Small Vices

Chapter 3

I was the only white guy in sight, sitting in an Area B cruiser on Seaver Street, near the zoo, with a cop named Jackson, who was the Community Service officer for District 2. He was a slow, calm, burly guy with gray hair. He had one of those profound bass voices which adds portent to everything said, though he didn’t talk as if he knew that.

“Ellis got the same story most of the kids you can see got,” Jackson said. He made a graceful inclusive gesture with his right hand.

“His mother’s about fifteen years older than he is. She and him live with her mother, his grandmother. Nobody’s working. Don’t know who the father is. Mother does some dope ’cause she got nothing else that she knows how to do. Grandmother does what she can. Which ain’t much. She’s got no education. She’s got no money. She don’t know who fathered her daughter. When Ellis was born, his grandmother was about thirty-two. Ellis don’t go to school much. Nobody at his house seems able to get up early enough in the morning to get him there. He’s a gang banger soon as they’ll have him. Ran for a while with The Hobarts. By the time he’s a grown-up he got his career mapped out. He does strong arm, dope dealing, small-time theft. For recreation he molests women. Anybody he seen in his whole life, that he actually knows, who’s a success, that’s what they do. Michael Jordan may as well be from Mars.”

“You think he did the woman in Pemberton?”

“Could have. Don’t much matter to me. He’s where he should be. I don’t never want to see him get out.”

“His lawyer thinks he was railroaded because he was black.”

Jackson shrugged.

“Probably was. Happens a lot. Because he’s black. Because he’s poor. Either one is bad, the combination is very bad.”

I watched the kids walking past us on the sidewalk. They looked pretty much like any other kids. They were dressed for each other. Oversized clothes, sneakers, hats on backwards, or sideways. Most of them tried to look confident. Most of them were full of pretense. All of them were a little overmatched by the speed at which the world came at them. But these kids weren’t like other kids, and I knew it. These kids were doomed. And they knew it.

Jackson watched me as I looked at the kids.

“Shame, ain’t it?” he said.

“Been a shame for a long time,” I said.

“Went to a meeting, couple weeks ago,” Jackson said. “Some politician thought it’d be a good idea to get some influential folks together, talk about how to save the children. Asked me to stop by, maybe answer some questions.”

“And let me guess,” I said. “How many of them had grown up in a project.”

“Just me,” Jackson said. “They’re all white. They all feel that the parents needed to be more involved. They say that they all have faced problems in their schools. Students been defacing desk tops in Marblehead, and they been writing dirty words on the lavatory walls in Newton.”

“Better get a police presence in there quick,” I said.

“And the whole evening nobody uses the word ‘black’ or the word ‘Hispanic.’ Like there ain’t a racial thing going on. Like there’s a bunch of white Anglo kids in the inner city, walking around looking for the fucking malt shop. So I say, you people have simply got to stop talking ’bout fucking inner city when you mean black. And you really got to stop talking about fucking parents. Kids in the inner city got the usual biological folks. But mostly they ain’t got no fucking parents. Mostly the only family they got is the gang, and the only thing that they can insist on is respect. And the only things they got to insist on it with is balls and a gun.”

“Makes you tired, doesn’t it?”

“I’m used to it.”

“Well, at least they’re asking the right questions,” I said.

“They ain’t asking the right people,” Jackson said.

“Hell,” I said, “even if they were.”

Jackson nodded.

“Yeah. Only thing will help is if people change.”

“You think they’re going to?”

“Been a cop thirty-four years,” Jackson said.

“Yeah.”

We were quiet. It was the second Monday after Labor Day, and the kids who went were back in school. It had been a dry summer, but it was promising to be a rainy fall. It had been ominous for five straight days and each day seemed heavier with rain than the last one. The TV meteorologists were almost climactic.

“Just don’t get romantic on this one,” Jackson said. “Ellis is a bad guy. Maybe he didn’t have much choice about that, but it don’t mean he ain’t bad. You get him loose, you may be doing him a favor. You ain’t helping anyone else. And you probably ain’t helping him. You get him out, he gonna go back.”

I nodded, looking at the still-green leaves stirring apprehensively in the overcast.

“You think you can eliminate crime?” I said.

Jackson snorted.

“So what do you do?” I said.

“Do what I can,” Jackson said in his deep slow voice. “There’s nobody perpetrating a crime on this corner, right now. That’s ’cause I’m here. Somebody’s perpetrating something someplace else, maybe, but right now this corner is okay... It’s not much. But it’s all there is.”

“Yeah.”

Jackson looked at me for a while. Then he nodded slowly.

“Okay,” he said. “You too. Okay.”

We were quiet again. The street was almost empty now as if everybody were inside somewhere, waiting for the storm.

“Just don’t expect too much from Ellis Alves,” Jackson said.

“I expect nothing,” I said.

“Be about what you’ll get,” Jackson said.