The officers looked at each other.
“He stole from you?”
“No, sir. No, he did not. He told me that I should pay, but I told him that I would call the cops.”
“He says that you were involved in his beating,” Arnold repeated.
“Look at me, Officer. Look at me. How’m I gonna beat up a man the size of a icebox? I might could shoot him if I owned a gun. I might’a would’a shot him if I did. But all I said was that I didn’t have no money and that we was gonna go to the cops if they do anything else. He’s afraid’a the cops. Him and Melinda both dope fiends. Both of ’em.”
“So you deny that you had anything to do with Pride’s beating?” Thompkins asked.
Ptolemy did not answer.
“Did you see him get beaten?” Thompkins pressed.
“No, sir.”
“Did you, ma’am?” Thompkins asked, turning to Robyn.
“I don’t even know who you talkin’ ’bout,” she said. “Papa Grey had some trouble with that bitch, but I gave her the news.”
“We ...” Arnold said. “We heard that there was another family member taking care of Mr. Grey.”
“No. Just me.”
“Ms. Hogarth said that there was a young man,” Arnold said. “She claimed that he beat her and that another man, a heavyset guy, and a young woman had beaten her.”
“Damn,” Robyn said. “She been beat by just about everybody on the block accordin’ to her.”
Officer Arnold couldn’t help but smile.
“Will you please answer the question?”
“You didn’t ask no question. You just said that somebody said somethin’.”
“Do you know of anyone else taking care of your uncle?”
“There’s Reggie Brown.”
Ptolemy’s heart lurched in his chest when Robyn uttered that name.
“Where is this Reggie Brown?”
“Dead.”
Again the policemen looked at each other.
“He was killed in a drive-by ’bout nine weeks ago. Killed him on Denker when he was sittin’ out in front’a the house of a friend’a his.”
Thompkins frowned and Arnold rubbed his fingertips together.
“Listen,” Robyn said. “Melinda do dope. I’ont know her boyfriend but he prob’ly a dopehead too. My uncle’s a old man. He ain’t in no gang. He ain’t runnin’ down no dopehead, beatin’ him on the street. That’s just stupid.”
“And what about you?” Officer Arnold asked.
“What about me?”
“She said that a young woman beat her with an electric fan.”
“So? She tell you that she the Virgin Mary when she get enough dope in her blood.”
“How old are you?” Thompkins asked.
“Eighteen.”
“Are you in school?”
“Got my GED and I’m gonna start LACC in the fall.”
Ptolemy could see Robyn’s chest heaving.
The policemen stared a minute, but neither Ptolemy nor Robyn crumbled under the scrutiny.
Then the policemen looked at each other, nodded, and stood as one.
“We may have more questions later,” Officer Arnold said.
“We always here, Your Honor,” Ptolemy told him. “At ninety-one, with dope fiends all ovah the street, I don’t get out too much.”
You bettah call Billy Strong an’ tell him not to come by here for a while,” Robyn said after the cops were gone.
“I almost lost my mind when them bull was at that do’,” Ptolemy said.
“What you mean?”
They were sitting at the kitchen table, drinking ice water from purple plastic tumblers.
“I saw them uniforms an’ my mind went blank. It didn’t mattah that the cops was both colored, not one bit. It was like, was like I was feebleminded again. If you aksed me my name I wouldn’t been able to say.”
