L.A. Blues III Read online

  For a moment, I thought the law was after me for disposing of Tank’s head. Were these the two agents who came to me with the proposition in the first place? Had my blackmailers turned me in since I hadn’t gotten them any money?

  I held my breath, waiting for the squad cars to stop and pull me over. Instead, the black-and-white squad cars whizzed by me in a blur, sirens screaming, horns blaring, tires screeching. I drew a deep sigh of relief.

  Oh, Lord, somebody was going to pay for the mess they made of my life.

  Then, out of nowhere, I saw what looked like green leaves filling the air. I thought it was some type of green snowfall, which, either way, would have been strange in L.A.

  Everything seemed surreal. I could see greenery floating in the air, a whirlwind of verdant-looking leaves. Onlookers rubbernecked and came out to see what was going on. People swarmed out into the streets, screaming, dancing, hollering, jumping, leaping, as if they had the Holy Ghost.

  What’s going on? I wondered, regarding the commotion. People, bent over like cotton pickers, lifted what appeared to be leaves up off the street. The total bedlam reminded me of the 1992 L.A. riots. Was the sky raining leaves? Then it occurred to me. This was money! This was more absurd. The sky was raining money!

  A police on a bullhorn barked, “People, put that money down. We have you on tape. You will be arrested for obstructing a police investigation. These men are armed, reckless, and considered dangerous.”

  As they gathered up the money, people were oblivious to the police orders. More trails of people came flooding from their houses to pick up the dollar bills. Cars stopped while the drivers and riders craned their necks out the window to see what was going on. A throng of young men wearing hoodies in honor of the murdered black teen Trayvon Martin had gathered in the street and was picking up money. Pandemonium reigned and everything seemed bizarre.

  The police continued to roar in a stentorian tone over a horn. “People, go in your house. You are obstructing a police pursuit. Get out the way! We have you on camera! If you pick up any of this contraband, you will be arrested.”

  I could see all this purloined loot being picked up, and, oddly, I felt a strange sense of exhilaration. A sense of justice. As if somehow a wrong was being righted. I knew I’d never do it, but for a mother with five kids to feed, no job, and no food, maybe this was moral. Right and wrong sometimes shifted in the kaleidoscope of harsh reality.

  “Money, money, money,” people chanted, dancing wildly up and down the curb and onto the sidewalk. “It’s raining money!” Some threw the money in the air.

  In the manner of the old Martha Reeves and the Vandellas song, people were literally dancing in the street. Several people threw up their fingers in gang signs. Some were doing the Crip walk to a rhythm with a made-up song that went something like, “Kiss my ass, popo!”

  “Fuck you, pigs!”

  “Go to hell, motherfuckers!”

  I kind of figured out what was going on, and there was a side of me that cheered the robbers on. I know it was wrong, but a perverse side of me was hoping that they got away.

  “It’s Robin in the hood!” someone quipped.

  Bam! A loud noise exploded. The car the police pursued suddenly crashed into a truck.

  I guessed the robbers were caught because farther up ahead, as I was stuck in traffic, I saw the police squad cars surround the speeding car. Guns were drawn. One man seemed to get away, but the other suspects surrendered.

  Mesmerized, I started pulling over, trying to get out of the way of the traffic. I cut my radio on to see if I could find out what was really going on. Before I could get a news station, and while I was watching what was going on, out of nowhere a car barreled down on me like a bulldozer, and there was another bam!

  I started twirling into a dervish-like spin, and the whole time I was crying, “What is happening? Help me, Lord!”

  The next thing I knew I was turning over like a tumbleweed. The collision caused me to flop over and over again. After what seemed like an eternity, the SUV stopped and turned upside down like a turtle on its back.

  “Help me, God!” I cried over and over again.

  I had my seat belt on and, strangely, I didn’t budge. I didn’t move out of my seat. When I tried to unbuckle my seat belt, I was stuck. My air bag had blown up, but it also kept me penned in my car. That’s when I began to panic.

  For a moment, the world went black.

  Chapter Four

  Carjackers? was my only thought as I drifted back into consciousness.

  With my senses returned, my neck lurched, and a pain shot up my back. Obviously, some car had hit me. That much I knew.

  After I don’t know how long, a tapping started at my window. I heard a strange female voice calling into my car, “Roll down your window. Miss, are you okay?”

  I let my window down, and this angel stuck her hand in the car and held my hand.

  “Help is on the way. I called 911 on my cell.”

  Drowsily, I wondered if I was imagining this stranger. Was she another angel in my life? She reminded me of how Romero saved my life from a gangbanging group of wannabe rapists when I was eighteen.

  The lady talked me through the accident as she popped up into my peripheral vision. “I took my car and blocked your car so no one else would plow into you. I tried to get the driver’s license plate but whoever it was was moving too fast. They had dark windows so I couldn’t see in the car either.”

  My eyes swamped in tears of appreciation. “Thank you, miss.”

  All of a sudden, I could hear the drone of what sounded like an emergency crew, paramedics, maybe even helicopters. I don’t know how much time elapsed as the woman talked to me in a soothing voice. I must have sunk in and out of consciousness because I looked up and saw a fire truck parked near my car. Through a fog, I could hear sirens in the distance. I heard a familiar voice, which had a rich timbre to it.

  “Ma’am. Are you hurt? “

  I looked up—which was actually down since I was upside down—and a fireman wearing a black shirt with an orange and white triangle badge on the sleeve was kneeling down with his hands splayed on the ground, talking to me in a calm voice. It sounded strangely familiar.

  “Miss, don’t cry. You’re going to be all right. Are you hurt?”

  “I’m hanging upside down. What happened?”

  “It looks like a hit and run,” I heard someone say.

  Although my eyes were kind of blurry and I was still in shock, somehow, I recognized the voice. It was the minister’s who had just married Haviland! “Aren’t you Reverend . . . Edgar . . . the minister who officiated over Haviland’s wedding?” I said haltingly. My voice sounded strange since I was still hanging upside down.

  “In the flesh. Reverend Edgar Broussard. What happened?”

  “A car hit her and kept going. She flipped upside down,” the lady Samaritan was explaining.

  “What?” I asked drowsily. The world was spinning and I was dizzy.

  Silently, I thanked God I’d added insurance to the rental I was driving. I hadn’t wanted to drive my hooptie on the freeway to Newport Beach and I’d taken out the accident insurance, just in case, so that was covered.

  “How did you get here?” I asked Reverend Edgar.

  “Remember, I told you I had to leave for my shift. I took a ferry back to land.”

  “Small world.” Then a pain hit my shoulder where my seat belt had cut into my skin with the impact.

  Everything happened in a blur after that. I felt like I was at the bottom of a well as I heard the buzz of the Jaws of Life as they sawed me out my seat belt and out of my car. Somehow they lifted me out the car, plopped me on a gurney, and deposited me in an ambulance. Racing through the streets, sirens blaring, the ambulance took me to USC hospital, which used to be old County General, since I didn’t have health insurance. I was waiting for my Obamacare to kick in since I was self-employed.

  It reminded me of when I was in the hospital after
Romero’s death. I woke up, strapped down to a hospital bed, sore from my fight with four men to the death in Brazil, worn out from a shootout with Mayhem’s kidnappers, and forcefully anesthetized because of my screaming about Romero’s death, but alive.

  I guessed I was still alive now, which is always a good thing.

  Earlier this year, when I was at the Academy Awards posing as a reporter when I was actually doing an investigation on a missing starlet who was believed to be a victim of a black serial killer known as the Grim Sleeper, an FBI agent, Special Agent Jerry Stamper, and a DEA agent, Special Agent Richard Braggs, took me into custody. They told me I had to go to Rio to get marked money that Mayhem’s girlfriend, Appolonia, was allegedly holding for them or they would kill him.

  Let me recap. Before I left the United States, I had helped get Mayhem’s three sons out of L.A. with my mother, Venita, acting as their guardian/grandmother to keep them from getting killed. I’d run all over the nightlife of L.A., looking for clues as to who had kidnapped my brother. Before I left, I stopped by our office and received a basket in the mail with Tank’s decapitated head. I left the head in the park, so I could get gone to Rio to get the money that I assumed was ransom money for my brother’s kidnapping.

  While in Rio, I learned about a surviving African religion and its voodoo power. A Santeria had worked her magic over me, gave me an ankh, which I still wear, and sent me out to free Mayhem’s girlfriend, Appolonia, from this cartel. I didn’t free Appolonia, because she didn’t want to be freed, but she gave me the flash drive for the money. Afterward, I escaped by coming up the Amazon River.

  The two agents, Agent Braggs and Agent Stamper, met me at the LAX airport, demanding the money I had access to, but I refused to give it up until I got my brother released. I told them for us to do the exchange at Venice Beach.

  To my surprise, Romero showed up at the Venice Beach Pier. Bullets began flying everywhere and he got killed during the shootout that freed Mayhem. After that, everything was such a harrowing wild ride, I hadn’t gotten in touch with how I even felt about the whole fiasco.

  After Romero died, I was out of it. I hadn’t even talked to Mayhem since the shootout. If Chica and Haviland hadn’t pulled me through the shooting of our reality show, I’d still be lying in bed, ensconced in my grief. The two would show up at 4:00 A.M., before it was time to go on the set, and literally help me shower and dress. Each day I put one foot in front of the other, I must have gotten stronger. That’s how I wound up at Haviland’s wedding.

  Chapter Five

  I was lying in emergency with an IV in my arm and some type of machine attached to me that hummed along, but I had no idea what it was for. Smells of human life, blood, feces, pain, suffering, and antiseptic assaulted my nostrils. I thought about a few years ago when I got shot in the line of duty on the LAPD, and how it felt waking up after surgery. At the time, I didn’t know if I was in this world or the next. This time, though, I felt like I was going to be all right.

  “You’re going to be all right,” Reverend Edgar said, reassuringly patting my hand.

  “Thank you so much for helping me.” My voice reminded me of how I used to sound when I was drunk before I went to rehab two years ago. My words stumbled out in a slurred iambic tetrameter.

  “I’ve got to get back to work. I put your purse on the side of your bed. It was in the car, so you’ve got all your ID.”

  “Okay,” I murmured. I checked and my gun was still in there. It was inside a pink case.

  I must have dozed off. I woke up thinking of this minister/fireman who had just left my bedside.

  “That was nice of him,” I mumbled drowsily. I couldn’t get comfortable as I tossed and turned. I wondered if I was bleeding so I checked for my blood and didn’t see any—only bruises on my arms and legs.

  Blood made me think about the six men I had killed—ironically, all in my new line of duty as a private eye. Funny thing was I never killed anyone when I was on the LAPD. In each case, as a private eye, it was down to me or them, though. I cringed. That still leaves their blood on my hands. What will I say on Judgment Day? But what if I killed my baby?

  Ironically, I canceled the two appointments I’d made at an abortion clinic. Now that I thought I was about to lose the baby, I couldn’t stand the thought of a miscarriage. For the first time, this baby was more than an inconvenience. It was a life . . . a life inside of me. Maybe my baby was still alive . . . I reached down into my underwear and pulled out my hand to examine it. I wasn’t bleeding. I thought I would’ve been bleeding if I’d lost the baby. I let out a sigh of relief, then dozed back off. I think they’d given me some type of sedative.

  I woke up again as they were rolling me on a stretcher to a regular room where I wound up being alone. The next time I woke up it was the next morning. Through a fog, a police officer came and interviewed me and asked me did I see who hit me, and I told him no.

  “I don’t know what happened. Someone hit me out of nowhere.”

  After that, I kept dozing in and out. There were two other beds but no patients.

  I opened my eyes and a Dr. McCrutcheon was standing at my bedside. “Doctor, I’m pregnant,” I blurted out. “I hope my baby is okay.”

  “Yes, your cervix is intact. Your baby is fine. We’re going to keep you another night for observation though.”

  “Are you sure about the baby?” I heard myself saying. I rubbed my stomach in a circular motion. For the first time I felt protective of my unborn child. Oh, Lord, don’t let anything be wrong with my baby.

  “Yes.” The doctor paused, absently shaking his head, as if in disbelief. “You’re both a living miracle. It looks like your baby will be fine, but I’d like you to stay on bed rest for the next week or two. We’ll keep you one more night to be sure, then release you tomorrow morning. Make sure you see your doctor next week. ”

  A tall, lithe Jamaican nurse, whose badge read Eurie Harris, RN, pushed in a heart monitor machine for the baby. She took out a magic wand and put it on my stomach, which was still flat. I heard this “slosh, slosh, sloshing” sound, which resembled the noise a washing machine makes. A strong rhythmic pony trot filled the room.

  “That’s your baby,” the nurse said in her lilting Jamaican accent. My baby’s heartbeat sounded like the most beautiful symphony ever written.

  “You’re not bleeding either,” she continued. “Your cervix is closed. The baby seems fine.”

  She pointed to a flashing point on the screen. “That’s your baby’s heart. Here’s the head. The body.”

  “Can you tell the sex of the baby?”

  “Not yet. At twenty weeks. You’re almost twelve weeks. Here, I can give you a picture though.”

  I gazed down at the ultrasound picture in amazement. For a moment, I caught my breath. I’d never seen anything more beautiful—this tadpole-looking piece of protoplasm in this cloudy, dark photo. Then I just broke down, tears oozing down my face. My baby was alive—the baby I almost aborted.

  Maybe this was a miracle. We both could have been killed. I could have lived but lost the baby, but neither situation happened. For the first time I felt a butterfly-feeling flutter in my stomach. In awe, I reached down and gently touched my stomach, which was still as flat as an ironing board. Feathers trembled in my stomach again. What was that? Then it hit me. My baby was moving!

  Suddenly I didn’t care who the father was. This was my baby. He or she had a right to live. My mother, Venita, gave birth to my brother at age fourteen and to me at sixteen, and she survived. Besides, how old did I have to be to have a baby? Who’s to say I’d ever get pregnant again? I was now thirty-five. I thought about what Chica told me about her abortion and how it left her sterile.

  “Thank you, Lord,” I silently prayed, grateful I didn’t get the abortion. I made a silent vow to my unborn child: Well, it’s me and you. I’ll try to keep you safe and be a good mother. I don’t know how, but I’ll learn how.

  I reached in my purse and found my iPhone.
I called my foster mother, Shirley, and told her about my car accident.

  “Are you all right?”

  I could hear the concern in her voice. I was surprised though, since she was still caretaking my foster father, Daddy Chill, who had dementia. Shirley always seemed more overwhelmed than I ever remember her being when we were growing up. But recently, she put him in an adult daycare center where she got a little relief for six hours each day. She really sounded like she heard me for the first time in a long time.

  I thought about how this was my second time I almost died, the first time being when I was shot on the LAPD. Somehow this near-death experience made life even more precious; especially now that I had my unborn child’s life to consider. “Yes, I’m fine. The doctor said I’m a walking miracle, but there’s something I want to tell you.”

  “What is it?”

  I paused. Should I tell her? Something egged me on. “I’m pregnant.” It was as if putting my condition into words made it real. Announced it to the universe. I was going to be a mother! Now that I’d said it, this pregnancy felt real.

  “What?” Shirley shrieked. “I knew it. I knew something was different about you. Oh, my God. Are you and the baby all right?”

  “Surprisingly, we’re fine. I’m scared, though.”

  “Don’t worry. The Lord never gives you more than you can handle.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, at least you will have a piece of Romero. I know how much you loved him. Life is strange like that. God taketh away and He giveth.”

  I hesitated. I couldn’t tell Shirley I wasn’t sure about the paternity. She was the second person, the other being Chica, who had said I’d have a piece of Romero; I sure hoped so.

  “I guess it is.”

  Next, I got a call from my brother Mayhem, the reason for my dilemma in the first place. I hadn’t talked to him since the shootout that freed him from his abductors.

  “Hey, Z. I need to see you.” He was always blunt and to the point.