Chapter 33 IN THE BELLY OF THE FISH

Seven years earlier

DETROIT, MICHIGAN

A U R E L I A N O

I stare at Abdul's lifeless eyes, silently willing him to get up, but he's crossed another realm where the living can never reach. I look down at my hands that are now sticky with his blood, wondering how it all came down to this.

Sirens begin to blare closer. Closer still.

Run.

But my body is on a lockdown. My bones feel like liquid. They've turned into jello.

They've gone revenge-mode on me.

I can't move even if I wanted to.

The sirens are much closer now. I hear the sound of a car approaching just as I see the red and blue strobe lights from a police car flashing through the curtains.

The silence that follows is off-putting. I fleetingly think it's the silence before the storm.

Noise outside the door signals incoming steps.

They appear suddenly, tanked up in the dark blue police uniform, and armed to the teeth.

There are two of them.

They make a sweep of the scene with their eyes. The judging starts . . . and the condemnation begins.

No words are needed.

Young black man --- excuse me, nigger --- crouched beside a man, a muslim at that. And a gun lying very close to them . . . with finger prints all over it. My fingerprints.

Go figure.

I watch as one of them carefully walks to Abdul --- eyes trained on me --- stoops and checks his pulse, and then lifts his head up and flicks his eyes to his partner, whose eyes never leave mine. He shakes his head and I watch as the mouth of the other one curls up.

As he closes Abdul's eyes, the other circles me warily, hands on his holster, ready to burst a move. "Take it easy, boy. If you so much as blink, your head will get splattered all over the floor beside that man you just killed."

Called it.

Condemnation without a fair trial.

But I can't move even if I wanted to. I'm still in shock. Seems like I'm watching things from afar. Everything seems so real, yet surreal.

He puts a hand on my shoulder and in one swift movement, slams me to the ground, and my mouth eats dust. I close my eyes as pain sears into me, but I don't utter a cry. I don't struggle. As I open my eyes again, I see Abdul's motionless body, and thoughts of what happened replay in my mind like a bad grade C movie.

I hear the whish of metal before cuffs are shackled around my hands that are twisted unnaturally tight behind my back. Still, not a squeak comes out of me.

I deserve this. I deserve whatever maltreatment is being meted out to me.

At least I'm alive, but Abdul will never see the light of day again.

He begins to read me the Miranda rights, but my mind is in total shutdown mode.

You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney . . .

Tracy.

I need to let her know what's going on.

She'll know what to do.

Suddenly, I snap out of the stupor I'm in.

"I need to call someone." I struggle against the iron-clad hold of the policeman dragging me outside the door.

"You'll have a right to one phone call from jail. Until then, shut up and act like you don't exist."

My mind begins to skitter in different directions, wondering how it came to this.

"That's my hijo. What's wrong? Please don't take him away, please." Mama suddenly materialises beside me and begins to push at the policeman holding me.

Oh mother, everything that can go wrong, already has.

"Ma'am, he's under arrest for allegedly murdering someone. If you want to see him, please come to the police station."

I hear a thud as mama falls to the ground, her soft wails wrenching my heart into two. I try to twist around, to reach out to her. Show her a bit of comfort that I don't have myself, but the policeman is having none of it.

When we came from Sayulita, I never in my wildest dreams thought I'd be on the recieving end of the law.

All the plans I had with Tracy to find out who The boss is has all gone burst now.

And the drugs I've been peddling . . . Shit! I hope they never found out about that.

"Move your black ass, boy. We don't have all night." The policeman roughly pushes me into the backseat of the police car, not caring if I hit my head against the roof on my way in.

There's another guy in the backseat --- a white guy. He grins and tilts his head in welcome at me, but I remain silent, chosing instead to look outside.

"I need a light, please." He taps on the roof of the car.

A light for what, I vaguely wonder. To set the car on fire?

I'm startled to see him holding a stick of cigarette. That's when I notice with rising surprise his hands aren't in cuffs like mine are. The policeman who cuffed me, pokes his head through the window and snaps open a lighter. Once the cigarette catches, he drags on it deeply and the tip flares orange. He throws his head back and exhales smoke.

I shake my head and face my side of the window once again, my mind immediately replaying the words of Bob the cat, one afternoon, during a sit out with him.

There are three types of people in America --- White, minority and Trash.

By trash, I mean black people, that is, The negro community. If by some ill luck they happen to be on the recieving end of the police, I can assure you it's definitely not going to be in their favour.

It was a warning of sorts. Something for me to think about so as to stay under the radar of the police. And look what I did, I walked headlong into their net.

"Yo! What'd you do?" I feel a tap on my hand and I mentally groan.

Can't this entitled white brat leave me the fuck alone?

I'm not in the mood for polite conversation, so I lift a shoulder and bring it down again.

As the confined space fills with the pungent smell of tobacco, I hear him chuckling. "Man, you must have done something real bad to have your wrists cuffed at the back. I beat up my girl 'cause I saw her with another man." He giggles softly. "Broke her jaw and sent her to the I.C.U. Serves the bitch right." He giggles again, his time much longer than the first.

This dude is on another level of cray cray. He's tripping. How can he brag about sending his girlfriend to the hospital, all because he caught her cheating on him with another guy.

This is why I don't fucking date. That shit messes with your brain.

"So what'd you do, you can tell me." He asks, more insistently this time.

Without missing a beat, I fix a stern gaze on him, and in my best Morgan Freeman imitation voice, say. "I killed a man."

His eyes immediately become wide and frightened. He looks like he's about to piss his pants.

Not so tough now, are you Mr. entitled scumbag.

He recoils from me like I'm some poisnous vine he needs to steer clear of.

I don't expect what he does next.

"GET ME AWAY FROM THIS NIGGER, PLEASE! HE'S GONNA KILL ME TOO." He begins to shriek like a cornered rat.

As I lean back and try to tune out the voice of the brat still shrieking away,, I close my eyes and play back what led to me sitting in the back seat of a police car with my hands cuffed behind my back.

"Stop your ruckus or I'll cuff you too." One of the policeman yells to the brat, and that shuts him up immediately.

The sirens begin wailing, and I realise we've begun moving. Suddenly, I see Mama's reflection in the side mirror as she begins running after the car.

This time, I let the tears flow freely.

"Turn your face to the left." The disinterested voice of the booking officer rings out clearly in the busy police station as he takes my picture.

There's another clear meaning to his words . . .

Hurry up, and let me book your black criminal ass, 'cause it'll soon be time for me to go home to my family, where I can eat a nice hot meal and put my feet up and watch t.v., while you stay here locked behind bars. So glad I'm not you.

Yes officer, right now I wouldn't want to be me, either.

As my finger prints are taken, a man dressed in a sleek dark blue suit comes out through a door with a name written in gold lettering on it. Immediately the other officers see him, they snap to attention, while a few who were initially lounging around their cubicles, begin acting like the world's most busy officers.

"Round up all the suspects for a line up, now!" He points to one of the policemen and he jumps up immediately.

"Yes, chief. Right away!"

I'd heard about line-up's at police stations and I gotta tell you --- it's like sucking the very essence out of your soul. It takes a special type of gangster to make you not feel, not flinch, and not think your freedom is being stripped from you, standing in front of a mirror and hoping the person or persons behind it don't choose you as a liable suspect. At that point in time, they hold the keys to your freedom . . . or lockdown.

I hear sometimes people get Id'd wrongly, and they get to serve punishments they never even got to commit.

I watch as a few black boys are led, most with their hands cuffed behind their backs, all because the officer couldn't be bothered to remove them.

Yup! It definitely takes a certain level of hood to stand in a line-up.

"You!"The officer appointed for the line-up, points to me. Join them!"

My heart sinks. Please! No!

"Pass! Not done with him yet." The booking officer informs him, as he busies himself collecting my wallet and phone, and bagging them in a Ziploc bag.

I breathe a sigh of relief as the door to the screen closes.

The next few hours are torture. It's something I wouldn't even wish on Hitler, assuming he was alive. I'm taken straight to the interrogation room, and the questioning starts. Knowing full well a lawyer needs to be present, they go ahead anyway, and badger me with questions, forgetting my rights of having one present while doing so.

At a point they turn the tables on me, almost forcing me to agree to the murder of Abdul.

"Is it, or isn't it true, that the guy was lying dead beside you?" The bulldog of an interrogation officer persists.

"Yes it was, but ----"

"So that means you killed him."

"I didn't kill ----"

"Ballistics reports says differently." He opens a long brown envelope and brings out a piece of paper. "This here says your fingerprints were all over the gun."

Same as Abdul's. But I keep mum and act dumb.

The officer stoops to my level on the chair, and it seems I'm able to see into his heart where it's all black and soulless. He points a meaty finger at me. "So you killed him?"

"I need to make a phone call now."

But my plea falls on deaf ears, as it's done in the past one hour.

"So let's start from the beginning once more." He moves back and begins to circle me. "You say you got into your house and saw Abdul there. He said some things that rubbed you the wrong way. You got angry, pulled a gun on him, and then . . . bam! You shot him."

"I don't even have a g ----"

"Then someone else did it. An accomplice, maybe?" He looks at me meaningfully, searching for a reaction from me.

Suddenly, something in me snaps.

"If you're trying to get a rise out of me, it's not gonna happen." I shake my head. "I'll have you know I prefer to get all my rises from the opposite gender. Im talking 'bout women."

I sit back and smile widely at the murderous expression on his face.

"Why, you little ----"

The door suddenly opens, cutting off what he was about to say. I see a flash of blonde hair, and I've gotta tell you I've never been as excited to see Tracy as I am right now. She flashes me a smile, but throws officer bulldog a mean one.

"Inspector Malone, FBI, I'll be taking over from here." And she holds up her badge for him to see.

"But this isn't a federal case, officer. The paper work isn't even rea-----"

"Here!" She holds a file out to him. He archs a brow, harrumphs, and begins walking off.

"You seem to have forgotten something, officer." She looks at him meaningfully, but he raises a brow and acts dumb, so she sighs and points to my hands. "Please uncuff him. We don't treat suspects like criminals, unless they've already been tried in a court of law."

I know he wants to say something as he turns round and looks at her, but he thinks better of it and retraces his steps to me, brings out a key from his pocket, and uncuffs me with a grim look on his face.

Immediately he leaves, Tracy gives me a look that I don't quite understand. She sits in the metal chair opposite me and brings out a sheet of paper from her hand bag. "Mr. Aureliano, my name is Tracy Malone, and I'll be the one handling your case from now on. We found this at your place." She taps the sheet of paper, and I look down at it, only to see her own handwriting scrawled on it.

Just play along!

I try my best to suppress the smirk finding it's way to my face.

"Yes ma'am, it is."

She nods, looking thoughtful.

"Can you lead me up to what happened to you right when you got into your house and saw Abdul?"

And so I begin recounting the story, for almost the hundredth time, word for word, exactly the same thing I told bulldog officer, but unlike him, Tracy smiles encouragingly at intervals, and doesn't try to make me trip over my words.

"So I have a picture of the gun Abdul used in threatening you. Let's take a look at it." She brings out an envelope from her bag, opens it and slides it across the table to me.

Tell me the truth, did you kill Abdul?

"Tell me, Mr. Aureliano, is this the gun Abdul was holding?"

"No, ma'am!" I shake my head, already exhausted.

Tracy nods her head wonderingly. "That will be all for now, Mr. Aureliano, we will talk in the morning about getting you a law---"

The door opens and in walks officer bulldog. "We've got a witness."

A who?

He smiles triumphantly, and opens the door wide for someone.

I try to remember if I left the door open after I went in and saw Abdul sitting down, but my brain is scrambled from all the stress.

Lifting up my hands to the sides of my head, I try to ease the headache against my temples, when a voice has me whipping my head up.

"Hello Aureliano, it's so good to see you again."

Shock spirals through me as I see the woman standing in front of me. Seeing her now after six months comes as something of a shock to me.

Her hair is blonde, once again, and . . .