o’clock in the morning. Then I go home and go to bed and when I get up in the late afternoon, I can’t stand anything heavy so I eat breakfast again, and then maybe around eleven just before I come to work I grab a couple eggs. Jesus, I’m eating breakfast three times a day!”
Light settled the family dispute the easiest way by taking the husband’s identification and calling into R and I where he found there were two traffic warrants out for his arrest. As they were taking him out of the house, his wife, who had called them to complain of his beating her, begged them not to arrest her man. When they put him in the radio car she cursed the policemen and said, “I’ll get bail money somehow. I’ll get you out, baby.”
It was almost five o’clock when they got their prisoner booked and drove back to their beat.
“Want some coffee?” asked Light.
“I’ve got indigestion.”
“Me too. I get it every morning about this time. Too damned late to go to the hole.”
Roy was glad. He hated “going to the hole” which meant hiding your car in some bleak alley or concealed parking lot, sleeping the fitful frantic half-awake sleep of the morning watch policeman, more nerve-racking than restful. He never objected when Light did it though. He just sat there awake, dozing, mostly awake, and thought about his future and his daughter Becky who was inextricably tied to any dream of the future.
It was 8:30 A.M. and Roy was sleepy. The morning sun was scorching his raw eyeballs when they got the silent robbery alarm call to the telephone company just as they were heading for the station to go home.
“Thirteen-A-Forty-one, roger,” said Roy and rolled up his window so that the siren would not drown out the radio broadcasting, but they were close and Light did not turn on the siren.
“Think it’s a false alarm?” asked Roy nervously as Light made a sweeping right turn through a narrow gap in the busy early morning commuter traffic. Suddenly Roy was wide awake.
“Probably is,” Light muttered. “Some new cashier probably set off the silent alarm and didn’t know she did it. But that place has been knocked over two or three times and it’s usually early in the morning. Last time the bandit fired a shot at a clerk.”
“Can’t get too much money early in the morning,” said Roy. “Not many people come in this early to pay bills.”
“Hoods around here will burn you down for ten bucks,” said Light, and he turned sharply toward the curb and Roy saw that they had arrived. Light parked fifty feet from the entrance to the building where the lobby was already filling with people paying their utility bills. All of the customers were Negro as were many of the employees.
Roy saw the two men at the cashier’s counter turn and look toward him as he came through the front door. Light had gone to cover the side door and now Roy took a step toward the men. They turned before he got very far into the lobby and were almost to the door when he realized they were the only two in the place who could possibly be robbery suspects. The other customers were either women or couples, some with children.
He thought of the embarrassment it would cause them if it was a false alarm, how there was so much talk these days that black men could not proceed about their business in the ghetto without being molested by white policemen, and he had seen what he considered overly aggressive police tactics. Yet he knew he must challenge them and for his own protection should be ready because they had after all received a silent robbery alarm call. He decided to let them reach the sidewalk and then to talk to them. Nobody behind the cashier’s windows had signaled him. It was undoubtedly a false alarm, but he must talk to them.
“Freeze!” said Light, who had approached from behind him noiselessly and was standing with his gun leveled at the middle of the back of the man in the black leather jacket and green stingy brim who was preparing to shove the swinging door. “Don’t touch that door, brother,” said Light.
“What is this?” said the man closest to Roy, who started to place his left hand in his trouser pocket.
“You freeze, man, or your ass is gone,” Light whispered and the man raised the mobile hand sharply.
“What the fuck