“Good point,” I said.
CHAPTER 17
Orestes Tillis was waiting for us when we arrived for work at Double Deuce the next day.
“They set twelve fires last night,” he said. Hawk nodded. Jackie clicked on her recorder. “They set one in every trash can in the project,” Tillis said. He glanced at Jackie’s recorder. “And I believe I know why. It is an affront to every African-American that you should have one of the oppressors with you, protecting black people from each other.”
Hawk nodded again.
“That’s probably it,” he said.
“You cannot be taken seriously as long as you appear allied with the oppressor,” Tillis said.
“Sure,” Hawk said.
“Are you saying that blacks and whites cannot work together?” Jackie said. Unconsciously she held the tape recorder forward. Tillis pointed it like a spaniel with a partridge.
“Could slaves work with slaveholders?” he said. “The white man is still trying to enslave us economically. He tries to destroy us with drugs and guns. Where does all the dope come from here? Do you see heroin labs in the ghetto? Do you see any firearms factories in the ghetto?”
Tillis pointed at me rather dramatically, considering that it was only us and the tape recorder. “His people are practicing genocide, should we ask them for help?”
“You shut that thing off,” Hawk said to Jackie, “and he’ll shut up.”
She looked startled, but she switched off the tape recorder. Tillis stopped gazing into it and looked at Hawk.
“They will not take you seriously,” he said, “if you work with a white man.”
Hawk stared at Tillis without expression for probably fifteen seconds. Then he shook his head slowly.
“You got it backwards,” he said. “We the only thing they do take seriously. We all they can think about sitting out in the middle of their turf. They set those fires to see what we’d do. They don’t care about you. We are an affront to them. They think about us all the time.”
“Why don’t they just shoot you?” Tillis said.
“Maybe one reason being they can’t,” Hawk said. “And maybe they kind of interested, see what we do.”
“Why?”
“They admire Hawk,” Jackie said.
Hawk continued as if neither of them had spoken.
“And they going to keep doing things, a little worse, and a little worse, and finally they going to get into shooting with us and we going to kill some of them.”
Tillis’ eyes shifted to Jackie and back to Hawk. “Just like that?” he said.
“Un huh,” Hawk said. “Maybe get lucky and one of the ones we kill will be the dude that did Devona and Crystal.”
Tillis started to say “who?” and then remembered and caught himself.
“You sound like you are talking about simply shooting them to clean up the problem,” he said.
“Un huh.”
“I want no part of that,” Tillis said. He glanced again at Jackie, who was all the media he had at the moment. “I can’t condone murder.”
Hawk shrugged.
“What makes you think they won’t kill you?” Tillis said.
“Blue-eyed devil here,” Hawk said, “going to prevent them.”
“And I thought you’d never even noticed my eyes,” I said.
CHAPTER 18
Erin Macklin came to my office at about 9:30 in the evening. She had thick dark hair cut short and salted with a touch of gray. Her features were even. Her makeup was understated but careful. She wore big horn-rimmed glasses, a string of big pearls, matching pearl earrings, a black suit, and a white blouse with the collar points worn out over the lapels of the suit. Her shoes were black, with medium heels. Dress for success. She looked around my office, located the customer’s chair, and sat in it.
“I am here,” she said, “because two people I know tell me Susan Silverman is to be trusted, and Susan Silverman says you can be trusted.”
“One can’t be too careful,” I said.
“I also know a woman named Iris Milford who says she knew you nearly twenty years ago, and, at least at that time, you could leap tall buildings at a single bound.”
“Iris exaggerates a little,” I said becomingly. “When I knew her she was a student. How is she?”
“She has stayed in the community,” Erin Macklin said. “She has made a difference.”
“She seemed like she might,” I said.
“You and another man are attempting to deal with the Hobart Street Raiders,” she said.
“Actually,” I said, “we are dealing with them.”
“And Susan told me that you would like to know what I know about the gangs.”
“Yes,” I said. “But first I’d probably like to know a little about you.”
“I was about to say the same thing,” Erin Macklin said. “You first.”
“I used to be a fighter. I used to be a cop. Now I am a private detective,” I said. “I read a lot. I love Susan.”
I paused for a moment thinking about it.
“The list,” I said, “is probably in reverse order.”
“A romantic,” she said. “You don’t look it.” I nodded.
“The man you are working with?”
“My friend,” I said.
“Nothing more?”
“Lots more, but most of it I don’t know.”
“He’s black,” she said.
“Yes.”
We were quiet while she looked at me. There was no challenge in the look, and the silence seemed to embarrass neither of us.
“I used to be a nun,” she said. “Now I am a teacher at the Marcus Garvey Middle School on Cardinal Road. I teach a course titled the History of Contemporary America. When I began we had no books, no paper, no pencils, no chalk for the blackboard, no maps. This made for innovation. I started by telling them stories, and then by getting them to talk about the things that they had to talk about. And when what they said didn’t shock me, and I didn’t dash for the dean of discipline, they told me more about the things they knew. The course is now a kind of seminar on life for fourteen-year-old black children in the ghetto.”
“Any books yet?”
“Yes. I bought them books,” she said. “But they won’t read them much. Hard to find books that have anything to do with them.”
“The March of Democracy is not persuasive,” I said.
She almost smiled.
“No,” she said. “It is not persuasive.”
She paused again, without discomfort, and looked at me some more. Her eyes were very calm and her gaze was steady.
“I used to work in day care, and we’d try to test some of the kids when they came in. The test required them, among other things, to draw with crayons. When we gave them to the kids they didn’t know what the crayons were. Several tried to eat them.”
“The test was constructed for white kids,” I said.
“The test was constructed for middle-class kids,” she said. “The basal reader family.”
“Mom, Dad, Dick, and Jane,” I said.
“And Spot,” she said. “And the green tree.”
“You and God have a lovers’ quarrel?” I said. Again she almost smiled.
“Gracious,” she said. “A literate private eye.”
“Anything’s possible,” I said.
“No. I had no quarrel with God. He just began to seem irrelevant. I could find no sign of Him in these kids’ lives. And the kids’ lives became more important to me than He did.”
“The ways of the Lord,” I said, “are often dark, but never pleasant.”
“Adler?”
“Theodor Reik, I think.”
She nodded.
“It also became apparent to me that they needed more than I could give them in class. So I stayed after school for them and then I began going out into the streets for them. Now I’m there after school until I get too sleepy, four or five days a week. I came from there now.”
“Dangerous?” I said.
“Yes.”