Nickel City Crossfire

by Gary Earl Ross

  “Seems like only yesterday.” He shook his head. “Hard-working as she is, there are only so many hours in a day. Something my wife is constantly reminding me of.” He got to his feet.

  Taking that as his cue the interview was over, I pocketed my notebook and stood, noting the file tabs on his desk: BLDG FUND, NEWSLETTERS, HOMILIES. I tried to make my final question as non-invasive as I could: “Are you on the board, Dr. Markham?”

  “Only as a non-voting member,” he said. “Which is good because I spend so much time running here and there, I don’t get to many meetings myself.”

  Someone in the hall knocked.

  “Come in,” Dr. Markham said.

  The door creaked open. A light-skinned man in a gray hoodie and blue HOLLISTER sweat pants filled the doorway—literally. At well over six feet, he appeared to be in his late twenties with close-cut hair and a thin mustache. He looked as if he would clock in close to two-sixty on a digital scale—pounds that seemed less the result of donuts and soda than the by-product of an NFL weight room.

  “Tito, this is Mr. Rimes. Tito Glenroy, our custodian.”

  He stepped inside, and my hand almost disappeared in his as we shook. His grip was gorilla powerful. He didn’t crush my fingers but doing so would have been easy. Instead, he held them a few beats longer than he should have. I wondered why.

  Turning, Tito nodded at the minister and looked at Mrs. Markham for a few seconds. “Reverend. Ma’am.” He spoke in a voice that was half whisper, half crushed glass, in an almost apologetic tone. “I found where the water’s coming from in the basement. Not the men’s room but a wall in the kitchen. Had to pull the stove out to get to the source.”

  “We gonna need a plumber?”

  “Yes, sir.” He frowned and cocked his head to one side. “Probably work inside that wall too. Looks like it’s been wet in there a long time. You got a minute; I can show you.”

  Sighing, Dr. Markham turned to his wife. “Looks like we’re gonna go another month without getting the new organ in and the choir loft brought up to code.”

  “The choir’s doing just fine in the front of the assembly,” she said. “Nice for them to be seen as well as heard.”

  The minister looked at me. “These old buildings. If it isn’t one thing—”

  “Go,” she said. “I’ll show Mr. Rimes out. I gotta get going anyway.” She stood and pushed the center chair forward to avoid touching the hot radiator. Then she sidled past me on the way to the coat rack, and I caught a whiff of her perfume.

  Awkwardly smiling at her, Tito hesitated a moment before pulling the green leather jacket off its hanger and holding it for her.

  “Thank you, Tito,” Mrs. Markham said as she slid her arms into the sleeves. Then she turned to her husband. “I’ll see you later.”

  Nodding, the minister shook my hand. “Old building like this...”

  “I understand.” I gave him a Driftglass card and passed one to his wife. “You remember something or hear something, either of you, please call me. Thank you for your time.”

  Dr. Markham followed Tito out as Mrs. Markham zipped up and tugged on a knit hat she pulled from a pocket. Then she worked her hands into a pair of thin leather gloves as she led me out of the office and toward the door.

  As we emerged into sunlight, I glanced at the F-150 that must be Tito’s and then looked again to memorize the plate. “Tito is a big guy,” I said. “Looks like he played some serious ball in his day.”

  “He did for a little while,” she said.

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “About eight years ago he got a full ride to Eastern Michigan U—a real win for the son of a humble church janitor who never made it to eighth grade.”

  Zipping my jacket, I thought of my own father, a janitor who had finished only high school. A tireless reader, he had become best friends with the professor whose office he cleaned, who would raise me after my parents’ deaths. When I was younger, Bobby made a point of telling me how much my mother and especially my father would have appreciated each milestone in my life. “His father must have been proud,” I said now.

  “We all were,” Mrs. Markham said. “The congregation gave him a huge send-off party. There was talk he was a shoo-in for the NFL. But then—” She let out a long sigh. “Let’s just say he was better at catching passes than passing classes.”

  I pulled my watch cap over my ears and adjusted the stems of my glasses as I thought about how easily that line had rolled off her tongue as if she had said it before. Often.

  “He worked hard and scraped through freshman year only by the skin of his teeth,” she continued. “When his father died at the start of sophomore year, he kind of lost the will to try. So he came home, settled into his father’s job, and that was that.”

  She unlocked the Camry with her remote and got inside when I opened the door.

  “Good luck, Mr. Rimes,” she said. “Sorry if I seemed a little short with you before but this whole thing has been so very unsettling.”

  “I understand.”

  She looked at me for a long moment. “I believe you do,” she said at last. “In the end, we all want the same thing, to find Keisha.”

  Alive, I thought.

  Still in the church parking lot and waiting for my car to warm, I punched Sonny Tyler’s cell number into the Bluetooth display. The call took an unusually long time to connect. I asked for him by name when a man answered.

  “Speaking. Who’s calling?” The voice was crisp and dispassionate.

  “Mr. Tyler, my name is Rimes. I’m a detective working a missing persons case. I’d like to ask you a few questions about Keisha Simpkins.”

  “Keisha?” His voice faltered before rising with concern. “Keisha’s missing?”

  “Yes. When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Last time I saw—what the fuck is this, man?”

  “I understand you dated briefly.”

  “That was a long time ago. Years. I ain’t seen Keisha since we broke up.”

  “Why’d you break up?”

  “I was young and stupid and needed to straighten out. I talked to her a couple times since then. We didn’t say all that much but we stayed on friendly terms.” He took a breath, and his tone changed. “Where you get my name from?”

  “Her apartment.”

  “She disappeared in Buffalo?”

  “Yes.”

  “How the hell she get lost in her own back yard?”

  “One day she just didn’t come back home. I’m—”

  “Look, detective, I ain’t been to Buffalo in almost four years. I talked to Keisha maybe eight or nine times since I left. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

  “So where are you?”

  “Stuttgart, in Germany.”

  That explained why the call had taken so long to connect. “You at the USAG there?”

  “Nine months in, with the five-fifty-fourth.”

  “You’re an MP?”

  “Yes, sir.” He sounded surprised. “You know your company designations.”

  I had been an MP in Iraq before transferring into the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division. I shook my head at the irony but said nothing about my service. “When was the last time you were stateside?”

  “About six months ago, for my grandmother’s funeral, in Dallas.”

  I glanced at my watch and did a quick calculation. “What time is it there?”

  “Stuttgart? Seventeen hundred hours and change. What, you don’t believe me?” As if annoyed, he rattled off a name and contact number for his commanding officer.

  “I believe you,” I said, without adding that I would call both his commander and friends I still had in the CID. “Sorry to have troubled you but your number was on my list and I have to check everything.”

  “I understand.” He was quiet a moment. It sounded as though he swallowed a couple of times. “Detective, will you please call me back and let me know when you find her? Let me know she’s okay? Bette
r still, have her call me—if that’s possible.”

  I promised I would.

  8

  The florist shop was a small green clapboard storefront on Kensington Avenue near Bailey. It had once been a two-family house, with an upstairs porch and big two-car garage, but now the downstairs had plate glass windows flanking a center entrance. Neon tubing in the left window said, in pink: Flowers by Fatimah. The window on the right said: For All Occasions.

  I opened the front door and stepped inside. To my left was a solid steel security door that looked fresh out of the box—to the upstairs flat, I thought. An open wooden door was on my right. As I climbed three steps and went through the doorway, I heard an old-fashioned shop bell ring, likely triggered by the electric eye mounted at calf level. The pale blue wall to my left held shelves of floral arrangements, indoor plants, decorative pots, and a security panel. The opposite wall had three glass-doored floral refrigerators with motors humming and interiors full of color. Mounted above the center refrigerator was an opaque plastic security camera bubble. Ahead was a service counter. The woman behind it was of average height and in her mid-thirties. Clad in a tan pantsuit, she had cocoa skin and black hair teased into a small halo. Looking up from a computer screen, she pulled off her black-framed glasses and let them dangle from a neck chain.

  “Good afternoon,” she said.

  “Hi,” I said. “Are you Fatimah?”

  “I am.” She smiled. “How may I help you today?”

  I smiled back and thought about Phoenix, whose smile I cherished. I wondered if maybe the best way to go about my business was to help this woman go about hers.

  “I’d like to send flowers.” I unzipped my jacket because the air was so warm.

  “Special occasion?”

  “Special person.” I let that hang a moment. “Just because.”

  Fatimah’s smile widened. “You’ve come to the right place. We even have Just Because cards you can use to personalize your message.” She rotated the countertop display rack and selected three cards, which she spread before me. “Is this special person a woman?”

  “Yes, but not my mother or my sister.”

  She glanced at my ring-free left hand. “Not a wife but much more than a friend?”

  “Yes.” I examined the cards and looked up. “Which would you recommend?”

  With an aqua-lacquered nail, she tapped the center card, which depicted two brown hands, fingers interlaced, in the glow of a lit candle. “May I suggest roses?”

  “I don’t want her to think I’m too conventional. This is kind of an impulse.”

  “Then what about a bouquet of orange and yellow roses? A spontaneous burst of warmth in a cold December—if this is a local order.”

  “It is. Can they be delivered today?”

  “Our van is out on a funeral run right now but should be back before too long. Same day delivery for an order past noon does cost a little extra though.”

  “Fine. I’d like it to reach her office between four-thirty and five. Is that possible?”

  “Just late enough for her co-workers to see them but not spend the afternoon gushing over them.” Nodding, Fatimah consulted the computer screen, tapped something in, and tore an order form off the pad to her right. “We can make that happen.”

  After I gave the office address and inserted my MasterCard into the chip reader on the counter, I wrote I’m Thinking of You after the elegant Just Because inside the card. I signed G, wrote Phoenix on the envelope, and used the stylus to sign the chip reader screen.

  “Is there anything else we can do for you today?”

  I handed Fatimah a Driftglass card and took out my notebook. “I wonder if you’ve seen or heard from Keisha Simpkins lately.”

  The smile disappeared. She watched me for a long moment, saying nothing, not even blinking. Then she pulled on her glasses to read my card. “You’re a private detective?”

  I nodded.

  “So somebody’s paying you to look for her. Who?”

  “Ordinarily, I don’t give out that information but since I got your name from her parents, I don’t think they’ll mind.” I gazed at her for a long moment, hard. “Who did you think was paying me?”

  Fatimah looked away and pulled off her glasses again and took a deep breath before finding her footing. “I don’t know.” She turned back to me, and her voice climbed an unsteady notch. “But if she was into drugs so much that she OD’d, maybe she owes somebody money, so much they’d look for her. Hurt her. Or maybe it was that boyfriend of hers that owed them money. Now that he’s gone, they want her to pay.”

  “So you think I’m looking for her to collect?”

  “Might could be. You’re big enough to be somebody’s thug nasty.” She swallowed as the weight of what she said sank into her gut. “Now that I’m looking at you, I guess that bulge under your sweater isn’t a cell phone clipped to your belt.” For a few seconds, she didn’t breathe and didn’t move as she considered the possibility I might hurt her in my quest for her friend. “Look, I don’t want no trouble. I don’t know about Keisha and I don’t want her drugs around my kids.”

  “I’m a retired army cop,” I said. “You just ran my credit card through your system so if I’m here to do you harm, I’m stupid.” I kept my voice calm to ease the fear and uncertainty in her eyes. “A mutual friend put me in touch with Keisha’s parents. I’m just trying to help. I’m looking for her because her folks are worried sick. Even if she doesn’t ever want to see them again, they just want to know she’s okay.” I paused but never broke eye contact. “Phoenix Trinidad is very real and more than special to me. I know you need to put that bouquet together, and I want you to, so it’s in my best interest to take up as little of your time as possible.” I chanced a smile, a sliver of which she returned. “So, have you seen or heard from Keisha lately?”

  She hesitated a fraction of a second, shook her head, and said, “No.”

  The eye shift. Was she lying or simply still afraid?

  “But you knew she disappeared recently.”

  “Yes. Her mother called to ask if I’d seen her. But I hadn’t.”

  “Mrs. Simpkins says you and Keisha and Bianca were like sisters growing up. You always had each other’s backs.”

  Half-smiling, Fatimah nodded. “My mother used to call us the Three Mouseketeers, which I didn’t understand until I was much older.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” I said. “I thought Keisha might reach out to you or Bianca if she was in trouble and needed help.”

  “I haven’t talked to Keisha in months. At least three. Been busy with the shop and my kids. She’s always working herself.”

  I decided against asking her about her children because I didn’t want her to take it as a subtle threat. “What about Bianca? Think Keisha might have gone to her for help?”

  “Bianca and me—we don’t keep in touch much anymore, but I think Keisha still sees her—saw her—from time to time. So, maybe. Yeah, Keisha might’ve got in touch with her. Are you gonna talk to her too?”

  “She’s next on my list.”

  “Will you tell her I said hi?”

  Somewhere outside a car door slammed, hard.

  “I will.” I put away my notebook without having opened it. “Thanks for your time, Fatimah. If Keisha does contact you, please give her my number and tell her I’d like to help her. The address for the flowers? It’s a law office. Phoenix Trinidad is a lawyer, a good one. She’s willing to help too. Whatever Keisha’s going through, she doesn’t have to face it alone. If you see her, tell her that.”

  Just then there was movement in the back of the shop. A burly brown man with short hair and a close-cut beard stepped into the room. He was clad in khaki work clothes with a Flowers by Fatimah patch on his shirt pocket. Only glancing at me, he moved to the counter and handed Fatimah a small clipboard full of papers. “What’s next?”

  “Only six this afternoon,” she said. “Four are ready to go.” She handed him another sma
ll clipboard. “I still gotta prep two. But I want you to take extra care with the last one.”

  His brow furrowed. “I don’t understand.”

  “Mr. Rimes here just ordered flowers for his special lady, and we want him to come back to us when it’s time for the wedding.”

  The delivery man looked at me and smiled and stuck out his hand. “Congratulations!”

  “Mr. Rimes,” Fatimah said, “I’d like you to meet my husband Isaiah.”

  “Ike,” he said as we shook.

  9

  “If you see Fatimah again, tell her I said hi. But don’t do it if she’s with her husband. Ike Kelly is the reason she won’t have much to do with me these days.”

  An imposing copper-skinned woman who wore mocha lipstick and nail polish, a well-tailored blue skirt suit, a platinum necklace, and a diamond-studded white-gold wedding band, Bianca looked every inch the manager of a jewelry store. I had reached the Hunnicutt counter on the first floor of the Walden Galleria and asked for Ms. Dawkins just as she was authorizing the return of a gold locket. She read my card as I explained why I was there. When she saw my eyes go to the ring on her left hand, she reassured me that she did use the name Dawkins and agreed to talk about Keisha if I treated her to lunch. Now she sat across from me at a table in the mall’s second-floor food court, ramrod straight and eating a salad and pita wedges from Souvlaki Brothers. I worked on a calzone from Sbarro.

  “Isaiah doesn’t like you?”

  “He thinks I’m a bad influence.”

  “On Fatimah?”

  “And their daughters.” She sipped Diet Pepsi through a straw but that action did nothing to reduce the tightness of her jaw. She leveled her eyes at me as she set down the cup. “He doesn’t like that I’m married to a cop.”

  “That’s a bad influence?”

  “A white cop.”

  “Oh.”

  “Named Jennifer.”

  “Three strikes with a single swing,” I said. “From his point of view.”