It was as she stood numbly in the jammed elevator, slumped against the wood paneling, that she found the piece that had eluded her. She emerged on the eighth floor in a haze. A few agents intercepted her in the hall to offer condolences and ask about her health, but Nora only gave curt responses. She swallowed hard and walked into the office. “This was my fault,” she said softly, and all three agents looked up from their computer screens.
“What was?” John asked.
Nora clenched her eyes shut, seeing it all again. When she spoke at last, she said, “Class D larceny.”
“Come again?” said Burton.
“I should have seen it earlier,” Nora murmured.
John frowned. “Class D—oh. You mean, Rashid?”
“He was working for a warehouse in South Philly. He filled up a U-Haul with merchandise from several of the companies storing their stuff there. Among them, a beauty supply distributor.” Nora’s eyes were full of regret.
Ben Calder understood immediately. “Acetone,” he said.
“He ended up with a lot of shampoo and hair extensions. But, also enough acetone to last him for a long, long time,” she said. “It’s not like they made him turn it in when they sent him off to prison. He hadn’t been on anyone’s radar. No one knew he could cook.”
“But by the time Rashid got out of jail and was ready to start up again, his brother was getting his meth from Mexico,” Burton said.
“And that’s not a relationship you sever,” said Ben. “Unless you want to end up wearing your own entrails.”
Wansbrough said, “But Nora, all of us missed something. Rashid and his mother were always coughing, classic sign of having a meth lab on premises. It never occurred to me. Hell, we were in the house together, and I found it hard to breathe. Why didn’t we search the basement that day we went into Kylie’s room?
“If the part of the story was true that he was angry with Kevin over how he neglected the mom and sister, then leading the Somalis to take Kevin’s car would make a certain amount of sense,” John said, adding that line to the report he was working on.
“So Rashid can implicate Kevin in the killing that starts a gang war,” Nora said.
“But what about Kylie? Would he have led the Somalis to her as well?” Ben asked. “Even if he was trying to help the Somalis start a gang war, why would Rashid have consented to Kylie being one of the victims?” Ben asked.
Eric Burton met Nora’s eyes. She read his gaze, while appreciating his silence. Not dropping her eyes, she said softly, “Honor killing?”
The other two agents contemplated this theory in silence. Then John said, “We have to find Asad … and that car. If Monty Watt’s right, and Kylie was killed in a vehicle, it might have been that one. And Hafsa’s body probably took a ride in it before being dumped.”
Nora checked her watch. “Catherine Zucco should almost be there by now,” she said.
“It being a half an hour after we agreed to meet,” Wansbrough said irritably. “She’d sure as hell better be there by now.”
All four stood, gathering files from their desks, and made the short trip to Hahnemann Hospital. Soon they found themselves once again crowding into Kevin Baker’s room. This time Laurie hadn’t joined them, and only Nora and Eric Burton sat on the wide windowsill. Unlike their past visit, Kevin Baker was lucid and angry. “You take my mama into custody? Old lady like that?”
“First, if we hadn’t removed her from the house, she’d be dead now,” John Wansbrough answered. “Second, are you suggesting she didn’t know what your brother Rashid was up to? That it wasn’t part of his plan to have the sweet old lady feeding us all that information?”
Although he could still only really open one eye, Kevin regarded Wansbrough steadily. “What do you know about it?”
Ben interjected, “What do you know about it?”
Ever-poised, Catherine Zucco was saying, “I advise you not to answer that.”
Kevin listened, cocked his head slightly, and remained mute.
John Wansbrough was irritated. “You do understand the concept of sentence reduction, right? It implies you will share information with us in exchange for a lighter sentence. In your case we are going to be hearing from you all about your contacts in Los Zetas. But first, we want to know when you last saw Rashid?”
Kevin glanced at his lawyer who nodded assent that he answer. “Last week.”
“Before the drive-by in which Benzo was shot?”
“Same day.”
“Did he have a spare key to your car?” John asked.
Kevin shifted uncomfortably in the bed as he considered this. “Maybe. I had left a valet key in the house somewhere…”
“Did Rashid want to participate in your business?”
Kevin nodded.
“And you kept him out?”
His bruised face darkened slightly, in fear, in remembrance. “I’d made a deal with Los Zetas. They had ways of being sure I carried through with my part.” Kevin glanced at his lawyer, who hesitated, but nodded again. He chose his words carefully. “It turned out to be the right decision, keeping him out, though. He was too much of a risk.”
“How?”
“I knew he’d be on probation a long time. But I also figured, you know, with the beard, him comin’ home from jail all Muslim … that the FBI’d be watchin’ him anyway. To see if he’d gone sand nigger or somethin’…”
From her perch on the windowsill, Nora flinched.
“Tell me about your relationship with Rashid,” Ben was saying.
The lawyer leaned in. “Irrelevant, don’t answer personal questions.”
“Relevant,” responded John Wansbrough loudly. “We believe that Rashid might have set Kevin up.”
That got Kevin’s attention. He said, “The last time I saw him, he was angry. He’d been approached by one of Dewayne’s crew, asking him to cook for them. His cooking was top secret, see. Even when he was supplying the A&As back in the day, nobody was supposed to know it was him. That’s how he played it safe.”
“He thought you’d let his secret out?”
Kevin nodded.
“And did you?” John asked.
“Hell no!” Kevin said, indignantly. “Naw, man. I didn’t want no trouble from him.”
Ben studied him, then asked, “You were scared of your brother, Kevin?”
Kevin looked from Calder to Wansbrough, his gaze heavy with ugly memories. “My brother been through shit nobody should go through. Saw Mama get beat up all the time. Saw his daddy killed right in front of him. Gangbanger stab the man, right in front of him. Right in front of him, and walk right off. Police don’t do nothing. It made him hard, made him, like, dead inside.”
The two agents were silent a moment, waiting to see if he would add anything. Finally, John Wansbrough said, “What was the last thing he said to you?”
“He said I’d betrayed him, sold him out. That all along I hadn’t done right by the family, not by Mama or Kylie, and not by him … so he had new friends now, new brothers. He said … He said they were running from war just like him—that life in Kingsessing is war every day, in every way. And so they understand each other just fine. And that they would be taking over my business, and that he would help them. That more war was brewing, and I was next to die.”
“So he thought you had exposed him, put him in danger,” John said. “What did he say when you told him it wasn’t you who had ‘sold him out’?”
Kevin Baker’s voice became soft. “He wanted to know who it was, then.”
“And you said?”
Kevin looked at his hands, then raised his eyes. Even Nora and Eric could see the remorse there. “I told him he should ask Kylie, cuz word was … word was she was … with Dewayne.”
* * *
Eric Burton was talking very fast as the cluster of agents bent together outside the interview room. “So it wasn’t supposed to be Kylie. They were going to start the war by killing Kevin first.”
“But Rashi
d found out about Kylie,” Ben said.
“And either volunteered her to be their next victim, or killed her himself,” Eric surmised.
“In the Escalade,” Nora said.
“In a car, Monty Watt told us. That probably was the Escalade. The same Escalade that likely delivered Hafsa to the alley. Goddam, I want that car,” John said, frustrated.
Suddenly Ben Calder looked up, eyes bright.
“It’s a miracle she hadn’t died already, though, right? Isn’t that what you said, John?”
The rest of the agents looked at each other in sudden, confused silence. “What?” Burton demanded.
“From a sexual disease. It’s a miracle she hadn’t died already,” Ben repeated.
John, Nora, and Eric all stared at him, confused.
He started to laugh. “I think I know where the flash drive is,” he said excitedly.
“What? Where?” John demanded.
Still laughing, he grabbed Nora by the arm. “Give us an hour!”
“Where are you going?” Burton called after them.
“Medical examiner!” Ben called over his shoulder, pulling Nora by the arm through the hall. He almost bumped her into six different agents as he hurried her to the elevator and punched the down button.
“Have you lost your mind?” she asked, yanking her arm back and rubbing it.
“What was weird about the scene in the loft?” he said excitedly.
Nora shrugged. “Everything about that scene was weird.”
“The bathroom?” he prompted, clearly expecting her to know the answer.
Nora reflected as he pulled her by the other arm into the elevator and punched “B.” The car was already half-full of employees from the ninth and tenth floors. “There was a laptop in the bathroom?”
“Yes, but what else?” he pressed.
“Ummm, toiletries?” She scanned her memory. “Condom wrappers?”
He snapped loudly, startling his fellow passengers. “Not condom wrappers! A condom wrapper. One.”
Nora shrugged. “So?”
“The whole reason we have Dewayne in custody at all is that he has left his semen all over the city.”
The woman next to Nora wore a dark gray suit and a pile of pearls. She eyed them both with distaste, then appeared grateful when the doors whooshed open at the lobby.
Ben continued undaunted as he and Nora waited for the car to continue to the basement. “Reality is a gangster, and a player, and he does not wear condoms.”
Nora frowned. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying,” he said, green eyes flashing, “that the easiest way to smuggle something—say, in my field, drugs—out of a tricky situation is to swallow it in a condom.”
“Eww…” Nora winced. “Are you telling me…?”
Ben laughed out loud as he ushered her into his car. “… that the hooker I shot had just eaten her flash drive!”
* * *
The Philadelphia medical examiner hadn’t even touched Lisa Halston’s mostly headless corpse until Nora and Ben stormed in. The flash drive that the M.E. pulled out of the dead hooker’s stomach was indeed a moneypot. Libby and Jonas had taken only a few hours to decrypt it. One level of decryption allowed them to see what the Internet clients would see: girls, some as young as nine, in a variety of poses, sometimes completely naked, sometimes scantily clad, sometimes alone, sometimes with adult men or women touching them, displaying them. The second level of decryption exposed Lisa Halston’s files on each child. Her name, how much she was bringing in, how many clients she could service per day (the average was five). Tameka Cooper was among them, and so was Jane Doe, whose picture appeared next to the name Susan.
There was a list of security guards at local motels who would keep their mouths shut, and for how much … There was a list of clients with cell phone numbers or e-mail addresses for each name. And most damning, an accounts receivable page listing Dewayne’s cut and hers. Lisa Halston had been organized, thorough, and utterly soulless. Had Ben Calder not shot her in the head, the seventy-six girls on that flash drive would have netted her and Dewayne no less than twelve million dollars a year.
It was only a few hours after John Wansbrough had signed the evidence disclosure statement when Dewayne’s lawyer called to let them know he would cut a deal.
The lawyer, whose name was Jenkins, twisted his Rolex back and forth on his arm. “I’m here to ensure that my client’s rights are not violated during the process of helping the state with its case.”
Nora did not disguise her disgust. “Such a noble public servant.”
Dewayne laughed out loud at that—“Aww, the sister dissed you, Jenk…”
Before he got any further, Nora rounded on him. “I want to know about gang pimping.”
“You would make a nice addition,” Dewayne answered, letting his eyes travel slowly over her entire body. “Kinda skinny, maybe, but you smell real good…”
Nora let her rage smolder, looking to Ben who was standing next to the table. “Why minor girls, Dewayne?” he asked.
Dewayne shrugged. “Customers pay more. Just business. The younger ones is fresh, sweet. You know. Softer.”
Nora bit back her fury as Dewayne spoke. She accepted a steadying look from Calder, then said, with great deliberation, “But there’s something more, right? They’re easier to scare.”
Dewayne thought this over. “It’s a business. I can’t take them home to mama each night for cocoa and bedtime stories. They have to believe that it’s life or death.”
“They perform for you or someone gets hurt.”
Dewayne glanced at his lawyer who shook his head.
“And Kylie?” Nora demanded.
“Kylie was different, she came to me. But she did it. She was good at it, didn’t complain like the others.”
Nora recalled the doodling in the girl’s biology textbook. “Because she loved you?” Nora asked, suddenly peering curiously into Dewayne’s icy eyes.
Dewayne didn’t answer. Nora knew she hadn’t expected him to.
“Did you kill her?”
“I keep telling you people, I didn’t kill her. Why would I kill her?”
“To mess with Kevin Baker?”
Jenkins interjected, “All of this is hypothetical, you needn’t answer at all, Dewayne.”
But Dewayne ignored him. “Naw, man. Kylie made me a lot of money, see. It woulda been stupid.”
“Do you think Kevin Baker killed her? Because she was sleeping with you, his biggest rival?”
Dewayne shook his head. “I don’t know, man…”
“Or perhaps it was Rashid Baker? Different brother, same reason?”
Nora saw Dewayne glance at his lawyer, and she pounced. “You know something about Rashid Baker.”
Dewayne shrugged, frowning.
Ben sighed in frustration. “Come on, Dewayne. Were Rashid and Kylie close—did he know about the two of you?”
Dewayne rapped his knuckles against the tabletop, a deep frown still furrowing his brow. Then he looked up and said, “Kylie hated him. He was always up in her face, askin’ where she goin’, what she doin’, who she doin’ it with … Didn’t like her clothes, didn’t like her attitude. She start comin’ to me after he got out. He made her crazy, so it was like she wanted to get away, you know…”
“Did he threaten her?”
“Every day, man,” Dewayne answered.
“Did he know about the two of you?” Ben repeated. “Or that you were pimping Kylie?”
Dewayne shrugged. “I don’t know, man. I know Kylie was too scared to tell him—about me. Or about the tricks.”
Nora asked, “Did you know he could cook?”
Dewayne nodded slowly. “It was Kylie said he was starting to bring all these bottles and shit into the basement, made her swear never to go down there. Her mama don’t go down there anyways, what with her knees, right—but Rashid started tellin’ Kylie don’t go down in there. I understood, then. Even sent a runner to talk
to him, see about supplementing our current suppliers with some homegrown product.”
Ben and Nora shared a glance. Then Ben asked, “Did you hear anything about Kevin Baker’s Escalade being stolen?”
“The Escalade they used to take down Benzo?”
“The same.”
Dewayne narrowed his eyes. “A&As sayin’ they didn’t do it?”
“Kevin Baker says he didn’t do it, that his car had been stolen. What do you think?”
Dewayne seemed to be thinking. He glanced at Jenkins, who said again, “You only have to answer direct questions—you’re not here for conjecture.”
Ben glared at the lawyer. “He’s asking for a deal in exchange for volunteering useful information. He can engage in a little conjecture.” He turned his gaze back to Dewayne. “Come on, Dewayne. You have to have a theory. Same Escalade was used in a drive-by against federal agents. Lot of arrests happened after that. Could it be that someone’s trying to play the JBM and the A&As off against each other, trying to punk you?”
Dewayne worked his jaw back and forth. Then he said finally, “There’s some Africans on the scene.”
Nora sat up straighter in her chair. “Go on,” she said, hoping to keep her tone measured and calm.
“New in town, you know. Mean motherfuckers.”
“How did you hear about them?” asked Nora.
Dewayne tapped his finger meditatively on the smooth tabletop. “They was offering deals to get into the business. To get hooked up, you know. So they could be sellin’.”
Ben leaned forward. “What kind of deals?”
“They had some girls who was off the grid, see? No one lookin’ for them. No papers. No missing persons databases.” He said this last as though there were no greater irritation in the life of a gangster. “These girls were guaranteed ready to go all day every day, if you know what I mean—little meth, little H, and they was … cool. For the right info, the right connections, you could get a couple. For keeps. After that, they could make it regular, you know. Start bringin’ ’em in whenever.”
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