Total pages in book: 150
Estimated words: 136791 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 684(@200wpm)___ 547(@250wpm)___ 456(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 136791 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 684(@200wpm)___ 547(@250wpm)___ 456(@300wpm)
"I promise you that we're doing everything we can," he says.
"Right," I snort, not giving a shit if I piss him off or not. Whether he wants to admit it or not, we both know they aren't bending over backward to solve this murder. In neighborhoods like this, people like Titan and Jana are just another fucking statistic. A cautionary tale about what happens when you grow up poor like Jana or with the wrong skin color like Titan. He's just another casualty in a war he never wanted to fight, and she's collateral damage.
"You said yourself that I'm a smart kid, Whitten. You think I don't know you're here knocking on my door because you don't have a clue who rolled up on my girl's house and killed her family? You think I don't know that the LAPD doesn't know which Diablo pulled the fucking trigger and isn't bending over backward to find out? To the LAPD, Titan was just another poor mixed kid slinging dope. How many similar cases are still sitting open on your desk? Forty? Fifty?" I shake my head in disgust. "Motherfuckers like the Diablos run this city, and guys like you just let them do it because you're too goddamn scared to set foot in neighborhoods like this unless you're forced to do it."
He opens his mouth to say something, but I cut him off.
"You wonder why kids like Titan die? It's because of cops like you," I snap. "I told you what I know. I've told you guys over and over and over that the Diablos did this, and Curtis Kaleo might as well have put the fucking gun in their hands. Maybe stop knocking on my door and start knocking on their doors. Maybe then you'll find out what the fuck happened to Titan and Jana. Maybe then my girl wouldn't be staring at the ceiling, too traumatized by watching her brother bleed out and die in the street to even speak."
"Michael, I'm on your side," Whitten says, holding his hands up like he's not the enemy. And maybe he's not. I don't have a problem with cops in general. But I do have a problem with guys like Whitten feeding me a bunch of bullshit because he doesn't have the first clue which of the Diablos killed my best friend…and he never will.
Gang crime is the LAPD's dirty little secret, the one they pretend not to see until rich white folks like my grandparents get caught in the middle. Then, it's an issue to solve. Then gang crime is a priority. Until then, Titan is just another case file in a fucking stack.
"I've got nothing else to say," I mutter with a disgusted shake of my head. "Get the fuck off my porch."
With that, I storm back inside, leaving him sputtering and stuttering through an explanation we both know is more manufactured bullshit. He doesn't have a clue who killed Titan. He'll poke around for a few days, maybe haul in a couple of the usual suspects, and then he'll toss the case aside and pick up the next.
I slam the door so hard the windowpanes rattle in the living room.
"You good?" Quan asks, looking up from the television. His eyes are just as bloodshot and bruised as mine. He's slept just as little as I have. He lost someone important to him, too. And I can't even tell him that it's my goddamn fault.
"No," I tell him, fighting for control when all I want to do is put my fist through the wall. Anything to release even a fraction of the guilt and rage eating me alive. "The fucking cops are useless."
"Truth," he says, putting a fist in the air like it's the 1968 Olympics, and he's standing on the podium with Tommie Smith and John Carlos. Times haven't changed much since then, not around here. If anyone gets that, it's Quan. He knows it a whole hell of a lot better than I do because he's mixed. He lives with the reality every day. I don't deal with half as much bullshit as he does simply because I was born a different color.
But, hell, on this side of the poverty line, not even being white will save you. Jana was white. She's still dead, and no one's doing a goddamn thing about it because she wasn't the right kind of white from the right kind of neighborhood. In neighborhoods like this, life is a motherfucker. Doesn't matter what color we are or where we're from, we're all bleeding down here, and no one gives a flying fuck about any of us. They never have. Just ask the residents of Skid Row, where our decades-long attempts to contain the poorest of us have created a goddamn maze of tents and desperation.