Samaritan

by Richard Price

  “Beautiful,” Ray said again.

  “Yeah,” Salim purred. “You really got me going again with my art. You saved my life the other day.”

  “Why are all these kids packin’?” Ray asked, to deflect the flattery.

  “Yeah, OK. The reason they all got guns? It ain’t to rob nobody or hurt nobody. It’s for protection, you know, protecting what’s theirs because that’s the way it is.”

  Omar stepped on one of his father’s drawings. “Take care, Boo Boo,” Salim said gently, pushing his son backward off the matting. “OK, but now here’s the one I really want you to see.”

  Salim singled out another ghetto waif with a Glock-19. The kid, sporting comically oversize hand-me-downs and a sideways baseball cap, was pointing his hand-cannon at the viewer, squinting one-eyed to draw a bead, the tip of his tongue peeking out in concentration.

  “What’s Mine Is Mine” ran in bold letters beneath his sneakered feet.

  “It’s strong,” Ray said.

  “Yeah. That’s what I think, too. It’s gonna be my new logo.”

  “Logo for what?”

  “Yeah, OK. This is what I want to talk to you about.”

  “OK,” Ray said, thinking, Shit . . .

  “I got a business proposition for you. See, the other day, like I said, you really got me going about my future, and look . . .” Salim produced the slim catalogue of a sportswear wholesaler; page after page of item codes and order forms, Ray’s eyes getting heavier than lead.

  “OK, this here?” Salim touched his new logo. “It’s gonna cost me seventy-five dollars to make a silk screen, OK? Now I can handle that off my savings. But here . . .” He ran a finger down one of the stock lists. “I can get me a dozen T-shirts white or black for like twenty-five dollars, OK? I order say, fifty dozen? That’s fifty times twenty-five is like twelve hundred and fifty dollars, or a hundred dozen, that’s . . .”

  Salim extracted a slip from his jeans pocket; Ray saying, “Twenty-five hundred.”

  “Yeah, uh-huh. Now. Those hundred dozen I just bought? I take them to this printer with my silk-screen? That’s like four dollars a shirt for the ‘What’s Mine Is Mine’ logo to go on, OK? So that’s like four times twelve hundred shirts is forty-eight hundred dollars plus the twenty-five hundred dollars for the shirts themselves is like a seventy-three-hundred-dollar investment, breaks down to a little over six dollars per shirt except for I am selling these shirts for fifteen dollars each, which is like a nine-dollar profit or a ten-thousand-seven-hundred-dollar profit on the whole thing minus five hundred for a vendor’s license which is still over ten Bigs free and clear, no overhead, no store rent, no nothing, just me and a folding table right on the street, or hey, I don’t even need a folding table, I’ll sell ’em on the hoof straight out the backpack ’cause I love to walk and I ain’t never been afraid to meet the people. I’m telling you, Ray, Mr. Mitchell, I’ll be paying you back in like three weeks, reinvest the rest in more shirts and I’m off to the races.”

  “Seventy-three hundred . . . Jesus, Salim.”

  “OK, OK . . .” Salim grinned, prepared for this. “See, you talk about John Shaker, how he’s a prominent television personality now and that’s great because he never took his eye off the prize and he got what’s his . . . But like, that’s just inspiration for me because I know what it took to be a focused individual in that school, how hard that was back then. See, W.E.B. Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk, he called it the crab-cage effect, how if one crab starts trying to climb out of the bucket the others by reflex pull him down, but Shaker got out irregardless and more power to him but see, I’m in that same crab bucket still and you know, back then I didn’t even know enough to try to climb out. I mean, back then I was all about the street, being a kingpin on the street, and we all know where that leads, right? And that day you took me to the advertising agency? And then I was supposed to go right away to the art school and I didn’t? You was trying to hoist me out of the bucket but I was too naive to know that, my vision was too limited to see that, and I blew it. I disappointed you, I disappointed myself . . . But whatever has been done to me since then . . . I got shot,” showing Ray a starred scar on his shoulder, “stabbed,” raising his shirt to reveal a whitish keloid on his rib cage, “got incarcerated three times, two times for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, nothing more, been in the joint like, six years altogether but here I am, you know what I’m saying? I’m still here, I don’t eat meat, I don’t drink, I don’t use profanity, I read everything I can get my hands on, I’m observing the, the tenets of my religion, get up five o’clock every morning to perform my prayers. I got my son, my health, and now, right now I’m finally about crawling up and out of that crab bucket and yeah, seventy-three hundred dollars is a lot of cheese, and there may be a few other people I can try and touch for it like my mother, who frankly has been in contempt for me since the day I was born or one or two others that in terms of my legal and spiritual well-being I don’t even want to associate with no more let alone be in debt to, but I’m coming to you for it, because ever since I blew off the art school thing? I need for you to be proud of me. I need for you to see your faith in me was not unabated.”

  Salim delivered all this while balanced on his hams, surrounded by his artwork in the middle of the floor, Ray uncomfortably standing over him, remembering one of his mother’s favorite sayings: On your back can be a very effective fighting position.

  “Are we talking fifty dozen or a hundred,” Ray dropping to one knee in order to achieve psychic balance. “Because you started out talking fifty.”

  “I’ll leave that up to you.”

  “Because fifty dozen is half that amount.”

  “No, I hear you.”

  Omar had found a pen and squatting splay-footed started scribbling lines across one of his father’s drawings, long flattened interconnected Z’s, like the polygraph readout of a liar.

  “Watch it, honey,” Ray said, then repeated to himself, Honey.

  But Salim simply turned the drawing over, tapped the blank back and said in that overloud voice, “Draw a picture for Ray, Boo Boo. Draw.”

  “Jaw,” the kid said, once again delicately squatting, and continued his back-and-forth lines.

  “Make a face, Boo Boo.”

  As Ray crouched there, squirming over Salim’s pitch, Omar drew two wobbly circles inside a larger circle, like two eggs in a frying pan.

  “See, all this I’m talking about with you?” Salim bounced to take the burn out of his knees. “I mean it’s for me, yeah sure, but mainly it’s for my son, you know what I’m saying? I mean, I’m not gonna be one of these no-show fathers. I’m determined on that.”

  “No, I hear you,” Ray said faintly.

  “OK, then,” Salim said, then, gingerly duck-walking toward Ray, embraced him in a light hug, Ray staring at Omar over his father’s shoulder, the boy untroubled, one eye shut in a luxuriously feline yawn; Ray thinking, Fifty dozen and be done with it.

  Both men rose to their feet, Ray self-consciously brushing the knees of his jeans.

  “Hey, Mr. Mitchell?” Salim began, his voice suddenly awkward. “Can I ask your advice on something?”

  And with that simple vague pre-request, something in the tone of it, the genuine tentativeness of it, Ray completely melted, suddenly found himself more at Salim’s disposal than he had been at any other point in this visit.

  “I have got to tell you, I’m like almost thirty years old, right? And you won’t find many African-American men admitting to this, but I don’t understand jack about women, I really don’t.”

  “I’m divorced myself,” Ray said easily, this flip self-effacement masking an eagerness to successfully field whatever was coming his way.

  “See, my fiancée, Michelle, right? She works in Jersey City, is like the receptionist for this stockbrokerage company on Exchange Place? Started out as a office temp after Omar was born, they liked her so much they gave her the job full-time, OK? And she bring
s home three hundred and ninety-two dollars at the end of the week and I told you how she had me on this allowance, was breaking my back about me not being able to contribute to Omar’s upbringing, the house maintenance and everything else, right? OK. So. The other day I come in with the five hundred of the money you gave me to finally pitch in, there you go, right?”

  Ray knew exactly what was coming now, and almost physically flexed for it.

  “So I give her the cash, right? She’s like, ‘Why’d that guy give you this money. What’s he want you to do for it. What are you into,’ all bitching me out. And I’m, ‘What the hell, ’Chelle, you always complaining about me not holding up my end around here, coming through around here, the man’s my old teacher, has been trying to get me to believe in myself since the dinosaur days, what is your problem?’ And Ray”—Salim reached out, touched the back of his hand—“when I was in jail? She’d come every week to visit. Always had a smile on her face, always brought the baby, food, cigarettes, books. Whatever I asked for, and she never missed a visiting day. And you know, just because I wasn’t bringing in money, that didn’t mean I wasn’t partaking in the house, you know what I’m saying? When I first met her, she had a alcohol problem. Nineteen years old with a alcohol problem. Pint bottles of Hennessey in the hamper, under the bed, behind the couch, and I helped her clean up. I was like a bombardment of positivism. I went to meetings with her and everything. I couldn’t bring her into my religion, she’s still Christian, but she ain’t had a drink for five years. I did that. Me. But now here’s the thing . . . I’m free. I’m on the brink of making it all happen for myself, for us, I ain’t never been in better shape physically, mentally, spiritually, I walk in the door for the first time in years with money for the table?” He reached out and touched Ray again. “Mr. Mitchell. She won’t talk to me, be in bed with me, look me in the eye . . . What’s it about.”

  “Look, Salim,” Ray began, almost incandescent with goodwill. “Now that you’re finally out, she’s probably having a delayed reaction to your going in to begin with. That being said, and I’m just speculating here, so don’t . . . But there are some people, they piss and moan about having to carry you, about how everything’s always on them, blah blah blah. But what they get in exchange for that is total control over you. And, I don’t know your fiancée, but for a lot of people, being on top like that is well worth the carrying charge, do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yeah, uh-huh. I hear you, I hear you,” Salim said. “Domination through financial takeover. But see, I’m not like most men, you know, be they African-American, white, Jew. I don’t have a need to, to dominate in return. I just want to be equal with her. I just want to hold up my end, you know?” Salim’s voice started to get away from him, become feathery and hoarse. “And I will. No doubt about it. I survived six years of penitentiary life, and there is nothing out here, and I mean nothing, that can compare to that. End of the day?” Salim stopped, tried to remaster his delivery. “End of the day? My son . . .” He quickly swiped at his cheekbones with the heels of his palms, a graceful fanning motion outward toward the ears. “End of the day . . .” he repeated, the words then coming out of him in a burst as if racing the tears. “My son will look backwards and have great pride for his father.”

  Salim turned his face away. “I’m sorry.”

  “No problem,” Ray said, desperately trying to hold onto the notion that this kid was maybe still working him, but then losing all self-control himself.

  “Oh, what the hell, Coley. Let’s go for the hundred dozen.”

  Chapter 21

  Danielle—February 24

  Nerese waited for Danielle Martinez in the encroaching twilight under the marquee of the RKO Rajah in downtown Dempsy.

  The first time she had ever come to this place was as a kid to see Enter the Dragon with her grandmother in the early seventies; the last time was as a uniformed cop, helping to oust the more than two hundred homeless who had taken up semipermanent residence inside the long-dark theater in the early nineties.

  In its seventy-seven years of existence, the Rajah had gone from splendiferous vaudeville house to movie palace to multiplex to crack squat, to in its most recent incarnation, school building; the city, a few years back, had finally unloaded this white elephant by leasing it for a dollar a year to Dempsy Community College which, with minimal modifications, had converted the eight smallish theaters into lecture halls.

  A moment after hearing a prolonged rasping bell from inside the building, Nerese was enveloped by exiting students—working adults, for the most part—separating then closing around her like streaming water around a rock. Everyone and his cousin was seemingly making a break for the street through those doors—everyone, that is, except Danielle Martinez.

  She was in there, though, most likely trying to wait Nerese out, but Nerese loved pissing contests and patiently stood her ground in the gray flannel gloom, as the rush-hour rage began to build: an endless stop-start caravan of SUVs, black-and-orange gypsy cabs and red-and-yellow buses, all plowing through the near-black slush and hammering their horns as if they had never encountered traffic lights before.

  And in the midst of her determined idleness, Nerese found herself recalling that last visit to this place nearly twenty years earlier, specifically the half carrying out of one old geezer, a milk-eyed, scabby guy who, despite the fact that Nerese was literally in the act of eighty-sixing him into the street, nonetheless in his fear and disorientation began to speed-rap to her in a disturbingly cheerful voice about the Rajah in its glory days during World War II, when on consecutive Saturday evenings he and his wife had seen Charles Laughton, Ray Milland and Walter Brennan deliver patriotic speeches from the stage before the lights went down; Nerese politely ooing and ahing until the poor bastard was out in the cold with everything he owned—one of those days when she was less than proud about doing her job.

  After having kept Nerese on ice for thirty minutes past the agreed-on meeting time, Danielle finally, reluctantly exited the theater, Nerese easily ID-ing her by the turgid anger in those cat-light eyes.

  She came out swinging. “You think my life’s a game or something?”

  “Excuse me?” Nerese blinked, thinking, We can play it that way.

  “Two thousand messages. I got my boss, the school, everybody going ‘What’s with you and the police, what’s with you and the police.’”

  “Well, as far as I knew you didn’t get any of my messages”—Nerese shrugged, eyeing the traffic—“being that not a one was returned.”

  “Yeah, I got ’em. I just didn’t want to talk to you. You’re a detective, couldn’t you figure that out?”

  Nerese just stared at her for a good fifteen seconds before responding, Danielle still hot but having to look away.

  “You don’t return my calls, not only does it piss me off, but worse for you, it makes me think I’m on to something.”

  Danielle flashed fire, leaning into whatever she was about to say but . . .

  “Think before you talk,” Nerese leaning into it herself. “Think who you’re about to mouth off to,” locking into her eyes.

  Outgunned, Danielle grudgingly toed the line, looking off again, down the darkening boulevard.

  “Let’s just do this nice and easy,” Nerese said placatingly now that she had won the initial face-off. “C’mon, I’ll buy you dinner.”

  Nerese steered Danielle to a corner booth in the Red Robin Diner—no window views—then nudged her to a seat that put her back to the room, so that she had to look either directly at Nerese or at the clown painting for sale above her head.

  Danielle carelessly, wearily hauled her schoolbag up on the table, some textbooks spilling out across the damp-wiped Formica.

  Nerese eyed the titles: Case Problems in Organizational Behavior; Regulating the Poor; The Vertical Cage; Elementary Statistics.

  “What’s your major?” she asked, signaling for two coffees.

  “Public policy.” Danielle began sna
pping toothpicks, her left leg jiggling restlessly.

  “Public policy.” Nerese tried it out. “Can I see one of your notebooks? I’m just curious.”

  “Which one?”

  “Any.”

  She slid a spiral notebook out of the bag and inched it toward Nerese.

  The pages were a pale mint green; the class notes written small in some kind of bronze-toned ink, exquisitely neat.

  Danielle leaned forward, trying to read upside down whatever was being scrutinized.

  “You have a nice hand,” Nerese said softly, turning a few pages. “Beautiful . . .” It appeared to her that Danielle took down every word out of her teacher’s mouth. “Look at this,” brushing her fingers across the back of one page, feeling the minute raised impressions. “My notebooks in college? They looked like someone upended a numbers runner, glued on a page whatever paper scraps fell out of his pockets.”

  “You sound like what’s it . . . Columbo,” Danielle said, reaching for more toothpicks.

  “Me? Nah. I like Law & Order. But damn . . .” She gave Danielle’s calligraphy one last caress. “That’s it. I’m going back to college.”

  The waitress bellied up to the table. “How you doing, baby,” she said to Nerese. “Turkey cheeseburger?”

  “Yeah, and throw me some cottage fries with that?”

  The waitress turned to Danielle.

  “Just coffee,” she said, exhaling adrenaline.

  Nerese watched the waitress shuffle across the room, then returned to Danielle.

  “Six months from now, I’m moving to Florida? There’s three different colleges within twenty miles of my house, and I’m just twenty-four credits shy a bachelor’s,” Nerese said.

  “A bachelor’s in what,” Danielle asked, without interest.

  “In what? Hell, I don’t know, addiction counseling, rehab management, youth services, family services, social services . . . You know, whatever retired cops tend to major in. What’s public policy?”