Outrage (6 page)

“I … I … I …”

“‘I … I …’ nothin’, motherfucker, you’re trying to hook up with my woman, ain’t that right?”

Frightened and under pressure, Felix did what he always did. He agreed. “Yes. I was trying to hook up with Maria Elena.”

“Why, Felix …,” Maria started to say with a smile.

But the black man’s eyes widened and his lip curled up in a sneer. He shoved Felix backward. “Why, you little …”

Whatever he was going to say was cut off when someone grabbed his arm and spun him around. That someone was Alejandro Garcia, who, although six inches shorter than the other
man and forty pounds lighter, looked like he was going to go for the bigger man’s throat.

“You got a problem?” Garcia snarled, his eyes fierce.

“Yeah, this joker was messin’ with my girlfriend,” the man said, trying to sound tough, but his voice was guarded.

Garcia looked at Maria Elena. “Was Felix bothering you?”

Maria Elena shook her head. “No, we was just talking.”

The rapper turned to the other man. “They were talking,” he repeated. “No law against that. Now get the fuck out of here.”

“Why should I?” The black man was looking around for support without seeing any.

“Two reasons,
pendejo,”
Garcia said, moving forward until he was only a few inches from the other man. “One, you pushed and insulted my friend for no reason. Two, if you don’t, I’m going to kick your ass up around your ears.
Comprende?”

The black man scowled down at his smaller opponent but made no move. “Fuck this place anyway,” he said. “Come on, Maria, we’re leaving. You don’t need this job.”

“Screw that,” she replied, shaking her head. “I ain’t quittin’ nothing but you, Perry. I’m tired of the macho bullshit.”

Alejandro cocked his head and smiled a most unfriendly smile. “Guess you heard the lady; now get your ass out of here.”

“Yeah,” Felix added. “Guh … guh … get your ass out of here.”

Garcia and Maria both looked at Felix in surprise. Then they both laughed as Perry turned and pushed his way out the front door.

“Watch out, Maria,” Garcia said. “I think Felix is going gangsta on us.”

“I don’t know,” Maria replied with a wink at Felix, who was blushing, grinning, and shifting back and forth from one foot to the other. “I like the new Felix. He’s kind of sexy.”

Garcia looked at his friend and was going to add to the teasing. But Felix had already spun on his heel and was racing for the men’s restroom.

“I
THINK WE NEED TO SAY SOMETHING TO
D
AD
.”

“Yeah, right, he’ll go ballistic, heads will roll, and then everybody on the team, including the coach, will hate us.
You
don’t have to worry about it because you’re riding the pine anyway, but I’m a starter and I’ll never get to play again.”

“I got to play in the last game,” Giancarlo said to his twin, Isaac, who was scowling at him from across the room they shared as they sat on their beds.

“We were ahead twelve-nothing in the bottom of the eighth,” Isaac replied. Bigger, stronger, and faster than Giancarlo, “Zak” hated it when his deep-thinking sibling tweaked his conscience, which just made him get his back up and lash out. “Coach Newell felt sorry for you. And
I
was pitching a no-hitter…. But the point is that if we say something, it’s all going to come crashing down—the team, our run at a state title, my stellar freshman year as the number two pitcher. My whole life will be ruined.”

“You’re being overly dramatic; your ‘whole life’ wouldn’t be ruined,” Giancarlo said, scoffing. “It’s not like you’re going to make the pros anyway.”

“I might,” Zak argued, “but not if I don’t play every year just because some kid is getting a little shit from some of the guys. Most of us have been together as a team since elementary school. He’s a new guy, and he doesn’t fit in very well. They’ll get tired of it. Just wait.”

“They’re making his life miserable because he’s from Mexico,” Giancarlo shot back. “And because he can play. You’ve seen him, he’s good. He’d make a better shortstop than Max Weller, and Max knows it. But Max is Coach Newell’s little pet, so Coach sits Esteban on the bench and then looks the other way while the team bullies the poor guy, trying to get him to quit.”

“Not everybody,” Zak replied sullenly. “I don’t do nothing to him—”

“You mean ‘I don’t do anything to him.’” His twin was genuinely bighearted and fair, but Giancarlo knew that he sometimes needed a little prodding when wrestling with the devil of self-interest.

“Whatever, Miss Molly,” Zak retorted. “But as I was saying, I don’t do nothin’ to him and neither do you. Lots of guys on the team aren’t bothering him.”

“But enough are, and the thing is, none of the rest of us are saying anything about it. I feel guilty, but I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to screw up your dreams, and if I say something on my own, everybody will deny it and I’ll just end up sitting with Esteban on the end of the bench—and probably getting the shit kicked out of me by Max and his sycophants.”

“Well, thanks,” Zak said grudgingly. “And I wouldn’t let Max and these sick whatever-they-ares kick the shit out of you. They’d have to go through me first, and that ain’t going to happen. I’m already taller than Max and I weigh almost as much.”

“Nice to know you got my back,” Giancarlo said, “but not even Super Zak can take on six other guys at the same time. So I hope it doesn’t come to that … I’d hate to see you get the shit kicked out of you to save this pretty face. But the point is, what do we do about the guys bullying Esteban? It’s not just words anymore. Max tripped him as he was going down the stairs to the field on Friday. And Chris Worley threw that beanball at him the other day in batting practice on purpose. He’s going to get hurt.”

“Then maybe he should quit the team,” Zak said, lying back so he wouldn’t have to look at his twin. He stared instead at a poster on the ceiling of legendary Yankee pitcher Whitey Ford. “Or maybe he should transfer to another high school where he’d be more accepted.”

“You mean a low-income, Spanish-speaking, public school,” Giancarlo retorted, shaking his head. “Jesus, Zak, you’re starting to sound like Coach Newell, who’s just a racist with a whistle and a clipboard.”

“We have black guys on the team,” Zak said.

“Because they come from wealthy families with a lot of pull at the school,” Giancarlo retorted, “and we wouldn’t be vying for the state private school title without them. And they’re outfielders and not a threat to Max. But Esteban’s a scholarship student from Brooklyn, takes the train into the city every day just to attend Hudson; nobody’s going to stick up for him.”

“Look, I don’t like it either, but it’s not my job to protect him,” Zak said.

“Then whose job is it?”

Zak’s response was cut short by a knock on the door, which opened to reveal their father.

“Hey, boys,” Karp said to his sons, “lights out pretty soon. Moishe’s coming over tomorrow to talk to you about your project and I want you bright eyed and bushy tailed. Are you guys ready?”

Karp paused. His father sense detected the charged field of tension between his sons. That in itself was nothing new. The boys were identical twins mostly in name only. They shared some physical traits, such as the dark, wavy hair; beautiful, doelike brown eyes; and general Mediterranean facial features of their mother’s Italian heritage. And since they were already more than six feet tall in their freshman year of high school, it looked like they might attain their father’s height. But even the physical similarities went only so far. With his finer features, porcelain skin, and slighter build, Giancarlo was like a more polished version of his more masculine and athletic brother, Isaac.

However, it was their personalities that differentiated the twins and frequently put them at odds. Both were smart, though Giancarlo was more bookish, a better student, articulate, philosophical, and more likely to use his head rather than his physical assets to get himself out of a situation. He was an accomplished musician who played nearly a dozen instruments, including the banjo and accordion.

Brave, forceful, and extroverted, Zak, on the other hand, was always full steam ahead, preferring to go through obstacles rather than around or over them—or not deal with them at all if he could avoid it. He kept his grades up only through the valiant efforts of his mother, who cracked the whip, but all he really wanted to do was play sports.

Looking at them now, one lying on his back and obviously avoiding eye contact, and the other furrowing his brow as he stared at his twin, Karp felt blessed. They were both good boys and generally made good decisions, though Zak’s impetuousness and sense of adventure sometimes led him and his brother, who was usually along to keep an eye on Zak, into trouble.

“Everything okay?” he asked. Both boys mumbled an affirmative.

Karp followed Zak’s gaze to the poster on the ceiling and smiled.
Whitey Ford
, he thought,
the Chairman of the Board. Yankee legend, ace pitcher in the fifties and sixties.

As a lifelong Yankee fan, he knew everything there was to know about the wily southpaw. Born October 21, 1928, in New York City. Height, five-ten; weight, 180. Lifetime record: 236-106; .690 winning percentage, best of any twentieth-century pitcher. Received the 1961 Cy Young Award and still holds many World Series records, including ten wins, thirty-three consecutive scoreless innings, and ninety-four strikeouts.

“Elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974, same year they retired his jersey,” Karp said. “I was at the game …”

“We know, Dad,” Zak said.

“We’ve heard the story,” Giancarlo told him.

“Hey, when do we get to go to a game?” Zak asked.

Karp recognized the attempt to steer the conversation away from whatever the twins were debating. Zak was anything but subtle. But it did remind him that one of the things he’d promised himself after the Jabbar trial was that he was going to spend more time with the boys. He’d even had to miss a few of their baseball games, which galled him. And it had been a long time since they’d played hoops together or just threw a ball around in Central Park. As Marlene kept saying, it wasn’t going to be too much longer before they were out of the house.

“Let’s compare calendars tomorrow and pick a day,” he said. “I’ll spring for the tickets, but you’re on your own for beer.”

The twins smiled at their father’s lame attempt at a joke; the promise of a family outing to the ballpark lightened the mood in the room. “Oh, and I’d suggest that you bring your digital recorder for Moishe’s talk,” Karp said. “This is oral history, and there’s fewer and fewer people every year who can tell us the truth about what happened.”

Zak sighed heavily. “Okay, okay,” he muttered.

Karp smiled. He knew that this was not going to be his outdoors-loving sons’ idea of how best to spend a Sunday afternoon. “You chose the topic and asked Moishe to help,” he reminded them. “And this was the time that worked best for him. By the way, make sure you thank him or forget the ball game.”

“We will,” Giancarlo promised.

“Okay then, see you dudes in the morning.”

“Nobody says ‘dudes’ anymore,
Dad.”

“Good to know, dudes,” he replied, and closed the door.

T
HE SKY WAS STARTING TO LIGHTEN IN THE EAST WHEN
the young woman climbed the stairs out of the subway station at 167th and River Avenue. She’d just completed an eight-hour shift at the Old Night Diner in Manhattan and all she wanted was a hot shower and to crawl into bed. But with a groan she thought about the hours she’d first have to spend studying the schoolbooks she was lugging in the satchel over her shoulder.

It was Sunday morning and traffic was light on 167th as she started to walk west past Mullayly Park. She kept an eye on the shadowy environs of the park. The police had still not caught whoever murdered the woman she’d read about in the newspapers. The sidewalks were nearly deserted, too, and she was glad that it was getting light enough to see and be seen by the few pedestrians who were out and about. It made her feel safer.

Then out of her peripheral vision, she saw a man in a hooded
sweatshirt. He had been walking in the same direction as she was on the other side of the street but was now crossing at an angle and speeding up to intercept her.

The woman, Marianne Tate, increased her pace. But so did the man. His face was shadowed by the hood, but he appeared to be a young Hispanic in need of a shave. She fought not to panic when he jogged the last few yards to catch up. “Your bag looks heavy,” he said with a slight accent. “We are walking in same direction, let me help you.”

“No, thank you,” Marianne said firmly, as she’d been taught in the women’s self-defense class she’d taken at the YMCA. He was to the side and slightly behind her, and she avoided looking directly at him and kept her eyes straight ahead.

When he started to hurry to get in front of her, she walked even faster. “Leave me alone!” she shouted, hoping someone would hear or that her voice would deter him.

Instead, he grabbed her from behind; she felt the blade of a knife against her throat. “Don’t scream,
sooka
, or I’ll cut your fucking head off,” the man snarled. “Now you and I are going to get busy.”

The man started to drag her into the park. But at that moment, a man walking a small dog came around the corner from River Avenue. He saw what was happening and shouted, which caused his dog to start yapping excitedly.

Tate’s attacker hesitated and she felt the knife move away from her neck. Summoning her courage and recalling her martial arts instructor’s admonition to fight back “with anything you have,” she stomped on the man’s instep and heard him cry out in pain. She then twisted slightly and threw an elbow behind
her as she’d been trained, and was surprised when it made solid contact with the side of the man’s face.

His grip loosened and she dropped to the ground, where she scrambled away on her hands and knees. She heard her attacker run off and started to cry as she looked up into the worried face of her rescuer, whose dog danced around barking.