“How are you?” Jamison asked and immediately thought it was an odd question.
“Been better, man,” Ras answered. “I could use a beach in Montego Bay and a spliff right about now, but it ain’t so bad. We’re all brothers in here.”
“That’s good to hear. But you know I’m not just talking about your current living situation.”
“I know. I know.” Ras kind of looked over his shoulder at the guard by the door, who was looking back at him.
Jamison and the guard exchanged glances and the guard nodded before stepping outside the room and closing the door behind him.
Ras’s eyes were big on Jamison when he turned back around. “Wow, Mr. Mayor has it like that? Got the guards moving out the way?” He laughed a little.
“No, those Benjamin Franklins have it like that,” Jamison explained.
“Money, power—” Ras started.
“And respect,” Jamison finished. After a short pause, he added, “So, what’s really going on?”
Ras sat back in his seat. “I don’t know, J. One moment I’m out there. Next moment I’m in here.”
“But how’d all that happen?” Jamison pushed. He noticed how vague and detached Ras was being. Almost avoiding his eyes. Any notions he’d had of Ras’s guilt or innocence were being weighed through this unclear communication. He needed more.
“How? Man, I don’t know.” Ras seemed to slip even farther down in his seat. The distance between the former roommates was growing.
“Come on, Ras. You know something. What’s up?”
Ras looked around the room, from corner to corner, ceiling to floor.
“What? You think the room is bugged?” Jamison asked. “You think I’m here to record you? Me?”
“Again, I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. Know anybody.”
“You know me, man,” Jamison. “We go way back. Way back.”
Ras just looked at Jamison.
“I helped you install those hardwood floors at your grandmother’s house that summer,” Jamison said.
Ras gave a weak grin.
“It was hot as hell in that house. No air-conditioning. In the middle of the A,” Jamison recollected for Ras. “And she wouldn’t pay us.”
“Wouldn’t even give us any sweet tea,” Ras added.
“Just water,” Jamison continued. “But I showed up to help you. Three hot summer days in a row.”
Jamison fought with Ras’s eyes to get his attention.
“What’s up, Glenn?” Jamison said, calling Ras by his birth name. “Talk to me. No one else in this room but me and you.”
“I didn’t do this shit, J. They’re setting me up,” Ras spat.
Jamison let the words settle in the room before he decided what to say next.
“Weed?” Jamison laughed in a tone appropriate to mentioning marijuana in front of his friend who’d once attempted to cure himself of the flu by smoking pot for two hours straight. When the experiment was done, neither had been sure if it had worked. But they had been sure they were high.
Ras laughed before explaining, “I had a few ounces. Nothing big.” Ras leaned into Jamison. “Nothing unlike what I normally roll with. You know.”
“So, it was your weed?”
“I had nine bricks. Maybe. I ain’t fucking with no cops. I got kids. You know the black man knows the law.”
“So, the cops planted extra weed on you?” Jamison concluded.
“More weed, more charges. Less weed, I go home.”
“Why wouldn’t they want you to go home?”
Ras sat back again and looked into Jamison’s eyes. “What are you here for?”
“What?”
“You ain’t been to see me in all the weeks I been locked up. Suddenly, you show up. Just today? Why?”
“Kerry was saying . . . I mean, I was thinking . . . I just wanted to hear the truth.” Jamison saw the distance in Ras’s eyes again. “What, you don’t believe me?”
“I don’t know who the real people are and who the agents are.”
“An agent? Of what? And what would make you think I’m one of them?” Jamison asked.
“Because they mentioned you.”
“Me?”
To get an answer, Jamison had to soften Ras again. He’d called him Glenn. Reminded him of the time they’d broken into their professor’s office together the night before the midterm exam and stolen answers. They’d gotten all the way back to their dorm with the answers to the chemistry exam, but then Ras had started feeling so bad, remembering something his grandmother had told him about cheaters, that he’d convinced Jamison not to use the answers. They’d stayed up all night studying, quizzing each other. By morning they had been chemistry gurus. But they’d both failed the exam anyway.
“I got this call two weeks before I got pulled over,” Ras told Jamison. “Some man was talking about how he knew I was dating this white girl from the Highlands and wouldn’t it be a big blemish on my record if everyone in the community knew I was running around with a white girl.”
“So, the white girl wasn’t a plant?”
“Nah. Nora’s a little something I got on the side. You know. She likes to smoke and shit. Just a little something, something. Anyway, I was high as shit when the call came, so I was laughing. I was like, ‘Fuck is this? I don’t care who knows.’ Then he said he had pictures.”
“Pictures?”
“Yes. Told me to look at my phone and I did and there was a bunch texts from an anonymous number. Pictures. Nora and me . . . you know.” Ras ran his fingers through his locks nervously. “I got kids, man.”
“What did they want?”
“For me to stay away from you.”
Jamison listened as Ras told a story about a whisper through the wire that told him to stop the negotiations between the Hawks players and the city. If he didn’t, the pictures would go out everywhere—his kids’ school, the community center. Ras said he wouldn’t comply. Two weeks later, he was riding in the car with Nora. There were blue sirens behind them. Two officers got out of the squad car. Two more men, dressed in black suits, got out of a black Impala trailing the squad car.
“One had on your ring,” Ras revealed.
“What ring?”
“The black fist on top of the phoenix. Greek symbol in the middle. I know that ring. You wore it every day after you pledged,” Ras said.
“That doesn’t make any sense. You have to be mistaken. There are plenty of rings out there just like my fraternity ring,” Jamison said. “I mean, even if some crazy cops tried to plant weed on you and catch you out there with some white girl from the Highlands, what does that have to do with what we’re doing with the Hawks? With us getting scholarships for kids? Why would they care? And why would anyone in my fraternity be involved?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“No reason—that’s all. And that’s why this sounds crazy.” Jamison was the one who sat back that time. “That’s why you have to be mistaken.”
Ras took notice and asked, “So, you don’t believe me?”
“How high were you that night when you got that phone call? You sure it wasn’t me on the phone?”
“Jamison, I’ve been smoking for over twenty years. Weed is like water for me,” Ras said. “I actually think more clearly when I’m high.”
“Okay. I’ll give you that. But what about the ring? Every fraternity, social club, college, and sports team has a ring. Maybe you thought you were seeing something you weren’t. Got confused.”
“I’ve gone through this in my mind a million times.”
“So you think the call and the bust are connected?” Jamison asked.
“No doubt in my mind, brother. I told those motherfuckers no, and now they’re setting me up,” Ras said.
Jamison searched and saw nothing but truth in Ras’s eyes. While he couldn’t confirm everything his old friend was saying, he knew Ras believed it.
After giving the guard ten one-hundred-dollar bi
lls, Jamison walked out of the jail feeling like his world had just gotten a little smaller and more complicated. With every question he couldn’t answer, he thought of a new question. Kerry was right. Ras wasn’t a liar. He wasn’t a criminal. He wasn’t crazy. He wasn’t stupid. But if all those things were true, everything he was saying must be true. And if those things were true, many things Jamison thought he knew were false.
His phone rang. He looked down to see Leaf’s name. His world fell into itself more. Felt more complicated. He didn’t take the call. Stuffed the phone into his pocket and descended the steps to make it to the parking lot. Then the small world crashed in some more.
Lights. Cameras. Dax.
“Mayor Taylor,” Dax called, rushing up on Jamison with his microphone extended. The common company of cameras and men were behind him. “Can I ask you a couple of questions?”
“Not today,” Jamison said, avoiding the urge to put his hands up to the cameras and grab one that was in his face with a bright light hanging over it.
“But we see you’re leaving the jailhouse and we know your former roommate, alleged militia drug lord, Ras Baruti is inside. Were you here to see him today?” Dax and his crew were following closely behind a briskly walking Jamison.
“No comment.” Jamison felt his phone vibrating in his pocket.
“Are you here to support him?”
“No comment.”
“Are you a part of his movement?”
“No comment.”
“Come on, Mayor Taylor, give us something. The people of Atlanta deserve to know what their mayor is up to. They put you in office. They can take you out.”
Jamison stopped walking and looked at the man holding the microphone to his face like he was an insect on a wall.
“No comment, Dax.”
Dax pulled the microphone back.
“So, you remember my name now?” Dax was wearing a nasty grin. The kind that started fights. That made grown men spit on one another.
It took a few quick reminders for Jamison not to jump on Dax. He reminded himself of who he was and where he was and who was watching. He looked into the camera and saw so many layers of mirrored glass.
Dax just kept on pushing. That was his plan.
“Is it true that this drug dealer is your friend and you two were doing business together? Working on a contract with the city?” Dax asked with hints of his grin still tugging at the sides of his lips.
“He’s not a drug dealer,” Jamison said, feeling his pocket vibrate again.
“So, you did see him in the jail?” Dax’s voice went lower. Became more intense. Accusatory. “He is your friend. You are working with him.”
“What do you want from me?” Jamison couldn’t really say whom he was asking. His little world was eating itself. He was forgetting to breathe.
“This interview isn’t about what I want,” Dax said. “It’s about what the people want to know about you. About your activities.”
“Interview? Activities?” Everything was spinning. Jamison was sinking in now, too. He knew what he was supposed to say; his publicist had trained him for moments like this: no comment. No comment. But where was that? His pocket was vibrating. “What are you talking about? What do you want?”
“The people are beginning to question your judgment, Mayor Taylor. The headlines. Corruption in City Hall.” Dax held the microphone to Jamison again.
“There’s no corruption.”
“With Ras Baruti on your staff, I’m sure you know we know that’s a lie,” Dax claimed. He was pushing his microphone back to Jamison again when a white Mercedes turned sharply around the corner and stopped just short of where Jamison was standing. All eyes turned to the screeching tires. The blackened window came down, and Jamison saw Leaf in the driver’s seat.
“Get in,” Leaf said to his boss.
“What? What are you doing here? How’d you know I was here?” Jamison asked, still dizzy from Dax’s interrogation and confusing the men for maybe being two in the same.
“Come on!” Leaf pointed at the cameras that were still rolling.
Jamison got into the car, and Leaf pressed the gas pedal like he’d been waiting for such an incident all his life or maybe he’d done it before.
Jamison turned to look out the window and watched Dax watch him ride away.
“You got something against answering your phone?” Leaf asked.
Jamison ignored the question, but when they were out of the lot and driving up Peachtree, he turned to Leaf with his own question.
“How did you know I was there?”
“I’ve been calling you. I’m always calling you. You don’t answer.”
“Leaf!”
“I got a tip.”
“On me being at the jail? From who?”
“No, my tip was about Dax. I’ve had a tail on him since the courthouse thing. My tip said Dax had a tip about you. I just followed the cheese,” Leaf explained.
“The cheese?” Jamison looked out the window once more, remembered everything Dax had said. The smug look on his face. “Fuck! That motherfucker!”
“I told you to stay away from the jail,” Leaf said rather authoritatively, but Jamison was too busy hearing Dax in his brain to discern this. “Why did you go there?”
Jamison’s anger had him pulling out his phone, dialing a number.
“Send your guy in,” Jamison ordered into his phone to a voice that sounded garbled to Leaf. “Get Dax.”
“Who is that? Who is on the phone?” Leaf asked.
Jamison clicked the phone off and sat back in his seat stone-faced. “Just drive,” he said. “Drive.”
Kerry had rung the doorbell three times, knocked more than that. Now she was banging. When she was about to pull out her cell phone and call to reconfirm her reason for being at Jamison’s front door, the big block of wood opened just a few inches and the former secretary with poor letter-writing skills was on the other side with sleepy eyes.
“Yes?”
“I’m here to get Tyrian,” Kerry barked. She wasn’t the kind of woman who’d put her hand on her hip, but there it was. And her eyes were rolling, too. She had reason to be annoyed. She’d called ahead to let Jamison know she was on her way to retrieve her child after he’d picked him up from camp. She’d expected the boy to be waiting on the steps with his book bag dangling at his feet. That’s how they always did it. Then she wouldn’t have to speak to anyone in the house. Not Val, of course.
“Tyrian?”
Kerry’s eyes widened. Also out of character for the Southern belle was saying something nasty . . . but there the words were, right in her throat. Still, she decided not to let the situation pull her away from who she thought she was.
“He is here, right? Jamison picked him up from summer camp today. I just spoke to him. Told him I was on my way,” Kerry said.
“Oh, I didn’t know. I’ve been asleep,” Val said, stepping back and rubbing her stomach a little. “Our baby keeps me up all night.”
“Sure. So . . . Tyrian?” Kerry kind of shifted her eyes into the house.
“Well, Jamison left out a little while ago, but let me check to see if Tyrian is still here. He’s probably upstairs with Mrs. Taylor.”
Val was about to go into the house and close the door in Kerry’s face, but then she came up with a better way to put Kerry in her place.
“Come in and have a seat.” She opened the door and led Kerry into the living room.
They could hear Tyrian upstairs giggling.
“Oh, there he is,” Val said, acknowledging his laughter as if Jamison hadn’t told her Tyrian was in the room with his mother and asked her to have him ready to go when Kerry got there.
Kerry was steadily biting her lips and considering all the ways she’d talk about Val to Marcy later. And there would be much to say. In the living room, where Val was leading Kerry for no reason other than a show, there was a brand new fresco over the fireplace. It was a swirling mass of primary colors uniting separa
te images of Val and Jamison; she’d commissioned a painter to make it look like a professional portrait. Val had ordered it at the mall before the wedding. It looked like it.
“Mommy!” Tyrian hollered from the top of the steps, his head bobbing over a banister that was almost as big as he was.
“Hey, sugar bump!” Kerry called to her son, forgetting all about the garish painting and Val and her stomach.
Tyrian began to climb down the steps, but he didn’t have his backpack or the Braves baseball cap he’d been wearing when Kerry dropped him off that morning.
“Wait, honey, get your things,” Kerry said.
“I got ’em! I got ’em,” called a familiar voice.
Kerry and Val looked behind Tyrian at the top of the stairs and saw a face that served to unite them.
In a hot-pink silk muumuu with shiny silver jewelry and a brand-new jet-black wig was the mother-in-law.
A frown was too low of a calling to describe the look on Kerry and Val’s faces. Even a scowl was a slight. It was the countenance of hidden rage.
Tyrian was smiling.
“I don’t want to go home, Mama,” he pleaded, climbing down the steps with Mrs. Taylor holding his hand.
“But you have to. There’s camp tomorrow.”
“I don’t want to go to camp. I want to stay here with Grandma T! We were having fun. Weren’t we, Grandma T?”
“Yes, we were, sweet baby boy! Grandma always has fun with her precious grandbaby. Because he’s the most special little boy in the world.”
Tyrian beamed, standing next to his grandmother at the bottom of the steps. When she’d gotten sick at his birthday party, Tyrian had been beside himself. He didn’t understand the possibility of death, but the idea of his grandmother feeling any pain was pain enough for him.
“No camp, no allowance. No allowance, no more apps for your iPad,” Kerry listed her common sanctions.
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