Lauren sighed and stared at the screen. Of course, Sydney was right; she had to do what she had to do. She scrolled down the screen some more, until she got to an entry she could handle: Where did you last see this suspect, the form questioned.
Lauren typed in, Peeples Street, the West End, and then scrolled down some more, past the “vehicle information” and on to the “crime notes” section. Under “type of offense,” she slowly typed the word “murder,” her fingers trembling with each tap of the button. Then she hesitated, if only for a moment, struggling to find the words to describe what little details she knew. She looked at Sydney, who was busily twirling the earring in her right ear, and then poured out all she could.
This guy Smoke beat up Rodney Watson because Rodney was dating his baby’s mother. The baby’s mother’s name is Chere, and I think she lives in the West End, too, and should know where Smoke lives. It happened in the West End, and Smoke left Rodney to die on his front lawn, on Hopewell Street. I know this because it’s what I heard.
Lauren read her statement aloud so Sydney could hear it, and, after they went over it a few more times, Lauren scrolled down some more, entered a password so that she could, as the site stated, check back and add more details if she wished. Then she carefully read the privacy policy, said a quick silent prayer that what she was doing was the right thing and most of all, that nobody would find out she was snitching, and then gave a final look to Sydney.
“Go ahead, do it, Lauren,” Sydney coaxed. “It’s going to be all right. I promise.”
She wasn’t really sure she believed it, but there was something in her sister’s eyes that made her push those negative thoughts to the recesses of her mind.
And with Jermaine’s face dancing in her head, Lauren did it: She clicked on the button that said SUBMIT TIP.
Lauren walked gingerly up the walkway and then the steps, each inch she took feeling like a mile in quicksand. She couldn’t quite put her finger on why she was so nervous; it was him, after all, who had wanted this for so very long—she who had resisted with all her might this reunion, this coming home. In the car on the way over, she’d imagined him opening the door, taking one look at her, and slamming said door in her face—a pittance of the fitting retribution she deserved for all the drama and anguish she’d brought into his life. A face full of wood? She deserved at least that much.
But really, what Lauren was looking for was forgiveness.
She yanked at her jacket and pulled her purse up onto her shoulder, using her underarm to grip it a little tighter. And then she did it: She rang the bell.
The shuffling of feet in the room just beyond the door was audible and instantaneous, but it took an eternity for the door to open. His eyes immediately locked with hers, even as she shifted from one foot to the other.
“Hey, Ladybug—fancy seeing you here! I like the new hairdo,” Dice laughed, pulling her into his embrace. “Wait, I thought you had riding lessons today.”
“Um,” Lauren hesitated, awkwardly hugging her father back, “I don’t take riding lessons. That’s Sydney.”
Dice went still for a moment, even as his long arms remained wrapped around Lauren’s shoulder. Slowly, he pushed her back so he could get a good look at his daughter. “Lauren?” he questioned.
“H-hi, Dice,” she said, looking into his eyes again. He looked just like he did in the pictures Sydney had showed her in the photo album, except with less hair on top of his head and more gray everywhere else. His arms were muscular, like she’d imagined; she wondered if they’d gotten that way from lifting in the prison yard, or if his arms always felt that way. Looking into his eyes was like looking into Sydney’s and her own; all these years, she never realized they’d gotten those almond-shaped browns from their father—their birth father.
“Lauren?” he asked, slightly bewildered. “Baby, that’s you, for real? Oh, my God, I can’t believe you’re here!” he said, pulling her back into his arms. “What? Why? How?”
“Hey,” Lauren said, patting him on the back. “It’s me, live and in the flesh.”
Dice pushed Lauren back to get another look at her. “I can’t believe you’re here! Come on in, come on in,” he demanded, taking her hand and pulling her into the humble house. He closed the door behind her and stared some more. “I’ll be damned, look at you!” he laughed. “All these years I told myself that I would be able to tell the difference between my own daughters. You know, when you two were little, I could tell you apart so easy. I guess I’m a little rusty.”
“Yeah, people usually tell us apart by our hair and I guess our voices,” Lauren said, forcing a smile to her face. “Mom’s pretty good at it, though. I think maybe because she can tell our different personalities.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” Dice said. “A mother knows. Usually, so does a father. I guess I kinda missed out on that, though. I’ll work on it—promise.”
“No, no—it’s cool,” Lauren reassured.
Silence pierced the air—hung thick between them as they searched each other’s eyes. Finally, Lauren spoke again. “Can I, um, sit down?”
“Oh, yeah, sure, sure—where are my manners? Come on in, have a seat over here on the couch,” Dice said, rushing to move the newspaper, his reading glasses, and a tattered blanket he’d been using as a pillow. He tossed all three on the coffee table, swiped at the sofa cushion, and then patted it—an invitation for Lauren to sit. She obliged, albeit hesitantly. “Can I get you something to drink—some water? Soda? I think Lorraine has some orange juice in here somewhere…”
“I’m fine, Dice—I’m good,” Lauren said. “Thanks, though.”
“Yeah, okay,” he said, unsure of what to say next.
They were quiet again; for the first time, she noticed music softly playing on a small stereo system sitting on a wooden console next to the TV. Lauren had never heard the song before, but she thought she recognized the voice. “Who’s that singing?” she inquired.
“Who, that playing right there?” Dice asked. “That’s Donny Hathaway, baby. The one and only. I was at this record shop down in Little Five Points the other day and I found this CD,” he said, hopping up and rushing over to the stereo to find the case. “That’s him in concert. ’Sack Full of Dreams’ is what’s playing now. One of my favorites.”
“Cool,” Lauren said. “He sang that Christina Aguilera song ’A Song for You,’ right?”
“Uh, correction, Dewdrop. Christie Alera or whatever her name is sang Donny’s song,” he laughed. “I think I might have heard her version while I was in the pen. Ol’ girl can blow, that’s for sure, but she ain’t Donny.”
Lauren shifted in her seat at the mention of “the pen,” a movement that was neither lost on nor new to Dice. Most everyone, save cons, were nervous around ex-cons.
Dice smiled nervously. “Hey, hey—I want you to hear something,” he said, leaning in to the stereo. He punched a button a few times, then twisted the volume knob. A slow, melancholy, almost funereal beat struggled through the speakers; Dice closed his eyes and stood, trancelike, as Donny’s soul-drenched voice danced atop the organ and drum. Lauren watched her father mouth the words, each of them written decades before she was born but relevant to their circumstance all the same:
I’m not trying to be/just any kind of man/I’m just trying to be somebody/You can love, trust, and understand…
Finally, he opened his eyes and smiled, almost embarrassed by the way he was carrying on. “That song right there, it’s called ’I Love You More Than You’ll Ever Know,’” Dice said quietly. “When I was locked up, I played it over and over again in my mind, you know, ’cause we weren’t allowed to have any music of our own. I mostly heard the popular stuff when the guards played their radios at night while they were on post. But none of those songs could touch Donny, and especially this song right here. That song? Baby, that’s our song.”
“It’s a beautiful song,” Lauren said simply as her father walked across the room and sat next to her.
Lauren wrung her hands, unsure of how to respond to her father without bursting into tears. She bit her bottom lip and grabbed her purse. “I have something for you,” she said, rummaging through it, hoping that her father didn’t notice the moisture in the well of her eyes. She pulled out a small photo and looked at it admiringly before handing it to Dice. “It’s you, Sydney, and me at our fourth birthday party at—”
“Piedmont Park,” Dice said, holding the picture gingerly. In it, Dice was holding both of his girls on his waist; Sydney was smiling at their dad, while Lauren, laughing, was staring at a blue balloon she was clutching between her tiny fingers. “Your mother snapped that picture right before I kissed you on those fat cheeks. You were giggling so, you let go of that balloon and it floated right on up into the sky. And then came the tears.”
“It’s funny, but I didn’t remember that day until I came across this picture,” Lauren said. She’d found it in the photo album Sydney had hidden behind the toilet in her bathroom for weeks before she could sneak it back downstairs into Keisha’s old boxes. “Mommy threatened to beat my behind if I didn’t stop crying over it, but you held me in your arms and wouldn’t let go until I settled down.”
“I told Keisha she better not lay a finger on you, either, or she was going to have to box me,” Dice laughed.
“Yeah, you were always protective of me and Sydney, huh?”
“Y’all are my daughters,” he said. “I would die for you.”
Lauren put her hand across her mouth in hopes that it would keep her sobs from escaping, but it was no use. “I…I…know,” Lauren stuttered. “All this time I hated you for leaving me, for leaving us, but these past few weeks I’ve found out a lot about you and Mom and Altimus and even myself. I just didn’t know, Dad—I didn’t know what they were capable of, and how much they hurt you.”
“Why would you know, Dewdrop? It wasn’t for you to know.”
“But…”
“But nothing,” Dice said sternly. “You didn’t have any business being mixed up in grown folks’ business to begin with, and I don’t want you to worry about it now. Only thing that matters to me is that you’re here. Right here—with me. I ain’t going nowhere if you don’t.”
Dice pulled Lauren into his arms, and this time, she didn’t fight it. She closed her eyes and melted into his embrace; for the first time in a long time, she actually felt, well, safe. They sat that way for quite a while, the rhythm of her breathing locking in sync with his. They stayed that way until Donny stopped singing. When Lauren opened her eyes, they focused on the newspaper sitting on the table.
Lauren sat bolt upright and her eyes got wide as saucers as they focused on the title of a small article in the local section: “Suspect in West End Murder Found Dead.” She practically pushed Dice off to get at the newspaper and brought it up close to her face to make sure she was reading it right.
“What’s wrong, Dewdrop?” Dice asked, concerned.
Lauren didn’t answer at first—just kept reading the short article. “He’s dead,” she said. “Omigod, who?”
“Who’s dead?” Dice asked. “What’s wrong?”
“They found him dead?”
“Who?” Dice asked a little more sternly.
“Smoke—somebody killed him. The police found him dead,” she said, still reading the article. “The police went looking for him, and they found him dead.”
“Humph, dead, huh?” Dice said. “Smoke?”
Lauren looked up from the paper; her father was looking at her just as cool as you please.
“You know Smoke, don’t you?” she asked quietly.
“I know of him,” Dice said simply.
“You mean you knew him. He’s dead,” Lauren said.
“Okay, and? Hazards of the job.”
“Well, the paper says he was the chief suspect in Rodney’s death,” Lauren said, pointing to the sentence in the paper and shoving it in Dice’s face. “They were going to take him in for questioning when they found him.”
“I still don’t understand your fascination…”
“The police were supposed to arrest him for Rodney’s murder—I made sure of it. I notified the Crime Stoppers Web site to tell them they should question Smoke’s girlfriend. The only somebody who knew I was doing it was Sydney. And now he’s dead…”
“Rodney’s brother, I know,” Dice said.
“So now he’s dead?”
“Hell, Dewdrop, if the police think he killed Rodney, and he ain’t around to say otherwise, that’s a good thing!” Dice exclaimed.
“Wha—what?”
“It means this ankle bracelet is about to come off, baby!” Dice said, jumping up from the couch. “Means the police don’t have any reason to keep coming for me if they think somebody else killed Rodney. Damn, baby, you saved the day!”
“I…but…who killed Smoke?” Lauren said, still confused.
“Don’t matter,” Dice said. “Don’t matter at all. Look here, baby, sit right there and don’t you move—I gotta call my lawyer. Don’t move, okay? Stay right there. I don’t want you to leave—we got a lot to talk about.”
“Um, okay,” Lauren said, fingering the newspaper in her hands.
She wondered if Jermaine read the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
And if he did, he, too, knew that Smoke had sparked his last fire.
19
SYDNEY
“We got this. Don’t you worry about a thing, you hear me,” Keisha whispered loudly as she leaned forward in her seat to give Altimus a kiss on the cheek. Altimus gave her a small smile in return and turned back to face the front of the courtroom. Keisha cut the prosecuting attorney a mean side-eye, sat back in her seat, and smoothed out her black Donna Karan suit. She closed her eyes and started whispering a prayer.
Sydney turned to her right and looked to see if Lauren had just witnessed their mother’s antics. However, instead of rolling her eyes in annoyance, Lauren was looking at the floor, mumbling her own little prayer. In the past four months, the younger Duke twin had matured so much, Sydney sometimes felt she almost didn’t recognize her anymore. “It’s really going to be fine, Lauren,” she said softly as she reached out and rubbed Lauren’s tightly clenched fists.
“I know, I know, I just wish someone could convince the butterflies in my stomach,” Lauren responded with a rueful grin.
The small side door opened and the bailiff finally walked in. “All rise,” he announced as the jury filed back into the room. As soon as the twelve Atlanta residents were back in the jury box, he announced, “The Honorable Emmanuel D. Highwater.”
The stern-looking white man in a long black robe entered the room and walked up to his seat overlooking the courtroom. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?” he asked in a gravelly voice.
The foreman stood up holding a piece of paper. “We have, Your Honor.”
“And what say you?” the judge queried. The deafening silence in the room pounded in Sydney’s ears. She struggled to swallow the huge lump in her throat.
“After careful deliberation, we, the jury, find Altimus Duke neither negligent nor culpable for the unpaid taxes and, therefore, not guilty of tax evasion,” the foreperson announced solemnly.
“Woo-hoo! That’s what I’m talking about!” Keisha screamed as she leaped over the wooden barrier and into Altimus’s arms, Whitney Houston style. “Give us free, give us free!!!” Altimus laughed and hugged her back while his legal team s
truggled to keep a straight face.
The judge banged his gavel several times before Keisha stopped whooping and hollering. “Order in the court! Order in the court! Mrs. Duke, please get off your husband!” The local press immediately started taking pictures and then rushed out of the room to jockey for position at the press conference Altimus’s lawyers had called.
Lauren looked at Sydney and shook her head. “Um, can you please get your mother,” she giggled, obviously relieved by the way things had turned out.
“I’m convinced there’s nothing anyone can do to stop Keisha Duke,” Sydney responded as she stood up and smoothed out her gray Nanette Lepore baby-doll frock. “Do you want to wait outside while they pull themselves together?” she asked.
“Hell, yeah,” Lauren responded, grabbing the new cobalt-blue Chloé bag Keisha had given her for Christmas. “After you,” she then offered to Sydney as she fished out her favorite oversized Chanel sunglasses and put them on.
“Why, thank you, my dear,” Sydney replied as she picked up her own Christmas gift from Keisha, a navy Hermès Kelly bag, and turned to lead the way out of the courtroom. Busy celebrating with the legal team, neither Keisha nor Altimus noticed when the two sisters pushed their way out of the heavy swinging doors, down the long hallway, and walked side by side out into the sunshine.
“This is so crazy, right, Syd?” Lauren was the first to speak when the girls reached the curb across the street from the courthouse. They both turned to face the mob of press waiting for Altimus to come out and make a statement.
“Who are you telling,” Sydney retorted as she started digging through her own bag for her sunglasses. “And forget about today. I can’t believe the last few months. It’s, like, is this really my life?”
“Yeah, there have been way too many ups and downs…” Lauren’s voice trailed off a bit. She pointed to Sydney’s wrist where the Cartier bracelet used to be. “Speaking of downs, are you going to tell me what was the matter with you that night when I came in the room and found you all upset? I know you said you were okay but…”
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