Chapter 8
Although he was not in the file, the young man was certainly the previous inhabitant of the FBI apartment. As a Bureau operative, he had assumed he was under surveillance. To him, a bugged phone and a monitoring anklet were still better than prison. In exchange for two years’ early release, all he had to do was go to some meetings and act mad about being black in America.
A week after the operative had arrived at the apartment, he stood outside a nearby liquor store, talking on the pay phone and swigging gin from the bottle. Across the street, a Jeep idled in the shadows beneath the broken streetlight in front of the vacant lot.
“You can’t call me on the cell, cause I swear they listening.”
The operative leaned further into the booth as a trio of young men stepped out of the liquor store.
“Girl, I told you, I can’t come to LA,” the operative said. “You can bring the baby. I just need you to get that bus ticket and come on up here.”
The three young men shuffled across the parking lot in their low-slung jeans, unwrapping a bottle of malt liquor and tossing the bag into the gutter. As they passed the operative talking in the shadowy phone booth, the Jeep pulled away from the curb with its lights off and accelerated. The driver pointed an automatic handgun out of the window and took aim.
As the first shot rang out, one of the young men screamed in pain, as a shot caught him in the arm. The other two threw themselves down onto the concrete, as a second shot whizzed past. It hit the operative, who had attempted to dive for cover behind a garbage can.
The Jeep sped off, as the two young men scrambled toward their wounded friend, leaning anxiously over him.
“You okay man?”
“I’ll be aight,” he gasped. “They only got me in the arm.” The youngest of the three, his little brother, began to cry.
“The fuck you crying for?” the older brother asked. “Pull yourself together, nigga. You gotta take my gun to the house before any cops get here.”
Gingerly, the younger teen reached for the gun in his older brother’s waistband, as they heard the distant sirens.
“Hurry up, nigga!” The pressure just made the kid more anxious, and his hands shook.
The third young man grabbed for the gun and thrust it into the boy’s hands. “Go on, now!” He gave him a shove. Stumbling into motion, the kid ran back across the vacant lot toward their apartment.
Only when the sirens were nearby did the liquor store owner step outside to see what had happened.
“Is your friend okay?” the owner asked. “I called the ambulance and the police when I heard the shots.”
“They just hit me in the arm,” the wounded kid said through clenched teeth.
The police cars came down the street, their headlights illuminating the entire block.
“How about your other friend?” the store owner asked.
“What the fuck?” the young man began. “That lil nigga still here?”
Only as the police car drew closer did the two young men see what the store owner meant. The operative’s legs stuck out from behind the garbage can. His low-slung denim shorts reached to mid-calf, but a telltale house arrest anklet made a distinctive lump under his left sock. The phone receiver from the booth dangled off the hook, an operator informing them that if they would like to make a call, they would need to hang up and dial again.
The unhurt young man moved closer, as the police lights illuminated the man’s face.
“I ain’t neva seen that nigga before in my life,” the young man scoffed, attempting to look tough in the face of death.
The fatal shot had hit the FBI operative in the neck. His face was clearly recognizable as someone that nobody in the neighborhood knew.