“Sure,” I said. “Pays to understand your enemy.
“She does not see them as the enemy,” Susan said.
“She’s not hired to protect people from them,” I said.
“If you want her input,” Susan said, “you should probably not stress that aspect.”
“Good point,” I said.
CHAPTER 17
Orestes Tillis was waiting for us when we arrived for work at Double Deuce the next day.
“They set twelve fires last night,” he said. Hawk nodded. Jackie clicked on her recorder. “They set one in every trash can in the project,” Tillis said. He glanced at Jackie’s recorder. “And I believe I know why. It is an affront to every African-American that you should have one of the oppressors with you, protecting black people from each other.”
Hawk nodded again.
“That’s probably it,” he said.
“You cannot be taken seriously as long as you appear allied with the oppressor,” Tillis said.
“Sure,” Hawk said.
“Are you saying that blacks and whites cannot work together?” Jackie said. Unconsciously she held the tape recorder forward. Tillis pointed it like a spaniel with a partridge.
“Could slaves work with slaveholders?” he said. “The white man is still trying to enslave us economically. He tries to destroy us with drugs and guns. Where does all the dope come from here? Do you see heroin labs in the ghetto? Do you see any firearms factories in the ghetto?”
Tillis pointed at me rather dramatically, considering that it was only us and the tape recorder. “His people are practicing genocide, should we ask them for help?”
“You shut that thing off,” Hawk said to Jackie, “and he’ll shut up.”
She looked startled, but she switched off the tape recorder. Tillis stopped gazing into it and looked at Hawk.
“They will not take you seriously,” he said, “if you work with a white man.”
Hawk stared at Tillis without expression for probably fifteen seconds. Then he shook his head slowly.
“You got it backwards,” he said. “We the only thing they do take seriously. We all they can think about sitting out in the middle of their turf. They set those fires to see what we’d do. They don’t care about you. We are an affront to them. They think about us all the time.”
“Why don’t they just shoot you?” Tillis said.
“Maybe one reason being they can’t,” Hawk said. “And maybe they kind of interested, see what we do.”
“Why?”
“They admire Hawk,” Jackie said.
Hawk continued as if neither of them had spoken.
“And they going to keep doing things, a little worse, and a little worse, and finally they going to get into shooting with us and we going to kill some of them.”
Tillis’ eyes shifted to Jackie and back to Hawk. “Just like that?” he said.
“Un huh,” Hawk said. “Maybe get lucky and one of the ones we kill will be the dude that did Devona and Crystal.”
Tillis started to say “who?” and then remembered and caught himself.
“You sound like you are talking about simply shooting them to clean up the problem,” he said.
“Un huh.”
“I want no part of that,” Tillis said. He glanced again at Jackie, who was all the media he had at the moment. “I can’t condone murder.”
Hawk shrugged.
“What makes you think they won’t kill you?” Tillis said.
“Blue-eyed devil here,” Hawk said, “going to prevent them.”
“And I thought you’d never even noticed my eyes,” I said.
CHAPTER 18
Erin Macklin came to my office at about 9:30 in the evening. She had thick dark hair cut short and salted with a touch of gray. Her features were even. Her makeup was understated but careful. She wore big horn-rimmed glasses, a string of big pearls, matching pearl earrings, a black suit, and a white blouse with the collar points worn out over the lapels of the suit. Her shoes were black, with medium heels. Dress for success. She looked around my office, located the customer’s chair, and sat in it.
“I am here,” she said, “because two people I know tell me Susan Silverman is to be trusted, and Susan Silverman says you can be trusted.”
“One can’t be too careful,” I said.
