They cornered him in a back yard. Dwayne shot his hands high. He didn’t want to end up another Trayvon Martin or Tamir Rice. This may be Playa Maria, but he was black, they were police, and he didn’t want to die.
A deputy yanked his arms down and cuffed him. A police officer opened the gate for him to walk through to the front. Not locked like the one at that stupid, fucking house on Beverly. The deputy frog-marched him to a sheriff’s vehicle.
Anger prickled his skin. Inside the cruiser, he wrestled with the cuffs behind his back, though it was useless. What was wrong with that dude chasing him? He could have shot the fucker. Should have shot him. But he’d never shot anyone before.
Dwayne butted the divider with his forehead. The deputy in the front had turned off the screen and radio. Dwayne couldn’t see or hear what was going on.
He banged the divider again. “What am I being charged with?”
The deputy waggled his head. A no. He wasn’t going to say.
“I wanna know the charge.” He hadn’t been Mirandized. He was asking for the info. The deputy could tell him if he wanted to. “Robbery?” That’d mean they found the gun.
His question woke the popo from his fantasy of glazed donuts. He turned a bit. “I don’t know.”
Dwayne snorted.
“But since you’re asking.” The deputy slid a creased cheat sheet from his uniform pocket and read him his rights. Dwayne looked out the window, the possibility of learning what they’d found disappearing with the words.
When the deputy asked if he understood, Dwayne grunted. He could recite the thing by heart, better than the deputy. At the rumble of an arriving car, Dwayne twisted around. The vehicle behind them jammed his view. The fat-ass deputy got out of the car, opened the back door, and hoisted him to his feet, pushing him toward the newly-arrived cruiser.
Seated beside a deputy, the dude who had chased him gawked through the windshield. The deputy got out and said something back through the door. The guy nodded his head.
Dwayne cut him with his eyes. Sucked his teeth. How had this shrimpy old motherfucker been able to keep up with him? What a stupid bust. There hadn’t even been any good shit, not what he expected—no cash—not even good Apple picking. Then their cat had leaped onto the top of the gate, like it had suddenly decided to come home. It had sized him up through the bedroom window. Next thing he knew, the cat was being called, the owner stepping on to the porch.
Now the old guy cracked the cruiser’s door like he was coming for him.
The fat-ass deputy spun Dwayne around. Dwayne glanced back over his shoulder, wanting to laugh. Seriously, dude?
The deputy stuffed him back onto the hard-plastic bench seat, started the vehicle, and gunned it. Dwayne shrugged his shoulders, working the collar seam of his shirt into his mouth. He gnawed on it. There was something about the way the officers were acting that made him think they didn’t find the gun. They weren’t quite cocky enough.
The ride didn’t take even five minutes. The deputy pulled into a short driveway blocked by a wide gate and spoke into an intercom. “County Sheriff, one male.”
The gate doors folded open like accordions. The cruiser rolled through to a sally port big enough to hold a fleet of vehicles.
County jail. Three hots and a cot.
The deputy yanked him roughly from the back seat.
“Hey, police brutality.” The cold of the concrete garage, heady with diesel exhaust, swirled around Dwayne. The officer prodded him toward a table against the wall covered with stacks of forms and pushed him down into a white plastic chair.
“Sit there and behave yourself.”
“Must need a donut fix,” Dwayne muttered. “You like the ones with little sprinkles?”
An intake officer peeked from a door. “Need any help?”
“Nah. He’s not going anywhere.” The deputy returned his attention to a form.
Dwayne felt like jumping up and ramming his head under the deputy’s white pasty face. He already faced a burglary charge, a possible gun charge, a resisting arrest charge. What difference would assault make? Right now, The Restraint Chair. That holy hell had been invented by some sick motherfucker. Who sat around coming up with a black molded seat all isolated in its own dark little room? That was some medieval shit.
“Let’s go.”
When the sheriff’s deputy tried to raise him by the bicep, Dwayne shrugged away. He knew the drill. He entered the padded intake room. It stank of nervous sweat and vomit. Facing the wall, he spread his legs. The sheriff removed his cuffs.
The intake officer snapped on gloves and emptied Dwayne’s pockets—breath mints and his mom’s expired Sears card, leftover from better days. He’d returned to their old ’hood, the gray concrete buildings of Oak Tree Elementary School spilling out memories, random bits like the alphabet in cursive above a whiteboard.
The deputy patted him down. “Shoes and belt.”
Dwayne didn’t want to get The Chair. Last time he’d spent two hours there with his shoulders, arms, and legs in restraints.
He lifted his Raiders tee shirt so the guy could see he didn’t have a belt to hang himself with. He untied his high-tops and toed them off, leaving them on the floor for the officer to pick up.
The officer ticked off items on a clipboard. “Hepatitis?”
“No.” At least not that he knew of.
“HIV?”
Dwayne rolled his eyes. “No.”
A correctional officer met him on the other side of the intake room.
Dwayne turned toward a holding cell.
“Dream on, buddy.” The officer guided him directly through the metal detector to the computer for fingerprints. Then he pointed at the camera. “Time for your photo op.”
Dwayne twisted strands of his goatee. No opportunity to call Espie, maybe get an assist. Once inside, his calls would be monitored. At the twinge of disappointment, an inner voice snarled at him, “Man up.” That voice always sounded like his brother Wesley.
The officer escorted him to a closet-sized room where a Mexican dude grinned at them both—glad to have a job, Dwayne guessed—sized up his build and selected an orange top and bottom for him. The man scanned Dwayne’s stocking feet. “Size ten?” Without waiting for an answer, he added jail sandals to the bundle.
As they continued down a glossy hallway, Grammy Rice came sneaking into Dwayne’s thoughts. She resided in a soft spot under his left ribs, like a bruise to touch if you wanted to feel something. “Count your blessings, son,” she told him.
I sure as shit will, Grammy, if I can think of any.
Well, no cavity search. He smirked.
Still, Grammy Rice’s praying had latched onto him like head lice. You had to resist those easy answers. What was there to call a blessing? His dad had been shot in Utah. “Execution style,” his mom said, pointing an acrylic nail at a yellow newspaper article. His dad was white, probably the reason he’d never done time, but he’d been living the thug life, no doubt. “Oh, yeah, baby,” his mom would say, tapping the article, “But ask any of the Williams family, and I led their precious boy astray.”
He’d pray, right now, though, if it’d get that sweet little Kel-tec off the street. If found, the gun would be straight-up plus ten. A blade of cold knifed his gut.