Harlem Hit & Run

by Angela Dews

  “My quotes will get a swift reaction from the ever-vigilant culture police,” Joseph announced.

  “Sons of bitches used her death to make a little story that is not about her,” Mister Bell said. “Sons of bitches need to talk about real people dying like they do about those motherfuckers nobody even knows.”

  They were quickly surrounded.

  And, still looking for conversation and for answers, I took out my notebook and looked around the bar for someone who I expected would give me a good quote.

  “What the—?”

  What sounded like an explosion was loud enough to rattle some glass and silence Bobby Bop’s horn.

  Karl was the first to move and he had the shortest distance to go from his stool beside the door. His camera bag was flung out behind him and his Pall Malls were still on the bar.

  C H A P T E R • 11

  * * *

  I was able to catch up to Karl where he had stopped on the bar side of St. Nicholas Avenue to take the wide shot of the row of buildings on the other side of the street.

  “You fools can’t see anything in the dark anyways,” the Kit Kat bartender called out to our backs for our benefit. Most of the crowd had stopped on the sidewalk in front of the bar, safely across the street. On that side were storefronts—a laundromat, a grocery, a Chinese takeout.

  On the other side, where they have stood since 1888, was a group of seven adjoining houses that made a set, their carved facades a solid sandstone street wall. Viola owned one near the end of the row.

  Part of the early development of the Heights named after Alexander Hamilton, who had a country home there, they had been built to stand against anything but the most vehement acts of God and neglect. And that was probably the combination that finally caused one wall to crumble beneath one mansard turreted roof. The building continued its sporadic rumbling.

  The bartender was right. Those of us who had crossed the street couldn’t see much. But we could hear, and something was settling with a sporadic rumbling in the guts of one of the buildings.

  When the firemen showed up, they didn’t go into the building. Instead, they sprayed beams of light from the sidewalk and from the alley next door and shepherded the crowd away, including everybody they could roust from the neighboring buildings.

  “Why are you just standing there?” I asked one of the firemen.

  “See that X? Someone in the department painted it to announce the floors wouldn’t hold the weight of a man.”

  I took out my notebook and wrote that detail for my story. “If you knew it was derelict, it seems like it should have been supported. What’s the protocol for a fragile building? Do you get a lot of these uptown?”

  “We get enough. But I’m not the one to ask about it. I need you to step back. This is too close.”

  “Okay. And you be very careful.”

  He looked at me and gave me a thumbs-up. “I always am.”

  I let myself be shepherded away and kept my distance, satisfying myself with craning to follow the searching lights. Karl was the only one of the onlookers who needed to be discouraged as he moved close enough to take the pictures the newspaper was going to need to report the story.

  The address seemed familiar and I doodled a box around the number before capturing the other details in my notebook. A couple of buildings away, a Keep the Power banner fluttered in front of what must have been a campaign field office for the incumbent in the last election.

  Police arrived in a herd of blue and whites with lights flashing. And Obsidian unfolded from a sleek black sedan he parked in the no-parking zone in front of the Kit Kat. I watched him walk across the street.

  “Pearl? For someone who doesn’t want to be here, you seem to be all over Manhattan North these days.”

  “Obie.” I got a rush from seeing him and reverted back to his childhood nickname. “I heard it from across the street.”

  “Mmmm.” His attention was on the building.

  “And now you’re going to have another vacant lot,” I said.

  “Not if we can help it.”

  “We?”

  “It’s city-owned. Therefore, we have some clout.”

  “And some responsibility.”

  “You place value on responsibility?” He turned back to me. “What about a citizen’s responsibility to turn over documents that could figure in a police investigation?”

  “I told Karl to give you those pictures,” I said.

  “I’m not talking about your pictures. You all have been calling some of everybody about the evidence Cecelia Miller collected about activity at the bank.”

  “Send someone by the office tomorrow. What police investigation?”

  “We’ll go to the office now.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yes, tonight. And you’re lucky I don’t arrest you for obstruction.”

  “What police investigation?”

  “I heard you the first time. No comment.”

  “Is it just a hit and run or do you think maybe she was run over on purpose?”

  “I don’t think real reporters pull together their stories with ifs and maybes.”

  “Of course they do. Probably like real cops do.”

  “I do know there’s a helluva lot more to being a cop than your movie version. Come on. There’s not much more to see here.”

  He was right. New Yorkers have short attention spans. The group was breaking up. Except, in front of the building next door to the one still rumbling, as if on cue, there was more to see.

  A man in overalls spattered with what looked like paint was arguing with two firemen and they attracted the attention of the police. I moved closer and stationed myself as witness with my notebook out in the ready-and-recording position to take the names and badge numbers if the argument escalated.

  From there I heard the man, who was not much older than a kid, arguing that he needed to get back inside. His face was swollen and bandaged.

  “You bitch ass motherfuckers,” he screamed at the policemen. Which seemed like a bad idea to me. But I wrote down the quote.

  Sure enough, one of the cops moved behind him and snatched his wiry arms behind his back so his jehri curls swung.

  “Who you calling a motherfucker?”

  The policeman’s hat fell off to reveal a baby face. He looked like Tom Sawyer, but for the rage. The other cops were standing nearby, spectating. Except, one came to grab the kid on the other side and help rough-house him against the car. When he had finally been thrown against the door frame and pushed inside, the last thing we heard from the car was, “Kiss my mother fucking ass.”

  Obsidian promised a rendezvous. “Wait for me at the Kat.”

  C H A P T E R • 12

  * * *

  Obsidian walked over to the police car and stayed for a minute talking. He was angry. I could read his body language even at a distance, even in the uniform. I know that body.

  When the police car drove away, he walked over to two men standing beside another parked car. It was conspicuous, unmarked, but official.

  I tried to get some reactions from the police and fire department crowd in uniform while I waited for him to come back. I got nada.

  Obsidian was hardly better. I asked him, “Why did the police beat him up? Nobody told him you don’t cuss out the police?”

  “Clarence has no impulse control. But whoever beat him up did it before we got here.”

  “Tom Sawyer is the one who needs impulse control. Why do they assign those rookies to Harlem with their paramilitary training and their big eyes and their big guns—frightened and armed? And his partner was worse.”

  “Tom Sawyer? Oh, the redhead. He’s new. Not from around here. The other policeman wasn’t the rookie’s partner. His partner will walk with him and give him the experience that trumps the paramilitary training. This is where they learn their jobs. Wherever they come from, their real training starts when they get here. And if somebody taught Clarence some respect he wouldn’t be in
a squad car right now.”

  “Respect goes both ways.”

  “Heavy will get out in the morning, if he doesn’t do anything else stupid while we’re holding him. As it turns out, he’s part of the operation making bootleg videotapes. I suppose it pays better than his job as the bouncer over at the Kit Kat Klub.”

  “Heavy? I thought you called him Clarence.”

  “Actually, his name is Clarence. But lately he started wanting us to call him Heavy. And we do.”

  “He wants the police to call him Heavy?”

  “No. I mean all of us. I’ve known him since he was a kid.”

  “I can see the Journal doing a couple of stories about the Harlem police.”

  “I can give you some people to talk to. I would actually like to read a story about what it looks like and feels like from the inside being a Harlem cop.”

  “Really? You want a story about how making black-market videotapes is a crime you need to get beat up for?”

  “Heavy will be released. But, ironically, he’s at risk of being busted for stealing movies. And it is a crime; although we usually don’t have the time or resources to arrest them. Those clowns sitting over there in their jive Chevy are some freelance hotshot rent-a-cops from the coast who have been watching locations over the last few months where videotapes of movies are being made.”

  My feelings changed in an instant from indignation to curiosity. I could see the headline:

  HOW DUBS ARE DONE

  “Who are they investigating?” I asked and wondered about Al and the African vendors on the sidewalk in front of the Journal.

  He looked at me and shook his head. “I’ve already said too much. Got riled up. That’s off the record.”

  “You should have said so.”

  C H A P T E R • 13

  * * *

  He walked faster and I refused to run to keep up. By the time I got to his fancy sedan, he was waiting at my passenger door.

  “You are the most annoying woman,” he said. “But I’ve missed talking to you.”

  I was probably revved high enough to talk some trash but I hung back and stalled. I looked at the face I could still sketch with my eyes closed. Then I turned away.

  “You’re not even going to try, Pearl?”

  “Have you forgotten we already did try?”

  When we got in, he threw his hat in the back, and when he started the car, the music went up. It was Prince. “1999” reminded me of a summer once when our spaces were filled with us loving and much of the noise we both made was laughter.

  “I hate you were probably right. You needed to go to California to make your movies. But now you’re home.”

  “Harlem’s where I’m from. Home is not where you’re from. It’s where you’re at. I only got these three weeks because my movie is in postproduction. In fact, I’ll have to catch up with the dialogue re-recording for the film when I get back. People, a lot of people, are counting on me.”

  “Your father went downtown and did his corporate thing. But he came back home to Harlem. Harlem pulled him back.”

  My eyes started to fill up. Never knew when it was going to happen, when the grief would check in. But the tears still didn’t fall.

  “I cannot forgive him and his so-called wife for not letting me know how sick he was.”

  “I don’t think any of us knew how sick he was. And I’m glad I don’t have to take sides between you and Viola, who is his widow, by the way. Not so-called anything. I’ve been impressed, actually. First she took in her sister’s kid and then she looked after your father.”

  “I can feel gratitude at the same time I feel everything else I feel about that woman, but it’s easier from a distance.”

  “You know, you can act here. Broadway is here.”

  I laughed. “It would certainly be better than the Tar Baby story I’m acting in now.”

  “Tar Baby story?”

  “I’m fighting against this family responsibility, and I feel like Brer Rabbit, who was kicking at the tar baby to get free of it. And I have one foot already stuck.”

  I watched him laugh by the light from the myriad scanners and indicators arrayed in front of him. I used to love to make him laugh.

  Then I followed his gaze through the tinted window to the long stretch of St. Nicholas Avenue down the hill in front of us over the pulsing, lighted dashboard.

  “This is how it happens,” I said. “When you have all this technology, these sirens and lights and radios, and of course the gun, you’re not out on the street and you don’t feel like one of the people. And I guess you’re not supposed to.”

  “One of the people? Out on the street? Please! I’m so much a part of the street there’s a crosswalk on my back.”

  “That would mean you got out of the car. Does that happen?”

  “I always did, even before I became the CO of the 28th. And we all do now. Commissioner Lee Brown and Mayor David Dinkins are taking us back to community policing. Commissioner Brown calls it Park, Walk and Talk. We get out of the car for one patrol hour during each shift.”

  “Do the men like it?”

  “Some of them love it. I know it gets stale in the car. It did when I did it. But some of them have gotten lazy and don’t want to walk. I don’t think it’s going to last. There’s an undercurrent of resentment about a black mayor and a black police commissioner commanding mostly Italian and Irish cops to police people they fear and even hate. It also happened when Ben Ward was the police commissioner and started community policing with the Community Patrol Officer Program. That didn’t last.”

  “Walking in the street might impress a bad apple or two,” I said. “But it’s going to take radical upheaval to make systemic change. I’m going to put that in my article.”

  “Wait! I need this conversation and anything else we talk about when you’re not being a reporter to be off the record. Otherwise, I’ll keep it to myself like I usually do and I’ll miss this rare opportunity to hear myself talk.”

  “I’ll listen. I’ve missed talking to you too. About everything. But, off the record, how can you work with these racists? Is it all about the pension?”

  “Couple of things. If we didn’t work with racists, where would black people work? Up north, they clean it up. But if we’re inside we know. And the other thing is being a policeman does offer a good pension. It has been a route to the middle class. Sanitation is hard work and we can’t be firemen. Being the head of the 28th allows me to call out the violence and disrespect. Sometimes it makes a difference. I was able to direct one of the men to join the military where he might find job satisfaction if he sees real combat. Mostly we don’t join the force to be soldiers but that’s what they expect now.”

  He turned left on 125th Street and slowed down to cruise. Most of the shops had closed behind the rolled-down metal gates, displaying the dancing, strutting images painted by Franco the Great. Because even the whites and Asians who own the stores know it’s a black thing.

  Tribes of people took pictures of each other—usually all black, all white or all Asian, not mixed, not diverse. They clustered in front of the scenes painted on Woolworth’s and the Colonel’s and Puppy’s and places to buy synthetic hair, T-shirts, sneakers, and music and the things to play it on, and in front of the Victoria Theater and Harlem’s historic Apollo Theater.

  “So, you know everything. Who’s at the Apollo?” I asked him.

  “It’s Amateur Night.”

  “Wednesday. I forgot.”

  “Plenty happening on Amateur Night at the Apollo.”

  Next door to the theater, Hector was doing a booming business photographing tourists in front of their choice of six-foot painted velvet and canvas backdrops of album covers and cartoons. A pile of them were folded on the sidewalk. Six were taped with gaffer’s tape on the tall chain-link fence along the vacant lot next to the Apollo theater, offering the ominous faces of men and the half-naked bodies of women. Tasmanian Devil carried a gun.

  “You�
�ve got to be tough to ride Hector’s fence at night,” I said. “Barney went in when the kids went home.”

  “There are always young people on the street. And someone’s child will get home tonight because we’re out here.”

  It stopped me. “If your cops can see it’s someone’s child under his suspicious colored skin.”

  “Suspicious. That’s the word. The uptown crews are targeting each other and they look like they’re going to make some real trouble all the time. They do it on purpose. And the gangs are only one kind of violence. Don’t forget booze and drugs and passion and greed and despair. You know. And this isn’t Hollywood, Pearl. But we get it done. Most of the time it’s nothing but stupidity. And we need people to give us all the information they have.”

  “Right. And how often do people in this community give you all the information they have?”

  “You’d be surprised. Everybody has some attitude about talking to the police, until it’s someone they know or something they want or some beef they can’t handle alone. Really. You’d be surprised. And it’s easier when we’re face to face, on the street.”

  “Do you want to tell me what you said to Tom Sawyer, the rookie who was manhandling Heavy just now?”

  “I was talking to the veteran. The rookie is learning. The veteran has to unlearn. This is a conversation we’re having with each other.”

  C H A P T E R • 14

  * * *

  When we parked in front of 215 where the paper has its offices, he didn’t get out and he turned to me. “Pearl, our conversation gives me an idea. I saw you chanting to Cecelia on the street this morning. Do you teach meditation?”

  “I teach kids in L.A. It’s amazing how super aware they already are each day of their lives as they navigate their world. I tell them to turn their awareness inside.”