An Urban Drama (5 page)

“Killed a cop? In our apartment? What were the cops doin’ there?”

“They came to arrest Lorenzo on a warrant for conspiracy to distribute,” Shay explained.

“Oh my God,” I said as I began to cry.

“I don’t think that you should try to go in there anytime soon, Nina,” Teena said. “You know how they like to arrest the girlfriend and shit. They figure that you know everything about how Lorenzo does business, and then try to make you testify against him.”

“Shit, that ain’t gonna happen,” I said. I took out my cell phone and called the lawyer. “Let’s get out of here.”

The worst thing about waiting for information is that you have plenty of time to speculate, and the three of us were off the chain with it. We had been sitting at Shay’s house for an hour, coming up with all kinds of stuff. When the lawyer did finally call, he didn’t do much to end all the drama. He confirmed what we already knew: both of them were charged with murder and conspiracy. He said that Chris was in jail and Lorenzo was in the hospital, and that he was on his way to see Chris. He couldn’t tell us anything else, and said that he would call back with more information as soon as he could.

“What’s Lorenzo doin’ in the hospital?” Shay asked when I told them what the lawyer had said.

“He didn’t know. Or if he did, he didn’t tell me.” I looked at Teena. She had been uncharacteristically quiet since we got to Shay’s. I mean, she was talking or whatever, but she wasn’t her usual self. She wasn’t talking any shit, and that’s what was uncharacteristic. I wondered if Chris was becoming more than just another nigga with money to her.

The next day, the lawyer called me back to say that Lorenzo was the one who killed the cop. I went numb, only hearing half of what the lawyer said after that. I knew then that nothing about my life would ever be the same. At the time, I couldn’t even imagine how true that was.

I wasn’t allowed to see Lorenzo while he was in the hospital. They told me some bullshit about his condition. When I tried to get information, they told me that I needed to talk to the police, but the police weren’t telling me shit. After two days, he was released from the hospital and went straight to court. I was late getting there, so I had to see him when he got to jail. When he came into the visiting room, all I could say was “Damn! What the hell happened to you?” Lorenzo’s right eye was bruised and swollen, and his lip had stitches.

“Cops.”

“The cops did that?” I asked him, thinking it was more of a statement than a question. This wasn’t the first time I had seen the type of brutality that the cops could deal out. I just never in my wildest dreams, thought it would happen to anybody I knew, and definitely not Lorenzo. He was much too smart to put himself in a position for the cops to bust him up like that, but there he was, all busted up.

“Yup. It looks a lot better now. Yesterday this whole side of my face was swollen.”

“They say you killed a cop.”

Lorenzo just nodded.

“What happened?”

“
Me
and Chris were at the crib chillin’ when the cops come to the house with a warrant to search the place. I looked at Chris; he looked at me. I knew I had shit there, so I knew we were goin’ to jail, but we’d talked about this, you know what I’m sayin’? Keep your mouth shut and do what they say; don’t give them
no
excuses. So we’re sittin’ there on the barstools, like we always do, waitin’ for them to find the stash. While we’re sittin’ there, one of the cops is talkin’ big shit to us, but you know we ain’t payin’ that shit
no
attention.

“So when they find it and they’re about to arrest us, this cop steps in front of me, points his finger in my face and says, ‘I guess you
boys
are goin’ to jail.’ Now, you know I hate that shit, so I stood up and said, ‘That’s all right. I’ll be back on the block playin’ stickball before dinnertime.’ Then he hits me in the face. And I don’t know, maybe it was reflex, but I swung back.

“Another cop pulls out his club and hits me in the shins and I drop to my knees. I tried to get up, and then both of them start hittin’ me with their clubs and kickin’ me. All I could think about then was dyin’. I knew they were gonna kill me, Nina. I couldn’t just let them kill me, so I grabbed one cop’s gun and I shot him.”

“Damn, Lorenzo. You killed a cop.”

“It was self-defense. He was gonna kill me, Nina. I know it. After I shot the cop, the other cop pulls his gun and shoots me in the arm.”

“You’re lucky it was just your arm. He coulda aimed for your chest.”

“He did, but I moved, just not
quick
enough. The bullet caught me in the arm and I dropped the gun. Then it seemed like all the cops started kickin’ me and hittin’ me with them clubs. I heard somebody yell, ‘That’s enough,’ and I blacked out. The next thing I remember is waking up in the hospital.”

“Where was Chris while all this was goin’ on?”

“I don’t know.”

Over the next few months, the government took everything. Yes, everything. I never did get back in the apartment. I was told that it had all been purchased with the proceeds of a criminal enterprise or some shit like that. So now I had nothing—no home, no car, no clothes. It was a good thing that I did leave my old stuff at my parents’ house, ’cause I needed it then. Since my parents wouldn’t let me move back in the house, I had to get a small apartment. It was a dump, but it was all I could afford. I had given just about all the money to the lawyer.

 
At the trial, the prosecution presented their case and rested. This was when it became apparent what part Chris had played in all this. He became one of the star witnesses for the prosecution. Lorenzo’s lawyer told him that Chris began telling everything he knew as soon as Lorenzo blacked out. Chris didn’t want any part of the murder charge, so he rolled on Lorenzo and did it quick. He wasn’t the only one. Lorenzo had another partner named Bryce, who had seemed to disappear about four months earlier. As it turned out, Bryce had been busted on a possession charge, and he was the one who gave them Lorenzo.

Lorenzo’s lawyer didn’t have much of a defense to mount. He tried to discredit Chris and Bryce on their drug-related testimony, based on their admitted involvement in a criminal enterprise, but the bomb was already dropped when they put Chris on the stand to talk about the murder. He testified that he heard Lorenzo talking shit to the cops, then the next thing he saw was Lorenzo grabbing the cop’s gun and killing him. Not a word about the cops beating Lorenzo. That bitch didn’t say shit about that. I wanted to shoot that nigga myself. How you sellout your boy like that? Lorenzo said he understood, but I could see in his eyes that shit hurt him. Both of your boys rolling on you—you can’t tell me that shit is easy to swallow.

It took the jury less than an hour to find Lorenzo guilty on all charges. I can’t ever remember crying so hard over something, than I did for Lorenzo that day. Inside, I felt like my life was over too. In those two years, I had built my whole life around Lorenzo Copeland. What would my life be without him? Did I even have a life without him?

His lawyer arranged for Lorenzo to see me for a minute before they took him away. I began to cry again, as soon as I saw him.

“Don’t cry, baby. We knew this day was coming,” Lorenzo said.

“I know.” I continued to cry and Lorenzo held my hands.

“There’s something that I gotta say to you,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“I want you to know that I love you. I have always loved you, Nina.”

“I love you too.”

“If you ever need anything, you gotta call my cousin, Leon, in
Jacksonville
.”

“I will,” I said, still not able to stop myself from crying.

“I been thinkin’ about this for a long time, and I know it’s gonna be better for you this way.”

“What are you talkin’ about?”

“I don’t want you to come see me anymore.”

“What do you mean? Why don’t you want me to come see you?”

“I know that I’m never gonna get out of here, and if I do, it won’t be for a long time.”

“What are you sayin’? Lorenzo, I love you. I don’t care how long it takes, I’ll wait for you.”

“Nina, you gotta listen to me. It’s not fair to you. I can’t do that to you. Make you live your life alone, or worse, lying to me.”

“No, Lorenzo, don’t do this. I promise to be faithful to you. I love you. I promise to come see you, and I’ll write to you all the time.”

“I don’t want you to come see me. I don’t want you to write to me. You are a young, beautiful woman. You have the rest of your life in front of you.”

I broke down crying hard. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “I don’t have a life without you. I need you. You’re my whole life.” I couldn’t breathe. How could he be saying this to me?

“I can’t be a part of your life anymore. That life is over for me.”

“No,” I cried. “Your life is not over. Don’t say that.”

“My life is inside now, with my father and my uncles. It’s like this is where I always been goin’ all my life,” Lorenzo said as the deputy opened the door. “I’m dead to you now.”

“That’s it,” the deputy said, as he uncuffed Lorenzo from the table. “Sorry, ma’am, but it’s time to go.”

Lorenzo stood and put his hands behind his back. “Good-bye, Nina,” Lorenzo said as the deputy put him in chains.

“What am I supposed to do now?”

Lorenzo smiled at me and mouthed the words
sell drugs
.

When Lorenzo was sentenced to life without parole, the reality of my situation finally began to sink in. I was alone, I was about to be broke, and I was depressed about it. I stayed in bed for a few days. When I did get out of bed, I wouldn’t come out of the apartment. Everybody came by to holla; make sure I was all right. I told them all the same thing: I was fine and just needed some time to get myself together.

One afternoon, a friend named
Amel
came by to see me. She worked as a masseuse at the spa that I used to go to. She had been my masseuse for the last couple of years. I knew she did a little private dancing on the side, but there was a whole other side to her that I never would have even suspected. When an attendant walked in on her while she was having sex with one of her customers, she got fired. And yeah, that customer was a woman.

It took me a minute to come to grips with that fact that the woman who had her hands all over my body was, as she called it, a woman who believed in choices. She said she hated the term bisexual. By the time that happened, we’d become friends. Our relationship had gone beyond her providing me with a service, so I accepted her. We could be cool as long as she never came at me like that, and she never did.

In spite of that, Lorenzo would have freaked if he knew. Although he’d never admit it to me, gay and bisexual woman intimidated him for some reason. “Maybe
it’s because we come at a woman on a level that he could never understand
, much less compete with,”
Amel
told me once, but that shit was too deep for me to even wrap my mind around.

Naturally, I couldn’t afford to pay her for her services now, so she dropped in to gossip and smoke a blunt. “What are you gonna do now, Nina?”

“I don’t know. I’m not ready to sell drugs, and I’m definitely not ready to get a job,” I said, but that was exactly what I should have been ready to do. I had a degree in business administration. I could hear Lorenzo telling me that I was a young, beautiful woman, and that I had the rest of my life in front of me. Still, I wasn’t ready to make that choice.

“Why don’t you dance?”
Amel
asked me.