“Alfred,” Walter said, “Mister Mack isn’t arguing with you. He didn’t say that. He just said that it wasn’t doing anybody any good for you to just sit there and call people names. You’ve got to tell him what happened.”
“That’s right,” Mack said. “Alfred, maybe I can’t do anything for you. Maybe I can do something for you. I won’t know until you tell me exactly what it is that’s bothering you, and what you think ought to be done about it. Maybe I will tell you something else that I think I can do, and maybe I will tell you I can’t do anything. I don’t know. And I won’t know, either, unless you can stop hollering and yelling like a little baby and tell me what happened that’s bothering you.”
“Oh, shee-it,” Alfred said. He waved his hands. “You gonna try and give me that shit, man? You’re supposed to be our representative, right? We elected you. You’re supposed to help us, when somebody is doing this kind of thing to us. You’re supposed to give us all this here effective leadership thing. Isn’t that what you said?”
“That’s what I said,” Mack said, “and that’s what I want to do. But I can’t lead you any place if I don’t know where you’re coming from, and so far you haven’t told me.”
“All right,” Alfred said, “my sister, right? My sister Selene. Now my sister Selene, she is only seventeen years old, all right? She don’t hang out. She goes to school every day and she gets all A’s and B’s and she helps my mother and she works on the weekends and at nights down at the twenty-four-hour store. She comes home nights with that fuckin’ purple slush all over her uniform and she’s so tired she can’t hardly say anything, and she sits up there and she studies and next year she’s gonna go to Boston State and maybe after that she’s gonna be a lawyer like you, Mister Mack. And this guy, this Peters guy, he is buggin’ her all the time and askin’ her to go out with him and he’s a married man. He won’t leave her alone.”
“Who’s this Peters?” Mack said.
“Peters is one of them,” Alfred said, “and the other one is his partner, Cole. Now those two guys, Cole shouldn’t let him do that, go in there and start giving Selene a whole ration shit. It’s late at night and there’s only one other person in there, Toby Florence, he’s usually drunk and he can’t do nothing to help her. Drunk or he’s smokin’ and he’s not interested. Now them guys, they shouldn’t be doing that. They should get transferred someplace else, if they are gonna be doing things like that. That’s what I mean.”
“Who is Peters and who is Cole?” Mack said.
“Peters is the guy that drives, all right?” Alfred said. “I already said something to him myself. I told him: ‘Look, you bastard,’ right? I said, ‘You been givin’ my sister a whole bunch of hard time and I don’t like it,’ right? And he just looks at me. And he calls me a shit and tells me I don’t get along, he is gonna take me in and arrest me for somethin’ and I can see how I like that, all right? And his partner, Cole? He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t do anything. He’s the guy that’s supposed to be in charge of the car, but he don’t say anything. Nothing. So here I am, and I’m talking to you and you don’t do nothing. You know something? I am gonna do something, if somebody doesn’t do something. Either that fuckin’ Peters starts leaving Selene alone or I am gonna do something to him.”
“Alfred,” Scott said.
“Don’t gimme that,” Alfred said. “She is a nice girl, my sister. They are bothering her all the time and nobody does anything about it.”
“Alfred,” Mack said, “you did five indeterminate at Concord for something that you did. Didn’t that satisfy you? You really convinced that you would like to do something else?”
“I wouldn’t’ve,” Alfred said, “if you went at it the right way.”
“Alfred,” Mack said, “they had three eyewitnesses who saw you with the weapon before the attack, and five who saw you make the attack, and the victim lived and told everybody about how you hit him three times with a jack handle. Now let us be reasonable and realistic, Alfred. You cannot go around doing things like that if you really want to be on the street. Now, if you really want to be in jail, if that is actually what you want, you can go ahead and beat up another guy, a cop this time. Knowing you, why don’t you do it down in Quincy Market someday, some fine afternoon when Kevin White’s there with about three hundred people and two television cameras, announcing how he’s gonna run for reelection again, and that way everybody’ll be handy and they can just run some videotape of you doing it, huh? Then you can come in here again and tell me it’s a shit case and you don’t care about the moving pictures and three hundred witnesses, I should beat it easy.”
“This guy,” Alfred said, “this guy is kicking the shit out of my sister. You know how we live, Mister Mack? You got any idea with your house in Newton and your nice car that you use to come back in here every day and see how us poor niggers maybe get up some more money to give you, so the next time you don’t have to settle for an Oldsmobile, you own maybe a Cadillac, huh? You don’t live here no more. You say you do, but you really don’t. You got your kids in the private schools and your wife plays the tennis and her picture’s in the paper looking very fine and everything. And I see where you been playing some golf and getting your picture taken with a lot of the guys that play for the Patriots and also forgot how they used to be black, huh?
“You don’t know. You think you know, but you don’t. You made it. What you are is actual honky, except you’re kind of dark for it. But the honkies like that, don’t they? They like havin’ a pet nigger around that they can show off when they all go down to the swimming pool, and they lie around and have all that good shit and talk about how they’re going down to Florida in a week or so but they’ll be back in time so they can go the Cape for the summer. Bullshit.”
“You know, Alfred,” Mack said, “a little of you goes a considerable distance. I think what you need is another lawyer. I sure don’t need you for a client.”
“No,” Alfred said, “now you don’t need me for a client. But back when I first came in and my mother came up with three thousand dollars that she gave you, that she hadda go and beg off of her sister, then you did. Then you had a little place that you didn’t even have a secretary and you used to run your business outta phone booths. You didn’t mind seeing me then. You did a shitty job for me of course, but you got your money and that was all, mattered to you. Now, now it’s different, because you got the money and you’re a big-ass state rep, even though you don’t live in the district, and people’re always having you around at cocktail parties and stuff and givin’ you lots of money and kissing your ass for you.”
“Okay, Alfred,” Scott said, “that’ll do it. Now why don’t you just go outside and sit down and read a magazine or something and I’ll talk to Mister Mack and see if I can make some sense out of your problem. And then if we need you again, we’ll just call you back in and we’ll ask you, all right?”
“I don’t have to leave,” Alfred said.
“No,” Scott said, “you don’t. And you don’t have to come to work tonight, or any other night. Not for me at least. And I don’t have to pay you. I had to ask Mister Mack as a special favour if he would see you on account of all the trouble that you gave him the last time, and he did me the favour and made time in his busy schedule so you could talk to him, and I took time out of mine so that I could come here with you, and you are making me think that maybe I am wasting my time and certainly wasting his. Now get the hell out of here and go outside and sit down and shut up, because I am sick of listening to you and I know he is.”