Shades of Black: Crime and Mystery Stories by African-American Authors (8 page)

“And that is the point, isn't it?” Jennings cut me a piercing look.

I really didn't have a good answer. Somehow, in the upside-down world of The Root, it had all made sense.

Finally, after a painful pause, Jennings spoke again. “Have you called your wife recently?”

I thought about Dakota. “You a family counselor now?”

“No, I'm a supervisor who sees a bunch of phone messages piling up, and I wonder about the
pressure
piling up and how you're ever going to get your job done.”

“Nice.” Ant checked out the signed, numbered print on my wall. Bearden.

I thought about Dakota, how she had opened up a whole new world to me, then shut me out of hers. Wondered how things were going with her down at the gallery. Couldn't bring myself to call. Thought about that, how I hadn't talked to her since I moved out. Little Beirut wasn't just my cover now. It was my home. It was my purgatory.

“So, you're not gonna use this stuff about Carver.” Ant looked at the file folders on the table where I had sorted the background material from the things we would definitely include.

“You mean when he—”

“When he was loud-talking that Korean in the store—”

“After taking the cash, when he should have been getting the fuck out of there.”

“Right. Gave the clown time to go for his gat, pop his ass,” Ant said. “Says a lot about this place, yo. The hard lessons we all have to learn. How fast life can move away from you. How you have to think fast to keep up.”

I considered it all, the take on life from this young urban philosopher.
“Yeah, well, we'll see. But, some of the best color never makes it into a story.”

He weighed it for a minute. “Like with the hos?”

“You mean, the hooker series?”

He shrugged. “You know what I mean. Anything you didn't stick in that one?” He cut a wicked smile.

“Some stuff, yeah.” I thought about my talk with Jennings and how there are always consequences with each story. People whose lives are changed and sometimes not for the better.

“Some stuff with this Peaches, I bet. I checked her picture, yo. She's banging, Dog. So, look, you can tell me, since we're partners and shit. She put it on you?”

I just let that hang there for a suspenseful moment. Thought about how Dakota had asked the same thing. In so many words. “First thing you have to learn if you're going to keep good sources,” I said, “is that you've got to keep some shit tight. Confidential.”

“Cool.” He beamed. “So, I won't tell.”

I thought about it and started talking. It was more like I
had
to than wanted to. It was like my confessional. I told him what Peaches had told me. There was somebody out there running their whole game. Somebody over the pimps, calling the shots, setting the rates, turning in the competition to the cops. He was even claiming freebies with some of the girls. Power trip. She had heard he was “a real monster motherfucker.”

I looked Ant dead in the eye. “That's what they called him. ‘MoMo.' That part never made it into the series because I couldn't get confirmation. No second source. Not long after the series ran, they found Peaches in a South Side alley. She was banged up pretty bad. I paid the hospital bill, got her out of town, set her up. But she'll never look like that picture you saw in the paper. Never again.” I looked down at the table. “She said it was a bad trick. Everybody knew better. I sure did. It was MoMo, paying her back for talking to me.” I looked back up at him again. “You were right on the money, Ant. What I do makes a difference. All the difference in the world.”

“No telling where his no-account mother is.” Gladys Sampson was still hanging in there with us. “You'd think a boy like that, out at two in the morning like that, I mean somebody should care about what's happened. Shame. Real shame.”

“Yep, real shame, all right,” Carver chimed in. “Boy shouldn't been running his mouth so damn much.”

I didn't want to ask, but I couldn't stop myself. “Running his mouth about what?”

He turned, slowly, to face me. “You ain't been in The Root long, Dog, but you been here long enough.”

I took another hit. “For what?”

“To know the one thing you need to know.”

“And that is . . . ?”

He turned away from me, gazed down at Ant again. “That there's some things you better off
not
knowing.”

“Everybody takes chances,” Ant said. “I take a chance every time I step out in the street, doing what I do and all. Peaches knew what she was getting into, what she was putting on the line when she started talking to you. She knew it just like she knew what she was getting into first time she stepped off the curb, into some trick's ride.” Then he smiled in a way that showed he still held on to some measure of hope, despite everything he had seen, despite everything he had revealed to me. “We're reporters, yo. No risk, no reward. Hell, I'm taking a chance talking to
your
ass.”

I nodded. “You mean T-Rex?”

He ditched the happy face. “I mean, how do I know I can trust you, D? This phantom drug king motherfucker. I mean, he could be anybody.” He narrowed his eyes to laser focus, as if he was trying to pierce my consciousness. “Could be you, for all I know.”

My eyes tried to conceal what my mind was flashing. Was this a joke? Was it an elaborate scheme? I thought about Jennings again. Had he been right? Had the kid flipped the script on me? Was Ant setting me up? For sure this kid was double dealing. What I couldn't be sure about all of a sudden was exactly who the trick was in this game of deception. T-Rex, or
me? Shit! The more I thought about it, the more I could see all the moves in some game this kid could have put me in. What the fuck had I gotten myself into? Just as all the alarms were sounding in my consciousness, Ant took it down a notch. He gave up that smile again. Only thing was, now I found little comfort in it, now I was back on guard.

“Yo, man, I gotta bounce. Before T starts wondering what's taking me so long up here.” He stood up, reached into his pocket, and I reached into mine.

“So, let's see now,” he said, almost as an afterthought, dropping another rock into the cigar box, snatching up another twenty. “How much do reporters make, anyway?”

I snorted a laugh. “Probably not as much as you're making off me right here.”

“Damn.” He held a beat. “Well, do
they
buy drugs, too?”

We both laughed. But he laughed the most. Left me wondering if the joke really was on me.

One of the detectives wearing rubber gloves bent over Ant's body, pulled the nine millimeter from his waistband. But the real chill for me came next. It was Ant's cell phone.

“Bet
that
don't make it to the evidence room,” Carver said, spitting the words more than speaking them. “Cops . . .” He shook his head. “Nothing but gangbangers with a badge, yo.”

That wasn't the part I was concerned about. I knew what Carver couldn't possibly have known. Just a push of the “redial” button and they would know the last call Ant had made.

Seemed like a dream at first. Then I thought Ant had somehow let himself into my apartment. It was all a blur as I sat up listening to his voice. Then it hit me.

“Come on, D, pick up,” he said.

It was the answering machine. Before I could pick up the phone, he started saying what he had called to say.

“I'm coming past the crib, yo. Wake your tired ass up. You are not going to believe this shit. The phantom drug dealer, man, it's MoMo. Now we gotta figure out who the fuck
that
is.”

I checked the clock. It was one forty-five. I tried to call him back on the cell, but there was no answer. So, I just rolled over listening for the door. I closed my eyes, thought about Ant and what he was putting on the line. I thought about how I had doubted him, suspected him, feared him. For a minute. And how now I had come to care about what happened to him. And how I didn't want to. Everybody I ever cared about got hurt. Dakota, my brother Isaiah, Peaches. Besides, this was an assignment. I had work to do.

I must have drifted off again. Thought I was dreaming when I heard the pop of a gunshot. Same sound you would hear in The Root a half-dozen times a night. But this time, the reality started setting in, slowly, and I opened my eyes again, and I thought about it, trying to clear my head of dreams and nightmares. This time it seemed different from all the other times. This time, the gunshot was a lot closer to home. My home. Not on the next block or some far away block in the neighborhood. Then I heard the sirens, heard them getting louder and louder, screaming down my street. That's when I jumped out of bed, looked out the bedroom window onto Woodridge Street, and saw the first of the squad cars to pull up to the curb outside my building, next to the body. Ant's body.

As I watched the detective examine the phone, push the redial button, there was the sound of a gunshot. Thought I was dreaming again, until I realized there were screams from the crowd. It spooked me. I had been watching that phone so intently that it seemed the cop had pushed some weird-ass sound effects button that triggered everything, like a recording, of what I had heard in my sleep. As it turns out, the sound came from the next block over and about a half-dozen cops started running toward my building, heading for the gangway to take a shortcut to the crime scene. The screams of more sirens started up in the distance and made their way to our neighborhood.

It wasn't long before word started drifting from the next block that there had been another murder. This time it was nine-year-old Sloopy Taylor. Already, word was that it was all gang-related. Sloopy had been hooked up with the Imperial Viceroys and had put it to Ant. Then somebody offed him to keep him quiet. That's the way of the world in The Root. Soon some of the cops started making their way back to our street. A couple went straight to the Gator, tapped on the window, made T-Rex get out for questioning. Just then, another cop made an appearance. It was Detective Moore. He walked right by us through my gangway from the other block, started talking to the cop holding Ant's cell phone.

Carver turned toward me. “Shit, I know I'm out now.”

“What's up?” I asked, thought about how Moore had been stalking Ant, T-Rex.

“I do not want to be in the same time zone with that monster muthafucka.”

My body went cold.

“Show a little respect, young man,” Mrs. Sampson snapped.

“No, wait a minute. Say that again,” I said.

“Don't you dare,” Mrs. Sampson said.

I moved down the steps as Carver started to hop away on his crutches. I grabbed at his arm, spoke softly, firmly. “What did you call him?”

He jerked his arm away, almost fell in the process. “Monster muthafucka,” he said, almost in a whisper, partly out of respect for Mrs. Sampson, but mostly, I knew, out of fear of the cop. Maurice Moore. MoMo.

Carver started hobbling off. But it was too late. Funny thing about a murder scene. Stick around too long, you're a suspect. Try to leave too soon, the chase begins.

“Hold up.” MoMo pointed straight at Carver, stopping him in his tracks. He looked back at the phone as the other cop pushed a button again. Then they both looked in my direction. MoMo made his move.

Most of the other cops were distracted, still across the street, still interrogating T-Rex, who looked like he was unfazed.

“What's your rush, niggah?” MoMo was talking to Carver, but he kept looking back and forth between him and me, like he was holding us both, frozen in place.

“I ain't doing nothing,” Carver said.

“Yes, you are,” MoMo said. “Looks like you trying to leave without asking permission.” Then he looked at me. “What's your name?”

I looked away, down the street, trying to avoid the inevitable. Just then, I caught the eye of one of the reporters on the scene. He was from the
Trib,
a former intern of mine, interviewing people a couple of doors down. Worse yet, he started making his way to me.

“I
said,
‘What's your name?' ” MoMo was like a pit bull, and I felt like he was clamping his jaws down on my leg, like I couldn't get away.

“D,” I said.

He stepped to me. “Don't fuck with me,” MoMo said. What's your
whole
name, bitch.”

It was obvious what he was looking for. A match to Ant's caller ID. I knew the script. They would use that to get a search warrant for my crib, bust me for the drugs, maybe more. MoMo was going to need a scapegoat. I turned, saw the
Trib
reporter coming. Knew I couldn't get away. Run inside, and this rogue cop would come in after me. Hot pursuit gives you an excuse for a whole lot. Bust into my place. Or worse. Shoot me. Say I made the first move. I had no place else to go. I'd never make it past him and all the other cops on the block.

Just as MoMo started inching up the steps to get in my face, the other cop, the one with Ant's cell phone, walked closer to the stoop. “What's going on, Mo?”