Dutch Read Online Free PDF

but they both knew there’d be no gourmet Italian feast after this, no matter what happened in the courtroom.
    “Sure, I’d like that,” said Mrs. Piazza, trying to sound convincing.
    “It’s a date then. Listen, I gotta go, though.”
    “I know, I know, go ahead. Take care of yourself, Bernard,” she said, cutting him off and wishing him a last farewell.
    He nodded, and with that, he was off.
    As Mrs. Piazza opened the door to her blue Volvo wagon and got in, she stopped short of inserting the key into the ignition.
     She sat back in the leather interior and peered up at the courthouse that towered above her. She had been here many times
     over the years, but this was the first time she had felt so dwarfed by the building. It was the first time the courthouse
     had looked so ominous, despite the afternoon sunlight. When her husband, Roberto, was alive, he himself had been in and out
     of this building, but always with a smile and a swagger in his step. He never saw a day in jail. But Roberto had died three
     years ago.
    That was the last time she had seen Dutch, at the funeral, and she thought how Dutch over the years had played such a major
     part in her life. She knew if he were Italian, he wouldn’t be on trial for his life, and for the thousandth time, she wished
     that he was. She always wished that for Dutch because she disliked blacks, not passionately, but passively.
    In her eyes, they never amounted to anything, except Dutch. Dutch was different. He had saved her husband’s life and her own.
     Her mind traveled back fifteen years to the day when Roberto had his pizza parlors.
    The parlors did well, but the better business took place in the back where Roberto handled Fat Tony’s gambling money. Roberto
     had five parlors in different parts of Newark, all in impoverished areas, so Mrs. Piazza was exposed to the seedy, seething
     side of the ghetto. Her interactions with blacks were usually with the street element and the drug addicts who sold them everything
     from kitchen appliances to jewelry, all stolen and very cheap.
    Not to mention the young black girls who spat out baby after baby, running scams on the welfare department, getting food stamps,
     then bringing them to her in exchange for cash; seven dollars for every ten dollars in food stamps. Then there were the little
     kids who never seemed to go to school and who had no pride in their appearance. They hung around the pizza parlor trying to
     jig her video machines with paper clips for free games. These were the types of blacks by whom she shaped her opinion of all
     blacks, and she treated them all the same. This was her idea of equality.
    Dutch was one of the young boys who always came to her pizza parlor and hung around. He was a lot like all the rest, except
     he usually had some money and seemed to have good hygiene habits. She also noticed her husband taking an interest in the little
     black boy. Roberto would let him sweep the floor and help unload the delivery trucks every Thursday, stuffing the boy with
     pizza and worldly chat. She, unlike her husband, didn’t warm to Dutch’s presence, but merely grew accustomed to him being
     underfoot… until that night.
    It was a night like any other at closing time. Dutch was sweeping the floor, while Mrs. Piazza was cleaning the counters and
     utensils. Roberto was balancing the cash register when all of a sudden, a tall black man in a ski mask burst through the front
     door brandishing a .38 caliber revolver and yelling, “You know what it is! Gimme what I want ’fore you get what you don’t!”
    Mrs. Piazza froze with a feeling of fear mixed with anger. How dare one of these niggers try to take something from her? How
     dare he step into her husband’s shop and demand anything? But her anger took a backseat to her fear as the gunman pointed
     the .38 at her, then waved it in the direction of her husband.
    “You! Get over there by yo’ husband and start takin’ off them rings and them