***
After the metal air vent cover dropped semi-noisily onto the tile floor, a spray of golden light easing in through the bottom of the room’s closed door ricocheted off it like tiny pin-shots of fool’s gold. Prodegee came through the air vent first, followed closely by Cain. As soon as both gathered themselves onto their feet, Ben flicked on the light.
Seeing their astonished, sweaty faces, he explained, “I practically grew up in this gym. I know all the nooks and crannies.”
“Cool,” Cain said sarcastically. “So ya know that Cain and Prodegee aren’t magical.” He reached for the duffel bag that was next to a metal desk. He opened it and pulled out two towels, one of which he handed to Prodegee. He wiped his face while Prodegee did the same.
“Still,” Ben said. “It was a great show. Someone said you were a showman. And you are. I must admit. I got to give you your props.”
Prodegee finished wiping his face and begin to relax a little, apparently relived that Cain seemed to know the unexpected stranger. “Thanks man,” he said to Ben. “You really liked the show, huh?”
“Yeah, I really did,” Ben said.
“But I bet you weren’t waiting to ambush us in order to congratulate us on our set,” Cain said.
“Well, I wasn’t exactly waiting in ambush. But you’re right. I wasn’t here waiting just to congratulate you. I need to talk to you.”
“I told you before, I’ve said all I’ve got to say.”
“You think you can just blow this off. You think it’s just going to go away.”
Cain glanced at Prodegee, and then turned to face Ben. “You can make it go away.”
“It doesn’t work that way. You got to give me something.”
“I told you man. I ain’t got nuthin’ to give. I don’t know nuthin’.”
Ben stood back, casually looking around the room. There were two metal desks with matching metal chairs squeezed against a side wall. The room was a little bigger than an average-sized dorm room. It hadn’t changed at all since he’d last been in it, over fifteen years ago. Britt Center used it as a little study cubby for the kids, especially the ones that hadn’t been able to study well with others.
Prodegee grabbed a seat in one of the metal chairs and looked from Ben to Cain.
Finally Ben said, “Calvin is dead. His future is over. You’re still here. You have a future. Are you going to allow them to take that future away as well?”
Cain sighed and dropped his head. No one spoke for several minutes. Muffled voices and music coming from the gymnasium seeped into the room. The concert after party had started. Finally, Cain said in a near whisper, “I can’t snitch.”
Ben grimaced. He had just about enough. He was sick and tired of these so called gangster rules, hood rules, where no one talks. No one snitches. Kids dying, lives ruined, that’s acceptable, the cost of doing business. As long as no one talked, everything was okay. “I don’t want to hear that,” he said sternly. “You call it snitching. I call it doing the right thing. You owe Calvin the right thing. You owe your hood the right thing. You owe your future the right thing. Pay your debt. You owe.”
After several moments, Cain looked at Prodegee. “Yo man, get out of here.”
“I need to stay,” Prodegee protested.
“Nah, you don’t. I don’t want you involved in this. It’s going to be alright. I’ll see you back at the house.”
With an air of reservation, Prodegee stood up. “Are you staying at Fathers House tonight?”
Cain forced a smile. “Fo show, dude. We got to revel in our greatness.”
“Alright, bet,” Prodegee said. The two touch fists and then Prodegee left the room, leaving his damp towel on the metal desk, and closing the door behind him. Cain locked it and turned to face Ben. “You know I’m dead, right?”
“No, I don’t know that. We can protect you.”
“You didn’t protect Calvin.”
“We didn’t know Calvin needed protecting.”
“The FBI did.”
Ben held his hands up. “Whoa! The FBI? What do they have to do with Calvin?”
Cain cocked his head and stared at Ben for a long moment before answering. “The FBI is the reason Calvin’s dead.”
Ben pondered the accusation for a minute. He pulled the other metal chair away from the desk, making a high-squeak sound like a nail being scraped across a chalkboard. He sat down. “Maybe you should start from the beginning.” He pointed at the chair Prodegee had sat in.
Cain waved it off. “Nah, I’ll stand.” He glanced nervously about the room. “Have you ever heard of Fathers Disciples?”
“No.”
Cain released a nervous chuckle. “I guess you never got into trouble while you were at Fathers House.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Any kid that gets into any type of serious trouble while staying at the House will get sent to the basement. And if you ever got sent to the basement, then you would know about Fathers Disciples.”
“You’re saying Mayo Fathers is running some type of illegal operation at Fathers House.”
“No, I ain’t saying that. And I ain’t saying anything about Fathers House.”
“Okay, fair enough. Then, what is Fathers Disciples?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“Alright. What does the FBI and Fathers Disciples have to do with Calvin’s assault?”
“Fathers Disciples got word that Calvin was talking to the FBI. How they got that word, I don’t know. But Calvin shouldn’t have been talking.”
“How did you get involved?”
“I was told that some guys were going to come and pick me up and then we were going to go pick up Calvin. I was just a means for Calvin to get into the car.”
“Who told you?”
“I can’t get into that.”
“Then who were the guys that picked you up?”
“I told you. I don’t know them. I hadn’t seen them before and I haven’t seen them since. But, what I do know is that they were cops.”
“How do you know that?
“Because some uniformed cats showed up and they knew them.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah, you must’ve forgotten what it’s like living in the hood. I can spot a cop.”
The kid was right. Even back when Ben had lived in the neighborhood, a favorite pastime was diming out the undercover policemen, the unmarked cars, and the out-of-place bums on the street corner. To be sure, there had been some successful busts stemming from narc-work, but most of those had been aided greatly by informants, aka snitches. It was what made undercover work increasingly difficult and dangerous for law enforcement. A discovered undercover agent would pay dearly with his life. “Alright, so they were cops.”
“Yeah, they were,” Cain said matter-of-factly.
“And…”
“Someone called 911 when Calvin got snatched up. A witness saw me in the car and told the police. So I was told to take the heat for it. They said that I would only get an assault charge; no time, as long as I kept quiet about the other two.”
“But Calvin died.”
Cain blew out a long breath and said silently, “Yeah, he did.”
Ben leaned back in the metal chair, held up one hand, and ticked off fingers one at a time. “Okay, so what we got is the FBI, some supposedly notorious bad asses named Fathers Disciples, dirty cops, and one dead teenager. Does that about sum it up?”
“Yeah, it does,” Cain said.
“Is there anything else you’d like to add?”
“You don’t get it. Do you? I’ve already said enough to get me killed.”
“I don’t see how you’ve said anything. I still don’t have the names of the killers.”
“You have more than you did before I started talking. It’s on you what you do with it.”
“Yeah well,” Ben said. “We’ll see.”
“What about the murder one charge?”
“Like I said, we’ll see.”
Cain took off the damp shirt, and retrieved a dry one from his duffel bag. He wiped his chest and face with the towel, and then pulled on the new shirt, before stuffing the old one plus the two towels into the duffel bag. He looked at Ben and then shook his head slowly as if to say “My life is over. I hope you’re happy.” He left the room without saying another word.
Ben stayed in the room for another twenty minutes before deciding to leave. He wanted to make sure no one saw him leave so soon after Cain, lest they’d ascertain that the two of them had been together. Knowledge of the meeting would sprout a cascading amount of snitch innuendo. He turned off the light and opened the door slightly, peering out. The hallway was empty. He looked back in the room and spotted the vent cover lying on the floor. Leaving the door cracked, he went over to it and firmly snapped it back into place over the vent.
If he’d taken an extra moment to look into the air vent before snapping the cover back over it, he would have stared straight into the eyes of the second person who’d been privy to Cain’s forbidden snitching. Instead, he left the room, blissfully ignorant to the fact that the walls truly had ears.