A Moment of Silence: Midnight III (The Midnight Series Book 3) (9 page)

“Step six steps to the side,” I told him. He didn’t obey.

“My shotty ayah,” he said with a new confidence, requesting his gun back from me like it was some even trade.

“Nah. You can’t call it,” I said, reminding him who was in control. He wasn’t.

“Bretheren,” he said, as though he and I could somehow be brothers.

His two men made a dash for their weapons. I banged the hostage in the head, collapsing him, spun around, and shotty-whipped his boys before either of them could get a grip on the AK or the nine. Three men down, knocked out and bleeding without shots being fired.

I heard the voices of women reacting, gasping, whispering, chattering behind a closed door. They didn’t open it. I grabbed the other two guns. I was headed down, hoping the exit door was the exit to the streets and that it was open and not bolted.

On the lower level, the Red Flamingo stepped out of the dark corner, interrupting my stride. Still wearing her “fuck me” minidress, her cobra keys now around her neck like a heavy necklace. She dragged a red laundry bag and was holding a small brown shopping bag in her other hand. I pushed past her, shoving open the exit door. It wouldn’t open.

“Open the door,” I told her, losing patience.

“Take dis. Believe me. You want to live, ya hafta carry out the red laundry bag. When the beast see dis red bag, dem no touch ya.”

“And the other bag?” I asked.

“Your dinner.” She smiled.

“Open the door,” I told her again.

“Remember I,” she said roughly, like it was an order. “Simanique is da name my mum gave me.”

I put the weapons down, facing the opposite wall from where she stood. She was staring at the guns like she was somehow attracted to them. I looked in the red bag. There was folded laundry. It wasn’t mine. I was rifling through it, a couple of sheets and pillowcases, inserting my hand searching for anything else hidden that I might not see at first glance.

“Me luv you, ayah,” she said powerfully.

“Open the door,” I told her. “You don’t know me.”

“I know three tings,” she said, her hand resting on the door after setting the shopping bag down. “One.” She pulled down one finger. Obviously she liked to count and list.

“I saw you praying that way. Me never see a man do dat before. Two, you write some lucky one a long letter; me want that for I. Tree, you went up in the hole.” She pointed towards the ceiling. “And you come back out alive with all dem guns. No one wins over Redverse’s brothers. You did. So you win I.”

She turned the key in the lock. The heavy door creaked open. I pushed it with my gloved hands.

“The red bag,” she insisted again. “You gwon live so I could love you.” I took the red bag for one reason. If she was right, and if the
police were outside her door, and if I could walk out past them, I could make it to the mailbox, which was my only goal. After that, I didn’t give a fuck.

Outside it was still hot. Headed down the alley towards the front of the Laundromat, I could still hear the sounds of Brooklyn late-night street life. Looked left, looked right, without turning my head in either direction. New cop on the corner on foot, tall and slim. The one before him was short and slim. Cruiser still parked at the opposite corner. Now the mailbox was right in front of me. Walking out, calm ’n cool, I placed the red laundry bag on the ground beside the mailbox. I pulled the letter out of my pocket, pulled the handle, opening the mailbox, and dropped my letter inside.

Relieved, I checked inside the food bag before taking another step: two bottles of water, and food wrapped in foil. Walking and watching and being watched, I looked up. Man on the roof of the Laundromat. Dressed in all black, he blended in with the sky. But I could see the outline of his physique. I took him for one of “Verse’s” men.

When an empty city bus rolled in slowly, my mind moved swiftly. Picking up my pace, I darted down the next alley while the foot cop’s view of me was blocked by the bus. Squatted there, I took some seconds to get my mind right. I felt my hunger; I hadn’t eaten since early afternoon. A minute later, I heard the voice of my second wife in my mind.

“So fucking cool,” she would often say about me. “But sometimes,” she had said softly, right before we last parted, “you have to throw cool away for a little while and do what’s best to survive.”

I ate.

5. TETRIS

Their side-room investigation pit was still empty, except for me in cuffs seated in the chair and the decaying burger on the table. The police detectives probably went to reshuffle their deck and would come storming back in here with a different approach. It didn’t matter.

As I drifted off into a half-sleep, I suddenly realized that my mind had been measuring up the murder and the steps I took immediately afterward, as well as which tactics and strategies I should and shouldn’t use now. So focused on that, I didn’t focus on the reality, the impact or the results of my having entered Midnight Wash, that Laundromat. Now I reflected clearly. Now, I concluded that this investigation is not about the homicide I committed.

It was about the drug den that I’d unknowingly entered, to write a letter to Umma and to wash off the evidence of the murder. Unusually sharp usually, I didn’t pick up on what my young life in Brooklyn had already schooled me on. Any empty business is a front for some illegal business, like a corner grocery store with very few groceries on the shelf and no everyday customers. Or a specialty shop whose window displays and decorations never changed because what’s in their windows ain’t what they selling. If I had lived in the neighborhood the Laundromat was in, I would have noticed. But I was just a man on a mission passing through. Now that I think about it, the three machines in a row that had a sign
saying they were out of order could have had something big with high street value stashed inside—cash, drugs, guns, whatever. The whole switching of the exit signs and locking and bolting down the doors like that wasn’t a crazy fucking fire hazard should’ve tipped me off. If one of their enemies set that place ablaze, they would all be trapped. And what about all that bullshit about the red bag? If carrying the red bag meant “no man, no beast ah touch ya,” no street cats or cops in other words, would touch me, that had to mean that the cops and the dealers were working together and what they had in common was the red signal and the contents of the red bag.

What about the barefoot women who never opened the door even though they had to have heard the fight and the commotion? Were they also locked in? What else were they concealing and doing? Were there any men behind that door with them?

Now that I was alone in the room, I began to see some of the pieces of the setup. The Red Flamingo was their lookout girl. But she was a weak link in their chain. She was their untrained trusted girl soldier, although I didn’t know why any man would have his woman as the face of his dangerous illegal business dealings, surrounded by other men, blood or no blood relation.

Glad I didn’t fuck her. I didn’t desire her or feel tempted by her. She wanted the dick-down so bad, if I was a weaker man she would’ve had me off guard and half naked. After the stroking, I’d be soaking in my own blood when her man’s men came dropping down from the opening in the ceiling like spider assassins.

There is a difference between men who are believers and men who are not. Believing men don’t take whatever is being offered just because it’s available. The believers believe that there are three people in the room whenever any unmarried man and unmarried woman are in a room alone. The third one is the devil.

Believing men restrain first, and resist and select and take women as wives wisely, with all of their senses. Our reward is peace of mind, peace within our family, and also, Allah’s mercy and protection.

There is a difference between niggas with weapons and trained fighters, armed or unarmed. No matter how much attitude or grimy looks or slick talk any untrained nigga has—and no matter if he is holding a stockpile of weapons and ammunition—a trained warrior will disarm and disable or dead him in seconds, and everything he has or had becomes mine . . . if I want it.

*  *  *

“It stinks.” Hours later, the morning after the murder, two police in plain street clothes, wearing their badges like necklaces, entered the room. It was their beef stinking up their windowless side room. Now rotting meat mixed with the smell of their coffee and sugar doughnuts and the residue of their cigarettes, and a trace of alcohol on at least one of ’em. I had my head down on the table, not asleep anymore; my eyes were open and I was listening with my mind alert. Calm now, my thoughts dropping down rapidly, then shifting right into place like Tetris.

“Wake up! We don’t sleep. You don’t sleep, either,” one of them said.

But of course I knew they had slept. Why else would they leave me sitting in the chair for eight hours? Seated straight now, I put my blank face back on.

“Get Officer Darby to escort this perp to the bathroom. It fucking stinks in here. Smells like he shitted in his diaper.”

In the bathroom built with cement cinder blocks and no windows, I was about “to handle my business.” First time in my life I’d ever been in a public bathroom with other men who were not there to handle their own business in their own stall or individual urinal. These cops were here to watch me.

“Bet you didn’t know you have to ask every time you want to go to the potty and pee-pee,” one of ’em joked.

“If you don’t cooperate, you’ll be doing this all day every day for the rest of your life.” He exaggerated his threat. Still cuffed, I was standing, still adjusting. In a room where there was no way out
except through the front door, in a heavily armed police precinct, where these two uniformed cops could’ve just posted at that front door and waited for me to finish, they chose to enter with me. One of them was walking in and out of each stall collecting the toilet paper.

“If you want tissue for your ass, you gotta open your fucking mouth and ask me for it,” he said, juggling the rolls, dropping one or two and leaving them on the floor. I didn’t reach down for it. “Oh yeah, I forgot. You don’t have a name and you can’t talk,” he said sarcastically. “Go ahead. Take a dump. We ain’t got all day.”

He watched. Must’ve been some twisted pleasure for him to see if I could manage in the bathroom cuffed. As I walked in a stall he ordered, “Leave the door open.” I pulled down my jeans and eased down my boxers. When I was done, I realized I couldn’t wipe my ass while cuffed. He was standing in the stall with me now, laughing.

“Hey shitty ass,” he said. “Need some help? Ask me for it.” I didn’t. He uncuffed me but stood in the stall immediately in front of me. “I’ll let you wipe your ass if you ask me for the tissue,” he smirked. I didn’t ask. I stepped out of my jeans and removed my boxers and used them to wipe my ass. I threw the boxers in the toilet same as though they were toilet tissue. I flushed with my foot, and didn’t pay attention to the toilet clogging as I climbed back into my jeans. Now me and him are face to face in the tight stall. “Don’t you dare glare at me,” he said. “Hands!” he ordered and cuffed me. I waited till he stepped back out. He did. I moved past the cop to use the sink to wash my hands, and even washed the shit off the cuffs.

“You should’ve emptied out the soap too,” his partner said, laughing at his failed attempt to get me to break my silence.

Escorted out of the bathroom like a toddler, I listened with my brain and not my heart as they talked dumb shit.

“Fucking animal, I’d put a bullet between his eyes if he ever glanced at my wife,” the cop who’d stood in the stall with me said to the other.

He has a wife?
I thought to myself. I pity her. She probably respects her husband, the police officer. She probably believes he’s out
serving those who need help and protecting those who need to be rescued. She probably cooked him breakfast this morning admiring him and gave him a kiss and a lunch before he left, while not knowing he’s just a fool who spent his morning on a black man’s dick.

This is how they break men
, I thought to myself. Being cuffed and trapped was expected. But what they kill you with is what no decent men would ever do, or ever expect to be done. It’s the extra shit that has nothing to do with being questioned, or with being charged with a crime, or even with being sentenced or with serving time as a just punishment.

*  *  *

Inside the still stinking side room a detective spread some photos on the table. By now, I had observed that the detectives were more focused and serious than the regular uniformed cops. Yet all cops are cops to me.

These are narcs
, I thought to myself. Drug detectives looking for drug dealers, drugs, and information leading them to a bust. I was clear now.
But one or more of them might be a drug dealer himself
, I thought. A dirty cop pretending to be a detective while dealing drugs on the low, or at least by protecting drug dealers on the low. Particularly, drug dealers on Redverse’s team.
The ones carrying the red bag
, I said to myself.

“All that’s required here are your fingers since your jaw is jammed shut. Point out which man or which men in these photos you recognize. Smartest thing you can do for yourself is to separate yourself from these guys.
Give them up. Cooperate with us
, and you can walk out of here a free man soon,” he said.

In the photos were four different dreds, and one Caesar cut, all dark-skinned and Jamaican. I recognized two of them. The first was Shotgun; the other was AK-47. The other two I didn’t know. I figured it was Redverse and one of his lieutenants, or maybe another
one of his brothers or even his business partner. Neither me nor my face responded to the photos.

“You could move the photos around. Put ’em in the right order for us,” the detective said. “The bigger the boss, the bigger the bang, the better the bargaining chip for you. Your freedom is based on this negotiation.” I didn’t speak. The officer who was trying to do all the convincing continued, as the other detective’s face and body grew more and more impatient. He stood stiff, fingering his holster. The first detective threw a small pad and a piece of a pencil on the table.