“Hey!” She gave me a look that said stop treating her like a child.
Then she picked up her notebook full of equations, looking very happy.
I was running away with a physics genius. I can’t even balance my checkbook.
Damn good thing they’d made the Staten Island Ferry free.
“All I found are records for an Isaac Jackson, Sr.” confessed John Chen when we met in an East Village café. “You’re right. Jackson’s dad fought in the Vietnam War.”
“He never got any service decorations, did he?”
“You mean Silver Star or shit like that? No.”
“No award from the French government?”
He looked at me sideways. I said never mind.
“Isaac Sr. did his tour, came back home fucked up like so many other vets. Nothing criminal, but he checked himself voluntarily into psychiatric institutions in Chicago. Did it at least twice.”
“Any details?”
He read out his notes. “Mental problems associated with drug use. Heroin mainly. High percentage of that among vets at the time. He tried to hold down a job but died of tuberculosis in a project in Harlem in the eighties. Sad story.”
“But what about the son?”
“That’s just it,” said Chen. “Isaac Jr. isn’t in the system. No criminal record, never worked for a hospital or the civil service so he doesn’t rate a blip. He listed his father and the project address on an old learner’s permit for a New York driver’s license, but the old forms didn’t need as much for identification as post 9/11.”
“Well, what about renewals?”
“Never filed one.” Chen shrugged. “In fact, he never followed through on the driving test. Hey, it’s New York! Having a car’s a pain in the ass. Must have changed his mind. Lots of people here go their whole lives without ever getting behind a wheel.”
“Strange,” I said. “You’d think he’d still want one. He lives out on Staten Island, after all.”
“You said yourself, he’s got all these minions. They must drive him around too.”
“I suppose so.”
Manhattan was a different planet. Go figure. As huge as London is and as extensive as the Tube, Southeast Rail, Southwest Rail, and so on, are, there are still plenty of times when I’m glad that I have my license and can borrow a car.
“This guy’s either never made a false move in his life, or he was born yesterday,” said Chen. “No sealed juvenile record—we’ve checked that. I’m having one of my guys go through school records for Manhattan near Daddy’s old place and in Chicago where he used to live.”
“What about birth records?” I asked.
“Well, why would you need them?” he asked back. “We have his address, we have his social security number, we have date of birth—what else is his birth certificate going to tell you? Especially considering that Dad moved around. Place of birth? So what? Just because he might have been born in Chicago or here doesn’t mean he went to school in the same place.”
I was getting frustrated. “Then what will school records tell you?”
He threw up his hands. “Hey, everybody has to work, right? He had to hold down some job before he was the black Hugh Hefner and Al Sharpton combined. When he was a kid, it must have been tough with his daddy going through problems. My theory? Maybe a teacher helped him get into a vocational program, helped him up his grades to get into a technical college—I don’t know, something.”
“Makes sense,” I said.
Chen laughed. “I’m so glad you approve.”
My cell was ringing. I recognized the number and wondered what they could possibly want.
“Hello, Teresa.”
“Danielle?”
“Hi, sweetie!” she said. “I heard you’re in Manhattan this afternoon. I’m here too, and I thought maybe it’s time we had another private chat, just us girls.”
“Oh…Right. Sure, Danielle. Where are you? If you give me, say, thirty—”
“Why don’t you come right now. It’s really important, hon.”
Chen listened to all this with mild amusement, his eyebrows lifting.
“Remember I said I never have to worry about you? Please, Teresa. I know you’re obedient, and you always try to do your best. It won’t take long. Central Park. Just come as quick as you can.”
She rattled off a landmark and gave me directions. Hung up with a breezy good-bye.
“I’d better go,” I told Chen with little enthusiasm.
“See ya, Princess,” he said with a smirk.
“Don’t call me that.”
Whatever Danielle wanted, I assumed it was intended to be confidential. Knowing I was in the city, she could have picked any spot in Manhattan, so I had to wonder why she insisted on Central Park. But she was the duchess—I was Cinderella.
I crossed into New York’s huge rectangle of green on the eastern side, Fifth Avenue above 102nd Street, and asked passersby for directions to what was called the Loch.
It took me a while to navigate the footpaths of the North Woods, and there was Danielle up ahead, patient and smiling. That alone should have set off an alarm. But it was daytime, a sunny afternoon, and she appeared to be alone.
I hiked over to her, nodding politely and saying, “Hey.” Wondering why she was so happy to see me. Not happy. Smug.
The Loch is beautiful, really, not that I ever want to visit it again. Not ever. It lies at the bottom of what they call the Ravine, and there’s the gurgling stream and Huddlestone Arch, all woodland-picturesque.
But when I walked up to it in this chilling moment, Danielle waved to the view and asked me, “This is a gorgeous spot! Don’t you think?”
Lying on the rocks, her temple robes stained a hideous red, lay Violet. The knife was still plunged into her chest, but it was clear she’d been stabbed multiple times. Her face, emptied of color, was a mask of innocent, helpless shock.
I stared at Danielle, thinking I might throw up. The finishing touch was her voice ever so softly, ever so sweetly asking me, “You want your necklace back?”
No. No, no, no. NO!
“She was wearing it the other day,” explained Danielle, her voice still matter-of-fact. “That made me sure—you know? I mean, I thought I caught a glimmer when you two were introduced, but there’s an element of sexuality in every friendship, right? But your gift! Too nice, even for a new friend. And she wore it so proudly, just like a lover. It got me thinking, because, hey, you can’t get that kind of jewelry anywhere, even in New York. Benin, right?”
Oh, God. How could I have been so stupid?
She must have recognized the style of the piece—because she’d been there. Nigeria.
“Sure you don’t want the necklace back?” she purred. “You’ll need the receipt.”
I couldn’t stop my tears if I’d wanted to.
I’d been so careful. Left my passport and other ID back with the staff at the Chelsea—even rented a new cell phone with added security when I knew I was going undercover in the mansion.
Tiny little scrap of cash register paper, the name of the shop in blue ink.
She must have dug through my purse, checking on me, even while I checked on her at one of the library computers.
“I bet you think you’re so clever,” said Danielle. “Making a fool out of that stupid weak clown Oliver. But clever girls like you just have to show off your smarts and your sophistication.”
I couldn’t follow—just stared at her blankly. Violet. Oh, Violet.
So she made it clear for me. “We went back and spoke to those bimbos Oliver takes as arm candy to the club. Remember them? I don’t blame you, really. Christ, they are stupid! I know houseplants with larger vocabularies. And you held up your passport to shut ’em up, but one of them, Teresa—one of them does remember the pretty stamps on the pages. Nigeria, Sudan, Thailand…”
No. If I hadn’t given her the necklace—
If I hadn’t wanted to show up those silly girls—
“Le
t me guess,” said Danielle. “Craig Padmore’s family hired you, right? I knew we should have come up with a motive!”
Let her think what she wants for now.
“An accou-accountant…”
“Sorry, what was that, honey?”
“An accountant shot execution-style in his home,” I said slowly, my voice still trembling. “Yeah, it raises que-questions. Why? Why Violet? She couldn’t know anything!”
“But she was special to you,” said Danielle sweetly. “That’s good enough.”
“Wh-why?” I demanded, my voice cracking with my torment. “Why br-bring me here?”
“So you’ll get blamed for it!”
And she giggled and laughed, laughed some more, full of glee and bloodlust at the big joke, and sprinted away, calling back to me, “You don’t fuck with us!”
I stole a last look at my poor girl and got the picture. The knife. I had looked but not seen a moment earlier—it was a common butcher knife, like the kind used in the kitchen at the mansion. I’d been cutting fat from chops with that kind of knife only yesterday, and ten to one my fingerprints were on that instrument.
I ran and ran after Danielle, who was setting a fierce pace.
“Teresa!” Panicked voice I didn’t know. “Teresa, honey, no, please!”
What the…?
It cut through my grief and outrage. A surreal interruption that came out of nowhere—and was supposed to.
Black guy I had never seen before in my life. Not outside, not at the mansion. Square head but full head of hair, full mustache, and cruel eyes, bulk on him. Another outside contractor like the Asian tagalong thug in Bangkok.
He ran a few yards behind Danielle through the trees, then stopped in my path. All at once, my mind flashed an insight of why he was here and why Danielle had run, knowing I would chase her. This was yet another fantasy in the making—my assassin who would claim it was self-defense. My “ex-lover” forced to kill me after I discovered him with his new girlfriend. A knife for her, a gun for me.
“No, baby, don’t do it!” he shouted. Loud enough for people to hear but no witnesses around to see.
I dove to the ground and rolled. As I picked myself up, I saw the guy frown, his mouth hissing the word shit as he stopped himself from firing his pistol. The scenario only worked if we were up close and “struggling” for the weapon.
Now he was chasing after me through the woods, trying to intercept me before I got back to the main path, where joggers and strollers would spot me in trouble.
I had to let that bitch escape.
And she would have to let me.
When I looked back, the hired killer was gone.
Violet. I flagged down someone to call 911 on their cell, and I stayed with her until the police arrived.
Detective John Chen’s voice was tired as he handed me a cup of coffee and put my mind at rest. “Yeah, I know you didn’t do it, Teresa. For fuck’s sake, I heard her lure you on the phone.”
We sat on a distant bench as the police radios squawked, and I tried not to watch my girl being taken away in a zippered bag.
“And I don’t need the medical examiner to give me a short course on postmortem lividity,” he said, his voice sour. “Time of death is always a problem, but one of our forensics guys says she’s cold. That’s absolutely impossible if she was stabbed about an hour ago. Her body temp would still be fairly up there, even with contact on those rocks and the water. They probably killed your friend right after you left the house. Sorry.”
Violet.
“Cameras,” I said suddenly. “You guys closed-circuit-TV everything in parks and such like the British police do, right?”
Chen nodded. “Yep. But my guess is they were smart about the body dump—”
I looked at him.
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “About the way they left—”
“What do you mean they were smart?” I prompted.
“They probably got as close as they could from the Ninety-seventh Street Transverse, smuggled her down in a maintenance cart or something. We’ll see what the cameras show, but with the trees and line of sight, I’m not hopeful.”
“But Danielle—”
“Teresa.” He cut me off, hard.
I paid attention.
“She led you here, and I can confirm that much,” said Chen. “But it’s not enough. She’ll claim you two came across the body by accident and she simply freaked out and ran. There’ll be piss-poor audio, if there’s any usable closed-circuit at all, and from what you’ve told me all she did was stand there and try to provoke you. I can’t hold her for that. At best, we’ll have you running after her through those bushes and then you running back. Right now they’re probably cleaning up on Staten Island. Making sure it looks like the girl never stepped foot in that mansion.”
I felt a sob rising like a shudder through my body. “It’s my fault….”
“How can this be your fault?” he asked. The voice of detached professional reason.
I explained about the necklace, burying my face in my hands.
“She was a close friend, then?”
“You could say that. And more.”
Holding his coffee cup with both hands, he hung his head with delicate, perfect sympathy and confided, “Listen, I don’t know anything about black culture, to be honest with you—my girlfriend likes Sean Paul, but that’s about it, so…What I’m saying is I was raised Buddhist, and we believe that good people are reborn in higher incarnations until they reach Nirvana. Maybe there’s some comfort in that idea—”
He stopped himself all of a sudden, turning apologetic. “Oh, shit, you’re probably Christian, right? Sorry, sorry, sorry—you’re what? Do they have Baptists in Britain or—”
“Tiger Woods.”
“Excuse me?”
“Tiger Woods,” I said, the idea crystallizing and sharpening into focus.
And, oh, my God, this is what it’s always been about all this time.
Craig Padmore understood as he dug through the French book about the Vietnam War. It was never right in the pages, but it was a logical implication. Who still gets hurt by war after the war is over?
“What?” demanded Chen. “What the hell does murder have to do with golf?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all. Come on, we’ve got to go do some research!”
13
I explained the spark, what had prompted the idea. He thought we were wasting our time, but I managed to persuade him. He didn’t buy it at first because who bothers to go for a legal name change if your name is already your dad’s? You’re not thinking about it in the right direction, I said.
Plus, he argued, Isaac Jackson didn’t have a criminal record, which is always high on the list for ditching who you used to be.
Wrong direction, I said.
None of it would make sense unless my theory was right.
Both of us could still hardly believe it when the proof rolled out of his mobile car fax. We were staring at a copy of the petition that went to the New York State legal authorities in Albany eighteen years ago. Our temple leader had changed his name, all right.
It took us another hour or so and Chen flashing his badge to everybody we came across, but eventually we had what we needed: a twenty-year-old piece of paper dug up from the right district branch of the U.S. federal government.
Then we made some more phone calls and filled in the jigsaw portrait.
I had been right about them from the beginning. Danielle was the power, but Isaac was the key. Until today, however, I couldn’t dig deep enough into the background of Isaac Jackson.
It was because there never really was an Isaac Jackson—not an Isaac Jackson Jr. There was and there wasn’t, you see. Even though the original Isaac Jackson, the fellow who had died of tuberculosis, who had gone in and out of psychiatric institutions, the poor man haunted by war and drugs, had indeed been the cult leader’s father.
Detective John Chen stared at the photo and the signatures,
and he whispered my same thought. “Unbelievable.”
We heard his cell ring, and I listened to Chen whisper a horrified “Jesus Christ” and then “yeah” and “yeah” and “yeah, thanks” before hanging up. I held up my hands, impatiently demanding, Well?
“We have a problem,” he said, “and I am going to need your help desperately with a capital D. We’re racing the clock. Oh, God…”
“What? What is it?”
“You gave me a yellow pill and an orange one as samples,” said Chen. “The yellow one is high-quality ecstasy, as good as it gets.”
“And the orange?”
“Laced with a fatal dose of strychnine. Ten, twenty minutes after you take the hit, you go into violent convulsions. Respiratory paralysis causes you to asphyxiate. Horrible way to go.”
Literally, a death rattle. God in heaven.
“It’s mass slaughter,” I said, scarcely believing it.
“It gets worse. We raided the lab. They’ve shipped out.”
A nightmare, probably hours away.
“Strychnine? How the hell did they come up with strychnine?”
Chen was surprised at me. “You should know. You found the link.” And when I didn’t catch on, he added, “They use it in pesticides and rat poisons. You said they own an insecticide company, right?”
“Oh, God. Of course! Just one more license.”
“This must be Isaac Jackson’s idea of a sick joke.”
“I don’t follow,” I said.
“Back in the sixties, there used to be an urban myth that strychnine could be found in tiny doses in tabs of acid,” explained Chen. “It’s bullshit, according to our chemists. But I guess Isaac wanted to make this idea come true.”
“I think the massacre’s her idea,” I said. “Danielle uses a Chinese gang as a go-between, and all the deaths will destroy their credibility. Then she and Isaac take over the market.”
“And Isaac won’t mind all this death?”
“You know how much he hates Asians,” I said, struggling to suppress a shiver. “And now we know why. Jeez, we’ve got to stop this fast.”
Beg Me Page 23