As I drifted off into a half-sleep, I suddenly realized that my mind had been measuring up the murder and the steps I took immediately afterward, as well as which tactics and strategies I should and shouldn’t use now. So focused on that, I didn’t focus on the reality, the impact or the results of my having entered Midnight Wash, that Laundromat. Now I reflected clearly. Now, I concluded that this investigation is not about the homicide I committed.
It was about the drug den that I’d unknowingly entered, to write a letter to Umma and to wash off the evidence of the murder. Unusually sharp usually, I didn’t pick up on what my young life in Brooklyn had already schooled me on. Any empty business is a front for some illegal business, like a corner grocery store with very few groceries on the shelf and no everyday customers. Or a specialty shop whose window displays and decorations never changed because what’s in their windows ain’t what they selling. If I had lived in the neighborhood the Laundromat was in, I would have noticed. But I was just a man on a mission passing through. Now that I think about it, the three machines in a row that had a sign saying they were out of order could have had something big with high street value stashed inside—cash, drugs, guns, whatever. The whole switching of the exit signs and locking and bolting down the doors like that wasn’t a crazy fucking fire hazard should’ve tipped me off. If one of their enemies set that place ablaze, they would all be trapped. And what about all that bullshit about the red bag? If carrying the red bag meant “no man, no beast ah touch ya,” no street cats or cops in other words, would touch me, that had to mean that the cops and the dealers were working together and what they had in common was the red signal and the contents of the red bag.
What about the barefoot women who never opened the door even though they had to have heard the fight and the commotion? Were they also locked in? What else were they concealing and doing? Were there any men behind that door with them?
Now that I was alone in the room, I began to see some of the pieces of the setup. The Red Flamingo was their lookout girl. But she was a weak link in their chain. She was their untrained trusted girl soldier, although I didn’t know why any man would have his woman as the face of his dangerous illegal business dealings, surrounded by other men, blood or no blood relation.
Glad I didn’t fuck her. I didn’t desire her or feel tempted by her. She wanted the dick-down so bad, if I was a weaker man she would’ve had me off guard and half naked. After the stroking, I’d be soaking in my own blood when her man’s men came dropping down from the opening in the ceiling like spider assassins.
There is a difference between men who are believers and men who are not. Believing men don’t take whatever is being offered just because it’s available. The believers believe that there are three people in the room whenever any unmarried man and unmarried woman are in a room alone. The third one is the devil.
Believing men restrain first, and resist and select and take women as wives wisely, with all of their senses. Our reward is peace of mind, peace within our family, and also, Allah’s mercy and protection.
There is a difference between niggas with weapons and trained fighters, armed or unarmed. No matter how much attitude or grimy looks or slick talk any untrained nigga has—and no matter if he is holding a stockpile of weapons and ammunition—a trained warrior will disarm and disable or dead him in seconds, and everything he has or had becomes mine . . . if I want it.
* * *
“It stinks.” Hours later, the morning after the murder, two police in plain street clothes, wearing their badges like necklaces, entered the room. It was their beef stinking up their windowless side room. Now rotting meat mixed with the smell of their coffee and sugar doughnuts and the residue of their cigarettes, and a trace of alcohol on at least one of ’em. I had my head down on the table, not asleep anymore; my eyes were open and I was listening with my mind alert. Calm now, my thoughts dropping down rapidly, then shifting right into place like Tetris.
“Wake up! We don’t sleep. You don’t sleep, either,” one of them said.
But of course I knew they had slept. Why else would they leave me sitting in the chair for eight hours? Seated straight now, I put my blank face back on.
“Get Officer Darby to escort this perp to the bathroom. It fucking stinks in here. Smells like he shitted in his diaper.”
In the bathroom built with cement cinder blocks and no windows, I was about “to handle my business.” First time in my life I’d ever been in a public bathroom with other men who were not there to handle their own business in their own stall or individual urinal. These cops were here to watch me.
“Bet you didn’t know you have to ask every time you want to go to the potty and pee-pee,” one of ’em joked.
“If you don’t cooperate, you’ll be doing this all day every day for the rest of your life.” He exaggerated his threat. Still cuffed, I was standing, still adjusting. In a room where there was no way out except through the front door, in a heavily armed police precinct, where these two uniformed cops could’ve just posted at that front door and waited for me to finish, they chose to enter with me. One of them was walking in and out of each stall collecting the toilet paper.
“If you want tissue for your ass, you gotta open your fucking mouth and ask me for it,” he said, juggling the rolls, dropping one or two and leaving them on the floor. I didn’t reach down for it. “Oh yeah, I forgot. You don’t have a name and you can’t talk,” he said sarcastically. “Go ahead. Take a dump. We ain’t got all day.”
He watched. Must’ve been some twisted pleasure for him to see if I could manage in the bathroom cuffed. As I walked in a stall he ordered, “Leave the door open.” I pulled down my jeans and eased down my boxers. When I was done, I realized I couldn’t wipe my ass while cuffed. He was standing in the stall with me now, laughing.
“Hey shitty ass,” he said. “Need some help? Ask me for it.” I didn’t. He uncuffed me but stood in the stall immediately in front of me. “I’ll let you wipe your ass if you ask me for the tissue,” he smirked. I didn’t ask. I stepped out of my jeans and removed my boxers and used them to wipe my ass. I threw the boxers in the toilet same as though they were toilet tissue. I flushed with my foot, and didn’t pay attention to the toilet clogging as I climbed back into my jeans. Now me and him are face to face in the tight stall. “Don’t you dare glare at me,” he said. “Hands!” he ordered and cuffed me. I waited till he stepped back out. He did. I moved past the cop to use the sink to wash my hands, and even washed the shit off the cuffs.
“You should’ve emptied out the soap too,” his partner said, laughing at his failed attempt to get me to break my silence.
Escorted out of the bathroom like a toddler, I listened with my brain and not my heart as they talked dumb shit.
“Fucking animal, I’d put a bullet between his eyes if he ever glanced at my wife,” the cop who’d stood in the stall with me said to the other.
He has a wife? I thought to myself. I pity her. She probably respects her husband, the police officer. She probably believes he’s out serving those who need help and protecting those who need to be rescued. She probably cooked him breakfast this morning admiring him and gave him a kiss and a lunch before he left, while not knowing he’s just a fool who spent his morning on a black man’s dick.
This is how they break men, I thought to myself. Being cuffed and trapped was expected. But what they kill you with is what no decent men would ever do, or ever expect to be done. It’s the extra shit that has nothing to do with being questioned, or with being charged with a crime, or even with being sentenced or with serving time as a just punishment.
* * *
Inside the still stinking side room a detective spread some photos on the table. By now, I had observed that the detectives were more focused and serious than the regular uniformed cops. Yet all cops are cops to me.
These are narcs, I thought to myself. Drug detectives looking for drug dealers, drugs, and information leading them to a bust. I was clear now.
But one or more of them might be a drug dealer himself, I thought. A dirty cop pretending to be a detective while dealing drugs on the low, or at least by protecting drug dealers on the low. Particularly, drug dealers on Redverse’s team. The ones carrying the red bag, I said to myself.
“All that’s required here are your fingers since your jaw is jammed shut. Point out which man or which men in these photos you recognize. Smartest thing you can do for yourself is to separate yourself from these guys. Give them up. Cooperate with us, and you can walk out of here a free man soon,” he said.
In the photos were four different dreds, and one Caesar cut, all dark-skinned and Jamaican. I recognized two of them. The first was Shotgun; the other was AK-47. The other two I didn’t know. I figured it was Redverse and one of his lieutenants, or maybe another one of his brothers or even his business partner. Neither me nor my face responded to the photos.
“You could move the photos around. Put ’em in the right order for us,” the detective said. “The bigger the boss, the bigger the bang, the better the bargaining chip for you. Your freedom is based on this negotiation.” I didn’t speak. The officer who was trying to do all the convincing continued, as the other detective’s face and body grew more and more impatient. He stood stiff, fingering his holster. The first detective threw a small pad and a piece of a pencil on the table.
“Give us some names. Write down the names of even one of the guys you know—his street name, name his momma gave him, whatever. But it better be right. Pull a fast one, and I’ll have you serve all of their time put together. I can do that, you know.” He was leaning on the table now where I was seated. His facial expression was serious, angry and frustrated. I knew the routine. He was playing “bad cop, good cop.” I wasn’t playing. The bad cop puts the fear in a prisoner and the good cop poses as a reasonable ally who the prisoner can mistakenly trust in and bargain with.
“Stand up!” the “bad detective” yelled, not giving a fuck about who could hear him. I stood. A tough guy, he took off his gun and handed it to his partner like he wanted me and him to shoot a fair one. There is no such thing as a fair one between a cop and his prisoner. The cop is hands-free and the prisoner is not. Even if I defeated the cop using only my trained feet, even if I knocked him out using the metal cuffs I was wearing as a weapon and banged him at a point on his body that I had already studied, even if I head-butted him into unconsciousness—and I could do all that—I knew if a man in custody, a prisoner, moves one muscle in his body, a cop is authorized to kill. And this detective wanted to kill somebody. He threw his best shots to my stomach, didn’t like not seeing the look of pain on my face, and began slamming his fist into my sides. I felt it. I didn’t react. His partner pulled him off me and pushed him outside the door. Now I was supposed to believe the “good cop” is my protection. I don’t need it. I don’t believe it. It was all a show to me.
Knowing they got no kind of charges they could stick on me, hadn’t seen or caught me with any drugs, weapons, or even cash, I did a breathing routine I learned in my training, to shift the energy around in my body after the detective attacked me. The “good detective” stared at me. But all he could observe was my silence. He walked out saying, “I’ll give you more time to think. Choose yourself, or choose them.” He pointed to the photos.
Three detectives entered two hours later, two familiar, one not. One was carrying the Sunday edition of the New York Daily News.
“Where did you drop the package?” the unfamiliar detective asked me.
I’m not no fucking mailman. So, I didn’t answer him. The unfamiliar cop laid his newspaper on the table. I took a good look at him. He was the same build as the foot cop I saw posted on the corner late last night. The same height and frame, I was sure. He saw me exit the Laundromat carrying the red bag, I told myself. He must’ve also seen me drop the letter in the mailbox. But he couldn’t have seen me clearly from across the street where he was posted on the corner in the darkness of midnight.
“Was it the mailbox?” he asked with an urgent tone. Ignoring him, my eyes closed in on the Daily News headlines, one word in big bold black block letters: EXECUTION. One big photograph and it was me. I moved my eyes from it.
“Do you think we can’t open the mailbox and look inside?” My mind is speeding. My face is blank. I’m thinking: he was definitely on the corner last night. I’m guessing he was the extra dirty cop in this setup. He saw me carrying the red bag, but he also saw me set it down, pull something from my back pocket, and drop something into the mailbox and then walk away without the red bag. If I would’ve held onto the bag like the Red Flamingo suggested, he would not have tipped off the cops who swarmed on me at the subway. Maybe I had confused him by both carrying the red bag and not carrying the bag till I got off the block. Maybe he thought he fucked up and lost the trail of the drugs.
My mind moved to the letter. Could they really open the mailbox? The detective is bluffing, I thought to myself. It was past noon. The mail had to have been collected already. They’re looking for drugs, not mail. Maybe they had already opened the mailbox. If they did, they already knew there were no drugs dropped inside. At least, not dropped by me. Even if they opened it already, I told myself, the mail still would’ve got delivered. Long as Umma receives my letter, I’m good. Oh, it’s Sunday, I reminded myself. Maybe they don’t collect the mail on Sunday. It’s America’s day off. In the East, where I’m from, Friday is the day we go to mosque for Jummah prayer. Friday and Saturday is our weekend, and Sunday is our first day of the workweek.
“Answer the fucking questions, fuck face!” the bad detective screamed, playing his role. I sat silent. My eyes were back to the photo of myself executing the enemy last night on my Brooklyn block, a two-second hold, then my gaze was back onto the wall in front of me.
“What do you think those guys are going to do to you when they find out you handed the drugs to the government? The mail is federal property. What were you thinking? How much was in the package, a kilo? Two? Enough for you to pay with your whole life I bet. More money than your life is worth. These guys are gonna kill you. They’ll put a price on your head and some crackhead on the street will blow you away for two rocks.” The bad detective was leaning into my face and holding one of the photos up to try and extract fear in me.
The Daily News cover photo of me looked like it was shot from both behind and overhead. Maybe from a news helicopter. But I didn’t see or hear no copter last night at the block party. The stage! The thought shouted on the inside of me. A photographer could’ve caught the shot from the stage, which stood high over the crowd. Alhamdulillah, the photo did not capture my face, only my back, my physical form and clothing, and my extended arm, my gloved hand holding my black milli. My barrel shoved in his mouth.
“Your loyalty to them is gonna backfire,” the good detective said. “Cooperate with us. We can protect you. Give us the right info and we can even relocate you so that you’ll never run into these guys again.”
Funny, how he thought I was the dupe in this scenario. He thought I was protecting some drug syndicate because I didn’t know any better. Actually, the good detective was the dupe, from how I see it. He was protecting the dirty detective who posed as a uniformed cop posted on that drug block—’cause he, the good detective, seemingly didn’t know any better. The words the dirty D was saying revealed what his main focus was: Where are the missing drugs? He was concerned not because he needed to seize them and turn them in to the precinct. He was concerned because he was the real drug dealer, or the overseer and protector of a drug syndicate, who lost track of the package. Probably considered the worse possible fuck-up in their line of “work.” Now nobody could get their payoff, at least not from last night’s take, ’cause their drugs were missing. Somehow, somebody g’d off, I thought. Whether someone in Redverse’s crew had the drugs and was acting like they didn’t. Or someone who was supposed to deliver the drugs to them stole the product while pretending that they delivered it and that I stole
it. Or even the cops could have one of their guys steal the product. I didn’t know. I didn’t give a fuck. I didn’t have nothing to do with drugs, don’t use ’em, don’t sell ’em, but I could see now that I was somebody’s come-up, somebody’s fall guy and the diversion all in one.
“We’ll take your fingerprints and match them with the package. Once we book you and you’re in the pit with some of these other guys, you’re done! Game over, finished!” the dirty cop threatened.
I knew there was no package in their possession. Not with my prints on it; that’s why this bullshit boring-ass precinct interrogation was ongoing. They made a huge police scene in the train station last night. They thought they caught me red-handed. They made the mistake. Now, they had no evidence and no explanation. They needed me to do their job right now. They needed my mouth to snitch on the hustlers. They couldn’t do their job; they weren’t intelligent or clever or even capable of what they call good police work. And what about the fact that at least one of them in the room and probably a few of them in the precinct were part of the “red laundry bag crew”? They had to get some sucker and lock him up to cover up their own hands. They needed to make it seem like they wanted to stop the hustlers from hustling when they actually needed the hustlers to hustle to get their food, their cut, which I was sure had to be more than their little paychecks ever paid them.
“Smart-ass, you think we got nothing on you? We got your laundry bag that you left beside the mailbox . . .” he said. His hands were leaning on the tabletop. His fingers were pressing down hard and turning pale pink with stress. I knew the fact that they had the bag didn’t mean shit. I was wearing gloves when I carried it that short distance. He couldn’t see my black gloves on my black hands last night. And I had trashed the gloves in an outdoor trash can before I entered the lighted subway system immediately before my surprising arrest. There were no prints on the bag, at least not mine.
I saw the newspaper caption beneath the cover photo: