Yellow Tape, Part 3 of 'What's Going On: A Political Fiction'

james-grady

James Grady

Contributor
Posted:
09/23/09
Previously: Dante Jones and his wife Rhea lose their night out when a shooting in the Liss Gardens area of their Washington, D.C. hometown shatters a street war truce ex-con Dante helped forge between rival groups in the Gardens who live under the web of a criminal spider named Luther. Surprising Dante outside his home, Luther blames Dante for failing to create police-free peace.
You're alone.
Driving through the city night.
Car wheels rumble over potholes that weren't in somebody's budget.
You can do this.
Gotta!
This isn't about you.
Push the gas pedal harder.
How many dead?
'Trey: How bad is he jammed up?
Leave blocks of homes lit with happiness and hard work, random luck and regulated electricity. Merge onto the commuter strip lined by neon dreams that won government-backed small business loans.
A parked car.
Inside, she's smiling and turning in the passenger seat to meet the guy behind the steering wheel who's turning toward her and they lean in with closing eyes, parted lips.
Remember that kiss.
Traffic light flashes RED. Stop on the road's white line.
Pale twin eyes light your driver's side mirror.
A white car tattooed with red & blue scrawls pulls beside you.
Cops.
Driver. Shotgun rider.
Two machines chugging at a stoplight in the city night.
Shotgun Cop lets his face swing your way.
For a look! That's all! Not `the' look, `a' look, it's OK! You're straight now! Like Luther said, a stone citizen. Off Paper Outta The Life.
Show a whiff of nervousness like a regular American.
Don't stop me. Don't pull me over.
Phone in your shirt pocket buzzes: ANSWER ME! ANSWER ME!
Shotgun Cop licks you with his eyes. Our windows are down. What can he hear? Does he care as the cell phone vibrates ANSWER ME!
Can't! Gotta! 'Law says no cell phone while operating a motor vehicle. Can't take the bust, the hassle, the delay!
Shirt pocket over your heart stops vibrating.
Traffic light flashes GREEN.
Let the cops glide away first, going, gone.
Don't let anybody shoot them tonight.
Don't let them shoot anybody tonight.
Radio broadcasts: "Metro just announced delays on the Red Line. Investigation of an incident has trains running one track of alternating routes. Spokesmen expect no delays in tomorrow's morning commute."
Liss Gardens.
But what's important is tomorrow morning's commute.
News is what people want to know.
Dante's silver car flew like an arrow in the night toward the glistening ivory dome of Congress' lair, turned right to careen around a park named for a Secretary of War who barricaded himself in his office until the president who'd fired him was gelded by impeachment.
Go north like that mouse in the kids' story.
This ain't no story.
You ain't no kid.
We are not mice.
Invisible dollar signs on the passing townhouses shrank with each block the silver car sped north until it turned left on a road dotted by stores still boarded up from assassination riots Dante'd missed while stalking through Asian jungles in a war no one could tell him how to win.
Up ahead, by Metro's bridge of above-ground subway tracks: spinning red & blue lights.
A police cruiser blocks the road.
Park.
Got no jacket on – good.
Get out slowly. Keep your hands in plain sight.
Watchers huddled in shadows and doorways wait to whisper.
Walk past the first cop cruiser – it's empty. More cruisers block traffic beyond the bridge that supports an empty subway train whose windows glow like golden scales on a snake.
Smoke swirls from hissing flares.
A heart-high line cuts the night in front of you: yellow tape.
Yellow tape that cages somebody else's pain.
Yellow tape that defines the life you've chosen.
Uniformed cops work inside the yellow tape. Shimmers from flares, headlights and emergency flashers reveal a white chalk outline of somebody on the pavement. The sidewalk by the bridge displays another chalk artwork.
"Dante! Over here!"
'Trey's voice, he's --
"Who the ___ told you to talk?"
Rebuke from a skinny guy in a black suit: Murder Police. Ten steps further into the yellow taped turf, his bulldog partner looks up from taking notes to lock his eyes on Dante.
Leaned against an unmarked cop car: 22-year-old 'Trey, muscled like a linebacker, his face regaining concrete Dante'd started chiseling away eight months earlier.
'Trey's hands bent behind his back.
They've hooked him up!
Stand on the citizen side of the yellow tape.
Spread your hands out empty and wide like Jesus.
Yell: "Officer! Can I come over to help?"
Skinny Cop puts the eyes on Mister who the ___ : "Sure."
Duck under the yellow tape.
"Officer, my name is Dante Jones, I'm from the Coalition of Committed Citizens." Tell it and sell it. "Sorry you had to come out here for something terrible, but I'm glad to see you."
"Really." Skinny Cop's smile could slice steel.
"Yes sir." Give him respect. Even if the ____ 's cuffed 'Trey. "The community needs all the help we can get."
Now reel it back: "Has my man 'Trey there been able to help?"
Smells: Flare smoke. Singed air from hot lights. Sweaty clothes off the cops and 'Trey. And you. Ghosts of gunpowder. Something like meat.
"Your man?" says Skinny Cop, detective eyes, Murder Police soul. "Your man's On Paper."
"Absolutely. His Parole Officer hooked us up."
After we asked, but never mind the cause, now is about effect.
"'His P.O. know' he's on my crime scene interfering with a police officer and causing a public disturbance?"
"We're all disturbed. But I'm surprised: he's too street smart and re-directed to interfere with a police officer."
'Trey yells: "I came 'cause 'word was six people shot and I needed to know to chill it, Dante, tha's all!"
Give 'Trey the four magic words/shut the ___ up glare.
Give Skinny Cop silence to fill.
But his partner Bulldog calls out: "Hey, I know about these guys!"
"Me, too," says Skinny Cop. "I used to read the newspapers."
Meet him there: "They don't write it right about us, do they."
Let that bond settle.
Go for it: "I figure 'Trey over-stepped trying to get the truce working – if this ain't some domestic or stick-up."
"These are beef killings. I know that even if we got a night full of NSN's."
"Nobody Saw Nothing," said Bulldog Cop.
Flat out tell them: "We can't help you with that."
Skinny Cop says: "Then what good are you?"
"We want to work it so you won't have to come out like this again."
Bulldog Cop told his partner: "Come on. They ain't the bad guys. 'Least not on our case."
Self-interest is the sweetest appeal. "Do you really want to do all the paperwork for locking my man up?"
"Do?" said Skinny Cop. "I don't want to do death notifications, meet more ripped up Moms with two sons never comin' home 'n' three other kids racking up hospital bills. I don't want to do a day of reports spelling out not what I do know, but what some lawyer can't rip me up for. I do not want to knock on doors for more NSN's. I do not want to squeeze here, squeeze there until somebody who needs me to squeeze them out of a jam realizes how maybe we can do for each other."
Skinny Cop jerked his thumb toward the train parked on the bridge.
Subway car -- one brightly lit window centered by a starburst hole.
Skinny Cop said: "I got the subway police arguing with my bosses about statistics, who's got jurisdiction, whose budget is going to pay for backing the train up to where it got shot 'n' panicked a hundred riding-home voters even if none of them caught that stray bullet. I got bosses pushing me to close my numbers here so City Council won't make the Chief `re-organize' us Murder Police just to show they're doing something about crime, and I got your Mister On Parole For Armed Robbery 'Trey here doing his thing, getting in my face and him I can do!"
From the bridge came the clunk of steel as the train moved.
Validate him. "You're right."
Shine a light into his night. "You sent the train home. What good will it do to lock up 'Trey?"
Ten heartbeats later, 'Trey got un-cuffed.
Make 'Trey shake hand with both Murder Police.
Shake their hands, too.
Don't let it look like anything more than that to eyes watching from beyond the yellow tape.
Walking away with 'Trey, hear the Skinny Cop yell: "Now you do!"
'Trey says: "Sorry, man! I know I was supposed to stay away, but –"
"If you're sorry, use that." Dante strode toward his silver car.
Cops pull the yellow tape so POP! it burst in front of Dante and 'Trey to flood its caged time & place into this city night.
'Trey whispered: "Bad ____, Dante. We lost Mrs. Williams."
What's Going On is fiction. All characters and incidents, except for historic references, are purely fictitious. Copyright: James Grad.

Related: 'What's Going On:' Facts Inside the Fiction