Slow Motion Riot (8 page)

It's time to deal with this guy on
his terms. After all, Ms. Lang wanted me to lean on him a little. I reach
across the desk, lift his right foot an inch or two, move it over, and drop it
over the side. "My house, my rules," I say.

I come around the desk and sit on
the front of it, leaning forward so my nose is just an inch or two from
Darryl's. His features remain absolutely still. His mouth is closed so tight
that it's hard to believe that it'll ever open again. His eyes are bloodshot.
From the smell of his breath, you'd think a little man had crawled up inside
him and died.

"Listen to me," I say
loudly. "You have to give me a full account of all your activities. Where
you live, what you do, and who you're doing it with."

Darryl waves his hand and turns away,
like I'm nothing.

"Don't give me that," I
say. I'm starting to really get pissed off now, with the veins pumping up in my
neck. "If you don't do the right thing, and I find out that you're doing
more shit out there, I'm gonna personally send you to jail. And since it'll be
a violation of probation, you'll do serious time."

"Shee-it," Darryl King
says.

"I expect you in here next
week at a reasonable hour. Like nine in the morning next Friday would be
nice." I rest my chin on my clenched fist. "I'm telling you now,
Darryl. You work with me, I'll be your best friend. You work against me, I'm
gonna come down on you as hard as I can."

He turns up the left corner of his
mouth and tightens his facial muscles. "Anybody ever wasted a probation
officer?"

"What?"

"I'm just askin'. You know. 'S
just a question," he says lightly, as though he's just being
philosophical.

"You kill a probation officer
and your life is over, okay?" I light a Marlboro and then notice I already
have one burning in the ashtray. "That would be murder one..."

I suddenly realize I'm shouting.
I've never lost my temper like this with a client before. Richard Silver
bothered me yesterday, but this is different. This guy is really getting under
my skin. The thing is that he knows he's crossing the line. I have no idea why
he's making it into a personal thing between us. But now I can't back down. And
neither can he.

"Man, don't try to front on
Darryl," he says violently. "I know what time it is. They save murder
one for cops. And if I was still a youthful offender, they wouldn't say shit,
no how. I know the courts. I know 'em better than my lawyers. I could be a cop.
I could do that..."

He jumps to his feet, throws his
left arm straight out, points his index finger like a gun, and steadies it with
his right hand. "MOVE IT—MOVE IT—MOVE IT!" he yells. "THIS IS A
FUCKIN' RAID! GET YOUR BUTT ON THE FLOOR! YOU ALL UNDER ARREST! THAT'S RIGHT,
THAT'S RIGHT. FORTY-FOUR MAGNUM FIREPOWER, BABY! NOW SPREAD 'EM. I SAID, SPREAD
'EM, PUSSY! YEAH, YOU LOOKIN' GOOD. WE GONNA PARTY DOWN. BEND OVER AND SPREAD
'EM. HERE I COME!"

At first I think he's talking to
me, but then I realize he's off in his own angry world. Light still pours into
his eyes, but now nothing shines out. I write a note: "Possibly
psychotic."

"JUST SHUT UP NIGGER! I'M IN
CHARGE HERE!" he says, pacing back and forth. "WHAT WE GOT HERE? A
coupla dope fiends. Motherfuckin' crackheads. This place smells like shit. You
gotta get some Glade lemon air freshener. I SAID, SIT YOUR ASS DOWN. Yeah, you
take her in the back,
Jefferson
, I'm gonna have me a
discussion with this nigger. WHERE'S THE MONEY? JUST SHUT UP. YOU THE PERP, I'M
THE COP." He cocks his head to one side like he's listening to somebody.
"What? Ain't gonna tell me? Well, CHECK THIS OUT."

He brings his hands down fast like
he's slamming someone with the gun butt.

"I split your head? I'm sorry,
man. I'm really crushed. I think you better tell me." He clicks, waits,
and makes a firing sound. "DAMN! Boy, your arm is all fucked up."

He waits and then slams the butt
down again. I cross out the "possibly" next to "psychotic."

Darryl grows still and puts a
finger to his lips. "Yo,
Jefferson
," he calls
out in a schoolyard voice. "Yo, this nigger bought it. He's dead. He
bought the fuckin' farm, man. I dunno... Just chill, awright... This don't look
too good, you know." He pauses and looks around. "Yo, we gotta make
this look like a rip-off or something. Shit.. .Just take the fuckin' money on
the table. We gotta find us some rope, so we can tie up his hands and feet. Now
you go down to the car and get back up some gasoline... Nah, I don't wanna
torch the place. I wanna pour it down his throat. Make it look Colombian an'
shit." He makes a bolstering motion. "The girl? She thirteen? We
better waste her too."

He takes a long pause and then his
beeper goes off again.

I can't think of anything to say.
It doesn't matter if all of this was an account of true events or a performance
for my benefit. The feeling is the same either way. Darryl smiles at me once
more.

"Yeah," he says quietly.
"I coulda had me a career in law enforcement."

He leaves the cubicle a few minutes
later. It's almost
eight o'clock
and
my day is over.

I take out my evaluation sheet and
write three more words under Darryl King's name: "He scares me."

"Why y'all beeping me when I'm
talking to my probation officer?" Darryl King wanted to know.

"How do I know who you're
talking to?" said his sister, Joanna Coleman, looking up from the
horoscope chart on her refrigerator. "All I know is that I got business to
discuss with you right away."

She wore a gold cable as big as an
arm around her throat. Two brown incense sticks burned on the kitchen table,
wafting a sweet, overpowering odor through the room, and there was a
"healing" crystal on top of the refrigerator. A pile of self-help and
astrology books sat on the counter.

Joanna's two children, Howard, the
six-year-old boy, and LaToya, the five-year-old girl, were running around the
cramped apartment like wild Indians. The boy was like a little man. He walked
around with a stern expression and his shoulders back, turning his body from
side to side as if he was ready for a fight at any angle. The little girl
followed him, with her pigtails flapping. She threw her arms over her little
brother's shoulders like she wanted him to give her a ride.

"LaToya, you mind your
brother," her mother warned her. "Else he'll turn around and smack
you one..."

Aaron Williams, the
fourteen-year-old with the harelip, sat on the sofa, watching the Mets game on
the television. Darryl's large friend Bobby "House" Kirk sat next to
him and a catatonic-looking boy Darryl had never seen before sat on the floor
staring at Bobby's size sixteen sneakers.

"What's so important?"
Darryl asked.

"Him," his sister, Joanna,
said, pointing to the catatonic boy. She said his name was Eddie Johnson and he
was sixteen years old. Darryl King glanced over at him. The boy had hair that
stood straight up and no physical energy. He was like a piece of furniture.
Joanna explained that Eddie Johnson usually woke up at
noon
every day and sat up in bed about two hours later. By
early evening he'd come as far as the front room, where he watched TV until it
was time to go to sleep again.

"They think he's
depressed," said Joanna.

"So what?" Darryl said.

"But he listens good,"
his sister told him. "That's the thing. You say something, he hears it. He
never forgets it. He notice everything... Even though he's a Scorpio ..."

Darryl glared at the blank-faced
boy on the sofa. Then he clapped his hands in disgust and pivoted away from all
of them. "Joanna, I don't believe you called my beeper for this ..."

"So listen, listen, part of
the time Eddie live with his sister in the
Bronx
,"
Joanna said, pointing a long red nail at her younger brother. "The rest of
the time, he live around here, with his mother. Right next to Pops
Osborn."

She was still after Pops Osborn and
all his crack houses. She and her Jamaican boyfriend, Winston, were getting
obsessed with killing him and taking over his business, and Joanna had never
stopped giving her younger brother shit about blowing the first attempt on
Pops's life.

"You hear what I'm
saying?" she asked Darryl. "Eddie here lives in the apartment right
across the hall from Pops. He hears when Pops comes in with a guy and when he's
alone. So he can get us into Pops's place, and you can get another shot at Pops."

"Oh." Darryl gave the kid
on the sofa a sideways glance. "How you doing?"

"It's like I said," his
sister told him, picking up her well-thumbed copy of Visualize Success from the
dinner table. From the book's black cover, the pair of intense blue eyes seemed
to be staring right at Darryl.

Eddie continued to stare straight
ahead at the television as though he were a zombie. Next to him, Aaron Williams
was biting the red cap off a crack vial and pouring the beige chips into a pipe
with a Jack Daniel's label on it.

"So how'd you do with that guy
anyway?" Joanna asked her younger brother.

"Who?"

"Your probation officer."

"Aw, he's a sucker like that
other one," Darryl said. "But he's a little younger... a little
more... like..." He couldn't think of the word he wanted. He shook his
fist.

"Like energized?" his
sister suggested, rolling her hips to a rhythm no one else could hear.

"Whatever." He shrugged.
"Better watch his ass, else he'll end up like that cop got shot."

She looked over his shoulder and
out the window. The lights from the other buildings in their housing project
were shining brightly. LaToya, the little girl, ran up to her mother and buried
her face in Joanna's thigh.

Darryl laughed. "What I did, I
made up all this crazy shit to tell the guy. You know, I told him like I was
going around like a cop." He dropped his hands and swung his shoulders in
a macho swagger. "Like I bugged out in his office, you know. I told 'im I
was like the maniac cop..."

He stomped around the apartment
shouting like a madman and waving his hand like a gun. Bobby Kirk and Aaron
Williams were almost doubled up with laughter on the couch. The two little kids
hid behind chairs as Darryl lurched around. Joanna Coleman frowned and said she
thought her brother and his friends were all idiots. Aaron was giggling so hard
that he could barely keep his lighter flaring at the crack pipe.

"The guy was sitting there
like this," Darryl said as he imitated his probation officer's squint.
"Then I told him how I was a cop and we was busting in on drug dealers and
taking their money and then pouring gasoline down their throats."

His friends roared with laughter
again. This time even Eddie Johnson, the catatonic kid, seemed amused. At least
he was paying attention.

Joanna was less impressed.
"You told him what?" she said loudly, stuffing her hands in her back
pockets.

"I told him like I was a cop
..."

"You told him a story about a
cop and pouring gasoline down somebody's throat?"

Darryl grabbed the crack pipe from
Aaron, who he felt was taking excessively long draws. "That's what I just
told you."

"Since when are you smoking
that?" his sister asked.

"This is only the second
time," he lied.

"What am I gonna do with you,
Darryl? You starting to smoke that shit. You not thinking straight."

"Shut the fuck up. Why do I
take orders from you? What you know?"

"I know you're stupid to talk
about that shit with your probation officer. That's playing with fire after
what you did. You just daring him to catch you now."

"Nah," said Darryl,
taking a hit off the pipe. The clean strong ether smell filled the room,
drowning the incense odor. "I was just fuckin' around with the guy."

His sister got up and glared at him
with her hands on her hips. "Darryl," she said, "why didn't you
just tell that man you were behaving and have him leave you alone? What did I
tell you about visualizing. You have to think about what happens after you do
shit."

Darryl King didn't answer. He was
busy taking another pull on the pipe. His right arm waved frantically like a
drowning man's as the pulsing surge went through his body. He closed his eyes
and raised his brow.

"That's why you be taking
orders from me, Darryl," his sister said.

Walking down
Flatbush
Avenue
toward Junior's, where they're having Tommy
Markham's farewell party, I find I can't stop thinking about Darryl King.

I'm not sure what it is that
bothers me so much about him. Maybe it's just the wear and tear of the job. I
mean, it's demoralizing enough putting most of these poor bastards through a
system that hardly ever helps them or anybody else. But there's also a matter
of macho pride involved. When somebody like Darryl pushes you, you push back.

I try to be a good guy and all, but
I'm starting to hate this wimpy social worker image. I'm somebody who barely
made it through the two years of Erik Erikson, developmental psychology, and
clinical training you need for a graduate degree. And after that, you don't get
many opportunities to swagger around bragging about the job: "Yeah, I
listened to that boy's problem real good. We achieved some fuckin' empathy!"

Just before I go through the front
door of Junior's, a woman coming out gives me a strange look. I realize I've
been talking out loud to myself again. I've got to try to spend less time
alone, or I'm going to turn into one of those guys you cross the street to avoid.

Inside, regular customers sit
around the front counter near a glass display case full of cheesecake. Some of
the lights are dimmed and an easy-listening radio station plays in the
background. Tommy Markham's farewell party is under way in the section on the
right. Jack Pirone is once again holding forth to a group of a dozen P.O.s.
around the side tables. Tommy, who is a little guy in his late sixties with a
gnome's face and thick glasses, sits by himself near the back. He has a
half-eaten piece of strawberry cheesecake on his plate and a pink party hat on
his head with a rubber chin strap. He's trying to look happy, even though
nobody's paying attention to him.

I sit down next to Tommy and ignore
Jack, who is swigging from a bottle of beer as he tells the other officers,
"And the last time I saw her, she was giving head to a bunch of Shriners
in the elevator!"

"Mr. Tommy Markham," I
say as the guys behind us roar with laughter. "You getting ready to take
it easy a while?"

"Oh sure, sure, kid,"
Tommy says in a salty little tough guy voice that makes him sound like the
sergeant in a foxhole in an old Warner Brothers war movie. "It's gonna be
swell. Just swell."

It's always struck me as funny the
way Tommy can sound so hard-boiled, yet still be the biggest bleeding heart in
the department. I notice, in fact, that somebody has draped a white T-shirt
with a picture of a red bleeding heart across the seat next to him. I ask Tommy
if it's one of his going-away presents.

"Oh yeah, yeah," he says,
a forced smile creasing his knobby face. "It's just the fellas havin' some
fun with me. Y'know, Steve. They're just havin' some fun. Y'know. 'Cos they
call me a bleeding heart. Y'know. 'Cos I feel sorry for everybody. Y'know. I
always say everybody was once somebody's baby. Y'know what I'm saying, Steve?"

"I know." I try
unsuccessfully to get the attention of a waitress going by.

"Even the guys who killed
somebody, Steve. They was somebody's baby too. Y'know what I mean? I used to go
down to the cells to talk to them. I remembered one guy who killed his whole
family. He looked at me through those bars and you know what he said, Steve? He
said, 'I need help.' Y'know. It does something to you inside when you hear
stuff like that."

I put my elbow up on the table.
"I know, Tommy." I've always thought Tommy was a very nice man, but
his penchant for repeating trite and obvious things is really irritating. The
sad truth is that Tommy is not too bright, and while everybody likes him,
almost nobody respects him. Jack and the others are using the gathering more as
a union meeting and a drinking session than as a chance to say good-bye.

"So, Tommy, what're you going
to do with yourself now that you're retiring?" I ask, taking a cigarette
out of my shirt pocket and thinking about a stroll over to the cheesecake
display.

"I dunno, kid. Y'know..."

"Are you gonna travel?"

"Nah, kid, I was in de
merchant marines. I seen the world already."

"Oh. Do you have family you're
gonna stay with?"

Tommy tries to keep his chin from
sagging and his eyes from dropping. "Nah. I really don't have much family
around, Steve. Y'know. I got a room around the corner from here. That's where
I'm gonna be most of the time."

I start to get depressed as Tommy
explains that he's actually looking forward to spending the rest of his days in
the tiny room. "It'll give me a chance to catch up on a lot of
things," he says, like he's trying to convince himself it won't be so bad.
"I gotta catch up on watching television. They got some good programs on now..."

I don't know. It seems like a
frustrating end to an unsatisfying life. I hope I don't wind up like Tommy. I
wonder what, if anything, he has to show for all his years on the job.

"Tommy, can I ask you
something?"

"Sure, sure, kid. Fire away.
Anything you want."

"Well, you've been a probation
officer a long time, right?"

"Long time, Steve. Very long time.
Y'know. More than twenty years. Ever since I got outta de merchant marines."

"Okay." I put up my hand
to interrupt him. "And you've seen a lot of clients in that time. Probably
thousands of them..."

"Sure, thousands, kid."
Tommy bobs his head up and down furiously like a doll on a car's dashboard.
"Thousands..."

"And a lot of those people
were in terrible trouble when you met them, right? Like they'd really messed up
their lives. They were really at the end of their rope ..."

"Absolutely, kid, absolutely."
With the way he's bobbing his head, I worry Tommy's about to sprain his neck.

"So tell me something, Tommy.
How many of those people did you really help? I don't mean giving them bus
fare, or getting a summer job for a kid who didn't commit that serious a crime
in the first place. I'm talking about actually turning somebody's life around.
Giving hope to somebody who was in total despair. Do you know what I'm talking
about?"

Tommy's head stops bobbing and he
gives me a hurt look. "Yeah, I know what you're talking about," he
says slowly.

"So I was just wondering what
you had to show. Can you name one person who you really helped that way? Did
you ever change somebody's life?"

Tommy looks glummer than ever. He
pokes his cheesecake a couple of times with his fork and then puts the fork
down. "I dunno, kid," he says after a very long silence. "I
guess I gotta think about it a little. I never thought about it like that."

I'm sorry I asked the question. I
didn't mean to make Tommy feel so bad. I only wanted to know what I might have
in store for the future. Better to leave it alone now. I try once more to get
the waitress's attention, but she still won't look at me.

"Excuse me a minute, Tommy.
I'm gonna go to the counter and get a beer. You want anything?"

"Nah, kid," Tommy says,
still looking down at his cheesecake. "I got everything a man could
need."

I get up from the table and walk
down the aisle past Jack Pirone, who's sweating profusely, gesturing wildly,
and telling a stupid joke.

"Hey, Judas," Jack says
as I try to squeeze by him.

"Jack," I say, "I'm
not Judas, and you sure as hell ain't Jesus. You're too fuckin' fat. You'd
break the cross. So get off my back."

The other P.O.s laugh as I keep
going toward the counter. I turn to see Jack bowing and smiling as though acknowledging
my point. I lean over the counter and order a Budweiser and a slice of regular
cheesecake.

"Hey you," says a
familiar voice.

I turn and see Ms. Lang looking at
me, with a glass of vodka in her hand. A couple of buttons on her blazer are
undone and her hair is out of its bun. Her eyes seem a little glassy and she's
even smiling a little. She's not quite drunk, just a bit more relaxed than
usual. Lloyd Bell, looking trim and handsome in a dashiki and jeans, is sitting
on a stool between her and me.

"So what're you doing
here?" Ms. Lang asks me.

"Just saying good-bye to
Tommy."

"Oh." She gets quiet and
puts a finger to her lips. From the back of the place Jack Pirone's voice is
saying much too loudly, "So the tribal chief says, 'We will grant your
request and put you to death, but first, a little Boom-ba.'"

"Keep it down, Pirone!"
Ms. Lang suddenly shouts. "Show a little respect for Tommy."

There's an abrupt silence. She
looks more surprised than anybody by her outburst. In two years I've never seen
her lose her cool this way. I've never liked her as much.

"I think I'll be going to the
ladies' room now," she says softly, turning around on her stool and
getting off.

"All right," says Lloyd.

"Sure you don't want to join
me?" she asks, running her fingers along Lloyd's taut, muscular arm.

"My wife would prefer that I
don't," Lloyd says gently.

"Suit yourself."

She smiles crookedly and goes
teetering off toward the bathroom. Lloyd looks after her, shakes his head, and
sighs. Then he takes a long sip of water.

"She's a good woman," I
say.

"She's special."

"Yeah."

"I'd be interested,"
Lloyd says, twisting the watchband on his wrist. "Except I'm married, you
know."

"Yeah."

"And she's a little old for
me."

I stop and give Lloyd a good look.
He doesn't seem that much younger to me. He already has wrinkles around his
eyes and his neck. The guy behind the counter sets my beer, dessert, and check
down in front of me.

I ignore the food for a moment to
watch Tommy, Jack, and the rest of the scene around the restaurant. There's
something a little strange and a little sad about a lot of the people from
probation, I decide. So many of them started off wanting to do something else
with their lives and then got waylaid. I remember how Jack once told me he'd
wanted to be a chef years ago. I see Cathy Brody standing near Jack with a
drink in her hand and her arm wrapped around her waist. She wanted to be a
psychiatrist. And Lloyd Bell, sitting next to me, wanted to be an actor. For a
moment I'm glad I didn't set out to do anything else. There are already too
many disappointed people running around.

"So did you see my homeboy
Darryl King today?" Lloyd asks me.

"Yeah, I think he's a
psychopath. You want him on your caseload? I'll trade you him for two chain
snatchers and a token sucker to be named later."

"Not necessary." Lloyd
leans back with his elbows on the counter. "I already got his friend Bobby
'House' Kirk as my client. Remember? Anyway, I just heard something I wanted to
pass on to you."

"What's that?"

"Well, you can't believe
everything you hear on the street, but the word is Bobby had something to do
with setting a fire at a crack house the other night."

"Oh yeah?" I fumble with
my wallet.

"It had to do with a fellow
named Pops Osborn," Lloyd says calmly, turning around and tapping the
counter with his long fingers. "You don't know if Darryl had anything to
do with it, do you?"

"No, but maybe we should put
our heads together and see about violating both of these guys. We could call
the local precinct."

"Whoa, boy," Lloyd says,
putting a hand on my shoulder like he's trying to calm a bucking bronco.
"We can't do that."

"Why not?"

Lloyd stands slowly and turns up
his hands. "It's just word on the street, man. It's just smoke. Might not
even be true. No one reported nobody starting no fire. It's just people
talking. I just thought you might want to know about it."

"So what am I supposed to do,
Lloyd?" I ask.

Lloyd shrugs and checks his hair in
the mirror behind the counter. "Ours is not to reason why," he tells
me. "Besides, all this might be bullshit. Your boy Darryl may be a Boy
Scout after all. He wouldn't be the first black youth who got pegged wrong by
the system." He's smiling uneasily.

I'm about to say something else to
him when somebody starts poking me in the back with a sharp finger.

I whirl around and see it's Tommy
Markham. His eyes are moist and he's licking his lips. "I thoughta
somebody," he's saying. "I thought about what you asked and I
thoughta somebody, y'know."

"Somebody who you helped?"

"Yeah, yeah." Tommy
closes his eyes and rocks from side to side. "You asked if I ever changed
somebody's life and I thought of a guy."

"Who?"

"Augusto Ramirez."

"Augusto Ramirez?" The
name sounds familiar, but I can't quite place it. "What did he do?"

"Ah, he was in a mess of
trouble. Y'know. I helped him plenty, Steve. I tell you. I got him a job, and a
place to live, and I even introduced him to his wife. He's doing great now. He
writes to me all the time."

"That's great, Tommy."
I'm still not sure where I heard the name Ramirez before. But Tommy is smiling
and his head is bobbing up and down again as he limps to the bathroom. I don't
want to break his mood by questioning him too closely. I pick up my beer and
cheesecake and start to walk back to the booth where we'd been sitting.

Along the way, I step directly into
Jack Pirone's path. "Hey, Jack, I got a question. You ever hear of
somebody named Augusto Ramirez?"

Jack snorts and smiles cynically.
"Of course. What do you want to know about him?"

"Who was he? I asked Tommy to
name one guy he'd ever really helped in his career and he said this guy
Ramirez. And I can't think of why I'd heard that name before."

"That guy was a
cop-killer," Jack says with a sigh. "He was Tommy's client a few
years ago and Tommy got him out of jail and the guy walked up to some cop in
the street and blew his fuckin' head off." He shrugs. "Fuckin' Tommy
never could keep anything straight."