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  Wanting to be respectful, Sean didn’t let his thoughts get out of control. The woman looked like a fish out of water, which was a surefire sign that she wasn’t a regular. She stood there looking like she was unsure of what to do next, making Sean conclude that it was her first time there. He wondered who she had come to visit. Sean crossed his fingers, hoping that she wasn’t there to see a boyfriend, husband, or a baby daddy.

  Sean continued to watch the woman while she got her registration card time stamped. She cautiously wavered over to the table that was marked with a number sixteen on it in permanent magic marker, and slowly lowered her rear end onto the seat. Seemingly upset, she impatiently squirmed in her seat while waiting for her inmate.

  Sean wanted to talk to her but he knew that wasn’t going to happen. Talking to her was something that couldn’t be done without inmates and officers zeroing in on his every move. Sean had no other choice but to keep his cool. He couldn’t let that woman leave the facility without him getting to know her. Sean walked to the other side of the visit area, positioning himself so that he could keep her within his eyesight.

  “Damn, I hope the dude she’s comin’ to visit is her cousin, her brother, anybody but her man,” he said to himself.

  When the heavy metal door slid open, Sean held his breath for a moment, as some inmates filed to their respective tables with their visitors. This was when he observed a lanky young man about six feet tall walking over to the table where the woman was sitting. She instantly stood up to greet him with a smile and a warm hug.

  The young man looked much younger than her, but these days, a person could never tell what floats someone’s boat. Sean encountered some older professional women who were definitely into young thugs nowadays, thanks to the rapper 50 Cent dating Vivica Fox. They both sat in the chairs and began chatting with each other. Figuring that that was the time to make his move, Sean worked his way toward their table. He walked around for a brief moment, trying to play it off by talking to the other visitors. No one knew that he had an ulterior motive.

  When Sean arrived at their table, he noticed that the young man, who was looking dead at him, had a scowl on his face. Sean ignored the nasty look and greeted him anyway.

  “Hey, what’s up, youngblood?” Sean stated. “Everything is a’ight over here, right?”

  “Yeah, we’re straight, old head, we’re good over,” the young man replied, looking at Sean, up and down, with a suspicious look on his face.

  Sean looked at the woman, who smiled at him. “Oh, yes, officer, we’re fine. I’m just here visiting my son. You have to excuse his attitude. He’s a little overwhelmed by all of this,” she added, giving the young man a dirty look. She looked at Sean’s nametag. “Um, Officer Daniels.”

  Sean extended his hand to the mother and to the defiant son, who looked at Sean up and down but ended up reluctantly giving him a pound anyway.

  “Ma’am, not to worry, he’s in good hands. I’ll make sure I look out for him while he’s here.” Sean looked at the young man. “What housing area you in?”

  The young man sucked his teeth. “I’m in Five North.” Sean nodded his head.

  “Oh, yeah, yeah, you good then. That’s my old steady housin’ area right there. I’ll put the word out and tell the officers up there to hold you down.”

  The young man impatiently shifted in the chair. “Look, CO, you ain’t gotta do for me! I don’t fool with too many of these cats in here anyway, so trust me, I’m gonna be okay. Oh, and I damn sure don’t fuck with the police!”

  The woman had a sour look on her face. “Shut the hell up, Shamari!” she said loudly. “That’s why your ass is in the trouble you’re in now,” She looked at Sean apologetically.

  “Officer Daniels, I apologize for my son’s ignorance. He always had a problem with authority and now this is where he ends up. He’s only nineteen years old and he doesn’t belong here because I didn’t raise him like this. On the other hand, this is just a pit stop before death. I don’t know what it’s going to take for him to get it right!” Her eyes began to get watery.

  Sean felt uncomfortable, dying to comfort the distressed mother, but he had to remain professional. He reassured the woman by telling her that everything was going to be okay. Sean glanced at the teen, wanting to whip his ass for making his mother cry and wondered if the boy’s father was still around. It was then he figured that it was time to walk away, half hoping that he would have an opportunity to talk to the woman before she left the facility.

  “Well, I’m sorry for interruptin’, so I’m goin’ to do what I get paid to do. Enjoy the rest of the visit,” Sean stated before quickly walking off. After the brief interaction, he spent the next twenty minutes pretending to be busy. He still was unable to keep his eyes off the woman. Sean laughed to himself and figured that if anyone was going to pass some drugs, the time to do it would be while the mystery woman was there keeping his eyes and thoughts preoccupied. Sean sat in a seat alongside the desk, leering at her from afar. Suddenly, the inmate’s mother got up from the seat and was about to walk out. Sean immediately walked over to the table to stop her.

  “Um, ma’am, is there a problem here?” he asked, as he summoned her to sit back down.

  “Yes, it is!” she replied angrily. “I’m leaving! I have to go to work this morning and my son obviously does not appreciate me coming up to this disgusting place to visit his ungrateful ass!”

  Shamari sucked his teeth. “Ma, c’mon, cut it out, you—” he said.

  She gave him a stern look and pointed a well manicured finger in his peach-fuzzed face.

  “Shamari, I’m gonna tell you this and I’m not gonna tell you anymore. I gave you the best years of my life so that you wouldn’t have to go through this. I was sixteen years old when I gave birth to you. I made all kinds of sacrifices trying to provide you with everything that you needed so that you would not be out in these streets trying to steal, cheat, and rob, and this is how you repay me? Then when I come up here to see you, you talk to me like I’m one of those hoochies you like to run around with. Remember I’m your fucking mother! When all the smoke clears, who do you come running to? Me! Not your friends, not your uncles, not your grandmother, nobody else but me! So don’t ever disrespect me like that again!”

  Shamari wore a smug expression on his face while some nearby visitors and inmates stared at him. Shamari sat there with his arms folded, never answering his mother. She almost walked out at first but Sean explained to her that the inmate had to leave the visit area before she did and that it was procedure. Shamari stomped out of the visit area like the spoiled brat he was and walked through the metal door with an attitude without so much as a good-bye to his flustered mother.

  It took everything in Sean’s power not to snatch Shamari out of his jail-issued jumpsuit for being insolent to the one woman who loved him so much. He was going to be handled, but right then, Sean was more concerned about the mother, who was very upset. When she finally was able to leave, Sean took the time to walk her to the visit registration area. He waited patiently while she removed her personal items from the locker and took a seat.

  There were a few visitors in the area waiting for the visit bus. It was the bus that transported visitors back to the main registration building. It was there the visitors would catch the Q-101 bus to the parking lot on the other side of the Riker’s bridge or Queens Plaza for the subway.

  “Thank you, officer, for everything. I want to apologize again for my son’s behavior,” she said with a forced smile.

  Sean could tell that she was still upset about her son’s behavior. “Oh, it was no problem, sweetheart,” Sean replied. “I’m still gonna look out for him, though. Don’t be too upset, Ma. He was just tryin’ to be hard. I been doin’ this for a while now and he’s probably just scared to death.” He paused. “Oh, by the way, what’s your name, Miss?”

  She giggled. “Oh, shoot, forgive me. All of this newness and I forgot to introduce myself. I’m Brandi Wallace. That’s
‘Miss’ Brandi Wallace.” She made sure she stressed the fact that she wasn’t married.

  “Brandi. What a beautiful name.”

  Brandi quickly placed a business card in his hand with her information on it. She walked briskly to the other side to line up for the bus. As she walked away, she put an imaginary phone to her ear and mouthed the words, “Call me” to Sean and put on a megawatt smile. Sean stood in that one spot and watched Brandi until she was out of his sight.

  Sean looked around for any nosey officers who may have been watching him talk to Brandi. Lucky for him, everyone seemed to be too busy working to notice him. Sean knew that fraternizing with visitors who came to see inmates was against the rules, but looking at Brandi’s sexy ass, he knew that his mind was made up. He was about to break that rule and he didn’t need anyone to remind him of that.

  Chapter 3

  Approximately an hour later, Brandi was driving her champagne colored Lexus IS 300 on the FDR Drive and singing along to a Keyshia Cole CD. Even though she was excited about meeting Sean Daniels, she felt emptiness. Her only child was locked up in a jail cell on Rikers and there wasn’t anything that she could do about it. She desperately missed Shamari but she also realized that it was time for him to grow up. Brandi knew that Shamari didn’t have the type of street smarts that she had growing up. In those days, they were called survival skills. Fortunate enough to have never done any jail time, Brandi had been careful to hide her own criminal past from Shamari.

  Brandi was the so-called “gangster bitch,” the ride or die chick every thug needed and wanted in their lives. With the exception of drinking and drugging, there was nothing that Brandi had not done on a street level. Never knowing what it felt like to actually struggle, Shamari was sheltered. He was protected from the mean streets by his mother; she knew that the streets would only swallow him up and spit him out.

  When Shamari’s father, Maleek, was murdered in 1993, Brandi decided that it was time to finally straighten up her act. She thanked God for her mother, who looked after five-year-old Shamari while Brandi went back to school and got her GED. She eventually went to college and succeeded in getting her master’s degree in sociology, although now it seemed ironic that she chose the major when she couldn’t even understand her own child’s problems.

  Brandi remembered the day she first met Maleek. It was 1986 and she was attending Boys and Girls High School at the time. A rebellious teenager at fifteen, Brandi stood in front of the school on Fulton Street, cutting last period, accompanied by her best friend, Sheba. They were standing around talking shit with a few other girls and chain-smoking Newport 100s when she noticed Maleek. He was leaning against his black Saab convertible, with Rakim’s lyrics coming through his booming system. He was with three other guys D,ollar, Gator, and Peeto, who were all just as fly as him. They were sporting expensive truck jewelry and velour FILA sweat suits with the sneakers to match. Brandi used to see Maleek around the way all the time, but he was always on the move and Brandi never had a chance to catch him alone. This was probably her one opportunity to get with him and she was not going to miss it for the world.

  As Brandi and Sheba stood nearby, they watched closely as Maleek talked to one of their female schoolmates. Brandi and Sheba were extremely popular with the student body at Boys and Girls. They were known for being unruly and disobedient to most of the administrative staff and whomever else they didn’t like. They were boosting at the time, so sporting the latest gear was nothing for the duo, who thought that the world revolved around them. Brandi, being the tough girl that she was, finally grew impatient with Maleek talking to the girl and slowly approached the two.

  “Um, excuse you!” the girl exclaimed, looking at Brandi as if she had lost her mind. “Don’t you see me talkin’ to him?”

  Brandi turned around and faced the girl. “No, you was talkin’ to him, bitch! Now step off! ” she yelled.

  When the female looked as if she wanted to jump, Brandi spit a single edge Gem Star razor out of her mouth and into her right hand. “Now, what was you about to do?” The girl froze in her tracks. “’Cause I’ll carve my fuckin’ name in your face, ho!” Brandi said, as she raised the hand with the razor over her head, waiting to attack.

  The girl shook her head and backed away with a look of defeat on her face. Shamari’s future dad seemed impressed with this display of aggression, a move that he would have never expected from a girl with such a pretty face and feminine appeal. Maleek and his boy, Dollar, began laughing hysterically.

  “Yo’, shorty, why did you do that shit to homegirl?” Maleek asked with a big grin on his face. He was kind of flattered by the violent gesture. “You ain’t right!”

  “I ain’t gon’ lie,” added Dollar. “That was some sexy shit right there. We love a chick that could hold her own!” Gator and Peeto slapped each other five in agreement with what Dollar said.

  Brandi smiled at Dollar then looked at Maleek with a smirk on her face. “Maybe I did it because I wanted you for myself, that’s why. I always get what I want,” Brandi replied. “Anyway, my name is Brandi, and yours?”

  He held out his hand to shake hers. Maleek looked Brandi up and down, surprised by her straight forwardness. “My name is Maleek, shorty. You’re real sexy, you know that?”

  She blushed a little. “Yeah, you too, boo. You’re the reason I walked my ass over here and spit my razor out on a bitch in the first place. I just hope that I’m not wastin’ my time.”

  Maleek blushed. He liked Brandi’s approach and he was more than happy to accommodate her. He could see that she had been around the block and back; Brandi was no amateur in the game. Brandi had no idea that Maleek was familiar with her and Sheba. He also knew that they stayed fresh to death. They rocked all kinds of colorful Ralph Lauren and Guess? gear, along with the multiple pairs of dooky earrings in their ears and four-finger name rings on their fingers.

  “Nah, shorty,” Maleek replied, licking his smooth lips. He paused for a moment and looked back at his friends, who nodded their heads in approval.

  “You know what, Brandi? I like you. I’m gonna give you my house number and my beeper number, okay? Hit me on my hip later on tonight.” After that day, they were like Bonnie and Clyde, inseperable and joined at the hip.

  Having grown up as the only girl with three older brothers, Brandi held herself down like one of the guys in the streets. Alongside Maleek, while she was six months pregnant, she transported kilos of crack along 95 South. They hustled in cities like Washington, D.C. and Norfolk, Virginia. They were young and disobedient with no respect for the law, growing up in an era when drug crews policed their hoods.

  Meanwhile, Brandi and Maleek stood by each other, through good and bad times, with Brandi sometimes bringing that heat to a motherfucker, if she had to. She had killed at least two or three men in those days, and lucky for her, the cases went cold and unsolved. Sad to say, no one was concerned about young black men being murdered during that time-it was crack wars going on. But one day everything stopped for Brandi when Maleek was found dead on the side of Interstate 64 in Norfolk, Virginia in his Range Rover SUV.

  Brandi was then left to raise her son—alone. Although she knew that he was in a better place, she missed Maleek. These days, she hadn’t been with a decent man in years, focusing on her career and raising Shamari by herself, trying to keep him out of trouble. It was ironic because no one would have ever suspected that Brandi was a reformed bad girl, and she wanted it to stay that way.

  While Brandi steered her car over the Queensboro Bridge toward Manhattan, she shed a few tears. She prided herself in coming a long way from being the ’hood chick she once was to becoming a director for the Administration of Children Services. With her professionalism and new attitude about life in general, Brandi had managed to redeem herself of all the negative connotations that came with the mere mention of her name. She knew that it was no use trying to beat herself up about the things she had done in the past. Brandi found herself wondering where
she went wrong with Shamari and feeling like God was punishing him for all of the sins that she and his father committed.

  Brandi shook her head, waking up from the recurring nightmare that haunted her almost every day of her life. The only thing she needed to do now was concentrate on trying to bring her son home, and getting him on the right track so he could also experience the joys and success that she had worked so hard to achieve.

  Chapter 4

  Back at the jail, Yadi and Vanita exited the control room, preparing to go home. Sean gathered his belongings and walked out too.

  “Where are you goin’, Mr. Daniels?” Yadi asked in her usual flirtatious manner. She looked up at him and was suddenly tempted to kiss his soft lips, but decided to keep her cool for now.

  “To my second post. I have North on overtime,” he said.

  “Dag, Sean, you stay workin’ overtime in that rat hole!” Yadi replied with her nose turned up. “I couldn’t stand workin’ up there with those ignorant asses! Ever since Captain Phillips allegedly got caught up with that inmate, females don’t even wanna work on that post anymore!”

  Vanita frowned at Sean. “Yeah, Daniels, you don’t get tired of those Five North assholes?” Vanita asked.

  Sean laughed and waved the two women off. “Those crooks! I’m here to make my dollars. They serve their time and I get paid. Fair exchange, no robbery.”