by Osborne, Jon
Dana stretched her neck. “What’s the Brotherhood connection?” she asked.
Blankenship cleared his throat. “None that I could find, unfortunately. Unlike Lee Jarvis, nothing in Gibbons’s apartment connected him in any way, shape or form to any white-power hate-groups, and nobody in his neighborhood seemed to know him very well. Anyway, we’ve got a twenty-four-hour guard covering Janice Wiley at the hospital now, and the guard will accompany her when she goes home, too. Maybe in a day or two, according to the docs. Still, something tells me that these Brotherhood assholes aren’t stupid enough to come back to the scene of their failed crime. If they were, we probably would’ve caught them by now.”
Dana frowned. “So, where does that leave us then?”
“Exactly where we started.”
Dana shook her head. “I was afraid you might say that. Absolutely nowhere.”
Blankenship laughed without humor. “Yup. ‘Fraid so.”
Dana glanced over at the small digital alarm clock sitting on her bedside table. Six fifty-three a.m. Figuring in the two-hour time-zone difference in New Mexico – Mountain Standard as opposed to the Eastern Standard Time used in Cleveland – she puzzled out the hour in New Mexico. “Jesus Christ, Blankenship,” she said. “Did you even sleep last night?”
“Not a fucking wink.”
“Well, why don’t you try to go get some now? You probably need it.”
“Can’t.”
“Why’s that?”
“Have you talked to Krugman yet?”
Dana extracted her legs from the tangle of covers on the bed and put down her feet on the floor. “Nope, not yet. Why?”
“Because I just did. Long and short of it: I’m coming home today, per his orders. Krugman says there’s no use in pumping a dry well. Anyway, can you pick me up at Hopkins at ten a.m.?”
“Of course. My time or yours?”
“Yours. So, I’ll see you at ten a.m.?”
“Yep. I’ll be there with bells on.”
“Better than that white-power outfit you were wearing the other day.”
“What wouldn’t be? Anyway, I’ll see you at ten.”
“Thanks, partner.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Switching off with Blankenship a moment later, Dana immediately punched in the number for Bill Krugman down in DC. After fifteen rings, the Director’s cellphone switched over to voicemail. Dana pursed her lips and cut the connection without leaving a message before trying his office line next. No answer there, either. Weird, considering the fact that Krugman had always started his workday at exactly five a.m. on the dot.
Dana sighed and headed toward the bathroom to go take a shower. Hell, everything in her life was just plain weird, though, wasn’t it? Damn right, it was.
Always had been ever since she’d been four years old.
CHAPTER 103
By the time Angel and Malachai finally made it back to his condo in Avon, it was nearly midnight.
They didn’t say a word to one another as they walked through the front door and he placed his car keys on the dining room table. They’d already said enough to each other back at the restaurant, hadn’t they? Damn right, they had. Besides, what was left for them to say? Should they just remind each other again that they weren’t shit to the white world but soulless mud people?
Once again, no fucking thank you.
Not having been there for a while, Angel paused and looked around the place. Everything still looked pretty much the same as she’d remembered from her last visit, the living room designed in the same bachelor chic: a couple mismatched pieces of furniture; a secondhand coffee table; a brand-new flat-panel TV hanging on the northeast wall near a bubbling tank filled with a variety of colorful and exotic-looking fish; an old leather recliner in the corner, Malachai’s favorite.
Malachai came up behind her and wrapped his strong arms around her waist. “Everything you remembered?” he asked in a throaty voice.
Angel turned around to face him, immediately knowing what was thinking. Mostly, she guessed, because she was thinking the exact same thing.
“And then some.”
He took her face in his hands and kissed her softly on the mouth. “I never thought I’d see you again, Angel,” he said. “I’m so happy, so goddamn thankful that you’re here. I missed you so much.”
Angel just let things happen from there. His bedroom was down the hall just off the living room, his king-sized bed neatly made up with plenty of comfortable pillows and a down comforter. His sheets smelled of him as she sank deep into the bed. It was a smell she’d always adored. A smell she’d missed. Woodsy, manly, comforting.
Just what she needed right now.
She sank deeper into the bed and felt a flutter of anticipation in her stomach as Malachai climbed on top of her, just like she’d felt their first time together. Hell, maybe this was their first time together. Could be, if she really wanted to look at it that way.
She did.
Malachai’s warm breath tickled her ear. “I missed you so much, Angel,” he repeated, running a hand over her heaving breasts. “So goddamn much.”
Angel’s nipples hardened into diamond points beneath his familiar touch. She ached for him as he kissed her passionately on her neck, and not just in her nipples, either. Farther south, too.
“You already mentioned that,” she breathed.
Any other words they might’ve spoken were lost as Malachai’s mouth again covered hers.
Angel reached down and fumbled with his belt buckle while he undid the buttons on her blouse. His need was palpable and growing more apparent with each passing second, more apparent than she’d ever remembered before.
Their movements became faster then, more choreographed, both of them longing to revisit the places they hadn’t visited for so long. The places they’d missed when they’d been away from each other.
When they were both naked, Malachai entered her gently, brushing the hair lovingly out of her face with the back of his left hand as their heavy breaths quickened and became one.
They moved together like that for what seemed an eternity then, but also in a place where the concept of time was simply an abstract device, an ethereal invention of the earthly world whose surly bonds they’d just slipped.
When it was over, Malachai brushed the back of his hand against her cheek and looked down into her eyes. His own brown eyes were so warm, so full of life, so full of love that Angel could hardly stand to look up into them.
“Everything you remembered?” he asked.
She nodded and felt a single tear slip down her right cheek. “And then some.”
CHAPTER 104
When Gregory Mellon had finally exited the room with his silly little Nazi salute, the Race Master leashed Bane to a heavy steel chain and brought the dog out to the clearing in the woods along the edge of his sprawling Massachusetts property. They had just one more thing they needed to accomplish before they left for Mississippi tonight.
Ten minutes later, Bane was mounting the purebred pit bull bitch, his huge tongue lolling out of the corner of his mouth as he pumped himself in and out with wild abandon. The bitch’s owner, a breeder from a nearby town, stood by the Race Master’s side as they watched their dogs go at it.
“He’s certainly an animal in the sack,” the blonde woman said, laughing obnoxiously at her own incredibly stupid joke. “Does he get that from his master or what?”
The Race Master turned to face the woman and looked her over from head to toe. About five-four. Blue eyes. Cut-off jean-shorts featuring ragged fringes hanging over plump thighs. Maybe forty years old. Perhaps a bit on the heavy side for his liking, but the extra weight on her frame filled out her bra quite nicely, straining her ample bosom against her tight white t-shirt.
“Why don’t you be the judge of that?” he said, more of an order than a request.
The blonde woman smiled at him. “It’ll cost you extra. Another thousand bucks on top of the breeding fee. D
eal?”
Ever the businessman, The Race Master considered the proposition for a moment. “And the puppy is guaranteed as part of the transaction?” he asked. “The pick of the litter?”
Still smiling, the blonde woman took him by the hand and led him behind a stand of trees twenty feet away. Her throaty voice tickled the tiny hairs in his left ear as she pulled him down to the forest floor.
“That’s not the only thing that’s guaranteed,” she breathed. “Now just lie back and relax.”
CHAPTER 105
Dana’s cellphone sounded from out in her bedroom just as she emerged from her shower in thick, billowing clouds of steam.
Wrapping a soft white cotton towel around her dripping body, she hurried into the bedroom, flipped open the phone and placed it to her ear with her hair still soaking wet. “Hello?”
“Dana, it’s Bill Krugman.”
Dana took the phone away from her face and wiped some of the moisture from her left cheek before placing the phone quickly back to ear. “Yes, sir. How are you? I’ve been waiting to hear from you. I was starting to get a little bit worried. Is everything OK?”
Krugman paused. Finally, he sighed and said, “Professionally, yes. Personally, no. Marie’s cancer has come back. I’m calling you from Georgetown University Hospital right now.”
Dana cringed. “Oh my God, sir,” she breathed. “That’s absolutely devastating.”
Krugman sighed again, even more deeply this time. “Yeah, it is, but Marie’s strong. The strongest woman I’ve ever known in my life. She’s going to beat this shit again, I just know it.”
Dana nodded. “Of course she will, sir. There’s not a doubt in my mind about that.”
Krugman cleared his throat. “Anyway, I’ve had some time to think here in the hospital, and I’ve decided that the best course of action would be for you and Blankenship to hook up with the private investigator again.”
He hesitated momentarily, probably while he looked down at some notes. “This Angel Monroe woman. Seems to me that she might be the key to pulling back the curtain on the Brotherhood. For the life of me, I just can’t figure out why they didn’t kill her when they had the chance – at the same time they killed her grandmother.”
Dana frowned. She’d wondered the exact same thing. “I think that’s a great idea, sir,” she said. “I’ll call Angel Monroe just as soon as I get off the phone with you here, see if I can’t set up a meeting for us after I pick up Blankenship at the airport.”
A disembodied voice sounded in the background of the call. Code 723, fifth floor. Code 723, fifth floor. All available surgeons, please report immediately to the fifth floor.
“Sounds good to me, Agent Whitestone,” Krugman said when the voice in the background cut off in an abrupt rumble of static. “Just keep me posted on all the details as they become available, OK?”
“Yes, sir. I certainly will.”
Switching off with Krugman, Dana punched in the number for the Cleveland-based private investigator, Angel Monroe. No answer after fifteen rings. No voicemail on which to leave a message, either.
Dana hung up the phone and sighed. Out loud, she said, “Where are you, Angel?”
CHAPTER 106
Angel left Malachai’s condo early the next morning, being very careful to not wake him. She wasn’t sure how to feel about what had happened between them, but she also knew she’d needed it. They both had.
The day had broken sunny and bright across the cloudless blue sky, the birds singing in the warm air all around her as Angel made her way through the parking lot with her panties wadded up in a ball in the middle of her purse. Thankfully, nobody was around to see her, so she guessed what she was doing at the moment couldn’t technically be considered “The Walk of Shame”. Thank God for small favors.
Angel sighed. She knew that she should probably be glowing in the aftermath of the lovemaking experience – wasn’t that how it was supposed to be when a girl was in love? Butterflies and fairy dust and all that good stuff? But the anger she’d experienced the previous day had bubbled up inside her chest again, scalding her throat like a bad case of acid reflux. She could barely keep it down as she drove back to her and Granny Bernice’s place on the west side of Cleveland.
She shuddered, knowing that she was starting to hate white people. All of them. And that scared her.
A lot.
She left the car running in the driveway when she reached their house and ran inside before jumping into a pair of white jogging shorts and a faded grey Cleveland Browns T-shirt, slapping her New Balances onto her feet before heading out the door again. If nothing else, she needed to run this ugly hatefulness out of herself before she fucking exploded.
She hit the cement jogging path at Edgewater Park hard twenty minutes later, not even bothering to look out at the lake. Hungry seagulls screamed angrily in the sky above at the top of their healthy lungs, demanding something to eat. The wind whipped hard through her long black hair as she raced along with the volume on her iPod turned up full-blast. The frenetic sounds of Menace Clan thumped wildly in her ears:
Niggas in the church say kill whitey all night long! The white man is the devil… the Crips and Bloods are soldiers I’m recruiting with no dispute; drive-by shooting on this white genetic mutant… let’s go and kill some rednecks!
Menace Clan ain’t afraid… I got the .380; the homies think I’m crazy because I shot a white baby; I said; I said; I said: Kill whitey all night long!
A nigga dumping on your white ass; fuck this rap shit, nigga, I’m gonna blast… I beat a white boy to the motherfucking ground!
Running as hard as she could now – much too hard for her furiously pumping legs to keep up with her upper body – Angel suddenly tripped and skidded across the cement, skinning her knees and the palms of her hands in the process, her flesh peeling back in long strips. Bright red blood seeped from her wounds, and Angel prayed to God that it was taking some of the hatefulness out of her right along with it.
Still, she knew that it probably wasn’t.
Hot tears of rage and shame spilled from her eyes. Sobbing, she curled up into a tight little ball right there in the middle of the jogging path, not even caring that a small group of white people had stopped to stare at her.
None of them asked her if she was OK.
Not a single, goddamn one.
CHAPTER 107
Eight hundred miles south of Cleveland, Ohio, Jasmine Pepperton strolled along the lush green campus of George Washington University in the nation’s capital on the last day of summer classes, pretty much just enjoying the pure summerness of it all. Birds circled high overhead in the clear blue sky above, their elegant wings spread out in glorious displays of feather while they rode the gentle breeze fifty feet up without even the slightest effort. Jasmine’s sleek black hair was tied back into a ponytail, and the warm sun smiled down on her bare shoulders as her boyfriend, John Mullins, ran to catch up with her.
“That psych test was a fucking killer,” John sputtered, breathing hard as he finally caught up to her. “I’d be surprised if I got more than three questions right. The five stages of grief: DABDA – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. I think I’ve reached the fifth stage, Jasmine. I accept the fact that I failed that goddamn test.”
Jasmine looked over at her boyfriend and smiled. Five-foot-seven and no more than a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet. Messy blonde hair that looked like it hadn’t been washed in a week. A rumpled blue dress shirt that appeared as though it had been rolled hard and put away wet – which, considering his laundry skills, probably had been.
Coupled with her own six-foot frame, Jasmine and John made quite the odd couple, to say the least. She was black; he was white. She’d come from money; he’d grown up dirt poor on a cattle farm in Indiana. But John made her laugh, and that was all that mattered to her.
Coming from a family as deeply entrenched in Washington politics as Jasmine’s had always made dating somewhat of a tric
ky proposition. She never could tell if her suitors were making a play for her because of her sparkling personality, or simply because they were looking to gain a foothold in the politics game. With John Mullins, though, she’d never needed to worry about that.
She playfully hip-checked him into a stand of landscaped bushes along the walkway two feet away. “C’mon, honey,” she said. “You probably aced the damn thing. Hell, we stayed up all night studying for it.”
John smiled up at her mischievously. “Oh, is that what you call what we were doing? Studying? Hell, if that’s the case, sign me up for some more of that.”
He paused and knitted his eyebrows together thoughtfully, an overdone look of concentration coloring in his face. “Maybe I’d have done better if they had let me take off my pants during the test.”
Jasmine laughed and rolled her eyes. “That’s quite enough out of you, lover boy. Keep it up and you’re cut off from here on out.”
An insincere look of pain etched John’s interesting face. He wasn’t classically handsome, but he wasn’t all that hard to look at, either. His clear blue eyes had been the first thing she’d noticed about him in Freshman Biology three years earlier.
“You’d cut off your baby daddy?” John asked incredulously. “A little too late to be pulling that crap now, Jazzy.”
Jasmine giggled and put a finger to her lips to hush him. “Hey, keep your voice down, dummy. I didn’t even tell my parents yet.”