Casanegra

by Blair Underwood

  “Bitch, you better do it.” M.C. Glazer’s trigger finger itched, trembling. I heard a tiny voice in my head:Do it. It’s just kissing leather. And then they’ll laugh, and you will live…

  I just couldn’t. Everything swayed as dizziness rocked me. My ribs were on fire. Gagged and bleeding, I stared at my killer. I looked at his eyes, not his feet.

  M.C. Glazer smiled at me with a kind of faraway rapture. He was ready.

  I closed my eyes then. The panic was gone. I was empty.

  I heard the steady, beating wind. The wind massaged my face and ears. They say the windmills near Palm Springs provide electricity to a hundred thousand homes, and I was glad to be in a powerful place. I could feel the world’s heart beating above me. Beneath me. Inside me.

  I remembered the way my father’s eyes shone the last time I saw him, when he knew his son needed him. I thought about Chela and April, somewhere safe. Alive.

  And I heard Serena’s voice, one last time:

  Come on, Ten. I’m taking my Bronze Man home.

  It’s all right to die. It really is.

  A time comes when there’s nothing more you can do. Just close your eyes.

  Say good-bye.

  NINETEEN

  “PUT THE FUCKING GUN DOWN, GLAZE.”

  At first, I didn’t believe I’d really heard Lorenzo’s voice anywhere except my mind, but his order triggered a flurry of motion. When I opened my eyes, Lorenzo and DeFranco both had their guns drawn, trained on M.C. Glazer. The doors to the Hummer flew open, and Glazer’s two men fell out, one of them leveling a shotgun at DeFranco. Lorenzo had moved smoothly, placing Glazer between him and the buckshot. His right arm was straight as a rifle stock, his left cupping the weapon, elbow bent in a modified Weaver stance. No matter what went down, M.C. Glazer was an obit.

  Glazer stood frozen, as stunned as I was. But he didn’t drop his gun.

  Lorenzo balanced his gun with both arms for accuracy. Glazer whipped the gun at Lorenzo, and a shotgun cartridge jacked into place from the Hummer. DeFranco spun, aiming his sidearm at the guy with the sawed-off.

  It was a miracle no one was dead yet.

  “Get away from Glaze, man,” the shotgunner said in a husky voice, trying hard not to sound as scared as he had to be. The stock shook against his shoulder.

  Lorenzo never took his eyes off Glazer. Neither Lorenzo nor Glazer made a move to lower his gun. Aiming to kill each other, and neither flinched. “Mo?” Lorenzo called to the man with the shotgun, almost casually. “This shit’s got nothing to do with you. I’m LAPD, and you donot want to shoot me.”

  “You better have a magic bullet, Mo,” DeFranco said to Shotgun, crouching. Aimed and ready to fire.

  “I never thought I would live to seethis shit,” M.C. Glazer said. But I was still staring down the barrel of his S&W.

  Lorenzo took a single, deliberate step toward Glaze. “You want to live another minute? Put that fucking gun down. There is no part of me bullshitting you.”

  Glazer sneered. “You’re fired, man. No more VIP pussy for your broke ass.”

  “I’m counting to three, Glaze,” Lorenzo said. “One…”

  Glazer didn’t wait fortwo. He threw his gun to the ground, where it skittered behind a dry, ragged bush that looked as tired as I felt.

  “You too, Mo,” DeFranco said. “Don’t throw it. Lay it on the hood.”

  Lorenzo and DeFranco sounded like cops again.

  “What’s this?” Glaze said. “Some kind of entrapment bullshit?”

  Lorenzo shook his head. He lowered his gun, but didn’t holster it. “You’re cool, Glaze, and you’ve been good to me. But I’m not gonna piss my life away over a whore and a phone. No disrespect intended. We came out here for Jenk.”

  “We still love the pussy, man,” DeFranco said, as if he hoped to negotiate.

  Glaze gave them a contemptuous look. “I miss Jenk already.”

  “Not like I do,” Lorenzo said. His voice was raw.

  Glazer walked past me and gave me one last shot, a solid punch to the face that whipped my head around and sprayed blood on the sand. I was already hurting so much that the pain didn’t bother me, but it pissed me off. I hate getting hit in the face.

  “Used to be pretty, didn’t you, motherfucker?” Glaze said.

  And he walked to his Hummer.

  As Glazer drove off with his music blaring, a cloud of dust climbed over me in the Hummer’s wake. Lorenzo yanked the gag out of my mouth and held my hair so my head would be steady enough to meet him at eye level. Maybe I was about to pass out.

  “What happened to you, sir?” His eyes told me not to say anything stupid.

  “I walked into a hotel room, and somebody hit me over the head.”

  “What did you see?”

  I swallowed blood. Coughed. “I didn’t see shit. I think a couple of heroes saved my ass, though.”

  “We were never here.”

  “Never got a good look. S-sorry about your friend.”

  Lorenzo searched my face for a while. His lips were puffy, and blood filmed his teeth. He sucked at one of them, winced…and smiled, nodding. Our business was finished. “He looks like he needs a doctor, huh, DeFranco?”

  “He’s jacked up,” DeFranco agreed.

  Lorenzo grabbed me beneath my armpits, pulling me to my feet as if I were weightless. He was used to carrying heavy loads. “While we’re riding over to the hospital, I want to hear more about Devon Biggs…”

  Biggs killed Serena. Biggs killed Jenk.

  It wasn’t just a story in my head.

  Arguing for my life, I’d wondered if my story was more fantasy or reality—but it felt so real now that I didn’t know how I hadn’t seen it before. It was impossible to tell one piece of misery from another that day—I was in agony, yet numb—but I felt more grief than anger. I had a concussion, two broken ribs, probably a broken nose, and severe dehydration, but my mind kept looping back to Dorothea Biggs.

  First chance I got, I was going to call my father’s friend, Hal Dolinski.

  Dorothea’s son would need protective custody when he went to jail.

  I spent three days in the hospital, and I could have stayed three weeks. April was good enough to keep Chela with her—and Chela was grateful enough to do anything I asked of her—so for three days I didn’t have anything to think about except how much I hurt from one end of my body to the next.

  I’d almost died over nothing. I’d treated my life carelessly. And like anyone who’s tasted what dying feels like, I vowed never to play peek-a-boo with death again.

  Madness.

  And I’d done it for Serena; to put her to rest. To putme to rest.

  I was still sorry I never had my Friday night date with Serena. She’d been ready to make changes in her life, and I’d been ready to make changes in mine. It’s the stuff of Hollywood: right place, right time.

  Sometimes, you meet too soon. Or too late. Or both.

  After my first one, Lieutenant Nelson never returned my phone calls. When he heard my theory about Devon Biggs, even as I urged him to interrogate Tyra, he’d sounded noncommittal and hung up before I thought he’d gotten my point.

  But my last night in the hospital, I got a visitor I wasn’t expecting. It was after visiting hours, but like M.C. Glazer said, you can go anywhere with a badge.

  Detective Hal Dolinski stood at the foot of my bed, wearing a classic desk-jockey rumpled shirt and slacks that don’t fit quite right. He looked like a man who wished he’d retired five years ago, fifty pounds overweight and walking with a slouch he probably hadn’t noticed. I remembered how big he’d seemed when I was young, and felt jarred. When it came to ass-kicking, Lorenzo and DeFranco were nothing compared with Father Time.

  “You’re lucky to be alive, kid,” Dolinski said. The look on his face told me I wouldn’t want to use a mirror for a long time.

  “I got a pretty bad bump on my head,” I said. The bandages across my nose made me sound muffled. Gagged.
/>   Dolinski laughed. “Yeah, right. Some kind of bump. Bumpedoff, you mean.”

  A part of me almost laughed, but I couldn’t. Funny wasn’t in my vocabulary yet.

  Dolinski waited for me to fill in the blanks during the silence. When I didn’t, he finally said, “If you file charges, we’ll get you protection.”

  My insides cinched. “I was hoping this was a social visit.”

  Dolinski shrugged. “We’ve been after these guys for a while, Ten.”

  I resented being leaned on in a hospital bed, but cops are cops.

  “What guys?” I said. I said it like I meant it.

  Dolinski sighed and nodded. He knocked the pile of fast-food wrappers off the chair at my bedside and took a seat, pulling the chair close. “That’s the way it always is, Ten,” he said. “Nobody wants to talk. I’m not saying I’d do it any different…”

  “I’m not sure I catch what you’re talking about, Detective.”

  “But there are bad people out there. Preach knows. Cops have to carry that around, and it’s hard on the body. It sucks years out of you. But you’re trying to do something good in the world. If you’re not, you’ve got no business with a badge.”

  His speech was moving, but the man had no idea how deaf my ears were to any conversation that involved trying to prosecute Carlos Lorenzo and Paul DeFranco. They had almost killed me; I had almost killed them. Then they had saved my life, their every Palm Springs action motivated by the same thing: a strange sense of honor that had nothing at all to do with what was legal or even what was right.

  Even if there was no come-back, I just wouldn’t rat them out. Some of my loyalties are…complicated.

  “What goes around comes around, Ten,” Dolinski said.

  “I’m less and less clear on your meaning, Detective.”

  “People ask me all the time about these rap murders. Tupac, Shareef. Everybody says, ‘How come nobody got arrested?’” The detective’s frustration splotched his ears. “It’s easy as pie: Nobody will talk, that’s why.”

  “Or nobody listens when they try.”

  Dolinski pinched the bridge of his nose. He nodded again, stiffly, as if his neck hurt. “You know I had to ask.”

  “That’s what a good cop does.”

  Dolinski gave me another few seconds to have a change of heart. Then he clapped his hands, grinning. Our social visit began. “We’ve got him,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “Devon Biggs. He surrendered yesterday. Press conference will be in time for the nightly news cycle. Not even a week, and it’s closed. We owe you, Ten.”

  I wished I had heard it from Lieutenant Nelson, but it was nice to hear gratitude from someone at LAPD.

  “What’s the evidence?”

  Dolinski laid it out for me: Blood in Biggs’s office. A strand of hair caught at the base of the bronze statuette. Blood on Biggs’s phone.Looks like the sonofabitch kept making calls even after she was dead, probably so he could seal his alibi. Detergent residue on Serena’s skin. Blood on a laundry cart from Biggs’s building.They figure he rolled her out of the office in the cart, to the parking garage. Blood in Biggs’s car.

  Once the police knew where to look, the truth was impossible to ignore.

  “He killed her, no question,” Dolinski said. “It looks like what you said—they were fighting over the damn statue. They were alone, things got out of hand. Doesn’t feel like premeditation. It was a dumb-ass move to kill her in his office.”

  “He didn’t know she was coming.” I was sure of that.

  How could Biggs keep going to work day after day, knowing what he had done? That was one cold, tightly wrapped little man.

  Dolinski went on: “They haven’t been so lucky pulling together a case on Jenk, but they will. For now, closing Afrodite is a huge boost. We needed some good damn news. All the talking heads get to powder up and go on CNN.” He slapped my shoulder harder, his eyes twinkling. Good old Uncle Hal.

  “What’s the surprise?” he said. “Like father like son, right?”

  It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me.

  While the nameDevon Biggs raced over the national news, claiming its place in music history, I tried to pull my life together a piece at a time. In the process, I was buried in paperwork.

  April found me a family law attorney.

  Marcela found me a practical nurse.

  I was building a home.

  Devon Biggs tried to call me at least once a day. His messages were always frantic but polite, but I never picked up or listened to what he had to say. The sound of his voice awoke rage I didn’t have time for. Devon Biggs was buried in a hole that went straight through the center of me. I wanted to forget he existed.

  But like I told Serena the last time I saw her, you don’t get to do what you want.

  A week and four days after I ran into Serena at Roscoe’s, I finally checked my mail at my rented mailbox. Just as I had expected, it had piled up. Mr. Niyogi walked out with me to my car to help me carry a box of letters and bills, since I was on crutches. I wasn’t supposed to walk at all, but I’ve never been good at lying around the house.

  Most of the mail was junk; I’d been pegged a sucker for every course, every seminar, every miracle “insider” tip sheet on How to Make It in Hollywood.

  I pawed through, looking for checks and bills, the only mail I care about. Everything was due at once, but two residual checks fromMalibu High made me smile. Six thousand dollars was a good haul for work I’d done ten years ago. I had decided to chuck the rest of the mail when an envelope markedCASANEGRA PRODUCTIONS caught my eye, buried at the bottom.

  Only curiosity made me open it. I still had one question for Devon Biggs:How could you?

  The letter was on plain typing paper. Handwriting filled the page; careful and elaborate, with flourishes on the Ys unmistakably feminine. And familiar.

  The letter electrocuted me. I was sitting at my kitchen table, but I felt like I had lost my mind in the desert after all.

  It’s from Serena.

  Serena hadn’t dated it, but there was only one day the letter could have been sent.

  Dear T—

  What a trip seeing you again after all this time! You were a sight for sore eyes—and I mean that in every way. They say God sends angels in many forms—ha, ha. I am writing the “old-fashioned” way because I don’t trust email. Remember people can read your email without you knowing. I know I don’t have to say it, but this letter is just for me and you. I am shocked at myself for writing to you, but I guess it boils down to how you have always treated me like a lady. I know that was an act before, but I don’t think it was an act today—and I am looking forward to some more of that jerked goat or whatever you made for me that time in Negril.

  Ten, you’re the only man who’s never raised his voice at me. Isn’t that sad? If it’s not an act and you are someone I can trust, maybe we will see each other again soon. But you may not want to see me after what I’m about to tell you. You might be the only one I can trust my secrets to.

  After half a glass of water, I read on.

  A long time ago a girl named Reenie started out her life the wrong way. She didn’t speak up for herself and she put herself down. She believed she only had one thing to offer, and that the only way she could find any greatness in the world was through the greatness of others. And she went along with things she shouldn’t have, afraid to make a change.

  Five years ago, I made a change, and someone I knew didn’t like it. I guess I always knew deep down, but he was playing an act with me, trying to be what he thought I wanted, but underneath he was like a vampire. Charming and sweet, but always sucking until one day there’s nothing left. I started talking to my pastor, and I was seeing through his games. I was not the same person I was when I met him. I had grown up.

  I started Casanegra Productions so I could have something of my own. ’Pac and I talked about movies and the Hollywood thing. He understood the importance of being freed f
rom bad influences, and even then, he knew it was going to cost him.

  When I was ready to start Casanegra, this person I knew acted like he was fine with it, but he had jealousy in his heart, so he had too much to drink one night and got violent. He had never been physically violent before—only with his words. Ten, he tried to rape me. It was the most confusing moment of my life. I can’t tell you how much that hurt my heart. But when you are attacked you act on instinct and I had to fight him. I felt blessed when I saw the gun he’d put on the counter before he pulled his pants down.

  I have killed a man. I shouldn’t even write those words on paper.

  My sadness gave way to shock. I had thought Serena was describing her complex relationship with Devon Biggs.Five years ago?

  Shareef.

  Serena had killedShareef ? The world spun. The three children posing by the Impala in the photo in Devon Biggs’s office had been blown to bloody pieces. That car might as well have been wired with a bomb on a timer.

  I hope God will forgive me, but I got scared and only made it worse so no one would ever know what happened. I was more worried about Afrodite than Reenie, so I went the selfish route. I used a friend to help me with details, and I know that took him farther from his salvation after I’d tried to help him walk a straighter path for years. I feel so bad most of all because the man who died was like family to me.

  It was the beginning of a nightmare. I confided in someone else I thought was a friend, and in his heart I don’t think he ever could forgive me. He changed toward me. He used the secret over me, and I made decisions concerning my career that I would not have made otherwise. When we argued, he said he would tell what I did and tear my name down, so I always shut up. I knew I was paying the price for what I had done.

  But I can’t live with the lie anymore. And I can’t be a prisoner. You are right when you say we have to do what we have to do. I have to stop being Reenie and stop being Afrodite and be Serena for once. Once this secret is out in the world, no one will have power over me but me. So now you cansee there is a reason I ran into you today. You always knew how to make me see only the best in myself.