She Had It Coming Page 13

  “I don’t care what you say,” I said to Noble, looking to Viola for more support, and I got it with a firm nod from her and a scowl that she shot in Noble’s direction. “I know Floyd better than you do, and I know he’s innocent.”

  Now that Luther was gone, Noble walked all over poor Viola like he was walking on a beach. But every time he upset her, he crawled back into her good graces like a lizard. There was a contrite look on his miserable face now, but I could see right through it. “Uh, Auntie, I didn’t mean to upset you,” he muttered. “You know you my boobie. But I’m just going by what everybody is saying. Maybe that boy is innocent after all. . . .”

  I had never liked Noble, but right then I despised him. His arrogance was beyond belief. It seemed like he went out of his way to aggravate me. I knew that the sooner I moved out of Viola’s house, the better off I would be. If I didn’t do it soon enough there was a strong possibility that I’d be the next person to go to jail, with Noble’s blood on my hands.

  My search for a better job finally paid off. I accepted the first one that was offered to me, and it sounded like the perfect distraction I needed. The other incentive was that it included more money. And if all that was not enough, it sounded like a fun job, too. I was going to be one of three secretaries in the main office in downtown L.A. for a popular cruise ship line called Encantadora. In addition to doing clerical work, I’d get to take cruises from the port in Long Beach to various ports along the Mexican Riviera and occasionally ports in the Caribbean. Health benefits, a credit union, stock options, and a retirement package added more icing to the cake.

  I gave Dr. Oglethorpe three days’ notice, even though I wasn’t going to start my new job for another three weeks. I couldn’t continue working for him knowing that he thought that there was a possibility that Floyd was guilty. As a matter of fact, I didn’t want to be around anybody else who thought Floyd was guilty.

  Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, they did. Noble had already practically moved into Viola’s house. But a week later when his wife left him and returned to Mexico, he did move in. Lock, stock, and barrel. Now I had to put up with his arrogance day and night, seven days a week. I was fit to be tied.

  Two days into Floyd’s trial, one week into Noble being in the house full time, I ran into Miss Naomi when we got on the same bus coming from downtown. She was coming from the bar she owned and operated; I was coming from the courthouse where I’d sat through several hours of testimony. And none of it was good. Another witness had come forward! This bitch, the best friend of the dead girl, swore that the girl had told her that Floyd had been stalking her. I didn’t know how much more of this shit I could take, but I knew I had to be strong for Floyd. I was glad to see Miss Naomi. Seeing her took my mind off my own problems for a while. “Lo, I know that boy didn’t rape nobody. And he couldn’t kill a fly! You keep on believing in him, and things will work out.” Miss Naomi gave me a pitiful look.

  I was in such a daze it took me a while to realize I’d never known Miss Naomi to take the bus. She had always had a nice car to get around in. “What happened to your car?” I asked in a feeble voice.

  “I sold it. I’m going to be moving to Memphis soon,” she told me.

  “Oh. Well, when you see Valerie tell her I asked about her,” I mumbled. I didn’t even care about Valerie anymore. She’d made her choice and it didn’t include me. Besides, Floyd’s trial and my new job were more than enough for me to deal with.

  “You can tell her yourself. She’ll be home this Saturday,” Miss Naomi told me with a wide smile. “She’s going to run the business and keep up the house.” At the mention of the house, Miss Naomi gave me a strange look. “She don’t like living alone, so she’s going to rent out the rooms. One of the waitresses I just hired has already given me a deposit on Binkie’s old room.”

  “Is she going to rent out the rooms and stay there, too?”

  “Of course she is! She has to! Why?”

  “It’ll be nice to have her back in the neighborhood,” I said gently. “But I probably won’t be around. I’m going to move out of Viola’s house as soon as the trial ends. Maybe even before that. Her nephew moved in. . . .”

  “That sloppy punk that’s been sitting around waiting on her to die so he can take over that house?” Miss Naomi said, almost spitting out the words. I nodded. Miss Naomi gave me a pitiful look and shook her head so hard the flowered scarf she had tied around her head came undone. I turned away for a brief moment, but I returned my attention to her when I realized she had more to say. “You poor child. I feel so sorry for you,” she continued, retying her scarf, this time in a double knot. “This thing with Floyd would be enough to drive me to the river. And if you don’t mind me saying, from the misery in your eyes, look like you done been to the river and back. You look unhealthy and haggard. No young girl should be in this shape,” she said, looking back at me with a look in her eyes so painful you’d have thought Floyd was her man. “But having to live under the same roof with Noble Coleman would finish me off.” Miss Naomi grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “Take my advice. Move, girl. If any woman knows what it’s like to live with a devil, it’s me. You’d be happier in a doghouse than in the same house with Noble. Focus your attention on Floyd. Because child, in his case, you got yourself a long hard row to hoe.”

  Even though I knew that Miss Naomi believed in Floyd’s innocence, it didn’t matter because his fate was up to a jury. And every day of the trial all twelve of those grim faces displayed so much contempt they would have crucified Jesus all over again.

  The next day Floyd called me up. He spent the first few minutes asking me about myself, then he gave me a list of complaints about the jailhouse food. He even laughed about that. Then he got quiet. “Lo, there is something you need to hear from me, not the six o’clock news or the newspaper.” I didn’t like the serious tone of his voice. It scared me.

  With my heart beating so hard I had to rub my chest, I held my breath and braced myself. “What?” I asked, clutching the telephone in my hands like it was going to jump out the window. Floyd was taking too long to answer. “Floyd, what do you have to tell me?”

  I heard him suck in his breath before he replied. “Baby, I’m going to change my plea from not guilty . . . to guilty.”

  CHAPTER 26

  “Did you hear me, Lo? I’m going to plead guilty, or no contest. Whichever one will speed this shit up the quickest.”

  “Floyd, what in the hell are you talking about?” I shrieked.

  Of all the things in my twenty years on Earth that my ears had relayed to my brain, this was the one thing that I could not comprehend. I couldn’t believe my ears. I held the telephone away from my ear and just looked at it. I wanted to throw it against the wall and then out the window. Had it been a pipe bomb, I could not have despised it more.

  I was glad that Viola and Noble were out shopping for a new car, with Viola’s money, for Noble to “help her get around town.” I almost dropped the telephone as I placed it back up to my ear. “What did you say?” I mouthed, still mad at the telephone for transporting such a shocking message. If I could have “killed the messenger,” I would have.

  “I’m changing my plea to guilty,” Floyd said in a voice that sounded so distant now, he could have been calling me up from the moon.

  “You mean . . . you really did do it? You are guilty? Motherfucker, are you crazy? You’ve got me, and you could have any other woman you want and you still went out and raped somebody? Then you killed her?” I still couldn’t believe what I’d just heard. I had to hear him say it again. “You are going to plead guilty?”

  “Um . . . yeah. That’s what I just said,” he stammered.

  I was so stunned that the slightest breeze could have blown me over. “You did it. You did rape and murder that girl. Just like Noble and most of L.A. said you did!”

  “Baby, calm down!”

  “Calm down? You admit this shit to me and you expect me to calm down? What
the fuck do you think I am?” I didn’t even know I was crying until I tasted tears on my lips. “I just want to know why. No, it doesn’t matter. You are a sick bastard, and you are right where you should be! What the hell did you need me for?”

  “Dolores, I need you to calm down so I can explain,” Floyd said calmly.

  “What is there to explain? You did it, and that’s that. Do you think I want you to explain how you fucked her? How you killed her? There’s nothing for you to explain to me. Any explaining you do, you do it for the jury. I’m through.”

  “Dolores, I didn’t do it,” Floyd said, still speaking calmly. “Just listen to me.”

  “You got two minutes, and then I’m off this telephone,” I yelled. “I’ve been a fool for too long.” I couldn’t even feel my legs, so I didn’t know what was keeping me from falling to the floor.

  “I didn’t do it. I’d never do something that crazy, and you know I wouldn’t.”

  “Then why the fuck are you going to plead guilty? It sounds like you need to be pleading insanity because the more I talk to you, the crazier you sound.”

  “They offered me a deal. I am not ready to die, baby. Especially for something I didn’t do. The only way I can stay out of that gas chamber for sure is to plead guilty.”

  “Oh hell no! You didn’t do it, and you are not going to say you did!”

  “Would you rather see me on death row or doing life? And you know sometimes people who get sentenced to life eventually get out after . . . thirty or forty years. We’re young. We could still have a life together in our fifties or sixties.”

  “Fuck that shit! Do you expect me to wait around for half a century, or longer, worrying about what’s going to happen to you in some prison? You are not going to spend one year in jail after this trial—and we’ll find a lawyer and sue those motherfuckers to make them compensate you for the time you’ve already spent in jail! I think you should take your chances and let the jury decide. No, I don’t think, I insist. You are all I’ve got now, Floyd. If they find you not guilty, you’ll be coming home to me and we can get married and move away from here like we planned. Baby, don’t do this to us.” I was crying again. Fresh tears and slimy snot glazed my lips and chin. I slid my tongue across my lips and wiped my chin, eyes, and nose with the sleeve of my blouse.

  “Lo, I got to go now. Baby, I love you,” Floyd said in a low raspy voice.

  “Don’t you hang up this phone! I am not going to let you plead guilty, Floyd. You can’t! Please don’t do that. I never begged you for anything until now, and I am begging you with all of my heart not to do this to us. They are putting me on the stand tomorrow, and I’m going to tell the world that you were with me that night.” Floyd didn’t respond but I could hear him breathing, so I knew he was still on the line. “Floyd, baby, please don’t do this to us. There’d be no way I could live knowing you are in prison for life. Don’t change your plea. Please, please, please, don’t do that.” Floyd moaned under his breath, but still said nothing. “Floyd, say something, please. Please take your chances with the jury.”

  “All right . . .” was all he said.

  Floyd didn’t change his plea. And my testimony didn’t help. Three days after I swore on a Bible and told the court that Floyd had been with me before, during, and after the murder of that college girl, the jury found him guilty. Guilty of rape and murder! The DA didn’t get everything he’d asked for. Floyd avoided death row, but he got life, anyway. The same thing he would have received had he changed his plea to guilty!

  After the two burly bailiffs handcuffed Floyd and escorted him out of the courtroom, people started filing out like they were leaving something as casual as a movie or a play. Other than me, and a young Asian public defender who had fought tooth and nail to get Floyd off, there was nobody there for Floyd. Viola had had a relapse the night before and could barely get out of bed, so I had not expected her to be there to show her support, but I knew she was in Floyd’s corner all the way. Miss Naomi had come to court the day before and cried like a baby. But not a single one of Floyd’s so-called homeboys, coworkers, or his foster family showed their faces. I don’t know how to describe what I was feeling at the moment. But whatever it was, it was too much, and I snapped. I shot across the courtroom floor so fast I lost both of my shoes.

  I mowed down three people trying to get to that smug DA so I could give him a piece of my mind. “You son of a bitch! You know Floyd Watson is innocent!” I don’t remember grabbing his arm, but before I knew it an armed guard was pulling me away, pushing me toward the door. I didn’t even care at that point if they hauled me off to jail, too.

  Some of the spectators who had been present during the last part of the trial looked at me with an assortment of expressions on their faces. Some looked amused, some looked horrified, and a few looked downright angry. I even heard a cousin of the dead girl mutter, “She’s that killer’s girlfriend.”

  “How will you sleep nights knowing you sent an innocent man to prison for life?” I asked the DA.

  He lifted his pointed chin, narrowed his icy blue eyes, and looked me up and down like I was a piece of trash. “I’ll sleep like a baby,” he said with a snicker, smoothing the sleeve of his expensive-looking blue suit where I’d grabbed him. “What about you?”

  CHAPTER 27

  There would be no possible parole for Floyd after forty or fifty years like he had predicted. His life sentence was just that: life behind bars until the day he died. People had the nerve to tell me to look on the bright side: “At least Floyd didn’t get the gas chamber.” Had it been me, I would have chosen that. As far as I was concerned, life in prison for a man Floyd’s age until death was a far more cruel and unusual punishment. He could live to be a hundred. And in that case, what good was the next eighty years to him?

  I was absolutely devastated. I couldn’t eat, sleep, or even think straight. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what Floyd felt like. I was so distraught I couldn’t start my new job at the cruise ship office when I was supposed to. And I didn’t care if they’d hold the job for me or not. But the woman who’d hired me did. “I can give you one more week, but after that I have to fill this position, and we do have two other candidates . . .” she told me over the telephone.

  “I have some family problems I need to straighten out first. But I will be there next Monday morning,” I assured her. I was glad she didn’t ask me my business, because I didn’t want her to know that I was the girlfriend of a man who had just been tried, convicted, and sentenced for rape and murder.

  Viola was in the hospital again the day I moved from her house into a studio apartment a couple of miles from my new job. I had used part of the money that Floyd and I had saved to pay my first and last month’s rent and to pick up a few pieces of cheap, mostly used furniture. “You can take that bedroom suite if you want it,” Viola told me when I visited her at the hospital. “And if there is anything else I can do, all you have to do is ask me. As soon as I’m able, me and you will go do something nice. We’ll go to Disneyland, or Knott’s Berry Farm, and spend the whole day. After all you been through on account of that mess with Floyd, you need a break, baby.”

  I had no interest in going to Disneyland or Knott’s Berry Farm with Viola or anybody else. But I let her think I would, mainly because she was obviously in a lot of physical pain; I didn’t want to say anything that might upset her. “That’ll be nice,” I told her.

  I didn’t get a chance to get that bedroom suite from my old room in Viola’s house. She died an hour after I left her hospital room that dreary day. Since I had not installed a telephone in my new apartment yet, Noble didn’t call me to let me know. Knowing him, he probably would not have done it anyway, even if he had known how to get in touch with me. I found out five days later when I rented a U-Haul and picked up two Mexican day laborers off a street in Echo Park to go to Viola’s house to help me get the bed I’d slept in for most of my life. I still had a key to the house, so I let myself in.

 
I was absolutely stunned to say the least. My mouth dropped open as I looked around. There was not a stick of furniture in the living room or anywhere else in the house. As a matter of fact, the only thing in the house was the carpets on the floor. I could see that somebody had already started to remove them. Noble was nowhere to be found, so I called his cell phone from the new cell phone I’d just purchased the day before. He didn’t try to hide the fact that hearing my voice annoyed him.

  “What?” he said in a voice that sounded gruff even for him.

  “Viola said I could take anything I wanted from my old bedroom,” I started. I stopped talking when he started mumbling some unintelligible gibberish under his breath. “Please speak clearly. I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”

  “I said, my boobie didn’t tell me nothing about you taking nothing out of her house,” he said casually. It seemed like he was trying to taunt me. I didn’t have to see that miserable face of his, but I already knew that there was a smug look on it.

  “Is she still in the hospital? I’ll call her and have her call you,” I offered. “I really don’t want to do that because I don’t want to upset her. . . .”

  “Well, you ain’t got to worry about upsetting her no more.”