Double Deuce

And for my wife and sons, who have taught me everything else that matters.

She loved carrying Crystal, loved the weight of her, the smell of her hair, the soft spot still in the back of her skull, where the white lady doctor at City had told her the skull hadn’t grown together yet. They were together most of the time, because there was no one to leave Crystal with, but Devona didn’t mind much. Crystal was a quiet baby, and Devona would carry her around and talk with her, about their life together and what it would be like when Crystal got bigger and how they’d be friends when Crystal grew up, because they’d be only fourteen years apart.

She had Crystal dressed that day in a new snowsuit with a little hood that she’d bought at Filene’s with money she’d gotten from a boyfriend named Tallboy who dealt dope and might be Crystal’s father. It was white satin with lace at the hood, and she liked the way Crystal’s face looked, so black in the middle of the white satin. Devona had on a pink sweatsuit with pink high-cut sneakers that she wore with rainbow shoelaces. It was a warm spring and she wasn’t wearing anything over the sweatsuit, even though she had Crystal bundled in her snowsuit.

She was on Hobart Street. It wasn’t her turf, but she wasn’t down special with one gang, and she might have even duked one of the Hobart Street Fros sometime. She wasn’t sure. Still she felt the little tight feeling in her stomach when the van crawled up behind her and followed along as she walked. She always felt a little protected when she had Crystal. People were usually more careful about a baby, and she always felt like she could protect her baby, which made her feel like she could protect herself.

She rounded the corner by Double Deuce with the spring sun warm in her face. The van came around behind her. Somebody spoke to her from the passenger side.

“You Tallboy’s slut?”

“I not no one’s slut,” she said. “I Crystal’s momma.”

Somebody else in the van said, “Yeah, she’s Tallboy’s.” And something exploded in her head. She never heard the shots that killed her, and killed Crystal. There were twelve of them, fired as fast as the trigger would pull, from a 9mm semiautomatic pistol through the back side door of the van. Devona fell on top of her baby, but it didn’t matter. Three slugs penetrated her body and lodged in the baby’s chest, one of them in her heart. Their blood was mixed on the sidewalk outside Twenty-two Hobart Street, when the first cruiser arrived. It wasn’t until the wagon came and they moved her to put her on the litter that anyone even knew the baby was there and they had two homicides and not one.

“Winter’s first green is gold,” I said to Hawk.

“Sure,” he said.

He ran as he did everything, as if he’d been born to do it, designed for the task by a clever and symmetrical god. He was breathing easily, and running effortlessly. The only sign of energy expended was the sweat that brightened his face and shaved head.

“You working on anything?” Hawk said.

“I was thinking about breakfast,” I said.

“I might need some support,” Hawk said.

“You might?”

“Yeah. Pay’s lousy.”

“How much?” I said.

“I’m getting nothing.”

“I’ll take half,” I said.

“You ain’t worth half,” Hawk said. “Besides I got the job and already put in a lot of time on it. Give you a third.”

“Cheap bastard,” I said.

“Take it or leave it,” Hawk said.

“Okay,” I said, “you got me over a barrel. I’m in for a third.”

Hawk smiled and with his arm at his side turned his hand palm up backhand. I slapped it lightly once.

“Housing project called Double Deuce,” Hawk said. “You know it?”

“Twenty-two Hobart Street,” I said.

We were running past the lagoon now, on the outer peninsula. There were ducks there, pleased with the spring, paddling vigorously, and regularly sticking their heads underwater, just for the hell of it.

“Ever been in Double Deuce?”

“No.”

Hawk nodded and smiled. “Nobody goes in there. Cops don’t go in there, even black cops, except in pairs. Only people go in there are the ones that live there, which is mostly women and small children. And the gangs.”

“The gangs run it,” I said.

“For a little while longer,” Hawk said.

“Then who’s going to run it?”

“We is.”

We went over the footbridge from the lagoon and rejoined the main body of the Esplanade. There were several sea gulls up on the grass, trying to pass for ducks, and failing. It didn’t matter there was nobody feeding either of them at this hour.

“You and me?” I said.

“Un huh.”

“Which will require us, first, to clean out the gangs.”

“Un huh.”

“We got any help on this?”

“Sure,” Hawk said. “I got you, and you got me.”

“Perfect,” I said. “Why are we doing this?”

“Fourteen-year-old kid got killed, and her baby, drive-by shooting.”

“Gang?” I said.

“Probably. Church group in the neighborhood, women mostly, some kind of minister, couple of deacons. They got together, decided to stand up to the gangs. Neighborhood watch, public vigil, shit like that.”

“Bet that brought the Homeboys to their knees,” I said.

“There was another drive-by and one of the deacons got kneecapped.”

“Which probably cut back on the turnout for the next vigil,” I said.

“Sharply,” Hawk said. “And they talk to the Housing Police and the Boston Police and… ” Hawk shrugged. “So the minister he ask around and he come up with my name, and we talk, and he hire me at the aforementioned sum, which I’m generously sharing with you ‘cause I know you need the work.”

“What do they want done?”

“They want the murderer of the kid and her baby brought to, ah, justice. And they want the gangs out of the project.”

“You got a plan?” I said.

“Figure you and me go talk with the minister and the church folks, and then we work one out.”

The traffic was just starting to accumulate on Storrow Drive and the first of the young female joggers had appeared. Colorful tights stretched smoothly over tight backsides.

“The gangs don’t scare us?” I said.

“I a brother,” Hawk said.

“Double Deuce doesn’t scare you?” I said.

“No more than you,” Hawk said.

“Uh oh!” I said.

“She can be taught,” Susan said.

“You think anyone can be taught,” I said. “And you think you can do it.”

“You have occasionally shaken my confidence,” Susan said. “But generally that’s true.”

She had on nearly knee-high black boots and some sort of designer jeans that fit like nylons, and a windbreaker that looked like denim and was made of silk, which puzzled me. I’d have thought it should be the other way around. Her thick black hair had recently been cut, and was now a relatively short mass of curls around her face. Her eyes remained huge and bottomless. She had a cup of hot water with lemon which she held in both hands and sipped occasionally. I was drinking coffee.

“Got any thoughts on gangs?” I said.

“Gangs?”

“Yeah, youth gangs,” I said.

“Very little,” Susan said. Pearl came close and then shied away when Susan reached for the ball.

“You’re a shrink,” I said. “You’re supposed to know about human behavior.”

“I can’t even figure out this dog,” Susan said. “Why do you want to know about gangs?”

“Hawk and I are going to rid a housing project of them.”

“How nice,” Susan said. “Maybe it could become a subspecialty for you. In addition to leaping tall buildings at a single bound.”

“Spenser’s the name. Gangs are the game,” I said. “You know anything about youth gangs?”

“No,” Susan said. “I don’t think many people do. There’s a lot of literature. Mostly sociology, but my business is essentially with individuals.”

“Mine too,” I said.

Pearl came to me with the yellow tennis ball chomped in one side of her mouth, and pushed her nose under my forearm, which caused my coffee to slop from the cup onto my thigh. I put the cup down and reached for the ball and she turned her head away.

“Isn’t that adorable,” Susan said.

I feinted with my right and grabbed at the ball with my left, Pearl moved her head a quarter inch and I missed again.

“I haven’t been this outclassed since I fought Joe Walcott,” I said.

Susan got up and went into her kitchen and came out with a damp towel and rubbed out the coffee stain in my jeans.

“That was kind of exciting,” I said.

“You want to tell me about this gang thing you’re involved in?”

“Sure,” I said. “If you’ll keep rubbing the coffee stain out of my thigh while I do it.”

She didn’t but I told her anyway.

While I told her Pearl went across the yard and dropped the tennis ball and looked at it and barked at it. A robin settled on the fence near her and she spotted it and went into her point, foot raised, head and tail extended, like a hunting print. Susan nudged me and nodded at her. I picked up a pebble and tossed it at the robin and said “Bang” as it flew up. Pearl looked after it and then back at me.

“Do you really think the `bang‘ fooled her?” Susan said.

“If I fired a real gun she’d run like hell,” I said.

“Oh, yes,” Susan said.

We were quiet. In the Globe I had read that coffee wasn’t bad for you after all. I was celebrating by drinking some, in the middle of the morning. Susan had made it for me: instant coffee in the microwave with condensed skim milk instead of cream. But it was still coffee and it was still officially not bad for me.

“I don’t see how you and Hawk are going to do that,” Susan said.

“I don’t either, yet.”

“I mean the police gang units in major cities can’t prevent gangs. How do you two think you can?”

“Well, for one thing it is we two,” I said.

“I’ll concede that,” Susan said.

“Secondly, the cops are coping with many gangs in a whole city. We only have to worry about the gangs’ impact on Double Deuce.”

“But even if you succeed, and I don’t see how you can, won’t it just drive them into another neighborhood? Where they will terrorize other people?”

“That’s the kind of problem the cops have,” I said. “They are supposed to protect all the people. That’s not Hawk’s problem or mine. We only have to protect the people in Double Deuce.”

“But other people deserve it just as much.”

“If the best interest of a patient,” I said, “conflicts with the best interest of a nonpatient, what do you do?”

Susan smiled. “I am guided always,” she said, “by the best interest of my patient. It is the only way I can do my work.”

I nodded.

Pearl picked up the tennis ball and went to the corner of the yard near the still barren grape arbor and dug a hole and buried the ball.

“Do you suppose that this is her final statement on chase-the-bally?” I said.

“I think she’s just given up trying to train us,” Susan said. “And is putting it in storage until someone smarter shows up.”

“Which should be soon,” I said.

Hawk parked his Jag at the curb under a streetlight and we got out.

“Walk in here,” Hawk said, “and you could be anywhere. Any city.”

“Except some are higher.”

“Except for that,” Hawk said.

There was absolutely no life in the courtyard. It was lit by the one security spotlight that no one had been able to break yet. It was littered with beer cans and Seven-up bottles and empty jugs of Mogen David wine. There were sandwich wrappers and the incorruptible plastic hamburger cartons that would be here long after the last ding dong of eternity.

The meeting was in what the urban planners had originally no doubt called the rec room, and, in fact, the vestige of a Ping-Pong table was tipped up against the cinderblock wall at the rear of the room. The walls were painted dark green to discourage graffiti, so the graffiti artists had simply opted for Day-Glo spray paints in contrasting colors. The Celotex ceiling had been pulled down, and most of the metal grid on which the ceiling tiles had rested was bent and twisted. In places long sections of it hung down hazardously. There were recessed light cans with no bulbs in amongst the jumble of broken gridwork. The room light came from a couple of clamp-on portable lights at the end of extension cords. In the middle of the room, in an incomplete circle, a dozen unmatched chairs, mostly straight-backed kitchen chairs, had been set up. All but two of the chairs were occupied. All the occupants were black. I was with Hawk. He was black. I was not. And rarely had I noticed it so forcefully.

A fat black man stood as Hawk and I came in. His head was shaved like Hawk’s and he had a full beard. He wore a dark three-piece suit and a pastel flowered tie. His white-on-white shirt had a widespread collar, and gold cuff links with diamond chips glinted at his wrists. When he spoke he sounded like Paul Robeson, which pleased him.

“Come,” he said. “Sit here.”

I already knew who he was. He was the Reverend Orestes Tillis. He knew who I was and didn’t seem to like it.

“You Spenser?”

“Yes.”

“This is our community action committee,” Tillis said to Hawk. He didn’t look at me again. An old man, third from the left, wearing a Celtics warm-up jacket that had ridden up over the bulge of his stomach, said, “What’s the face doing here?”

I looked at Hawk.

“That you,” he said and smiled his wide happy smile.

“When Hawk mentioned him,” Tillis said, “I assumed him to be a brother.”

“You the man?” the old guy said.

“No,” I said.

“Don’t see why we need some high-priced face down here telling us how to live.”

“He’s with me,” Hawk said.

“Too many goddamn fancy pants uptown faces come down here in their goddamn three-piece suits telling us how to live,” the old man said. I was wearing jeans and a leather jacket. The rest of the committee made a sort of neutralized supportive sound.

“Gee,” I said. “They don’t like me either.”

“I can’t take you anywhere,” Hawk said. He turned toward the old guy and said quietly, “He with me.”

The old guy said, “So what?”

Hawk gazed at him quietly for a moment and the old guy shifted in his seat and then, slowly, began nodding his head.

“Sure,” he said. “Sure enough.”

Hawk said, “I come over here to bail your asses out, and Spenser come with me, because I hired him to, and we probably the only two people in America can bail your asses out. So you tell us your situation, and who giving you grief, and then you sort of get back out the way, and we get to bailing.”

“I want to be on record, ‘fore we start,” Tillis said. “I got no truck with the white Satan. I don’t want no help from him, and I don’t trust no brother who get help from him. White men can’t help us solve our troubles. They the source of our troubles.”

“Price you paying,” Hawk said. “Can’t afford to be too choosy.”

“I don’t like the face,” Tillis said.

I was leaning on the wall with my arms folded. Hawk gazed pleasantly at Tillis for a moment. “Orestes,” he said. “Shut the fuck up.”

There was a soft intake of breath in the room. Hawk and Tillis locked eyes for a moment. Then Tillis turned away.

“I’m on the record,” he said, and went and sat on a chair in the front row.

“Now,” Hawk said, “anybody got an idea who killed this little girl and her baby?”

“Cops know?” I said.

A woman said, “You know, everybody know.” She had long graceful legs and a thick body, and her skin was the color of coffee ice cream.

“It’s the Hobarts, or the Silks, or some other bunch of gangbangers that keep changing the name of the gangs so fast I can’t keep track. And how we supposed to stand up to them? We a bunch of women and old men and little kids. How we supposed to make some kind of life here when the gangbangers fuck with us whenever they feel like?”

“They don’t fuck with me,” the old man said.

“Course they do,” the woman said. “You old and fat and you can’t do nothing about it. That’s why you here. They ain’t no men here, ‘cept a few old fat ones that couldn’t run off.”

The old man looked at the ground and didn’t say anything, but he shook his head stubbornly.

“They got guns,” another woman said. She was smallish and wore tight red pants that came to the middle of her calves and she had two small children in her lap. Both children wore only diapers. They sat quietly, squirming a little, but mostly just sitting staring with surprising dullness at nothing very much. “They got machine guns and rifles and I don’t know what kinds of guns they all are.”

“And they run the project,” Hawk said.

“They run everything,” the big woman said. “They own the corridors, the stairwells. They’d own the elevators, if the elevators worked, which a course they don’t.”

“They got parents?” I said.

Nobody looked at me. The woman with the thick body answered the question, but she answered it to Hawk.

“Ain’t no difference they got parents,” she repeated my word with scorn. “Some do. Some don’t. Parents can’t do nothing about it, if they do got ‘em. How come you brought him here? Reverend didn’t tell us we’d have to talk to no white people. White people don’t know nothing.”

“He knows enough,” Hawk said. “Name some names.”

The group was silent. One of the babies coughed and his mother patted him on the back. The bigbodied woman with the graceful legs shifted in her seat a little bit. The old guy glowered at the floor. Everyone else sat staring hard at nothing.

“That get a little dangerous, naming names?” Hawk said. He looked at the Reverend Tillis. Tillis was standing with his hands behind his back, gazing solemnly at the group. He shook his head sadly, as if he would have liked to speak up but grave responsibilities prevented him. “Sure,” Hawk said. “Anybody got an idea why the kid and her baby got shot?”

Nobody said anything.

Hawk looked at me. I shrugged.

“Me and Satan gonna be around here most of the time the next few weeks,” Hawk said. “Till we get things straightened out. You have any thoughts be sure to tell us. Either one of us. You talk to Spenser, be like talking to me.”

Nobody said anything. Everyone stared at us blankly, except Tillis, who looked at me and didn’t like what he saw.