“Scared-ass white boys,” said the roller.
He walked down the deserted street and turned at the bright lights of Chene on the east side. Old cars rambled past. Derelicts stumbled along, talking to themselves. Night people.
The roller watched the street carefully, looking for customers.
Normally the heads would come around eleven or so, after their supply ran out. They'd have to get money first, then come to see him. He didn't care how they got the money as long as they had it.
The roller was careful not to have his back in any direction for too long. Since the drug gang called the Union had self-destructed, the streets were in chaos. Dealers were engaged in petty wars, trying to recruit workers or put rivals out of business.
The roller, Keith James, was independent and would never work for any of the new drug gangs. He had a loose crew of three rollers he dealt with. No bosses and all that shit. They just sold the product and got paid. Keith hoped that all this silly-ass ambition would blow over and he could stop watching his back.
A young girl came his way. She walked slowly, looking from side to side. She was dressed in a tight little skirt and high heels. Her hair was done in short braids, and she wore a tube top that bounced along with her breasts. As she got closer, Keith saw that she couldn't be more than sixteen.
“Whassup, baby?” the girl said.
“Past yo' bedtime, ain't it, little girl?” said Keith. He saw that she was cute and maybe older than he had first thought.
“I go to bed all time of the day,” said the girl. She turned for him, smiling.
She was nice-looking, fine legs and a nice little behind. Too bad he was about business tonight.
“Sorry. I ain't interested,” said Keith.
“You sure? This stuff is the best you can get out here.”
“Sorry.”
“Maybe I need to change your mind.”
She was lifting up her dress a little when a car of teenagers rolled up to the corner. They stopped, looked, and drove on.
“Damn!” said Keith. “You gotta go. I ain't buyin' none of yo' stank ass. So get on while you still can--”
Without warning Keith felt a cord wrap tightly around his neck. Just as quickly the young girl stepped forward and brought a knee into his groin. He buckled over at the hot flash of pain. Behind him he heard a husky laugh.
“Never turn down the booty, dumb ass!” the young girl said.
Keith desperately grabbed the cord around his neck, but it was no use. He choked as the cord was stretched. The young girl patted him down and took his gun. Then she pushed Keith around the corner onto the dark street that he'd just left.
Under a broken streetlight a short black woman with a ponytail stood. As she stepped forward, the shadows made her face seem broken and dark. She was dressed in baggy pants, a flannel shirt, and sneakers.
“You rollin' up in my 'hood,” said the short woman. She removed a gun from her pants. “He strapped?”
“Not no more,” said the young girl. “I got it.”
“Let him go,” said the short woman.
Keith felt the cord loosen. He was still hurting from the hit on his balls and dropped to one knee. He looked up to see a tall woman walk over to the short one. The tall one was big, real big.
“This is my place, Keith,” said the short woman. She moved closer, keeping the gun on him.
Keith's eyes showed recognition. “What the fuck is this, LoLo?” he asked.
“You know what it is,” said the woman. “It's join-up time.”
“Like Uncle Sam,” said the young girl.
The big woman was silent. She just looked on.
“I'm my own man,” said Keith. “And if I did join a gang, it sure wouldn't be a pack of hos.”
The big woman stepped out, slapped Keith hard in the face. He fell on his ass. He tried to get up, but the big woman was already on him. A quick punch to the chest sent him back down. The big woman drew back her fist, ready for the next try.
“Hold up, Yolanda,” said LoLo. “Don't bust him yet.”
LoLo walked over and knelt next to the fallen man.
“Look, Yolanda and Sheri here want to do your ass, but I said no. I said, Keith is a smart nigga; he won't give us no trouble. Now, I know you a man and all that shit, but it's a new day in Detroit. You brothas been capping each other left and right, dying, going to jail, and what not. Us women have had to take up the slack. Now you can go on being all hardheaded and shit, or you can join up and get rich with the Nasty Girls.”
Keith spat blood. He was getting his ass kicked but good. Yolanda was watching him, waiting. And LoLo still had the gun.
“Okay, okay,” he said. “You want me, you got me.”
“Cool,” said LoLo. “All you gotta do is give me all your money, tell me where your stash is, and bring your crew to me.”
Keith looked shocked and angry at the request but said, “Yeah, yeah. All right-”
Suddenly Keith kicked out a leg at Yolanda. It caught her in the knee, and the big woman stumbled back. Keith grabbed for the gun in LoLo's hand and managed to knock it loose. He had just gotten to his feet when he was tackled by Sheri. Turning, Keith got off a punch that caught Sheri in the side of the head. Sheri fell, recoiling from the blow. Keith got to his feet and ran.
The first shot caught him in the back of his calf, the second in the hip. Keith fell to the ground, yelling in pain. He heard them cursing, coming closer.
Keith rolled over on his back and saw LoLo above him, gun in hand. Her long ponytail was draped over one shoulder. She dropped down on him, bringing her knee in his chest. Keith coughed dryly as the wind flew from his lungs.
Lights were going on in nearby houses. Curtains parted, but it was too dark to see and too late for the cops to come in time.
“Good night, punk ass,” said LoLo flatly.
Then she put the gun over Keith's heart and fired.
4
Jesse
The city was in turmoil. Harris Yancy had been butchered in his own home. There were rumors of a woman being involved, but the cops were being unusually tight-lipped.
You couldn't find a copy of a newspaper, and the TV stations were doing around-the-clock coverage. The president had even made a statement at a press conference expressing his condolences.
Jesse sat in his office trying to do some work. New prosecutors had tiny offices that were always filled with messy, stacked files. You couldn't get rich working for the state, and they never let you forget it. And in the biggest irony of all, the offices were about the same size as a state prison cell.
Yancy's death meant there would be a shift in power unlike any seen in Detroit. Several would-be kings had already hinted at filing for a special election.
Jesse was deeply saddened by Yancy's murder. The mayor had always stood for equality and action. He had been trying to save the city from itself and doing a pretty good job. More than that, Yancy had represented the future for young blacks like Jesse. It was like losing a relative.
Harris Yancy had given the commencement speech at Jesse's graduation from law school. It was a moment that no law student ever forgets. Yancy had no love for lawyers, but he'd agreed to give the speech because Jesse's graduating class contained the highest number of blacks in the history of the school.
“The law is a thing that men make to govern themselves, “ Yancy had said. “So society is bound by its better intentions. Young lawyers are the guardians of that sacred trust.”
Jesse had never forgotten those words. And now Yancy, father of an entire generation of black professionals, was dead.
There had been a funeral to end all funerals last week. Hundreds of friends, relatives, dignitaries, politicians, and celebrities jammed Detroit's Church of God. Loudspeakers had to be set up because hundreds of people had gathered outside the church to listen to the speeches and eulogies.
Frank D’Estenne, county prosecutor, was one of the many speakers at the funeral. He had been a frien
d and ally of the late mayor's. His eulogy had brought people to tears.
There were parades, candlelight vigils, and prayer meetings all over town. And the overwhelming statement heard was “We want the murderer.”
He'd sent condolences to the mayor's wife, Louise Yancy. Jesse was sure that it was lost in the thousands of other such messages at Manoogian Mansion, but it made him feel better.
Jesse King was in his fifth year at the Wayne County prosecutor's office. He was good at his job, some would say brilliant. He attacked his cases as if his own life were on the line, and he possessed a keen awareness and understanding of human nature, especially black human nature. He used these talents to fuel his relentless and crafty courtroom style. Juries loved him, judges respected him, and defense attorneys hated to see him coming. As a result of his talents, he'd won the vast majority of his cases and had never lost a murder case.
Jesse stood and stretched. He was six feet tall, dark, clean-shaven. He kept his hair cut low because it was curly at the roots and he thought it made him look better. He was handsome, but he didn't know it. Jesse figured that women were attracted to him because of his job. He was a professional black man and a premium in the community.
He was born into poverty in Detroit's Herman Gardens housing project. But this garden only grew anger, fear, and hopelessness. His parents had separated when Jesse was young.
Jesse's father, a quiet man named Walter, was a dreamer, but dreams were for men with money. Jesse's mother, Estelle, wanted no part of Walter's life speculation. So Walter King had packed up one day and left. They never saw him again. Years later Jesse heard that his father had died of a heart attack. He did not go to the funeral.
His mother was a good but weak woman who tried to help her family by taking up with one worthless man after another, failing each time to connect with anyone who could better their lives.
When they got older, Jesse, his sister Bernice, and their brother, Tyrus, all acquired their mother's welfare mentality. For years Jesse believed the world owed him something, that he was a victim of America and could not help himself without the efforts of those better than he was.
He grew up knowing what it was like to want. There were times when they didn't have enough food and had to scrounge for what they could get around the neighborhood.
They wore old clothes and had to suffer the humiliation of taking handouts. Poverty was heartless, he thought, but at least it forced the realities of life upon you.
After they moved from Herman Gardens, Jesse fell in with a group of neighborhood boys from the east side. A life of crime followed. His two best friends were Kelvin Ingram, a big, athletic boy who loved to play basketball, and Oscar Wellman, a handsome dark-skinned boy everyone called Cocoa.
Jesse and his crew shied away from serious crime. They were young but not completely stupid. Dealers died for dope, and none of them wanted that. The most they ever did was sell weed and steal. They drank, cut school almost every day, stole when they needed money, and had sex with willing young girls. It was one big good life, and like all kids, Jesse thought it would never end.
At sixteen Cocoa was picked up by police for burglarizing a house. Jesse and Kelvin thought Cocoa would get juvenile detention and be out in a few months. But days later Jesse found that Cocoa had been convicted of the rape of a young girl in Hamtramck.
They went to see Cocoa in jail and found out that he'd signed a confession. Cocoa couldn't read very well, and the cops had railroaded him. Jesse had known the boy all his life and just took it for granted that he could read.
Cocoa's family cried foul and got a lawyer, but it didn't do any good. The confession stuck, and Cocoa was sent to prison, real prison. Cocoa turned seventeen waiting for trial and was tried as an adult.
When he was in prison a month, Cocoa sent Jesse and Kelvin a chilling letter describing the day he was raped by two other cons.
The letter was childish, filled with misspellings and non sequiturs. Cocoa's last words were: “Don't ever come here.”
Later that same year Kelvin joined a real drug crew. He invited Jesse to join with him. Jesse thought about it, but in the end he was too afraid of the life, as they called it. Kelvin went on with his crew and was shot to death by a rival gang within the year. Jesse was alone, left with the startling truth: that he was next.
He went back to school at Pershing High, looking for another crew to hang with, but instead he found a man named Daniel Perry. Mr. Perry was a history teacher. A black man who threw out their history book on the first day of class and gave them a real lesson in American history, one that included blacks at every important juncture.
Mr. Perry took a liking to Jesse, and soon Jesse saw the world differently. Perry was a believer in self-help, no welfare, and black power. Jesse adopted this philosophy and soon was among the better students in his school. This led to community college, a four-year university, and eventually law school.
At Wayne State Law School in Detroit, Jesse became a so-called black conservative. He believed that blacks were wretched only because they chose to be. And unlike most conservatives, Jesse knew this was true, because he'd grown up poor and become a professional through hard work and sacrifice. He'd lived on both sides of the tracks and knew what it took to make it from one life to the other.
There were not many people like him in the professional ranks. Most of the people he met, black or white, had always been solidly middle-class or better. So Jesse felt separated from his current peers as well as his old neighborhood. The 'hood, as they say, was vile and somehow foreign to him now. He did not belong to either world, yet he was tied to both. His journey from poverty to middle class had divided his consciousness and his soul as well.
Jesse got up and walked out of the little office and down the narrow hallway. He had the mid-afternoon hungries and was going to cop a quick snack.
“Hey, Marcia, what's up?” Jesse asked a middle-aged black woman in the office next to his.
“Ramsey Felder,” said Marcia Daniels, a ten-year prosecutor. She was tough and smart with a quick wit.
“Ramsey Felder,” said Jesse with disdain. “Jesus, Esquire.”
“Right. Anyway, you know Ramsey, he's always preaching to the jury, waving that gold-plated Bible. I got him cold on the law, but our jury pool is looking like a choir of old church mamas.”
“You got a problem,” Jesse said. “Ramsey is good at that stuff. When I went against him, I beat him at his own game. I looked at his old case transcripts and took notes on the Bible passages he always quotes. Then I used them before he could. The notes are in my office, and you're welcome.”
Marcia smiled in appreciation as Jesse moved across the hall to another small office. Jesse said hello to the two young men in the office. They were Peter Saunders and Peter Janowski, a black and white team everyone called Pete & Pete. They did mainly murder cases and often co-chaired them.
Pete & Pete didn't say hello; they just waved and kept working, their faces down in papers on the desk. They were married to the job.
“Hey, Jess,” said a 'pretty blond woman down the hall. She looked upset. “Listen, I need your help on something.”
“Sure.”
Denise Wilkerson was a two-year prosecutor whose mother was a federal judge and father a senior vice-president at General Motors. Denise was polite to everyone, but it was obvious that she was on her way to a big law firm one day. She walked out of her office to Jesse.
“I'm trying to find a witness in that Villard murder case.”
“The lead pipe murder?” asked Jesse.
“Right,” said Denise. “The cops turned me on to this snitch, a probation officer, but he--”
“Hardaway?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Denise. “He's driving me crazy. He says he knows where the witness is, but he won't tell. I thought paying him was bad enough, but he's jerking me around for some reason.”
“He wants a hook,” said Jesse.
“A what?” Denise look
ed confused.
“Where is he?” asked Jesse.
Denise led him to her little office in the middle of the hallway. Jesse liked the fact that so many of his peers relied on him. He had a reputation for being smart, thorough, and capable of dealing with the scumbags of the system.
Jesse was the only lawyer ever to get an offer from the prosecutor's office in his junior year at law school. He was doing a mock trial in school, and the county prosecutor was acting as judge. Jesse so impressed him that he was given an internship that summer. At the end of the internship they made him an offer. He was a rising star, and everyone in the office knew it.
Jesse went into the prosecutor's office right out of law school. The county prosecutor even used his power to help expunge Jesse's juvenile record and get him past the state bar ethics panel.
Jesse and Denise entered the office to find Thomas Hardaway, a short, heavyset man sitting in a chair. Hardaway was about fifty, overweight, and mean-looking. He had slick, wavy hair, what used to be called a process, and was chewing on a long toothpick.
He was a state probation officer, regarded as one of the best, but he had a side operation. Hardaway would get information from his clients and sell it to the cops. He was good, fast, and reliable. Unfortunately he was also a sleazy, double-dealing bastard. He got cash from the cops, but from the prosecutors he needed something even more important.
“Jesse, my man,” said Hardaway. He got up and shook Jesse's hand. Denise sat at her desk. Jesse stood with Hardaway in the middle of the little room. They stared at each other like gunfighters.
“What's up, Hardaway?” asked Jesse. “You got your money, so give it up. “
“Hey, I told her what I knew,” said Hardaway. “The man you want is about five-eight, black, bald-headed and goes by the name of G.”
“That's about five thousand people in Detroit,” said Jesse.
“That's all I know right now,” said Hardaway breezily. The toothpick bounced with each word. He smiled and sat down.
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