L.A. Blues III (10 page)

On the drive to the city morgue, I got a text message:

I thought about how Mayhem said that he'd paid the two agents off. And what if it wasn't Agent Braggs and Agent Jerry Stamper? Then who could it be?

A second text came in:

Who is the us?
I wondered. Today was Wednesday.

On the ride I was reminded of how I was swooped up from the Academy Awards by the two crooked Feds when they'd set up Mayhem's kidnapping. What was going on?

 

The Los Angeles County Department of the Coroner is located north of downtown L.A. on Mission Road.

As they drove, I wondered if these two detectives were in cahoots with the crooked federal agents responsible for Mayhem's kidnapping. Did these detectives know I had left Tank's sawed-off head in the Santa Monica park? Were they the ones with the video of me dropping off the basket? The video also included the opening of the basket, which showed Tank's head.

If anything, were they the ones who murdered Tank? Had the blackmailer(s) dropped the dime on me? My heart was beating erratically. Was it my brother's body in the morgue? I hadn't heard back from him. Was he safe? Did he go to Rio alone?

The unmarked car finally stopped. When we went inside the building, I suddenly felt the icy fingers of death touch me in my soul. Now I was coming face-to-face with the lie I told when I was rushing to Rio.

“Why am I here?” I asked, trying to sound innocent. I tried to keep my face straight, and hide my fear. I was scared to death. Did they know I knew about the decapitated head?

“We have an unidentified decedent who we think you can identify,” Detective Mitchell said.

My heart palpitated. I felt like I was walking through a tomb as I trudged through the cold corridors. I guessed I was in a tomb.

We walked inside the coroner's examining room, and they took me to a large walk-in refrigerator that stored other bodies. They pulled the sheet back on a headless, handless, and footless body. I gasped.

“Do you know who this is?”

“No.”

“We don't believe you.”

“Why?”

“We had an anonymous tip that you might know who beheaded this person.”

Just seeing the corpse, it almost made me regurgitate again. Tank used to remind me of the late actor Michael Clarke Duncan. This body was that of a big male, about six feet six. I could see the bullet hole in his left bicep so that was the identifying mark for me, but I acted like I'd never seen him before. Even his feet were missing, but I guessed that was the way they gave proof that the hit was done.
Who put the hit out on Tank?

I'd observed that when I went and got the information as to where his sister lived, who had the boys, in order to help get my nephews out of L.A. One side of me was relieved that it wasn't Mayhem. But the other side was grieved but happy that they had found Tank's body.

Now where was his head? His hands? His feet? I remembered seeing on
NCIS
that the cartels paid a hit man to do a job and the hit man would have to cut off the feet as proof of delivering the job, and cut off the hands to hide the fingerprints. I don't know what the cutting off of the head was to signify. I wondered.

They say the dead don't lie. I could hear Tank's voice mocking me:
“I deserve to have my head with my body.”

“What?”

I took a deep breath. “No, I don't know who he is.”

“Well, we want to put you in a lineup. We have someone who says otherwise.”

From there I was taken over to Parker Center.

I'd never been in jail before, but it had to rank as one of the worst experiences I'd ever lived through. They claimed I was identified in the lineup as one of the last to be seen with Tank, aka Andre Clinton, so here I was arrested and thrown in jail with what I considered little or no probable cause. I had no idea what the charges were going to be against me, or how long I'd be incarcerated.

We were squeezed, almost like sardines, in a holding pen, which was about twenty by twenty. The smells were so rank, so rancid, I tried to breathe the air through an imaginary little O in my mouth to cut down on the strength of the smell. In between every other breath, I tried to ease oxygen out of one nostril, and then the other. It wasn't working though.

I was surrounded by prostitutes, boosters, murderers, and younger women who had probably gotten caught up carrying drugs for their boyfriends. One Amazonian woman named Big Red swaggered around the cell, very stud-like, pants sagging, as if she owned the place. She was at least six feet two. She had the cinderblock face of a man, broad shoulders like a linebacker, and feet that were at least a size thirteen. She wore red dreadlocks, which hung down her back.

“Hey.” Big Red came over and stood over me, sniffing like a dog in heat, on the prowl, but also ready to attack.

I knew I had to get her off me, yet not make her feel dissed. “Hey.” I kept my game face on. I refused to be intimidated. I was thinking about my tae kwon do, but at the same time, I knew I couldn't be out here fighting when I was pregnant.

I could tell “Tree,” as I nicknamed her inwardly, was itching for a fight. I'm five feet nine, but she was even taller.

“Wassup?”

I nodded in acknowledgment of her greeting.

“What'chu in here for?” she grunted.

I just gave her a look.

“You trying to diss me?” Big Red puffed up her chest, balled up her fist, and was ready to fire on me. Her face was set in hard lines.

I could tell from her tattoo that she was a Crip also.

I had an idea. “You know Big Homie who owns Kitty Kat Koliseum? He 8 Tray.” The truth be known I didn't know what set Mayhem currently was in, but I knew the street gang names for the different Crips sets from growing up in a Crip family, and from learning the gang set identifications through the police academy training.

“Yeah, I know Big Homie. Who on the street don't know him?”

“He my brother.” I purposely spoke in Ebonics to let her know we both were from the same tribe—the tribe of crazy.

A look of fear flashed across Big Red's face. Unwillingly, she unfurled her fist. I could literally see each finger ease out of her fist, she moved in such slow motion. “Oh, yeah.”

I watched her visibly shrink back and get out of my personal space, if there was such a thing when you were on lockdown in a crowded cell of women.

Big Red starting speaking in a congenial tone. “Homegirl, welcome to the Taj Mahal.” She turned to the other predatory women in the cage. “Hey, all y'all bitches up in here. Word up. Y'all see homegirl here. Nobody bet' not mess with her. She fam'. Her brother is Big Homie.”

All the women from the hookers to the mules to the dealers to the junkies nodded in silent assent. The rapacious gaze that was always seeking “who is the one to be abused” turned to a terrified look mixed with one of deference on their faces. I was glad they realized now that I was not “the one” to be played with. The women started acting extra nice toward me.

“Hey, get off that bench, and let homegirl sit down.”

For the first time, I was glad that Mayhem was my big brother. It was like having a legal guardian angel straight from the pits of hell. Satan, who could appear as an angel of mercy but who was also an angel of darkness. But now I was beginning to wonder if Mayhem was as bad as he was made out to be. What was that he had said about the secret society that made him seem like a saint?

I eased out a sigh of relief. I sat down and tried to act normal, but I couldn't stand it. I had hand sanitizer with me, and I kept using it. I could see what looked like green puss running out of one of the junkie's arms. I prayed I didn't catch anything.

Somehow, I managed not to have a bowel movement, but I couldn't help urinating. As a courtesy for almost messing with Big Homie's people, Big Red would stand with her back to me and cover me up. There was only one toilet and it stank to high heaven.

Now I had an idea of how Venita must have felt in jail, then later in prison while she was pregnant. Powerless. Hopeless. Helpless. Pregnancy is the world's most vulnerable place a woman can ever find herself. I don't care if she's got the best husband in the world, she has to carry this baby by herself. She's so attuned to the universe, she can feel, smell, taste everything around her. She is more sensitive to the world because she is now in touch with God. But, to be caged like an animal, now that had to be one of the worst things that could happen to a woman.

I thought about what Venita said about having a baby in prison was her lowest point, and I really became afraid. I didn't want to have my baby while I was in prison.
Oh, Lord, help me!
What were the charges they had against me?

I promised myself if I got out of there, I would never go back to jail.

Two days later, charges were dropped and I was released. They had held me the legal forty-eight hours, but I felt it had been an illegal hold. I'd never had such an awful experience in my life as the two nights I spent in jail. In California, the law can keep you up to forty-eight hours without having an official charge until the prosecuting office filed charges.

I didn't know who to call. I was too ashamed to call Chica or Haviland, although last year I'd gotten Haviland out of jail for unpaid tickets. I didn't want to burden Shirley, whose plate was full.

I'd never felt so vulnerable in my adult life, but now I knew what it was to feel powerless. If I got a felony, I'd never be able to vote, or to keep my license as a private investigator. I vowed now that I would have to clear my name. I knew I was innocent, but Black people went to prison all the time for crimes they didn't commit. Nelson Mandela. Rubin “Hurricane” Carter. Angela Davis. And they were famous, so who cared if I went to prison for life since I wasn't really a celebrity?

I couldn't even say, “Oh, that will never happen to me,” and feel comfortable. Then what would happen to my baby? Oh, Lord, I was going to have to get to the bottom of this mess. I didn't want to be part of the new slave system—mass incarceration.

Finally, I got my telephone call and I called Venita. Thank God she was at home and answered on the second ring. She accepted the charges from an inmate.

“Venita. I've been arrested. The prosecutor didn't file charges so I'm being released. Can you pick me up from L.A. County?”

“Oh, Z, my goodness! Sure, I'll be right there. I have a car now.”

Booking returned my purse, and I was able to cut on my cell phone. While I waited for Venita, I received another text message: We're serious. Next time, we'll have the charges filed. We want $1 million now.

I had never been happier to see Venita in my life when she showed up to get me released. I didn't get a sigh of relief out, though, until we walked out the jail and I got my first taste of
freedom.
My hair was nappy and I was funky. I hadn't brushed my teeth in two days. But I was free. Even the air tasted better.

“Where do you want to go?”

“Home. I live in Silver Lake now.”

“Do you want to talk about what happened?”

“It's related to what happened when I was investigating and trying to help Mayhem.”

“What was that?”

“I can't tell you right now, but I've got to investigate it. It seems like someone's trying to set me up.”

One thing I can say is that Venita didn't throw it up in my face about my going to jail. I knew she was upset, but she only offered support.

Once Venita pulled up to my house, I invited her in. I'd never had her to my place since she'd been released from jail three years ago. I guess I felt I could now trust her. I opened the door and for the first time, I saw how my spot must have looked as it filtered through Venita's eyes. It was a masculine house—it still had all Romero's camel leather sectional furniture. The oak floors were dull because they hadn't been waxed. The drapes, which darkened the room like a casket, were chocolate. The place looked dark, which was still how I felt most days.

“This is a nice house. Just needs some tender loving care,” Venita said.

While I took my shower, washed my hair, and brushed my teeth, Venita picked up my house, which was cluttered in the living room, where I worked on my laptop. She opened the curtains and all the windows, dusted the framed pictures on the fireplace of Romero and me on our trip to Santa Barbara and Palm Springs when I was in hiding during my investigation of Trayvon's murder. She had also opened Ben's cage and cleaned it out and let him out.

By the time I came out the bathroom, I found Venita in the small Mexican-looking turquoise-painted kitchen. She had cooked a simple meal of quesadillas with chopped-up tomatoes, cilantro, and black olives, and some fried hash brown potatoes with onions. My refrigerator was practically empty, so it was ingenious how she came up with that meal at all. She'd taken lemons off the tree in the backyard and made a large Mason jar of lemonade. The house had an airy lightness to it that I hadn't felt since I'd moved in. She had opened the windows and let out some of the grief.

The smells were tantalizing and comforting. For the first time since my mother had gotten out of jail, I felt happy to have her back in my life. “How did you find all this food when I didn't have that much in the refrigerator?”

“I'm a woman. Girl, we are magical. We can do whatever we have to do with whatever we have.”

I smiled as we sat down to eat. Once again, holding my hands, Venita prayed before we ate. “Father God, Allah, thank you for getting my child released. Let her name—Zipporah I Love Saldano—be cleared of all charges. Let her keep her record, clean. Amen.”

“Amen.” Now I really was in need of prayer.

I didn't trust Venita when she first was released from prison, but slowly I was feeling a trust come back for her. After all, who else could I run to? Shirley's plate was filled with the four teenage girls and Daddy Chill, with his dementia.

After we finished eating, we sat down in the living room. Venita went out in my front yard and cut a piece of Birds of Paradise. She took another Mason jar and made a center piece.

“I never knew you were this creative, Venita,” I commented.

“I did a lot of arts and crafts in prison. They developed a garden and that's how I fell in love with plants and flowers. That's what helped the time go by.”

I didn't say anything. It was still hard to reconcile the old “OG” Crip mother with this new nurturing, creative woman.

“I'm not trying to get in your business, Z, but he seems like someone special to you, judging from the pictures I've seen.” Venita's words interrupted my thoughts. She pointed toward the pictures on the fireplace.

That's when I realized I hadn't ever told Venita about Romero. “He was.”

“What do you mean . . . was?”

“He's dead.”

“What? I'm so sorry to hear that. What happened to him?”

I took a deep breath and told her the entire story from how we met when I was eighteen, during the L.A. riots, when he kept me from getting gang raped, to how he came back into my life after I was shot on the LAPD. I told her how he gave me the card for the rehabilitation program I went into, which helped me get sober and saved my life. I told her about my murder investigation case with Trayvon and how I came here to hide out, how we became more than friends. I told her how Romero asked me to marry him, and, up to the point of me going off to Brazil without telling him, so I could free Mayhem, how the two of us were inseparable. Finally, I told her how he got shot trying to help me free Mayhem and save me.

Tears filled Venita's eyes. “Romero sounds like he really loved you.”

“Yes, Romero did. I didn't even believe in love when he came into my life. But he showed me what love was. Anyhow, he left this house to me. Maybe he felt something bad was going to happen once he got involved with keeping his family from killing Mayhem . . . I don't know. I just found out about the house when I heard his message on my voice mail. He'd left the message three months ago, just before he died. I had never listened to my messages.”

“That's something. He helped free my son . . .” Venita's voice dropped off in a tone of disbelief. I guessed she knew from experience now not to seem too happy about Mayhem around me. I was trying not to be so jealous so I forgave the tears of joy I saw in her eyes. “God bless his soul.”

A hush fell over the room. Finally I spoke up. “I have something to tell you . . . Good news.”

“What is it?”

“I think I've found Daniel, Diggity.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“No, I'm serious. He's a sergeant in the Army. He's deployed in Iraq. He sent me an e-mail.”

Venita's hands flew to her mouth to keep from screaming. Her eyes watered. “This is wonderful. I'm so glad he's alive. That he's not in any type of trouble.”

“I know . . . I had worried too with him being a Black male.” I thought of what had almost become a normal eventuality for too many young Black males: the prison, or the graveyard. That's sad, but I believed that little Diggity beat the odds and had turned out fine. He hadn't become a statistic. Like the writer Antwone Fisher, he sounded as if the service had helped make a man out of him. “I haven't heard back from him since the first e-mail, but I'm hoping.”

“Is there anything else you would like to tell me?” Venita peered at me with a searching look. I could tell by her gaze that she knew.

“Yes . . . I'm pregnant.”

“I knew it. Hallelujah!” Venita grabbed me, kissed my cheek, and hugged me all up. “I've been dreaming fish for the past few months. I dreamed you had a baby boy, but when you dream it, sometimes it's the opposite. It would be nice if you have a daughter.”

For the first time, I relaxed into my mother's hug. On a deep level, I felt like a baby in its mother's arms. My heart leaped and soared. I had to pull away before I crawled back up in the womb.

“Thanks, Venita.”

I felt better now that I had told Venita. Generally, Shirley will tell Venita things about me, but I guessed my foster mother felt this was something I should tell her myself.

The other good thing was Venita took Ben home with her. She said the boys would enjoy playing with him.

After she left, I thought about how, regardless of whether I wanted to admit it or not, Venita had shaped my most formative years. Part of who I was today was because of her. I was thinking of how Venita was the type of mother who made you go and fight for yourself.

A memory, long buried, surfaced. I remembered when I was about eight years old a classmate named Shawana was threatening to beat me up. Part of the nonsensical reason was because Venita dressed me to the nines, thanks to children's clothes bought from the local booster. She also kept my hair neatly combed and braided in the nicest intricate styles with matching barrettes.

Now don't get me wong. There was a time in the projects when most little Black girls had their hair neatly combed and dressed. But with the crack epidemic in the eighties, more and more little girls were beginning to look like vagabonds, if Big Mommas or aunties didn't step in and help.

When I was a child, people wouldn't just comment on my clean appearance, they would look at me and say, “You really have such long hair and are so pretty to be dark skinned.”

Talk about a collective cultural, psychological scar of a people when it came to hair and color, but that's another issue.

Now, although my tormentor was probably my age, she was much taller and thicker than I was. Obviously, Shawana's mother was on crack and this child was never dressed as nicely as I was. Worse, she knew I was afraid of her. For whatever reason, she spent that particular day at school kicking the back of my desk. “When school lets out, I'ma beat your ass,” she kept hissing.

Fights were common in our hood. It wasn't that I went for bad, it's just I never had to fight because of who my family was. Up until then, I'd been protected by association with Mayhem. Unfortunately, by then, though, my brother, at the age of nine, missed more school than he attended, so I couldn't run to him for protection.

I was sweating bullets, stressed out, and quaking in my shoes all that day. The hands on the clock seemed to creep and crawl until it was time for school to let out. I couldn't wait for the bell to ring and school to dismiss. As soon as it did, I hauled ass home, with Shawana and her crew hot on my heels.

As soon as Venita saw me when I crossed the threshold of our project unit, she knew something was wrong. She looked up from the ironing board where she was ironing one of my many outfits. “What the hell is the matter with you, girl?” she hollered, which was how she communicated most of the time, talking loud and cussing.

Tears muffled in my voice, I blurted out, “Shawana say she gon' beat me up.”

“Where she at?”

“She outside.”

Venita looked out the door and saw the crowd of children waiting for a fight. I wanted her to go out and fight my battle for me, but she pushed me back outside. “Go out there and fight that heffa. Even if she beat yo' ass, you better fight her back. If you don't fight her back, I'm a beat yo' ass myself. Don't you ever run your narrow ass in here scared of nobody.”

I went out and fought Shawana with everything I had inside of me. Somehow, I won, by whatever standard street fights were solved, and from then on, I was never picked on or bullied. When Mayhem found out about it, he took me out to the park and taught me how to handle a gun—which was how I was such a good shot when I went through the LAPD Police Academy years later.

I guessed, in her crazy way, Venita had shown me love. So I thought about the lesson Venita taught me that day: never back down from no one. Pregnant or not, it was time for me to get busy, but I didn't know how long I'd be gone when I had to go dig into the sewers of the street.