Harlem Hit & Run

by Angela Dews

They followed me upstairs, and I moved the cupboard and opened the door to our portal into Cecelia’s house next door.

  “What the hell?” Ginny said.

  Viola said. “Your daddy always said you practiced at being Lt. Knight by playing detective with Cecelia. But I had no idea you were this serious.”

  After we crawled through, I told them, “When we were girls, we read that prohibition bootleggers opened the space between the top floors of these row houses and escaped through them when the feds came in downstairs. Daddy had a beam put in. We have been using it since we were kids.”

  Virginia said, “This is like C.S. Lewis in Narnia. The Magician’s Nephew.”

  “You are such a weird kid,” I said.

  I carefully closed the wainscoting, and we walked downstairs.

  Mrs. Miller walked out of her room. “Pearl Washington,” she said and looked at us. “And a crowd. What are you doing using your hidey hole in the middle of the night?”

  Ginny went for a hug and was unable to easily pull herself away.

  “This feels so good,” Mrs. Miller said. “How are you sweetheart?”

  “I’m good Auntie Elizabeth,” Virginia said and made her escape.

  “We have to go,” I said, and I walked over to Mrs. Miller. “Do you have anyone here with you?”

  “No. I’m waiting for Marc.”

  Before I could gather myself to figure out what to do about this terrible thing, Adrianne walked over and took Mrs. Miller’s hand.

  “You all be careful,” she said to me. “I’ll stay here.”

  I led the rest of us down the stairs.

  The front light was off. I disabled a motion timer, using the chops I learned when we were escaping as girls.

  I opened the street door slowly and looked out. Then, I stepped back. Two men were walking up my stoop next door.

  “Come on. We don’t have but a minute until they see we’re gone,” I said.

  All three of us hunkered down and ran along the parked cars to Viola’s car sitting at the distant curb.

  The trunk was open and a man looked up. But I had to kick him to get him to release the bag he thought he was going to run away with. Then I had to kick him again when he tried to grab it back. I allowed the one who was stretched across the back seat to pull himself out of the car door with the broken window. And we watched them both run down the street.

  “Just in time,” I said and slammed down the lid to the trunk.

  “Virginia, see if you can find space in the back.”

  “It’s a mess back there,” Ginny said.

  I turned on the car and saw my company running out of my house.

  C H A P T E R • 56

  * * *

  I turned down Eighth Avenue and headed south towards Obie’s 28th Precinct. A red light at 135th Street stopped me.

  I felt the cold when Viola stuck her gun against the back of my head from the backseat. “Turn the car around. We’re going uptown.”

  “You know, if I don’t, and you shoot me, you’ll be in a wreck and you’ll not get anywhere you need to be.”

  “Where I need to be is at the church,” she said.

  “Everybody needs something,” I told her.

  What I needed was to take us to a precinct. If I turned left to the closest, the 32nd, so close, right down the block, Bobby’s friends in the red Cadillac couldn’t shoot us and take their money, and Virginia would be safe. Instead, I did as she asked and took the light and turned right on 135th and then right again on Edgecombe Avenue, heading uptown. I turned off my headlights and pulled into a fire hydrant space just past Harriet Beecher Stowe I.S. 136. Within minutes, we watched the red beauty speed up St. Nicholas Avenue where it forked along beside Edgecombe.

  I stopped at the light on 141 Street and waited to turn up the hill.

  “How are you going to get into the church?” I asked Viola.

  “Gary’s there.”

  “I knew it. What does he have to do with this?”

  “He took some bank loans. He doesn’t want the bank business public. Makes him an ally even against his will. And he did love Cecelia.”

  When I saw red in the distance coming down Edgecombe, I ran the light and headed up the hill and got honked at but not hit. The Caddy was a couple of cars behind me as I drove past the park and City College and the church, and got to Amsterdam and turned uptown.

  Amsterdam Avenue was an obstacle course. I sped north and, using my best Lt. Knight moves, managed to keep control of the car. I found a way around and through moving and double-parked cars and so many people on the crowded avenue who couldn’t care less about our rush.

  Stopped at a red light, I heard the window humming open.

  “Virginia, don’t roll down the window,” Viola yelled. “Stop it. They’re coming.”

  “I know,” she said.

  In the side mirror, I saw the red Caddy move into the empty downtown lane two car lengths behind us.

  “Virginia. Stop,” Viola yelled. “Virginia. Stop it.”

  When I looked in the rear-view, I saw Virginia, who must have been on her knees, with a big oil can in her hands and I watched her pour a full can of the oil in a stream out the window.

  “Perfect. And now I’ll turn,” I said.

  I took the light and the left turn on 153rd, just south of the cemetery and I watched in the mirror as the driver in the red car tried to follow. Instead of turning left, the car careened around on the oil and turned the wrong way. He must have slammed the brakes because it was spinning again to the accompaniment of much honking in the distance.

  I didn’t see them behind me on 153rd Street when I drove across Broadway and turned up Riverside or when I turned right on 155th Street. I turned off my lights and made a U-turn and took the parallel side street between the American Indian Museum and the cemetery, and I waited.

  “Virginia, that was brilliant,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “What is this going to get you?” I asked Viola.

  “I just need to get through the night. Once they get the money, I don’t have anything else to negotiate with. They won’t hurt me until they get it,” she said. “But they will do whatever they need to do to get it.”

  “I am not going to be part of this,” I said. “When we get to the street, I’ll take Ginny, and you can go on about your runnings.”

  “You can get out now. And Virginia’s not going anywhere.”

  “When I get to a real street,” I said. “I’m not getting out here. Who knows who is under the drive in the dark in front of us. And Riverside is not a safe place to be walking around at night.”

  We waited some more, and I tried to bargain with Virginia. “Ginny, this is very dangerous. You need to come with us. Your Auntie Vy can handle things better if she doesn’t have you to worry about. You have become a disadvantage.”

  “I can help,” Virginia said.

  I tried to bargain with Viola. “She doesn’t need to hear about all of the bad you have been up to.”

  “No. She doesn’t,” Viola said.

  “Let her come with me.”

  “No.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Why don’t I tell your niece some bedtime stories that will shatter her lovely innocence.”

  “No. Don’t do that.”

  “How about the one with Cecelia dying on 125th Street? Or the one where Obsidian gets shot in the shoulder and how bloody it was and how much it hurt? Or the one about Heavy being hit upside the head? Or, maybe, what happened to Bobby Bop?”

  “They were all mistakes,” Viola said. “And then self-defense. In fact, they were all self-defense.”

  “You know that’s bullshit.”

  “Don’t be a bully, Auntie Pearl,” Virginia said.

  “I’m not making this up, honey. Those are bad guys in that car. We need to go to the precinct. We need protection.”

  Viola said, “They will not be on my side. No one will.”

  It was still quiet and dark whe
n I made the U-turn and drove to 155th. I didn’t turn on the headlights when I turned west back to Riverside and drove north. A car pulled out from where it was parked on the drive and followed us. When it turned on its headlights it showed itself to be the Caddy.

  Riverside was too narrow and too dangerous. And even when we could see where we were going with our headlights, it was still too likely someone would come out walking or driving or on a bike and be hit.

  The entrance to the Westside Highway was just in the distance ahead of me and I saw them in the rear-view mirror when they pulled into the right lane behind me to the honking of whoever they cut off.

  “I need you to take me to Jersey.”

  “Not Jersey,” I said. “That’s not a good idea.”

  Instead, I turned off at 178th Street and drove beside the bus station where we had another opportunity to move through traffic and pedestrians who didn’t care anything about our need to be in a hurry.

  “Stop,” Viola yelled and grabbed the steering wheel.

  “Stupid,” I told her and corrected.

  I took St. Nicholas and passed the 30th Precinct at 151st, speeding. Nobody noticed and I didn’t hear any sirens. But ahead of us I saw police cars at Viola’s house. She grabbed the wheel again and I managed to pull the car over to the curb and stop.

  I got out and Viola slid over to the driver’s seat of the Buick. Ginny got out to move into the front. I tried to stop her.

  “Don’t go. Stay with us where it’s safe,” I said to her. “Don’t take her,” I said to Viola.

  “Get in,” Viola said and the car was already moving when Ginny jumped into the passenger seat.

  They drove away and the Cadillac followed within minutes.

  I walked to Viola’s house, and when I heard, “Put your hands up,” I did.

  Captain Obsidian Bailey walked out of the house and he was a welcome presence. He felt like safety, and I knew I had been missing the feeling. My shoulders even dropped a little. But it was only an instant, before I felt the anger taking its place again.

  “There is drug money in Viola’s Buick, and those men in the red Cadillac who are following her are after the money. It’s theirs. And Virginia is in the car.”

  He said something into his radio.

  Then, he said to me, “Pearl, I need you to stand here with me.”

  He took my hand. “I’m so sorry Pearl,” he said.

  We watched them rolling Mister Bell into an ambulance.

  He was close to dead. But Bobby Bop was all the way dead.

  “Do you know who shot Bell?” he asked me.

  “Bobby Bop. It looked like he might have been aiming at Viola and Mister Bell got between them,” I said.

  “And then who killed Bobby Bop?”

  “Viola shot him.”

  E P I L O G U E

  * * *

  The morning is jagged enough to crunch underfoot and mean enough to explode as clouds in front of the faces of the shell-shocked where they are in line at Independence National Bank, standing or sitting in fold-up chairs made for picnics or concerts or church dinners. They must have been there since before the sad excuse for daylight dawned because it is still early and two lines stretch and turn at opposite corners up both Adam Clayton Powell and Frederick Douglass Boulevards. Empty coffee cups and paper food wraps blow down the street.

  And there is no music.

  Winter is going to be hard again for the sun people. The wind is blowing that promise down 125th Street against the lines. The cold is seeking a way through a scarf and a collar and a hat and a hood to assault ears and to play on tender necks. I would not call the wind Mariah after my great-grandmother who, although she was not particularly gentle, was not mean like this. Many on the line are her age as I remember her. And they are bundled against more than the November weather.

  The boys are making us some money hawking the Harlem Journal. It is full of the information we have spent the week digging up about our community bank.

  We put together the loose bits of gossip, essential insider leaks and a satisfying sense of daring to tell the bank’s stories. Today, November 13, 1990, our gamble is on the front page of the special edition of the Journal:

  FEDS TO HARLEM: DROP DEAD

  RACISM CAUSES INDEPENDENCE NATIONAL BANK’S

  PROBLEMS DEMISE

  The paper’s photographer Karl is walking the line, taking close-ups of faces. I wish I had a broadcast hook-up so they could say how it feels out loud and people could see them say it. But I do have my notebook and I ask the questions, gently or not, depending.

  “Did the City’s only black commercial bank feel like a safe place?”

  “If a new Harlem bank opens up, will you deposit your money?”

  “Who do you blame.”

  “Pearl Washington over here!”

  Eyewitness reporter John Johnson is making his way across the street. I can visualize the television shot of me profiled against the bank door, so I put off knocking and turn my best side toward him and wait for him to cross.

  “John?”

  “Is it true you killed Bobby Bop Nelson.”

  “You know I won’t comment.”

  “Did you forget this is not Hollywood? You’re an actress, not a real cop.”

  How many times have I heard that this week?

  “No comment.”

  Reverend Doctor William Garrison walks past us to knock on the bank door. He is one of several ministers who have come to see about their flock and their finances.

  The guard shakes his head no. And I watch Reverend Gary take on the self-important air I find so annoying as he walks toward us.

  John catches it on his television camera and sticks his microphone in Gary’s face.

  “Reverend Garrison! What does this mean to the people of Harlem?”

  “Is someone asking those racists in Washington that question?”

  “You’re on the bank’s board of directors. What are you doing about this?”

  “Nobody’s asking for a handout. The only commercial bank in the city run by black people was started by heroes and run by supermen. Pledges are still coming in. Even just now someone pledged another two million dollars on the phone. If this goes down, then know what gets endorsed and supported is not our self-sufficiency, but our dependency. Always has, always will.”

  While the camera is pointed the other way, I knock. The stranger inside moves aside one of the concealing shades and looks out. He is not impressed with my press credentials, which are actually expired, but he wouldn’t know because he doesn’t move close enough to see.

  I am forced to step back to join my neighbors outside our community bank. I feel with them the weight of our defeat. We are stooped under it.

  The line is a snaking thing full of stunned acceptance. The anger is barely contained in its familiar groove. As much as it feels like a unique experience, it also feels like one too many of the same old thing. Some have come with company to the boulevard. But if we have come alone, we can find comfort in the line. We are dense together because we need less personal space on this cold morning. The angry voices trying to rally us are an intrusion.

  “Save the bank.” The chant comes and goes. It seems to take too much voice.

  I march across the street away from the bank because I feel the need to re-establish a distance.

  When I turn back I get a wider view of the two lines leading to the bank’s covered windows and doors. My people. Glorious and complex. Langston Hughes once said they do not know how beautiful it is to be colored.

  “Pearl! Pearl!” Samantha is waving a piece of paper at me as she makes her way across the street. She is one of those slow-moving sisters.

  “You got another fax from Roger,” she says when she finally gets to me. She passes me a single page rolled lengthwise like a baton.

  “Thank you, Samantha.”

  “Sure,” she says. “The devil is busy,” she adds and she turns away without waiting for a reply.
<
br />   I unroll the paper. It is a poem. I fold it in half.

  “Who’s Roger?” Obsidian asks from behind me. He has done that thing he does. Sneaking up on a person is probably an essential talent for his cop job.

  I turn to him and tell half a truth. “Roger is my friend who teaches kickboxing and mixed martial arts to my meditators.”

  “I wish the brother well,” he says. “But you’re going to be spending a lot of time here in the City. And I don’t think you can be trusted.”

  I deserved that but I did not expect it.

  “If I am going to be here, I need to meditate again with your people,” I tell him. “That was hard last night.”

  “How does it feel to be in danger? To witness someone dying? Did you feel tenderness toward your fellow man and fellow woman? Was your heart open?”

  I get the point he is making, using the language from my meditation at the precinct.

  “No,” I say. “I noticed my heart closed. I disassociated to protect myself.”

  “But did you feel the chemicals your body unleashed?” he asks.

  “Yes. If you are talking about fear and grief.”

  “My people experience that all the time and their intention is to protect themselves from a danger they perceive will leave them dead in the street.”

  “Perception is framing reality—figuring out how we think things are. You say your police perceive danger in the dark bodies they are supposed to protect. Do you hear yourself?”

  He looks over at the crowd across the street. “I’m not afraid. This is my community.”

  He turns back to me. “But we can’t afford empathy and an open heart. That kind of connection will get in the way of us doing our job. You saw how fast that happened last night. You don’t have to worry about meditating at the precinct again. It’s not going to happen.”

  “Because I practice, I could be aware of where the reaction was landing in my body,” I say “And I could tolerate being activated and stay present to my thoughts and feelings and watch them change.”

  “I practice too. I discharged by moving by body this morning.”

  “But we can’t just discharge the grief and rage. To heal, we have to admit to what’s happening—to the fact that the community and the cops are all being triggered again and again without release.”