Inside, Alice converted the original laundry room into a simple panic room; wood-paneled walls, a table and garden chair, a telephone, and two locks on the inside. Her neighbor convinced her to build it after a home invasion down the street put a documentary filmmaker and his son in the hospital. It’s not a big room—more like a glorified storage space—but when I moved in, I shoved a few stacks of unpacked boxes in the corner and built a large spice rack just inside the doorway so that it reallywas my pantry. Like Alice, I rarely used the room. But it was the perfect place for M.C. Glazer’s property, for now. With the police sniffing so closely, I had to take precautions.
Chela’s eyes widened as I slid my fingers between the rack and the wall where a hidden groove allowed me to pull the door open with ease. To her, seeing my pantry appear was an act of magic.
“That issooooooo tight!” she said, yanking on the door. Bottles clanked.
“Watch the wine.”
Together, we left the gun, her two coats, four gold chains, and an unopened duffel bag on the table inside. As the door closed, they vanished behind my bottles of 1998 Gaja Barbaresco, 1999 Rex Hill Pinot Noir, and 1989 Hugel Riesling Vendange Tardive.
For the next hour, I sat with Chela and watched music videos in silence. I dozed to the sound of electronic beats and samples from music I’d grown up with, remembering images of my drab living room at Dad’s house, longing to hear the original songs intact.
I opened my eyes when I heard Serena’s voice.
There she was in my living room, her face bright-eyed and radiant, her ochre skin draped in flowing white that ruffled in a caressing wind. It was the same music video that had been playing in Devon Biggs’s office. The director had made her look angelic, as if he had known that this video would be her last. I wished the song itself deserved the honor, but it was good to see her.
“Should I turn? You said Afrodite was a friend of yours,” Chela said.
“That’s okay. I don’t mind.”
“You want some of this? / You better step up.”Serena cast a special wicked glance over her shoulder just for me before the video faded away.
“Was M.C. Glazer really at a party Monday night?” I said. Chela didn’t answer, and I cursed myself for pushing too hard. I decided to change the subject. “Yes, Afrodite was a good friend.”
“Did you love her?” Chela said. She scooted around to give me her full attention, her arms wrapped around her folded-up knees, and I forgot any thought of sending her back to Mother’s. Somebody should be sending her to school and making sure she did her homework and studied for her SAT.
“Maybe. I don’t know.” I was beginning to ask myself the same question.
“You always know if you’re in love with somebody.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“I’ve never been in love, and I never will,” Chela said. “But youknow.”
“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “Maybe I never have and never will either.”
“You’re better off,” Chela said wisely, and turned back to the television screen. I was trying to think of a way to discuss her future when she blurted: “I don’t know where Glaze was Monday. I didn’t see him until Tuesday. But I don’t think he killed her.”
“Why not?”
She shrugged, not turning around. “I dunno. I was with him when he heard Afrodite was dead. He was shocked. He was saying stuff like,What? Oh, shit. Like…he was sorry it happened.”
“He didn’t seem sorry to me.”
“He acts different in front of you. He acts different in front of everybody.” I heard sad fondness in Chela’s voice. She had been brave to leave him, I realized. It must have hurt her to hear M.C. Glazer call her alittle bitch. I wished I could erase it.
“Do you have a toothbrush?” I said.
Chela didn’t answer, looking at me as if I’d asked in Zulu.
“Never mind. I have an extra,” I said. “I’ll get you a toothbrush, soap, and towels, and put them on your bed. The guest room is that way, on the other side of this room. The room with all the prints of Dorothy Dandridge.”
“Who?”
“Never mind. There’s a bathroom in there too.”
“Do you get a lot of guests?”
“You’re my first.”
That was truer than I’d realized. If I could work things out, my guest room would belong to Dad soon. I just had to get my life together long enough to bring him here.
After I’d collected a pile of toiletries for Chela, I left her watching TV and went upstairs to hit my treadmill hard for a half-hour. Then, I sank to the carpeted floor for my nightly Hindu Squats and Hindu Pushups. One of each, then two, then three, then four…
I got up to twenty, a total of 420 reps in under fifteen minutes, before my lungs felt as if they’d crawl out of my throat and die. I was tired, but the sweet punishment felt brutally good. My mind slowly shifted into silence as my heart thundered, and sweat pooled beneath my exhausted body. I stretched.
I decided to unwind with some reading before bed. I have a pile of books on my nightstand, most of them read halfway through, and I usually pick one at random. Like I said, I have trouble finishing anything. I’d grab one of my mysteries by Paula J. Woods or Valerie Wilson Wesley, or maybe Barack Obama’sDreams of My Father.
The shower afterward felt so good that I wanted to cry. Alice had splurged on her master bathroom—marble counters, copper fixtures, and two excellent shower heads. Steaming water pelted me all over, and I felt my worries running down the drain.
The feeling was great while it lasted.
As soon as I left the bathroom, toweling off, reality slapped me again. Chela was waiting for me in my bed, posed beneath the covers. I saw her bare, pale shoulders, but I didn’t look long enough to see what else was exposed. When I lunged backward, covering my eyes, I almost slipped on my bathroom tile.
“What?” Chela said, sounding hurt.
“Get the hell out of my room.”My enraged voice almost shook the wall. I was the maniac from M.C. Glazer’s house again. “Rightnow, Chela!”
I heard her feet pad on the carpet as she ran out. She slammed my door.
I pulled on some sweatpants and a T-shirt, cursing myself for yelling at her. I needed to explain the rules to Chela. What else was she supposed to think? In her experience, men wanted to have sex with her. Why else would I bring her to my house? In her mind, she’d been offering me an expensive gift. Sex might be the only kind of affection she could conceive of.
I sat at the edge of my bed, drained physically and emotionally.
I knew I should go downstairs and have a frank talk with her. I should tell her that I wanted to help her in a way I wished someone had helped Serena. I should tell her I wasn’t going to take her back to Mother’s, and that she should hang out with me until we could figure out what to do next. But I sat, unable to move except for my unsteady hands, which I planted on my kneecaps. My mind was a blizzard.
Thinking about Chela. And Serena. And Jeanine. And me. I saw a mental snapshot of my old drama teacher, remembering my visits to her backyard pool. I had been Chela’s age when Ms. Jackson invited me to come over and play, and she must have been in her thirties. It was like slipping on contact lenses; for the first time, I saw the episode through clear eyes. What the hell had that woman wanted with a kid?
Before I knew it, an hour had passed. I still wanted to say something to Chela, but I was so tired my bones felt hollow. I wasn’t used to feeling so exhausted, as if I had climbed a mountain with a piano on my back. It was only ten, but I forgot about reading. I turned off my lights and surrendered to my bed, where I smelled Chela’s shampoo on my pillow.I’ll talk to her in the morning, I thought.We’ll work it all out tomorrow.
I forgot that sometimes tomorrow never comes.
The pounding on my door downstairs—and the persistent ringing of my bell—seemed to start as soon as I closed my eyes. But my clock said it was 7:00A .M.
At first I thought Chela was
playing games, but in a flash of inspiration, I knew better. I rolled out of bed and pulled back my curtain. Two police cars were parked at the curb—one black-and-white, one unmarked. Shit. Everything I had dreaded was coming to pass, and I hadn’t been able to do anything to stop it.
I heard a muffled identification: “Police!” Then, more pounding.
Not too long ago, if police had showed up my door early in the morning, I would have assumed something had happened to Dad. Period. Now, I couldn’t figure outwhich of my problems had brought them there: M.C. Glazer? Serena? Chela? I was in trouble that had no bottom to it. There was no end in sight.
I slipped my feet into my loafers and ran downstairs. The TV was still on, the pizza box left on the floor, but the guest room door was closed. I opened it and peeked inside. The bedsheets were rumpled, but Chela wasn’t there.
“Chela?” I called, half-whispering so my voice wouldn’t carry. I checked her bathroom, but that was empty except for a mound of towels on the floor.
As I passed the wine rack, I knocked on the wall. “Chela? Stay out of sight,” I said, hoping she was already hiding, although a sinking part of me was sure that Chela was long gone. I hoped she hadn’t somehow dragged even more trouble to my doorstep.
I dialed April’s number on my throwaway cell. Her phone rang three times, then four. I gritted my teeth as the pounding at my door turned to thunder. The police would break it down if they had to.
“Hold on!” I called out from the kitchen, crossing toward the foyer.
After forever, April’s voicemail picked up. I pressed “*” to bypass her greeting. “Hey, it’s me,” I said in a hushed tone, five feet from my door. I saw a shadow of someone on my front stoop through the smoky glass. “Cops are at my door at 7:00A .M. See what you can find out from Lieutenant Nelson. Something’s happened.”
Knowing that April would hear my message soon made it easier to open the door, but my knees still felt like water.
The morning was overcast, so it was barely light outside. O’Keefe and Arnaz—the same cops who had told me about Serena’s death—stood on my front stoop in a defensive stance, both of them with hands firmly on their holsters, guns unhooked. They gazed at me red-eyed:Do not even THINK about fucking with us. Two uniformed officers stood on the street, watching with unblinking eyes, also ready to draw.
“Can you get against the wall?” Arnaz said hoarsely. “Please.”
“As soon as you tell me what this is about,” I said.
Arnaz frowned, gesturing toward the wall. “Please,” he said again. His eye twitched from the effort of holding so much politeness in his voice.
The two men frisked me against the front of my house while I stared up at the ceramic numbers of my street address, hoping it was too early for my neighbors to see. I’d been frisked before. I hate uninvited hands.
“Clean,” O’Keefe said. A radio chattered urgent directives from a police car, too loud for the hour. The sound seemed to echo up and down my street.
Without a word, O’Keefe took my right arm and pulled it behind my back. I heard the clanking of metal, and my legs quaked. Handcuffs.
NEVER AGAIN,I had told myself. Another god damned broken promise.
“Wait—do you have an arrest warrant?” I said, as cold metal closing against the bone of my wrist told me to expect bad news. O’Keefe pulled down my other arm. Aclick, and my freedom was stolen from me. Others controlled my life now.
“Sorry, man,” Arnaz said, nearly under his breath.
Four officers and handcuffs, but no Miranda?
“This is bullshit and you know it,” I said as O’Keefe tugged my arm to pull me around, and not gently. Arnaz looked away from me. “Just tell me what’s going on.”
Nobody answered, nor would they meet my eyes. The silence made me feel like I was being kidnapped. O’Keefe pulled me to the patrol car at a brisk pace, and Arnaz guided my head as I ducked in. I didn’t recognize the uniform officers, who were dead quiet. O’Keefe patted the trunk. “Right behind you,” I heard him say. “Let’s roll.”
I grew up around cops. Bowling leagues. Beach parties. Cookouts. To me, they’re just guys doing their job like anyone else. But I don’t mind admitting it: I was scared. As that police car lurched away from my front curb, I wished I had learned what my father tried to teach me all those years at First AME Church.
I wished I had learned how to pray.
ELEVEN
FOR AN HOUR, I WAS LEFT ALONEin an interrogation room in the Parker Administration Building, my hands chained in front of me to an iron ring beneath the table. The room was hardly the size of a closet, so cold that my back teeth chattered. I would have paid fifty dollars for socks and a sweatshirt.
If you have never been a prisoner, trust me: There are few deeper feelings of personal shame, failure, and despair. I was left alone to experience the crushing feeling as long as possible, in the unforgiving cold.
I tried counting my breaths to calm my mind, but my mind would not be soothed. An actor’s life is full of disappointment, so I always prepare for the worst. My imagination was expecting charges for anything from killing Serena to assaulting M.C. Glazer. But despite all my worst-case scenarios, it was still worse than I thought.
At nine-thirty, the door finally opened.
Two uniformed officers walked in; one white, one black. It took me a second to recognize them dressed for patrol: Kojak and his white partner, both of them circling me like I was a ham steak they wanted to carve up for breakfast. I tugged on my wrists against the handcuffs, pure instinct. Those guys looked scarier behind badges than they ever had at Club Magique. My mind suddenly foresaw how this day would end: My corpse would be laid out naked at the morgue after I was locked in a room with two of M.C. Glazer’s bodyguards. It all seemed horribly clear.
Lieutenant Nelson came in behind them, followed by two older detectives I didn’t recognize, and I exhaled with relief. I studied the grim collection of faces. The room was hushed, a funeral parlor.
“Well?” Nelson said. He might have been talking to me, but I only sat, frozen.
“That’s him,” Kojak said, hollow-eyed. He looked like he was living the worst day of his life. He also looked like he wanted to kill me bare-handed. Never had that wish been more plain on any man’s face, not even M.C. Glazer’s.
“Thank you,” Nelson said, and gestured his head sharply.Out.
Kojak and the white cop slid past me, their eyes never leaving my face. The temperature in the room seemed to climb under their gazes. They were both still glaring, arms crossed, as the door fell closed behind them.
“They’re the ones who should be arrested. Try assault,” I said.
“We’re listening,” Nelson said, but his expectant face told me I’d already said something wrong. Keeping quiet hadn’t helped me so far, but I pressed my lips shut.
“Why do we keep seeing the name Tennyson Hardwick?” Nelson said. “Is it because you were you an only child? Do you need a lot of attention? Need to move out from under Daddy’s shadow? Congratulations. You have our attention.”
The detective half-sitting on the tabletop was at least sixty, with a ruddy nose and unruly hair that grew in uneven splotches, like snowdrifts. His limbs were slender, but his stomach tugged vigorously against his shirt buttons. “Do you understand why you’ve been detained? Are you sick or injured? Do you have any questions or concerns?” His voice was flat as he raced through his procedural obligations. He didn’t give me time to answer, and his eyes didn’t give a shit anyway.
“Tell me what’s going on,” I said, ignoring the questions.
Nelson pulled a chair up to the table. He leaned close to me, exactly the way I’d closed in on M.C. Glazer. “We lost one of our officers last night,” he said.
My throat sealed itself. I glanced at the older cops, who were listening in studied silence, waiting for my response. The weight of the world was on their minds.We lost one of our officers. The phrase left cool footprints across my skin.
I could always tell if an officer had been killed by Dad’s mood when he got home. There was a tightness brewing just beneath the surface, a hair-trigger, and I knew I better keep out of his way. When police officers died, war had been declared on civilization.
That was the official story, of course, what cops told the papers. Anyone who would kill a cop is an even greater danger to the average citizen…They didn’t say the other part. The human part.Anyone who killed another cop might kill me . A cop’s job is constant stress and danger. No one can do it without a certain sense of invincibility, an “I’m the baddest sonofabitch in the valley” attitude. Any cop’s violent death punctured that aura, brought home to every policeman, and every criminal, that officers weren’t a thin blue line. They weren’t Robocops. They were mortal men heir to the same fears and failings as the rest of us. Kill a cop, and you release the fear beneath the bravado. And there is nothing more dangerous than a frightened man with a gun.
“Did you want to file a complaint against officers DeFranco and Lorenzo, Hardwick?” Nelson said. “Was there an incident involving these officers?”
I only heard Nelson’s questions five seconds after his mouth moved. Fear and confusion momentarily made me deaf. “Yes,” I said. “They work for M.C.—”
“Right. Security for CopKilla Records, against regs. IAG has been investigating Robert Jenkins for six months,” Nelson said. “Lorenzo and DeFranco are next in the hot seat. Don’t worry.”
I didn’t know what to say. I was sure a trap was being laid.
“But that must have pissed you off,” Nelson went on.
“What?”
“Getting your ass kicked by cops. Dirty cops are trash, right?”
“LAPD should know. You tell me.”
Lieutenant Nelson raised an eyebrow. Something lethal slithered across his face. He reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out a baggie. Inside, I saw my business card. He slapped it on the table. Déjà vu.
“I already told you, I didn’t kill Serena. I ran into her at Roscoe’s and we—”
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