Hard Betrayal (Michelle Angelique Avenging Angel Series 2)

by Jason Stanley

  “How about we start with you coming back here and letting me wash your hair?” Baby-Sister said to Deja. “I can also rub some of those kinks out of your neck.”

  Deja rose and followed Baby-Sister farther into the salon. “Thank you, God, for delivering me from fools and into the bosom of good friends.” With a contented sigh, she kicked off her shoes, put her feet up, and leaned her head back into the hair-washing sink.

  * * *

  After a couple of hours at B’s Salon, the friends drove to the house Nikky grew up in.

  Inside, they sat at the table in Mrs. Harris’ kitchen where nothing had changed in years. The oval-shaped, wood-grain Formica-top table with black steel legs still sat against the wall, with a line of napkins, salt and pepper shakers, Tabasco sauce, and a toaster, all hugging the back edge and a single cigarette burn mark punctuating one end. The same, lingering scents of home-cooked meals and hand-washed dishes greeted Michelle when she entered the small kitchen. Yet, nothing was the same. Everything had changed when Taye was jumped.

  Taye hung in limbo in the intensive care ward at the hospital, and with her return not automatically assumed, the house felt empty, almost like it announced and amplified her absence.

  “Nikky, I’m so, so sorry,” Deja said. “I wish I let you and Michelle cap Jerome the first time. I stay sick thinking about how Taye’s been jacked. It’s my fault for asking you to hold back.”

  “Oh, sweetheart, we all agreed to warn him,” Nikky said. “It’s all our faults, not yours alone.”

  “Maybe, but I still feel like I caused everything.”

  “No, you’re both wrong on this,” Michelle said. “None of us did anything wrong. Deja, you only screwed up being with such a loser, that’s all. Women hook up with losers all the time, and nobody’s hurt like this. This mess, this is all his fault. He’s the one who hit you. He hit Nikky. Now he’s hurt Little Taye. Everything bad that happened is because he’s a rat bastard sonuvabitch. I’m real clear here, Deja, this is not your fault.”

  “Thank you,” Deja said. “One sure thing is that asshole’s days in this hood are numbered. He’s gotta go.”

  Michelle turned to Nikky. “I’m right with you on wanting to cap this asshat and his friends. And we will, but we’ll have to be smart.” She looked Nikky in the eye. “And being smart means you need to hold your temper. You have every right to blow up, sky-high. The problem is, if you let your temper go, it could screw things up.”

  “Other than keeping my temper, what do you mean by ‘being smart’?”

  “I mean, once we have him, we do this however bad or quick you want, and we make that fucker pay. Only, we cap his ass on the low-low so the police can’t catch on and we don’t go to the joint. Our doing time won’t help Taye or your mom. With what’s happened, they’ll need our help more than ever so we can’t screw up and put them in a bad spot because we’re mad deep down inside.”

  “Okay . . .” Nikky closed her eyes, took a breath, gripped the edge of the table, then pushed herself back in her chair. Her hands dropped into her lap, and she perched ramrod straight.

  Quietly, Michelle and Deja looked at Nikky, then met eyes with one other, and then looked at Nikky again. No one said anything for a full half-minute while Nikky sat, eyes closed.

  Then she opened her eyes, leaned over, propped her elbows up onto the kitchen table, and cut her stare over to Michelle. “How in God’s name were you able to keep from going insane, while making yourself bide your time before you offed Michael’s murderer? Sitting here, trying to get a hold of this shit and not running out to kill that sonuvabitch is the hardest thing I can ever remember doing.”

  “This may sound crazy,” Michelle said, “but honestly, I think this situation is harder in some ways than what I went through. At first, I was scared for my life.”

  “How is that easier?” Deja asked.

  “I didn’t have time to focus on what happened, and, I knew if I showed my face, I’d be dead. From this distance, where there’s no danger, it sounds exciting. But when you’re that scared, all the drama goes away. Then before I had any time to think, I was living on the other side of the world in Thailand. Staying cool so I could think and plan was a lot easier when that’s all I could do. Even though your sister might be okay later, and my brother was already dead, I think keeping your head is harder, a lot harder, than it was for me. That’s why Deja and I are here — to be strong for you when you can’t be.”

  Nikky looked at Michelle and Deja and fresh tears followed in glistening tracks down both cheeks. Again, she closed her eyes, and shook her head. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “So, what do we do?” Deja asked.

  “For one, we need to agree not to do anything alone,” Michelle said. “If one of us sees Jerome, we call the other two. We wait for at least one of us to come for backup. Can we all agree to that?”

  Both Nikky and Deja agreed.

  “How about you?” Nikky asked. “Will you agree also?”

  “Yes,” Michelle said. “As bad as I want that rat bastard, I’ll wait for you.”

  “Even if you have a good shot at him?”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  “It is.”

  “Then I’ll wait” —Michelle nodded— “even if he’s in the open with a safe, clean shot. It’s not a problem. He’s stupid, so we can catch him a second, or even a third time.”

  “And I can wait,” Nikky said, “because when the time comes, I’ll do him up close and personal, so he hurts bad.”

  “Whatever you want, sweetie.”

  “What she said, whatever you want,” Deja added.

  Nikky glanced down at her watch. “I promised Mom I’d bring some of her stuff to the hospital. She wants to spend the night again with Taye.” She rose and gathered up some of her mother’s items. The friends said their goodbyes and drove off in three different directions with three quite different destinations.

  A few hours later, while Michelle sat at her desk with a Glock 17 field-stripped, its parts neatly lined up, her phone chimed.

  “Sup?” she answered.

  “I didn’t mean to, but I screwed up, big time,” Deja said in a small, apologetic voice.

  Michelle straightened in alarm. “What happened? Where are you? Are you hurt?”

  “No. I’m okay. It’s just that I’m in big trouble.”

  “You’re not hurt?” Michelle asked again.

  “No. Oh, Michelle you guys are going to be so mad at me.”

  “Mad? Why? What did you do that would make us mad?”

  “I’m in county jail for stabbing Jerome.”

  .

  Twenty: Bad Day In Court

  MICHELLE GOT THE most key facts from Deja, and then called Trevon, who agreed to represent her and arrange bail.

  “No problem then?” Michelle asked.

  “Shouldn’t be any problem,” Trevon replied. “She stabbed him in the hand with some manicure scissors. She should be out in a couple of hours.”

  Late the following afternoon, they met in court.

  Deja sat, dejected and angry, her hair still fresh from yesterday’s do, a stark contrast to her scrubbed, makeup-free face and ill-fitting orange jumpsuit. Trevon, dressed in a precision-tailored suit, occupied the chair next to her at the defendant’s table.

  The judge, a balding man with a close-trimmed gray beard, and the prosecuting attorney, a young, cherub-faced man with a severe haircut, were the only White people in the front of the courtroom. The bailiff was an older Black man, the female deputy who’d brought in Deja was also Black, and the court reporter was a stereotypically diminutive Asian woman with long, straight black hair, grey-streaked and tied back in a low ponytail by a butterfly clasp.

  Behind the barrier, several of Deja’s friends filled the public section.

  “Mr. Prosecutor?” the judge said.

  “Your Honor, the accused is the known estranged girlfriend of Mr. Jerome Johnson. She was seen by numerous witnesses
and caught on surveillance video savagely stabbing Mr. Johnson, who was unarmed.”

  “You go, girl!” a female voice shouted from the back of the room, loudly enough to be heard, but not to be disruptive.

  “Damn right,” another female voice agreed.

  The prosecuting attorney continued. “Further, there is a history of violence. Mr. Johnson, while involved in an intimate relationship with the accused, was shot on three separate occasions, each one significantly more heinous than the previous. The last shooting resulted in Mr. Johnson losing a testicle.”

  “Hell, if it had been me,” cut in a loud female voice from the back of the courtroom, “Mr. Johnson would’ve lost his johnson along with that testicle!”

  After a moment’s hesitation from the judge, in what looked like he hid a smile, he addressed the prosecutor. “Anything else for the state?”

  “Yes, Your Honor. Outbursts aside,” the prosecutor said, “this is a serious matter.” He turned and, putting his fists on his hips, pointedly stared at the vocal group with a stern expression that came off as childish and about as threatening as a marshmallow.

  “Your Honor,” he went on. “I draw your attention to a recent gun battle that took place in our community. Six people died. The violence even continued into the hospital, the very sanctuary of human life.” He paused. His clearly rehearsed expressions and gestures of thoughtfulness, shock, and concern for the dead gave the impression of a little boy playing house.

  “An innocent man, a barber working in his shop, was brutally shot and remains in the hospital fighting for his life as we speak. The Dis—”

  “You’re a big liar!” another female voice rang out from the back. “G-Baby’s my fiancé. He was shot in the arm. He’s already back home.”

  “Your Honor, please,” the prosecuting attorney said.

  The judge banged his gavel. “Any more outbursts,” he told the group of women, “and I’ll remove you from the room.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor.”

  “It wasn’t for you, Counselor. This courtroom will be treated with respect, like it or not.” The judge stared over the top of his glasses at the crowd sitting in the back of the room. Focusing on Deja’s support team: Mrs. Washington; her sister, Nissy; and her dad; Michelle; Nikky; Baby-Sister; Miss Betty; T-Dog, and seven of her girls; plus, five others from the Pussy Squad. “And this means all of you,” he said.

  Deja’s support in the courtroom was obvious, though others, like Mrs. Harris, had stayed with Taye in the hospital, and Sugar and her crew were absent. For a conservative White judge, it was probably best not to have a half-dozen or more street prostitutes visibly, and most likely too verbally, on Deja’s side.

  “Where are you taking this?” the judge asked the prosecuting attorney.

  “Your Honor, the District Attorney is serious about stopping this wanton violence from spreading, so the state asks Your Honor and this court to help until the police can assist us in getting things cooled down. It’s in the public’s best interest to keep the accused off the streets. We are asking for Attempted Murder in the first degree.”

  Trevon jumped up. “I strenuously object, Your Honor.”

  “Objection overruled.”

  A murmur rolled through the courtroom.

  The judge turned to Trevon. “Councilor, your turn.”

  “Attempted murder in the first degree?” Trevon said, incredulous. “Your Honor, the prosecutor knows this should be no more than an aggravated assault. Not even that. The facts will irrevocably prove it was self-defense; the accused acted out of fear for her life. Given the isolated nature of the video evidence before the court, I ask for a charge of aggravated assault, and a release into her own recognizance.”

  Not skipping a beat, Trevon went on. “The previous assaults on Mr. Johnson were not in any way connected to Miss Washington. I’m sure every man in the city can sympathize with Mr. Johnson; being shot and losing a testicle would be horrifying. On a personal note, I am happy Mr. Johnson didn’t lose his johnson but, however bad, those incidents are separate from this case.”

  Trevon paused to scrutinize the young prosecuting attorney as though inspecting a bug under a magnifying glass, then he turned to the judge, and said, “Your Honor, my colleague is trying to grandstand. In my opinion, his miserable failure is only eclipsed by the sheer transparency of this ploy. The prosecutor is using scare tactics for publicity. This is nothing more than a sophomoric attempt to create some good press to obfuscate the trouble the DA’s in over recent events.”

  The prosecuting councilor leaned over and, placing his hands on the table, shook his head in denial.

  “Those events are completely irrelevant to the case,” Trevon said, “and are not linked to my client by any stretch of the imagination. She has not been implicated in any of the shootings. If anything, it goes to show the lack of character of Mr. Johnson. I ask, who gets shot on three separate occasions for no reason? Unfortunately, people are shot in accidents or in acts of anger, even aggression, all the time. Common sense tells us, to be literally shot in the balls requires complicity; Mr. Johnson had to have done something rather extreme to receive such treatment. So again, my client is not remotely connected with any of these acts against the state’s witness.”

  Murmurs of agreement and shuffling sounds drifted from the back of the courtroom.

  “Unlike the state’s witness, Miss Washington is an employed, stable member of the community. Born and raised here, she has strong family and community ties. Her social ties are witnessed by her support in the gallery today.” Trevon swept his hand toward the large group of Deja’s friends and family, at whom the judge nodded in recognition.

  “As the video evidence will show,” Trevon continued, “this was a spontaneous act, completely without premeditation, and a charge of attempted murder in the first degree does not apply. Further, additional evidence will show Mr. Johnson is guilty of significant and continued abuse, so the full facts of the case support self-defense. My client should be released, with all charges dropped, and a restraining order placed on Mr. Johnson.”

  Again, the prosecuting attorney shook his head, but Trevon ignored him.

  “However, in light of recent events, I understand the court’s reluctance to make a hasty decision. Therefore, I suggest the charge be, at most, aggravated assault, with a strong emphasis on ‘aggravated.’ So again, I move the charges be reduced to aggravated assault and Miss Washington be released on her own recognizance.”

  “Normally I would tend to agree with your arguments, Councilor,” the judge said. “However, as you say, in light of recent events, and in the interest of public safety, I’ll be more careful. It’s modified to a charge of assault with a deadly weapon and two million dollars bail.”

  “Your Honor, two million dollars bail effectively denies my client the possibility of release,” Trevon protested.

  “Yes,” the judge said, “so it would seem.”

  * * *

  Trevon laid a comforting hand on Mrs. Washington’s wrist. “You’ll do fine.”

  She had the lost, hesitating, unsure attitude of all first-timers going into the visiting room at the county jail. He directed her to a seat at the wood counter that crossed the full length of the long room, where visitors sat on one side of a vertical, ten-inch-tall partition and prisoners sat on the other.

  Like a tourist in a new city, Mrs. Washington looked around the room while they waited for Deja. Old cigarette burns dotted the counter’s edge, though no cigarette smell remained; too many years had gone by since smoking had been banned in public buildings.

  For Trevon, it was a familiar place. Still, he closed his eyes and softly inhaled. Not quite a gym. Wet cement and people? It’s different, like a floor mopped with a dirty mop. Clean, but not really.

  The body language of the prisoners varied greatly. Several women talked in hushed tones with attorneys wearing suits; they tended to sit straighter, be less expansive than the woman at the end, who was obviousl
y at ease. She laughed and spoke in a loud voice that carried throughout the room, while her visitor, a man of about the same age, lounged in his chair, equally relaxed. They acted like it was all old hat to them.

  One young woman sat hunched with a dejected expression and red-rimmed eyes, withering under the harsh tones of a woman who, because of the strong family resemblance, had to be her mother. A large, well-dressed man, overflowing in the chair next to the mother, broadcast his disdain and arrogance.

  Mrs. Washington touched Trevon’s hand, indicating the man with a sidelong look. “That’s one pompous prick of a minister,” she whispered. “He’d never make it at our church. That poor child needs support, not the load of guilt those two are heaping on her.”

  Trevon glanced at him and shook his head. “Bets? Ten to one, he’s screwing the church secretary.”

  Mrs. Washington chuckled. “That, Mr. Trevon, is a sucker bet.”

  Across the room, the electronic door lock click-buzzed loud enough to be heard over the conversations. Deja strode through, no cuffs and dressed in an orange jumpsuit. She approached the officer sitting in a tall booth in the corner, said a few words, and then, with a big smile, bounced over and took the chair opposite her mother.

  “Oh, my sweet baby,” Mrs. Washington said. “How’re you doing in here, sweetheart?”

  “I’m all right, Momma,” Deja said. “Hey, Trevon. Did Michelle send you?”

  “Yeah,” Trevon said. “I brought some legal business we’ll review in a minute. But first, you guys go ahead. I can wait.”

  “Baby, honestly, how are you?” Mrs. Washington asked.

  “You know, while this jail is a real shithole, I can hold my own.”

  “Before I forget, Michelle sent you a message. She said to tell you she’s sick to death they couldn’t get you out. But she said not to worry; they’ll take care of everything legal. And don’t even think about the cost, she has that covered.”