L.A. Blues III (3 page)

I cut my iPhone back on, but the signal was weak. Within minutes, my phone vibrated. A text message came across: I see where you put out a call on Facebook and Twitter for a biological sister named Righteousness. I think I might be that person.

For a moment, everything around me fell silent. The world froze like children playing the game Red light/Green Light. I had to stop reading I was so floored. I sucked in a deep breath, gathered my wits about me, and continued to read the message.

She'd also sent an attached picture of herself. Right away, I could see some of my mother Venita's features. Although she was what some black people would call a “redbone,” this Rachel had Venita's cherry nose and slanted eyes.

I text messaged back: You look like my mother. Let's talk at 9:00 tonight. I will call you. I'm at a wedding on a ship. I can't call you from here.

Okay, she text messaged back.

I was so excited, I forgot my unwanted pregnancy, I forgot my nausea, I forgot my blackmailer, and I almost forgot where I was. Years melted away and I was still nine, worrying about the basketball in my mother's stomach, which I later learned was a baby sister, who somehow survived when my stepfather, Strange, beat the mess out of my mother when she was seven months' pregnant. I was so excited I couldn't wait to catch the next ferry going back.

I made my way over to the dais where the bridal party was seated. The line of well-wishers had thinned out and the newlyweds were surrounded only by their wedding party. I was supposed to have sat at this long table with Peter, but I had elected to stay in the dance hall. I'd missed the first dance of the newlyweds.

“Z, where have you been?” Haviland snapped petulantly. “You missed the throwing of the bouquet and the garter.”

“I'm sorry, but I got a little seasick.” I caught myself, then changed the subject. “Girl, you're looking radiant.” I blew air kisses, a Hollywood habit I'd picked up from Haviland.

Haviland was beaming, her makeup still intact. You could see how happy she was being the center of attention. She was the cynosure of all eyes, and, as an actress, she really hammed it up. Even so, she had this determined look like this was it, like she might make it through her fourth marriage. For her sake, I hoped so.

“Thanks for sharing our day,” Trevor said.

“I wish you both all the happiness,” I said sincerely. “I'm leaving, Haviland, Trevor.”

In spite of Haviland's protests regarding me leaving the reception so early, I insisted I had to leave. I hugged them both, in the best mood I'd been in since the wedding started. They were due to fly out for Paris for their honeymoon later that night.

“Have fun. Congratulations!”

Absently, I twiddled and twirled my ankh, which I wore around my neck, as I sped up the 73 West Freeway toward L.A. in my rental SUV. A few months ago, a Santeria had given this amulet to me when I was in Rio. Sometimes this ankh brought me comfort and lifted my mind from fear. I was still wondering if the ankh was what gave me the power to kill four men by myself when I was surrounded in Brazil.

Driving along, in a moment of clarity, I felt a sudden urge to go to an AA meeting, but I wanted to go to a meeting with people who looked like me—brown. Plenty of AA meetings were scheduled in Orange County, but I wanted to go to one in L.A. I'd been sober for almost three years now. Up until Mayhem was kidnapped, life had been good—brand new because of my newfound sobriety.

It hit me that I hadn't been to an AA meeting in almost three months but, fortunately, with this pregnancy and the constant nausea (which I was kind of hoping both would magically go away), drinking was the last thing on my mind. I thought about it. A meeting wouldn't hurt. It always gave me clarity about a situation: how should I handle the reunion with my long-lost sister? I wouldn't talk about my unplanned pregnancy, or my reunion with my sister, but generally, I'd hear a solution in what was said by one of the people who opened up and disclosed more.

I merged from the 405 Freeway to the Harbor Freeway, exited at Vernon and was driving down Vernon to Vermont in South L.A., all the time my mind was on my baby sister. So, her name was Rachel now. What would she be like? Would she remember me? I last saw her when she was about eight or nine and living in a foster home in Rowland Heights.

My mind drifted back to Romero. I decided I would go to the cemetery tomorrow and put flowers on his grave and talk to him about my situation.
Should I abort this baby?
My real question:
Romero, is this your baby I'm carrying
?

Oh, no! I don't want to be on some Maury Povich TV show with the DNA test.
I could see the drama now. Would his family come forth and say, “That's not Romero's baby. He doesn't look anything like him—I don't care if he is dead!”
Oh, Lord!
And Romero came from a crime family background, too.

My mind wouldn't rest. I couldn't stop thinking about this pregnancy. To take my mind off my dilemma, I thought about my sister, Ry-chee, aka Rachel. I had told her I would call her back at 9:00
P.M.
It was only 6:00. I had time to make an hour AA meeting in the hood.

I was so excited about going home to sit down and really talk to my baby sister, I wasn't as conscious as I usually am. Wahoo-wahoo. Suddenly the wail of numerous sirens swooped down into my consciousness. Loud sirens blared around me, and a cordon of police cruisers were zooming down on me. My heart catapulted in my chest.

For a moment, I thought the law was after me for disposing of Tank's head. Were these the two agents who came to me with the proposition in the first place? Had my blackmailers turned me in since I hadn't gotten them any money?

I held my breath, waiting for the squad cars to stop and pull me over. Instead, the black-and-white squad cars whizzed by me in a blur, sirens screaming, horns blaring, tires screeching. I drew a deep sigh of relief.

Oh, Lord, somebody was going to pay for the mess they made of my life.

Then, out of nowhere, I saw what looked like green leaves filling the air. I thought it was some type of green snowfall, which, either way, would have been strange in L.A.

Everything seemed surreal. I could see greenery floating in the air, a whirlwind of verdant-looking leaves. Onlookers rubbernecked and came out to see what was going on. People swarmed out into the streets, screaming, dancing, hollering, jumping, leaping, as if they had the Holy Ghost.

What's going on?
I wondered, regarding the commotion. People, bent over like cotton pickers, lifted what appeared to be leaves up off the street. The total bedlam reminded me of the 1992 L.A. riots. Was the sky raining leaves? Then it occurred to me. This was money! This was more absurd. The sky was raining money!

A police on a bullhorn barked, “People, put that money down. We have you on tape. You will be arrested for obstructing a police investigation. These men are armed, reckless, and considered dangerous.”

As they gathered up the money, people were oblivious to the police orders. More trails of people came flooding from their houses to pick up the dollar bills. Cars stopped while the drivers and riders craned their necks out the window to see what was going on. A throng of young men wearing hoodies in honor of the murdered black teen Trayvon Martin had gathered in the street and was picking up money. Pandemonium reigned and everything seemed bizarre.

The police continued to roar in a stentorian tone over a horn. “People, go in your house. You are obstructing a police pursuit. Get out the way! We have you on camera! If you pick up any of this contraband, you will be arrested.”

I could see all this purloined loot being picked up, and, oddly, I felt a strange sense of exhilaration. A sense of justice. As if somehow a wrong was being righted. I knew I'd never do it, but for a mother with five kids to feed, no job, and no food, maybe this was moral. Right and wrong sometimes shifted in the kaleidoscope of harsh reality.

“Money, money, money,” people chanted, dancing wildly up and down the curb and onto the sidewalk. “It's raining money!” Some threw the money in the air.

In the manner of the old Martha Reeves and the Vandellas song, people were literally dancing in the street. Several people threw up their fingers in gang signs. Some were doing the Crip walk to a rhythm with a made-up song that went something like, “Kiss my ass, popo!”

“Fuck you, pigs!”

“Go to hell, motherfuckers!”

I kind of figured out what was going on, and there was a side of me that cheered the robbers on. I know it was wrong, but a perverse side of me was hoping that they got away.

“It's Robin in the hood!” someone quipped.

Bam! A loud noise exploded. The car the police pursued suddenly crashed into a truck.

I guessed the robbers were caught because farther up ahead, as I was stuck in traffic, I saw the police squad cars surround the speeding car. Guns were drawn. One man seemed to get away, but the other suspects surrendered.

Mesmerized, I started pulling over, trying to get out of the way of the traffic. I cut my radio on to see if I could find out what was really going on. Before I could get a news station, and while I was watching what was going on, out of nowhere a car barreled down on me like a bulldozer, and there was another bam!

I started twirling into a dervish-like spin, and the whole time I was crying, “What is happening? Help me, Lord!”

The next thing I knew I was turning over like a tumbleweed. The collision caused me to flop over and over again. After what seemed like an eternity, the SUV stopped and turned upside down like a turtle on its back.

“Help me, God!” I cried over and over again.

I had my seat belt on and, strangely, I didn't budge. I didn't move out of my seat. When I tried to unbuckle my seat belt, I was stuck. My air bag had blown up, but it also kept me penned in my car. That's when I began to panic.

For a moment, the world went black.

Carjackers?
was my only thought as I drifted back into consciousness.

With my senses returned, my neck lurched, and a pain shot up my back. Obviously, some car had hit me. That much I knew.

After I don't know how long, a tapping started at my window. I heard a strange female voice calling into my car, “Roll down your window. Miss, are you okay?”

I let my window down, and this angel stuck her hand in the car and held my hand.

“Help is on the way. I called 911 on my cell.”

Drowsily, I wondered if I was imagining this stranger. Was she another angel in my life? She reminded me of how Romero saved my life from a gangbanging group of wannabe rapists when I was eighteen.

The lady talked me through the accident as she popped up into my peripheral vision. “I took my car and blocked your car so no one else would plow into you. I tried to get the driver's license plate but whoever it was was moving too fast. They had dark windows so I couldn't see in the car either.”

My eyes swamped in tears of appreciation. “Thank you, miss.”

All of a sudden, I could hear the drone of what sounded like an emergency crew, paramedics, maybe even helicopters. I don't know how much time elapsed as the woman talked to me in a soothing voice. I must have sunk in and out of consciousness because I looked up and saw a fire truck parked near my car. Through a fog, I could hear sirens in the distance. I heard a familiar voice, which had a rich timbre to it.

“Ma'am. Are you hurt? “

I looked up—which was actually down since I was upside down—and a fireman wearing a black shirt with an orange and white triangle badge on the sleeve was kneeling down with his hands splayed on the ground, talking to me in a calm voice. It sounded strangely familiar.

“Miss, don't cry. You're going to be all right. Are you hurt?”

“I'm hanging upside down. What happened?”

“It looks like a hit and run,” I heard someone say.

Although my eyes were kind of blurry and I was still in shock, somehow, I recognized the voice. It was the minister's who had just married Haviland! “Aren't you Reverend . . . Edgar . . . the minister who officiated over Haviland's wedding?” I said haltingly. My voice sounded strange since I was still hanging upside down.

“In the flesh. Reverend Edgar Broussard. What happened?”

“A car hit her and kept going. She flipped upside down,” the lady Samaritan was explaining.

“What?” I asked drowsily. The world was spinning and I was dizzy.

Silently, I thanked God I'd added insurance to the rental I was driving. I hadn't wanted to drive my hooptie on the freeway to Newport Beach and I'd taken out the accident insurance, just in case, so that was covered.

“How did you get here?” I asked Reverend Edgar.

“Remember, I told you I had to leave for my shift. I took a ferry back to land.”

“Small world.” Then a pain hit my shoulder where my seat belt had cut into my skin with the impact.

Everything happened in a blur after that. I felt like I was at the bottom of a well as I heard the buzz of the Jaws of Life as they sawed me out my seat belt and out of my car. Somehow they lifted me out the car, plopped me on a gurney, and deposited me in an ambulance. Racing through the streets, sirens blaring, the ambulance took me to USC hospital, which used to be old County General, since I didn't have health insurance. I was waiting for my Obamacare to kick in since I was self-employed.

It reminded me of when I was in the hospital after Romero's death. I woke up, strapped down to a hospital bed, sore from my fight with four men to the death in Brazil, worn out from a shootout with Mayhem's kidnappers, and forcefully anesthetized because of my screaming about Romero's death, but alive.

I guessed I was still alive now, which is always a good thing.

Earlier this year, when I was at the Academy Awards posing as a reporter when I was actually doing an investigation on a missing starlet who was believed to be a victim of a black serial killer known as the Grim Sleeper, an FBI agent, Special Agent Jerry Stamper, and a DEA agent, Special Agent Richard Braggs, took me into custody. They told me I had to go to Rio to get marked money that Mayhem's girlfriend, Appolonia, was allegedly holding for them or they would kill him.

Let me recap. Before I left the United States, I had helped get Mayhem's three sons out of L.A. with my mother, Venita, acting as their guardian/grandmother to keep them from getting killed. I'd run all over the nightlife of L.A., looking for clues as to who had kidnapped my brother. Before I left, I stopped by our office and received a basket in the mail with Tank's decapitated head. I left the head in the park, so I could get gone to Rio to get the money that I assumed was ransom money for my brother's kidnapping.

While in Rio, I learned about a surviving African religion and its voodoo power. A Santeria had worked her magic over me, gave me an ankh, which I still wear, and sent me out to free Mayhem's girlfriend, Appolonia, from this cartel. I didn't free Appolonia, because she didn't want to be freed, but she gave me the flash drive for the money. Afterward, I escaped by coming up the Amazon River.

The two agents, Agent Braggs and Agent Stamper, met me at the LAX airport, demanding the money I had access to, but I refused to give it up until I got my brother released. I told them for us to do the exchange at Venice Beach.

To my surprise, Romero showed up at the Venice Beach Pier. Bullets began flying everywhere and he got killed during the shootout that freed Mayhem. After that, everything was such a harrowing wild ride, I hadn't gotten in touch with how I even felt about the whole fiasco.

After Romero died, I was out of it. I hadn't even talked to Mayhem since the shootout. If Chica and Haviland hadn't pulled me through the shooting of our reality show, I'd still be lying in bed, ensconced in my grief. The two would show up at 4:00
A.M.
, before it was time to go on the set, and literally help me shower and dress. Each day I put one foot in front of the other, I must have gotten stronger. That's how I wound up at Haviland's wedding.