by Kiki Swinson
“What the fuck is he talking about? I want to know what’s going on right now! This is a setup! This nigga gotta be lying!” the guilty dude screamed, getting in the Hispanic man’s face.
Detective Keith was screaming for an explanation. The Hispanic was trying to convince him that what he was offering was the truth. The guys were behind the both of them, yelling that they were ready to leave, that these Spanish motherfuckers could not be trusted. It was all too much. It was a garble of loud voices and chaos.
“Quiet!” Detective Keith finally shouted, causing everyone to pause midsentence.
“Believe what you see in those pictures, Redds. My boss is never wrong, and he never lies,” the Hispanic man said calmly. “Count this as a gift. We don’t give a fuck about too many people we do business with, but we figured in this case you would want to know about this.”
My body was engulfed in heat now. Something ticked in my brain, like a bomb was about to explode. It was about to go down. I positioned my phone so I could get some footage.
“This is bullshit!” the guilty dude shouted. “You going to believe these spic motherfuckers? They just trying to make trouble!”
“Shut the fuck up!” Detective Keith finally exploded, tossing the pictures onto the floor at the guilty dude’s feet. “Everybody just shut the fuck up for a minute!”
Everyone seemed to look down at the pictures at the same time. It was as if time had stood still. I squinted through the slats, but I couldn’t make out the images. I could only imagine how bad they were. The hum and buzz of the groans coming from everyone in the room sounded like a swarm of angry bees about to attack.
“Satisfied?” Detective Keith huffed, kicking the pictures toward them all. The guilty dude quickly fell silent. “Are your own fucking eyes lying?”
“This can’t be,” another one of Detective Keith’s men said, placing his hands on either side of his head. He took another close look at the pictures. “Nah, this fuckin’ can’t be!” he croaked, his words getting caught in his throat. “Something got to be wrong,” he whispered. Then he turned toward the guilty one, who had his head hung low now.
I could see the hurt in all of the guys’ faces. Street dudes or not, betrayal had the same effect on everyone. They all seemed suspended in time, like someone had just told them their mothers were dying or something. I could tell from the looks of sheer dismay on all of their faces, there could be nothing good in those photos.
My body went cold like someone had pumped ice water into my veins just watching the exchange. I could actually imagine the deep cut from that type of betrayal. I’d been betrayed before; I knew the hurt.
“The truth is all there,” the Hispanic man insisted. “My boss expects you or your boss to handle this. We can’t continue our business if you don’t. Having a man inside that would set you up tells us your team is not airtight. We can’t do business with anyone whose team is not airtight.”
From what I had learned already from Kyle, I could surmise that the Hispanic man would be reporting back to his boss exactly how Detective Keith handled the situation. I knew in that moment his reputation and his boss’s business dealings in the future depended on every single move he made now. Either he’d become known as a weak man in the business or a powerful force that wasn’t having it. I guessed his traitorous worker had made the decision for him. It was a no-brainer.
My nerves were raggedy watching all of this shit go down. It wasn’t even me in there and I actually felt vomit creeping up my esophagus. Fire burned in my chest and huge sweat beads raced down my back. I saw Kyle wipe sweat from his head too; he was feeling it as well. It was a whole lot to take in at once.
With his lips pursed and nostrils flaring, Detective Keith slipped his hand into his waistband. He wrapped his hand around the cold steel of a big black pistol and pulled it out slowly. I wondered if it was his service weapon and then immediately dismissed that thought of him being that stupid. My adrenaline rushed so fast as I watched Detective Keith turn and stalk toward his own men.
“Wait!” the guilty dude said, putting his hands up in front of him and attempting to halt Detective Keith’s fury. He was too late.
The dirty detective walked right past his crew and up to the one member who’d been outed. None of them saw what was coming next. Without talking or screaming or warning, Detective Keith raised his weapon and placed it at the traitor’s temple. Suddenly the room erupted and everyone started speaking at once. There was another angry hornet’s nest of buzzing in the room. The gun wavered in the detective’s hand as it kissed the skin of the traitor’s forehead. More chaos erupted and different members of the crew were pulling out their weapons. Some pointed them at the detective and some at each other.
“What the fuck you doing, Redds?!” another one of his men barked.
Another one of their men followed Detective Keith’s lead and trained his gun on the traitor too. But the other dude leveled his gun at Detective Keith’s chest. My heart almost stopped. I knew shit was about to get real. If he shot, all kinds of shit was going to go down in the city—and I’d have it all on video. I silently cheered for myself.
“What the fuck!” the traitor growled, his hands up in surrender, weapon dangling off of his pointer finger. Clearly, he had no wins.
“Drop your weapon,” Detective Keith said in a low, embittered whisper. “Drop your fucking weapon now!” Detective Keith screamed this time, his voice seemingly shaking the weak wooden shack walls.
I thought about my father for a hot minute. The way he died. The tragedy of it all. I didn’t know if I wanted to witness that again, but I couldn’t peel myself away.
“Do what he said, man,” another dude told the traitor. He was outgunned. He knew if he made one false move, that would be his end.
“Explain yourself, motherfucker!” Detective Keith barked angrily, picking up the pictures and making them rain down around the traitor. If what was shown in the first set he’d dropped wasn’t clear, this set must’ve made it unequivocally clear what had gone down.
“What the fuck?” Detective Keith barked again; his words seemed to catch in the back of his throat like he was hurt. It was the first sign of an emotion other than anger I’d seen the whole time.
“Is that you? You with dudes who are down with our worst enemy—motherfuckers who tried to put us out of business, who tried to kill us?” Detective Keith asked, his voice cracking some more like he was about to cry.
Everyone turned their guns to the traitor now. Even the Hispanic man and his crew did.
“Listen . . . I . . . I c-can explain,” the traitor stammered now, his knees knocking together.
I knew from Kyle that in their line of business there really wasn’t much more the traitor could say that could help his case. The pictures did not lie.
“Everybody in here was in agreement with me at one time or another. None of us wanted a dirty cop to be our boss. Don’t front now! Come on now, y’all niggas remember what you said about how this nigga was a cop first and would always be a cop. So why is it that all y’all thought shit with him was suspect. A real street nigga would’ve never joined no police force . . . remember all that? You said that! Flip, remember you saying that this nigga Redds took over too fast and never gave us a chance to rise up. You even hinted at a setup on his part, saying he was police and you didn’t trust this nigga! I’m not fucking crazy! What the fuck, man? Y’all not going to admit to shit now? I wasn’t the only one that wanted to get rid of him. I did this for all of us! The other crew was going to take care of him and we were going to be on our own and make our own shit. I wasn’t the only one. This was for the fam!” the traitor cried out, snitching on his crew while his voice rose and fell like a crying girl’s.
Detective Keith reacted like he was taking a punch to the face every time the traitor said another thing out of his mouth.
I couldn’t believe what I was watching. I looked away a few times but I did it in a way so that my feelings distract me.
“All y’all niggas stupid. I was put in the position by the boss of all bosses. If y’all don’t like it, that’s too fucking bad, because I am here to stay and you will all respect my authority,” Detective Keith growled, flames flashing in his eyes. He ground the end of his gun on the traitor’s temple.
“Please don’t kill me,” the traitor begged, trembling. “I . . . I . . . can still help you. That man they got tied up is Arsenio’s son. If you let them kill him, you will be a dead man walking.” The traitor knew he only had minutes to live, so he was grasping at straws trying to save himself. The warning was the least he could do to make up for his cowardly betrayal.
“Shut the fuck up! Don’t give me no fucking advice now, you fucking Judas!” Detective Keith growled, grinding his gun into the traitor’s head even harder. The traitor closed his eyes . . . waiting for his ultimate fate.
I saw the other dudes, one by one, turn away. They all seemed devastated by their guy’s betrayal, but even more about what they all knew would happen next. Kyle lowered his head as well. I had forgotten he basically knew all of those guys from the streets.
“Let this be an example to the next man who tries me,” Detective Keith gritted, putting pressure on the trigger. “Go to hell, fucking traitor.”
One powerful blast to the dome spun the traitor around in a slow pirouette as a spray of his blood and gray brain matter splashed onto the floor.
With the gun blast, I fell down onto the ground behind the house, wheezing for breath. I was paralyzed with fear. The same fear I felt when my father got shot in front of me. I felt like I was suffocating. Kyle crawled over to me and shook me.
“Get up. Let’s go,” he whispered harshly. “We got to get out of here before they see us. You can’t fall apart now.” He pulled me up onto my knees. I gripped my stomach and doubled over. Vomit spewed from my lips, just missing Kyle’s shirt. My chest heaved like a beast in the wild after a fresh kill. I had just witnessed a cold-blooded murder by a cop. Something inside me seemed to snap apart. I knew all too well how violence could change lives. In that moment something awakened inside me. This wasn’t going to be just about a story for Christian. This was going to be about changing things and bringing down violent criminals—like the ones that had changed my life in ways that I didn’t realize until right then, because I had worked so many years to suppress it all.
4
THE AFTERMATH
I didn’t sleep for days after I had witnessed that murder. Just like I thought would happen, I couldn’t eat, sleep, think, interact with my family—nothing. Every time I tried to do anything, when I closed my eyes or even when they were open, I would see that guy’s brains bust from his skull and his bloodied dead body hit that ground.
I knew I had to eventually return to work, but I wasn’t looking forward to it. The call-out excuses that I’m sick with the stomach virus will run out sooner than later. With everything wearing heavily on my mind, I wasn’t up for Christian and her shit at all. I was spooked, and everywhere I went in the days after the murder, I was looking over my shoulder, thinking people knew I was there. I worried that someone could tell I had the entire murder recorded. I was officially an eyewitness to a murder. Now, how crazy is that?
Kyle and I had gotten out of there before the dirty detective and his people left and could see us. From the moment we’d gotten back to the car, wheezing and huffing and puffing for air, I could not stop wondering what they’d do with the guy’s body. The thought of them leaving someone there to rot and decompose to the point that he couldn’t even have a decent funeral had nagged at me. It didn’t matter to me if the guy had been a traitor to his people—or that I knew he was a drug-dealing criminal—he was still a human being. Our ride back to my mother’s house that day had been eerily silent. I don’t think Kyle or I anticipated the mental space we’d be transported to after witnessing that cold-blooded killing.
I’d stayed in my old room for two days, only coming out for a few hours. Kyle had come by and told me that everyone in the street was talking about how the dude that had been murdered in the shack had gone missing. It had been on the news and everything, but only we and the killers knew the real deal. I could barely look my mother in the eye. She knew we were going to be out there covering dangerous territory, but I’m sure she didn’t expect that we’d be witnesses to a murder. I could tell she was suspicious that we were hiding something from her, but she was trying hard not to ask. My mother had been buzzing around and trying to make small talk. That was her way. I think the guilt of her past kept her from prying all the way.
Kyle knocked on the spare bedroom door, where I’d been holed up for the past couple days.
“Come in,” I called to him, pulling the covers up over me.
“What up, twin?” Kyle asked, bopping in the room. I could smell the weed emanating from him before he even sat down on the end of the bed. I knew how he’d been coping with seeing what we saw.
“I’m just here. Not really sleeping, and dreading going back to work,” I groaned. “What about you?”
“I’m maintaining. People in the streets are talking. They’re asking around about when the last time anyone seen dude. Ole girl, his baby moms came up to our spot asking me directly if I knew of any spots he might’ve been going to, or anywhere out of town he might’ve gone,” Kyle said, shaking his head. “Shit is sad, man. I hate to see his son with no pops like that. I grew up the same way . . . I know that pain,” he continued.
I sat up and looked at Kyle seriously. “Damn, even his baby mother is out scouring the streets. Where the fuck are the cops?” I replied. “That’s how they do us?”
“You know what it is with the Norfolk PD. They did a few knock-and-talks, but they ain’t going too far. One, this is a black dude we talking about, and they don’t give a hot damn about our lives. Two, you know who got people up in that missing person squad and have already probably heard this shit and had the clean cops close their case right out,” Kyle said. He sighed and shook his head. “This nigga ain’t even going to get a proper burial because we the only ones who even know where his body is at and we ain’t telling shit,” Kyle said, giving me the eye. “You hear me? We are not telling anyone shit about seeing what happened and where that body is at. You got it?”
I shook my head slightly but didn’t say another word. My mind was racing a million miles a minute. I was thinking, maybe if I called in an anonymous tip to the police, they could go in and locate the body. And then I could report on it as a placeholder until I broke the news on the bigger case, revealing the double life of the potential future mayor. It could possibly all work out in the end. The dude would get a burial, his baby mother and kids would get some closure, and I would get the first of many good stories to come. I was thinking hard on it, but I wouldn’t dare tell Kyle. At least not yet.
“It’s crazy, man. These street cats out here asking if anybody know who would’ve wanted to hurt him or rob him for any reason. Personally, I was annoyed as shit about all of the questions. Why would they assume any of us knew the answers? What would make people believe that we would tell them shit anyway?” Kyle complained some more, pulling out his trusty pick and picking his hair, which was his new nervous tick.
Right away I wondered if Detective Keith had already somehow disposed of the body, and even my anonymous tip would be for nothing then. Just the thought of that dirty cop getting away with murder, scot-free, made me shudder and feel sick to my stomach. As crazy as the thought was, I felt like I needed to do something more . . . get in deeper. The urgency I was feeling to bring this crime ring down was keeping me up at night and haunting me all during the day.
After Kyle talked some more, he finally left. Thank God. I loved my brother to the end of earth, but sometimes I didn’t want to know everything about the streets. I might’ve been better off not knowing that the dude who’d been killed had a family, just like my father did when he was murdered. It was tough to think about. And even tougher to feel like
I couldn’t really do anything about it.
I waited until I thought my mother was asleep to go into the kitchen to have some chamomile tea. I was hoping something warm in my stomach and the soothing properties in chamomile would help me finally get some sleep—especially because I was going to have to return to the office tomorrow. I was standing before the refrigerator with my back turned, getting the milk for my tea.
“Baby girl?” my mother said, and touched my shoulder from behind me. I almost jumped out of my skin as if a bolt of lightning had struck me. My mother snatched her hand away quickly and took a few steps backward.
“Did I scare you?” she asked, her eyes wide and her hand on her chest.
I swallowed hard and put on a fake smile, and I put the milk down out of my shaking hands.
“Um . . . no. I was just getting some tea and didn’t hear you coming, so I was a little thrown off when you touched me. I’ve just been feeling a little stressed with everything going on . . . you know, with work and the pressure still,” I said, my voice shaky. She’d scared the hell out of me—if I was being honest. My nerves were on a hairpin trigger. I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking. I shoved them in the pockets of my bathrobe and even that didn’t help. I couldn’t let my mother see too much, because she sometimes took her concern for Kyle and me to another level.
“I know you have been stressed. I also know you were talking about letting your brother help you get a story,” my mother said, one part sympathetic, the other part suspicious. I looked at her strangely as if to say, What is the question under your statement? I guess my mother sensed it or either read my mind and the expression on my face.
“What I’m saying is that there is something going on. I can tell from you and from Kyle, both walking around here and looking like you saw a ghost each. I can hear you at night and him too. Neither one of you are sleeping very soundly these past few nights. Remember, I gave birth to y’all, and when something is going on, I can feel it. So, if there is something, I need to know, you better tell me. I don’t want any surprises and the only way I can help either of you is if I know everything . . . nothing being held back,” my mother continued. A pang of guilt flitted through my chest and belly. I wanted to tell her so badly what we’d seen, and how it had been awful to watch someone die in the same way my father had died, but telling my mother about the murder wasn’t an option. I couldn’t take the risk of what she might do or how she might react to the information. If that ever got out in the streets, Kyle and I would be running for our lives, for sure.