by Lee Hurwitz
Now she was living with Ronald Wilkes, Jr., a successful cocaine dealer. Handsome and articulate, Wilkes had attended Howard University for two years until the prospect of big money lured him into the drug trade. Although not a high-level kingpin, he had enough street smarts to earn several hundred thousand dollars a year. He could have easily afforded a large, expensive home in DC or affluent Montgomery County, but his survival strategy called for him to be inconspicuous. So he and Denise lived in a split-foyer in Upper Marlboro, Maryland.
In a tentative, uneasy fashion, Evelyn liked Wilkes. He didn’t beat Denise or sneak around on her. He didn’t curse, at least not while Evelyn was present. He appeared not to use his merchandise. Although his criminal career put Denise in great jeopardy, Evelyn had come to understand that her sister was as bound for trouble as the sparks were bound upward, no matter what.
If Denise had still been with one of her abusive thugs, Evelyn would have had no place to go at all.
“Jeez, Evelyn,” Denise said when she opened the front door. Her sister was shivering in the December cold.
“Could you pay the taxi, Denise? It’s a hundred bucks and I’m not carrying that much cash.”
“Where’s your car?” Denise stepped back and looked at her sister.
“Would you just pay him, please?” To her astonishment, Denise saw that Evelyn was shaking and crying. She drew her sister into the house, grabbed her purse, pulled out six twenties and took them out to the cabbie.
When she got back in, she coaxed Evelyn, still weeping, into the kitchen. “I’ll make you some tea,” she said. Just before it finished steeping she added a generous portion of Wilkes’ favorite brandy.
After Evelyn drank half a cup she began to relax. “Oh, Deenee,” she said, using the childhood nickname she hadn’t used in years. “The whole world has blown up in my face!”
Denise pulled a stool up. “Tell me about it, baby,” she said, and for the next thirty minutes Evelyn told her little sister a story too wild for any of Wilkes’ coked-up clients to imagine. Several times Evelyn stopped to take a big sip from her tea, and midway through the story, Denise poured her sister another mug, this one heavier on the brandy. “Jeez, honey,” Denise said, over and over again.
When Evelyn was done Denise pulled her close. “You’re all right, Ev,” she whispered. “We’ll take care of you.”
“I just need—just tonight, Deenee, just tonight.”
Evelyn felt the touch on her shoulder, heard the deep voice. “She’s right. Evelyn. We’ll take care of you.” She looked up.
It was Wilkes. His eyes were dead.
All his life Ronald Wilkes, Jr. had prized invisibility. When he was a child, when his father beat his mother, he had practiced his invisibility, so that he could be in the same room and not feel the fear, nor the terrible, terrible shame. In school, with drug deals and beatings and thefts all around him, he mastered the tiptoe walk, the soft breathing, the bland expression of the invisible man. In college, he had read Ralph Ellison’s novel of the same name, and thought: yes, that’s me, that’s me and thank God for it.
And here, here in the middle of Developed Suburbia USA, Wilkes the cocaine dealer could be any accountant, any insurance company lawyer, any sales manager or Subaru dealer or pharmacist in the country. He liked it that way. It allowed him, bit by tiny bit, to rip off his powerful suppliers. He was rich but made sure not to be conspicuous.
But this week things had gone wrong and he was inconspicuous no longer. His many incremental rip-offs had been found out, and unless he could come up with 1.2 million dollars—more money than he had saved, by half—his time on the planet would be measured in days, maybe hours.
Unless—unless he could give them something more valuable than money.
He waited until Denise took her sister upstairs before he picked up the phone.
It was two a.m. when Denise answered the door.
“Ms. Boone, I’m sorry for disturbing you, but I need to speak to your sister, Evelyn.”
“Who are you?” Denise was blinking sleep from her eyes.
“Ms. Boone, I’m a very good friend of Evelyn’s,” The man, who Denise had never seen before, was tall and slender, with a thin moustache. There were two much larger men with him. Denise thought he might be Hispanic, but his accent was very slight, almost negligible. Wilkes appeared at the door, behind Denise. “I have reason to believe she’s in trouble. I need to speak to her.”
“She’s not here. Have you tried her house?”
“Ms. Boone, I am not fooling around. Your sister is in terrible trouble.”
Neither Stone nor Denise noticed the car glide up and park across the street, but Wilkes did. He saw the window roll down, saw a quick reflection of light from inside the car. They were checking on him, he saw. Checking to make certain he’d do his part of the trade. “I’ll go get her,” Wilkes said.
“Ron, no!” Denise shouted, but her lover was already up the stairs, two at a time.
The three men stood unmoving, almost unblinking. The car across the street turned off its lights.
Suddenly Denise felt a cold breeze against her back, and a half-second later heard Wilkes’ agonized voice. “Fuck!” he yelled. “She’s gone!”
Chapter 3
Yvonne Brown clapped the pillow over her ear to keep out the shrill ringing noise. No luck. “Dammit,” she yelled, and slammed her hand down on the alarm clock. The phone rang again.
Who could be calling her at eight in the morning? Her mind wandered back to that delicious-looking casting director who had offered her a line of coke at Enrico’s. No way he would be calling her this early. He would be in dreamyland, as she wished she was this very minute.
The phone rang again.
“Yvonne? Evelyn.” Yvonne shuffled through the Rolodex in her head. Evelyn? Evelyn? Not that pudgy costumer she met at the Spielberg thing last year…
“I’m in Miami for a while and I wondered, can I crash at your crib?” Evelyn Boone continued, and all of a sudden it came to her, Evelyn! They had been roommates freshman year at Howard, and later pledges together at Alpha Kappa Alpha. At the beginning, Evelyn had seemed like a sort of goddess to Yvonne, a track star, accomplished, extremely self-confident. Later she learned Evelyn’s other side, her manipulativeness; her willingness, in particular, to use sex to get what she wanted. Still, they had been very close. Funny, thought Yvonne, that she had been the one to break away—become a freelance scriptwriter; get some movie credits; getting a regular gig writing for Hardbodies, and then getting herself sent to this tropical paradise to write for the hit show Beat Cops of Miami, live in South Beach, and write lines for the cool people. She giggled. Write lines for the cool people, and then do lines with them afterward. Miami was the new L.A.
“Girlfriend! Of course you can! So dish. What is it? Big business deal?”
“Nah. Just thought I’d get away for a couple of days. Catch some sun, walk on the beach…”
“It’s a man, isn’t it? C’mon, you cannot bullshit me…”
Evelyn laughed easily. “Honestly, honey, I wish it was a man. They got me working so many sixteen-hour days I can’t re-create. The only man I see after eight o’clock is the janitor in the office, and he’s starting to look good.”
Yvonne laughed too. “I’ve missed you, girl. What gate are you at? I’ll pick you up.”
“Actually, I’m at the coffee shop down the street from you. I can come over…”
“Give me a minute,” Yvonne said. Briefly, she considered locking her dope away, but decided not to. Evelyn never minded when they were in college, although she never went near the stuff herself, so there was no reason to think she’d mind now. “I could use a cup of strong coffee myself. Man, you like to do your thing early.”
Nothing ever threw Evelyn! As she stepped first into the shower and then into some classy Jordache jeans she bought just yesterday, Yvonne marveled at her friend’s together lifestyle.
So why—when Yvonne got a firs
t look at her—did her eyes look like they had been crying all night? And why had she torn the front page of the Washington Post’s Metro section into long, irregular strips?
Hawkins was uncharacteristically quiet on the trip. “I fucked up, Hi,” he said almost immediately after he was released on recognizance into Hightower’s custody. Hightower shushed him. Hightower knew that Hawk’s impulses weren’t entirely wrong. A certain sort of cop could have pulled it off—the loud voice, the quick cuffs, the top-of-lungs Miranda warning—”You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney…” the authoritarian air. He could have pulled it off. But Hawk, Hawk was hopeless. The motherfucking Marriott night clerk didn’t believe he was a cop.
Hightower hadn’t told Hawkins the plan yet; hadn’t brought the younger man down to the details of the business at hand. Hightower was still working on getting them down himself. He walked Hawkins to Evelyn Boone’s apartment. This woman had seen something, and thus had seen too much. He walked into the lobby, flashed his badge at the clerk. He flashed a look at Hawkins: this is how it’s done.
“I’m looking for a resident, Evelyn Boone. Does she live on the fifteenth floor?”
“Yes,” the clerk replied. He wore a name tag: N. Obando. “She left the building with two suitcases. Looked like she was in a big hurry.” The words came in a liquid rush
“What time did she leave?”
“Around nine or ten.”
“Have you seen her since?”
“No, officer.”
“We need to enter her apartment.”
“This is a condominium building. Each apartment is the property of the owner. We’re not authorized to allow anyone to enter the apartments. Do you have a search warrant?”
“Mr. Obando, you’ve been watching too many police stories on television. I’m a sergeant with the Metropolitan Police Department. I don’t need a search warrant in this city. I am conducting an investigation into criminal activity. I certainly wouldn’t want to have to make a report that you interfered with our investigation. My colleague and I are going to take a walk. I suggest that you look for the keys to Ms. Boone’s apartment.”
He took Hawkins over to a news stand. A Penthouse was out of its wrapper and Hightower paged through it. He saw that Hawkins was looking at a gossip rag, People or Us or something.
“Hey, Hi, look at this. It says that Jimmy Ray Mallory clocked Ambrosia on the set of that movie and everybody is trying to keep it quiet.” Hawkins showed Hightower a picture of Ambrosia in the magazine. She looked delicious and un-clocked.
“Yeah, I could get into that Ambrosia if Mallory’s no longer interested,” Hightower offered. In fact, he doubted that he could spend ten minutes in the same room with the tarty rock star, who had posed naked more times than any Penthouse model,
“Me, too, Hi,” Hawkins said, and then a pained look crossed his face. “What if he won’t do it, Hi?”
Hightower knew he meant the clerk, not Mallory. “Three words for you, Hawk. Immigration and Naturalization.”
When they walked back to the clerk he was dangling a set of keys. “I’m not authorized to let you enter Ms. Boone’s apartment. I can lose my job if anyone finds out. But since you’re police officers, I’ll let you in if you leave everything in place, and if you don’t tell anyone.”
Obando, Hawkins, and Hightower took the elevator to the fifteenth floor where Obando unlocked the door and left. Hawkins and Hightower took a tour of the apartment. It was spotless, and there wasn’t a clue as to what Evelyn Boone had decided to do with herself. Next to her bed, Hightower noticed, was one of those complicated phones with buttons for preset numbers. Hightower walked over to it, looked at it closely. One of the buttons read “redial.”
Hightower picked up the phone and pushed the redial button.
“Alpha Travel,” said the voice on the other end, pleasantly.
“Hello,” Hightower said, trying to sound distressed. “My name’s Charley Boone. I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m trying to find my sister Evelyn. It’s kind of urgent. Our mother’s taken a turn for the worse and I need to talk with her.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Boone. I didn’t know she was ill. Let me look.” Hightower was forced to listen to Herb Alpert for half a minute. “Your sister booked a flight to Miami—eleven-thirty direct from National. I’m sorry, it doesn’t look like she booked a hotel.”
Hightower hung up and phoned a number he had been given when he got the information about Evelyn’s name and address. The man who answered sounded vaguely Hispanic. Hightower told him what he knew.
“We know,” the voice said. “You are booked on the redeye. You’ll be staying at the Ramada near the airport. There’ll be a package waiting for you when you get there.”
And there was.
He told Hawkins that the guns, sent courtesy of a buddy of his at the Property Division, would be waiting for them when they checked into the Ramada.
And he told Hawkins that they would be using assumed names. Hawk would be Ted Wilson. With anything more complicated, there was the very real danger the man would forget or become confused. Undercover work was not exactly Hawk’s forte.
Hightower would be Aaron Moore.
He hung up the phone as Hawkins entered the room. Now knowing what he had to know, Hightower went over to the motel’s cheap little oval table and began methodically checking the weapons. Two Smith & Wesson .32-caliber automatics, with silencers and clips. Two Glocks, as well. Hightower broke them down, spun the chambers, sniffed the oil in them. They were good guns. Of course, he would have preferred a rifle; the handguns could only be used at close range, and if he had to use a silencer he wouldn’t be able to aim at all. But Bissel had made it clear that he couldn’t have a big gun; a missing big gun would be too conspicuous in the property room.
Hightower got up, walked to the window. He felt Hawk’s eyes on him like the eyes of a nervous dog, looking for some sign of what he should do next. Sit! Fetch! Here’s dinner! Hightower unlatched the door, stepped out on the balcony, and closed the door behind him. Stay, Hawkins.
What the fuck was he doing here? Loaded up with weapons and ammunition, deputized to blow away some innocent woman who through her own godforsaken luck had blundered upon the Mayor of the Capital City, the Honorable Wendell Francis Watson Junior, as he got his head bashed by some two-bit tart from the Department of Human Services. Or—be honest, now, Hightower—had blundered upon him shooting this selfsame two-bit tart. I didn’t mean to kill her. I wanted to shoot that ashtray out of her hand. But he did kill her, the bullet entering just below the ear—it swerved! I swear the bullet swerved—and careening through the brain. And this woman saw everything.
The first time he killed a man was in the Mekong Delta, in ‘66. He had just gone in-country the day before and he was not yet used to the strangeness of it all, the way that the wet air lies on you like a blanket or the thick vivid colors when all hell broke loose, bullets flying every way including into the throat of some guy he’d just been talking to about whether the Twins would have been any good if they had stayed in Washington and still been the Senators. And then Hightower saw the enemy, the gook. On automatic, he pulled his M-80, sighted, and squeezed, and through the scope he saw a hole open up in a guy’s forehead like a flower blooming, and then the guy falling dead. I can do it, he thought, and for the first time he could remember, the fist in his stomach relaxed; his breathing slowed down and his blood stopped itching.
He figured he killed ten guys that day, though there was no way to be sure—he’d fire and then there’d be another one of them, so he couldn’t be certain he got a clean kill—and they managed to beat back the attack, that time. Afterward, he’d volunteer for patrol a lot. He liked slipping noiselessly through the jungle, liked the thought that somewhere out there was a gook patrol doing the same, him trying to find the gooks, them doing the same to him. One of us will live and one of us will die, he thought, and in the end we’ll both be at peace. Highto
wer was always the first one to spot, and, when necessary, the first one to fire.
He rose quickly through the noncommissioned ranks and eventually, inevitably, the brass started talking to him about becoming career army. He was smart, tough, the other men respected him. And the army, unlike the rest of America, had been integrated since 1948.
The problem was that he couldn’t stand to take orders, couldn’t stand to be told what to do by some pasty-assed white boy fresh off the Point who got his warfare out of textbooks. Lieutenant Asshole, 22, who shaves every other day, comes into the middle of this hellhole, listening to no one, not to Hightower, not to thirty-year veterans, full of buzzwords and tech talk and bullshit, and Hightower (this is the Army way, now) has to treat him like he is the Lord God Almighty, or Moses down from the Mount. And worse yet, if he stayed, Hightower could see this going on forever, could see himself taking orders from Lieutenant Asshole Jr., and, if he was lucky enough to live so long, from Lieutenant Asshole III.
“You seem a bit wound up, Hi.”
Hightower started, then pulled himself in a little, to ease Hawkins’ anxiety. Hawkins was the only one who called him that. It annoyed him but he didn’t say anything. Best not to overburden the guy.
“Nice sunset,” Hightower said. They were looking west. Hightower knew that somewhere beyond those buildings the sun was actually setting.
“Great sunset!” Hawkins agreed. He was doing everything he could think of to atone for his mistake and get back into Hightower’s good graces. Perhaps, he thought, agreeing about the sunset would do the trick.
“Boss’ll call, tell us what’s next.” Hightower said, not looking at Hawkins. He knew Hawkins wanted some idea of what they were to do when they got Evelyn Boone but didn’t know how to ask.