The Color of Fear

by Thomas Laird

  No sounds. Silence.

  We edge forward toward the front windows. I spin when I think I hear a footfall behind me, but nothing shows up in my line of fire. I’ve got the Bulldog cocked, and this little prick has always had a hair trigger.

  “Ahhh, shit,” Doc murmurs.

  He shrugs at me and motions me onward. We both stand in the blackness of the main room at the front of the apartment.

  Then we hear a shuffling coming out of where the bedroom ought to be.

  My partner beats me to the first move. He is storming the rectangular living space before I can even pivot. It seems as if my feet are glued to the hardwood. That’s how fast this retirement-aged copper has moved past me.

  I hear the discharge of Doc’s service revolver, and I see the form flying through the window.

  Glass shards are exploding in the same direction as the guy we’ve been dogging. Out toward the gangway, beneath this leaping form.

  “Did you clip him?”

  “Fuck no,” Doc groans.

  We tear back toward the staircase, lunge down the steps two or three at a time, and when we finally reach the ground there’s nothing on the sidewalk of the gangway except sparkles of broken glass.

  “Not even one drop of fucking blood ... You think I need bifocals, Jimmy?”

  Then he clutches the left side of his chest.

  “Jesus Christ! I’ll go call an ambulance!”

  He bends over, but then he straightens right back up.

  “The hell you will. It’s just indigestion.”

  “I’m calling for help.”

  “The hell you are. We got a three block walk back, and if you think I’m waiting here alone, you’re fucking nuts.”

  “I wouldn’t let leave you alone.”

  “Goddam right you won’t.”

  “You’re a stubborn goat, Doc.”

  “I got a digestion like a goat, too.”

  “You ain’t ever gonna die. You’re too goddam mean.”

  He crunches his way toward me through the shards and debris.

  *

  “Somebody’s making a move on Rashaan Abu Riad,” I tell her, once my breathing is back to normal.

  “Making a move on who?”

  “On Bobby Wells. The big drug honcho in your hood. You know, the guy who hired Chaka and Creel and Antoine. The guy who called the hit on Ronnie.”

  “Oh, yeah. I heard of him.”

  Her eyes look away from me suddenly. She seems to be retreating again. I have to shake her back before she leaves me entirely.

  “Celia.”

  “Huh?”

  “Come on back here.”

  “I ain’t never left you, Jimmy.”

  “The hell you don’t. Sometimes you just take off inside that head of yours and you leave me alone in a room. You do it all the time. And you’ve been doing it more often lately.”

  “No I haven’t.”

  There’s no point in arguing with her. She always wins because she cheats. She starts up by touching me and rubbing me and then I never remember why the hell I was so put out with her. It’s disconcerting as hell, what she can do to distract me and manipulate me and dissuade me.

  “You’re cheating again.”

  “What’m I doing now?” she grins.

  “You don’t play fair. I was asking you about this drug punk and you—”

  “I don’t know anything about him. And why are you wasting our night by asking me about Bobby Wells?”

  She licks my stomach, and I know I’ve lost another round.

  *

  She finally has the cash to move out of the projects, so I rent a U-Haul and we take her possessions to a new apartment on the southside, not five blocks from the hospital she’s working at. It’s in a mixed neighborhood. One of the few areas that haven’t been blockbusted on the southwest side. Seems to be a relatively calm area from what I can gather from the coppers I know who work this district. So it’s a move up for her.

  “We won’t need that motel anymore,” she smiles. My knees almost give out when I see her put on that facial light show. She knows how it affects me. You can bet your fanny on it.

  “Why?”

  “Because we got a nice place to come to right here,” she frowns.

  “Oh yeah. Of course. Sure. I wasn’t even thinking about that. But you’re right. This is perfect.”

  She knows there’s something off in my voice, something not terribly genuine in my enthusiasm for her new apartment.

  “Well?” she demands.

  It’s no use bullshitting her. It can’t be done. Not at least by me.

  “I still want you at my place. I want you to move in with me.”

  “Your kids would never put up with anything like that and you know it, Jimmy.”

  “How do you know what my kids would put up with?”

  “They just lost their momma five months ago. They’re not going to jump for joy to see some black woman move right in and—”

  “Marry me, Celia.”

  “Oh, Jimmy. Don’t you start up with that.”

  I’ve finally caught her off guard.

  “Why not? Why not make it legal? They’re children, Celia. They can adapt to any goddam thing. They’re not old farts like me. And if the northside isn’t for you, what’s wrong with this apartment?”

  “It’s too small for four people. Don’t talk like a crazy man, Jimmy.”

  The apartment would be a bit cramped for two adults and two kids. She’s right, on that account.

  “We could find a bigger place. Rent a house. I could sell my place.”

  She sees my face cloud over when I talk about unloading the house I lived in with Erin and the kids for all those years.

  “You are talkin’ crazy, Jimmy. But I love you for trying to make me feel better. We ain’t ever going to be married, Jimmy P. You know it as well as I do. This is temporary, you and me. Just like my little boy was temporary. Just like my husband was only around for a little while. Life is just a little while, too, and then... Don’t be talking about permanent things around me, Jimmy. I know better. And you do, too. Let’s just be happy with whatever time we get together.”

  “You’re the one talking loony. There is no damn reason in the world that we can’t wind up under the same roof. I don’t give a good goddam what anybody else in this world thinks about us being together. You’re the only one with a vote in my precinct. Fuck ‘em. Fuck all the rest of them.”

  “And your boy and girl?”

  “Like I said, they’ll —”

  “Don’t talk silly, Jimmy P. They’d take all kinds of hell from their friends if you took me into your house. You know it’s true. Don’t be a fool, baby.”

  She kisses me as gently as she ever has and I don’t want her to take her lips from mine. Not now and not ever. But as she says, everything is only temporary. That’s the way it was with Erin, too. Twenty-three years seemed like a short weekend. Celia’s telling me a truth I can’t bear to hear. I know she’s right. I know what she’s saying about the kids suffering from their friends is right on the money, but I haven’t got the heart to let her know that I know she’s correct.

  “So we take the time we have right here in this apartment, Lieutenant. That’s what God gave us and that’s what we take. And we don’t ever talk about the way things might’ve gone because that’s just wasting more of those precious seconds we haven’t got time to waste. You understand, Officer Parisi?”

  She returns with the same warm kiss. She can silence me any time she wants to with this magic of hers. It’s more potent than any tranquilizer. If she could bottle it, we could buy this bloody burg. I can’t fight with her when she does this to me. I just have to go along. Go along and see what the next moment will bring. And the next moment after that. It wasn’t this way with Erin. I always thought there would be a future, something distant and down the road for both of us. I’m not used to living it by ear, moment to moment.

  It’s not like I have much choi
ce, in any case. I belonged to Celia the second I walked inside her Cabrini Green apartment’s door.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Back at Celia’s on the southwest side, I’m stretched out across her double bed. She’s just changed the sheets. I can smell the laundry in them. It’s a delicious fragrance that I used to look forward to on Erin’s wash days.

  “You have a good time?” I ask her.

  “Sure. You are one crazy man, Jimmy P. Scaring those two yokels like that. Whyn’t you just tell them you’re the po-lice?”

  “I never use my badge when it’s a personal beef. Bad ethics.”

  “You so ethical. That’s why you turn my blood to flame.”

  “It only goes to prove what I been sayin’ all along.”

  She looks down at me with a hard hearted stare.

  “It can’t happen for us the way you want it to, Jimmy P. There’s too many of them out there waitin’ for us to show up together arm in arm.”

  “You’d let some racist stop us from being happy?”

  “Aren’t we happy the way it is?”

  I can’t remonstrate with her. We’ve been down this road too many times.

  “We’re going to be happy. We don’t need no Church. We don’t need no paper. We just need to be together when we can be. We have to live like those folks in South Africa, Jimmy P. Separate but equal. I got my life and you got yours and we got something special when we’re in the same room together. That’s a good deal, far as I’m concerned. What about you?”

  I’d raise the white flag if I had one.

  “Are you fazing out again?” I ask her.

  She takes at least five beats to come back to me. Then she begins to take off my clothes. Next it’s her own.

  “You tell me all about the place there is just for us where everybody minds their own yard and don’t nobody care what shade you come in. You ever find a real place like that, Jimmy baby, I’ll marry you just like you asked me.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “No. I’m not fooling. You find that place and I’ll go there with you with no hesitation.”

  She’s sure she’s got me, of course. She’s certain there is no place where people leave you the hell alone.

  “I love you, Jimmy Parisi. I’ll love you ‘til my heart goes dead. I’ll love you ‘til the cows come on home and then some.”

  I feel her humid breath on my chest. I feel her warm face resting upon my middle.

  “Marry me, dammit,” I whisper.

  *

  The report from tactical says that Creel’s been dealing at Cabrini again. Someone sighted him two days ago, and the information finally filtered back to us in Homicide. There’s still no word on Chaka, and Rashaan Abu Riad bought himself a new pitbull. Someone in Tactical said this mutt is much bigger than the last savage dog Bobby Wells owned.

  We have to go back to the projects and search for this banger before someone else beats us to him. It makes sense that Chaka and Creel and now Bobby Wells are all on someone’s top ten list that only goes to the number three.

  Doc laments having to return to Cabrini. He rather hoped that we wouldn’t be called back there too soon, now that Celia has moved out of the hood. But we’re no strangers to that near north location. It’s almost like a nightmare second home to us now.

  “We ever going to catch these two mutts, Chaka and Creel?” Doc moans.

  He’s looking out the passenger’s side window of the Ford. The gray brick landscape on a rainy, early summer day goes past him unnoticed.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Every time I talk future with Celia, I hit the deadend. She won’t allow such talk around her. She tells me she’s descended from the Masai in Africa. They have no concept of ‘future’, she keeps telling me. If you lock a Masai warrior in a jail cell, they simply sit down and damn near immediately die.

  There’s no image of her lovely dark face inside my dream condo on the Gulf, then. She won’t allow it. I want Celia. I want her to be with me, but she won’t have any part of my vision for what’s ahead. She wants to live for the moment, one shift at a time. I try to see it her way, but I guess I’m just too old fashioned.

  *

  Jimmy Lee is our undercover guy from Tactical in the Cabrini District. You’d never make him as a cop. He’s short and scrawny. Not at all athletic looking or clean cut. Jimmy really looks like he’s into the hood. That’s why he scores such great intelligence for us. No one thinks he looks like a po-lice and so they talk to him like he’s just one of the brothers.

  “He’s on the eighth floor. Room 868. Found out last night.”

  Jimmy’s in his street getup. His hair is in cornrows and he’s got an earring in his left nostril.

  “Doesn’t that fucking ring in your nose hurt?” Doc teases.

  Jimmy stares out the window of my office cubicle and he checks out the blue, enticing Lake water.

  “You can’t resist, can you, Doc,” Jimmy breathes out.

  Doc slaps his knee and smiles.

  “You are the best of the best. Don’t take nothing personal,” Gibron grins.

  Jimmy looks up at me with a wan smile.

  “You cracker cops are hilarious... You need to get up there soon. This motherfucker’s only stayed in one crib for three days at a time. Likely he’ll be on the move soon. He’s scared goddam shitless that he’s gonna get cut like the other two dudes.”

  “He may be right,” I agree.

  “You need to get in right away,” Jimmy Lee concludes. Then he rises, waves, and disappears out my door.

  “We take four uniforms as backup. I’m getting nervous, what with my wedding not too far off,” Doc smiles.

  “I’ll go in first if that’s what’s bothering you.”

  “Fuck you, guinea. That’ll be the bloody day.”

  I click off my desk lamp and we head toward the elevators.

  *

  Wendell is on as usual.

  “Nobody on the elevators until we bring him out. Nobody on the stairs, either,” Doc explains to him. Wendell nods, and the four uniforms and Doc and I walk to the lift. It seems to be operating. At least the lights on the buttons are working.

  Again there is the attendant coldness of rising in this shaft. I don’t know if it’s the air conditioning or what it is, but it’s unearthly cold in this elevator.

  We arrive at eight and walk out the double doors silently. Doc motions for the two patrolmen with the battering ram to get themselves in position in front of the door to Creel’s crib.

  Doc raps on the door.

  “Police!”

  No answer, but we can hear sounds of movement inside. There’s a chance that he might be heading for the fire escape, but Wendell’s partner is already waiting for him down there with another squad of two patrolmen. Doc asked for the extra two uniforms — he wasn’t leaving anything to chance.

  The ram creams the door flat down inside the apartment, and standing ten feet away from the leveled entryway is a naked Creel and a young black female, also nude, who’s holding a hand over her pubic patch and another hand is gratuitously trying to cover an amazingly ample bosom.

  “I think I’m in love,” Doc grins.

  “Go get her some clothes out of that bedroom,” I tell one of the battering ram cops.

  “Anything in particular you’d like me to get for her?” Patrolman Feaney smiles.

  “Cut the bullshit,” I tell him.

  All of us are scoping the girl and no one’s much paying attention to Creel. Except for me. I’ve got the .44 pointed at his head, and he’s already got his hands behind his noggin. He ought to know how to assume the position. It also seems we’ve caught him at a very inopportune moment. His johnson’s halfway raised and ready for battle, and it looks like he had a lot of love to give.

  Then the girl lowers both her hands to her sides.

  “Motherfuckers! Have a good gottam look!”

  There is snickering behind me until Feaney brings out her cutoff shorts and teeshirt.
Feaney tosses them to her.

  “Get a good look, motherfuckers!” she screams.

  “Mind your manners, bitch,” the black uniform behind me warns her. His name is Oscar Roberts, a fifteen year veteran of these streets near the Green.

  She doesn’t sass Oscar.

  Feaney also brought out Creel’s sneakers and jeans and his cutoff sweatshirt with ‘Georgetown University’ printed across the chest.

  “You’re under arrest for the murder of Andres Dacy,” I tell the boy. He is just a boy. Can’t be much older than seventeen. The girl appears to be a minor, but I’m not thinking about charging him with statuatory rape at the moment. This little hustler probably beat Creel to the floor.

  When they’re suitably covered in clothing, we take them downstairs via the elevator. When we walk past Wendell, I notice an unveiled look of sheer rage cross his face. Doc catches the look, too, and then he peers over at me. But he doesn’t say anything about it on the way out.

  *

  “I want a lawyer,” Creel declares.

  “Your real name is Anthony Wayne Dwight,” Doc pronounces.

  “You call me whatever the fuck you want, but I want my lawyer. Ain’t saying anything to y’all unless my lawyer’s here with me.”

  He knows the law just like all the other thugs on the Green know their rights. So we let him call his attorney and we wait for the shyster’s arrival.

  Walter Evans is one of Bobby Wells’ finest mouthpieces. I’ve seen him in action. He makes Johnny Cochran look like a fucking novice.

  “Have you charged my client?” Evans demands.

  “We’re about to make it official. Yes. He’s been read his rights. The whole shtick,” Doc tells Walter.

  “You have probable cause for breaking into his apartment, I presume?”

  “We do. We have two eyewitnesses that put him alongside Chaka and a dead fellow named Antoine at the site of the murder of Andres Dacy.”

  “You intend to have a lineup?” Walter Evans asks.

  “Sure do. We hope you’ll be present, Walter, to watch them put the finger on Anthony, here,” Doc smirks.