The Darkest Hearts

by Nelson George

  Twice in his life D had felt especially vulnerable to law enforcement whims, each encounter as arbitrary as a nightmare. On the Upper East Side, D had been walking toward Lexington Avenue when a van full of police pulled up next to him. Suddenly, D was surrounded. He stopped dead in his tracks awaiting an explanation. None was offered. Instead, an older cop turned to a younger one. “Is this him?” the older cop asked. The younger cop looked D over, said, “No,” and then the police scampered back into the van without an apology.

  D had been in a long-distance relationship with a makeup woman working at the Black Entertainment Television studio when it was still in DC. Cheryl was a pear-shaped beauty with big eyes and golden-brown skin who studied the Yoruba religion when she wasn’t putting eyeliner and pancake on R&B singers. Cheryl had taken a liking to the big man dressed in black and given him her business card, saying he could use a bit of powder on his bald dome. D had happily taken the bait and began chatting with her on the phone, which quickly escalated to Amtrak weekend rendezvous in NYC and DC.

  On one particular afternoon, he’d come down to DC to hit a museum and have dinner, but once he’d entered her apartment, a kiss became a nibble, and then a full meal on her mud-cloth bedspread. D hadn’t told her he was HIV positive yet and, despite her reassurance that it was okay, he’d worn a condom. Cheryl and D had tremendous chemistry and he’d wondered afterward whether they had a future.

  It was fall and D had worn a black leather jacket that he was zipping up when they stepped outside her apartment building. Three DC police cruisers screeched up to the curb. Cops rushed out with guns drawn. Cheryl screamed. A white cop pointed an automatic at D’s face. He took a deep breath. He could see right down the barrel. D put up his hands, which were then pulled behind his back and cuffed. It was a multiracial bunch of police but the man in charge was white and had officer’s bars.

  He had been stuffed into the back of a cruiser. He could hear Cheryl yelling at the police, but D stayed calm. Next to him was another black man, about his age, wearing a shiny brown leather jacket. The car pulled off and D craned his neck to see Cheryl being restrained by an officer. Between the policemen in the front seat and the guy next to him, D figured out that there had been a robbery by “a black man in a dark leather jacket” and that they were headed for a lineup.

  D, who’d seen so many family, friends, and clients in similar situations, worked to suppress his anxiety at being one trigger finger away from death. He told himself he hadn’t been shot and that he hadn’t robbed anyone and he had a witness who could give the cops intimate details of his actions of the last few hours that would make the station house envious. D had even smiled, trying to focus on that truth and not the reality that he was sitting on a hard seat in the back of a police car with his hands cuffed and the circulation to his fingers disappearing.

  The cruiser stopped at a curb and D was pulled out and made to stand motionless with a policeman holding his arm. A black man, an employee or a customer, stuck his head out of the store, looked at D, and nodded—yes, he had robbed the store. Now D’s cool front collapsed and he began speaking rapidly about how he’d been with Cheryl and how wrong that crazy motherfucker in the store was!

  D was trying to think if he knew anyone in the security game in DC, someone on the force or even an attorney. A weekend in a DC jail was not what he had in mind when he’d arrived at Cheryl’s place.

  Thankfully, two more people came out of that store and both shook their heads. D was not the perpetrator. The handcuffs came off and D felt his butt cheeks unclench. The officer walked over to D and asked if he’d like a ride back to where they’d picked him up. There was no way he was getting back in that cruiser. “Good luck, bro,” he said to the brother in the brown leather jacket and then headed back in the direction of Cheryl’s place. He wasn’t quite sure where he was going, but anyplace was better than where he had been.

  Cheryl had tear-filled eyes when he finally got back to her apartment and they ordered in, watching movies on HBO and then making love again until their bellies glistened with sweat. D had planned on staying the entire weekend but after a couple of phone calls, he told Cheryl had to get back to the Apple. Though it wasn’t a conscious decision, he didn’t return to DC again for two years, passing on gigs that would have taken him to BET and passing on invitations to visit Cheryl. She came up to New York a few times, but something had changed for D, and the relationship ended with a long-distance phone call.

  D remembered all this while watching the TV. He sighed deeply, pressing stop on the treadmill, and looked at a protest march on CNN for the slaying of a black man for holding a smartphone some cop claimed was a gun.

  Through ambition, access, and a couple of accidents, D had survived the ghetto gauntlet. Some would say he was a winner. Truth was, he was just one awful moment away from death every time a bigoted, fearful, inexperienced police officer gazed his way. D looked down at his watch. 8:15 LA time, 11:15 ATL time. He had a call in fifteen minutes.

  Well, D wasn’t dead yet. Things to do. Money to make. Dreams to remember. Goals to fulfill. Food to eat. Women to love. Days to fill. Night to night to night. Moments. So many moments. It could all end in a second. Until then, D would not, could not, live in fear. He wiped the sweat off his brow, smelled the musk from under his arm, and smiled. He was alive and fuck you to them all—every last one.

  CHAPTER TEN

  NICE FOR WHAT

  Once again soaking in that big London hotel room bathtub, every muscle in Serene’s upper back ached. It felt like her left rotator cuff had a slight tear and there were bruises on both shoulders. It wasn’t deep pain, but she wasn’t looking forward to the long trip back in coach across the Atlantic.

  This discomfort was soothed by what she’d accomplished in London. Someone could argue that releasing one or two girls was a drop in the bucket compared to all the humans trafficked across the globe. But every girl rescued was a life saved, a family reconnected, and a little less evil on a planet. This wasn’t the life she’d expected, but it felt like a righteous one, and the path of the righteous was never easy. She’d been a soldier. She’d been an athlete. She’d been a teacher. Now, she was all those things and more.

  Serene Powers’s odyssey had started one Monday morning at the Westlake Academy outside of San Francisco. While teaching the morning English lesson, she’d noticed that Alicia German wasn’t in class. Alicia, a caramel teen with fashionably curly hair, was precocious, smart, and way too infatuated with her own Instagram selfies.

  Previously, Serene had found Alicia crying in the girl’s restroom. Her father Theo had a gambling problem and had stolen money Alicia had stashed in her room for a class trip to the San Francisco MOMA.

  “Where’s your mother?” Serene asked.

  “Dead,” Alicia said, “in a car accident.”

  The next time they spoke about it, Alicia said her mother had drowned swimming. Serene checked the school records and found that her mother had actually died of a gunshot wound. Her father Theo had initially been charged with manslaughter but the DA hadn’t pressed charges.

  After reading that, Serene kept an eye on Alicia, looking for bruises on her arms and legs. She’d dropped her off at home on a couple of occasions, met her father, and seen rage in his eyes. She was sure they’d tangle one day.

  Alicia didn’t show up for school for a second day. This time, Serene cornered her best friend Elise, a sly girl whose assurances that she didn’t know why Alicia wasn’t in class rang false. Serene took her concerns to the principal, a stoic man named Josh Adams, who politely told her that the head of school security would look into it. Serene was still relatively new to the school so she didn’t want to be too aggressive with her boss.

  In the teacher’s room, Serene used her iPhone to search Instagram for Alicia’s account, but she needed to be approved and she got cold feet. Instead, she searched Elise’s public account and its many pictures of teenagers in skimpy outfits and heavy eye makeup. A phot
o taken over the weekend at the Paradise Club caught her eye. The Paradise was a local spot no underage girl should have been in. Tagged in the photo with Elise was Alicia, wearing too much makeup and few clothes, and a sketchy dude with arms around both their young necks. He was identified as @DaMagnificent1.

  DaMagnificent1 was brown, lean, and had the smug handsome face of a certified asshole. His fingers, wrist, neck, and teeth were bedazzled in gold and diamonds, like he was 2 Chainz on a budget. His profile described himself as party promoter, playa, and pussy trainer.

  DaMagnificent1’s Instagram account was full of pics of young women of the barely legal persuasion at the Paradise Club and other local venues. Serene’s stomach rumbled when she spotted a post of Alicia sitting behind the wheel of a Tesla with DaMagnificent1 in the passenger seat flashing a victor’s smile. Rifling through the promoter’s pictures, Serene noticed other faces from the school’s hallways. Apparently, the door policy at the Paradise Club didn’t include checking IDs.

  These images drove Serene back to Adams’s office. Considering that his students were involved, Serene expected some serious anxiety when she showed the principal the DaMagnificent1/Paradise photos.

  “We’re aware there’s a problem with the Paradise Club,” Adams said matter-of-factly. “We’ve had complaints from parents about that place and we’ve passed those concerns on to the police.”

  “Shouldn’t we alert the police that we potentially have a missing student?”

  Adams said, “I’ve already spoken to Mr. German today and he said Alicia’s just been sick.”

  “Did you ask to speak to her?”

  “I did and he said she was sleeping.”

  “I’ve had run-ins with him before,” Serene said.

  “Yes,” Adams replied coldly, “which is why you need to let me and the sheriff’s office handle this. I appreciate your concern. Thanks for alerting me, and if anything is seriously amiss, we’ll find out.”

  Serene, who’d only been at the school about a year, realized that this was her cue to leave. Of course she’d let the authorities handle things. But Serene knew leaving government employees as the chief protectors of young women was always a questionable decision.

  Unsure how to proceed, Serene decided to clear her head and went over to the gym after work. Not an Equinox or 24 Hour Fitness, but a gym where people practiced the fine art of violence. Serene had gotten interested in mixed martial arts in the service and found it therapeutic after intense verbal engagement with teenage girls.

  Actually, saying she got “interested” is seriously understating Serene’s involvement with MMA. She’d learned to scrap on the streets of Richmond, a tough Bay Area town that made Oakland seem like a resort. In the army she’d refined her wrestling skills, and not just in the gym. The dirty secret of women’s enlistment in combat zones was how many rapes and, in Serene’s case, attempted rapes occurred by latrines and in the field. When a soldier attacked her after a late-night bathroom break, she’d nearly had to blind him with two thumbs to the right eye. In the fallout, Serene saw firsthand how the words rape, consent, and seduction would all be commingled in official status reports.

  Anita Gibson was waiting on her at the gym. Anita, a tough white blonde with a flaming-red bird tattoo across her back, was a skilled Muay Thai fighter, capable of knocking out opponents with an elbow or knee. Anita was on the MMA circuit and promoting protein drinks on Instagram, wearing outfits showcasing her impressive six-pack, for cash which she brought home her to her husband and two sons.

  Still, she’d found it hard to get the best of Serene, who was adept at clinch fighting, a style that allowed her to neutralize Anita’s skill advantage. Serene specialized in keeping opponents close so she could inflict pain with knee thrusts or flip them on their backs to pound their face and upper body. This ground-and-pound approach was frowned upon in women’s MMA, one reason Serene didn’t want to go pro. She was afraid sport fighting could become therapy, and in some crazy flashback, she’d really hurt someone.

  No worries on this day. Anita easily dominated Serene in three two-minute bouts.

  “So what’s going on?” Anita asked afterward. “I never kick your ass—at least not this easily.”

  Serene forced a laugh and then talked about her concerns regarding Alicia, DaMagnificent1, and the Paradise Club.

  “I’ve heard nothing but bad things about that place,” Anita said. “My husband and I went there one time to dance. When I went to the restroom I saw some really young girls in there doing coke. Back at the bar, some guy had slipped Rich a card and told him to check out some website if he was looking for something fresher than what he’d come in with.”

  “Fucking bold,” Serene said.

  “I tore than card to shreds and we left. So who knows what happened to your student at that place.”

  “You think the cops know about what’s going on there?”

  “How could they not?” Anita said. “But knowing and doing something aren’t the same thing.”

  Over the previous five years, three high school girls from the area had disappeared. Alicia would make it four. There were whispers of a serial killer in the region. The FBI had even sent a profiler to the city. It sounded convenient to Serene, like blaming it all on the boogeyman. The local police had a human-trafficking department of two people who’d done an underwhelming presentation at the school. Based on Serene’s army experience, she was skeptical.

  So, against the advice of Adams, Serene didn’t head home, but over to the small wood-framed house Alicia German shared with her father. The place was in need of TLC just like the people inside. It took ten rings before the front door cracked open. Theo German stuck his head out and gazed dolefully at Serene. He had a potbelly, a scruffy beard, and the hostile demeanor of a man who hadn’t been happy in years.

  “You ever heard of minding your business?” Theo barked by way of greeting.

  “I wanna see Alicia.”

  “I bet you do,” he said. “I look at you and you know what I see?”

  “I don’t care what you see, Mr. German. I need to talk to your daughter.”

  Theo sneered. “I see a lesbo and I seen you wanna make a lesbo-in-training of my daughter. That’s why you’re here.”

  “Let me see Alicia!”

  Theo slammed the door. The force of it shook the porch and made Serene take a step back. She began yelling Alicia’s name, walking around the house and asking her student to respond. A couple of neighbors peeked out their windows but the blinds and windows of Theo German’s house stayed closed. When two sheriff’s deputies drove up, Serene put her hands up and tried to explain her actions. That’s when Theo, in a dirty blue bathrobe, Adidas slip-ons, and a black do-rag, popped out of the house and said the magic words: “Officers, I wanna press charges.”

  Handcuffed and pissed, Serene soon found herself in the back of a patrol car. Her temper didn’t cool at the station, where the focus of the detectives’ questioning wasn’t where was Alicia, but why a schoolteacher was screaming outside a student’s house. Serene was already hot but went nearly nuclear when they wanted to know “the nature” of Serene’s relationship with Alicia.

  “Are you fucking crazy?” she said in a tone that clearly made a question mark optional.

  Theo’s statement had basically been: my daughter is a runaway and I believe it was because Serene has been aggressively pursuing her for a lesbian relationship. Rather than endure further harassment, his daughter had run away. Theo’s evidence? Well, Serene Powers was an amateur MMA fighter and everyone knew those girls didn’t like dick.

  It got worse. One of the detectives, a very dry, pale man in his forties, looked at an Instagram photo of Alicia and said, “Well, she is cute.”

  Serene wanted to leap across the table and slam him to the ground. She, however, had enough restraint to know that her teaching career was already hanging by a slender thread. If this incident got back to Adams (and how could it not?), her job was in danger.
/>
  By the time Arthur Ellis arrived at the precinct, the police had charged her with disturbing the peace but had also agreed to look into Alicia’s relationship with the promoter DaMagnificent1. When she walked into the station’s waiting area, there was her boyfriend sitting hunched over in a chair, watching himself cook on YouTube. He was viewing diagnostics, concerned that his talk about healthy wines wasn’t going to match the views of last week’s episode on vegan beef.

  “Hey, bae,” he said, wrapping Serene in his long arms. His thick black beard caressed her forehead and fragrant spices tickled her nose.

  Arthur had the fingers of an artist and the slim, firm build of a former gymnast. He was the only man Serene had ever known who felt like home to her.

  In Arthur’s car, Serene related her day, all the while marveling at his sweetness and good heart. Between the army and her MMA hobby, Serene had spent much of her life around violent, driven people for whom there was honor in combat, but who had a hard time with mundane moments. Arthur was as far from those people as you could get. He was passionate about vegan cuisine and spent most days working on recipes, prepping food, and studying YouTube analytics.

  “Bae,” he often said, “we’ll buy our first home off my YouTube subs and our second when I have my vegan-restaurant empire up and running. I’m gonna make people healthy even if they resist, kicking and screaming. Gonna put pictures of Trump eating at McDonald’s on my website. That should scare up a lot of business.” Arthur had several million subscribers on YouTube, was working on a cookbook for a New York publisher, and had been approached by vegan establishments in SF and LA about joining their staff. It was just a matter of time before he broke big.