Hold Me in Contempt

by Wendy Williams

  “King!”

  I set my hands on either side of his neck to pull him up, but then he moved and snapped up.

  “Shit!” he said. There was blood on his shirt.

  “What happened?” I reached toward him. “You shot him, Paul! You shot him!” I was checking for a hole in King’s shirt, but there was none.

  And then I realized Paul hadn’t said anything—nothing.

  “I’m fine,” King said, dropping the gun to the floor.

  I looked down at Paul. He was squirming, shaking, looking down at blood springing from a hole in his shirt like oil from the earth.

  “Paul!”

  I pushed King off him.

  “Paul! Look at me! Look at me! Paul!” I screamed. “Don’t leave me! Please! Stay with me! Paul!”

  Chapter 14

  I’d been sitting in a chair at Mount Sinai afraid to speak. Move. Do anything. Two detectives I’d known for years were seated across from me with their eyes wide open, inspecting my every muscle movement, awaiting information. I knew not to call or text anyone. Everything I did from the moment I dialed 911 from my apartment could become evidence later on.

  I’d already told them everything I could about what happened—​how the district attorney came to lie dying on my kitchen floor. The tale went the way Paul had said—he’d shown up at my apartment to check on me after what happened at work, the suspect in a case we’d recently opened showed up at my place with a gun, the suspect shot the DA, I called the police. When they asked for the suspect’s name, I replied with what I knew they’d find out anyway: Rig McDonnell.

  I’d told that story six times in the six hours it took for Paul to come out of surgery alive. So many times it started to sound like the truth. But, of course, that wasn’t how it happened. And, of course, what I’d told them about how King had gotten to my apartment and how he’d left wasn’t true either.

  I’d said that maybe Rig followed Paul there to retaliate. I’d never seen him before in my life. He pulled the gun. He shot Paul. He ran away. I’d told the false version of events without ever looking to the right, repeating details with not one word out of place.

  The detectives seemed to feel sorry for me. There was so much blood on my shirt and hands. Blood everywhere. They vowed to catch the perpetrator. To exact revenge against the person who’d tried to kill my boss, my mentor. Placing his hand on my shoulder for comfort, one detective reminded me, “You know we don’t tolerate this against our own. We’ll find him. We’ll make sure he pays.” He nodded and I knew what that meant. I tried to appear excited or encouraged, but inside I was wondering how far away King had gotten.

  Before I called for help, I forced him to leave and take the gun. I made him promise to stay away from me. To go as far away as he could for as long as he could. Once it was discovered whose blood was on my hands, everybody would be looking for King. Elliot would shut down the city. There would be a manhunt. If they caught him, King would be lucky to make it to the precinct alive. I told him he’d be no good to me dead, and if he left, at least there was a chance we’d see each other again. He asked me to run with him, but I couldn’t. Paul would die for sure if I left him alone on that floor. I couldn’t live with that. King grabbed the gun and kissed me. He said he’d send for me once he was someplace safe.

  The detectives offered to take me home when doctors came out of the emergency room at 2 a.m. to say Paul would live. But I decided to wait. I didn’t know what was waiting for me outside the hospital. Reporters had already started showing up. They’d gotten tips about Paul but probably didn’t know I was involved. My walking outside to their cameras and flashing lights would just give them a face to follow, an idea to carry back to their sources, who’d work faster than the detectives. In minutes they’d know enough about King and me to raise the detectives’ suspicion, and then there’d be no way out for me. I needed time to think before I made a move. I also wanted to know what Paul was going to say happened at my place. If I needed to run. If I had more time.

  When they wheeled him out of surgery and into his room, the nurse told me I couldn’t come in because I wasn’t immediate family. I’d have to wait until he woke up. She said she’d called Paul’s emergency contact, but the woman hung up after saying to call her back if he died.

  Sitting across from the two detectives, I noticed a woman I thought I recognized walk into the waiting room. She looked Puerto Rican or Dominican, had huge breasts and a tiny waist. I couldn’t remember her name or where I’d seen her. I’d been up for more than twenty-four hours at that point, though, and my eyes were puffy and swollen, so I wasn’t sure if I was dreaming or just confused. As she walked toward us, I rubbed my eyes and tried to get a better look without staring.

  Once she’d passed and I saw the detectives unashamedly staring at her ass in her blue jeans, I convinced myself I didn’t know her and was just delirious. But then she turned and glanced at me, and it came to me instantly: Iesha, the bartender from Damaged Goods.

  She caught my eyes and looked toward the bathroom where she was headed, signaling for me to follow.

  I waited a second for them to resume their conversation about Strickland and Frantz being found dead.

  “Strickland was an asshole though. Wouldn’t be surprised if he was working with the dealer. Not one bit,” one said.

  “Really?” the other one asked.

  “Yup. Straight up trash.”

  “You think both of them were working both sides?” the other one asked.

  “I said I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  I picked up my purse and started getting up.

  “Where are you going?” one of the detectives asked eagerly.

  “Little girls’ room.” I pointed to the bathroom. “I’ll be right back.”

  Iesha was standing at the sink, looking at herself in the mirror, when I walked into the bathroom.

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  “Shhhh!” Iesha covered her lips with her index finger and walked toward me. She hugged me tightly and slipped something into my back pocket as she whispered in my ear, “He’s safe. Flush it. Okay?” She looked into my eyes and waited for me to agree with a nod. She hugged me again and kissed my check. “Tell him I said good-bye,” she said in a low voice. “And thanks for everything—make sure you tell him that.” She let me go and walked out of the bathroom.

  I went into one of the stalls and pulled out what she’d placed in my pocket. It was a little note folded in half. I opened it and found four lines written in blue ink:

  BABOO IS AROUND THE CORNER. HE’LL DRIVE YOU TO TETERBORO.

  LEAVE YOUR PHONE, YOUR POCKETBOOK, EVERYTHING.

  TELL NO ONE WHERE YOU’RE GOING.

  YOUR NEW NAME IS QUEEN DONNELLY.

  When I walked out of that bathroom at Mount Sinai, I didn’t know what I was going to do. What was important. What was right. Even what I wanted anymore. I only knew that I was tired. That I needed somewhere to lay my head and close my eyes and rest. To really rest without interruption. When I saw the detectives sitting across from my empty seat in the waiting area, they almost looked like the rest I needed. I could walk up to them, tell them everything, and hold my wrists out for them to arrest me. To take me away to a cell and close the door behind me. Then I wouldn’t have to think about another thing. That would be it. I could lie down and close my eyes and know nothing would ever change again. This was the kind of thinking that led rapists, murderers, thieves, and molesters to confession. If they told the whole truth and faced the consequences, they wouldn’t have to lie anymore. Lying was what kept them up at night, trying to hold it all together, cover their footsteps, stay one step ahead. It all became too draining and paralyzing after a while.

  I didn’t realize it, but my feet were taking me right to the detectives as my brain prepared my confession.

  They looked at me and stood anxiously.

  “I need to say,” I started just as I was about three feet from them, but the nurse who’d been in an
d out of Paul’s room all night came between us and cut me off.

  “Kimberly Kind?” she said. “You’re Kimberly, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s awake. He’s asking for you.” She grabbed my hands and pulled me into Paul’s room. “He’s still a little groggy from the surgery,” she said, ushering me toward the bed where Paul was lying beneath baby-blue sheets and blankets. “But he’s okay to talk for a little while. Just try not to get him too excited. You know?”

  “Sure,” I said. I looked at the tubes from all of the monitors stuck into Paul’s arms. When he was in surgery I’d heard two nurses talking about where the bullet had entered his chest just inches left of his heart. It hadn’t exited, and removing it could paralyze him.

  “I’ll leave you two alone,” the nurse said as I sat at Paul’s bedside. I felt tears coming to my eyes. “Just give me a shout if you need anything.”

  When she was gone, I placed my hand on top of Paul’s hand on the blue sheet. Only a few months ago we’d been lovers sneaking around Manhattan in the middle of the night. But just hours ago he’d threatened to kill someone in my apartment. How had all of this happened?

  “You’re here,” he said, opening his eyes and smiling weakly at me. “I thought you would leave me.”

  “No. I wanted to make sure you were all right,” I said.

  “You’ve always been a bad liar. We both know why you’re here.”

  “Don’t make it sound like I would just leave you for dead.” I looked over my shoulder to make sure the detectives weren’t waiting in the doorway listening. “Paul, I looked up to you. Before all of this we were friends.”

  “Before all of this, we were in love,” he said.”No, we weren’t. I don’t know why you’ve made it up in your mind like that. We weren’t. We were a cliché—a bored boss and a heartbroken assistant. That’s all.”

  “You never would’ve said that before you met him.”

  “But I did. I told you so many times it was over. You never listened to me.”

  A tear escaped one of Paul’s eyes. “I can’t let you go.”

  “You have to.”

  “I won’t.” He looked at me hard. “I won’t.”

  “Even if you scream for the detectives right now and they arrest me, I still won’t be with you,” I said. “Nothing is going to change that.”

  “You love him?”

  “Yes. I do,” I admitted.

  “Over everything? Over your life? Everything you’ve built?” Paul looked like he was just coming to understand something.

  “I don’t think I had a choice.”

  Paul looked away from me dismissively. Coldly. As another tear slid from his eye, he said, “I’m turning you both in. When you walk out, I’m telling the detectives what happened.”

  “You going to tell them about Frantz and Strickland too? Or should I tell them that?” I asked.

  “You tell them whatever you want. Like you said, you don’t have a choice.”

  “Fine.” I started backing away from the bed. I could feel the detectives behind me. See Paul’s focus shift from me to them.

  “Kimberly, don’t leave me!” he shouted, sitting up. But he winced and fell back.

  The nurse rushed into the room, pushing past the detectives and me.

  “You lie back, Mr. Jackson. You’re in no condition to be sitting up and raising your voice at anyone. I heard you all the way up front.” She turned to me and the detectives as she rearranged Paul in the bed. “You’ll all need to leave the room,” she said. “I can’t have him upset. He’s still weak.”

  “But we’re waiting for his statement about what happened,” one of the detectives said.

  “It’ll have to wait until he gets a little more rest,” the nurse said, leaving Paul’s bedside and pushing us out of the room before closing the door in our faces.

  “Kim!” Paul called out. “Don’t leave!”

  “So what were you going to say to us?” one of the detectives asked me in the hallway.

  “Say?”

  “You were about to say something before you went into the room,” the other added.

  “You said you needed to say something.”

  “Oh. I was going to say that I was going home to get some rest. I’ll come back in the morning to answer any more of your questions. I just need some sleep. Been a long day.”

  “Do you need a ride home?” one of them asked. “We can escort you.”

  “No. You stay here with him,” I said, walking away from the waiting area.

  “Where are you rushing to,” one asked, and I almost stopped and fainted, thinking I was caught, “without your pocketbook?” He pointed to my purse waiting in the chair beside my empty seat.

  I smiled through my racked nerves and went to get the bag. “Thank you,” I said, picking it up. “I don’t where my brain is.”

  When I exited the hospital, it was a little after 3 a.m., so most of the reporters were gone or asleep in their vans double-parked in the street. I walked quickly with my head down and turned two corners, dropping my cell phone into a garbage can on the first corner and my purse into a garbage can on the second corner.

  Just before the third corner, I saw a shabby taxicab with a man in a turban sitting in the front seat.

  Chapter 15

  The fog was so thick when Baboo pulled into the drive in front of Teterboro, there was no way I could believe my flight, or anyone’s flight, would be leaving out of the small, private New Jersey airport that June morning. It was just five o’clock, but so hot and muggy outside, the tight air looked like white smoke or milk you could catch in a cup and drink.

  I rolled down the back window and reached outside to test the elements. To find a sign, an omen telling me what I should or shouldn’t do. I was seeking something to help me make a decision I’d thought I already made when I walked out of Mount Sinai and discarded my belongings into public trash receptacles. My hand in the fog, I reminded myself that it wasn’t too late to turn back. To turn myself in.

  I tried to hold the fog in my hand. To grasp it and remember the shadows of my life. I was Kimberly Kind. An attorney at law. That was all I was. All I’d achieved. I wanted more. So much more. And I wanted it with King. If I stayed, that would never happen. I realized that when I was talking to Paul in his hospital room. He was never going to give up.

  Baboo stopped in front of the terminal.

  I pulled my arm in and rolled up the window.

  Baboo turned around to me and smiled in his silent way that said so many things. He was wearing his white turban with gold piping around the edges.

  “You ready, miss?” he asked so simply.

  “I guess so.” I sniffled and blinked to hold back contemplative tears.

  He got out of the car and left his door open, so the dinging from the car alarm blared a warning signal.

  I looked out around the car and tried to see my old world through the fog. There was nothing.

  My door opened and Baboo was standing there with a slender white man in a black jacket, who was smiling at me.

  “Queen Donnelly?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Welcome to Teterboro Airport. I’m Pope. I’ll be escorting you to your jet,” he said.

  I got out holding an envelope Baboo had handed me when I’d gotten into the car in Manhattan. There was a passport inside. “Queen Donnelly” was beside the actual picture from one of my older driver’s licenses.

  “No bags, Ms. Donnelly?” Pope posed, looking into the car behind me.

  “No. Just me.”

  “Well, right this way then.” He smiled again and turned to lead me through the sliding glass door in front of the terminal.

  I started walking, but then I stopped. “Wait a second,” I said, turning back to Baboo and running toward him. I embraced him and tried to find in his hold everyone I couldn’t say good-bye to. “Thank you,” I said to him and all of them. “I’ll be back.”

  I let Baboo go and
walked into the airport, promising myself I wouldn’t look back again. I didn’t realize where I was going until Pope mentioned that I’d be flying on one of Meridian’s private jets to Belize. There was another family, the Quinns, who’d be flying with me. If I wasn’t okay with that, he could have Ladouceur enlist better accommodations.

  “That’s fine,” I said as we walked right through security and toward a small waiting area that was just steps away. Five chairs were organized before doors that led out to the tarmac where a G6 was being catered to by a crew armed with hoses and brushes.

  “Don’t worry about the fog. Meridian’s pilots are the best money can buy. Everything will be fine,” Pope said, looking at me. “Just relax. We do everything from here.”

  Once the Quinns, a fortyish couple with teen twins in matching Polo outfits, made it to the gate and we boarded the plane, it seemed like the fog dissipated into wind.

  I sat in a cushy single recliner toward the back of the plane. There were only three rows though. And one long leather couch the twins had already commandeered. I looked out the window. The sun had just made it over the horizon and burst through the clouds.

  I remembered the first flight I’d ever taken. My mother’s mother had died and we were taking her body back to Church, Florida, for burial. My parents could only really afford one ticket, but my mother insisted my father find some money so I could go with her. I was just six, but she said she wanted me to see where her people were from. I honestly don’t remember anything about the trip. Just the flight. It wasn’t a G6, but it was a big deal to be on that airplane. My mother let me sit next to the window. She held my hand and told me not to be afraid. To look right out at the sky and not blink. She said, “There’s only rumbling when you’re going through the clouds. After that, you’ll be the closest to God you can get without dying.”

  I looked out the circular window from my seat in the back of the G6. We weren’t above the clouds yet. The pilot was talking to us over the intercom, something about turbulence ahead and fine weather at our final destination.