Young Lionz

Bishop sat at an interrogation table with a frown on his face. He was thoroughly pissed off that he was being held without bail. It was bad enough that the police had found Temp’s gun under the seat. But it got much worse when they searched the car and also found his gun in the car. The detective had already informed him that they were planning on charging him with gun possession. But the thing that worried Bishop the most was that when they ran ballistics on Temp’s gun, it was sure to come back dirty.

Ain’t this a bitch, he thought. I’m supposed to be at the party, gettin’ fucked up and gettin’ ready to put the dick to Veronica later on, and here I am in muthafuckin’ jail.

Bishop looked at the door and frowned even harder when he saw Detective Ramsey walking through it. Confidently and smugly she strolled into the room and sat directly across from Bishop. She leaned back and took a deep breath. In her heart of hearts, she was certain that at least one of those guns belonged to Temp. But what she really wanted was to scare Bishop into giving her something on Temp. She didn’t know if he knew anything about Temp beating Yolonda, but she was more than willing to take a chance to find out.

“Look here, Mr. Bernard Simmons, I’ve got you on gun charges that will put your ass away for a long, long time. Now you told me that the car you were driving is yours, but it’s registered a Mr. Tempton Green.”

“It used to belong to him. He sold it to me.”

“Is that right? Well, my friend, that may be too bad for you. Because if it was still his car, we could charge him with the guns. But since it’s your car, it’s your ass in the fire.”

Ramsey tried to stare Bishop down. Bishop stared right back at her. Ramsey then leaned across the table and let her elbows rest on it.

“Look, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but your friend Tempton brutally beat a young girl by the name of Yolonda about a week ago. Yolonda was pregnant. She and the child died.”

Bishop thought for a second. He did remember how Temp was acting in Antwan’s backyard when they were there talking about getting revenge on the bitches who’d jacked Temp. But then he thought a little more. If this bitch had something on Temp, then she woulda been picked his ass up, so she must ain’t got shit.

“If I get Tempton down here, I’m sure that I can get him to slip up and tell me something about Yolonda. I want his ass . . . bad! Now, like I said before, since the car is still legally in his name, it’s still his car, and I can charge him as such. But since you told me that it’s your car, I can use that against you. One of you is going down. It’s up to you to decide who it will be.”

Ramsey then got up and walked out of the room. The right side of Bishop’s brain said, snitches are bitches. The left side of it said that he would be a fool to go to jail for Temp. The mental tug of war continued well into the next day. That’s when Ramsey brought him back into the interrogation room and told him that ballistics proved that one of the guns they confiscated from the car killed two people and shot another.

“Now I know that ‘no snitching’ is the code of the streets. But do you really wanna go to the electric chair for something Tempton did? Because if I can’t get Tempton on the murders of Yolonda and her daughter, I’ll get him on the other murders. And if you want to take the blame for killing people, we both know you didn’t kill, then like the saying goes, ‘Stupid is as stupid does.’”

Ramsey got up and walked out of the room, leaving Bishop sitting there shocked beyond belief.

Vivian and Doris both knelt down in front of the alter at Morning Starr Baptist church. They both had been through terrible ordeals. They had experienced the most painful feeling that any parent could feel. From the moment they met, Vivian had been telling Doris to trust in God. They would forever be joined at the soul because of the events that had transpired in their sons’ lives just one short week ago.

While Doris was sitting at Niko’s bedside wondering if she would ever be able to tell her son that she was sorry for the way she’d treated him, James had the nerve to show up. Before he could even open his mouth to speak, she told him that he had ten seconds to get out of her sight before she called the police. James, who didn’t give a shit about Niko in the first place, just shrugged his shoulders and left. The only reason he was there in the first place was that his sister kicked him out and he didn’t have anywhere else to go.

Vivian’s feelings continued to flip-flop. While she was extremely overjoyed that her daughter had come through her operation in good shape, it tore her up that her son, the one person on the earth who was the most responsible for her daughter getting a new lease on life, was fighting for his.

The two mothers grabbed each other’s hands and clutched tight. Tears flowed freely from the eyes of both women. One woman’s tears were rivers of joy. The other woman was crying for an entirely different reason.