Chapter 28
Green Street had overhead lights around its perimeter, but at least half of them had been broken, so the playground was bathed in a dusk-like light as Denny and I went through the hinged gate and walked towards T-Man and the same two kids who’d been with him at my place in Shadyside the day before. All three of them were wearing dark slacks and jackets, along with the ubiquitous red bandanas. For the evening’s festivities, Denny was all in black: jeans, turtle-neck, leather sports coat and Rockport casual shoes. I was nattily turned out in blue jeans, a long-sleeved white T-shirt, navy windbreaker and my Sauconys. The Links, who were standing at one end of the basketball court, all managed to conceal their sartorial envy.
When we got to within ten feet of them, T-Man said, “Didn’t say nothin’ ‘bout bringin’ no cop.”
I turned to Denny and said, “See, I told you he’d never believe you were my manservant.”
One of the other kids said, “Hey, dint you hear my man? No fuckin’ cops allowed.”
“Cool it, Rodney,” said T-Man.
Rodney was almost as big as Denny, and you could tell he didn’t like being told to cool it, but he did.
Denny stepped in front of T-Man and said, “I’m not interested in you or your friends or your gang or whatever you and this man are here to talk about. Yesterday afternoon, when you waited for Mr. Barnes here in front of his house, you made your presence known to a woman sitting in his car.”
“Yeah,” interrupted Rodney. “I remember her. She a little old, but she still be finer than most of the sisters I know.”
Denny turned his head to look at Rodney, who’d moved over so he was standing right next to Dennis. There was a look in Denny’s eyes, but I was pretty sure that Rodney was nowhere near bright enough to pick up on it.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” said Denny.
“Well, shit,” said Rodney. “Excuse me all the fuck, officer.”
Denny was maybe the toughest guy I’d ever known, and anyone who understood tough could see that in an instant. But Rodney didn’t have a clue. He’d been big all his life, and he’d come to confuse size with tough. He’d never learned that the two of them don’t necessarily go together. I had a feeling that class was about to begin.
Denny just stared at Rodney for a minute, not saying anything, and finally Rodney had to break the silence. People like Rodney can’t be quiet for long. They have to constantly be proving how tough they are.
“You here as a cop,” he asked Dennis, “or as a black man?”
“I’m always black,” Denny told him. “Always a cop, for that matter. Doesn’t mean I have to arrest you right now.”
Denny’s voice was low and calm and relaxed. To anyone who didn’t know him, he might have been having a casual conversation with a friendly acquaintance. But there was an undercurrent there, one that I knew well. Unfortunately for him, Rodney was oblivious to it.
“Life’s full of choices,” Denny continued. “Everybody’s got choices to make every day. For instance, today, right this very minute, you have to decide if you’re going to stop mouthing off at me or spend the next few days in one of this city’s excellent medical-care facilities.”
For the first time, Rodney looked a little confused. He wasn’t used to people challenging him.
“Shit,” he said, “you think we care about what you say ‘bout some white bitch that—”
There was a blur of motion, and suddenly Denny’s right hand was around Rodney’s neck. Rodney’s initial reaction was to bring his hands up to try to break Denny’s hold, but Denny tightened his grip just a bit and lifted Rodney up so that he was standing on his tiptoes. Some part of Rodney’s tiny brain managed to grasp the fact that resistance was futile, and he dropped his hands back down to his sides. He did manage to croak out, “I’m a minor. Gonna file a complaint.”
Ignoring him, and continuing to hold him like a rag doll, Denny turned his attention back to T-Man.
“The woman has nothing to do with anything. If you bother her again, I’ll find you.”
Then, after turning to me and saying, “I’ll wait for you at the car,” Denny released his grip on Rodney’s throat. Rodney immediately put his hands up to his neck and made another croaking sound. Without looking back, as he walked away, Denny said, “It’s Detective Wilcox. File your complaint with my bosses downtown.” And he left.
I’d been watching T-Man the whole time, and he’d displayed no emotion at all. At best, he’d been an interested observer. He might have flinched just a bit when Denny’d grabbed Rodney’s neck, but that was it. And he made no move to help Rodney now or even inquire about his condition.
I’d been thinking about how to approach T-Man, and I decided to go with what had always worked in the past. If there was one constant in the way I dealt with my students at Franklin, it was that I always tried to be honest with them. You may, indeed, be able to fool some of the people all of the time, but when you spend one-hundred-and-eighty days with the same kids, they’re going to quickly figure out if you’re lying to them. So I tried not to, and that’s the approach I took with T-Man.
“Anthony Warren’s mother wants him out of the gang,” I said.
“The fuck I care what that boy’s mama wants? She ain’t nothin’ to me. And Anthony knows better than to even think about leavin’ the Links.”
“This wasn’t Anthony’s idea,” I said. “His mother’s been trying to get him to quit the gang for over a year, but he refused. So she contacted me and asked if I’d help.”
“Why you?” he asked.
“I used to be her English teacher.”
He stared
