by Yasmin Angoe
She is halfway down the steps, has long, tousled dark hair, and is wearing a glittering dress that reminds me of Bridget’s. A sizable green leather purse loops over her shoulder. Her eyes are as round as saucers as she takes in me, wrapped in my too-short towel, and Monsieur in his half-opened robe.
We stare at her, and she stares back. She is pretty, a bit overly done with the makeup. She is older, more voluptuous, and the lights do not complement her sallow skin.
Silently and with a foreboding that deepens within my gut, I twist the faucet knob until the water drips to a stop. And I wait for what comes next.
33
AFTER
Georgia ditched the adults to finish homework. Nena and Cort sat together on the living room couch in awkward silence while she nervously played with the hem of her shirt. Her behavior, her shyness, was different than it’d been the night they’d met, and she worried he was disappointed. She should have told Elin where she was going. Maybe Elin would have given her some pointers—after Elin laughed so hard she peed herself and called their mother.
Nena blurted, “Why Georgia? I mean, it’s a lovely name; don’t get me wrong. But why Georgia and not Dakota or Arizona or Virginia?”
He settled into the couch. “I was born in Haiti, my wife, Donna, as well. We grew up together in a little town that was . . .” He trailed off. “We had a difficult life.”
She nodded for him to continue, folding her legs beneath her.
“Donna and I said we’d come to the States to go to school and have the all-American life. We worked hard, really hard, saved everything we had, and bought our way here when we turned eighteen. We worked our asses off while we got our degrees—hers in nursing and mine in law. Atlanta was the first real vacation we ever took. We were always going without to make ends meet. Finally, one day, I was like, ‘Let’s go somewhere.’”
He shrugged. “We chose Atlanta and fell in love with the city. I mean, we came back broke as hell. Had to play catch-up for months, but it was worth being able to have fun for a few days. Not long after, Donna told me she was pregnant, and when we found out it was going to be a girl, Georgia was the only name that made sense.”
“The nickname makes sense to me now too.”
His laugh was a deep, boisterous, belly-rumbling laugh that reminded her of Papa. “Yeah, she’s my peach.”
Nena pursed her lips.
He laughed again. He beamed talking about his daughter, reminding Nena of how Noble doted on her and Elin. She realized she really liked Cort’s laughter. It was like being at home, settled and secure. Even more, she liked being the cause of his laughter.
“Why become a federal prosecutor?” she asked, hoping to tamp down the sudden assault of emotions. She was worried about what she was starting to feel and whether she could control it.
Cort chuckled as if to say, Where do I even start? “I was a cop for a few years. Loved it and worked with my best friend, Mack. Then I got my law degree and had been working in the Economics and Environmental Crimes Section at the US Attorney’s Office for about seven years by the time Peach’s mom died.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “Don’t be.”
“Economics and Environmental Crimes?” she asked. “A mouthful.”
He laughed. “I work General Frauds, which handles investments, securities, Ponzi schemes, to name a few.” He thought some more. “Suddenly I was a single parent to a little girl, trying to make a name for myself, which was—is—tough, especially for a Black man, you know? They’re so busy thinking you don’t know as much, or you won’t work as hard, or you got where you were because of affirmative action or to check a diversity box. Or they stereotype you. I had to know more, work harder, and be more of a hard-ass than my White counterparts. The work is how I got to where I am now, handling cases like the one prosecuting Dennis Smith. And I enjoy it because I like serving up a piece of the justice pie. Which screwed with me when the guy was shot right in front of me. That easily could have been me.”
If Nena made it through the night without exposing herself to Cort, she deserved a damn Emmy.
“You like taking down the bad guys.”
He shrugged. “There are laws, rules, in place that people have to adhere to.”
“But what about when people do things outside your rule of law for a good cause?” Was she really having this conversation with him, a federal prosecutor, about what was just and what wasn’t? She was playing with fire.
“What do you mean?”
She tried finding the right words. “I mean justice by your own rules, but for the betterment of people.”
“Justice is not just black or white, you know. There are shades of gray. I get that. Still. We have a justice system in place for a reason. People should leave judgments to them.”
“Or there is chaos.”
He squinted an eye. “Yeah,” he said, nodding. “I guess.” He held up his hands in surrender. “There is no perfect system. Mistakes happen.”
An understatement.
“Not everything is perfect, not even in my office. I guess we all just have to do what we can.”
Her mind was traveling places she hadn’t wanted to revisit. “Yeah, all of us do what we can. And sometimes, it’s all that we can do.”
He agreed, pausing as if he were having an internal debate. “Don’t know if you heard about the big cartel leader killed last month.”
She kept her face placid. The image of the girl on the bed, the way her fingers had fumbled with the key to unlock her way to freedom. Then, as quickly as the image had come, she washed it away.
“The way he was killed was personal. Not like anyone else on the property, who were all shot.”
What was Cort getting at? What should she say? If she said the wrong thing, revealed information that hadn’t been made public, she’d raise suspicion. So all she said was, “How do you mean?”
“I really shouldn’t be discussing this”—he shifted on the couch—“but it’s been a minute since I was able to talk work out with someone who has nothing to do with any of it.”
Her lip twitched before she had a chance to stop it. She needed to remain in control. She needed to be clearheaded around this man who made her want to lose herself in him. She also needed to find out what he didn’t know so she could clear him with the Tribe and they wouldn’t give him a second thought.
“I was talking to my buddy Mack, who worked the scene, but he doesn’t buy it. He thinks it was just a hit. But this guy’s death was a message. Personal.”
“Bit of a stretch?” In her mind, she thought, Spot on.
Her practiced confused face prompted him to explain. “Because it was up close. Not a shot like all the others. The killer cut his neck. Takes a lot of balls to cut a man’s neck.”
If she didn’t know any better, Nena would think Cort was impressed. And that pleased her entirely.
Took a lot of something to rape and sell young girls too. But Nena didn’t share that part.
“Not to mention the guy who was killed in front of me.” Cort grimaced, his conviction slipping as the memory hit him. He blew out a breath. “It’s still hard to think how close I came to death. Like, what if it was me in the crosshairs, not the other guy?”
Nena frowned sympathetically.
“Georgia would have been an orphan.”
Cort’s words plucked at the chord of guilt thrumming in her chest. She didn’t need reminding of what could have been.
“But the guy I was going to prosecute and the cartel guy, they were linked.”
“How?” This question was real because she herself wasn’t entirely sure. Would Cort realize both Smith and Juarez had an affinity for human trafficking?
“Money. There’s a money trail that links one of Smith’s schemes to some of Juarez’s investments.”
Her thoughts went to N’nkakuwe and the Compound. The way the Walrus had laughed when her father’s head had rolled. Money schemes and investments. Cort had no idea what Smith had
really been into.
“Is it a stretch then to say justice was served?” she asked. “You say both men were bad men. If what you’re saying is true—”
It was.
“—and their deaths are connected, or personal, or whichever . . .” She frowned. “Is it wrong that they’re gone? Justice served?”
He looked at her, resolute. “No.”
“Which is it?”
“Justice wasn’t served.”
“Even though they were bad men?”
He shook his head.
“Why?”
“Because we have a system for this. A legal way to exact justice.”
“Would the man you were going to prosecute have been sent to prison?”
“I would have tried my damnedest.”
“But what if he got off? What if he was exonerated? Where is the justice then?”
She could see Cort’s torrent of emotion as if his face were a movie screen, the war raging between systematic justice and moral justice. She quelled the urge to reach out and touch him. The intensity of the feeling both terrified and thrilled her. Nena wanted him to see that justice was more than a system of unbendable laws. She wanted to tell him all systems were fractured, and laws were colored shades of gray. Cort would work himself to death trying to live by rules no one else played by.
“It’s my job, no matter which way it falls.”
There were some jobs not meant to be done. She thought of the bullet marked for Cort that had gone into Attah Walrus instead.
“That’s very commendable.” She pitied the day when his idealism would be crushed.
Cort beamed at Nena before reaching for the TV remote. Nena gladly took it as a signal they’d gone deep enough for one night. He flipped through the apps.
“Have time for one more movie?”
“I do. Yes,” Nena answered without hesitation. She watched as he relaxed into his seat and followed his lead, settling into a more comfortable position on the couch, feeling her guard lower with each passing moment. She asked, “Any new releases?”
“I can help with that!” a singsong voice called from two rooms over.
They looked at each other, at first wide eyed at Georgia’s eavesdropping on their conversation. Then amused when she suddenly materialized in the doorway. Without prompting, she invited herself back in and nestled on the couch between them, sitting closer to Nena than to her dad, as if Nena had always belonged there, with them.
34
BEFORE
“What the hell is this, Robeeee?” the woman drawls, reminding me of John Wayne movies.
An American? Here? And who is Robe-eeeee?
“Who’s the kid? And what the hell is going on here?” She gets her second wind. “I like kinky, but I don’t do kids, okay?”
She is so busy gawking at me she does not notice Monsieur’s slow rise from the bench or the stealthy steps he is taking toward her. He is a predator, she the prey. He closes the gap between them. My anxiety is growing because he will undoubtedly blame me for his forgetting to properly lock the basement door.
“I thought you left,” Robach says, standing at the foot of the steps. His voice takes on a honeyed tone, as American as apple pie.
What is his game here? Why has his accent changed?
“She is my housemaid.”
“Then why wasn’t she upstairs cleaning or something?” She narrows her eyes at me as if I am competition, about to take her prize. She takes two steps down. “She’s also naked under that towel, and you’re here. It’s weird, Robeee.”
Monsieur’s smile is disarming. He does not fool me one bit. “Really, dear? How is it weird? She lives down here. Can’t have the help living upstairs with me, can I? Plus, who can want a waif like her when I have a woman like you?” He holds a hand out for her to take.
I am wound tighter than the skin on a drum. Why can she not see the trap Robach lays for her? I have been on the receiving end more times than I care to count.
She considers him. Looks at me with hooded eyes. Her heels clomp down the stairs, and she clears the last couple of steps. How she does not fall on those stilts, I have no idea. She takes his hand, allowing him to pull her into him.
They kiss for a long while. He fondles her rear. I look around, wondering if I should resume my showering, retreat to my dwelling, or stay as I am.
He pulls away from their kiss, looking down at her, stroking her mane of wild hair. His hand trails gently along the edge of her jawline. He gazes at her. She swoons, exhaling. Her eyes go all gooey and romantic like in one of those black-and-white movies my auntie liked to watch. I scratch an itch on the back of my neck, my every sense electrified.
“My dear,” he says in a disappointed sigh, wiping his hand over his face as if weary, “why couldn’t you mind your fucking business and leave?”
Her head jerks back as if slapped. “What? What do y—what do you mean?” she stammers, confusion filling her rapidly blinking eyes.
She tries to step away, to make some room between the two of them, but he grips her firmly by the waist with his left hand. His other hand snakes up to her neck. My mouth goes dry and my mind numb.
When he speaks, he no longer sounds regretful that she has happened upon us. And his French has returned. “You should have left when you had the chance.”
His voice is cold, colder than I have ever heard, and it nearly stops my heart.
His huge paw of a hand curls around her pale throat. His thumb presses into her larynx; then the other hand sidles up to join it. Together they mash into her throat, closing her airway, damaging the delicate bones, tendons, and nerves that help her breathe. He means to make her suffer. It is as if he blames her for his having to kill her.
Her eyes bulge. The purse drops, sounding loud and heavy. It tips over, and its contents, tons of makeup, spill all over, going this way and that.
Her hands slap and claw at his. She tries going for his face, beats at him. Her fight is in vain. When he is like this, he is not human. His face does not register emotion.
The struggle she puts up is no match for this hunter, this apex predator, the enslaver of girls, the oppressor of souls. My feet shuffle until I am at the bathroom’s doorway. I should run. Turn away. My heart is in my throat, but I cannot tear myself from what I am seeing.
He yanks her forward, then wrestles her to the floor. Terrible sounds erupt from her, tight, gurgling, gagging sounds.
I am not watching to relish her death. I am learning his moves. If I ever get a chance, a big if, I can never allow him to get me beneath him. He cannot wrap his fingers around me like he is doing her. I would never get him off, as she cannot. I will need to maintain the upper hand.
He grasps the sides of her head in his bear paws, lifting it. Our eyes connect. There is utter fear in hers as they beg for help. And before I formulate a thought, Monsieur smashes the back of her head on the floor so hard I become disoriented. Her grip loosens, and an arm flops to the floor. The other wavers in the air.
Her breathing is a wet wheeze. He lifts her head again, gathers himself on his knees so his weight is entirely in it, and smashes her head back. And again. The dull sound her skull makes on concrete is sickening. Her other hand drops, and she no longer moves. He continues straddling her, watching as the last bits of life ebb from her. Then he smiles, takes his finger to her chin, and turns her head toward me.
Her blank eyes stare in my direction, without fear this time because there is nothing. The silence after so much noise is deafening. He looks at me with bottomless black orbs, grinning like a Cheshire cat.
“A shame.” He pouts as if he dropped an ice cream cone. “I rather liked her.” He licks her cheek with the tip of his tongue where a single tear has fallen and takes a deep inhale of her hair, sticky with the blood oozing from her shattered skull. Her dead eyes ask me if her death is on my hands too.
There is no answer from me. Instead, I retreat into the bathroom and turn the shower back on, waiting for the hot wat
er to wash away the stink of death.
When I finish showering, towel dry, and slip on the loose blue jogging suit Monsieur has left for me to wear, he is no longer sitting by the dead woman’s side. He is at his workbench sorting out an array of shiny metal instruments a coroner or butcher might use.
His hands glide lightly across the instruments, finally settling on a large cleaver, a mallet, and a slender boning knife. “We have a series of unfortunate events, Souris.”
Does he mean it to be a pun, alluding to the children’s book?
“I cannot call the authorities for obvious reasons.” He points to me and at her. “And we cannot leave it here.”
She is “it” now, no longer a woman he spent time with, no longer human. She probably never was to him. This is the first time he has killed in front of me. Usually, I am locked in my dungeon, and anything he does in the cellar, I only hear. My imagination runs wild as I try to visualize what he is doing beyond my prison doors, but to see Monsieur end a life with his own hands resonates deep within me.
He walks to the metal shelf filled with storage items, selects a couple of huge dark duffel bags, and tosses them to me. He goes to a large roll of thick, frosted white plastic, attached to a wall and hung like a roll of paper towels, and pulls a long length from it. The vinyl comes away at the perforated edge with a rip. He juggles the cleaver, boning knife, mallet, and plastic sheet before setting them all on the floor next to the woman. He spreads the vinyl out, then rolls her body onto it. She left quite a bit of blood from her head wound. Robach sprays the puddle with liquid that smells of ammonia and begins preparing his knives, reverently laying them out in a neat row near the massive capped drain in the floor.
“Come.” He beckons with his fingers.
I acquiesce.
There is no time to unpack my feelings, a whirlwind of emotions: Perplexed at how he treats her like she is a slab of beef, curious about what he will do—although I am beginning to get an idea—and repulsed because whatever he does, he will make me watch. And I am afraid, always.
“Kneel.”
I do a few feet away, not wanting to be too close. He places the boning knife between us. We make eye contact. One look reminds me he expects me to take a chance.