Casanegra

by Blair Underwood

  “I happen to be a bodyguard,” I said. “So unless you’re trying to play me, you just lucked out.”

  “A bodyguard?” He scanned me, seemed to notice the thick upper arms, flat chest, and narrow waist for the first time. “No shit. I thought you were just Reenie’s dick for cash.”

  I squeezed back my anger, and a pinch of pain. My eyes were on autopilot, sweeping from side to side, watching everything. Two male mongrels chased a female dog in heat, her teats still flopping from her last litter. Except for the four kids still in sight, the street was empty. The ice cream truck was gone. A fading Pinto sped by, but the gray-haired driver never slowed. The bumper sticker warned me toACCEPT JESUS .

  “Who do you think killed Jenk?” I said.

  “How much time you got? Could be anybody.”

  “Like?”

  “Any of the dealers he was shaking down. Somebody he ripped off in a deal. Gang turf shit. Hell, knowing Jenk, he could’ve pissed off somebody at a club feeling up the wrong hoochie. Glaze could’ve done it, trying to clean up his trail.”

  I’d thought of that, too. M.C. Glazer had plenty more guns at his disposal. And so did other LAPD officers, rogue or otherwise, who considered Jenk a liability.

  We walked slowly alongside a five-foot wall of blooming hibiscus hedges that shielded a neighbor’s house from the street. My eyes never left the hedges; they were a perfect hiding place. A Chihuahua yapped at us from the window of the cream-colored bungalow. My shoulders flexed, hard.

  “Could it be retaliation for Serena?” I said, looking at Biggs sidelong so he wouldn’t miss my point. It was hard to imagine someone as nervous as Biggs taking down Jenk, but he could have hired it out. Tyra was Serena’s only family, so who would want retaliation more than Biggs?

  But he only shrugged. “You mean me? If I was gonna kill Jenk, it would’ve been after Shareef died—just incase,” he said, his voice fracturing. “But as much as I loved Reenie, I’m not crazy enough to jack a cop. Casanegra doesn’t have bangers on the payroll like Glaze. Nobody’s killing cops in Reenie’s name…unless it was you.”

  I ignored his probing. “Why did you think he killed Shareef?”

  Biggs didn’t answer right away, glancing toward his house ahead. Biggs’s mother’s house was twenty yards from us, almost within earshot, so he lowered his voice.

  “Glaze hated Shareef ’cuz of the shit Shareef said on his CDs, trying to be gangsta. I told him it was playing with fire, but Shareef was going after those sales. If Glaze wanted Shareef gone, Jenk would’ve had a price—fuck how long we knew each other. Even when we invited that brother to parties, we felt like we had to look over our shoulders ’cuz you never knew who Jenk was working for. Jenk would know how to do a job fast, how to dispose of the body, how to make the gun disappear. A professional. And it had to be somebody Shareef knew.”

  “Why?”

  “Shareef wasn’t a banger, but he belonged to the Beverly Hills Gun Club, man. That shit might sound funny, but the brother couldshoot. Nobody was gonna cap him with his own piece unless they got close.Real close.”

  “Was Jenk at the party at Shareef’s house the night he died?”

  “I was eight time zones east, man, so I didn’t see shit,” Biggs said. “But that don’t mean he wasn’t there.”

  Biggs’s face suddenly transformed in his mother’s shadow. A boyish grin wiped away our conversation, and I understood how I hadn’t recognized him at first glance. His cheeks dimpled, his teeth radiating in the sun. He wrapped his arms around the woman and swung her from side to side, rocking with her.

  “Mama…hey,” he said gently, burying his face against her neck. He kissed her and let go, clasping her hand. Watching them, I felt the sting of envy I always feel when I see people with their mothers, starting in kindergarten.

  Dorothea Walton Biggs was a fit, coffee-skinned woman smartly dressed in a skirt and blouse from a job behind a desk—except that she wore faded slippers on her stocking feet. Her hair was dyed black to cover the gray, but her skin was so vibrant that she didn’t even look fifty-five.

  “You look like Ole Miz Susie out here in your house shoes, Mama,” Biggs teased.

  “I couldn’t keep looking at those weeds,” she said. “What were you doing?”

  “Business. But we were just on our way over,” Biggs said, a glib liar. “This is a buddy of mine, Tennyson Hardwick. A friend of Reenie’s.”

  “Oh!” That credential brought a sad smile to her face. She reached over to hug me, and I’d barely shifted away my gun side before she squeezed me tight. “You must be hurting.”You must be hurting, too, she meant. Our grief made me family.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, and hugged her back. My chin rested naturally on her shoulder, and I smelled talcum powder at the nape of her neck. Hers was a mother’s hug, tight and warm, without expectation. From the time I was thirteen, women old enough to be my mother rarely hugged me maternally. It was a nice change.

  “I saw you drive by before. I’m sorry if I gave you the evil eye, sugar,” she said. “I didn’t know if you were a reporter or what. They’ve been a nuisance. But this was Reenie’s old street, so they want their footage, or B-roll, or whatever they call it.”

  “I wish you would move on out of here,” Biggs said. “I got you that house—”

  “Just stop it, Dev,” she said.“This is my house.”

  Biggs sighed, irritation pressed between his lips. I tried to imagine being a multimillionaire trying to convince his mother to move into a bigger house in a more scenic neighborhood. I drew a blank. Devon Biggs and I had very different problems.

  Biggs opened his box and showed his mother one of Serena’s CDs. She examined the photo of Serena with a heartsick smile, tracing her finger lightly across the jewel case. Then her smile fell, and tears flooded her eyes. She gave the CD back to Biggs and patted his hand.Not now.

  She looked up at me, as if her tears needed defending. “She used to come over here after school. Her and Shareef. I’m having hard talks with God over this one. I don’t understand it. What’s wrong with this music? Why is it killing our children?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am,” I said. “I wish I did.”

  “Mama…” Biggs said impatiently, talking to her like a remedial schoolteacher. “Music doesn’t kill people.”

  “This music does,” she said. “The Temptations never shot at the Four Tops.”

  I chuckled despite myself.

  “True, Mama,” Devon said, smiling a little. “True.”

  Dorothea Biggs walked toward the front porch past a shiny, cream-colored Audi in her driveway that I guessed was a gift from her son. She waited for us to follow.

  Devon hesitated, looked at his watch. He waved me in, and together we climbed the porch steps to Devon Biggs’s childhood home. A girl’s loud laughter from down the street reminded me that if I had walked through these doors twenty years sooner, I might have bumped into Serena.

  People who visit my house don’t learn much about me, even after thorough searching. I had noticed the same detachment at Serena’s house, her absence in Casanegra’s décor. Tyra’s place, too. We lived as if we didn’t expect to stay anywhere long, were on our way somewhere else. But Dorothea Biggs lived on her walls, plain as day. Her home was her family’s shrine.

  The walls were so crammed with photographs, certificates, and framed newspaper stories that there was hardly space between them to show the stained wood planks. While Devon and his mother spoke in low tones about Serena’s funeral, I looked around.

  The living room was stuffed without looking cluttered. A regal chesterfield with African mudcloth-styled upholstery was draped with a rug picturing the solemn faces of Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy side by side. That was the sofa for show; a plainer beige couch sat in a corner of the living room near a small television set mounted alongside rows of hardcover novels in an entertainment center. The King James Bible was most prominent on the shelves, but I scanne
d the other titles:Encyclopedia Africana. Middle Passage by Charles Johnson. Alex Haley’sRoots.

  Against the wall, a black-and-white stereo console stretched at least four feet across, a relic from the seventies. Remarkably, an eight-track was playing softly from the stereo’s mouth. Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.” I noticed a stack of eight-tracks and LPs: Aretha Franklin. Mississippi Mass Choir. Roberta Flack. This stereo had been here back in Serena’s day, probably playing the same songs.

  My impression of a cultured, education-oriented family was confirmed by the certificates bearing various Biggs names on the wall: Dorothea’s Bachelor of Science degree in sociology from Pepperdine. Devon Biggs’s law degree from UCLA. Even Devon’s high school diploma from Dorsey High was framed on the wall. A business license for Legacy Insurance.

  Photographs filled another wall, leading toward the hallway. The first photo I noticed was almost too high to be in my line of sight, but I couldn’t miss Serena’s face. Dressed in a halter top and shorts, her hair was pulled into Afro-puffs, sitting between Devon and Shareef on the house’s front porch. All three of them lifted Popsicles to the camera in a toast.

  I peered closely, urging the photo to come to life and talk to me. The porch outside was identical, down to the white wicker rocking chair, as though I might open the door and find them all still waiting.

  In the photo, Serena, Devon, and Shareef were about thirteen or fourteen—after the trouble started in Serena’s house. The photo in Devon’s office with her old Impala was from earlier days; unless it was my imagination, I could see an unspoken life in Serena’s eyes as she grinned for the camera. Maybe it was because I knew too much about how they spent their time after school, but Serena’s lips were curled as if she had a grand, ugly secret. Her eyes weren’t smiling nearly as much as the rest of her face. Devon’s picture had captured the three of them at play, but in this one, they had grown up, only playing a childlike role.

  “Am I riding with you to West Angeles, then?” Devon’s mother asked Biggs.

  “Of course! I’m swinging by to get you. But I have to come by ten, ’cuz that church is gonna be a madhouse. I just heard from Will and Jada. Stevie. Nick Cage,” Devon said, sounding distracted while he messaged someone on his Blackberry.

  “Is there room for one more at the church?” I said, trying to sound casual.

  Biggs nearly glared at me, since his mother’s back was turned, but he caught himself and faked a pleasant expression. “It’s pretty tight, man. Remember, I told you I was working on it…” In other words,fuck off.

  “Well, that hardly seems right, Devon,” his mother said, giving her son a withering look. “He can’t get a seat to his own friend’s funeral? Half those people you mentioned hardly knew her.”

  “He’ll handle it, Mrs. Biggs,” I said. “Besides, I’m saying good-bye to Serena in my own private way.”I’m going to find out who killed her—the kind of tribute that actually means a damn.

  Biggs tugged on his mother’s arm, eager to change the subject: “What’s up in the kitchen? I thought you already had somebody look at that microwave…”

  His tactic worked. While his mother began a litany of complaints against the company he had contracted to fix her household appliances, I studied a large Sears-style family portrait taken when Devon Biggs was eight or nine, with only a missing front tooth to mar his angel’s face. Dorothea Biggs had been maybe fifteen pounds heavier, but had a professional makeup job that made her look like a model. On the other side of Devon sat a light-skinned black man in a United States Navy dress uniform. The Eagle and two stripes told me he was a petty officer first class. Devon’s father was slightly built and smooth-faced, like his son, with large, kind eyes. They were a striking family.

  If Devon Biggs had grown up with both parents in the house, he was one of the few.

  But I felt a sense that Biggs’s father wasn’t around anymore, and I was right: Beneath the portrait sat a small table that looked like a smaller shrine: a framed wedding photo taken on a beach when Dorothea and her lanky groom were still teenagers, and a funeral program dated August 12, 1987.

  Devon Biggs’s father had died when Devon was about fifteen.Ouch.

  “Wallace would’ve been fifty-five last Saturday,” Devon’s mother said, noticing my attention. “So this has been a hell of a week. He retired from the navy, then we started Legacy Insurance with our savings. Now Legacy’s been in the neighborhood twenty years.” She was almost talking to herself, amazed at how time had escaped her. Suddenly, she turned to Devon. “What have you heard about Robbie?”

  “Nothing, Mama,” Devon said. “Just what’s on the news. Nobody knows.”

  Dorothea Biggs shook her head viciously, and her face clouded with rage. “Wallace’s birthday, and then Serena and Robbie in the same week. They say the Lord won’t put more on you than you can bear, but this is a test.”

  Robbie. Robert Jenkins.

  “You knew Detective Jenkins?” I said to Mrs. Biggs.

  “Goodness, yes. He was one of our regulars. Those kids loved Wallace, you see. Robbie never knew his father, and neither did Shareef or Serena, so Wallace was the neighborhood stand-in. ‘Keep the kids busy, keep the gangs away,’ that’s what he’d say. So he’d fire up the grill, and the boys played pickup on the street while I braided Serena’s hair on the front porch. And Shareef always did a talent show right out in the yard.”

  “With that little cheap-ass microphone—remember, Mama?” Biggs said, smiling.

  “Oh, it was cheap, all right. You could hear him better without it. We all knew he had talent. Now, Serena…” She sighed.

  “What?” I said.

  “I worried about her. So withdrawn, she would hardly open her mouth. It’s hard to believe she ended up such a public person. She jumped at her own shadow.”

  “It wasn’t like that, Mama,” Biggs said. “But see, you’re right: Serena owed Shareef everything. He really made her what she was.”

  “Well, you, too,” Mrs. Biggs said in a way that sounded almost obligatory.

  “Were Shareef and Serena dating?” I said.

  The question surprised her, as if I should have known better than to ask. “Of course not. The three of them were like cousins. Siblings. Wallace and I wanted to move her in with us, when her mother was struggling to keep the lights on. I even asked Serena’s mother once, but she got insulted.” Dorothea Biggs sighed. “It was plain she couldn’t take care of those girls by herself. Children are always hard. There wouldn’t have been any shame in letting Serena live with us for a time.”

  Dorothea Biggs’s voice wavered. Her moist eyes said she was convinced that if she had only broached it the right way—or if Serena’s mother had been more reasonable—that shy, pretty girl wouldn’t have died. Maybe that was true and maybe it wasn’t, but if Devon’s mother knew more about her son’s enterprise with Serena, I was sure she would relinquish one painful regret and replace it with one that might hurt even more.

  “The Three Musketeers. That’s what we used to say,” Devon said, flicking a tear from his eye. “But you can’t change that, Mama. Come on and show me what’s up in the kitchen. We’ve got a meeting in five minutes.”

  “Well, Dev, if you’re busy, then I’ll call back and—”

  “No way. You’re my mama, and your things should work right.” Biggs probably was more concerned about his name’s weight than his mother’s comfort, but she gave him such a grateful smile that it didn’t bother me.

  Because no one asked me not to, I strolled a few paces behind them in the narrow hall to try to hear more of their conversation and check out the house. The scent of last night’s dinner still clung to the walls; roasted chicken and cornbread. My mouth watered. I wished Tyra had asked us to meet her closer to dinnertime.

  The kitchen was large enough for a table and four chairs, with a matching sea green-colored gas stove and refrigerator. Dorothea Biggs loved strawberries, because strawberries covered the wallpaper, refrigerator
magnets, and neatly folded dish towels. Only the crisply tied white lace curtains over the large window were free of strawberries. While Devon and his mother fussed over the microwave, I pulled the curtains aside and took a quick peek into the backyard.

  What I saw made my blood crawl: A large wooden shed, painted barnyard red with white trim, sat against the back fence, ringed by blooming rosebushes. Was this the shed where Serena, Devon, and Shareef used to sneak her customers for ten-dollar sessions while his parents were at work? The thought put a bad taste in my mouth.

  Devon caught me looking outside, and his face snapped to rigidity. “Hey, man, wait in the living room. I’ll just be a minute.”

  Dorothea Biggs took my hand, ready to usher me away. Her quick appearance beside me at the window made me wonder if she knew something about the shed, too. Her eyes avoided mine. “Devon doesn’t like people watching him try to be a handyman,” she said. “It embarrasses him.”

  “Everybody’s entitled to their secrets,” I said, giving Devon a long look as I allowed his mother to lead me back into the hallway. His eyes sparked at me.

  Dorothea Biggs walked at a deliberately slow pace, and I matched her halting steps. I was about to ask her if she was feeling well, but her face told me she was trying to work out her thoughts, so I stayed quiet. Once we were back in the living room, she led me to the photograph of Serena I’d been admiring on the wall.

  “So pretty,” she said sadly. “And sweet as she could be. If she was walking over to the Handi Mart, she’d come knock on the door and ask what she could bring me. Every time, I mean. And it really was such a help. Serena was the way I always pictured a daughter might be, if I’d ever had a girl.” Devon’s mother had yet to mention Tyra, so her affection apparently didn’t extend to Serena’s half-sister. I wasn’t surprised.

  I wished I had more time to talk to her. Devon might not let me near her again.

  “You’d never know all she was going through from the way she’s smiling,” I said.