“Anyway, I’m wondering if I might be able to talk to her supervisor, or someone who could tell me some of the places she liked to go, the people she hung around with, that sort of thing.”
“What’s your daughter’s name?”
“Keisha Anderson.”
“Oh, that’s your daughter. I’ve been seeing that on the news all morning. I’m sorry.”
“If you could just get me her supervisor,” John said impatiently. He was already growing tired of the sympathy.
“Of course,” the secretary said, getting on the intercom and calling for a manager.
It took a few minutes for the woman to come up on the elevator. But when she arrived, with her hair curled perfectly and her slim brown frame ensconced in a flowing summer print, it was clear that she was a woman of style. The type of woman that Keisha had always wanted to be.
“Mr. Anderson,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m Sheila Jackson. I work with your daughter in Women’s Wear.”
“My pleasure,” he said, taking her hand.
“Would you like to rest your bag?”
“No,” he said, a bit too quickly, and held the bag tightly to his side. “I really don’t plan to be here that long.”
“I see,” she said, looking at him strangely. “Well, I heard about what happened on the news, and I have to say, I’m a bit confused. I thought they knew who your daughter was with. So I’m wondering exactly how I can help you.”
“I just think there’s more to this than what the cops are saying,” he said. “I think there might even be more people involved.”
“Well, in any case, Keisha’s a lovely girl. Whatever I can do to help, I’d be happy to.”
“Actually, I was hoping you could answer a few questions for me.”
“Sure.”
“Do you know if Keisha had any friends who stopped by when she was at work? Male friends?”
“Not that I know of,” the manager said. “She generally stayed by herself. I mean, there were boys, and, frankly, men, who were interested in her. But Keisha never gave them the time of day.”
“Did she make a lot of phone calls or receive a lot of phone calls here at work?”
“No,” the manager said. “She was a little bit of a loner. She usually ate in the food court by herself. The only person I ever saw her have lunch with was your wife.”
“My wife?” John was surprised. He’d never heard his wife talk about meeting Keisha for lunch.
“Her name is Sarah, right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“I met her once,” the manager said. “She seemed very nice. Pretty, too. You’re a very lucky man.”
“Thank you,” he said, taking a business card from his back pocket. “If you remember anything else, can you give me a call?”
She looked at his card as he turned to walk away.
“Actually, Reverend, there was one other thing.”
“What’s that?” he said, stopping in his tracks.
“I always thought Keisha might make a great buyer. So I sent her down to our sister store, Lord & Taylor, to meet with our regional buyer for women’s wear—Nola Langston.”
The color drained from John Anderson’s face.
“Maybe Nola might remember something that could help you. Would you like her number?”
“No, thanks,” John said, walking out of the office. “I think I know how to reach her.”
Ishmael parked the Chrysler in the public parking garage on Tenth Street and walked half a block to a phone booth on Market. If things happened the way he wanted them to, he would walk back to the garage and drive away before anyone could catch him. But first he had to kill John Anderson.
He stood at the phone booth, holding the phone while pretending to make a call. He didn’t want to chance John spotting him the way he had a few minutes before. So he stood with his back to the mall entrance that John had used, waiting for the reverend to come out.
Reaching into his jacket, he wrapped his hand around the butt of his nine-millimeter and imagined how it would feel to pull the trigger. The thought of it made him anxious to do it. But he told himself that he would have to wait. Disposing of John Anderson on a Center City street, where Ishmael was most likely to be caught, would only defeat the purpose.
He couldn’t spend the rest of his life with his lover if he was jailed for murder. But he knew in the back of his mind, where secrets and rage dwelled together in an uneasy union, that his lover’s embrace would not be his only reward for killing the preacher.
Ishmael’s greater prize would be the look in John Anderson’s eyes when he told John what he knew. It was a look that he’d imagined for weeks. Ishmael would have the satisfaction of that look because he would deliver the killing blow while standing face to face with him.
With that thought fresh in his mind, Ishmael turned around and watched as John walked up the steps that led out of the Gallery Mall. When he saw that John was walking toward him, Ishmael hung up the phone and walked to the corner of Tenth Street.
He ducked inside a bank and stood at a counter by its large window, which overlooked Market Street. Picking up a pen, he pretended to fill out a deposit slip while waiting for John to pass by.
A few seconds later, John did. His gait was a step slower than it had been a few minutes before. His eyes were unfocused, as if he were walking in a dream. His face was ashen gray, and his mouth hung open in apparent shock.
Ishmael could have walked up from behind and put a bullet in his brain. John would have never known what hit him.
But this wasn’t the time or the place. So Ishmael waited a few more seconds before putting down the pen and walking out of the bank to follow John Anderson.
It wasn’t until he saw John walk to Thirteenth Street and into Lord & Taylor that he stopped. He knew that the pastor would have to come back to his car sooner or later. So he walked back to Ninth Street to prepare for the confrontation as his mind filled with thoughts of the woman who would give him his ultimate reward.
Kevin Lynch and Detective Hubert had spent the last half-hour going through the wealth of material they’d gotten from Nola and Frank upon their capture, and splitting the information into separate files.
Lynch believed that it was best to talk to Nola first. With all Frank Nichols had done to her, she should be more than willing to talk. And the more information she gave, the easier it would be to pursue a case against Nichols for the commissioner’s death.
Although Lynch was angry that he had missed Keisha and Jamal back at the projects, the evidence laid out before him was encouraging.
If Lynch’s hunch was right, Nola was the missing link in the Nichols organization. And if he was able to break her, finding Jamal and Keisha would be easy.
He grabbed the file, a plastic bag filled with Nola’s personal effects, and the briefcase filled with the money. Then he walked out of his office and down the hall to the interrogation room.
“How are you, Ms. Langston?” he asked as he walked inside.
Nola was sitting at the head of the table with a detective on either side of her.
“Annoyed,” she said, sounding like a petulant child.
“You guys can take a break,” Lynch said, dismissing the detectives as he sat down at the other end of the table.
As they walked out of the room, taking great pains to steal final glances at Nola, Lynch opened the file, taking his time so she could watch him remove all the personal papers and cards they’d taken from her purse. Next he removed her makeup and cell phone from the plastic bag.
Finally he put down the cash-filled briefcase, hoping that the sight of it would make her nervous. But as he looked across the table and saw the arrogant smirk that played on her lips, he could see that it did no such thing.
“Why’d you try to elude the detective I had trailing you this morning?” Lynch asked.
“I didn’t try to elude him. I did,” she said with a chuckle. “I don’t like people following me arou
nd.”
“Frank followed you,” Lynch retorted.
“And I got away from him, too.”
“Yeah, you did,” Lynch said while flipping through the file. “Was that before or after he screwed your daughter and tried to kill you?”
Nola stopped smiling, and Lynch knew he had her.
“Tell me something,” he said. “You and Frank Nichols, I assumed the two of you were just lovers, but you’re business partners, too?”
“You know what they say about assuming,” Nola said coolly.
Lynch smiled. “Alon Enterprises. That’s Nola spelled backward. Clever name. Was it your idea?”
“Actually, it was Frank’s. He thought it would be nice to name the business after me, since I was the one who came up with the concept.”
“And what concept was that, Ms. Langston?”
“I told him that he should open some coffee shops on a few college campuses. Maybe do some vending as well.”
“Did you tell him to filter the drug money through the business, too?”
Nola smiled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Okay,” Lynch said, sliding her withdrawal slip across the table. “Tell me how Alon Enterprises sells a million dollars’ worth of coffee to college kids in a year.”
Nola looked up at Lynch with a seductive grin. “It was really good coffee, Lieutenant. Some people have even called it addictive.”
“Cut the shit, Ms. Langston,” Lynch said impatiently. “I don’t have time for it. And frankly, neither do you. Your name is on a business that launders drug money under the direction of Frank Nichols, and you made an illegal transaction in an attempt to clean out the assets of that business.”
“I made an emotional decision that any woman might make if she found out her man was sleeping with her daughter,” Nola said with a knowing smile.
“An emotional decision to steal a million dollars in drug money?”
“I don’t know anything about drug money, Lieutenant. As far as I know, that money is all legitimate. I’m the second signer on the business account, I created the business, I grew the business, and given the fact that Frank is wanted in connection with the commissioner’s murder and tried to kill me this afternoon, I think a jury would agree that I had every right to try to protect my interests.”
“Frank didn’t seem to think so.”
“He’s a hothead,” she said, crossing her legs so her short linen dress rose up to the top of her thighs.
Lynch walked back around to his end of the table and picked up her cell phone from the pile of personal effects.
Nola’s self-assuredness seemed to waver as she watched him walk toward her with the phone in his hand.
“Cell phones are interesting little pieces of technology,” he said as he toyed with the buttons. “Yours, for instance, is billed to Jamal Nichols—Frank’s son, and his right-hand man in his drug business.”
“That doesn’t mean I know anything about any drugs,” Nola said.
“Maybe not. But it doesn’t mean you don’t, either.”
“Look, Frank gave me that as a business phone, and that’s what I use it for,” Nola said, her voice a little more jittery. “How am I supposed to know who the phone’s billed to?”
“I understand,” Lynch said. “I think cell phones are one of the best business tools you can have. You can make calls from virtually anywhere. You’re always accessible, and you always have the ability to get in touch with the people you need to.”
Lynch began to press her buttons—all of them.
“I keep my schedule on my cell phone,” he said with a grin. “I send e-mails with it, too. I even use the calculator and that little picture phone thing. But you know, sometimes it’s the simple things that make technology so great. Things like the phone book function.”
Nola looked up at Lynch, who was once again standing over her.
“It lets you put all your important numbers in one place,” he said as he scrolled through her list. “For example, you’ve got Frank Nichols, your daughter, Marquita, your job. You’ve even got Jamal Nichols here.”
He bent down in front of her and put the phone on the table so she could see what he was doing.
“And when you go back and scroll through the recent calls on your phone, you’ve got a call to Frank this morning, which explains one of the calls we saw on his phone from Jamal. But then there’s three others that are a little more difficult to explain. Calls to you from Jamal Nichols. One at seven-forty, another at seven-forty-one, and another at seven-forty-two.”
He stood up and looked down into Nola’s face. “That’s after he snatched Keisha Anderson. But, of course, you already know that, because you’re the one who told him what to do with her.”
“So what am I, a crime boss now?” Nola said with a nervous giggle. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?” Lynch said over his shoulder as he walked to the other end of the table and sat down. “Then what’s this?”
Lynch reached into the pile and extracted a small slip of paper. He unfolded it, slowly, and read the message that it contained.
“Keep the package for an hour. If you don’t hear anything, get rid of it.”
Lynch put the paper down and stared across the table at Nola. “You wanna tell me what that means?”
“Could be a note from work,” she said, looking away from him. “I don’t really remember, to be honest with you.”
Lynch stared at her for along moment. “Okay,” he said. “That’s fine. The notes and the calls could all be a coincidence.
“The business stuff, that’s a little different. Because frankly, Ms. Langston, a first-year accounting student could look at the books of Alon Enterprises and see that there’s drug money there.
“Now, maybe you can get away with it,” Lynch said as he began to gather her things. “Maybe you lick your lips just so, and bat those beautiful eyes, and a jury believes that a Wharton graduate like yourself was a partner in a business and knew nothing about its primary source of revenue.”
Lynch stood up.
“But why chance it? You’ve still got a lot of years ahead of you, Ms. Langston. Would you rather spend those years in prison for laundering drug money, or would you rather just tell us what we need to know about Frank and Jamal’s involvement in the commissioner’s murder, and come out with a slap on the wrist?”
Nola wanted to respond, but she couldn’t speak. She was too afraid.
Lynch knew that, so he walked toward the door to give her fear a chance to set in.
“Whatever you decide,” he said as he reached for the doorknob, “you need to make it quick, because Jamal Nichols is still on the loose with Keisha Anderson. And you don’t want him to do anything else that might be traced back to you.”
Lynch was about to leave the room when Nola finally relented.
“Lieutenant?”
“Yes, Ms. Langston?”
“I’m ready to call my attorney.”
13
“Gimme the gun,” Jamal whispered to Keisha.
They were sitting between seats that obscured their hands from the view of the other passengers on the nearly empty elevated train.
Just one day before, Keisha would’ve been afraid to remove the gun from her purse, regardless of the fact that no one could see her. But now she didn’t care.
She took the gun out of the purse and handed it to Jamal, knowing that it was better for him to have it, in case they needed to use it.
She wouldn’t have trusted him enough to hand over the weapon just a few hours before. But each of them had demonstrated what the other meant to them, not only through their words, but through their actions.
Her life was literally in his hands, she thought as she looked down into the streets below the fast-moving train. And his life was in her hands as well.
As the el train slowed down and pulled into the Allegheny Avenue station, Keisha thought of the struggle in the car, and the look she’d glimps
ed in the woman’s eyes as she’d choked her. Keisha imagined that it was a look much like the one she had worn the night before, when the men attacked her in the playground.
It was odd, she thought as she looked at Jamal, that loving him had made her stronger. Perhaps it was because she had something worth fighting for now. Or maybe it was because she had someone who was willing to fight for her.
Whatever it was—the energy of the streets, the struggle to survive, or the power of their love—it was enough to transform her from a victim to a conqueror, from a little girl to a woman. It was enough to make her into someone she had always wanted to be.
As the doors closed and the train pulled away from the station, she was concerned with only one thing—their next move.
“Where do you think we should go?” she asked, laying her head on Jamal’s shoulder.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But wherever it is, I want it to be away from all this.”
“Away from all what?” she said, looking up at him.
“My father, your father, the drugs, the guns, the lies, everything.”
He looked at her and imagined that she was still the little girl he’d met five years before.
“I want to go someplace where we can be those two little kids again. Where it don’t matter what family we from. I wanna go where we ain’t gotta be lookin’ over our shoulders to see who comin’ at us, tryin’ to take what’s ours.”
Keisha furled her brow. “We don’t have anything that anyone would want to take.”
“You wrong,” Jamal said. “We got what everybody else tryin’ to get. All them people chasin’ paper, chasin’ men, chasin’ women, chasin’ ghosts, they tryin’ to get what we got. They tryin’ to get somebody to care about them.”
Jamal shook his head and sat back in the seat. “You got people out here doin’ whatever—workin’ theyself to death, slingin’ dope, sellin’ ass, takin’ loot—doin’ whatever they gotta do just to get somebody to notice them. And you know what? None o’ that shit they doin’ don’t mean nothin’.”
Keisha looked out the window as the train passed by spray-painted names scrawled upon walls, and wondered if the people who’d written them were looking for someone to notice them.
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