“May I give you something, Officer?” I replied.
“What?”
“A document that will explain my presence here.”
“Did you hear that, Mike?” the pale boy asked the dark one.
“What, Gil?”
“He wants to give me a document that will explain why he’s here.”
Mike got a quizzical look on his face and his partner went over to him. They discussed my unusual request for over a minute. Meanwhile pedestrians and shop owners had come to see what was going on. Everybody in L.A. was on alert. At the height of the riots angry black crowds had threatened to leave the ghetto and bring the violence into the white neighborhoods. Who knew when the Molotov cocktails would start exploding in Beverly Hills?
Mike came up to me.
“What is it you want to show us?”
I took Gerald Jordan’s letter from my shirt pocket and handed it to him.
The Mediterranean-looking boy took enough time to have read the note six or seven times. Either Mike was slow or he was surprised by the content and signature. He looked up at me with dark Hellenic eyes.
“Is this a joke? I mean, do you think you can get away with this?”
“No joke, Officer,” I said. “And yes, I do expect to walk away if not get away.”
Mike went back to the police car and made a radio call while his partner kept an eye on me.
More and more people had gathered across the street in front of the May Company department store. My mind stayed calm but my body was reacting to the situation. I could feel the blood racing and my muscles getting tense. I could have run a quarter-mile sprint but instead I took out a new low-tar cigarette and lit it up.
Cigarettes would kill me one day, I was sure of that, but inhaling that smoke right then probably saved my life. Without the calming effect of the tobacco I might have taken a run at that pale child calling himself the law.
Mike got out of the patrol car and went up to his partner. They discussed the letter, glancing at me from time to time. People across the street were pointing at me and talking about me too. There wasn’t one dark face on the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax.
I took another deep drag on my cigarette, wishing that it were a filterless Pall Mall.
Finally the cops approached me.
“Break out some I.D.,” Mike ordered.
I took out my wallet, pulled my driver’s license from its sleeve, and handed it over.
They eyed the name on the letter and compared it to the license.
“Are you Ezekiel Rawlins?”
“Yes I am.”
“What are you working on for the commissioner?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“What did you say to me, son?” Mike asked.
That brought a smile to my face. The letter worked. The police were impotent and that made them mad.
“May I go now, Officer?”
“I asked you a question.”
“Ask Deputy Commissioner Gerald Jordan,” I said. “Because I’m reporting directly to his office—son.”
Mike stared hard at me, committing my face to memory. He wanted me to know that one day he’d see me again, when I wasn’t protected by his bosses.
It was a serious threat but I didn’t care. I was having my own rebellion against the power structure. I was making a stand right there in West L.A. under the scrutiny of three dozen white people.
“Go on,” Mike said. “Get out of here.”
The police returned to their car. They went east on Wilshire so I decided to walk down Fairfax to Pico.
“We’re not gonna put up with that crazy mess around here, nigger,” a man’s voice said.
I turned and saw a white man, with a white woman at his side—both of them staring hate at me.
“Are you talkin’ to me?” I asked him.
“Yeah.”
He was all loose. His casual clothing, his skin, his drooping jaw.
I took a step in his direction and he scooted away with his girlfriend in tow. After five steps he turned to see if I was running him down. I took another step, and he and his girlfriend took off at a gallop.
“He is a fool,” another white man said. This one had a European accent.
When I turned I expected to see him talking to someone about me but he was alone. A short man wearing wire-rimmed glasses. He wasn’t old, maybe fifty-five.
