New Jersey Noir Part 3

Miles placed a hand on the doork.n.o.b and started out. Before leaving, he turned slowly and spoke softly: "Mr. Cash, I know what everybody thinks. I know what you think. Tonight, any other cop would have been a.s.signed some lawyer right out of school. But because of my father, you showed up personally. And I'm sure you know how grateful he'll be for that."

Cash wore a neutral expression. "Yes," he said.

"I need you to understand something, though. I want everybody to understand something. The last thing in the world my father wanted was for me to become a cop. He tried his best to change my mind, and when he couldn't he tried to talk me out of working for Camden PD. But he couldn't do that, either. There are some good people in Camden, Mr. Cash. They're trying to make a life for themselves."

For the first time since entering the room, a small, tired smile touched Miles's face as he continued.

"I just wanted to help them do it. That's all I ever wanted. The other cops, they hardly talk to me. Negron and Sanchez have me for a partner because they p.i.s.sed off the duty sergeant. But they've got me all wrong."

He turned back to the door, speaking as he left the room.

"I was just trying to help."

When Miles was gone, Cash turned to the window behind him, his cold, gray eyes studying the early-morning light as it began to nudge against the slowly dying night sky.

He stood there alone for quite some time. He wondered why Negron, from his position of cover behind the porch, had not fired.

He wondered why Sanchez had not fired.

And as the Camden sky grew brighter, he wondered about organs and brains, nerves and enzymes, anatomy and souls.

NEW DAY NEWARK.

BY S.J. ROZAN.

Central Ward (Newark) A new day was coming to Newark.

The boy had actually got himself elected mayor.

Miss Crawford was satisfied with this. She knew him now for some years, not just seen him on the TV, mind you, but she knew him. Not because she was his people. His people were from Harrington Park, and Miss Crawford had watched him sideways like lots of folks at the old Brick Towers back when he was a councilman and he first moved in. The boy himself went to Yale and Stanford and places like that, and besides he had those green-blue eyes. Wasn't no other politician she could remember ever set foot in Brick Towers, and this baby-face councilman was going to live there? Something had to be up, no question. But the councilman was always polite, he learned her name right fast, and if something was going on she never knew what it was. He walked up the stairs like the rest of them when the elevator was out and one time she saw him bringing groceries for old Mrs. Green next door to him. Miss Crawford herself, she lived on the second floor, so it wasn't no thing, but she couldn't help noticing that since he moved in, it wasn't like the elevator went out less often but it got fixed when it did. The lightbulbs in the halls got replaced when they burned out too, not six months later.

So when the boy announced for mayor, that first time, she thought, Well all right. None of that with the elevator and the lightbulbs happened all the years that other boy was mayor, did it? Strictly, that one wasn't no boy, excepting that Miss Crawford was so far past her threescore and ten that she could call anyone a boy she liked to, thank you very much. That other one, he was a grown man with expensive suits and a gap in his teeth and he should have known better. Oh, he spoke beautiful. If he'd took to preaching instead of politics he'd have had any pulpit he wanted and Miss Crawford just knew he could've sold the Lord to the Devil himself. That was the trouble with him right there. In the boy's first campaign the gap-toothed mayor kept telling everybody who'd listen, Newark's not for sale, but he was the one buying and selling. He was everyone's friend and everyone's favorite uncle, he threw ice-cream socials and all, and he got big gla.s.s buildings built downtown. But here in the Central Ward, were the schools safe? Did anyone think to fix the sidewalk cracks, where poor Leteesha Monroe broke her leg? Did the police run off the drug dealers from the playgrounds? Course not. They stopped their patrol cars and called the dealers over, but sure as G.o.d made little apples, that was to get their share of the take. Miss Crawford might be eighty-eight, she might be five feet tall and weigh less than a sack of flour, but she knew what time it was. Maybe the boy would be as bad when he got elected, but he couldn't be no worse. And the elevator was running. So she voted for him, and he lost, but then he won the next time, which was now.

So it was a new day in Newark.

Now, that didn't mean the old day was gone away. Things took time, Miss Crawford knew that. Those gangs peddling their poison had cleared out from the schoolyards, and that impressed Miss Crawford. The new mayor promised that and he delivered it. But those same no-account punks sneered from the streetcorners now, and the police cars still rolled up and rolled away. That would be the hardest part of the new mayor's job, to Miss Crawford's mind: straightening out the police. He could hire all the new chiefs he liked, and the new chiefs could take up the rotten apples when they found them, and she'd seen that start to go on already. It was just, there were so many of them. Which wasn't no way saying Newark didn't have police you could trust. It surely did, and more every day.

That nice girl who moved in upstairs from Miss Crawford in January, she was a new officer, just out of the academy. She was from Weequahic Park over in the South Ward, but the police a.s.signed her to the 4th precinct and so she moved here. "Like the mayor," she told Miss Crawford in her kitchen as they got acquainted, very neighborly. She poured Miss Crawford coffee and said, "You know, when he was a councilman he represented the Central Ward so he wanted to live here. In the old Brick Towers, you remember that place? He inspired me."

Well, there you go, Miss Crawford thought. Do right and you never know how far it'll spread. She told the girl officer-Patrol Officer Joyce was her name, Aleksandra Joyce-about how she used to live in Brick Towers too, with the councilman before he was mayor, about him carrying groceries and walking the stairs.

Officer Joyce's face gleamed. "I knew he was like that, I knew it. And I thought the old mayor taking down Brick Towers right after that first election, that was just spite."

"Oh, child, it surely was."

"Well, I'm glad anyway," the girl had said impulsively. "If there was still Brick Towers, you would never have moved here, Miss Crawford, and then we wouldn't be friends."

That made Miss Crawford feel all warm, and she sat in Officer Joyce's kitchen more times than that. The girl needed friends too, you could tell that when she talked. She shrugged it off, acting all tough police, but Miss Crawford didn't get to be this old for nothing.

"It's always like this for new officers, I guess," the girl told her. "Especially women."

"Life's hard on women everywhere," said Miss Crawford.

"You got that right."

Another time: "It's like a club. The older cops, they've been in this club a long time, and they don't necessarily welcome new members."

Miss Crawford had nodded at that, and just said, "These things take time." Officer Joyce smiled, but Miss Crawford felt troubled in her mind. Here was a good girl and an honest officer, trying to do right, and the same old, same old was holding her back. Right here on these blocks of the Central Ward, Robbie down at the grocery still had police taking coffee and donuts in the morning, bags of potato chips and pretzels too, then just waving goodbye as they strolled past the register. The Shaw twins at the garage still changed the oil in officers' private cars for nothing, and shopkeepers all up and down the streets still handed over contributions to the Widows and Orphans Fund. In cash.

All that was down at least some to the people who lived here, as much as the bad police, and Miss Crawford went and scolded Robbie or one of the Shaw boys from time to time, but what were they going to do? Chances were already poor they'd get police protection if they needed it, but they'd be poorer if they didn't play along, and everyone knew it.

Yes, things took time, Miss Crawford thought as she trundled her grocery cart along, but sometimes, like now, she wished the time had already come. She walked the long way home, because over around the other side of this block, that was like the Wild West over there. Drug dealer there by the name of C-4-wasn't even no name, but she guessed it was supposed to be tough-he let his crew do anything they wanted. She wasn't scared of him, but she wasn't stupid neither, and more than one time C-4's crew was out there shooting rats in the empty lot. Bullets bounced around, didn't they? Miss Crawford would rather take a dozen extra steps home than get shot by crossing where some punk thought he saw a creature uglier than him. Every now and again, somebody went and called the police. Didn't help. Even if they were good police and not rotten ones, by the time they got there all the guns were hidden, or at least lying on the ground. Being caught with a gun, that was one crime it was hard to talk your way out of in Newark. Which didn't mean the g.a.n.g.b.a.n.gers had no guns, of course they did, every last useless one of them. It only meant they paid some attention to not getting caught.

Now, over here on this side of the block, that drug dealer Bigmouth, right there on that corner with the knit cap down over his forehead, Miss Crawford could ignore him like he deserved. She knew that boy when he was a baby, she watched him grow up on these streets. Rashawn was his name, though Miss Crawford couldn't remember the last time she heard anyone use it. His momma, she wasn't no good, with her men and her liquor, and all her babies had to drag themselves up because she wasn't helping. That didn't give Bigmouth an excuse, neither a reason, for being the way he was. It gave Miss Crawford something, though. Whenever she started to get afraid of him, she remembered him running down the street in his diapers. Then she could just walk on by.

Bigmouth anyway, he thought she was too poor to bother with and too feeble to bother him. She knew it, and it suited her, but he didn't feel the same way about Leteesha Monroe's oldest boy and that did not suit Miss Crawford at all. That was a promising child right there, a boy who could write poetry and nice stories, he played basketball and he could sing too. He'd be in middle school next year and he could go on to college and be somebody, if the somebody he wanted to be wasn't more and more like Bigmouth every day. The car and the bling and the gun, that was what the Monroe boy saw, that was what all the children saw. Wasn't easy to tell them to work hard and stay in school when it was easy for them to stand on street corners, just a year or two older than Leteesha Monroe's boy, and get paid by trash like Bigmouth to steer rich white children from the suburbs to his door. Runners and snitches, Bigmouth used them as too, because everybody knows little pitchers got big ears, but everybody forgets. And to call him with the cell phone to tell him when the honest cops were coming, because who those were, and who they weren't, was another thing everybody knew.

All this was a big problem for the new mayor, but he had lots of problems. It was a bigger problem for Leteesha Monroe, and she had lots of problems too, the poor girl working two jobs, just trying to do right by her children. Miss Crawford, her and her Teddy hadn't never had no children, which she was sad about when she was of that age but it was behind her now. She just helped everyone else raise theirs. Her whole life she was a teacher's aide, right here in the Central Ward, and she watched people's babies even sometimes now, as far as her old bones would let her. Helping Leteesha Monroe, that's what was on her mind as she pushed her cart, which was why she almost ran Bigmouth down.

Him and his cap and his pants so low she swore she didn't know what kept them on his fat behind, they took up the whole sidewalk. Bigmouth had his hands stuck on his hips and he was smiling out across the street like he was some farmer and all this was his green pastures. He stood sideways to her and he didn't see her and he sure didn't move. Sometime, Miss Crawford might have just walked around him onto the gra.s.s; but last night it rained and the gra.s.s was muddy, and she had her cart with its wobbly wheel, and she'd been giving a thought to Leteesha Monroe. So him taking up the sidewalk set her anger off, and she stomped her foot and told him, "Boy, you move aside!"

His face got all surprised, like he didn't know where the sound came from, then he looked down and saw her. Out popped that nasty grin. "Well, lookee here, Miz Busybody."

"You didn't buy that sidewalk, boy, so you best let people use it."

"Why should I buy it when I already own it?" He smiled across the street; some of his crew were sitting on a stoop over there, watching and snickering.

"You don't neither. The peoples of Newark owns it, and I'm one of them, so let me pa.s.s."

"Maybe I will, and maybe I won't."

"Maybe you better."

"Or you gonna do what, skinny-a.s.s b.i.t.c.h? Call a cop?"

"I might, for real. Not one of your friend cops. One of the new cops."

"New cops? Lady, what's wrong with you? You believe all what you hear from that carpetbag mayor?"

Miss Crawford snorted. "You got enough schooling to know what carpetbag means, child?"

Bigmouth laughed. "It means he ain't really black. He don't give a s.h.i.t about these blocks and he sure ain't about to run on over here and help you out."

"Now you listen here, you drug-dealing no-account. You move aside right now, or you go ahead and knock down a lady." Miss Crawford waited a second, then she took a step and plowed her cart right on. Bigmouth sneered but he stepped away like she knew he would. His boys might love to see him swagger, but it wouldn't help his gangsta reputation none for them to watch him throw an eighty-eight-year-old woman on her rear end.

Miss Crawford went on home and unpacked her groceries. She stacked them neatly in their cabinets and she scratched behind the cat's ears when he jumped up on the table. Facing down Bigmouth didn't amount to nothing and she would've forgotten all about it, except that across the street, three doors down from Bigmouth's crew, someone else was hanging out too, and watching. And it was Leteesha Monroe's oldest boy.

Bigmouth was wrong about the new mayor. He surely was black, for one thing, and for the other, he did care about these blocks. Especially these blocks. But he was new, and he had lots of problems, and what was it Miss Crawford herself had been saying to Robbie just now as he bagged up her groceries? It's a new day in Newark, she told him, and what's wrong can be righted if we step up and right it ourselves.

Two days later the sun was out and the breeze was warm and come afternoon Miss Crawford felt like a walk. She wasn't in need of groceries but she went that way nonetheless, along the side of the street where Bigmouth's crew hung out. She pa.s.sed them with her head high and without a word, and then stopped three doors down. Like the other day, there was Leteesha Monroe's oldest boy.

"What you doing here, child?" Miss Crawford demanded. "You got no homework waiting for you?"

"Done it." The boy fidgeted uncomfortably.

"And your momma got no ch.o.r.es?"

"Done 'em."

Miss Crawford looked him up and down. "Well, I got ch.o.r.es. You come help me with my cabinets where I can't reach, and I'll pay you. That suit you?"

He shrugged, still a good enough boy to know his duty. "I guess."

She nodded. "Later today, right before suppertime. And boy? No point in your hanging around here day and night. Those punks, they don't need you and they don't want you. And you too good for them, you surely are."

He didn't meet her eye. Miss Crawford marched on to the grocery and pa.s.sed the time with Robbie. She bought three cans of cat food, because sooner or later the animal was going to eat her out of what she already had, wasn't he? Then she headed back along the other side of the street, and blessed if Bigmouth wasn't standing on the exact same piece of broken sidewalk as always.

"Rashawn, move yourself aside."

Bigmouth stared with that mean grin. "Rashawn? Old lady, who you talking to?"

"Oh, get out my way. I need to get home. Every time I come by here, you get all up in my face."

"Listen, old b.i.t.c.h, I got a question for you. You in such a d.a.m.n hurry to get home, how come you even come by here? You live over there, be much faster the other way. You just like getting all up in my face?"

"Don't like nothing about your face, boy. But that other boy, can't deny I like him less."

"Who?" Bigmouth scowled. "C-4?"

She snorted. "C-4. Pure foolishness is all that is. You, at least I know the name your momma give you. Far as him, he's just one evil child. Don't like the way you strut around these blocks like a rooster, Rashawn, but I be sorrier if he turn out to be right."

"Right? What you mean, who's right?"

"That boy. When he say he's gonna take these blocks from you."

Bigmouth frowned down at her. "He say that?"

She squinted at him. "You ain't pretending to me you never heard that? I'm just a old lady, live with a cat. If I heard it, I know everybody did. You planning on hiding your head in the sand? Go right ahead, boy, but just remember when you do that, what sticks out." She looked at him again, then walked on home.

The Monroe boy came over right before suppertime. He put the cat food and soup and all the flour and sugar in the cabinets where she wanted them. The flour and sugar, she had out because she'd been baking raisin cookies, and along with five dollars, which was fair, she gave him some of the cookies and a gla.s.s of milk. She had some herself too, and while they ate them she asked him about school and basketball. She told him how good the church choir sounded and she said she could hear him especially, which she wasn't sure was true but it made him smile. Besides that smile, all she got was one-word answers, nods, and shrugs, because that was how boys acted at that age, but she heard enough to be satisfied he was still going all those places they talked about and that's why she was asking.

"All right," she finally said, packing more cookies in a sack and handing them to him, "you take these for your brothers and your sister. Tell your momma Miss Crawford sends my best."

The next afternoon was sunny again. Miss Crawford went out. She took a breath in the bright sunshine and walked around the block the other direction.

The boy standing in her way on this side wasn't C-4 himself. Miss Crawford supposed that meant he was off somewhere doing his drug-dealer business, which was the only time Bigmouth cleared off his square of sidewalk too. This boy here, she didn't know what his momma called him but on these blocks his name was Late Nite. He stepped aside after the tiniest little look at her, like she wasn't worth his worry. But she stopped in front of him and tilted her head up-he was a tall one-and she said, "Yo, son. You work for that ugly boy, call himself all letters and numbers?"

Late Nite drew his eyebrows together. "Say what?"

"C-4," she said impatiently. "Came over here to talk to him."

"He's busy." Late Nite looked like something was funny.

"Don't you mock me, boy. He hiding out already?"

The snicker stopped. "What?"

"I say, is he hiding out? 'Cause that ain't gonna help him Friday."

"Friday? What's that?"

"It's the day at the end of the week. The day Bigmouth and his crew from over there-" she jerked her chin "-say he gonna come over and clean his clock."

"What clock? What you talking about, clock?"

Miss Crawford regarded the young man. "I don't like that Bigmouth none," she finally said, "but Lord Almighty, at least his crew ain't stupid. Maybe I was wrong. Never you mind." She turned to leave.

"Wait, old lady. Just wait. What the h.e.l.l you saying?" He stepped around in front of her.

"Watch your tongue, boy. Don't no one curse at me."

Late Nite rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yo, sorry. But lady, what you saying?"

"Not sure I should tell you now. Like I say, maybe I was wrong."

He made a fist, though he didn't raise it to her. "If you got something you think C-4 oughta know ..."

Miss Crawford took a quick step back, eyeing the clenched hand. She didn't take her eyes from it as she swallowed and said, "Why I'm here, I was studying on it, and I decided, if one boy gonna be running both blocks, might better be C-4 than Bigmouth."

"Running both blocks? Who say?"

"Bigmouth. Starting Friday. High noon, he be here, like this was some stupid movie. That's what started me thinking. C-4, he mean and ugly, but he run a business. He don't be playing no games over here. If we gotta choose between a clown and a hard case, maybe best we have a hard case. I imagine, C-4 make a deal, probably he stick to it."

"That's for sure." The young man waved it aside. "You telling me Bigmouth and his crew coming here Friday, to get up in C-4's grille?"

"How many times I gotta say it before it sink through your thick skull? Bigmouth, he's thinking this the time to do it, because of the amnesty."

"Amnesty? What the-what do that mean?"

She gave a sigh. "The police amnesty, you natural fool. All them cops C-4 be paying to watch his backside, they getting amnesty this week if they sign a paper says they ain't gonna protect you all anymore. The mayor, he wanted them to have to tell all about you too, but that got negotiated. You know that word?"