Now she had enough money to maybe take a trip or go to the gospel convention in Atlanta.
Even better was what she’d gotten from the Mayor and his white friend, Don Przybylski. She would not be worrying about money for a while, she thought happily.
But what she really wanted was a man, a full time one, not like the man she occasionally slept with. God sure did make life hard for women. But soon, she’d have no need for diversions of the flesh and she could be truly wedded to Jesus.
She was getting ready to go out and meet some of her church friends. They all met each week and tried to do something together. They were a nice bunch but none of them were married and often Joyce felt like it was some kind of spinsters’ club.
She went to the door after the bell rang. Fear leapt into her heart when she saw the white cop with the black voice.
She wanted to run but didn’t see the point. He didn’t know anything. But what the hell was he doing back here? Joyce calmed herself then opened the door.
“Hello, Officer,” said Joyce Watson brightly. “What brings you here?”
“I think you know,” said Danny grimly, countering her attitude. He barged into the house past her. He walked into her living room and stood facing her.
“I was just going out, so I don’t have time to talk,” Joyce’s voice was beginning to waver.
Danny surveyed the woman. She was indeed dressed to go somewhere but there was fear on her face and she could not hide it.
“You went all the way downtown and made time for Don Przybylski, the Mayor’s aide, on the day of his arraignment, so can give me a few minutes.”
Joyce began to shake visibly. She moved back inside the house, closing the door. The shock on her face was evident, like she had just seen some mythical creature.
“I know you’re thinking about having a drink,” said Danny. “You can cut the Christian act and have one. You’re gonna need it.”
Joyce went to her chair and sat down. She pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. She was truly upset and it was no act. Then she reached inside her purse and pulled out a steel flask. She unscrewed the top and took a swig.
Danny sat down opposite her and waited. She was not a dangerous criminal or some kind of evil person, he thought. He saw guilt in her eyes. She hadn’t tried to lie to him and she seemed ready to talk.
“I knew it was wrong but I just… Oh, I don’t know why I did it.”
“Why were you talking with Przybylski that day and what were you arguing about?”
“He was the other policeman who came here asking about Rashindah’s things,” she said.
Danny remembered that she had told him a man came masquerading as a cop.
“Okay,” said Danny. “So why were you two fighting?”
“I saw him in the newspaper with the Mayor. He was in the background but I got a good look. So I looked up all the Mayor’s people online and found out who he was. I figured he had to be pretty desperate to come here like he did, so I called his office asking for Roman Young and I kept calling until it was clear I wasn’t going away.”
“You blackmailed him?” said Danny. “To keep quiet.”
“No, I just told him that I’d tell the news that he came out and pretended to be a cop if he didn’t take care of me.”
“That’s kinda what blackmail is,” said Danny. “How much money did he give you?
“None,” said Joyce. “That’s not what I wanted. The city’s got this new program renovating houses and giving them away. I just asked him to donate some of them to my church.”
“And you’d get the first free house, right?” said Danny knowingly.
“Well, it would only be right since I brought the blessing,” said Joyce, looking away guiltily. “Then I could rent this one and… Anyway, he said no. And I knew he’d be at the hearing so I went there and waited for him to see me in the crowd with all them reporters. He did and we talked. He gave in and said the city would do it.”
She seemed sincere and it did make sense. Przybylski knew about the text messages and couldn’t risk having anyone else know by sending an errand boy. So he did it himself. He was clumsy about it and Joyce had discovered his ruse.
“And where did you leave it with him?” asked Danny.
“He said someone would call my church and set it up this month,” said Joyce.
“And that’s it? “
“I swear, that’s all,” said Joyce. “So, are you going to turn me in? I didn’t take any money or anything. Nobody’s getting hurt. It’s for the church, really.”
“No,” said Danny. “I’m not interested in hurting you, Ms. Watson. But I need you to do something.”
“Anything,” said Joyce relieved.
“I need your phone records, all of them for the last year or so.”
“Why?” asked Joyce. “I called the Mayor’s office but they never called back.”
“It’s not for that,“ Danny said. “I’m more interested in who your niece may have called from here and who might have called her back.”
“No telling with her,” said Joyce. “Well, I don’t keep my bills. You have to get them from the phone company.”
“I’m betting you don’t have a computer,” said Danny.
“No, I hate them things,” said Joyce.
“Well, all of your bills are online somewhere,” said Danny. “I need you to open an account for your phone line and give me the password. When I’m done, you can change it.”
“I wouldn’t have any idea how to do that,” said Joyce.
“You can do it right now,” said Danny. “On the phone.”
“Will this help me with the Mayor thing?” she asked.
“Do this and I won’t remember a thing,” said Danny.
Joyce called the phone company. Twenty minutes later, she had an account. She chose the password “Redeemer.”
Danny accessed her account and pulled up her records on his cell phone. It took a while but he had them. They were too small to see very well, so he emailed them to himself.
“Okay,” Danny said. “I’ll call you and tell you when you can change the password. I’ll need it open for a while.”
Joyce agreed. She was looking a lot calmer now. Suddenly, Danny remembered the stash he’d found. Technically, all of it belonged to Joyce as Rashindah’s only relative. He hated the idea of giving Joyce anything. She was a deceitful hypocrite and she had profited enough on the girl’s corpse. He decided that he could make better use of it.
Danny headed for the door and then stopped. He was sure Joyce would keep her mouth shut but he wanted to leave her with a healthy dose of fear.
Joyce had corrupted herself against everything she claimed to believe in. He thought about the verse from Proverbs. He who troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind. And the fool shall be made servant to the wise of heart. Maybe Joyce Watson by her own dishonesty had inherited the wind.
“You should think about something,” Danny said. “If these men are the ones who had your niece killed, what makes you think they wouldn’t try to shut you up the same way?”
Joyce’s eyes widened and the fear returned. She had been so blinded by her greed that she hadn’t even thought of the possibility.
“But he didn’t do it, did he? The Mayor, he wouldn’t have done it. He was just trying to cover his sin with her, right?”
“I don’t know,” said Danny. “But if Mr. Przybylski contacts you again, you’d better call me and not the police. And if I were you, I’d invest in a gun.”
Danny said goodbye to the stunned woman. He left the house and climbed into his car and rolled off. He made a call to the prosecutor’s office and left a detailed message for Jesse King about Shera. He recommended they release her.
He went to a branch of the public library and went inside. Danny showed his badge and the librarian let him use a special terminal with a printer attached. He’d brought the case file with him on a flashdrive.
After a while, two numbers started to come up with regularity. It matched numbers that he assumed Rashindah had dialed repeatedly. Whoever she was calling had to unblock his number to call Joyce’s house. Thank God for old people, Danny thought.
Danny called the police communications department and had them track the number. One was a disposable phone number but the other, the one used to call in, was not.
Danny got the name on the account but it was not one he recognized: Sharitta Kingston.
“Kingston,” Danny muttered to himself. He took out the case file and paged through it. He saw the given name of the dealer named Jangle was Dumartin Kingston. This had to be a relative. A lot of dealers did things through their families to hide their activities.
Danny got the address of the bill from the police liaison. Danny then called Erik to see where Jangle was.
Danny’s excitement faded when Erik told him the cops had lost the dealer on the street.
29
SHADOW MAN
Danny approached Jangle’s house as night began to fall. He‘d called home to check on Vinny and she was fine, surrounded my family and police guards. Erik had gone into work and left a message saying that things were calm there as well.
Tony Hill had been written up in both papers for solving the Green Murder and was going to be on television tonight talking about crime prevention with Riddeaux who was now part of the PR plan.
Marshall and Jesse King were in a legal war over the text messages. If they were not admissible in court, then the prosecutor had no case. If they were, the Mayor was finished. Marshall put forth a very persuasive case for their exclusion and the trial judge had set a hearing on the evidence.
Jangle had given the cops following him the slip somewhere on the west side of town. They tried to find him but figured he’d jumped on the freeway and could be anywhere by now.
Danny stopped his car a street over from the target house. If he was like most dealers, Jangle always had somebody there to watch the place.
Danny walked down the sidewalk. The concrete had cracks and big sections were missing in many places. Vacant lots dotted the street. He thought vaguely of the Farmer and his legion of followers claiming the vacants.
Danny saw the house. There was a man outside just sitting with headphones on. He was just a kid but he was big and probably armed.
Danny cut into a yard before the big kid could see him. This was as close as he dared to get. All of the homes around a drug dealer’s house probably had paid lookouts in them.
Danny went through a yard and into the dark alley. If there was another man, he would be in the back or inside the house. If he was in the house, Danny could get the disk from the back without incident. If he was in the yard, it would get ugly.
He pulled his guns and moved slowly down the alley. He hoped to surprise the man if he was in the back. Danny thought about calling the cops but that would require a lot of explaining and was no telling where Rashindah’s evidence would end up. It was clear to him that no one could be trusted now.
Danny got closer to the backyard of Jangle’s house. There was a vacant lot next to Jangle’s place and so Danny was two doors down when he looked over.
The yard was empty but the house across the street from that vacant lot had a man sitting on the front steps. If Danny walked by, he would be seen.
Danny waited, peeking every now and then to see if the man was there.
Suddenly, a woman’s shrill voice called out. The sitting man went to the door to answer.
Danny quickly walked across the open vista to the back of Jangle’s house. There was no fence and he easily went inside. It was dark now and there was only dim, yellowish light coming from a lamp on the back roof.
Danny looked around and saw five stone columns with swirling patterns on them. There were old and dirty and had once been ivory in color. They were now stained with dirt and grass.
He picked out the shortest one and went to it. He put both guns away then lifted the column by tilting it away from him. In the dimness, he saw a dark square under underneath the column. It was the disk encased in a thick plastic container.
Suddenly, Danny heard a car pull up in front and doors open and close. Then he heard voices out front. Jangle, he thought. This could be his chance to take him.
Danny reached over and got the disk. He shoved it into his pocket.
The voices out front got louder and sounded like an argument. He counted at least three different voices and one sounded like a woman. Then he heard nothing.
A shotgun blast sounded inside the house. Under the blast, he heard a yell.
Danny rushed to the back door and kicked it open. He moved inside, both guns out in front of him.
LaMaris fired the shotgun into the wall to show the men she meant business. Trini yelled and jumped away. Kenjie just laughed.
“Last time,” said LaMaris. “Where is Jangle’s money stash? Don’t make me go Omar on your asses.”
The men said nothing. They just glared at the big woman and her gun.
“Fuck it,” said LaMaris, “which one of you wants the first one, then?”
Suddenly, she heard a noise from the back of the house. Footfalls. She turned in that direction, the gun still dangling toward the floor.
“What the fuc—!”
She saw a big white man enter the doorway holding two guns in front of him. He moved so fast, it didn’t seem possible. In the instant, she remembered. The cop who had killed her cousin carried two guns. It was him, she thought vaguely, the man who killed Rakeif.
Danny moved into the front and saw five people. Two men were on their knees with their hands in the air. There was a big shotgun blast in the wall next to them.
Across from the men, was a very big woman holding a sawed-off pump. Behind her, were a smaller woman and a boy.
The big woman held the shotgun in front of her angled downward. She turned toward Danny as he entered.
Danny had the .45 pointed at her, as she looked his way. His hand holding the Glock instinctively angled at the men on their knees.
“Police!” Danny yelled.
And then, things happened very fast.
Jangle’s head was throbbing in the darkness.
They had loaded him into his truck and drove him away but he never knew it. He had passed out before they got him in.
Trini, Jangle thought. That little bitch had turned on him for that lowlife brother of hers. There was only one person who had the kind of cash she needed. Bob and LaMaris. The question was why? Did they want him out of the way for their so-called new crew? Why not just ask him to join?
Jangle could feel that he was tied to a chair and he could barely move. There was a bag over his head so he had no idea where he was.
Jangle groaned loudly. “What is this shit?” he said loudly. “Who’s out there, dammit?”
Jangle heard footsteps come his way. He tensed as he felt a presence near him.
“The question is, do you want to live,” said Bob as he pulled off the bag.
“The fuck is this shit?” said Jangle. The light hit his eyes and his head throbbed more from it. He was in some kind of garage. It was dark and he smelled garbage and gasoline.
“I know you can contact iDT,” said Bob. “Trini told us, then made a deal for her brother. You know, you really should be nicer to your people. And you should never shit where you eat.”
Jangle was even more afraid now. Why would Bob want to contact iDT?
“We saw what was on your phone,” Bob continued. “You got a message back from iDT after you
warned him about the white cop. You know what it said. It said, no worries.”
Jangle didn’t say anything. He just looked at Bob with cold anger. “You knock my head off just for that?”
“No, I needed to send a message back that I knew you’d never send. So the question again is do you want to live?”
“Of course I do,” said Jangle.
Jangle noticed for the first time that Bob was armed with a rifle, the kind he saw soldiers use on TV. Bob saw him glance at it and lifted it up.
“M4 carbine,” said Bob. “Gas-operated, air-cooled. Fires in three round bursts or fully automatic. We used to call it a camel-killer.”
“What you need that thing for?” asked Jangle trying to ignore the throb in his head.
“I’m gonna use it to kill iDT,” said Bob casually. “This one ain’t even mine. Government took mine but I know people who specialize. After I kill iDT, I’m gonna take the gun apart and scatter it all over Detroit.”
“You crazy,” said Jangle. “He’ll never show. All he do is send messages.”
“And pick up money,” said Bob. “He uses a bus locker but no one ever sees him get the money.”
“I watched one,” said Jangle. “Nobody came for the money. Nobody.”
“Oh, they did,” said Bob, you just didn’t wait long enough.” Bob pulled out Jangle’s phone. “After he said no worries to you, you sent him back a message saying you needed a special triple shipment and you were willing to pay upfront. iDT accepted and told you to leave the money. I’m not using my own money, so LaMaris is getting your stash. When it’s dropped off, we going to get him. You are coming with us. And then, I’m gonna to send iDT to hell.”
“No, I ain’t,” said Jangle. And as soon as he said it, he realized how dumb it was.
“Then I can just shoot you now,” said Bob. “Makes no difference to me. If you do it my way, you live. Don’t understand why all you little drug pushers want to act all bad.”
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