Nickel City Crossfire

by Gary Earl Ross

“But a home run from mine. We were together five years before equality and were almost at the front of the line at City Hall afterward.” Then she retreated from the edge of her wistfulness. “Ike told Fatimah it was his Catholic upbringing. But I know better. It’s because I said no to a threesome a long time ago and he begged me not to tell her he asked.”

  “You never told her?”

  “That her husband is a lesbian fetishist who can’t believe I wouldn’t be interested in what he’s packing?” Bianca shook her head. “I’m an only child. In fact, Fatimah and Keisha are too. It helped us bond. They’re the closest thing I have to sisters. I’d slash a wrist before I hurt either one of them, even if we don’t see each other as often as we used to. Better to be there for Fatimah when she hits the brick wall than to drive her into it myself.”

  “Back to Keisha.” I opened my notebook, which lay beside my paper plate. “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “About two months ago. We had her and Odell over for dinner and game night.”

  “Game night?”

  Bianca smiled for the first time, and the tension in her shoulders began to lessen. “Jen is from this big Italian family. Game night started back in the Depression before her great-grandparents could afford a radio. Back then they had cards, checkers, chess, charades, maybe Monopoly.”

  “No Scene It or Trivial Pursuit.”

  “Or Cards Against Humanity.” She chuckled. “Game night is a lot less frequent today with their family spread all over the country and everybody glued to phones but it still happens. When Jen and I were just close friends, as her parents liked to say, she took me to a couple game nights. I fit right in, thanks to countless winter Saturday afternoons where we played board games with Keisha’s mom. It helped when Jen came out that I was already a fixture in her family and one of the top Scrabble players. They were more accepting of her, and us, than she expected. Of course, I can only imagine what Great-grandpa Spina would have thought of us. He might have preferred Cards Against Humanity.”

  Something clicked, and it took me a moment to speak. “Spina? Your wife’s a cop named Spina?”

  “Yes.”

  “A sergeant. Tall, dark-haired.”

  “Yes. Do you know her?”

  “About six weeks ago I got shot. She was the one who took my statement in the hospital.”

  Bianca’s eyes widened and the last filaments of her uneasiness slipped away. “Jesus Christ! The PI who got kidnapped after he brought in the cop-killer? That was you?”

  I nodded.

  “Talk about a small world.” She let out a long breath. “You know, Jen isn’t easily impressed but she liked you, called you tough, in a good way. Wait till I tell her I met you.”

  “Tell her I said hi, that I’m doing fine, and I’m back to work.” I glanced at my notebook. “So you and Jen invited Keisha and Odell over for a game night. What did you think of Odell?”

  “He was a monster at Guesstures but sucked at Catchphrase.” She sighed. “We both liked him. Keisha looked the happiest I’d seen her in a long time. Jen even agreed to wear her uniform to speak to Odell’s class sometime before the Christmas break. With black men being shot by police all over TV, he didn’t want his kids to be afraid of cops.” Bianca looked away as her eyes moistened. “Jen never got the chance to talk, and Keisha never got her happy ending.”

  “Did Jen ever say anything about the overdose or reports that Odell was dealing?”

  “This wasn’t the first time we’d spent an evening with them, just the last.” Bianca wiped her eyes and leaned back. “We had dinner together three or four times before, at our place or Keisha’s. Saw a couple movies together. We knew Odell more than casually. Jen wasn’t part of the investigation but prides herself on being a good judge of people. She said she’d bet a week’s pay the informants who dropped his name were liars with other agendas.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I’m pretty good myself at scoping out secrets. After all, I had to keep my own for years—from family and friends, folks at church. I have to read people every day for my job. Keeping secrets means layers of hesitation in conversation, evasive verbal maneuvers, failure to make eye contact.” She smiled again. “Like a married man buying jewelry for a girlfriend and constantly looking over his shoulder for a familiar face so he can step away from her. I saw none of that with Odell. In fact, he reminded me of myself when I finally came out and found out who loved me and who didn’t.”

  “You felt free to be yourself, and to hell with anybody who couldn’t deal.”

  “Exactly.” She leaned toward me on her elbows. “Odell was just what he seemed, a good guy who loved teaching and adored Keisha. He would never put a needle in her arm.”

  “Even at gunpoint?”

  Bianca sat back, frowning. “What do you mean?”

  “Just thinking out loud. Something made this overdose happen. I wonder what. Or who.” I chewed the last bite of my calzone and took a swig of iced tea. “Fatimah seemed to think somebody might be after Keisha, maybe for money.”

  “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

  “So, you haven’t talked to Keisha since dinner that night?”

  “No.”

  “Who would she turn to if she was in trouble?”

  “Her parents. Fatimah. Me.”

  I took out my phone and pulled up Keisha’s letter to her parents. I enlarged the image and pointed to the closing lines as I passed the phone to Bianca. Right now my being with you will do you more harm than good, so please don’t try to look for me. Just know that I love you both. Always.

  “What if somebody is after her and she’s afraid turning to all of you would put you in danger? Who would she turn to then?”

  Bianca answered without hesitation. “Herself.”

  10

  Despite his green sweatsuit and brown corduroy slippers, Carl Williamson had the posture of a military man. Dark, broad-shouldered, with thinning hair and a full mustache, he led me to a country-style kitchen table and put on a pot of coffee as I draped my jacket over a white wooden chair. He took the seat across from mine.

  We were quiet as he lit a Camel and pulled on it. Then I asked, “Were you in Nam?”

  “Yeah, sixty-six to sixty-seven. Infantry.” His voice was an octave higher than his size and his cigarette would have suggested. “How could you tell?”

  “Soldiers can pick soldiers out of a crowd,” I said. “Iraq. MP.”

  “No shit? Was it crazy as they say?”

  “Was Nam?”

  He laughed. “Yeah. Clusterfuck from the get-go.” He shook his head, relaxed a bit, exhaled. “When I got back I didn’t think I’d ever feel real again. Know what I mean?”

  “I do.”

  “Like hearing the Eyewitness News traffic copter and starting to look for cover.” He shook his head again. “Mama said a job would get my head straight. I went to the post office to make her happy but I was shocked to find a brother in personnel. Told me he started after World War II when he got out of the navy. Worked his way up. He explained the jobs they had, benefits, veterans’ credits, the exam I had to take. In fact, he was the one who gave the exams. I did okay on the test and delivered mail for damn near forty years. Like I said, infantry.”

  We both laughed.

  He got up and went to the counter to pour us coffee. He took his black, and I told him I would too. He set a white china cup in front of me.

  “It’s good you came while Rhonda’s at work,” he said, stubbing the Camel in a glass ashtray. “You know, she just went back this week. Losing Odell’s been real hard on her.”

  “I’m sure it’s been hard on both of you,” I said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Don’t be. I’ve heard all the sorry any man could ever want to hear. I’m just glad the case is still active. I thought the cops wrote my only child off as a junkie. So what I want to hear is news about who killed him.”

  Having introduced myself as Detective Rimes
working the case involving Odell, I had not yet given him a Driftglass card or explained I was searching for Keisha. I wanted to be cautious because my clients told me Carl blamed Keisha as much as they blamed Odell, which meant he wouldn’t care whether or how I found her. “I just caught this case yesterday. Officially, it’s still an overdose but I thought it deserved a second look, so here I am.”

  “Is that what you do? Give things a second look?”

  “More or less.” I blew a stream of air across my cup and took a sip to find it good and strong. “The woman with your son that night, Keisha Simpkins. What can you tell me about her?”

  Holding his cup with both hands, as if absorbing needed warmth, he looked down a moment. “A nice girl,” he said. “Her father turned out to be a prick, but Rhonda and me, we liked Keisha a lot, and her mother.” He sighed. “That girl was a doctor. Definite daughter-in-law material.”

  “I’ve spoken to her parents and they say the same things about your son.”

  “They thought Odell was great until some assholes said he dealt heroin. Then her daddy blamed my son for the whole thing.”

  “Did you ever think Keisha was responsible? That she was the dealer?”

  “Not really. Maybe I said something like that when I was mad but I couldn’t see that girl messing with drugs.” He studied me a moment. “You from narcotics or homicide?”

  “Second looks,” I said. “That’s my specialty.”

  “Like cold cases?”

  “Close enough.”

  “I ask because I’d like the names of those informants so I can beat the panties off their sorry asses for lying on Odell.” He took a swallow of coffee and chuckled. “See how much street cred they got left after a retired mailman beats ‘em shitless.”

  “What they claimed would piss me off too,” I said. “But even if I had them, I couldn’t give up names of another detective’s confidential informants. That’s against the rules. But I can tell you this much. Something about their statements bothers me.”

  He nodded to show he understood. “That’s why you’re giving it a second look.”

  “One reason.”

  “I bet another is the autopsy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “No needle marks—except the one that killed him.”

  Nodding, I made a mental note to call Mira the instant I left.

  “Odell wasn’t nobody’s junkie or dealer,” Carl said through clenched teeth. His back stiffened again and he set down his cup. “We cleaned out his place the week after his funeral. Jeans, khakis, button-down shirts—real dealers’ clothes. Books and DVDs everywhere but no weed, no pills, and not one gun, except his paintball rifle. All those stacks of drug money you see in movies? The only cash we found was a hundred-dollar bill folded inside his passport and twenty bucks in change in a damn cookie jar. The manager at our bank did some kind of search for a safe deposit box in his name. Know what he found?”

  “I’m guessing no box in his name. Anywhere.”

  “Bingo.” Carl’s eyes began to fill. “What kind of dealer shops at Target and drives a ten-year-old Mazda?”

  I gave him a moment to breathe. “You have the autopsy report?”

  He wiped his eyes and shook his head. “Leon Starks, the undertaker, is a friend of mine. I asked him to look for needle marks.” Carl swallowed audibly. “I saw my boy before Leon put on his suit. His arms and legs were clean and smooth as a baby’s ass.”

  For a heartbeat or two I said nothing. “Did you know that Keisha’s missing?”

  His brow furrowed. “Missing? Like disappeared?”

  “Yes, about two weeks ago.”

  “Jesus!” He narrowed his eyes at me. “That’s why you’re looking into this. You’re missing persons and trying to connect the dots. I didn’t hear anything about this on the news.”

  “Sometimes publicity is wrong for a case like this. We’d appreciate it if you and your wife didn’t tell anyone till you hear about it from the media. Keisha’s life may depend on it.”

  He nodded and raised his cup to his lips as if the coffee would fortify his assent. Before he drank, he asked, “Did she disappear on her own or did somebody snatch her?”

  “Too early to know. That’s why we’re keeping things quiet. We need to determine if somebody is after her or if somebody caught her.”

  “Poor Keisha.” He bit his lip before he sipped. “But this kinda makes sense. Say somebody tried to kill them both—why, I have no fucking idea. But she survived. Then she ran. Had to. If they took her, her body woulda turned up somewhere by now.”

  “Still could,” I said and waited a breath or two before adding, “You said you cleaned out your son’s apartment. It might help me find whoever was behind the overdose if I could look at his phone or computer or maybe his car.”

  Carl had started shaking his head before I finished. “Sorry. Like I said, my wife was really torn up about this. My next-door neighbor is a retired shrink from UB. He said the faster I got rid of Odell’s stuff, the better it would be for Rhonda.”

  “So you sold it.”

  “Yeah. The police never showed much interest in it—till now.” He glared at me, but only for a moment. “Couldn’t stand the sight of that car so I sold it for a few hundred cash.”

  “Do you have his name, the buyer?”

  “Her. Ellen something. Something with a T. Rented a room down the street. Finished grad school this semester. She’s probably back in New York City by now.”

  And probably a dead end, I thought but said, “I’d still like her name.”

  “Terrio,” he said, index finger pointing toward the ceiling. “Ellen Terrio, Brooklyn.”

  I wrote down the name. “What about your son’s computer and phone?”

  “Odell had this big machine that did everything. We don’t have much use for a computer that fancy—Rhonda’s Kindle is just fine—so I donated it to the community center around the corner. Last I saw it, they were loading math games for kids in their after school program.”

  For a few seconds, I said nothing, calculating the odds of getting a computer tower away from the community center and getting something useful out of a hard drive that may or may not have been reconfigured. At best a longshot. “What about his phone?”

  “I put it in one of those electronic recycling bins at the mall,” Carl said. “I never even tried to turn it on.” He sighed. “Sorry, I’m not much help. You got a card?”

  “Fresh out but I’ll write down my cell number. Call me if you think of something.”

  “Take my number too,” Carl said. “Call me when you catch the motherfuckers.”

  Someone else had told me the same thing a few weeks ago, just before I got shot.

  11

  Glad you called,” Mira said, lowering the volume of what sounded like her favorite group, U2. “We have to talk about Christmas. What to get for Bobby, who’s coming to my house. So far it’s me and Shakti, Bobby and Kayla, you and Phoenix, Julie and her boyfriend. Do you think the Dorans will come this year or will they have family from out of town again?”

  “I’ll ask them,” I said, turning right onto Main from University Avenue. “I’m on my way there now.” I did a quick count in my head. “Are you sure you’ll have room for eleven?” Last year I hadn’t met Phoenix, and Julie Yang, the live-in math grad student who looked after Shakti while Mira worked, didn’t have a boyfriend. The year before last there had been nine of us in Mira’s small dining room, including Jimmy Doran’s wheelchair, at a table designed to seat eight.

  “We can make it work,” she said. “So let me know.”

  “I will.” I hesitated. “You’re not in the middle of something, are you?”

  “Like a post?” She laughed. “Just paperwork. There’s more to my job than autopsies, you know. If I were at the dissection table, I’d be talking to the voice recorder, not you. What’s up? Wait, let me guess. You’re working a case and want me to risk my job because you need a copy of an autopsy repo
rt.”

  “That you would say that means you’re at home, not in the office.”

  She laughed again. “My brother the detective. Nothing gets by him.”

  “I don’t want a copy of the report. I just need to know one thing.”

  “What?”

  I told her about Odell and Keisha’s overdose and her disappearance, that her parents had hired me to find her. I told her no one I had interviewed believed Odell was a user. “I just left his father. He thinks somebody forced heroin into his son. He said there were no tracks on the body, no punctures but the overdose injection site. I just want to verify that.”

  After a moment she said, “I’ll get back to you. You get back to me about the Dorans.”

  “Will do,” I said. “Give my nephew a hug for me.”

  A few minutes later I reached Admiral Road and parked two doors away from a brick house with a center entrance and a steel wheelchair ramp. The house belonged to my former campus police partner, Jimmy Doran, and his wife Peggy Ann. Jimmy had been paralyzed from the waist down a few years earlier in a shootout we had with two spree killers passing through the Buffalo State campus. His silver wheelchair van sat in the driveway, and Peggy Ann’s blue Impala was parked in front of the house. For a moment I just sat in my Escape, looking at their home and collecting my thoughts.

  The side of the van bore modest black letters that said Doran Security Consulting. A former state police officer forced into his second retirement by the shooting, Jimmy had developed the firm with his son Little Jimmy—LJ—who would soon graduate summa cum laude in computer science. They offered high tech security solutions for a diverse clientele, including Driftglass Investigations. LJ was especially adept at cracking codes, hacking into databases, and covering his tracks on the way out. I had no doubt he had gotten into both Keisha’s Dell laptop and her iPhone by now. But as I climbed out of my car and moved toward the steps, I realized that discussing the case with his parents might be useful too. Jimmy had been a smart cop whose instincts sometimes made me look at things differently, and Peggy Ann was a nurse practitioner herself who had retired early to care for her husband.