The Importance of Being Dangerous (25 page)

“That's good,” Griff said to himself sarcastically.

“Hell yeah, it's good,” said Yakoob.

“No, Koob. That's not good. What's good about taking the man's life?” Sidarra demanded.

Yakoob's surprised expression returned. “I can think of two
reasons offhand, baby. Getting paid and persuasion. We made a king-sized grip off all that shit. I know you're sleeping in some of yours; I'm ridin' in some of mine. And it was
y'all
that teamed up for persuasion. Remember dat? I didn't intolerate. You don't think I coulda? No, I listened. Y'all were righteous that night.” He waved his hand. “Good fuckin' riddance to that bastard. More of them evil fucks need to go like that.”

This was not supposed to be this. Sidarra planted her arms behind her on the table and let her head drop to keep from spinning too fast. She didn't understand and she couldn't make herself understood. The room started to crowd in on her, and she began to feel nauseous. Griff came over and reached out to steady her, but she couldn't even look up at him.

“You okay, sugar?”

“I need to, uh, I need to just get to the restroom for a minute. I don't feel so good.”

Griff helped her off the table and guided her slowly toward the dressing area where the private bathroom was. Yakoob stood helplessly, not sure if his help was wanted or needed. When Sidarra got to the little door, she leaned in and quickly closed it behind her. Once alone, she sat on the toilet seat with her head in her hands and listened to the inaudible sounds of angry whispers coming from the pool room.

“This macho shit is a fuckin' mistake, Koob!” Griff shouted in a whisper.

“Don't you fuckin' step to me, man!” Koob yelled back in a whisper. “Now that the pussy's yours, you some kind of black motherfuckin' knight? You better recognize, my brother. You made this shit go as fast as I did. Don't
come
with this how-could-I-know shit now, Griff, don't do it!”

Griff knew enough to let Koob's rage settle. “All right. You finished? You cool? I hear you. But she's right now. The shit is hot. The shit is for real. Sid didn't know.”

“I know she didn't know, motherfucker! Sometimes you act like can't another nigga think but you!”

Griff's right hand shot up and his fingers opened wide in front of his chest. “Whoa, whoa, black man. Try to put that shit on ice for me, a'ight? Just chill.” Griff put his hand down and waited for Yakoob to stop twitching. “You right. You caught me watching my lady's back. But that's our girl in there too. She's got a right to be upset. You need to stay cool. You really do, blood.” He walked around the pool table to the stand where his glass and a bottle of Hennessy rested. “I think you're right about the link. It's not there. But we're not waiting on that, dig? Shit's gotta get fixed.”

“I'm hip.”

“Okay then.”

Sidarra walked back in the room. She looked better, resolute, and her color had returned. She asked nothing about all the whispering she'd heard.

“Sid,” said Koob as he moved to embrace her, “I apologize, baby. I didn't mean to come off so hard. You know how they say don't hate the playa, hate the game? Well, I coulda played a different game. Okay? Don't be mad at me, sistergirl.”

She let him hug her and she eventually held him back. When they separated, she looked up into Koob's eyes. “You still my nigga,” she laughed. And they all laughed.

After that it was straight business. They filled their drinks together, sat down, and for the rest of the night figured out what they had to do.

 

BY THE NEXT MORNING
, Yakoob officially got cold feet about doing Cavanaugh. With even fewer specifics than he had given Raul on the Eagleton job, Koob had again enlisted his muscle to make his point for him. But not only did Raul not read the papers, unfortunately he had also developed what he called a professional
policy of not reporting back to Koob until he had completed his work. So Koob couldn't call him off; there was no sure way to reach him. And each day Koob would find a moment to peer inside the Fidelity Investments branch to see if Cavanaugh was still in one piece. But each time he went, Cavanaugh wasn't there.

BY THE EARLY SUMMER OF
1998, there were still two Central Parks. The first was the park of newly seeded lawns, keep-out fences, wildflowers, and mostly white families. That park had not come into being until maybe a decade before, and it was progressively taking over the huge urban sanctuary. The second Central Park, shrinking as it were, was the northern third, closest to the Harlem border, a little rockier and not as well kept. Here you still saw crowded family picnics of brown people and their soccer games, bands of boys, illegal barbecues, salsa and merengue in effect, dark lovers under trees, and unsafe cliffs you were wise to avoid. The families of freed slaves had seen their proud shacks demolished over a hundred years before to make room for the grounds on which their ancestors now breathed a little easier. The loop of road used by bicyclists, Rollerbladers, and joggers cut through both parks.

“Ready, Mom?” Raquel asked.

“Ready.”

By now, Sidarra and Raquel had their own bikes for the times they wanted to ride together around the Central Park loop. Because it was such a long walk to the park entrance at 110th Street, they didn't do it often enough to justify the high price of their top-of-the-line mountain bikes. But that Sunday, the sun was too bright to ignore and they needed some uninterrupted time with each other. They wore matching warm-up suits, one lime green, the other pink. Sidarra had grown concerned that her daughter's progress at St. Augustine's was occurring at the expense of a connection to her own people, the kids on her block and the ones, until recently, in her old classroom. So she put Raquel in a subsidized day camp that met near Fort Tryon Park in upper Manhattan. Raquel spent her days as a kid again, jumping double Dutch, playing kickball, making arts-and-crafts picture frames out of dried noodles and cardboard and learning the words to songs played on radio stations she didn't listen to much anymore.

A long walk down Lenox Avenue used to be filled with Raquel's questions, mainly about her grandparents and what they used to do there, sometimes about what the people there were doing now. But today Raquel had other things on her mind, things far beyond the street. Like cumulus clouds overhead. Like weather patterns she had been studying before school let out.

“I think I want to be an astronomer, Mom,” she declared at about 116th Street.

“That's a great idea, honey. A scientist. Astrology is some fascinating stuff.”

Raquel looked up at her as if Sidarra had horns and a tail. “Astrology, Mom? Astrology might be neat to some people, but it's not science. As
tronomy
is the science of the universe. I like celestial bodies. Stuff you can't see in New York City, like stars. I love stars.”

Forty years old and she still got those damn two words mixed up. Sidarra let the backslap go on account of her daughter being a Cancer. That's how they talk.

“Why stars, Rock?” Sidarra asked.

“Because,” Raquel answered firmly, “whoever lives there probably thinks this is heaven.”

They rode slowly through the park. They passed the point in the loop where Raquel had taken a fall for which she was hospitalized a few years back. Raquel's memory was sharper than Sidarra thought. She asked if they could pull over just past the spot. When they were safely beside the curb, Raquel got off her bike, held her mother's hand, and closed her eyes. Sidarra watched her lips moving slightly in a prayer she could not hear. Then Raquel crossed herself, smiled sweetly at her mother, and hopped back on the bike.

They rode on through the park's fresh meadows. They stopped to hear a live band or two and hit the swings at a playground near the children's zoo. Sidarra couldn't believe how much her daughter seemed to know at times. Raquel had a response to everything. She had opinions for days and always a keen eye for what the weather was doing. Days like this helped Sidarra to remember who she herself was and what she really wanted. Such a day helped her forget what the Cicero Club had done and what might happen to her. Nothing could happen to her, she decided.

For all her budding brainpower, Raquel had serious trouble working all the gears and speeds on her mountain bike. Sidarra herself almost fell over trying to change hers on a hill. Raquel said it was probably the fat tires that created resistance. That's why they struggled up the hills. Whatever it was, by the time they reached 106th Street on the East Side, they were walking again beside their bikes. Under a broad canopy of leaves, they stopped to have a hot dog and pretzel picnic.

“So you haven't told me much about camp, Raquel. How's it going?”

Raquel chewed her ketchup-covered frank and looked out at a field of families playing in the old Central Park. The shrieks and laughter sounded mostly Spanish, but they could also hear the distinct sound of dance hall music somewhere close behind them. Another mom and her daughter were sitting on the edge of a tall rock off to their right. Raquel's expression remained disinterested as she watched the pair swing their legs back and forth while they talked together. “It's okay. I'm the best girl in kickball.”

“That's great, honey. Do you all play anything else?”

“Nah. They don't have anything up there. You know that. The boys play stickball, but I'm not playing that. I asked the counselor if we could get a lacrosse game together, but he just laughed at me. I wasn't trying to be funny.”

Sidarra explained a little bit about the kind of camp it was and how it was important that Raquel remember that sometimes you try to make do with what's around you. They had fun anyway. Not all fun had to be St. Augustine's fun.

She was interrupted by a loud, sudden burst of laughter from the mother and her daughter on the rock above. She didn't know what they were laughing about. But Sidarra was reminded in that moment of all the times she had come with her own mother to this park before it divided, sat near rocks or under trees, and laughed over the lunch they packed in tinfoil from home.

“Oh, I play poor sometimes, Mom. Don't worry. But when this girl T'Quana heard me ask the counselor about playing lacrosse, she decided to jump bad with me.”

“What'd you do?” Sidarra asked, bracing herself for the answer.

“Well, you know I'm not trying to hear that from
her
. I said, ‘T, I'm not trying to hear that from
you
.' Mommy, T's mother is a crackhead. Either a crackhead or a ho. Anyway, T likes to fight. She fights like every day almost. So she comes at me with her fists up, rolling her neck and her eyes, tellin' me she's gonna bust me upside my face.”

“Oh no, Raquel, how'd you handle it?”

“I'm not getting my nice stuff jacked up by a crack ho, nuh-uh. I called over the counselor. I told him, ‘See this?' He stepped in and started to pull T'Quana away from me.”

Sidarra's worried look subsided a little. “Well, that was pretty sensible, Raquel. Better than to fight.”

Raquel seemed proud to add, “As he was dragging her away from me, I told her, ‘You know I can have you! You know that. I can have you, T!'”

“What was that supposed to mean?”

“It means I own her. She ain't got nothin',” Raquel answered matter-of-factly.

Sidarra hauled up terrified and very nearly smacked Raquel across the ear. Instead, she smacked her own hip loudly. “Have you lost your goddamned mind, child?”

“Mom,” she uttered softly, “that's using the Lord's name in vain. What's so wrong with what I said?”

“Get up!
Get up!
You don't talk to people like that. Just who the hell do you think you are, Raquel? I'm amazed at you and very disappointed.” She helped Raquel to her feet by yanking her by the back of her shirt. They grabbed their bikes by the handlebars, and Sidarra led them on a march back uptown. She didn't know what she was doing exactly, or where they were going. She had to figure out what to say, and it felt instinctively like they needed to be closer to home if not actually there. What have I done? What have I done? Sidarra muttered inside her head.

Then it came to her. She stopped and turned to Raquel. “Look at me, Raquel. We're about to do something, and I don't want you to say a single solitary word, okay? Some people have so much money they have to buy themselves a lesson, and you're about to buy one.” They marched ahead to the grass beneath the high rocks, stopped there, and Sidarra looked up. “Excuse me!” Sidarra
called to the mother-daughter team swinging their legs above them. “Excuse me!”

Finally the daughter's face peeked out and looked down at Sidarra. She looked to her side and her mother's face soon peeked down and smiled. “Yes? Is something wrong?”

“We would come up, but it's a little steep with the bikes. Listen, I was just wondering if you all would be interested in these bicycles?”

The mother needed only a second to start shaking her head politely, but her daughter quickly encouraged her to hold up. Sidarra could see them consulting, but couldn't hear what they were saying.

“Look, maybe your daughter could just come take a quick look. It's not a scam. The bikes are ours and everything.”

That was enough to warrant further investigation at least. Sidarra and a very sullen but silent Raquel waited while the mother and daughter gradually collected themselves and walked down a curling slope to them. The mom looked a little older than Sidarra, with a slight accent that could have been Caribbean. Her long-legged daughter had to be at least twelve.

“Why are you giving two nice mountain bikes away?” the girl asked with the beginnings of a Christmas smile on her cheeks.

“We sort of won them from a Wal-Mart in New Jersey where we live. We didn't really want them. It was a raffle. We don't really ride. You can tell they're still pretty new. They sat all winter. Today we thought we'd try them out in the park, but, honestly, we can't handle all the gears. So we've been looking for somebody who might make good use of them.”

The mother and daughter checked each other's eyes to see if Sidarra's story checked out. The daughter didn't need much convincing. Her big eyes were busy running over the bikes' details. She looked back at her mom in what was supposed to be a private
look of near-desperate acceptance. All she could say to her mom was, “Please?”

The mother had been looking at Sidarra's and Raquel's warm-up suits. Her only remaining look now was to check Sidarra's eyes for charity. She didn't want that. When she couldn't find it, she said okay. “Yes. We'd love to ride them.”

“No, no, you may
have
them,” Sidarra said.

“Okay, okay. Sure. What a nice surprise. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you both.”

Sidarra nodded and beamed at them. She handed them each the bike, checking only to make sure Raquel stayed quiet. Then she took her daughter by the arm and they walked off again toward the park entrance at 110th Street.

“All I'm gonna add, Raquel, is that the nice thing about giving somebody something with wheels is that, all the days and years of your life when you're wondering about whatever happened to that great bike you talked your way out of, some other girl and her mother are covering ground, traveling to the places they like to go, seeing things, and just maybe feeling a lot more grateful than you do that their world got a little bit bigger.”

“I just wish I knew their names,” Raquel said. “It's easier to remember people when you know their names.”

“Well, that's not a bad point,” Sidarra replied, taking her hand as they crossed out of the park. “Maybe you can make some up.” They walked in silence for a block or two until Sidarra could feel Raquel's grip on her arm return some affection again. She squeezed back and added, “I know how much you loved that bike, Rock. I hope you're not too mad, but that you got the message. You're my star, kid, and stars have to shine.”

It wasn't exactly true. Raquel had steadily lost interest in bikes since her accident. She just liked to be out with her mom.

“You're mine too,” she said.

 

“
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN
, on behalf of the mayor, who unfortunately could not attend today's historic meeting, I wish to introduce to you the new chancellor of the New York City public schools, Dr. Grace Blackwell.”

Sidarra stood at the huge table in the City Hall conference hall and clapped furiously along with about thirty other people, some of them regulars at the monthly Thursday education meeting, many of them attending only for the ceremony. A two-term Republican mayor who had campaigned and served as stern father and vengeful master to the darker peoples of the metropolis had simply run out of takers for the job. Dr. Blackwell was a staunch Democrat with an unapologetic résumé. She had been the president of Spelman College, her alma mater, after receiving her doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Then, after heading President Clinton's task force on educational reform in the former Bantustans of South Africa, she had accepted the post of schools supervisor over the troubled Gary, Indiana, school system. Beloved by most parents and many of the top administrators she had recruited, she made progress there until ongoing court battles over the use of school vouchers got in the way. When she refused to implement the voucher system on the ground that it discriminated against poor black children, she let her name be floated for job openings across the country. Now, at fifty-six, she, her husband, and their two teenage children would be moving into the chancellor's townhouse in Brooklyn Heights.

Sidarra held back her tears as she listened to the chancellor speak. Dr. Blackwell was a medium-sized woman of medium height, with shocks of gray hair and caramel skin. She wore a lightweight outfit of black and red robes that draped over her full bosom except when she occasionally tossed the front panel across her chest for emphasis. She spoke with unmistakable authority, a
kind of no-nonsense lyricism punctuated by frequent smiles below her bright brown eyes. There would be reforms again, she told the group. Without going into detail at this event, she assured everyone in the room that she had her own methodology, an executive staff of experts she had worked with for years, and little of it resembled the “corporatized” approach of her capable predecessor, God rest his soul. The transition would necessarily take more time than usual, she explained, because of the ongoing investigation. Which, she added, would not penalize the children.