Alvin Marsh was anything but stupid. He understood that there were consequences to actions, and so today, he would face those consequences. Keisha James would have her moment in the sun. She would appear before the cameras and hear how brave she was and afterward he would pat her on the head, kiss her goodbye, and she would leave with the man and woman Clyde had picked out to be her aunt and uncle, the Claytons. And they’d turn her over to Clyde, who would take her somewhere safe and kill her. No one would find her body. That, of course, was supremely important in this day of DNA and ultra science. They would take her to a local crematorium and her ashes would be spread out over the Chicago River. The consequences would be over on that particular chapter of his life.
The Claytons walked into the room with little Keisha by their side. He saw her eyes searching the room and understood she was looking for the man that had killed her mother and taken her. Jerome Larkin was dead, but she didn’t know that. He saw no reason to burden her with the information. The fire in the projects and subsequent collapse of the building had been ruled an accidental fire, started by an addict too high to know better. His contacts in the upper echelons of government would make sure that no one looked into the details and so it would stay that way.
All that remained was to finish this press conference. In a way it was funny, because as always, Marsh would use this to his advantage. Gil Mason had intended this to cause a problem for him, and in one way it had. He’d had to delay getting rid of the evidence, that is Keisha James, but in the most important way, it would actually help him immensely. He had decided that this would be the perfect time to announce his candidacy for President of the United States of America. Yes, America was great indeed.
A smile broke on his face as he stretched out his hands, welcoming both the press and little Keisha James as she walked toward him with the Claytons.
Turning back to the crowd, he felt a sudden terror flip-flop his belly, making him physically stagger, the smile faltering for the first time in his career. Standing to his right was a grinning Gil Mason.
45
The camera lights flashed and popped and clicked as Senator Marsh nodded at me. I let the grin widen and nodded back. Just two old buds, meeting up in front of the world.
He snapped back fast, I have to give him that; a professional politician to the core. The smile returned and his hands continued to take all the crowd in.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, and it was the best Morgan Freeman of them all, full of rich bass tones, melodious and smooth and classical. “Thank you all for coming today. The real reason we are here is to pay our respects to justice.” He reached down and placed a fatherly hand on little Keisha’s shoulder, looking down on her with a mixture of pride and humility. “This little angel has been restored to us, the citizens of Chicago, safe and sound. Her mother was murdered and she was kidnapped three years ago by a gang member named Jerome Larkin. I became aware of her plight through my charity organization, The Marsh Foundation. Since then, we have worked tirelessly to restore her to her family.” He held his hand out to the man and woman standing by Keisha James, shaking their hands in turn. “The Claytons,” said Marsh. “Little Keisha’s aunt and uncle. Her only surviving relatives.”
He then turned to me.
“And this is Gil Mason of Sheepdog Detective Agency, working out of Colorado. His firm aided us in securing Keisha and bringing her back to us.” He shook my hand and I shook it back, smiling for the cameras like a good boy.
After that, Marsh finished his speech. Questions were asked and answered and then the press was led out of the room. Keisha gave me a dirty look as her pretend relatives took her to a side room. Marsh told his security detail to wait outside while he spoke with me and we were alone, just the two of us.
As soon as he turned to me, the kid gloves came off and the true Alvin Marsh appeared. Not the slick politician. This was the old-time Blood gang-banger. Seeing the real man, I knew his police record had to have been doctored. There was no way he’d only had a few minor violations. No, this man was a killer.
“You think you’re pretty slick, don’t you?” he said to me. “Prancing in here like this. Parading yourself in front of the press. You think that makes you safe? Is that what you think?”
He picked up his cell phone. “Clyde, get in here.”
“Surprised to see me?” I asked. “Alive I mean?”
His jaw flexed like he’d eaten a bug and his eyes drilled lasers through me. “You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into.”
“You mean what you’ve gotten me into, right? It was you who came to me, not the other way around.”
I saw the change come into his eyes. He was thinking, plotting, reverting from the primal fight or flight brain of the street warrior to the long-term thinking of a strategist.
“Maybe I misjudged you,” he said, sitting at his desk and steepling his fingers. “What is it you want?”
“What is it you think I want?” I asked, letting a little smile play at the corners of my lips.
He nodded as the door behind him quietly opened and closed.
Without turning, Marsh said, “Maybe you were wrong about him, Clyde. Maybe Mr. Mason here is willing to play ball after all.” He pointed his two index fingers at me. “But you’re after something more than money. A position? You want to be part of my staff? Or is it something bigger? Ah, I see. You’re thinking ahead, aren’t you? After I take office.” He touched his fingers to his chin.
“What do you think, Clyde? Is he worth that? He has proven to be resourceful.”
“Resourceful?” I said. “I know everything.”
“Everything? What do you mean by that?”
“I know that you are the leader of the Bloods here in Chicago. That you’ve been having law enforcement go after the other gangs and clearing a path for the WSSBs to take over. I know that your charity foundation is a sham to funnel the money into your bank account. And best of all, I know that you are Keisha’s father and that’s why you want her dead. I had your DNA tested from the beer you drank at my house. I got Keisha’s when she was at the police station in Aurora. Perfect match. You are her father. That’s why you had Jerome and his pals go to her house and kill her mother. Only you didn’t count on someone else being there or that Jerome would balk at murdering a little girl in cold blood. That’s why you hired me. To find her and get her here so that you could hide the truth and the DNA evidence. That’s what I know.”
Marsh sat there, staring at his hands for maybe thirty seconds before taking a deep breath and nodding. “I’m afraid, Mr. Mason, that that is a little too much information for you to have and still be allowed to live.”
Behind him, the mountain of a man pulled out a gun with a silencer attached and pointed it toward me.
“What? You’re going to shoot me? Here in your office?
Marsh leaned back in his chair. “There are no security cameras in here, Mr. Mason. Whatever narrative I create is exactly how it will play out to the press.” He paused. “Tell me, how did you get in here?”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the security badge and card he’d given me in Colorado and dropped it on his desk. “I sort of accidentally gave you the wrong badge when you asked for it.”
“You are very clever, Mr. Mason. So clever, that you had to know I would kill you once I knew how much you know. Which means you have a plan. Okay, you have exactly five minutes to convince me that you staying alive is no threat to me or my plans and exactly how your value to me outweighs the danger you pose.”
“First, I don’t care about Chicago politics. I really don’t even care about federal politics, for the most part. What I do care about is that little girl. So here’s the deal. You let me take her. You leave her and me alone. Simple.”
Marsh blinked twice. “Is that all? You want me to hand you the one piece of evidence that ties me to everything and let you both walk away?”
I tossed the photographs I’d snapped on my phone.
Photographs of him meeting with the Bloods hierarchy, along with his and Keisha’s DNA results.
“Well, it would be nice if you would turn yourself in and confess to everything, but that’s a long shot. So, we’ll compromise. Let me have her and you get to make your run for the presidency. I’ll make sure she never knows and that no one else ever sees the evidence.”
Marsh closed his eyes and breathed in and out through his nose. “Once again you disappoint me, Mr. Mason.”
“Yeah, well, join the club. This really is the best way for you. Personally, I want to kill you very badly. You’ve hurt a lot of people. You killed my friend Ziggy and a lot of others, just so you could keep your bad habits a secret. But I’ll let that go… for the little girl… I’ll let it all go. Besides, you can’t get away with killing Keisha now anyway, not with all the press. So give her to me and let’s let this thing be done with.”
“That, Mr. Mason, is where you are very wrong. This is Chicago and bad things happen to good people all the time in Chicago. Accidents, shootings, muggings. All sorts of terrible things. Also, people go missing here. Lots of people. They go missing and no one even questions where they went. They are just gone.” He made a little fluttering motion with his fingers and thumb.
“I’m not going to let you take the little girl…”
I broke in, “Your daughter, you mean.”
He paused, looked at me with death in his eyes, the same way Morgan Freeman looked at Ben Kingsley in the movie Lucky Number Sleven, and said, “She has to go away. And so do you.” He motioned to Clyde to shoot me, only Clyde didn’t pull the trigger. Clyde didn’t pull the trigger because the man standing beside him wasn’t Clyde. Clyde was dead.
Marsh looked up to see why Clyde hadn’t shot me and saw Jerome looking down at him, dressed in Clyde’s suit and wearing his security badge.
“She ain’t your daughter,” said Jerome. “She’s mine.”
Marsh didn’t look scared at all. He was a tough man.
“I’m a United States Senator. You will never get away with…”
Jerome shot him once through the top of his head.
Jerome looked at me.
“Told you he wouldn’t go for it,” he said.
“I had to give him the chance.”
“No you didn’t.”
I didn’t know what to say to that so I just shrugged.
“Clair’s with those people?”
“Yeah,” I said. “In a little room over there. They aren’t really her relatives.”
“How much time we got?”
“Not much.” I looked up into his dark eyes. “You know they’ll find you… you and Clair. Sooner or later.”
He shook his head slowly. “No they won’t.” He jerked the gun up and shot me.
46
The bullet hit me just above the left hip, tearing through skin and meat and knocking me back and around. One hand went instinctively to the wound while the other, my right, grabbed for and found my Smith and Wesson. As I completed the spin, I shoved the gun forward, but I was too slow and Jerome caught me in the temple with the butt of the suppressed pistol. I fell to one knee, the room whirling and then I was on my back with Jerome standing over me, way up high, the bore of the gun staring me in the face.
“This here’s goin’ to play out in one of two ways. You kill me or I kill you. If you kill me, then what you got to do is make sure the story of this here rat gets out and my Clair stays safe, with a nice family that will take care of her. I’m putting you in charge of making sure that happens no matter what.”
“I’m not going to kill you, Jerome,” I said, my voice sounding garbled and far away inside my head. “No way.”
“Then I’ll sure kill you, and then go down and get my Clair and probably have to kill a bunch of people on the way out. You want that to happen? Do you? More dead on your head and me with Clair for the rest of her life or till someone catch up with us? That the way you want this to go?”
I felt the heavy metal frame of my 4506 still resting in my hand by my side.
“Jerome…”
“I’m not smart in most ways. I know that, you do too, but in this I’m being smart. I think you know that too. This way Clair stays safe and has a good life. You tell them that I snuck in here and killed the senator and shot you, but that you were able to shoot me back. Simple as that. Keeps you out of trouble with the law and gives my Clair her chance in this world.”
“No,” I said. “We stick to the plan. I lay it out for them, then…”
He let the gun drop down by his side.
“Then I go to jail and you do too and there’s no one to take care of my little girl. She ends up in a foster home or worse. Your plan is stupid. You think you can win because you’re on the right side of things. That’s nice thinking, but it’s stupid. It’s not the way the world works, so this here ain’t going down that way.”
My head was starting to clear, but I needed time, time to make him listen to reason, time to…
“Jerome, I can make this work. You have to give me…”
…please, just a few seconds…
“No,” he said. “Don’t talk no more. Shoot and save Clair from me and them or don’t shoot and I’ll try it my way. Your choice, but I’m done talking and so are you. Shoot or die… now.” He pulled the gun up from his side and took aim. I saw his finger squeeze back on the trigger.
The time I needed, like so often in life, just wasn’t there.
47
My stay in Chicago was extended another week, what with all the questions from both the locals and the feds. But now that I stood on my mountain, I felt better… not great… but better. The news media made me out to be a hero, which helped in assuring that Clair was placed with a good family. It would be hard for her. She had a long road ahead. She hated me for taking her from her daddy. Someday I hoped to tell her the whole story, but that day was a long way off. I would be watching. I’d keep an eye on her from afar. My unsaid promise to Jerome would hold me to it.
His bullet didn’t hit anything vital or do me any permanent damage, just pain and a little blood loss. That Jerome was a good shot.
The Claytons, Clair’s false relatives, were exposed as frauds and arrested. They probably wouldn’t get much time, but at least it was something. And without Senator Marsh’s influence to cover things up, the bodies and fire in the projects were being closely investigated. The anonymous documents I’d sent to the local branch of the FBI this morning would help in that investigation, proving who Marsh was and his involvement in the Bloods and their takeover of the city.
There was nothing I could do to clear Jerome’s name, and if I exposed Marsh’s role as Clair’s father, it would drown her in a shadow that she might never recover from (the curse of Caanan all over again). So I kept all that to myself.
The wind blew and a very light rain began to sprinkle as I laid Clair’s picture on Jerome’s grave. I’d had his and Ziggy’s remains flown in and buried on my mountain about a hundred yards north of my garage. Neither man had any family to speak of, so I bought a couple of headstones and laid them to rest. After all, we were a team there for a little while. Semper Fi, brothers.
I don’t talk to the dead, not seeing any evidence from the Bible they could hear me anyway. People don’t become God when they die, they can’t be everywhere and hear everything. I don’t know if either of them were Christians, probably not… most likely not. That being the case, they are both in Hell, now and forever. So instead, I asked Jesus to relay to them that I was watching over Clair and that she was with a good family that wanted to adopt her. I asked Him to let them know that one day I will tell her the truth about Jerome and what both of them sacrificed for her. I hoped it might help to alleviate a few of their stripes. I don’t know if the Lord will relay the message or not, or if it is even allowed. But Jesus knows my heart and why I ask, so ask I do.
Then I remembered my conversation with Jerome in the car, when he asked me about the Romans vers
e and how God can help us get through the toughest of times if we trust in Him. I do… I do… but sometimes… life just makes it so difficult.
My heart felt heavy and hard and sad.
A cold nose bumped against my hand and I looked down to see Max staring up at me. I rubbed his head and, wonder of wonders, he let me. Maybe because he felt bad about biting me and almost breaking my arm, but maybe because he could sense how I was feeling. Or maybe, maybe it was something else. Either way, I liked it. Baby steps or no, I liked it.
Thank You, Father.
So the two of us stayed there for a while, letting the warm rain stir up the summer smells and the wind toss our hair. And after a short time, we turned and headed back to the house and Pilgrim.
* * *
The End
Hair of the Dog Page 21