Authors: Ardella Garland
She stopped crying long enough to stutter, “T-T-T … ”
“T-Bob!” Calvin shouted and slammed the heel of his palm against a bad spot in the wall. A hollow sound burst out. Calvin wiped his hand across his entire face from his forehead down to his chin. He struggled with his hurt feelings. Calvin clasped his hands together tightly, then his words hissed from his lips, “Karen, you snuck T-Bob in the house?”
“We weren’t doing nothing, just being together. I had to sneak him in. You know you can’t stand T-Bob.”
“You see why now, don’t you?” Calvin’s voice rose. “Look at the shit he’s mixed up in.”
Karen tried to explain. “T-Bob said he didn’t know where Butter was but that he could pretend like he did and talk his way into some easy money. T-Bob said TV people make a lot of bank and she wouldn’t even miss it. T-Bob was gonna buy us matching Sky Walker shoes. All he had to do was go get the money and run.”
“Well, now T-Bob is in deep trouble and so are you,” I told Karen. “The police are going to come down hard on anyone connected to this crime.”
“I’m sorry. I swear. Here, I got most of the money, I’ll give it back. Here!” She reached down in her purse and pulled out three crumpled one-hundred-dollar bills.
“Let me see those,” I said, and Calvin unhooked the hip-high swinging door of the counter. Jason followed and stood behind me as I took the money and looked at it. They all had my mark—the
In
whited out, leaving “God We Trust.” “This is the money I gave him, all right.”
“Karen,” Calvin yelled, “how could you be in on something that low-down and stupid? I work like a dog for our family. I buy you damn near everything you ask for!” Calvin was pacing, his words stumbled past his lips he was blurting them out so quickly. “Can’t believe this. It’s crazy! Damn! This is trouble! Trouble!”
Karen was trembling and the motion sent tears flying. “You don’t wanna hardly let me do nothing! T-Bob can’t hardly come around. I love T-Bob. But, he-he wouldn’t hurt a little girl. He wouldn’t!”
Calvin grabbed Karen and started to shake her violently. Karen’s open mouth made this guttural waah sound just like when you shook one of those big old-fashioned dolls I used to play with—and Peaches used to tear up—as a kid. “Are you crazy? Are you crazy?!” Calvin screamed.
Jason grabbed one of Cal’s arms and I grabbed the other. It was like trying to move a jungle gym, his arms were just that solid.
“Calvin, stop it!” I yelled.
I felt myself being moved aside from behind. It was Doug. He shoved Jason out of the way, too. Jason fell backward, both elbows whacking against the top of the counter. Doug then grabbed Calvin in a headlock, pinned one of his arms behind his head, and smashed his face up against the wall. “Break it up!”
“Bastard!” Calvin grunted, saliva dripping out of his mouth.
“Let him go!” Karen screamed. “Let him go!”
“I will,” Doug announced calmly to the room, “but he has to get himself in check.” As Calvin’s breathing became more even, Doug applied less body pressure. “Thank you. Now be cool, man, because I’m going to ease up off you.” Slowly Doug backed away. Calvin jerked around and raked Doug with his eyes from the top of his head down to the tops of his shoes.
I stepped in and explained everything to Doug. As it turned out, he had gone to the Martin house after getting back the information on the phone call. The old guy sitting by the door had overheard Jason talking about Calvin and told him where the garage was.
Doug spoke firmly to Karen. “If you don’t want to be charged as an accomplice you’d better tell me where T-Bob is.”
“Hey, ease up, brah-thar!” Calvin said angrily. The veins around his temples pulsed in direct sync with the fierceness of his words. “Karen’s just a kid! You damn cops are mean, you don’t think about anybody but yourselves. You’re just an Uncle Tom Negro doing the white man’s work!”
Doug stiffened as if a bolt of lightning had struck him and an intense anger radiated from his body, seeping like poison from his eyes. He swallowed before unleashing his response.
“If people in the neighborhoods would stop taking all this shit from the gangs and get together and say
no,
and help us, then we could get these motherfuckers up out of here. But noooooo,
you’d
rather protect a punk like T-Bob … who you think is
all right
when he
ain’t
… than to
help
somebody like me who’ll come to your rescue and put his life on the line! Regularly I get shot at, cussed out, spit on, ridiculed by the media. And, every solar eclipse,
thanked
by
some
somebody with sense. Does anybody, I said, does any-
some
-body want to walk in my shoes
today
?”
That shut us all up swift and in a hurry.
“Now!” Doug turned to Karen. “I’ll ask you again, and for the last time, do you know where T-Bob is?”
S
he did and she told.
T-Bob was part of a basketball league playing at an outdoor court at the Elder Housing Projects about three miles west of the gas station. We had to wait until a squad car came to take Calvin and Karen down to the station; another detective working the case would take their statements. While Doug talked to them, I excused myself and headed for the bathroom in the rear where I had spotted a pay phone. I called my television station, gave them an address, and told them I needed a crew to meet me. Doug would be mad when he found out, but I’d deal with that when the time came.
When the other officers arrived, Doug once again attempted to ditch me. But this time the discussion was much shorter because we both knew it just wasn’t going to happen. When we got in Doug’s car, he called for backup to meet us at the basketball court. He would go in first, then cue them to come in just in case the crowd or T-Bob and his friends got any funky ideas.
“I want to make sure there’s no chance on this earth that my man T-Bob will get away,” Doug said. “He’s got too much knowledge and he’s gonna give it up whether he wants to or not.”
“You’ve got something big on him?”
“Georgia, I’m not just banking on your testimony. I got back the prints taken at the el tracks the night you had your own little personal meeting with the ransom caller. The prints came up Tyrell Robert Adams. T-Bob.”
I appreciated the fact that Doug was being honest and real with me. He was direct. Up front. He could be extremely calm or explosive with energy. He was a take-charge guy. I was finding myself fiercely attracted to this man. I wanted to jump this guy’s bones. But are they the kind of bones I want to jump and keep or just jump and bury?
“So what are you thinking about?” Doug asked.
“The case. Butter. What happened at Driven Auto Works,” I said, slow dancing my way to the subject. “You got pretty fiery back there, Mr. Doug.”
“Georgia,” he said easily, “let me tell you, that was nothing. I was juiced but that wasn’t even my most hyped level. How do you think I survive out here? Had I pampered that girl back there she’d a lied through her teeth, and her cousin too, honest though he seems to be, because people in the hood don’t like cops. But they hate crime, too. Now go figure that ass-backwards logic. How are you going to hate crime and then hate the very people who can get rid of it for you? There’s this minus-minus thing happening and they’re canceling each other out. That leaves things the same—plain old
bad
.”
“I’m not trying to judge you, Doug, because I don’t want you judging me.”
“That’s good, Georgia, because people have to accept others as they are to develop any kind of relationship, whatever it is—romantic, friendship, or working. No one likes to be judged, so they shouldn’t do it to anyone else.”
I agreed. Then Doug looked back up ahead. Just beyond the red light we’d come to, I could see the basketball court in the distance. The crowd was dense, partly because it was the first reasonably cool evening that we’d had in a week. The sun had gone from a festering blister to a smooth, waxy palette of warmth and color.
It was a game of Cut-Off Red T’s versus Skins.
The Skins were likely the most comfortable, their sepia tones made shiny by the sweat dripping off their backs. We were sitting in the car across the street, on an angle, watching. The athletics were stunning; with a step, one of the young men would vamoose into the air and slam-dunk in gravity’s face. The crowd cheered and it seemed as if there were no clear sides for or against, just appreciation for talent.
I struggled to pick out T-Bob. Dap-gum-it, where’s that boy? Karen had given us a photo of him; it was the kind of picture kids and adults in love, or in deep like, tend to take. It was a picture of a couple squeezed into one of those photo booths in the mall.
T-Bob’s face was the color of Concord grapes, as much of it as could be seen. Only about half was showing behind Karen’s head as she sat in his lap, her mouth turned up in a cheesy smile. T-Bob’s expression was pleasant but stony and he had his right arm looped around Karen’s neck hugging her close, making some kind of gang sign with his hands.
“There’s the backup,” Doug said as he stopped the car. He nodded to an unmarked car parked catercorner to us. Then he pointed a thumb sideways across the street at a black guy in sneakers and jeans standing in the doorway of a liquor store. A block down from him was a paddy wagon easing into a parking space behind a truck where a guy was stacking up boxes of potato chips for delivery.
Doug turned to me and said, “Stay here.”
“And miss all the action?”
“You are so hardheaded.” Doug moaned in an exasperated manner.
That didn’t sit with me at all. “Determined,” I said, substituting a word I deemed more fitting.
Doug blew a sigh, then gave me a wry smile. “Georgia, stay about ten feet behind me. When I get on the outside of the fence, I’ll scout him out on the court. Once there’s a break in the action—a time-out or foul—I’m going to make my move. Stay put behind the stands. The kids are likely to start yelling and throwing stuff. You don’t want to get knocked in the head.”
I agreed and I let Doug move out first. I followed ten paces behind. I tried to look cool and I did, even putting on my shades and walking like I was just out chilling. But who was looking across the street anyway? Everyone was watching the court.
Doug stopped at the gate entrance, which was open, and leaned against a metal pole. I was looking through the fence in between spectators who jumped up and sat down, cheered and hooted, ooohed and aahed.
Where’s T-Bob?
The action stopped.
I was getting more and more nervous as I watched Doug raise his hand overhead to signal the cop across the street.
I finally spotted T-Bob. He was at the free throw line. He bent his knees and was leaning on them with the palms of his hands, pulling his black shorts way down. T-Bob let the sweat drip off his brow onto the court, marking his territory, before he glanced up.
That’s when he saw Doug making his move.
I caught it in T-Bob’s eyes, that speck of panic. T-Bob looked behind him quickly. What was he looking at? My eyes darted hard.Left. Right. I was trying to find it, whatever T-Bob saw. Then I glimpsed a hole in the fence where there were no benches, a narrow opening where two sets of bleachers almost but didn’t quite connect.
Doug was moving closer. I couldn’t tell if he knew T-Bob had spotted him. Should I yell? That might set the crowd off or throw Doug off-balance. I made a move myself. I eased around the side of the fence.
T-Bob took the ball from the ref and started to bounce it. Doug was getting closer when someone in the crowd yelled, “Who is that?”
I was running around the fence now.
“Tyrell Robert Adams?” Doug said, pulling out his badge holding it high, eye level.
T-Bob took the ball and snapped it right in Doug’s face.
Doug went down, grabbing his nose and rolling over and over on the court. T-Bob took off running for the gap in the fence that meant a chance to escape.
But I was running for it, too. T-Bob is probably twice as fast as me but I had a head start. I heard the kids in the stands yelling, “Run! Run!”
Cops were running onto the court. One knelt over Doug and three more ran after T-Bob. As soon as he hit that hole in the fence, I was about three steps away. I slipped my purse off my shoulder just as T-Bob turned sideways to slide through that gap. I slung my purse at his ankles. T-Bob tripped. He fell flat on his face, panting against the ground. I put my knee in his back and two fingers at the back of his head and said in a Get Christie Love voice, “Freeze!”
T-Bob froze. Jeez, that crap actually worked?
I could feel sweat running down the back of my neck, afraid that any second he would turn around. God, please don’t let this boy turn his head around and see how I was bs-ing him with my fingers.
One of the cops came and pushed me out of the way. “Got him!” he said. The cop’s gun was drawn and he swapped it for my fingers, placing the barrel at the back of T-Bob’s head. “Who the hell are you?” the cop said to me without letting his eyes leave the young black teenager sprawled in front of him.
T-Bob moved.
“Cough, motherfucker! Please cough so I can blow your brains out!” the cop shouted, nudging his skull with the gun.
“I’m Georgia Barnett, Channel 8 News.”
“Damn!” T-Bob shouted into the ground. Then shaking his head, he said, “What I do? What y’all want?”