Double Deuce

CHAPTER 17

Orestes Tillis was waiting for us when we arrived for work at Double Deuce the next day.

“They set twelve fires last night,” he said. Hawk nodded. Jackie clicked on her recorder. “They set one in every trash can in the project,” Tillis said. He glanced at Jackie’s recorder. “And I believe I know why. It is an affront to every African-American that you should have one of the oppressors with you, protecting black people from each other.”

Hawk nodded again.

“That’s probably it,” he said.

“You cannot be taken seriously as long as you appear allied with the oppressor,” Tillis said.

“Sure,” Hawk said.

“Are you saying that blacks and whites cannot work together?” Jackie said. Unconsciously she held the tape recorder forward. Tillis pointed it like a spaniel with a partridge.

“Could slaves work with slaveholders?” he said. “The white man is still trying to enslave us economically. He tries to destroy us with drugs and guns. Where does all the dope come from here? Do you see heroin labs in the ghetto? Do you see any firearms factories in the ghetto?”

Tillis pointed at me rather dramatically, considering that it was only us and the tape recorder. “His people are practicing genocide, should we ask them for help?”

“You shut that thing off,” Hawk said to Jackie, “and he’ll shut up.”

She looked startled, but she switched off the tape recorder. Tillis stopped gazing into it and looked at Hawk.

“They will not take you seriously,” he said, “if you work with a white man.”

Hawk stared at Tillis without expression for probably fifteen seconds. Then he shook his head slowly.

“You got it backwards,” he said. “We the only thing they do take seriously. We all they can think about sitting out in the middle of their turf. They set those fires to see what we’d do. They don’t care about you. We are an affront to them. They think about us all the time.”

“Why don’t they just shoot you?” Tillis said.

“Maybe one reason being they can’t,” Hawk said. “And maybe they kind of interested, see what we do.”

“Why?”

“They admire Hawk,” Jackie said.

Hawk continued as if neither of them had spoken.

“And they going to keep doing things, a little worse, and a little worse, and finally they going to get into shooting with us and we going to kill some of them.”

Tillis’ eyes shifted to Jackie and back to Hawk. “Just like that?” he said.

“Un huh,” Hawk said. “Maybe get lucky and one of the ones we kill will be the dude that did Devona and Crystal.”

Tillis started to say “who?” and then remembered and caught himself.

“You sound like you are talking about simply shooting them to clean up the problem,” he said.

“Un huh.”

“I want no part of that,” Tillis said. He glanced again at Jackie, who was all the media he had at the moment. “I can’t condone murder.”

Hawk shrugged.

“What makes you think they won’t kill you?” Tillis said.

“Blue-eyed devil here,” Hawk said, “going to prevent them.”

“And I thought you’d never even noticed my eyes,” I said.