An Urban Drama Read online

  “What was Keisha doing while all this is going on?” I asked.

  “Don said she was just kicked back on the bed, watching like she was gettin’ off on it or something,” Shay replied. “So Don says he knocked Vincent into the dresser long enough for him to get his drawers on, but instead of running out the house, he tries to explain. He said Vincent went wild, reached into the dresser and got out his gun, and just started shooting.”

  “I bet he got that ass outta there quick then,” I said.

  “No, he said since Vincent wasn’t hitting nothing, he got the rest of his clothes. Keisha jumped on Vincent’s back; Don ran downstairs and out the back door. He said he hopped the fence and was running down the street when the police rolled up on him and went spotlight. Don tries to run like a fool. They ran him down and locked him up.”

  “That’s deep, Shay,” Teena said, shaking her head. “That’s the type of thing you hear about, but you swear stuff like that don’t happen.”

  “Hold up, hold up,” Shay said. “Cops are putting Don in the car when Vincent comes running out with his gun, yelling that Don had raped his wife. Cops throw down on him, but Vincent keeps coming. Don said he got in the car quick. Finally, Vincent drops the gun, but as soon as the cops relax, he rushes at Don again. Cops grab him, kick his ass, and they take both of them to jail.”

  “That’s too wild,” Teena said.

  “Did they charge him with rape?” I asked.

  “Yeah, but Keisha never would talk to the cops, so they dropped the charge,” Shay went on to explain. “She told Vincent she didn’t wanna go through all that drama. Pull over there, Teena, where those guys are standin’,” Shay said. Teena dimmed her lights and pulled over. One tall, skinny guy who looked like JJ from Good Times came to the car. I rolled down my window.

  “What’s up, ladies? Can I go with y’all?”

  “Hell no,” Shay said quietly, and we all giggled.

  “What y’all lookin’ for?”

  “What you got?” I asked.

  “Got these fat dub sacks,” JJ said.

  Teena leaned toward me. “Let me see them,” she said and held out her hand. While JJ got out a couple of sacks, Teena dropped the car in drive. It had been a long time, but I knew what was coming next. When he reached in with two sacks for her to look at, I slapped them out of his hand and Teena hit the gas. We drove away laughing our asses off.

  “We haven’t done that in years!” I yelled over the laughter.

  “You two are crazy,” Shay said, almost to the point of tears.

  “Just livin’ the life!” Teena screamed.

  My slide into the life continued, and after awhile, there was no more talk about finding a job. For what? I didn’t need a job. I always had money, I had a car, and I shopped practically every day. I didn’t want for shit. “Who needs a job?” I told my parents.

  “You do, that’s who, Nina.” My parents kept pushing the job thing down my throat. It was starting to get old. I started talking to Lorenzo about me getting my own place.

  “What you wanna do that for?”

  “I need to get out of my parents’ house,” I told him.

  “Why don’t you come live with me? You’re there just about every night anyway.”

  And that settled that. I moved in with Lorenzo. I didn’t take anything with me. I just bought all new stuff. To me, it was like leaving my old life behind and starting a brand new life; a life where Lorenzo was a king and I was his queen. Expensive cars, big money, new clothes, and anything else I wanted. It seemed like the money never stopped coming. Everything was great in my corner of the world. I was living the life, but what I didn’t know, was that fate was getting ready to get it all twisted.

  Three

  “Lorenzo Copeland, this is your last warning! Come out with your pants on!” Chris yelled while he rang the bell and banged on the door. We heard him out there making all that noise, but we didn’t care. Lorenzo and I continued to make love in spite of the noise. At least until it got so loud that it broke my concentration.

  “Damn!” I said as I rolled off Lorenzo, folded my arms, and pouted like a child who had her toy taken away.

  “All right, all right! I’ll be out in a minute!” Lorenzo yelled.

  “It ain’t nobody but Chris. Just ignore him and he’ll go away.”

  “You know if I don’t answer he’s just gonna keep banging.”

  “You’re right,” I said and wrapped up in the sheets.

  “I’ll get rid of him.”

  “Lorenzo, you know I like your friends, right? And Chris is my boy and whatever, but he always seems to show up at the worst times.”

  “You’re right. Chris does have a nasty habit of dropping by while we’re doin’ it,” Lorenzo said.

  “But you gotta admit I’m cool about it, though. It’s become sort of a running joke.”

  “It ain’t like I’m glad to see him either. You were tryin’ to fuck the shit outta me.”

  “I sure was, so make it quick. I’m not finished with you yet.”

  “Keep it wet for me,” Lorenzo said as he got out of the bed and put on his pants. He went to the door to let Chris in, then came back to the room. “What are you gonna do today?”

  “I saw the cutest outfit yesterday. I’m gonna go back and get it.”

  “Why didn’t you get it then?”

  “I’m ashamed to admit it, but my hands were already full.” I laughed and rolled out of bed.

  “Maybe that oughta say something to you about the amount of shopping you do. I mean, you got shit in that closet that you ain’t looked at since you bought it. Still got tags on them and shit. It’s like shoppin’ is your drug of choice.”

  “You want me to look good for you, don’t you?” I asked, walking around half in a daze, half looking for something to put on.

  “No doubt, but you don’t need to shop to look good for me. You look good to me just the way you are now.”

  I looked at Lorenzo and smiled. He smiled and stared me down.

  “What you smiling ’bout?” I asked.

  “Lookin’ at you.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “I don’t mean to be crude, Nina, but those are the prettiest titties I’ve ever seen.”

  “Even if you didn’t mean to, yeah, that shit was crude. But thank you anyway,” I said and got back in the bed. “If I look so good, maybe you could get back in this bed and finish what you started.”

  “I am thinkin’ about gettin’ back in that bed, but I know I got someplace I gotta be; so I been tryin’ to talk myself out of it,” Lorenzo said as he finished getting dressed. When he was ready to leave, he came to the bed and kissed me good-bye.

  Trying to be a good girl and prove that I wasn’t a shopaholic, I didn’t buy anything that day. We didn’t even go to the mall. We just hung out around the way until I was ready to go home. I sat in the backseat listening, but not really hearing what Teena and Shay were arguing about. My mind was in a completely different place. I was thinking about putting the BMW down and getting a Lexus. The BMW had served me well these last two years, but I just felt like driving something different. And I wanted a black one this time. I hate white cars, ’cause no matter what you do, you can never keep them clean.

  Teena turned down my street and into a sea of police and other emergency vehicles. A cold chill came over me; I instantly knew this was not good. We got out of the car and tried to make our way through the crowd. As I got closer, it became obvious that whatever was going on, Lorenzo was in the middle of it.

  “What you think is happening?” Teena asked.

  “I don’t know, but it can’t be good,” I said as I got near the building. I shivered as I watched the coroner come out of the building with a body bag. I was just about to cross the police barricade, when somebody grabbed me by the arm.

  “You don’t wanna do that.” I turned around and saw Jay, one of Lorenzo’s people.

  “Jay, please tell me that’s not Lorenzo they b
ringing out in that bag.”

  “It’s not. They brought Lorenzo and Chris out already. They’re both in jail,” Jay said.

  “What happened, Jay? Who’s in the body bag?”

  “I don’t know. I went to the store and all this was here when I got back.”

  “You didn’t try to find out?” I asked, mad as hell at him.

  “No, I ain’t goin’ anywhere near them cops right now.”

  Shay stepped up. “I’ll find out what’s happenin’, Nina,” she said, then walked up to one of the police controlling the crowd. They talked for a long time, which drove me crazy. Then the cop handed Shay a card and she made her way back to us.

  “Well?” I demanded.

  “Both Lorenzo and Chris are in jail. He said that one of them killed a cop, but he don’t know which one.”

  “Killed a cop? In our apartment? What were the cops doin’ there?”

  “They came to arrest Lorenzo on a warrant for conspiracy to distribute,” Shay explained.

  “Oh my God,” I said as I began to cry.

  “I don’t think that you should try to go in there anytime soon, Nina,” Teena said. “You know how they like to arrest the girlfriend and shit. They figure that you know everything about how Lorenzo does business, and then try to make you testify against him.”

  “Shit, that ain’t gonna happen,” I said. I took out my cell phone and called the lawyer. “Let’s get out of here.”

  The worst thing about waiting for information is that you have plenty of time to speculate, and the three of us were off the chain with it. We had been sitting at Shay’s house for an hour, coming up with all kinds of stuff. When the lawyer did finally call, he didn’t do much to end all the drama. He confirmed what we already knew: both of them were charged with murder and conspiracy. He said that Chris was in jail and Lorenzo was in the hospital, and that he was on his way to see Chris. He couldn’t tell us anything else, and said that he would call back with more information as soon as he could.

  “What’s Lorenzo doin’ in the hospital?” Shay asked when I told them what the lawyer had said.

  “He didn’t know. Or if he did, he didn’t tell me.” I looked at Teena. She had been uncharacteristically quiet since we got to Shay’s. I mean, she was talking or whatever, but she wasn’t her usual self. She wasn’t talking any shit, and that’s what was uncharacteristic. I wondered if Chris was becoming more than just another nigga with money to her.

  The next day, the lawyer called me back to say that Lorenzo was the one who killed the cop. I went numb, only hearing half of what the lawyer said after that. I knew then that nothing about my life would ever be the same. At the time, I couldn’t even imagine how true that was.

  Four

  I wasn’t allowed to see Lorenzo while he was in the hospital. They told me some bullshit about his condition. When I tried to get information, they told me that I needed to talk to the police, but the police weren’t telling me shit. After two days, he was released from the hospital and went straight to court. I was late getting there, so I had to see him when he got to jail. When he came into the visiting room, all I could say was “Damn! What the hell happened to you?” Lorenzo’s right eye was bruised and swollen, and his lip had stitches.

  “Cops.”

  “The cops did that?” I asked him, thinking it was more of a statement than a question. This wasn’t the first time I had seen the type of brutality that the cops could deal out. I just never in my wildest dreams, thought it would happen to anybody I knew, and definitely not Lorenzo. He was much too smart to put himself in a position for the cops to bust him up like that, but there he was, all busted up.

  “Yup. It looks a lot better now. Yesterday this whole side of my face was swollen.”

  “They say you killed a cop.”

  Lorenzo just nodded.

  “What happened?”

  “Me and Chris were at the crib chillin’ when the cops come to the house with a warrant to search the place. I looked at Chris; he looked at me. I knew I had shit there, so I knew we were goin’ to jail, but we’d talked about this, you know what I’m sayin’? Keep your mouth shut and do what they say; don’t give them no excuses. So we’re sittin’ there on the barstools, like we always do, waitin’ for them to find the stash. While we’re sittin’ there, one of the cops is talkin’ big shit to us, but you know we ain’t payin’ that shit no attention.

  “So when they find it and they’re about to arrest us, this cop steps in front of me, points his finger in my face and says, ‘I guess you boys are goin’ to jail.’ Now, you know I hate that shit, so I stood up and said, ‘That’s all right. I’ll be back on the block playin’ stickball before dinnertime.’ Then he hits me in the face. And I don’t know, maybe it was reflex, but I swung back.

  “Another cop pulls out his club and hits me in the shins and I drop to my knees. I tried to get up, and then both of them start hittin’ me with their clubs and kickin’ me. All I could think about then was dyin’. I knew they were gonna kill me, Nina. I couldn’t just let them kill me, so I grabbed one cop’s gun and I shot him.”

  “Damn, Lorenzo. You killed a cop.”

  “It was self-defense. He was gonna kill me, Nina. I know it. After I shot the cop, the other cop pulls his gun and shoots me in the arm.”

  “You’re lucky it was just your arm. He coulda aimed for your chest.”

  “He did, but I moved, just not quick enough. The bullet caught me in the arm and I dropped the gun. Then it seemed like all the cops started kickin’ me and hittin’ me with them clubs. I heard somebody yell, ‘That’s enough,’ and I blacked out. The next thing I remember is waking up in the hospital.”

  “Where was Chris while all this was goin’ on?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Over the next few months, the government took everything. Yes, everything. I never did get back in the apartment. I was told that it had all been purchased with the proceeds of a criminal enterprise or some shit like that. So now I had nothing—no home, no car, no clothes. It was a good thing that I did leave my old stuff at my parents’ house, ’cause I needed it then. Since my parents wouldn’t let me move back in the house, I had to get a small apartment. It was a dump, but it was all I could afford. I had given just about all the money to the lawyer.

  At the trial, the prosecution presented their case and rested. This was when it became apparent what part Chris had played in all this. He became one of the star witnesses for the prosecution. Lorenzo’s lawyer told him that Chris began telling everything he knew as soon as Lorenzo blacked out. Chris didn’t want any part of the murder charge, so he rolled on Lorenzo and did it quick. He wasn’t the only one. Lorenzo had another partner named Bryce, who had seemed to disappear about four months earlier. As it turned out, Bryce had been busted on a possession charge, and he was the one who gave them Lorenzo.

  Lorenzo’s lawyer didn’t have much of a defense to mount. He tried to discredit Chris and Bryce on their drug-related testimony, based on their admitted involvement in a criminal enterprise, but the bomb was already dropped when they put Chris on the stand to talk about the murder. He testified that he heard Lorenzo talking shit to the cops, then the next thing he saw was Lorenzo grabbing the cop’s gun and killing him. Not a word about the cops beating Lorenzo. That bitch didn’t say shit about that. I wanted to shoot that nigga myself. How you sellout your boy like that? Lorenzo said he understood, but I could see in his eyes that shit hurt him. Both of your boys rolling on you—you can’t tell me that shit is easy to swallow.

  It took the jury less than an hour to find Lorenzo guilty on all charges. I can’t ever remember crying so hard over something, than I did for Lorenzo that day. Inside, I felt like my life was over too. In those two years, I had built my whole life around Lorenzo Copeland. What would my life be without him? Did I even have a life without him?

  His lawyer arranged for Lorenzo to see me for a minute before they took him away. I began to cry again, as soon as I saw him.
r />   “Don’t cry, baby. We knew this day was coming,” Lorenzo said.

  “I know.” I continued to cry and Lorenzo held my hands.

  “There’s something that I gotta say to you,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I want you to know that I love you. I have always loved you, Nina.”

  “I love you too.”

  “If you ever need anything, you gotta call my cousin, Leon, in Jacksonville.”

  “I will,” I said, still not able to stop myself from crying.

  “I been thinkin’ about this for a long time, and I know it’s gonna be better for you this way.”

  “What are you talkin’ about?”

  “I don’t want you to come see me anymore.”

  “What do you mean? Why don’t you want me to come see you?”

  “I know that I’m never gonna get out of here, and if I do, it won’t be for a long time.”

  “What are you sayin’? Lorenzo, I love you. I don’t care how long it takes, I’ll wait for you.”

  “Nina, you gotta listen to me. It’s not fair to you. I can’t do that to you. Make you live your life alone, or worse, lying to me.”

  “No, Lorenzo, don’t do this. I promise to be faithful to you. I love you. I promise to come see you, and I’ll write to you all the time.”

  “I don’t want you to come see me. I don’t want you to write to me. You are a young, beautiful woman. You have the rest of your life in front of you.”

  I broke down crying hard. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “I don’t have a life without you. I need you. You’re my whole life.” I couldn’t breathe. How could he be saying this to me?

  “I can’t be a part of your life anymore. That life is over for me.”

  “No,” I cried. “Your life is not over. Don’t say that.”

  “My life is inside now, with my father and my uncles. It’s like this is where I always been goin’ all my life,” Lorenzo said as the deputy opened the door. “I’m dead to you now.”

  “That’s it,” the deputy said, as he uncuffed Lorenzo from the table. “Sorry, ma’am, but it’s time to go.”