ruin, trash every- where, and those kids selling dope in the house right across the street, the house where ol’ lady Melvin, the preacher’s widow, used to live. Some old man from New Orleans was in there now; she didn’t know his name.
Mrs. Jackson heard a car stop outside and peered through the window. Four young men dressed fit to kill stood on the sidewalk looking around. Mrs. Jackson reached for her camera, an ancient Brownie, but she had loaded it with some of that new film the man at the drugstore said would take pictures without a flash. When she got the camera ready and pointed through the gap in the drapes She could see only two men. The other two must have gone inside.
Damn those cops anyway.
She had told those detectives that Melvin’s was a crack house and nothing had happened. They weren’t going to pay much atten- tion to a fat old black lady, no way. She had seen that in their hard eyes as they looked up and down the street at the boarded-up windows and the trash and that worthless, shiftless Arnold Spivey sitting on Wilson’s stoop drinking from a bottle in a paper bag.
She was going to get pictures. They would have to do something if she had pictures. And if they didn’t do anything, she would send the photos to that neighborhood watch group or maybe even the newspapers. Leaving old people to watch their neighborhood rot and the dope peddlers take over — they would have to do some- thing about pictures.
She snapped the camera at the two men on the sidewalk, slick loose-jointed dudes with sports coats and pimp hats with wide brims and flashy hatbands. The license plate of that big car would be in both photos.
Here comes someone. A white man, walking bold as brass after dark in a neighborhood as black as printer’s ink, a neighborhood where the kids would rip off your arm to get your Timex watch. She squinted. Late fifties or early sixties, chunky, wearing a full- length raincoat and a little trilby hat. Oh yes, he went by earlier this evening, just walking and looking. She hadn’t paid much at- tention then, but here he is, back again. She pointed the camera and clicked the shutter. The two dudes on the opposite sidewalk by the big car were watching him, but he was ignoring them.
Now what did he just do? Stuffed something in that hollow iron fence post as he walked by.
Why did he do that? My God, the street is full of trash; why didn’t he just throw it down like everyone else does?
The two men who had gone into the crack house came out and they and their compatriots piled in the car and left, laughing and peeling rubber. Mrs. Jackson got more photos of them, then busied herself in the kitchen making tea since the street seemed quiet now.
She was sipping tea in the darkened living room and looking through the curtain gap when a haggard black woman in dilapi- dated blue jeans and a torn sweatshirt staggered around the corner and along the sidewalk to the crack house. She struggled up the steps to the stoop. The door opened before she even knocked. Mrs. Jackson didn’t bother taking her picture; she was one of the regu- lars, a crack addict who Mrs. Jackson suspected didn’t have long to live. Mrs. Blue next door had said her name was Mandy and she had heard she was doing tricks under the Southeast Freeway.
Nobody gave a damn. About Mandy or Mrs. Jackson or Mrs. Blue or any of them. Just a bunch of poor niggers down in the sewer.
Wonder what that white roan stuffed in that fence post? Some- thing to do with that crack house, no doubt Maybe he’s a judge or police on the take. Not getting enough. Maybe it’s money, a payoff for someone.
Well, well just see. We’ve got some rights too.
She pulled her sweater around her shoulders and got her cane. Her arthritis was bothering her pretty badly but there was no help for it She unbolted the door and lowered herself down the steps. As she approached the hollow iron post two houses down she glanced around guiltily. Her frustration was fast evaporating into fear. No one looking. Quick! She reached into the post. Only a crushed cigarette pack. Disappointed, she felt around in the hollow cavity. There was nothing else. With the cigarette pack in her pocket, she slowly made her way back to her house, steeling herself to look straight ahead. Oh God, why had she done this?
She locked and bolted her doors and sat at the kitchen table examining her find. Writing on the back, block letters. Numbers and such. Code of some sort. Payoffs, most likely. We’ll see what the police make of all this. Not that they’d ever tell an old black woman what it’s all about. No matter, if they’d just close that crack house, that’d be something.
But should she go to the police? They’ve been told about that crack house and they’ve done nothing. What if the police have been paid off? What if they tell the dopers about her?
Mrs. Jackson had lived too long in the ghetto not to know the dangers associated with interfering in someone else’s illegal enter- prise. As she stared at the cigarette pack she realized she had crossed that invisible line between officious nuisance and enemy. And she knew exactly what happened to enemies of dope dealers. They died. Fast and bloody. Those four punks on the sidewalk in their fancy clothes would smile as they cut off her ears, nose and tongue, then her arms.
She turned off the kitchen light and sat in the darkness, trying to think. What should she do? My God, what had she done?
Mrs. Jackson was still sitting in the darkness of her kitchen thirty minutes later when Terry Franklin walked past the front of her house toward the hollow post. He had parked the car three blocks away. Normally he was very circumspect and drove around for at least an hour to make sure that he had lost any possible tails, but tonight he was in a hurry. He had to get home before Lucy and the kids got back from the mall. So he had driven straight from An- oandale to G Street.
The block appeared empty. No, there was someone sitting in a doorway, across the street. Some black guy with a brown bag. A wino. No sweat. What a shitty neighborhood! He had never under- stood why the Russians had picked a drop in a run-down black neighborhood, but since he hadn’t talked to them after he had found the described drops, he had had no opportunity to ask.
It would be just his luck to get mugged down here some night.
He walked at a regular pace toward the post, not too fast and not too slow. Just a man who knows where he’s going. He would just reach in while barely breaking stride, get the cigarette pack and keep on walking, right on around the block and back to his car. Piece of cake.
He slowed his pace as he reached into the post.
It was empty!
Dumbfounded, he stopped and looked in. There was just enough light coming from the streetlight up on the corner and the windows of the houses to see into the hole. It was about four inches deep. Empty!
He walked on. What had happened? This had never happened before. What in hell was going on?
He turned and walked back to the post. He looked in again. The hole was still empty. He looked around on the sidewalk and the grass behind the fence for anything that might be an empty ciga- rette pack.
Nothing!
It must be here, somewhere, and he just wasn’t seeing it.
He was living one of those cold-sweat gibbering nightmares where you are stuck in quicksand and going to die and the rope is forever just inches out of reach. Finally he realized the cigarette pack truly wasn’t there.
Maybe he was being set up. Maybe the FBI was going to grab him.
Franklin looked around wildly, trying to see who was watching. Just blank windows. The wino — still there, sucking from his bottle. He reached into the hole again, trying to understand. Someone had gotten it. God, it must be the FBI. They must be on to him. Even now, they’re watching from somewhere, ready to pounce. Prison— he would go to prison. The wino — an agent — watching and laugh- ing and ready to arrest him.
Terry Franklin panicked.
He ran for the car, a staggering hell-bent gallop down the side- walk as he tried to look in every direction for the agents closing in.
To arrest him.
He careened into a garbage can and it fell over with a loud clang and the lid flew off and garbage went everywhere. He kept running.
At the intersection a car slammed on its brakes to the screeching of tires, barely missing him. He bounced off a parked car but he didn’t slow.
He almost broke the key getting it into the door lock. The engine ground mercilessly and refused to
