Two hours later, Tiny Trouble of Seven-Four Hoover was in an interview room at the notorious 77th Street Division police station drinking a Dr Pepper in the shadow of the intimidating Detective Mo Batts, six foot five, 275, and Sandra Core, a very attractive dirty blond deputy district attorney from the Hard-Core Gang unit.
Batts pulled his chair close to Trouble. “Let’s get down to business. Brynhurst. You know Brynhurst?”
“Never met the man.”
Batts slapped the top of Trouble’s head. Deputy D.A. Core shot him a look that said, “Don’t overdo it.”
Batts resumed. “Are you familiar with a street in the Hyde Park area of Los Angeles called Brynhurst?”
“Yeah, that’s the street where the Rollin sissies hang out. Or so I heard. Towards myself, I ain’t never even been there. Too many faggots there for me. Me, I likes me some pussy. Some white sugar.” He leered at Sandra Core. She rolled her eyes.
“Who you rollin’ your eyes at, bitch?”
This time, Batts smacked Tiny Trouble upside the head. Hard. For Los Angeles gang members, rolling your eyes at them is a disrespect of the lowest order, a step from putting down your mother even if your mother was sprung and just a few steps away from putting down your saintly grandmother.
“Look, here’s the situation,” said Batts. “We got several witnesses who saw you driving a Bronco on Brynhurst the night Debra Sady Griffen, the bus driver lady, was shot. They can point you out and identify the car as being the shooting vehicle. Do you think we just came up on you out of the blue?”
“Fuck blue. This is Hoova. Hoova is orange.”
“Enough with the colors bullshit,” said Core. “Didn’t that go out in the eighties? Wake up, boy.”
“Who you callin’ boy, slut?”
Batts slammed his fist into the wall. “Motherfucker. One thing I hate is for a lady to be disrespected in front of me. You know why, bitch? Because it’s disrespectful to me. Miss Core, can you let me alone with him for a few minutes? Wanna teach him some manners.”
Core hesitated, but left. The hulking Mo Batts moved in close.
“Get away from me,” Trouble said. “This ain’t Zero Dark Thirty. No torture. Back the fuck off.”
“Too late for that. You dissed me. And now you’re going to be my punching bag.” He started throwing jabs that came close to Trouble. Trouble started to get up, but Batts, with one mighty paw, put a vise grip on his neck and ground him back down into the seat.
“I’m gonna start yelling, you don’t back up.”
“Go ahead. Yell. Scream like a bitch. Like the bitch you really are. You know what? I just came up with a better plan for you. Why bruise my hands? We need to give you a full-body cavity search.”
At that, Batts pulled out his big nightstick. “Maybe I’ll get that pretty district attorney in here to watch to make sure I do this by the book.”
“No! No!” It was like a sweat spigot opened over Trouble’s whole body. Then his bowels started to loosen. He was about to smear his shorts. Damn, he thought, why’d I go to Popeye’s? He tried to squeeze his insides together. That seemed to work. A foul smell emitted, but the brown tide scare receded. He took a deep breath. More sweat came off of him in rivulets. But nothing else. “Okay. Okay, I was there. I was on Brynhurst. I didn’t do no shooting. Leave me alone. I din’t even know there was a gun in the sled.”
Batts stepped back, put his nightstick away, opened the door, and Sandra Core came back in and closed the door. She sniffed the polluted air. Batts said, “Our tough Hoover here just had a close encounter of the turd kind.” He laughed heartily. Core reopened the door and, with exaggerated, frantic hand movement, attempted to scoop fresh air into the room. She looked at Batts and started laughing too.
Never had Trouble felt lower. He thought his life had bottomed out three years ago when he’d seen his mother sucking off one of his homies for a rock behind the Bethel A.M.E. Church on Fig, but, this bottomed that. Does life even have a bottom? How low does the basement go? How many floors down? Sad thing is for fellas to be in the basement, say on like negative level four and they be happy as shit ’cause they ain’t on basement level negative eleven. Ain’t even on the ground floor and they cool with the view. Damn, but to almost shit myself. And I know these exaggerating motherfuckers gonna tell everyone I did. Fuck, I’m gonna play my wild card today. Get me to the lobby and get out this building. A touch of his bravado came back. He’d play his ace.
“Look,” said Trouble, “you wanna make me a deal? We can deal.”
“Deal?” said Core. “You were in the car with people that shot an innocent lady. A saint, from what I hear. How the hell you going to deal?”
“I know the Brynhurst shooting is big to y’all. But, the real big case is that reporter from the Times who got hit downtown. Am I right or am I right?”
“What about it?” Batts said, trying to hide his interest. “You shoot him, too?”
“Nah. But, I heard some very interesting information about that. That case been on like CNN and HBO and shit. Channel seven.”
“Go on.”
“I need to get a deal before I be sayin’ any goddamn thing.”
“Say something interesting and maybe we can talk,” said Core. “But, you are not walking anywhere. You can give me the new pope from Argentina as the reporter’s shooter and you still gonna do something for the lady on Brynhurst. Maybe we can work something out, though. What do you have, Mr. Trouble?”
“I like that. You calling me Mr. Trouble,” he said, eyes darting cautiously toward Batts. “Look, I ain’t actually heard it myself, but one of my g’s told me ’bout a tape floatin’ around that talks about the reporter’s shooting.”
“A tape?” Core said. “Like a videotape of the shooting?”
“Nah, nah. Not a video, a tape, you know just a sound tape.”
“An audiotape?” said Core.
“There you go. An audiotape.”
“What’s on this tape?”
“That reporter Lyons. He on the tape. Talking.”
“So what’s so important on the tape?” asked Batts.
“The reporter is on the tape planning his own shooting.”