Bad Break: A Novel

Chapter Twenty-Five

No one in the neighborhood surrounding the intersection of Martin Luther King Drive and North Avenue knew why Agamemnon Jefferson I referred to himself as "the first."

It wasn't on his birth certificate. It wasn't a suffix either of his parents had considered. He had no children, no Agamemnon Junior or II.

Robbin' Hood, AKA on the streets as the Nerd King or the Dope Nerd – pun intended on the latter nickname, Jefferson is equal parts Brainiac and mad scientist, or maybe evil scientist. There is a distinction.

This day, Jefferson's role is bored-looking kid, sitting on a sunlit stoop in front of the house he shares with his mother and middle sister, watching passing vehicle traffic. Until one car approaches his position at a crawl. Normally that would be a red flag, a sign that a rival drug crew was preparing a hit on Jefferson or his employees. Something about this car's crawl is different though, and instead of diving for cover, Jefferson sits and watches curiously. Soldiers for rival crews tend to pick up speed as they approach their targets. Not this driver. It's almost as if he can't figure out where he should be.

And then it happens. All three passenger doors fly open on the matte gray nineteen sixty-four Lincoln Continental. Three young black men dressed like extras on a rap music video set jump out. Jefferson braces himself, but the shots never come. Instead, the men tackle Jefferson's consigliere, who had been standing casually at the curb. They kick and stomp him for a moment, pull a sack over his head, hustle him into the car, and speed off.

Less than two minutes.

Jefferson pauses for effect after explaining what he witnessed to the patrol officers. He hadn't called the police. The kidnapped boy's mother had. And now the block is hot, teaming with blue uniforms and ill-fitting suits. A situation that calls for cooperation, however grudging.

And yet, cooperation or not, the officer is skeptical of Jefferson's account.

"You know more than you're saying!"

"You're just hoping to make detective off this case!"

"Don't be a smart-ass, boy! What else did you see?"

"Boy? Seriously, boy? Your implicit bias is showing officer – not just by your racial prejudice but because you assume I'm lying."

Jefferson doesn't bother telling the officer that he has an eidetic memory and retains a photograph-like image of virtually everything he sees.

But to admit to and define such a memory to the officer might suggest that Jefferson really was holding out on details.

Jefferson would learn approximately one hour later that another of his soldiers had been snatched in a similar manner, likely by the same crew in the Lincoln, just five blocks away. It would leave him pondering whether the grumpy officer had been holding out on him.

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To understand Jefferson, one must understand that he is not a high school dropout because he was an inadequate learner. On the contrary, Jefferson dropped out of school because he is brilliant and was bored and fed up with teachers proclaiming intimidation by him. The reality is he was better versed than all but one of his teachers in their topical expertise. And the one instructor he couldn't stump at Washington High School was a philosophy teacher whom Jefferson felt fought dirty.

Philosophy may be the only academic subject that Jefferson has willfully oversimplified. Shortly before dropping out, he stood before his philosophy class, tossed his textbook on the floor and dismissed the subject as "pseudo-religious science meant to make us draw straight lines between right and wrong, even when life shows us that line is often crooked as hell and really goes in fifty different directions."