Part 4 (1/2)
”Course I know that word,” Late Nite snapped. ”You mean-”
”Yes, young man, I mean you on your own now. You tell C-4, he see any of 'em coming for their payoff, he better run, because from now on they gonna be ratting on anybody tries to offer them money. That was part of the negotiation.” She looked to see was he following her, then added, ”Of course, Bigmouth, he on his own too.”
He stared at her. ”Old lady, how come you telling me this?”
”'Cause you say C-4 too busy to talk to me.”
”That ain't what I mean. I-”
”Oh, I know what you mean, boy. I come over here because next week or the week after, new cops is gonna be asking to be paid off by you punks. Things don't never change. But like I say, C-4 a better bet than Bigmouth for the peoples round here.” The young man said nothing to that. Miss Crawford waited and then she said, ”If C-4 got some smart boys, you ain't one of 'em, so I'm gonna help you out. Was I C-4, not that I'd ever want to be such a devil, but was I, I'd be heading over Bigmouth's way early Friday morning, while all his boys be getting ready for the showdown and his pet police be keeping their hands off. That's called a ambush, maybe C-4 knows that word. But go on, you do as you please. Whatever happen, folks around here be better off, one of 'em goes down.” Miss Crawford stared Late Nite in the eyes again, and then she walked away, thinking, was that amnesty real, it might just be a good idea.
That day before supper Miss Crawford had the Monroe boy come over again. He rearranged the pictures on the wall in her bedroom and carried the broken kitchen chair down to the trash. She gave him a slice of apple pie and asked him what he'd heard about the trouble on the block.
”Trouble?” The boy looked up sharply. ”Don't know about no trouble.”
”Well, you know more than I do, so that's a relief. Maybe it won't come to be.”
”Whatever, Bigmouth got it covered.” The child was straight-up bragging.
”Hope you're right, boy. I don't like Rashawn none, but the devil you know is always better than the devil you don't.”
”What devil's that?”
So she told the child about C-4, over around the other side of the block. ”He say he coming over here Friday at noon to take these blocks from Bigmouth.”
The Monroe boy stared, then finished his pie in two big bites, and gulped his milk. Miss Crawford packed up the rest of the pie for him to take to his momma, and watched him from her kitchen window as he hurried down the street. She hoped he'd hold that pie careful until he finally got it home.
Miss Crawford heard Officer Aleksandra Joyce come home after her s.h.i.+ft the next afternoon, and she popped her head out the door and asked her in. Miss Crawford had coffee ready and a plate of cinnamon cookies just out from the oven.
”You look tired, child,” she observed as Officer Joyce took off her big belt, with the gun and the flashlight and who knew what all, and laid it on the chair beside her. ”Hard work bringing law and order to Newark, I suppose.”
”That it is,” Officer Joyce agreed. ”Worth it if it gives folks like you peace enough to make cookies like these, though.”
”Why, thank you,” Miss Crawford said. ”Have another, please do. Those police, they still giving you a hard time?”
Officer Joyce shrugged. ”I'm still new.”
”Plus,” said Miss Crawford, ”I expect some of them got other ideas about policing than the ideas you got.”
The young woman sighed. ”They sure do, Miss Crawford. The mayor, I know he's working on it. Like you told me, things take time.” She smiled wearily.
”Well,” Miss Crawford took herself another cookie, ”maybe if more police like you was in the middle of things, it would all get better. So the question is, how we going to get you in the middle of things?”
”That's one of the reasons I moved to the neighborhood. So I could know what's going on. Know more and more people.”
”And what about things? What about if you know things?”
”Like what things?”
”Like, supposing you was to know about a thing that was going to happen. A bad thing, and you was in time to put a stop to it so no one got hurt.”
”Miss Crawford?” Officer Joyce put down her mug. ”You know a thing like that?”
”If I tell you something,” Miss Crawford asked the young woman direct, ”do you know people in the police you could tell, who ain't in the pocket of no drug dealers nor no g.a.n.g.b.a.n.gers?”
”I do,” Officer Joyce said promptly. ”My captain was brought in by the chief that was brought in by the mayor.”
”You saying you trust him?”
”Yes.”
”That's very good.” Miss Crawford nodded, satisfied. ”Yes, I believe that's very good.”
Though she wasn't one for excitement, come Friday morning Miss Crawford was just a little bit wistful that she wasn't a fly on the wall in that bas.e.m.e.nt hole Bigmouth called his headquarters. She wasn't positive what the NPD had planned, but it involved special officers, not the usual ones on these blocks, who were still deep in the pockets of the drug dealers and everybody knew it but no one could prove it. Miss Crawford did go out and sit on the stoop across the street early in the morning, so she saw C-4 and his boys coming around the corner. She was interested to see that the officers who swept them up were in plainclothes, so C-4 and his boys wouldn't scatter nor throw their guns away, while the ones who pounded on the headquarters door just after so they could grab Bigmouth and his crew getting set to head over to C-4's territory, they were in uniforms. One of them in uniform was Officer Joyce, which gratified Miss Crawford. She was also gratified that the whole operation was so cleverly planned that no shots were fired at all. Though still, it was a good thing it had happened in the morning, while the children were at school. No use having them in danger, hanging out on the stoops and all. There was no need for them to see it, they'd hear all about it by suppertime, C-4 and Bigmouth and all their boys in jail.
Miss Crawford went home and turned on the radio while she baked a sweet potato pie. She listened to WBGO because of the old-school jazz they played, which she and her Teddy had always enjoyed, and then the news came on. It told about the alleged gang members arrested, most of them in possession of weapons, just that very morning. The police suspected these young men of dealing drugs, though they couldn't prove that yet. All very well, thought Miss Crawford as the radio went back to music, but those guns every one of them were carrying was the real problem for those boys, and that problem was very bad. Being caught with a gun like that was a sentence for sure. How long it was going to be, well, that depended on if you had anything to say that the police wanted to hear. Those boys would be racing to sell each other out, starting already.
The timer dinged and Miss Crawford took the pie out of the oven and set it to cool. Then she settled herself in front of the TV with the cat on her lap. The new mayor was going to be making a speech, about how the people of Newark were taking the city back. Miss Crawford wanted to hear it.
NEWARK BLACK: 19401954
BY C.K. WILLIAMS.
Vailsburg (Newark) Black coal with a thunderous shush plunging into the clearly evil-inhabited coal bin.
The black furnace into whose maw you could feed paper to watch it curl to black char.
The hats women wore with black, mysterious veils, even your mother. The ”mascara” she'd apply more meticulously than she did anything else.
With her black lashes she was almost somebody else.
The incomprehensible marks on blackboards at school you conquered without knowing quite how.
The black ink in the inkwell. The metal pens with blots that diabolically slid from their nibs.
Black slush, after the blizzard had pa.s.sed and the diesel buses and trucks were fuming again, but you still remembered how blackly lovely the branches of trees looked in new snow.
The gunk on the chain of your bike.