Slipping Read online

  “Momma, I'm finta go take me a shower. Do you need me to do anything for you?”

  Before she answered, his mother dumped a shot of gin in her mouth. “No, Arthur. Rhonda is going to wash the dishes and Donald will empty the garbage when he comes in. I know you had a long day at work, so you go ahead and take your shower. I'll come in a little later and give you a back rub.”

  Don was stupefied. His mother had referred to him as Arthur. Arthur was his father's name. His mother had also spoken about Rhonda as if she was still alive.

  “Momma, Rhonda and Arthur, I mean Daddy, are dead. They're both gone.”

  His mother looked up at him. For a brief moment the light of sanity tried to break through the murkiness of her mind. “Oh, I keep forgetting. I'm sorry, Donald. Go ahead and get cleaned up.”

  Don pushed his chair under the table and kissed his mother on the cheek again. In the bathroom he smoked a rock while he waited for the shower to get hot. He sat naked on the side of the tub and blew the smoke toward the ceiling. The water was warm enough now so he stepped under it. The hot beads of water felt good on his exhausted body.

  He worked up a good lather with the deodorant soap. The bathroom door opened. There was soap on Don's face so he couldn't open his eyes.

  “Momma, I'm in here!” Don yelled.

  “I know, Arthur. I just came in here to keep you company,” his mother said in a sultry voice. She pulled back the shower curtain and stepped into the tub.

  Don stuck his head under the shower nozzle to get the soap off his face. He wiped his eyes with a washcloth. His mother, completely naked, stood behind him. He cringed, trying to cover his manhood with the towel.

  “Arthur, I know how much you like to make love in the shower,” his mother cooed.

  Don couldn't believe it; his mother really thought he was his father. She came close to try and fit under the shower-head with him. Her naked breasts touched him as she reached for his manhood and Don recoiled. He tried to get out of the tub, but his mother grabbed his arm.

  “Where you going, Arthur?”

  Yanking his arm out of her grasp made him slip and he had to grab the shower curtain to avoid falling on his face. He righted himself and sprang out of the tub. He grabbed his things and fled from the bathroom. He bolted up the stairs to his bedroom and locked the door. Dripping wet, he flung himself on the bed. Tears of anger and frustration assaulted his eyes. His mother came to his bedroom door.

  “Donald, Donald, I'm sorry!” she screamed as she pounded on the door. “Arthur, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to bother you! I just wanted you to make love to me before the kids came home! Let me in, baby, and I'll do whatever you like!”

  His mother was hysterical and her ranting and raving only made him more emotional. Don stood up and walked over to the door. He leaned his forehead against the cool wood. “Go away, Momma,” he sobbed. “Momma, I'm not Arthur, I'm Donald. Rhonda is dead, Momma. Just go away.”

  The pounding at his door stopped. Don knew his mother hadn't left because he could hear her weeping on the steps. He sat on the bed and tried to block out the memory of what happened in the shower, but the memory of it was too fresh. Don dug through his wet, dirty clothes and whipped out his pipe and crack. With trembling fingers he packed the pipe bowl with a dub-sized rock. Waving his cigarette lighter like a magic wand over the bowl, he let the crack melt a little and then took a godfather hit. He packed the bowl again and held the torch to it. Inside him, the smoke felt like it was curling around his brain, keeping him warm and cooling him off at the same time.

  Don sat the hot pipe on his nightstand as jabs of pain shot through his left arm and shoulder. He stumbled to his closet and pulled out some pants and a shirt. In his dresser he found some socks and underwear and stepped into them. He dried his tears on his shirt, stuffed his pipe and crack into his pocket, and put his pistol in his waistband. He opened his door, stepped over his weeping, naked mother, and jumped down the stairs. In the kitchen he grabbed his mother's keys off the counter and snatched the funeral information from the refrigerator door. Not looking back, he slammed the back door.

  23

  DETECTIVE WINTERS SAT IN THE BACK OF THE SMALL chapel. Her face was partially hidden by a Bible, but she was totally aware of her surroundings. She had been there since the funeral director opened the door for the viewing. There had been a few relatives—none of them were of any interest to her. It was a long shot, but a lot of crimes were solved on a long shot. Winters knew the chance of Don-Don showing up here was slim or none. If he did show she would keep calm and wait for backup.

  This was one of the wildest cases she'd had the displeasure of working. Her partner was in serious but stable condition. Three more guys were dead and she didn't have a clue to what Donald Haskill's role was in all of this. She would find out, though. If he came to view the body or showed up at the funeral tomorrow, Winters vowed that this would come to an end.

  Two young men walked into the chapel, causing Winters to slouch down in her seat. They signed the visitors’ book and approached the casket. Both men wore jackets with fraternity insignias on them. Both men stood quietly in front of the casket for a few moments. One of them bravely brushed his lips against Rhonda's cold forehead. The man stood and his eyes swept about the room. He noticed the gigantic bouquet of flowers from the Chicago Police Department and pointed them out to his friend. The two men whispered between themselves for a moment, turned, and left.

  A small, white woman with silver-gray hair strode into the chapel. On her hair was perched a pair of reading glasses. The woman never walked up to the coffin. She took a seat in the front row and sat quietly for about ten minutes. Her lips moved silently as if in prayer, she stood and crossed herself, and left without signing the visitor book.

  Winters looked at her watch. It was forty minutes to closing. She had resigned herself to hoping Don would show at the funeral when he suddenly walked through the door. Thrills of alarm ran through Winters as he strode to the casket. Slouching even farther in her seat, Winters slid her pistol out of the holster. She shielded it on her lap with the Bible as two young girls walked into the chapel. The girls stopped to sign the visitors’ book. Seeing Don at the coffin, they took a seat in the rear of the chapel. Winters returned her attention to Don at the casket. Great sobs shook the boy's frail body. Winters left her seat and eased up a few rows closer to the casket.

  “Rhonda, don't leave me,” Don wailed as he held his sis-ter's lifeless hand. “I'm so sorry, I'm sorry, Rhonda. Rhonda, please don't leave me and Momma.”

  Don knelt on the small stool in front of the casket and kissed his sister's cold hand.

  It would have been a touching scene to Detective Winters, but she knew the boy kneeling at his sister's casket was a killer. Still concealing her pistol behind the Bible, Winters left the chapel and, for lack of a better place, she closeted herself in the two-stall women's bathroom. She didn't like letting Don out of her sight, but she needed to call for backup.

  “This is Homicide Detective Winters,” she whispered into her radio. “I have spotted a murder suspect and I need backup. I'm in the chapel of A. R. Leak Funeral Home on 78th and Cottage Grove. Be advised suspect is armed and dangerous, approach with extreme caution. Detective will be maintaining radio silence. Copy?”

  “That's a copy,” was the dispatcher's static response.

  Winters tucked her radio in her blazer and readjusted the Bible and pistol. In the chapel she was relieved to see Don was still on his knees by the casket. A glance let her know the two girls were still waiting to view the body. Choosing an aisle seat this time, Winters sat and watched Don grieve.

  Finally, Don stood and wiped his face. Winters knew she would have to make her move, with or without backup. As she was ready to spring into action she heard the girls gasp loudly. Winters looked back over her shoulder and saw two men advancing toward the casket. One of the men was limping and the other had a large bandage on his neck. The one with the limp carried a sawed
-off shotgun; the other carried a small handgun. They walked straight down the aisle toward Don, not paying any attention to the girls or Winters.

  Fear turned Winters’ stomach muscles into knots. These were two of the men who were outside of Don's house when her partner was shot. Two were killed, but these two had gotten away when the backup squad chased Donald and crashed their cars.

  “We caught yo bitch ass,” Johnny said, aiming the shotgun at Don's back.

  Don wheeled around with a look of shock on his face. He put his hands up. “Hold up, man. I don't even know you niggas.”

  Johnny sneered. “Stud, you ain't got to know us. Bitch, you killed our motherfucking sister.”

  “I ain't kill yo sister. She ran in front of a truck. I was just trying to get my cola back from her ass. She didn't even look and tried to run across Cottage. I wasn't even gone put my hands on her. She stole my shit, though.”

  “We ain't trying to hear that shit,” Leroy said. “Our brothers is dead, too, cause of yo ass, nigga. Fuck this nigga, Johnny.”

  Don could see the muscles in Johnny's face tighten as he prepared to squeeze the trigger. A second too late Don dove over the casket. The loud boom of the shotgun in the chapel was deafening. Shotgun pellets peppered Don's side and back and embedded themselves in the side of Rhonda's casket.

  Winters sprang into action. She dropped the Bible and stood.

  “Freeze! Drop your weapons!” Winters yelled.

  Leroy tried to spin around, but the wound in his neck made his move awkward and cumbersome. By the time he brought the .25 semiautomatic around, Winters squeezed off two shots from her pistol, smacking into his chest a millisecond after one another. Leroy flipped face-first onto a pew. Johnny turned and loosed the other barrel of the shotgun in Winters’ face. Most of the pellets lodged in her bulletproof vest, shredding her blouse as they passed through it. One pellet grazed her eyebrow and another entrenched itself in her cheek.

  Winters flew backward in the aisle. Her gun fell out of her hand as she landed on her back. She groaned and grabbed her chest. Johnny emptied the two spent shells from the shotgun and retrieved two more from his pocket as he advanced on Winters.

  Don crawled from behind his sister's casket and began to crawl under the pews. His gun was in his hand and his side and back ached, so it was a difficult task. He made it to the row where the two girls had been sitting. They were crouched on the floor hugging one another. Don put his finger to his lips and crawled past them. He could see Johnny's feet as Johnny stood over Winters, loading the shotgun.

  “Pig bitch, you keep getting in our business,” Johnny said. “You just killed another one of my brothers, bitch. I'm glad you was here because you saved us the trouble of having to come after yo ass. Oh, you can bet we was coming. This way is better, though. I get to kill two birds with one stone.”

  Johnny snapped the shotgun closed and aimed it at Winters’ head. Don wanted to keep crawling, but as he drew parallel to Winters on the floor he could see the look of fear on her face. Don knew what he had to do. Leaning on one arm he aimed the pistol at Johnny's head and pulled the trigger.

  Reflex made Johnny fire the shotgun as he fell over on his side. Portions of his brain protruded from the exit wound over his right ear as he crashed into a pew. The pellets from the shotgun blew a chunk off the pew as he fell across it.

  Don was up on his feet as fast as the pellets in his side and back would allow him. He stood over Winters. The wounded homicide detective looked up at him not knowing what to expect. He spotted her gun and retrieved it. He ejected the clip and tossed it behind the pews, well out of her reach. He dropped the gun beside her.

  “I ain't finta do shit to you,” Don said. “So you ain't got to be looking at me all like that.”

  Winters didn't reply. Her attention was focused on the pistol in Don's hand.

  As if to quell her fears he tucked the pistol into his waistband. “You're under arrest, Donald Haskill,” Winters breathed.

  “Yeah, sure,” Don said as he stepped over her and made his way out of the chapel.

  Winters staggered to her feet using a pew to balance herself. She retrieved her gun and the clip from behind the pews and made her way outside. In front of the funeral home there was no sight of Donald Haskill. As she stood holding her ribs a police cruiser slid around the corner and screeched to a halt in front of her.

  “Fuck!” Winters screamed into the uncaring night.

  24

  DON RETURNED TO THE ABANDONED BUILDING. IT HAD been harder to get in this time. Heavy construction machinery was blocking the previous route and someone had repaired the hole in the chain-link fence. They had also replaced the board across the hallway. It would have been easy work to bypass the machinery and pull the board off the door, but the small, painful holes in his side and back made the job difficult. He reclaimed his room in the third-floor apartment. He didn't even know why he came back here instead of hitting the road. He guessed it had to be because he didn't want to leave his mother in her present condition. He didn't have any idea what he was supposed to do for her, but he knew he would have to go home one more time before he left Chicago.

  Once again he had been forced to kill. He didn't do it so much to save the lady detective's life as to bring reckoning to one of his sister's murderers. No matter, it was murder just the same.

  “Ughhh!” he grunted in pain as he sat on the floor. He closed his eyes and sagged against the wall to get some much-needed rest. He lifted his bloody, ragged shirt and began to pick the shotgun pellets out of his skin. He dropped the bloody pellets on the floor. Blood seeped from the small wounds in his side and back. On his hands the smell of cordite from the gunpowder was strong.

  Satisfied that he had removed most of the shotgun pellets, Don closed his eyes and lolled against the wall. Images of his naked mother and dead sister crowded the space behind his eyelids. He watched Johnny's body fall sideways in slow motion. Dre was facedown in the street. Sajak's brains flew into his face as Lonnie tried to shoot him in the face. Diego was on his knees begging for his life. The woman detective looked up at him waiting for him to kill her, too. Juanita ran in front of the truck and her body flew into the air.

  Don opened his eyes knowing there would be no rest from the visions of death. He dug through his pockets and pulled out his crack and pipe. The two ounces of crack had dwindled considerably, but there was still a nice-sized piece—maybe a half ounce. With trembling fingers Don packed the pipe bowl with the shake from the bottom of the bag. His first lighter was almost out of fluid, but he had another one. He flicked its powerful flame and waved it across the bowl to melt the chips of crack. Sucking like a vacuum, he pulled the smoke into his lungs until it made him puke.

  Vomiting made his wounds hurt even more. To numb himself, Don broke a huge chunk of crack and dropped it in the bowl. He lit it and took a mighty hit.

  This time he felt intense pain instead of pleasure. His lungs felt like he had swallowed molten lava. A spasm shook his frail frame like a leaf in a high wind. His nervous system went awry. The pipe slipped from his fingers as Don grabbed his left arm. Foam bubbled at the corners of his mouth. Every tortured breath he pulled into his lungs felt like he was swallowing steel-wool pads. He tried to claw his way up the wall but a pain exploded in his chest making him slide down the wall to his original sitting position. Blood began to mix with the foam dribbling down his chin out of his mouth. His brain felt tight in his skull like it was too big for the cavity. Searing hot daggers spread from his chest as if his blood had been emptied out of his body and replaced with napalm. Don convulsed again as a series of a mini-strokes paralyzed his limbs. He passed out.

  When he came to, he didn't know how long he had been out, but he found he couldn't move. As long as he took short breaths, the pain in his lungs was less intense. Gathering his strength, Don tried to call out for help, but his brain couldn't convince his voice to cooperate. It didn't hurt too much to open his eyes so he lay there, watching. />
  The moon climbed and then dipped. It began to lighten outside as the sun started to shine down on the rooftops of the ghetto. Birds began to chirp, cheerfully unaware of Don's paralysis. With clucks, coos, and whistles they nagged him to get up and start his day. He could hear voices outside of the building now.

  Police flashed through Don's head. He whimpered as he tried to move. It was no use, his body was broken. Tears rolled into his eyes and he felt his heart beating mildly but erratically in his chest. The voices weren't in a hurry, though. He managed to calm down enough to try and hear what the unseen men were talking about. The usual authoritative, urgent tone the police used was missing. He could just make out what the voices were saying.

  “Knock the sides out on the third floor and then drop that ball on through the roof,” someone shouted. “We're already behind schedule. We've got to clear this lot and clear lot seventeen by the end of this month. You lazy son of a bitches! Get that damn hose on and start spraying water on the damn building so the dust don't get too thick for us to see!”

  Don felt drops of water coming through the window.

  The voice continued, “Okay, Pete! Go ahead and swing that fucking ball!”

  Through the open window Don watched the gigantic iron wrecking ball swinging toward the apartment. In his mind he was screaming.

  LETTER FROM THE AUTHOR

  Peace. I wrote Slipping because I wanted to give a face to the numerous victims of illegal narcotics, mainly crack cocaine, in urban America. Conspiracy theorists say that crack was part of the government's plan to destroy the Black community nationwide. That may or may not be true. I don't know if crack was designed to do that, but I know it played a huge part in it. In the late eighties and early nineties, crack cocaine took its toll on many families, whether it was the repercussions of selling it or smoking it. The simple fact is, we weren't prepared for the tidal wave of crack that flooded our neighborhoods. It has been about twenty years since crack made its appearance on our streets, and the toll it has taken has been astronomical. Just the thought of how many prisons have been built because of crack cocaine is mind-numbing.