145th Street Read Free Page A

rail did, said a quick prayer and put on my innocent face.
    One of the cops came over to us. “How long you guys been here?”
    “Two hours, maybe three hours,” Pedro said. “Except for Mr. Lynch. He just got here.”
    The cop took a glance at Mr. Lynch. Then he went over to Willie and started patting him down.
    Willie just stood there and I hoped he didn’t have anything on him illegal. Then the cop asked him how long he had been there and Willie told him the same as Pedro did, except for Mr. Lynch, we had all been there about two hours.
    Then I saw an officer pointing to one of the buildings and when he did that all the cops got around behind their cars and started crouching down as if they were expecting some heavy shooting.
    “Hey, we’re gonna move on down the street,” Tommy called out to the cops.
    “You stay right where you are!” this big cop called out, and like he meant it, too.
    Then the next thing we did was to look up at the building to see if we could spot anybody shooting. Now, I figured if there was a crazy dude up there shooting at people he was liable to shoot at us instead of whoever he was mad at.
    “Hey, man, we sitting ducks here on this rail,” Willie said. “And I’m sitting here on the end.”
    “You’re lucky,” I said. “If it is some crazy fool he’s liable to be aiming at you and hit one of us. Least if he hits you first it’ll give us a chance to duck.”
    “Hey, Mr. Officer,” Pedro called out, “we got to get away from here ’fore we get shot up.”
    The cop looked over at us and didn’t say nothing. I bet if he had his way he would have had us sitting out there in that police car.
    Some more cop cars came and before you turned around there’s about seven cars and a whole mess of people milling around 145th Street, trying to figure out what was going on. Then the kids started coming around and everybody was looking up at the windows where the cops were looking.
    One thing about 145th Street. Half the guys on the block don’t have jobs and so they’re always on the stoops or just standing around with nothing to do. And after a while that gets boring, so when the cops arrive like this it breaks the day up nice. Unless it’s you they’re looking for, of course.
    “Junior! Junior!” Old Mrs. Davis come running out of the Laundromat with her fat self. “Junior! Junior!”
    “Get back, there . . . !”
    Things were getting out of hand and the police tried to get people to move across the street. One of them got on the bullhorn and told all the kids to get off the street immediately. He must have meant that as a joke. The kids didn’t have anything to do and they weren’t going anyplace.
    So you had the kids just standing there looking at the cops and then you had Mrs. Davis moaning and going on about where Junior was. Junior is a wino who does little odd jobs around the block, but anytime any trouble goes down his mama starts running around screaming for him like he’s four or five years old.
    “There’s somebody up there!” a kid yelled.
    Now, what did he say that out for? Everybody hit the ground, including me, and covered up the best they could.
    I hadn’t seen anything, but then I wasn’t looking too hard. The thing I don’t want to be is a witness.
    Once I got on the ground I figured I was gonna stay on the ground until the mess was over with. But then I saw Willie sliding on his belly down the way and into the Eez-On-In, the little soul food place. I went right behind him and soon we all on the floor of the restaurant.
    “What’s going on?” Mamie, the girl who worked there asked, when all these guys came crawling into the restaurant.
    “The cops are looking for somebody,” I said. “You better get on down here on the floor next to me so I can protect you.”
    Flood, the manager, was eating a sandwich and he just slid down to the floor and kept on eating. Right then a policeman came in and told everybody to get down. He was crouching and the