The two detectives looked at each other. They didn’t expect Shareef to talk so much voluntarily. They expected to have to pull every bit of information out of him. But maybe he was a good writer. His story was longer and more detailed than expected.
The partner nodded and said, “Okay, so then what happened?”
Shareef sighed and slowed down to get everything just right.
He said, “We get to the park, and we meet up with four guys on the hill, and they got guns with them. And this is in broad daylight. I mean, I figured they wouldn’t try no shit like that in broad daylight. That’s why I agreed to meet them there.”
“Okay, then what?” the partner asked again. This guy Shareef was amusing. His story all added up so far.
Shareef answered, “Then they started talking about going to the car to take a ride. So at that point—I mean, I’m not jumping in no fuckin’ car, man, and they already got guns out—so I told them I would follow behind them, ’cause I didn’t want nobody behind me, while I tried to figure out which way I wanted to run.”
He said, “Well, they didn’t like that too much. So we got to arguing about who gon’ follow who. In the meantime, I figured out I didn’t have anywhere to run, but since we were right near the hill, I told myself, ‘Look, I’m just gon’ roll off this hill and take my chances.’”
As he spoke, he turned slightly in his chair to the right to show them the injuries to his left side.
He said, “So once we got to a stalemate on the hill, their main guy said, ‘Fuck it. Kill ’em both.’ Once I heard that, I hit the ground and started rolling. That’s when the bullets started flying.”
He looked up into the faces of both detectives with remorse. He said, “And you know, rest in peace to my man Spoonie, but he just wasn’t thinking as fast as I was. So I made it off the hill, took the fall like a man, climbed back to my feet, and started running for my life again.”
Again, the two detectives stopped and looked at each other. Either this guy was an undercover super hero, or he was lying his ass off.
The detective asked him, “Whose idea was it to meet at St. Nicholas Park?”
Shareef didn’t hesitate. “It was their idea.”
The partner said, “Okay, so what about the other guys?”
“What other guys?” Shareef asked him.
The lead detective looked again to his partner. Was Shareef claiming he knew nothing about anyone on his side. Incredible.
He asked him, “Let me get this straight. You come back up to Harlem by yourself, knowing that these guys are trying to kill you, and you don’t bring a gun or anything, and nobody’s around trying to protect you? Is that what you want us to believe?”
Shareef opened his empty palms and said, “That’s just what it is. I mean, you don’t see no gun residue on my hands. It’s just dirt, sweat, and blood.”
The Latino partner began to get impatient. He said, “This is bullshit. You’re sitting over there…” He stopped and told his partner, “This guy could pass the lie detector test. He is a fuckin’ writer. He set this whole thing up and now he’s trying to get away with it. Fourteen people were killed on account of him, and he claims he doesn’t know anything about it.”
He looked back at Shareef and said, “What are you, Angel Heart over here?”
Then he looked back to his partner. “You remember that movie with Mickey Rourke? That’s the one where people end up dead every time he leaves the scene, and he claims he doesn’t know anything about it. Then he finds out that he sold his soul to the devil.”
The lead detective nodded. “Yeah, with Robert De Niro as the devil. I remember that one.” He looked back at Shareef himself and asked him, “Did you sell your soul to the devil, Shareef?”
Shareef played it seriously and frowned. “Come on, man.”
“Well, let me ask you something else,” the detective followed up. “Do you know a guy by the name of Baby G, aka Greggory Taylor?”
Shareef was as straightforward as he could be. He said, “Of course I know him. He’s the most popular guy in Harlem right now.”
The partner corrected him and said, “You mean was the most popular guy in Harlem.”
Shareef looked confused by it. “What are you sayin’?”
The partner squinted his eyes in concentration. “Okay, so I guess you don’t know anything about his death at the park, either.”
“I mean, I don’t know the guy like that, I just know who he is,” Shareef told him. “I haven’t been in Harlem long enough to know him like that.”
“Well, how do you know him?” the detective questioned.
“I saw him at the basketball tournament. The Kingdome. And people were talking about him. So, you know, I listened, like anybody else would. I didn’t know his real name though. Most of the time when they say G they mean like, ‘gangsta,’ like in Baby Gangsta.”
“Yeah, we know the street lingo. We don’t need lessons from you,” the partner responded.
The lead detective asked, “So, you never had a conversation with him?”
“About what?” Shareef asked.
“About him and his boys protecting you,” the partner interjected.
Shareef shook his head and said, “Look, man, this whole situation is crazy. You say fourteen people were killed on account of me. For what? For writing a fuckin’ book? A book that I ain’t even started yet. I just got off tour, man. I’m not even near a computer up here. Black men don’t read my books no way. I got an audience that’s ninety-five percent women. So why would these guys be chasing me over some book? I’m still try’na understand that myself. Do y’all have any answers for that?”
Shareef was trying to turn the tables on them using his own frustrations, steering them away from the Baby G subject. But at the same time, he didn’t understand it. What did Trap and his guys have to hide? He knew Shareef wouldn’t write anything about him. Was it all about ego? Were Trap’s feelings that hurt that Shareef wouldn’t back down? It was all insane?
The black detective responded, “You tell us. What did you plan to write about in this book?”
Shareef said, “It was a prison love story,” just out of spite. Then he told the truth again. “Come on, man, the guy wanted to tell his life story, but I didn’t even get to talk to him about it yet.”
“Yeah, and then he ended up dead. That just happened a few days ago. So that makes fifteen bodies now,” the partner responded.
“And I had something to do with that, too, right?” Shareef asked him.
“Did you?” the partner asked him back.
Shareef shook his head and remained silent. He didn’t even bother to answer that.
The lead detective asked, “So, how did Michael Springfield get in touch with you?”
Shareef looked up and said, “Believe it or not, he was reading my books. That’s where the majority of my five percent of reading men come from. Prison. You believe that shit? That’s fuckin’ sad, man. But it’s the truth.”
The partner said, “Look, we don’t want to hear your damn politics.”
The lead detective countered with a thoughtful nod. He said, “Yeah, but if you think about it, it makes more sense to me now. So if you say that most of the men who read your books are in prison, and these guys who were after you are one foot in, one foot out of jail anyway, then it makes the most sense in the world for them to want to stop you. You’re writing directly to their peer group. And all of these jailbirds know each other.”
Shareef had never thought of it that way. Male prisoners were indeed a niche group of readers. They just weren’t able to buy many books. But they read them when they got them.
Shareef said, “But I don’t even write those kind of books.”
“Yeah, but this book would have been that kind,” the detective noted.
Shareef agreed with him. He said, “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” He ran with that discovery and tried a brand-new approach to get himself quickly out of guilt.
He eyed both detectives and said, “But here’s what it is, Officers. At the end of the day, I have no criminal record whatsoever. Not even for jaywalking. I got a wife. I got two kids. I make my living writing romance books for women. I’m a college graduate, and I just got caught up in some crazy-ass bullshit back home in Harlem—because that’s what this shit is—and I can guarantee that I’ll never get caught up in this street shit again. I can promise you that. ’Cause all this right here is ridiculous. I can’t even believe I’m sitting here.”
The partner said, “But you are sitting here, Shareef. And we have fifteen homicides to solve.”
Shareef snapped, “Well, solve them then. Y’all know who pulled the triggers. And it wasn’t me. Not one of them. Y’all know that shit already.”
He said, “All I did was run for my fuckin’ life up here. So at this point, I’ve said about all I’m gon’ say, and y’all know how the story go; you can talk to my lawyer. And I’d like to make my phone call now.”
All of the conversation in the room just stopped. No one knew what else to say. But Shareef looked heated and was still irritated by the pain of his injuries that still had not been tended to.
The lead detective sighed and told his partner, “Let me talk to him for a minute.”
The Latino partner nodded and left the room.
Okay, here we go, Shareef told himself again. Now he wants to make his personal statements to another black man.
The detective sat on the edge of the table while Shareef prepared himself to hear whatever.
The detective stated in low tones, black man to black man.
He said, “I know your type, Shareef. You all think you’re above the law. And I’m not talking about a black or white thing here, because I’ve been around white boys, too. Matter of fact, the white boys are the worse. So I celebrate with a drink every time one of you assholes gets sent off to jail.”
Shareef stopped him and asked, “What exact type are you talking about?” He had an idea, he just wanted to hear the detective say it.
The detective answered, “You know what the hell I’m talking about. You smart enough. Ain’t you? You give a man a little bit more money than the next man, and he starts thinking he’s smarter than everybody, and that he deserves some type of special privilege. So when he fucks up real bad, he thinks he’s smart enough to get away with it. But he don’t want to be treated like some average street con. Oh, no, this nigga got lawyers working for him. The best lawyers in the business. And he’s on top of the pecking order. So he never do his own dirt, nor does he want to clean up his own shit afterward.”
Shareef shook his head and said, “You don’t know nothing about me, man. I’m no damn criminal. I’m not stealing from the stock exchanges. I’m not robbing the poor. I’m not taking old people’s pensions and overcharging people who don’t have health insurance for medicine. You got the wrong guy, man. I’m not him.”
The detective leaned back and nodded. What could he hit Shareef with that would stick?
He said, “You say you got a wife and kids, right? And you write books for women?”
Shareef just stared at him. “What’s your point?”
The detective asked him, “You got a girlfriend or two you see on the side?”
Shareef didn’t flinch, but he was caught off guard by it. He thought to himself, This motherfucker’s just looking for anything to get under my skin with.
Then he had a question of his own. He said with an honest face, “Well, let me ask you a question, Detective. Are police officers jealous motherfuckers before they take the job, or is that just a part of your training?”
The detective cracked a smile, chuckled and nodded.
He said, “You may get away with your bullshit in this life, Shareef, but it’s gon’ catch back up to you when you approach the gates of heaven. You just remember that somebody told you that. And all this after the community made a decent effort to clean up St. Nick’s and keep it safe.”
When he finished his private conversation, he stood up from the table and slapped his heavy hand against Shareef’s left shoulder.
“Ahh, shit,” Shareef whined and winced.
The detective stopped and told him, “Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot. You hurt yourself there, didn’t you?” And he walked up out of the room.
Shareef rubbed his badly bruised shoulder with his right hand and stared into the empty space of the room. The detective had gotten his point across. How did heaven look down on him? Shareef had to think about that himself. And he felt guilty, as if the gates would not open for him.
Nevertheless, while Shareef was still on earth, his intentions were to remain a free man. So he planned to stick to the script.
Tough Decisions
CHARLES PICKETT ARRIVED at the Harlem police station, pronto, to pick up his grandson and to make sure he was safe. He expected a fight to do so, and he was ready for it with his active NAACP membership card. He had in his mind to let the officers know that he would be back with a well-publicized lawsuit if he experienced any problems. But when he walked into the station and let the desk clerk know who he was and who he was there for, they responded with unusual speed.
“We’ll have him right out for you, Mr. Pickett.”
“Thank you,” he told them. And he waited patiently at the front for his only grandson.
Inside of a second interrogation room on the second floor, the lead detective and his partner were asking questions of T, who had been arrested at the scene of the shoot-out, while firing two automatic pistols into the air.
“So, you say you had no idea why you were there?” the lead detective asked him.
T looked up at him from his chair behind the interrogation table as if it pained him to answer. He was still pretty spotless as compared to everyone else who had been picked up at the scene.
He answered, “Yeah, like I said, we had beef.”
“Beef over what?” the partner asked him. “You had to be beefing over something. How did you all end up at the same place?”
T shook his head and muttered, “When you down for your team, you down for your team. It don’t matter what the beef is. So that’s how it went down. I just went in for my team.”
The two detectives continued to look at each other to try and figure things out.
The lead asked, “Have you ever heard of Shareef Crawford, the book writer?”
T looked up and grimaced. “Who?” It wasn’t as if he had read any of his books or anything.
The two detectives looked at each other again and shook their own heads.
The lead asked him, “So, you’re ready to go to jail for assault, illegal possession of a handgun, reckless endangerment, and murder, and all you have to say about it is that you were down for your team?”
T looked him in the eye and didn’t flinch. He answered, “All I know is that my man was killed in the beef. But I didn’t shoot nobody. I was just there for backup.”
The partner asked him, “You were only there for backup? Well, who shot the guy named Trap in the back?”
T shrugged his shoulders and said, “I don’t know who shot him. A lot of people got shot out there today. And they were both dead when I got there.”
The partner said, “And didn’t they find you with two pistols in your hands, firing away like a madman? That’s what we heard?”
T looked down at the table and said, “I just took the guns and started shooting them in the air after I got there.”
“Why?” the lead detective asked him.
T looked up at him as if he was crazy.
He said, “Because I was mad. My man had just got killed.”
Again, the officers looked at each other before they were interrupted by a knock on the door.
“Yeah,” the lead detective answered it.
A uniformed officer stuck his head into the room and said, “We got a pickup here for Shareef Crawford.”
“Who is it?” the detective asked him.
“His grandfat
her.”
The detective looked at his partner before they both walked out of the room to see for themselves.
WHEN SHAREEF STRUGGLED to walk down from the holding room with his one bag of luggage, the Latino partner spotted him heading toward his grandfather, and he asked the lead detective, “So we’re not even gonna try and hold him for a day? What if someone else ends up dead when he leaves here?”
The lead detective shook it off. “We still don’t have enough to hold him with. We know he was at both places, and we know that he ran both times. But everything else that we think we know, we still have to prove. So we have to gather up more of the guys out here who are still alive and willing to talk to us about it. And so far, that hasn’t happened.”
He said, “Now if we could charge him for being stupid and for getting involved with these people in the first place, he would definitely be staying here tonight. But until we have more concrete information, we let him go, and when we have something, we’ll go get him and bring him back.”
He added, “He’s definitely gonna have to stand trial. So he’s not going anywhere. All we need is time.”
The partner sighed. He still didn’t agree with letting Shareef go that easily, but what could he do about it? The older, veteran detective knew better.
WHEN SHAREEF CLIMBED into the back of a cab with his grandfather, he grimaced again from the stinging pain of his injuries.
His grandfather looked at him and asked, “Do I need to take you over to the hospital first?”
Shareef shook it off. “Nah, I just need some ice and some bandages. That’s all the hospital is gonna do. So I’ll be all right. I don’t have any broken bones, just bad bruises.”
His grandfather nodded to him. And as much as he admired his grandson’s adventurous nature, there came a time when enough was enough, and that time had come.
So his grandfather cleared his throat and told him, “Now, Shareef, you gon’ need to take some good advice after all of this here.”