Towanda Stephens lived at the Parkside Housing Development, one of Dayton’s notorious public housing projects. The designers and engineers had apparently decided to make it easier for residents to car jack any interloper who was stupid enough to try to navigate the maze of streets and parking lots that were contained in the wrought- iron fencing that surrounded the whole place. It took me five tries to find Towanda’s street, even though I had been there several times before. On the fourth try, I had to turn around in a cramped parking lot and accidentally ran over a small, rusty bicycle that I assumed belonged to one of the big-eyed tots looking out from apartment windows. I started to get out to see if there was a kid around who I could talk to when some hairy, toothless, crazy man came running towards me, yelling about the destruction of his “fine vehicle”. I left before he could commandeer mine as a replacement.
When I finally made it, Towanda saw me before I got to her door.
"I don’t want anything you selling, and I don’t got anything you want,” she shouted through a crack in her front window.
“I’m looking for Bennie. He told me to meet him here. Can I talk to him?” I yelled back.
Towanda’s next door neighbor looked through her cracked door. “T, you got some white woman here looking for your man? Ain’t that a bitch,” she cackled.
Towanda came out her front door, wrapping her housecoat around her skinny arms. “Ain’t no bitch takin’ any man I got, ‘less I want to give him up.” She turned towards me. “I ain’t got no use for that lousy, lazy excuse for a man. You see Benny, tell him the only thing I want from him is my child support.”
“Towanda, you and Bennie don’t have any babies together,” I said, hoping it was true.
“What you call Roderick?” she looked at the toddler peeking out the door.
“I call him somebody else’s child, that’s what,” I retorted.
“Ooh, she got you T! You gonna let her talk like that?”
The one-woman peanut gallery was getting on my nerves. Time to stop her.
“Aren’t you one of Marlene Gaskin’s cases? I know she handles a lot of the ladies from this neighborhood,” I asked the neighbor. My co-worker Marlene had a reputation around Parkside as a P.O. you didn’t want to mess with. She was from the projects, and was not afraid to come around looking for any of her people.
“You go on and mind Towanda’s business, and I’ll just mind mine,” she said. “Shoot, I don’t need Marlene coming around.” The neighbor disappeared in her apartment.
“You ain’t got to punk me out like that,” Towanda said.
“And you don’t have to try to pin a baby on Bennie that doesn’t belong to him.”
“Well, seeing as I got pregnant with Roderick when Bennie got locked up the time before last, because I need some attention and help with my car, I think he should be responsible for helping me out.” Towanda’s logic was giving me a migraine.
“How about you just tell me where Bennie is, and I’ll get out of your hair,” I offered.
“Can’t tell you what I don’t know. I ain’t seen him in at least two weeks. I thought maybe he got locked up again, although I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t call for cigarette money if he was.”
“He left me a message a little while ago to meet him here. Maybe he just hasn’t shown up yet.”
Towanda cocked an elaborately stenciled and pierced eyebrow. “He ain’t on his way here if he’s smart. Somebody’s sure to spot him.”
“Who’s he got to worry about around here? ” I asked.
“Oh nobody too important, unless you count the X-Man,” Towanda said, examining her three-inch long, rhine-stone encrusted nails.
I was momentarily stunned. The X-Man was far from nobody. The X-Man was definitely a somebody; in this neighborhood, he was the somebody. Namely, the somebody who ran the biggest drug empire in the city of Dayton, and ruled several of the projects like they were his own little serfdoms. “What’s the X-Man want with Bennie? Bennie’s never been a dealer. He’s never tested dirty for anything but weed.”
“Oh, word is that Bennie is real dirty, all right. Dirty with a wad of cash that belongs to the X-Man. If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll stay gone. Soon as he breaks me off a little piece of that cash. You find him, tell him I said that,” Towanda was doing the eyebrow thing again and pointing one of her gaudy nails in my direction.
I decided to wait around a little while longer to see if Bennie would show. I got in the Wrangler, turned on the heat and the radio, then leaned my seat back. I started to doze, when a car’s backfire jarred me back into full consciousness. My favorite talk radio station was on with the five o’clock news. The anchor informed the listening audience that the breaking story was that Dayton Police officers had just been called to investigate a shooting at the Parkside Housing Development, off of Keowee street. No word yet on casualties, but the police were on the look out for two or three men on foot, who were reported to be running through the Parkside neighborhood, firing shots.
“Holy crap! That’s here,” I yelled at myself, as I sat my seat up and shoved my Jeep into reverse. Soft-top Wranglers don’t offer much in the way of protection from stray ammunition. As I careened backward out of the parking space, I heard and felt a big thump simultaneously. I was opening my door to see what I had backed over, when the passenger side door flew open and Bennie jumped in the seat. “Go! Go, don’t stop to see. He’s gonna kill us!” Bennie screamed.
I didn’t wait to see if this was true. I jammed the stick in first and peeled out of the lot and onto the street on two wheels. “Where are the police? They’re supposed to be here,” I panted. My heart was banging in my chest and I felt like I had just sprinted a mile.
“Back on the other side of the project. They didn’t see which way we were running,” Bennie replied, looking through my plastic back window. “I don’t think he’s getting up.”
I turned down a side street that would take us back to the other side of the project. Bennie looked alarmed and yelled, “Where are you going?”
“To the police. We need to tell them what happened. That man was trying to kill you and I may have killed him. They need to know things like that,” I replied, my breath a little more even.
“You can’t do that. They might take me in.”
“Sounds like jail might be a safer place for you, with people trying to shoot you out here. What’s all this stuff I heard about you stealing money from the X-Man?” I looked at Bennie out of the corner of my eye.
“The X-Man is exactly why I can’t get locked up. He’d get me in jail for sure. Out here, I at least got a chance. Now turn around and take me down town.”
“Not a chance. We have to talk to the police. You didn’t tell me why you stole from him.”
“I didn’t.” Bennie said, looking out the rear window again. He swung his head around, then screamed, “Look out! Stop!”
I slammed on the brakes and the Jeep stalled out. Bennie slammed the door open and ran out into the street, turned down an alley, and disappeared in the dusk. I ran out into the street, first looking for Bennie, then looking to see what he had been screaming about. Nothing. Apparently talking to the police wasn’t in his plan.
