“I got mute. Like Leroy just sucker-punched me. I felt sick just like when I first found out about the murder. I mean, I didn’t even know that Leroy and Dr. Ben knew each other. But I suppose that Dr. Ben knew everyone. So I said…I said, ‘You did it, Yo-King? You snipped Dr. Ben?’ Then Leroy was acting all defensive. He said, ‘I didn’t do no snippin’, I just said I was there when it went down.’ Then he said, ‘I didn’t know they was gonna take him down. Things just got bad.’ And I say, ‘Who took him down?’ And Leroy say, ‘Don’t matter who done it. It wasn’t me and it wasn’t Jervis and it wasn’t even a brother. And now it’s over.’ Then he asked me do I want to be a major pimp or no. So I say, ‘No, I don’t got time to be no pimp.’ And that was that. He never called me again, I never called him again.”

Arlington swallowed hard.

“I never even thought about calling the police. I had no proof that Leroy was talking true, and even if he was, I would never pigeon a friend.” Another beat. “It turned out that Leroy wasn’t just blowing smoke about turning A-Tack into a pimp. He did cut a CD and Leroy sent it to me, being all smug. At that time, I was burning with envy. Just burning! I was determined to do better. I figured I really fucked up myself by not going back and joining Leroy. I kept playing the CD and saying, ‘I could do better than that. I could do way better than that.’”

Silence.

“If you know what happened to Jervis and Leroy, you know what changed my mind.”

Marge asked, “How’d you hear about the shooting?”

“My mama told me.” He looked away. “She called me up all excited and told me about Leroy dying and Jervis being paralyzed.”

“What did you think?”

“What did I think?” A beat. “I was sick. I got down on my knees and thanked Jesus for my salvation.” He blew out air. “I tried not to look at Leroy being shot as God’s justice for Dr. Ben, but you think what you think. I didn’t know why it was in God’s plan for Jervis to be hurt. Hell, if Leroy would have called me to pick him up, I would have done the same thing.

“The shooting turned Jervis’s life around. He told me that since he was in a wheelchair, he had lots of time to think about things. He found Jesus and never looked back. That’s what he told me.”

“Did Jervis try to contact you again after you left California?”