They didn’t argue, they turned off the TV, put up the controllers, came over and carefully gave me a kiss on the cheek without disturbing Alonzo, and went off to bed.

I started to get up. Dad waved me back down. He sat on the couch, one too low and difficult for him to extricate himself with his bad knees. He stared at me. I didn’t want to look at him. There was no alternative. Finally, I said, “Tomorrow, five o’clock. Marie will be here at three to help get things ready.”

Saying the words made it real.

My mind spun out far ahead, categorizing and prioritizing all the things that had to be done. I had to go back to the house on Alabama and 117th to dig up the money. Track down Jumbo for the balance. The latter might take more time than I had available. We would need the money. How could we house and clothe and feed eight kids without it? Marie knew nothing about the money and planned on living by both of us getting jobs. But then who would watch the kids? No, I wouldn’t leave without the money.

Dad’s eyes welled with tears, a sight that kick-started my waterworks as well. We’d talked and talked about it before. I wanted him to follow along in a year or so when the heat died down. But he was the one against it. He said it was too dangerous, and if the Feds ever discovered where we were, the kids would be in jeopardy of going back to where they’d come from, an absolutely untenable environment. “Besides,” he’d said, “I’ll be dead and gone long before all the hubbub dies down.” Something I didn’t want to believe. Dad had always been there for me, to imagine him gone, well, it just wouldn’t be the same world.

At the same time, I knew these kids had been keeping him going, keeping him alive. Take them away and he’d wither like a flower without water.

I got up, went over, and offered him my hand. He took it. I pulled him up and hugged him with Alonzo between us. After a long time I stepped back and handed him Alonzo, kissed them both, turned, and left.

Chapter Twenty-Four

I’d made one pass on Alabama to check for problems, like extra eyes that didn’t belong. The red light from a patrol car came on in the rearview at Mona Boulevard and Imperial Highway. For a brief second I thought, no, that can’t be for me, that if I just gingerly pull over, they’d go on by. It can’t be for me. Not now. It would ruin every damn thing. The next thought was to run. Push the accelerator to the floor. Hit it. Drive it like I’d stolen it. I’d been there before on the other side, and knew that I might be able to outrun the cop car. But not their radio, not their helicopter. I pulled over and hoped I could bullshit my way out of it. Time rolled by in long successive increments as I waited for the cops to approach. They were running a make on the car that was cold. I’d paid cash for it and made sure everything on it was in good working order before I’d laid it off in the back of the manse. The only thing they could’ve pulled me over for was DWB, driving while black. They say it didn’t ever happen. I knew better and had done it myself while on the prowl for crooks.

Finally, the strong spotlight beam broke, it shadowed as the cops approached, one on each side, standard procedure. The one on the passenger side knocked on the window. I leaned over and rolled it down. “License and registration.”

I opened the glove box and took out the registration. “Officer, I think I left my wallet at home. The car’s registered to me though.”

He looked at the registration with his powerful flashlight. “Mr. Norbert, could you please step out of your car?”

“Sure”.

I started to get out on the driver’s side.

“Hold it, get out on this side. Slide over.”

I did as I was told. When I got out, my eyes adjusted. They were blue bellies, LAPD, and not Sheriff’s deputies. I had a chance. He put me against the car and patted me down.

The officer had his notebook out, “What’s your full name and date of birth and if you know your driver’s license number?”

“Jonathon Delbert Norbert.” It was the name on the registration when I bought it and it sounded made up. “DOB is 10-15-60, and I’m sorry I don’t remember my driver’s license number.”

He left, went back to his car to run the information. By the time he came back, sweat beaded on my forehead in the cold night air.

“Couldn’t find you in the computer.”

“Yeah, that’s happened before. Sometimes it hits on my mom’s maiden name.”

“That right? What’s your mama’s name?”

“Aretha Jackson.”

“Jackson? That’s the same as Smith. There’ll be a thousand hits on it.”

I shrugged, too scared to smile.

“You got anything illegal in the car?”

“No, not at all. I was just going out to get some milk for my babies.”

“Then you don’t mind if we search?”

“No, not at all. Go ahead.”

The one cop nodded to his partner, who immediately went over to the car and opened the door. The inside of the car was, “clean as a Safeway chicken,” as Robby would’ve said. The searching cop worked over the inside for about ten minutes then came out with the ignition keys in his hand, headed for the trunk. The trunk contained the black bag with Q-Ball’s money, 45K, and the gun. It wasn’t against the law, under normal circumstances, to have that kind of money, but a black man at night in the ghetto was a sure call for the narcs to respond. If they put a narc dog on it, he’d sure as hell key on that dope money. After that, they’d eventually find out my real name. Game over.

The cop tinkered with the keys trying to find the right one. “Come on, show me which key opens the trunk.”

The car was an early model Plymouth, root beer-brown with a black stripe. As a precaution, I’d taken the trunk key off and put it in my shoe. “Oh, I lost that key a long time ago. But you can pull the backseat off, and if you’re real small, you can crawl into the trunk.”

The one cop looked at his partner, as if asking what they should do next. Time hung in the misty night air.

“Screw it. Let’s go.” He turned to me, “I’m going to let you off with a warning this time. Get a driver’s license. I stop you again, I’m going to run you in.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

The night was suddenly lit up with a bright spotlight from a slow-moving sheriff’s patrol car eastbound on Imperial Highway. I brought my arm up to shield my eyes, my face from recognition.

“Hey, look what we have here.” Said a voice from the slow moving car. The car squeaked against the curb. “It’s Bad Boy Bruno Johnson.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

The two blue bellies jumped me, took me to the ground hard. One gave me a cheap shot, a fist to the back of the head. The other hit me with a flashlight across the back of my legs. I roared and came up with them on my back, in a push-up position. There was nothing else to lose. They had me. The blue bellies quickly figured they’d grabbed a tiger by the tail.

I would have taken them and gotten away if the two sheriff’s deputies hadn’t joined in.

Dog pile on the black man.

The deputy who’d identified me, Good Johnson, no relation, laughed his coffee-sour breath right in my face as they got the handcuffs on. He’d been at Lynwood Station for at least fifteen years. The kind of deputy too cynical and callous, a violent-tempered ghetto deputy no other station or division would have. He was stuck, destined to do his entire career at the same place, festering, getting meaner and meaner until he’d eventually implode; take a lead pellet in the mouth to end his, sad, pitiful life.

The tag “Good” wasn’t earned out of job performance. It came up out of necessity when I first arrived at the station, a boot deputy. Two Johnsons became a problem. A white Johnson and a black Johnson like in the westerns with the cowboy hats. They called him the Good Johnson and me the Bad. Good added the “Boy” to mine, a derogatory reference to race and it stuck. Bruno The Bad Boy Johnson.