After Hours

by Rochelle Alers

  “If that’s the case, then why did you agree to see me?”

  “I didn’t know if I’d be able to help you. When you called the office you didn’t disclose your reason for a consultation.”

  Adina glared at the conservatively dressed woman. Although understated, the cut of her navy-blue linen gabardine suit was as exquisite as the diamond solitaire and eternity band giving off blue-white sparks on her left hand.

  “That’s because I was afraid to say anything over the phone. I’m still afraid and I don’t know when I’ll ever stop being afraid.” Tears filled Adina’s eyes and trickled down her cheeks; she swiped angrily at them.

  Karla’s closed expression didn’t change. She didn’t know why, but she felt Adina Jenkins’s pain. “Does he know where you are?”

  “No.”

  “When did you leave him?”

  “Friday.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  Adina peered at Karla through moisture-spiked lashes. She said a silent prayer that the attorney would change her mind. “I’m staying at a motel in Irvington.”

  “How long do you plan to be there?”

  “Until I run out of money.”

  “When do you predict you’ll run out of money?”

  Biting down on her lower lip, Adina mentally calculated how much it would cost to spend a month at the motel. “I have enough for at least another month,” she lied. How much money she had would remain her secret. “I’m going to need a new identity so I can get a job and rent an apartment. I have to start over, and that’s not going to happen unless I change my…my name.” The last word came out in a sob and the floodgates opened. Heart-wrenching sobs shook Adina as she buried her face in her trembling hands. A full minute passed before her hands came down and she stared at Karla. The tears had turned her brilliant eyes a mossy green. “I’m sorry,” she apologized before biting on her trembling lower lip. “May I use your restroom?”

  Pushing back her chair, Karla came to her feet and rounded the table. She’d witnessed domestic abuse firsthand as an adolescent when she walked into a neighbor’s apartment to find it ransacked and her best friend’s mother on the floor in a fetal position after she’d been beaten by her son looking for money to support his drug habit.

  Anchoring a hand under Adina’s elbow, she eased her from the chair. “Of course you may. It’s down the hall, on your left. Meanwhile, I’ll call someone I believe can help you.”

  Adina gathered her purse, sniffling as she walked out of the office; she hid a smile that mirrored supreme triumph. She’d rolled the dice and had come up a winner yet again. Despite her protests, Karla King was going to help Adina to not only change her name but also her life.

  CHAPTER 4

  Karla, waiting until Adina left her office, moved over to her computer; she pulled up her mailing list and scrolled through the names until she found what she wanted. Pushing the speaker feature on her phone, she dialed the number. Unfortunately the person to whom she wanted to speak was in court. She left a message on his voice mail to return her call. No one had saved her friend’s mother, who’d eventually been murdered by her son. But if she could, then she would do all she could to help Adina Jenkins.

  Leaning back in the leather executive chair, Karla stared at a wall filled with diplomas and citations chronicling her life as a tax attorney. She’d earned degrees from New York University in accounting and law and an MBA. At forty-one, she’d come a long way; she grew up in a low-income Newark neighborhood as an only child of a single mother who’d worked two jobs because she hadn’t wanted her daughter’s life to mirror hers.

  Karla didn’t want to think of what she’d sacrificed to get what she wanted from life; but she differed from her mother because now she was able to give back. She’d accepted personal cases pro bono, volunteered her services to organizations serving at-risk youth. And if she couldn’t get a former fellow law school student to take on Adina Jenkins’s case, then she would do what she could to help the young woman.

  Glancing at the clock on her desk, she noted the time. Adina had been gone more than fifteen minutes. She buzzed the receptionist. “Valerie, could you please check on Ms. Jenkins. She’s in the ladies’ room.”

  “No, she isn’t,” said Valerie.

  A slight frown creased Karla’s forehead. “No, she isn’t what?”

  “She isn’t in the ladies’ room. She left about ten minutes ago.”

  “Are you certain she left?”

  “Yes. In fact, she thanked me on her way out.”

  Karla’s dark eyebrows slanted in a frown. “Thank you, Valerie.”

  Perplexed, she hung up wondering if Adina had changed her mind and decided going back to her abusive lover was preferable to being on the run. Or perhaps she hadn’t believed Karla when she said she would get someone to help her. Expelling a soft breath, she closed her eyes. It would stand to reason that trusting wasn’t easy for a battered woman and that Adina was wary of everyone she met or confided in; after all, she hadn’t trusted the receptionist who’d taken her call to let her know why she was seeking legal counsel.

  Karla swiveled on her chair—and then she saw it. Adina had left without taking her shopping bag. She got up and picked up the bag. “Dammit,” she swore softly. She hadn’t gotten the name of the motel in Irvington where Adina was staying, so how could she return it to her?

  Sitting down in the chair her elusive client had occupied, she opened the bag and removed several sheets of decorative tissue paper. Her jaw dropped as she stared at the bag’s contents, her heart pounding a runaway rhythm. It took Karla several minutes before she was able to reach into the bag again. This time she took out a single sheet of paper addressed to her with Adina Jenkins’s contact information. She’d written down the name and telephone number to the hotel. She’d also included a cell phone number with a nine-one-seven area code and her proposed new name. Ignoring the stacks of bills bundled in denominations of tens, twenties and fifties in plastic Ziploc bags, she removed a large white envelope. Inside the envelope was an official copy of Adina’s birth certificate.

  A slow smile softened her wide mouth. “Why, the sneaky little minx,” she whispered. Adina Jenkins had come prepared to bribe her.

  Rising to her feet, Karla walked over to the door to her office and locked it. She returned to her desk and buzzed the receptionist. “Valerie, please hold all of my calls until further notice.”

  Her step was resolute, her hands steady as she entered her private bathroom, locking the door behind her. The corner office and private bathroom was only one of the perks that came from making partner. She’d worked hard, harder than any of her male counterparts at the firm, but the results were more profitable than mentally rewarding.

  She’d decided to take on Adina as a private client even before discovering the money; however, despite her passion for luxury, she wasn’t about to let greed jeopardize her license to practice law.

  The hands on the clock had made a full revolution by the time Karla had counted the cash and put it back in the bag. She’d been given ten thousand dollars to make Adina Jenkins disappear. Methodically, as if preparing to take a case to trial, she stored the money in a cabinet under the vanity, unlocked the door to her office, then returned to her desk to make a telephone call.

  A broad smile softened her round face when she heard a familiar greeting coming through the earpiece. “I need a favor, darling.”

  A deep chuckle caressed her ear. “Does your husband know you’re flirting with strange men?”

  Reaching for a pencil, Karla made squiggly lines on the pad filled with other doodling shapes. “No, but Ronald doesn’t have to worry about us.”

  “Are you sure about that, Karla? Surely you’ve told the poor man that I’ve been lusting after you since the first day we walked into the lecture hall at law school.”

  “I told him, but he knows nothing will come of it.”

  There was a pause before the ADA at the Mercer County prosecutor�
��s office said, “I know you didn’t call to talk about Ronald. What’s up, darling?”

  “I need you to run a trace on a potential client.”

  “Has he been indicted?”

  “No. I’m talking about a woman who’s hiding from her abusive boyfriend.”

  “Give me her name and address and I’ll call you back.”

  Karla gave him the information she’d gleaned on Adina. “Please run her through the Bureau’s database while you’re at it.”

  “What do I get for this?”

  “Are you trying to bribe me, counselor?” she teased.

  “Damn straight, counselor. How about dinner?”

  She smiled. “You’re on.”

  “I’m paying this time, Karla.”

  “Remember, Henry, that I’m the one with the expense account.”

  “That’s because civil servants don’t have the luxury of expense accounts.”

  “That’s why I’m paying.”

  There came another pause on the other end of the line. “I’ll call you when I get the info on your client, then we’ll set up a time to reconnect.”

  “Thanks, Henry.”

  Karla hung up, tucking several strands of hair behind her right ear, her mouth tightening into a hard, unattractive line. Henry had continued to come on to her even though she’d been married to Ronald for the past six years. Perhaps if she hadn’t admitted, when she’d had too much to drink, that she and Ronald were swingers, then perhaps Henry would have given up his relentless pursuit.

  She occasionally slept with other men and Ronald other women, but only with the other’s consent. Even if she wanted to sleep with Henry, she wouldn’t because she didn’t want to shit where she had to eat. She’d learned a long time ago to never mistake business for pleasure.

  The phone rang, startling Karla. She picked up the receiver when she saw the display. “What do you have, Henry?”

  “She’s clean.”

  She resisted the urge to jump up and cut a dance step. “Thank you, Henry.”

  He chuckled softly. “You’re quite welcome, Karla. I’ll be in touch.”

  “You know where to find me.” She ended the call, then retrieved her cell phone and punched in the numbers on speed dial. The man who answered her call was one Ronald would approve of her sharing his bed. It took less than five minutes to tell him what she needed.

  All she had to do was messenger the birth certificate to make the impossible possible with a single telephone call. Adina Jenkins was about to become Dina Gordon.

  CHAPTER 5

  Adina closed her eyes, feigning sleep when an elderly man attempted to initiate conversation. She didn’t want to talk—especially not with a stranger. All she wanted was to return to Irvington and the motel room that had become a safe haven. And she wouldn’t feel safe until she closed and locked the door behind her.

  The rocking of the train and the click-clacking sound of the rails lulled her into an almost hypnotic state and she was able to recall every detail of her last night in Brooklyn. It’d begun the instant she called a car service to take her to Chez Tangerine.

  She’d leaned forward on the worn rear seat of the livery taxi, tapped the Plexiglas partition with a set of silk-wrapped, airbrushed fingernails.

  “Put us out in the middle of the block.”

  The driver maneuvered alongside the curb in front of Chez Tangerine. The line for those waiting to get inside the trendy Brooklyn nightspot snaked down the block and around the corner.

  “Oh, hell no,” mumbled the young woman sitting next to Adina. “I told you before that I ain’t fixin’ to stand in no line just to get into a club.”

  Reaching into her tiny leather shoulder purse slung over her chest, Adina pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and pushed it through the slot in the partition. Shifting slightly, she rolled her eyes at her friend. She and LaKeisha Robinson had grown up in the same public housing project but hadn’t begun hanging out together until the year before.

  “Have we ever had to stand on line?”

  Even though LaKeisha was her girl, Adina didn’t understand why she complained all the time. In fact, there wasn’t anything in LaKeisha’s life that was that critical to make her a chronic whiner. She’d just closed on a condo in a Park Slope town house complex, worked as a loan officer in a downtown Brooklyn bank, was only fourteen credits away from earning an MBA and, unlike herself, she wasn’t a baby mama. Although educated, her friend lapsed easily into street jargon depending with whom she interacted.

  What LaKeisha didn’t know was that Adina envied her because not only did she know who her father was but also that Adina’s grandmother had had her mother at sixteen, her mother had her at fifteen and she’d given birth to her own daughter, whom she passed off as her sister, at fourteen. And her grandmother still lived in the same housing project where she’d been raised, raised her daughter, granddaughter and now, at fifty-seven, her great-granddaughter.

  Even though she’d dropped out of high school, Adina managed to earn her GED before her twenty-first birthday. She’d never been gainfully employed, and what haunted her most was that she hadn’t seen her alcoholic, drug-addicted mother in ten years.

  “No,” LaKeisha mumbled.

  “Then stop bitchin’.”

  “It’s just that I’m due to get my period in a couple of days and my back bothers me if I stand too long.”

  Adina didn’t respond to LaKeisha’s reference to her period because her attention was directed at a man dressed entirely in black. His smirk widened until it became a full dazzling grin. Bending slightly, he opened the rear door to the sedan.

  Within seconds she went into seduction mode, parting her full lips just enough to appear as if she were attempting to catch her breath; she tossed her long black braid over her shoulder as she slid forward on the seat to give him an unobstructed view of her legs and thighs under a short, tight skirt. Placing her hand on the broad outstretched palm, she felt the power in the strong fingers when he pulled her to her feet.

  “Hey, baby. How you doin’?” crooned a deep voice that matched the man’s massive bulk.

  Adina rose on tiptoe and looped her arms around Jermaine Werner’s neck. “Better now that I’ve seen you,” she said, pressing her cheek to his clean-shaven one.

  She was flirting with Jermaine because she was counting on him to get her and LaKeisha into the club without having to wait on line. The tall, dark-brown-skinned man was one of the finest brothers in all of Brooklyn, but for Adina he was off-limits. In fact, any man to whom she’d found herself attracted was strictly taboo. However, there were exceptions—the men Payne Jefferson set up for her to hustle.

  At twenty-seven, she’d lost count of the number of men she’d seduced for her elusive boss. Payne referred to himself as a “commercial manager,” but to Adina he was nothing more than a pimp. Payne always gave her a percentage of what he stole from the unsuspecting marks, but what she never disclosed to her boss was her own con, where she received special gifts that included money, designer clothes and an occasional fur coat or jacket. One mark had even given her a pair of calfskin thigh-high, mink-lined boots.

  Earlier that morning she’d received an alpha-numeric text on her PDA from Payne, instructing her to attend a private party at Chez Tangerine. The guest of honor had been paroled after doing a bid for robbing and assaulting an elderly diamond merchant. Closed-circuit cameras had recorded the crime, and because of several priors for petty infractions, he was given a sentence of fifteen-to-twenty years at an upstate New York prison. The case baffled police because the uncut diamonds, appraised for more than five million dollars, were never recovered. Her mission was to seduce the guest of honor and uncover whether he still had the gemstones and, if he did, where he’d hidden them.

  Jermaine gently removed Adina’s arms from his neck and took a step backward so she wouldn’t detect his hard-on. Her silk halter top was an exact match for the pinpoints of green in her large hazel eyes. Adina Jenkins was the sex
iest woman he’d ever encountered, and as a normal man, he wanted to do her.

  He found her incredibly beautiful; she had long, wavy black hair, a curvy body and perfect legs and feet. Although she identified African-American, she could’ve easily passed for Latina, Native American or someone from the South Pacific. Her olive coloring, exotic features, low, throaty voice and seductive walk had him thinking of her when he least expected. And whenever he found himself in bed with other women, it was Adina he fantasized making love with.

  “When are we going to get together, beautiful?”

  Adina’s practiced sensual smile slipped, but within seconds it was back. Jermaine didn’t know that she would never go out with him because with a wife, three children and a baby mama he couldn’t afford her. Although he worked a nine-to-five and moonlighted as a bouncer at different clubs on the weekends, he definitely wasn’t in her league.

  She winked at him. “I’ll let you know, Jermaine.” Extending her left hand, she waited as he removed a plastic orange wristband stamped with the club’s name and logo from the breast pocket of his jacket and fastened it around her wrist. “Please take care of my girl LaKeisha, and we’ll talk later about when we can hook up.”

  Minutes later, a band circled LaKeisha’s wrist and the two women strutted in stilettos over to the velvet rope suspended between sturdy stanchions. Raising their hands to display the bands of neon orange, Adina and LaKeisha batted their mascara-coated lashes at the man removing the rope as another opened a door for them.

  They made their way down a narrow hallway with painted black walls, then into a large space with lights flashing a kaleidoscope of color against a background of orange. A balcony overlooked a U-shaped bar and dance floor. Scantily dressed women and their men in casual urban attire lined up at the bar ordering outrageously overpriced drinks, while others gyrated to the infectious hip-hop flowing from powerful speakers.

  Adina glanced at the upper level. A procession of waitstaff made their way up the winding wrought-iron staircase carrying trays of food. A knowing smile tilted the corners of her mouth. Like a heat-seeking missile locked in on a target, her plan was to crash the private party.