Baby Huey: A Cautionary Tale of Addiction (26 page)

Chapter 23

Room service in an interrogation room. “Coke or coffee?” Coke. “Cigarette?” No. “Doughnuts?” Sure, chocolate covered, if it’s not a problem. “Water?” No thanks, I got this coke.

The table and chair were nailed to the floor, graffiti everywhere, stale BO in the air.

Another detective came into the room, this one slim, dressed in a suit and tie, his black hair combed back. I thought he’d come to take an order, as the others had done. I was ready to tell him T-bone, cooked well done. Baked potato too.

Instead he stared at me for a moment before saying, “We have a problem, Mr. Dough.”

My mind was still on that T-bone. “Western Sizzler closed?”

“You hungry?” I told him I was. He read me Miranda. “You understand what I just read you?”

“Yes.” I didn’t like his expression, not T-bone friendly at all. “What’s the problem, Detective…” I read the badge pinned under his suit pocket. “Detective Rainey?”

“Mr. Marko Roper is in the hospital. He’s not expected to make it through the night. Preliminary tests of the blood on the wrench found in Mr. Delano Hampton’s car match Mr. Roper’s. The problem, only you and Mr. Hampton witnessed the assault.” A pause. “He, Mr. Hampton, says you, Mr. Dough, were the one who hit Mr. Roper with the wrench.”

“That’s not a problem. He’s lying. I never touched the wrench. Two other guys saw Spanky do it. Calvin and Botchie, they were there.”

“What’s their last name?” I didn’t know. “That’s a problem. Mr. Hampton says you wore gloves, tossed them out on the highway. Do you smoke crack?”

My left leg started shaking. Always the left. “Yes, I do.”

“Mr. Roper fronted you crack, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Roper fronted you more than you could pay back, didn’t he?”

I picked up the coke can; it was empty. “Sorta. It all depended on how many cars we washed. Man, we’re going left field here. Spanky did it. I saw the whole thing. Why you pushing me, man? You didn’t see the blood on his sleeve?”

“You and Mr. Roper didn’t get into an argument over the money you owe him?”

“Hell naw! Spanky trying to flip it, man! Damn guy wears women clothes. You saw him. Man got a green wig on his head you know he’ll tell a damn lie!”

“Mr. Hampton says you and he are lovers and you have a history of getting violent when you smoke crack. Says you attacked him numerous times.”

I was too stunned to comment. My head started hurting. “Can I go now?”

Detective Rainey ignored the question. “The clothes found in the car, who bought those?”

“He did.”

“They’re not his size…or his style?”

Some guy named Rabbit had carved his name in the edge of the table. I thought about Mama picking up a newspaper and seeing my name connected with a murder and a transvestite.

Detective Rainey said, “Excuse me, I’ll be back,” and walked out, closing the door behind him.

Walking down that dark road in Dawson, I’d contemplated suicide for a brief minute. Now, in an interrogation room feeling more claustrophobic by the second, I contemplated ways of doing it.
Nothing messy. No blood. No holes.

Hanging seemed the ideal way to go. I could pull my pants down, grease my hands and package. That way my death would be ruled accidental. There was a name for it…
Choking while choking?
No. I couldn’t remember.

“He didn’t kill hisself--he was playing with his package and forgot the rope looped around his neck.”

Auto-erotic asphyxiation, that was the name of it.

Detective Rainey came back into the room and I started talking, beginning with the first time I smoked crack, ending with Spanky’s arrest. He didn’t seem concerned about my assaulting Doreen, choking Zelda, attempting to steal Uncle CJ’s safe. Yet he was very interested in Batman.

“His real name is Chris Hampton, isn’t that right?” I didn’t know. “He and Delano are brothers, isn’t that right?” I nodded. “Did you see Batman give Fifty money to buy drugs?” I shook my head. “You see Batman with drugs at any point?”

“Uh-uh.” I explained how the guy in the next room came in and took the box from Fifty.

Another detective joined us and Detective Rainey told me to recite the part about bringing Batman the turkey. Then he said, “Mr. Dough, you don’t want to go to prison for fifty years, do you?” I told him no and he said, “I’ve got something in mind to keep you from doing that.”

* * * * *

Lisa Grogan, my new girlfriend, was a looker. Pretty face, apricot-colored skin, sandy-colored hair tucked under a black wool cap. The large, black turtleneck sweater she had on didn’t hide a middle-age spread, but she was still a looker. We were riding in a teal-green Mercury Cougar, Lisa behind the wheel. Neither of us said a word.

I squelched the urge to hold her hand, tell her our relationship was a rose blossoming anew. Bad idea. She was an undercover detective. Our temporary relationship existed for the sole purpose of buying an eight ball of crack from Batman.

Once we walked out the door less the two hundred in marked twenties in my pocket, Lisa would give the signal, pulling the wool cap off, and a team of narcotic officers along with Detective Rainey would converge on the house and arrest everyone in it, including me and Detective Grogan.

I didn’t particularly like that part. Detective Rainey said it was necessary and would prevent me and Lisa being tagged as snitches. “Which do you prefer?” he’d said. “A couple hours or fifty years?”

Lisa stopped the Cougar in front of the blue house. “We’ve been aiming to pop this guy a long time. Don’t screw this up. You do and you may be looking at more than fifty years.”

Wait a minute!
There was one too many cops dangling fifty years over my head. I started to tell her that but noticed her hand shaking as she took the keys out of the ignition. She was just as nervous as I was. We crossed the yard, walked up the steps, and I opened the front door without knocking. I thought we were at the wrong house. There was furniture in the front room. Pictures on the wall. A tall but very skinny woman in a black leotard and white stockings moved in synch to an aerobic video on a console television. The smell and sound of frying chicken came from the kitchen.

A man walked from there, in a white shirt, tie and dress slacks, his hands white with flour. He looked like Batman. He smiled at Lisa and said, “Come in. Have a seat. Give me a minute, will ya?” He went back into the kitchen. He
was
Batman.

I looked at Lisa and she shook her head. I whispered, “Let’s go,” and she pointed to the couch, whispered for me to sit down and shut up. I wasn’t about to sit down. This was insane.

Where’s Cindy?

Batman came out a few minutes later, looked at me and said, “When was the last time you saw Spanky?”

“I saw him earlier today.”

“Where?”

“On the street.”

Batman licked his lips. “Reason I asked, he called me this afternoon, said he was looking for you. Said he has something for you. I told him to leave it with me, but he said he wanted to give it to you personally.”

I sat down then.

The limber beauty on the video spread her legs and deftly bent over and patted the floor with both hands. The skinny woman a few feet before us tried to duplicate the move and fell flat on her stomach. She lay there a moment before turning her head and staring at Batman, an embarrassed look on her face. Batman gave her a disapproving look and shook his head.

“Go to your room,” Batman told her. “Please. You gonna break something you’ll need later on.” The woman got up and left the room.

Lisa, a damn undercover detective, didn’t get it. This whole scene was staged. Spanky had tipped Batman off and issued a threat from jail. It was time to go.

I started to get up when Batman said, “What can I do for you two?”

Lisa patted my knee and said, “Show him the money, baby.” I gave her a no-way-in-hell look. “Baby, if we can’t get a deal here we’ll try somewhere else.”

I gave her the money and she put it on the table.

Batman said, “What’s up?”

“An eight ball,” Lisa said.

Batman played dumb. “An eight ball of what?”

That keyed Lisa to what was going on, but she had to play her hand out. “Nice talking to you, dawg. If you can’t serve us, we need to be moving on.”

Batman told her he didn’t sell dope. “You got me mixed up with someone else. In fact, you could run a dog through here, Mrs. Grogan, and you wouldn’t find so much as a painkiller.”

Lisa glared at him. “What did you call me?” Batman repeated her last name.

“You ready now?” I asked her.

She said she was, and Batman followed us out the door.

“John,” he said, and I felt a chill, “you ever see the movie
Roots
?” I nodded and he said, “Chuck Connors played the massa.”

Lisa stepped down to the sidewalk and told me to come on.

Batman said, “Hold on. John needs to hear this. The massa raped Kissi, Leslie Uggams, and she had a boy, Chicken George, they called him. Ben Vereen played him. Anyway, he grew up and him and the massa started running together, chasing whores, getting drunk. “Meanwhile, in Virginia, Nat Turner saw an eclipse and thought it was God telling him to go kill whitey. Which he did. As you can imagine this scared the bejesus outta white folks. The massa got out his rifle, and Chicken George tried to run his black ass inside with the massa and his family and hide from the niggas. Chuck pointed the rifle at him and told him to get his black ass back where he belong.

“Chicken George was hurt, thought him and the massa had formed a bond. Thought the massa would bring him into the big house when shit got ugly. That was then. Today, two thousand oh three, a nigga forget where he come from, run up in the big house and tell the man what nigga doing this, what nigga doing that.”

He shook his head and gave me a hard look. “Something bad happen to that nig
ger
! Something real bad! If you don’t know, you better ask somebody!”

* * * * *

The back door to the detail shop was open. In a swivel chair I propped my feet on the desk and watched the headlights stream down the street. The air was spiced with oil and Jobo Handcleaner.

The pint of Canadian Mist tucked between my legs was half full. Detective Rainey gave me a five spot for cab fare, but I walked, bought the pint. It wasn’t working yet: I couldn’t get my mind off what Batman had said.

“Don’t worry ’bout it,” Detective Rainey kept telling me. You think I need police protection? “Don’t worry ’bout it.” Batman sounded serious. “Don’t worry ’bout it.” What of those fifty years you were talking? “Don’t worry ’bout it.”

The Canadian Mist kicking in now, warming me up, relaxing my mind, I figured to keep a low profile, stay away from crack and crack dealers. Chill out. Don’t worry about a damn thing, just chill out.

It dawned on me that all that time I was with the police, no one mentioned anything about serving divorce papers, which meant that Doreen had changed her mind, had grown weary of Dokes, a clean freak better suited for the Nation of Islam than a relationship.

Then I remembered the baby.
Damn!

A woman screaming woke me up. I jumped and she ran out of the detail shop. It was morning. There was a white Ford Explorer parked out front and I heard the woman telling someone there’s a man in there.

“That’s John. He’s okay,” a man said.

Marko? I walked up to the Explorer. A man with his head wrapped up, shades on, was sitting in the passenger seat.

“Marko?” He nodded. “Man, I thought you were dead.”

His face was bloated, lips split and chalky, and he moved slow. “That’s why you, Botchie and Calvin run off and left me, right? ‘He’s dead, what the hell?’”

I started to apologize, but then he introduced me to the woman standing there gawking at me. Moesha: pointy nose, hair loosely plaited, thin, with a beer gut ballooning a pink bathrobe. Marko told her to go inside and get his stuff.

She left, he said, “I thought I was dead, too. Woke up, white folks staring down at me. That’s a bad sign.”

“Man, it happened so fast.”

“We were in high school I used to take his lunch card, run him home crying to his mama. I didn’t think he would hit me. He’s still a sissy…an aggressive sissy, but still a sissy. Next time I won’t let him get the jump on me.”

Moesha came out of the shop with a cardboard box and put it in the back of the Explorer, then got behind the wheel.

I said, “Marko, you don’t have to worry about Spanky no more. He’s locked up, headed to the joint.”

Marko scratched underneath the head bandage. He was still wearing the hospital band on his wrist. “It was you,” he said. “You dropped the dime on him?”

Moesha was ready to go, both hands on the steering wheel.

“Yeah, I did. Police stopped us and I told him Spanky just killed a man. They arrested him and then…” I didn’t think I should tell him about the botched bust at Batman’s house. “Lying bastards told me you weren’t gonna make it through the night.”

Moesha asked Marko was he ready to go and he said, “John, that’s bad news, man. Spanky come after you, man. You need to stay away from here. This’ll be the first place he look.”

“He can’t come after nobody in jail. I’m not worried about him.”

“He ain’t in jail.”

“Huh?”

“We just saw him driving down Booker Street. He ain’t in jail. Police was pressing me about Spanky the second I rolled into the hospital. They wanted me to roll over on him.”

“What? You’re not pressing charges? You gotta press charges, Marko. He’s a danger to society.” That got me a snooty look from Moesha.

Marko shook his head and I noticed the stitches in his left ear. “I’m in the hole with Batman. I roll over on Spanky, Batman will…You know what I’m saying?”

I looked at the traffic going in every direction, picking out white cars. There wasn’t much difference between a Camry and a Lexus.