The first fighter said, “Then you ain’t welcome here. You just good for shooting us in the back.”
Pine sized him up. “I’ll make a deal with you. If you can kick my ass, I’ll leave. If I kick your ass, I stay and get my questions answered. Deal?”
The two fighters looked at each other and belly-laughed. The crowd of men behind her closed ranks and did likewise.
“You gonna get in this ring with me?” he said with an incredulous look that eased to a grin.
“Unless you want to come out here.”
“No, step right up. Which teeth you want to lose and which ones you want to keep? I’ll try to be accommodating.”
The other man split the ring ropes so Pine could duck under.
She stood to her full height and drew closer to the man she was about to combat. He looked a little surprised that she was taller than he was.
Pine took off her jacket, revealing the Glock in her belt holster.
“You want me to hold your piece for you, lady?” said one man in the crowd.
“That would be a no.” She looked at the man in the ring. “How much do you weigh?”
“One-sixty.”
“Wow, almost as much as me. I’m five pounds heavier, for the record.” Pine had on a short-sleeved shirt underneath, and her ropy, corded muscles were clearly visible. The man glanced over at his friend, who shrugged and looked a little nervous as he stepped out of the ring.
“Okay, what are the rules?” asked Pine.
“Shit, ain’t no rules in here,” the man laughed.
“Great.” In a blinding move, Pine slammed a foot into his gut, and when he doubled over, she laid her right leg against the side of his head with such stunning force that it knocked him right through the ropes, where he was caught by several of the onlookers below.
She walked over and looked down at him. “Okay, warm-up’s over. You want to start now? Or just answer my questions? Your call.”
They heard someone clapping and all turned to see Gerald walking back to the ring, alone. Gerald stopped next to the boxer Pine had laid out and knelt down. “Okay, Ty, remember what I keep telling you about disrespecting the women?”
Ty nodded dumbly. Gerald helped him to his feet and looked up at Pine.
“Peanut ain’t here.” He turned to the others. “Anybody here know where Peanut is?”
Pine looked over the crowd one by one until a young man around eighteen stepped forward.
“Seen him over at Duke’s,” said the man. “Before I come here.” Pine glanced at Gerald. “Duke’s?”
“When you leave here, go right, three blocks, then go left. It’s a . . . store.”
“What do they sell?” she asked.
“It depends,” said Gerald. “It just depends on what you want. But if I were you, I wouldn’t be buying.”
CHAPTER
46
DUKE’S WAS A STOREFRONT that looked abandoned, just like every other storefront around here. Pine peered through the glass doors, but it was too dark inside to make out anything. She rapped on the glass. Then she rapped again.
“What do you want?”
She looked up to see a man staring down at her from the second-floor window.
“I’d like to talk to Peanut. I heard he was here.”
“Who’d you hear that from?”
“A guy over at Calhoun’s.”
“And you are . . . ?”
The man was in his forties with wiry dark hair and a stern, suspicious countenance. As he leaned out she could see he was wearing a compression-fit sleeveless athletic shirt showing arms and shoulders that were both heavily muscled and tatted.
“Just a friend. I met him over at the school.”
“Peanut don’t go to school.”
“But his friend Jerome did. I’m trying to find out what happened to him.”
“Then you a cop?”
“I have some pictures to show Peanut. He agreed to look at them.”
The man disappeared from the window.
A minute later the shop door opened and there stood Peanut.
“You got them pictures?” he said.
“Yeah.” She looked over his shoulder to see the man standing about ten feet farther back in the room.
Pine said quietly, “So what sort of business goes on here?”
“This and that.”
“Right. Is that guy in there Duke?”
“Maybe.”
“You don’t know?”
“I don’t know much. Works fine for me.”
They got into the car and Peanut was shown all the photos one by one. At the end he said, “He ain’t in there.”
“You’re sure?”
“Real sure. Ain’t nobody in there look like he did.”
Pine sat back, enormously frustrated. She looked at Blum. “We keep running into dead ends and I’m really getting sick of it.”
Peanut said, “See, what I can’t figure is, why Jerome do it at all. I mean, why he let a man do that to him? Give him a gun and set him up, ’cause that had to be what went down. And then he get shot on top of it. Why do shit when you know you gonna die? Why not say no and take your chances?”
“Maybe Jerome didn’t know he was going to die,” replied Blum.
Pine glanced at Peanut. “You said you haven’t been friends with Jerome for a long time?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Would you know about any close friends he might have?”
“Not really. Maybe somebody at school. Why?”
“Because in the alley that night he told me, ‘We’re in deep shit.’ I’m just trying to think of someone they could have threatened to get Jerome to do what he did.”
“Shit, lady, only ones he might do that for is his family. Nobody closer than that to him. They all real tight.”
“You know, I think you might be right about that. Thanks, Peanut.”
He opened the door. “And, yeah, that’s Duke in there.”
“This and that?” said Pine.
Peanut smiled. “Little’a this and a little’a that.”
“Give me your cell phone number in case I can get some more pictures to show you. I won’t have to look you up in person.” He did so and then climbed out of the car.
After he went back into the shop Blum said, “Where are we going now?”
“Back to Blake’s house. I’ve got a hunch and I’m praying that it pays off, because if it doesn’t we have less than zero right now.”
CHAPTER
47
DID YOU FIND PEANUT?” asked Cee-Cee Blake when she answered their knock.
“We did. Turns out he really couldn’t help us, but I was wondering if we could speak to your daughter.”
Blake looked confused. “To Jewel? Why?”
“We wanted to ask her a few questions about her brother.”
Blake shook her head. “She’s really upset. Can barely get her to eat anything. And she won’t come out of her room.”
“We will be very gentle, Cee-Cee. We have experience speaking with young people. And I really think it might help with finding out what happened to your son.”
“Well, okay. I guess you can try. You want me to go with you?”
“Just to introduce us. Then we’d like to speak with her alone.”
“No guarantee she’ll see you, though, and I ain’t gonna make her.”
They followed Blake up the stairs and down the short hall to a bedroom door. She knocked.
“Honey? It’s them two ladies from the FBI again. They want to ask you some questions about your brother.”
“No!” a voice screamed out. “Tell them to go away.”
Before Blake could answer Pine stepped forward and said, “Jewel, it’s really important.”
“I said no.”
“I’d like to know why your brother did what he did.”
“Go away.”
“Because I think he did it to protect you.”
Silence.
Blake
looked astonished. “What the hell do you mean by that? Protecting Jewel? From what?”
They turned when they heard the door start to open. And then there was Jewel, tall and beautiful and well-developed for her age, with long dark hair swirling around her shoulders. She had on pajamas, with characters from Mulan on them. Her eyes were reddened and swollen.
“It’s okay, Momma, I’ll talk to the lady.”
“You sure, baby?”
Jewel nodded. “Yeah, I’m good.”
Blake gave Pine a disapproving look. “Well, okay, but don’t take too long, honey, you need to rest.”
She slowly walked back down the stairs.
“Can we come in?” asked Pine.
Jewel stepped back and let them pass through.
The bedroom was cluttered, with clothes on the floor, books lying around, an iPad on the unmade bed, and a smartphone on the nightstand. And used tissues littered over seemingly every available square inch. The walls were painted with a mural of what looked to be female superheroes.
“Who did that?” asked Blum, motioning to the wall.
Jewel rubbed her nose. “Me and Jerome.”
“It’s really excellent. You’re both wonderful artists.”
“Jerome ain’t anything anymore ’cept dead.”
Pine leaned back against another wall and folded her arms over her chest. “That’s what we want to talk to you about.”
Jewel slumped on her bed and looked down at her bare feet. Pine began. “A man met with Jerome at his school. After that meeting Jerome was totally changed. Then that same night he ends up in an alley holding a gun. And then he’s shot by a cop who might not be a cop.” She paused and glanced at Blum, who was standing rigidly by the mural wall.
“Jerome said something to me right before he died, Jewel. Do you want to know what he said?”
Jewel didn’t look up, but she nodded. “What’d he say?”
“He said that no one would believe him when I asked what he was doing there. Then he said something else. And that’s why we’re here to see you.”
Jewel looked up now. “What did Jerome say?”
“He said, ‘We’re in deep shit.’ Why would this man be able to make him do something that would end up getting him killed?” She stopped and looked at Jewel, who seemed to be withering to nothing under the gaze. “It must’ve been someone very important to him. Like maybe you, Jewel?”
Tears spilled down the girl’s cheeks. Blum sat down next to her and took her hand.
“I know this is so hard, Jewel. So very hard. But we’re trying to find out who took your brother’s life. And any help you can give us would be very appreciated.”
Jewel wiped her eyes and stared up at Pine with a composed expression.
“Jerome knew.”
“Knew about what?”
“The man who came to get me.”
“What man?”
“Just a man. He would come at night. When Momma’s at work.”
“Where does your mother work?”
“She cleans buildings at night. Then she comes home in the morning and goes to sleep for a few hours. And then she has another job at Subway for the lunch crowd.”
“Okay, maybe you should start from the beginning,” suggested Pine.
Jewel collected herself. “It started one night. I went somewhere I wasn’t supposed to. Momma had to go see Willie, my other brother in Delaware, cause he was sick. Jerome was supposed to be home, but he got called to do this thing with the robots. I told him I’d stay in. But I didn’t.”
“Where did you go?”
“A party in Newark. I look a lot older than I am. I had a fake ID showing I was twenty-one. I went with a couple of friends from school. We got a ride with another friend.”
“Where was the party?”
“At some guy’s parents’ house. I was there for a while, had a couple of drinks. And then someone said there was a van taking people to a place in New York. A guy came over and said I’d been picked to go.”
“How? What guy?”
“I don’t know. He was older than me, early twenties. Tall, good-looking. Said he was in college.”
“White or black?”
“Oh, he was a white dude.”
“Color of his hair?” asked Pine.
“Brown, sort of wavy. I mean, he was real handsome.”
Pine pulled out her phone and brought up the picture of Jeff Sands that she had gotten from Puller. “Was this the guy?”
Jewel looked at the screen. “Yeah, that was him. How’d you know that?”
“I didn’t, until just now.”
“Do you know his name?”
“I do. Did he give you one?”
“Just said it was Charlie or something like that.”
“Did he tell you why you were picked?”
“No.”
“And you just went?”
“Well, it was a bunch of us, so I felt safe. And . . . and it sounded exciting. Charlie even said there would be some real celebrities there. I mean, some A-listers, not like old dudes. And I could meet them. And then he said I’d be given a ride back to my house.”
“What happened after that?”
“We drove to this building in New York.”
“Do you know where?”
“I don’t know New York. I’d only been to the city one time when I was a kid. But the building they took me to that night had a doorman and a private elevator and stuff like that.”
“So you went up there with all the others?”
Jewel shook her head. “See, the thing was, everybody got sort of separated. I ended up by myself heading up in the elevator. I was scared, but what could I do? I mean, I was already there.”
“What about Charlie?”
“He sorta disappeared. I didn’t see him in the van. Everything happened so fast.”
“Then what?”
“The elevator opened right into someone’s apartment. I never seen a place like that for real. I mean, it was like being in a movie. I mean, Jesus. I didn’t know nobody lived like that, not really.”
“And then what happened?”
“A woman came out to greet me.”
“Describe her,” said Pine.
“She was maybe thirty-five, sandy hair. Shorter than me. I . . . she just looked normal.”
“Lean and fit with freckles?”
“Yeah, that sounds like her, and she did have freckles on her face.”
Pine looked at Blum, who said, “Probably Lindsey Axilrod.”
“Okay, what happened next?” Pine asked Jewel.
“She said that I was to make myself comfortable and someone would be out shortly. She asked me if I wanted a drink.” Jewel stopped for a moment. “I . . . I didn’t know what to do. I mean, I’m only fourteen. So I told her just a Coke. She came back with it and I sat down and drank it.”
“And then what happened? Did someone else come out to see you?”
Jewel shook her head, her eyes filling with tears. “The . . . the next thing I know, I woke up in bed. I was naked. And . . . ” She bent over and sobbed.
Blum put her arm around the girl’s shoulders. “I know this is so terribly hard. So painful for you. Just take your time, Jewel, take all the time you need.”
A minute later Jewel composed herself, wiped her eyes, blew into the tissue Blum handed her, and continued. “There was a man lying next to me in the bed. He was naked, too.”
“Do you remember what he looked like?”
She nodded. “Older, white guy, maybe sixty with gray hair. He was snoring really loud.” Jewel wiped at her eyes. “I was totally freaked out. I didn’t know what the hell had happened. I mean, I was drinking a Coke and then this? But then when I sort of looked around, and the sheets . . . I . . . I knew that . . . ” She seemed unable to say it.
“That he’d had sex with you while you were unconscious?”
She nodded, her eyes filling with tears. “I got out of bed really quiet, I didn’t want t
o wake him. I ran to the door and opened it . . . and . . .”
“Was someone there?”
Jewel nodded. “The same woman. She had my clothes, all ironed and on hangers. She helped me get dressed. She calmed me down. She got me a ride home.”
“So they drugged your Coke, and the man had sex with you?”
“I was so scared.”
“And when you got home, did you report this to the police?”
“I was going to, but . . .”
“But what?” said Pine.
“I got a call on my phone. I don’t even know how they got the number. It was a man.”
“And what did he say?”
“That if I told anyone I’d get in big trouble.”
“Jewel, you were raped. You were drugged and then raped.”
“I know, but—”
“But what?”
Looking even more miserable, Jewel stuck her hand under her bed and pulled out a pillowcase. She held it up and dumped the contents on the bed.
It was cash, a lot of it.
“Where did you get all that?” asked Blum.
“That’s the part I didn’t tell you. The lady who helped me, she gave me two thousand dollars that night. Said it was to help me get over it.”
Pine looked at the money. “Jewel, that looks like a lot more than two grand.”
“It is. Because—”
“Because you went back?”
Jewel started talking fast. “They told me they’d pay me every time. Pick me up and take me back. I’d be home before Momma would get off work. One time they even flew me on a helicopter to New York, and we landed on top of the building. It was, like, unbelievable.”
“And Jerome?”
“He didn’t know. At first. But then he caught me coming back in one night. I tried to blow it off. But then he’d been asking around. He knew I suddenly had money. I bought some stuff, a ring and some earrings and a real Prada bag and a new iPhone and some cool clothes. I never let my mom see them. She would’ve been all over me. But Jerome found out. He got on my case about it big-time.”
“And did you tell him the truth?”
“Some of it. He was real upset. Told me to stop going. And I did. I really did.”
“But after the first time, they didn’t still drug you, did they?”
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