Pipe Dream

by Solomon Jones

  “She ain’t been doin’ nothin’ but settin’ niggers up since the day I met her. What, you think you different?”

  When he didn’t respond, Black looked in the rearview mirror and saw that Leroy knew he was right.

  “Dig this here,” Black said, tapping Clarisse on the arm. “Soon as she finish talkin’ to the . . . No, matter fact, y’all go ’head in there now.”

  “You sure?” Clarisse said.

  “Yeah. Make it look like y’all not with her.”

  Clarisse opened the door and got out. When Leroy got ready to follow, Black grabbed his arm. “Watch Pookie.”

  “I’m watchin’ you,” he said, and walked away from the car, looking back over his shoulder before continuing toward the hotel.

  Black didn’t answer him. The truth was, he had thought about driving away and leaving them there. But something wouldn’t allow him to do it. It wasn’t loyalty. It was something deeper than that, and something much more selfish. It was fear: the same fear that told him to tell Clarisse to give the desk clerk a phony name and a phony tag number; the same fear that told him he had to park the car off the street; the same fear that told him they hadn’t gotten away as clean as they thought.

  He watched as Leroy caught up with Clarisse and walked through the doors of the hotel. A minute or so later, the valet walked out of the vestibule leading toward the lobby and started toward the garage. Black shut off the headlights and tapped the gas, putting the car in neutral and allowing it to roll behind the hedges that lined the hotel driveway.

  Black figured the parking attendant would use his electronic garage door opener to open the door, leaving him with a few seconds to shut off the engine and coast in behind him. If Black was lucky, the timer would be set at ten seconds, giving him enough time to wait until the attendant was well into the garage before following him inside. If he wasn’t lucky, he’d know soon enough, when the garage door closed on the hood of the car.

  Black hoped that having the engine and the lights off was enough to keep the valet from seeing him. If it didn’t work out that way, he’d say that he thought garage parking was free. Then he’d park the car outside, because parking it legitimately meant going to the valet and filling out an information form with the tag number and his name. He couldn’t do that. They’d already taken enough risks.

  Watching from behind the shrubbery, Black saw the valet half jog to the garage to retrieve Pookie’s nonexistent car. Black was sure the valet was about to open the door. But he suddenly stopped, felt his pockets, turned, and started back toward the hotel as if he’d forgotten something. Quickly, Black put the car in reverse and backed in behind the hedges. The engine revved slightly, causing the valet to stop for a moment and look toward the shrubs. Black leaned back in the seat and watched the valet watch him. It became obvious after a few minutes, however, that the valet couldn’t see very well. He had to lean forward and strain to see past the bushes.

  When he was satisfied that nothing was there, the valet walked to the hotel lobby, came back, opened the garage door with a remote control, then walked down the ramp that led to the garage. Black put the car in drive, drove toward the entrance, shifted into neutral, and killed the engine. Then Murphy’s Law took over.

  The door started to close. To make matters worse, the car was slowing down, like it might stop before it got to the door. Black knew he couldn’t start it again, because the noise of the engine would be a dead giveaway. So he did what he was accustomed to doing whenever something like that happened. He shot up a prayer and hoped that the garage door wouldn’t close before he got inside.

  Just as he got ready to open the car door to get out and push, he saw another car’s headlights pulling into the driveway of the hotel. From the car’s outline, he thought it might have been a cop car. He could only hope, as he watched the car drive the winding path that led to the entrance of the hotel, that it wasn’t.

  Black looked from the garage to the rearview mirror, then back to the garage. In about three seconds, the approaching car would disappear behind the shrubs. The garage door would close in about two.

  He looked in the rearview mirror once again, saw the other car approaching the shrubbery, and decided to make a break for the garage. Half crawling out of the car, he pushed against the car door with one hand and maneuvered the steering wheel with the other. By doing so, he was able to gather enough momentum to make it past the garage door before it closed. When he got inside, he jumped back into the car and negotiated the curve that led to the far corner of the garage.

  Hoping that the valet couldn’t see the red glow from the brake lights, Black pulled into a space between a black BMW and another black Honda. Crouching, he got out of the car and crept toward the elevator on the other side of the garage. The valet came walking toward him, looking around like he was confused about something. From the look on his face, he was probably wondering if he’d looked in the right space for Pookie’s nonexistent car.

  Black knelt behind a red Cadillac and waited for the valet to walk by. When he did, Black crawled around the side of the car and scurried over to the elevator. He hit the up button and the light over the elevator door lit the number 5. After a long pause, the number 4 lit up. It took what seemed like forever for it to descend to the garage level. When it did, there was a loud chime. The valet looked, and started to walk toward the elevator. Black crawled on board, pushed 5, and hoped that the doors would close before the valet got there. They did. Barely. Black caught a glimpse of the valet’s hand moving toward the “open door” button right before the elevator started up.

  “What took you so long?” Leroy said when Black got off the elevator at the fifth floor.

  “We can talk about all that when we get to the room. Where Clarisse and them?”

  “They already went to the room. It’s on the seventh floor.”

  “All right. Let’s go.”

  Leroy pushed the up button and the other elevator came up from the parking garage. When the doors opened, Black found himself looking into the eyes of a very confused parking attendant. He looked from Leroy to Black and then back again. Then he paused to push a very thick pair of glasses back up on the bridge of his nose.

  The three of them stood there and looked at one another across the elevator threshold. Leroy, who was unaware that the parking attendant had seen Black sneaking out of the garage, was the first to speak.

  “You g-gettin’ off?” he said to the valet with an impatient stutter.

  “I, uh . . .” The parking attendant hesitated and looked at the knees of Black’s pants, which were smudged with gray dust from the garage floor.

  “Yeah, so like I was sayin’ . . . ,” Black said, looking at the attendant as he and Leroy got on the elevator. “Excuse me, brother, could you push twelve please?”

  “Sure,” the parking attendant said, pushing the button for the twelfth floor.

  “Yeah, so anyway,” Black continued, giving Leroy a look that begged him not to say anything. “She couldn’t even wait until we got to the bed. She wanted to do it on the floor and I’m like, ‘Damn, baby, can I at least take my pants off first?’ But she just got on the floor and was like, ‘Let’s have it.’ Straight freak. You see she got my pants all dirty. Man, I’m tellin’ you . . .”

  Black kept talking, and as the elevator reached the twelfth floor, he felt the tension ease considerably. The valet obviously believed he couldn’t have been the person he saw sneaking out of the garage. Black even saw a smile creep over the valet’s lips.

  “All right, man,” Black told him when they got off the elevator. “Have a good one.”

  “You, too.”

  When the doors closed behind them, Black steered Leroy around the corner and toward the stairs.

  “Why you do that?” Leroy said.

  “That was the valet. I think he mighta seen me sneakin’ out the garage.”

  “That nigger be lucky if he can see his hand in front o’ his face with them thick-ass glasses on,”
Leroy said.

  Black nodded his agreement. “Nigger had on microscopes.”

  When they got to the seventh floor, Leroy led Black to the room and Clarisse answered the door.

  “What took you so long?”

  “Don’t worry about what took us so long,” Black said, rushing in and closing the door behind them. “Just don’t come openin’ doors like that no more if you don’t know who it is. It woulda been the same thing if it was five-o.”

  “Well you weren’t five-o. Now, where’s my car?”

  “It’s in the garage. I parked it in the corner between a BMW and another black Honda.”

  “Well, give me my keys so I can get out of here. I have to be at work in three hours.”

  Black looked at her in disbelief.

  “You said you just wanted me to take you somewhere outside the city,” she said.

  “Well, we ain’t outside the city yet,” he said.

  “Is that my problem?”

  “You talkin’ ’bout don’t trust Pookie,” Leroy said. “You need to be worried ’bout this siditty-ass bitch.”

  Black glanced at Leroy, then looked at Clarisse with his mouth hanging open.

  “Don’t look at me like that, Everett. I’ve helped you as much as I could, and you know it.”

  “I know we gon’ be stuck in this damn hotel if you leave,” he said, thinking that they’d have to steal someone’s car out of the garage.

  “Look,” she said, placing her hand on her hip. “When you wanted clothes, I gave you clothes. When you wanted a ride, I gave you that, too. When that cop pulled up on Girard Avenue, I helped you get out of that. Damn, what more do you want?”

  “I want to get out of this thing alive.”

  “So do I. That’s why I’m leaving.”

  “Clarisse,” Black said as he moved closer and tried to put his hand against her face.

  “Clarisse nothing,” she said, pushing his hand away. “I really don’t want to be caught up in this anymore, Everett. And you can call me a bitch or whatever you want to call me. I don’t care. I just want to get back to real life. Now, hand me my keys so I can go.”

  Without another word, Black handed her the keys and turned on the radio. A commercial for a local car dealership ended with a man screaming something about deals as Clarisse gathered her pocketbook and coat.

  “Well, while y’all handin’ out stuff,” Pookie said, “can I get mine? ’Cause I wanna go with her.”

  “You’re not going anywhere with me. So you can get that out of your head right now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t like you,” Clarisse said, looking at Pookie like she would be stupid to think otherwise.

  Leroy reached into his inside pocket and handed Pookie the five hundred dollars he’d placed there earlier.

  Pookie stuffed the money into her bra. As Clarisse started toward the door, the broadcaster led off with the top story. Clarisse stopped in her tracks.

  “Police are seeking a female in addition to the two males who are wanted in connection with yesterday’s murder of city councilman Johnny Podres in a reputed North Philadelphia crack house,” the broadcaster said in a deep resonating voice.

  “Patricia Oaks, a twenty-two-year-old female, ninety pounds, five-two, light complexion, with brown hair and hazel eyes, is being sought by police along with Leroy Johnson and Samuel Jackson. Oaks has a scar on the side of her face and should be considered armed and dangerous.

  “The threesome is believed to have escaped from the North Philadelphia area in a 1991 black Honda Accord with a Pennsylvania tag reading CWRN. The car is registered to a North Philadelphia nurse. Police are seeking the owner of the vehicle for questioning, but they have been unable to locate her, and they are withholding her name until they can gather more information as to her whereabouts.

  “Anyone who can provide any information concerning Johnson, Jackson, Oaks, or the vehicle is being asked to call this number . . .”

  They all looked at one another, speechless. Leroy finally spoke.

  “Dig this here,” he said calmly. “We can do it like we been doin’ it, or we can do it the hard way. But ain’t nobody leavin’ till me and Black figure out where we goin’ and how we gettin’ there. ’Cause I can’t have y’all doin’ or sayin’ nothin’ to get us popped for somethin’ we ain’t do.”

  Black walked over and stood by the door.

  Clarisse looked from Leroy to Black. Then she sat down on the bed and reached into her pocketbook for her straight shooter and a cap.

  “Gimme two,” she said.

  Black walked over and handed her two matches. Clarisse sighed, took off her coat, and placed her pocketbook gingerly on the bed. As she emptied the cap into the straight shooter, Black watched her, and hoped that his decision to hide out in the hotel had bought them enough time to figure out what to do next.

  Commissioner Nelson sat in the Command Center and rested his head in his hands. He knew that the suspects were hiding somewhere within the city limits. He could feel it. But because he had formed his strategy around the 6th District officer’s assertion that the suspects were headed for I-76, he might never be able to prove it.

  Shortly after the officer in car 611 had radioed in the suspects’ last location and the direction he thought they would take, an expressway lieutenant contacted the Command Center and asked for permission to redeploy some of his units from I-95 to I-76. Commissioner Nelson approved the request, then had the districts that bordered I-76 assign cars to patrol the streets that ran parallel or perpendicular to the off-ramps.

  An hour after he had approved the plan, Nelson knew something wasn’t right. With no new leads on the whereabouts of the fugitives, with daybreak creeping over the city, and with the press preparing for a day of frenzied activity, it was clear that the lieutenant and the commissioner had guessed wrong.

  The suspects had never gone anywhere near I-76. They were gone.

  Nelson put down the coffee he had been nursing and got up to stretch. When he sat back down, the dispatcher on J band repeated the suspects’ descriptions and Nelson sighed, because this meant that the suspects were still at large.

  “It looks like we’re going to have to get down in the trenches and start digging for these guys,” Nelson said to Sheldon as the radio chatter died down.

  “I’ve already got people digging, sir,” Sheldon said. “Accident Investigations recovered what we believe to be the murder weapon from the car the suspects crashed on Roberts Avenue. We’ve brought in the dealers and prostitutes in the area, we’ve had detectives go door-to-door on Park Avenue, and we’ve got four extra teams on the streets in case these suspects decide to surface.”

  “It’s not about what the suspects decide to do, Sheldon!” Nelson said, pounding the table in frustration. “We have to go out there and find them.”

  Sheldon licked his lips nervously and began to babble. “It’s not like we’re talking about rocket scientists, sir. These are drug addicts. They live their lives in a four-block radius—from the car they break into to the nearest dope man. Even if they did get outside the city, they’d have no idea where to go or what to do.”

  “That’s your first mistake,” Nelson said. “You never, under any circumstances, underestimate a suspect. I don’t care if he is a drug addict. You got that?”

  “Yes, sir. All I meant was . . . Well, I just meant to say that they’ll turn up eventually.”

  “They’re just not going to turn up tonight,” Nelson mumbled.

  Sheldon gave him a moment to calm down before he spoke again. “I guess Jeanette Deveraux and the rest of them are going to have a field day with this thing if they don’t turn up tonight.”

  “Yeah,” Nelson said. “How’s that sergeant from Community Relations handling the press, anyway?”

  “I suppose she’s doing all right, sir. She’s been calling the news agencies with updates every couple of hours.”

  “And who’s been approving these updates
? I haven’t seen any of them.”

  “Her captain has been helping her to coordinate the press releases.”

  “Call down there and let them know that no more updates go out without my prior approval.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Have any of the television stations broadcast Podres’s name yet?”

  “Yes, sir. In the last hour or so, they’ve all said that highly placed police sources confirmed that the Park Avenue shooting victim was Podres.”

  “Highly placed sources,” Nelson said, massaging his temples and rubbing his eyes like he was waiting for Calgon to take him away. “Any ideas, Captain? I’m fresh out.”

  “Well, we know what they’re driving,” Sheldon said. “Do we have the helicopter in service?”

  “It’s been in service all night, but they haven’t spotted the car.”

  “What about that helicopter that does the traffic reports for the radio stations?” Sheldon asked. “If we can get an officer on board that helicopter, we can have two choppers instead of one.”

  Nelson’s face softened. “Good idea. Give them a call, Captain.”

  “I’ll get right on it, sir.”

  “The only thing I’m concerned about now is whether that young woman who’s riding with them is all right,” Nelson said, almost to himself.

  “Ramirez says there were indications that she might have gone with them willingly.”

  “That would make her an accomplice,” Nelson said.

  “So what should I tell my men to do if they find them?” Sheldon asked.

  “Tell them that Miss Williams might be a hostage,” Nelson said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “We don’t have anything concrete yet, though. There’s no ransom note, and there haven’t been any calls demanding money, so we’re going to wait twenty-four hours before we call it a kidnapping. After that, we’ll have to call in the FBI.”

  “The FBI?” Sheldon repeated.

  “I don’t want to have to call them in, either,” Nelson said, sensing Sheldon’s apprehension. “Believe me, I want this thing solved locally. The political implications of this department not being able to solve a major crime quickly and without federal assistance would be extremely damaging.”