Casanegra

by Blair Underwood

  “This isn’t the card we found on Serena,” Nelson said. “This was the card in Detective Jenkins’s car.”

  Even then, my mind fought against the knowledge. I was drowning in confusion. Then, suddenly, it hit me:Jenk is dead.

  My stomach fisted. I felt myself try to vomit.

  “So, let’s go over what happened again…” Lieutenant Nelson said. “You confronted M.C. Glazer at Club Magique, where you assaulted him in front of witnesses. While you were being subdued, you told Detective Jenkins you were going to kill him.”

  “That’s a lie. I got into it with Glazer—I thought he might have killed Serena—but I never said that. You can’t trust anything those guys say.”

  “Yesterday, you assaulted M.C. Glazer again at a house in Laguna…”

  Shit.That visit to Laguna Beach might well be my life’s crowning asininity. I’d underestimated M.C. Glazer. With Chela’s age and the threat of the photos, I hadn’t expected Glaze to tell his bodyguards, much less go to the police. Now the photos could work against me—as evidence of the assault. I had fucked up, and badly. If I got arrested for assaulting M.C. Glazer, I would make national news, and he could spend a mountain of money to put me away. Or take my house. And I couldn’t say why I had been sent there, or by whom, because that would implicate Mother.

  “I need to see my lawyer,” I said.

  “Of course,” Lieutenant Nelson said agreeably, and went on as if I hadn’t spoken: “Now, when Detective Jenkins called your cell phone at 5:56P .M. yesterday, I’m sure the conversation was lively. He said some unkind things to you, and you said some impolite things back. Bad blood, let’s call it.”

  My ears vibrated, and I shook my head to clear them. “You’re wrong. He only left a message, and I still have it. I never called back.”

  “You met up to settle your unfinished business. He drives his unmarked out to a parking garage in Culver City at, say…ten o’clock.”

  “I haven’t seen him since that night at the club.”

  Lieutenant Nelson’s lips were a tight line, almost a smile. “Detective Jenkins stepped out of his car. You spoke, and for some reason he turned his back. You pulled out your Nine and shot Detective Jenkins twice in the back of the head. Point-blank. You do own a nine-millimeter Glock, don’t you?”

  Holy Lord.Jenk had been shot with a Nine? I’d registered a Glock more than a decade ago, and it was still packed in a box in my basement. Nines are popular handguns, but I was looking more and more like a suspect.

  My mind was tired of being afraid, so it shifted abruptly, and the fear evaporated. My sanity had gone around the bend and back. I was suddenly more clear-headed than I had been all morning. “I can show you my gun. It hasn’t been fired in years.”

  “I’ll know when we get our search warrant. Where were you last night?”

  “At home. I went to bed early.”

  “Were you alone?”

  Chela’s name almost came to my lips. “No.”

  “Who can vouch for you?”

  “I can’t say.”

  One of the men observing made a chuffing sound. He had a white mustache twirled up at the ends like men used to wear in the 1920s. Nelson pursed his lips. “You may be the stupidest SOB I ever met,” Nelson told me.

  “There’s a cell phone on my kitchen counter,” I said calmly. “On that phone is a voicemail message from Robert Jenkins. Listen to it for yourself. We didn’t plan to meet. His cell phone records will show you I never called him back. I haven’t fired a gun. Give me a GSR.” A gunshot residue test could prove there was no gunpowder on my hands, at least. I was glad I wasn’t a smoker, which might give a false positive.

  Nelson pulled two small paper bags from his pockets. “May I?” he said.

  After I nodded, Nelson shook the paper bags open and slid one over each of my hands. That way, he could preserve any evidence on my skin before I was taken for testing at SID. “I’m sure even an academy dropout like you would wash your hands, Hardwick…but maybe we’ll get lucky. We’d like some DNA, too.”

  I knew I could refuse a DNA test, but why? If I said no, Nelson would call a judge and force me anyway. Checkmate. But even with a rush, it would be at least a week before he could compare my DNA to whatever he’d found in Serena’s bedroom, or any false evidence Lorenzo and DeFranco might have planted on Jenk. By then, I might find the real killers—or at least have a genuine defense lined up.

  “Take all the tests you need to,” I said. “I can understand how this looks.”

  “Oh, you can?” Lieutenant Nelson said. “This is how it looks:The Calling Card Killer. A killer who’s so cocky, he leaves his card behind.”

  “You can’t believe that.”

  “I believe what evidence tells me.” Contempt leaped from Nelson’s eyes. “I know you were booked for attempted murder in ’99, Tennyson.”

  I’d wondered how long it would take him to bringthat up.

  “That charge was crap,” I said.

  “You broke the guy’s jaw and elbow. You put his head through a window.”

  “He assaulted my client.”

  “You mean he pinched her ass?” Nelson said.

  A drunken fan had been harassing my client at the bar, and I’d warned him twice to keep his distance. When he brushed past her barstool and slid his hand beneath her ass for a meaty squeeze, I pushed him away, and he came at me. What followed was brief but messy. Any bodyguard might have done the same thing, especially one who was sharing her bed. Even drunk, a guy with glass joints should have known better than to grope a movie star that way. If my client hadn’t backed me to the hilt with her lawyer, I might have done real time over that.

  “My charge was reduced to assault,” I told Nelson. “And that arrest was expunged from my record. I assume you know that, too.”

  Nelson shrugged. “I know you were the captain’s son.”

  “I’m done,” said the man with the mustache. He gave me one last look askance and let himself out. The second man sighed, sharing a look with Nelson I couldn’t see.

  “See what the judge says,” the man said, patting Nelson’s back. “Keep him here.”

  I didn’t like the sound any of it. “Am I under arrest?”

  The stranger looked back at me over his shoulder, and his eyes fell away, pained. I almost recognized him then, sorting out his aging face from a collection of childhood memories. The beach, or maybe that picnic at Griffith Park. He knew my father. I was sure of it.

  “You’re not under arrest, son,” the stranger said.

  Yet.The word sat at the end of his sentence, invisible and yet impossible to ignore. The interrogation room door clicked softly closed behind him.

  An hour after I was brought back to interrogation from the SID lab, no one had peeked in yet to see if I was enjoying my stay.

  During my solitude, I made a list of the ways these cops had pissed all over procedure. Obviously they didn’t have enough evidence for an arrest warrant. They wouldn’t have had enough to bring me in, period, if not for the lies of the cops on M.C. Glazer’s payroll. My house—Alice’s house—was about to be searched without anything remotely like probable cause, and all because a judge might be feeling fevered after a police officer’s murder. Jenk died at 10:00P .M., and they rushed together their flimsy case against me by dawn. Jenk had died on the clock, and justice for cops works fast. I catalogued the names and faces I was going to crucify once I was a free citizen again.

  Nelson finally came back, alone. He had taken off his jacket and loosened his shirt and tie as if he was ending his day, but it was only 11:00A .M. Instead of looking at me, his eyes were on the floor.

  “It doesn’t take long, does it, Tennyson?” Nelson said. His voice was thoughtful and hushed, like a friend’s.

  “What?”

  “Tearing down a legacy.”

  I didn’t want that to hurt, but it did. Bad. Amazingly, I had kept Dad out of my mind most of the morning, except to take comfort in how outraged he would
be on my behalf when he heard about it one day, once the trouble passed.

  “Preach was my commander for twelve years,” Nelson said. “My father is a retired Air Force colonel, and he and Richard A. Hardwick stand as the most courageous, conscientious, and righteous men I have ever known. Maybe you don’t know what he went through. Maybe he never told you the whole story about how hard it is to be black at LAPD.”Oh, here we go, I thought.The brother-to-brother routine.

  “Preach helped open people’s minds. He created opportunities for me, and the people behind me, that would not have existed if he hadn’t worked twice as hard as the white boys—and he did that every day.”

  “You don’t have to tell me how hard my father worked.”

  Dad was almost never at home. All I knew about his life away from me was what I overheard when he had a couple of beers and swapped stories with his cop friends. He never wanted to talk to me about anything except my bad grades.

  “You mustnot know,” Nelson said, “because you’re here to shit on his name.”

  “I haven’t seen you at the nursing home, friend,” I said. I hoped my voice wasn’t shaking. “I know things about my father you don’t want to hear.”

  Nelson grimaced, but he pressed on. His voice relaxed. “Let me tell you why they sent me the Afrodite case: I’m black. She’s a rapper. And the nameHardwick came up. Put those three things together, and that case is a shitstorm. Nobody else wanted to touch it, so I’m the go-to guy. And my luck doesn’t stop there. Now Robert Jenkins, a badge under investigation for his association with CopKilla Records, is meat…and here we go again. More cops with gang associations. More department scandals. So these cases will get publicity. A lot of it. The only thing we can do to minimize the damage—and I mean theonly thing—is make a swift arrest. Be on our game.”

  “Then I must be very convenient.”

  “Convenient? Hell, you’re Preach Hardwick’s son. Nobody who knew Preach wants to touch a hair on your chinny-chin-chin. Those two guys who were in here would rather chop off their arms than have anything to do with sending Preach Hardwick’s son to prison. We’re all chewing Alka-Seltzer today.”

  To prove it, Nelson pulled a half-empty roll of antacid out of his pocket. They weren’t Alka-Seltzer—they were the Albertsons store brand—but he made his point. He pulled one out and popped the white tablet into his mouth, crushing it with his molars.

  “See, I know what’s coming. I’ve seen it before. A community that’s never had a break finally finds somebody who gives a damn. He keeps his promises. He locks up the drug dealers and gangbangers, but at the same time he’s helping to keep your son and grandsons from going to jail because he’s listening, too. He’s going to meetings. He’s helping get parks built. He’s at the schools. They love him for it. They name recreation centers after him. Then, something happens: His troubles at home come out in the newspaper. His son goes to jail. Yeah, it’s embarrassing, but it’s deeper than that: It’s like yourown son going to jail. It makes you feel hopeless. What’s the point? The battles that matter have been lost.No one escapes.”

  Nelson’s eyes shimmered as he gazed at me. I was startled to realize he was near tears. He must have learned well from my father, because he sounded just like him.

  “That is what is at stake here. Your father’s name,” he said. His eyes cleared suddenly when he blinked. “But two people are dead—one of them a cop—and you’re connected to both. So I’m going to take this bullet for my department. It’s what Preach trained me to do, and it’s my job. Is it personal? Yes, it is.You offend me.”

  “I haven’t killed anyone,” I said with a tremor. “I think you know that.”

  Nelson sighed gently. He hushed his voice like a grandfather about to tell a reassuring bedtime story. “I need you to tell me the truth. Thewhole truth. As the great man said, ‘The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy.’ This is your moment, Hardwick. I’m your last chance.”

  I chuckled. Evoking Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was excessive. “We’re supposed to be friends now, reverend?”

  “Today, I’m your best friend, your twin brother, and the guy who paid for your first hand job. I’m all you’ve got, Hardwick. Start talking. Please don’t make me do this the hard way.”

  The plea sounded genuine, and I knew a trip downtown was the least of what Nelson could do to me. I was at the center of two high-profile homicide investigations, and he needed to make something happen fast. If Nelson arrested me today, my name could be on CNN by nightfall. Nelson was right—it was time.

  “I was with Serena at her house the day she died,” I said.

  I heard my imaginary lawyer screaming, but Nelson’s face didn’t change. Calmly, he pulled a microcassette recorder from his inside jacket pocket. The little red light glared up at me. “Go on.”

  “I ran into her at Roscoe’s at eleven, like I told you. I didn’t know she would be there. I just stopped by because I didn’t see a line. She invited me back to her house. Years ago, I did some bodyguarding for her…and sometimes we went to bed.”

  “You mean you accepted pay for sex. You were a male prostitute.”

  It wasn’t a question. I hadn’t been charged with solicitation in ’99, but rumors abounded in the tabloids, probably straight from the mouth of a cop. I’d tried to fool myself into thinking that Dad never heard the details of my previous work, but maybe everyone at Hollywood division knew. Or had Devon Biggs told Nelson?

  “I prefer the term ‘escort,’ but yes, I was. Serena was a client,” I said. The admission was difficult to force out of my mouth—it sounded like a sordid story about someone else—but I needed Nelson to know I was willing to tell the truth. “That’s all I’ll say about that. I’ve been out of that work for years, and I hadn’t seen Serena sinceKeepin’ it Real in 2002.”

  “Who cut off your business arrangement?”

  “It was mutual. I quit the business, and she started a production company. She was a lot more cautious after that. We toasted our new lives, and I lost contact with my former clients, including her.”

  “Did you have sex with Serena Monday?”

  Ooh, you’re still freaky, T.Suddenly, I could smell Serena’s intimate dampness inside the room’s chilled air. I knew all of her smells. My stomach twisted, and I wanted to double over. “Yes. In her bedroom.”

  “The condom from her bedroom trash can at our lab?” Nelson said.

  “That was mine.”

  “When did you see her last?”

  “I left about two. I took a cab. She invited me to come back on Friday.”

  “She called Sunshine Cab at one-fifty-five. Your cab was there at two-fifteen,” Nelson said.

  “Then you know better than I do. That was the last time I saw her.”

  Nelson’s face was still unreadable as he wrote notes for himself on a tiny pad. I noticed that his rhetoric and tough-ass act were gone. Now that I was talking, he’d fallen out of character. He only wanted to ask the right questions. I didn’t like Nelson, but I couldn’t help admiring him. Nelson was my age, in his late thirties, but he had veered right, and I had veered wrong. Every day my father saw Lieutenant Nelson at work, he’d been reminded of who I wasn’t.

  “Did you have an argument?” Nelson said.

  “No. We were fine. She told Devon Biggs to call me about a job, and she invited me to come back on Friday. You can confirm that first part with Biggs.”

  Nelson nodded in a way that made me think Biggs had been telling the truth when he claimed he played Serena’s message for the police. “Did she mention any trouble?”

  I hadn’t spoken to anyone about that day, and now I was mired in it. Serena’s laugh echoed inside my ears, and fresh sadness lanced me. “She said something that stuck out: ‘Someone’s always trying to pull you down.’ I don’t know what she meant, but I try not to jump into people’s business. People at Serena’s level don’t
trust easily—everybody wants something from you—so I didn’t press her. I wish I had.”

  “Did she have a boyfriend?”

  “I don’t know. She said she didn’t have time for relationships. She never did.”

  “Did you notice anything unusual at all?”

  “No,” I said. “I was just glad to see her.”

  “What happened at Club Magique?” Nelson didn’t miss a beat.

  “M.C. Glazer assaulted me, aided by your three police officers: Jenkins, DeFranco, and Lorenzo. I fought back. Your officers beat me nearly unconscious, and I was rescued by bouncers. I didn’t make any threats against anyone. I didn’t say I wanted to kill Detective Jenkins. I could barely remember my own name. Your men are lying. They’re trying to deflect attention away from their association with M.C. Glazer.”

  “Did you stalk M.C. Glazer at his beach house?”

  Telling the unfiltered truth had been such a relief, my stomach jabbed me when I ran out of things I could say. My visit to M.C. Glazer involved several felonies, but if Mother got dragged in, the ripple effect would hurt too many people I cared about. Mother had paid my rent for years, and she would die in prison if she was arrested.

  “I went to M.C. Glazer’s beach house to talk to him without his bodyguards. I subdued him, asked him questions, and left.”

  “Why would you do that?” He looked genuinely confounded.

  “I thought he killed Serena.”

  “Based on what?”

  “His own words, at Club Magique. Going to his house was a mistake. Is he pressing charges?” I had given up hope of going back home today, but if I was going to spend the night in jail, I wanted to hear someone say it.

  “I’ll ask the questions,” Nelson said. “What did Detective Jenkins say to you after your visit to M.C. Glazer?”

  “Nothing. He left a message on my phone, but we never spoke.”

  “How did he have your number?”

  “I gave out cards at Club Magique. Maybe Jenkins was feeling me out. He knew Serena in high school—and Shareef, too. Devon Biggs thought Jenkins might have helped M.C. Glazer kill Serena and Shareef. He said Jenkins, Shareef, and Serena had a falling out. He said Jenkins was helping Glazer move guns and drugs.”