In These Streets

by Shelly Ellis

  Ricky stared at the cell phone image.

  The girl looked like a younger version of Simone with long curly hair. She was wearing a Catholic school uniform and posing with a Scottish Terrier in her lap. She was smiling at the camera and waving when the shot was taken. She was a pretty girl and very well could be a model if she wanted to be.

  Ricky shook his head.

  “I’ve never seen her in here and I’ve never seen her with Dolla either.” He reached for his glass again. “Besides, if she’s seventeen, she’s of age, ain’t she? She can do whatever the hell she wants. Maybe she just ran away.”

  “She didn’t just run away! Skylar wouldn’t do that. She was—”

  “Whatever!” he said tiredly, waving his hand dismissively. “It makes no difference either way. I’m sorry about your sister, honey, but you’re barking up the wrong tree. Okay?”

  He watched as she exhaled and angrily shoved her phone back into her purse. “I should’ve known better.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you’re just another low life like he is. You’d protect him no matter what! I thought you might understand considering what happened to your sister, but I guess not.”

  Ricky paused mid-sip at the mention of his sister. His eyes narrowed into slits. “What the fuck did you just say to me?”

  She shot to her feet. “You heard me! I said considering what happened to your sister, Desiree, I thought you might help me. That’s the only reason why I agreed to come back here and talk to you. I saw the crime report, Ricky. She was only fifteen when her pimp killed her. He used her up, tricked her out, then beat her to death. I don’t want that same shit to happen to my sister! I need your help!”

  Simone’s words sliced through him, flayed him open.

  Ricky tried not to think about Desiree or what she’d gone through, but the memories haunted him anyway. He had wanted better for his kind little sister. He had tried to save her more than once, to keep her off the streets, but by then she was already in her boyfriend’s clutches and solidly addicted to crack. He’d known she walked the track at night, hopping into strangers’ cars, giving hand jobs and blow jobs for as little as twenty dollars.

  The last time he’d seen her before she was murdered, she barely resembled the girl Ricky had remembered. Her face was covered with scars and bruises, her once bright hazel eyes were dull, and she wore a lopsided wig that was matted to her head. He’d taken her to McDonald’s and bought her a Big Mac and fries since she’d said she was hungry and hadn’t eaten a real meal in days. He’d told her that he could get her cleaned up, that she could move in with him. She had given him some elusive response and he had given her his cell phone number, making her promise to call him if she needed him. The next day, she was dead.

  He now glowered at Simone. “Get out,” he said in a strained whisper. “Get the fuck out or I’ll throw you out, and don’t ever come back to my club again. You hear me?”

  “Oh, I hear you. And I hope you and Dolla rot in jail someday, you son of a bitch,” she said over her shoulder as she stomped toward his office door and slammed it behind her.

  Ricky finally took a sip of his drink, lowered his glass from his lips, and realized that his hand was shaking.

  Chapter 6

  Jamal

  “Hey, Mr. Lighty! Mr. Lighty, can I ask you just one more question, sir?”

  Jamal glanced over his shoulder at the pudgy white man wearing glasses and an ill-fitting gray suit who was jogging toward him. A camera bounced around the man’s neck. A digital recorder was in his hand. The rubber soles of his shoes squeaked on the linoleum tile as he ran to catch up with Jamal.

  “You’ve been asking me ‘one more question’ for the past fifteen minutes, Phil.” Jamal loosened the knot in the tie around his neck and continued toward the recreation center’s glass doors. “I really need to get out of here.”

  “I know. I know! But I swear it really is one more this time—and it’s a quick one!”

  Phil was a reporter for the Washington Recorder and was as dogged as he was annoying. He held his digital recorder toward Jamal’s face, only inches away from his mouth.

  Fatigued and hungry enough to eat his own briefcase, it took all of Jamal’s will power not to shove the recorder away in frustration.

  “So,” Phil began, “you said during tonight’s meeting that the mayor plans to—”

  “Look, I’d be happy to answer more questions, just not right now. The meeting ran a lot longer than expected, and I’m pretty damn tired.” He yawned for illustration.

  The public meeting about the new small business incubator was supposed to end at nine, but had dragged on to almost eleven o’clock. Mayor Johnson had snuck out of the packed room more than an hour ago, leaving Jamal to field the rest of the questions from D.C. residents who wanted to know every detail about the program. They wanted to argue the pros and cons until Jamal had exhausted all possible responses and finally, just politely nodded at each person who stepped up to the microphone to praise or rail at him. He was tired of talking and tired of standing. He just wanted to go home, grab a quick bite, climb into bed next to Bridget, and fall asleep.

  “I understand, sir,” Phil said. “But I—”

  “How about this?” Jamal pushed open one of the glass doors and stepped into the cool September night. “How about you give me a call in the morning and I’d be happy to answer whatever questions you want. But for now, I’m going to have to say, no more questions. All right?”

  Phil opened his mouth as if to argue with him, but Jamal gave him a congenial slap on the shoulder, waved, and sauntered down the concrete steps before he had the chance. “Goodnight, Phil,” he called over his shoulder as he walked toward his car.

  “Uh, good . . . goodnight, Mr. Lighty,” Phil called half-heartedly after him.

  As Jamal sauntered across the deserted parking lot, his phone buzzed. He reached into his pocket, prepared to find a text message from Bridget, asking if he was headed home soon, but he saw instead it was an alert from one of his phone apps. It showed the final score from tonight’s Wizards versus Mavericks game. He cursed under his breath.

  “Are you kidding me? They got fuckin’ slaughtered.”

  He shook his head in exasperation and began to type a text to Ricky as he walked. The only sounds he could hear were his footsteps on the cracked cement and a police siren wailing in the distance.

  “Did U see your boys got stomped by the Mavericks tonite?” he typed. “U gonna . . .”

  His thumb abruptly halted.

  He couldn’t text Ricky about the Wizards game.

  “You’re not talking to Ricky, remember?” a voice in his head mocked. “He’s criminally adjacent. He’s a liability.”

  “You’re better off without them, honey. Trust me,” Bridget had assured him when he told her that he finally severed ties with his old friends.

  But he hadn’t realized how much his boys had been interwoven into the fabric of his daily existence: how he was used to texting them about random bullshit during the day, how he mentally catalogued funny stories to tell them about over drinks, and how he could go to them when he just needed to escape from Bridget or his job or the world, in general.

  He knew severing ties with Ricky and Derrick had to be done for the sake of his career and his aspirations. Someone who wanted to move up the ladder at city hall couldn’t have underworld ties. But walking away from them was starting to feel like a divorce—like a painful, contentious divorce. He wondered how long this feeling would linger.

  Jamal tapped the delete button until the draft of the text message to Ricky disappeared. He looked up from his phone screen and gazed around him, puzzled.

  He didn’t remember the parking lot being this poorly lit. He wondered why he had decided to park so far away from any of the street lamps and in some murky corner of the lot. You could get robbed, or worse, walking alone in the dark in a neighborhood like this. He had grown up in enough
bad neighborhoods to know that. How could he have been so dumb? But then he remembered that when he’d arrived at the recreation center, the parking lot had been filled to capacity. It still had been light outside.

  Jamal tucked his phone back into his pocket. He pulled out his keys and walked swiftly to his Audi. He pressed the remote button to open his car door, but paused when he heard the squeak of tires and the heavy bass of a car sound system behind him.

  Jamal turned and spotted another car pulling into the parking lot—a black Lincoln Navigator with glistening rims. It came to a screeching halt about fifty feet away, next to a Mercedes.

  Jamal didn’t recognize the Navigator, but he certainly recognized the silver Mercedes Benz; it was the mayor’s.

  That’s weird, Jamal thought. He’d assumed the mayor had gone home already.

  Jamal climbed inside his Audi, shut the door, and observed as the Navigator sat idle for another minute or so. Finally, one of the passenger doors flew open and two men hopped out. One was Mayor Johnson; the other was a big dude with a build of a linebacker, wearing a brightly colored Versace shirt. The big dude’s back was facing Jamal but he could clearly see him hovering over the mayor, almost bearing down on him like he was trying to intimidate him. Even from this distance, Jamal could see the look of fright on the mayor’s face. His eyes were wide. His mouth was tense. He looked like he wanted out of whatever conversation they were having.

  The big dude jabbed Mayor Johnson in the chest with his forefinger, shoving him against the side of the Navigator. The mayor nodded, said something, and the man finally turned slightly so that Jamal could see his face in profile under the parking lot lamp. When he did, Jamal’s mouth fell open in shock.

  It was Dolla Dolla.

  Jamal had only seen the drug kingpin a few times in his life, always with Ricky around, but he had seen him enough times that he could clearly recognize his dark hulking mug.

  “What the hell?” Jamal whispered aloud.

  Dolla Dolla gave the mayor another hard shove that sent the older man careening back against his own Mercedes. Dolla Dolla then climbed into the Navigator’s backseat and slammed the door closed. The SUV pulled off with tires squealing again, sending up pebbles and dust in its wake.

  The mayor looked badly shaken by the encounter. Jamal watched as the older man wiped the front of his pants and adjusted his tie and his jacket. He took a wary glance around him.

  Jamal sank low in his seat so that the mayor couldn’t spot him. His head almost grazed the arm rest. The gesture probably wasn’t necessary. It was so dark where he was parked he doubted anyone could see him at all. He raised his head a little, so that he could see just over the top of the steering wheel. He watched as the mayor then opened his Mercedes, climbed onto the driver’s seat, and pulled off a few seconds later.

  * * *

  “Are you okay?” Bridget asked, dabbing her wet face with a hand towel as they both stood in front of their double sinks. Her skin was bare and pale, making her blue eyes stand out like two bright marbles under the bathroom’s halogen lights. “You’re so quiet this morning. You’re usually such a chatterbox that I have to tell you to shut up.”

  Jamal spit the frothy mint of his toothpaste into the sink then stared at Bridget’s reflection in the bathroom mirror. He rinsed off his toothbrush.

  He had been up most of the night, tossing and turning in bed, thinking about what he’d seen at the parking lot of the recreation center. Why had Mayor Johnson been with Dolla Dolla, of all people? What could their conversation possibly be about?

  Nothing good, Jamal surmised, judging from both of their body languages last night.

  Jamal wondered how Mayor Johnson’s constituents would feel about him climbing out a Navigator and having a heated conversation with such a notorious person in the criminal underworld. And this was just eight years after former-mayor Clemmons’s wife had been caught flushing hundred dollar bills down the toilet when their house was raided by the FBI. The former mayor and his wife had been sentenced to nearly a decade in prison for corruption and money laundering along with several of Mayor Clemmons’s associates.

  Johnson had run on an anti-corruption platform. He had promised his constituents sweeping changes at all levels of his administration. Hell, “A Clean Slate,” had even been his campaign slogan. And now Jamal had stumbled upon this . . .

  If the press got wind of it, it could easily draw Johnson’s credibility into question. It could even end his political career. If Johnson was meeting in secret with Dolla Dolla, what else had he been doing on the low? People had been muttering for years that Johnson was just as corrupt, if not more, than Clemmons. He just hid it better. But Jamal had given no credence to the rumors. He’d dismissed it as gossip from bitter adversaries. Now he was starting to wonder if maybe the rumors were true.

  “Jesus, sweetie, just tell me already!” Bridget exclaimed with a laugh. She began to apply her makeup, grabbing a few brushes from her spot on the counter, and swiping on concealer. “Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad!”

  Jamal pushed himself away from the granite countertop and turned slightly to face her. “I . . . I saw something last night after the meeting I went to in Ward 8.”

  “Okay,” Bridget said examining her reflection. She swiped more concealer with her brush on the bridge of her nose. She looked like she was wearing peach tribal war paint. “Well, what did you see?”

  “I saw Mayor Johnson in the parking lot. It was late and he was . . . he was talking to this guy, a known criminal who goes by the name Dolla Dolla.”

  Bridget’s hand stilled. She lowered her brush and stared at Jamal, now frowning. “How do you know it was him? Couldn’t it have been someone else?”

  Jamal shook his head. “It was him. I’ve seen him enough times to recognize him. He’s Ricky’s business partner at the strip club.”

  At that, her frown deepened. “Did you hear what they were talking about?”

  Jamal shook his head again. “No, but it looked pretty intense. He was even shoving the mayor around. They acted like . . . like this wasn’t first time they’d talked. The whole thing looked shady as hell!”

  She shrugged and raised her brush back to her cheek, smoothing out the lines so that now her entire face was covered. “You’re inferring a lot from a conversation you couldn’t hear, Sinclair. Frankly, I don’t see what the big deal is. The mayor is allowed to talk to people. Just because he had a conversation with a criminal doesn’t mean it was ‘shady.’”

  “Bridge, there was nobody else around but me. That wasn’t a coincidence. They also did it in a deserted parking lot at eleven o’clock at night. They did that shit on purpose. The mayor didn’t want anybody to see him talking to Dolla Dolla.”

  “You’re acting like he’s the criminal, not this Dollar Dollar guy,” she said dryly, purposely mispronouncing his name.

  Jamal shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he is.”

  Bridget stilled again. She tossed her brush back onto the counter with a clatter and leaned against the granite surface. “Do you like your job, Sinclair? Are you happy that you were appointed deputy mayor?”

  “Of course, I am. What does that have to do with anything?”

  “I’m just saying maybe you should focus on that. Focus on the fact that you’ve accomplished all that you have by the mere age of thirty. Focus on what you need to do to execute your job well, and maybe one day, you can become mayor yourself.” She slowly linked her arms around his neck and smiled seductively. “I can see it in you: you’ve got the drive . . . the capability. What you could achieve could be limitless, sweetheart.”

  “But what about—”

  “You’ve got a full plate now,” she said, softening her interruption with a kiss. “You’re always juggling meetings, hearings, and events. Don’t get distracted by things that have nothing to do with you.”

  “Nothing to do with me?” Jamal eyed her. “So . . . what? You’re saying pretend like I didn’t see what happened
last night? Pretend like it didn’t happen at all?”

  “I’m saying don’t lose focus, sweetie,” she whispered hotly against his lips, removing her arms from around his neck. She lowered her hands to the waistband of his pajama pants and dug inside, wrapping her hand around his manhood and giving it a gentle tug that made him immediately forget about the mayor and Dolla Dolla, that made him groan. “I’m saying enjoy the moment. You’ve earned this. And it’s only going to get better.”

  He then watched as she yanked down his pants. His legs and ass lit up with goosebumps in the cold bathroom air. She then dropped to her knees and blew him right against the bathroom sink.

  Chapter 7

  Derrick

  Derrick gave an anxious glance at his wall clock, zeroing in on the second hand as it wound its way back to twelve. His 2:15 appointment was now officially thirty minutes late. He had scheduled the interview with the potential carpentry instructor, hoping to quickly replace the one who had abruptly quit. But it looked like the dude was going to be a “no show.”

  Too bad, he thought, pushing his chair back from his desk and rising to his feet.

  The man’s resume had shown lots of potential; Derrick had thought it would be an easy hire. And he was hoping to check this one task off the long list of things he’d wanted to accomplish this week, but he guessed that wasn’t going to happen.

  At least, not today.