by Mark Johnson
Earl’s “uncle” Dwayne wasn’t the only member of his family who’d spent time behind bars: there are cousins “and a no-good brother who oughtta be in jail, bein’s he’s nu’n but a con man and a cheat, all his life. Never paid a penny in taxes, scams people worse than a Clarke County Weaver, and collects disability checks even though he’s in better physical shape than me.”
Earl paused and patted his stomach. “’Course, that ain’t sayin’ much.” He grinned his whole-face grin.
But Earl also has a brother on his second combat tour in Afghanistan, who’s a sergeant with Escambia County’s S.O.—the very same agency that used to bedevil his dad and sent Uncle Dwayne to the Florida pen.
“Nobody does just one burglary.”
That’s Slocumb’s Theorem of Property Crime. Based on his own observations and life experience, he says, most petty thieves lack the imagination and entrepreneurial skills to think outta the box, change things up a little, throw us off.
“It ain’t exactly science with these guys,” Earl explained. “He’ll hit a lick, usually right in his own neighborhood. Often as not, the first few houses he hits is gonna be his own people—a neighbor, somebody he parties with, maybe an old girlfriend, maybe even his own cousin or mama,” Earl said. “Somebody who he knows the routines of: when they’re at work, gone fishin’ or whatever. He’ll know the stuff worth stealin’ in the house and where it’s at ’cause he’s been in that house, knows which window or door is easiest to get in.
“And he gets away with it. It’s so easy: kick in the backdoor, wrap the shit up in a pillowcase, hide it in the woods till dark, sell it on the streets that night, or take it to the drug man for some weed or crack. Even if the victim suspects him, he won’t usually tell us his name. Our victims don’t trust us or like us any more’n the thugs do. And they don’t wanna admit their friends or kin are thieves, or don’t wanna be a snitch. Or they think they can handle it themselves. Which they can’t.
“So it ain’t long ’fore he does it again. Same neighborhood, same deal: somebody else he knows. Maybe same victim as the first time, or somebody else whose house he’s been in, somebody who’s got the stuff he knows he can move quick: flat screens, Xboxes and games, maybe a gun or some power tools.
“Sooner or later, he’ll bring in a partner or two. That’ll give him more good targets: the partners know other good houses with flat screens and guns, know their neighbors’ work schedules, know other people who’ll buy or swap for the merchandise. And now he’s got somebody he can post outside with a cell to be lookout, and somebody who’ll help him carry those big fifty-inch flats or that generator or power washer out of the garage. Before you know it, they’re hittin’ a couple licks a week, all in the same zip code.
“It’s only a matter of time before they fuck up and get seen, or we lift a good print, or one of ’em gets ratted out by his baby-mama ’cause he gave some stolen bling to a new girl, but he ain’t paid for her Pampers in a month, or they pawn something they can’t sell or swap and we get a hit from pawn detail.
“So we look at who he’s been arrested with before, for anything. Juvenile shit: fighting in school, shoplifting, loitering, or possession. Or maybe the baby-mama tells us all his homies’ names. We pick them up, too. Bring ’em all in at once for questioning. Play one against the other, make shit up, do what we do, and one finally confesses to the lick. Now, at this point, most detectives are happy to make the arrest, clear the case, move on.
“But this is where the theorem comes in. Nobody does just one. Look at the open cases in the neighborhood over the past few months. Look at what’s been stolen, time a day, day a the week, method of entry. Patterns. Check his pawn history, his baby-mama’s pawn history, his family’s and homies’ pawns. Check the cars they drive, see if they match anything seen in the other cases. Then you tell him you know he did all the licks in the area. Word’s out now that he’s in custody, and we say we got people comin’ to us from all these other cases in the area, sayin’ they seen him cartin’, off they TVs and weed whackers, wantin’ they stuff back, or restitution. Whattawe gon’ do about all this mess? But then we say, like we’re just brain-stormin’ that moment, ‘Hmmm, Tyrone, mebbe there’s a way we can he’p you out, but you gotta he’p us out.’ And of course we can’t make this offer for all his partners, but if he cooperates, he can be a witness ’stead of a defendant on all these other cases, and we can tell the DA he cooperated and deserves a deal.
“’Fore you know it, he’s spillin’ his guts and sellin’ out his homies. And one case turns into a dozen cleared.
“Because nobody does just one.”
I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it play out, over and over. One burglary arrest would lead to multiple confessions and case clearances. Eventually, I developed my own mojo, my own style, and it never felt better than the time I got a kid who had burglarized more than thirty homes over a two-month period, in an area that spanned my beats as well as Earl’s. We both knew LaMarcus Pettway had done them, but we had nothing more than unreliable hearsay and circumstantial evidence: not enough to get a warrant signed for Pettway’s arrest.
Earl had interviewed Pettway on several occasions, to no avail. Then I got a couple of cases that had Pettway’s name all over them and brought him in for questioning.
“He ain’t gonna talk,” Earl warned. “Me and Lusty have double-teamed him twice: good cop–bad cop, claimed we had prints, said somebody ratted him out to us. That’s after I spent a couple hours with him by myself. Pettway don’t talk. He’s just a fuck-’tard thug, too stupid to reason with and too hard to intimidate.”
I didn’t have anything to lose by trying, so my buttoned-down self went into the room and started talking. He was only nineteen years old but no small kid. Grew up in the B’mo Bricks, one of Mobile’s toughest projects, been in trouble since he was fourteen and expelled from school. Six foot 3, 250 pounds, solid muscle, dark chocolate skin, LaMarcus looked like he could be a starting linebacker, replete with full gold grill and multiple tattoos.
I told him I had spoken with his mama and his grandparents earlier that day, and I could tell he came from a good family. His grandfather had introduced himself as Reverend Pettway, of Riverside Baptist. He had invited me inside.
“It’s a nice house. Yard’s kept up. He told me you used to cut the grass for him, that right?”
Pettway nodded but wouldn’t make eye contact with me.
“That was my first job, too: cutting grass. Not just for my parents, but also around the neighborhood.”
Nothing.
“Inside’s real nice, too. Not like mosta the places I go in. Your folks have good furniture, keep it all real tidy. Saw the family portraits in the living room. Looks like you got some little brothers and sisters.”
Pettway was still impassive, but at least he wasn’t argumentative, or a smart aleck.
“Your grandfather told me they’re all good kids, do well in school. Said you were like that, too, until those troubles with your father. When I told them why I was looking for you, they all three cried. I told them I had enough to put you in the same place as your father, for years. How you think your little brothers’ll handle that, LaMarcus? Next to your grandfather, you’re the man of the house, with your daddy being gone. Looks like you’re fixin’ to follow in his footsteps. Which means maybe your little brothers will follow in yours. At least that’s what your folks are all worried about.”
Pettway still avoided eye contact.
“My mama cried, too, when I was about your age, and I got arrested. My dad was really pissed, but I could deal with that. I even kinda liked it that I pissed him off so much. He and I butted heads a lot, and after a few years of it, he’d just had it with me. Called me a quitter, said I wouldn’t think for myself, just always went along with the crowd. That made me so mad. Still does, just thinking about it. So I didn’t care that I made him mad, and kind of embarrassed him, you know?”
To my surprise, LaMar
cus Pettway seemed to be listening, and he nodded, though he still wouldn’t look at me.
“But no matter how much trouble I got in, how many times I ended up in jail, my mama just cried but never gave up on me. I can still picture her in my mind, crying over me, even though she’s been gone almost twenty years now.”
I hadn’t planned this out, hadn’t thought I would be telling this stuff to a young (but accomplished) burglar, and wasn’t sure how I got here or where I was going with it.
Worse, I had not anticipated the strength of emotion the memories would stir in me. I’ve always been an easy weeper, much to my dismay. I’ve gotten better at anticipating it, heading it off, disguising it. Nevertheless, occasionally my eyes still well up before I know it’s coming. I looked down at the Miranda waiver form, filled in the date, time, and location, and signed my name on the line for Officer/Witness, then shuffled through Pettway’s multipage rap sheet as if reminded of something I needed to check on, made some arbitrary notational scrawls and check marks.
When at last I brought my gaze back up to Pettway, I was startled to see him looking intently at me, blinking back his own tears.
“You can turn this around right now, LaMarcus. Stop your mama’s tears. I can help you with that. We start with this case on Driftwood Drive. I know you did it, and you know I know. I got an eyewitness puts you at the scene, willing to testify. Didn’t even need to talk to you today. Coulda just had ’em take you straight to Metro, but after I met your folks, I promised ’em I’d try to work with you. You’re not like most of ’em I talk to in here, Marcus. You got a good family that still cares about you.
“So this is the deal: you get one hundred with me on this case on Driftwood Drive—and you might as well, ’cause I got you on it anyway—and you tell me about the others, too, on Delta and Greenwood and over on Bucker and Zula, too, then we can probably work something out. Now, I can’t promise you anything, but you help me clear cases, I can talk to the DA and even the judge for you about getting a break. They the ones who make the decisions, but they wanna know what we think before they decide.”
“You would do that for me? You could make some a this go away?”
“I could put in a word for you. How good that word is depends on how honest you are with me, how many names you give me, and how much stuff we can get back. That means you gotta tell me where the stuff went, and who all’s involved. The more you tell me, the more you help yourself, and the sooner you put all this behind you, Marcus, and start fresh with a clean slate.”
“What I gotta do?”
I pushed the confession forms across the table and gave him a pen.
“Start writing. Beginning with Driftwood and working backwards. I need names, addresses, I need to know as best you can remember what you got outta each lick, and who’s got it now.”
“But I don’t know no ’dresses. I could show you on a map or something, but—”
“We can do better’n that. How ’bout we take a ride? You’ll know the places if you see ’em, right? And we can get drive-through on the way. It’s almost suppertime.”
I left Pettway writing and went out to ask Earl and Lusty about checking out the undercover Tahoe with the dark-tinted windows. They couldn’t believe I got LaMarcus Pettway to talk.
“Well, I did hafta promise him a Big Mac and large fries.”
“Nah,” Earl said. “I think it’s that Clint Eastwood thing you got goin’ on. It must be workin’ for ya.”
I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell them how Marcus and I both got misty eyed over breaking our mamas’ hearts.
LaMarcus Pettway confessed to three dozen cases and gave up three accomplices, who were also arrested on multiple burglaries. In addition, we prosecuted the dope slinger who received most of their stolen goods. Earl and Lusty and I executed a search warrant on the dealer’s house and there recovered some $9,000 worth of stolen property as well as a bunch of marijuana and crack. Marcus was prosecuted for only five cases, sentences to be concurrent. He was back on the streets (on probation) in twenty months.
Within weeks of regaining his freedom, Pettway was shot in a predawn gun battle on Driftwood Drive. He and several others had attempted the armed robbery of a drug dealer, and the dealer won; he was found to be acting in self-defense and was not prosecuted for the shooting. Pettway’s accomplices remain unknown, having sped away unseen. They left behind their homeboy LaMarcus Pettway, twenty-three, to bleed to death in the dope slinger’s driveway.
23
Fool Me Once . . .
Ah, well, I am a great and sublime fool. But then I am God’s fool, and all his works must be contemplated with respect.
—Mark Twain
It was just another garden-variety burglary: door kicked in, flat screen carried out.
But the lady across the street watched the whole thing through her front window blinds and called in the play-by-play to 911. As units sped to the scene from several directions, the eyewitness provided Dispatch with detailed descriptions of the faded gray Honda, its tag number, the black female driver with a blonde hair weave who sat in the driver’s seat while her 300-pound black male passenger got out, kicked in the door, and emerged moments later with a fifty-inch flat too big to get in the little Civic’s backseat. The man finally laid it in the trunk with about a foot of it sticking out. They had nothing to tie the trunk lid down with, so they just let the lid flap up and down, banging on the unsecured jumbo screen, as they backed out of the driveway in a hurry.
At the end of the driveway, the Civic bounced over the curb and the screen shifted and slid halfway out of the trunk. When the blonde weave stopped to shift gears, the flat screen completed its exit from the Civic’s trunk like candy from a Pez dispenser and clattered onto the asphalt. The burglars stopped for a second when they heard their load hit the street, looked back at the shattered hulk of high-definition home theater lying in the middle of Martinwood Lane, then sped away. When police arrived, they recovered the now-worthless jumbo flat screen from the street, but the little Civic was gone.
The Civic’s tag came back registered to a black female whose address was just two streets away from the victim’s, in the same subdivision. Police went to that location, found the Civic parked in the driveway, and knocked on the door. A heavyset black male matching the description given by the eyewitness came to the door and was taken into custody without incident. Blonde Weave came out yelling, demanding to see the arrest warrant for her boyfriend, demanding to know what the fuck was going on, yelling that she knows her rights, and taking cell phone video of the officers as they placed her boyfriend in the cage of a squad car.
This was convenient for police. When officers started to cuff her, she resisted. She was a big girl. It took two officers to wrestle her to the ground. Both were transported to the precinct, to be interviewed by me.
Ordinarily I would start with the female, because they’re typically more cooperative and likely to rat out their accomplices. They have more to lose: they’re more often employed and don’t want to lose the job, have custody of kids whose care must be arranged if they go to Metro, and are generally not as hardened or experienced in the game as their male counterparts.
But given the circumstances of their apprehension and the volume of the bitch’s complaints emanating from the interview room, I decide to start with the male. He’s very polite, soft spoken, cooperative. Signs the Miranda warning and waiver form without hesitation. Has neat, legible handwriting. LaJuan Lawson is only nineteen, and despite multiple visits to Strickland Juvenile Center, his criminal history comprises only misdemeanor offenses like petty shoplifting, possession of paraphernalia and a couple of blunts, curfew violations, and the like. This would be his first felony, his first trip to big-boy jail.
Despite the gravity of the consequences he’s facing, LaJuan confesses before I even ask him any questions.
“You got me, fair ’n’ square, Detective,” he says, looking me in the eyes, resigned to his fate. “I kicked in
the door and took the flat, it ain’t no point in lyin’ about it. But I thought it was Kenyatta’s.”
Kenyatta is the blonde weave, still demanding her rights in the other room.
“She used to live with the girl at that house, and she said the girl changed the locks on her before she could get her flat screen out. I thought I was just doing her a favor, just getting her stuff back for her.”
“You say you ‘thought.’ You think different now?”
“Yeah. When it slid out the trunk, I said, ‘Oh, shit! Your flat’s busted!’ but Kenyatta just hit the gas and said, ‘It ain’t no thang, the bitch deserves it.’ That’s when I knew she done lied to me. But it’s my own fault. I never shoulda been so stupid.”
“Well, you aren’t the first man to be tricked by a female,” I say, feeling sorry for him. “And to your credit, you manned up, didn’t waste my time with a buncha bullshit lies. I gotta say, I respect you for that, LaJuan.”
“Yes sir. Thank you, Detective,” he says. His earnestness is almost disconcerting.
“Unfortunately, there’s no getting around the fact that a burglary was committed. I have no choice but to charge you with it, LaJuan, and Kenyatta, too, of course.”
“Yes sir, I understand,” he says. “You just got a job to do.”
“But I promise you, I’ll mention your cooperation to the DA. You’re still young enough to qualify for Youthful Offender, and the DA’ll probably agree to a plea deal, considering the circumstances, and your confession. Now, to bond out, it should only take a couple hundred dollars. Is there anybody you wanna call before they take you to Metro? Your folks?”
LaJuan lowers his eyes, shakes his head. “Nah. My daddy said next time I get in trouble, I’m on my own.”
