Marcus didn’t even look at me. He was already standing up, smoothing his jacket down with his legal pad in hand. “My client is not answering questions.”
The younger detective gave that little fake professional smile cops loved to use when they wanted to sound like they were doing something official. “He can tell us that downtown.”
“That’s fine,” Marcus said. “He still won’t be answering questions.”
Carmen stepped around the side of her desk then, with one hand against her stomach and the other resting on the edge of the file she had been working out of. She looked too good and too calm for a room full of men with badges, and the older detective noticed it too because his eyes stayed on her a second too long before he shifted them back to me.
“You’re under arrest,” he said.
I set my glass down. “No shit Sherlock.”
That made the younger one stiffen up a little like he thought I was about to make this hard, but I wasn’t because there wasn’t no reason to. They wanted the show more than they wantedme with the cuffs, the cameras and the ride down the elevator. The whole little production was giving them something to do so sometimes you just let them have it. It didn’t change what they could prove.
I held both hands out in front of me. “Go ‘head. Put on a show.”
Carmen didn’t say don’t be an asshole because she already knew that was pointless. She just watched me while they cuffed me, and her face was unreadable to anybody who didn’t know her the way I did. I could tell what she was thinking though. She was already ten steps ahead, already working angles, already deciding what moved where once I was downstairs.
The metal clicked around my wrists and the older detective stepped back like he had done something. “You have the right to remain silent?—”
“I’m gone use it,” I cut him off.
Marcus shut his briefcase. “We’ll meet you at the station.”
Carmen finally walked up to me then and ran one hand down the front of my shirt like she was fixing me before dinner and not right before police walked me out her office. It was such a Carmen thing to do that it almost made me laugh.
“You need anything?” she asked quietly.
“Nah,” I said, looking down at her. “You good?”
She nodded once. “Always.”
I bent my head enough to kiss her forehead, cuffs and all. “Go home after this.”
She gave me that look, the one that said she had heard me but was not promising nothing. The hallway outside the office was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Security from the building was still there as well as my shadows and the staff who was trying not to stare too hard. Everybody was watching though. The detectives walked me toward the elevator like they thoughtthey were escorting somebody dangerous. They were right, but not for the reason they believed.
The ride downstairs was quiet except for the younger detective shifting his feet too much and trying not to look at me. I kept my face forward and my mouth shut because there wasn’t no point saying much until we got where we were going. Once we hit the lobby, the noise was immediate after that like a rush.
Somebody had already tipped the media off. The damn cameras lit up the glass by the front entrance, as microphones shoved up over the barriers, with reporters yelling questions before the elevator doors even fully opened. They’d been waiting…. but of course, they had. Everything with my name attached was a story.
“Dom! Dom! Did you order the hit on Jermaine Cooper? Mr. Royal, are you being charged? Is this retaliation for the courthouse shooting? Was Carmen Royal the intended target in that shooting?”
They walked me right through the middle of it and I let them without ducking my head or hiding my face cause for what? I was the King BITCH! I looked straight ahead while the cameras flashed and the reporters nearly climbed over each other trying to get close enough to smell whatever story they planned to spin before the night was over.
Outside, my people were already there. That was the part that made one of the detectives curse under his breath as the black trucks and motorcycles lined along the curb on both sides of the street, with the engines running behind the dark tints. Men stood around them in all black and white tees, hoodies, chains, fitted caps, with their arms folded, and expressions on their faces that nobody wanted to test unless they was ready to fuck around and find out. My people were never loud and doing too much but it was enough of them that the cops at the curbstarted standing a little taller like posture was gone save them if this night went left.
That was how it always happened when one of ours got picked up. We showed up, not to start no scene if it wasn’t needed. Just to remind everybody watching that nobody tied to me ever stood alone. I saw Tone near the second truck, with one hand in his pocket and the other holding his phone to his ear. Dique was farther back by the curb talking to Marco with his chain hanging out over his shirt, looking like a rapper nigga again. Even from that distance I knew he wanted to laugh at this whole little parade.
The detectives got me into the back of the unmarked car and slammed the door harder than necessary. I leaned back in the seat, cuffs still on, and looked out the window while the reporters kept circling and my people stood there looking like the whole city belonged to them.
By the time we got to the station, the mood had already changed from performance to paperwork. That was always the funniest part to me. Once the lights, cameras, and ride downtown was over, all them men with badges had to sit back behind their little desks and remember they still needed facts. They couldn’t charge me with headlines. They walked me inside through the side entrance instead of the front because the press had already started gathering there too. I got processed, fingerprints taken, pictures, all the standard shit, and then they led me into an interview room that smelled like stale coffee, bleach, and donuts and shit. The room they took me to had a cheap metal table with two chairs and a camera in the corner. It was nothing about it new or impressive and they did this on purpose including making sure it was cold so they could freeze you.
They left me sitting there alone for a while because that was part of the little game too. Let him wait, let him think, let himget uncomfortable. But I wasn’t one of them little neighborhood niggas that started sweating after twenty minutes in a room. I had been built for pressure too long for that.
Eventually the older detective came in first with a folder tucked under his arm. The younger one followed behind him carrying a couple of photographs and one of those manila envelopes. Neither one smiled this time. They shut the door, sat down across from me, and spread the little evidence they thought mattered across the table.
The older one tapped the folder. “You know why you’re here.”
I looked at the pictures in front of me of Maine, the burned down house, and grainy still shots from some street camera but it was useless because we had already had our people fuck with the camera from the intersection before we got there.
