A Case of Redemption Read Online Free

asked.
    â€œMy crib.”
    At least I understood what that meant. He said it flatly enough to suggest the answer to my next question, but I still had to ask it.
    â€œAnd I take it you were home alone?”
    â€œYeah. Roxanne wouldn’t come to my hood, you know?”
    No, I didn’t know. “Where do you live?”
    â€œBrownsville, man. Tilden Houses projects.”
    Well, that explained why Roxanne never visited him. Brownsville was probably the most crime-ridden neighborhood in the five boroughs.
    â€œCan anybody give you an alibi?”
    â€œYou think I’d be sitting in here if somebody could?”
    â€œI just thought that, I don’t know, you’d have an entourage or something with you at the time.”
    â€œYou mean like Vince and Turtle and Drama? Fuck, no. I ain’t Hollywood, man. ’Sides, you gotta remember, when this shit happened my record had just dropped, and it wasn’t on the way to goin’ platinum or nothing, neither. All I’d done was opened a few shows for Roxanne and was, you know, wit her and such, but I wasn’t getting any money out of it. Shit, I still haven’t seen a fuckin’ nickel from Cap Pun, you know?”
    I looked over at Nina, but because I was the one on the phone, she apparently hadn’t heard Legally Dead’s claim of poverty. I wondered if her commitment to the cause included working for free.
    â€œMarcus Jackson was representing you pro bono?” I asked.
    â€œPro what?”
    â€œFor free. You weren’t paying him?”
    â€œCan’t give the man what I don’t got.”
    â€œSo why do you want to switch lawyers? Marcus is a very well-respected guy, and he’s not charging you.”
    â€œThe thing is, Marcus be tellin’ me that I gots to plead guilty. Don’t matter how many times I say I’m innocent, he keeps sayin’ that Imma get convicted, and I gots to make a deal.” Legally Dead shook his head, lamenting the injustice of it all. “I know that some of this shit don’t look good, but I didn’t kill her. I swear I didn’t.”
    â€œI hear you,” I said, the lawyer’s noncommittal response. I wasn’t saying that I agreed, just that I understood the words he was saying.
    Legally Dead was apparently smart enough to recognize the distinction. He turned away from me, staring at the floor, shaking his head again.
    So I decided to throw him a bone. “For what it’s worth, L.D., I was home alone that night, too, and I don’t think I could get anyone to alibi me either.”
    Of course, I wasn’t Roxanne’s boyfriend, nor had I written a song describing how I’d murder her if she ever got out of line. But for the moment, those were pesky details, and I wanted to gain his trust, if for no other reason than to try to get the truth from him. Or whatever his version of the truth might be.
    He resumed eye contact. It was enough encouragement that I continued.
    â€œI have to confess, I really don’t know much about the hip-hop world—”
    He interrupted me. “I do rap. Hip-hop and rap ain’t the same thing, man. That’s lesson number one.”
    â€œWhat’s the difference?”
    L.D. chuckled. “You ax a hundred people, you get a hundred answers. But fo’ me, it’s simple. You can hear the difference. What I do is rap. Spoken poetry to music. Eminem, Fitty, Dre, Snoop, that’s rap. Damn if I know what’s hip-hop, but I know what I do ain’t it.”
    I smiled back at him. “Fair enough,” I said. “Where I was going with this, however, is that, from what I understand of it, mainly from Nina and what I’ve read in the press, the prosecution’s theory goes something like this: you were her boyfriend, which put you at the top of the suspect list, right off the bat.” I realized the unfortunate word choice as soon as I’d said it, but decided