The Importance of Being Dangerous

by David Dante Troutt

  “What I need ain’t in here, yo,” he gasped.

  “You don’t always know that,” said Sideburns.

  No one else was around for some reason. Tyrell knew better than to trust that fact alone, but the pain was so bad. “WeeWah, motherfucker. You got some?”

  Sideburns looked puzzled for a minute, which could have been part of his art. “The fuck is that?”

  “C’mon, dog. I be a’ight.”

  “Nah, man, what is that shit? I might could get it for you.”

  Tyrell took the bait. “It’s a painkiller. Street grade. Don’t trip.”

  “What is that, like a morphine derivative?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” Tyrell gasped. As soon as it was out of his mouth he knew.

  Tyrell never got his WeeWah. By the time he woke up the next day, Sideburns was gone, never to be seen around Rikers again.

  THE INVESTIGATION NOW WAS UNSTUCK and heading straight to Manny’s lab, thanks to Tyrell’s slip about WeeWah to the informant. The press reported none of these new developments; however, that silence would not last long as the search widened. The Feds were deep into the matter now. Manny’s lab evidence was distilled down to the smallest molecule. Suddenly everybody was ready for an education in WeeWah. A special crime lab at New York Hospital enlisted the help of two expert epidemiologists, one from California, the other from MIT. Within days the two had figured out how the stuff was synthesized, how much could put you into a nice painless sleep, and how much could put you to sleep forever.

  Griff was always a day ahead of the latest tabloid report, but he was already a day late when he learned that investigators were working Manny over about his customers.

  “I fucked up, I think,” Tyrell told Griff when they met again in the pen at the Tombs.

  “How so, son?” Griff was back to his old clothes again, a denim suit that flattered but dated him.

  “I think I talked to a snitch, an informant at Rikers. A white guy.”

  There were white guys at Rikers, Griff knew. Not many, but a few. “What makes you think he was an informant?”

  Tyrell sat up with a clarity in his eyes Griff didn’t know was possible. “I told him about WeeWah. He asked me was that a ‘morphine derivative.’ You know any other motherfuckers out there who talk like that?” Griff surely did not and shook his head. “Plus, the motherfucker straight bounced off a dat. Gone.”

  Griff sat down and let out a long breath. He scratched the back of his neck for a second, then folded his legs and clasped his hands over his knee. “That’s all I want to know, Tyrell. That might not be so bad.” Tyrell looked only a little relieved. Griff kept thinking to himself. He reached into his briefcase and pulled out an envelope. Tyrell watched him with great interest. Griff put the envelope on the table between them under the light and very slowly, almost as if he wouldn’t finish, started to pull out a small photograph. “You got three seconds to tell me if you’ve ever seen this man before.” Griff allowed the image to peek out from the fold so Tyrell could see it. “One, two, three.”

  “Oh shiiit!” Tyrell yelled.

  “Shhhh.” Griff slipped the photo back into the envelope, folded it all up, and this time put it in his breast pocket.

  “That’s the nigga that fucked me up over by that teachuh house.” Griff’s eyebrows bent high. “That’s how come I got this and this,” Tyrell said, and pointed at his leg and his crooked face.

  “Okay,” Griff whispered. “Now, I want you to listen to me, son, and listen real good. His name is Raul. You keep that shit in your fuckin’ head like it’s a vault. You tell no one nothing until I say you do. If you open your goddamned mouth too soon, the attorney-client privilege will not save you from the people who want to make you gone. You dig?” Tyrell nodded like a little boy. “You already a snitch, young man. This time it might help you. Just watch your back in there, and keep your head up.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  AT ABOUT THE SAME TIME, Manny was on the well-guarded fourth floor of Bellevue Hospital with his lawyer, making almost the same deal with representatives from both the Manhattan and Brooklyn D.A.’s offices. They told him about the scientists they’d flown in and what they’d concluded. They told him that he was one of only three known sources of WeeWah in their entire search of New York City. And they told him that if WeeWah was in fact the substance in Eagleton’s blood and that it was in fact what caused his death, he was looking at charges the likes of which he’d never imagined. The Feds wanted the case. Manny’s lawyer thought they were bluffing. But Manny thought they knew more than they were telling him. He knew the difference between federal sentencing guidelines and what state judges give out.

  “What do you want?” he asked the four men in the room with them.

  “We want the guy.”

  YAKOOB KNEW BETTER THAN TO USE A CELL PHONE, but when he saw the Daily News the next morning he called Griff. Griff pretended it was a wrong number as he stood outside the Criminal Courts Building and called him back a few minutes later from a pay phone. “Just be cool, blood,” Griff said calmly. “Just bring your laptop and a blunt and pick me up in front of the pizza parlor on Chambers in a half hour.” Griff got off, went to the clerk of the court to clear his day, and headed into the early July heat to meet a man who days before was too bad to care.

  When Griff got in the Escalade, Koob was already soaked in sweat. “I can’t go to jail, brother,” he squealed. “You don’t understand, man. I can’t do time. I’d lose my woman.”

  Griff leaned back in the plush captain’s seat and took in his friend’s terrified look. “Drive, baby. Just drive.”

  Yakoob pulled the black SUV into traffic and headed toward the West Side Highway. His hands shook on the steering wheel. Griff noticed half a blunt sitting idle in the ashtray and reached for it. He didn’t normally smoke when he needed all his wits, but something about Yakoob suddenly losing it suggested it wouldn’t be a bad idea this once.

  “Somebody’s been tracking our shit, Griff.”

  “What?” he gasped, and tossed the joint back in the tray.

  “I can tell. They were pretty good, but there are ways to know, like fingerprints. Somebody’s been trying to get at my trail.”

  “What are you saying? Man, pull this car over.” Yakoob screeched a right turn off West Street onto a quiet cobblestone street in the West Village. “For how long?”

  “I can’t be sure. Not long. Mighta just started. Mighta been a few days.”

  Now Griff was pissed going on scared. “Motherfuck!” Before he could see his own life flash before his eyes, he refocused. “All right. What could they possibly put together? Go slowly. Take your time. Calm down.”

  “You don’t think we should get Sid in on this, dog?”

  Griff let out a long, smokeless breath. “Nah. Not yet. Let her sleep.”

  In the car, with the computer on but hardly in use, Yakoob and Griff methodically went down a long list of even more possibilities, including whether changes they had made since the last time they traced things could themselves be traced by police hackers.

  “Okay,” Griff said finally. “Now, we know what to tell Sidarra. Now, we know the exposure. Next, you gotta tell me exactly where a motherfucker finds Raul—all day, every day—I gotta know.”

  IT HAD RAINED ALL AFTERNOON despite the sun-filled July morning. Just as suddenly, about the time Sidarra had climbed the subway stairs and walked home, the sky bloomed lavender and a clear night commenced. She hurried home, practically running up the stoop.

  “Raquel? Aunt Chickie?” she called out. From upstairs came no answer. She searched the parlor floor. Still no one. She knocked on the door to downstairs as she always did, as if her aunt ever required true privacy. No one answered. Sidarra rushed down the dark stairwell, almost stumbling on the way, and opened the unlocked door to the ground-floor apartment. “Raquel? Aunt Chickie?” Still no one answered. Just when her heart started to pound with fear, she peered beyond the little kitchen’s windows and
saw them with their backs to her on the small patio. They were hunched together over one of her aunt’s flower beds, and she could hear Aunt Chickie’s voice alone, singing.

  “Summertime, and the livin’ is easy…the cotton is high…” Then she broke into humming.

  They were very busy, whatever they were doing out there. Sidarra just watched. This was another one of those scenes whose existence she had either forgotten or never knew about, like the people she saw in Belize lying down with the sun. They probably did this every Tuesday night when she was off being a pool queen. Aunt Chickie sang on, her voice so much raspier than Sidarra remembered as a child, still beautiful, possessed of practiced skill and nuance, but weak to the point of airlessness.

  “I’m home,” she said, pushing the door ajar.

  “Hi, Mommy.”

  “Close the door, will you, Sidarra? You’ll let the bugs in.”

  “Oh, c’mon, Aunt Chickie,” she said. “There are no bugs in New York City.”

  Aunt Chickie looked at her as if she’d grown two horns and a tail. “Well, pretend that there are. We’re out here picking enough of ’em out from under my tiger lilies that their cousins are bound to take up for ’em.” Aunt Chickie turned back around to redirect Raquel’s fingers through the soil correctly. “There’s wine inside if you’d like some, Sidarra.”

  “Thank you.” Sidarra stepped back into the kitchen and searched the countertop. Sure enough, Aunt Chickie had some sweet blush wine out of a box. The glasses in her cupboards held the dirt flecks of bad eyesight and best efforts. Wine was just what Sidarra needed and she poured herself a glass. When she returned to the patio, the two were still at it. She sat down on a chair that was still moist from rain, put her feet up, and sipped. The evening air was still a little damp, less so than the grass and the leaves beyond them, but things had cooled and there was almost a breeze.

  “Raquel, my love?”

  “Yes, mom?”

  “Would you mind going upstairs for a bit and changing into your bedclothes? I’d like to speak to your aunt a minute.”

  “She’s your aunt too, you know.”

  “She knows that, fresh girl,” said Aunt Chickie. “Now do as your mama says.”

  Off she went. One of the best things about their life with Aunt Chickie in the house was having a grown-up echo. Sidarra wondered for a moment if that was an advantage married parents had. “You want some wine, Aunt Chickie?”

  “No, baby,” she said, slowly squatting into a chair. “Whatcha thinkin’ ’bout?”

  “More than I can say, I’m afraid. But what I wanted to talk to you about is—” Sidarra suddenly realized she had forgotten the script she’d been writing in her head along the ride from Brooklyn. “Well, see, I want to do some estate planning, you know, for Raquel’s sake. And I was wondering if I could have the deed redone and put you on as the owner of this place. It’d be easy. Then we’d get a lawyer to write your will so that you’d put the house in trust for Raquel. Sort of kill two birds with one stone.”

  “Who are the birds? You and me?” she asked skeptically.

  “Figure of speech.”

  Aunt Chickie sat back and stared at her flowers for a moment. Then she turned to Sidarra, expecting the horns and tail to have disappeared by then. The look on her face said she still saw them. “I’ma tell you something, Sidarra. Maybe one or two things, come to think of it. I know you’re busy doing what you do. I’m sure you have your reasons, and I probably wouldn’t understand them if you explained them carefully to me. To tell you God’s honest truth, I really don’t care what you do with the deed as long as you don’t create a family mess out of it. By the time you get it all done the way you plan, I will most likely be dead. See, I’m old. You prob’ly figured that out.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I was aware of that.”

  “Are you?” Aunt Chickie’s eyelids seemed to hang halfway over her eyes, lending gravity to the slight look of disbelief she wanted Sidarra to notice. “Those flowers,” she said, pointing, “they’re perennials, you know. You heard my singing voice? That’s what doctors call early-stage emphysema from all that smoking in France and whatnot. Diabetes is also a strange thing. It never likes you for long. Living in this city, breathing this air, walking up and down the steps in this house, I would have to say that there is an excellent chance I will not be around to see these little orange smiles bud again once they go down in a few weeks. Are you with me?”

  “I’m with you, but I won’t believe you,” Sidarra said gently.

  “Then do what you want. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  28

  EVEN THOUGH JEFF GEIGER HAD HEARD WATERCOOLER RUMORS about his name, it was damned exciting to see it appear on the victim list of a file being opened by his own office, the federal prosecutor for the Eastern District of New York in downtown Brooklyn. Geiger had leaped to the U.S. attorney’s office after doing serious felony trials as an assistant in the Manhattan district attorney’s office. His leap was not quite what he intended, though. He now prosecuted federal securities fraud offenses with a lot less rush and intrigue than the grand larceny cases he was starting to handle at the time he left the D.A.’s office. Not two years later, those two lives collided in a file.

  At first the detectives thought there might be an African connection. No one was home at the time, but a search of the East Harlem apartment of a suspect named Yakoob who had known ties to another suspect wanted for murder turned up a yellow slice of legal-pad paper. Much of what was written there had been crossed out beyond recognition. A few notations appeared to be in code, but still decipherable were some personal names on a list that matched a state reporting bureau’s list of people who had been victims of electronic funds misappropriation and credit card fraud. The dollar amounts were there too, small, but sure enough, there lay Geiger’s long-lost $5,000 in black and white. Other units were piecing together whatever links might exist between the suspects and the crime or crimes involved. It could have been a terrorist murder-for-hire financing ring. Or gang activity. Or totally unrelated criminals whose paths crossed at convenient moments in time. Without knowing what to look for, the police hackers had done as much as they could. For his part, Geiger had to try to trace the small amounts of cash to larger stock purchases, transfers, and gains—securities violations.

  The yellow slice of paper was not a lot to go on, and nothing else was found to incriminate “the African guy,” as one detective called him. After interviewing him at the station house, they gave Yakoob what amounted to a summons to appear before a judge later. Without the main suspect, it wasn’t clear whether Yakoob could even be linked to Geiger’s $5,000 or anything else. But the file indicated that Yakoob would be put under surveillance, at least in the hours after work. And they knew where his wife worked.

  Geiger studied the slender file for as many hours as he could spare from his docket of cases ready for trial. It was so random, nothing made sense. His unit chief wanted him to prepare a list of specific things police and FBI hackers could go back in for and to articulate legal grounds for a warrant to examine all of Yakoob’s computer files and financial information. That had to be done within days. Whatever was going on in the case, Geiger was told, it was moving quickly. So Geiger set out on an aimless search for coincidences and petty identity theft. The murder suspect still had no name.

  Soon enough, the main guy’s predilections started to emerge. The NYPD received a tip from a sickly inmate on Rikers Island about a guy who an illegal drug chemist named Manny called “the Candy Man.” The chemist might have sold him a powerful sedative used in a high-level homicide. The kid in jail, who could at least call the suspect by his first name, Raul, had given the cops detailed information about Raul’s mother’s apartment, daytime habits, and a full physical description. Both men—Manny and Tyrell—had plea deals pending. That page of the file also said in bold letters that the suspect was probably aware that he was under suspicion and should be considered armed and extremely dang
erous. Geiger did what he could about the money trail, but mostly he waited to hear if and when they brought in the Candy Man—Raul—for questioning.

  NOT A FULL BLOCK AWAY FROM JEFF GEIGER’S OFFICE, in tall buildings that stood almost shoulder to shoulder, Sidarra was sitting at her desk cubicle at the Board of Miseducation about to receive her own promotion. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she told Dr. Blackwell.

  “Don’t be too happy just yet,” said the chancellor. “We plan on doing it differently than you’re used to.”

  “Our reorganization of the executive staff may look a lot like putting you right back where you were before the last reorganization had you reporting to what’s her name,” Stanley explained, “but we need your ideas.”

  “Actually, I’d like you to be one of my deputies, Sidarra,” the chancellor added.

  As soon as she had covered Dr. Blackwell with both arms, Sidarra realized that she probably had not really hugged another woman since she last held her mother. In fact, as the embrace nearly tripped them both over, she knew that was true.

  However, Sidarra did not know that Yakoob had been in and out of police custody the day before. She did not know what a wild chase was on for computer evidence of illegal stock trades involving her and the Cicero Club. And nobody knew exactly how close a small army of unmarked police cars was to closing in on Raul as he ate a late lunch at Conrad’s Chicken & Waffle. The only thing Sidarra considered in that rare moment of rapture was that she had good news to tell her crew at the Full Count tonight, something she had worked long and hard for, and for the feeling, she would not creep through an alley tonight but would walk through the front door, proud of her own damned self for the first time in a long time.

  EXACTLY WHAT RAUL WAS FINALLY GOING TO DO to Cavanaugh—short of murder—was going to hurt a lot. That much he knew. The man had been on vacation for at least three weeks, and the wait did not sit well with Raul. It took only a phone call to the receptionist to learn that this was the Monday Cavanaugh would return to his desk. All day Raul considered various options. It had to be good. It had to be memorable. It might be fatal, and for that reason it should come as Cavanaugh was leaving work around five. The hours grew long. Raul got hungry.