Chapter 6
Loud music blared from two large speakers and shook the walls of Betsy Simmons’s smallish three-bedroom, white wooden-frame house. The speakers were located in the tiny back third bedroom that Betsy had allowed her son, Cain, to turn into a makeshift studio. The room contained all the essential equipment for twenty-first century basic music making: a synthesizer, computer, microphones, and a camcorder. In here, Cain and Prodegee created rap songs and underground mix tapes that they burned into CDs. Sometimes they would also create homemade videos and put them on YouTube. It was all part of Cain’s strategy. He wasn’t going to wait to be discovered. He was going to make shit happen, and Friday night’s show was going to go a long way towards that end.
Framed pictures of Prince, Jay-Z, and several other past and current hip-hop and pop stars, all representing Cain’s varied influences, vibrated rhythmically to the thumpety-thump beat of Cain’s current YouTube offering—Enuff.
Cain bobbed his head and rapped into a microphone, “This is the right stuff. This is the rough stuff. This is the kinda stuff—you know you can’t get enuff.” This particular song was one of his mind-candy songs, something for the people to enjoy just for the love of music’s sake, no thinking allowed or necessary. He’d written it strictly to showcase one of Prodegee’s beats. He planned to start Friday night’s show with it. It would definitely get the crowd into a partying mood. The lyrics were easy-to-remember rhymes and that type of rap always seemed to get the crowd up. He had some more substantial shit to hit them with too—some make-them-think shit, but he was going to have to be careful how he played that. After finding out about Calvin’s death, and his own butt possibly facing murder-one charges, he didn’t want to do anything or say anything that would pour gasoline on a fire that Uncle Mayo clearly wanted doused.
He was thankful that Uncle Mayo had hooked up Friday’s show, making it part of some anti-gang festivity bullshit. The irony of Mayo Fathers spearheading such an event was not lost on him. But he chose not to think about that part of it. Right now, he wanted to focus on his upcoming performance. He was only one of several acts on the agenda, but in his mind, it was his gig, his time to shine. He prepared as if he was going to perform at Madison Square Garden.
Out the corner of his eye, he saw Prodegee take off his headphones and turn off the synthesizer. For a moment, he pretended not to notice and continued bobbing his head as if the music still played.
Prodegee was undeterred. “Dude, there ain’t no coming back from murder-one time.” His voice was stern and paternalistic despite the fact it hadn’t an ounce of bass and was accompanied by the dropped-ice-cream look of despair on the kid’s face.
Cain closed his eyes and did not respond.
“Dude,” Prodegee said louder as if the reason for Cain not answering was a sudden case of deafness. “There ain’t no coming back from murder-one time. They’re going to lock your butt up and throw away the key.”
Prodegee’s real name was Jamal Morris. But Cain had christened him Prodegee after he’d seen how the eleven-year-old wunderkind could create beats. It was Beethoven-type shit. The kid really had a gift for sound. In Cain’s mind, if there were truly such things as child prodigies, then Jamal Morris was their poster child. He was such a little fella, he didn’t quite look eleven. But he was hood-tough and walked with a swagger. Cain had first saw and heard him on the turntables at one of the talent shows that Fathers House always put on. It was musical-love at first sight.
Right then and there, Cain had made up his mind that wherever his rap destiny was leading him,
he’d get there a lot faster with Prodegee by his side, hooking up his beats.
“We got a show to get ready for man,” Cain said nonchalantly. “Turn my shit back on.”
The pre-recorded Enuff beat was stored on the synthesizer. Prodegee did not turn it back on. Instead he stared long and hard at Cain. For several moments, the two stood in silence, staring at each other. Cain knew the kid was right. There was no coming back from a murder-one conviction. The sentence would be either life without the possibility of parole or death. But he refused to allow himself to worry about that now. One reason why and perhaps the most important reason—he hadn’t committed murder-one. He hadn’t so much as laid a hand on Calvin. He had been there and had thrown some phantom punches as his consistent nightmares since that incident could strongly attest to, but he had been a bystander, an innocent and reluctant bystander.
For reasons still not clear to him, he was to cop to an assault charge and keep his mouth quiet about the true assailants. Calvin had gotten himself into some shit that he’d been unable to get himself out of, and had somehow gotten Cain caught up in it as well. Someone had ratted to the cops that they’d seen Calvin get into a car with Cain and some other people—who, the rat conveniently could not identify.
Cain knew what Calvin’s shit was, but at this point, he didn’t care. Cain had done what he’d been told to do. He’d followed orders. He was taking one for the team. It was f-upped that he had to do so. But that was hood-life. He had no choice. Snitching was not an option.
The second reason why he was not concerned was because of the assistant district attorney —Ben Lovison. Despite the man’s pretense otherwise, he had been a hood kid, a resident of Fathers House even. And when push came to shove, Cain was confident that Lovison would remember his origins and take care of his own, if not for him—Cain, then for Father. Father had a way of being persuasive—very persuasive.
The way Cain saw it, Lovison’s threat about seeking a murder-one charge was only that—a threat, an illusion, smoke and mirrors. There would be no murder-one charge. Lovison knew that. And Cain knew that.
Call it wishful thinking or a feeling in his gut, but Cain did not believe he’d spend a day in jail or prison. Finally he broke the silence. “I got some very important people backing me. Important people who know other important people. So, it’s all good. So what I’m going to do is get ready for my show.” His voice was strong, confident, and convincing.
Prodegee smiled. The look of panic that had strongly gripped his face only moments before, suddenly vanished. He knew important people could change the dynamics of most situations. So, if Cain was unworried, then things truly were all good. Prodegee flipped a switch and his original artistic beats once more roared from the speakers. And once again the walls reverberated.