Nickel City Crossfire

by Gary Earl Ross

  Pulling off my watch cap and pocketing it, I rang the bell.

  After a moment LJ opened the door and said softly, “Hey, G.” Honey-skinned and thin, he was under six feet tall and had the sandy curls typical of many biracial children. He wore a loose blue sweater, slim gray chinos, and sneakers.

  I stepped into the paneled living room, and he shut the door. His father’s motorized wheelchair sat near the lift track along the stairs. The lift chair itself was out of sight, which meant it—and Jimmy—were upstairs, where he kept a manual wheelchair. “It’s quiet.”

  “Dad’s taking his nap. Mom’s at the gym with her friend Leslie.”

  I nodded. As active as Jimmy forced himself to be—working irregular hours for his business, driving with manual controllers, swimming in his all-weather enclosed lap pool out back, curling dumbbells—he needed regular naps. It wasn’t urgent that I wake him right this moment, so I resigned myself to discussing things with him and Peggy Ann another time. “Well, how’d you make out?”

  “I got in,” LJ said. “But next time you bring me something, wear latex gloves so I don’t have to spend time isolating your fingerprints from the owner’s.”

  “She used fingerprint access, and you lifted her prints to unlock her stuff?”

  Grinning, he shrugged. “Too late to use that to get into the phone, so I figured out her passwords. But I wanted to practice making fake fingers anyway.” He walked past me and started toward the office in a converted breakfast room at the back of the house.

  “Superglue and Gummi bears,” I said.

  LJ shrugged. “Actually, surgical glue. Close to super glue, and Mom’s got plenty.”

  It was late afternoon, but the office was still bright because three of the four walls were exteriors full of windows. We sat at one of the tech-cluttered worktables, and LJ pulled over Keisha’s phone and laptop, as well as a large zip-lock plastic bag with printouts, a yellow DSC invoice, and three gelatine blobs—fake fingers.

  “Okay, you can get her emails, texts, call logs, and computer files.” He tapped the plastic bag. “With her ID you can pull down anything she has on the cloud. Oh, and I checked credit card activity. Nothing recent.”

  “Anything especially interesting in her files?”

  “I didn’t read much. Just enough to make sure I got into everything. Besides, exam week starts Monday and I have tons of work to do this weekend.” He hesitated. “But based on what you told me about this lady, I did see something in one of her text messages that sounded kinda like a threat. I tracked the phone number—”

  “A burner,” I said.

  He nodded. “I found where it was sold. A corner store on the east side.”

  “Thanks,” I said. But that information would be useless to me because I had no way of obtaining or executing a search warrant for access to any video surveillance. The most I could do was sit on the store and see if anybody connected to Keisha showed up there.

  As if he’d read my mind, LJ added, “I tried to see if they had security cameras online but I couldn’t find any. They may have a closed system or no cameras at all.”

  “Especially if they’re a front.” In recent years several neighborhood stores had been caught selling drugs, bootleg DVDs, and even handguns. “So what was the threat?”

  LJ unzipped the bag and took out one of the fingers and pressed it against the phone’s home button. The screen lit up—as did his face with a flash of pride. He called up the texts and turned the phone so I could see a single gray text bubble beneath a phone number: Lucky once bitch but remember luck is like lightning.

  I looked at LJ.

  “Lightning doesn’t strike twice,” he said.

  12

  Phoenix texted me hearts and kisses emojis to thank me for the flowers, but she was at a friend’s bachelorette party, so I had Friday night to myself.

  Before a light workout that included free weights and punching past shoulder pain on the heavy bag in my living room, I sent Mira a text that confirmed the Dorans would come to her house for Christmas. After the workout, I showered, toasted a ham and cheese panini on my tabletop George Foreman grill, and popped open a Corona. I ate at the dining counter in my kitchen as I examined Keisha’s phone and computer.

  I went through her iPhone first. Her home screen—which had a picture of earth from space—held the usual icons for the phone’s features and half a dozen games that included Candy Crush and Words with Friends. I tapped Words and looked at the list of unfinished games and saw that Odell and Bianca were among Keisha’s regular challengers. I returned to the home screen and jotted notes as I scrolled through her contacts, call logs, calendar, and texts. Her contact list had more than four hundred names—individuals identified by one name or two, businesses that ranged from Cora’s Curlz salon to EM Tea Coffee Cup Café to pizzerias like LaNova, Bocce, and Just Pizza, national and local professional associations, the Red Cross, more than thirty different medical offices, and two dozen social service agencies. I pulled up each entry, finding only a phone number for most, sometimes an address, and occasionally a birthday or office hours or a note indicating the best time to call.

  Her call logs stretched back over two months and included calls to and from various states, as well as Canada. Most were brief, three or four minutes, just enough time to order food or answer a question or check a bank balance. Many, including three from the burner number LJ had shown me, lasted less than five seconds—just long enough for Keisha to hang up on robocalls or heavy breathers trying to intimidate her. The longest calls were between Keisha and those I already knew were closest to her—her parents, Ileana, Odell, Bianca, and Fatimah, whose frequency of contact with her missing friend was greater than I had been led to believe.

  Why did you lie to me, Fatimah? I made a note to visit her again.

  Keisha’s calendar was mundane—meetings, appointments, reminders, even the date with Odell that ended with the overdose. The text messages ranged from the routine to the ridiculous—work matters, friendly chatter, comments on news stories, here and there jokes, confirmation of meeting times and lunch dates, playful banter and goofy emojis with Odell, some of it sexually suggestive. What emerged from most of the texts was a picture of the relationship Keisha had with each of her texting partners. With most co-workers she kept a professional tone: Must postpone mtg till Fri and LED projector needs bulb before presentation tomorrow. With her women friends there was a supportive sisterhood: LMAO and usual spot, drinks on me and Ugly, don’t buy! under a picture of a dress. With Odell, there was a comfortable intimacy that included shorthand like TOY—thinking of you—and ILY2—I love you too. Other messages between the lovers included things like Pick up wine & Ital bread and Feel like waking up at my place? and Hungry? I can order something. So far there was nothing to suggest they wanted to try drugs together.

  At first, my review of Keisha’s information was clinical and detached. Then I listened to her voice mails, mostly voices I had never heard and names I had seen only on the contact list saying Call me back or You’ll never guess where I am or I just wanted to thank you. I recognized the voices of those I had interviewed—her friends, Dr. Markham, her parents, who had left several worried messages before they realized she had disappeared without her phone. There were two heavy breathing recordings from the burner number that had made the text threat, and I felt a stirring of anger in my gut.

  But it was hearing Odell for the first time that sent a wave of sadness washing over me. It was entirely possible that Carl Williamson had found nothing at his son’s apartment because the organization had another site where product was prepared and money secured. But I doubted that as soon as I heard Odell speak. His voice was higher than his father’s and rang with a joyful fluidity that reminded me of Bobby. Though retired from the classroom, my godfather retained the vocal range and cadences of the natural teacher, the person whose rightful place in the universe was among those who needed to learn something. Odell, I was sure, had the same intellect
ual DNA. That future students would never hear his voice only magnified his loss.

  Carl’s words rang in my head: Call me when you catch the motherfuckers. I thought about the threatening text from a burner: Lucky once bitch.

  I stood up and got another Corona from my refrigerator. As I popped the top, my phone buzzed. I pulled it out of my pocket and said, “Hello.”

  “Gideon Rimes?”

  The voice was female, but its huskiness was familiar. “Yes.”

  “This is Jen Spina. You—”

  “Sergeant Spina! This is a nice surprise.”

  “Call me Jen.”

  “All right, Jen. So, what can I do for you?”

  “I know you talked to my wife today, about her friend who’s missing.”

  “I did.”

  “We talked about it at dinner. She said it would be okay if I called.” She hesitated. “Bianca is kind of reserved, so I’m guessing she didn’t let you know how upset she is.”

  “She made it plain.”

  “Keisha’s good people. So are her parents. They accepted me because Bianca was like another daughter, so I must be okay. I hate to see them left hanging. I hear you got friends in the department. For damn sure bringing in a cop-killer made your stock go up.” She drew in a deep breath. “So if you need anything to help you find her, even on the down-low, please contact me. I’ll run plates, check reports, dig up arrest records—whatever you need that won’t get me shit-canned. If you gotta go somewhere you need back-up, call me. Not the number on the card I gave you in the hospital, but this one, my private cell.”

  I couldn’t remember where I’d put her business card. “All right, Jen. I appreciate it.”

  “If you hear something, please let us know.” Her voice caught. “If it’s bad, tell me first so I can break it to Bianca.”

  Clicking off, I added her number to my directory. Then I sat down and forced my mind back into the case at the right point: Lucky once bitch. I remembered what Phoenix had said at dinner, that the botched break-in might have been Odell’s crew looking for hidden drug money or rival dealers trying to learn how Odell moved product. Since I had begun to believe Odell had no crew, the break-in was either unrelated to Keisha’s disappearance or an attempt to find something else. Lucky once bitch. Had that come from the would-be burglar? If so, what had he been trying to find? I took a hefty swallow of Corona as I thought about that. Then I turned on Keisha’s laptop.

  Her home screen background was a photo of a gleaming glacier shedding a chunk of ice. Against the brilliant white and stunning blue were assorted program icons, browser and email links, and several large folders labeled Humanitas, Church, Pictures, Misc, Games, and Professional. My first pass was through the folders. Most were like Russian nesting dolls, full of additional folders and files. Humanitas held Projects, Programs, Letters & Memos, Minutes, Staffing, Studies, Case Histories, Outreach, Outside Agencies, and at least twenty others that would take hours to examine. Church was home to Newsletters, Meeting Minutes, Cong Letters, Church History, Bldg Needs, and Memb Roll. Pictures had Family, Holidays, Vacations, Phone Pix, and Random. Misc was a nightmare of disconnected folders and files, a dumping ground to help keep the desktop uncluttered. Only Games and Professional had no other folders. The former had program icons for Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit, puzzles, several Sims games, and a handful of action games. The latter had only Word files, JPEGs, and PDFs of Keisha’s resumes, degrees, and certifications.

  There was nothing that, on the surface, would interest a thief.

  Grateful that she was organized, I began opening Humanitas files and skimming through them, convinced I was going to be up for a long time. When I finished my Corona, I stood up to make coffee. At that moment my cell phone buzzed again.

  “Hello.”

  The voice on the other end was breathless. “Gideon? Ileana. Are you free to join me at a homeless shelter right now?”

  “Is Keisha there?”

  “No, Veronica Surowiec. She says she saw Keisha earlier today. And bring money or she won’t talk. She already got my last twenty.”

  13

  Veronica Surowiec was hideous, the remnant of a once beautiful woman who had fallen into hell. Honey blonde hair now dry as broom straw stuck through holes in her old red watch cap. Her blue eyes were cloudy, the sallow skin of her face dotted with blisters. Behind her cracked full lips were the discolored, crumbling teeth of a long-time meth addict. If her hands were any indication, the body beneath her filthy mustard coat was skeletal and unwashed.

  With her long charcoal coat open, Ileana Tassiopulos and I sat across from Veronica at a table in the back of a deconsecrated Bidwell Parkway church that now housed Sanctuary Nimbus, a ragtag social collective which had replaced church pews with folding cots and kept a soup kitchen in the basement. It was a cold night but only half the cots were occupied. Maybe homelessness was on the decline, but it was far from being a problem solved.

  Sanctuary Nimbus, Ileana had explained as she led me from the front door, was the brainchild of an entrepreneur whose epiphany about asceticism and social responsibility would in another time have been called a nervous breakdown. Decades earlier, Paul Pollard had devised the Omicron Seven management system. For a time the rage in business schools and multinationals determined to humanize capitalism, Omicron Seven had made Pollard wealthy enough to squeak through the Great Recession with a third of his assets intact but less of his reason. Some years after his emotional collapse, he returned home to Buffalo and founded the collective, which offered food, shelter, and conversation to those in need, along with GED classes and workshops on the Seven Micromorphoses, the small changes that would sculpt individual and group identity into a more effective social personhood.

  “So that was him,” I’d said, glancing back at the elderly bald man enveloped in an oversized cloak that resembled a brown monk’s robe. “The guy with the frozen smile who opened the door, Pastor Paul.”

  “Yes, but he’s not ordained in any faith. Pastor Paul is a nickname.”

  Omicron Seven sounded like bullshit to me. Paul Pollard, now speaking to a wraith of a man seated on a cot, struck me as one who straddled the line between altruism and mental illness. But I said nothing as Ileana motioned me to a chair and introduced me to Veronica. I shook her hand—bony, chapped, with ragged nails and open cuts encrusted with dirt. I sat without reaching for the mini-bottle of hand sanitizer in my jacket pocket. Ileana spoke in tones intended to put Veronica at ease, repeating what she had explained before my arrival, that Keisha was in trouble and I was going to help her. My back to the room and the buzz of other voices, I took two tens and three fives from my wallet. I held them where Veronica could see them. Her dull eyes sharpened a bit. She looked at me with a faint leer, a mild kind of come-hither smile.

  “Veronica, tell Mr. Rimes what you told me, and he’ll give that money to you.”

  “One bill at a time.” My need to find my clients’ daughter struggled with my guilt for feeding a drug habit. “The more you tell, the more you get.”

  “Fuggin’ real?” Veronica’s voice was surprisingly deep but she slurred her words.

  “Fucking real,” I said. “I hear you saw Keisha Simpkins today. Where?”

  “Here.” She opened her hand, waiting for me to put a bill in it.

  I moved a five toward her and lowered it slowly. “When? What time?”

  “S’afternoon.” Her fingers crumpled Lincoln’s face, and the bill disappeared into a pocket quickly enough to impress a magician. Her hand returned to the table, her fingers uncurling in anticipation of my next question.

  “But the Sanctuary doesn’t open till evening,” Ileana said.

  “So why was she here today?” I said.

  “I dunno.” Veronica’s hand made a gimme gesture.

  I shook my head. “Just thinking out loud. I didn’t expect you to answer that one.” I held out the next bill. “But why were you here so early?”

  She hesitated, looked off, and
said, “Goin’ to Elmwood.”

  Lie or truth? Her demeanor gave me pause but the stretch of Elmwood just a few blocks away was home to a dozen restaurants and coffee shops. She might have been on her way there to beg. I gave her the bill. “Do you know where she went or where she’s staying?”

  “No.” Veronica wriggled her fingers, eager to close them around my last five.

  I pulled it back when she reached for it. “If you don’t know where Keisha is, I don’t think you can help me find her.” I made a show of reaching for my wallet to put away the rest of the money.

  “I saw her someplace else, shithead.”

  “Where? Other shelters?”

  Her hand was still open, “Me to know, ash-hole.”

  I put the five in her palm.

  “Salvation Army, yesterday.”

  “Has to be the one on Main Street downtown but I called earlier and she’s not there,” Ileana said. “Veronica walks all over town but doesn’t get out to the suburbs. Right, Vee?”

  Veronica nodded without looking at her former colleague.

  I leaned toward her, but her eyes were on the first ten. “Okay, this time I need more than one answer. In your walks all over town, have you seen Keisha at other places—and what places?”

  Browning front teeth clamped over her lower lip, Veronica nodded again. “The Friary,” she said after a moment. “Cornerstone. Gerard Place. Night People. Mercy House.”

  “Shelters that take women,” Ileana said.

  At that moment voices rose in anger some distance behind me—“Touch my shit I’ll kill you, nigger!”—and as I turned around there was a loud crash.

  “Who you callin’ nigger, you muhfuckin’ hillbilly!”

  About thirty feet away from us, two full-bearded men, one black, one white, faced off amid overturned cots. They began to move in a tight circle as they prepared to engage. Those nearest them scrambled away, and no one produced a cell phone to capture a bum fight video for YouTube. In dirty camo and half-crouching, the gray-bearded white man held a tactical folding knife in his right hand—carbon steel, the black blade suggested. Taller and fatter, the other man was about my complexion. He wore a threadbare pea coat. His hands were balled into fists but his fighting stance was all wrong for defending himself against a knife attack.