Angels with Dirty Faces. Walidah Imarisha
father, sitting on the opposite side of the courtroom from Kakamia’s mother. Bobby’s father had a small scar on his cheek, where a bullet had bruised it deeply, but not penetrated. It was actually a miracle he lived.
Bobby’s father had come to court to see Kakamia sentenced, and wanted him to get murder in the first degree. Since Kakamia was underage when the crime was committed, they couldn’t give him the death penalty. But they could give him life without, which Kakamia felt was worse in some ways than the death penalty.
Kakamia fantasized about what it would be like going to the chair (he wasn’t sure if that’s how they did it in California, but it sounded the most dramatic). He would set his jaw and walk with confident unhurried steps. They’d strap him in, and ask if he had any last words. Sometimes in his fantasy he’d imitate one of his favorite rappers Ice Cube from the album Death Certificate, which came out a year after he was arrested: “Yeah, yeah I got some last words. Fuck all y’all!” Sometimes he’d smile and say, “I regret that I have but one life to give.” He couldn’t remember where he’d heard that line before, but he liked the sound of it.
He’d been thinking of that over and over when he was arrested, the day after the murder. Maybe that was what prompted him to tell the cops that he was the one who pulled the trigger. There had been two cops, and they had him in a room asking him a lot of questions. They called his mom but the phone had been cut off that day. She wasn’t at home anyway.
They kept asking him who did it, and he wasn’t saying nothing. He wasn’t going to rat on anyone. At first he kept saying he didn’t know, but it sounded like a burglary, if things were missing.
“I heard that burglars often shoot people if they think they could ID them later. I saw it on a TV show,” Kakamia offered. That had been the story they agreed on: after Bobby shot his parents with the gun he stole from them, Kakamia would take the gun and run out. Bobby would hurry back to his room and pretend to have slept through the “burglary.”
Unfortunately, Kakamia and the others hadn’t studied those crime shows closely enough. There were only minimal signs of forced entry; they had barely broken the front door lock. Not enough to convince the police. And they had only taken the TV and VCR; with a house full of so many other valuables, the cops ruled out robbery gone wrong quite quickly.
Kakamia was momentarily at a loss for words after the cops interrogating him told him this. They hadn’t thought about that. They figured it would be enough if stuff was missing and Bobby was in his bed. What were they going to do now? He started to panic.
Then he had a flash of imagination: him standing over the sleeping couple, dressed all in black with a black ski mask on, the .38 revolver in his hands. He walked to the edge of the bed, extended his arm and burrowed the bullet into the back of Bobby’s mother’s head, firing one shot, then swung expertly to the father, and did the same. He wiped the gun down, and threw it in the corner. Without a backwards glance, he slipped out of the house, walked around the corner, pulled out a wad of cash, counted it and started laughing.
It’s already done and they already had both of them, so why not go out with style? So that’s what Kakamia told the police. All of it except the cash. He knew that wasn’t true, cause the insurance money hadn’t come in yet. One of the cops got ecstatic. But the second wasn’t convinced. “We know about you, kid, we asked around. Talked to your friends.”
“Yeah,” Kakamia tried to put some bass in his voice to sound tougher. “And what did they say about me?”
“They said you live in a fantasy world. That you like to be a big shot. You boast and brag about doing all kinds of things, but in reality you’re just a little nigger who comes to school in worn out shoes and eats mayo sandwiches for lunch. By yourself.”
Kakamia’s rage flared inside him like a gun going off. “You don’t know shit about me! I did it!”
But the cops continued questioning him on different aspects of the crime, trying to trip Kakamia up, confuse him.
“So you say you put the gun to both of the victims’ heads while they slept in their bed at 1 am?”
“Yeah, right up against their heads, just like they did in The Godfather,” Kakamia replied.
The cop wheeled on him fast. “Then how do you explain Bobby’s father still being alive? The only reason he didn’t die like Bobby’s mother is because the bullet got caught in the pillow and slowed down. When it hit his cheekbone, it didn’t penetrate his skull,” he finished triumphantly.
Kakamia sat quiet. He had forgotten that was part of the plan, he had gotten so caught up in his own imaginations. Since Kakamia hadn’t been in the room, hadn’t seen what Bobby did, he didn’t have that point of reference. He had waited downstairs in the darkened entryway, his hands raining sweat into his gloves.
But it was too late to turn back now, and in truth, he didn’t want to. He liked the image of himself holding money, handling business, stone cold. Hurting other people before they hurt him. He liked it as long as he didn’t think about Bobby’s mother, didn’t wonder about what her last thoughts were, or whether she knew subconsciously, as she lay there sleeping, that her own flesh and blood was about to end her life. He held that thought out at arm’s length, dripping red, so it wouldn’t stain him.
“Well, I did it,” Kakamia said stubbornly. “That’s all you need to know.”
* * *
Kakamia tuned back in to his sentencing trial. The judge was talking about probation. For half a minute, Kakamia’s hope flared. “According to the law, the defendant is eligible for probation for this charge. This charge, however, is one that clearly calls out for denial of probation, despite the fact that the defendant is so young and has no prior criminal record. The crime is just too enormous—there’s two separate victims, with loss of life and near loss of life to the second person—to allow for grant of probation, and therefore probation is denied.” His voice had the finality of a banging gavel.
Kakamia sighed. He knew he wouldn’t be getting probation; it was just an empty hope. He also knew they wouldn’t be sending him back to the California Youth Authority to finish his sentence. CYA could only hold him until he was twenty-five, and everyone involved, including his lawyer apparently, felt that wasn’t enough time for his crime.
No, Kakamia knew exactly what he was getting. After Bobby pleaded guilty a couple months before, he was given twenty-five to life. Bobby got out of the conspiracy charge by saying he wasn’t the trigger man. He blamed it on Kakamia, which of course went along with Kakamia’s earlier confession to the crime. So everything was hanging on him, and he was looking at life without. Kakamia used to think prison wouldn’t be a big deal. His dad had been in prison damn near his whole life. His whole life felt like a prison, like there was no escape. He was locked in, and no matter how hard he rattled the bars, no one came for him.
But when he was actually facing life in prison, he knew if his life had been a prison, it had been minimum security, grooming him for this next step, the big time. He had heard so many stories of prison from the other guys in his set, or gang. He would have to get deeper into the gang to survive, or he’d be left to fend for himself, always watching his back, always wondering where a shank was going to come from…
Kakamia couldn’t breathe. His throat was just as constricted as when he had tied the bed sheet around it. Wound it around and jerked the knot. Tied the other end to the top bars of his cell door. He thought it would be fast. One of the other guys in the jail told him it would be quick, a snap and then nothing. This guy, he’d seen other guys do it, and he said they didn’t feel nothing. But Kakamia hung there, no air. His eyes felt like grapes being squeezed. His legs jerked like a broken wind-up toy. They took him to the jail infirmary after they cut him down. The court had to push back his next court date, because he couldn’t walk. The doctors said it did permanent damage to his lower back and neck. He still couldn’t turn his head to the left or the right in the court room. He had to shift his whole upper body to look at his mom, eyes full of tears and frustration.
Kakamia leaned forward, rested his head