Guarding Secrets

by Pat Tucker

  What about E-Dawg? What about the plans we’d talked about?

  “I ne-need to make a phone call,” I said.

  My voice acted like it didn’t want to work.

  Mr. Richards stood and pressed another button on his phone.

  “She’s ready to go,” was all he said.

  I couldn’t wrap my mind around what was going to happen next. Was he going to let me walk out? My answer came the moment his office door swung open and two uniformed police officers stormed in.

  “On your feet,” one commanded. Sheppard and Sanchez shuffled out of their way.

  It took a moment for me to react because I couldn’t believe this was happening to me, and that they were talking to me.

  “Now,” he repeated.

  I eased up out of the chair, and a female officer approached me. “C.O. KenyaTaye Dunbar, you are under arrest, for plotting to smuggle drugs, cell phones, and other contraband into the Texas Department of Criminal Justice facilities, criminal conspiracy…”

  Everything else was a blur until my hands were yanked behind my back, handcuffed, and I was led out of the office like one of the criminals I used to guard.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHARISMA

  Being on the other side was nothing I could’ve ever imagined. I knew my mind should have considered the possibility since what we did was illegal, but if the thought of getting caught had crossed my mind, I’d told myself I’d have a way out.

  As I sat inside a cell, it was hard to formulate any kind of plan. One of the main reasons was my lack of focus.

  “Jesus! Can you stop with all the damn crying?!” I shrieked. It didn’t matter that I was frustrated, and pissed off; Lena wouldn’t let up.

  She had been going ape-shit crazy since we were booked, processed, and thrown into a holding cell at the Harris County Jail.

  “Why don’t you tell them, I didn’t do nothing wrong? I was at the wrong place at the wrong time!”

  “Shiit, me too,” a woman whom I thought was sleeping suddenly bolted upright and said, from a bench in the corner of the large holding cell.

  I rolled my eyes at her and Lena’s whiny behind.

  “Can’t you call your baller boyfriend to bail us out? I can’t be in jail. I’m too cute to be in this nasty cage! Can’t your baller boyfriend hire Dick DeGuerin to defend us? He’s got the money to do it. Don’t he?”

  I wanted to bitch-slap my cousin, but figured jail wasn’t the place to be beating up on anybody. Unfortunately, the cell wasn’t big enough for me to put any real distance between us, so I had to sit there and take it.

  She wanted me to call my baller boyfriend; if only she knew. There wasn’t anyone for me to call. DaQuan was already behind bars, so what the hell would he be able to do? Inmates weren’t allowed to call jails. I was now an inmate. I felt so down and desperate, I couldn’t think straight.

  The moment I tried to formulate any kind of plan, Lena started to cry and threw my thinking all off. I knew for certain that KenyaTaye was behind this. That low-down bitch went and sang for sure.

  I had to find a way to get the word to DaQuan. She had thrown us all under the bus. He’d be next if they hadn’t gotten him already. I was anxious and nervous at the same time.

  “When are we going home?” Lena howled again.

  Her nonstop crying and nagging hadn’t helped in any way. I got that she was scared and she was right; she was caught up in the wrong place, but I needed her to chill.

  “We will go before the judge; then we go from there,” I said.

  “A judge?” She looked down at herself. “You mean I have to go to court looking like this?”

  I shouldn’t have, but I did. I turned to look at my cousin. I couldn’t believe she was worried about what she looked like and we were sitting up in jail. She needed to be worried about whether she’d make it to see the judge the way she had worked the last of my nerves.

  “God, Charisma, don’t you watch any TV court shows? People who look dirty and tacky are assumed guilty. We need to shower and put on a change of clothes before we go to court. What’s the jury going to think? They’re gonna send us away to prison. OhmyGod! What to do? What to do?”

  Her lips quivered, she grabbed the sides of her head and started to bawl again.

  That was when the lady must’ve taken pity on her. She looked at me, then she looked at Lena.

  “Jury?” she asked.

  I tried to ignore them both.

  “Nah, honey, you got it all wrong. You see the judge first; he’s gonna say whether there’s enough evidence for the charges to stick. Hell, who knows? He might even let you go.”

  Lena’s bawl subsided a bit and she sniffled.

  “I didn’t do nothing. If I wasn’t at her house, I wouldn’t even be in here right now. I’ve always been the responsible one. I should’ve known she was doing something illegal.”

  Even being in jail didn’t stop me from wanting to kill her with my bare hands.

  My mind raced. While the woman talked to Lena, I started to try and figure things out. All of a sudden, a voice called my name. I looked up to see C.O. Scott.

  My eyes grew wide, but I wasn’t sure whether I should respond. We had always been friends, but the more I moved up in the ranks, the wider the gap spread between us.

  I rushed closer to talk to her.

  “Girl, how you holding up?”

  “This is a mess; my cousin is having a fit.”

  She looked past me. “Damn, I did hear that Lena got caught up too.”

  Was she here to gawk or did she have helpful information? I tried to check myself; there was nothing I could do.

  “How’d you know I was here?”

  “It’s all everybody is talking about. They got Dunbar inside the warden’s office. I heard they set her up, but Clarkson, Franklin, Edwards, and Bishop were all picked up right inside Jester.”

  “Whhhaaaat?” My eyes grew with every word she said.

  How could Dunbar be in jail too? She was behind this, I knew for sure.

  “Yes, girl. DaQuan is in solitary, along with R.J. and all of his top guys.”

  “What the hell?”

  “Girl, this is huge. It’s all over the news too.”

  “The news?”

  “Yes, girl. You’d better get a real good attorney when you get out of here.”

  C.O. Scott looked at me. “I just wanted to come check on you. I don’t know what I can do to help, but I didn’t know if you knew what was going on with everybody else.” She looked around, and said, “I need to get back to my post.”

  “Okay. Well, thanks for the info.”

  As she turned to leave, I called out to her again.

  “Can you call my mom for me?”

  “I did already. They’re working on getting you guys out.”

  When Scott left, I was more confused than before. If KenyaTaye was arrested too, then how did this happen? Could it be that she was blindsided too? Maybe they only arrested her so it could look good in front of everyone else. That thought died when I remembered where Dunbar was arrested.

  There was no use in me sharing any information with Lena. She and her new friend were talking and I wanted to leave them alone.

  So, we all got busted.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  KENYATAYE

  So many crazy thoughts swam around in my head that I didn’t know what was what.

  I couldn’t believe what I’d heard. I needed a moment; the only plan I came up with wasn’t going to work. Someone took the gun and it had been connected to me. Then, someone else had gotten my deal before me. I was pregnant and couldn’t get any sympathy.

  “We don’t need you,” the detective said. “We’ve got this on lock.” His smug attitude made me sick. I should have gone to the warden when I first thought about it—back when I talked to Edwards about it and she made it seem like ratting everyone out was a bad thing. I should’ve followed my mind way back then. I had waited too damn late.
>
  “I sure hope he was worth it, because you’re about to go to prison for a real long time. And that baby you’re carrying, get ready to kiss it goodbye. You betrayed a lot of good, hardworking correctional officers, who are proud to wear the uniform, for your own selfish greed and gratification.”

  Who did he think he was talking to? I didn’t know a single correctional officer who could be described as proud. We were overworked, underpaid, and considered the laughingstock of the justice system. The higher-ups expected us to be a barrier between the bad guys and the rest of society, with nothing but a radio on our hips. You pay us peanuts, then you’re surprised when we try to make a little extra on the side?

  “Is there a reason you brought me out of my cell? I’m done talking. I need to make a phone call.”

  “Oh really? Who you gonna call? Your mother is in the city jail; your kids are in state custody; and your ex, well, he’s in solitary. So, tell me, Dunbar, who you gonna call?”

  I bit down on my lip so I wouldn’t haul off and say anything they might be able to use against me.

  “I’m gonna take you back to your cell, but I want you to try and think about whether you have any information you think might be useful. The problem is, we’ve said the same thing to all your partners in crime, so you know how that goes. I’m sure Edwards, Bishop, and Jones are probably scrambling to knock down the door to get to us first.”

  I tossed and turned, and finally sat up. That conversation had taken place while I was being processed, but it still felt like it was just a few seconds ago. I looked around, to confirm I was still in jail. I hoped I was dreaming, but no such luck. This nightmare was real for me and obviously for a lot of others too.

  Cradling my head in my hands, I struggled to think about any kind of information that might be able to help my situation. My mother and kids had nothing to do with this. I needed them released.

  DaQuan is the one who’d fucked things up for everyone. He just couldn’t stop thinking with his dick! He had messed everything up and now I had to figure a way out.

  • • •

  Nearly a week after being released from jail, I was still saying sorry to my mother. She was released on her own recognizance, but I had to be bailed out.

  “We need to figure out how to get the kids back. This is a royal mess for sure,” she said as we walked into the apartment.

  I wasn’t ready for what we saw.

  The couches were turned over, with cushions and pillows slashed; magazines, books and papers were strewn all over. Plants were dug up and potted dirt was left all over the floors. The TVs were smashed, dishes were piled on the table, and all of the doors to the cabinets and drawers were wide open.

  My mother stepped cautiously toward the kitchen.

  “They left the refrigerator open like this?”

  Food, from the freezer and elsewhere, was deliberately pulled out. I didn’t want to see what the other rooms looked like.

  “What were they looking for like this?”

  Too mad for words, I walked around and took in all of the damage. If I had anything left, I couldn’t see it; everything my eyes saw was destroyed.

  The scene was even worse in my bedroom. The mattress, dresser drawers, clothes were all mixed with liquids. They ransacked the closets, and the stench of all kinds of stuff mixed together was enough to make me upchuck.

  “What have you done to make the law come down on us like this?”

  My mother leaned against the doorway as I stepped over the trash that had become my room.

  “I warned you about drug dealing. I told you that trash of a man who came by here, who you couldn’t stay away from, wasn’t gonna be no good for you. I ain’t never in my life broke a single law and now, I’m looking at a record, and my grandkids are caught up in the system.”

  She sighed hard and I felt like shit.

  I couldn’t even tell her I’d fix it, because it was a lot to fix. She’d be right not to trust anything I said.

  Later, I took a call from E-Dawg and we agreed to meet. Of course I couldn’t tell my mother and I was okay with that. I needed to figure out what to do about this mess.

  E-Dawg agreed to meet anywhere I wanted. That was easy. I told him we would meet inside a movie theater. I picked a movie, a showtime and texted him with the information.

  The next morning, I left around eleven for the 11:50 showing. I arrived and found a seat in the last row of the dark theater. A few minutes after the previews started, a tall, dark silhouette strolled into the near-empty theater and looked toward the back.

  I waved him up and he came and eased into the seat next to me. He smelled good, like he had just walked out of a weed dispensary.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  E-Dawg had bailed me out. A bust like ours traveled fast through the criminal world.

  “It’s all good. How you holding up?”

  “Not good. My kids got taken away; Moms is pissed and worried.”

  Usually I was a real good judge of character, but I couldn’t call it anymore. I felt lost because when I rode high with DaQuan, I couldn’t imagine I’d be on the outside looking in at what the good life used to be like.

  “Ma, we can do this. I tried to tell you we needed to move fast.”

  E-Dawg wanted me to help him take over DaQuan’s business, but that was before the arrests. Now, I didn’t think there was anything left to take over.

  “What are we gonna do? I’m facing an indictment. As far as I know, so is everybody else who was working on the inside. I heard DaQuan is in the hole. What’s there to take over?”

  “With ya’ boy out of the game, these cats gonna go bananas trying to jockey for position.”

  I wondered whether E-Dawg had been dropped on his head as a baby or maybe he didn’t want to get the message; the business was dead.

  “For a long time, I couldn’t figure out how ol’ boy was able to hold it down the way he did from the inside. But the more I peeped the way he moved around, I realized he really was only good because of the females who had his back.”

  “Too bad he didn’t realize that.”

  “Bae, don’t get mad. Get better and beat him at what used to be his game; that’s the way you get revenge. Let ’em see you doing good despite everything.”

  E-Dawg’s pep talk sounded good, but unlike him, I couldn’t ignore what loomed. I was looking at doing time myself, and although I believed he really wanted me as a partner, I didn’t think he was being realistic about the fact that my days of freedom might be numbered.

  “So, what you say, ma?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHARISMA

  The stash account was my lifesaver and I was glad DaQuan had insisted that I set it up. Unfortunately, I didn’t do it as soon as he told me, so there wasn’t a whole lot of money in there.

  Once out of jail, I tried to figure out what my next move should be. I had no way to reach DaQuan and I sure as hell couldn’t go up to Jester.

  Worse than being in jail, I had to hide out at Lena’s house. The only reason I had a reprieve was because she’d been taking two-and-a-half-hour baths. We’d been out for nearly a week and she complained that jail stench still came out of her pores.

  Her irritating voice announced her arrival before I ever saw her. I rolled my eyes as she approached.

  “Eeww, I can’t believe you were hooking up with some nasty inmate.” She scrunched up her nose as she flopped onto the sofa. “I mean, who does that?”

  She was so flippant when she talked about my relationship with DaQuan, and she didn’t understand.

  The last thing I wanted to do was talk about him with Lena. She didn’t get what that man had done for me. I knew from the outside, most people would say I was a fool, but I had never had a man tell me I was beautiful. He took care of me better than anyone else ever had.

  Lena got up and pranced down the hall. I knew she wouldn’t be gone for long, but I was upset when she returned too fast.

  She hadn’t sat for
five minutes before there was a knock at her door. Lena jumped up and screamed, “I’ll get it!”

  Not in the mood for any company, I figured I could ease my way into the background as soon as she and her company walked back into the living room.

  “Now, Charisma, I knew you wouldn’t agree, so I made an executive decision. I think you need someone who can relate to you and what you’re going through.”

  Confusion settled on my features because I had no clue what she was talking about. No one I knew would be coming for me at Lena’s house.

  As I tried to make sense of what Lena had said, Corey came around the corner and looked at me with pity on his face.

  “Man, what the fuck you been doing?”

  He frowned, hard and intense.

  I looked at Lena, then back at Corey.

  “I knew something wasn’t right! I knew it, man, like I felt it, but ain’t no way I woulda’ took you for one of them thirsty broads trolling jailhouse sites for dudes.”

  Lena stood off to the side like she was an adult chaperone.

  “That’s like one of the oldest hustles around, them dudes just looking for a female to help do time with them.” He shook his head and Lena shook hers, too.

  “Ah, and don’t even tell me, he probably had you putting money on his books too, huh?”

  “If you must know, he has been giving me money and lots of it. It’s not what you think and I don’t really wanna talk about this. I don’t even know why you’re here.”

  With his hands extended in my direction, he moved toward me.

  “Corey, I got this. I don’t know why crazy over here called you. But DaQuan took better care of me and your kids than you ever did. We didn’t want for nothing while I was with him.”

  “That fool bought you that whip?”

  “And he bought us designer purses. He had lots of money, but if I knew he was in jail, running a gang and all of that hood stuff, ain’t no way I would’ve condoned that relationship,” Lena said.

  “Newsflash!” I jumped up. “I’m a grown-ass, educated woman. Whatever I did, I did because I wanted to do it. I don’t need you,” I pointed at Corey, “or you,” I pointed at Lena, “all in my damn business.”