Page 23

THREE WEEKS LATER and Roni and her partner, Detective Dean Dixon, were with the infamous dynamic duo Detectives Bruce Synder, a small white guy, and Gabe Richardson, a taller, slender black man. Bruce and Gabe were already standing outside of an old, broken down apartment building near the outskirts of town when Dean and Roni arrived. Roni remembered the place as a kid. It used to be called Lake something, as she recalled, and it was a rough place to live even back then. A nest of crime and drug addiction, as she remembered, before it was condemned and the landlord sent to prison. Now it was an abandoned building with every window broken out and nothingness surrounding it. No kind of place to interrogate a suspect. Unless you were the dynamic duo who made their own rules and did their own thing. They all got out of the two unmarked cars.

Bruce looked Roni up and down. “I remember a time when cops just wore suits.”

“This is a suit,” Roni said. She wore a tailored Prada pantsuit, heels, and large shades even though it was early nighttime. And of course her ‘fro, which Bruce seemed especially displeased with.

“Suits,” he said again, “and nice haircuts too.”

Roni rolled her eyes. She wasn’t thinking about that bigot.

“Our advance team was supposed to have already secured the subject in an apartment waiting for us,” Gabe said. “But just in case, we’ll enter with some element of surprise. We want you two to go around to the side stairs. Bruce and I will take the back stairs. We’ll meet up on the ninth floor.”

“Damn,” said Dean. “No elevator?”

“None. Now get to it,” Gabe ordered as he and his partner headed for the back.

“Not even a how do,” said Dean as he and Roni made their way toward the side of the building. “They could have at least thanked us for providing backup.”

Roni glanced at her partner. He was one of the few cops on the Force who wasn’t enameled with BG, which she appreciated. He was turning out to be a good guy and an honest cop all around. “It’s supposed to be our honor to work with those two,” Roni said. “We should be grateful to grace their presence.” Then she shook her head. “I don’t know what they see in those guys because I don’t see it.”

“Me neither,” Dean agreed as they walked up stairs. “And who ever heard of detectives with an advance team?”

Roni smiled. “I never heard of it.”

Then Dean looked at her as they made their long way up the side stairs. Roni was in front. Dean was watching her sashay those hips, and that tight ass, as he climbed up behind her. Baby girl had it going on, he thought. “How was it?” he asked her.

Roni glanced back at him. Did she miss something? “How was what?”

“That blind date your girlfriends sat up for you. I wasn’t being nosy, but I overheard you talking to one of them on the phone about it at lunchtime. You said something about the first blind date two months ago and now they want to set you up on another one. Or something like that.”

“It’s exactly like that. Once is never enough for my girlfriends.”

“But I take it you ain’t having it.”

“I am not.”

“Which probably means the first one wasn’t so great.”

Roni sometimes wondered what was wrong with her that she could never get it right with any man ever. Even the one that she knew loved her didn’t love her enough to put up with her for life. “He canceled,” she said.

Dean hesitated and then kept on walking. Poor kid. “Sorry to hear that. I don’t know what’s wrong with these men nowadays. I found me a good woman and snatched her up before anybody else could. At least until she divorced me. But she was still a good woman. But these men nowadays?” He shook his head.

Roni knew what he meant. Although all of her girlfriends were in good, productive relationships or marriages with good, productive men, she was the outlier in her friend groups.

“I think, in your case though,” Dean said, “I know what it is.”

“Well will you let me in on it?”

Dean laughed. “I think men are intimidated by you. You don’t present yourself to the world like some weak woman who needs a man to take care of her. Some guys are turned on by that. But a lot of guys are intimidated by that. I know I am,” he added, and they both laughed.

There was some truth to what he was saying, and Roni knew it. But that theory didn’t hold any kind of water when it was matched against the one man she wanted. The one human being on earth she was intimidated by. Brax even loved her. She believed that with all her heart. He just didn’t love her enough. “Okay, we’re approaching the ninth floor,” she said, forgetting about Brax and men and blind dates too, and they both pulled out their weapons.

One got on either side of the door, Dean as the senior detective gave the go-ahead nod, and Roni flung open the door. Both cops assumed the position when the door flew open, but all they saw was a dark hallway.

They immediately turned on the light scope on their service revolvers and began to walk slowly down the hall, aiming quickly at every corner they came upon. Roni loved it, but her heart was pounding too. Anything could happen in situations like that. They were always prepared, but she knew they could never be fully really.

They kept on walking, with Roni tiptoeing because of her heels, until they turned down a back hall and saw Bruce and Gabe walking toward one apartment that appeared to have an open door with a light on inside. Lights on in this place? It seemed odd to say the least. Unless, she thought, this was a regular interrogation spot for BG.

BG, Roni, and her partner all met up on either side of the apartment door. All with their weapons drawn, they entered the apartment.

And there, as you turned the corner inside the apartment, was one lone man: a bulky Hispanic in a t-shirt and trousers too tight over his round belly. His hands were tied behind his back. His face looked slightly bruised, although Roni wasn’t sure if he came that way. He obviously was a gangbanger from way back.

“Well if it ain’t Rodrigo in the flesh,” Gabe said.

“I told your boys I’m not into that shit no more. You got the wrong guy.”

“Sure we do,” Bruce said. “And I’m Mary Poppins.”

“And I’m Peter Pan,” said Gabe.

“And I’m Elizabeth Warren,” said Dean, grinning.

Although Roni smiled, Bruce and Gabe looked at him. “Who the fuck is that?” asked Bruce.

Dean was shocked. “You don’t know who Elizabeth Warren is? Oh wait a minute. Maybe you know her as Pocahontas?”

Bruce and Gabe frowned. “What are you talking about?” asked Bruce. “Just shut the fuck up!”

Dean’s smile was gone. Roni felt bad for him. Those two heroes weren’t so heroic after all, just as they suspected all along. Roni had already done one job with them when her partner was Detective Diversity Hire Carter. The beat a suspect unconscious. They got what they wanted, but it still turned Roni’s stomach inside out. She was no fan of those two.

But before she had finished observing the scene, Bruce had already grabbed a metal pipe from the floor and was slamming it upside Rodrigo’s skull, opening up an instant gaping hole.

Roni and Dean were shocked as Rodrigo cried out.

But Bruce and Gabe were serious. “Confess motherfucker!” Bruce insisted.

But Rodrigo looked confused. “Confess to what?”

“Confess!” Gabe yelled as he punched Rodrigo across the face.

“Confess to what? I didn’t do nothing!”

“That kid’s in a coma and two girls are dead because of you. You’d better confess,” Bruce said as she slammed Rodrigo again with that pipe.

Rodrigo was crying and begging now. “I don’t know nothing. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know nothing!”

But they kept on yelling for him to confess as they beat his ass. Roni didn’t know what case they were talking about and she didn’t care. They were out of line. And that was why, when Bruce was about to hit Rodrigo again, who was already collapsing in pain, she grabbed the pipe just as he held it up to strike.

Bruce looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. But she was not backing down. “He said he didn’t do it,” she yelled as she held onto that pipe. “Why you keep hitting him? What’s wrong with you?!”

Dean’s heart dropped. He touched Roni on the arm, trying to pull her back. But she held her ground.

But BG were not amused. It was as if all the anger they felt toward their alleged perp immediately turned onto Roni. “What’s wrong with me ?” Bruce asked her, astounded that she had gone there. “Is that what you just said?”

Roni wasn’t trying to get into it with that man. That legend. She was just trying to be a good cop. She removed her grip on that pipe.

“Ross, is that what you just said?” Bruce asked her again.

“Yes I said it!” Roni yelled at him. “You’re out of line, Detective. He said he didn’t know anything, that has to be enough. We don’t just keep beating them. What’s wrong with you?”

Bruce smiled, but nobody in that room took it for anything joyous. “What’s wrong with me, she says. What’s wrong with me.” Then his fake smile vanished and he began beating Rodrigo so badly that Rodrigo fell out of the chair unconscious. Roni and Dean tried to grab at Bruce, but Gabe pointed his gun at them, forcing them back. “Don’t even try it,” he said to them as Bruce continued to assault their suspect until he had to be dead. Then he got in a few more licks even after that. Roni couldn’t believe it.

But Bruce wasn’t done. He tossed that now-bloody pipe aside and looked at Roni. “Here you are, some nobody asking me what’s wrong with me?” He was yelling it out. “That’s what we’re doing now? That’s what fucking nobodies like you are doing now? Questioning the authority of somebody like me? Is that how you roll, Ross? What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with your ass is the question!”

And then Gabe turned his weapon exclusively on Dean as Bruce grabbed Roni’s service revolver and threw it across the room. Then he grabbed Roni so unexpectedly that Roni at first didn’t know what was happening to her. Until she saw Bruce dragging her over to the open window inside the apartment. Her heart now terrified, especially after what she’d just witnessed him do Rodrigo, she fought with all she had to prevent the drag. And then she began flailing as much as she could to stop his progression.

But it didn’t work. He easily flung her over the window ledge, headfirst, and began dangling her out of that window that was nine stories up. The only thing stopping him from dropping her on her head was his hands holding her by the catch of her ankles.

Dean was mortified. “What are you doing?” He was pleading with Bruce. “Pull her up, man, you’ll drop her. Pull her up! What are you doing?!”

He tried to hurry over to assist her, but Gabe had his gun on him. “Try anything, you idiot, and he’ll let go,” he yelled at Dean. “He’ll drop her like a bad habit so stay where you are!”

“Tell him to let her up,” Dean was begging.

“Stay out of it.”

“But this is crazy!”

“Stay out of it. He’ll drop her if you don’t shut the fuck up!”

Dean, realizing these two were as batshit crazy as he always thought they were, held up his hands.

Bruce was looking down at Roni as she was screaming for him to let her back up. She was terrified, but he was smiling. “Still think something’s wrong with me, Ross? Still think something’s wrong with me, Bitch?”

Roni was so horrified that she could hardly think straight. Dangling down on the ninth floor inside a deserted building in a long-deserted part of town was her nightmare come true. She kept screaming for him to let her up. Begging for him. But when he was laughing even harder, she suddenly realized that she was feeding the beast, and her panic might just cause her downfall.

She became still as a lamb. She knew, if she wiggled too much, he could accidentally drop her.

She could not believe her fellow police officers were putting her in this crazy position. Again!

But only this time it was her life, not her career or the life of some phone-snatching kid, that was on the line.

“Something still wrong with me, Ross?” Bruce was screaming back at her. “Something still wrong with me?”

Roni was staring up into his big blue eyes. And they looked so soulless to her that she knew there was no appealing to his better angels. He didn’t appear to have any. Because he was enjoying it too much. He loved to see her squirm. He loved to see her beg. She was feeding his demented appetite for power and pain infliction, and she knew she had to stop it. He’d keep doing it if she kept the food coming.

She decided to starve his ass.

She stopped screaming at him. She placed her hands over her chest, to help stop her body from rocking to leverage her weight, and she stopped looking down in terror and then pleading with him even more. She stopped relying on him totally and turned her entire focus on praying to God Almighty that that idiot didn’t drop her or let her go. She was a churchgoing girl. She believed in God. She was relying on that belief.

When Roni stopped all of her antics to unnerve Bruce, and especially when she stopped screaming, too, it did seem to disappoint him. He even looked at Gabe as if he didn’t know what to do all of a sudden. Why wasn’t she going along with his show? What was wrong with her ?

That was when he decided to scare her on another level. “What do you think?” he asked Gabe. “When I drop her, what’s going to be our story?”

“Don’t do that, guys,” said a terrified Dean. “Please don’t do it! Please guys. She’s one of us.”

“Shut up!” Gabe yelled at him, cocking his gun ready to fire it at him. Dean backed up, his hands in the air even higher.

Then Gabe looked at Bruce again. “We can always blame Rodrigo. That’s why we had to beat him to death.”

Bruce smiled. “I like that. He threw her out the window like the trash she is, and we took care of him. Sounds like a plan to me.”

Then Bruce looked down at Roni. “But what a shame to waste all this female,” he said, staring at her body. “I heard you got gold between these legs,” he said to her, opening them wider. “I heard you got a sugar daddy that makes certain nobody but him gets to enjoy what’s between these legs.”

Roni was fighting with all she had to control her terror because she was sufficiently terrified. She was praying. She continued to have her hands folded over her chest and she was praying to God to help her out of this one. She could not have been more terrified.

But Bruce wanted that rise out of her. It was as if it was his life food. “How does it feel, Detective?” He began yelling at her again. “How does it feel? How does it feel, Roni Ross? Tell me how it feels!” Only this time he screamed it out as if he was begging her to have a reaction. “Tell me how it feels!”

But when she still said nothing and did nothing, he seemed deflated. And he looked to Gabe again.

“I think we got her, champ,” Gabe said to give his partner, and himself , an out. “We proved our point.”

Bruce looked at her again. “Yeah. We proved our point. Didn’t we, Ross? Because you’re going to go along with whatever we say about what happened to Rodrigo. Aren’t you, Ross? If I pull you up, aren’t you going to go along with whatever we say?”

Roni was no fool. It was her lifeline. And she agreed instantly with her adversary. “Yes. I’ll go along with whatever y’all say.”

Bruce laughed. “I knew you was a coward in the end.” And then he pulled her up and back into the apartment.

Dean exhaled so sufficiently when he saw her back inside the apartment that he had to lean over with his hands on his knees. It was a wonder to him that he hadn’t pissed in his pants. He’d seen a lot in his career, but nothing like this.

But if Bruce and Gabe expected some kind of gratitude from Roni Ross for sparing her life, they didn’t know her. Her own notorious temper took over and all she saw was red. Because as soon as her feet hit the floor again, she was in fight mode. She wasn’t letting those bastards get away with what they’d just did to her, are they crazy? They terrorized her, there was no other way to put it, and she had to terrorize them.

She lifted her stiletto heel and kicked Bruce so hard in his groin that he fell to his knees in unbearable pain. He screamed out as blood immediately began to appear outside of his pants as he held onto his gravely distressed balls.

When Gabe, stunned by what she’d done, aimed his gun at her, she picked up that discarded pipe and knocked the legs out from beneath him, causing his bullet to sail to the ceiling. He fell onto his back in severe pain, but he was still aiming his gun at Roni ready to take her out anyway.

But Dean fired next, and took him out.

But just when Dean thought it was all over, Roni was just getting started. She was still seeing red. She grabbed a now practically incapacitated Bruce and with all the strength she should not have had, she lifted him and flung him, headfirst, out of that same window the way he had lifted her. She held onto his legs, but he was dangling just as she had been dangling. Already in unbearable pain, Bruce was screaming for his life.

“How does it feel, Detective?” Roni was screaming down at him. “How does it feel, bitch ? How does it feel?!”

But unlike her when she was dangling out, Bruce began to panic and was jerking his body wildly as he attempted to lift himself back up. “Help me!” he was crying like a helpless baby. “Help me!”

“Stop wiggling like that you bastard,” she admonished him. “I took it, your ass got to take it too!”

But Bruce was still panicking as if all he could think about was crashing to the street beneath him. He wiggled and squirmed so desperately that Roni was unable to control him.

Dean, seeing her struggle, hurried over and tried to help her pull him back in. “Stop so we can pull you in, you stupid fuck!” Dean was yelling at Bruce. He couldn’t stand his ass, either, and would not have mind dropping him. But he wasn’t that kind of man. “Just stop moving!”

But Bruce could dish it better than he could take it and he could not be reasoned with. He was in full-blown panic mode and there was no stopping him from losing complete control. And as Roni and Dean tried to pull him back in, he became the obstacle. And just as they were trying to get a firmer grip on his legs, he wiggled one time too many, and did it so wildly, that their grip slipped.

“ Nooo !” Roni cried out as first Dean’s hands and then her hands slipped away from Bruce’s kicking legs. And Bruce Synder of the infamous BG dynamic duo, fell all nine flights, screaming out into the air all the way down.

Roni and Dean leaned all the way over the window ledge in total shock. They could not believe it! They looked at Bruce as his hands were still reaching out for them to save him, as his screams still emasculated their eardrums, until his body slammed into the concrete below.

He was so badly smashed that he looked as if he’d been flattened by the wheel of a steamer, and was made one with the street.

Roni’s heart was hammering. Did that just happen? Did she just drop a man to his death ?!

“Jesus have mercy!” she decried, looking at her partner. “What have I done, Dean? What have I done?!”

Dean was so stunned himself that he couldn’t answer her.

But she wasn’t waiting around for an answer anyway. “Call it in!” she yelled at him as she was running out of the apartment. “Call it in!”

Dean went to Gabe and felt his pulse. He was dead. He looked at Rodrigo, who was long since dead. What a mess! Then he hurried behind Roni.

When he got outside, he could see her on her knees at Bruce’s side trying to feel for a pulse. Then she tried to hear for one. But there was none. He could see her pumping and pumping on Bruce’s chest trying to revive him. It was obvious from his fall that there was no way he could have survived, but she was still pumping. BG deserved everything they got as far as Dean was concerned, but Veronica Ross, he was coming to realize, wasn’t built like that. They were scum of the earth human beings, no doubt about it, but they were still human beings in her eyes and she wasn’t giving up on any human. She kept on pumping.

Dean was outdone too. He couldn’t believe the turn this shit took. This was a mess. There were no two ways about it.

Before he went over to Roni, he pulled out his cellphone and did as he was ordered to do when he first became her partner.

She wanted him to call it in and that was exactly what he did.

He called it in.

But not to who Roni meant.