“What’s up, didn’t you hear someone knock?” she asked en route to the door.
“Shhh!” Lapeace hissed urgently, waving her back with a contorted face and exaggerated swings of his arms. Shima froze in her steps looking puzzled. Then she saw the two shadows cross the expanse of the window. She eased over to his side and peeped out as she saw him doing.
“What they want here?” Shima asked in a whisper, observing the officers walk to the next house and traverse up the walk.
“I ain’t knowin’ and really ain’t tryin’ to find out,” he answered and moved toward the stereo.
“Why you didn’t answer it, Babes?”
Bending down choosing a compact disc from the stored selection, Lapeace thought about explaining everything to her, but quickly decided against it.
“’Cause it smelled like pot up in here and you heard what happened to Snoop in Atlanta when the pigs smelled pot.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” said Shima thoughtfully, stepping up to Lapeace and playfully pushing him on the head. “You got some brains in that ol’ thick head of yours don’t you?”
“Awright girl, quit playin’,” chided Lapeace gleefully, relieved she was in a good mood. “Eh, Shima, what you know about this?” He pointed the remote at the stereo and out came “Strange Fruit” by Billie Holiday.
“Ooh, that’s a phat ass song, ain’t it? Sista-girl put it down! Hey.”
“Yeah, but what you know about it?” asked Lapeace pressingly.
“She’s talkin’ ’bout lynchin’ in the South.”Then she thought again and added, “You know I gotta be up on it if it’s my CD.”
“Not really,” he countered, “’cause a lot of folks slept on X-Clan. Got caught up in the beats and never under, I mean overstood the lyrical importance.”
“Probably because X-Clan got too esoteric and the average hip-hop head couldn’t fade it. But the production was definitely on it.” “Strange Fruit” played on in the background as Lapeace busied himself with splitting the skin on another blunt. With experience he slit the belly of the densely packed cigar and emptied the contents on Ice Cube’s face as it appeared on the cover of The Source magazine. Before going any further with the delicate procedure, Lapeace asked Shima if she had any honey. Promptly, she went to retrieve what she had. Intensely he watched her muscular mounds rise and fall with each step. Her ass was all over the room. Far too long he felt he’d been denied the opportunity to be intimate for any length of time with such a woman. From head to toe she was simply gorgeous. Tammy, he remembered, was never gifted with the ass of a sista. Really, as he thought more about it, her body was terribly unattractive, especially after the children. Ugh. In the face, she remained a stunning beauty but below the neck she was a wreck. And it had become, in the latter times in their relationship, a true test in anatomical will to get an erection for her. He grimaced just to think about it.
Shima aided in that thought’s dissipation by entering the room. She wore gray terry-cloth shorts, no shoes or socks, and a midriff gray T-shirt that showed off her sexy belly button. Her walk was lively and modelesque, made all the more attractive by her bowlegs. She plopped down on the couch beside him and slid over the plastic honey bear. Lapeace wasted no time in applying the honey to the cigar paper packed with chronic. He rolled it expertly in his large hands allowing not one parcel of pot to fall out. Once complete, he laid it aside and moved to discard the cigar tobacco in the waste can in the kitchen. It was time, he felt, to tell her. Better now than never—which was really not realistic. She’d find out soon enough and more than likely from the wrong people. Those who always twisted shit, got facts blurred with fiction. Envious bustas, back-bitin’ gangsta haters. Either them or the so-called news would exploit the fear and ignorance of the people and turn reality into a montage of white supremacist perception, as usual. He knew it was his responsibility and he’d never run from that. When he returned to the living room, having dumped the whole magazine in the trash, Shima had changed the music. Now playing was “Happy Feelings” by Maze featuring Frankie Beverly. Shima was simulating a slow dance, grinding her pelvis against an invisible partner, eyes closed, arms extended, hips swaying. He moved quietly to the sofa and sparked the honey blunt. The inhalation was sweet and smooth. The afterburn smelled of honey-roasted crescent rolls with a mint aroma. When she opened her eyes again he was passing her the bud.
“How long you been sittin’ there watchin’ me?” she asked and took a drag on the blunt.
“Long enough to get horny watching your sexy ass.”
“That long, huh?”
“It only takes a second,” said Lapeace, lustfully ogling her while rubbing his crotch area. He stopped abruptly and reminded himself of what he had to do. He sat up straight and cleared his throat. Shima passed him the blunt back and went to change the music. “Shima, leave it off for a minute, will you? I’ve got to run something to you.”
“Oh, okay, Babes,” answered Shima, and returned to his side on the couch. “What’s up?”
Lapeace pulled hard on the blunt, making its cherry burn brightly for a long moment. He held the smoke in for a while, trained it up from his mouth to his nostrils, then exhaled heavily. “Did you hear about that big shooting on the ’Shaw last month?”
“Um,” Shima thought, hand on her chin, legs drawn up under her tight little body. “I think so . . . Oh, hell yeah, wasn’t that what they called the Crenshaw massacre?”
“Yeah. Well . . .”
“Oh, yeah. Now I remember. A lot of innocent folks got all shot up. Gas stations exploded and people got ran over and stuff. What about it?” asked Shima, hand resting on Lapeace’s thigh.
“I was involved in that.”
“We have a code blue alarm in one-twenty!” shouted the beefy male nurse over his shoulder as he ran down the cluttered corridor. In his wake, almost as if his wind alone had propelled them forward, the remaining staff followed his lead. He burst through the door with force. So much so that the heavy wooden door hit its rubber stop behind it and bounced back, almost knocking down the first following physician. Corbet, the beefy lead nurse, moved quickly to the bed whose alarm had been tripped but was astonished to find that he was not in distress at all. Perplexed, Corbet turned toward the other patient in the room, who was the dog-bite victim. He in turn raised a bandaged hand and directed everyone’s attention toward the far corner of the room. There, under Anyhow’s bed, was a thick, almost congealed pool of blood. His left arm lay extended off the bed, hand half clenched with blood flowing freely down, feeding the pool. His right arm was laid easily across his chest and his eyes were closed softly, as if he were peacefully asleep. The hospital staff flew into action under the commanding barks of the head doctor. Soon Anyhow was being attended to by half a dozen physicians. After an hour of intense work and critical care, Anyhow was listed in very critical condition with possible brain damage due to the massive amount of blood lost. Nurse Richter notified Sweeney immediately after she found the code blue to be for Anyhow. Mendoza and Sweeney were there within an hour of the call.
“How significant is the threat of brain damage?” asked Sweeney, leaning against Nurse Richter’s station in a crumpled brown jacket and customary white shirt. His pink head was glistening from sweat brought on by the event, as well as from the bright four-foot fluorescent lights beaming down upon his naked dome.
“Well,” began Nurse Richter, reaching under her counter to retrieve a Kleenex for Sweeney’s sweating head, “we won’t have any definite results on brain activity until a full CAT scan and EEG has been done. Which could take anywhere between two days to a week.”
“We’ll need to be kept abreast of his developments,” Mendoza said, looking up from his notepad at Nurse Richter, who stared back evenly.
“Of course.”
“You’ll call me, should there be anything significant, then?” asked Sweeney, leaning over the counter in search of a waste-paper basket.
“Yes. As I did, I shall continue
to do.”
“Great.”
Mendoza wrote:8-27-96, approx. 6:30 p.m.
Suspect attempted suicide at Co. Gen.
Then he slapped the black leather notepad shut and pressed the DOWN button for the elevator. Instinctively his left hand went up to his mustache.
Sweeney stood silently brooding as the elevator descended from the thirteenth to the seventh floor, where a young New Afrikan deputy sheriff boarded. The descent continued. Each nodded his greetings but no words were spoken. Sweeney shifted heavily from one foot to the other as he contemplated the ramifications of Anyhow’s actions. He tried to recall what he’d learned in the military about the brain and the various ways it could be damaged by blood loss. Damn, he critiqued himself, need to brush up on my studies. Let’s see, he thought, focusing on the two-thousand-pound-capacity weight sign on the elevator wall. There was the lobus occipitalis. The temporalis, the cortex . . . um . . . damn . . . the corpus callosum. So many connecting fibers . . . having lost the amount of blood that he had, causing a loss of oxygen to the brain, could result in a number of brain-altering maladies. When he had been allowed to look in on him nothing by way of exterior observation seemed amiss. Though on the oscillator Nurse Richter pointed out the very low heart rate pronounced by the LED. He could only hope that Any pulled out with some degree of stability. Otherwise the case against Lapeace Shakur would be shot. Traveling back to the new prefab trailer station the 77th Division was using while its original location was being rebuilt and expanded, Sweeney spoke what he’d been thinking.
“You know,” he began, eyeing the exposed girders of the 110 freeway, which had been under construction for years, “wouldn’t it be something if the Mexican guy in the room with Harper slit his wrist?”
“Yeah, that would be something,” replied Mendoza in an “oh yeah, sort of incredible” tone.
“No, I’m serious. I mean, shit, aren’t the Mexican gangs and the black gangs at war?”
“Yep,” Mendoza said while changing lanes. “So?”
“So? Don’t you see what I’m saying? Look, all this guy had to—”
“The guy had a hole in his head, John. For Christ’s sake, he was shot in the head! He has no motor skills.”
“Oh. I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah, well I—you stupid fuck!” exclaimed Mendoza, slamming on the brakes briefly after being cut off by an older sedan. He quickly righted the Chevy and resumed the discourse. “No, I um . . . I took a peek at his chart while you were in the ICU with Nurse Ratched.”
“Well, that kills that theory then.”
“Yeah,” chuckled Mendoza, “deader than shit.”Then, with seriousness he said, “I can’t see why you would think it was the Mexican guy anyway. What about the other patient, the black guy? Shit, they kill each other too. But you automatically assumed that the Mexican did it.”
“I was using deductive reasoning. There was nothing racial about it, if that’s what you’re reaching for.”
“Your thoughts speak for themselves, Mexican people cut.”
“Oh, come off it, beaner!” Sweeney shouted and then burst into hysterical laughter.
“¡Chinga tu madre, pinche yanqui! ” replied Mendoza as he wheeled the Chevy into the station’s parking lot.
7
At his desk in the makeshift station, Sweeney sat reclining in his chair with his feet up. In his meaty hands was a blue notebook—the murder book, as it was called. He was studying the evidence to date, compiled in chronological order in the binder. These collective pieces were of great importance to his case, but alone, without the assistance of an informant, they could not win a conviction. The murder book’s binding was covered with a strip of masking tape that ran from top to bottom, drawing one’s attention easily to it. There, written vertically in black marker, was:Lapeace Shakur—Cren Mass: 1996.
Sweeney knew Lapeace well—or, actually, knew of his exploits well. Only once had he been in contact with him. A “slickster” is how he thought of him. Educated, smooth, loyal, and, without a doubt, a killer. Although he’d never been convicted of murder, his reputation spoke for itself. And somewhere along the line he’d gotten a lump sum of cash, Sweeney knew. Yet his name had never been associated with drugs. Not only that but up until this case his name was not even on the neighborhood wire. Sweeney turned the page and was confronted with a slew of photographs, which depicted every victim framed in the finality of death. Photographs taken by crime-scene specialists showed grotesque holes and gashes torn into the bodies of innocent bystanders. Page after page froze the lifeless from an angle different from the one preceding it. He turned each page slowly, carefully. From the explosion site body parts were circled in chalk and photographed. An arm here, a leg there, pieces of skull with the hair and scalp still attached were pictured in glossy colors for pages on end. Sweeney had never gotten used to the murder book photos or now, as it were, video shots of the scene. It was a macabre ritual. He closed the book with a sigh and began to sift through scraps of notepaper scattered over the plastic blotter. Finding the number he wanted scrawled sloppily on the back of a Chief Auto Parts business card, Sweeney picked up the phone. On the third ring the line was answered by an adult male.
“May I please speak to Robert?”
“This Robert.”
“Little Huckabuck?” Sweeney questioned with suspicion, hearing the monotones of exchange in the background.
“Yeah, this him.”
“Listen, Huck, this is Sweeney. I need your help on something. Now I know you’ve been doing all you can on the Stoney case, but we would really be grateful if you could poke around and see what you can find on Lapeace.”
“Lapeace?” Lil Huck asked, and before Sweeney could answer he added, “Man, I’m a tell you, Lapeace ain’t doin’ nothin’ that I know of. He don’t slang or nothin’.”
“Well this ain’t got nothing to do with dope. We need to know about his involvement in the big Crenshaw shooting earlier this month. Poke around, see what you can find. It’ll do you some good.”
“Aight, man. I’ll get on it. Is that it?”
“Yeah,” answered Sweeney, drumming his pencil on the blotter top. “Oh, hey, how the feds treating you?”
“Shit, man, them fools still owe me money and niggas startin’ to ask questions about me. It’s gettin’ kinda hot.”
“Well, you be safe and keep your nose clean.”
“Aight then.”
Sweeney replaced the receiver in its cradle and again picked up the blue book.
Once Lil Huck had returned the receiver to its place, he rejoined his homies in the den. There were five there, lounging, getting high, and playing Sega.The room was replete with indo smoke and the acrid scent of the chemical compound PCP. C-Fish held the small iodine bottle filled with the sluggish urine-colored liquid still while he dipped in the marijuana joint. Once it was totally saturated he pulled it gently from the bottle and laid it on top of a strip of tinfoil. No one paid him much attention, for they were all into the Sega game. When the joint had dried sufficiently, C-Fish sparked it up. It caught with a blaze of fire, which he had to blow out. “Damn, cuz, this shit da bomb,” said C-Fish. He got no response. He began to smoke the joint. After two big drags he handed it to Baby C-Dog, who refused it.
“You know I don’t smoke that shit, nigga.”
“Here, cuz,” exhorted C-Fish pushing the chemical joint toward Stagalee. “This shit is monkey piss loc.”
“We’ll see.” Stag took the fat stick of pot, laced with twenty-two different chemicals, and pulled on it hard. The harsh invasion of indo smoke was all but subdued under the wetness of the PCP and no recoiling cough spasm occurred. Yet the effect of the indo’s strength was felt strongly as the PCP took Stag down into a dark mental abyss and seemingly rolled him around on a bed of pointy nails that tingled every nerve fiber in his body. Then came the flow of saliva and the need to spit—but by then he was embalmed and couldn’t move. His Sega control lay alone on the floor an
d he stared out into the virtual reality created by the drug. The joint was taken from his hand and pulled on by Lil Spike, who after three hits was comatose in a vertical position, legs wide apart, forehead beaded with sweat. No one else wanted any of it. It was, as C-Fish said, da bomb. C-Dog and Lil Huck played on with the Sega and let the others enjoy their trip. It was true, Lil Huck’s name had begun to leave a sour taste in some homies’ mouths, for word had come out of the county jail and the Federal Metropolitan Correctional Center that his name was linked unfavorably to some cases involving bank robberies and murder. Those who still hung around him were there only at the behest of Sidewinder, who had instructed a team of little homies to cover him until a definite word came down regarding his fate. There was a knock at the door and Lil Huck went to answer it. C-Dog was left alone with the zombies. He looked pathetically from one to the other. Pitying each in his own way, wishing for the millionth time that his loved ones would stop using PCP. Their motor skills were shot, unresponsive to any directive sent from the brain. They stood and sat as motionless as statues. Burning up.
T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E. Page 9