Where to Choose Page 6

  “Why didn’t you leave your yard and porch lights on, Bert?” Angie asked with real agitation and felt herself jerked to a halt, as her left arm was linked tightly in Roberta’s right.

  “I did leave my lights on,” Roberta said quietly. And she withdrew her arm from Angie’s and thrust her hands into her pockets. “Who the hell is that on my front porch?”

  They all saw the shadow’s movement a fraction of a second later, and screams erupted from their throats in bad harmony, as if or­dered by a drunken choir master. The shadow moved swiftly, but not away from them, not around the side of the house to the rear and to escape on the next street. It ran toward them, dark and amorphous, something in its hand, pointing. They flinched and cowered at the sound of deafening noises. Three of them. And the running shadow was falling, first to its knees, then to its face. And the shadow—they could see it was a man—was still.

  They obeyed the instinct to run, individually and together, to Roberta’s door, the door that already was opened but not with a key. As if following taped x’s on a stage floor, they tumbled inside, one after the other, without pushing or shoving or contesting primacy. And once inside, they waited in the dark silently, patiently for light. Light and sight convinced them that they each and all were safe and unharmed. That Roberta’s living room was the victim. That Roberta was the avenger.

  “Where on earth did you get a gun?”

  “Bang!Bang!Bang! You shot him just like that and you didn’t miss, not once!”

  “I didn’t know you could use a gun. How do you know how to use a gun?”

  “Bert, say something!”

  “Roberta Lawson, if you don’t tell me right now where you got that gun!”

  Roberta raised her right hand and looked at what was in it. “It’s Charlie’s Army pistol. He kept it after the war. Lots of men did. Then, when he started long-distance trucking, he was worried about me at home alone with four girls so he taught me how to use it. I buried this gun in the back of the closet when I buried Charlie.” She raised her hand closer to her face and turned the gun from side to side, studying it. “I dug it out and oiled it last week. Just in case.”

  “What are we going to do now?” Angie was speaking to the group but her eyes were on Roberta’s hand. “Shouldn’t we call the police?”

  “Those same police who can’t find anybody to arrest for killing Sadie and Peggy and for bashing in Mrs. Asmara’s head? You want me to call them and confess? Never.”

  “Suppose,” Angie began, then paused to wait for her brain and her mouth to synchronize. “He’s laying out there...sup­pose he’s not dead?”

  Roberta shrugged and tightened her lips into a fierce grimace. She seemed to push the words out through them. “They left Mrs. Asmara laying there and she wasn’t dead.”

  “Suppose...”

  “Suppose what, Angie?”

  “Suppose somebody saw us? Heard the shots and saw us?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Give me the gun, Bert.” Grayce’s voice was quietly authorita­tive.

  “We need this gun for our protection, Grayce! Which of us do you think would be out there in the grass right now if I didn’t have this gun?”

  “That’s not the point, Bert.”

  “The hell it’s not! It’s the only point. We’re alive and I intend to keep us alive. Me and my friends Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson and their six cousins.” Roberta blew on the gun and thrust it into her pocket and looked around at her living room, as if noticing the dam­age for the first time. “The bastard!” she hissed.

  “Mother of God,” Luisa whispered and crossed herself.

  “Roberta, please stop talking like John Wayne. It is not becoming to a gentlewoman of color.”

  “That’s the second time tonight you’ve said ‘Mother of God,’ Luisa.”

  “She says ‘Mother of God’ a thousand times a day.”

  “She says ‘Madre de Dios’ a thousand times a day. Tonight she said it in English. Twice. I think that must mean something.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “This is Jennifer Johnson with an update on events at Jacaranda Estates. The violence continues, but with a twist. Two nights ago, there were two attacks. One victim was a seventy- two-year-old Black man, the husband of an earlier victim who remains hospitalized in a coma. The second victim was a young Mexican man, identity unknown as of this report, who was shot three times at close range. A loaded but unfired automatic weapon was in the man’s hand. Police are investigating, and the residents of Jacaranda Estates are angry. They are angry that the police have launched a full-scale investigation into his death, while ignoring the murders of two of their friends and neighbors, the beating of a third, and a six-month reign of ter­ror that has left them all fearful for their own lives. Police offi­cials would not confirm or deny the existence of an ongoing investigation into crimes at Jacaranda Estates.”

  Smog, dense and heavy, prevented the sun from warming a signifi­cant portion of the Los Angeles basin, including the portion that was Jacaranda Estates and though not a cool afternoon, not by Southern California standards, more sun would have been appreci­ated. But its absence did not dampen the excitement and spirit of the dozen people clustered together in the grass, behaving, for a change, like neighbors; standing and talking together in a way that they almost had forgotten once was the norm. Over and over again they reminded one another that this was the first time in months that they had stood in their yards, relaxed and comfortable, and communicated. Though the topic of conversation may not, in some quarters, have been considered neighborly.

  “I don’t care who shot him! I hope whoever did it will shoot the rest of ‘em! He deserved just what he got!”

  “That’s exactly what I told those police officers who came asking about it.”

  “And the nerve of them! Kept me up half the night asking me over and over and over again if I was sure I didn’t see anything. And acted like they didn’t believe me when I told them no!”

  “Me too! Like it’s my job to do their job. I told ‘em I don’t go out at night, don’t look out at night, and it’s their fault.”

  “Didn’t they question you, too, Roberta? I heard ‘em knocking in your door, beating on it like they were trying to tear it down.”

  “I told ‘em she wasn’t home. That it was her bridge club night and that she was probably still at Grayce Gibson’s.”

  “Thank God you didn’t come home to find a dead bum in your front yard.”

  Roberta inhaled deeply, tried to speak, and failed. For her efforts, she received two pats on the shoulder and a wise and under­standing nod of the head.

  Angelique and Roberta were part of the group but so far had re­mained silent, Angie because listening was more natural for her than speaking, and Roberta because she was still too numb to speak: From the shock of having taken a life, and from the ordeal of restoring order to her home following the destruction wrought by him whose life she had taken.

  “That’s what we all need to do. Get a bat or a stick or a brick, and use it to fight back.”

  “Or a gun.”

  Roberta shivered and Angie grabbed her arm and pulled her in close, and whispered that they should go home. Roberta nodded but didn’t move. Seemed not to be able to move.

  “Notice anything different about the playground today?”

  Bodies, heads, eyes, swiveled in the direction of the playground and once again the group reacted as a unit, as if rehearsed and di­rected. Nods, smiles, gratified murmurs.

  “That’s why we can’t ignore them or show them fear. The cowards are gone. If we keep fighting back, they’ll stay gone.”

  “But I don’t have a gun.”

  “I don’t want one!”

  “I do!”

  “Who’s that in the fancy car?”

  Their energy and attention shifted and, as a unit, they watched Carole Ann drive slowly up John Brown Drive, turn into Pancho Villa Drive, turn again into Harriet Tubman Drive and cruise to a
stop before her mother’s house. There were several more mur­mured queries about the occupant of the “fancy car.” Roberta waited for Angie to respond, and Angie waited for Roberta to re­spond. Finally the answer came, half authoritative and half specu­lative.

  “That’s Mrs. Gibson’s daughter. I don’t know her name, but she’s a doctor or a lawyer or something like that. She lives on the East Coast. New York, maybe?”

  “Washington, D.C.,” Roberta finally said, thinking it better to have the facts rather than more gossip circulating about the com­plex, and realizing with a tinge of sudden sadness that most of the people in the circle didn’t know Grayce’s daughter. Wouldn’t know her own four daughters. “and she’s a lawyer.”

  “I wish my daughter was a rich lawyer. I’d get her to move me out of here in a hurry!”

  Humor circulated among them, good-natured and relaxed and easy again, as they watched Carole Ann push the button on the key chain that locked the car and set the alarm, and walk toward them.

  “Is that little Carole Ann? I haven’t seen her since her college days,” one of the few remaining old-timers murmured in a remi­niscing tone.

  “Good lookin’ girl, whoever she is,” one of the men said, and one of the women punched him on the arm. “Well, she is!” he replied de­fensively, rubbing his arm. “She married?” And the giggle was still roaming the circle when Carole Ann approached.

  She was dressed casually in beige linen slacks and a gold silk tee shirt that somehow seemed not to have gotten wrinkled on the six- hour drive down from Sacramento, and she walked loosely and eas­ily, her long legs covering the distance swiftly. Two weeks of being overfed by her mother and a long weekend of collegiate-like pigging out with Marge had filled out her frame, and her skin was burnished deep bronze by the sun and the sea air. She smiled as she reached the group, encircling Bert and Angie, one under each arm, and of­fered a general greeting to the crowd. The older woman, Mrs. Philpot, whom she greeted by name and with a wide smile, blushed in gratitude to be remembered by a woman who’d remained a child in her memory.

  Despite the warm greeting and the wave of small talk, Carole Ann felt an underlying uneasiness. She was not unaware that it was unusual for so many people to be gathered outside, no matter that it was the middle of the day. She made a casual but careful scrutiny of the people now surrounding her—for the circle had opened to re­ceive her and had closed again around her—and then surveyed her surroundings. Her glance held for a long moment on the empty playground.

  “Is anything special happening?” she asked quietly.

  “She’s a lawyer, all right!”

  Carole Ann joined the laughter at her own expense and waited for an answer.

  “Somebody killed one of the bums.”

  “Shot him dead, the bastard.”

  “Right over there.”

  “And the police got the nerve to be asking us if we saw or heard anything.”

  “I heard they couldn’t identify him.”

  “Yeah, I heard that, too. He didn’t have any ID.”

  “Nothin’ in his pockets. Not even dust.”

  “But he had a gun in his hand!”

  “Praise God he didn’t get the chance to kill one of us.”

  “My husband chased two of ’em with a baseball bat that same night. They were beating up on an old man—”

  “That was Mr. Asmara.”

  “That’s the one! I called the cops when Bobby ran outside in his underpants, and do you know they haven’t come yet? But they can come here to see about that thug.”

  Carole Ann looked from Roberta to Angie, waiting for a contribu­tion from them to the discussion; expecting one from Bert, who had an opinion about everything. And she grew immediately uneasy when she closely scrutinized the expressions on their faces.

  “Why do they treat us like that? We’ve always been law-abiding citizens in Jacaranda Estates. Police never had a bit of trouble from us but they act like they don’t care what happens to us.”

  “That’s why we have to take care of ourselves! Can’t wait for the police. Like Malcolm X said: By any means necessary!”

  A heavy silence prevailed for a long moment, then it rapidly was filled with murmurs of assent. Heads nodded and lips smiled tightly and at least two pairs of hands applauded as if affirming the Sunday sermon. So there was a stunned reaction when a young Mexican woman, a stranger to both Roberta and Angelique, spoke up, loudly and with an edge.

  “No. The best thing is to ignore them. If you try to fight them, it will only be worse.”

  The young woman withstood the hostile stares and suddenly an­gry murmurings for several seconds before she turned and hurried away.

  “Worse! How can it be worse?”

  “Who is she? She must be a newcomer.”

  “I don’t care who she is, she’s wrong! We’ve got our homes back today, our peace and quiet. No hoodlums on the playground.”

  “We should all buy baseball bats.”

  “A bat won’t stop a bullet. That fool that got shot the other night had a gun. And it was a gun that stopped him.”

  That comment stopped all others. They regarded one another, these participants in what still was an experiment, for each of them, old-timers and newcomers alike, shared the belief that people could and should put aside their differences and live together in peace, despite daily confirmation to the contrary. And because they held such a belief, it was against their most basic and natural instincts to commit a violent act. And yet... and yet...

  “Who was that girl?” Carole Ann asked into the silence. “The one who said we shouldn’t fight back. Does anyone know her?”

  As a reply, she received a circle of shrugged shoulders, shaken heads, puzzled glances, and furrowed brows.

  “I’ve never seen her before.”

  “Me either.”

  “Does she live here?” C.A. asked. “Does anyone know for certain if she lives here?”

  As a reply this time, she received nothing.

  Carole Ann didn’t hear much more of what was said; the alarm going off in her brain was making too much noise. Someone had killed a man who couldn’t be identified. The police were taking that killing seriously. Roberta was eerily quiet, almost as if she were afraid. Peaceful people were contemplating vigilantism against the unwelcome advice of a stranger. No way all those jagged pieces ever could fit together in a picture that made sense.

  But Carole Ann tried. Much as she regretted having to do it, she rejected Roberta’s invitation for dinner: “Just the two of us.” In­stead, she went shopping. She bought what must have been the most expensive pair of binoculars on the planet—the highest power with night-vision capability. And she bought black spandex tights, black sneakers, and several black tee shirts. She spent the remain­der of the afternoon selecting a suitable place to spy on the play­ground from outside the Jacaranda complex.

  She had an early but subdued dinner with her mother and, with­out having to be dishonest about it, claimed fatigue and went to bed. She slept deeply for five hours, waking before the travel alarm she’d placed under her pillow had an opportunity to sound off. It was eleven-thirty. She lay in the darkness listening, certain that her mother was asleep—Grayce went to bed at eleven every night—but allowing a few extra minutes of insurance. At midnight she rose, dressed, and, shoes in hand, crept out of the house and into the night. She slid around the side of the house, keeping close to it, an­gled toward the garage, and ducked into the dense shrubbery beside it, where she sat beneath a spreading jacaranda and amid dense bougainvillea and put on her sneakers.

  She sat for a few moments longer, fiddling with the binoculars, adjusting them to her and herself to them. They were worth every penny. She could see Roberta’s house across the expanse of lawn as clearly as if she were standing next to it. She surveyed the entire complex in every direction, making certain that she was alone in the darkness. And with the binoculars, she could be certain.

  Walking briskly, confidently
, though with care and awareness, Carole Ann left the confines of Jacaranda Estates with as much dignity as she could after skirting garbage bins and climbing over backyard fences. She was on the far south end of the property, the quiet and upscale residential area that she realized was slightly frightening so late at night. Frightening because, behind the protective and pri­vate walls of foliage-covered stucco and wrought iron, Carole Ann could discern no signs of the lives she knew were being lived there.

  She slowed her pace to a stroll and got control of the anxiety that was making her jittery. The very circumstance that was unnerving her—the absence of life—also was her guarantee of safety and pro­tection. Because there was no visible sign of life, there was nobody to notice her or to be suspicious of her presence or her actions. That’s why she’d chosen this route and this location, she reminded herself. So she could sit in the enormous bough of an ancient euca­lyptus tree and watch the Jacaranda Estates playground. To be cer­tain that what Jennifer Johnson suspected, that what she and Jennifer had seen—or hadn’t seen—several nights ago was not an aberration.

  Carole Ann, with the aid of the powerful binoculars, watched the playground for two hours and saw it and its inhabitants as clearly as if it were noon and she were standing next to it. During that time, the six young men in the ugly gang-banger clothes sat quietly talk­ing with one another. Twice, as if on a scheduled patrol, four of them left, two walking east and two walking west. Both times they were gone for half an hour. But not once during the period of Carole Ann’s surveillance did anyone approach them, nor did they ap­proach anyone.

  Choosy beggars were a tacky breed in anybody’s lexicon but Carole Ann was on the verge of complaining about the air-conditioned chill in the empty office in his warehouse/studio that Robbie had loaned her to work in. Her fingertips were numb, her teeth were chatter­ing, and her shoulders were hunched so tightly her neck and back ached. She had to work to remind herself that things could be worse: She could be attempting to organize the unruly mass of pa­pers and documents—and her equally unruly thoughts—at home with her mother and Angie and Bert and Luisa hovering, question­ing, wondering, prodding, probing. And that thought sent a real chill through her.