Slipping Into Darkness Read online

  In my heart, though, I didn’t believe my brother was a snitch. Something was not adding up. But what I did know was someone ratted him out for him to get kidnapped.

  My gut started thundering. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that they were setting me up. But what did they want with me? Moreover, what was in it for them?

  “So once again, where is the money?”

  “What money?”

  “We understand you will know how to get that. They say you can track anything.”

  “Who are ‘they’?” I wasn’t flattered at all.

  “Look. We’re going to keep busting your balls until you give up what you know.”

  “No, you’re going to tell me something first. Do you know where my brother is?”

  “Look, we can get that little license of yours pulled. I suggest you get busy and try to help us.”

  “Why should I?”

  “We’re part of a covert operation!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We gave your brother five million to do a deal in Brazil. Now the money has come up missing and he’s supposedly kidnapped. Do you have any idea where he is?”

  “No. I don’t keep up with my brother like that.”

  “He’s going to pay unto Caesar what is due to Caesar. We’re going to take you back now, but you better get busy. If you want to see your brother alive again, that is.”

  With that, they grabbed me from the chair, each taking an arm on one side, then deposited me in a rough toss like so much garbage into the back seat of the car. They both tossed me their cards, which I tucked in my purse.

  “Give me back my camera.”

  “You’ll get it back when we get that money.”

  “Hey, I paid a lot for that camera.” It was the latest Canon and could even capture people in movement.

  Neither man responded.

  Thank goodness, I’d taken all my cases off the camera yesterday and only had shots of the Academy Awards.

  They drove off, burning rubber. I guess I was safe for now ... that was, if their wild driving didn’t kill me first. I sat in the back seat, alone with my thoughts. I didn’t know what my next move would be. What should I do?

  Sometimes cases stick with you, take you dark places you don’t want to go. Who was the bad guy in this case? I wondered. Was my brother such a bad person because he refused to not be able to take care of himself and his family? I didn’t know what was right or wrong sometimes.

  I’d made my share of mistakes in this life and I didn’t want to judge my brother. I’d been fired from the LAPD due to my drinking problem, which I developed while on the job. I know I have to take full responsibility for my choice to drink, but what if I hadn’t been able to use my skills to become a private investigator? What if I’d had to do something illegal to make a living? Then, how could I judge Mayhem?

  Whenever I thought of my alcoholism, I saw my life in two acts. My life as an alcoholic was Act One and it was behind me. That was then. Act Two was now. I was sober now, one day at a time. I refused to let my past define me. Would I have done anything different if I could? I didn’t know. My sponsor, Joyce, said our alcoholism can be a blessing if we turn our lives around and use it to help others. I didn’t know about all that.

  Now, fortunately, I was clean again, making a living. Wasn’t I a free agent? The LAPD didn’t sign my paycheck anymore. Internal Affairs didn’t own me. A quiet voice spoke to me. You are your own woman. You’re self-employed. You can help your brother.

  Suddenly I recognized an emotion I was feeling. I was POed: pissed off. Red-hot rage pissed. I was furious that I couldn’t go to the police for help. I was furious that these two jackasses didn’t care what happened to my brother. I was furious that my brother was only considered a convict and not a human being. Maybe he didn’t mean anything to them–to the world he was just another black man, dispensable. But, to me, he was my brother. They broke the mold when they made Mayhem.

  He was the first male I’d followed around when I learned to walk. He was the one who taught me how to shoot a gun, and how to be as tough as a man. I remembered when we were kids, he’d said, “I’m going to teach you to shoot so you can take care of yourself so that no man can fuck over you like they do Mama.” The truth of the matter was that there was only one man, Strange, our younger two siblings’ father, who ever walked over my mother without her going to royal battle with him.

  A couple of years ago, Venita had been released from prison after serving a twenty-year bid, so we were definitely not the Huxtables from The Cosby Show. My three siblings and I were raised in four different foster homes, except for Mayhem, who ran away and was on his own from the age of ten. I guessed that’s why he was in the trouble he was in today.

  I thought about my mother and how upset she was over the possible pending murder of her oldest son, her first born. She’d already lost her youngest two children. Up until this day, we didn’t even know where my younger brother, Diggity, and my baby sister, Righteousness, were living, or if they were alive at all. We’d all spread to the four winds, it seemed. The younger two sibs seemed to have vanished into thin air. I was just trying to get my life together, and had two years of sobriety under my belt. I’d just started a search for my younger two sibs on the national registry, but no luck so far.

  Something hit me. I realized I was alone in this world. Mayhem was all I had of my siblings and I didn’t want to lose him. I didn’t have to answer to a job, so I was free. I decided then and there I would return the money on the missing starlet to the family and handle my own family’s business. But how?

  Chapter Four

  I didn’t breathe easily until the two alleged federal officers dropped me back in front of the Kodak Theater near Hollywood Boulevard, hours later. I could see the crowds had cleared. Only a few stragglers remained in the area. The after parties were probably already in full swing. For some reason, it didn’t bother me though. My mood was ruined after this night I’d had. Anyhow, I didn’t feel like being around all the beautiful people right now. I didn’t feel like watching Haviland act like a flibbertigibbet the way she did whenever she was in her element surrounded by other actors.

  No, I just wanted to be alone. I had to process what had just happened. Who were these men? What did they want with my brother? What was this dad-blain money they were talking about? Was that the motive for kidnapping Mayhem?

  A light mist began to fall softly, although it wasn’t exactly raining. L.A. was funny like that. My old bullet hole, where either one of the two undercover cops–Flag, my ex, or Anderson, his partner-in-crime–had shot me always told the truth. Or, maybe I should say, my old wound never lied. It was going to rain sometime soon. That I knew for sure. If not tonight, by tomorrow for sure. My old wound was like an internal weather barometer.

  At a loss as to what to do, I tottered over to Melrose Boulevard, ignoring how my feet hurt in the Prada heels I was wearing. I stopped before I reached Melrose, and slipped off my heels. I could feel the runs beginning up my light pantyhose as the sidewalk grated against my feet.

  I started to call Romero but changed my mind. He probably was caught up on his own case. He’d been tagging a methamphetamine lab for some time now and he must have gotten a break in the case.

  Finally I flagged down a cab. I decided I would go home to my garage apartment at my foster mother Shirley’s and try to get some sleep. As I climbed into the cab, I turned on my phone and I saw I’d missed a lot of calls. I listened to my voice mail. The first call was from Venita. “We need you, Z. Please help us.”

  Several hysterical calls were from both Chica and Haviland. “Where are you?” they both screamed frantically into my message center. I decided not to return their calls at this moment. I didn’t feel like being interrogated by them right now. Anyway, who did they think they were? My mama or something? Even my foster mother, Shirley, or my biological mother, Venita, didn’t try to keep tabs on me.

  I could only conjecture
that things were crazy when Chica and Haviland realized I was missing from the Academy Awards ceremony. Absently, I told the cabbie where to transport me, which was home.

  Before I could return my friends’ calls, my phone rang, its Beyoncé song “Run the World (Girls)” ringtone startling me. I pushed answer and instantly a Skype picture of Mayhem appeared on my screen. I looked down and saw that this was Skype and was not a video. I gasped. I didn’t know what to say. His eyes were swollen shut and blackened, but he was holding his head high.

  “Hey, sis.”

  “Mayhem?” I didn’t know what to say. “Are you okay?”

  “For now. I need your help, sis.”

  “I–”

  “I got caught slippin’. Go see Tank.”

  “Who’s Tank?”

  “My lieutenant. You’ve met him before. The big dude. He’ll know what to do.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Call Venita and get the number for him and set up a meeting.”

  “Why me, Mayhem?”

  “You are trained. I’m counting on you, Z. You can do this.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Get the boys outta here.”

  My ears shot up.

  “What boys?”

  I thought he was talking about his muscle or his henchmen.

  “My sons. They just kids,” Mayhem said. “You’ve got to help me save my boys.” He paused before continuing. “If they don’t get this money they’ll kill them too.”

  “Where is their mother?”

  “They have their mama, my wifey, in Rio as a hostage.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “Sis, I’m going to need you to go to Brazil.”

  “What?” I almost screamed in the phone. He might as well have said he needed me to go to the moon. I swallowed a lump in my throat. “What’s going on?

  “I need you to go to get my wifey, Appolonia. Then the money can be released.”

  “What money? You’re the third person who’s mentioned this money.”

  “Just do it, bitch, if you want to see your brother alive again,” an electronic squawk box voice interrupted, and Mayhem was cut off. The voice had sounded like a robot.

  I didn’t see the person on the screen but another threatening voice with the same electronic sound bellowed in the background, “The next time you see your brother it’s going to be real bad. Tell your mother to get out her black dress if you don’t get that money.”

  The line went dead. I tried to push redial but the number was unreachable.

  For a moment I was too numb to move. Once I gathered my wits about me, again, I made sure my phone line was on, if the kidnappers decided to call back. I was so upset I needed to get my bearings.

  Now Mayhem had said to call Venita, but I didn’t want to call her. I was still mad at her for spending half my childhood in prison for a crime she didn’t commit. I was not on exactly the best speaking terms with her, but then something occurred to me. Who else could I call? Mayhem asked that I call Venita. Our mother. She’s the only person who would have Tank’s contact information.

  “Venita, it’s Z.”

  My mother’s voice sounded sleep filled, but I heard the alertness when she realized it was me. “Z?”

  “I need Tank’s phone number. Mayhem told me you would have it.”

  My mother was happy to hear from me, since I’d shut down my phone on her during our last contact via text. We didn’t exactly have a close mother-daughter relationship, you might say. “I have his address too. He’s in Imperial Courts.”

  I wrote down the phone number and address, then hung up. I could tell Venita was happy that I was on board. She didn’t seem to realize something. Not only was he her first born, he was also my big brother. I wasn’t doing this for her. I was doing this for Mayhem. Because when everything was all said and done, I remembered one thing: Mayhem killed for me when I was a child. The sad thing was, at the time, he was a child too. I was only nine and he was ten when the thing that destroyed our family happened. But I often wondered, what would have happened to me had he not pulled that trigger and killed Strange? I now wonder, where would I have wound up? Would my mother’s then boyfriend, Strange, had molested me, the same way Chica’s mother’s boyfriend molested her throughout her early years before she was placed in foster care?

  I thought about calling Romero, but changed my mind. After all, he was the law. Plus, he probably was out on his own surveillance case. We had an agreement never to interrupt each other when we were working.

  Instead, I called my foster mother, Shirley, who had been the linchpin to love in my childhood and my adult life. The way safety pins used to hold old-fashioned cloth diapers together on babies, she’d held my life together when I was a nine-year-old child, traumatized from witnessing my father’s murder, my mother’s imprisonment, and the subsequent breakdown of our family system.

  Two years ago, once again, Shirley had pulled my life together when I was a disgraced fired police officer, adult alcoholic, drowning in my own stew of demons. When I hit rock bottom, it was Shirley who climbed down in the cesspool of alcohol I was literally drowning in. She’d helped cleaned me up from my own vomit, sat through my detox, and got me into rehab until I could stand on my own two feet again. Up until then, I’d always thought I was so strong, but I found out I wasn’t.

  Sometimes when we can’t pull things together or handle things, someone else has to hold our hand until we can handle them.

  As soon as Shirley answered the phone, I felt a sense of comfort just hearing the sound of her voice. Unfortunately, just as I started my spiel, I realized I was talking to her voice mail. Dag-gonitt.

  Anyhow what can she do? I asked myself inwardly. I didn’t know, but I knew one thing for sure. Shirley was always the one to dust me off, and make me think I could make it.

  That’s why I needed to see her now. If anyone could make sense of this craziness, it would be Shirley.

  I left a short, cryptic message. “Moochie, I can’t talk on the phone about this. When I get home, can I come to talk to you? I know it’s late, but I need to talk to you. It’s urgent.”

  I always called Shirley by her nickname, Moochie, when I needed something.

  Chapter Five

  Just as I pulled up in front of Shirley’s house, the rain had already stopped. It was just one of those capricious early spring showers that can hit L.A. one minute and disappear the next. The first thing I noticed was a black-and-white LAPD patrol car parked in the driveway, and, perhaps because I was already tense, I panicked. My antenna of “something bad is going on” rose up too high on my stress barometer and I could feel my hair standing at attention on my neck. My stomach knotted up. Was someone sick? Were Chica’s girls okay? Lord, we couldn’t take another hit emotionally since we’d lost Trayvon. I hated how I never relaxed anymore. I never took it for granted anymore that harm would never come to my loved ones anymore since Trayvon’s death.

  So why were the police at Shirley’s at one in the morning? Something wasn’t right. Baldwin Hills, one of the best-kept neighborhoods in L.A., was generally a quiet neighborhood, but this morning something was awry. The overhung streetlight was the only light on the street. From on top of the hill, I could still see the lights from the hill all over the L.A. Basin, but I felt like I was entering the Twilight Zone. Nothing seemed normal anymore.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, rushing up on Shirley, my heart galloping.

  “He ran away.”

  “Who?”

  “Daddy Chill. He’s a wanderer risk now.”

  “I thought you said he’d plateaued,” I said, uselessly, almost like an accusation. Just last week, on the phone, Shirley was bragging on how well Daddy Chill was doing.

  “It’s one step forward, two back. I found him missing from his room this afternoon. I just turned my back and he was gone.”

  “What?”

  Shirley absently shook her head. She looked beyond disgu
sted. “They just found him about an hour ago. I don’t know how much longer I can take this.”

  The two officers, one white and one black, were escorting my foster father, Daddy Chill, into the house. He had a “little boy lost” look on his face, one that was a bit befuddled, as he shambled his way into the front door. A sense of sadness swept over me, thinking of what a big, strapping man he used to be when he worked for the Post Office. Now he’d lost so much weight, he was so gaunt, so haggard, he was only a shell of the man he used to be. He was the one who had taught me to listen to my guts, which have really served me well as a private investigator.

  “Hey, Z,” Daddy Chill said sheepishly. He had a look on his face like a little boy who got caught stealing cookies out of the cookie jar.

  “Hey, Daddy Chill.” I reached over and hugged him. I could almost feel his bones through his shirt and it nearly broke my heart. He used to be a buff, muscular man. Now, combined with his gauntness, he felt like he was freezing cold. That’s when I realized he didn’t have on a jacket, and the night air in L.A., and the recent rain, could get deadly. A chill ran through me. He could’ve have frozen to death, out there, lost, and not knowing where he was.

  “What happened?” I directed my question to Shirley.

  Shirley’s face was lined with worry and fatigue in a way I had never noticed before. With the melanin in her skin, she’d seemed ageless in the twenty-six years I’d known her. Now she looked even older than her sixty-one years.

  “He got lost this afternoon. I’ve been driving around all over looking for him. I was supposed to wait for twenty-four hours to put in a missing person’s report, so I wasn’t able to get it in.”

  “Where was he?” I asked, following her into the house

  “They just found him wandering in Culver City. He was wearing his I.D. bracelet, and that’s the only way they knew how to get him back to me.”

  Oh, my God. So he’d been missing over half a day. His dementia had definitely gotten worse.

  Shirley looked so distraught as she was pacing the floor. I could tell she was fit to be tied. “Oh, this man is giving me the blues.” She wrung her hands as she led him into his bedroom.