by Angela Dews
“Them and us. That’s the place we never step out from.”
I pull out my notebook. “Tell me again about how your black mayor and black police commissioner will have you getting out of your cars and walking the streets.”
“I’m not talking about this with you. I came to tell you I got a call. Viola is in custody. They were stopped at LaGuardia Airport. Virginia asked you to come get her. I’ll be back for you.”
I watch him walk away.
Other police on horses clop down the boulevard in front of the restive crowd.
“Save the bank! Save the bank!”
Finally, belatedly, the crowd begins chanting loud, like they mean it.
The bank doors are open. The line moves and Adrianne walks into the bank with the first in line.
She comes back out and turns down her thumb to let me know they are cutting checks.
We were right, and as she turns back to the line, she raises her fist in an incongruous power salute. I give it back to her.
T H E • E N D
Who Shot John?
C H A P T E R 1
(Monday)
* * *
I pulled down a hat to hide under in case Lt. Peace Knight, action figure, might be recognized by my Harlem neighbors as I was going about my business—the business of Pearl Washington, actor, and daughter of Harlem.
Lt. Knight had just solved a couple of crimes in the third movie in the Harlem Knight series. As much as I enjoyed finally shooting a Harlem Knight movie in Harlem, it did not make a significant difference in the tired familiarity of playing the same role again. This was getting old.
As I walked down Seventh Avenue, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Blvd., my memories of my hometown were refracted by the way the changes hit the familiar. And it was even more disorienting because Harlem had turned into a ghost town, a netherworld that I walked through from 135th Street.
Where was everybody?
When I got to 125th Street, I found them.
The streets were full. But the shops were empty behind the metal gates that were still rolled down, most of them displaying the dancing, strutting images painted by Franco the Great. Because even the store owners who are not know it’s a black thing.
The police and the shopkeepers were mostly talking to each other.
The population of peddlers and vendors who usually sell oils and books and dolls and hats and music and things along both sides of Martin Luther King Jr., Blvd. were standing around or pacing in their work clothes—African jalabas, yards of skirt, Malcolm X and Che t-shirts, khakis and cargo pants and jeans. They had not been allowed to set up.
The journalists were the ones doing most of the moving from one group to the next, breaking the borders that separated the tribes, shoving microphones and video cameras in front of faces.
I took off my hat, folded it in my hand and checked the barrette at my neck before I walked over to stand behind the television cameraman. Karl had provided still photographs when I was running my father’s newspaper four years ago, and he had moved from the newspaper business to television. Knowing Karl, his camera was no doubt sweeping the wide boulevard and the Apollo theater to capture a panorama for an establishing shot of Harlem in 1994.
Then he zoomed in on a close-up of television newsman John Johnson where he was standing ready to interview a shopkeeper. Karl gave the sign. Show time.
“They put Krazy Glue in our locks,” said the owner of the men’s clothing store we were standing in front of.
“That’s why you are still closed?” John asked. “I thought you were afraid to open because you expected some violence. Although you certainly have enough police protection.”
“I’m not afraid to be here. I’m never afraid to be here. I’ve been here for years. Everybody knows me. I pay taxes. They don’t pay taxes.”
“They put their carts right in front of my store,” another man said and he pointed to the sneaker store next door.
“Where would you have them put their carts?” John asked.
He looked surprised. “Somewhere else. Not right on the sidewalk at my door.”
I felt the beating drums as much as I heard them, and when I turned, I saw the street vendors marching. The interruption they provided was perfect for the piece Karl and John were creating.
A chorus of voices chanted:
“If we can’t eat; they won’t eat.”
“Whose streets? Our streets?”
“Harlem is for Africans. At home and abroad.”
“No justice; no peace.”
“Racist Giuliani got to go.”
They were old people and kids, men and women. They came from continental Africa and the West Indies and New Jersey, Brooklyn and the Bronx and 111th Street. Not everyone marched, but there was a substantial parade. Some were rolling their folded tables and plaid bags of inventory along with them. Many had arrived without their moveable shops, and had come ready to fight back this morning. The man who was their leader was in front with a phalanx of other familiar allies. But no elected officials that I recognized were in the street or on the sidewalks. Missing in action.
Karl was shooting the marchers. He was walking backwards, panning, actually kneeling in the street so they marched around him. They were an army of color, probably 200 strong, threading its way east across 1-2-5 through a gauntlet. So much anger and no small amount of fear showed on their faces.
Some of the same emotions were on the faces of more than 400 policemen from all over the city who were standing poised along the route. They included community affairs cops in their blue windbreakers and commanders in their dark suits and white shirts. Some were on horses, some were in riot gear, expecting what? I wondered.
I marched with them on the sidewalk and turned with them at Seventh Avenue toward 126th Street and the plaza at the Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. State Office Building.
There was a soundtrack like there always is on Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd.
And it took a few beats to confirm it was not the bass from Eric B. & Rakim but gunshots I was hearing suddenly and echoing out into the big sky,
John was on his knees. I ran over to him.
“Where were you hit?” I asked him and looked to see.
He handed me his notebook before I got pushed out of the way.
“Come with me,” Karl said.
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