Wendy Hornsby - Bad Intent

I started with a little neutral icebreaker. “How are you, Tyrone?”

“Tee Bone,” he contradicted, putting the emphasis on the second word so it rhymed with his name. “In here they call me Tee Bone.”

His voice was deep, sullen. He was huge for fifteen, a muscular, sleek ebony man with a child’s smooth cheeks and an old man’s obsidian-hard eyes. I had seen his record, a steady escalation from curfew violation through joy riding, and on to crimes against people: assault, rape, car-jacking, then murder.

The county began offering Tyrone hospitality at age seven, when he spent four months at MacLaren Hall in El Monte, the facility for abused and abandoned children, because his mother forgot to come home for a while. After that it was easy time in Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey for petty crimes on a regular basis until Tyrone began using a gun.

At twelve the court sent him to Camp Miller in the scrub-covered hills above Malibu to serve eighteen months for aggravated assault. The ride north in the sheriffs black and white bus had been his first trip outside the central city. Apparently, the change of scene had not detoured him from his criminal path.

Tyrone got out of Miller two weeks before his fifteenth birthday, exactly three weeks before he pumped a load of double aught buckshot into the chest of Kenny Jackson.

I clipped a small mike to the collar of Tyrone’s coveralls. “What did you have for breakfast, Tee Bone?”

“Corn flakes and Tang,” he said.

I looked over at Guido, who stood hunched beside a small video monitor with an earphone in one ear. I asked, “How’s the sound?”

He nodded. “Little echo we can filter out. It’s the cinderblock walls that do it. You look good. Tee Bone has a glow, but it’s okay.”

That probably meant that Tyrone looked as if he was sweating, even though he wasn’t.

“So, Tee Bone,” I said, “the questions we’re going to ask pertain only to your family and your growing up. We will not discuss your pending case. We want to keep the tone like a conversation, very casual. Forget about Guido over there with the camera. Just relax, talk as you normally talk.”

“Yeah?” he grinned broadly, checking Guido, a little male-bonding thing. “What I normally say?”

“Please,” I said.

“What I normally say is this, take down my pants, bitch. Blow me.”

I knew from experience that Guido is fast rather than strong. Under siege he can be counted on to get the camera and film out safely. Whenever possible, he keeps the camera rolling during his rapid retreat. It makes for very effective footage. Knowing this, however, gave me small comfort. If Tyrone attacked me, and that is what was on my mind as I sat there beside him, seeing the erection inside his county-issue overalls, the assault would be on the six o’clock news and Guido would be a contender for the Pulitzer. And I would be in intensive care watching it.

The glass panel in the door was partially blocked by the deputy probation officer standing outside. I knew he was unarmed, but he was big and he was only about fifteen seconds away if I screamed. I thought that for fifteen seconds I could take care of myself. I looked down at my notes, exhaled, started again.

“Tell me about your family, Tee Bone.”

His answer was like a well-rehearsed recitation. “My mother? She a bitch. My grandmother? She a old bitch. My father? Well, he special. He a son of a bitch.”

“Have you been watching the news? The district attorney is saying your father may get out of prison on a technicality.”

“Oh yeah?” Finally I had hit on a topic that animated him. “He comin’ out?”

“Are you close to your father?”

He shook his head. “I never remember him. He went up when I was little. All I know is this, he never sent Etta no money for me. Where is Etta? She say she comin’ to see me.”

“Have you communicated with your father? Maybe written to him?”

“I only get one phone call a day and I’m not much for writing. All I know, other people tell me. He went up for killing him a cop. In my set, that’s cool, if you get what I mean.”

“You received some extra status in your gang because your father killed a cop?”

“It’s my inheritance,” he said, emphasizing each syllable. I wondered who had said that to him.

“Your set is the Grape Street Watts?”

“Yeah.” He flashed his gang’s hand sign and I saw Guido move the focus in close on it.

To fill in information, I said, “Grape Street Watts is one of the most powerful gangs in the area that includes the Jordan Downs projects where Tee Bone lived with his grandmother.”

“The most powerful. The most badass powerful.” Tyrone used his fist on the table for punctuation, loud enough for the deputy to look in. “Grape Street rule the city. Anyone forget that, we show ‘em.”

“How do you show them?”

“Anyone dis me, I blow him away.”

“Did Kenny Jackson dis you?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

Switch the topic-I didn’t want to be called in to testify against him. “The district attorney does not say your father didn’t kill that cop, only that his trial wasn’t fair. But if it turns out that he isn’t a cop killer, will you lose status?”

“Don’t matter if he done it. He done his time.”

“Because of your record, you’re being tried this time as an adult,” I said. “It seems to me you’ve had a rather short childhood. Your mother died when you were ten. Do you remember living with her?”

“My mama?” Tyrone thought it over before he answered. “All I remember is this: she was stoned. You got to understand somethin’. When I stayed with her, I took care of her, not the other way around. Now and then, if she feelin’ bad, she carry me over to James to stay for a while. It was real nice over at James’s. The house was real clean, he put the food on the table, real nice. Cook it on the stove, you know? Use dishes and forks and shit. He read to me, James did, put me into the bed every night. He walk me down to the school every morning, he pick me up by the door every day. He make me come inside the house when it get dark, make me take a bath. He don’t let me take the Lord’s name and shit. He real strict, but I kinds like being there.”

“Who is James?”

“My granddaddy.”

“James Harkness?” I asked.

“No. The other one. He my daddy’s daddy. He have this market up on Central and Hunnerd-third.”

“He still has a market?”

“Yeah. He make me turn myself in to the police this last time. Say the police shoot me dead if I don’t turn myself in.”

“How did you end up with Etta?” I asked, comparing Etta, who was anything but a model parent, to his description of James.

“It was the mothuhfuckin’ police kep’ carryin’ me to Etta,” he said, showing a flash of his grandmother’s influence. “They keep takin’ me over to her. They say to her, your girl stoned, your girl in jail. Here, take the kid. Mos’ the time, she keep me a while, buy me a new shirt or something, then she let me go over to James.”

“Why didn’t the police take you straight to James if he was so good to you?”

“You ax me that, shows you don’t know nothin’. If one of my set kill one of your set, you gonna turn some kid over to me? Fuck no. You gonna keep him away. Well, my daddy kill one of the police’s set. They kep’ the county from lettin’ James have me.”

“That’s how you see it?” I said. “The police are just another gang?”

“Ain’t they?”

I couldn’t look over at Guido because the tape was rolling. Instead, I took a breath. “You were very young to have a relationship with the police. How did the police treat you? Did they dis you?”