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“What?”
“You ain’t been to see me in all the weeks I been locked up. Suddenly, you show up. Just today? Why?”
“Kerry was saying . . . I mean, I was thinking . . . I just wanted to hear the truth.” Jamison saw the distance in Ras’s eyes again. “What, you don’t believe me?”
“I don’t know who the real people are and who the agents are.”
“An agent? Of what? And what would make you think I’m one of them?” Jamison asked.
“Because they mentioned you.”
“Me?”
To get an answer, Jamison had to soften Ras again. He’d called him Glenn. Reminded him of the time they’d broken into their professor’s office together the night before the midterm exam and stolen answers. They’d gotten all the way back to their dorm with the answers to the chemistry exam, but then Ras had started feeling so bad, remembering something his grandmother had told him about cheaters, that he’d convinced Jamison not to use the answers. They’d stayed up all night studying, quizzing each other. By morning they had been chemistry gurus. But they’d both failed the exam anyway.
“I got this call two weeks before I got pulled over,” Ras told Jamison. “Some man was talking about how he knew I was dating this white girl from the Highlands and wouldn’t it be a big blemish on my record if everyone in the community knew I was running around with a white girl.”
“So, the white girl wasn’t a plant?”
“Nah. Nora’s a little something I got on the side. You know. She likes to smoke and shit. Just a little something, something. Anyway, I was high as shit when the call came, so I was laughing. I was like, ‘Fuck is this? I don’t care who knows.’ Then he said he had pictures.”
“Pictures?”
“Yes. Told me to look at my phone and I did and there was a bunch texts from an anonymous number. Pictures. Nora and me . . . you know.” Ras ran his fingers through his locks nervously. “I got kids, man.”
“What did they want?”
“For me to stay away from you.”
Jamison listened as Ras told a story about a whisper through the wire that told him to stop the negotiations between the Hawks players and the city. If he didn’t, the pictures would go out everywhere—his kids’ school, the community center. Ras said he wouldn’t comply. Two weeks later, he was riding in the car with Nora. There were blue sirens behind them. Two officers got out of the squad car. Two more men, dressed in black suits, got out of a black Impala trailing the squad car.
“One had on your ring,” Ras revealed.
“What ring?”
“The black fist on top of the phoenix. Greek symbol in the middle. I know that ring. You wore it every day after you pledged,” Ras said.
“That doesn’t make any sense. You have to be mistaken. There are plenty of rings out there just like my fraternity ring,” Jamison said. “I mean, even if some crazy cops tried to plant weed on you and catch you out there with some white girl from the Highlands, what does that have to do with what we’re doing with the Hawks? With us getting scholarships for kids? Why would they care? And why would anyone in my fraternity be involved?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“No reason—that’s all. And that’s why this sounds crazy.” Jamison was the one who sat back that time. “That’s why you have to be mistaken.”
Ras took notice and asked, “So, you don’t believe me?”
“How high were you that night when you got that phone call? You sure it wasn’t me on the phone?”
“Jamison, I’ve been smoking for over twenty years. Weed is like water for me,” Ras said. “I actually think more clearly when I’m high.”
“Okay. I’ll give you that. But what about the ring? Every fraternity, social club, college, and sports team has a ring. Maybe you thought you were seeing something you weren’t. Got confused.”
“I’ve gone through this in my mind a million times.”
“So you think the call and the bust are connected?” Jamison asked.
“No doubt in my mind, brother. I told those motherfuckers no, and now they’re setting me up,” Ras said.
Jamison searched and saw nothing but truth in Ras’s eyes. While he couldn’t confirm everything his old friend was saying, he knew Ras believed it.
