Endangered (12 page)

“I will give you just one more fact,” and he raised his index finger by way of promising. “The leading cause of death for black males fifteen to thirty-four is homicide. Not cancer, not heart disease, not old age. It is murder. Most of us expect to grow old. Outlive our parents. Have children and grandchildren, even. This is becoming less and less of a reality for the black male.”

In response, Tiffany Palmer broke a cardinal rule of broadcast journalism: there was complete silence, dead air. Her eyes went from Roger to Calvin, then settled on Janae.

The frazzled voice in her earpiece brought her back to the moment. She was on air. The three guests sitting across from her all looked at her with questioning eyes. The voice commanded her to ask a question, make a statement. “Fill the damn air, Tiff! We have forty seconds to the next commercial.”

Tiffany Palmer finally spoke, to Roger. “As a journalist, I didn't realize how . . . I feel somewhat shell-shocked, embarrassed honestly,” she said. Her body shifted slightly toward Janae. “As the mother of the boy at the center of this case, what are your thoughts as you sit here and listen to all the statistics your attorney just mentioned?”

Oh no. No, no, no. Not again
.
Roger told me I wouldn't have to talk
. Janae stole a peek at Roger. If he was terrified about what might come out of her mouth, he sure didn't show it. She could feel Calvin's eyes on her but she didn't look at him. She took in a deep breath and exhaled.

“My son is innocent of the charges against him. He is only fifteen years old. He is my baby.” She could feel a lump forming in her throat. “He is in the system right now. He is, right now, one of those boys that Roger”—and she abruptly diverted her gaze to him—“excuse me, I mean Mr. Whitford, talked about. But we will prove his innocence. And that is the day I look forward to.”

The red light on top of the camera went off. Tiffany Palmer pulled the piece from her ear. “That was good. That was good.”

The two women locked eyes for a pregnant moment. In that moment everything that separated the worlds of the two women faded away.

Roger reached for Janae's clenched fists, which lay in her lap, and squeezed them. “I could not have said that any better myself.”

Janae laughed nervously. “I hope that is it for me,” she said, relieved.

Calvin chimed in his agreement. “You really showed the human side to the story.” He patted her on the back. “I'd say you're a pro at this.”

Her back stiffened at his touch. Her nose scrunched at his words, as if she smelled something rotten. “I just want my son home.”

“Well, that is why we are here,” Calvin said. “To get your son back.”

Janae's face softened slightly. The enormity of his words hit her in the place that she struggled to contain since all of this began; that tender delicate place where she knew that if something didn't give soon she would lose her mind. She adjusted herself by straightening her back and looking Tiffany Palmer directly in the eye. They weren't done, and she was prepared for the second round.

Chapter Seventeen

ROGER ENDED THE CALL ON HIS CELL PHONE AND GRINNED A TOOTHY GRIN at Calvin and Janae.

“What? What is it?” Calvin returned the smile.

“I have two pieces of good news.” He looked at Janae, who appeared relieved the interview with
GDA
was over. “Well, maybe I have good news and bad news.”

Janae looked at her watch. It was already past nine.

“That was Margaret. CNN wants to interview us, too.”

“When?” Calvin said enthusiastically.

Roger's grin widened. There were even touches of red creeping into his cheeks. “Well . . . now. As soon as we can get there.”

“Look,” Janae said through pursed lips. “These interviews are fine and all that. And I know I agreed to this. But I don't see how they are going to help Malik. He has a hearing in a week to see if he is going to be tried as an adult, and there's this guy—” She stopped mid-sentence when she noticed Roger and Calvin's eyes narrowing.

“What guy?” Calvin demanded.

“I thought we agreed that you would leave the investigation to the police and me. To us”—Roger wagged his index finger back and forth between Calvin and himself.

Janae told them about Kim and what she had seen.

Calvin slipped one hand in his pants pocket and with the other rubbed his chin in frustration.

Janae felt something else emanating from Calvin's body language.

“Well,” she shrieked, “I wanted to actually have something concrete to tell you!”

“No, that's not how this works. Anything you know, we need to know it
immediately
,” Calvin said forcefully.

She put up her hands in surrender. “Okay, fine. But”—and she pointed to her watch—“I'm supposed to talk to my friend's sister today. And I am not missing it.”

“
I
will be talking to your friend's sister,” Calvin insisted.

“I don't know,” Janae wondered out loud. “Kim isn't expecting you. I'm not sure if she'll even talk to you.”

“Then we'll call your friend to give them the heads-up that I'll be there. This is too important to Malik's case.” Calvin paused. “We need you safe, Janae. So we'll do the next interview, and then we'll go together.”

Janae studied Calvin. “All right. We'll do it your way.”

“Besides, this interview with CNN is not going to take long,” Roger said. “All three of us will go and we'll be out of there in half an hour, forty-five minutes tops. All of us need to be there. This is for Malik, too.”

Janae shook her head. “I don't see it, not yet,” she said, followed by a pause. “But I trust you.”

“Good,” Roger's voice bellowed through the hallway. “That's all I need. And, by the way, you are not off the hook. You're not a detective.”

Janae smiled sheepishly.

“Rog, I really think with this CNN interview you're going to need to get right to the point. We have to keep in mind the full message that we want to deliver in order to get the public debate really cranking the way we want,” Calvin said.

“I hear you. Maybe I should pick up where I left off on
GDA
?”

“Exactly. Treat the two interviews like one extended interview. You should touch on the statistics but then jump right into your views on black boys' lives being endangered.”

“I can't exactly force-feed the guy the interview questions I want.”

“You can parlay every question, though, into a platform to advance our position,” Calvin retorted.

Roger smacked Calvin on the back. “I knew there was a reason we wanted you on our team.”

Calvin feigned smugness, tugging at the lapels of his suit jacket. “Well, that's just what I do.”

A smile crept onto Janae's face, and she turned her back to him so he couldn't see it.

Chapter Eighteen

ROGER, JANAE, AND CALVIN WERE SEATED AT AN OVAL-SHAPED GLASS-TOP table on the CNN set. Janae could see her legs through the glass. There was the beginning of a run in her pantyhose near her left ankle and she tucked her left leg underneath her right to hide it.
Ugh! Six bucks for new pantyhose.
Her hands were clenched together in her lap.

Across from them sat a CNN news anchor. His stark silver hair was at odds with his youthful face. He wore a light-gray suit, a white shirt, and a tie as blue as his eyes. When their eyes met he smiled at Janae. She returned the smile.

“Would you explain to our viewers why the Endangered Species Act is the right law to address the plight of young black males in the U.S.?”

The question was like manna from heaven. It allowed Roger to run with Calvin's advice. “Now, let's compare them to white boys of the same age. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, black boys from twelve through nineteen are
fifteen times
more likely to be killed than white boys!” The statistic erupted from his mouth. “It's not pretty—they are
fifteen times
more likely to be gunned down. That is a huge difference.”

The news anchor's brow furrowed. “That is quite a significant difference—but doesn't that make it counterintuitive that you would choose to represent one of the defendants accused of murder?”

Janae stirred in her seat. Calvin brushed his shoulder against hers. Her head moved slightly in his direction.

Roger smiled easily as he scooted slightly forward in his seat. “Two things,” he said and held up two fingers. “First, my client is innocent, and the facts will establish that. Second, homicide among young black males is a symptom of a much greater problem. When Congress passed the ESA it said that as a country we value animal and plant life so much that we are willing to take steps to protect it. All I am saying is that we need to be proactive about valuing the lives of black boys.”

“What you just said begs the question—how do you value their lives if you are comparing them to animals. How do you expect the American public, let alone the court system, to take you seriously with such an outrageous claim?”

Roger's eyes widened. “Outrageous? No. I'm very serious. All I am doing is taking a concept that we are all familiar with and saying, hey, there's a real problem over here. If we can set up a whole system to address endangered animals, then surely we can do the same for our fellow humans. That's what I am saying. That's the comparison.”

The news anchor inched forward, toward Roger. His pen was point down on the desk. He tapped it against the glass a few times. “Let's go all the way down this road. With your theory you would have the government set up another system, or agency, some new bureaucracy, to protect black boys.”

Roger nodded vigorously. “Absolutely. And it would be there for any group that has been determined through some established process to be threatened by the very functioning of our society.” Roger tapped his index finger on the glass table. “This idea is not completely foreign. For decades, centuries really, Native Americans have had special rights and exemptions from state and federal laws due to their unique status. The purpose of these special rights as they relate to fishing, hunting, and water access, is to preserve the very existence of their unique culture. African-American boys are also a part of a unique culture that needs protecting.”

“Well, we are coming close to needing to wrap this up. You've made some compelling arguments. But it seems to me you're shifting the problem to the government and the American people when what we have here is really a parenting problem,” the news anchor retorted. “We've all heard the stats before—that over seventy percent of black kids are raised by single and overwhelmingly poor mothers.” He rattled off the statistic as though he was reading a grocery list. “Isn't that the problem? The breakdown in the African-American family. Too many black males simply discarding their own kids. So why is that America's problem?”

Without missing a beat, Roger said what he believed since he started his human rights practice: “Because America helped create the problem . . .”

“Why not just trust the current system to work the kinks out?”

“Those ‘kinks' you're talking about are actually a bias—a bias against black boys, an often subtle but sometimes overt bigotry in our criminal justice system.”

“Bigots in the criminal justice system?”

“No, no! You miss my point—”

The camera narrowed in on the news anchor as he cut Roger short. “We're out of time. Thank you for sharing your views. We'll have to have you back on as both the criminal and federal cases move forward.” The anchor shifted his body to another camera and spoke directly into it: “And after the break, we have with us Republican senator Chuck Grassley, who will share his views on President Obama's signing into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.”

Roger snatched the microphone off of his lapel. He never believed the criminal justice system is made up of bigots. The problem was a vicious cycle of ignoring the facts; pretending to not see that the prisons are flooded with brown faces and the consequences it's having on an entire community.

Calvin reached over and patted his back.

“It was a good interview,” Janae finally said.

This time Roger rolled his eyes with about as much attitude as two black women with sore feet.

Janae looked at him and burst out laughing. “Excuse you,” she said with her hand on her hip and a smile that stretched over her entire face. She was beaming.

Calvin joined in, and then Roger, if a little reluctantly, and soon the three were in a fit of laughter. A few CNN employees stood up from low cubicle walls to see what all the ruckus was about. One uptight woman looked at them disapprovingly and had the nerve to point to an exit sign about fifty feet away. Her actions made Janae laugh all the louder as she turned her back to the woman, whose eyes were now bulging.

Suddenly, Janae got unnaturally quiet.
How could she be laughing about anything with Malik locked up
?

“Janae, are you all right? You look like you've just seen a ghost,” Roger said as his laughter subsided to bursts of low giggles.

She shrugged her shoulders. “No, I'm fine, I'm fine. It's nothing.” She was a lousy liar. She wrung her hands together and then began to smooth out her dress, purposely avoiding eye contact with Calvin and Roger.

Calvin placed his hand on her petite shoulder. “We still have the hearing in a few days, and I am still determined to win it.” He smiled. “When we get back to Philly, we'll talk to your friend's sister.” He paused, his finger pressed against his lips. “Tameka! That's it. We'll talk to Tameka's sister.”

Janae offered a weak smile, noticing that he had a good memory.

Roger gritted his teeth with renewed energy. “I agree with Calvin. We might have gotten a little roughed up by that asshole, but we will stay the course, all the way.” He swung his right arm in the air like a fairy godmother granting a wish. “Everything is going to work out. You'll have your son, and Lady Justice will begin to lose her damn eyesight.”