Dying in the Dark Read Online Free PDF Page B

one of your friends?” I raised my voice loud enough to show I meant business and to get his attention from behind the paper. He folded it and laid it down on the table.
    “CJ didn't go to my school, but he knew guys who do, so he used to hang out there a lot.”
    ‘And CJ, as you call him, was a friend of one of your friends?”
    He hesitated just a tad too long. “No, Ma, Cecil was not a friend. He was just a dude I knew. Everybody knew him. He hung with a bunch of guys that I definitely try to avoid. So don't worry about me.”
    “Of course, I worry about you! This kid has been stabbed by who knows what and you know the kids he hung with! Why shouldn't I be worried?”
    “So he was stabbed?”
    “Yes.”
    He shook his head sadly and said in a subdued voice, “Ma. Here's the deal. You don't want guys like CJ and his boys thinking you think you're better than them, right? So you stay out their way, you watch your back when you're around them, you don't get too tight with them, but you still acknowledge them and stuff. You give them their props and show them you have respect for them. You're cool with them.” His face took on a weariness that I'd never seen before, and in that instant I could see him as a grown man, laying down the truth as he knew it to somebody who needed to hear it.
    ‘And you were cool with Cecil Jones?”
    “Yeah, I was cool with him. I used to be cool with one of his boys in fifth grade, but not anymore. Now it's just enough to get me by. Like I said, he didn't really go to my school, but he was around. I think he dealt drugs or something.”
    “Oh God! So you know guys who deal drugs?”
    “Ma, what do you think?” He gave me a look that was at the sametime helpless and incredulous, reminding me again just how grown he had become.
    ‘And who were his boys?”
    He avoided my eyes, and then said after a minute, “This guy named DeeEss, the kid I used to know.”
    ‘And don't anymore, right?”
    He nodded. ‘And another one called Pik, dudes like that.”
    ‘And they deal drugs, too?”
    “I don't know. I told you, I avoid those guys. They probably do. Yeah, they do. Enough of the third degree! I'm not a suspect, okay?” There was a hint of annoyance in his voice that I ignored.
    “Do you know his girlfriend?”
    “Cristal?” His eyes lit up when he said her name, which, I knew from observing men, wasn't so much recognition as acknowledgment of a certain kind of woman. I started to say something about his attitude, but decided to let it be.
    But I did add as innocently as I could, “So her name is Cristal, like the champagne?”
    “I guess so, Ma, that's what they call her anyway. I don't know!” He threw up his hands in a dramatic gesture of helplessness and picked up the sports page again, which told me I wasn't going to get anything else out of him.
    “Thank you, Jamal.”
    “For what?”
    “For being honest with me.”
    “You're my mother, I have to be honest with you.”
    “Have you ever tried drugs?” I asked after a moment, my eyes piercing his.
    “No, Ma. Do I act like I do drugs?” He did a half-ass imitation of somebody high on something that made me smile despite myself. “There's no way I'm going to be into drugs living with somebody who's always in my business.”
    ‘And you know I'll stay in your business.”
    “Yeah, how well I know,” he said with a smile that told me that despite his attitude he was glad I was. “Now tell me how you know Cecil Jones?”
    ‘A case.”
    “What kind of a case.”
    “He came to my office.”
    “Why?”
    “He had something he wanted me to do for him.”
    “What?”
    “It doesn't matter now, he's dead.”
    ‘Are you going to find out who killed him?”
    “I don't know yet.”
    “Ma, just be careful, okay? Promise me?” he said with so much concern it made me smile because they were exactly the words I always said to him.
    After our talk, I decided I'd better make it my business to attend Cecil Jones's funeral