Cane looked back when he was a little ways down the street and he saw Tyler pulling off from the curb. It dawned on him that moment that he left his weed in the car, and he smiled, shaking his head. The little nigga had come across a gold mine when he tried to rob him.
Cane put his hands in the pockets of his cargo shorts and put his red Chuck Taylors to work. He could pull his phone out to call somebody for a ride, but a part of him wanted to walk and clear his head. There had been a lot on his mind, especially when it came to his thoughts about East St. Louis. In twenty years it was the second time that they had to close up shop around the whole city. That time he was sure nobody would rise up the way King David had. He looked around as he walked and was saddened by the sights. Since he’d moved to St. Louis from Louisiana when he was eighteen he didn’t remember a time when the streets were so unsafe and dirty. He thought that maybe it was time to shut down shop once and for all in the city, set his sights on a new place, and per—
Hooonnnk!
The sound of a horn blaring interrupted his thought process. He didn’t stop walking but he looked over his shoulder from where he was on the sidewalk. He saw a black Tahoe slowing to a stop in the street next to him. The windows on the vehicle were so dark that he couldn’t see who was inside. His hand went to his waist just in case he had to pop off. Slowly the back window rolled down and, when he saw who it was, he removed his hand.
“Did I just see you give your car away?” Day asked, raising her perfectly arched eyebrow.
“Just doing my good deed for the day.” Cane shrugged his shoulders.
“Get in,” she instructed, opening the door for him and sliding over so that he would have room to sit. “Please,” she added when he hesitated.
“I didn’t even know that word was in ya vocabulary,” Cane said to her and obliged.
When he got in, the driver pulled off as soon as he shut the door. He studied Day and saw that something was completely off about her. She wore sunglasses to cover her eyes, and the aura she was giving off wasn’t that off the attitude-prone person he’d come to know. There was something soft about her. Her hair was in a disheveled bun at the top of her head, and she wore a light yellow Juicy Coutour jogging outfit. He was taken aback when he saw that she was wearing house slippers and no socks on her feet.
“How you been holdin’ up?”
She opened her palms and shut them before she answered him. The last thing she wanted to do was let him see her vulnerable, so she cleared her throat before she spoke. “Somebody killed my mom.”
“When?” Cane asked with an even voice.
“Yesterday.”
“How?”
“There was a car bomb in my car and when she turned the key it exploded. She didn’t make it out.”
“Damn.” Cane shook his head. “Hold up, did you say it was in your car?”
“Yup.” Day looked up from her hands to look at him through her sunglasses. “It was supposed to be meant for me. My dad’s security has been trying to figure out who’s trying to kill us, but they haven’t been able to yet. They don’t want to get the feds involved because they don’t want their noses sniffing in places that they shouldn’t be.”
“I feel that.” Cane nodded his head. “So what are you gon’ do?”
“I know whoever it is isn’t going to stop until David Jr. and I are dead. Mac wants us to stay cooped up in his house until Saturday or until they find the crazy mothafucka. That’s why I been out here looking for you.”
“Why is that?” Cane asked. She was looking at him and he couldn’t see her eyes. That bothered him, so he reached and removed her Dior sunglasses. When he saw how bloodshot and puffy her eyes were he understood why she had the glasses on in the first place. Without thinking he stroked her right cheek with his fingers. “Day.”
“I can’t be cooped up in the house with nobody, unless it’s you,” Day said seriously. “What if I would have been the one to get in that car? I don’t trust nobody else to protect me.”
Cane had half of a mind to tell her that he couldn’t do it, but looking into her eyes he couldn’t bring himself to say the words. She was in distress, and out of everybody in the world she could have called upon she had chosen him.
“Okay,” he said. “A’ight, you can stay at my crib until all this shit gets situated. You got a bag or we need to stop at the store and get you some shit?”
Chapter 15
Detective Avery paced back and forth, running his hand from the top of his head all the way down to his chin. The last few days his office had become his room and his desk chair had become his bed. After getting the warrant to search Davita Mason’s apartment he had gotten a little hope that he would find at least something to bring her in once again. He was wrong. When they kicked in the door or Davita’s condo it was as clean as a freshly bathed baby’s bottom. There was no sign of struggle or foul play, so just like that he was back at square one.
He inhaled deeply and plopped down at his desk. On top of it were files that covered the last five years. He grabbed one of the folders and an old photo fell from it. It was a picture of King David before he had risen to the top. The picture was a mug shot from when he was arrested for a petty corner store robbery. It was a day that Detective Avery would regret for the rest of his life. If he had done things differently back then, he wouldn’t be in the predicament he was in now, and there never would have been a King David.
“We have a two-one-one in progress on State Street. Requesting officer backup immediately!”
“Ten-four,” a young Officer Avery said into his receiver after listening to what the dispatcher had said. He was new to the force and had been picking up every job that he could in hopes to get in good with the chief.
His partner sat in the passenger seat of the police cruiser, and looked over at Officer Avery with irritation written all over his face as he drove. “Boy, you must love this job, don’t you?” Officer Dobbs asked, referring to the fact that it would be the eighth call that they had answered that day.
“When I joined the force I swore to protect and to serve. We all did. I’m just doing my job, Dobbs. Do you have an objection to that?”
“No, I don’t, and I understand that you want to do your job, but we only have fifteen minutes left. My wife made my favorite for dinner tonight and I’m just trying to get there. Are you sure you want to go? There are at least a dozen officers on patrol right now. It’s probably just another one of those crackhead niggers trying to get a quick buck anyways.”
The fact that he had used the word “nigger” so freely made Officer Avery feel a certain kind of way, and his emotions read on his face. Officer Dobbs saw that he had struck a nerve and almost took his use of the word back. However, when he thought better of it he didn’t, because he meant it.
He didn’t care that Officer Avery was a black man. To him the only thing that separated Avery from the rest of them was the uniform on his body. When he first learned that his new partner was a black man he had charged into the police chief’s office angrier than all get-out. He was refusing to work with anyone the same color as the filth that he wanted to clear off of the streets. He requested a new partner immediately but his request was denied, so he had no choice but to work with the black man. Over the past few months he came to learn that Avery was one of the bearable ones, and they got along for the most part. Still, though, Officer Avery knew that Officer Dobbs was prejudiced just by the things he said.
Avery let the comment fly, not wanting to let it get the best of him. He had a job to do. He knew the moment that he signed up to be a police officer what he would be up against. Including him, there were only ten black officers on the police force. They had to deal with racial slurs and remarks all day and act like it didn’t bother them. When they were out on the streets in uniform, the word “sellout” came out of almost every black man’s mouth he passed. But just like the petty corner boys, he was just doing what he had to do to get a check.
Officer Avery had a hard childhood. His mother was addicted to drugs and his father would come in and out of the home. It was more peaceful when he was gone, because when he was home his alcohol problem caused him to beat on anything with a heartbeat. Officer Avery decided to become a police officer right after he turned twenty-one because he wanted to make a difference in the world. At the time, though, he didn’t know how hard that would be; because at the end of the day it was still a white man’s world. Black people just existed in it. Officer Avery tried not to let it all affect his way of thinking. He had a plan and that plan was to work his way up the totem pole so that his weekly checks would turn to salary, and so that he could buy the house of his dreams.
“The address is past the police precinct. If you want, I can drop you off to your car before I head over there. I understand how important dinner is these days.”
Officer Dobbs gave him the side-eye before leaning back in his seat and taking a deep breath. He ran his fingers through his ginger-colored hair and shook his head. “No. I’ll come for backup. Lord knows with those monkeys have with them.”
For the second time that night Officer Avery brushed his words off like dust on his shoulders; and he turned the siren on. He did a U-turn at a set of lights to go toward the direction of the address that the dispatcher had given him. It took about five minutes to reach the destination and they hadn’t even come to a complete stop when they heard the gunshots ringing out.
“Cover me. I’m going in,” Officer Avery said, withdrawing his gun from the holster and jumping out of the car.
He didn’t wait to see if Officer Dobbs had followed him; he just ran toward the shot-out glass door of the small store and mentally prepared for combat. He kicked the door open and got low to the ground as he walked. Debris was blowing wildly around in the air and all but one of the lights in the whole store had gotten shot out. His eyes instantly went to the dead cashier leaning over the front counter. Blood was leaking from his head and forming a small circle of blood on the ground below him.
He looked around and saw an elderly woman holding a small child as she hid behind the chips aisle. When she saw the officer she used a shaky finger and pointed toward the front of the store. He nodded to her and mouthed the words, “It will be okay.” He then pressed the button on the walkie-talkie that was on his chest so that he could request backup. He had heard multiple gunshots from the outside. He wasn’t sure how many people there were armed and dangerous.
“There is a two-one-one in progress. I’m requesting backup immediately. Shots fired. I repeat, multiple shots have been fired!”
He held his gun up by his face and took a few steps to the front of the store. A couple more shots went off, and when he got to the front of the store he pointed his gun toward where he heard the shots coming from. There he saw a man wearing camouflage khakis and a black hood holding a woman by her hair with a gun pressed to her temple.
“Freeze. Police!” Officer Avery shouted out. He stood to his feet and revealed himself while aiming his gun in the man’s direction. “Let the girl go and lower your weapon now!”
Seeing the police officer before him instantly caused the young man’s entire body to surge with fear. His name was Pete Willis and he had planned to just get in and out of the store a couple hundred dollars richer. He was only nineteen but the hard life he lived made him look about ten years older than what he actually was. The bags under his eyes confirmed that he hadn’t been to sleep in days, and the furrow on his brow showed how angry at the world he was. He was broke and hungry. The only way he knew to survive was to rob others. His parents had given up on him a long time ago and put him out on the streets when he was only thirteen.
Pete looked around the store frantically. Avery thought he was looking for a way out.
“There is no way out of here,” Officer Avery said. “This place is about to be surrounded with officers in a matter of seconds. Just give me the girl and drop your weapon and nobody gets hurt.”
Pete knew the chances of him getting out of there alive were slim to none. And even if he did he would never see the outside world again. The officer was mistaken when he assumed that he was looking for a way out; that wasn’t it at all.
Pete’s eyes immediately brushed over the tiled floor that was smeared with blood from the cashier. The man didn’t want to cooperate, and he had made a sudden movement so he had to blow his brains out. He lay slumped over the countertop with the back of his head missing, being as he’d gotten shot at such a close range. He told everyone in the store that he would kill them all if they didn’t stay out of his way. After that, he shot an elderly man in the chest to send a solid message. That was when everything went downhill.
Out of nowhere somebody in the store began to fire wild shots at him. He didn’t know who it was so he started to shoot his gun blindly around the store, causing everybody inside to scream and take cover from the stray bullets. His bullets knocked out the glass to the door and all the lights in the place except one. Looking into the eyes of the police officer he knew then what the cashier had made a sudden movement to do. He contemplated his next move and almost put his gun down, but then thought better of it. “Why would I do that? So you can kill me?”
“I promise I’m not going to kill you, son. I just want to see the rest of these people go home to their families. Don’t you want to see your family again?”
“I don’t got no fucking family. The gutter raised me.” Pete threw the girl to the side and raised his gun to fire at the officer.
Bang! Bang!
The young man had moved so quickly that Officer Avery didn’t have a chance to react. He heard the gunshots and prepared himself for the pain to follow. When he felt nothing he used his free hand to feel all over his chest. When his fingers touched no blood or any open wounds he looked up to see that the young boy was lying dead in a pool of his own blood. Standing over him was another young man around his age holding a smoking gun loosely in his right hand. The boy was tall and slightly muscular. The clothes on his body were worn and he looked like he could use a haircut and a nice lineup. Officer Avery quickly recovered from the shock of the near-death experience that almost just taken place. Behind him he heard the door open, and Officer Dobbs ran in behind him with his gun pointed at the boy with the smoking gun.
“Put the fucking gun down, boy! Put your hands behind your head and drop to your knees slowly,” Officer Dobbs shouted.
The boy looked at the officers and slowly did what he was asked. The woman who was just thrown to the side saw more officers coming in and swarming around the boy. She shook her head, trying to help. “No! No! It wasn’t him. He was trying to help us!” she tried to explain, trying to get their hands off of him. “Please, no, you don’t understand. It was him on the floor who did this!”
“Shut up and get out of my way!” Officer Dobbs said, pushing her to the side to get to the boy. He roughly handled him while he put the cuffs on his hands. “You have the right to remain silent
. . . .
”
Officer Avery was still standing there in shock when the woman ran to him. “You have to help him. David is a good kid. He was just trying to help us. Pete killed the cashier and old man Jenkins! David was just trying to get us all out of here alive!” She was herded out of the store by two officers, but she gripped on to Officer Avery’s sleeve before they completely removed her. “These white mothafuckas don’t care about us! To them all they see is a nigga with a gun. Help him, please. His mother just died. A case is the last thing he needs!”
Officer Avery pulled his sleeve from her and took a step back so that she could be removed from the murder scene. The place had already started to reek with death but he paid no mind to that; the only thing he was thinking of were the words of the woman. He knew she was right. And if it hadn’t been for the kid then he would have been dead due to his own slow reflexes.
That night David Mason was booked, where he stayed in jail for a whole week before they finally released him. He wasn’t charged and the fact that he had an unregistered weapon was swept under the rug, on account of a police officer’s word that he had acted in self-defense.
Detective Avery threw the mug shot to the side and wanted to punch himself. If only he hadn’t let that woman guilt trip him that night then he wouldn’t be in the predicament that he was in now. He would have been able to save the streets of St. Louis before King David’s reign even began.
With a heavy heart, he piled up all of the folders and started to put them in a box that he would take to where the rest of the boxes for unsolved cases went. Normally he wasn’t a quitter, but he felt that he had wasted too much time and energy on a case that had no other leads. He would just have to wait until Davita was caught slipping, just like her father had been.
Suddenly, there was a knock at his door, and he was confused since he had been certain that he was the only one still in the office that night. He walked to the door and opened it.
“Yes?” he asked, but soon saw that he was talking to nobody but dead air. In the distance he saw the janitor mopping the floor, but nobody else was present. He whipped his head left and then right. “Is anybody there?”
When he got no answer he slowly backed into his office and shut the door. On his way back to his desk he felt his foot step on something on the ground. Looking down, he saw that it was a manila envelope with the words Y
OU’RE
W
ELCOME
written in red ink on it. Slowly he bent down to pick it up. Somebody must have slid it under his door.
He walked back to his desk and sat down, curious to see the contents of what was inside. He ripped the top open and turned the folder over to dump out the contents. The only thing that fell out of it was a piece of paper with an address written on it and the words: