Deceit and Devotion

by RM Johnson

  “Caleb,” Lewis said, “there is no one you can trust more.”

  38

  Daphanie spent the day with little Nathaniel. She had taken him with the intention of causing Nate pain, of making him realize what a hell it was to no longer have his child. But she realized she was causing herself a fair amount of pain, as well. Until now, she had not realized how much she missed his son, and how much she still loved him.

  Earlier, when Tricia had brought Nathaniel out to Daphanie, his face had brightened at the sight of her. With open arms he ran to her. She scooped him up, hugged him tight, and thanked Tricia before the boy unknowingly said something that would get Daphanie in trouble.

  “I missed you, Daphanie,” Nathaniel said slowly, once in the car. He always had trouble pronouncing her name.

  Daphanie blinked back a tear as she buckled the boy in the passenger seat. “I missed you too. So much,” she said, kissing Nathaniel on the cheek.

  She took him to the park, out for lunch, to a movie, for ice cream, and back to the park because Nathaniel asked and Daphanie couldn’t deny him. He had her wrapped around his little finger, as he always had when Daphanie and Nate dated.

  But it was evening now, and she figured Nate had learned his lesson. She still had little Nathaniel downtown. She wasn’t foolish enough to go home. There were probably rescue copters hovering above her condo, SWAT teams scaling the sides of her building, because that was the kind of power and influence Nate had.

  She was sure he had already been informed it was Daphanie that had picked up Nathaniel from day care. She was sure he had already called her place a thousand times and probably rung her cell phone even more. She had turned it off for that very reason.

  But it was almost eight o’clock, and the boy had already started asking for his father, so Daphanie figured it was time to give him back.

  “You ready to go back to Daddy?”

  “Yay!” Nathaniel said, raising his chocolate-covered fists. He had been working on a chocolate bar Daphanie had bought him.

  “Okay,” Daphanie said. She felt sad as she powered on her phone. The twelve missed calls from Nate appeared. She highlighted his number, punched the Dial button, and said, “Yeah,” when Nate picked up the phone.

  “Is my son okay?” Nate asked. Daphanie was surprised at how calm he sounded.

  “Of course. You know I wouldn’t hurt him. We had—”

  “Hi, Daddy!” Nathaniel yelled.

  “We had a good day,” Daphanie continued, wiping the boy’s hand with a moist towelette she had pulled from her purse. “We went to—”

  “I don’t care what the hell you did. I just want my son back. You do recognize you made the worst mistake of your life? Where are you? I’m coming to get him.”

  “No. I’ll bring him to you. As long as there are no police waiting for me.”

  “Fine. There won’t be.”

  “Do you promise?”

  “Yes,” Nate said.

  Twenty minutes later, Daphanie stood at the door of Nate’s million-dollar mansion, holding Nathaniel by the hand.

  The door opened. Nate stood behind it.

  “Daddy!” Nathaniel yelled. He shook Daphanie’s hand loose and grabbed his father’s leg. Nate lowered his hand to the top of the boy’s head. From behind him, an older woman wearing an apron appeared. Daphanie figured she was the new nanny.

  “Mrs. Langford, take Nathaniel, bathe him, and prepare him for bed, please. I’ll be up to tuck him in shortly.”

  “Yes, Mr. Kenny,” Mrs. Langford said, taking Nathaniel by the hand and leading him into the house.

  Nate stepped out onto the porch and closed the door. “He had been kidnapped by that psychopath Freddy Ford. I just got him back. Why would you do this?” Nate said, finally exhibiting the slightest bit of emotion.

  “Imagine if you were never getting him back.”

  Nate stared past Daphanie, as if entertaining the thought. He frowned. “I can’t imagine that. I think I would die.”

  A tear rolled down Daphanie’s face. She quickly brushed it away. “That’s how I feel. I know I was wrong, Nate. I should’ve never lied to you. But I loved you once, and I know you loved me too. Do I deserve to lose my child for one lie? You have to help me. Please,” Daphanie said, grabbing his arm. “Please.”

  Nate took a moment. Daphanie believed she saw something resembling sympathy on Nate’s face, before he said, “You did a horrible thing, and you’re paying for it. I’m sorry,” he said, pulling away from Daphanie’s grasp. “What you just did, you’re going to have to pay for that too.”

  Daphanie shook her head. “Do what you will, Nate. You’ve already done the worst to me. I’m not afraid of you anymore.”

  39

  Nine p.m. and the house was quiet. Austin sat at the dining room table, in the dark, his hands folded on the table’s surface, his eyes closed. He listened and heard nothing. Not the sound of his son and daughter playing, not the sound of his wife cooking in the kitchen, calling out to tell him to cut the potatoes.

  A small smile spread across Austin’s lips as he thought about those memories from so long ago.

  “Hey,” Marcus said, flipping on the overhead lamp.

  Austin opened his eyes, squinting against the light.

  “What are you doing here in the dark?”

  “Just taking a little time out is all,” Austin said. “Where have you been? Kinda late for you to just be getting home.”

  Marcus pulled a chair out across from Austin and sat down. “Been filling out applications. Went to the coffee shop and was online for a few hours looking, then went to the bookstore and read up on some career books. You know, best interviewing techniques, stuff like that.”

  “Wow, you’re not playing.”

  “Nope,” Marcus said.

  “You know if there was anything at all at the firm, I would give it to you,” Austin said.

  “I know, but I’m not expecting that. And I don’t want you to feel obligated,” Marcus said. “The crazy thing is, I think it might have taken Reecie putting me out to realize I have to do everything I must to be the man I need to be. I’m actually excited about starting back to work, wherever it is.”

  “Well, that’s what I like to hear. I’m glad for you.”

  “And how are you? Seem kinda depressed, a little.”

  “What, a man can’t sit alone in his dining room with his eyes closed, the lights off, without being considered depressed?” Austin joked. “Truth is, the more I think about it, the more I want another good relationship. I want to make a woman really happy, be the man she can trust. I want that again.”

  “So,” Marcus said, “are you just telling me that and hoping the information will find its way to some beautiful woman, or are you getting out there and trying to make it happen?”

  Austin smiled, thinking about the possibility of him and Monica. “I’m out there trying to make it happen.”

  40

  Monica lay asleep in her bed, tossing in her sheets.

  She was back in the courtroom where her shooter, Freddy Ford, was sentenced. Officers stood the thin, muscular man up and walked him out. He would not look up.

  Monica needed him to see her. She needed to look in his eyes and see what he was thinking, what he was feeling.

  She stood up from her chair, hoping he would lift his face. She wanted to see pain, guilt, remorse—something. She needed that look to replace the one that had been burned in her brain—the expression that was in his eyes when he turned his gun on her.

  It was all Nate’s fault, she thought.

  Nate had blackmailed Freddy.

  He had told Freddy if he didn’t help Nate in the scheme to get Monica to leave Lewis and come back to him, he would have Freddy’s mother thrown out of her house and have the home demolished.

  Freddy had helped initially, but toward the end, he had felt guilty and told Lewis everything. It was too late. The plan had worked. Monica went back to Nate. Freddy’s mother was
tossed out on the street, and the house was demolished, as Nate had said it would be. But that wasn’t all. When Freddy’s pregnant girlfriend, Kia, found out about all that Freddy had done, she had their child aborted and left him.

  Monica knew that was what had brought Freddy to find Nate. But had he been there for her too?

  Monica was never able to ask him that, and she worried that one day he might come back and finish the job.

  It was the reason why every night before going to bed, she locked her bedroom door. It was the reason why every night she had the same dream of Freddy Ford standing inside her room, his gun pointed at her head.

  Tonight, just like all those other nights, at seeing herself killed in her mind, she shot up in bed, sweating, screaming, her eyes wide, her heart racing. She whipped her head about, her eyes landing on the locked bedroom door.

  The doorbell rang.

  Startled, Monica didn’t move, hoping that whoever was ringing would go away.

  The bell sounded again. Monica looked at her alarm clock: 10:49 p.m.

  She pulled herself out of bed and took her gun from the top shelf of her closet. She walked slowly through the darkened house, the gun held out in front of her.

  “Who is it?” Monica said.

  “Girl, it’s me,” Tabatha’s muffled voice came through the door. “What are you doing in there? Open up.”

  Not until Monica opened the door and saw the reaction on Tabatha’s face did she realize how she must’ve looked: her gown soaked through with sweat, sticking to her body. She was still trembling, her eyes wide, the huge gun in her hand.

  “What the hell is going on?” Tabatha said.

  Half an hour later, Monica was in a robe on her living room sofa, Tabatha beside her.

  Tabatha had stopped by to tell Monica about the blind date she had just been on. It had been a disaster, and she thought Monica needed a laugh. She didn’t know how right she was.

  Monica explained to Tabatha why she had gotten the gun, how she was terrified many nights of being alone in her own home.

  “Maybe you ought to see a psychiatrist,” Tabatha suggested.

  “No.” Monica shook her head. “Hell no.”

  “Something has to be done.”

  “I don’t know why he shot me. I need to know that he still doesn’t want to kill me.”

  “Girl, don’t be crazy. He’s locked up. Even if—”

  “I need to know,” Monica said.

  “And just how you proposing to find that out?”

  “I’m going to go there and talk to him.”

  41

  At almost midnight, Jahlil stood in the shadows around the corner from an ATM. The machine was attached to a Jewel food store, in a shopping plaza off Ninety-Fifth and Stony Island Avenue. The grocery store had closed a couple of hours ago, but there was a gas station nearby, leaving just enough traffic to have an occasional person coming by wanting cash, but not so many that Jahlil and his small crew couldn’t quickly rob someone without being noticed by onlookers.

  Jahlil had been standing in that dark corner for almost half an hour. He wore a black hooded zip-up and a black ski mask pulled over his face. The bruises and swelling had healed some, but they still hurt. He kept a bottle of aspirin in his pocket to stave off the ever-threatening headache.

  His 9mm rested in the small of his back, under his shirt. He punched the tiny keys on his phone, sending a text to Bug.

  Bug sat behind the wheel of his car, a silver revolver in his lap. He and Toomey were parked thirty feet away, off to the side of the ATM, out of sight of the camera that recorded the area just in front of the machine.

  “What did he say?” Toomey asked, sitting in the passenger seat of Bug’s 1986 Chevy Impala. The license plates had been pulled off and stuck in the trunk just after they had parked.

  “It says, Ya’ll better not go to sleep.” Bug laughed, and spoke aloud what he texted back to Jahlil. “Sorry … we … ain’t … get … this … text … cause … we … already … sleep.” Bug giggled and pressed Send.

  Toomey was stone-faced.

  “What?” Bug asked.

  “He damn near got killed yesterday. He’s fresh out the hospital and already got us back out here robbing. Why does he need money that bad?”

  “You know he got a kid on the way. You act like we ain’t getting money. Like we don’t need it too. You need it too, right?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “And my mother so broke, if I wasn’t making this money, I probably wouldn’t eat, I wouldn’t have no clothes, no shoes—nothing. So why you trippin’?”

  Toomey slumped in his seat, watching a car roll past the ATM. “What if that was you who got beat up, or me? And what if instead of just getting beat up, one of us died out there. We didn’t even make all of our money back that day. You trying to tell me that’s worth our lives? Yeah, I kinda need the money now, but I’m going to college. I got a future to think about, so—”

  Bug spun in his seat. “You smart, and we all know it. We glad you going to college, but right now, you need to decide what you gonna do here. We about to stick a gun in some fool’s face. Anything can jump off, so we need your head here, not wondering why we doing this in the first place. You know what I’m sayin’?”

  It took a minute for Toomey to answer. “Yeah,” he finally said. “I don’t like it, but I know what you saying.”

  “Good,” Bug said. He looked down at the glowing screen on his phone. We got us one. Ready? it read. Bug looked over his shoulder to see a big man step out of his car and walk up to the ATM. Bug texted Jahlil back. Let’s do it!

  Around the corner of the building, Jahlil slipped the phone in his pocket and grabbed his gun. He carefully peered out from behind the wall and saw the man punching numbers into the machine’s keypad. Over in the parking lot, he saw Bug jumping out of his car. Toomey slid over to the driver’s seat to act as a lookout and getaway driver.

  Bug walked alongside the wall of the building, his gun tucked under his sweatshirt in the front of his pants. He wore dark sunglasses but no hood or mask. If he had, he would’ve probably triggered the suspicions of the man they were about to rob. At ten feet away, the big man had already stopped punching the keys and was watching Bug as though he knew he was up to no good.

  Bug stopped three feet short. “You got the time?”

  “Get the fuck away from me,” the man said, stomping a foot at Bug like he was shooing a dog away.

  Bug giggled.

  The man heard a click and spun to his right to see the masked Jahlil, pointing a gun at him. When the big man turned back to face Bug, Bug’s gun was drawn too.

  Jahlil stood still, not wanting to be picked up by the camera.

  “We do this right and fast, and you won’t end up dead. You hear me?”

  “Yeah,” the man said, starting to turn toward Jahlil.

  “Don’t look at me! Your business is on that machine. Withdraw the max, five hundred dollars. Walk over and hand it to my boy on your left.”

  “What if I don’t have five hundred?”

  “You better have five hundred, broke-ass motherfucka,” Bug said.

  The man went about withdrawing the money. He walked the few steps, out of camera shot, over to Bug.

  “Easy,” Jahlil warned him from behind his mask.

  With one hand holding the gun, Bug took the bills with the other.

  The Impala pulled up to the curb.

  “Go,” Jahlil said, prompting Bug to run around the car and jump in the passenger seat. Next, Jahlil demanded the man’s car keys.

  “What?” The man said, his eyes wide.

  “I ain’t jackin’ you, man. Just give me the keys, so you don’t try following us. I’m gonna drop them out the window on the corner of Ninetieth and Stony. Now give ’em up.”

  The man fished the ring of keys from his pocket and tossed them to Jahlil. Jahlil walked backward, keeping the gun on the man till he lowered himself into the Impala.

  Toome
y sped off.

  Inside the car, Bug howled with excitement. “Clockwork, baby! Just like the pros do it. Five hundred smackeroos!”

  “Yes, sir!” Jahlil said, peeling the mask from over his head. “We ain’t no joke. We want money—get money. Five hundred, three ways. How much that come to, Toomey?”

  “One hundred and sixty-six dollars and sixty-six cents,” Toomey said, driving but not sharing in the celebration.

  42

  So this was the other man keeping Daphanie from seeing her child, Austin thought, first thing in the morning, as he sat in Trevor Morgan’s office.

  Austin was there to reason with this man, ask him to search his conscience, maybe find it in his heart to allow Daphanie to share the responsibilities of raising their child.

  “Please have a seat,” Trevor said, only briefly looking up from his paperwork. “I’ll be with you in just a moment.”

  Austin looked around the large office and at the clean-shaven, neatly dressed man. Austin could see how Daphanie could get away with telling Mr. Kenny the child was his, for he and Mr. Morgan bore an uncanny resemblance to each other.

  Trevor slid the paperwork into a drawer and gave his attention to Austin. “I received your message. I was going to have my secretary call you back and find a good time for us to meet.”

  “I’m sorry about coming here unannounced,” Austin said, not sorry at all. He believed the man had no intention of calling him back, which is why this morning he told himself he would go to the bank where Trevor worked and not leave until he had spoken to the man.

  “It’s okay,” Trevor said. “This is important, right?”

  “Yes, very important. As I’m sure your secretary told you, my name is Austin Harris. I’m representing Daphanie Coleman in regard to regaining custody of her child.”

  Trevor sighed heavily. “You know the story then.”

  “Yes.”

  “I really wish things hadn’t happened this way,” Trevor said, sounding sincere. “But when she found out she was pregnant, she told me it was mine. Then she changed her story. I knew she was lying. I could feel it in my soul, that baby was mine. I loved that child from the moment she told me she had conceived.”