Nickel City Crossfire

by Gary Earl Ross

  “The good news is, you won’t bleed out and you still have your dick,” I said, undoing his brown and gold tie and pulling it from around his neck. “The bad news? I don’t trust you to keep quiet.” I wrapped the tie around his mouth twice and knotted it between his teeth. Flaring nostrils told me he could breathe. Then his beady eyes became discs full of fear.

  Keisha had come down the steps and now stood behind me, gun in hand. “Hello, QC. The bitch is back.”

  “Keisha, eyes on the main course,” I said. “Yes, it’s personal but this idiot’s only the appetizer.”

  “I know.” She slipped the gun back into her shoulder bag. “I just want to see him sweat.” Moving from behind me, she put one boot heel against the makeshift bandage and pressed down with all her weight.

  QC’s eyes grew so wide his irises were ringed by white. He shook and jittered and made a horrible muffled trumpeting in his throat, cheeks filling like a bellows. When she stepped back, he was puffing hard, his forehead slick. His eyes were still fearful but now wet.

  “There,” she said, as I stood. “That was for Odell.”

  Just then the front door opened, letting in another blast of cold air. Harlow Graves walked in, his face twisted in apparent disgust, and said something I couldn’t hear over his shoulder to Oscar, who was behind him. Graves saw me and stopped in mid-sentence as I leveled my Glock at him. Then he saw Keisha and QC. He started to turn as if to head back outside, but Oscar caught his arm and twisted it into a hammerlock that kept him angled to one side. Graves muttered something about making us pay—until I motioned them over, placed the barrel against his forehead, and told him one word or wrong move would make Rosalind a widow.

  Oscar looked at Keisha and smiled. “Girl, your daddy is sure gonna be thrilled to see you. Soon as I can, I’ll hug you for him.” Then he looked at QC, who had slid down to the floor in front of the stairs. “Which one is he?”

  “The fake cousin,” I said. “He shot himself when I shocked him.” I looked at Graves. “I take it he denied any involvement.”

  “Denied every word,” Oscar said. “Told me he was just a lawyer who didn’t know anything about FBF.”

  “Yet here he is sharing guard duty with FBF’s chairman of the board, and the CEO, both of them cold-blooded killers.” I gestured to Graves’s tie. “We need to truss him up the same way, so we can finish this without interference.”

  Nodding, Oscar removed Graves’s tie as I pulled out more plasticuffs. It took less than a minute to immobilize and silence Graves, whom we left on the floor near QC.

  Despite the lessening of fervor and the slowing of the drumming that meant the song was winding down, I gave Oscar and Keisha a moment to embrace. I took that time to type and send my final text message of the night. Afterward, I asked if they were ready. Both nodded, tears in their eyes. Then, with Keisha on my left and Oscar on the other side of her, each of us with an arm around her, we pushed open the door and started down the aisle. I kept my right hand inside my jacket, near my shoulder holster.

  In a billowing white surplice with a kente cloth stole bracketing the cross that hung from his neck, Dr. Markham had just returned to the wooden lectern. When he saw us, his mouth fell open. “Oh, my God!” he said after a heartbeat or two, so close to the microphone his words reverberated. “Even as the good Lord takes one of our children from us, he sends another one home!” He pointed to us. “Praise the might of our Lord!”

  Seated at the piano with her back to the congregation, Loni spun around on the bench and froze, clerical collar bobbling with her swallows, her white surplice and black underskirt twisting and riding up to reveal too much thigh, which would have been considered indecent if anyone had been paying attention to her.

  But as far as I could tell, all eyes were on us as we made our way through the center of the assembly. I saw mouths hanging open, smiles, looks of disbelief, confusion on the faces of children and a few of the elderly—and Jen, in her purple ski jacket and rising from an end seat beside Bianca. Following my texted instructions, she moved near the entrance Dante was supposed to secure. I heard gasps, voices, utterances of gratitude for God’s mercy and goodness. We moved slowly, as I had said we must. To observers it looked as if Keisha had difficulty walking, forcing us to go at her pace. This gave Oscar and me a chance to assess our surroundings, to see what might unfold. As I expected, we commanded so much attention that people rose and came to us, surrounding us and obscuring Keisha as a target.

  When we reached the front, Dr. Markham came down the chancery’s two steps and embraced Keisha as if she were his own daughter. Tears squeezed out of his closed eyes and for a moment I felt sorry about what he would soon learn about his wife. Then he shooed the bustling, chattering congregants back to their seats, saying, “We’re gonna let this child tell her story!” and “Hush now!” and “God’s given us this chance, so we must listen!” He put his hand in the small of Keisha’s back, to steer her up to the lectern, but she twisted away from him with a fluid motion that nearly upset his balance, pulled the pistol from her shoulder bag, and pointed it right between Loni Markham’s eyes.

  This time the collective gasp and subsequent babbling were so loud I was sure no one heard Keisha say, “Up!” But everyone saw the gun. Everyone saw Loni stand and watched as Keisha twisted her arm in a hammerlock and forced her up the chancery steps—keeping Loni between herself and the door I expected Dante to use, as I had instructed. In the silence that followed, all anyone heard was Dr. Markham say, “Keisha?”

  Now Jen was by the closed right side door, hand in her coat, waiting. Oscar moved to the opposite door, his hand holding the closed pocket baton he sometimes used to discourage abusive husbands from trying to see their wives sheltered at Hope’s Haven. I stayed near Keisha but gave her enough room to position Loni up at the lectern.

  “Keisha,” Dr. Markham said again. “Child, what has come over you?” He clearly wanted to take a step toward her but dared not move. “What have they done to you?” He looked at me with an uncertainty that was trying to become anger but kept dissolving into fear. “Mr. Rimes, what is this—”

  “Must be drugs!” Loni shouted. “She’s on drugs again! Somebody help me!”

  “Liar!” Keisha screamed, pushing the gun barrel into the side of Loni’s head, hard.

  The door near Jen began to open but stopped partway. She pulled her gun and flashed her badge to the handful of people looking at her. Several crouched down in their pews.

  “You’re going to tell them everything,” Keisha said, “or you’re going to die.”

  “Keisha, please,” Dr. Markham begged. He looked at Jen and then at me with my hand still inside my jacket. “Please put down your guns. All of you. This is the house of God.”

  “If God’s given us this chance to listen, Dr. Markham,” I said, “I think we should.”

  The door near Jen eased shut.

  Exerting pressure on Loni’s right arm and putting the PPQ against her ribs, Keisha nudged her sideways just enough to put herself behind the lectern’s microphone.

  “All of you know me,” she said. “A lot of you have known me since I was a baby. A few weeks ago some of you comforted my folks when I was in the hospital for an overdose. You said you couldn’t believe I was doing drugs. The truth is, I wasn’t. My boyfriend—” Her voice faltered as tears began. “My fiancé Odell and I were cut off by two men and forced to inject heroin at gunpoint.” She paused and took a deep breath. “The person behind it all was a woman I trusted, a woman I looked up to and loved, a woman who was nothing but a she-wolf in clergy clothing. Now Loni Markham is going to tell you why she’s been trying to kill me since I got out of the hospital.” Amid the congregation’s gasps and utterances of denial, Keisha sidestepped enough to jerk Loni to the microphone. “Tell them.”

  Loni’s gulp sounded over the public address system. “This is all a misunderstanding.”

  “Tell them, you bitch!” Keisha said. “Tell them about the drugs and t
he money laundering and your brother.”

  “Brother?” Dr. Markham’s surprise was underscored by the murmurs that rippled through the crowd. “We’ve been together over twenty years. You said you were an only child.”

  “Tell them!” Keisha screamed. “You think I won’t shoot? Remember, I still love the man I saw die.” She released Loni’s arm and stepped back, keeping the gun leveled at her.

  I looked at Jen and then at Oscar. So far, no additional movement from either door. Where the hell was Dante? Had he retreated because he couldn’t see the situation? Had he gone through the basement to the front of the building and found QC? Were they starting his Navigator even now?

  As the congregation listened in stunned silence and her husband sank onto the piano bench in horror, Loni confirmed the basic details of her foundation’s entanglement with FBF Development, a company headed by a brother she had left behind in Detroit years ago, along with the rest of her dysfunctional family. He had found her some years back, she said, and blackmailed her into cooperating with him. She spun the story with a sincerity that made her an unwitting pawn in a Faustian bargain to increase the wealth and good works of Sermon on the Mount and its foundation. Even as she spoke, however, I saw doubt, disappointment, and anger on enough faces to know she had lost the congregation. Loni too must have seen that any sympathy she hoped to rouse evaporated with each sentence. After saying the decision to kill Keisha had been her brother’s, she stopped speaking and dropped her mask.

  If this were Salem in 1692, I thought, she’d already be on her way to Gallows Hill.

  Seething, Loni turned to Keisha. “There. Happy now?”

  “No,” Keisha said. She pulled the trigger twice, hitting Loni squarely in the chest.

  For a moment there was a perfect stillness in the church.

  There had been no explosions, nothing to make anyone cower in fear of a third shot. Those who ducked had done so reflexively, but the absence of sonic booms was confusing. The snap of the PPQ was not unlike the phfft of a suppressor, but there was no extension on the barrel. As if surprised she was still standing, Loni looked down at her chest and saw the huge splotch of blue staining her robe. Then she looked at Keisha, who fired again and again, each snap of the CO2 cartridge adding yellow, green, more blue, and purple to the swirl of color on her vestments.

  “A paintball gun!” Loni screamed. “A fucking paintball gun!” Hands curled into claws, she lunged for Keisha.

  Just then there was a distant phfft and a chunk of the lectern blew off. A second shot whizzed past me and hit something as I screamed, “Everybody down!” and dropped. A third shot hit the piano as I tried to get a fix on the shooter. It just missed Dr. Markham, still on the bench. But I saw the flash that time. Though it had been minimized by the silencer, it came from a silhouette standing behind the front panel of the choir loft. “Jen, the loft!”

  We both fired two shots at the loft, our gunfire loud enough to elicit screams as the silhouette ducked out of sight.

  I charged up the center aisle, yelling “Stay down! Stay down!” and Jen raced along the wall, shouting “Police officer! Call nine-one-one!” We reached the narthex doors at the same time and stood on either side of the center, straining to see movement through the beveled amber glass. Nothing. I signaled I would go through on a three-count, and Jen nodded. Then I kicked open one of the doors and plunged through.

  The narthex was empty, save for Harlow Graves, still tied and gagged but now dead, a scorched bullet hole in the center of his forehead. QC’s cuffs had been cut and left on the floor. With Jen on the other side, gun ready, I eased open the front door, expecting a shot. Instead, through a light snowfall, I saw a body sprawled on his belly halfway down the stairs.

  Jen covered me as I went down. I didn’t need to turn him over to see who it was. The split left leg of his pants told me it was QC. The blood pooled around the hole at the base of his skull told me he was dead.

  “That the guy?” Jen said when I returned to the top. “Did we hit him?”

  I shook my head. “His partner.”

  “What happened?”

  “I guess he couldn’t keep up.”

  We heard the sirens before we pulled the front door shut.

  “This is gonna be a real shit show,” Jen said while we were still alone in the narthex. “Better give me your gun and we both better wipe our texts. I was just here to visit my wife’s childhood church and got caught up in a shootout. You good with that?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. I handed her my Glock and QC’s gun, both of which she pocketed, and then my lock pick gun.

  “Jesus, Rimes. Are you gonna hire me if I lose my job?”

  “They’ll process my gun as part of this scene and get it back to me. But burglary tools—”

  “Yeah, yeah.” She pocketed the lock pick gun too. “What about your friend? He carrying?”

  “A pocket baton. He works security.”

  Jen nodded. “I don’t know his name yet, so don’t tell me. And don’t tell me any more about your plan with Keisha. Did you know the whole time her gun wasn’t real?”

  “Odell got her into paintball. A PPQ replica was one of the things I found in her closet when her parents let me go through her home.”

  “All right then. I got up when the gun came out but I couldn’t announce myself or take a shot when I thought doing so would endanger lives.”

  “Makes sense to me,” I said.

  We pushed through to the sanctuary and walked down the aisle. There was turmoil on both sides as people asked whether it was safe to leave or if we had caught the shooter. There were also tears and prayers and people still in shock.

  Reaching the center, Jen took charge. She called for quiet and again announced that she was a cop, off-duty. “Police are on their way. Get comfortable and stay exactly where you are. It’s going to be a long night with a lot of questions. When you’re asked what happened, just tell what you saw. Now, is anyone hurt or in need of medical attention?”

  “Here,” came a trembling, tearful voice. It was Dr. Markham, seated on the steps with his wife’s head in his lap. A few choir members were gathered around him, crying and holding onto each other.

  As Jen and I walked toward Dr. Markham and the choir members, we saw Keisha and Bianca some distance away from them, holding each other and crying.

  “Hurt but long past medical attention,” Dr. Markham said. “She’s with the healer of all healers now.”

  50

  Just before the detectives arrived, I called Phoenix and said, “It’s finished. As soon as the police are done with me, I’ll drop off your car and leave the key on one of the hooks just inside your door. It’ll probably be late so don’t bother waiting up.” I said nothing then about all that had happened since Piñero had dropped us off yesterday afternoon. She knew nothing of my breaking into Tito’s home. Having read the paper, she might have guessed that the Sanctuary Nimbus fire had something to do with my case but wouldn’t know for sure. She couldn’t know Loni Markham had died from a bullet likely intended for Keisha Simpkins or that Dante Cuthbert had silenced two liabilities before fleeing into the night. She didn’t ask how the case ended or if I was all right. She said, “Okay,” and nothing more.

  Of course, there were things I didn’t know either.

  Much would emerge over the next several days as the investigation continued. Fingerprints led to the unsealing of a juvie record that showed QC Griffin was actually Alton Kimbrough, whose resemblance to Dante Cuthbert made people assume they were related. Kimbrough and Dante had shared a cell in juvie when Dante spent time there for pushing the real Quentin Cuthbert Griffin in front of a car. Marco Madden would be found in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and would eventually explain the intricacies of the relationship among Flame Bright Fame, the Sermon on the Mount Community Development Foundation, Sanctuary Nimbus, and the Immortals. Within weeks the investigation would expand to include the New York State Police, the Chautauqua County Police, the Detroi
t Police, the FBI, the DEA, the ATF, and the Department of the Treasury.

  As Jen had said, a real shit show.

  Also, I had no idea that despite a nationwide BOLO that included his description and his Navigator, Dante Cuthbert would not be caught that week. Nor did I imagine that facing down a killer with a paintball gun would be the stuff of national news or that appearing on camera for all four of Buffalo’s network affiliates for the next couple days would make Jen Spina emerge as the hero of the evening. Having gone to the church with her wife, who felt the need to pray for her missing childhood friend, Jen had been there when Keisha came in with a family friend to confront the woman who had tried to kill her. No one mentioned my name in the media that night or any time during the next week. I was happy about that.

  What I did know when I sat down with Rafael Piñero and Pete Kim that night was that I was tired, overfed turtle tired, so I answered their questions as accurately as I could in the fewest possible words, omitting my interactions with Jen. Then I left.

  It was almost two when I parked in Phoenix’s slot in the underground garage and rode the elevator to the eleventh floor. Letting myself in with my key, I slid the Toyota key over one of the hooks near the door. Then I noticed the flickering glow from the interior of the loft. I went inside and passed the kitchenette island.

  Her robe wrapped around her, Phoenix sat on her steel-framed sofa in the living-dining area, in the light of an alcohol gel fire crackling in her ventless fireplace. Electric light from other buildings came in through her tall, uncovered windows.

  “My second fire tonight,” she said. “These canisters only last about three hours.”

  “I said it would be late, not to wait up.”

  “I figured you might want to talk.” She was quiet a moment, staring into the fire, not looking at me. “If you didn’t, I knew I’d want to. I need to.”