Dax was standing in front of the little Old Fourth Ward house Ras had inherited from his grandmother when she died. Jamison knew the house well. He’d helped Ras install new hardwood floors for Ras’s grandmother one summer.
“That’s a reported seventy-nine semi-automatic rifles found in the basement of drug kingpin Glenn Roberson’s—aka Ras Baruti’s—home here on Boulevard,” Dax said to the camera sternly. “Police have been clearing the place out since a bust that started at about three a.m. this morning.”
“Drug kingpin? What the fuck?” Jamison said.
Val shook her head. “Crazy-ass motherfucker—”
Dax started speaking again and Jamison and Leaf quieted Val with annoyed hand signals. He was cradling an earpiece to his ear and speaking slowly to suggest he was giving the latest reports from the wire.
“This just in—Roberson’s estranged wife, the mother of the two children he has custody of, was apparently the one who tipped police off to the arsenal found here in this small community,” Dax added. “Karena, the wife, told officers, and I quote, ‘He is a dangerous man.’ ” Dax grimaced gravely. “Such a shame. The people of this great city are truly better off now that this monster is off the street. Let’s hope our mayor makes sure it’s permanent.” He snapped out of his mood quickly and pepped up. “Back to you in the studio, Bob.”
Jamison grabbed the remote from Val as the image on the television shifted to the anchorman and pressed mute.
“I can’t believe this shit,” Jamison said. “A drug kingpin?”
“It’s already all over the Internet,” Leaf revealed. “There are even some pictures of Ras training boys with the guns at some militia camp on the coast. Have you been there?”
“It’s not a militia camp,” Jamison said. “And since when is owning guns illegal in Georgia?”
“It’s not,” Leaf said, “but it doesn’t look too good for someone facing an intent-to-distribute charge. Jamison, they’re trying to build a case against him. The feds want him.”
“The feds?”
“Good, let them carry his ass off to prison, good riddance,” Val said. She’d met Ras a few times at the office and had decided she didn’t like the way he looked at her.
“Leave it alone, Val. You don’t know him,” Jamison said. “This isn’t like him. None of this is.”
“Won’t matter much longer,” Leaf interjected. “It won’t matter at all.”
“They’re lynching him,” Jamison said.
“What? Lynching him why? For what?” Val asked. “Please. Everyone’s talking about what he does in the community. Weed and white girls? He ain’t no Martin Luther King. Why would anyone want anything to do with him?”
Leaf looked at Jamison.
“Something has to be done,” Jamison said.
“I know you have a lot riding on him, but I don’t think you should get involved right now—not if you don’t have anything to do with it,” Leaf advised. “It’s a watch-and-wait game right about now. You get in the rink and whoever’s after him will come after you.”
There was a sobering quiet as Jamison thought through everything Leaf had said.
And then Jamison’s phone rang and clanked on the counter pulling all eyes to it suspiciously as if the “who” that Leaf had been talking about was about to teleport right through the little technological device. It rang in the silence two more times before Jamison looked at the screen to see the word MAMA and the little pudgy woman’s face smiling in a picture she’d uploaded to the phone herself.
Jamison answered with the voice of someone who was relieved.
“I done called you five times. Called the house too. Bet that Val was there just looking at the phone ring.” All this without saying hello.
“Mama, I was going to call you back when I got out of the shower.”
Val quickly rolled her eyes and turned away from the conversation, busying herself with something on the kitchen counter.
“I don’t hear no shower going right now,” Mrs. Taylor said.
“That’s because I’m not in the shower.”
“I don’t care if you’re in the shower, boy!” This declaration was so loud Leaf could hear it.
“Mama, what do you want?” Jamison pushed.