“How y’all doin’?” he said.
“We’re fine,” Lester said. “Just going back to work.”
“You the po-po now?”
Lester laughed like that was the biggest joke he’d heard in a week.
“Nah, man, we’re with the paper.”
Lester nonchalantly put his camera bag in the trunk and then came around to the door where the young man was leaning. He didn’t move.
“Gotta go, bro. Can I get by you there?”
I was on the other side of the car by my door. I felt my insides tighten. If there was going to be a problem, it was going to happen right now. I could see others in the same gang uniform standing back on the shaded side of the parking lot, ready to be called in if needed. I had no doubt that they all had weapons either on their person or hidden nearby.
The young man leaning on our car didn’t move. He folded his arms and looked at Lester.
“What you talking to moms about up there, bro?”
“Alonzo Winslow,” I said from my side. “We don’t think he killed anybody and we’re looking into it.”
The young man pushed off the car so he could turn and look at me.
“That right?”
I nodded.
“We’re working on it. We just started and that’s why we came to talk to Mrs. Sessums.”
“Then she tell you about the tax.”
“What tax?”
“Yeah, she pay a tax. Anybody in business ’round here payin’ a tax.”
“Really?”
“The street tax, man. See, any newspaper people that come ’round here to talk about Zo Slow has to pay the street tax. I can take it for you now.”
I nodded.
“How much?”
“It be fitty dollah t’day.”
I’d expense it and see if Dorothy Fowler raised hell. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my money. I had fifty-three dollars and quickly extracted two twenties and a ten.
“Here,” I said.
I moved to the back of the car and the young man moved away from the driver’s door. As I paid him Lester got in and started the car.
“We have to go,” I said as I handed over the money.
“Yeah, you do. You come back and the tax is double, Paperboy.”
“Fine.”
I should have let it go at that but I couldn’t leave without asking the obvious question.
“Doesn’t it matter to you that I’m working on getting Zo out?”
The young man raised his hand and rubbed his jaw as though giving the question some serious thought. I saw the letters F-U-C-K tattooed across his knuckles. My eyes went to his other hand, hanging limp at his side. I saw D-A-5-0 tattooed across the other ridge of knuckles and I got my answer. Fuck the police. With sentiment like that on his hands, it was no wonder he would extort those trying to help a fellow member of the crew. It was everybody for himself down here.
The kid laughed and turned away without answering. He’d wanted me to see his hands.
I got into the car and Lester backed out of the space. I turned around and saw the young man who had just extorted fifty dollars from us doing the Crip walk. He bent down and used the bills I had just given him to pantomime a quick polish of his shoes, then straightened up and did the heel-toe-heel-toe shuffle the Crips called their own. His fellow bangers over in the shade whooped it up as he approached.
I didn’t feel the tension in my neck start to dissolve until we got back to the 110 and headed north. Then I put the fifty bucks out of my mind and started to feel good as I reviewed what had been accomplished during the trip. Wanda Sessums had agreed to cooperate fully in the investigation of the Denise Babbit–Alonzo Winslow case. Using my cell phone, she had called Winslow’s public defender, Jacob Meyer, and told him that, as the defendant’s guardian, she was authorizing my total access to all documents and evidence relating to the case. Meyer reluctantly agreed to meet with me the next morning between hearings in the downtown juvenile hall. He didn’t really have a choice. I had told Wanda that if Meyer didn’t cooperate, there were plenty of private attorneys who would handle the case for free once they knew there were headlines coming. Meyer’s choice was either to work with me and get some media attention for himself or give the case up.
Wanda Sessums had also agreed to get me into Sylmar Juvenile Hall so that I could interview her grandson. My plan was to use the public defender’s case file to become familiar with the case before I sat down to talk to Winslow. It would be the key interview of the piece I would write. I wanted to know all there was to know before I talked to him.
All in all, it had been a good trip—the fifty-dollar tariff notwithstanding—and I was thinking about how I was going to present my plan to Prendergast. Then Lester interrupted my thoughts.
“I know what you’re doing,” he said.
“What am I doing?” I said.
“That washerwoman might be too dumb and the lawyer too worried about headlines to see it but I’m not.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re comin’ on like you’re the white knight that’s gonna prove the kid innocent and set him free. But you’re going to do the exact opposite of that, man. You’re going to use them to get inside the case to get all the juicy details, then you’re going to write a story about how a sixteen-year-old kid becomes a stone-cold killer. Hell, getting an innocent man free is a damn newspaper cliché nowadays. But gettin’ inside the mind of a young killer like that? Tellin’ how society lets that kind of thing happen? That’s Pulitzer territory, bro.”
I didn’t say anything at first. Lester had me cold. I put together a defense and then responded.
“All I promised her was that I would investigate the case. Where it goes it goes, that’s all.”
“Bullshit. You’re using her because she’s too ignorant to know it. The kid will probably be just as stupid and go along, too. And we all know the lawyer will trade the kid for headlines. You really think you’re going to win the big one with this, don’t you?”
I shook my head and didn’t respond. I could feel my face getting red and I turned to look out the window.
“Hey, but it’s okay,” Lester said.
I turned and looked back at him and I read his face.
“What do you want, Sonny?”
“A piece, that’s all. We work it as a team. I go with you up to Sylmar and to court and I do all the photo work. You fill out a photo request, you put my name on it. Makes it a better package anyway. Especially for submissions.”
Meaning submissions to Pulitzer and other prize judges.
“Look,” I said, “I haven’t even told my editor about this yet. You are jumping way ahead. I don’t even know if they’ ll—”
“They’ll love it and you know it. They’re going to cut you loose to work it and they might as well cut me loose too. Who knows, maybe we both get a prize. They can’t lay you off if you bring home a Pulitzer.”
“You’re talking about the ultimate long shot, Sonny. You’re crazy. Besides that, I already got laid off. I’ve got twelve days and then I could give a shit about the Pulitzer Prize. I’m out of here.”
I saw his eyes register surprise at the news of my layoff. Then he nodded as he factored the new information into his ongoing scenario.