A Good Dude (15 page)

She sat there in a state of suspended emotion. On one level she understood that she really was in the middle of a police raid. But from a logical standpoint, she knew this couldn’t be. She looked around at all of the people in her apartment. It was surreal. Most of them still had on masks. They wore their badges on a dog chain hanging from their necks. They all toted weapons, enough to take out a whole camp of terrorists, it seemed.

And Candace was in the midst of them shivering like a wet kitten. Tears and fear marred her delicate features. These people had come to kill her baby. She knew that as well as she knew her first name.

“I’m Detective Judkins,” white shirt said. He presented a small stack of papers Candace hadn’t noticed he was holding. “This is a search warrant for your apartment.” He held the documents in front of her face, but the legal jargon meant nothing to Candace. She didn’t even really look at it.

“I didn’t do anything,” she whimpered.

“What’s your name?” the detective asked. “Cuh-Candace.”

“What’s your last name?”

“Hendricks.”

“I’m gonna have to search you, Candace,” Judkins said. “Is it all right if I get a female officer to search you?” He looked back to his minions. “TJ, can you search her for us?”

TJ wore the same dark attire as her comrades, but she didn’t have on a mask. She had blue eyes, blonde hair, and a sharp nose. She walked up to Candace and holstered her weapon.

“Could you stand up, please, ma’am?”

Candace shook her head. “Please. Please don’t do this.”

“Could you stand up, please, ma’am?”

“Go ahead, Candace,” Judkins said. “It’ll be okay.” He spoke with the patience of a preschool teacher.

Candace stood slowly, wringing her hands as if she were arthritic. She looked to the detective for respite. “I didn’t do anything,” she moaned.

“It’s okay, Candace. TJ’s just going to check you for any drugs or weapons you might have.”

“I don’t have anything.”

“It’ll be okay.”

“Could you turn around, please?” the woman known as TJ instructed.

Candace turned slowly. Every eye was on her. She shook her head and looked to the ceiling rather than meet them. If there was a God, He would save her now. She was one of the innocent. She was being unlawfully persecuted.

“Do you have anything sharp in your pockets? Any needles?”

Candace didn’t even have pockets. She looked back to the woman, hoping she would see the sincerity in her eyes. “No. But I didn’t do anything.
Please listen to me
.”

“Could you raise your arms, please?”

Candace did as she was told. She stretched out her arms and looked up to the ceiling again. This was God’s time to shine. She stood there, like Jesus on the cross. Tears snaked down her face like blood from a crown of thorns.

“Please . . . .”

But the hands were on her then. They felt under her arms, slid down her sides. They patted her hips, went down her legs all the way to her ankles. The hands were between her legs, then around her stomach and under her breasts.

Candace didn’t think she’d ever felt so violated, so insecure, so exposed. She cried. She cried like when she was five and her mother told her Daddy was going to live in heaven now. Her head fell and bobbed up and down with her jagged breaths.

She wanted to wipe her nose but was afraid the move might get her shot. Everything she thought of doing might get her shot, so she just stood there and took it. But it was over with fairly quickly. The female officer backed away and Candace turned to look at the detective.

“Sit down,” he said. “You got any paper towels in the kitchen? TJ, can we get her something so she can wipe her face?”

The female officer walked off in the direction of the bathroom, and the detective took a seat on the couch next to Candace. He crossed his legs and turned his body towards her.

“Please tell me what’s going on,” Candace pleaded.

The detective looked through his papers as if he had no idea himself. “We’re here because we believe there to be drugs in this apartment,” he said bluntly.

Candace’s thoughts immediately raced to Rilla’s duffle bag. Her eyes might have flicked in that direction, too; she wasn’t sure. But they couldn’t pin that on her, could they? She’d never touched Rilla’s bag. For a moment, Candace thought she might actually be okay. But there was more.

“An informant has identified this apartment as a location for drug activity.”

Informant
? Candace’s mind raced. Rilla hardly ever sold drugs out of the house. Even if he did, Rilla was already in jail. Why were they just now coming to arrest him for it?

“Furthermore,” Judkins went on, “the informant has identified you, ‘a pregnant girl named Candace,’ as the person he buys drugs from.”

That’s when the world fell from beneath her. Candace almost passed out. A timely kick from the baby was probably the only thing that saved her.

An informant?

I got something for you.

“Listen,” the detective said. “Before we get into the whos, whys and whats, I need to let you know that you
are
under arrest for suspicion of drug trafficking. You have the right to remain silent. Anything . . . .”

Candace stared at his mouth in abject horror. She saw his lips moving, knew he was saying something devastatingly important, but she didn’t hear anything past
you are under arrest
. Not even in her most bizarre dream would she have imagined this. Not in her most convoluted nightmare.

“
I didn’t sell any drugs!
” she cried.

“If you chose to speak without an attorney present, anything you say can be held against you in the court of law . . . .”

“
I didn’t do anything!
” Candace wailed. “
I never sold any drugs!
My boyfriend did, but he’s in jail already.” She felt like she was begging for her life. This was awesomely stupid. Insanely ridiculous. What informant were they talking about? And why would they take his word for it?

The female officer came back and handed Candace a small towel from her restroom. Candace wiped her face with it and blew her nose. It was a loud honk that sounded like a mother goose’s mating call. She couldn’t get her hands to stop shaking. Her teeth were actually chattering.

“Who’s your boyfriend?” Detective Judkins wanted to know.

“His name is Raul.
He’s a rapper
.
Rilla
. Everybody knows him. He just went to jail a couple weeks ago.” Candace sang like a bird. The words flew past her lips so fast she didn’t know what was coming next. She didn’t know if what she was doing could be considered
snitching
, but she didn’t give a damn either way. She wasn’t going to jail for Rilla or anyone else. If she had to stand up in court and point him out and say,
That guy was selling drugs, your honor: Raul Canales
, she would do it in a heartbeat.

“So you never sold any drugs yourself?” Judkins asked her.

Candace stared at him like he asked if she was down with a threesome. “No.
Never! I swear to God
, I never even touched that stuff. I never sold drugs to anybody! Who told you that?”

“Are there any drugs in the house?” the detective asked.

Candace’s eyes flicked again, and her heart didn’t beat at all for a few seconds. Her hesitance wasn’t lost on the Mr. Judkins.

“Does
Rilla
have any drugs still here?” he asked, and that was the out Candace was waiting for. She nodded, and then another wave of sobs wrecked her features. She lowered her head and moaned into the face towel.

“Candace.”

She looked up and met the detective’s eyes. They were gray and green, with crow’s feet in the corners.

“We have a warrant to search this whole apartment,” he said. “We can run through here and tear everything up like you see on TV, or you can be a good girl and tell me where Rilla’s drugs are. Either way, we’re not leaving without them.”

“In the cl-closet,” Candace said. “A bl-black duffle bag.” She knew she was sealing Rilla’s fate, but self-preservation had to come first. For her and her baby.

A few of the men left the living room. They came back quickly with the bag in question. It was unzipped. One of them set it on the coffee table and looked inside. He looked back to the detective and nodded.

“Well,
okay
,” Judkins said. He stood and folded his search warrant. “You’ve been a lot of help,” he said to Candace. Then he looked around for the woman who frisked her earlier. “TJ, can you get some cuffs on her? Put her in my car.”

Candace didn’t hear right. “Wh-what?”

Detective Judkins looked down at her with the traces of a smile in the corner of his mouth. “Candace, you’re going to jail. You understand that, right?”

“Buh-but I gave it to you. It’s not mine.” She wore the expression of a very confused child.

“It’s in your house, Candace. By your own admission, you knew it was there. Rilla’s in jail, and my informant made a buy from you just a few hours ago. You’re the only one here. As far as I’m concerned, that’s
your
bag.”

Another floodgate opened. This time it was in Candace’s panties. She looked down at herself with more shame than the mother of a rapist. “I, I think I pee—”

“Her water broke!” Officer Teri Jacobs said knowingly. “Get an ambulance in route!”

THE MERRY OLD LAND OF OZ

At some point many years from now, Candace will look back on the next few days of her life and wonder which event had the most profound effect. Being the target of her very own drug bust was certainly a top contender. The whole thing lasted less than ten minutes, but every second would forever be ingrained in her psyche. It was like the tragic climax of a thoroughly faltering life. But as bad as that was, it was nothing compared to having a premature baby at the county hospital.

In the ambulance Candace had to be mildly sedated. Every hand on her wanted to help, but she fought her caregivers off like a wounded puma. She couldn’t shake the notion that all of these people wanted to kill her baby. The masked EMTs were just an extension of the police who assaulted her in her home. It was during this frantic ride that Candace decided she wanted to keep her child. The baby was all she had left. The baby was the only person in the world as divinely helpless as Candace herself.

At the hospital Candace was too distraught to fill out her admission paperwork, and she wouldn’t provide a phone number for her next of kin. She couldn’t say whether she wanted to deliver naturally or have an epidural. The only thing Candace understood about the whole process was that she should push when told to do so.

There was no comforting hand to hold, and no familiar faces around from which she could draw strength. There was no one pacing in the waiting room and no one praying for a safe delivery. There was only Candace, her doctor and nurses, and the uniformed police officer who sat outside her door reading a Donald Goines novel.