Judging Time

45

The kitchen cabinets and table dated back nearly a hundred. years to the turn of the century, but the dishwasher, stove, and refrigerator were brand new. The rest of the brownstone Belle called home had been carefully restored in a style Rick Liberty recognized from historic photographs of the lives of wealthy people of color at the turn of the century. The dim light of the January afternoon did not diminish the warmth and glamour of the rooms. Entering such a place in his ripped parka and bloody sweatshirt, Rick had felt like the felon that half the world thought he was.

Belle took him into the kitchen, gave him a cup of coffee, brought him into the living room to drink it, then went upstairs to shower and change her clothes. When she returned fifteen minutes later, she was a different person again. Now her long hair was in a ponytail, and she wore a maroon turtleneck, gray tailored trousers, and a navy blazer. Black alligator belt. This Belle was no child of the slums. The change was unnerving.

"We have to get you some clothes," she said briskly. "Is there anybody you know who can get in and out of your apartment?" "Sure, but it's probably being watched." "Fine, I have a friend about your size. I'll get you some clothes. How about a lawyer?" she said casually. "I know a few of the best. But I'm sure you do, too. By the way, what do your friends call you?"

"Rick," Rick said, sitting forward on a rich burgundy velvet chair with a complex braid trim.

"Rick, you're bleeding on my chair," she remarked.

"Thanks."

"What for?"

"You stopped calling me nigger. Do you have any gauze pads?"

"I'll get some. You need stitches?"

Rick shook his head. "Just a messy scratch. I'm sorry about the chair. I'll have it recovered. Who are you?"

"Nobody important. My name is Isabella Wentforth Lindsay." Belle grimaced as if the three words gave her a bad taste. "This is my grandma's house. Granny isn't very well, but doesn't want to leave. So I stay here and watch her home-care nurses, make sure she's all right." Belle looked toward the bow window overlooking the north end of Central Park.

"This house belonged to her father. My father grew up here." She stroked the patterned cut velvet on the antique sofa. "Daddy left here after law school. I grew up in White Plains. My parents live in Westchester now. But I still love the house. Granny let me do the restorations. Do you like it?"

"Very much." The shooting of Jefferson, the cuts on Rick's chest, and the long sleepless night of worry over Belle's head wound and her barrage of insults were all catching up with him. He was having trouble taking everything in. Now he knew who her father was, a prominent conservative black New York State Supreme Court judge. Her mother was a documentary film producer. A white documentary film producer.

Grief swept over him, tightening his chest until he could hardly breathe. He closed his eyes against the onslaught of nausea that severe pain often brought him. Belle's mother was white. Until that moment Rick had never considered the possibility that the children of white mothers might feel anger, even despair, at having to go through life bearing the color their fathers had not wanted to—would not have—married themselves. Belle's skin was honey-colored, as if the sun had warmed her from within. Her famous mother was white. The charge always leveled at him was that when black folk came up in the world and married white, they forgot that their children would be black no matter how light their skin. Perhaps if he and Merrill had had children, they would have fell the same.

"You okay?" She studied him.

"I'm sorry to get you into this," was all Rick could say.

"I do this with adolescents all the time. I do it with battered wives. It's my calling—anyway, I've always thought you were—" Belle broke off. "Why don't I go get you those clothes and stuff?"

An hour and a half later, dressed in borrowed clothes, Rick was waiting for Marvin's van to pick him up when a shriek of sirens brought him to the bow window where he parted the lace curtain. He saw a forest green Chrysler with a light flashing on top and two blue-and-white police cars speed up the wrong side of the street and cluster in front of the brown-stone, blocking Marvin's van that was pulling up at the same moment.

Rick watched four uniformed cops and the WCRN news team scramble out of their vehicles. Four cops unholstered their weapons. A man in a gray overcoat and a man in a suit jumped out of the Chrysler and started screaming at the man with the TV camera.

"Get back!"

"Get out of here!"

"Is that camera on?"

"Get that camera off."

"What's going on, Officer?" The reporter moved in with the camera.

"Get back, please."

"Can you tell me your name, Officer?"

Rick watched the scene with horror. A white uniformed officer shoved a black reporter with a video camera. The cameraman shoved him back. The red light on the camera was on. Six officers jostled each other as they climbed up the front stoop to get him. He was afraid, and he was angry. He wanted to tell Belle he was sorry, that he would make it up to her. But he couldn't open his mouth, knew he could not make anything up to anybody.

It occurred to him that Marvin had friends in the police. He could have set this arrest up. Or maybe Belle had set this up. He glanced at her. No, Belle looked as frightened as he. She held his hand, speechless for once. How could the police have found him? The doorbell rang.

"Stay here. I'll go by myself." Rick's head pounded as he went down the graceful circular staircase toward the insistent ringing doorbell. He opened the door. Cops were arranged all around it with their guns pointed at him.

"Put your guns away," he said. "I'm not going to resist you." His hands were by his sides. He did not think to raise them. Belle had followed him down the stairs. She stood beside him, pressed against his arm in case they intended to shoot.

The man in the dove gray overcoat did not bother to ask who Rick was. His first words were, "Mr. Liberty, you're under arrest for the murder of Wallace Peter Jefferson. You have the right to—"

"What—?"

"Remain silent—"

"Wait a minute—wait, you have the wrong man."

"Tell it to the judge, Mr. Liberty."

"Wait—!" Liberty shouted. "Just wait one minute."

Two uniforms jerked his hands together and wrestled his wrists into handcuffs, closing them tighter than they had to be. Rick heard Belle's voice, but couldn't make out what she said. The camera crew filmed him with Belle, then him alone as he was hurried, in a huddle of blue, down the stairs and pushed into a car—protesting so vigorously the arresting detective never got a chance to finish reading him his rights.