Four police cars came up all at once. Cops rolled out of the cars and into the house. People were coming out of their houses on the next block. The sun was coming up as if even the sky was awakened by the racket.
As the minutes went by, the ambulance attendants didn’t reappear. That meant there was either a false alarm or a death.
“It’s him!” someone shouted in a maniacal tone. “It’s him! It’s him!”
I looked out and saw, not fifteen feet from Jewelle’s Citroen, the flabby man with the green eyes who had called the police on me the last time I was on Jocelyn’s block. He was shouting and jumping in his housecoat and slippers. When our eyes met he shrieked and ran straight for the cops.
“You got a key for the glove compartment?” I asked Jewelle.
“What’s wrong with him?” she said, referring to the screaming man.
“Take it off of the key chain and gimme it,” I said.
I took the forty-five out of the bag and Jewelle handed me the key. I threw the gun into the glove compartment, locked it, and then swallowed the little brass key just as if I were in some spy movie about to be arrested for attempting to go over the Berlin Wall.
“What’s wrong with that man, Easy? Was he talking about us?”
“The cops are going to grab us, JJ. Let’s get out of the car and cross our hands in front of us.”
Jewelle was a fast study. She got out with me and we waited for the cops that were hurrying out of the Ostenberg house.
Even though we were waiting peacefully we were both grabbed and thrown to the ground. The officers used rough language, calling us niggers and asking questions without waiting for or expecting replies. We were cuffed and yanked to our feet, dragged down the street and thrown through the Ostenberg front doorway.
As we were pulled into the house more policemen arrived. All that pushing and shoving opened the wounds on my leg and arm.
“This one’s bleeding,” one cop said.
But I wasn’t paying attention to their overreactions or the stinging pain I felt. I was looking around the Ostenberg living room.
It was all white.
The carpets and walls, the sofa and even the coffee table were stark white. Even a painting on the wall was a big white house in snow with white children laughing in the window. I wondered if the rest of the house was the same. A policeman grabbed my bandaged arm and a drop of my blood fell onto the thick white rug.
A white man in a brown suit was ushered into the room by two cops. He was an old man and miserable beyond his years. One cop whispered something into his ear and he looked up at me and Jewelle. Then he shook his head and collapsed into their arms. They led him to a white stuffed chair.
He rolled out from the seat and onto the carpet, crying.
I watched him as if he were a distant constellation. I didn’t care about Jocelyn’s husband any more than some far-off celestial event that occurred before humanity had blighted the earth. He was just a bystander who didn’t see the car coming at him. He wasn’t important.
48
What were you doing in front of the house?” a police sergeant asked me.
We were in the kitchen of the Ostenberg house. I was sitting in a white chair, at a white table, across from a white enamel stove, dripping blood on the white linoleum floor.
Somewhere else in the house the white man was crying.
“I was down the block,” I said. “Sitting in the car with my girl.”
“How did you get shot?” The sergeant was in his mid-thirties. When he was a teenager he had a bad bout with acne. The scars covered both of his fat cheeks.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I was going to my office when somebody opened fire.”
They had Jewelle in another room but I wasn’t worried about her. Jewelle would just say that we were parking, that there was no law against that.
I had given them Jordan’s letter but with a black suspect in a crime in a white neighborhood less than a week after the riots, they had to have more than a tardy note from the deputy commissioner.
“What are you doing in this neighborhood?” the scarred sergeant asked.
“Nuthin’ special, Officer. Just hangin’ around.”
“Tell me about this note from Jordan’s office.”
“That’s nothing,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong here. I didn’t do anything and haven’t seen any crime.”
“You open your smart mouth again, nigger,” a uniformed officer said, “and I’ll break your face for you good.”
“Yeah?” I said.
It was as if Mama Jo’s elixir was waiting for some insult. The blood in my veins turned hot and I was suddenly ready to fight.
The sergeant didn’t know what to do. And I was of no help. I couldn’t seem to control my mouth or my actions
