A Moment of Silence: Midnight III (The Midnight Series Book 3) by Sister Souljah Page B

police officer. She probably believes he’s outserving those who need help and protecting those who need to be rescued. She probably cooked him breakfast this morning admiring him and gave him a kiss and a lunch before he left, while not knowing he’s just a fool who spent his morning on a black man’s dick.
    This is how they break men , I thought to myself. Being cuffed and trapped was expected. But what they kill you with is what no decent men would ever do, or ever expect to be done. It’s the extra shit that has nothing to do with being questioned, or with being charged with a crime, or even with being sentenced or with serving time as a just punishment.
    *  *  *
    Inside the still stinking side room a detective spread some photos on the table. By now, I had observed that the detectives were more focused and serious than the regular uniformed cops. Yet all cops are cops to me.
    These are narcs , I thought to myself. Drug detectives looking for drug dealers, drugs, and information leading them to a bust. I was clear now. But one or more of them might be a drug dealer himself , I thought. A dirty cop pretending to be a detective while dealing drugs on the low, or at least by protecting drug dealers on the low. Particularly, drug dealers on Redverse’s team. The ones carrying the red bag , I said to myself.
    “All that’s required here are your fingers since your jaw is jammed shut. Point out which man or which men in these photos you recognize. Smartest thing you can do for yourself is to separate yourself from these guys. Give them up. Cooperate with us , and you can walk out of here a free man soon,” he said.
    In the photos were four different dreds, and one Caesar cut, all dark-skinned and Jamaican. I recognized two of them. The first was Shotgun; the other was AK-47. The other two I didn’t know. I figured it was Redverse and one of his lieutenants, or maybe anotherone of his brothers or even his business partner. Neither me nor my face responded to the photos.
    “You could move the photos around. Put ’em in the right order for us,” the detective said. “The bigger the boss, the bigger the bang, the better the bargaining chip for you. Your freedom is based on this negotiation.” I didn’t speak. The officer who was trying to do all the convincing continued, as the other detective’s face and body grew more and more impatient. He stood stiff, fingering his holster. The first detective threw a small pad and a piece of a pencil on the table.
    “Give us some names. Write down the names of even one of the guys you know—his street name, name his momma gave him, whatever. But it better be right. Pull a fast one, and I’ll have you serve all of their time put together. I can do that, you know.” He was leaning on the table now where I was seated. His facial expression was serious, angry and frustrated. I knew the routine. He was playing “bad cop, good cop.” I wasn’t playing. The bad cop puts the fear in a prisoner and the good cop poses as a reasonable ally who the prisoner can mistakenly trust in and bargain with.
    “Stand up!” the “bad detective” yelled, not giving a fuck about who could hear him. I stood. A tough guy, he took off his gun and handed it to his partner like he wanted me and him to shoot a fair one. There is no such thing as a fair one between a cop and his prisoner. The cop is hands-free and the prisoner is not. Even if I defeated the cop using only my trained feet, even if I knocked him out using the metal cuffs I was wearing as a weapon and banged him at a point on his body that I had already studied, even if I head-butted him into unconsciousness—and I could do all that—I knew if a man in custody, a prisoner, moves one muscle in his body, a cop is authorized to kill. And this detective wanted to kill somebody. He threw his best shots to my stomach, didn’t like not seeing the look of pain on my face, and began slamming his fist into my sides. I felt it. I didn’t