Carl Weber's Kingpins

by Raynesha Pittman

  As for Kei’Lani, she was exactly like him. If he couldn’t stand Bridget, he knew his daughter couldn’t either. If it were up to Bridget, she’d lock his baby in the house until she was able to ship her off to college. He couldn’t have that. Nor did he want his little girl to miss out on the valuable lessons that could only be taught by the streets. Letting her hang around, Temper gave her those lessons. However, Keith didn’t believe in coincidences. If there was heat on Temper, then there was heat on Kei’Lani. If Trice died trying to hunt down a truth involving the little girl instead of grieving, then the shit that was taking place was monstrous. It was Beast.

  “What happened? Why aren’t you in the room with her?” Keith questioned as he stormed down the emergency room corridor. He didn’t expect to see Bridget heading toward the exit doors. In fact, he thought he’d have to pry her away from their daughter’s side.

  “No one can go into the room with her. If you hadn’t hung up in my face, you would have known that. I’m going outside to smoke.”

  “Smoke what?”

  “What do you think?” she sassed back.

  “I don’t know because your ass don’t smoke.”

  “You don’t pay attention to shit, do you?”

  Keith was at a crossroads. He couldn’t decide if he should find a doctor with an update on his daughter or follow Bridget out the door to see her smoke with his own eyes. After weighing his options, he headed to the parking lot, sure that Bridget wouldn’t have left Kei’Lani if she’d had the opportunity to stay.

  “So you smoke Newports now?” he asked, firing up the Black & Mild cigar he kept in his shirt pocket.

  “How about asking me about our daughter before you start judging me and shit?” she snapped, and she was right. He didn’t have a clue of what was going on.

  “What happened? How’s my baby?”

  Bridget rolled her eyes. She hated it when he used the word “my” when it came to their daughter. It confirmed that he enjoyed that his daughter was becoming the lowlife he used to be.

  “Our daughter is being put in a medically induced coma,” she said as she fought back the tears. “Nobody seems to know what happened, but the Mexicans across the street from us found her in their backyard having a seizure.”

  “A seizure?” he yelled.

  “Lower your damn voice,” she snapped. “Yes, a seizure. Somebody used a weapon to beat our baby’s head in. Her body is covered in bruises, and she keeps having seizures. The doctors said they have to put her in the coma as an attempt to save her life.”

  The strength Bridget was pretending to have washed away with the tears streaming from her eyes. Keith grabbed her and pulled her into him. He didn’t acknowledge the heat from the cigarette she was holding against his arms. Instead, he snatched it out of her hand without complaint. Tears began to fill his own eyes, though he couldn’t decide if his ducts were overflowing from hurt or anger. He wanted to see the bruises. He wasn’t an expert in forensic science, nor had he been a medical examiner or coroner, yet seeing the wounds would lead to who had done it. He didn’t see the need for a man to use a weapon to subdue his daughter. Nevertheless, he wanted to confirm it.

  His mind was running a fact check over a plethora of his thoughts. Could Trice have taken her beef with Temper out on Kei’Lani before she died two days ago, or did her little investigation lead her to Kei’Lani being the problem? To answer that question, he would need to know the last time Bridget had seen their daughter and the time difference between that and when the neighbors found her. Questions filled his mind, and he knew who had the answers—Temper. He needed to talk to Temper.

  “Did you hear what I said?” Bridget said, interrupting his train of thought.

  “No, baby, I didn’t. What did you say?”

  She pulled away from him until her eyes met his. There wasn’t an indication she had been crying besides a slight puffiness under her eyes.

  “I said you need to come out of retirement and kill the muthafuckas who did this to our baby. Understood?”

  “Perfectly. That’s on Low Bottom Crips. I’m gon’ handle this shit.”

  Chapter Six

  “Ladies, down the hallway. When you hear your name called, step out for transportation. I’ll repeat it for those of you who have a problem with listening and following directions. Step out for transportation only if you hear me say your name. B. Adams, K. Boyd, T. Chey, and T. Washington, step out for transportation, ladies. Bring your dirty linen and all of your personal belongings with you. You might not be coming back here after court.”

  The correctional officer’s voice echoed down the hallway. For a second, you’d think she was using a megaphone to give orders by the volume her voice carried. Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall was in Sylmar, California, twenty-eight minutes from Central Juvenile Hall. Temper had court next door to it at Eastlake Juvenile Courts. In Los Angeles traffic, that trip could easily be an hour and a half. Still, the wake-up at four thirty in the morning seemed unnecessary, and one of the girls didn’t have a problem with showing it.

  “I see one of you is deaf. There should be four girls in my hall dressed and ready for court with their dirty linen rolled up and their brown bags in hand. When I say your name, take a step into the center of the hallway, follow the white line down to me, place your dirty linen in the bin, and have a seat in the dayroom for breakfast,” she said, unfolding the list clipped to her board. “Brittney Adams, Katrina Boyd, Temper Chey, and Tyger Rae Washington. Washington, step out!”

  “Permission to speak?” Brittney Adams asked as she turned into the dayroom.

  “Permission granted, Ms. Adams.”

  “Um, Washington is probably in the room asleep. She normally stays up all night talking to herself. She’s probably too tired to get up,” she relayed, holding back laughter.

  “And how do you know she stays up all night talking to herself, Ms. Adams?”

  “Because she was my roommate at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall a few months ago, and that chick is weird. Like, crazy weird. She was up like three days straight doing math, and when I asked her what she was doing it for, she said to graduate early. She said she would take over the world and make criminals like me her modernized slaves since we enjoy the defeated mentality.”

  “What? You’re telling me Washington, the girl down my hall, said all of that?” the correctional officer asked with a slightly uncomfortable giggle in her tone.

  “Yes, ma’am. I remembered it word for word. I didn’t understand what it meant, so I asked my mama. She told me to tell the CO to switch my room because that, um, B word was crazy.”

  The other girls and the CO erupted in laughter. Temper’s jaws didn’t flinch.

  “Ay, Debbie, can you come sit with these girls in the dayroom while they eat breakfast and wait for transportation? I might have a little issue to handle down this hallway with the fourth girl.”

  “Shit, you should sit with the girls, Kim. You know I’m all about handling issues, especially after my damn vacation was denied again.” She unsnapped the pepper spray off her belt loop and said, “What’s the problem?”

  Kim brought her up to speed as the girls ate the food in front of them. Then their ears got full of the story Debbie shared of what she knew about Washington.

  “Something is wrong with that girl, Kim. Adams ain’t lying. That’s the girl I told you about, the one who hit her public defender during court. She couldn’t get sentenced after that shit. They sent her crazy ass straight to loony lockup to await a therapist. That’s probably what she’s headed to court for now. Yeah, I got this one. Watch how I do her.”

  “Hey, Chey, do you have a problem?” Kim asked Temper, who didn’t seem to find anything amusing.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Then why are you looking at my partner like that? Are you cool with Washington? Because you look like you have something you want to say in her defense.”

  “I don’t know Washington,” she said, taken aback, “and I wasn’t l
ooking at your partner in no type of way. I’m just here to do my time. I don’t want any extra problems. If you thought I was messed up about it, my bad.”

  “Listen to you. Who taught you how to talk black?” Kim questioned and then laughed at her own words. The other girls joined in.

  “Man . . .” Temper moaned.

  “Man what, Chey? Answer the question. Who taught you to talk black? I didn’t think Asians were allowed to have black friends, but then again, you’re kind of on the darker side of Korean. Aw shit, Chey might be one of us or at least half of one of us. Who got jungle fever, your mama or your daddy? It looks like you got you a black card, girlfriend.”

  The laughter picked back up as Debbie entered the room with Washington hogtied in shackles. She had one connecting her legs and another wrapped around her waist. The only part of her body she could move freely was her mouth.

  “How about Miss Washington here told me to come and get her when transportation arrives because she’s reading and didn’t want to stop for breakfast? She said that it’s poison, and she’s sure the additives in it cause cancer.”

  The irritation growing throughout Washington showed on her face, yet she opted to use her words. “You’re fabricating, and you know that’s not the truth. I told you I was up, dressed, and ready for court. I wasn’t hungry, and my linen was clean since I hadn’t used any of it. Yes, I did mention the cancer part, which was the only part of my words you didn’t add to. You woke us up at four thirty in the morning. Transportation doesn’t arrive until six. We aren’t allowed to fully groom, so the extra time we waste staring at the dayroom walls isn’t beneficial to any of our futures. I was reading, and you interrupted me because you could, not because it was necessary. That’s what I said.”

  Temper giggled.

  “What are you laughing at with your Chinese ass?” Debbie snapped.

  Washington had an answer for that too. “That was more of a giggle than a laugh. If she were a boy, you’d call it a chuckle, and her last name is Chey, a common surname for Cambodians. But then again, how would you know that? To become a correctional officer, a college degree or special knowledge isn’t necessary. Not even a criminal justice course is required as long as you’re a citizen, at least twenty-one, have a high school diploma, and are in good physical condition. I’m not sure how you passed that portion. You must have taken your physical years ago and must not possess a felony conviction. Then they’ll hire you to babysit us. You take a few self-defense classes, learn to use pepper spray, and get CPR certified. It sounds like those qualifications aren’t much more than what’s needed to operate a neighborhood liquor store or strip club or become a middle school PE teacher. Nothing impressive to brag about there. Chey is Cambodian and black, which means she’s black, or so says the one-drop rule,” she finished with a shrug.

  Neither correctional officer said a word. They just stared at her. Temper had to grit her teeth to prevent the smile that longed to grace her face. She was more than impressed with Washington’s smarts, and through their pissed-off expressions, she could tell the correctional officers were too.

  Surprisingly, it wasn’t until transportation arrived that the officers sought their revenge. “Hey, Debbie, can you shackle the CCs together?”

  “CCs? Who the fuck is that?”

  “The crazy one with the Cambodian. I think they’re made for each other. Let’s make them best friends for the day.”

  “No problem!”

  The ride to court was quiet and quite painful as the shackles dug into Temper’s ankles with each pothole they hit. The sheriffs demanded it be silent, and since they had the power to bring their threats to life, no one debated their authority.

  It had been five months since Temper’s arrest and hospitalization. At that point in her life, she didn’t want a life and would have happily traded it for a room six feet deep. There was a baby she’d never mother, and an unknown infection and STD that would have taken away her life if they had gone any longer without being cured. She had a drug trafficking charge over her head. To save her ass when the police came questioning how Temper could hide a pregnancy and why Temper wasn’t enrolled in school while in her grandmother’s care, her grandmother told them that Temper was a runaway and that her granddaughter must have used her son’s drug addiction to manipulate him into buying her the one-way bus ticket. She told the courts that Temper was too wild for her to handle and that she didn’t want her back. The shit storm she caused had fallen on her head, and death seemed to be the best option for her to use as an umbrella. Then she received a visit that changed all of that.

  “What do you want?” Temper asked, suddenly feeling disgusted by the visitor sitting across from her.

  “I want to help.”

  “The same way you helped me in Las Vegas? If that’s the case, I’m already locked up. You can leave, Blanca.”

  “I’d rather stay, and Blanca is my undercover name. My name is Isabel.”

  “What do you want, Is-a-bell, ringer, and whistleblower? I’m somewhat busy serving time for trying to help a fellow weed smoker get high because she stood up for me to a junkie. I just wanted to return the favor, and look at what I got out of it.” Temper pointed at the orange jumpsuit she was wearing.

  “I know what you got out of it, but you don’t see it yet.”

  “Yeah, I need to get my eyes checked. That’s why I smoke weed. What is it that your perfect police vision sees that my eyes don’t?”

  “I can tell you, yeah, that’s the easy way, but you still won’t see it. Why were you running from California, Temper?”

  “I’m not answering shit without a lawyer,” she snapped. “You’ve already set me up once.”

  “I’m not here as a cop. I’m here as a friend.”

  “Damn, a friend? Well, I’m going to decline your friendship invitation. I don’t want any friends, especially the kind who will put me in jail. I know I blacked out because of the infection growing inside my pussy, but weren’t you the same cop bitch who put the handcuffs on me? Fuck your friend request.”

  “I knew you would have your guard up, but I’m trying to win your trust.”

  “That’s the problem. You keep treating my life like it’s a game. Don’t play with me to win my trust. Earn it. Now tell me the truth. Did you cuff me? Are you that same cop bitch who set me up for a hundred dollars’ worth of weed? Am I sitting in this hellhole because of you?”

  Isabel stood and paced the small space for a second before returning to her seat. She didn’t have a problem with answering the questions truthfully. Her delay was because she wasn’t sure if Temper would accept the truth for what it was.

  “Yes, I got you to sell me the drugs so I could arrest you. I placed the cuffs around your wrists, that’s the truth, but I will not lie and take the blame for you being in this hellhole, as you call it. You’re here because of all the bad choices you’ve made. You’re so busy being mad at the world that you forgot to be mad at yourself. Don’t you realize you could be dead right now if I hadn’t cuffed you?”

  “Yes, I do,” she interjected, “and if I were dead, I wouldn’t have to deal with any of this shit.”

  “That’s the coward’s way out. That little girl who birthed a child and traveled two days after having it, with a temperature of 103 or better, with nothing but the clothes on her back and a few dollars, she thought she was defeating her problems, not running from them. You didn’t neglect your child. You gave him a better life. The only person you keep cheating is you.”

  “So you did a little research, and now you think you know me?”

  “No, I did a lot of research, and I won’t pretend to know you, because you don’t know yourself. You’re too busy turning all the hurt in your life into anger and releasing it through sex, drugs, and violence. Your parents were on drugs, and they left you, so you went to school and whooped everyone’s ass that you could. Half black isn’t full black, is it? And in the hood where you grew up, they constantly pointed that out to you
, so you suppressed the Asian in you to prove you were blacker than everyone around you. You thought that by keeping yourself caught up in the bullshit, you’d earn the respect the lack of melanin shorted you, huh?

  “Your granny is an alcoholic, and your uncle is on crack. That pisses you off because you don’t understand how they could love you in their addictions to raise you, but your parents jumped ship. So you sell drugs to feel above the addiction, but I bet that I couldn’t give you cough syrup or a children’s Tylenol without you panicking from being scared you’ll get addicted to them.

  “Your dad is dead, and your mom lies about it. Truthfully, she’s too high to believe the truth. That’s why you’ll never love. You have a fear of loss. You’ve had sex with everyone you could and didn’t feel anything from it. Open those beautiful, tight, slanted eyes and see the truth, Temper. You didn’t do your son as your parents did you. You gave him more than you ever had. You said that I’m playing with your life? No, sweetheart, you are, and the saddest part of all is that you don’t see that you won. Your uncle was high as the tip of Mount Everest when I sat down with him, and after telling him everything that happened with you, he smiled, clapped, and do you know what he said?”

  Temper didn’t respond, and it didn’t matter because Isabel wasn’t done.

  “He said, ‘She finally got her twenty feet.’ I thought he was high and rambling, but when he told me his theory behind it, I couldn’t help but agree.” She slammed the picture Troy had taken of her parents outside of the legendary singer’s house on the table in front of Temper.

  “Now that you have your twenty feet, what are you going to do with them? Can you let go of the anger to finally get mad at Temper and fix the shit in your life? You’re still a kid and can erase a lot of this shit, and what you can’t erase, there’s Wite-Out for.

  “I’m here to help. I don’t know why, but I am, and I want to be. The way you looked at me before you passed out said you did not only need help, but you wanted it, too. I’ll be back to see if you still want that help next week. If you decline my visit, I won’t make another trip from Vegas to check on you again. If you do, be ready to work, because that court-appointed public defender is an hourly employee. No one has to pay you to defend yourself.”