Commitment (79 page)
Authors: Nia Forrester
g
It wasn’t as though he’d never
been
inside
a police station before.
Or even
been booked and fingerprinted.
Back in D.C., in his old stomping grounds, he’d gotten into a
lot of
scrapes that ended up just like th
is one.
But he was kid then
and
d
idn’t know
or d
idn’t care about what it meant.
And in
his
neighborhood, getting picked up by the police was almost a
rite of passage
.
This time it was anything but.
There were a fe
w reporter
s on the perp walk and a couple of camera crews from MTV and the local news.
T
hey took their pict
ures and yelled their questions
but
he ignored them.
Inside
they took his
mug shots and fingerprints and
sealed his
watch, chain and
wedding ring
in an envelope
.
He talked to an officer and, with
Doug sitting next to him, declined to answer any questions
and was put in a cell.
It
was more like a cage, really—
made
out of the same
chain link
material that surrounded
construction
sites.
Everyone else had bee
n cleared out, so he was alone.
Doug came back to talk to him and he finally hea
rd more about Keisha’s charges.
She said she was
drunk and resisted his advances;
that he
didn’t listen when she said no.
That he tore her underwear and forced himself
into
her, forced her to perform oral sex, and then kicked her out of his hotel room in
the early hours of the morning.
She said she didn’t tell
anyone because she was ashamed.
She was reporting it now because he’d threatened to assault her when she saw him in California and she was afraid
for her life.
Shawn listened to whol
e recitation with no reaction.
It was hard to believe all of these so-called ‘facts’ were supposed to be about him.
“I can tell you right now,” Doug
said, a hand on his shoulder.
“I’m very encourage
d.
There’s lots of
holes
here.
Lots of holes.”
Shawn nodded
, uninterested
.
“Could y
ou call my wife when you leave?
Let her know what’s going on?”
“Of course.”
“Thanks.”
He leaned back and yawned.
The bench he was sitting on was
dirty, the floor was sticky and h
e was tired.
But
he
was
also
strangely calm.
It was as though all of this, all this drama, had absolutely nothing to do wi
th him.
H
e was
merely
a spectator.
Doug and the cops and everyone else around; they were the players and he was just a part of the audience.
“So I’
ll see you in court tomorrow,”
Doug stood and gave him a
brief
smile.
“We’ll have you out of here by noon.”
Associated Press
Dateline: New York
, NY
Smooth
Faces Rape Charge
A warrant was issued yesterday for the arrest of chart-topping rapper K
Smooth
on charges of rape and sodomy.
K
Smooth
, whose real name is Kendall Gardner was expected to surrender to authorities and spend the night in
jail as of Wednesday evening.
After learning that the ch
a
rges were pending, K
Smooth
returned to New York from Los Angeles where he was promoting his new record label, So Def Records.
No details are available yet about the alleged incident or the status of K
-
Smooth
’s engagements across the country.
K
Smooth
debuted near the top of the “Billboard” album chart more than eight years ago but has recently seen unprecedented critical and commercial success with his ‘Fire Next Time’
CD
.
He
was once
described
by
Newsweek
as the
“voice of social consciousness” in what some
say
is an otherwi
se hedonistic hip-hop culture.
K
Smooth
is married to
Riley
Gardner, a writer at
Power to the People
, a progressive Afric
an-American political magazine.
His mother-in-law is renowned radical feminist Lorna
Terry
who has described rape as being “the male species’ most potent weapon in
the
ongoing gender-based
warfare
” being waged
against women
around the world
.
He wasn’t out by noon.
After a night spent sleeping exactly where he’d been put after booking, sometime the next morning
he was transported to court in the back of a van with a bunch of other guys, each of them chained together and to the bench they were made to
sit on.
Most were brothers who looked bored with the whole scene, like they’d been thr
ough it a million times before.
They all
looked at him
with recognition in their eyes
, but no one
acknowledged
that they knew who he w
as.
From the van they were put in a long narrow hallway with doors on both ends, waiting
to be taken into the courtroom.
By then,
Sh
awn had lost all sense of time.
When the guards were
fitting
his leg-irons, some of the brothers
’
eyes fell to
his boots.
He’d bought them in L.A. no more than two weeks ago, and they st
ill looked brand spanking new.
They’d cost him over
seven
hundred dollars.
For a lack of that amount of money, more than half of
the men in
t
here
with him
wouldn’t make bail today.
And he would walk out of there, their freedom on his feet.
When he was up,
Doug
made a two-minute speech about
his
not being a flight risk and his willingness to surrender his passport and the prosecutor made a brief
and half-hearted
counter-argument.
Shawn guessed that
Rikers’ Island was not particularly excited about making accommodations for a high-profile inmate who would likely need to be in extra-special protective custody.
The judge set his bail at two hundred and f
ifty thousand, and he was done.
S
uddenly, he
was too exhausted to
keep his eyes open.
Doug went with him to claim his
jewelry
and then he was stepping
out into the real world again.
There were more reporters this time
and a few
television
crews, including MTV, VH1 and BET
.
Doug put a hand on his back and guided him through
the crowd.
Shawn
tuned
everything out the way he sometimes did when h
e was onstage or at a photo-op.
Then there was a Lincoln Town Car in his path
with an open door
and
the next thing he knew
B
rendan
had
pulled him in
to the backseat
.
“You a’ight, man?”
He nodded.
“What time is it?” he asked
.
He’d forgotten
that he had his own watch back now.
Brendan patt
ed him on the back and checked.
“Four thirty-seven.”
The whole day had passe
d and he almost hadn’t noticed.
If anyone had asked him to guess, he would have said it was abo
ut twelve-thirty at the latest.
Doug got in the front seat and they
pulled off into traffic heading for Manhattan
.
When they got to
Doug’s office
, Shawn realized something.
He smelled like jail
.
“You don’t have to come up,” Doug sa
id, before getting out himself.
“Just call me later when you’ve gotten some rest and we’ll talk.”
Shawn nodded.
“C’mon, man.
Let’s go.”
Brendan w
as pushing him toward the door. They were getting out too.
“
Riley
’s waiting for you.”
Shawn got out of the car obedientl
y, and that was when he saw their car
parked at the
curb along with Brendan’s SUV.
There were two heads in the
Bentley.
Riley
got out and hugged him.
His arms felt
so
heavy
, he could barely hug her back.
She looked into his eyes like she was searching for whatever afflicted him.
“Is he okay?” she asked Brendan.
“He’ll be a’ight.
Probably
just tired,” Brendan said.
“Call me when you get up there.”
Up where
?
Shawn wondered.
“Sure.
Thanks Brendan.”
When
Riley
led him to the car, he saw who the
second head was.
It was Lorna
.
She gave him a wan smile.
“Hey,” she said.
“How you
doin
’?”
Shawn tried to respond, but his eyelids were heav
y. All he could do was blink and each time, it became more difficult to open his eyes again.
Riley
her
ded him
into
the back
and she got back up front behind the steering whe
el, pulling away from the curb.
The urge he had to sl
eep was even more powerful now.
Irresistible, in fact
.
He lay acros
s the seat and closed his eyes.
The last thing he remembered was the worried exchange between
Riley
and Lorna.
Mom, what’s the matter with him?
Shush, he’ll be fine.
g
Riley
sat and watche
d Shawn sleep.
He’d been
out
for more than
eighteen hours now.
Hadn’t even
woken up to go to the bathroom.
After the drive upstate, she and Lorna had to practically drag him into the house and lay him across t
he bed.
And there he’d stayed.
The night in jail seemed
to have shaken him up a little.
Probably not the conditions of the jail itself but more likely the reality of being charged with a crime he didn’t commit had finally hit home.
She’d been worried enough to make Lorna call Dr. Spacey who assured her that it was likely just a combination of st
ress and common old exhaustion.
People were known to sleep for
entire
days when they were under inordinate amounts of stress,
Lorna had reported cheerfully.
But still
Riley
sat and watched.
She
’d
left him only when she had to sleep
herself—
on
the daybed by the
window
—
or
to sh
ower and get something to eat.