"This was the Man we talkin' to," Hooper "Whutchoo 'spec me to tell him?”
"I never done no crim'nal thing in my Seronia said, still doing a pretty fair imitation of he . brother's deeper voice. "Never!" she said, an clenched her fist and rapped it against her sin budding breast.
"Is 'zackly whut I tole the Man," Hooper said, grinned.
"I like to wet my pants when I heerd that, Seronia said, and shook her head in admiration pride. "I goan be any kine a'nigger, it's goan be i good one," she mimicked. "Like Eddie Murphy.”
And again shook her head and rolled her big brown eyes heavenward.
"Eddie Murphy, right," Hooper said.
"You goan wish you was Eddie Murphy when he comes roun' again," Seronia said. "'Cause he look to me like the kine a'fuzz doan let go, bro. An' he goan talk to the people 'long. "Leventh Street, an' somebody gonna tell him sumpin' you dinn tell him.
An' then he goan fine out whut happen 'tween you an' the pries" an' then you goan be in deep shit, bro.”
"Am' nothin' happen 'tween me an' the pries'.”
"'Sep' you hid yo' stash in the church," Seronia said, and bit into another slice of pizza.
VI
Willis did not get back to the house on Lane until almost eight o'clock that Saturday He called her name the moment he stepped into entry foyer.
There was no answer.
"Honey?" he called. "I'm home.”
And again there was no answer. He was policeman, trained to expect the unexpected.
was, moreover, a policeman who had lived onmth thin edge of anticipation from the moment he' committed himself to Marilyn Hollis. The wor he'd heard on the telephone this past Thursday nigl!
suddenly popped into his mind Perd6neme, sen and just as suddenly he was alarmed.
"Marilyn!" he shouted, and went tearing up t.l'm. stairs two at a time, made a sharp right turn on t landing and was starting up the stepsi:n second-floor the third floor when he heard her voice coming fro somewhere down the corridor.
"In here, Hal.”
She was in the kitchen. Sitting at the butcher block table, the stainless steel ovens, refrigerator and range forming a grey metallic curtain behind her.
She was holding a dish towel to her nose. The towel bulged with angles.
There was an empty ice cube tray on the table.
"I fell," she said.
Hand holding the dish towel to her nose, eyes wide above it and flanking it, flesh under the eyes already discolored.
"Down the stairs," she said. "I think I broke my nose.”
"Well, Jesus, did you call the... ?”
“It just happened a few minutes ago," she said.
I'll call him," he said, and went immediately to the phone.
"I don't think they can do anything for a broken nose," she said. "I think it has to heal by itself.”
"They can set it," he said, and began searching through their personal directory on the counter under the wall phone. Rubenstein, the doctor's name was Rubenstein. Willis realized all at once that he was irrationally irritated; the way a parent might become irritated when a child did something that threatened its own well-being. He was relieved that Marilyn had not hurt herself more badly, but annoyed that she had hurt herself at all.
"How'd you manage to fall down the goddamn stairs?" he said, shaking his head.
"I tripped," she said.
"Isn't his number in this thing?" he asked impatiently.
"Try D," she said. "For doctor.”
More annoyed now, he turned to the D section the directory, and scanned through a dozen name: and numbers in Marilyn's handwriting before he found a listing for Rubenstein, Marvin, Dr. He dialed the number. It rang four times and then a woman picked up. The doctor's answering service. advised Willis that the doctor was out of town several days and asked if she should notify hi standby, a Dr. Gerald Peters. Somewhat curtl' Willis said, "Never mind," and hung the phone bac on the wall cradle.
"Come on," he said, "we're going to th hospital.”
"I really don't think...”
“Marilyn, please," he said.
He hurried her out of the house and into the He debated hitting the hammer, decided against Use the siren on a personal matter, the would take a fit. The nearest hospital Morehouse General on Culver and North Third, inside the precinct's western boundary. He there as if he were responding to a 1013, on the accelerator, ignoring traffic signals unless changing light posed a danger to another and then made a sharp right turn on Third, wheeled the car squealing up the driveway to the Emergency Room.
This was Saturday night.
Only eighteen minutes past eight, in fact, but the weekend had already begun in earnest, and the E.R. resembled an army field station. Two black cops with identifying 87 insignia on their uniform collars were struggling to keep apart a pair of lookalike white goons who had done a very good job of cutting each other to ribbons. Their T-shirts, once white, now clung in tatters to bloody streamers of flesh.
One of the men had opened the other's face from his right temple down to his jaw. The other man had slashed through the first guy's bulging biceps and forearm all the way down to the wrist. The men were still screaming at each other, their hands cuffed behind their backs, shoulder-butting the cops trying to keep them separated.
A resident physician who looked Indian and undoubtedly was in this city, there were more Indian interns than in the entire state of Rajasthan kept saying over and over again, quite patiently, "Do you wish medical treatment, or do you wish to behave foolishly?" The two goons ignored this running commentary because they had already behaved foolishly, had probably been behaving foolishly all their lives, and weren't about to stop behaving foolishly now, just because a foreigner was Sounding reasonable. So they kept bleeding all over the E.R. while the two sweating black cops struggled with a pair of enraged men twice their size and tried to keep their uniforms clean, and a saintly nurse patiently stood by with cotton swabs, a bottle of antiseptic, and a roll of bandages and tried to keep her uniform clean, and an excitable orderly circled warily, trying to mop the goddamn floor as blood spattered everywhere on the air.
Elsewhere in the room, sitting on the bench, or crowding the nurse's station, or standing about in various stages of distress and discomfort, Willis saw and registered with dismay: A twelve-year-old Hispanic girl whose was torn open to reveal a training bra and budding breasts. Blood was streaming down inside of her right leg. Willis figured she'd raped.
A forty-year-old white man being supported yet another police officer and yet another resident, who were maneuvering him toward one the cubicles so that the doctor could examine wh looked to Willis like a gunshot wound through left shoulder.
A black teenager sitting on the bench with o high-topped sneaker off and in his hands. His ri foot was swollen to the size of a melon. figured him for a non-crime victim, but in precinct you never could tell.
There were also... There was Marilyn, period.
"Excuse me, doctor," Willis said, red-headed resident standing at the nurse's station studying a chart glanced up as though wondering who had had the unspeakable audacity to raise his voice here in the temple. On his face, there was the haughtily scornful, one-eyebrow-raised look of a person who knew without question that his calling was godly. It was a look that managed to mingle distaste with dismissal, as though its wearer had already singled out and was now ready to punish whoever had dared fart in his immediate presence.
But Willis's woman had a broken nose.
Unintimidated, he flashed the tin, announced his own godly calling "Detective Harold Willis" and then slapped the leather case shut as though he were throwing down a glove. "I'm investigating a homicide, this woman needs immediate medical attention.”