His restless concern had taken him to the library sifting through old newspaper accounts of Mount Peter’s anti-drug campaign. It had been centered in the neighborhood in which the church was located, and a few blocks beyond. The fight had been a quiet but determined one. There had never been any direct confrontation with dealers or junkies, simply the purchasing of empty properties that had been used for drug sales. No dealers had been named or arrested. The media appeared to have stumbled onto the story by accident, and Nedra was dubbed the campaign’s reluctant heroine. Modestly, she’d given all of the credit for what had been accomplished to the members of her church. They in turn had verified that they would not have thought of such an endeavor had it not been for her dynamic leadership. The mutual admiration was commendable, but Sin needed to know how much all the goodwill was costing the drug world. When he saw the estimate in the last paragraph of one article his anxiety grew. He’d known people killed for much less. That she was in danger was no longer a question, it was now a fact.
Saturdays were quiet in the Bayland office, so he often came in to do paperwork without the interference of ringing telephones or interruptions. He had started early. It was now ten in the morning, and as he looked at the papers scattered on his desk, he realized that for three hours he had accomplished nothing.
When he was supposed to be doing paperwork, he had really been wrestling with his conscience, assuring himself that whatever was happening out on those streets was none of his business. If Nedra was involved, she could take care of herself. She had done so for years before he arrived in California. Nothing had happened to her. If she posed a threat to the drug world, then why hadn’t an attempt been made on her life? Whatever was going down didn’t involve her. Yet, Eddie had been babbling about a woman being involved in whatever was happening. Some “bitch,” as he so crudely put it. But it didn’t have to be Nedra. Maybe it was some social activist or some politician, but not Nedra.
Sin closed his eyes. Gently, he massaged the tense muscles in his face, and then he suddenly stilled. Why wonder, when it was possible to know for sure if Nedra was in trouble.
Stuffing the papers into a folder, he tossed it back into the basket. Minutes later he was dialing a telephone number which he hadn’t used for twelve of the eighteen months he had been in the Bay Area.
The telephone rang a half dozen times. He was just about to hang up when he heard a graveled voice saying “Hello.” The sound reminded him of sand paper.
“Hey, man. It’s Sin. How’s it goin’?”
Silence greeted him. Sin pressed on.
“I need some information.”
“What?” The voice was cold, impersonal.
“I need to know what’s the word on the street about Moun—”
Sin hesitated. He didn’t want to mention Nedra’s church or her name. It was best that there be no connection between them.
“What do you want, man?” The voice was now impatient.
“What’s the word on East Oakland?” Sin grasped at straws trying to find more to say. What had he heard, recently? What? What? Eddie! Yes! He said something about.... “Word is East Oakland is gonna get hot for a while? What’s up?”
More silence.
“Talk to me, man. I need to know. If something is going down, it could cost me some money.”
“You said the magic word.”
“How much?”
“$200. In twenties, mail it to me at the P.O. Box. Same address. You still got it?”
“Yeah, I’ve got it. Now what’s the word?”
“You said the word. Money, lots of it. It’s being lost in East Oakland because of some do-gooder crusader. Word is a contract’s out.”
Sin’s mind raced. “Who’s the target?”
“Nobody’s talkin’ specifics. Must be big. Politician maybe.”
A politician. Yes, maybe. But a do-gooder politician? Since when?
“Do you know if the target is male or female?”
“I told you, nobody’s talkin’ specifics.”
“When’s it going down?”
“Don’t know, and that’s all I know. Mail my money today.” The phone went dead.
Sin sat musing over what he’d heard. He hadn’t spoken to his contact in quite a while. He’d met him a week after his arrival in the Bay Area, an unobtrusive man of few words, most of them blunt and to the point. He was a shadow in the underworld, moving quietly among those who chose to live outside the law. Information was the name of his game, and any he acquired was for sale. He had to be accurate. That was how he built his reputation. Sin had no reason to doubt him.
He reviewed what little he’d been told, sifting the words, rephrasing them, examining their meaning in every way possible. Four words stood out—a do-good crusader. Damn! It described Nedra Davis up and down. Still, he could be wrong. Maybe it was somebody else?
After driving aimlessly for an hour, he made a second call. This time it was to the Oakland Police Department. Not identifying himself, he demanded to speak to whoever was in charge. His request was denied.
Trying to calm his anger, he informed the duty officer of his suspicions that Nedra Davis was in danger, describing who she was and why the danger might exist. Hanging up, he knew that his call would be suspect, and doubted if Nedra would be granted protection. His had been an anonymous call, with no verifiable facts. There was no way he could identify himself, or could he explain how he knew what he knew. How can you explain intuition? He made another call, providing the authorities with the same information, hoping that this time he would be taken seriously.
Three hours had passed since the call to his contact and the call to get some protection for Nedra. As he stood in line at a fast food restaurant ordering his dinner, he told himself that he had done all that he could do. If Nedra was in danger, the police would take care of it. After all, he wasn’t even sure that she was in danger.
It was just a gut feeling. But his time in the streets had taught him to never ignore such a feeling.
Taking his tray to a table by the window, he plucked an abandoned newspaper from another table and straightened it out, prepared to read. He cursed silently to himself as he noticed that the paper was a week old. Flipping through it with general disinterest, his half eaten hamburger was suspended in midair as a small headline on page ten caught his attention: ANTI-DRUG QUEEN’S HOME BURGLARIZED. Quickly, he scanned the article.
The hamburger remained half eaten. The fries remained untouched, and the newspaper remained open on the table as the sleek Jaguar tore out of the restaurant parking lot, headed toward East Oakland.
****
Sin hadn’t been inside a church since he was dumped into his first foster home. The old lady—he couldn’t remember her name—forced him to go with her every night, and all day Sunday. He lasted a week there before running away. He wouldn’t have been at Mount Peter today if he had been able to find Nedra last night. He’d driven by the church, but she wasn’t there. The Simpsons weren’t at home when he drove by to see if they had her home telephone number or address. He had no idea how to get in touch with Carla and Sharon. He had been up half the night worrying that the hit had been made, but the morning news had no report of an attack. It was his concern that had brought him to Mount Peter’s morning service.
The church wasn’t as big inside as it appeared outside, and it was packed to capacity. All of the seats downstairs had been filled before Sin arrived, and he had barely gotten a seat in the balcony. Others who had entered behind him had been relegated to the basement, where the service was broadcast on a wide screen television. The colors of the church’s interior were warm and inviting, pale pink walls with forest-green rugs and white benches, cushioned with forest-green seats.
A trio, sitting on the floor to the left of the pulpit struck a lively chord, and the choir began to march in. Dressed in forest-green robes, trimmed in brightly colored kente cloth, the number of singers seemed endless as they marched in singing joyously. Most of the
congregation rose to shout and clap its approval.
Sin stood too, motivated not so much by the music but his inability to see through the people who stood in front of him. He needed to see the pulpit, to see Nedra when she walked in. He watched as a line of men dressed in clergy robes walked solemnly out of a doorway to the pulpit. There were four robed men, but no woman. Nedra wasn’t with them. Where was she? He felt a rush of panic.
Working his way pass a line of rapturous worshippers, he approached one of the ushers standing at the top of the stairs. He inquired about Nedra’s absence. She informed him that she was on vacation and would be back in two weeks. Nobody knew where she was. Sin smiled, thanked her, and then hurried down the stairway, anxious to escape the confines of a building in which he’d never found hope.
As he stepped into the bright sunshine of the crisp morning, he took a moment to adjust the light cashmere dress coat he wore over his suit. The street was quiet, a far cry from an hour ago when hordes of church goers vied with each other for entrance into Mount Peter. Inadvertently, his eyes scanned the street filled with cars parked on both sides. They were all empty, except for one. It was a dark car, parked near some trees across from the church parking lot. Two men sat in the front seat. The driver flicked a cigarette butt out of the window. It joined the pile lying in the street by the driver’s door.
As casually as possible, Sin walked to the lot, got in his car, and drove away. He knew where he was going. He had known immediately after talking with the usher where he would be spending the next two weeks.
CHAPTER 7
Nedra looked in the bathroom mirror at the face peering back at her. She didn’t look as though she was born yesterday, but Sinclair Reasoner seemed to think so. He expected her to believe his story that their meeting here in Tahoe was an accident.
He had claimed that he was in Reno on business and had decided, at the last minute, to come to Tahoe for a few days of rest and relaxation. According to him, it was a coincidence that they both were here at the same time, although she distinctly remembered telling him where she would be vacationing. It was the night when they were at the Simpson house. He claimed not to remember, but she did. She could recall everything about that night.
How they had bumped into each other up here seemed as contrived as his Reno story. She had been strolling along the trail by her cabin when, suddenly, he appeared from nowhere. Dressed in a dark sweat suit, with a hood covering his head, he jogged past her at first, did a double take, then stopped and greeted her with a warm smile. He claimed he was surprised to see her, but she got the feeling that wasn’t true. The reason for the lie she had yet to figure out, but something was definitely fishy.
She suspected Carla or Sharon was behind Sin’s convenient vacation. The thought that they would interfere with her life like this did not sit well with her. If she found out that either of them was responsible for trying to force a romantic liaison between her and this man, she’d have the head of the one responsible!
Even Mother Nature was conspiring against her. They were snowed in! He couldn’t get back to the hotel and she was stuck with an unwanted overnight guest. Now here she was holed up in the bathroom trying to decide what to do about this situation. What a mess!
When she met him on the road yesterday morning, he had invited her to join him for dinner that evening. At first she had declined, but he had turned on the charm and she relented.
The evening had been pleasant. Sinclair Reasoner was an interesting man. He was a good conversationalist, and he displayed a quick wit. Nevertheless, if she hadn’t accepted that dinner invitation, she wouldn’t have left those earrings, and he wouldn’t have come to the cabin to return them. For some reason the dangling baubles had been irritating her, and she took them off, placing them on the dinner table with the intention of slipping them into her purse later. She had forgotten. That gave him the perfect excuse to return them the next day.
It had been snowing lightly when he trudged up to the cabin, and even that small amount of snow came as a surprise. It was early for such weather, even in Tahoe whose economy was centered around the ski slopes. Neither Nedra nor Sin would have guessed that by the time he had eaten the dinner she invited him to share with her, and helped wash the dishes, a full blown blizzard would be in effect. When they opened the front door, they could barely close it, snowflakes were falling so fiercely. They turned on the television to find that a snow emergency had been declared. Sin could not get back to his hotel. Whether she wanted him or not, Nedra had an overnight guest
She groaned. Why had she worn those stupid earrings anyway? They weren’t even hers. She had borrowed them from Carla, and had forgotten to return them. She found them stuffed into the zipped lining of her purse and, on impulse, had put them on to go dining with Sin. She rarely wore anything like that. What had possessed her?
Moving to the toilet, she closed the cover and flopped down on top of it. She was stuck now. She might as well make the best of it. Anyway, this wasn’t worth sweating over. No one knew that she was here, snowed in, alone, with a man. Even those two traitors, whom she called her friends, wouldn’t have imagined this scenario. As irrational as it might be, she felt guilty about being here alone with him. Maybe it was because she had enjoyed the time that she spent with Sinclair a little too much.
He was wonderful, and he had been a perfect gentleman. Not once had he tried to make a move on her. Nedra sighed. Why not?
She jumped, startled at the thought. Where did that come from? She wasn’t looking for a man. She didn’t need one cluttering up her life. What was developing between the two of them was a level of comfort in which two strangers were moving toward friendship. That’s what she wanted, not a romantic relationship. At least that’s what she kept telling herself.
Nedra couldn’t help but notice the way he looked at her when he thought she wasn’t looking. It made her pulse race, and she had to remind herself that this man was still a stranger. All she really knew about him was his name, not much else. He was very good at saying little when it came to talking about himself. He did tell her he was a businessman and had moved to the Bay Area nearly two years ago. He owned an import business located on the Embarcadero. He’d already told her that he wasn’t married and had no family. In the time that they had been together that was all she knew about him, nothing more. He was a master at evasion when it came to details about himself.
In spite of that, there had been plenty of conversation. He seemed to know a little something about everything—national and world events, African American history, music, the arts. Whenever Nedra asked him something that he didn’t want to answer, he would avoid answering it so cleverly that she forgot she had asked it until hours later. She couldn’t help but admire that kind of skill, but it didn’t foster a lot of trust.
Sighing, Nedra rose. It was time to stop hiding and face the truth. She would be spending this night with an extremely good looking man. Nothing was going to happen and no one would ever know.
As usual, she put the situation in the hands of a power greater than her own. Whispering a brief prayer about the situation, she opened the bathroom door and joined Sin.
The cabin consisted of one large room with a high vaulted ceiling providing the illusion of space. The living room area was designated by a long leather sofa, a matching chair, and a coffee table that faced the huge stone fireplace that occupied one wall. The kitchen area was designated by a series of vinyl tiles. It contained a small refrigerator, a stove built into the counter, a sink, and a few cabinets finished in maple. A dining table, surrounded by four chairs, was placed between the living room and kitchen area. The bathroom from which Nedra had exited was tiny and located next to the cabin’s only bedroom, which contained a full-size bed and a nightstand. The bedroom closet had a few shelves, two built-in drawers, and a couple of hooks for clothing. This completed the entire cabin.
Nedra stood for a moment watching Sin. He was sitting on the sofa, elbows on his knees, hunched forw
ard, his full attention focused on the TV screen. The weather report was on. He turned, aware that she had entered the room. A look of concern was etched on his face.
“They’re expecting up to three feet of snow.”
“Three feet?” Nedra wanted to cry. They’d be buried in this cabin forever!
“I took a look outside. I thought I might be able to make it down the road to the hotel, but from the look of it, nothing is going to be moving tonight. I’m really sorry, but I have no choice but to stay here.”
Nedra settled into the comfort of the plush leather chair opposite the sofa. She was touched by his apology. He seemed sincere. “There’s nothing to apologize for. This won’t be the first time I’ve pulled an overnighter with sin.”
He appeared puzzled by her reply. Then it dawned on him what she was saying. The cabin vibrated with his laughter.
“So the preacher does have a sense of humor!” Sin marveled, as he wiped tears of mirth from his eyes. He had sensed her resolve when she entered the room. He knew that his having to stay here would be awkward for her. He worried that their present situation might put distance between them, just when she had begun to display some trust in him.
He had been in Tahoe three days before their accidental meeting. At the Simpson house, she had mentioned the road on which the cabin was located. He had the good fortune of remembering that and located it right away. The cabin was close enough to his hotel that his jogging story didn’t seem contrived when they met. She would never know that he had been on silent watch outside her cabin since the day he discovered where she was staying.
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