32
Brian ran, his feet taking him where only they knew the destination. Will and Tyrel were dead. Old Man Blackwell, he was on his way.
Brian ran, blinded by tears, fear, and disbelief, down the block, away from the red and blue spiraling lights. Away from his boys.
He didn't want to believe it. Not his boys. They couldn't be dead. He struggled to stifle a scream as he ran. His boys, his brothas, his niggas.
Brian ran. He saw nothing but the sight of his lifelong friends on the ground lying in a pool of their own blood. He heard nothing but the crack of gunfire and the shrill of his own scream. He felt nothing but . . . emptiness.
He ran.
And ran.
Until his lungs demanded that he stop and take in air.
He stopped, leaned against the brick wall of a building, and took in several deep breaths of air. He was four blocks away now from the disaster that had taken place, but he was as on edge, as though he were still inside. His heartbeat refused to slow down, refused to try to stop beating its way through his chest. He felt like rubber, his hands shook. He breathed in and out. Deep, deep breaths as tears fell from the corners of his eyes.
“Damn,” he whispered, slamming his head back against the wall. “Damn.”
He looked up to the starless nighttime sky and prayed for the nightmare he was living to be over.
Be a dream
, he thought.
A horrible fucking dream
. He closed his eyes, and prayed that when he opened them, he'd be back at Will's sitting on his couch with Will on his right and Tyrel on his left, playing Xbox 360. Of course he knew that wouldn't be the case, and so when he opened them, he could only let out a breath.
A police siren wailed suddenly and his heart leapt into his throat. He flattened himself against the wall, unable to move.
They found me. They found me.
He couldn't breathe as one of New York's finest sped by in an unmarked car on the street in front of him, its single light flashing red, its siren wailing, and headed in the direction he'd just come from. Only when the car was out of sight did Brian allow himself to breathe and to move.
He needed to get off of the street. But where could he go? Not home. He'd held his emotions down before, but put now in front of his mother he would surely break down. So where? He needed a safe place to think, to breathe, to break down, and then pull himself back together.
Brian looked up at the sky, prayed that Will and Tyrel were somewhere up there amid the darkness, and then pushed away from the wall and ran to the safest place he could think of.
Two and a half hours later, he lay in Carla's arms, staring up at her ceiling while she slept. He'd spent a little over an hour telling her all about the three-man cartel he'd been a part of, and then telling about what had gone down hours earlier.
Carla, who hadn't known about any of the activities he'd done with Will and Tyrel, laid into him. How could he do this? What had he been thinking? He was an idiot. An asshole. On and on she went, and then in Spanish, sounding far more pissed off. Brian took it all without a word because she'd been right with everything she'd said. He was an immature, irresponsible, disrespectful idiot. He was pitiful, weak. After Carla finished ripping him a new one and telling him how disappointed she was in him, she helped him come up with an alibi for when the cops came knocking on his door, which he knew they would.
Brian stared up at the ceiling, reliving moments he knew he would never forget. He closed his fists. If he could only go back, he thought. But of course he couldn't. The cards had been dealt and turned over. There was no giving back to the dealer the hand he'd been given. He unclenched his fists.
His boys.
Old Man Blackwell.
He took a slow breath. Old Man Blackwell. He'd told him to take the tape, told him to leave. Why? It was a question he'd never have an answer for.
Brian took another slow, deep breath. He'd had no gun in his hand, and he hadn't pulled any triggers, but Old Man Blackwell's blood was on his hands just as surely as if he'd been holding the piece of steel with his finger curled around the trigger. That fact hurt his heart almost as though he'd taken a bullet point blank. He closed his eyes while tears welled once more and leaked from the corners.
33
Deahnna rolled over onto her side and looked at her alarm clock. It was nine o'clock in the morning. She should have been up since six, cleaning and dusting. Her Saturday morning ritual. But she didn't feel like cleaning or dusting. She didn't feel like doing much of anything.
Three days had now passed since she'd last seen Jawan. More, if you consider the fact that their last time together had been one she wanted to forget.
Three days.
Seventy-two hours of loneliness.
She stared at the time displayed. Watched one, then two minutes click by. Minutes that seemed like hours. She looked from the clock to her cell phone sitting beside it. It hadn't rung in the middle of the night. It hadn't chimed, letting her know that a message was waiting for her to listen to. That meant Jawan hadn't called. She frowned. She wanted to pick it up and call him again, but what was the use?
She opened her mouth, took a deep breath, and blew it out as her eyes threatened to well. She shook her head and pressed her palms against her eyes.
No,
she thought.
No more.
She wasn't going to cry anymore. She'd made the bed and she would have to lie in it. Even if she wasn't completely in the wrong.
She didn't want to, but she swung her feet off of the bed, slid into her slippers, and stood up. Three days had passed and he hadn't called. Surely he'd gotten her messages. She didn't want to, but she had no choice: she had to move on. Move on and continue to survive, knowing and accepting that love and happiness just wasn't in the deck she'd been given when she was born.
She took a final glance at her phone, and then slid on her robe and went into the bathroom to brush her teeth. As she did, there was a knock on the front door. Her heartbeat quickened. Jawan? Could it be? Her toothbrush in her mouth, she called out to her son. “Brian, can you get the door?”
She finished brushing, then washed out her mouth, and quickly ran water over her face and through her hair. She didn't have time to shower, but at least she could look presentable.
Knocking came from the door again. Harder. More insistent.
She dried her face, did the best she could to spruce up her hair, and then went to Brian's bedroom door and pushed it open as the knocking continued. “Brian.” She paused. His room was empty. His bed still made up from the day before. “Dammit,” she whispered.
She shook her head, promised to have a very serious, no-nonsense heartâto-heart with her son about being under her roof and having to follow her rules, and then rushed to the front door.
“Coming!” she yelled out, tightening the sash on her robe.
She took a look through the peephole and her heart fell to the pit of her stomach. On the other side of the door, dressed in blue uniforms, with their hats on their heads, were two police officers. Deahnna felt a shiver come over her. Brian wasn't in his room and hadn't been all night. Now the police were at her door at nine o'clock in the morning. “Oh, God,” she whispered.
She opened the door slightly “Yes, can I help you?”
One of the officers, the taller of the two, with dark brown skin, a clean-shaven face, and deep-set dark brown eyes smiled and said, “Hello. Are you Brian Moore's mother?”
Deahnna nodded. “I am.”
“I'm Officer Cribbs. This is my partner, Officer Lomax.”
Deahnna looked at Officer Lomax, a shorter, stockier man with a whisper of a goatee and a scowl on his face, and then looked back to Officer Cribbs. “Can I help you?”
“We're looking for your son, Brian.”
“Brian? Is he in some sort of trouble?”
Officer Cribbs shook his head. “We just have some questions that we'd like to ask him.”
“Questions about what?”
“We'd really rather talk with Brian before we discuss the nature of our visit.”
Deahnna looked at them skeptically. “Well, I'm sorry, officer, but my son isâ”
“Mom?”
Deahnna looked past the officer's shoulders, down to see Brian approaching. “Brian,” she said, her tone sharp.
The officers turned as Brian stood still.
“Wh . . . what's up, Mom?”
“Are you Brian Moore?” Officer Cribbs asked as his partner looked on.
Brian nodded. “Yeah.”
“I'm Officer Cribbs. This is Officer Lomax. We'd like to ask you a couple of questions.”
Brian looked at his mother, and, in that moment, Deahnna could see in his eyes that something had happened. She gave him a nod.
Brian looked at Officer Cribbs. “OK.”
Officer Cribbs turned back to Deahnna. “May we come inside?”
Deahnna opened the door. “Come in.”
Both officers followed Brian inside. Deahnna directed them to the living room, where everyone sat down: the two officers on the sofa, Brian on the loveseat, Deahnna on the loveseat's arm beside her son.
Officer Cribbs pulled out a notepad and looked at Brian. “Are you now just getting home?”
Brian nodded. “Yeah.”
“From where?”
“My girlfriend's place.”
Deahnna looked down at her son, who kept his head low.
“Your girlfriend's name?”
“Carla.”
“Her last name?”
“Quinones.”
“And her address.”
Brian gave it.
“Were you there between eleven-thirty and twelve last night?”
Brian nodded. “Yeah. I was there all night.”
“Excuse me?” Deahnna said. “Her parents allowed this?”
Brian looked up at his mother. “Her mother didn't know. I snuck in.”
“What? Brian, goddammit . . .”
Officer Cribbs cleared his throat. “Brian, are you friends with Will Barber and Tyrel Gardner?”
Deahnna stared hard at her son. If the cop mentioned Will or Tyrel's name, that meant that there was trouble. She watched Brian closely as he let a few seconds go by before he said in a softer tone, “Yeah. They're my . . . my best friends.”
“Did you see them last night?”
Brian intertwined his fingers. “I . . . I mean, we played the 360 for a while after school, and then I left to go and see Carla.”
“What time was that?” Cribbs asked after scribbling down some notes.
“I left Will's place around five.”
“And you stayed with Ms. Quinones all night?”
Brian nodded, then shrugged. “Well, not then. I hung with her for a little and then left before her mom got home.”
“And where did you go?”
“I came home.”
A chill came over Deahnna as she forced herself to not look down at Brian. She'd gotten home at fivethirty and had gone to bed at eleven-thirty. Brian had never come home. Too depressed over Jawan ignoring her, she'd never bother trying to call Brian to see where he was, and unlike any other time, she never bothered waiting up.
Officer Cribbs looked at her. “Were you home around that time, Ms. Moore?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“And you saw Brian come home.”
“Yes. I did.”
“And you never saw him leave?”
She looked down at Brian who kept his sights on the floor. “No,” she said. “I didn't.”
Officer Cribbs nodded, scribbled in his pad, and then looked at Brian. “Brian, Will and Tyrel were both killed last night.”
Brian looked up. “Wh . . . what?”
Deahnna put her hand over her mouth. “My God,” she whispered.
“It was a botched robbery attempt.”
Brian shook his head. “No way,” he said, tears falling from his eyes. “You're . . . you're lying.”
Officer Cribbs frowned. “I'm afraid not.”
“They . . . they can't be dead,” Brian said, his voice cracking. “Not my boys.”
Deahnna leaned over and wrapped her arms around her son and held him tightly. “I'm so sorry,” she whispered, kissing him on the top of his head. She looked at Officer Cribbs. “Is my son in some sort of trouble, Officer?”
“Not unless he knew about what his friends had planned. Did you know they were planning anything, Brian?”
Brian shook his head. “N . . . no.”
Officer Cribbs looked at his partner, who gave a subtle shake of his head. Cribbs looked back to Deahnna. “No, Ms. Moore. We got Brian's name after questioning people who knew Will and Tyrel. We were told about how close they were. We just wanted to come and talk to him. We'll corroborate his alibi with Ms. Quinones.”
“And then?”
“And then if everything checks out, that will be it.”
Deahnna nodded. “How did Will and Tyrel die?” she asked, rubbing Brian's shoulders as he sobbed.
“They were shot by the establishment's owner, who was also shot.”
“My God,” she whispered. “Did . . . did he or she die as well?”
Officer Cribbs shook his head. “No. He took a bullet to his chest, but, fortunately for him, he survived. He's in stable condition right now. We were actually able to question him, and he did confirm that he'd only been accosted by two people.”
“So why did you come here?”
“Just wanted to dot all of the Is and cross all of the Ts.”
Deahnna nodded.
Both officers stood up. “Thank you both for your time,” Cribbs said. “Brian, sorry about your friends. Lucky for you that you weren't hanging with them last night.” Cribbs turned, looked at his silent partner, and gave a head motion toward the door.
Deahnna kissed her son on his head again, left him on the loveseat, and escorted the officers to the door.
“We'll speak with Ms. Quinones,” Cribbs said, stepping out of the apartment. “But again, as long as their stories gel, we won't be bothering your son again.”
Deahnna gave the officer a half smile. “Thank you.”
Cribbs turned to leave and then stopped and turned back around. He took a look toward Brian, and then looked at Deahnna. “Ms. Moore,” he said, his eyes serious, intense. “Your son is a very lucky young man,” he said. “I hope he understands that.”
She looked at the officer, who looked back at her with an unflinching gaze. “I do,” she said.
Officer Cribbs gave her a nod, and then turned and left.
Deahnna closed the door, dropped her chin to her chest, and let out the breath she hadn't yet exhaled. She shook her head, and then turned and went back to her son.
Brian looked up at her, his eyes red as tears ran furiously. “I'm sorry, Mom,” he said, his voice barely audible. “I . . . I'm sorry.”
Deahnna took him in her arms, and let him bury his head into her. She stroked the top of his head and cried her own tears. “Oh, Brian.”