Murder at the Foul Line (29 page)

I didn’t play so proud after that. I passed off and only took a coupla shots myself the rest of the game. I think I even missed
one on purpose towards the end. I ain’t stupid. We still won, but not by much; I saw to it that it wasn’t so one-sided, like
it had been before.

When it was over, Wallace wanted to play another game, but the sun was dropping and I said I had to get on home. I needed
to pick up my sister at aftercare, and my moms likes both of us to be inside our apartment when she gets home from work. Course,
I didn’t tell any of the fellas that. It wasn’t somethin’ they needed to know.

Wallace was goin’ back my way, I knew, but he didn’t offer to give me a ride. He just looked at me dead-eyed and smiled a
little before him and his boys walked back to the Maxima parked along the curb. My stomach flipped some, I got to admit, seein’
that flatline thing in his peeps. I knew from that empty look that it wasn’t over between us, but what could I do?

I picked up my ball and headed over to Georgia Avenue. Walked south towards my mother’s place as the first shadows of night
were crawling onto the streets.

It’s five a.m. I’m sitting in my cruiser up near the station house, sipping a coffee. My first one of the night. Rolling my
head around on these tired shoulders of mine. You get these aches when you’re behind the wheel of a car six hours at a stretch.
I oughta buy one of those things the African cabbies all sit on, looks like a rack of wooden balls. You know, for your back.
I been doin’ this for twenty-two years now, so I guess whatever damage I’ve done to my spine and all, it’s too late.

I work midnights in the 4
^th
District. 4D starts at the Maryland line and runs south to Harvard Street and Georgia. The western border is Rock Creek Park
and the eastern line is North Capitol Street. It’s what the newspeople call a high-crime district. For a year or two I tried
working 3D, keeping the streets safe for rich white people basically, but I got bored. I guess I’m one of those adrenaline
junkies they’re always talking about on those cop shows on TV, the shows got female cops who look more beautiful than any
female cop I’ve ever seen. I guess that’s what it is. It’s not like I’ve ever examined myself or anything like that. My wife
and I don’t talk about it, that’s for damn sure. A ton of cop marriages don’t make it; I suppose mine has survived ’cause
I never bring any of this shit home with me. Not that she knows about, anyway.

My shift runs from the stroke of twelve till dawn, though I usually get into the station early so I can nab the cruiser I
like. I prefer the Crown Victoria. It’s roomier, and once you flood the gas into the cylinders, it really moves. Also, I like
to ride alone.

Last night, Friday, wasn’t much different than any other. It’s summer; more people are outside, trying to stay out of their
unair-conditioned places as long as possible, so this time of year we put extra cars out on the streets. Also, like I reminded
some of the younger guys at the station last night, this was the week welfare checks got mailed out, something they needed
to
know. Welfare checks mean more drunks, more domestic disturbances, more violence. One of the young cops I said it to, he said,
“Thank you, Sergeant Dad,” but he didn’t do it in a bad way. I know those young guys appreciate it when I mention shit like
that.

Soon as I drove south I saw that the avenue—Georgia Avenue, that is—was hot with activity. All those Jap tech bikes the young
kids like to ride, curbed outside the all-night Wing n’ Things. People spilling out of bars, hanging outside the Korean beer
markets, scratching game cards, talking trash, ignoring the crackheads hitting them up for spare change. Drunks lying in the
doorways of the closed-down shops, their heads resting against the riot gates. Kids, a lot of kids, standing on corners, grouped
around tricked-out cars, rap music and that go-go crap coming from the open windows. The farther you go south, the worse all
of this gets.

The bottom of the barrel is that area between Quebec Street and Irving. The newspapers lump it all in with a section of town
called Petworth, but I’m talking about Park View. Poverty, drug activity, crime. They got that Section 8 housing back in there,
the Park Morton complex. What we used to call the projects back when you could say it. Government-assisted hellholes. Gangs
like the Park Street and Morton Street Crews. Open-air drug markets; I’m talking about blatant transactions right out there
on Georgia Avenue. Drugs are Park View’s industry; the dealers are the biggest employers in this part of town.

The dealers get the whole neighborhood involved. They recruit kids to be lookouts for ’em. Give these kids beepers and cells
to warn them off when the Five-O comes around. Entry-level positions. Some of the parents, when there
are
parents,
participate, too. Let these drug dealers duck into their apartments when there’s heat. Teach their kids not to talk to the
Man. So you got kids being raised in a culture that says the drug dealers are the good guys and the cops are bad. I’m not
lying. It’s exactly how it is.

The trend now is to sell marijuana. Coke, crack and heroin, you can still get it, but the new thing is to deal pot. Here’s
why: In the District, possession or distribution of marijuana up to ten pounds—
ten pounds
—is a misdemeanor. Kid gets popped for selling grass, he knows he’s gonna do no time. Even on a distribution beef, black juries
won’t send a black kid into the prison system for a marijuana charge, that’s a proven fact. Prosecutors know this, so they
usually no-paper the case. That means most of the time they don’t even go to court with it. I’m not bullshitting. Makes you
wonder why they even bother having drug laws to begin with. They legalize the stuff, they’re gonna take the bottom right out
the market, and the violent crimes in this city would go down to, like, nothing. Don’t get me started. I know it sounds strange,
a cop saying this. But you’d be surprised how many of us feel that way.

Okay, I got off the subject. I was talking about my night.

Early on I got a domestic call, over on Otis Place. When I got there, two cruisers were on the scene, four young guys, two
of them with flashlights. A rookie named Buzzy talked to a woman at the front door of her row house, then came back and told
me that the object of the complaint was behind the place, in the alley. I walked around back alone and into the alley and
right off I recognized the man standing inside the fence of his tiny, brown-grass yard. Harry Lang, sixty-some years old.
I’d been to this address a few times in the past ten years.

I said, “Hello, Harry,” Harry said, “Officer,” and I said,
“Wait right here, okay?” Then I went through the open gate. Harry’s wife was on her back porch, flanked by her two sons, big
strapping guys, all of them standing under a triangle of harsh white light coming from a naked bulb. Mrs. Lang’s face and
body language told me that the situation had resolved itself. Generally, once we arrive, domestic conflicts tend to calm down
on their own.

Mrs. Lang said that Harry had been verbally abusive that night, demanding money from her, even though he’d just got paid.
I asked her if Harry had struck her, and her response was negative. But she had a job, too, she worked just as hard as him,
why should she support his lifestyle and let him speak to her like that… I was listening and not listening, if you know what
I mean. I made my sincere face and nodded every few seconds or so.

I asked her if she wanted me to lock Harry up, and of course she said no. I asked what she did want, and she said she didn’t
want to see him “for the rest of the night.” I told her I thought I could arrange that, and started back to have a talk with
Harry. I felt the porch light go off behind me as I hit the bottom of the wooden stairs. Dogs had begun to bark in the neighboring
yards.

Harry was short and low-slung, a black black man, nearly featureless in the dark. He wore a porkpie hat and his clothes were
pressed and clean. He kept his eyes down as I spoke to him over the barks of the dogs. His reaction time was very slow when
I asked for a response. I could see right away that he was on a nod.

Harry had been a controlled heroin junkie for the last thirty years. During that time, he’d always held a job, lived in this
same house and been there, in one condition or another, for
his kids. I’d wager he went to church on Sundays, too. But a junkie was what he was. Heroin was a slow ride down. Some folks
could control it to some degree and never hit the bottom.

I asked Harry if he could find a place to sleep that night other than his house, and he told me that he “supposed” he could.
I told him I didn’t want to see him again any time soon, and he said, “It’s mutual.” I chuckled at that, giving him some of
his pride back, which didn’t cost me a thing. He walked down the alley, stopping once to cup his hands around a match as he
put fire to a cigarette.

I drove back over to Georgia. A guy flagged me down just to talk. They see my car number and they know it’s me. Sergeant Peters,
the old white cop. You get a history with these people. Some of these kids, I know their parents. I’ve busted ’em from time
to time. Busted their grandparents, too. Shows you how long I’ve been doing this.

Down around Morton I saw Tonio Harris, a neighborhood kid, walking alone towards the Black Hole. Tonio was wearing those work
boots and the baggy pants low, like all the other kids, although he’s not like most of them. I took his mother in for drugs
a long time ago, back when that Love Boat stuff was popular and making everyone crazy; his father—the one who impregnated
his mother, I mean—he’s doing a stretch for manslaughter, his third fall. Tonio’s mother’s clean now, at least I think she
is; anyway, she’s done a fairly good job with him. By that I mean he’s got no juvenile priors, from what I know. A minor miracle
down here, you ask me.

I rolled down my window. “Hey, Tonio, how’s it going?” I slowed down to a crawl, took in the sweetish smell of reefer in the
air. Tonio was still walking, not looking at me, but he mumbled something about “I’m maintainin’,” or some shit like that.
“You take care of yourself in there,” I said, meaning in the Hole, “and get yourself home right after.” He didn’t respond
verbally, just made a half-assed kind of acknowledgment with his chin.

I cruised around for the next couple of hours. Turned my spot on kids hanging in the shadows, told them to break it up and
move along. Asked a guy in Columbia Heights why his little boy was out on the stoop, dribbling a basketball, at one in the
morning. Raised my voice at a boy, a lookout for a dealer, who was sitting on top of a trash can, told him to get his ass
on home. Most of the time, this is my night. We’re just letting the critters know we’re out here.

At around two I called in a few cruisers to handle the closing of the Black Hole. You never know what’s going to happen at
the end of the night there, what kind of beefs got born inside the club, who looked at who a little too hard for one second
too long. Hard to believe that an ex-cop from Prince Georges County runs the place. That a cop would put all this trouble
on us, bring it into our district. He’s got D.C. cops moonlighting as bouncers in there, too, working the metal detectors
at the door. I talked with one, a young white cop, earlier in the night. I noticed the brightness in his eyes and the sweat
beaded across his forehead. He was scared, like I gave a shit. Asked us as a favor to show some kind of presence at closing
time. Called me Sarge. Okay. I didn’t answer him. I got no sympathy for the cops who work those go-go joints, especially not
since Officer Brian Gibson was shot dead outside the Ibex Club a few years back. But if something goes down around the place,
it’s on me. So I do my job.

I called in a few cruisers and set up a couple of traffic barriers on Georgia, one at Lamont and one at Park. We diverted
the cars like that, kept the kids from congregating on the street. It worked. Nothing too bad was happening that I could see.
I was standing outside my cruiser, talking to another cop, Eric Young, who was having a smoke. That’s when I saw Tonio Harris
running east on Morton, heading for the housing complex. A late-model black import was behind him, and there were a couple
of YBMs with their heads out the open windows, yelling shit out, laughing at the Harris kid, like that.

“You all right here?” I said to Young.

“Fine, Sarge,” he said.

My cruiser was idling. I slid under the wheel and pulled down on the tree.

Just around midnight, when I was fixin’ to go out, my moms walked into my room. I was sittin’ on the edge of my bed, lacing
up my Timbies, listening to PGC comin’ from the box, Tigger doin’ his shout-outs and then movin’ right into the new Jay-Z,
which is tight. The music was so loud that I didn’t hear my mother walk in, but when I looked up, there she was, one arm crossed
over the other like she does when she’s tryin’ to be hard, staring me down.

“Whassup, Mama?”

“What’s up with
you
?”

I shrugged. “Back Yard is playin’ tonight. Was thinkin’ I’d head over to the Hole.”

“Did you ask me if you could?”

“Do I
have
to?” I used that tone she hated, knew right away I’d made a mistake.

“You’re living in my house, aren’t you?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You payin’ rent now?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Talkin’ about
do I have to
.”

“Can I go?”

Mama uncrossed her arms. “Thought you said you’d be studyin’ up for that test this weekend.”

“I will. Gonna do it tomorrow morning, first thing. Just wanted to go out and hear a little music tonight, is all.”

I saw her eyes go soft on me then. “You gonna study for that exam, you hear?”

“I promise I will.”

“Go on, then. Come right back after the show.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I noticed as she was walkin’ out the door her shoulders were getting stooped some. Bad posture and a hard life. She wasn’t
but thirty-six years old.