Drumsticks by Charlotte Carter Read Free Book Online

fishy about the way Ida was shot?”
    â€œBut he told you, there ain’t nothing fishy about it. Who says there is—Mama Lou?”
    â€œHa fuckin’ ha. Maybe she did, Leman—I mean, Sergeant. But even if I’m crazy to take the doll stuff seriously, that doesn’t mean the story doesn’t smell. It was just too convenient, the way she was shot. I can feel it. Will you call Loveless—please?”
    He didn’t answer right away. In fact he didn’t answer at all. “Why you always gotta think you know better than the pros?” is what he said.
    â€œI don’t. Believe me, I don’t. I’m just trying to do what’s right. Suppose—just suppose someone did kill that old woman. Do you want them to get away with it? You think it’s right to just sweep another black body under the carpet?”
    â€œDon’t talk that shit to me, girl. I know more about black people dying in this town than you ever dreamed of. You don’t know shit.”
    â€œAll right,” I said, calm again. “All right, I know you do. But I have to find some way to put this to rest, man. I’m just feeling so guilty.”
    â€œAbout that woman? Don’t be stupid. It wasn’t your fault.”
    My God, what was this? Compassion from Leman Sweet? A tiny ray of ordinary human kindness—for me? It left me speechless.
    â€œLook,” Sweet said, cleaning his fingers with the Wash’n Dry he took out of its little foil wrapper, “maybe something smells, and maybe it doesn’t. But either way, I don’t have no business sticking my nose in Loveless’s case—and more to the point, no time. Right now I’m swamped with another case where the powers that be are sweeping a black carcass under the rug. A lot more than one carcass, matter of fact.”
    â€œWhat are you talking about? Serial killings?”
    â€œYou could put it that way. I’m working on the most recent one—the Black Hat killing.”
    I drew a blank. A complete blank. “What’s the Black Hat—a club?”
    â€œBlack Hat was a who, not a what. A kid who was murdered a few months ago.”
    â€œOh. And how many other carcasses were there?”
    â€œSix others.”
    I had more or less been living in a cave the last months, deep into the booze-soaked depression. But even so, I didn’t understand how I could have missed hearing about the mass murder of seven black children. “Jesus Christ! Seven kids were murdered? What happened?”
    â€œThey didn’t all get killed at the same time,” he said. “And they weren’t all children. It’s the so-called rap wars.”
    Blank. Again.
    â€œRap, fool,” said Sweet. “R-A-P.”
    The light suddenly went on. “As in ‘music,’ you mean? That kind of rap?”
    â€œYou ain’t too dumb, are you?”
    A dim memory of a news bulletin: a well-known rapper shot to death as he rode in the back of a limo on Grand Central Parkway. But that seemed like at least a year ago. I asked Sweet if that was the kid he had just named—Black Hat.
    â€œNo. That was Phat Neck,” he supplied, “the fourth one to buy it in two years. He was one of the biggest names around.”
    â€œI see.”
    I guess I saw. Since I loathed rap music, the name of one of its big stars meant nothing to me. Rap had been around long enough to begin influencing every other kind of music. It had seeped into virtually every aspect of life in the States. They sold cars and diet cola with it. They used it to teach kids how to read on educational TV. You never saw a movie anymore that didn’t feature it. And now it had gone global. Yet it was no huge effort for me to tune it out. I managed to do so because I disliked and resented it, maybe even feared it, because to my ears it was so rude and simplistic, and so very pleased with itself.
    â€œAnd who were the others