Ride or Die

by Solomon Jones

As Anderson recounted the shooting in his mind, a door opened, dragging him from his thoughts. When he turned around, he saw a bald, black plainclothes officer walking toward him with a bandage on his head.

  “I’m Lieutenant Lynch,” the officer said, extending his hand.

  Anderson took it and gripped it tightly. “I’m sorry about the commissioner. He was a good man.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” Lynch said, releasing the handshake and turning toward a back room. “You can come on back here with me.”

  Anderson hesitated. “I already talked to the detectives about the shooting,” he said politely. “I’m just waiting for my wife to pick me up.”

  Lynch was surprised. “I thought your wife was with you at the protest.”

  “Protests make her nervous,” Anderson said, smiling stiffly.

  “I see.” Lynch walked to the door and opened it. “This’ll only take a minute.”

  Anderson sighed, then got up and followed him inside. Lynch closed the door, and the two men sat down on opposite sides of a steel table that had seen better days.

  “Can we get you some coffee or something?” Lynch asked.

  “No,” Anderson said, placing his hands on the table.

  “Okay, then I’ll get right to the point,” Lynch said, opening a file and looking through it as he spoke. “You’ve been at the center of two shootings in less than twenty-four hours. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were the drug dealer.”

  “Well, I’m not.”

  Lynch looked up from the file. “Not anymore, you mean.”

  Anderson could tell that Lynch knew more about him than he was letting on. So he perched his hands in a steeple and tapped his forefingers against his lips, contemplating what he should say.

  “You know, Reverend Anderson, I had a case a few years ago in the East Bridge Housing Projects that kind of reminded me of this one,” Lynch said, breaking the silence. “A little girl disappeared, and I went in to try to find her.

  “It took me back to my roots, I guess, because I grew up there, watching the people in that building destroying each other, a little at a time.”

  Anderson looked up at him. “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “You said this whole thing was about someone trying to rape your daughter,” Lynch said evenly. “I’ve got a daughter of my own, so I can understand that. But it’s not just about your daughter, is it? It’s not even about that woman they shot last night. It’s about you and Nichols destroying each other a little at a time. Except now you’re destroying other people, too.”

  “Look, I just wanted to help—”

  “Help who?” Lynch snapped. “You took matters into your own hands. Now the police commissioner’s dead, and right this minute, cops are on every street in this city trying to find his killer, and they don’t care who gets in their way.”

  Anderson started to speak, but Lynch wouldn’t allow it.

  “That means people are gonna die, Reverend Anderson. So if you really wanna help as much as you say you do, you’ll tell me what I need to know, and you’ll tell me now.”

  Anderson wanted to attack Lynch for having the audacity to look beyond his rhetoric. His war against North Philly’s drug trade was, after all, a just war, waged to take back the souls of mothers who’d become whores, fathers who’d become murderers, and sons who’d become victims. It was a war to save his people. At least, that’s what Anderson told himself.

  But now, as he sat at the table, with Lynch waiting for him to offer something real, he knew that it was time for him to admit the truth. Not only to the cop, but to himself.

  Anderson folded his hands on the table and took a deep breath.

  “Frank’s parents died when he was seventeen,” he said haltingly. “Got killed in a bus accident on a trip to visit relatives down South. Since Frank and I were pretty good friends and my father needed another set of hands in the family business, we took him in.”

  “And what was the family business?” Lynch asked.

  “Drug dealing, numbers, prostitution. My father ran his business like the mob. Had it all set up in crews with lieutenants and captains and a boss.”

  The pastor looked up at Lynch uncomfortably and waited for judgment to sweep across his face. When it didn’t, he went on.

  “My father was John Anderson Sr. They called him Johnny Hands, ’cause he could strangle a man with one of them.”

  “I remember the name,” Lynch said. “First real gangster in North Philly.”

  “Yeah,” Anderson said, nodding his head. “And he taught us well, me and Frank. Taught us according to our strengths.”

  “And what were your strengths?”

  “Me? I was strong and big, so I was an enforcer. You crossed my pop, he sent me out with one of his soldiers, and we handled it. After a while, I got so good at it, he started sending me out on my own.”

  “So you hurt people for your father?”

  “I knocked a few heads here and there,” Anderson said. “Nothing major. But what I did is beside the point, if you wanna know about me and Nichols.”

  “Okay,” Lynch said. “Go on.”

  “The same way my father trained me to my strengths, he trained Frank to his. And Frank’s strength was his mind. After three years in the business, my father made him a lieutenant, and then a captain, gave him a few corners to run and taught him how to get men to do things. Terrible things.”

  “And your father didn’t do the same thing for you?” Lynch asked.

  “He tried, but when I saw what it would take for me to be like my father, I couldn’t do it. I didn’t have the stomach for it. But Frank did.”

  Lynch nodded and sat back in his seat.

  “When I was about twenty, there was a problem with my father’s corn liquor suppliers in North Carolina,” Anderson said. “Frank suggested that I take care of it, and my father agreed.

  “It was the first time I’d ever left my father for more than a day, but it was okay. Frank was like my father’s second son, the one who would watch his back if anything ever went wrong. Not that anything could. My father was so strong, not even the white boys down South Philly would mess with him.

  “So when Frank put together this big surprise party for him at the bar on Eighth and Diamond, nobody batted an eye. They just came. Everybody who worked for my father was there. All his dealers, all his whores, all his soldiers. Everybody except me.”

  Anderson laughed bitterly. And then he shook his head slowly from side to side.

  “Frank had these strippers come in,” he said, as if in a trance. “And right behind them, these guys came in and shot up the place. My father and three of his closest lieutenants died. Frank took a bullet in the shoulder. But none of the men in Frank’s crew were shot. And the guys who shot my father got away clean.

  “I got word down South that something had happened, and Frank was handling it. They told me that it was too dangerous for me to come back. I ignored them and drove back here as fast as I could. And when I walked into my father’s bar, there was Frank, sitting there in my father’s seat, with his arm bandaged, red-eyed, like he’d been crying, with three of my father’s men around him.

  “I ran to him and we hugged and cried together, swearing we were gonna get the men who’d killed my father. Our father. But I knew in my heart that I couldn’t do it anymore. So I just backed further and further away from the business. And Frank got more and more ruthless. Before I knew it, he had everything that had belonged to my father. And he offered me crumbs. Crumbs I didn’t want.”

  Lynch looked over at him. “How long did it take you to figure out what happened to your father?”

  Tears welled up in Anderson’s eyes. “I guess I always knew,” he said. “I just didn’t want to believe the man I’d loved like a brother, the man my father had treated like a son, would turn around and set him up that way.”

  Lynch nodded and waited for Anderson to wipe the tears from his face.

  “Even after I got saved
and went into the ministry, I didn’t want to believe it. But I knew. I knew in my heart that Frank had killed him. And I hated him for it. Still do.”

  “And you never tried to avenge your father’s death?”

  Anderson stared at Lynch for a long while before he answered. “I guess I’m like the people you grew up with in the projects,” he said finally. “I just want to destroy him a little bit at a time.”

  As Anderson’s words hung in the air between them, the door opened and a police officer rushed in and whispered something to Lynch, whose deep brown face turned ashen gray.

  When the officer left, Lynch turned to the preacher. “Reverend Anderson,” he said. “Your wife is downstairs.”

  “Good,” Anderson said, getting up from his chair. “You can call me if you need me.”

  “Wait, Reverend Anderson.”

  “I’ve had a rough day, Lieutenant. So if it’s all the same to you, I just wanna go home with my wife, hug my daughter, and forget about this for a little while.”

  “That’s just it,” Lynch said solemnly. “Your wife hasn’t seen your daughter. She’s been missing since the shooting.”

  Ishmael squinted as the sun shone through the front windows of the storefront church.

  With the temperature outside approaching ninety and the windows of the church shut tight, the entire second floor was stifling. But he couldn’t afford to leave, because the police still believed that he was somewhere close to the crime scene. And they were right.

  Sitting shirtless in the window, with his strapping frame drenched in sweat and his dreadlocks draped about his shoulders, he would have made for an imposing figure if anyone had seen him. But he didn’t care to be seen. At least not yet.

  For now, he had to do what he’d done for the last forty minutes—watch the police milling about on the street below, and wait for her to call him with the next move. In the moments in between, he tried to remember what had brought him to this point.

  When he looked in his past, he saw heartbreak and fear, anger and hurt, betrayal and pain. But all of those things had been there for as long as he could remember. None of them had ever caused him to want to kill.

  He hadn’t known bloodlust until he’d known pleasure unimaginable. And he hadn’t known such pleasure until he’d met her.

  She had walked into his life three months ago, and told him that there was hope for something more. And when he looked at her, he couldn’t help believing her, because he couldn’t see anything beyond her smoky eyes, seductive curves, and creamy skin.

  He was captivated by her husky voice, echoing through his mind in the quiet of his dreams. It was a voice that seduced him with half-truths and beguiling flattery.

  She told him that his crime-riddled past didn’t matter, that the only thing that counted was his future. She told him that his black skin reminded her of sunsets on the African savannah. She told him that his mind was keen, that he would someday lead men to greatness.

  She told him everything that he had always longed to hear. And then she used the very things that had always made him feel inferior, and she turned them to rage.

  It was like she knew everything about him. From his tortured childhood, spent moving from one house to another, to his adult dreams of becoming something more than what anyone had expected him to be.

  She was the only person who’d ever truly understood him. Based solely upon that, he would have done anything she asked. But when she wrapped herself around him and showed him how love should be made, slowly and deliberately, with each touch serving a purpose, each movement taking him higher, each kiss stoking the flame, he was enslaved.

  That’s why he didn’t question it when she told him what she wanted him to do. If it meant that they would be together, he was willing to do anything.

  Sitting there on the stifling second floor of the storefront church, with police milling about below, seeking to arrest him for a murder that would surely bring the death penalty, he didn’t ask himself if he had done too much. He asked himself if he had done enough.

  Extracting his cell phone from his pocket, he tried calling her once more. The line rang busy.

  He put the phone away and settled back to wait. Soon he would make his move. And then she would finally be his.

  Keisha stared at the bearded driver’s thick neck over the Buick’s backseat and refused to acknowledge Jamal’s frequent glances in her direction, lest her true feelings show in her eyes.

  She was determined to play the role he’d asked her to. But as she looked out the tinted window at the ramshackle houses and vast empty lots they were passing on the east side of Glenwood Avenue, she wondered how long it would be before Jamal played his.

  Her trust in him eroded with each passing moment. After all, Jamal had the gun and could very well use it against her if things went wrong. But it wasn’t the gun that kept her there, waiting for the game to play out. The thing that kept her there was her heart.

  The circumstances surrounding their love didn’t matter to her. What mattered was that she’d given her heart to him all those years ago. And now she was giving it to him again.

  Since seeing him at Strawbridge’s three weeks before, she’d spent a portion of each day trying to recapture the innocence of their secret summer, and a portion of each night attempting to rekindle their love.

  For the first few nights, she snuck out of the house and rode with him to Fairmount Park, to laugh and reminisce about the time they’d spent together, and to vow, in the quiet of her heart, not to lose him again.

  By the second week she was stealing moments during the day to talk to him on the cell phone he’d given her as a gift. And when they weren’t together, she spent her time anticipating the moments when they would be.

  Through it all, she ignored the telltale signs of his profession. She saw the fancy car and the seemingly endless amount of time he had to spend with her. She saw the wad of cash that bulged from his pocket, and the jewelry that dangled from his neck.

  In truth, she’d known from the time they’d reunited that he was a drug dealer. And though she pretended not to notice or to care, there was something about it that excited her. It pulled at her, even now, as she watched the back of the driver’s head and tried not to think of what could happen if things went wrong.

  Jamal turned and glanced at her yet again, and wondered what was going through her mind. His thoughts were of her kiss. He could still feel it lingering on his lips and causing warm blood to run to his loins.

  He looked away from her, knowing he couldn’t allow himself even one moment of fantasy. He had to be patient, as did Keisha.

  If he made his move before the hour was up, his father would know that something had gone wrong. And he couldn’t chance that.

  He knew that she was growing impatient. But he hoped that she could hold on for a few minutes more. A second later, when Keisha broke the silence, it was apparent that she couldn’t.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” she said, hoping Jamal would take the cue and do something.

  The driver looked at her in the rearview mirror. Then he cut his eyes toward Jamal.

  “Shut up,” Jamal said coldly. “It ain’t time for you to go to bathroom yet.”

  “I have to go now,” she said with an attitude.

  He looked at her as the driver turned right on Allegheny Avenue and drove them into the heart of North Philadelphia’s Badlands.

  “You can’t always have what you want,” he snapped.

  And with that he turned away from her, and waited for the hour to expire.

  6

  By nine o’clock, Lynch had five teams of detectives searching for Keisha Anderson. He didn’t plan to lose another girl the way he’d lost nine-year-old Kenya Brown. And he certainly didn’t plan to lose his leading suspect, Frank Nichols.

  Though his homicide detectives had failed to turn up anything in Nichols’s North Philadelphia houses and bars, they were determined not to give up. They would find Nichols with
in the hour, or they would convince one of his many associates to give him up.

  What they didn’t realize was that Nichols wasn’t running. He’d spent the night at his girlfriend’s three-story townhouse in an affluent Center City neighborhood called Rittenhouse Square. And just as he always did when he was there, he cut off contact with the outside world.

  He’d driven there himself, without any of his men, in a Volvo station wagon that blended in nicely in the neighborhood. And the only thing he brought with him was a cell phone, which he didn’t answer.

  He didn’t know that a protest at his bar had gone horribly wrong. And in truth, he didn’t care.

  Frank Nichols was in the place he’d wanted to be since his girlfriend had taken him to her home for the first time, over a year before. He’d seen what he wanted then. And nothing was going to prevent him from having it.

  As the morning sun crept through the slightly open blinds in the master bedroom, casting strips of yellow light across his back, Frank Nichols was on his knees, oblivious to everything but the soft, yielding flesh stretched out before him.

  He bent to kiss buttery legs, parting his lips until his tongue was against one and then the other. And as he moved his mouth to the place where her thighs met and felt her lips quivering against his, he thrust out his tongue to taste her, and she gasped.

  He reached up to caress her and heard a rumbling deep inside her throat as her nipples grew hard beneath his touch.

  He rose up and traced a moist path to her navel, and then to her neck, and finally to her lips. He kissed her, and she greedily sucked her essence from his tongue.

  He pulled away to look into her eyes, and he saw what he already knew he would. Everything that she’d been holding onto, waiting to give to someone special, was there for him. All he had to do was take it.

  She wrapped her arms and legs around him and pulled him down until he stiffened against her softness. Moaning in spite of himself, he reached around to her ample bottom and held it in his hands as he began to thrust, softly at first, and then more forcefully, taking the virginity she so willingly gave.