by Mark Johnson
“What’s his name and number?”
I call Mr. Lawson from my office and explain LaJuan’s circumstances. He’s pissed.
“That boy just won’t learn, Detective. He refuses to listen to me. I’ve tried so many times with him, I cain’t even remember how many times I’ve tole him not to run with those other little gangsters, how many times I been to Strickland for him. I couldn’t even beat any sense into him, Detective. He just won’t do right.”
“I understand, Mr. Lawson. But at least he was respectful and honest with me. And I believe him about thinking he was just doing the girl a favor.”
“Nahhh, you don’t know him like I do. I’m finished with him. Metro is what he deserves.”
“With all due respect, I think Metro would do him more harm than good.”
“He’s a big boy. He can take care of himself in there.”
“He’s big, all right. But that’s not the kinda harm I’m talking about. I’m talking about the people he’ll meet in there, the influence they could have on him. His bond’s only gonna be a couple hundred.”
“Shit. Even if I had a couple hundred, I ain’t gonna spend it on no bond for that boy. He’s a lost cause. I know him. He thinks he’s grown now, let him sit in Metro with the rest a’ them grown thugs.”
“How ’bout if I split it with you? Could you come up with a hundred?”
An hour later I’m meeting Mr. Lawson at Bandit Bail Bonds. He’s as bewildered as he is skeptical of our shared investment in LaJuan. I make him promise not to tell LaJuan or anybody else that his arresting officer chipped in to bail him out.
And Slocumb’s Theorem is the furthest thing from my mind.
Several years later, we have finally persuaded HQ to allow us Facebook access from our precinct workstations in order to monitor its treasure trove of thug chatter. Devin O’Malley had been doing it from his personal computer for months and is current with the technology and the lingo of the website. More important, Devin’s “down” with the culture of its habitués. He has valiantly taken on the hopeless task of teaching me, the avowed Luddite, how to navigate it.
Devin has created a fictional female named LaTonya Nettles, complete with phony bio that says she’s a graduate of BC Rain High School, works as a server at Hooters, and grew up with the B’mo Boyz in the 1010 Baltimore project (thug central in the First Precinct). “Her” favorite quotes are from Michelle Obama (“Our souls are broken in this nation . . . as a black man, Barack can be shot going to the gas station”) and favorite rap artists are Jay Z, Lil Wayne, Kanye, and local fave Rich Boy. “LaTonya” says she misses the (fictional) boyfriend she calls “my Boo” who’s doing time in Atmore. The main attraction, though, that draws ’em like flies: non-identifying body shots displaying “her” tattooed cleavage and spandex-stretching booty.
Within hours, horny homeboys by the hundreds have “liked” and “friended” her and e-mailed LaTonya pictures of themselves posing with their stacks of Benjamins, their Gats and Nines, their smoke-billowing blunts. I’m incredulous at the bounty of criminal activity laid claim to, bragged about, and posted in snapshots on the Internet.
And then I spy a familiar face among LaTonya’s wanna-be Facebook friends, in pictures posted from a smuggled cell phone inside Atmore Penitentiary. Dressed in prison whites, shirt unbuttoned to display a fully tatted chest and neck, fingers of both hands forming gang signs, is LaJuan Lawson. He’s three months away from “touchdown”—the end of a three-year, split-to-serve-eighteen-month stretch for Burglary First Home Invasion.
I feel really stupid. I wanna throw up. Not only had I forgotten Slocumb’s Theorem but also that stinging rebuke from my first FTO, Porter: “What are you, some kinda fucking social worker?”
Five months after seeing LaJuan’s Atmore photo gallery through LaTonya Nettles’s phony Facebook account, I’m looking at him face to face across a Metro visiting room table. He’d been arrested a few days prior for armed robbery of a Circle K. I didn’t know much, nor gave a damn, about the specifics of the robbery rap. It had taken place out in the Fourth. But that case, resulting in LaJuan’s arrest, made it much easier for me to locate him for questioning about a recent burglary report that had crossed my desk.
It had occurred the day before he was picked up for the robbery, and it had LaJuan Lawson’s name on the suspect line.
He’d been out of prison less than six weeks, sleeping on a cousin’s couch because he’d burned all his bridges. She had foolishly entrusted him with a house key. Four days ago she had come home from her job at the counter of a Long John Silver’s to discover her flat screen missing. No forced entry, although the burglar had tried to make it appear so: a window had been broken.
But the window was too small for most grown men to fit through. And shards of broken glass were scattered on the sidewalk outside the window. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to deduce that it had been busted from the inside out. LaJuan’s cousin had named him as the suspect in her burglary.
“Remember me, LaJuan?” I say, shaking his hand when he enters the small Metro conference room.
His face lights up in a broad smile. “Detective Johnson! Sho’ do remember you! You the one split the bond with my dad that time!” I cringe inside, wondering how many other people LaJuan’s father has blabbed that to.
We sit down across the table from each other, and he seems genuinely glad to see me.
“You here about this thang they got on me? I ain’t did it, y’know. Wadn’t anywhere near no Circle K that night.”
I wave him off. “I don’t have anything to do with that, LaJuan. That’s Robbery’s case. You know me, I just work burglaries.”
“Aw, man, I figured you’da been moved up by now! Dey oughtta had you on alla dem high-profile cases dey put on the TV!”
“Flattery won’t do you any good, LaJuan. But I appreciate the thought. I’m here to ask you about your cousin Chandra’s case. You musta heard about that—you were staying with her, right?”
“Aw yeah!” LaJuan frowns at the injustice of it all. “I sho’ hope you find who done it, ’cause she good people—family—know’m sayin’, dog?”
“Did you just call me ‘dog,’ LaJuan?”
“Sorry, man. Didn’t mean nu’n by it, just da way I ’spress myself, Detective Johnson.” He flashes his big pearly whites in a chastened grin.
“A’ight,” I say, smiling. “Just clarifyin’. Anyway, what do you know about Chandra’s flat screen?”
“I’ont know nu’n ’bout it, man. Wish I did—I’d put you on ’em in a heartbeat! Cain’t belie’e some punkass damn niggas done her like dat. She good people, know’m sayin’? I jus’ hope, when you catch ’em, you tell me who dem niggas is, ’cause I got a li’l some’in’ for ’em my own self! Will ya do dat fuh me, Detective Johnson?”
“So you got no idea who stole Chandra’s flat, LaJuan? You know, we lifted some decent prints from around the busted window.”
“Good! I hope you catch ’em, Detective! ’Course, I was stayin’ up in there, so my prints natchully be all over e’rethang a’ready.”
“We realize that, LaJuan. Your prints wouldn’t mean a thing. But there’s something funny about that case. Whoever did it had a key. And Chandra says the only one ’sides her with a key—”
“Huh? Had a key? How you be knowin’ dat? Den why dey busted open da winda’ fuh?”
“That’s what we were wondering. But now we’re guessing they just busted the window to make it look like they broke in, to throw us off, cover the fact that they had a key. Pretty sneaky, huh?” I’m studying LaJuan’s face, looking for telltale reaction. He’s not giving anything away. But he’s not saying anything either.
“But they weren’t all that sneaky, really, because they didn’t quite think it through, know’m sayin’, dog?”
LaJuan says nothing but shrugs his shoulders, arches his eyebrows quizzically, awaiting my explanation.
“The busted window thing: know why they didn’t quite th
ink it through, LaJuan? The window was busted from the inside out. Broken glass all over the sidewalk, none inside. Whaddaya think a that, LaJuan?”
He shakes his head one time, then smiles. “I think it’s a good thing fuh Chandra she got you on the case, Detective Johnson. If they’s anybody can catch ’em, it gon’ be you! But you need to be lookin’ at summa dem niggas Chandra be talkin’ to. She prolly ain’t tell ya dat, but she be bringin’ lotsa mens home wit’ her, know’m sayin’? And it ain’t nu’n to slip out wid a key and get a copy made at the Dollah Sto’ right across the street.”
I nod ponderously but say nu’n.
LaJuan takes this as his opportunity to change the subject. “You know the detectives on this robbery thang they got me up in here on? Could you mebbe talk to ’em fuh me, Detective? Tell ’em you know me, tell ’em to check out my alibi. I ain’t did no robbery, Detective, you know dat! I mean, I just got out! Dey really think I’m ’onna be dat stupid, to get myself violated when I just got out? Will ya talk to ’em fuh me?”
“Sure, LaJuan, I’ll put in a word for you,” I say, rising to leave. I have no intention of going to bat for LaJuan Lawson with Robbery. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, fuck you—and your poor, hardworking, unfortunate cousin Chandra, “good people” though she may be.
When I get back to the precinct, I call Robbery and ask about LaJuan’s case. It’s a slam-dunk: an eyewitness picked him out of a six-panel photo spread, and there’s pretty conclusive footage of LaJuan’s 300-pound physique on the store’s security cam.
“Good,” I say. “Kid’s nu’n but a thief, from way back.”
“Yeah, we saw in his Compis file where you put a burglary on him a while ago.”
“Uh-huh. But the judge granted him Youthful Offender, and they gave him a deal,” I reply. “Wasn’t too much later he gets sent to Atmore for the Home Invasion. He’s a bad one. You guys need to really put dick to him this time.” (Keeping my promise to LaJuan, that’s the word I put in: dick.)
Then I call Chandra and tell her that although I’m as certain as she is that LaJuan stole her TV, without a confession all we have is circumstantial evidence, which isn’t gonna be enough to win a conviction. She understands, is not surprised.
I offer her the consolation that Robbery’s case is solid, so at least he’ll be headed back to Atmore soon. “Of course, that won’t get you your TV back, but it’s something.”
“That’s good,” Chandra says. “He won’t be doin’ it to nobody else, ’least for a while.”
She thanks me for my effort before hanging up. She does sound like “good people,” and that only makes me feel worse.
24
Bad Day on the Bayou
A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control.
—Proverbs 29:11
There had been six felony property thefts down the parkway over the past three weeks. Most of the stolen items were unsecured marine equipment, taken off boats and docks, big-ticket items like depth finders, radars and radios, a few trolling motors and outboard motors. Even a canoe, two kayaks, and a small wooden rowboat had gone missing. In addition, three misdemeanor thefts of the same kind of stuff, only of lesser value—tackle boxes, life vests, water skis, fishing rods, batteries, oil and gas cans, coolers, even tow ropes and mooring lines—had been taken from piers, boathouses, and gazebos along the same stretch of Dog River. And an alert citizen had reported seeing Wesley Colt driving what turned out to be a stolen John Deere lawn tractor down Riverside Drive yesterday morning.
All had occurred on the east side of the river and along that side’s bayous and slues, all within a half mile of where Riverside Drive and Gill Road converge before dead-ending at the water’s edge.
That alone—the location—was all I needed to know. Just past the Riverside/Gill convergence is the home of Little Ricky Stedman, seventeen, and his mama with the lazy eye who’s not all there. She hasn’t been right in the head, it’s said, since her husband, Little Ricky’s daddy Big Rick Stedman, had died in a fiery motorcycle wreck several years ago.
Big Rick had been a legendary wildman on the parkway. Though well liked and gifted with a wrench (he could build, fix, and race anything with two wheels, four wheels, or an outboard), Big Rick didn’t leave his wife or Little Ricky much when he was cut down in his prime, so they took in boarders to make ends meet.
There was an ever-changing cast of drifters, grifters, dope addicts and slingers, thieves, tramps, and layabouts taking up temporary residence at the Stedman place, 3656 Riverside. They would hang around until the heat was on, we busted them, or they were run off by their own kind, only to be replaced by newcomers, or returnees who had done their time in Metro and had been released to wreak more havoc down the parkway.
Little Ricky’s mama’s house is, as you’d expect, a wreck, but the acreage it occupies is prime, graced with towering old live oaks in the front and a hundred feet of waterfront in the back. Many of the neighbors’ homes, on both sides of the Stedman place as well as across the bayou behind it, still command high six figures and are equipped with all the pricey toys that go along with that lifestyle, despite the gradual but unremitting decline of the parkway.
A few short decades ago, the parkway had been one of the more prosperous, thriving commercial and residential areas of Mobile. The first blow was LBJ’s closure of Brookley Field (home of twenty thousand good-paying aircraft fabrication jobs) shortly after Barry Goldwater carried Mobile in the ’64 election. The final blow was the hurricane that took out the bridge at the bottom of the parkway, from Hollinger’s Island to Belle Fontaine. This disaster had rendered the arterial’s very name a misnomer, as you could no longer get to Dauphin Island by taking Dauphin Island Parkway. The lifeblood of the area was pinched off to a trickle, and blight, neglect, decay, and crime set in.
So now the parkway is a mix of vacant, abandoned, overgrown houses collapsing in on themselves as daily they are pillaged by copper thieves and squatters; modest, formerly tidy working-class neighborhoods that have become rundown pockets of federally subsidized housing favored by dope slingers and small-time gangsters; boarded-up businesses and empty strip malls sprinkled with second-tier chains and franchises like Burke’s Outlet, Citi Trends Clothing, Checkers hamburgers, Shop ’n Save groceries, and pawnshops; and opulent waterfront homes nestled among the live oaks with $50,000 sailboats, trawlers, and yachts moored at their piers out back. A thief’s paradise.
The most frequent boarders at the Stedman place are the Colt boys: Travis, twenty-one, and his brother Wesley, eighteen. Both are driven by fierce addictions and criminal inclinations, limited only by their modest intellects. The Colt boys stay at the Stedman place when banned (at regular intervals) by Grandma from the Colt family homestead on Gill Road, about a mile east of the Stedman place. Grandma Colt’s daughter Brandy, in her late thirties, and Brandy’s daughter Candy, nineteen, also reside there. Brandy and Candy are mother and sister, respectively, to the Colt boys. There’s also another guy, Andy Colt, who is maybe a little older than Brandy and also appears to live at Grandma Colt’s place. Andy keeps to himself, and the rest of the family doesn’t seem to have much to do with him, either, but I always see him sitting on Grandma Colt’s front porch or puttering around the yard when I drive by, and I see him walking around by himself a lot. Rumor has it he’s a half-wit, but he doesn’t look mongoloid or anything, and he’ll say a sentence or two if you address him directly. Various accounts of the half-wit Andy have him as cousin or brother or nephew of somebody in the Colt clan. Whatever he is, Andy Colt’s not a criminal, but he’s not all there, either.
The mother-daughter team of Brandy and Candy Colt, though conniving and clever enough to stay out of Metro (for the most part), is nevertheless driven by the same demons as Travis and Wesley. Brandy and Candy usually manage to escape arrest by ratting out Travis and Wesley (and anyone else with the bad luck or bad sense to pass through their orbit), though as often as not, all f
our are equal participants in criminal enterprises that are usually hatched by Brandy and Candy in the first place.
A case in point was the theft of the $23,000 cash life savings of a sad old terminally ill alcoholic in the last month of his wretched life who had the additional misfortune to reside directly across Gill Road from the Colt clan. Brandy and Candy insinuated themselves into homebound Fletcher Gibbs’s life by walking Gibbs’s crippled old bulldog, Sarge, providing light housework and meal prep, running to the ABC state store and the Rite Aid to replenish his stocks of Crown Royal and Lortabs, and occasionally performing fellatio.
The girls introduced Travis and Wesley and Candy’s then-husband, Troy, into the mix by convincing ol’ Fletch that the boys’ collective expertise in auto repair, home maintenance, and landscaping was critical to his well-being and to the value of the estate he’d be leaving his grown and distant heirs upon his imminent passing due to liver disease. Fletcher Gibbs’s physician had estimated he had no more than six months to live and told him to get his things in order. Fletch’s idea of getting things in order was to close his checking and savings accounts so as to keep a close eye on the $23,000 that he kept in fat wads of fifties and hundreds within arm’s reach, under the cushion of his Lazy Boy recliner where he spent his days and nights drinking blended whiskey, chain-smoking Pall Malls, and watching old cowboy movies on the Turner Classic cable channel.
When Fletch came to one morning and discovered the cash gone, he still had enough sense to suspect the Colts but couldn’t be sure which one and had no proof. The clerks at the state store and the Rite Aid confirmed to me that Brandy and Candy had been buying way more than their usual lately and paying for it all with crisp fifties and hundreds. The old parkway dope slinger Roosevelt Jenks, a favorite supplier of Travis and Wesley, confided to me that the brothers had recently been coming to him flashing rolls of Benjamins and acquiring his entire inventory every few days. And Candy’s husband, Troy, had been seen wheeling around the parkway in a new (to him) ’06 midnight blue Dodge Charger with dark tinted windows, fancy rims, and a paper dealer tag on the back. The owner of the car lot where Troy bought his muscle car recalled that Troy paid $5,200 cash for it, in hundred-dollar bills.
