I was choking the shit out of her. I wanted to detach her head from her shoulders.
“Get off her! Get off her!” Ronnie yelled out.
Then I felt a sharp pain against my back and across my head. I turned around, and his punk ass hit me across the face.
“Get your hands off of her,” the big officer Johnson threatened.
That’s when I went ham on his ass, not caring that he was the police or about the fact that I was outnumbered. I remember grabbing him, lifting him up into the air, and slamming him onto the concrete. This nigga was going to get the beating of his life. “Training time bitch! I am sure the academy don’t teach you this!” I heard myself saying. My intentions were to break his bones up into little pieces. I heard him cry out, and I knew I was beating the shit out of him. It’s always them big, cock diesel muthafuckas that can’t fight. Next thing I know, it seemed as if everybody was beating on my ass. Then shit faded to black.
• • •
When I woke up, my left leg was in a cast; it hurt like hell, and so did the rest of my body. Steve, my attorney, was surrounded by badges and what appeared to be some reporters. He never missed a chance to get in front of a camera. I was handcuffed to the bed. When I let out a groan, all eyes shifted on me.
“Everybody out!” Steve yelled. “I need to talk to my client.”
A nurse rushed in and made sure everybody was out and then closed the door. The cop on duty remained with us.
“Give us a few minutes, please,” Steve said to him. “He’s not going anywhere.”
“Sorry, I have to stay in the room as long—”
“Five minutes, man. Attorney-client privilege. Five minutes. You can even leave the door open. Damn.”
“I’m on duty, man, sorry.” He hunched his shoulders but did turn his back to us.
As the nurse probed and checked my vitals and whatever else, I asked, “What the fuck happened to my leg? Where’s my wife, Steve? Why am I handcuffed to this bed?”
“I spoke to her. She is on her way here, and as far as your leg goes, they felt that you had it coming. There were bullets from weapons that were not on the scene. You are their main suspect for now. But listen to this.” He turned up the TV, and on the screen was the club, police tape, footage of body bags, and Oni crying.
“Amelda Stone, tell us what happened there.”
“Well, John, authorities are being pretty tight-lipped concerning this bizarre scene here at what used to be Club Mix in Decatur, Georgia. As you remember, John, Club Mix was shut down last year when a tip led the FBI and the DEA right here and a street value of almost six million dollars of ecstasy, heroin, and crack cocaine was confiscated. Back then, this club was owned and operated by the notorious East Atlanta Gresham Boys. And today a known and wanted member of the organization, Dwayne ‘The Gatekeeper’ Morgan, was found dead. He had one gunshot wound to the back of the head and one in the leg. Ironically, that is how the Gatekeeper was known to leave his own victims. One shot in the back of the head.
“The two other bodies are unidentified, but there is speculation that they are also members of the East Atlanta Gresham Boys. But John, the sad news is that there was the body of a child found dead at the scene. What a child was doing there, we don’t know yet. And the child’s father—”
“Turn it off, Steve. Turn it off.” When they mentioned my son, it took me right back to that cold, dark warehouse. All I could do was turn my head to the window as the tears rolled down my cheeks.
JAZ
By the skin of my teeth, I managed to get a red-eye flight from Philly to Atlanta. I had to pay my cousin Pat to stay at the hospital for the rest of the week with my granny. We learned that she had Type 1 diabetes and that they were going to get her sugar leveled and run some tests on her leg. I was praying that they wouldn’t have to amputate it.
Kaeerah and I arrived at the Emory University Hospital in Atlanta around three thirty in the morning. Just like me, she was wide awake. Stepping off the