Deacon King Kong(68)

“Gossip?”

“I wouldn’t call it gossip. Everybody knows everybody’s business in these projects, so why put a name to it? It’s news one way or the other.”

Potts nodded and sighed. “That’s why I come. I have some.”

“Do you now?”

“We arrested a young fella. Fella named Earl. We know you know him.”

Her smile disappeared. “How’s that?”

“We saw you. We . . . one of our guys . . . followed you. After the little ruckus over in the plaza last week.”

“You mean Soup’s party?”

“Whatever it was, they—uh, without my knowledge—had somebody roll behind you. He saw you and a big, giant fella carry Earl out of the projects to the Silver Street subway station. They saw the little deal there, where you closed the turnstiles and you two had a little talk with Earl and sent him on his way. That’s a Transit Authority violation, I’m sorry to say. A pretty big one, to close down a subway station.”

Sister Gee, thinking of Calvin in the tollbooth, felt the blood rising in her face. “It was my idea. I made Calvin do it. It wasn’t but ten minutes. Till the train came. I don’t want him fired from his job on account of my foolishness.”

“What were you planning on doing?”

“I wasn’t gonna have the man thrown on the tracks, if that’s what you mean.”

“What did you want?”

“I wanted him out of the Cause and I got him out. You can take that back to the precinct or tell it to the judge. Or I’ll tell it to the judge myself. That fella was hunting somebody. Sportcoat, most likely. That’s why he come there. I’m told that wasn’t his first time in the Cause neither. We wanted him gone.”

“Why didn’t you call the police?”

She chortled. “It wasn’t a crime for him to come to the plaza party. Somebody threw a bottle and he got struck over the head by accident. I’m telling you what God’s pleased with. The truth. That’s exactly what happened. He was in a fog when he come to. As God would have it, the darned thing didn’t kill him, just knocked him out. I reckoned he’d come out of it swinging. So I had Soup carry him to the subway and told Calvin to shut the turnstiles down till the first train come. I didn’t want nobody to get hurt. That’s all there is to it.”

“That’s called taking matters into your own hands.”

“Call it what you will or may. It’s done now.”

“You should’ve called us.”

“Why we got to have the police around every time we has a simple party? Y’all don’t watch out for us. Y’all watch over us. I don’t see y’all out there standing over the white folks in Park Slope when they has their block parties. We was just having a celebration for poor old Soup, who went to jail a boy and come out a man. Much of a man, I’d say. Where’s a man like him gonna get a job, big as he is? Soup wouldn’t hurt a fly. Do you know when he was a tiny boy, he was scared to come out the house? Used to stay inside and watch television all day. Captain Kangaroo and Mister Rogers and them type shows.”

“The kiddie shows?”

“Been doing it since he was a child. He’s a Muslim now. Can you believe it? All that work we put into him here.” She nodded at the church, then shrugged. “Well . . . as long as he’s got God in his life some kind of way.” She shifted her weight off the weed cutter and absently swiped at a few weeds near her feet on the cracked, dry dirt.

“So you and kiddie-show guy and the token-booth guy shut down the station,” Potts said.

Sister Gee stopped swiping at the weeds and looked at him, her face melted into the slightly angry expression she had worn when they first met. She saw his eyes slice away from hers and cut to the ground. Was that shame she saw in his eyes? She wasn’t sure.

“I shut the station down. Me alone.”

Potts removed his cap, wiped his brow with his sleeve, and replaced it on his head. She watched him closely. Every movement, she observed, was that of a man trying to maintain emotional control of himself. He didn’t seem angry. Or even disappointed. Rather he seemed resolved to a kind of silent sadness that made her, despite herself, feel drawn to him, for she knew the feeling well. She found the whole business a little worrying, that common ground, but also wildly and almost terrifically exciting. She’d forgotten what that felt like. After thirty-one years of being married, the last five of which had been a trial of silent suffering, of infrequent bursts of small, almost minuscule, useless affection, she felt a part of herself she thought long dead shaking loose and awakening.

“Shutting down the station? I don’t want to know about it,” he said. “Neither does the precinct. Neither does Transit. I made sure of that. But we arrested that fella Earl—I arrested him—and that’s something you ought to know about.”

“Why?”

“He’s . . . a suspect.”

“So’s a lot of people.”

“Okay. He’s more than a suspect. He’s no junkie. He’s what you call a strong-arm guy. A smart one. He knocks out teeth here and there. But he’s not a concern now. No worries there. We got the goods on him. We’re working with him—or he’s working with us. That’s all I can tell you. That’s between you and me. So you don’t have to worry about him coming around again. But the guy he works for. We don’t have him and he is somebody to worry about.”