Hell To Pay

“It does make an impression,” said Strange. “But I hope you’ll understand if I don’t seem too impressed.”

“So now you gonna tell me, It’s not what you have, it’s how you got it, right?”

“Somethin’ like that. All these pretty things you own around here? There’s blood on ’em, Granville.”

Oliver’s eyes flared, but his voice remained steady. “That’s right. I took it, Mr. Strange. Wasn’t no one gonna give me nothin’, so I just went out and grabbed it. White man gonna try to keep a black man down from birth. But Bobo, he couldn’t do it to this black man.”

“Okay, then. In your mind, you’ve done all right.”

Oliver blinked his eyes hard. “I have. Despite the fact that I got born into that camp of genocide they used to call the ghetto. Poverty is violence, Mr. Strange, you’ve heard that, right?”

“I have.”

“And it begets violence. Poor black kids see the same television commercials white boys and white girls see out in the suburbs. They’re showed, all their young lives, all the things they should be striving to acquire. But how they gonna get these things, huh?”

Strange didn’t reply.

Oliver leaned forward. “Look, I got a good head for numbers, and I know how to manage people. I’ve always had that talent. Young boys wanted to follow me around the neighborhood when I wasn’t no more than a kid. But do you think anyone in my school ever said to me, Take this book home and read it? Keep reading and get yourself into a college, you can run your own company someday? Maybe they knew, black man ain’t never gonna run nothin’ in this country ’less he takes it and runs with it his own self. Which is what I been doin’ my whole adult life.

“So poor kids with nothin’ are gonna want things. They start by gettin’ into their own kind of enterprise, ’cause they figure out early there ain’t no other way to get it. And these enterprises are competitive, like any business. Once you start gettin’ these things, see, you’re gonna make sure you keep what you got, ’cause you can’t never go back and live the way you were livin’ before. And now Bobo gonna act surprised when the neighborhoods he done herded us into start runnin’ with blood.”

“You don’t have to lecture me about being black in this country, Granville. I been around long enough to remember injustices you haven’t even dreamed of.”

“So you agree.”

“For the most part, yes. But it doesn’t explain the fact that a lot of kids who grew up in the same kinds of places you did, the same way you did, with no kind of guidance, got out. Got through school, went on and got good jobs, careers, are raising kids of their own now who are gonna have a better chance than they ever did. And they’re doin’ it straight. By hanging with it, by being there for their children. Despite all the roadblocks you talked about.”

“Didn’t work out that way for me,” said Oliver with a shrug. “But it sure did work out. So I hope you’ll understand me if I’m not too ashamed.”

“That what you tell that young boy you got working for you, the one I saw outside?”

“Don’t worry about that boy. That boy is gonna do just fine.”

Strange leaned back in his chair. “Say why you called me out here.”

“I told you.”

“Okay. You claim Joe was yours.”

Oliver nodded. “He was one of my beef babies, from back when the shit was wild. When I was out there getting into a lot of, just, battles and mad shit like that. Used to crib up with different girls I knew from around the way, just to go underground, keep myself safe until the drama cooled down. In those two or three years, I must have fathered three babies like that.”

And you think that makes you a man.

“But you were never there for Joe,” said Strange.

“His mother, Sandra, wanted it like that. She didn’t want him to know about me. Didn’t want him lookin’ up to someone like me, Mr. Strange. It speaks to what you were just lecturin’ me on just now. She wanted the boy to grow up with some kind of chance.”

God bless her, thought Strange.

“You gave her money?”

“She wouldn’t take much. Didn’t want me anywhere near the boy; no presents at birthday time, nothin’ like that. She did take a whip I gave her, though. Told her I didn’t want no son of mine ridin’ around in that broken-down hooptie she was drivin’. A nice BMW. She couldn’t turn that down.”

“I saw it,” said Strange. “Why did you pick me?”

“Sandra says you all right. You been havin’ that business down in Petworth for years, and you got a good reputation behind it. And she says you always were good to the little man.” Oliver smiled. “Boy could play some football, couldn’t he?”

“He had a heart,” said Strange, speaking softly. “You missed out on the most beautiful thing that ever could’ve happened to your life, Granville. You missed.”

“Maybe. But now I want you to help me make it right.”

“Why? Okay, so you fathered Joe. But you never were any kind of father to him for real.”

“True. But some people know he was mine. Man in my position, he can’t just let this kind of thing go. Everyone needs to know that the ones who took my kin will be got. You lose respect in this business I’m in, there ain’t nothin’ left.”

“The police are close,” said Strange. “I’d say they’re gonna find the shooters in a few days. They’ve got