The Importance of Being Dangerous

by David Dante Troutt

  “A corrupt corporate director, Sid,” he interrupted. “A master pimp hoing black children for shareholder profit.”

  “He was a human being!” Sidarra screamed to the sky. She stood up and walked in a deliberate little circle before turning back to him. “Listen to how you talk about it even now, Griff. ‘We.’ Like I had any goddamned say at all. Like I’m just the girl in the movie. This ain’t no movie, Griff! I ain’t no girl! This is real life, man! This is my life!”

  His eyes grew desperate. All his smarts dropped into the sea. “I know it is, baby. I got caught up.”

  She waited for him to come with something more, but she couldn’t wait. It was all too clear now. “I’m afraid this is bullshit. You’ve been lying to me all this time, Griff, and now you’re just rationalizing. What’s wrong with you? How could you do this to me? I have a child, man! I’m all she’s got.” Suddenly tears pierced her rage. “You said you loved me!”

  “I do.”

  “Then why would you take away from me the first chance I had to control my own life? I decided to invest in the stock market to save my life. I joined that club so that I would stop waking up wondering who was gonna fuck with me today. I had already rejected a man who wanted to run my show. Now you. So fucking typical, Griff. I really thought you were different. I thought you got it.” Sidarra leaned on the banister and squinted at the sea. “‘We’!” she repeated. “What the fuck is wrong with men?”

  At first it actually took Griff a moment to realize that Sidarra’s horrified look of rage was meant for him. Had he lied? He guessed so. Did he love her? More than anyone or anything he could remember. Did he try to control her the way he couldn’t control his own wife? Not on purpose, but the wrong he had put on her face panicked him. He searched it, hoping the anger would leave, but when it refused he was powerless to hold back his own tears.

  “I never got to protect a woman,” he said quietly. “I always wanted that, Sidarra. And then when I realized that I loved you, how deeply I respected you and wanted you to have, well, it seemed like…You’re right.” He shook his head and stared at his feet for a minute. Then he stood up. “I’m sorry,” he nearly asked. “I’m so sorry, baby.” He cried into her arms. “I really wanted to help.” And locked in tears, they held and swayed.

  After a while, their arms slowly fell off each other. Sidarra sniffled a bit and wiped her face with the wide sleeve of the terry cloth robe. She was okay. She even wiped his face dry. They settled back into their chairs.

  “Why in the world didn’t Yakoob just stop Raul?” she asked in a whisper. “Was he afraid of him?”

  Griff pulled up a little surprised. “Yeah, he was.” He paused. “Me too. That man was not just a little dangerous. He was completely dangerous. I mean, I failed, Sidarra, hard as it is to say it. The thing was complicated. They seemed to have some kind of undetectable history going on, like a big brother-little brother thing. By the time I really got it, it was too late.”

  Sidarra rubbed her eyes and shook her head. “Jesus, you guys really needed me. Thugs are my specialty.” She closed her robe, folded her legs, and squinted at the blue wall of water before them for a while. “Are you going to prison, Griff?”

  “Probably.”

  “Is the case strong?”

  “Not nearly as strong as they’d like to think, I figure.” He cleared his throat and got his strength back. “First of all, nobody really believes there’s more than one black person on earth who could ever pull this off—and he’s a Supreme Court justice. Second of all, they’ve got so many agencies involved—the Manhattan and Brooklyn D.A.s’ offices, the U.S. Attorney, DEA, FBI, the IRS—that they’re all probably tripping over themselves right now, I would guess, trying to get us on everything and giving each other as little as they can. At the end of the day, sugar, I think they’ll have no chance of proving we knew anything certain about the chancellor’s death. Whatever we gained is gonna look awfully lucky. There were three types of accounts, you know, and the cash ones are out of the question. The shell corporations are still an X factor, but I think we’re probably okay on those. It’s just the early ones, the ones we did on credit cards where we might have slipped up a little. I’m pretty sure Koob used some real names before that money got converted into stocks. They can’t really follow them, I don’t think. But they’ll try. That’s why people say you always want to follow the money. That’s also why people say what they do about dead men talking.”

  “You could stand to be in prison?”

  “Are you kidding?” He laughed a little falsely. “I’ve got more friends in there than I can count, Sid.”

  She turned toward Griff’s face. “What about Yakoob? Is he gonna do time?”

  “I have to think so, sweetheart. He’s in as deep as me at least. They obviously started with his passwords and may not get too far, so they tend to want to stay with that first guy. If the Fidelity shit ever comes up, he could really go away. But he promised us both he’d never open an account in there, he’d just hack from outside. He should be clear of that one. Yakoob is a good brother. In a way, he’s like my brother now. He just has to accept the system for what it is and not try to get too bold.”

  “Yakoob?” she giggled. “C’mon. What do you mean?”

  “I mean, he told me he wants to go to trial. He still wants to plead innocent to everything and make ’em prove their shit. That’s too risky. You gotta plea this shit out. You do that and all the colors of the masterpiece they want to paint for a jury sink down in a puddle. They already know my life is ruined. They know I’ll be disbarred, won’t practice another day of law in New York. They probably even know Belinda will never lay eyes on me again and will take everything I didn’t hide. But Koob’s got a woman. Nobody’s gonna miss me but the brothers I meet inside. On the other hand, he’s got somebody to get back to fast. So he’s the last one who should be beating his chest.” Griff turned close to Sidarra, grabbed her hand even tighter, and sat up a little. “The only question is whether I will have someone waiting for me, Sidarra.”

  “What are you talking about, baby? I, I assumed from all you’ve been saying that I’m going down too, for something anyway.”

  “No, darling,” he said very clearly. “The ‘we’ ends there. If you just lay low and don’t make it easy for them, I really don’t think they’re gonna get to you, Sid.”

  “Why not?”

  Griff smiled into her eyes with an almost fatherly admiration. He seemed to be counting the things he could say to her, just as he had spent the last half hour expressing conclusions he had reached over many sleepless and calculating days. But this answer had nothing to do with the law.

  “Because you’re loved.”

  YAKOOB WOKE HAPPILY to the sculpture of Marilyn’s sleeping body and sat up in the Sunday calm of a July morning, occasionally kissing points along her side. Periwinkle sheets twisted in long lines between her tawny thighs, up over one shoulder, and into a ball of clenched fingers against her peaceful face. He studied her eyelids for a long time, blew light breaths upon a single peeking nipple, and inhaled the warm weight of her scent. Then, for the first time in many months, Yakoob leaned into his wife’s outstretched body and made love to her without the hope of pregnancy, but just to love her soundly.

  Maybe an hour or so later it was Marilyn’s turn to take in the unguarded perfection of her partner. His naked feet were never as bad as he made out, she smiled as her toes gently caressed his. He self-consciously snatched them back under the sheets and stirred with a chuckle. Her eyes looked distracted.

  “What you thinking ’bout, baby?” he whispered hoarsely.

  Marilyn leaned on her elbow and began to stroke Yakoob’s chest hairs. “Is it really that good?” she asked.

  “It’s all good,” he assured her, turning in the pillow to look into her eyes.

  “No, sweetie. I mean, all the stuff we got now. Amazon.com and McDonald’s. Somebody told me you don’t really see the money so fast with the stock mark
et. I’m not doubting you. But how come we do, baby?”

  The sun nearly fell across them like truth serum, and Yakoob felt the light of lies nearly blind him. He blinked hard and felt his pulse change. “Dividends, sugar,” he said calmly. “Some people don’t cash them when they come. We do.”

  She thought for a long moment, not completely satisfied with his response. “That makes me feel kind of stupid, Koob.” He sat up beside her. “The idea that I don’t know anything about the stock market, you know? And people just saying things about the stuff that’s changed my life with you, baby, and I’m thinking I don’t know shit about this. I want to be someone’s mother? A mother—who doesn’t know adult things?” Her brown eyes creased as they stared into his, and she drew up and kneeled on the mattress while squeezing the fingers on one hand with the other. “That’s bullshit, isn’t it? That shit’s got to change for me. I have to know all about shit like that. You need to be a teacher, Yakoob. Okay?”

  Suddenly disappointed in himself, he took a deep breath as he gazed back and forth between her eyes. “You’re right, baby. I will. I’ll try,” he said with all the courage he could muster.

  It was still early in the morning when they came, and well before there was any chance he might get away. They came with two vans, a few squad cars, a battering ram, and a warrant. Yakoob and Marilyn had both fallen back to sleep when the banging began at their front door. The neighbors woke too and watched as Yakoob was brought out into the sunlight in handcuffs, slippers, and only his velour warm-up pants to clothe him. Thing by thing, one by one, the marshals and agents carried his personal belongings into the street and onto the vans. The plasma TVs, sound systems, video games, racks of clothes, boxes of jewelry, a stash of herb, the basketball trophies, Bally shoes, three fur coats, a recliner stuffed with hundred-dollar bills, and, most importantly, the last of all his hard drives, monitors, backup systems and CD-ROMs were tagged with yellow “evidence” tape and removed. The black Escalade sat atop a flatbed truck waiting obliviously to be towed away. Yakoob lowered his head into his chest and dragged himself through the neighborhood perp walk while Marilyn, wearing only an old silk nightgown, screamed through her hysterical tears, “Maricón, maricones, you fucking bastards!” into the July air.

  “I got you, baby!” she screamed after him with all her might. “Don’t worry, baby, I’ll get you out! Maricones! Maricones motherfuckers!”

  31

  SIDARRA’S MOTHER HAD A PHRASE she applied mostly to food storage: “Just to be on the safe side.” Just to be on the safe side, Sidarra had emptied several different accounts she held with different banks into the money market fund with Raquel’s name on it earlier in the week. She had closed most accounts that bore her own name and transferred a large amount of cash to a charter school fund she had set up in a small local bank based in California. Sidarra wanted to sell the Mercedes or give it away, but had decided at the last minute to simply pay it off. Now, as she and Griff prepared to leave the condo for a walk in the town before they would have to depart from Belize, she poured the contents of her travel bag onto the desk beside Griff’s bulging billfold.

  “What’s all that?” he asked, pointing to the small pile of gum wrappers, tissues, receipts, lipstick, and plastic.

  “Credit cards for the sea,” she smiled. Arrayed before them she spread a half dozen plastic cards from department stores, American Express, Visa, and MasterCard, all in the name of her alias, Desiree Galore.

  “Is that what you had to go back for when we were leaving?” Griff asked as he buckled his belt.

  “Yes, these and a few personal items,” she answered matter-of-factly. She opened the desk drawer, pulled out a pair of scissors, and methodically sliced each card into many pieces. He turned and walked into the bathroom for something. Sidarra pulled a small black box out from under the pile. She opened it, pulled Michael’s radiant diamond from its blue velvet pond, wrapped it in a napkin, and stuck the ring in her jacket pocket. Then she collected the jagged pieces of credit cards, placed them in a paper bag she stuffed into her purse, tossed the rest of the stuff into the trash, and waited for Griff to take her for their stroll.

  When Griff was finished with his own preparations, he came back to the desk area and picked up the billfold.

  “Is that what I think it is?” she asked.

  “Depends what you think, love. I’ve got something I need to do on our way out.”

  When they got downstairs to the marbled lobby, Griff stood with Sidarra under the overhead fans and asked to see the concierge. As they waited, Sidarra looked around and noticed that everyone working there was a deep, luscious brown. The pretty women at the front desk. The straitlaced doormen. The baggage assistants in their bright red uniforms. The janitors clearing cigarette butts from the ashtrays. Even the concierge of this British investment was brown.

  “What can I do for you and your lovely wife, sir?” the man asked.

  “Is unit number 12D where we stayed still available for sale?” Griff asked.

  “Of course, sir. But we have much better for not much more money, American,” the man replied.

  “No. I think we like that one just fine. However, we’re in a bit of a hurry to return to Chicago. We have a plane to catch.” Griff reached into his slacks, retrieved the hefty grip so the man couldn’t miss it, and patted the leather cover with one hand. “Can we do this quickly?”

  “Of course,” said the man. “We are quite happy to accommodate you. Let me bring you to the sales office and we can have you out of here in no time at all.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  Moments later they were seated in a small, plushly decorated room with a huge fish tank behind the sales manager’s desk. She too was brown and a little too taken with Griff’s hazel eyes for Sidarra’s taste. A few lies, twenty-eight minutes, $65,000 in cash, plus a few years of prepaid condo fees later, Griff had an envelope with all the pertinent information and a quitclaim deed in his jacket pocket. On the way out of the lobby doors, he addressed it to a P.O. box, paid for the postage, and dropped it in a mail slot. In Sidarra’s pocket was the sales office business card with a number she’d scribbled on the back while Griff was signing papers: Unit 12D.

  “My instinct tells me I probably should turn around, go back up there, and move in when we’re finished in town,” he told her as they walked arm in arm to a taxi. “But at least I have someplace to come back to one day.”

  Sidarra wished she too had thought of such a move. That, in many ways, was the difference between her and Griff, the difference between Griff and Michael, and the person she had been looking for these forty years without knowing who. For a married man, Griff seemed to do so much so well alone, as if he were born to it. He made more peace than he knew. And now there was nothing worse than knowing the peace they had made together, a peace that didn’t really rely on dollars and the Cicero Club, was in danger of locking shut.

  They never walked so slowly. The slow town speeded by them as they walked its dusty streets with serene smiles. They dawdled over knickknacks, stopped to watch kids play music on the street, and fed each other snacks from sunlit stands selling God knows what. Their steps matched so perfectly, each leftward stride an elegant march into a hard-won future, each right foot forward a step closer to the gallows of the present.

  “I promised myself I would not buy anything,” Sidarra said as they passed a colorful hat stand, “but I think I might need to make just one exception.”

  She tried on a wide floppy straw hat with a Diana Ross brim and a red ribbon. It covered half her face, exposed a single sun-glassed eye, and fit her head like a tropical gangster’s. Long ago she had gotten her mother in trouble with Aunt Chickie over a hat like that. “Why not?” Griff said. “Keep your promise. I never bought you a birthday present.”

  She laughed like a silly schoolgirl again while Griff paid for the hat. Within minutes that street in Belize was a memory and they were in a cab on their way back to the airport.


  Each mile under the old taxi’s wheels spelled something foreboding. The time was running out. To distract her stomach from the death-defying drive over unbanked mountain curves, Sidarra decided to sing to Griff. She chose another Anita Baker number that had popped into her head, “Sometimes I Wonder Why.” Griff’s bones received every note. His spine tingled, and the driver slowed to a crawl as Sidarra lifted her voice and sang: “This tightrope that I walk/A tightrope without a net below/And if I fall, child I just fall/Because I know/I know/I’ll love you till I die…”

  Suddenly Sidarra stopped singing. “Driver?” she called out as the car ambled around a seaside cliff. “Please stop for a minute. I just want to get one more look at the water.”

  The man pulled the car over to the side of the road, Sidarra indicated to Griff to stay and jumped out of the door. She hurried across the dirt road in the breeze and stood at the edge of the cliff. The waters swirled in rock jetties way below. Griff watched Sidarra’s profile against the sun. She pulled the small bag of credit card cuttings from her purse, opened it to insert a handful of pebbles she found at her feet, and flung the package over the side.

  “Goodbye, kind lady,” she whispered into an indifferent breeze.

  When she saw it disappear under the white bubbles, she got back in the taxi.

  She and Griff sailed through every checkpoint with the ease of man and wife. Smiles greeted them and their backs as they boarded. Griff had managed to seat them together for the first leg of the trip, a flight to Chicago before they had to change planes. As much as they had to say, they kept their shades on, clasped each other’s hands as the borders flew by beneath them, and napped ear to ear. The landing in Chicago was bumpy and they woke to the loud bounce of rubber on tarmac.

  Griff’s face had already changed as they walked to the connecting gate at O’Hare. Sidarra decided not to tell him about that habit of his until they were back in New York. She would have the whole flight to think of things she thought they could change in their relationship. For all his legal calculations, Sidarra had a feeling he was not going anywhere without her.