Tough Love Read Online Free PDF

face.
    Jedidiah Briscombe had always looked older than his sixty-five years; tonight he looked three hundred and change. Seated in a vintage brown-and-orange frayed recliner, he held the framed photograph of Jamal and Malcolm at the party the squad had thrown when Jamal supposedly got out of the gang. There in the photo stood Grace, with a turquoise feather in her hair, and Rhetta, in a dress; Ham, and Henry. Butch and Bobby. And Lieutenant Yukon, grinning from ear to ear with his arm around Jamal’'s shoulders. Lieutenant Yukon had been their boss before his POS addict brother shot him dead, right in the squad room. He had died in Grace’'s arms.
    Grace remembered the taste of chocolate cake and icy fruit punch; how Jamal’'s white teeth had outshone all the cop badges in the room. How awkward he had been as the center of attention, but how pleased and proud. Everybody had pooled their money to buy the J-man some good clothes for job interviews; Butch’'s mom whispered into a couple of ears, got him something in a mail room for a foundation whose board she sat on. Next stop, community college, maybe a trade school. A life.
    “"I’'m sorry, Mr. Briscombe. I really am,”" Grace said. She squeezed his trembling hand. “"And I know this is a terrible time. But we need to find Jamal.”"
    “"Malcolm, Malcolm,”" he wept.
    Grace kept holding his hand. Her heartbeat ticked away the seconds but she kept every single emotional impulse in check. This was the edge cops had—--to wall off their feelings so they could concentrate on their work. She was very walled off at the moment.
    But as he sobbed, she could feel the cracks starting to form.
    Ham shifted. Grace read his body language: He didn’'t want to hurt Mr. Briscombe, either, but if Jamal’'s grandfather knew where his surviving grandson was, he would be doing him no favors by withholding information. In the gang life, Jamal had revealed weakness and/or betrayal by walking out on his “"brothers.”" If he tried to rejoin, they might brutalize him as punishment, or as a test of his loyalty. The Sixty-Sixes “"beat in”" their recruits—--made them endure a beating for sixty-six seconds. If any of them had discovered in the meantime that Jamal had been a CI, they’'d kill him. Slowly. In bits and pieces. Grace and Ham had picked up the pieces of some of those lessons. And deposited them in dozens of evidence bags.
    “"I know this is terrible. I know that you’'re hurting,”" Grace said. “"But we need to focus on Jamal right now. If he does something to strike back—--”"
    “"It’'s that goddamn gang,”" the old man broke off. “"Vampires. Monsters.”"
    She couldn’'t argue. It was such a vicious cycle-gangs, injustice, rage, violence. And kids, in the mix. It was so wrong that kids got sucked in and flattened by the whole horrible machine. But they did.
    A tear slid from Mr. Briscombe’'s left eye and zigzagged down his sunken, wrinkled cheek, clinging to the end of his nose. He began to make a strange hitching sound, and for a second Grace thought he was having a heart attack or stroking out. But it was his grief speaking. Sucking the life out of him, and making him even older.
    “"He said he had to do this for Malcolm,”" Mr. Briscombe said, in a thin, papery voice. Grace went on alert. He was going to tell them where Jamal was. She and Ham exchanged glances and stayed quiet, giving Mr. Briscombe time to say what was on his mind.
    “"I begged him not to. I told him to stay here, with me. I said, ‘'Boy, they’'ll kill you.’' But he told me they all loved Malcolm like a little brother, and that they’'d get the people who had done this.”"
    “"We’'ll get those people,”" Grace half whispered. “"That’'s our job.”"
    Jamal had been eleven years old when he’'d joined the Sixty-Sixes. When they’'d beat him in, he’'d cracked a rib that never healed properly, because he never got medical attention for it. He started breaking into