by Mark Anthony
“Holes like what?” I replied.
The detective then reached into her pocket. “Well for starters, this is the driver’s license that the paramedics found on your possession.”
I looked at the fake driver’s license that I had totally forgotten about.
“And Tara, if this is not you then you have a twin sister out there who looks a whole lot like you,” the detective added as she placed a promotional postcard from Pink Chocolate on to the table, which had Tara’s face and half-naked body on it.
Tara was silent and I didn’t say anything.
The assistant district attorney was also in the room and so was my father. My father didn’t say anything but he came close and he examined the fake driver’s license as well as the Pink Chocolate postcard. The assistant district attorney, however, did speak up.
“Here is the thing. Shayla, we’re gonna bring this guy in that you picked out of the mug shots and if one of you are able to pick him out of the lineup and he doesn’t have an alibi, then we’re gonna arrest this guy. The media and everyone is putting pressure on us to solve what happened to you and we wanna solve it. But at the same time, if we arrest this guy and it goes to trial, anything and everything about the both of you, in terms of your past, is gonna come into question. So what we’re saying is, if you’re holding something back from us out of fear or whatever the case may be, just tell us now before you get exposed later at a much higher consequence.”
Tara looked at me and I could tell that she was nervous as hell, but I was praying that she would just hold her ground and not admit to shit.
I kept my mouth shut and looked at Tara and then I looked straight ahead and just stared at the wall in silence.
“Shayla, what about the driver’s license?” my father spoke up and said.
I gave him a look as if to say, nigga, whose side are you on?
I sucked my teeth and then sighed and said, “Everybody has a fake ID.”
The assistant district attorney looked at me and said, “Shayla, this is not about everybody, it’s about you. And what’s gonna happen is when it comes out that you were walking with a fake ID on the night you were raped, then that is gonna make everything else you say questionable.”
“Look. All I know is what I told you that happened. And why does that gotta come out now, anyway? I thought my identity was gonna be protected.”
Detective Pelonis then spoke up and said, “Shayla, your identity will be protected. Don’t worry about that. Now here’s the thing, and I can’t shoot any straighter than this. Tara, my partner and I took a trip over to Pink Chocolate and they confirmed that you do work there as a stripper. So what’s the story?”
“I’m a dancer, not a stripper,” Tara blurted out as she rolled her eyes.
The detective cracked a half smile and then she continued on. “No one at Pink Chocolate would say whether or not you were working there on the night that Shayla was raped. I have enough experience to know that they were probably just covering for you. But you better believe that if we arrest this guy, the picture is gonna be painted that the two of you are nothing more than loose strippers, walking around with fake ID’s, who, if they got raped it probably wasn’t rape and they probably deserved it.”
“Now wait a minute, now,” my father said, speaking up. “My daughter may have had a fake ID but—”
The detective cut my father off and said that in no way was she trying to label me and Tara. She just wanted us to be aware of the realities of what could come. The assistant district attorney pointed out that if things were to go to a trial down the road and if concrete evidence was presented to contradict my story and Tara’s story, then we could both be looking at perjury charges. She stated that it was highly unlikely, but that they had to let us know the real deal.
I sat stoned-face. I decided to just think about my 250,000 dollar check that I was waiting to clear in my bank account that I had just recently opened up.
Thankfully, the mini-interrogation was soon over and the cops let us go. As we walked out of the precinct I could just tell that everyone—including my father—had high reasonable doubt as to my account of what had happened that night, but like I had said to myself earlier, that was my story and I was sticking to it.
As it turned out, the next day the cops did arrest the guy that I had picked out of the mug-shot books. His name was Antonio Reid and he was forty-four years old, which was about the age I would have guessed from looking at the guy that night when he assaulted me.
The cops were ready to bring Antonio Reid into a lineup with five other men who they had chosen at random. They wanted me to go first and then Tara to see if one of us could pick him out of the lineup.
I wasn’t too nervous but at the same time there was a sense of anxiety running through me. I mean, even though none of the suspects could see me through the doubled mirror partition that separated us, I guess the nervousness was from the thought of being in such close proximity to the man who had violated me.
Well, as the men were brought in one by one and stood in their respective places I examined each one of their faces. It didn’t take me long to know which one of the guys it was.
“It’s number five,” I said in all of about ten seconds after the last guy was brought in.
“Are you sure?” the detective asked. “You didn’t really look for that long.”
“I’m sure it’s number five. All he did was clean his self up and shave his nappy-ass face hair,” I said in a confident, matter-of-fact tone.
The detectives looked at each other and smiled but they didn’t say anything.
“Well, is that him?” my father asked.
“We got him,” the detectives replied.
“You motherfucking bastard!” my father had screamed at the guy even though the guy couldn’t see us and I don’t think that he could hear us either.
My father then grabbed me and hugged me and told me that he loved me and was proud of me for being so strong.
Right after that my dad and I were ushered out of the room and Tara was brought into the room. Tara was in the room much longer than I had been but when she came out she emerged with a smile.
“I picked the right guy,” she said to me as she hugged me. She held onto me and she playfully whispered into my ear, “I want all large bills for all of this stress you puttin’ a sister through.”
The detectives took our hugging and smiling as us being relieved that we had picked the right suspect out of the lineup.
“So what happens now?” my father asked.
The detectives said that they were gonna place Antonio Reid under arrest and question him at length and then put him through the system.
I definitely was relieved because I was sure that a lot of the doubt that I know had been in the detectives’ heads was now starting to dissipate just a bit. At the same time, I was relieved because picking the right guy out of the lineup also helped reassure me that I was not just some ho who was concocting a story. Nah, I was a beautiful human being who had been assaulted and raped.
The next day I received a call from the assistant district attorney and she asked me if I was sitting down.
“No, I’m not.”
“Well, you have to sit down for this because you won’t believe it.”
“Okay. I’m sitting,” I said even though I was still standing and pacing the floor with my cordless phone.
“Wait, wait—before you say anything, is it good news or bad news?”
She chuckled and told me that it was definitely good news.
“A’ight cool. Well then what’s up?” I asked.
“You and Tara said that you two had gone to see the movie Terminator 2. Is that right?”
“Yeah,” I replied.
“Well, Antonio Reid gave a videotaped confession to the police last night and he admitted to being in Times Square on the night that you were assaulted and he even admitted to seeing Terminator 2!”
My heart skipped a beat and my mouth fell o
pen because I knew that the chances were very slim that that could have actually happened, because Antonio Reid was at the strip club in Harlem that night, unless he had been in Times Square prior to coming to Pink Chocolate.
“He admitted that?” I asked.
“Yes, and he voluntarily admitted it. It was like that was the alibi that he gave for his whereabouts. He’s even saying that his fiancée was with him at the movies that night and he can have her back up what he’s saying.
“Wow,” I said, meekly.
“Shayla, this is open-and-shut. He has an attorney and they’ve agreed to provide a hair and blood sample and if that comes back positive, I don’t even think that this case will go to trial. He’ll probably take a plea deal and go to jail. The guy is a two-time felon with a previous conviction for assault and another separate conviction for weapons possession.”
I really didn’t know what to say, but I could tell that the assistant district attorney’s confidence level in me and my story had grown and any reasonable doubt that her or the cops may have had was now gone.
The only thing now was that it was me, Shayla Coleman, who was the one with the reasonable doubt.
Chapter Nineteen
Crocodile Tears
Two days after Antonio Reid had admitted to being in Times Square on the night I was raped, Tara and I found ourselves in Citibank. My check had cleared and the money was to become available to me that day.
“Is this sick or what?” I asked Tara as I showed her my checking account balance that was on the ATM screen.
“Damn girl! You fucking rich,” Tara said to me as she laughed.
I smiled and the two of us proceeded to walk into the bank so that I could withdraw the money that I had promised to her.
“So what you gonna do with all that cash?” Tara asked me.
“I’m getting an all-white baby Benz,” I replied without hesitation.
“That’s it?”
“Nah, of course not, and after that, I’m doing whatever the hell I wanna do when the fuck I wanna do it. You know what I’m saying?” I said to Tara as I slapped her five.
“I know that’s right.”
The two of us reached the teller’s window and I handed the teller my withdrawal slip along with my ID. She looked at me, looked at my ID, and then she asked me how did I want my money.
“What the fuck you mean, how do I want my money?” I barked at the lady.
Tara then discreetly explained to me that I had the option of taking large bills like hundreds and fifties versus small bills like twenties and tens.
“Oh well, why didn’t she say that, then? Give me all hundreds.”
The teller rolled her eyes. She walked away for a minute and then she soon came back with a wad of money. I was withdrawing 20,000 dollars so the teller counted off 200 one-hundred-dollar bills.
“Can you do me a favor and put fifteen thousand in one pile and five thousand in another pile?” I asked her.
She looked at me and nodded, but she didn’t say anything.
“This bitch got an attitude,” I said to Tara underneath my breath.
Tara smiled and told me to just chill.
Not much long after that, the teller handed me two envelopes full of cash. I handed Tara the envelope that had the most cash and I took the smaller envelope. Just like that my account had dwindled down to 230,000.
“Don’t this make you wanna cum on yourself just looking at all this cash?” I asked Tara.
“You ain’t say nothing but a word,” Tara replied.
“Now did I keep my promise or what?” I said.
“You my fucking girl goddammit,” Tara shouted into the car as she slapped me five. “We gotta go out tonight and just live it up and celebrate.”
Tara was right. I had been through a lot over the past few weeks and I deserved to do something nice for myself. After all, I had never even really gotten the chance to celebrate my eighteenth birthday, and with a bank account full of money, what better time to celebrate?
Tara and I made plans to hook up with each other later that evening. We would finalize then just where we were gonna be hanging out. Before we parted ways, I made sure that I told Tara to not tell anyone how much money I was holding. She swore to me that she wouldn’t and she made me swear to her that I would never say anything to anyone about her lying to the cops for me. That, of course, was without question, because if I did say anything to someone else then I would only be setting myself up for a problem.
By the time I had returned back home from the bank it was still early in the day on a Thursday morning. I was actually surprised that my father was still in the crib when I got there. Lately he had been hanging out around the house a lot more. I didn’t think much of it and I just attributed his renewed presence to the fact that I had been raped and him wanting to make me feel more secure following such an ordeal. However, as I would quickly find out, that had not been the true reason he had been hanging around.
“Hey, baby girl,” my father said to me as I walked into the kitchen.
Baby girl? I said to myself. Where in the hell did that pet name come from?
“Hey,” I said as I proceeded to fix myself something to eat.
“Shayla, you know I been meaning to speak to you about something for some time now. I guess now is as good a time as any.”
I got two eggs from the refrigerator, cracked them, and put them in a bowl.
“Okay,” I said to my father as I scrambled the eggs and prepared to cook them.
“Well, I never told you any of this because to me it didn’t seem right to worry you or burden you with my financial problems.”
I turned on the fire, placed a skillet and some butter on the fire, and looked at my father so he could continue on.
“What I’m trying to say is, ever since your mom died, I’ve made some horrible decisions with my money. I got myself into some trouble. I’m over my head in debt, with bills and credit cards. I refinanced this house a couple of times and the bank won’t let me borrow any more money against it. Right now I’m so far behind in the mortgage that they about to foreclose on me and take this house from us.”
I poured my eggs into the skillet and began to cook them. My mind was racing and I didn’t exactly know what to say. A little voice inside of me was telling me to be smart and be careful.
“So what are you saying, exactly?”
“What I’m saying is I know you just got the money from your mom’s insurance policy. That’s your money and you can do whatever it is that you wanna do with it. What I wanna ask you, Shayla, is to loan me one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars so I can take that and pay off the house. Then we won’t have to worry about a foreclosure or anything like that, and I won’t have as much pressure on me.”
My eggs were just about ready. I liked my eggs to be really runny so I never let them cook for too long.
“One hundred and twenty-five thousand? Wow, that’s a lot.”
“Shayla, I know it is. But it’s only half of what you got, plus you’re gonna get another two hundred and fifty thousand dollars when you turn twenty-one,” my father said in a tone that sounded like he was desperate and trying to convince me.
I sat down at the table and began eating my eggs. I told my father that I could give him something, but I had to think about giving him 125,000.
“You gotta think about it?”
“Yeah, I mean I could give you like five thousand, but—”
“Five thousand? Shayla, you got two hundred and fifty fucking thousand dollars! I’m asking you for help and that’s the best you can do? I don’t believe this shit,” my father screamed.
The next thing I knew my father grabbed my plate of food and snatched the fork out of my hand and flung them both across the kitchen. The eggs, the plate, and the fork all slammed into the kitchen wall and crashed to the floor, making a huge mess.
“You gonna eat my fucking food in my fucking kitchen and you got the audacity to sit in my face and tell
me you can’t help me out? Shayla, after all I did for you. You gotta be fucking kidding me?”
“Daddy, why are you cursing like that? Calm down,” I said as I stood up from the kitchen table.
“Don’t tell me to fucking calm down and don’t act like you got virgin ears, Shayla.”
“You know what?” I said as I shook my head and walked out of the kitchen.
My father continued to rant and rave and I couldn’t believe how mad he had gotten. He was slapping things as he walked by them and just grunting and venting to himself like a spoiled child.
I made it up to my room and sat on my bed. I didn’t know what to do. Part of me started telling myself to just give him the money and forget about it. Another part of me had no way of knowing if he was telling the truth or not. Even if he was, how in the hell did I know what he was really gonna do with the money after I’d given it to him?
I sat and thought for a few minutes. As I sat, I got kind of angry. Not violent angry, but pissed-off angry. I realized that all of that money that I had gave me a sense of power in that no one could have control over me like they could when I was younger and dependent on other people. I was eighteen with money and old enough to call my own shots. I had to go let my father know what was what.
I walked back downstairs and I confronted him.
“Daddy, I just gotta tell you something. Understand that I am not trying to disrespect you or anything like that. I know you may not like what I gotta say, but I just have to say it.”
My father looked at me and twisted his lips and walked away from me. I followed right behind him.
“Daddy, you are so selfish, all you think about is yourself. Since I was small all you thought about was yourself. You had these nannies raising me because you didn’t have time for me. Before Mommy was even in the ground you was running behind other women. You and I both know that all you care about is you and your ladies.”