I put my right hand in my pocket, trying to imagine that I was Mouse, and said, “Stand the fuck outta my way or I’ll kill you where you stand.”
Somewhere inside the machinery of my mind I found the will and the recklessness to kill the man who had commandeered my people’s reformation of his language to threaten me.
His china blue eyes faltered. He was used to being the top dog, but he also knew what I had in my pocket. He knew it and I knew it, and so he moved to the side and went past me down the stairs.
After that performance I knew that I didn’t have much time. I went to the bank of mailboxes, homed in on T HIGHT, and ran up the three flights of stairs to apartment 4C.
The door was an impossible combination of pink and lime, with a lacquered but rusty-looking doorknob. I imagined the long-haired sentry gathering his tribe to teach all my people a lesson through me.
I knocked and, before there was time to answer, knocked again.
There came a sound from down the stairs. I knocked one more time.
Men’s voices, angry men’s voices, were making their way up the stairs.
I tried the doorknob; it wouldn’t budge.
I tried knocking again while looking around for a good defensive position.
I was desperate, but the irony of the situation was not lost on me even then. Here I was after Hight, wanting to bring him down in order to help my friend, but at the same time I was knocking on his door hoping that he might save me from the strangers I could hear saying the word
Across the way from Hight’s door was an inset doorway with no apartment number on it; a storage room or maybe the super’s hopper. It was only a few inches of protection, but I crossed the way.
My pursuers were half a flight down when I took out my pistol and molded myself into the unmarked doorway.
I was ready to go down protecting myself when a thought came into my mind.
It occurred to me that I was the victim not only of those men but of the conditioning that made me wait for them to come before I acted. I was sure that a group of four or five men was coming up those stairs to cause me serious bodily harm. I was innocent of any crime warranting this attack. Why should I cower in a corner, giving them the upper hand, rather than run down among them, pistol blazing?
I was acting like a guilty man even though I knew I wasn’t. I was being defensive when I should have been on the offense. I had six bullets and all the training I’d ever need.
The decision to slaughter those men came with no fear of law or prison or death.
I was about to run down shooting. The war cry was in my throat.
When the door to 4C came open, my gears changed so fast that I was a little confused. I put the pistol in my pocket before the dark-haired white man came out into the hall. Half a second after that, the long-haired man I had threatened appeared at the top of the stairway.
“There he is.” Long-Hair pointed a gnarly, cigarette-stained finger at me.
There were sounds of rage and indignity issuing from the throats of men I had never met.
“Tomas Hight!” I shouted.
The white man who came from the apartment was tall and well built. His dark brown hair was short but not military. His black eyes studied me briefly and then turned to the five men after me.
“What’s up, Roger?” the man asked my blond, and until then nameless, archenemy.
“Nigger insulted me, threatened me,” Roger replied.
A few of his friends agreed, though they had not witnessed the encounter.
“And you had to get a whole mob for just one nigger?” Hight asked, putting an odd emphasis on the last word.
“He said he was after you,” Roger said, trying to enlist the new player.
“Are you after me?” Tomas Hight asked me.
“I wanted to talk to you about another MP,” I said. “Glen Thorn.”
Tomas squinted as if in pain, then turned to Roger and the suddenly docile pack.
“This man and I have business,” Tomas said. “So get outta here and leave us alone.”
“He’s got a gun,” Roger said in a last-ditch attempt to turn the tide of his potential revenge.
“Then I probably just saved your life,” Tomas said.
It was true. Even Roger seemed to understand that chasing an armed man into a corner was a stupid thing to do.
“Come on in,” Tomas said to me.
I was glad that he wasn’t the man I was looking for. I was elated that he was the man I’d found.
19
Tomas Hight lived in a one-room studio. The walls were pale fuchsia and the furniture mostly forest green and dark wood. There was no bed in evidence, so I figured that the couch folded out. A yellow hard hat sat upright on
