Garrett laughed, angered and amused, more the former than the latter.
She swallowed water, crying. “I’m so embarrassed. Jesus, I think I boo-booed myself.”
Garrett heard her. He laughed out his anger and his workers laughed with him.
I said, “It’s okay.”
“I defecated. I’m sorry I defecated. I’m potty-trained, I promise I am.”
While Garrett laughed, I moved us closer to where I needed to be in the pool.
I said, “You’re hurt bad.”
She sobbed. “He kicked me down the stairs. Bastard raised his foot, kicked me down a flight of wooden stairs to the hard marble floor. He kicked me. I thought I’d broken my neck. Then I passed out from pain. People don’t do that to dogs. He kicked me like I was less than a dog.”
“I need you to stop talking. Don’t fight me. Breathe normal, save your energy.”
“Motherfucker kicked me down the goddamn stairs. Cut my hair off. He shaved all my hair. Told me he would make sure no other man ever wanted me. Laughed while he did that shit.”
“Shhh. You’re going to keep pulling us both underwater.”
“Then he put his dick in me. He was inside me. My head was bleeding. He grabbed me and slammed me on my stomach and raped me while I was dazed, in and out of consciousness, unable to fight. But I tried. Scratched his face. Scratched that bastard good. I put my nails in him and he banged my forehead on the marble. I have a big knot. He hit me like he was fighting a man.”
“Shhh.”
“Mr. Big Shot has never fought a real man a day in his life. But he attacked me.”
“Calm down.”
“Fucker grabbed my arm, dragged me back up the stairs. Up the stairs. I couldn’t stand and he dragged me, almost pulled my arm out of its socket. Then he locked me in my closet.”
“Shhh.”
“Never should have signed that prenup. Never should have kissed him. When his attorney came in, that was a sign. I should have run away. This is worse than Scientology.”
“Okay, shut up. I need you to shut up. I’m going to show you how to tread water.”
“I can’t swim. I don’t even put my feet in the water at the beach.”
“Treading isn’t like swimming. You just move a little to keep your head—”
“Don’t let me go. Please, don’t let me go.”
“You’re going to pull us under. Sweep your arms back and forth. Then do a flutter kick.”
“I can’t. My arms are hurt. I can only use one leg.”
“Try.” I kept her from going under. “Keep your body upright, and keep your head—”
Garrett fired into the pool six times, each bullet flying close to us. That stopped the lesson and silenced his wife’s frantic words, but she cried. It was uncontrollable. Inconsolable. Hopeless.
“Jesus, no. No.” She winced with pain. “My left leg, it’s cramping. It’s cramping bad.”
I held her while she fought with her pain, and we went under a dozen times. When the pain subsided, she let out a wail, shook her head in surrender, as if she saw her future, saw the inevitable, then begged, “Let me go. Please, just let me drown. I’ve had enough of this life.”
“No, no, there will be no drowning.”
“I’m in so much pain. This is my fault; this is my fault. Let me die.”
I told her, “No.”
She cried a moment. “I’m scared.”
“I know. Just talk to me, if that helps.”
“You’re a nice man.”
“My name is Ken Swift.”
“You’re a good man, Ken Swift.”
“I’m just a man. Just a wounded man, with an ex-wife who never loved him, with a girlfriend too good for him, with a daughter who has no connection to him, in the deep end of a pool, treading in cold-ass water, ignoring my own pain, trying to keep you from drowning.”
“He kicked me down the stairs. Motherfucker kicked me down the goddamn stairs.”
“You can’t be angry right now. Can’t have your heartbeat get elevated.”
“He cut off my hair. And as I lay dying, he put his dick in me. My husband raped me.”
“Mask off. You have now seen him with his mask off.”
“Someone needs to teach men not to rape. To respect women as their equals.”
“I need you to focus. Right now, I need you to use less energy.”
Garrett came closer. “Unfaithful bitch. Drown with the fucking nigger.”
Sneezes, orgasms, and anger.
They stood around us, watching us go under, take on water, and come back up. They laughed, took bets on how long it would take us to drown.
They looked upon me with disdain. Black skin, different tribes. I was a pit bull, abused and raised on gunpowder. So were they. I saw prison tats, gang tats up to their eyeballs.
None were over twenty-five. Those gentlemen were from the East-side.
I said, “He left your boy burning in the streets. He’ll do the same to all y’all.”
They looked at one another, contemplated what might’ve been on their minds.
I said, “I hope he paid y’all up front. He’s not reliable when it comes to paying debts.”
Garrett hated my words and fired at me. He came like he wanted to give me the John F. Kennedy special and send me to go hang with Biggie, Tupac, and Elvis. He stood at the edge of the pool, smiling at me without lowering his gun. Cagney with his finger on the trigger. He’d had enough of me. Enough of his wife. He hated her. And maybe he loved her. Maybe the latter was why she was still alive. This had gone too far to turn it back around. Roses, dinner, and a night of making love couldn’t fix this. But Garrett didn’t seem like the type to issue an apology. He chose a course and stuck to it. It was easier for some men to kill than it ever would be for them to apologize. I’d grown up in the South and I already knew that some men, educated or illiterati, would never apologize to a black man, educated or illiterati, but would demand an apology, even when the black man wasn’t in the wrong. Men like Garrett would never apologize to a woman, but would demand an apology for her every complaint. Those were the most dangerous men on the face of the planet. Especially when they had a gun. That gun made Garrett think he was an alpha male’s alpha male. Without a gun, Garrett was just an angry Pillsbury Doughboy. Men like him would nurture and feed a stray dog, would treat a dog with dignity and kindness, but would shoot me in my back, then go to Burger King, get two Whoppers for six dollars, and feed one to the dog.
If Garrett had known his armament was sleeping in the bottom of the pool, with his anger, he could have gone for a quick dive, recovered his toys, loaded up, and done the ultimate drive-by in Leimert Park just to show Jake Ellis who was the boss. With that cache of weapons and the league of bushwhackers he had employed as a well-armed militia, he could have driven from Crenshaw Boulevard down Stocker to Leimert Boulevard, taken that to MLK, shot up the area doing forty miles per hour, and killed innocents while he slaughtered gentrification, then been back on the 110 speeding north toward Pasadena before anyone in zip code 90008 had stopped screaming and had the nerve to rise from their floors or crawl from under their kitchen tables.
Garrett had come at us the way angered men like him had gone after Nat Turner. As if he had the right to do so. Suffering and dying in slave ships. Hanged from trees. Whipped to death. Beaten to death by slave catchers dressed in blue, shot dead in the streets, first to die in movies, or first to die in real life. Black death was normal, a nonevent. Because killing people who had never been completely humanized had never been a crime. History reinforced what savages were capable of doing today. History reassured savages of what they had the right to do, of things that had been labeled as okay to do by the savages that came before them. History lived in their minds, became the roadmap for continued manifest destiny.
G
arrett said, “You came to the wrong house.”
“We had the right address. GPS brought us to your gate.”
“I was the wrong one to cook salmon for.”
“It wasn’t personal. I was just doing my job. You know how this business rolls.”
“You break in my house, it’s personal. Do you understand how violated I feel? And I don’t care if my wife is an unthankful drama queen, that mammothrept is my goddamn wife.”
“Tell San Bernardino you don’t like the way things are done, not me.”
“Touch my wife, it’s personal.”
“I never touched her.”
“You ate my damn gelato.”
“I didn’t want to be rude.”
“Keep that sense of humor. It will serve you well as a court jester in hell.”
This pool had become my jail. And when he pulled the trigger, it would be my grave. As the freezing night air moved through a jungle of palm trees, as the American flag waved, I had no way out. I knew this was a wrap. I would be shot a few times, then die with lungs filled with water.
But an abrupt crash made us jump, made everyone turn toward the mansion. Glass broke, shattered, and a two-cell cinder block that weighed about thirty-five pounds flew like it weighed as much as a bottle of lotion. Garrett and his men shouted, ducked, then regained their composure, looked at the cinder block that had flown through the patio window. It had been slung with Hulk-like rage from the inside of the estate. It was the same cinder block Garrett had used to damage Jake Ellis’s Mustang. Jake Ellis was here, fury his traveling companion. I couldn’t see Jake Ellis from where I was in the pool, but they did. Mr. Garrett saw the African he’d called what white men, both rich and poor, had called black men, both rich and poor, for hundreds of years.
CHAPTER 23
MR. GARRETT RAN by palm trees in his private yard, ran by patio furniture unseen by anyone because of the high walls, ran with his well-fed belly jiggling as he bolted toward the broken door, gun aimed, ready to shoot, infuriated as he said, “He’s here. The African is here.”
Garrett had been waiting for Jake Ellis all along. He had kept me cold, tired, beaten, weakened. Three of his men stayed at the pool, tasked with watching us drown. Mr. Garrett took the rest running with him, each picking up a makeshift weapon on the way. Each confident.
Hours ago, Jake Ellis and I had broken into this nine-bedroom mansion, gone room to room and collected weapons; then we had stood out here, under palm trees, by fruit trees, in an enclosed backyard, secluded from the world, Garrett’s gun collection sealed in plastic while magically moist salmon cooked in the oven, and we dropped it all in the bottom of this pool.
I whispered, “We’re going underwater for a few seconds.”
“No, no.”
“Mrs. Garrett—”
“Elaine. My name is Elaine.”
“Mrs. Garrett, I know you’re scared as hell, but I’m gonna have to let you go, and I’ll need you to hold your breath as long as you can. Have to go to the bottom. If you don’t, we might die tonight.”
“No, no. I can’t go underwater and I can’t hold my breath for a second.”
“Take a deep breath. I’ll be back for you in no time.”
“Don’t; please don’t.”
A moment ago, she wanted to die. Now she wanted to live. I had no other choice but to chance letting her drown. I pushed her away, let her go, watched her eyes widen as she freaked out and looked at me like I had betrayed her, watched her fight the water like she was fighting an ocean, then surrender to gravity, hold her breath, and go under. I took several deep, slow breaths, fought my pain, and tried to bend, had to get my legs in the air, had to get my head facing down, had to fight to swim downward while I exhaled slowly to equalize the pressure. I wasn’t going to make it. I was going to drown in Pasa-fucking-dena. Couldn’t turn back. Held my nose and blew, had to equalize the pressure a bit more in order to kick away discomfort in my ears. Wiggled my jaw. Bottom of the pool felt like it was deeper than the Y-40 Deep Joy in Italy, and that pool was 113 feet deep. They had beat me good. Everything hurt, even my thoughts. Had to use a lot of energy to go this short distance. Needed to go back up, but I touched the bottom, fought with the little air left in my lungs trying to make me float toward the top. If I went back up, I’d never make it back down. I ran my hands along the bottom of the pool, blew bubble rings, felt death begging me to exhale, then inhale one last time.
One deep breath could fix it all. No more taxes. No more problems.
Then I touched the edges of one of the black plastic garbage bags. It was hard to see the armament. The bag was too heavy to lift and carry to the surface. Ten rifles and a cache of automatic weapons were down at Davy Jones’s locker too, but those were too heavy to lift. Garrett had more guns than a domestic terrorist. Severe gun ownership was part of his privilege. In my world, men who owned weapons like this were either paranoid or mental, usually both. I struggled with the bag, turned it over until I found the plastic drawstring, exhaled some oxygen as I tugged it open, and reached inside. Inside this bag were ten Ziploc bags that had been used to hermetically seal each handgun. The Ziploc bags were huge. Waterproof. Everything had been layered like Christmas presents. Rifles and assault guns had been wrapped in Saran Wrap, some put in giant Ziploc bags, then everything was dropped inside Hefty garbage bags. We had been careful, had used three layers of plastic to keep the weapons dry. Ten handguns were sleeping at the bottom of the deep end of the pool. Garrett had never found them. Or maybe he had never looked for them. He assumed we had stolen them. He saw two black men and saw two thieves. He’d been busy shoving his wife down stairs. He’d been busy recruiting warriors to come after me and Jake Ellis. After he’d squared up his tab with San Bernardino, we would’ve told San Bernardino where the guns were, and San Bernardino would have let him know where his armament was.
Lungs burning like a California wildfire, I struggled, grappled, grabbed the first gun I could, didn’t care the caliber, but it felt like a Glock. It slipped from my hands and I had to fight with my lungs and the slipperiness of the plastic. I was underwater, trying to rush without panicking, knowing Mr. Garrett would reappear and start shooting down and offing me in this watery grave. He’d shoot until he saw red water rising and diluting to pinkness. I wasn’t sure if I could shoot a Glock underwater without modification, but I knew if I shot upward, I’d be shooting blind. Water didn’t compress and could bind in the firing pin chamber. And a shot from this deep underwater would be nonlethal. The shot wouldn’t be accurate, and even if I got lucky, it wouldn’t have the velocity it needed to kill a motherfucker who was standing over me trying to gun me down. The Glock had to stay in the Ziploc until I surfaced. Mind was in a frenzy. Was delirious from pain and the need to breathe. I couldn’t carry two gats and swim to the top, not when one felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. I didn’t have time to sort that out, so I tucked the first Glock in my waistband, hoped it was loaded, then got my feet under me, touched the bottom of the pool and pushed upward, pushed and felt the last of the air escape my body. As I glided upward, the gun moved down into the left pant leg of my joggers, became awkward weight, worked against me, tried to anchor me to the bottom. This wasn’t working. Had to keep going. I looked up and saw nothing but darkness, didn’t think I’d make it back to the top, and the surface looked like it was a mile away. I had taken my last breath. I wouldn’t live long enough to inhale fresh air again. Dread owned me. I was in hell, pounds of water standing on my head. Garrett’s pool was on Garrett’s side. This water was his water. My body wanted oxygen and did its best to force me to breathe. I wanted to breathe. Holding my breath went against what my body needed. I felt the carbon dioxide level accumulating in my blood. I had to breathe. I was suffocating. It was a battle that no man could win. When I was about to black out, when it was too intense and my body tried to force me to gulp and try to drink an ocean of chlorine,
I broke the surface, breathless, wheezing like I’d run two marathons uphill and back-to-back at top speed, came from a cold, watery womb into the world like a baby being born, right next to Mrs. Garrett’s nude, bald, battered, lifeless body.
CHAPTER 24
STRUGGLING TO BREATHE, I turned Mrs. Garrett over on her back, tried to keep her head above water. She wasn’t breathing. Struggling to stay afloat, Glock nestled in the leg of my joggers, I tried to kick, sidestroke, and pull Mrs. Garrett to the side, wanted to get to the edge of the pool, but the three homies Garrett had left behind came after us. I heard them talking. Couldn’t understand a word they said. They thought I had drowned and were surprised when I had come back to the surface. My mind was fractured. A woman had drowned. One of Garrett’s henchmen had been sent to follow Jimi Lee. And Jake Ellis was here. Garrett and his gun were after him. There was noise inside the mansion, a battle I could barely hear. My ears were waterlogged.
Another of the mansion’s windows broke and a body flew out headfirst, landed on top of the barbecue grill, a big number that had two propane tanks. They had Jake Ellis. They had trapped, shot, and killed Jake Ellis. The thugs hurried over to see the broken body. When they turned back toward me, I was out of the pool and had pulled Mrs. Garrett with me. She was on her side, still not moving. Still not breathing. I left her as she was. Jake Ellis was my priority. Limping across concrete, water dripping from my joggers like rain, wounded from head to toe, barely able to inhale, I hobbled toward the body. The thugs called out, hurried toward me. They expected me to try to escape. And they knew I was in no shape to run. They came at me until they saw the Glock. They were ten feet away when they realized I was armed, and their charge came to a sudden stop. Attitudes changed. The captors became the prisoners. Each had a shocked expression, wondering where the hell I had gotten a gun from, wishing Garrett had left them strapped. They had been overconfident. They didn’t need to worry about the gun. Guns never killed anyone. Bullets were grave makers. And I had seventeen.
Bad Men and Wicked Women Page 24