Joshua: A Brooklyn Tale (45 page)

It occurred to Paul that Schachter had probably never even intended to succeed with his initial request, but had used it only for bait, knowing that Paul wouldn’t dare deny the elder twice. Paul had been outsmarted, and with his humiliation came a tinge of respect for the elder’s savvy. “When does the Rav want to start this project?” he asked.

“Immediately. There is no time to waste.”

CHAPTER 49
 

It was six-thirty a.m. Joshua lay in bed, awake, listening to his mother preparing for work. He got up, walked into the living room, and saw her in the kitchen, standing at the table, folding her uniform. He walked in.

She looked at him. “You’re up early.”

“I know, didn’t sleep much last night.”

“I’ll bet.”

He wasn’t surprised by the comment; he’d figured she’d heard most of what had occurred. “You were awake?”

“Who wouldn’t be, all that screaming!”

“We weren’t screaming, we were talking.”

“Sounded like screaming to me.”

He didn’t argue.

“Tell me something, Joshua, why are you always picking women who are going to hurt you?”

“Good question.”

She finished with her uniform, placed it in a shopping bag, picked up her pocketbook, and moved toward the door. “I best be going, don’t want to be late.”

“You don’t have to go, Mama?”

“What?”

“You don’t have to go to that job any more. I make more than enough money for us. You can stay home now and take it easy.”

She gave him a strange look. “Now listen here, Joshua, it isn’t your place to be telling me what to do with my life! I’ve been doing this job for more than twenty-five years. I don’t plan on stopping now just because you’re a big lawyer or something. Mrs. Sims still needs me.”

“
Needs
you
, for what? All these years you’ve been telling me how she doesn’t need anyone to clean her home. Hell, you’ve been joking about how she probably cleans up after you leave.”

“That’s none of your business, Joshua!”

“But it is my business, Mama. You’re tired; you’ve been tired for a while now, traipsing out there every day just so we could live, so you could take care of me. Now it’s
my
turn to take care of you.”

She approached him and ran her hand through his hair. “I’m proud of you, Joshua, prouder than I ever believed I’d be. But you should be thinking of yourself. You should be finding a woman, a
proper
woman, and having a family of your own. You don’t need to be worrying about me; I’ll take care of myself just fine.”

He knew there was no use arguing; there never was. She hugged him, kissed him on the cheek, and left. He stood, stunned and helpless, wondering why none of the women in his life ever listened to a word he said.

Connie stampeded into his office, wearing a look that spelled trouble. “How could you?” she exclaimed.

“How could I what?” He pretended ignorance.

“You turned down the Pilgrim case, without even consulting me!”

“Who told you that?”

“Thompson,
that’s
who
! Who did you think?”

“He doesn’t waste any time, does he?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means he’s dividing us to manipulate us into taking the case.”

“Oh,” she said, “
he’s
being manipulative. Thank you for clarifying that.”

“Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I
was
planning to.”

“
Planning
to tell me!”

He was wordless.

“Listen, Joshua, and listen
clearly
! If we’re partners, then you don’t tell me about such things
after
you’ve decided. You
consult
me and
we
decide together.”

“I’m sorry. You’re right. It’s just that they needed a decision this morning and…” He stopped himself, realizing he was about to dig a deeper hole.

“And what?”

“And I was going to say that there wasn’t time to contact you, but that wasn’t true. I just wasn’t thinking. I did some pretty dumb things in the last twenty-four hours, and not consulting you was definitely one of them.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

He proceeded to relate his escapades of the previous evening.

“You mean,” she said, “you
actually
pretended you were there to see the rabbi? That’s a new low, one for the books!”

“Thanks.”

“Only kidding.”

“Not quite. You’re still pissed.”

“I’ll get over it. I’m more worried about you than anything else.”

“Me?”

“You don’t sound like you’re playing with a full deck lately.”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

“She really gets to you.”

He hesitated, then said, “She does.”

“It’ll work out; these things always do.”

“Not for
me
they don’t.”

“Isn’t that a double negative or something? Unbecoming for a lawyer of your stature.”

“Life’s a double negative.”

“You’ll survive.” She started to leave, but stopped at the door. “About the case, you really think you made the right call?”

“The guy’s guilty, Connie. Thompson wants to use us to make it into a racial thing.”

“Can’t see as I completely blame him; you used the situation for
your
racial thing.”

“Touché, counselor.”

She smiled, and left.

He tried to get busy with work, but the events of the past twenty-four hours kept intruding on his mind. Between Connie, Rachel, and his mother, it had been a memorable day. And then there was the biggest shocker, Jerome Williams, right there in his office, after all these years. He wondered about Celeste, where she might be, and was sort of relieved at not knowing. He also wondered if Thompson would actually use that dark chapter of his life against him. Either way, he knew Connie was right: he would recover. He always seemed to, though the costs were building.

He didn’t hear much about the Pilgrim case in the following months. Either Thompson hadn’t managed to find another sucker, or the media just wasn’t biting. He also didn’t hear anything about his history with the now Reverend Jerome Williams.
That
whole thing had merely been a bluff, though he didn’t discount the possibility that it might still, one day, come back to haunt him.

Nine months after the murder of Israel Turner, on July 29, 1976, a small paragraph in the back pages of The New York Times reported that Larry Pilgrim had been sentenced the previous day to 25 years to life. Pilgrim was 24 years old at the time, and Turner would have been 55. A waste all around, Joshua thought, as he read the article over his morning coffee.

Suddenly, he realized that time was passing much more quickly these days. Nine months in a flash. It was frightening. Things had been moving along nicely, however. Business was booming. He had even had a brief fling with a nice looking paralegal who had been working for an opposing counsel on some civil suit. He’d waited for the case to conclude before calling her, naturally. Her name was Cheryl, and it had been quite pleasant for the two months it had lasted. It was his fault that it had ended; his heart was elsewhere.

He’d managed to keep the affair from Rachel, but hadn’t had as much luck with Connie. Connie always knew everything, and had a crafty way of making him aware of it. Loretta also knew; it was hard to keep anything from her.

Things went along much the same with Rachel. He tried to find satisfaction in what was, rather than misery in what wasn’t. On balance, he figured he was ahead of the game, considering where he’d started. His blessings would always be mixed.

In all, things had pretty much settled in. The cases in the office were fairly routine; the rest of his life was status quo. He was learning to appreciate the serenity and, oddly enough, was even getting used to it. Though he knew it wouldn’t last.

BOOK V 

CHAPTER 50
 

Mrs. Sawyer was absorbed in her work as Joshua came through the front door. She glanced up at him, then turned her eyes to the waiting area. He was late, and the office was packed with people, sitting restlessly, some with appointments, some walk-ins.

“Court ran over,” Joshua said, apologetically, hoping the patrons overheard.

“Yes, I’ve been telling them you would be arriving
momentarily
.”

“Where’s Connie?”

“In her office, on the phone. She’s been on the phone for hours,
not
to be disturbed, she says.”

“Who’s she talking to?”

Mrs. Sawyer shrugged. “Lots of different people, one call after another. I have no idea who they are.”

He detected her annoyance, and wasn’t pleased to hear of his partner’s obliviousness to an office full of people. He marched to the back, knocked hard on Connie’s door, and stuck his head in before she could respond.

Connie was on the phone, but didn’t seem to mind the intrusion. “Hold on, just a few seconds,” she said to the person at the other end, before covering the mouthpiece with her hand. To Joshua: “Come in, come in, sit! You’re not going to believe what just happened.”

“Connie, we have an office full of…”

“Arthur Miller just died. No, correct that, he was killed by the cops.”

“
What
?”

“I’ve been on the phone all afternoon, trying to find out exactly what happened. Friends, relatives in the area, anyone who knows anything. I’ve got Eunice Scott on the phone now.”

“Eunice who?”

“Eunice Scott, she’s a clerk over at the ME’s office. I met her when I was with the DA. The body’s being examined by the ME as we speak.”

He planted himself in a seat in front of her desk. He definitely needed to sit. She went back to the call. “Listen, Eunice, I’ve got to go now, but promise me you’ll call as soon as you know anything.” She paused. “Thanks, talk soon.”

She hung up the phone and looked at him. He said nothing, but his mind was thinking all kinds of things,
dreadful
things. It had been four years since the Willie Johnson case, four years of progressively declining relations between the black community and the police, and now this. A storm was brewing.

Arthur Miller wasn’t a close friend of his, but no black person lived or worked around Crown Heights without having crossed Miller’s path. Throughout Joshua’s involvement with the Nostrand Avenue Commerce Association, he’d met Miller on more than one occasion, and had even had the pleasure of a brief conversation at a recent luncheon that Miller had organized to raise money for the association’s youth program. It was a cause that was close to Joshua’s heart and, as usual, Arthur Miller was at the helm.

To Joshua’s mind, Miller was a man who had it all: four children, a burgeoning construction company, and a grocery store on the side. He was also champion of several local philanthropic causes, and had a robust handshake and hearty manner to boot. Miller’s friends affectionately called him “Sampson,” referring to his short, muscular stature, and everyone regarded him as an ambassador of the black community in Crown Heights. And now, at 35 years of age, he was dead, allegedly killed by police.

“What the hell happened?” Joshua asked.

“From what I have so far, it started as a thing between his brother and two white cops over a pile of debris in the street in front of a construction site that the Millers were working on. I think they were converting a tenement into a catering hall or something.”

“I’ve met his brother. I think his name is Samuel.”

“Yeah, Samuel, that’s it. Young guy, about 21, worked with Arthur.”

“What building were they converting?”

She consulted her notes. “Here it is, 748 Nostrand. You know it?”

“I’ve passed it. Seen the debris.”

“Anyway, word is the cops were rousting Samuel about the debris, and also because he was loading it onto a truck which he’d been driving with a suspended license.”

“What precinct?”

“77th.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“Wait, it gets better.”

He waited.

“So Samuel claims the license isn’t suspended anymore, asks the cops to escort him home, where he has the paperwork to prove it. They don’t buy. At this point, Arthur comes walking down the street toward them, shouting something like, ‘It’s me. Cool it. Cool it. You’re wrong.’”

“How do you know all this?”

“No one was whispering. It was broad daylight. There are lots of witnesses.”

“But the cops all know Arthur. They should have given Samuel the benefit…”

“That’s just it, they
didn’t
!”

“Sounds like this was about more than just trash or a suspended license.”

“Tell me about it. Anyway, the cops
apparently
didn’t recognize Arthur, but they saw he was wearing a gun.”

Joshua remembered having seen the gun himself the first time he met Miller. It was hard to forget something like that, but it was an understandable reality in a neighborhood such a this. Many businessmen carried, some of Joshua’s own clients, and it was often his job to help obtain their permits.

Connie continued, “So even though Arthur has his hands up, one of the cops gets on the radio and calls for help. An argument ensues, Samuel loses it and topples a fruit stand on one of the officers.”

“Good God.”

“Within minutes, a sergeant and another officer arrive to supervise the arrest. At this point, the argument supposedly intensifies. Arthur loses it and pushes the sergeant, who then orders that Arthur also be arrested. A brawl breaks out, Arthur hurls one of the officers over his shoulder and drops him to the ground. The officers call a ‘10-13,’ officer in need of assistance, on the radio, and less than five minutes later, twelve more cops swarm onto the scene.”

She stopped to catch her breath. “Witnesses say Arthur’s mouth was foaming as he was shoved into a patrol car, that his feet were sticking out the window as the car drove off. The cop who Arthur threw, broke his kneecap. Two other cops had back injuries, and a fourth had an injured or broken thumb or something. Next thing I hear, Arthur’s DOA at St. Mary’s.”

“This is bad.”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

“Do you know who the cops were?”

“Not yet.”

“I don’t get it. Arthur was friendly with all the cops around here. It just doesn’t add up.”

“Not unless, of course, there was something else going on.”

“You mean the cops were asking for payoffs?”

“Makes sense. They come by, complain about the debris, looking for graft, threatening summonses. Young Miller says no, starts loading the garbage on the truck, they check his license—knowing he’s had some problems with it—big brother Arthur comes on the scene, and the proverbial shit hits the fan.”

He had to agree it was possible, and far from unheard of. Mrs. Sawyer stuck her head in the door. “There’s a Miss Scott on the phone for Constance,
and
a
room
full
of
people
outside
I
might
add
.”

Connie picked up the phone. “Hi Eunice, got anything?”

Joshua sat, and listened to Connie’s end of the conversation, wondering what would happen once the news spread to the streets. Connie picked up a pen and started jotting down notes. “Uh huh… Uh huh… Uh huh… Wow, thanks Eunice, I owe you one. We’ll get together for dinner sometime next week… Good… Thanks again… Take care.”

“So?” Joshua asked.

“So, seems the coroner’s report is going to attribute Miller’s death to asphyxia.” She looked down at her notes, and read, “Pressure applied to the front of the throat in a narrow area by a rod-like object, such as a forearm or a stick.”

“Choked to death!”

“I suppose one could put it that way. She referred to her notes again. “Get this, the cops are saying that there’s ‘no evidence of excessive savage beating.’ That’s a laugh.”

“No one’s going to be laughing. Look, I suggest we tell everyone in the waiting room to go home, and that we go home ourselves.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about riots. What do
you
think’s gonna happen when this news gets out?”

She considered his point. “I haven’t really thought about it.”

“Well, do
think
about it, and let’s get moving.” He stood up and headed towards the door.

“You really believe they’ll riot?”

“I don’t know what I believe, but I’d rather be safe than sorry, wouldn’t you?”

“I suppose so,” she muttered under her breath.

“Get your stuff together,” he said. “I’ll talk to the folks in the waiting room, then call a cab and see you and Mrs. Sawyer home.”

There were no riots. In fact, the immediate aftermath of Arthur Miller’s death was surprisingly quiet, the community too shaken to respond. The funeral was small and uneventful, and there weren’t any demonstrations until four days later, when a crowd of about a hundred people gathered at the foot of the courthouse during Samuel Miller’s arraignment on charges of resisting arrest and assault.

Joshua hadn’t planned on attending the rally, but he happened to be coming from the courthouse on business while it was occurring. He stopped and noticed that the crowd was rather orderly, despite the rhetoric from the podium that Miller’s death had been provoked by the victim’s repeated refusal to comply with police demands for payoffs. Joshua didn’t want to believe that, but he couldn’t deny that it did explain some things.

He looked around and wasn’t the least bit surprised at seeing Professor Alvin Thompson and Reverend Jerome Williams near the podium. He was due back at the office, but something kept him there. He waited, and watched, and soon found himself trailing the crowd as they marched across the Brooklyn Bridge to City Hall. He didn’t know what compelled him, only that he was drawn to follow.

They came to City Hall, stood outside, chanting and yelling, until Mayor Edward Koch emerged and spoke to the crowd. He appeared sincere, expressed his condolences, and promised a “full investigation” into the details of the case. The crowd was unimpressed; many tried to shout the mayor down. But he was tough, and at one point even admonished the crowd against making this a racial issue, pointing out that two of the police officers who escorted Arthur Miller to the police station were, in fact, black. For a brief moment, as the mayor stepped down, the shouting lulled and the crowd seemed to consider his words, but that didn’t last long.

Reverend Jerome Williams climbed the steps and turned to the crowd. “First they try to extort us,” the reverend exclaimed, “they try to sell us their lies.”

“You tell ’em, reverend,” someone in the audience yelled.

“Right on!” others joined in.

Jerome continued, “When they aren’t trying to sell us, they’re trying to buy us. And when we protest, they offer vain promises, false promises! For all they really want is to
buy
and
sell
us, just like they did in the old South. But we aren’t for sale, and
we
aren’t listening to their lies anymore! No more
buying
, no more
lying
!”

“
Right
on
!”

“The truth will emerge eventually, my friends. One way or another, the truth always emerges! Either they will admit what they’ve done, they will repent before God and beg forgiveness, or it is going to be a
l-o-n-g,
h-o-t
summer!”

“
Right
on.”

“You
tell
’em,
reverend
!”

Joshua, hearing the rage in his old friend’s voice, couldn’t help feeling responsible and frightened. Then, suddenly, he emerged from his trance and realized that he had joined the crowd. And that was even more frightening.

Regarding the actual causes of Arthur’s death, Dr. Milton A. Wald, the deputy chief medical examiner, who had performed the autopsy, reported exactly what Eunice Scott had told Connie: death by asphyxiation, but “no evidence of excessive, savage beating.” A police spokesman admitted that “considerable force was being used… violent force,” and added, “A blow may have been delivered, or pressure applied by an arm or whatever resulting in injury to this area of the body (the larynx), which resulted in death.” The spokesman qualified his statement, however, explaining, “When you think of someone being ‘choked to death,’ you get the impression of somebody with two hands around the neck. We do not have something like that here.”