent until proven guilty. Proven by evidence. Only two sets of fingerprints were found on the gun that killed Jameson Sweet. Did either of them belong to David McKay? No, they did not. Did one of them belong to Jameson Sweet? Yes, they did.

  “I repeat: Evidence. Look to the evidence. But how can we? There is no evidence that David McKay shot Jameson Sweet. There is, however, evidence that Jameson Sweet shot himself.”

  Nevin’s voice took on the rolling cadence of the pulpit preacher. His walk became more vigorous as he strode the span of the jury box. He was no ordinary attorney; he was a craftsman. His soaring, vital voice drove on. Steadily and precisely, he depicted the fallacies of the state’s case.

  “The charges against David McKay were based on his alleged motive: to keep his double life a secret. Since the trial began, a second alleged motive—to avenge his sister’s death—has been brought to bear. These motives remain unproved. Yes, David McKay wanted to retain his privacy, but Nella Harding testified that he had already agreed to let her publish details of his life. Yes, he wanted his sister’s killer punished, but it was a legal, a judicial punishment he planned to seek. Gentlemen of the jury, this case boils down to the word of the state against that of the accused.

  “My learned colleague, Mr. Baker, sees no reason to believe David McKay. David McKay is a liar, says Mr. Baker: David McKay has lived a lie for four years. Has denied his own people for four years. This man, implies Mr. Baker, is a murderous coward. But I remind you: This man is a war hero. This man has faced what no member of this jury will ever face: the blood-lust of a lynch mob.”

  Nevin leaned on the jury box. “Who among you would have acted differently than David McKay? Who is ready to cast the first stone? David McKay did not turn from his people—he turned from injustice. Shall I repeat his words? He said, ‘I did not decide to pass for white. I did decide to let people see what they wanted to see.’”

 
“I ask you: What kind of moral code requires a man to constantly identify himself as a target for racial hatred? Or to make himself a willing victim for the proponents of genocide? Tell me, men of the jury, which one of you would have stepped forward to endure the hangman’s noose or the burning pyre?”

  Nevin paused to let his words sink in. “David McKay’s initial denial of his racial identity was born of terror. But his long-term decision to no longer brand himself as either black or white stemmed neither from fear nor cowardice, but from despair. Despair at the murderous stupidity of lynch mobs; despair at the haunting political impotence of the black race; at the rigidity of America’s caste system and the knowledge that the democracy you fought for overseas will turn a blind eye when you’re lynched at home.

  “As you know, in this country, a man’s worth is irrevocably determined by his racial identity. David McKay thought his decision to be neither black nor white would free him from America’s whole mad obsession with race, and in his sense of racial responsibility, he worked privately, feverishly to help as many of his people as he could. How can you see a man who cares that much, who labors that hard, as a murderous coward?”

  David thought of his clients in Philadelphia. Now he knew how they felt when they were on trial: the helplessness and frustration at the beginning; the despair and resignation toward the end. He had always tried to give them hope. He had asked them to have faith. He realized with a sinking heart that retaining faith was the most difficult of all things to do. He found himself praying as he hadn’t prayed in years, for hope, for faith, for courage to endure what he was sure would befall him.

  They took him to another room in the courthouse to await the jury’s decision. He asked Nevin to leave him alone, then sat down on one of the hard wooden chairs furnishing the barren room and stared out of the barred window.

  Inevitably, his thoughts returned to Rachel. She had offered to serve him choice bits of truth on each successive visit.

  “What shall I tell you today?” she would ask. “What do you want to know?”

  “Tell me,” he’d said the evening before, “about Jameson Sweet.”

  “Jimmy? Now what’s there to say about him?” She played at being surprised. But her mocking tone was softened by a bittersweet smile.

  “He was your sheik, your sugar daddy?” he asked.

  “And my friend.” Her look was teasing. “Jealous?”

  “No,” he said mildly with a little shake of his head.

  “Just curious, huh?” She was suddenly bitter. “You never loved me.”

  “No, but I cared. For a while, I cared very much.”

  “And now?”

  “Does it matter?”

  She eyed him. Her heart-shaped face was tight with anger. “No,” she said coolly. “It don’t matter. Don’t matter at all.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You want to know about Jimmy? Well, he loved me. Adored me. Always had. From the time we ran the streets as kids.”

  “You never talked about him.”

  “Why should I? I knew the kind of people I wanted to be with—and he wasn’t one of them.”

  For the first time since he’d known her, David saw the naked ambition in her eyes, the sense of ruthless calculation that drove her. He did not fault her for it; given her life, he even understood it. Nevertheless, it repelled him.

  “I saw less of Jimmy as I grew older. Years went by. Then I ran into him two years ago, right after I moved back from D.C. Jimmy knew about the baby. Seems like everybody did. I was tired, broke. Jimmy tried to help. After Mama died, he offered me everything he had. He thought he could make me forget. But he was wrong.”

  Her soft voice was heavy with hate. “I wanted to make you people hurt the way you hurt me, and I wanted Jimmy to help me do it.” Her voice trailed off, as she remembered. “He tried to talk me out of it. He promised to deliver the sun and the moon and the stars, if I’d just give up my idea. But I wouldn’t. Finally, he gave in. He loved me too much to let me try it alone.”

  David had never expected to feel sympathy for Sweet, but for a moment he felt something quite close to it. He rearranged his normally expressive face into a mask, but he found it impossible to keep the rage from his eyes.

  “What was your plan?” he asked in a dull voice.

  “It was simple: Jimmy was to marry Lilian, fake her suicide, then wait a while and marry me.”

  “As simple as that?”

  She arched an eyebrow. “Yeah, as simple as that.” She smiled provocatively. “You’re very handsome when you’re mad.”

  “Is that what you told Sweet before you shot him?”

  The smile disappeared. She was furious. “What d’you care what I said to him? What I did with him on the parlor sofa—before he died?”

  He gave a slow, studied shrug. “You’re right. I don’t give a damn what you two did together. I just want to know about my sisters. You introduced him to Lilian, didn’t you?”

  “Well, what of it? She wanted to marry a dark-skinned man. To make herself look good. To prove her commitment to the race by marrying ‘a real Negro.’ My, my, she was something. A pathetic snob who knew nothing about men.” Scorn distorted Rachel’s pretty features.

  “But Rachel, when you learned that she was going to have a child—”

  “That changed nothing.”

  “You still planned to kill her?”

  “Of course.” She gave him a hard stare and a strange light entered her eyes. “I wanted her dead. You hear me? Dead. You think I should’ve had pity on her ‘cause she was carrying a baby. But she didn’t have pity on me. Lilian as much as killed my child—our child, David, our child. I didn’t owe Lilian a damn thing. Isabella would’ve lived—if only she’d gotten good food, good medicine—if only she’d had you.”

  Something convulsed inside him. His blood pounded in his face. “Tell me the rest,” he said thickly.

  She gave him one last resentful look. Then her features composed themselves. Her passions, so dramatically evident one second, disappeared the next as though some mental door had swung shut behind them. Within a minute, her face was calm.

  “Everything was going fine. Then Gem arrived. That worried us, but we decided to go ahead with our plan. We didn’t know Gem had plans of her own. Not until later, when Gem told Jimmy what she’d done to Lilian at Nella Harding’s house.”

  A look of injured self-righteousness swept over her face. “You think I’m cold-hearted. Well, what about Gem? She killed her own sister: shot her in the heart. Right on Nella’s dock. Gem said she’d wondered how it would feel to kill. But it was no big deal. She said she’d had more fun shooting rabbits. So there.”

  David knew that she expected a response; he gave her none. He believed what she said about Gem, of course. He believed her one hundred percent. It was more or less what he had figured out. But that made the confirming details no less painful to hear.

  And Rachel knew it.

  Telling him how Gem had murdered Lilian was part of her revenge. She wanted to wound him and she was doing a good job of it. He felt as though she were raking his heart with claws, but he was determined not to let her know it, so he met her vicious tongue with silence. He knew that she would be unable to hold out and he was right. Her own need to tell him everything drove her on.

  She began speaking in a low, vehement tone. And he listened—he had to. He was truly a captive listener. He had sought the truth and now he had it, delivered in its most brutal form. She told him how Gem had stripped Lilian’s body on the spot.

  “That’s when she saw Lilian’s belly. It was a little too round. She touched it and nearly rocked on her heels. A baby. Gem thought back on how Jimmy had acted—how he and Lilian had acted together—and it hit her like a thunderclap that maybe Lilian hadn’t told Jimmy about the baby. It was a slight chance. Slighter than the crack in an ant’s behind. But still there. And if Lilian had told him ... Well, Gem figured she’d have to have her
self a little accident. Maybe a fall down the stairs.

  “Anyway, she didn’t waste time worrying. She dragged the body to the edge of the dock, tied it up with some rope and rocks, and rolled it off the pier. The next morning, she put on Lilian’s clothes and drove back in Lilian’s car.

  “Jimmy didn’t suspect—at first. But Gem was a lousy actress. Too conceited. Didn’t like having to pretend to be somebody else—especially when that somebody was Lilian. Finally, Jimmy said something. She admitted everything. Even bragged about it.

  “Jimmy said he’d turn her in. But she said she’d say he helped her. It would’ve been his word against hers. Then she told him he’d be smarter to just play along and let her ‘keep Lilian alive.’ No one would be the wiser. You were the only one who could tell the difference, but you’d been gone for years. Gem was sure you’d died in some southern cornfield. No one else could guess. Not even Annie. Gem didn’t know about me. So, Jimmy and me let her think she was getting her way. We decided we’d just wait a while, then kill her, too.”

  David was past being shocked. Still, he stared at her, wondering. Her face was familiar—her eyes, her nose, her delicate throat—but he felt as though a stranger sat before him. Where was the desirable woman he had married? Had she ever existed? Usually, he had good instincts for people. Why had he never perceived the bitterness, the ruthlessness that simmered within her? There had been times when he had sensed something … something not quite right. That was the best choice of words he could come up with. But his remorse had blinded him. His sense of guilt and regret had disabled him. Now I’m free of such constraints, he thought bitterly. His mind was once more free to follow a logical train of thought, no matter where it led him.

  “Was it your idea to drive Gem out of her mind using drugs?”

  Rachel’s smile was smug. “We’d done it to Lilian. I stole the drugs from the hospital. Jimmy mixed them with Gem’s food, put them in her drinks. Then he brought me into the house. To help ‘take care of her.’ We waited a year. A whole damn year. Long enough for everyone to know she was sick. I got tired of it, so I said: ‘Jimmy, go do it.’ He picked the weekend he was supposed to be in Newark.”