Nickel City Crossfire

by Gary Earl Ross

  I slid the pair of tens to Ileana and stood up, my legs beginning to move. My brain was already calculating how quickly I could reach the man in camo and how best to disarm him without drawing my Glock. Before I could get to them, however, another man darted in from my left—a sandy-haired man in jeans and a pile-lined suede jacket. He looked about thirty but moved like a teenager. In a quick, fluid motion he stepped between the combatants and caught the white man’s wrist. He twisted hard and kicked the blade aside when it clattered to the floor. I bent to pick it up when I got there and closed it.

  The younger man clutched the older by his jacket and pulled him up to his full height. “You know the rules, Norm. You can’t stay here if you fight.”

  “Sorry, Brother Grace, but he touched my shit.” He pointed to a black plastic garbage bag a few feet away.

  “I ain’t touch nothin’, you crazy fool!” the black man said.

  “I got this, Charlie,” Brother Grace said, giving Norm a hard shake. “Charlie doesn’t want anything you got. Now get your shit and go.”

  “Then I want my knife back,” Norm whined, cocking his head toward me. “That other nigger picked it up. Make him give it back.”

  Brother Grace looked at me and grinned. Then he turned back to Norm. “You really are a dumb shit, aren’t you? Can’t you see that man is a cop?”

  Everyone nearby began to cast sidelong glances in my direction, some to edge away. Charlie, who never thanked Brother Grace for saving him from a belly wound, started toward the other side of the room.

  “I was you,” Brother Grace said to Norm, “I’d grab my bag and go before he took me downtown and hooked me up to one of those machines.”

  Norm looked at me, his eyes widening in a panic that spoke volumes about his mental health. “Not the machines,” he whispered.

  “You still got time to get over to Night People,” Brother Grace said.

  “Occifer, I’m sorry,” Norm said, hefting his garbage bag and backing toward the front door. “I’m real sorry.” When he got to the exit, he turned on his heel, pushed the crash bar, and disappeared into the night. His exasperated “Niggers!” was audible as the door closed.

  Handing Brother Grace the knife, I said, “I’m not a cop, not anymore.”

  Pocketing the knife, he smiled, his teeth strong and white. “But you still got the look, my man.” He nodded as if congratulating himself on his perception. “You still got the look.”

  “Gideon Rimes.” I stuck out my hand.

  “Jeremiah Grace,” he said, taking it. “I work here with Pastor Paul. So what brings you to Sanctuary Nimbus? You don’t look like our typical volunteer.”

  “Just helping a friend.”

  He looked past me to Ileana and Veronica. “Miss Tassi-whassis, in the nice coat. She must be your friend.” Turning back to me, he half-whispered, “Can’t be Nasty Nica.”

  I tried to match his volume level. “Nasty Nica?”

  Brother Grace glanced back at Veronica. “Don’t know where it started but her street handle is Nasty Nica. Maybe ‘cause she cusses like a biker—or maybe ‘cause she’ll give anybody a hummer for five bucks.” After an impression of her throaty, slurred speech—“Blow job fi’ dolluhs”—he shook his head. “I hear she can be haggled down to two. The microbes in that mouth have gotta be in their own version of World War III.”

  I looked back at Veronica and felt a stab of sadness anyone could have fallen so far. She wasn’t close enough to hear what he had said about her but she watched Brother Grace intently, her expression somewhere between hunger and uncertainty. Just then the phone in my jacket pocket buzzed once. I didn’t check the text because Pastor Paul joined us, his mild confusion tinged with concern: “Are you all right, brother?”

  “Fine, Pastor.” Brother Grace hooked a thumb toward me, and light glinted off the raised infinity symbol on the large stainless steel ring he wore. The print above and below the symbol was too small for me to read. “This guy had my back.”

  “Thank you, Mister—what was it again?” The old man appeared to concentrate but his unfaltering smile made the effort seem eerie. “I know you’re a friend of Ileana’s.”

  “Rimes. I met you when you let me in.” Not ten minutes ago, I thought.

  “Mr. Rimes. Thank you.” He shook my hand, his grip feeble, liver spots south of his knuckles. “Brother Grace is one of my best helpers. We could not function without him.”

  “You’re not gonna lose me, Pastor.” Jeremiah Grace patted the old man’s back. “I owe you too much. Why don’t you finish your rounds and let me talk to Mr. Rimes and Miss Ileana for a minute.” A hand on each shoulder, he began to steer Pastor Paul away from me.

  But the pastor turned back as if attached to a resistant spring. “Maybe you can get this strapping young man to volunteer.” As he studied me, I wondered if the flutter in his voice was from a neurological disorder like Parkinson’s. “Latecomers will need a meal and conversation. Mr. Rimes, you look like a man who’s seen lots of things to talk about.”

  Pastor Paul moved away and bent to speak to an oversized woman sitting on one of the cots. She wore layers of rags, three scarves on her head, and filthy fingerless gloves. Toothless, she smiled at the attention and slapped her knee when he said something funny. Watching him, I remembered an article I’d once read about mental illness among saints.

  Brother Grace turned toward Ileana and Veronica as if ready to go to them but I asked him a question before he could move: “How long have you volunteered here?”

  He grinned. “I don’t serve food and launder sheets. I’m the shelter troubleshooter—kind of the operations manager. Only four of us get paychecks—Judy the cook, Marco the business guy, Drew the custodian, and me. Pastor and I are the only ones who live on site.”

  “You live here, in the building?”

  “Not here, with the drop-ins.” He shook his head. “I’m up all night. Volunteers clean the church after folks clear out in the morning. There’s no place else in the building to sleep. The basement’s too cold. The bell tower is locked because it’s not safe. Our rooms are in the parsonage next door. I crash in the morning. Then I’m up by three for deliveries.”

  “Deliveries?”

  “Food, blankets, linen, used clothing, cleaning supplies. Sometimes money.”

  “Pastor Paul gets a lot out of you for the roof over your head.”

  He laughed. “A roof that needs as much work as the rest of this joint. Pastor is rich but even he can’t do all that needs to be done.” Then Brother Grace started toward the table in the back. I followed him.

  “Hi, Miss Tassi-whassis,” he said when he got there. “I’m sorry but I always have trouble saying your name.”

  She looked at him without smiling. “I’ve told you to call me Ileana.”

  “Miss Ileana,” he said, his tone ingratiating. “I truly respect what you do, so it’s only right I show that respect.” He shifted his gaze to Veronica—who looked down like a puppy caught standing over a shredded pillow—but he continued to speak to Ileana. “You try to help people. You’re a good person.” Then his voice sharpened a bit. “Nica, you haven’t been taking advantage of Miss Ileana’s kindness, have you?”

  “No.” Veronica’s voice was flat but tight. “I’m tired, so I’m gonna go lay down now.” She stood and pulled from under her chair a pair of bulging cloth shopping bags. Then she moved toward an empty cot at the center of the room.

  “You know we worked together,” Ileana said to Brother Grace. “She was—is—a doctor. She’ll never practice again but I’d like to get her back into rehab. Maybe then—”

  “Wish I could help,” Brother Grace said. “I know what it’s like to hit bottom and I know she needs more than a bed. But I got my hands full keeping this place together every night, and I never know who’s gonna show up. The most I can say is, when she shows up here, she never tries to use.”

  Because she’d be afraid to, I thought.

  14

  I
leana’s eyes were moist as she sipped her tea. “I hate seeing her like that, and I hate thinking Keisha might end up the same way.”

  With our coats on the backs of our chairs, we were sitting at a small corner table in Spot Coffee on Elmwood. We had retreated there to discuss our visit to Sanctuary Nimbus. Ileana had given Veronica one of the tens I’d slid to her. The other we had used to buy green tea for her and black coffee for me. Now I drank my coffee in silence as Ileana said whatever she needed to say. I wanted her to vent before I asked any questions, to get past the distress of seeing Veronica before I shared what I now knew about Keisha’s drug overdose. Because it was almost closing time, few people were there, and no one was near us.

  “I wish we could do something to help her. We tried before to reach out to her, several times—Keisha, me, other people at work. She pulled away every time and even ran when she saw us coming. But tonight she looked worse than ever. She didn’t run when I came up on her. Her eyes were glazed but she knew who I was. Her skin and teeth are awful. She’s lost so much weight, I don’t see how she can go on much longer.” Ileana finally wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Now it’s starting all over again with Keisha. God, I don’t know if I—if I’m strong enough to lose another friend to this shit.”

  She began to cry, quietly enough not to draw attention to us. I handed her my napkin because hers was already in shreds. I waited for her to finish. Finally, after dabbing her eyes, she blew her nose and let out a deep breath. Smiling awkwardly, she looked at me. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be this way.”

  “No need to apologize.” I placed my hand over hers. “I understand. We haven’t lost Keisha yet. I promise to do everything I can to find her.” I withdrew my hand, locked my fingers under my chin, and thought for a moment. I needed to talk, to get a reaction to all I had learned in round one of my investigation. But Ileana didn’t know any of it. I would have to ease her into it, which meant I would have to trust her. My gut told me I could, that her concern for Keisha was genuine. “I’ll need your help,” I said finally.

  “Anything.”

  “Your eyes and ears for one. But first, Veronica. Besides being wasted and wasting away, how did she seem to you?”

  “Obscene.” She half-chuckled. “Always did have a mouth on her. If something struck her as stupid or wrong, Veronica wouldn’t hesitate to say so with language that used to get my mouth washed out with soap. She was persistent and stubborn enough never to back down.”

  “So she was pretty gutsy.”

  “Still is. I’ve heard from people she’s approached for money that if you give her a dollar, she’ll demand two. We must have seemed like a winning scratch-off tonight.”

  I nodded. “Drugs, drink, power, sex, religion—all those things don’t change who you are. They just magnify it, right?”

  “Yes.” She sipped more tea. “So does being on the street. Homelessness doesn’t make you less human. It underscores everything human about you, for better or worse. Got a drug problem? Now it’s hopeless. If you’re nice and fall on hard times, your kindness is a liability. Being homeless makes a happy person seem profoundly sad, a complainer a curmudgeon, a constant talker more annoying. Mental illness seems more pronounced—like Norm’s.”

  “Did Veronica seem in any way less like herself tonight?”

  “No, she was—” Ileana caught her lower lip between her teeth. “When it was just us with her, she was this bitter homeless Veronica that called everybody asshole. But toward the end she was different.”

  “How?”

  “Skittish. Almost afraid when Brother Grace came over.”

  Feeling a stab of gratitude that she’d confirmed my perception, I said, “Tell me about Brother Grace.”

  Ileana looked down for a moment, perhaps collecting her thoughts. “Sanctuary Nimbus started maybe nine years ago, with Pastor Paul funding it out of pocket until it was established. For a few years, it had a good board that helped it get a 501c3 designation, grants, and other support. It had a bookkeeper, a lovely older woman named Betsy Kling, who lived in the parsonage and may or may not have shared Pastor Paul’s bed. Whatever she was to him, she was the one who kept his quest organized and on track.” Ileana sighed.

  “What happened to her?”

  “Cancer,” she said. “Almost five years ago. Pastor Paul was devastated.”

  “Was that the beginning of his current decline?”

  She nodded. “The Sanctuary foundered for several months until Marco Madden came on as business manager and Brother Grace began to help with day to day operations.”

  “Where did Brother Grace come from?”

  “I’m not sure but I think the Southern Tier, maybe Jamestown. I heard him say something once about growing up not far from where they first put Scary Lucy.”

  I bit back a smile. Home to Lucille Ball and the National Comedy Center, Jamestown, near the New York border with Pennsylvania, had made the national news a few years earlier because a toothy bronze statue looked more like a short-haired bride of Frankenstein than the city’s most famous daughter. Replaced by a more accurate rendering nicknamed Lovely Lucy, Scary Lucy was still on display in another part of the comedienne’s memorial park.

  “Also, he knows what it’s like to hit bottom,” I said. “Any idea what he meant?”

  “No.”

  “Pastor Paul seems to depend on him for quite a bit.”

  “Paul Pollard is old, declining, as you said. He’s likely in poor health, maybe showing signs of dementia. I think it’s safe to say at this point he needs all the help he can get.” Ileana shredded another corner of the napkin. “I don’t know how well organized his operation is, but if something happens to him, Sanctuary Nimbus will fall apart, figuratively and literally.”

  “You don’t think Jeremiah Grace can step in and save the day? I mean, he has the name for that kind of work.”

  “If that’s his real name.” She paused. “If he doesn’t turn it into a cult.”

  “You don’t trust him. Or like him.”

  “No.” Lips pressed tight, she inhaled deeply through her nose. “There’s something about him that’s off. Unnerving. Even creepy.”

  “Maybe a little dangerous,” I said.

  “Maybe a lot.”

  “The way he treated Norm?”

  “Yes. He almost seemed to enjoy the cruelty of it.”

  I nodded. “Did you and Keisha ever talk about him?”

  Ileana shrugged. “Only in passing. She thought he was kind of a jerk too.”

  I drank more coffee and sat back, ready to trust her. “Now let’s talk about Keisha. You called the Salvation Army and she wasn’t there but Veronica saw her at several places.”

  “If she told the truth.”

  “There is that,” I said. “But for now let’s assume she did.”

  “All right.”

  “Let’s assume she saw Keisha at several shelters, where people would know her from Humanitas.”

  “Some staff would know her but maybe not all the volunteers.”

  I thought about that a moment. “What if she went to the Salvation Army and the other places not as Dr. Keisha Simpkins but as someone else?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “In ratty old clothes, her face hidden from those she knows. Essentially, in disguise.”

  Ileana wrinkled her brow. “Why would she do that?”

  “Veronica’s life spiraled out of control but Keisha’s wasn’t there yet, at the point of no return. Would you agree?”

  “Yes.”

  “She had a drug overdose nobody thinks was her fault.” I resisted the urge to count off my points on my fingers. “Even if it was, she had rehab and a job to come back to. She has a home, family, friends—none of which say they have seen her. So why did she leave without her car and cell phone? Why would a woman with a solid support system drop off the grid and mingle among those served by shelters?” I leveled my gaze at Ileana, hoping she would remember what she had tol
d me about the homeless when we were in her office. “Why would Keisha make herself invisible?”

  Ileana’s mouth fell open and her eyes widened. “Because she doesn’t want to be seen.”

  “Or found.”

  “You mean somebody’s looking for her? Who?”

  “Someone she believes will hurt her family and friends if she’s anywhere near them.”

  “My God!” She sat up straighter. “Do you think Brother Grace has anything to do with this?”

  “No idea. I just have a gut feeling he’s bad news for people he’s supposed to help.”

  “If he knows somebody’s looking for Keisha, he’ll sell her out in a heartbeat?”

  “Right.” Then I told her about the black Navigator, the attempted break-in at the Simpkins home, the absence of any evidence suggesting drug use or dealing on the part of either Keisha or Odell, Bianca’s certainty that Keisha was self-reliant, Carl’s belief someone had killed his son, and the threatening text on Keisha’s phone. Finally, I said I had a friend in the medical examiner’s office and showed her Mira’s last text, which I had read in my car before driving to the coffee shop:

  No trax. No bruising on arm. 1 pinpoint where you said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “One needle mark means it’s murder,” I said. “Lack of bruising means the M.E. concluded Odell injected himself without being forced. That’s why I need your help, your eyes and ears—and maybe a couple of others to watch shelters and call me if they see Keisha. Maybe somebody in your outer office, if you feel you can trust them, but nobody else.”

  “Cassidy and Yvonne,” she said. “I can trust them. Fareed has a wife and baby and probably can’t get out at night. I’ll set up a meeting with the girls tomorrow if you like.” When I nodded, she swallowed, fear taking root in her eyes.