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“I think most men aren’t inherently bad, you know,” Roosevelt said. “But the majority of folks in this town are immigrants one way or another. And when a new part of a city comes along and starts growing, I think it makes them feel a little less powerful. It’s this whole new place that they can’t make heads or tails of—a place that seems foreign to them. They don’t know how to see the streets or the people on them. And a lot of the time, they find that it’s just too much work to figure out how to adapt. So instead, they just turn their noses up.”
Ava nodded her agreement, but something he said remained in place in her head, jumping out among all of the other things he’d said.
They don’t know how to see the streets or the people on them.
Slowly, she got up from the edge of the ring, thinking.
“You okay?” her father asked.
“Yes. I think you may have accidentally just provided some of that insight you were hoping for.”
“Really?” he asked with a smile. “What did I say?”
She hugged him, wanting to get out of there before the sudden surge of speculation drifted off. “I’m not even sure yet,” she said. “But thanks, all the same.”
Still smiling and with a bemused look on his face, he said: “Don’t mention it.”
Ava left the gym and when she was back out on the street, she started putting it together. They don’t know how to see the streets or the people on them. This made her think of Albert Long’s story—of how he’d been coming from a client’s office and had supposedly seen Carter attacking Monty Lincoln. But based on the information they had, the client he’d been visiting was across the street and further down the block. The only way Albert would have seen the attack was if he’d intentionally been walking by the alleyway.
She pictured the street layout in her head, specifically where the alleyway came out. There was nothing down that street but a few dumpy apartment buildings and a series of buildings and businesses that got more and more decrepit and poor the further down the street they went. But as far as she knew, no one had bothered to ask Albert Long where he’d been headed after leaving his client’s office. The police saw him as a well-to-do white man who was probably in a hurry to get out of Harlem and had left it at that.
Ava was a bit ashamed to realize that she had done the same. While she did not consider herself above anyone regardless of race, she had subconsciously assumed Long to be telling the truth. She’d not even thought of questioning why he’d had such a clear view of the alley that ran behind the Candle’s Wick.
But it was a question that was very prominent in her mind now and she intended to get it answered as soon as possible. Now more determined than ever, Ava kept her eyes open for a cab as she hurried along the street.