Daddy Dearest (13 page)

During that magical hour, nothing else seemed to matter. All the bad that had happened was now all manageable, and all the good times that they shared were mild in comparison to what they planned for the future.

But as soon as they ended their call, reality set back in, and their surroundings squatted back on their shoulders.

* * *

“What happened Bobbit?”

Hammer tried to speak, but no sound came out. The Chaplin came around the desk and grabbed the phone. “Hello?…Is this Cataya?…Hello, Cataya. This is Chaplin Stephens. Can you tell me what’s wrong with your father?…Oh, my! That’s terrible!” He said a few more words before hanging up.

Hammer was staring at the wall with tears running down his face.

“I’m so sorry, Bobbit. I’m truly am.”

“It’s all my fault,” he uttered in a mere whisper. “I sent him there.”

“No, Bobbit! Whatever happened there was God’s will. It would’ve happened if you hadn’t sent him; it was his time.”

Hammer wasn’t buying it. “No.”

“If you have faith in the Word like you say you have, then you know that what I’m saying is true.”

“But it’s hard!”

“When God calls someone home, that’s all there is to it.”

“I understand that, Chaplin. It’s not that simple to accept.”

“Nothing is easy but not believing in God and His will.” He consoled. “Trust me, I know how you feel.”

“I doubt it. Nobody knows how I feel. It’s like I lost my brother. He did every…Maybe Fannie is right. She said that I destroy everything that I come in contact with.”

“Whoever this Fannie is can’t know that Carl Bobbit that I know; because the one that I know helps guys prepare for their release, and things of that nature. And for the record, I do know how you feel. My wife was murdered twenty years ago. She was three months pregnant with our first child, and it took all the faith I could muster to not give up on life.”

Hammer looked at the Chaplin in shock. “You never told me none of that before.”

“I never told anybody. It’s not something that I talk about. I chose to tell you because I want you to see that there’s life after death.”

Hammer thought hard about all that he had lost in the past fourteen years, and he knew that this situation was different from the Chaplin’s. The Chaplin’s loss had happened without the benefit of his own influence.

But his own loss, had his hands, in his mind, just as dirty as the person(s) that had taken LeLe’s and Ron’s lives. So along with the pain of the grief on his shoulders, he was also carrying around guilt.

* * *

Cataya hung up the phone feeling a deep sense of satisfaction. She told her father off and her relationship with Ching was budding. For the first time in years, she felt genuinely happy.

“I don’t know why you still choose to communicate with that fucker. He’s only going to bring you down like everybody else that he comes in contact with,” Fannie preached.

“Who, Ching?”

“No. Your piece-of-work daddy.”

“Oh. Granny always told me that it’s more important to know who you’re dealing with, than to worry about who you’re dealing with.”

“Ain’t no secret what Hammer is. He’s a murdering low down bastard that needs to go where his friend just went.”

Not before he answers to my mother’s death,
Cataya thought.

“I would’ve paid my last dime to see his face when you told him that Ron was dead.” Fannie continued, “What did he say?”

“Not much. I heard him gasp.”

“For real? I hope that he had an asthma attack or something.”

Cataya turned her attention outside the window, and seen some officers standing around Ron’s corpse. They were whispering secrets, or inside jokes among themselves.

Like that and so many other things that surrounded her life, she couldn’t be sure how to call it. She wasn’t even sure if her uncle would be charged with murder.

Her father seemed to be ubiquitous during the years that he had been incarcerated. Ron had made sure of that. But now he was about as resourceful as a pageless phone book.

She smiled at the thought of that and began to critique the second stage of her plan.

 –—Chapter Fourteen–—

“Rain on me, won’t you take this pain from me. I don’t want to live…”

Rafeal sang loudly as he urinated in the corner of the interrogation room. He ended this act by vigorously shaking his penis free of any remaining fluid, and sitting back down with a hard-on.

An hour had passed since he had been brought to the Police Head Quarters. Rafeal found himself becoming frustrated and impatient. The detective seemed to sense this because he strolled in the room holding a clipboard.

“How are you feeling, Mr. Johnson?”

Remember what I told you, my nigga.

“I’m tired, busted, and disgusted.”

“Sorry to hear that,” the detective replied, sympathetically.

“
Sorry
is definitely the word that describes you. Got me in this goddamn room like…like……like you don’t got no respect for me.”

“Well, I assure you that I do.”

“I can’t tell Dickhead Tracy.”

Easy, my nigga. Name calling won’t help us I this situation. Dickhead Tracy holds our fate in his hands.

“I apologize for making you wait, Mr. Johnson. We had a situation downstairs.”

“Whatever. Just tell me why y’all got me down here for.”
“As you already know…” he paused and sniffed the air.

He smells that piss I told you not to do that shit. Dumb-nigga-there!

The detective continued. “As you already know, a man was slain at your residence, and-“

“I don’t know nothing about that. Not a goddamn thing!”

No, my nigga! You’re tripping!

The comment baffled the detective. He lifted the papers on the clipboard to inspect the police report. “Mr. Johnson, it states here that you was discovered standing over the deceased with a weapon in your possession.”

“I don’t give a fuck what it says, I didn’t do shit! You got the wrong man!”

“I’m trying to-“

“You can asks me nicely, you can asks me screaming, but the answer is going to be the same. I didn’t do it.”

If your stupid ass don’t want to get locked up, then you better tell him what I told you to say!

“I don’t care about getting locked up no more!” Rafeal screamed. I’m tired of all this shit: especially you!”

“Listen to me very carefully, Mr. Johnson. From the way that I see things, it’s obvious that you was only protecting yourself. So, getting locked up is the last thing that you should be thinking about.”

That’s what the fuck I’m talking about, my nigga! You got him hanging from your nuts; now feed him the story. Right in his mouth!

“From my understanding,” the detective continued, “this guy was walking outside your home armed. God knows what he would’ve done if you hadn’t stopped him.” The homicide detective spoke slowly and deliberated so he wouldn’t be misunderstood. “In order for me to confirm this largely shared theory that my colleagues and I have, I’m going to need a complete statement from you.”

“People in Hell want ice water. My black people want their identity back. So don’t come in here making some fucking demands like…like…I’ll slap the shit out of you!”

What the fuck is your problem, man! Oh my, God! This nigga is trying to get me locked up!

The detective frowned, but it was more because of the rancid odor that Rafeal’s bizarre outbursts. He stood to survey the room and saw the yellow puddle in the corner.

“Is that what I think it is? Did you urinate on the floor?”

“I didn’t do shit,” Rafeal said, as he zipped up his fly. “I pissed earlier.”

You’re really showing our ass. Don’t trip when it’s my turn.

Whatever. Let’s just get this over with. If you didn’t kill the man, then tell me who did.”

Rafeal shrugged. “Hell if I know.”

“Let’s back this up to the beginning. Are you familiar with Cataya Bobbit?”

His eyes lit up. “Yeah. That’s LeLe’s daughter. She’s staying with us for the moment.”

“Her statement says that the two of you were in the living room talking when you saw the deceased and ran out after him.”

“She’s right. I do remember that.”

Okay, my nigga! Walk his ass through it. Make it dramatic, too. Snot and tears.

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” the detective commented, rubbing his hands together. “Tell me what happened once you got outside. Did he threaten you with the handgun that we found in his possession?”

Rafeal started frowning. “That’s strange.”

“What?”

“I…I don’t remember. I can remember everything up to that point.”

Why are you doing this? He’s going to lock our ass up if you don’t tell him what he wants to hear. This shit is crazy.

The detective laughed at his luck. “You got to be fucking kidding me.”

“No, I’m serious.”

“How could you forget something like that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Mr. Johnson.”

“Huh?’

He leaned in close to Rafeal. “I want to be very clear and frank with you. I don’t have any intentions or interest of charging you with anything. Not even for the unregistered firearm that was found on you. But if you continue to act like you have a bad case of amnesia, my disposition may change.”

Please, my nigga This is our last chance. I ain’t trying to get locked up, I got some shit planned this weekend!

“Fuck ya!”

“Excuse me?”

“I said, ‘fuck ya’! I don’t remember doing it, and all the coercing in the world ain’t going to make me admit to doing it.”

“Mr. Johnson, if you don’t re-“

“Fuck ya!”

Detective Taylor became so frustrated that he stormed out of the interrogation room screaming obscenities.

* * *

Detective Gastons was on the phone when his partner came out of the interrogation room cursing. He immediately ended the call to see what was wrong.

“Dan, what’s wrong?”

“Do you want to hear some weird shit?”

He nodded, indicating that he did.

“The fucking guy, the one that was picked up for the justified homicide, is a real nut case. I explained to him as clear as I possibly could that we were in the process of ruling the shooting as a justified homicide, and I only needed a statement from him so I could close the case. This,” he said, pointing in the direction of the interrogation room, “ignorant black nig…bastard told me that he didn’t do it, when it’s obvious he did.”

“What?”

“Hold your judgment. Here comes the mother of all weird shit. I read the witness’ statement to him to coerce a statement, and he says he remembers everything up to confronting the deceased.”

“He doesn’t remember?”
“That’s the story he’s sticking to.”

“Are you sure that you explained that we don’t have any intentions of charging him with anything?”

“As clear as I fucking could. Several times, at that.”

Gastons pondered on that for a second. “That is weird. What is his I.Q. level?”

“He’s far from dumb. But now that I’m thinking about it, he has to be mentally unstable. He was…It was like he was talking to someone else at times. And the nasty bastard urinated on the floor.

That caused Gastons to laugh. “Damn. What did his family say about him?

“One of the girls, I was told, was too hysterical to give a statement. The other one said that he was sick. I initially assumed that he was sick with diabetes, or something of that nature. It’s clear now that she was referring to his mental state.”

“I tell you what. Why don’t you give his family a call and see what you can learn. I’m going to see if we have anything on file.’

“Sounds like a plan to me.” He looked down at the report to see if it had Cataya’s contact number in it. “Because that guy in there is impossible to talk to.”

* * *

The whole shooting incident had Dehila on the edge of her seat. It wasn’t that she was frighten, or feared for her uncle’s well being. She was in a fretted state because of all the commotion had veered her plans of getting some cocaine.

The guy that she had met on Facebook had supposedly been on his way to her house, but had never showed up. Dehila guessed that all of the police cars spooked him.

Now as he sat at the computer sending him back to back, messages, she became irritated when he heard someone enter her room.

“Aunt Fannie told me to asks you if you wanted something back from Boston Market,” Cataya relayed. “We’re about to go now.”

“No, I’m not hungry.”

“Oh. And she said if Ra-Ra calls for a ride home, tell him to call her cell phone.”