Mr. Paradise A Novel Read Free Page A

Harris and Jackie Michaels.
    But Wendell wanted to hear about the shooting out on East Eight Mile at Yakity Yak’s two nights ago.
    “Where are we, Frank?”
    “I’ve got a guy housed at the Seventh,” Delsa said, “Jerome Juwan Jackson, also known as Three-J. He’s twenty, a weedman on and off, went down a few times in his youth, wears Tommy Hilfiger colors with his cargo pants hanging off his ass.”
    “I know him,” Wendell said, “without ever having seen him.”
    “Yeah, but Jerome aspires to be ghetto fabulous and I’m helping him make it.”
    “He give up anybody?”
    “Let me tell it,” Delsa said. “Jerome and his half-brother Curtis they call Squeak? They’re at Yakity’s to see the bouncer. They want to hire a couple of strippers for a party they’re having and the bouncer can arrange it.”
    “Get ’em some white chicks,” Wendell said. He took off his Kangol, sailed it like a Frisbee at the coat tree and missed.
    “Jerome calls them titty bitches. He said he had to be honest with me, he was smoking blunts and sipping Rémy all day, so that evening wasn’t clear in his mind what happened.”
    “You ask him did he want to be a witness to this gig or a defendant?”
    “I did,” Delsa said. “See, Harris’d already had Squeak in thepink room. Squeak claims he didn’t know the shooter, but Jerome did, and now Jerome’s looking over his shoulder.”
    Wendell said, “Tell me who he gave up.”
    “Tyrell Lewis, T-Dogg. Deals weed and blow, set up his girlfriend in a hair salon with crack money. That night at Yakity Yak’s he’s giving her a hard time about something. They’re in the parking lot and he’s got her against a blue Neon, yelling at her, getting rough. A guy comes out of the bar, five-five, one-fifty, has his dreads in a ponytail. The guy’s all hair and he’s stoned. Comes to the lot and says to Tyrell, ‘Get your bitch off the car.’ “
    “It’s his car,” Wendell said.
    “No, we had that wrong. Tyrell stops abusing his girlfriend and pulls a nine out of his jacket. The little guy with the dreads pulls his nine, levels down on Tyrell and says, ‘I got one too, motherfucker.’ “
    Wendell said, “And got killed for showing off.”
    “You want to let me tell it?” Delsa said. “Another guy comes out of the club and starts yelling at the two gunfighters, calling ’em punks. ‘You nothing but punks playing with guns.’ Tyrell says, ‘You think this is a game, huh,’ and shoots the guy five times. Jerome says, ‘Yeah, ’cause he punked him out in front of his baby’s mama.’ “
    “Another one popped for nothing,” Wendell said. “You pick up the little fella with the hair?”
    “Nobody knows him or ever saw him before.”
    “Gets a man killed and takes off. You say it wasn’t even his car, this blue Neon.”
    Delsa said, “You know whose it is?”

    “You may as well tell me.”
    “My witness, Jerome.”
    Wendell sat down at his desk without taking his eyes from Delsa. “You’re looking at a way to use it.”
    “I wrote up two witness statements. In one of ’em it’s Jerome who says to Tyrell, ‘Get your bitch off my car, motherfucker.’ “
    “What about the little fella with the hair?”
    “He’s gone. I don’t mention him in this version. Then I have Jerome say in the statement, ‘He pulled a nine and I pulled mine.’ When I read the page back to Jerome I stopped there and said, ‘Man, that sounds like rap, “He pulled a nine and I pulled mine.” Who’d you get that from, Ja Rule, Dr. Dre?’ Jerome says no, he must’ve thought it up as he told what happened.”
    “He knows he didn’t say it,” Wendell said. “Does he know you know he didn’t?”
    “He doesn’t care,” Delsa said, “he sees himself with a new image. In the statement he names Tyrell as the shooter and tells what he did after that. Got in his car, went home and smoked a blunt. I asked him to read the statement and if the information’s correct sign