Baby Brother's Blues

by Pearl Cleage

  “Long enough.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you have secrets, and in this town, secrets are better than money.”

  “But I didn’t kill him!” Kwame’s voice was an anguished cry.

  “I know that, and you know that, and after a long, messy trial, the jury may believe it, too. But in the meantime, these pictures will be on the front page of the paper and all over the Internet. Your mother will have to withdraw from the race. You’ll lose your job and your wife will almost certainly divorce you and take the baby. What’s her name?”

  “Joyce Ann,” Kwame whispered.

  “Well, you think about the effect of her daddy’s murder trial on Joyce Ann.” Captain Kilgore paused to let the idea of his daughter being caught up in this whole mess sink in before she spoke again. Kwame leaned over and put his head in his hands. “And then you explain to your mother that I need her answer in twenty-four hours.”

  Kwame sat up and stared at Lee. “Twenty-four hours?”

  “How long do you think I can withhold information regarding an ongoing murder investigation? It’s already been two days. Twenty-four hours is the best I can do, Mr. Hargrove. Are we clear?”

  What choice did he have? Kwame nodded.

  “Good. Call me when you’ve got an answer from your mother.” She handed him a piece of paper with a number typed on it, but no name. “And don’t be late.”

  The meeting was over, but Kwame didn’t know how he got out of the building. He walked the two blocks to his car in a daze. Twenty-four hours to try to convince his mother to compromise herself because he was caught up in some madness that could put him in jail for life. Or worse. How could he even begin to have such a conversation with Precious? He didn’t have a clue, but he knew he had to try, and right now. The clock was running and Precious held his future and the future of his family in her always capable hands. He picked up his phone and speed-dialed her number, knowing wherever she was, she would respond to the sound of the Ohio Players.

  When you’re hot, you’re hot,

  You really shoot your shot,

  Fi-i-i-re!

  60

  Even though they had been back from D.C. for almost a week, Blue and General hadn’t had much time to talk. The personal trauma of Abbie’s experience with urban violence was mirrored citywide in a panic after a shoot-out at the Fulton County Court House left three people dead, five wounded, and a fugitive at large somewhere in the metro area. There were cops everywhere, and West End was no exception. They had sought Blue’s assistance, but he had no leads to share, so they did a quick pass through the neighborhood and moved on. Once the guy had finally surrendered, exhausted and out of options, things returned to a more normal pace and Blue asked General to stop by for a drink.

  He poured his friend a scotch and a cognac for himself. Anyone watching the two men would have observed them chatting easily about the events of the day, but General knew this was no ordinary catch-up session. They could have done that at the West End News. The reason Blue had invited him here was still a mystery, but somehow General knew it had something to do with the death of Baby Brother. He hadn’t told Blue what he had done and the lie of omission floated between them like a malodorous cloud.

  “Anything else we need to talk about?” Blue said as he refreshed their drinks.

  General shook his big head slowly. “Not that I can think of.”

  Blue sat back down, swirling the cognac slowly around in an oversize snifter, and looked at his friend. “You moving to Vegas?”

  Thrown for a loop by the directness of the question, General tried to keep his voice steady. “You know I don’t like Vegas.”

  “I know. That’s why I thought there must be a damn good reason. You want to share it with me?”

  General sipped his scotch, tried to remember the last time he had lied to Blue’s face, and couldn’t. He could keep a secret as long as the question was never broached directly. That was one level of deception. Looking into Blue’s strange eyes and outright lying was something else altogether. General knew he had to tell Blue about Brandi. He just couldn’t figure out how without making himself look as foolish as he felt.

  “I’ve been seeing this woman,” he said carefully. “She’s a dancer… at Montre’s… and we just kind of… hit it off.”

  Blue was looking at him with no readable emotion on his face. General plowed ahead, the words coming slowly as he tried to explain.

  “She’s young, man, and fine.” He heard himself attempt a small laugh, a man-to-man laugh, to pave the way for a lighthearted exchange about the inscrutable ways of women, but Blue’s expression didn’t change. General decided to cut the chitchat and lay his cards on the table. “She’s never been to Vegas. I told her I was the man to take her.”

  Blue’s eyes began to darken imperceptibly. Their sky blue was becoming inkier by degrees. General knew from experience that silence was always on Blue’s side. He could sit still and quiet longer than anybody had a right to. If that was the contest, General conceded defeat without a struggle.

  “Just a visit, man. I’m not moving anywhere.”

  Pouring himself another splash of cognac, Blue nodded. “Her cousin came to see me.”

  That surprised General. What did Madonna have to do with it?

  General reached out for the scotch. “Oh yeah?”

  “She was worried because some guy her cousin was seeing got shot last weekend, and all of a sudden Brandi’s talking about moving to Vegas. She asked me to check into it for her. That’s her name, right? Brandi?”

  So that was it. Brandi had blabbed to Madonna about that dead faggot and then said she’s moving to Vegas. Damn! he thought. Couldn’t she just keep her mouth shut? “Yeah, that’s her name.”

  “When her cousin said she was going away with you, that made Madonna feel better, but she wanted to check with me because she’s convinced her cousin is a pathological liar.”

  General felt the ground shifting beneath his feet.

  “I asked Madonna if Brandi had given her a name for this guy, the one who got shot. She said his name was Wes Jamerson.” Blue watched General, whose studied nonreaction told him what he needed to know. “You remember him, don’t you?”

  “That nigga who came here looking for Zora?”

  “That’s the one.”

  Feigning surprise, General shook his head. “I always knew he was going to be trouble. You remember I said it first off.”

  “I just don’t want his trouble to become my trouble,” Blue said.

  “You can’t control what happens to every punk who passes through West End.”

  General wanted to change the subject, but he hadn’t introduced it and it wasn’t his place to try to move on. He sipped his scotch and waited.

  “Are you in love with this girl?”

  General had to bite his tongue to keep from blurting out the truth. I’m in love with the part of Juanita that lives in her! “No. I’m just seeing her, that’s all.”

  They both knew that what Blue was really asking was how a man of his age and position in the neighborhood could get so deeply involved with a stripper who trailed trouble behind her like a full-length mink. There was no answer but the truth that would even begin to explain his behavior, but that was an impossibility. This was no way to reveal a secret he’d been sworn to keep for twenty years. Suddenly General was flooded with anger at Blue for asking him these questions like he was a child. Like he had to justify who he took to Vegas and why. If the best defense is a good offense, General decided to go for broke. He put down his glass.

  “Tell me again why this is of concern to you.”

  “Because,” Blue said calmly, “I’m only supposed to hear that you’re considering a move out of West End from you.”

  General took a deep breath, sat back into the soft leather of the big chair, swallowed his pride, and spread his arms in a gesture of supplication and surrender, his eyes downcast to avoid Blue’s glare.

  “You�
�re right,” he said softly, hating the words he was about to offer in his defense. “You’re right, brother. I’m an old fool chasin’ some young pussy that don’t belong to me.”

  “So you still owe this girl a trip to Vegas?”

  “Yeah, I guess I do,” General said.

  “When do you intend to take her?”

  “Maybe this weekend if I can get things set up.”

  “You’ll be back by Sunday?”

  “No problem.”

  “Good.”

  The two sat looking at each other for a moment, glasses empty now, hearts and minds full of history and the complexity of their overlapping lives. Then Blue stood up to signal that the meeting was over. General stood up, too, and they embraced like brothers.

  “You can be an old fool,” Blue said at the door. “You were a young fool, so I’m used to it.”

  “Fuck you, too.” General smiled, glad it was over and that Blue hadn’t pressed him any further about his relationship with Brandi.

  “The important thing is that we’re still brothers,” Blue said. “I trust you with my life and the life of my family.”

  General wanted to look away, but the intensity of Blue’s gaze caught and held him. “You can trust me. You know you can trust me.”

  “Good,” Blue said, nodding slightly and stepping back inside. “Take it slow.”

  Relief flooded General’s body as he walked to the car, even though he knew this was probably not the last of it. Blue wasn’t careless or stupid and there were questions still to be answered. He drove to the corner without looking back and turned the car toward Montre’s. He needed to talk to Brandi.

  61

  As soon as she heard his voice, Precious knew Kwame was in trouble.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You busy?”

  “Of course not. Come on by. I’ll put on some coffee.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “You all right?”

  “I been better.”

  “Okay. I’ll put some rum in that coffee.”

  His laugh was dry and mirthless. “Sounds good.”

  He knocked on the back door five minutes later and she was shocked at his appearance.

  “You look terrible!” she said. “What the hell is going on? Are Aretha and Joyce Ann okay?”

  “They’re fine.” He sat down at the table and took a long breath.

  “Did something happen?”

  “It’s a long story, Mom. Can I have that cup of coffee first?”

  “Of course you can.” Precious poured them both a cup and added a dollop of the Captain Morgan she kept from one Christmas to the next for eggnog. “Now tell me everything. Whatever it is, we can handle it.”

  “I don’t know where to begin. It’s complicated.”

  “Just start anywhere,” she said. “I’ll keep up.”

  “Well… I… I own a loft.”

  “A loft?”

  He nodded. “Over on Peters Street. I bought it last year as an investment.”

  Precious sipped her coffee, wondering why he’d never mentioned it, but knowing this was not the time to ask. “There’s a lot of development over there, that’s for sure.”

  “A guy got killed in it.”

  “What?”

  “I went over there a couple of days ago to work on the place a little, and… I found the body in the kitchen.”

  “My God, Kwame! How awful!”

  “It was terrible.” His eyes filled with tears.

  “Did you call the police?”

  “Of course. They sent two detectives over. I told them I’d had a problem with squatters.”

  “Is that who they think he was? A squatter?”

  He looked up at his mother again. “That’s what I told them.”

  The difference between her question and her child’s answer was not lost on Precious. She looked at her son. There was something he wasn’t telling her. Something important. “Do they have any suspects?”

  Kwame looked around the kitchen where he had sat so many times, in this same chair, talking to his mother, swapping stories, sharing a meal of a tall glass of iced tea. Every inch of this table was familiar to him and every memory of this room was a good one. Now he was going to destroy all that. He didn’t know if he had the strength.

  Precious watched the conflicting emotions playing across Kwame’s face and leaned over to take his hand. It felt so cold and clammy she was frightened. “What is it, son? Just tell me.”

  Her face was so concerned, so worried. It was cruel to make her wait for such terrible news.

  “What I told the police…” Kwame hesitated.

  “About the squatters?” Precious said encouragingly.

  He nodded. “Yes, well, they think… not all of the… but one of them thinks that… well, they… she, it’s a woman… seems to believe that I…that they should talk to me about it more because… she had some… pictures that made her start speculating that he… might not have been a squatter.”

  Kwame had always been a terrible liar. Tonight was no exception. The words he was speaking were tumbling out in an indecipherable jumble.

  “Then what was he doing there?”

  “She thinks maybe he was… maybe I knew him.”

  “Did you?”

  It was a simple question with a very complicated answer. “Yes.”

  Precious was now thoroughly confused. “Then why did the police think he was a squatter?”

  Kwame stood up and walked over to the sink. Through the kitchen window, the barest sliver of a new moon was not enough to dispel the shadows in the yard. He turned back to his mother. It was time to tell the truth. She was his brilliant, beautiful, strong, sensible mother. If he could just tell her the nightmare he had made of his life, he knew she could help him fix it. She had to help him fix it!

  “Because I met him… at a club.”

  “You met the squatter?”

  “Well, he wasn’t a squatter when I met him, but when he found out who I was, he started blackmailing me. That’s why I took him up there.”

  “You’re not making any sense, Kwame. Blackmailing you about what?”

  There was no way to say it but to say it. The captain’s clock was still running. “Sometimes, Mom… sometimes… I have sex… with men.”

  He hated himself for saying it that way. Sometimes. He should have said every chance I get.

  “You what?”

  At least she didn’t jump up and throw him out of the house. He sat back down, and this time, he reached for her hand. She didn’t take her eyes off his face.

  “Sometimes I have sex with men.”

  “For money?” She whispered the words, unable to comprehend what he was saying.

  “No, no,” he said quickly. “I don’t do it for money. I do it…”

  He didn’t know how to finish the sentence. Because I like it? Because I can’t not do it? They sat looking at each other across the small table, neither one having the words to say all they felt, or feared.

  “I don’t know why I do it,” Kwame said quietly.

  Now Precious took both his hands and gripped them so hard it was painful. “Did you have sex with the man who was murdered?”

  “Yes,” he whispered. “Yes, I did.”

  She squeezed his hand so tightly he wanted to jerk his fingers free. “Did you kill him?”

  “No, no, no!” he said urgently, needing her to believe him. “I didn’t kill him. He was dead when I got there, just lying on the floor.” He shuddered at the memory of that face, those eyes. “But they don’t believe me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they have pictures! They have pictures of me with him in the car and at the loft.”

  “Pictures of you doing what?”

  Her voice rose alarmingly at the end of the question, a terrible mixture of confusion, disappointment, rage. Kwame hung his head. There was no room for him to be self-righteous about the nature of her questions. He had never felt so ashamed and
helpless.

  “Talking in the car, going inside. But she said it gives me a motive and that she… she was there the night I found the body. She had pictures of me leaving. I was… running.”

  “Who took the pictures?”

  “I don’t know. She did, I guess. I saw them. They’re real.”

  Precious closed her eyes. She couldn’t bear the sight of this stranger’s face, but it was too late to run. It was time for truth.

  “Have you been charged with anything?”

  He shook his head. “No, but Captain Kilgore said—”

  The tiny hairs on the back of Precious’s neck stood up. “Captain Lee Kilgore?”

  “Yes.”

  “She had the pictures?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long has she been watching you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She said she hadn’t shown them to anybody and that they were prepared to go with my squatter story, but she… she…”

  He hesitated again, but Precious was tired of coaxing the story out of him. “Dammit, Kwame, stop stuttering and tell me what you know!”

  Startled by the harshness of her tone, he blurted out the rest of his sorry story.

  “She’s prepared to turn over the pictures to us and never mention any of this again if you agree to absolve her of any crimes.”

  “What?”

  “She said you have information that could damage her career and that if you don’t agree—in writing—not to use it, she’ll have me arrested for first-degree murder. She gave us twenty-four hours.”

  Precious stood up and walked out of her back door without another word. She sat down in her favorite porch rocker and tried to make sense of what she was hearing. She knew that putting something like that in writing would give Lee the power to blackmail her forever. She could never run for mayor with something like this hanging over her. The drug charges must be pretty close to home for Lee to resort to blackmail, Precious thought. Lee had to be really scared to risk coming after family. There were probably millions of dollars at stake. Rocking slowly, rhythmically, Precious realized this was all about business. But it was more than that. This was personal. Very personal.