Ah, well, I am a great and sublime fool. But then I am God’s fool, and all his works must be contemplated with respect.
—Mark Twain
It was just another garden-variety burglary: door kicked in, flat screen carried out.
But the lady across the street watched the whole thing through her front window blinds and called in the play-by-play to 911. As units sped to the scene from several directions, the eyewitness provided Dispatch with detailed descriptions of the faded gray Honda, its tag number, the black female driver with a blonde hair weave who sat in the driver’s seat while her 300-pound black male passenger got out, kicked in the door, and emerged moments later with a fifty-inch flat too big to get in the little Civic’s backseat. The man finally laid it in the trunk with about a foot of it sticking out. They had nothing to tie the trunk lid down with, so they just let the lid flap up and down, banging on the unsecured jumbo screen, as they backed out of the driveway in a hurry.
At the end of the driveway, the Civic bounced over the curb and the screen shifted and slid halfway out of the trunk. When the blonde weave stopped to shift gears, the flat screen completed its exit from the Civic’s trunk like candy from a Pez dispenser and clattered onto the asphalt. The burglars stopped for a second when they heard their load hit the street, looked back at the shattered hulk of high-definition home theater lying in the middle of Martinwood Lane, then sped away. When police arrived, they recovered the now-worthless jumbo flat screen from the street, but the little Civic was gone.
The Civic’s tag came back registered to a black female whose address was just two streets away from the victim’s, in the same subdivision. Police went to that location, found the Civic parked in the driveway, and knocked on the door. A heavyset black male matching the description given by the eyewitness came to the door and was taken into custody without incident. Blonde Weave came out yelling, demanding to see the arrest warrant for her boyfriend, demanding to know what the fuck was going on, yelling that she knows her rights, and taking cell phone video of the officers as they placed her boyfriend in the cage of a squad car.
This was convenient for police. When officers started to cuff her, she resisted. She was a big girl. It took two officers to wrestle her to the ground. Both were transported to the precinct, to be interviewed by me.
Ordinarily I would start with the female, because they’re typically more cooperative and likely to rat out their accomplices. They have more to lose: they’re more often employed and don’t want to lose the job, have custody of kids whose care must be arranged if they go to Metro, and are generally not as hardened or experienced in the game as their male counterparts.
But given the circumstances of their apprehension and the volume of the bitch’s complaints emanating from the interview room, I decide to start with the male. He’s very polite, soft spoken, cooperative. Signs the Miranda warning and waiver form without hesitation. Has neat, legible handwriting. LaJuan Lawson is only nineteen, and despite multiple visits to Strickland Juvenile Center, his criminal history comprises only misdemeanor offenses like petty shoplifting, possession of paraphernalia and a couple of blunts, curfew violations, and the like. This would be his first felony, his first trip to big-boy jail.
Despite the gravity of the consequences he’s facing, LaJuan confesses before I even ask him any questions.
“You got me, fair ’n’ square, Detective,” he says, looking me in the eyes, resigned to his fate. “I kicked in the door and took the flat, it ain’t no point in lyin’ about it. But I thought it was Kenyatta’s.”
Kenyatta is the blonde weave, still demanding her rights in the other room.
“She used to live with the girl at that house, and she said the girl changed the locks on her before she could get her flat screen out. I thought I was just doing her a favor, just getting her stuff back for her.”
“You say you ‘thought.’ You think different now?”
“Yeah. When it slid out the trunk, I said, ‘Oh, shit! Your flat’s busted!’ but Kenyatta just hit the gas and said, ‘It ain’t no thang, the bitch deserves it.’ That’s when I knew she done lied to me. But it’s my own fault. I never shoulda been so stupid.”
“Well, you aren’t the first man to be tricked by a female,” I say, feeling sorry for him. “And to your credit, you manned up, didn’t waste my time with a buncha bullshit lies. I gotta say, I respect you for that, LaJuan.”
“Yes sir. Thank you, Detective,” he says. His earnestness is almost disconcerting.
“Unfortunately, there’s no getting around the fact that a burglary was committed. I have no choice but to charge you with it, LaJuan, and Kenyatta, too, of course.”
“Yes sir, I understand,” he says. “You just got a job to do.”
“But I promise you, I’ll mention your cooperation to the DA. You’re still young enough to qualify for Youthful Offender, and the DA’ll probably agree to a plea deal, considering the circumstances, and your confession. Now, to bond out, it should only take a couple hundred dollars. Is there anybody you wanna call before they take you to Metro? Your folks?”
LaJuan lowers his eyes, shakes his head. “Nah. My daddy said next time I get in trouble, I’m on my own.”
“What’s his name and number?”
I call Mr. Lawson from my office and explain LaJuan’s circumstances. He’s pissed.
“That boy just won’t learn, Detective. He refuses to listen to me. I’ve tried so many times with him, I cain’t even remember how many times I’ve tole him not to run with those other little gangsters, how many times I been to Strickland for him. I couldn’t even beat any sense into him, Detective. He just won’t do right.”
“I understand, Mr. Lawson. But at least he was respectful and honest with me. And I believe him about thinking he was just doing the girl a favor.”
“Nahhh, you don’t know him like I do. I’m finished with him. Metro is what he deserves.”
“With all due respect, I think Metro would do him more harm than good.”
“He’s a big boy. He can take care of himself in there.”
“He’s big, all right. But that’s not the kinda harm I’m talking about. I’m talking about the people he’ll meet in there, the influence they could have on him. His bond’s only gonna be a couple hundred.”
“Shit. Even if I had a couple hundred, I ain’t gonna spend it on no bond for that boy. He’s a lost cause. I know him. He thinks he’s grown now, let him sit in Metro with the rest a’ them grown thugs.”
“How ’bout if I split it with you? Could you come up with a hundred?”
An hour later I’m meeting Mr. Lawson at Bandit Bail Bonds. He’s as bewildered as he is skeptical of our shared investment in LaJuan. I make him promise not to tell LaJuan or anybody else that his arresting officer chipped in to bail him out.
And Slocumb’s Theorem is the furthest thing from my mind.
Several years later, we have finally persuaded HQ to allow us Facebook access from our precinct workstations in order to monitor its treasure trove of thug chatter. Devin O’Malley had been doing it from his personal computer for months and is current with the technology and the lingo of the website. More important, Devin’s “down” with the culture of its habitués. He has valiantly taken on the hopeless task of teaching me, the avowed Luddite, how to navigate it.
Devin has created a fictional female named LaTonya Nettles, complete with phony bio that says she’s a graduate of BC Rain High School, works as a server at Hooters, and grew up with the B’mo Boyz in the 1010 Baltimore project (thug central in the First Precinct). “Her” favorite quotes are from Michelle Obama (“Our souls are broken in this nation . . . as a black man, Barack can be shot going to the gas station”) and favorite rap artists are Jay Z, Lil Wayne, Kanye, and local fave Rich Boy. “LaTonya” says she misses the (fictional) boyfriend she calls “my Boo” who’s doing time in Atmore. The main attraction, though, that draws ’em like flies: non-identifying body shots displaying “her” tattooed cleavage and spandex-stretching booty.
Within hours, horny homeboys by the hundreds have “liked” and “friended” her and e-mailed LaTonya pictures of themselves posing with their stacks of Benjamins, their Gats and Nines, their smoke-billowing blunts. I’m incredulous at the bounty of criminal activity laid claim to, bragged about, and posted in snapshots on the Internet.
And then I spy a familiar face among LaTonya’s wanna-be Facebook friends, in pictures posted from a smuggled cell phone inside Atmore Penitentiary. Dressed in prison whites, shirt unbuttoned to display a fully tatted chest and neck, fingers of both hands forming gang signs, is LaJuan Lawson. He’s three months away from “touchdown”—the end of a three-year, split-to-serve-eighteen-month stretch for Burglary First Home Invasion.
I feel really stupid. I wanna throw up. Not only had I forgotten Slocumb’s Theorem but also that stinging rebuke from my first FTO, Porter: “What are you, some kinda fucking social worker?”
Five months after seeing LaJuan’s Atmore photo gallery through LaTonya Nettles’s phony Facebook account, I’m looking at him face to face across a Metro visiting room table. He’d been arrested a few days prior for armed robbery of a Circle K. I didn’t know much, nor gave a damn, about the specifics of the robbery rap. It had taken place out in the Fourth. But that case, resulting in LaJuan’s arrest, made it much easier for me to locate him for questioning about a recent burglary report that had crossed my desk.
It had occurred the day before he was picked up for the robbery, and it had LaJuan Lawson’s name on the suspect line.
He’d been out of prison less than six weeks, sleeping on a cousin’s couch because he’d burned all his bridges. She had foolishly entrusted him with a house key. Four days ago she had come home from her job at the counter of a Long John Silver’s to discover her flat screen missing. No forced entry, although the burglar had tried to make it appear so: a window had been broken.
But the window was too small for most grown men to fit through. And shards of broken glass were scattered on the sidewalk outside the window. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to deduce that it had been busted from the inside out. LaJuan’s cousin had named him as the suspect in her burglary.
“Remember me, LaJuan?” I say, shaking his hand when he enters the small Metro conference room.
His face lights up in a broad smile. “Detective Johnson! Sho’ do remember you! You the one split the bond with my dad that time!” I cringe inside, wondering how many other people LaJuan’s father has blabbed that to.
We sit down across the table from each other, and he seems genuinely glad to see me.
“You here about this thang they got on me? I ain’t did it, y’know. Wadn’t anywhere near no Circle K that night.”
I wave him off. “I don’t have anything to do with that, LaJuan. That’s Robbery’s case. You know me, I just work burglaries.”
“Aw, man, I figured you’da been moved up by now! Dey oughtta had you on alla dem high-profile cases dey put on the TV!”
“Flattery won’t do you any good, LaJuan. But I appreciate the thought. I’m here to ask you about your cousin Chandra’s case. You musta heard about that—you were staying with her, right?”
“Aw yeah!” LaJuan frowns at the injustice of it all. “I sho’ hope you find who done it, ’cause she good people—family—know’m sayin’, dog?”
“Did you just call me ‘dog,’ LaJuan?”
“Sorry, man. Didn’t mean nu’n by it, just da way I ’spress myself, Detective Johnson.” He flashes his big pearly whites in a chastened grin.
“A’ight,” I say, smiling. “Just clarifyin’. Anyway, what do you know about Chandra’s flat screen?”
“I’ont know nu’n ’bout it, man. Wish I did—I’d put you on ’em in a heartbeat! Cain’t belie’e some punkass damn niggas done her like dat. She good people, know’m sayin’? I jus’ hope, when you catch ’em, you tell me who dem niggas is, ’cause I got a li’l some’in’ for ’em my own self! Will ya do dat fuh me, Detective Johnson?”
“So you got no idea who stole Chandra’s flat, LaJuan? You know, we lifted some decent prints from around the busted window.”
“Good! I hope you catch ’em, Detective! ’Course, I was stayin’ up in there, so my prints natchully be all over e’rethang a’ready.”
“We realize that, LaJuan. Your prints wouldn’t mean a thing. But there’s something funny about that case. Whoever did it had a key. And Chandra says the only one ’sides her with a key—”
“Huh? Had a key? How you be knowin’ dat? Den why dey busted open da winda’ fuh?”
“That’s what we were wondering. But now we’re guessing they just busted the window to make it look like they broke in, to throw us off, cover the fact that they had a key. Pretty sneaky, huh?” I’m studying LaJuan’s face, looking for telltale reaction. He’s not giving anything away. But he’s not saying anything either.
“But they weren’t all that sneaky, really, because they didn’t quite think it through, know’m sayin’, dog?”
LaJuan says nothing but shrugs his shoulders, arches his eyebrows quizzically, awaiting my explanation.
“The busted window thing: know why they didn’t quite think it through, LaJuan? The window was busted from the inside out. Broken glass all over the sidewalk, none inside. Whaddaya think a that, LaJuan?”
He shakes his head one time, then smiles. “I think it’s a good thing fuh Chandra she got you on the case, Detective Johnson. If they’s anybody can catch ’em, it gon’ be you! But you need to be lookin’ at summa dem niggas Chandra be talkin’ to. She prolly ain’t tell ya dat, but she be bringin’ lotsa mens home wit’ her, know’m sayin’? And it ain’t nu’n to slip out wid a key and get a copy made at the Dollah Sto’ right across the street.”
I nod ponderously but say nu’n.
LaJuan takes this as his opportunity to change the subject. “You know the detectives on this robbery thang they got me up in here on? Could you mebbe talk to ’em fuh me, Detective? Tell ’em you know me, tell ’em to check out my alibi. I ain’t did no robbery, Detective, you know dat! I mean, I just got out! Dey really think I’m ’onna be dat stupid, to get myself violated when I just got out? Will ya talk to ’em fuh me?”
“Sure, LaJuan, I’ll put in a word for you,” I say, rising to leave. I have no intention of going to bat for LaJuan Lawson with Robbery. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, fuck you—and your poor, hardworking, unfortunate cousin Chandra, “good people” though she may be.
When I get back to the precinct, I call Robbery and ask about LaJuan’s case. It’s a slam-dunk: an eyewitness picked him out of a six-panel photo spread, and there’s pretty conclusive footage of LaJuan’s 300-pound physique on the store’s security cam.
“Good,” I say. “Kid’s nu’n but a thief, from way back.”
“Yeah, we saw in his Compis file where you put a burglary on him a while ago.”
“Uh-huh. But the judge granted him Youthful Offender, and they gave him a deal,” I reply. “Wasn’t too much later he gets sent to Atmore for the Home Invasion. He’s a bad one. You guys need to really put dick to him this time.” (Keeping my promise to LaJuan, that’s the word I put in: dick.)
Then I call Chandra and tell her that although I’m as certain as she is that LaJuan stole her TV, without a confession all we have is circumstantial evidence, which isn’t gonna be enough to win a conviction. She understands, is not surprised.
I offer her the consolation that Robbery’s case is solid, so at least he’ll be headed back to Atmore soon. “Of course, that won’t get you your TV back, but it’s something.”
“That’s good,” Chandra says. “He won’t be doin’ it to nobody else, ’least for a while.”
She thanks me for my effort before hanging up. She does sound like “good people,” and that only makes me feel worse.