“Hey Shima,” said the brotha. “I thought that was you but I wasn’t sure. Hey,” he continued, “you know Me’shell Ndegeocello, don’t you?”
“No, but I’ve always wanted to meet you,” Shima answered warmly.
“The feeling is definitely mutual.”
They’d all but forgotten about Lapeace sitting there looking sullen. He’d heard it all. And while he didn’t know who Antoine was, he’d definitely heard of Me’shell Ndegeocello. He had her Plantation Lullabies CD in Lucky’s CD changer. He made a mental note to play it on their way back.
“Oh,” bubbled Shima, bouncing on her toes, “I’m so sorry. This is my friend Lapeace.”
“Lapeace, good to meet you brotha,” said Antoine, extending his hand for a power clench shake.
“Righteous,” replied Lapeace, standing cordially to receive his hand, then shaking it strongly.
“Hey, Lapeace, how you doing?” greeted Me’shell, stepping up for a hug.
“I’m straight, and it’s certainly a pleasure to meet you.” His whole language pattern changed for the greeting. Shima, as usual, noted it. Lapeace stood a bit outside the circle while they chatted on about industry things. Antoine Fuqua was a major video director for Propaganda Films who’d been hired to shoot Me’shell’s new video, plus it stemmed from the conversation that she’d be doing the score for an upcoming film Antoine was directing. They talked a minute more before final salutations were exchanged, then the pair left. The steamy hot chicken and waffles were the bomb, as always, and went down quickly. On the ride back, Lapeace began Me’shell’s CD with his favorite, “Souls on Ice,” and Shima listened attentively, agreeing off and on with traditional “I know that’s right” and “Fo’ sho’.” The Suburban pushed on down Washington to Arlington and panned right. At the corner of Adams and Arlington they were caught by the light. They both sat staring across at the Elegant Manor, the huge house used by the Universal Negro Improvement Association, Marcus Garvey’s organization, which was still in existence. A black-and-white patrol car eased up in the turning lane, its tomato-faced occupants staring hard at Lapeace’s truck. The green Lexus paint, covered by its thirteen coats of lacquer and accented by gold Daytons wrapped in 50-series low-profile Perellis, screamed drug dealer to the police. They sat and looked piggish, and Lapeace eased the music down. He wasn’t worried about anything legitimate they could sweat him for, ’cause all that was covered—license, registration, and proof of insurance. Even his heat was stashed so well they’d never find it. The light turned green and the truck churped out and got some rubber from its posey traction. The police turned right.
Lapeace took the double hill on Arlington slow, careful not to scrape the bottom of his bumpers against the asphalt, a precaution he’d been given when he’d had his coils cut. The vibration on his hip alerted him to a page. He lowered Me’shell’s “If That’s Your Boyfriend” and lifted up the cellular from its holder, keyed in the number, and pressed send. A moment later, a male voice came on the line.
“Hello.”
“This is Lapeace.”
“Please hold, sir,” said the proper voice on the other end. A moment passed before a familiar voice came on.
“Lapeace, how are you this morning?” queried the voice in a colonized accent.
“I’m straight. What’s up?”
“Well,” began the voice cautiously, “it appears that she is willing to fight you in a custody battle. Now, we have more than enough grounds to win this case, but I don’t know if you want your business in the court of law.”
Lapeace looked pensive, outwardly disturbed at the news. “Well, let me get back to you this afternoon. Right now I’m in traffic and holding.”
“Oh, I see,” answered the voice. “Very well then. Call me back at the office, say, around three. Is that fine for you?”
“That’s straight. Oh, and dig this: 29 910 459,” said Lapeace, rattling off the numbers given to him earlier by Sekou. “Can you check into this for me?”
“Sure, Lapeace. At three, I’ll have something for you.”
“Awright, I’m out.” The connection was broken and so was his laid-back mood. Shit, he thought to himself. If it wasn’t one thing it’s another. In midstride he flicked the CD from Me’shell Ndegeocello to Tupac and “You wonder why we call you bitch” came blaring out. So loud was it that Shima had to tap his leg for attention and signal for him to please turn it down. Reluctantly he did so, but only slightly. She tapped again, looking questionably at his cloudy face. He put the song on pause.
“Lapeace, what’s wrong? Is it me or what?” she asked pointedly, trying to figure out his sudden mood change. Certainly she’d heard nothing on his end of the situation to warrant such a shift. Perhaps, she thought, it was her and this was his sign of saying the date’s over.
“Naw, Shima, it ain’t you,” he said, coming to a stop behind a waste-management truck on Arlington and Vernon Avenue. “It’s my ex-girl, really my ex-wife. She doesn’t want me to have custody of my children. She wants to fight it out in court.” He looked, for the first time, weak and frightened.
“You’ve been married and have children?” she asked in a nonbelieving tone.
“Yeah, I got caught up with a woman older than me and became dependent on her. It’s a long story.” He trailed off his discourse.
“I ain’t mad at cha. It’s just a trip to find a brotha your age who’s been married these days. So, you ain’t afraid of commitment, huh?” she asked, which was more rhetorical than an outright question.
“Naw, it ain’t commitment that scares me, it’s scandalous bitches that fuck me up.” He’d grown angry, and it reflected in his language, tone, and driving. He was pushing Lucky with recklessness up Vernon Avenue. At Crenshaw he punched it through a yellow light and took Santa Rosalia up into the hills.
“Lapeace, can you please slow down a bit?” She’d grown afraid of his driving, and Lucky no longer seemed luxurious and comfortable, but more like a rolling coffin. When they got to Shima’s house, he sat in the truck and wouldn’t get out. She came around to his side and rested her elbows on his window. “Listen,” she began, “I feel you, Lapeace. I see that you are a qualitative brotha. I don’t know much about you, but from what I’ve seen I can dig you. But if you let some . . . some . . . ol’ scandalous bitch drive you mad, you’re as weak as any other fool out here.” He shot her an eyebrow-connected glare, but she continued. “Now, what I suggest you do is,” opening the door to the truck, “come on in here and blow a blunt with me and calm down.”
“I gotta bounce,” he responded, closing back his door, “but let’s get together later, awright?”
“You ain’t gonna get with me later, Lapeace.”
“I will if that’s what you want.”
“You know it is . . .” She looked off thoughtfully.
“What,” he said in a clowning voice, “I gotcha open?”
“Wide, baby,” she said looking at him and holding his brown eyes to hers, “but I can close if I feel the catch is foul. So don’t bug out on me, War.”
“War? Where you get that from?” His mind had already fallen off of his ex-wife.
“Lapeace,” she said slowly, “ ‘La’ is Swahili for no, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“And ‘peace’—no peace. Which means if there is no peace, it’s only war. But which war are you fighting, soldier?” she asked seriously.
“The good fight,” he answered and Lucky rumbled to life. “I’ll hit you off later,” he said, backing out of Shima’s yard, never unlocking eyes with her. He was back in control of his mood and flicked the remote to reflect it. Out of his system came MC Lyte: “B boy, I’ve been lookin’ for your ass since a quarter past . . .” Tashima smiled, waved, and he rolled off subbing down the block, hidden behind the dark tent of Lucky’s windows.
2
Anyhow lay still in a morphine drift, too medicated to feel what he looked like. His torso resembled an early colonial map of Af
rika drawn by marauding pirates. He’d been shot four times. Twice in the chest, once in the stomach, and once through the right biceps. A translucent tube ran from an extraction pump on the left side of his bed, up through his nose, and down into his stomach. A drainage tube had been inserted on his left side to pump fluid from his lungs, one of which had collapsed. Two ribs were fractured and a hairline fracture scarred his sternum. An incision had been made from under his armpit around his right breast and stopped just under center mass. Another ran vertically from his solar plexus to his pubis. His right arm had already begun to atrophy. His mouth was agape and his eyes were closed peacefully. An IV was taped to his left forearm and a catheter had been inserted, along with a colostomy bag for body waste.
He was on the thirteenth floor of the L.A. County Hospital, chained by the ankle to the bed, barely alive. “We tried to kill the nigger,” said one detective the night he was brought in unconscious, “but them fuckers die harder than Bruce Willis.” Anyhow was rigged to several machines that monitored his life: heart, respiratory, brain waves, etc. His condition was critical, and he looked every bit of it.
“I’m sorry,” said the nurse, “but he is in no condition to be interviewed. His every conscious minute without medication is unbearably painful.”
“All the more reason we’d like to speak with him now,” said Sweeney, peering through icy blue eyes at the nurse with a you-know-the-rules look.
“I’m sorry, Detective . . . uh . . .”
“Sweeney,” he interjected.
“Sweeney, of course, but doctor’s orders.”
“When,” asked Mendoza, through smacks of ranch-flavored CornNuts, “will Mr. How, I mean Harper, be well enough for an interview?”
“I’m not sure. He’s in pretty bad shape. You know, perhaps a week or two at the least,” she said, hunching her bony shoulders helplessly.
“That bad, huh?” jestered Sweeney.
“Real bad.”
“Thank you, uh, Nurse . . .” turning his head sideways.
“Richter,” she said.
“We’ll definitely be back.” At that, the detectives turned and left the floor. Anyhow slept on, oblivious to it all.
Two weeks from that day they were back, and Nurse Richter gleefully prepared Anyhow for a bedside interview. He still experienced some pain but had gone from morphine to codeine and his condition had been downgraded from critical to stable. He was in the room with two other prisoner-patients: a Mexican who’d been shot in the head by the Lennox division of the L.A. Sheriff ’s Department as he exited a bank after robbing it and another brother who’d been mauled by an LAPD K-9 Unit. His face and neck were so bruised, scarred, and swollen that from the shoulders up there seemed to be one great mass of bloody flesh. His moans permeated the room. The low hum of the equipment, coupled with the periodical groan of the head-shot victim and ever-present sobs of the K-9 patient, created an eerie soundtrack of gloom, over which were laid the sights to these sounds. The atmosphere was utter despair and pain.
Anyhow had been out of the ICU for three days when he was informed that he had visitors. He was not delighted in the least when in through the double doors walked Sweeney and Mendoza. He just looked at them pathetically. They pulled up chairs and took off their coats. As usual, Sweeney’s forearms were exposed, revealing a devil dog tattoo, with Semper Fi under it and U.S.M.C. over it. Mendoza’s long-sleeved shirt was impeccably starched. He had in his hand a leather notepad, an accessory from Moca Max. He opened it and wrote:Alvin Harper
6 Duce Brim
24 years old
Black male
Homicide suspect
August 27, 1996
“Alvin,” began Sweeney in a jovial tone. “How goes it, fella?”
Anyhow ignored him and turned his head. The head-shot victim stared across at them from behind his head and neck brace.
“Oh, don’t tell me you’re not talking to us, Any. What’s up with that, homeboy?” Sweeney called himself using the “native dialect,” just like his settler forefathers. Silence. Low hum of technical equipment and the K-9 victim’s sobs. “Yeah, well, what if I did . . . this.”
“Ahh! Nurse! Nurse!” screamed Anyhow as a piercing bolt of pain shot through his arm. Sweeney had taken his thumb and pressed it hard into Anyhow’s wound.
“Oh, don’t worry about the nurse. She’s one of us,” replied Mendoza and wroteSuspect responsive but belligerent:
in his notepad. “Now, we are going to begin again,” instructed Sweeney. “How are you, Alvin?”
“Fuck you, pig,” answered Anyhow defiantly.
“Oh yeah. Fuck me, huh?”
“Ahh! Ahh! Ahh! Ahh!” Anyhow cried until he began to cough up blood. The Mexican looked on in terror and the K-9 victim’s sobs got louder.
“Don’t feel too good, does it, Anynigger? Huh?”
“Noooo,” answered Anyhow through the excruciating pain and curdling blood. Mendoza wroteSuspect assaultive, might have to restrain:
“Now that we’ve got your attention, you little shit, we’d like to talk to you about a couple of hot ones that your name keeps coming up on. Do you hear me?” asked Sweeney, leaning into the ear of Anyhow, breathing heavily.
“Do you feel like talking, Alvin?” asked Mendoza, as if he had just run into him at a shopping mall.
“Hey!” Sweeney shouted, reaching with that bloody thumb. “My partner’s talking to you.”
“I hear him, man. Shit. You just watch that fuckin’ thumb,” grumbled Anyhow angrily, looking with injurious intent at Sweeney. The look was not lost on Sweeney, who responded with a feigned backhand that caused Anyhow to turn his head.
“Answer him then,” demanded Sweeney.
“What, man? Whatcha wanna talk about? I don’t know nothing ’bout no hot ones. Nothing.”
“Well, we think a bit different. Now, we’ll lead and you follow. If what you say doesn’t jibe with what we already know, you get the thumb. You got that?”
“Man, I told you that I . . . Ahh! Ahh! Awright, man, awright!!”
Mendoza wrote:Suspect has agreed to talk openly with myself,
Det. J Mendoza #68201. And Det. J Sweeney
#532307-Hom. Unit 77th Div.
Sweeney wiped the blood from his thumb on Anyhow’s bed clothes and leaned over the bed rail.
“Where you wanna start with this?” asked Anyhow, willingly, not wanting again to feel Sweeney’s thumb penetrating his wounded arm. It had gone in clear to the muscle. He looked across the room and saw in the Mexican’s eye terror and hate. In the K-9 victim’s slits—’cause his eyes were but that—there came a stream of tears.
“From the beginning, Any. From the fucking start.”
Anyhow and Lapeace had grown up together. Their parents had migrated from the South at approximately the same time. It was the early 1960s and South Central was predominantly Amerikan (white), especially in the area that Ansil and Evelyn Harper moved into. They lived on 64th Street and Normandie Avenue. They were the second New Afrikan family on the block. Evelyn worked downtown in the garment district, sewing fabrics for clothing designers. Ansil worked as a television repairman.Together their wages allowed them to move out of the Jordan Downs housing projects quickly and reside comfortably on L.A.’sWestside, although not too far west. They were both twenty years old and energetic; the future, they felt, looked bright for them. They considered themselves “good Negroes,” for they didn’t involve themselves in freedom marches, sit-ins, or integration protests. They openly opposed the civil rights movement and Rev. King. Said he was a troublemaker. Their flight from the South was more akin to the fable of the Pilgrims fleeing England than anything else. Though, of course, they’d passed it off as good fortune. In ’67—two years after “that terrible riot in Watts,” as Evelyn called it—they had their first child. She was named Gloria after Ansil’s grandmother. In ’72—the year those “dreadful terrorists murdered all those nice Jewish athletes,” as Evelyn had said—they had Alvin. By this
time the complexion of the neighborhood had turned dark. White flight had rendered the area an economic disaster zone. Cheerfully the Harpers endured twelve years of disdainful stares, hostile gestures, mysterious house fires, sugar in their gas tank, and epithets scrawled across the front door without once wanting to leave their home. And even though they despised Rev. King and the civil rights movement, they gingerly enjoyed the fruits of the struggle, complaining the whole time. In ’73 they moved into Baldwin Hills and joined the ranks of the petty bourgeoisie. Ansil, by this time, owned the second-largest appliance chain in L.A. and Evelyn, of course, had long since been domesticated. Alvin complained about every elementary school he was made to attend, until finally, in the fourth grade, he was sent to Raymond Avenue on 76th and Normandie. He and Lapeace met over a lunch pail, which belonged to neither one of them. It was from this point that the competition began and grew steadily like a festering cyst, infectious and malignant.
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