Three Days Before the Shooting ... (125 page)

“Now there, A.Z.,” Wilhite whispered, “is an
old
billiards drinker if ever I saw one.”

Recalling the old joke about a country boy who had pretended to be sophisticated by swaggering up to the bar of a big city pool and billiards parlor and ordering a glass of billiards, Hickman visualized the foamy-headed drink which the bartender had improvised for the imposter and silently shook his head. And appalled by the idea of such a character reappearing in such an exasperating situation as that in which they were now trapped, he watched the brown artificial fur of the man’s bathrobe catch the light as he came aggressively forward, elbowing and bellying tenants out of his way. Then, reaching a spot directly behind the jam of tenants facing Wilhite and himself, the man paused, grasping a half-eaten drumstick in one fist and a can of beer in the other.

“Naw, Maud,” the man called over his shoulder as he studied the startled white man’s face with the jaded expression of a world-weary judge weighing a plea of innocence from a notorious, habitual criminal, “it ain’t worth the sweat. Which you’ll see once I explain what’s
behind
this mess. Because then you’ll realize that all this little cop is doing is looking for him a little … easy …”

Seeing the spokesman pause and thrust the fist-held drumstick high above his head, Hickman nudged Wilhite as the word “GRAFT!” resounded with an explosion of breath that left the spokesman’s barrel-like body bouncing up and down as though set in motion by the sheer weight of his pronouncement.

“And that’s all,” the spokesman said with a lip-protruding grimace of absolute conviction, “the hell … it is!”

And here
, Hickman thought,
after convincing myself that such characters disappeared with the player piano, I find one alive and bassing in Washington!
As now, relieving himself of a resonant belch, the spokesman took a quick sip of beer and glared at the detective.

“So now, ladies and gentlemen, here way early … in the mawning,” the spokesman continued, “… he’s got the un
-miti-
gated
gall
to try to hit a bunch of sophisticated, Dee-Cee folks like us with some
ig
nu
nt peckerwood
mystification—yeah! And doing it in the name of his undemocratic notion … of
law and order
!”

Hearing the hallway pop and sputter with an angry firecracker-flurry of agreement, Hickman stepped aside as the detective reddened and stabbed a finger at his accuser.

“Now you listen to me, Jack,” he shouted, “there’ll be no more of that! You hear?”

“You damn right, Jack,” the pop-eyed man boomed with a scornful wave of his drumstick, “I hear you, but I also know my rights under the
Constitution
! Therefore before this court of my peers and these two brothers from down home I’m holding that Miss Maud up there has got no business letting herself get all worked up just because
you
want to put down your simple-minded hype!”

“… What? What was that,” the little woman called with a hand cupped to her wig-covered ear. “What?”

“… Because all we have here,” the fat man went on, “is a little
small-time
hustling!”

“Lonnie!” the woman called from the stairs, “LONNIE!”

“That’s right, my clerical friend,” the pop-eyed man said with a patronizing nod to Wilhite, “to you home-boys it might look complicated, but when you sift this crap down to the nitty-gritty all you get is a simple case—as the hipsters on the block would say—of the ‘Man’ trying to twist him a ‘Boot’ for some
loot!”

“… All right, Jack,” the detective interrupted, “you’re asking for it, what’s your name?”

“… And I’m one man who’s willing and able to lay it out for you: The first thing he does in putting down this type of hype is to find him a tight
situation
. By
which I mean some kind of double bind which he can go about naming anything he damn pleases—like larceny, loitering, spitting on the public sidewalk, littering, playing a radio with the volume high, or scratching his head and his behind at one and the same damn time—any damn thing you damn please.

“Next: He finds himself a ‘Boot’ who’s in some kind of uptight predicament—which, as we all know, is liable to be true of
any
Boot at
any
time. Because after the way the white establishment have rigged the system it’s more normal for a Boot to be
in
trouble than not. And being booted before he’s out of diapers the Boot also knows that they rigged it that way so he’ll always be up to his butt in some kind of trouble. Therefore, all the
Man—
of which you have a prime example caught in the act—has to do is find him a tight situation and a Boot to fit it. Then he goes about
terrorizing
his chump until he’s willing to own up to any crime, no matter how trumped up and unreasonable, that he wants him to admit committing! And it don’t matter if it’s something as humanly impossible as peeping through a bedroom window when he’s standing ten … flat-footed stories … below it on a stinking sidewalk! Then the
next
thing he does is to throw the Boot smack-dab in the middle of that kind of phony situation and force him to confess to being guilty—which, unfortunately—and
most
unfortunately, I must add—any unhipped Boot is more liable to do than not!

“And that, my friend,” he said with a nod to Hickman, “is because when you get right down to it, your average Boot figures he’s
got
to be guilty of
something
. Because otherwise he has no explanation—neither philosophical, political, legal—Yeah! That’s right—or
theological
as to
why his
life in a country as prosperous as this could be as messed up as it usually is! Therefore, it makes it easy for the
Man
to find himself an iffy situation and force some innocent Boot to match up with it. And then, ladies and gentlemen, watch out! Because the
Man
has got it made!”

“That does it,” the detective shouted. “What’s your name?”

“BARNES,” the pop-eyed man roared in a tone of high indignation. “The one and only, and well-known to the community! Are you satisfied? BARNES! LONNIE BARNES! And to you,
Mister
Barnes and a man who’s
proud
to be of service to this community!”

“Now, Barnes, you listen to me,” the detective began—but with a contemptuous wave of his drumstick Barnes whirled back to the crowd.

“So my friends—and as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted—that’s
all
that’s happening. Therefore as your friend and fellow-tenant it’s my responsibility to hip y’all to the scam that’s going down!”

“A.Z.,” Wilhite whispered, “I can’t figure out what’s going on, but from the way they
sound
some of these Negroes have got to be drunk! And this white man is right in there with them….”

“No, Wilhite,” Hickman began, “it has to be more than that.” But now, seeing the detective turn in their direction, he held up his hand for silence.

“Look, Officer,” he said, “could we please get this over with? I’ve tried to explain that we came here to deliver a message, and that’s the truth….”

But suddenly the detective lunged, pushing him aside; and he whirled to see Barnes executing a dancer’s spin that ended behind the protective bodies of his fellow-tenants, and from where, stabbing a fuzzy arm at the detective, he shouted, “As you folks can plainly see, he don’t like the idea of my exposing him worth a damn. But as per usual that’s what he’s trying to do. Up to now he’s been getting away with pushing folks around while he prepares to drop him a stinking shuck, but with a man like
me
looking him dead in the eye he don’t know how. So now I’m spelling it out so that
everybody
will be forewarned the next time they see a scam like this going down:

“First he shows up here in the line of duty—that’s right! But then, after casing the joint and finding nothing but
colored
folks, he decides to rename whatever it was that brought him here to his own convenience—which has
got to
be in the blurry category of crime….”

“Crime,” the little woman screamed. “
What
crime?”

“… and that’s because he’s a cop and, like it or not, cops live and
thrive
on CRIME! That’s a fact, so take it from your friend Lonnie! No cops, no crime! No crime, no cops! Either way it’s simply in keeping with the cops’ unwritten law of demand and supply. So any way you look at a cop you’re …”

“… Up against crime,” a man agreed from the rear of the crowd.

“That right, brother,” Barnes called with a slap of his hands. “These lousy cops eat crime, drink crime, breathe crime, and
thrive
on crime! And like that one standing there they buy their cheesy suits, shirts, shoes, ham hocks, and shinola with loot they make out of crime—and that includes everything from his funky drawers to the fillings in his snaggly
teeth!

“So take my word for it, his true business is breaking the law in the
name
of the
law
! And when he finds him some kind of questionable situation the stage is set. Because then all he has to do is go poking around until he finds some black man who he can drop slap-dab in the middle of it—and, behold, brothers and sisters, ladies and gents, he’s got it made!”

“Amen,” a man shouted. “Give his butt hell!”

“… Thank you, brother, your ‘Amen’ is most welcome…. So now, my friends,

the rest of you are probably asking yourselves how has he been going about it in this particular instance? Well, my friends and fellow-citizens, all you have to do is gimme your ears and I’ll
tell
you:

“As you all know by now he’s already picked Brother McMillen as his victim. And while I don’t know what his buddies are doing to the innocent man behind those closed doors you can bet it ain’t legal! Therefore, if I hadn’t decided to speak up, that one standing there was all set and ready to go. That’s right! Because between running out here and bossing
us
around he’s been in there trying to trap Brother McMillen into confessing to some bogus, unfounded, and ill-conceived
circumstantial evidence! That way he means to force our neighbor, Brother McMillen, to own up to it. And if
we
keep standing around and letting him get away with it he’ll twist Brother McMillen so
hard
that he’ll give up and give in…. And then, brothers and sisters, ladies and gentlemen …”

Barnes paused, shaking his head mournfully as he looked over the crowd, “all that so-called servant of law and order has to do is twist his Boot … and he’s
got …
his loot!”

“Now Lonnie, you listen to me,” the cross-eyed woman screamed from the stairs. “You stop your referring to our people as ‘Boots,’ you hear me? Don’t do it! Don’t be giving that white man the immoral satisfaction of hearing you talking so common! Can’t you see that that’s his only reason for letting you run your big mouth? He’s the kind who likes to twist and turn everything a colored person says and does wrong-side out! And if you’d stop running your mouth long enough you’d see it! He’s just taking in everything you say so he and his friends can laugh about it! He’s the kind that has so little respect for folks like us that if he sees us ladies being escorted a few times by different gentlemen he’ll be calling us
prostitutes!
You know that! And that’s because as far as
our
people go, he has a low-rating kind of mind….”

“… And now, Maud,” Barnes called with a judicious bow of his head, “you’re catching on to him! You’re getting his low-rating number—but it ain’t uncommon.
And
, like I say, after he’s yeasted a situation like we have here this evening to his own satisfaction he badmouths and blackjacks his victim ‘til he confesses. Which is how he twists the Boot for the loot—that’s right! And that, thanks to Maud’s calling it to my attention, also goes for the
personal
loot of you beautiful ladies who’re known far and wide for y’all’s beautiful fine brown frames!”

“Lonnie,” the cross-eyed woman screamed, “LONNIE!”

“… However, it is my sad duty to point out that in the case of you
women
folks Buster there makes him a fine distinction. Because instead of busting y’all for breaking the law he’ll be breaking down your doors demanding FREE TRADE! Which
I
would describe as his way of compounding the criminal offense of misnaming an iffy situation with the age-old crime of bearing false and malicious witness with an act of de facto—I said DE FACTO—bribery! In other words—twisting the Boot for some loot!”

“LONNIE,” the woman screamed with a violent tug of her wig, “I HAVE TOLD YOU!”

“… But that,” Barnes continued, “is just one more way of upending a Boot for some loot or plunder—which … in the special case of the
female
species … I’d define as ‘
under-plunder’
or ‘
booty-loot’!”

“A.Z.,” Wilhite said in a whisper, “if I were superstitious and that woman was blazing at me like that I’d cross my fingers and spit in my hat! That crazy detective is letting Barnes’ mush-mouthed legal talk upset him, but
she’s
the one he has to watch—just look at those eyes!”

With a disapproving glance at Wilhite, Hickman looked to see the little woman stab a finger at Barnes.

“I’m telling you, Lonnie,” she screamed, “if you don’t hush up I’m going to
read you!
I’m warning you now: I’m going to READ you!”

“You’re going to read
who?”
Barnes growled. “And where do
you
get the right to be threatening a man like
me?
Read me
what?
Hell, everybody in the community knows I don’t go for no little skinny women, so what can you tell them about me? Besides, this is a free country and open to all
kinds
of opinion! Therefore I have a right …”