The Glamorous Life 2: All That Glitters Isn't Gold Read online

  Compton’s eyes were the size of pancakes when the deadly fireworks erupted. “Maybe we should try to get out of the window.”

  Confused, but trying to remain calm as best she could, Calliope clutched the biggest of the three blades she’d hoarded. All she kept saying in her head was the Twenty-third Psalm.

  An agonizing scream pierced the walls of the bedroom as if they were paper-thin. Then all of the sudden, it stopped. Calliope knew that the wail had belonged to Big Jack. She also knew that things hadn’t ended well for him. Big Jack was dead. And if it was his time to go, nobody could control that. Wherever his fate took him, maybe he deserved it for the roles he’d played in all the lives he’d destroyed with the poison he sold. Whatever he did was illegal and worse to people who didn’t pay him. She wasn’t condoning it, but at least he allowed her and Compton to stay in a dry house and they got to eat whenever they wanted, and that was more than their good-for-nothing mother did for them. At the end of the day, in a weird way, he did look out for them.

  But Calliope didn’t have an extra moment to dwell on Big Jack’s demise, or on her mother, for that matter. Her only concern was that she had to keep her and Compton alive and safe, somehow, some way.

  Calliope prayed. “God, please help us.” She put her back to the wall next to the closet door, gripping the knife so hard in her fist that she thought it might snap.

  She prayed. Maybe they would take the drugs and money and leave them alone. Then she thought again: they were witnesses to all this mayhem. But not really, because they hadn’t actually seen anything or anyone’s faces. What incentive did these people have to leave them alive? Maybe they would feel some kind of pity that Compton and she were only kids. Her mind ran wild wondering, and begging God for answers on what she should do next.

  Then, with her heart pounding so hard that she thought it was trying to jump out of her chest, she was never happier or more relieved to hear the word, “Police!”

  Thank God, she thought. He was always right on time.

  “Cease fire,” she heard a voice say.

  “Get on the floor! Everybody on the floor!” she heard them repeat a couple of times, and then footsteps were coming down the hall.

  Once the door was ajar, she made their presence known.

  “Don’t shoot!” she cried out. “We’re in the bedroom. Don’t shoot us. It’s only me and my lil’ brother.”

  She wanted to shout, “Thank you, Jesus, God, Jehovah, or Allah.” They were all watching out for them. They weren’t going to die … and then suddenly it occurred to her, what if it really wasn’t the police? Oh, shit!

  3

  “Hold your fire! I repeat, hold your fire.” Brad “Rusty” Cage gave the order through his two-way walkie-talkie. He was the lead officer of the TNT squad and was the last member of his team to breach the premises. One glance at the dead man sprawled out on the floor in a pool of his own blood was enough for Rusty to ID him.

  He kneeled down and looked up with a wide smile of victory. “Yup, that’s him.” The corpse belonged to the man they came there to arrest. “Good Ole Johnathan ‘Big Jack’ Till.” He shook his head. “A coldhearted piece of shit, who had been selling to a lot of key players throughout the city.” He felt that this was definitely a milestone in his career and knew for sure that his superiors would be pleased at the efforts of his team under his supervision. They had wanted to catch Big Jack for a long time for drug trafficking, distribution, and murder. Although he had some other little petty charges, for the life of them, they could never really catch him with his pants down.

  As Rusty stood over the body, he shook his head. “I always knew this cocksucker would go out in a blaze of got-damn glory.” He had respect for the bullet-ridden corpse lying there.

  The rest of his eight-man team continued to search the house room by room while he gloated about what he felt was a major accomplishment, a dead dope dealer’s body. “Well, fellas, I guess this was one way to get this motherfucker off the streets.”

  TNT was an elite tactical squad put together by the government to aid in the “war on drugs.” Some people considered the squad’s efforts an invaluable asset to the city and its communities.

  Others called it a waste of the taxpayers’ hard-earned money. The people could never understand why the governor would rather have billions spent on arresting small-time drug dealers and users, who usually got a smack and were back on the streets in no time doing the same thing, than on better uses, like schools, community centers, programs, and drug rehabilitation centers.

  They claim it is a way to use the smaller fish to get the bigger fish but it’s only politics because the news doesn’t show the cartel getting arrested.

  The search of the house went quickly, but methodically. “All clear,” came a call from the master bedroom over the radio. Bathroom: “Clear.” Den: “Clear.” Kitchen: “Clear.”

  The entire house was covered by the special team in a matter of seconds, leaving the room where they’d heard the “call for help” for last.

  It was protocol to be sure there were no hidden surprises—like perps with automatic weapons—before engaging with supposed nonhostiles.

  Trained to go and ready for whatever was about to go down, good or bad, sixteen trained eyes were focused on the remaining unsearched room, guns at the ready position in case the voice, who had tried to identify herself as a young girl, was being deceptive. Just last month a member of their team was ambushed by what was supposed to be an innocent, the sister of the suspect’s wife. Mistaking her for a victim or a bystander, he ended up with two hollow-points to the chest for letting his guard down, a lesson they all learned from firsthand and would never forget. So, for sure every precaution would be taken in this situation.

  Rusty issued the command to Calliope and her brother, “Come out slowly, and put your hands where we can see them.”

  After a brief moment—the door to the bedroom creaked open.

  * * *

  Calliope had never been so nervous in her entire life. She held her brother’s small, trembling hand and stepped out of the room that had virtually been their prison for the past three months.

  “My name is Captain Cage,” the team leader said in a practiced, calming voice, “but my friends call me Rusty. Good Ole Rusty, and we’re going to be friends.” He tried to come off as nice as he could. Then he asked, “Is there anyone else in the room?”

  Shaking her head, Calliope said, “No.” But guns still rushed their bedroom anyway. One of them shouted: “All clear in here, Captain!”

  For the first time since entering the house, the TNT squad relaxed, somewhat.

  To Calliope, the air in the room smelled similar to the way it did after the big fireworks display at the Fourth of July festival she attended last year. She turned up her nose because the smell was getting in her throat. She told Compton to put his shirt over his nose, to try to camouflage the smell, and she did the same thing.

  The police that called himself Rusty asked her name.

  “C-Calliope,” she said, wishing so bad that something could ease her nervousness. “This is my brother, Compton.” She gestured to her brother with one hand while holding her shirt with the other.

  When Rusty extended his hand toward Compton, the two were in total shock. Compton’s hand disappeared into Rusty’s. “Nice to meet you, Compton.

  “Gunpowder, that’s what that smell is. It’s an awful smell, and we are going to get you out of here,” he said, acting as if he was trying to be helpful, but she didn’t trust him. Something about his shifty eyes made her nervous.

  One of the members of the task squad radioed for a coroner. He recited the address into the headset, then tried to cover Big Jack’s frozen body with a blanket before she or Compton noticed, but he was about two minutes too late.

  The sight of Big Jack’s body covered in a pool of blood would be a picture that she would never forget. Big Jack didn’t look as mean, dead, or even as stressed as he’d been alive,
Calliope thought. For some reason he looked like he was at peace. She wondered if she was crazy to think that he was okay with being dead. I guess you had to be; you didn’t really have a choice. At least his last few minutes of living, he did some good things and maybe God will overlook all of the bad things he did. Then she thought again: God blesses fools and babies, so Big Jack might be okay. Big Jack would like to think he wasn’t no fool, but in Calliope’s eyes he was a fool for the way he went out, gunning at the cops.

  Rusty asked, “Where’s your mother at?” in an attempt to divert her attention back to him.

  Calliope was in a trance, watching Big Jack’s cooling blood slick away from his lifeless corpse.

  “Shouldn’t the blood have stopped since he’s dead?” she asked.

  “Your mother…,” Rusty said again when Calliope hadn’t responded to his initial question. “Do you know?” Calliope didn’t respond. “Do you know where she is?”

  She was still studying the horrific scene.

  Pulling her eyes away from the blanket that covered the man who’d acted as their house warden but their protector and provider as well, Calliope thought about Rusty’s question for a beat.

  “Probably shopping I guess,” she said. “Not really sure.” Shelly didn’t share her daily itinerary with them. Oftentimes they went days without even seeing her or speaking to her even when they were in the same house, but Calliope didn’t bother to share that part with Rusty.

  “What about any other family?” Rusty inquired. “A grandmother? Aunt? Cousin? Uncle?”

  Calliope shook her head. “We have no one,” she said nonchalantly.

  Their mother, Shelly, was originally from New Orleans. If they had any family other than her, neither child knew of their existence.

  “It’s just us,” Calliope said to Rusty.

  At age thirty-two, Rusty was known to his colleagues as The Machine. Not because of the tireless work ethic he gave to the job, but more for his emptiness when it came to showing emotion.

  “This is what’s going to happen,” said Rusty matter-of-factly, with the intent of trying to get the kids to open up to him. “There’s no need to hold out on additional family because you think they are going to get in trouble or you are going to be able to stay with your mother. Not happening, at all.” He shook his head and his pointer finger. “Unh-uh, no! Because even when your mother returns, she’ll be arrested and booked for conspiracy to distribute cocaine, countless gun charges, and two counts of reckless endangerment of a child.” He walked back and forth, and then slid his palm over the crew cut that used to be a mane of curly blond hair. He put his police-issued black baseball-style cap back on. “Being that you have no other family, we’re going to have to have someone take you to Social Services.”

  Those words, “social services,” tore through Calliope like bullets, but she tried to show no emotion. “Then what?”

  “If a temporary guardian doesn’t come, then it’s farewell to this life you once knew, with family and friends. You’ll be put in a home until you’re eighteen.”

  The thought of being separated from her brother caused her stomach to pancake. This can’t be happening, she thought. But the dour expression on Rusty’s face convinced her that it was and there was nothing either of them could do to change it.

  Compton, aware of the implications, squeezed Calliope’s hand for dear life.

  “You said you were our friend. A friend wouldn’t do that. You a liar. Big Jack always said don’t trust no police, ever. I don’t trust you,” Compton said.

  Though those were her sentiments exactly, Calliope squeezed her brother’s hand tight, wanting him to shut the heck up, because she wanted to try to appeal to Rusty to get him to work something out. But she knew that the ego-driven high-strung cop didn’t give a damn, and helping two black kids out was the last thing on his mind.

  For a split second she thought about just grabbing her brother’s hand and running, but the place was surrounded and there would be no getaway, so basically at this moment, they were pretty much fucked and there was nothing that she could do about it.

  4

  The morning heat wave made the old-school mercurial thermometer look as though it were blushing, the temperature already stretching well into the nineties. Moisture in the air made it difficult to capture a restorative breath, so oppressive it almost felt as if one were trying to breathe from the bottom of a hot tub.

  Just an average day in the heart of one of the most beautiful cities on the East Coast—but beauty was in the eyes of the beholder.

  From Calliope’s eyes, as the uniformed officer led Compton and her up a set of concrete steps that were hot enough to fry eggs to their grim fate, things couldn’t have been more horrific. Yet, even in the grips of this tropical furnace, from Calliope’s perspective, the world was coldhearted and frigid.

  Once they reached the apex of the concrete hot plate, the officer held a steel door open for them. Then they went through a heavy smoked-glass door, with words on it that read SOCIAL SERVICES. Inside was as cold as the people Calliope suspected worked at a place like this—a place that began the process of shuffling disenfranchised children around like playing cards, inanimate objects. As far as she was concerned, the Social Services department was nothing but a glorified agent for the foster homes, where kids were warehoused for money with, nine times out of ten, folks who could really give a damn about the children’s well-being. She had heard ten times more bad stories about foster kids than she had heard good ones—and most all of them had one common denominator: it was all about the money.

  “Have a seat.” The officer pointed them to the plastic chairs that were lined up against a toxic-green wall.

  “What’s going to happen now?” Compton asked his sister once the officer had hustled off to find someone to take the kids off his hands.

  Calliope hadn’t the foggiest idea of what would happen next. Well, she had a few ideas from the things she had seen in the movies and TV shows. And what one of her friends at school had told her about being a ward of the state … none of it was good.

  She hugged her brother, absorbing his warmth, realizing that this may be one of the last hugs she’d be able to give him. She’d never lied to him before and she didn’t want to start now. “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said, “but I do know if I can help, hook or crook, that I won’t let anyone split us apart.” And she meant it that she would do everything in her power to make sure she hadn’t lied now. Though she didn’t have a juice card, an ally, or any power there. She knew that she wasn’t a bad person and God was on her side and all the unnecessary stuff that she’d been through in her sixteen hard years of her life, maybe he’d have some mercy on them now.

  And “everything in her power” meant anything.

  “What if they try to—” She knew what her brother was about to say, but she cut him off before he could even finish.

  “Well, you know what Oprah said, that you shouldn’t put stuff in the universe that you don’t want to happen, because you might bring it to existence. So don’t even think it, Compton, okay? And I won’t either, because if you think it, then it could come to life.”

  Although that’s what she told Compton, as much as she tried, she couldn’t erase those negative thoughts from her mind. And it didn’t help that minutes went by at the pace of an arthritic snail with bunions. After what felt like a lifetime, but was actually more like two hours, they were finally seen. Apparently the folks at Social Services weren’t all that social, and the services was tricked the hell up. She and Compton were in for two different ones. The only destination was that the known source of ass cramps were in front of a faux wooden desk. Behind the desk sat an antique white woman sporting a half smile that was not only as fake as the imitation wood but twice as stiff.

  “Hello.” The lady’s pearly whites were funny-looking. Probably weren’t real. “My name is Mrs. Daisy,” she said. “From what I’ve been told, the two of you have found your
selves in somewhat of a pickle.”

  Compton turned to his big sister, face twisted into a mask of flummox, wondering what the old woman was talking about. Even he knew it was impossible to be inside a pickle. “I’ll explain it to you later, but it’s just a matter of speech,” Calliope whispered to her little brother.

  “I’ve made a few calls,” Mrs. Daisy continued. “Along with quite a bit of digging on my computer, old records and everything else, trying to get ahold on this situation for you two children. And”—she took an exaggerated look at her computer monitor—“it doesn’t seem to be too many people we can contact concerning the two of you.”

  Tell me something I don’t know, Calliope thought. Hell, if we had real family, we wouldn’t be here, lady.

  “In the State of Florida anyway. And the few we looked up in New Orleans weren’t too interested in your predicament.”

  The Grim Reaper couldn’t have been any more unsympathetic than this woman was.

  A chill raced up Calliope’s spine, a possible warning of the impending bad news.

  Mrs. Daisy appeared to sense Calliope’s expression and dredged up a spark of concern. “However”—she put her pointer finger up—“I was able to discover one local relative.” Calliope, with raised eyebrows, quickly got attentive because she didn’t know who in the hell that could’ve been, but at least it was one fighting chance they had of staying together.

  Mrs. Daisy asked if they knew a woman named Mabel Moon. The name didn’t ring a bell at all. “Well, she’s your great-grandmother,” the lady told them. “On your father’s side. She’s up in her years—but who isn’t.” Mrs. Daisy cracked her first authentic smile. “Ms. Moon has agreed to take temporary custody of you two kids.”

  They smiled and almost jumped out of their chairs so fast, they nearly knocked them over. God was good, for everything that she had ever did, it was finally coming back around. Karma was a wonderful thing, and Calliope was finally glad that someone in a high place was looking after them.