In 1951 seedlings had been planted to shade and gentrify the place-eucalyptus, cypress, magnolia. Within the square block that bounded Holly Park there were three communal gardens and a children’s playground with swing sets and monkey bars and slides. Curtains hung behind shining windows. In the four grassy spaces between buildings, now each a barren no-man’s-land called a cut and ‘owned’ by a crack dealer, people had hung laundry and fixed bicycles.
One hundred eighty-six people over eighteen claimed residence in Holly Park. There were one hundred seventeen children and juveniles. Every known resident was black. One hundred fifty-nine of the adults had police records. Of the juveniles between twelve and eighteen, sixty-eight percent had acquired rap sheets, most for vandalism, shoplifting, possession of dope, several for mugging, burglary and rape, and three for murder.
There were four nuclear families-a man, his legal wife and their children-in Holly Park. The rest was a fluid mass of women with children.
Because Holly Park was provided by the city and county for indigent relief, by definition every resident was on welfare, but twenty-two women and thirty men held ‘regular’ jobs. The official reported per capita income of all the adults in Holly Park was $2,953.13, far below the poverty level.
Income from the sale of rock cocaine was estimated by the San Francisco Police Department to be between $1.5 and $3 million per year, broken down to about $50 to $75 per hour per cut, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
So far this year-and it was September-ninety-six percent of the residents of Holly Park over the age of seven had been victims, perpetrators or eyewitnesses of a violent crime.
Police response time to an emergency in Holly Park averaged twenty-one minutes. By contrast, in the posh neighborhood of St Francis Wood, it averaged three and a half minutes, and Police Chief Rigby was upset about how long it took.
Some people believed that the solution to the drug and crime problems in the projects was to put a wall around them and let the residents kill each other off.
There are all kinds of walls.
Louis Baker was cold.
He opened his eyes, awake now, unsure of where he was. It was dark in the room, but a slice of gray light made its way through where the plywood sagged off the window. The box spring he had slept on had a familiar smell. He sat up, pulling the old army blanket around his massive bare shoulders.
At least it not be the joint, he thought. Praise God.
He stood up, shivering in his bare feet, and put on the suit pants they had given him when they let him out the day before. He crossed to the crack at the window and looked down into one of the cuts.
Pretty much the same. Gray building, gray fog, the constant wind. No trees, no grass, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Martha Reeves and the Vandellas. Now it was Rap, already coming up from three, four places. That was cool. Faces changed, music changed, even people sometimes. But it was the same turf, his old turf. Territory, turf. You controlled it you could be happy. The constant.
He pulled the blanket up closer and put his eye to the crack, checking down the cut. Kids standing around. Some business maybe going down.
His Mama called out from down below. “You movin’, child? You up?”
She was not his mother but he called her Mama. He was not even sure they were related. She had just always been around, always been Mama.
“Comin’ down,” he said.
Mama dressed exactly the same. There was no fashion here in Holly Park. There were no politics. Nothing external was going to change things here. Louis knew that. It was all inside, as it had been for him.
Mama was large. She sat sipping instant coffee at her formica table. Her hair was held by pins and covered, mostly, with a bandanna. She wore a plaid flannel shirt, untucked, over a pair of faded blue jeans that was tearing at the seams by her generous hips.
Louis kissed her, spooned some coffee crystals into a mug, poured boiling water over it and sat down across from her.
“It’s good to be home.”
“What you be doing now?”
Louis shrugged, blowing on his cup. “Get a job. Something. Got to work.”
“An’ be careful, right?”
He reached over and touched her face. “Don’t you worry, Mama. Nothin’ else, I learned careful.”
But he wondered then, for a second, if it was true. When they let him out, he had not given a thought to careful. But seeing Ingraham just when he got out had brought it all back. Back on the streets, he best be careful every minute.
He saw Ingraham again-taking care of business before he had even come down here to Mama’s-and his blood ran hot. The rage was still there. Beatin’ it was the hard thing.
He gripped at his mug with both hands, bringing it to his mouth.
But that had been old business. Finished now, he hoped. He wouldn’t have any cause to think about it again. It was settled.
“Cause out there, you know…” Mama motioned to the back door.
Louis followed her glance, then scanned the kitchen. Over the stove the paint was peeling in wide sheets. A poster of Muhammad Ali was taped up next to a religious calendar-he noted the suffering Christ.
Mama kept the place pretty clean, but she was old. What was the point of putting in a window over the sink? The plywood wouldn’t break-it kept out the wind. It made the kitchen dark, but dark was safer. The whole house was dark.
“I know ’bout out there, Mama. Here’s what I do, so you don’t worry. I go see the man, he set me up or not. Come back here and start setting up.”
“Set up what?”
He stood up, leaning over to kiss her. “The house, Mama. We gonna clean house.”
“Hardy in chains,” Glitsky said. “I like it.”
“It is a good time,” Hardy agreed. He had stood up when Glitsky entered the living room, and now one of the patrolmen was unlocking the cuffs. “Damn, those things work good.” He opened and closed his fingers, rubbing his wrists, trying to get the circulation going. “If this affects my dart game, I’m suing the city.”
Glitsky, ignoring Hardy, asked Patrolman Thomas if he could stand outside and direct the homicide-scene team below as it arrived.
When he went outside the other patrolman, Ling, said, “The body’s in there.”
Glitsky nodded. “What are you doing here?” he asked Hardy.
“Long story.”
“With a loaded gun?”
“Makes it longer.” He shrugged. “It’s registered. I’ve got a permit.”
Ling spoke up. Glitsky realized he was the shortest cop he’d ever seen. When he had come up there’d been a minimum height requirement of 5'8", but some court had ruled that since many Asians were under this height, the rule unfairly discriminated against a class of people and therefore had to go.
Ling was about 5'5", but since he had been the one left below to handle Hardy if he got feisty, Glitsky assumed he could take care of himself.
“Can I see the gun?” he asked.
Ling handed over Hardy’s weapon. He checked the cylinder and clucked disapprovingly. “It’s loaded,” he said to Hardy.
“It works better when it’s loaded.”
Glitsky flipped open the cylinder and let the bullets fall, one by one, into the palm of his hand. He put them into the pocket of his blue parka and smelled the weapon. “It hasn’t been fired.”
“No, sir,” Ling said. “I realize that.”
“Come on, Abe,” Hardy said. “I didn’t shoot anybody.”
“My friend here has a rich fantasy life,” Glitsky said. He handed the gun back to Ling. “You think this is Dodge City or what? You can pick it up back at the Hall.”
“Abe, it’s a legal weapon.”
“And this is a murder scene, Diz. It can’t hurt to check the paper on it.”
Hardy turned to Ling. “And what brought you guys out here?”
“The couple who live on the next boat over were going out for a jog and passed you walking around with a gun in your hand. They saw you come in here, and they went back to their boat and reported it.”