by Brad Parks
Kuti followed my lead. I listened for a moment, heard nothing. I popped my head up slightly over the hood of the parked car to look at the house. There were lights on inside.
“Okay. First of all, please silence your cell phones during this movie,” I whispered, pulling mine out to make sure it was on vibrate.
This brought a smile from him. “Good policy,” he said.
I raised my head to take another glance at the house, but it wasn’t exactly going to start talking to me. We needed more information and to be more proactive about acquiring it.
“What do you say you go around to the right and I’ll go around to the left,” I said. “Look in windows as you go, see what you can see. I’ll meet you back here in five.”
He didn’t say anything, just rose from his crouch and walked up the driveway, angling toward the right corner of the house. As he melded into the darkness, I envied his clothing and skin color, both of which afforded him a lot more camouflage than I had at the moment. This was one of the few circumstances where being a white man in a blue shirt and khaki pants actually disadvantaged me.
I stood up and aimed for the left corner, studying the house as I went. If you put a place like this in the suburbs it would be worth a million dollars, easily. In Newark, they went for less than a third of that. Most of them had been subdivided into three-family houses. This one was unusual in that it remained intact.
The first structure I came across was one of those typically Victorian sitting rooms that had three bay windows jutting out toward the street in a semihexagon. It was dark. I passed by it with only a cursory inspection.
Moving along the wall, staying low next to some shrubbery, I reached what was likely a bathroom, judging from the height and size of the window. Again, no light came from it.
Further back, there was a glow coming from one of the rooms. The ground sloped away as I neared the back of the house, exposing more of the foundation and making the house seem like it was even taller and more fortresslike.
When I drew even with the room, I could see only the upper parts of some cabinets, enough that I knew it was the kitchen. Wanting to inspect the room a little more, I eased my way into the shrubbery. Once I was next to the house, I grabbed the narrow windowsill and pulled up, giving myself a glimpse inside.
My handhold being somewhat tenuous, it was not a position I could hold for very long. All I saw during my brief inspection was a narrow, galley-style kitchen. There were no people, just a pot on the stove with steam issuing from it.
I lowered myself and continued around the corner to the backyard. There was a small back porch butting up against this part of the house, with nine steps climbing up to it. The porch led to what might have been a mudroom or a laundry room. There were no lights on.
The room next to it, on the other hand, was well-lit. But this part of the house was well above ground level. From where I was standing, it was difficult to see much inside.
I continued my clockwise navigation of the perimeter and eventually joined Kuti, who was looking intently at the well-lit room, which extended to the far corner.
“I think she is in there,” he whispered. “There are people coming in and out, a lot of activity.”
“Makes sense,” I said. “I haven’t seen much in any other part of the house.”
Only the upper portion of the wall and ceiling were visible from where we were standing. I had to get a better view of the room somehow. The closest window was about nine feet in the air, higher than the kitchen window by at least a foot. It was not an insurmountable distance by any means. But it was high enough that I would have to jump to grasp it and I didn’t want to risk making noise when my body thudded against the siding.
“You think you can give me a boost up to that window over there?” I asked Kuti.
He nodded once. We approached the wall and he threaded his hands together like a stirrup.
“Step here,” he said.
I followed his instruction and he lifted me, until I was able to grasp the windowsill and pull myself up. My eyes were just over the bottom of the windowpane.
What I saw took my breath away. There were three people in the room. Two were young black males with guns in their hands. The other was Tina.
She was semireclined on a plastic- and sheet-draped couch with several pillows behind her back that kept her propped at a roughly forty-five degree angle. There was a heavy-looking metal tray next to her with ice water on it. Her feet were resting on a coffee table. Her legs were splayed wide. They were covered by another sheet, but she appeared to be bare from the waist down.
Which was really strange.
Unless they were planning to have her deliver the baby right there.
Of course. The boiling water was to sterilize whatever instruments they planned to use. The ice water was to keep her hydrated while she labored. The sheets and plastic were on the couch because they expected all the bodily fluids associated with birth.
They had obviously come across her in the car and, despite their murderous intent toward me, decided they couldn’t do her in. But they also couldn’t just let her go. Hence, she was now half-naked on the couch, getting ready to push out our baby.
The panic ripped through me. Did they know the baby was a breach? Did they have any idea what they were doing? Even Dr. Marston, who had years of medical training and did this for a living, warned us that breach pregnancies could get very complicated, and that it was best not to even attempt a vaginal delivery. I remembered her lecture about negative outcomes. Would these thugs take her to a hospital if she started having real difficulty?
I saw Tina’s pants, crumpled on the floor. I could tell they were soaked. Which meant her water had broken.
Tina had her eyes closed. The two guys with the guns did not seem to be paying attention to her until she began moaning slightly.
“She’s having another one,” one of the thugs hollered to someone outside of the room, his voice only slightly muffled by the thin pane of glass that separated us.
I soon recognized that by “another one” he meant a contraction. Zabrina strolled into the room wearing a blue workout suit. Her hands were empty. She turned slightly, and I could see the gun she had tucked in the back waistband of her pants.
Zabrina checked her watch. “Three minutes since the last one,” she said.
I felt another surge of terror. Three minutes was close. And her water had broken. This baby was coming. Soon. Whether Tina wanted him to or not.
Zabrina knelt at Tina’s side, but did not touch her. Tina didn’t seem to notice. I could see her chest heaving. Her legs twitched a little.
Just watching it made my stomach clench.
* * *
The windowsill was so narrow, I couldn’t stay up there very long. My fingers were starting to cramp and I could feel Kuti’s arms getting wobbly. Once Tina’s contraction subsided, I decided to come down.
“Okay,” I said softly to Kuti.
He lowered me part of the way and I dropped the rest. I pointed in the direction of the street and started walking that way. He followed me. We skirted the driveway, staying out of the direct line of sight of anyone inside the house until we were back out in the street.
Sweet Thang was perhaps a hundred feet down, standing on the sidewalk with someone who I could only see in silhouette. Then I realized the silhouette had a handlebar mustache. Dave Gilbert.
As I approached, I saw he had his shotgun at his side, its muzzle pointed toward the pavement.
“Hey. Thanks for coming,” I said.
“Hi,” he said. “Is she in there?”
“She is. With three armed guards.”
Gilbert held out the shotgun for me. “Then you’re going to need this,” he said.
I didn’t move to accept it. I’m not a gun guy. Quite the opposite. I’ve never owned one, never shot one, never wanted one in my house. I’m all for the Second Amendment, when applied in moderation, but I abhor what illegal handguns have done to our
inner cities. Interview as many mothers who have lost their babies to gun violence as I have, and you’d feel the same way.
Dave sensed my reluctance and took another step toward me with the gun. “Look, I know I owe you a favor, but this is where it has to end,” he said. “I’m a felon. I shouldn’t have this. If you’re going to be using it, I can’t be anywhere nearby. As far as I’m concerned, it’s yours now.”
He held it out. I eyed it. Then I grabbed it with both hands. Tina needed me. My baby needed me. That mattered a lot more than my own personal feelings about firearms.
“Thanks,” I said.
“It’s already loaded: one in the chamber, two in the magazine. You can bet my fingerprints aren’t on them,” he said. “And you should know this weapon is untraceable and I bought it from someone who probably stole it. I wouldn’t let the police know you have this.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a clear plastic bag with a handful of cartridges inside. He handed me the bag.
“They’re buckshot, just like the ones in the gun,” he said. “This is just in case you need extra. But three should be all you need.”
“Got it,” I said, pocketing them.
“Have you ever fired one of these before?”
“No.”
“Keep it braced against your body, because it’ll kick like a donkey,” he said. “If you have to shoot someone, just aim for the middle of their chest.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m out of here,” he said. “Good luck.”
He walked off into the night. Kuti had joined our little gathering in the middle of the street. Sweet Thang’s eyes were fixed on me, all large and lustrous.
“Are you okay?” she said.
“Not particularly,” I said.
“You’re going to call the cops now, right?” she asked.
Kuti answered the question for me. “I would not recommend that,” he said.
“Why not?” she said.
“Because I understand their policies and procedures,” Kuti said. “This is a hostage situation. And in a hostage situation, their priority is to get everyone out alive. In this case, Mr. Ross’s priorities are a little different. I believe he is focused more on the safety of two people in particular, one of whom is very small.”
I didn’t say anything, just nodded slightly.
“I have two children,” Kuti said. “If it was my fiancée and my baby, I would want to take care of it myself.”
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out and saw it was Buster.
“Excuse me for a second,” I said, taking a few steps away from Sweet Thang and Kuti and keeping the shotgun pointed away from them.
I answered with: “Hey, what do you got?”
“It’s more about what you got,” he replied. “My guy on the task force didn’t even need to run that list through his computer. He recognized seven names at first glance.”
Seven out of a hundred. That sealed it. The Rotary Club was firmly at the center of this conspiracy and Zabrina Coleman-Webster was either running it or involved very deeply.
“Okay, thanks,” I said.
“My guy was very curious to know what is going on at the Newark Rotary Club,” Buster said. “Is there anything you want me to tell him?”
I took a deep breath and held it. This was the moment. If I wanted a mob of Newark Police on this street—and a full-blown hostage situation, with helicopters and dogs and God-knows-what-else—all I had to do was say the word.
Then I thought about some hostage negotiator telling me to be patient even as I knew Tina and our unborn child were in dire need of medical assistance; about one of those hoodlums inside using Tina as a human shield as he tried to make an escape; about some nervous young cop with an itchy trigger finger firing when he shouldn’t; about all the things that could go horribly wrong.
I imagined some police captain apologizing to me for some unforeseen mishap that he insisted couldn’t have been avoided. And I might have been in a mood to listen to him, except in the version I was seeing in my mind, we were having this conversation in front of a tiny casket.
Suddenly, I knew for sure: I didn’t want that all in the hands of a bunch of people I didn’t know and who could never possibly care on as deep a level as I did. For them, it was a job. A job they wanted to do well, yes. But still, it was a day’s work that was either going to go well or badly.
For me, it was my whole life.
I looked through the darkness at Kuti, who seemed to understand exactly what I was feeling and who struck me as both calm and competent. I felt the weight of the shotgun. My lungs finally released the breath I had been holding.
“No, I’m good for now,” I said. “But, Buster?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you,” I said with all due sincerity. “I really owe you one.”
“No,” he said. “Not this time.”
* * *
I walked back toward Sweet Thang and Kuti, who were in the midst of a muted conversation.
“… absurd not to,” I heard Sweet Thang saying.
When Sweet Thang saw I was rejoining them, she said, “Carter, seriously. Let’s call the police. This is what they’re trained to do. This is why we have police.”
“For someone else’s child, you’re absolutely right,” I said. “But not for mine.”
She started to say something, then rethought it. She settled on: “Okay.”
I turned to Kuti. “We’re looking at three armed assailants,” I said. “You said your background is in the military?”
He nodded.
“Well then I’d really like your thoughts on how to plan this operation.”
“If it was one man, we could try to get a shot through a window,” he said. “But not with multiple targets. And not with the guns we have. They are effective as close range antipersonnel weapons. They are far less useful at greater range. Even if we could get two of them targeted at once … I am gathering you are not an experienced marksman?”
“That’s an understatement,” I said.
“Then it might be prudent simply to wait. We know they have to come out eventually. We pick them off when they do.”
“No good. The baby is a breach. Tina’s water has broken and the contractions are less than three minutes apart. We have to get her to the hospital now or we could lose the baby.”
Just saying the words—“lose the baby”—made my throat constrict.
Kuti thought on this for a moment or two. “Then we need to find some way to flush them out. It is the only way. As long as they are inside the house, they have too great a tactical advantage on us.”
“Flush them out,” I repeated. “How do we do that?”
He stared at some unfixed point beyond me. There was a streetlight nearby, but almost nothing on Kuti’s ebony face reflected back its dim light.
“If the woman were not pregnant, I would say we set fire to the house,” he said, after a while. “But that is too great a risk. We need to do something to force action from them, get them to want to leave the safety of their dwelling. Then we ambush them on the way out.”
“Okay, what if we don’t set fire to the house. What if we make some kind of explosion outside and … what?”
I had become aware that Sweet Thang was watching us go back and forth with this look of disgust.
“You guys are morons,” she said. “You have Zabrina’s cell phone number, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Then why don’t you just call her? Tell her you’re coming over to get those documents. That’ll force them to act. At the very least, one of them will have to come out and move Tina’s car.”
Kuti and I smiled simultaneously. He said, “There is an African proverb that says, ‘If you’re looking for good strength, look for the chief. If you’re looking for good sense, look for his wife.’”
“Americans have a proverb, too,” I said. “It comes from the classic film White Men Can’t Jump. And it go
es, ‘Listen. To. The woman.’”
“It’s certainly easier than setting a house on fire,” Sweet Thang said curtly.
“Okay,” I said. “Give me a moment. Mr. Kuti, could you please keep an eye on the house while I make the call?”
“Of course,” he said, and began walking back up toward the street.
I walked perhaps a hundred feet in the other direction, far enough that I was sure Zabrina wasn’t hearing my voice in stereo. I took a few deep breaths to calm myself, then dialed.
After three rings, she answered. “Hello?”
“Hey, Zabrina, it’s Carter Ross from the Eagle-Examiner,” I said, breezily.
“Oh, hi,” she said, matching my tone.
“Hey, this may sound like a strange question, but have you seen my fiancée, Tina Thompson? I asked her to go over to your house to pick up those insurance documents, but I haven’t heard from her in a little while.”
“Huh, that’s strange.”
“So you haven’t seen her?”
“No, not at all. I was actually starting to wonder where you were,” Zabrina said, not too quickly, not too slowly. If she had been surprised at all by my calling, she was already over it. It was chilling how smooth she was.
“Yeah, I asked Tina to pick them up because I was running late,” I said, then forced a laugh. “But she’s pregnant. So she probably stopped for ice cream and pickles or something.”
“I guess. If she comes by, I’ll be sure to tell her you’re looking for her.”
“That’d be super,” I said, then sighed as if I was being terribly inconvenienced. “Well, I guess I better come out and get those documents myself. I should be there in ten minutes or so.”
There was no hitch in her reply. “Actually, would you mind waiting until tomorrow? I’m beat.”
It was a nice try. But I had anticipated her attempt to delay and was ready with a response. “I would, except I need to write this story tonight and Tujuka Okeke still isn’t talking to me. Without the documents, I can’t write. And I promised the story to my editors first thing in the morning.”