Ride or Die

by Solomon Jones

  Every dream they’d had about each other, every thought they’d had about this moment, every forbidden pleasure they’d secretly entertained, was there, standing between them, daring them to take them for themselves.

  Jamal ran his hands through her hair and along her cheek, over her breasts, and down to her secret places. He took her in his arms and carried her to the bathroom. Then he placed her in the shower, turned on the water, and watched it cascade over her body’s every curve.

  Stepping over the rim of the tub, he stood behind her and took the soap between his fingers, and with his bare hands, he washed every inch of her body. He rinsed her with the water, and then he rinsed her with his mouth.

  Keisha felt his fingers everywhere, probing her, caressing her, loving her. She felt her body growing softer, more yielding, as he pressed himself against her. His lips were on her neck, and on her back, and down her spine, causing every part of her body to tingle at his touch.

  She reached back and pulled him closer, closed her eyes and lost herself in the rhythm of his movements, opened her mouth and allowed herself to give voice to what she felt.

  She placed her hands against the slick, tiled wall and pushed herself against him until her body pulled him in, and they were one.

  They moved to the beat of their hearts, slowly at first, and then faster, until they lost control. She squealed with delight at the sensation of his love, and his voice joined hers in a shouted harmony of passion.

  They clawed and gripped one another, holding on for dear life, until their love burst forth from their bodies in streams of ecstasy. They were both left breathless at the end, trembling as the water poured over them and hoping that their love would never end.

  15

  Lynch Sat at the far end of the table with the assistant DA on his right. Nola and her lawyer were at the other end. Both of them looked anxious. That was good, Lynch thought. It meant that Nola’s lawyer believed that it was best for her to cooperate.

  “This is Assistant District Attorney Robert Harris,” Lynch said by way of introduction. “Mr. Harris, this is Nola Langston and her attorney, Ryan Gold.”

  “Charmed,” Harris said, staring at Nola. “I’m sure.”

  He took out his copy of the plea agreement. “Mr. Gold,” Harris said, “the state is willing to abstain from filing any serious charges against your client—that is, felony charges—in exchange for full cooperation, with the stipulation that her testimony leads to a conviction in the murder of Commissioner Darrell Freeman. Of course, we have no say concerning any federal charges, but we’re willing to recommend leniency with respect to any federal charges that may be filed.”

  Gold looked at Nola. “I’m not sure we can take that agreement,” he said.

  “I’m offering your client the moon and stars,” Harris said, grinning seductively at Nola. “She can’t possibly want any more than that.”

  Gold looked at Nola, then back at the flirting assistant DA, and shook his head.

  “My client maintains that she doesn’t know anything about the circumstances of Commissioner Freeman’s murder, simply because she was not in Philadelphia at the time. What she can give in exchange for that agreement—the moon and stars, as you call it—is testimony about the events leading up to the shootings that have taken place over the past few days.”

  “Will it give us Nichols?” Lynch asked.

  “It’ll give you the truth,” Nola said, speaking up for the first time.

  Lynch looked at Nola and saw that the flirtatious grin was gone, and her legs were no longer crossed. Her flawless hair was beginning to contract in the humidity of the closed-in room, and she had a haggard look in her eyes. She was tired, from what Lynch could see. And she just wanted to get it over with.

  “Okay,” Lynch said. “Tell us the truth.”

  “In exchange for what?” her lawyer interjected.

  Harris leaned over and whispered something to Lynch.

  “We can give her the same deal if her testimony leads to a conviction in at least one of the three murders connected with this thing, and a racketeering conviction against Nichols,” Lynch said.

  Nola looked at her lawyer. He nodded.

  She leaned back in her chair and took a deep breath.

  “First of all, you’re on the wrong track,” she said. “If you think this thing is about Frank and Jamal Nichols, you’re wrong.”

  “Well, who is it about, then?” Lynch asked.

  “It’s about Reverend Anderson. It’s about money. And it’s about me.”

  Nola smiled at the assistant district attorney, who was once again enthralled with her, because he could see in her eyes that she was ruthless.

  “I used to date mobsters,” she said, returning the prosecutor’s hungry gaze. “Something about bad boys and their big guns has always turned me on.”

  She paused as the men in the room shifted uncomfortably in their seats, no doubt picturing the double entendre.

  “They can afford to feed my expensive tastes. But they always seem to die. A few years ago, I decided that if I kept dating those kinds of men, it was only a matter of time before I got caught in the crossfire. So I figured I needed a different type of man—a good man.

  “A friend suggested I try church, and told me about this growing congregation down in North Philly. So I decided to give it a whirl.

  “I got there and I was pleasantly surprised. There was a lot to choose from—businessmen and lawyers, even a doctor or two. But they all seemed to have these problems.”

  She sat back in her chair and crossed her legs again as she thought back on the power that her body had given her, even in the church.

  “After a few Sundays,” she said, fixing her eyes on each man at the table, “I decided that the only man I wanted there was the pastor. He seemed so big and strong standing up there in that pulpit.

  “So I went to him after the service one Sunday and asked if he could come and pray with me. I told him I needed a special kind of healing. Then I stuck my business card in his Bible, and right before my eyes, he went from man of God to just man. And that’s when I knew I had him.”

  “That’s all very interesting, Ms. Langston,” Lynch said impatiently. “But we need to know how all this plays into the commissioner’s murder. And if it doesn’t have anything to do with it, we need to know what does.”

  Nola smiled. “The commissioner was murdered because I slept with Reverend Anderson. I slept with him, and he did what men do because he was weak, just like every man I’ve ever known.”

  She spoke directly to Lynch, daring him to refute what she was saying.

  “You see, Lieutenant, men want what they want, and they do whatever they have to do to get it,” she said with a wicked grin. “But they never think of consequences, only pleasure. They think that just because a woman sleeps with them, she’s their friend. And so they talk. They tell us all of their problems—the things their wives don’t want to hear.

  “And then they expect us to spread our legs and solve each and every one of them.”

  She paused to revel in the shocked expressions on their faces.

  “Reverend Anderson was no different,” she continued. “He was a nice man, a spiritual man, but a man nonetheless. So after we’d been seeing each other for a while, sneaking away to places where his congregation and his wife couldn’t see, he started to open up to me.

  “He told me about this man, Frank Nichols, who’d killed his father and stolen everything he had. He told me how Nichols had become one of the biggest drug dealers in the city. He told me that he was going to bring Nichols down one day.

  “The good reverend also told me about his own past in the drug business,” Nola said, speaking with some degree of satisfaction, as if the pastor’s sins justified her own.

  “He talked about hurting people, even killing people, back in the sixties.”

  “People like who?” Harris interjected.

  “He didn’t say,” Nola answered. “He just said
that he’d made some mistakes as a young man, and that the only thing that could make him kill again was his daughter, Keisha. He said that if anyone ever laid a hand on her, he would kill them, just as sure as he was sitting there talking to me.”

  “So it seems you had your bad boy and your good boy, all rolled up into one,” Lynch said. “Why’d you leave him? Because he was married?”

  “Don’t be silly,” Nola said with a smile. “I really didn’t want to leave him, because sleeping with him was … spiritual. But he couldn’t support my lifestyle on what he made. I need money, Lieutenant. I can get sex from anybody.”

  “So you found Frank Nichols,” Lynch said matter-of-factly.

  “Yes, I did. And oh, what a find he was. See, there’s something about small-time gangsters like Frank. They’re always looking for a woman with class—someone to lend them social standing. So that was the first thing I offered.

  “I walked into his bar one day with a business proposition. I told him that I’d heard a lot about him, and that I wanted him to invest in a company I was starting. Of course, the only thing he could see was how I looked. So he flirted, and I let him. And for six months, I strung him along while I learned everything I could about his business.

  “By the time we finally laid down, I had my finger on the pulse of everything he was doing. The drugs, the prostitution, everything.

  “Soon after that, he started giving me little assignments, telling me to make phone calls and deliver messages.”

  “What kind of messages?” Lynch asked.

  Nola shrugged. “The same kind of message you saw. Words on a strip of paper that could have been about anything. He’d just leave them in my purse and tell me to make a phone call at a certain time, and that was it. I never knew what it was about. And to be honest with you, I didn’t care. The only thing I cared about was what was in it for me. I brought up my business proposition to him again, and he acted like he didn’t want to hear it. So I did what I had to do to make him listen. I played with his manhood.”

  Harris and Lynch exchanged glances as Nola’s lawyer turned his head, embarrassed and at the same time intrigued by her choice of words.

  “I bought him a tailor-made Armani tuxedo,” she said with a self-satisfied grin. “And I took him to see the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Kimmel Center. He’d never been there before, but I could tell, by the way he was sitting there, looking around at the people with real money—people with fortunes he could never dream of having—that he felt inferior, just like I wanted him to.

  “Then I took him home that night and made him feel like a man again. I told him he needed some legitimate money to fall back on. Something that could take him to the next level, and make him like the people we’d seen that night. I started Alon Enterprises for him, made myself the second signer on his account, and watched him filter the drug money through the business. Then something crazy happened.”

  “What do you mean?” Lynch asked.

  “Reverend Anderson got wind of my relationship with Frank, and he started calling me five times a day,” she said. “Sometimes he’d hang up. Sometimes he’d leave these long, pitiful messages, asking why I’d betrayed him with Frank. I never returned the calls, and eventually I changed my number. When he couldn’t take his anger out on me anymore, he did what any man would do. He turned his anger on Frank.

  “John was determined to get him for stealing me. That’s why he started trying to drive crack out of the neighborhood. It had nothing to do with healing people and saving lives, like he claimed it did. It had everything to do with hurting Frank Nichols.

  “Frank knew that, and it pissed him off. When I saw how it was affecting him, I saw it as an opportunity.”

  “What kind of opportunity?” Lynch asked.

  “It was a chance to take control of the situation,” she said. “I got in Frank’s ear, and told him that the only way to get back at John was through Keisha. I convinced him to get Jamal to follow her, and he did it. They started talking about kidnapping her and holding her for ransom, but I didn’t think they were really gonna do it, and I didn’t feel like sitting around waiting.

  “So I hired two guys to scare the girl last night,” she said. “I didn’t tell them to hit her, but I knew she would go back to her father and tell him what happened. I figured he would blame Frank.”

  “So what did you expect to happen?” Lynch said.

  “I expected that John would go after them, and Frank would do something stupid and get himself in trouble. I figured, no matter what, that I would end up with the money.”

  Lynch shot a troubled look in the prosecutor’s direction. Then both men looked at Nola’s lawyer. They were all thinking the same thing: Nola was diabolical, and dangerous. But she still needed to give them more, if she was going to walk for her part in it.

  Lynch stood up, reached back, and massaged his neck. It had been a long day.

  “Ms. Langston,” Lynch said with a frustrated sigh. “There’s really only one thing I need to know. Did Frank Nichols ever give the order for Jamal to kill John Anderson?”

  “Frank gave a few orders in the last few days,” Nola said, looking around the table and connecting with each face. “Orders he told me he was going to give, to put the whole feud with John to rest.”

  “Did you hear him give these orders?” Lynch asked.

  “No, but right before I left for New York, he told me that he was planning to have Jamal murder John Anderson.”

  “So Jamal takes a shot at John last night, misses, and hits the old woman on Diamond Street?” Lynch said.

  “That’s right,” Nola said. “But that wasn’t good enough. Frank wanted Jamal to finish the job. That’s why he had him take another shot this morning. Of course, we all know how that turned out.”

  “So where does the whole kidnapping thing come in?” Lynch asked, shooting a look in Robert Harris’s direction.

  “I’m really not sure,” Nola said. “I mean, I know that was something they’d discussed before, but like I told you, I never believed it would happen.”

  “So if you never believed it would happen, how’d you know what to tell Jamal when he called you this morning after he’d snatched the girl?” Lynch asked.

  “The same way I always knew,” Nola said, growing nervous. “Frank had given me a message to relay to him, and that’s what I did. I relayed the message.”

  “If you were in New York and he was with your daughter, when did he have a chance to tell you what to say?” Lynch asked.

  “He gave it to me before I left to go to New York,” Nola said. “He said, ‘If Jamal calls you, I want you to tell him this.’ Then he stuffed the paper into my bag, and I left.”

  Lynch sat back in his chair and looked at the assistant district attorney sitting next to him. Harris was no longer impressed with Nola’s looks. From the look on his face, Lynch could tell that he was more concerned with the gaping holes in her story.

  Nola’s lawyer watched the two of them and felt the need to interject, because he saw that things were going badly for his client.

  “She’s given you what you asked for,” Ryan Gold said, sitting up in his chair. “She’s willing to testify that Frank Nichols gave the order to kill John Anderson, and that Jamal Nichols attempted to carry it out, killing Commissioner Darrell Freeman and Emma Jean Johnson.”

  “That would be fine if your client’s testimony were true,” the prosecutor said, getting up from his seat. “But we all know there’s something missing here. It’s up to Ms. Langston to tell us what it is.”

  “I can’t give you what I don’t have, Mr. Harris,” Nola said anxiously. “All I can give you is what I know. The rest is up to you.”

  “No, the rest is up to you, Ms. Langston,” Lynch said, getting up from his seat. “If you want the deal, you have to give us something we can use.

  “And when you revise your story, I want you to consider this. Keisha Anderson isn’t with Jamal Nichols because she was forced to be. She’s
with him because she wants to be.”

  The young lovers had spent the last hour devouring one another with their hands and with their mouths. Now, as they sat in the quiet of the simple room, listening to the echoes of the voices emanating from the bar downstairs, they were feeding their hungry eyes with the only sight they wanted to see—each other.

  They lay on the small bed together, Keisha feeling the whisper of Jamal’s breath against her neck. She tried to think only of the moment, only of their love, only of herself. But she couldn’t, because something inside her kept bringing her back to the tragedy that had created this perfect moment.

  It was difficult for her to reconcile her own pleasure with the death and destruction that had taken place all around them. She knew that she should be mourning with those who mourned, and praying for the families of those who’d lost people whom they loved as much as she loved Jamal.

  But Keisha swept those thoughts aside, and instead immersed herself in thoughts of Jamal. She wanted to know who he was. She wanted to know who he wanted to be. But more than anything, she wanted to know what had brought him to her.

  “Where’d you come from?” she whispered.

  “From the playground,” he said with a playful smile. “Remember?”

  She tapped his arm. “Stop playing, Jamal. I really want to know. I mean, Frank Nichols is your father, and I’ve always seen him. But I only saw you that one summer, and this past month. How come?”

  Jamal’s smile faded as he considered a question that he’d never posed to himself. Where did he come from? In many ways, he didn’t know. But what he did know, he was willing to share with Keisha, just as he was willing to share everything else.

  “My mom and pop met in the early ‘eighties, somewhere between heroin and crack. That’s how my pop tells time. Whatever his hustle was, that’s what time it was. The ’seventies was heroin. The ‘eighties was cocaine. Then, around ’eighty-five or so, it was crack.