CHAPTER EIGHT


Hawk and I went to call on Amir Abdullah in his offices at the African-American Center at the university. A couple of hard-looking young guys in black suits and white shirts let us in. They eyed me like I was a case of the clap.

“Teaching fellows?” I said to Hawk.

Hawk smiled and let his stare rest on the two men.

“Dr. Abdullah,” I said. “He’s expecting me.”

They looked at me some more and at Hawk, who smiled at them engagingly.

Then one of them said, “Down this hall, third door on the left.”

Hawk and the two young men kept eye contact until we were past them and headed down the hall. There was African art on the walls, and some splashy posters advocating action. Everyone I saw was black.

“I feel like Casper the friendly ghost,” I said.

“You a pale one, all right,” Hawk said, and we knocked on the half-open door of Abdullah’s office.

A voice said, “Come!” And in we went.

The walls of the office were covered with some sort of pan-African proletarian art in which magnificent black men were throwing off yokes of oppression. The white men in the posters were all mean-looking fat guys. None of the white guys looked like me. None of the magnificent black men looked like Abdullah. Abdullah was very light-skinned. In the old days, before tans were unhealthy, Susan, in summer, was darker than Amir. He was skinny, and quite tall. His hair was short and militant-looking. He wore round gold glasses and a saffron-colored robe and sandals. His nails were long and clean and looked manicured. He wore rings on all four fingers of each hand. A Rolex watch peeked diffidently out from under the sleeve of his robe. He was smoking a long curved meerschaum pipe, and the room was rich with the pungency of his tobacco. A six-foot shield made of ornamented hide stood in the corner, with two long-bladed spears crossed over it. The bookcases were full of books. Many names I didn’t recognize, a few I did, Frantz Fanon, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright.

Abdullah nodded at Hawk.

“Do I know you?” he said to me.

“My name’s Spenser,” I said. “This is Hawk.”

Abdullah looked thoughtfully at Hawk, and nodded.

“S’happenin‘, bro?”

Hawk didn’t say anything. He moved to the left of the door and leaned on the wall. Abdullah looked back at me.

“Don’t get many white men in here,” Abdullah said.

“Too bad,” I said.

“Why?”

“I hate segregation,” I said.

“Don’t need no smartass honky jivin‘ me ’bout segregation,” Abdullah said. “Nigger’s got to get on with life. He do that best if he keep Whitey at a distance.”

I didn’t see anything there to help me with Robinson Nevins’ tenure problem so I let it slide.

“You’re on the English department tenure committee?” I said.

“Why you axin?”

The strain of talking like a homeboy was palpable in Abdullah, you could tell he had to rephrase things in his head so he wouldn’t sound like Clarence Thomas. Leaning against the wall, Hawk looked like he was fighting a yawn.

“You caught me,” I said. “Actually I know you’re on the tenure committee of the English department, I guess I was really wondering why you don’t have an office there.”

“Ain’t my business solvin‘ yo’ problems,” Abdullah said.

“Of course not,” I said. “You ever see Robinson Nevins in a sexual circumstance with the late Prentice Lamont?”

“You ain’t no cop,” Abdullah said.

“How can you be sure?”

“You’da hassled me when you came in.”

“Private cop,” I said.

“And him.” Abdullah nodded at Hawk.

“Amir,” Hawk said. “You refer to me as ‘him’ again and I will slap your skinny ass around this office like a handball.”

Hawk’s voice was calm and his diction was better than Tony Blair’s. Abdullah flushed. He was so light that it was visible.

“Only way you talk to a brother like that, is if you a damned Tom,” Abdullah said.

Without a word Hawk stepped toward Abdullah, who flinched back involuntarily behind his desk.

“Hawk,” I said. “It won’t get us what we’re after.”

Standing directly at Abdullah’s desk, Hawk kept his eyes on Abdullah.

“No white man calls me nigger,” Hawk said quietly, “no black man calls me Tom.”

He leaned across the desk and grabbed a handful of Abdullah’s saffron robes. Abdullah screeched for help and several of the hard young men in dark suits came dashing down the corridor. Hawk slapped Abdullah across the face forehand and backhand, hard enough to rock his head back. Abdullah was all skinny arms and legs scrambling to get away. Hawk slapped him again as the first of the hard young men rushed into the room. Hawk dropped Abdullah, turned, and flattened the hard young man with a left hook. Three more crowded through the door. I took in a deep breath and let it out, and hit one of them on the back of his neck behind his right ear, and the fight was on. There were four of them and two of us, but one of us was Hawk and one of us was me, and they had Abdullah on their side. Having Abdullah on your side was like subtracting one, so the fight was almost even. The young men were all aficionados of some sort of Asian fighting technique, at which they were technically skilled. But they’d used it mostly to frighten college kids and intimidate professors. By the time the university cops arrived, the fight was over, we had won, and the militant Professor Abdullah was trying to crawl out of his office door from behind his desk, before Hawk got hold of him again.

“He assaulted me,” Abdullah shrieked to the first cop through the door. “He assaulted me.”

The university cops were followed in pretty close order by a couple of Boston cops, one of whom I knew. The university cops wanted to arrest us, but I explained what I was doing there and swore that Abdullah had started it, and the Boston cop that I knew interceded and eventually Hawk and I walked, though we were to stay close in case Abdullah pressed charges.

When we left the university police station we headed for the Harbor Health Club. After Henry Cimoli had stopped fighting, and before he opened what at that time he’d called a gym, on the waterfront, he’d worked corners for a while as a cut man. I had a cut under my eye, and a puffy lip and the knuckles on my left hand were scraped and swollen. Hawk had a black eye and a cut on his bald scalp that bled a lot. We needed Henry’s repair service.

“Well,” I said, “a fine mess you got us into this time, Ollie.”

“He hurt my feelings,” Hawk said.

He was pressing a folded paper towel against the cut on his head.

“You don’t have feelings,” I said. “I’ve heard blacks call you Tom, and whites call you nigger, and for all you cared they could have been singing ‘Louie, Louie.’”

“I know.”

“And all of a sudden you have a NO-BLACK-MAN-CALLS-ME-TOM fit and we’re fighting four martial arts freaks.”

“I know. Done good too,” he said. “Didn’t we.”

“We’re supposed to,” I said. “What was all that wounded pride crap.”

Hawk grinned.

“Scrawny fucker annoyed me,” Hawk said.

“Well, of course he did,” I said.

“Hate phonies,” Hawk said.

“Sure,” I said. “It’s the right thing to do. But if it comes up again, could you hate them on your time?”

Atlantic Avenue was generously dug up and intricately de-toured as the Central Artery project lumbered ahead. I pulled in and parked in among some heavy equipment near the Harbor Health Club.

“Can’t promise nothing,” Hawk said.

Загрузка...