Quincy was dead. Monique, an unfortunate but an intertwined complicit associate, was dead. Lewis, Michael’s murderer, was in her sights. He had apparently made his peace. So did she. Michelle took a couple of deep breaths, slowed her heart rate, reached absolute calm, and looked Lewis in the eye.
“It’s not business to me, muthafucka. This is real personal.”
Puhffiitt!
Twenty-Two: Dirty Cops
MICHELLE WALKED BY the nurse’s station, full cups of coffee in each hand.
The nurse looked up. “Did you get those downstairs?”
“Yes.”
“You’re here with the woman in 403, right?”
“Yes. In the ER waiting room. I mean, yes, I’m with my friend in 403, and I got the coffee from the vending machine in the ER waiting room.”
“You don’t need to go all the way down to the ER. There are some machines in the waiting room just past the elevators in the hall.”
“Thanks, I’ll remember that.”
With her butt, Michelle pushed open the heavy hospital door and backed into the room.
“How is she?” she asked.
“Sleeping,” Nikky said. “She’s been out the whole time. What happened with you?”
“Here’s some coffee. I’ve got to get cleaned up first, then I’ll fill you in.
When she left earlier, Michelle hadn’t expected to have the golden opportunity to kill her brother’s murderer, so her hands and arms had been bare when she’d fired her gun, and if the police showed up for any reason, her skin would be covered with gunshot residue. Michelle stepped into Deja’s private restroom to scrub her hands, face, and neck, then returned to her friends.
“What’s up?” Nikky asked.
“Hand me that coffee,” she said, and Nikky did. Michelle tested it with her finger. “That’ll work.” She stepped away from the foot of the bed … and poured the coffee down the front of her dress.
Nikky gaped. “What in the world are you doing?”
“Hang on a minute. I need to get some dry clothes.” Holding her dress away from her skin, Michelle marched back to the nurse’s station.
“Oh my God,” the nurse cried. “What happened to you?”
“Can you believe it? I spilled my coffee. Thank God it’d cooled down. Are there some scrubs or anything I can wear?”
A few minutes later, re-dressed in fresh hospital scrubs and with her thoroughly rinsed dress bundled into a small ball, Michelle sat next to a wide-eyed Nikky.
“Well?”
“Sorry I couldn’t talk,” Michelle whispered. “I had to take care of that first. I got them—I fucking got them! I had to do it on the spot. No planning, no cover, nothing. I had gunshot residue on everything.”
“Can you tell me? What the hell happened?”
“Let me get a fresh cup of coffee and I’ll fill you in.”
Through the rest of the night, Michelle and Nikky whispered about what had happened and what it meant for the future. Several hours later, still dressed in the borrowed scrubs and her party heels, Michelle stood in the cafeteria’s checkout line with two take-away breakfast plates, when a plainclothes police detective approached.
“Michelle Angelique?”
“Yeah?”
“You strapped?”
“What kind of stupid question is that?”
“Don’t give me any shit. You got a gun?”
“No.”
“Slowly, so I can see your hands, put the coffee down on the counter and drop your purse on the floor.”
Michelle knew the drill, so she did what he’d ordered.
“Now put your hands behind your head and turn around.”
The cop’s partner stood off to the side. Alert. Tense.
“Michelle Angelique,” the first officer said, cuffing her, “you are under arrest for the attempted murder of Jerome Johnson.”
“What happened to Jerome? I didn’t do anything to any Jerome.”
A rat bastard coward, and a snitch. Now he’s really gonna pay.
While the cashier stood wide-eyed and dumbfounded, mouth slightly open, Michelle turned to her and said, “My friend—she’s a short, pretty girl with skin color close to mine, wearing a fancy party dress. She’ll be down here looking for me. Do me a favor: please tell her what happened here. Can you do that for me?”
Eyes still as wide as saucers, the cashier nodded. “I’ll make sure she gets the message,” she said.
“Thanks.”
“Enough of that,” the cop said. “Let’s go.”
*
Michelle spent over an hour alone in the interrogation room, when finally one of the arresting officers entered. She ran her hand over the scarred tabletop and made a show of sniffing. “Don’t you guys ever clean this place? It stinks like a third world restroom.”
“Get used to it. That’s the smell of incarceration. Something you’ll know all about very soon.”
“I doubt it. But, do tell, what the fuck makes you think so?”
“Do you admit to knowing Jerome Johnson?”
“Sure, if it’s the Jerome who’s hooking up with my friend Deja. Yeah, I’ve met him. Can’t say that I actually know him.”
“Yeah, him. He says you came in his house and shot him. Said you were cool and calm the whole time. Told us you shot him three times.”
The cops who’d arrested her were partners—one Black, the other White. The White cop did the interview.
“Jerome, the guy who’s over six feet tall? The one who’s lived in the hood all his life? Grew up here scrapping with the other guys? That Jerome?”
“Did you shoot him?”
“He’s a big, strong man. I’m an average-sized woman. Do I look like I could walk in his place and shoot him? That’s crazy.”
“He said you shot him over something between you and his woman. Are you a dyke and pissed that he’s doing your girl?”
“You’re a fucking moron. You know that, right?”
“Did you shoot him?”
“No, I didn’t shoot him. I want my attorney.”
“Are you sure about that? We might be able to make a deal before your attorney gets involved.”
Michelle nodded at the camera in the corner. “Your partner watching?”
“Are you ready to make a deal?”
“Here’s the deal: I have a medical condition that makes me prone to bladder infections, so I have to make frequent use of the restroom.”
“That bullshit won’t fly here,” the cop said. “Hold it.”
“Your partner gets a woman in here within the next three minutes to take me to the bathroom, or I’m dropping my pants and pissing on the floor. My attorney will charge you with anything that goes with denying me the medical necessity of relieving myself. And she’ll add charges for making me do it in front of you, and on camera. Now, give me my phone so I can call my attorney, and send in an escort to take me to the bathroom.”
At those words, a woman in a blazer stepped into the room. “That won’t be necessary,” she said. “You’re not under arrest. You can go to the restroom on your own.”
“Thank you,” Michelle said. “I want to call my attorney immediately.”
“Of course.” The woman looked up at the camera. “Give her what she needs.”
Outside of the interrogation room, Michelle talked to her attorney for several minutes, then switched over to speaker, walked up to the detective’s desk, and held her phone out in front of her. “Can you hear me?” she asked.
“Very well,” a female voice came from the phone.
“Excuse me, detective. What was your name?” Michelle asked.
“Detective Gerard.”
“Detective, my attorney would like to speak to your lieutenant. I assume she was the woman who I spoke with earlier?”
Detective Gerard glowered. “Not gonna happen.”
“Detective Gerard,” said the voice on the phone, “do I need to come down there and make this personal, or will you do th
e smart thing and let me speak to your lieutenant?”
The lieutenant stood in her office door, listening to the conversation. “I’ll take that in here. Miss Angelique, please sit outside.” Then she pointed to Gerard and his partner. “Detectives, in here with me.”
*
“Let her go,” the lieutenant said.
“Christ-a-mighty, Lou—she’s as guilty as sin! Our guy positively identified her as the one who shot him three times. Even told us how she did it. The doc says the wounds are consistent with his story, which, by the way, scared the shit out of me. That is one cold-blooded bitch.”
“Well, that’s all fine and dandy, but the DA won’t file. She has a rock-solid alibi. She was in New York on a work assignment, for Christ’s sake. Airline tickets, hotel receipts, signatures on official city government dockets—all legitimate. Her attorney says she can produce several credible witnesses—good people, like government workers who’ll remember her being in their offices every day for over a week. She can get librarians at NYU and taxi drivers, to name a few. Forget it. Hell, we don’t even have enough to hold her overnight on suspicion. The evidence says she’s innocent.”
“She had plenty of time to fly back and do it.”
“Do you have any record of her flying back? A gun? Any prints? Anything other than this jerk-off’s word?”
“Nothing we can find. She could have flown under a fake name.”
“Listen to yourself. This isn’t a Jason Bourne spy movie. The whole thing sounds made up, like it came out of an afternoon soap opera. Who shoots a guy, and then makes him drive to the hospital? We’re talking about a lowlife who probably got shot by somebody’s husband, and now he’s trying to put it on some woman he’s pissed at. Maybe she won’t sleep with him. Maybe she’s a dyke and she’s taking one of his girls away. I don’t know and I don’t care. What I do care about is that you’ve got nothing.”
“I’ve got a witness,” the cop protested.
“You’ve got shit,” the lieutenant said. “You’ve got the word of a no-count, unemployed punk. She’s an upstanding, hardworking woman with no record and a solid alibi. So far, you can’t prove anything else. Bring me some proof she flew back and shot his ass. Until then, we’re done. Cut her loose.”
“Okay, Lou, but I feel it in my bones. She did it.”
“Fine, take your bones and get some real proof,” the lieutenant said. “And you’d better make it good. I mean, air-friggin-tight, or it won’t fly. You’ve got an asswipe from the hood who lives off of women and he claims she shot him. The jury will hate him. Hell, I hate him. She’s everybody’s dream defendant: orphaned at sixteen, with a big brother who was a banger but took care of his little sister for a few years, until he was killed in a bad drug deal. Still, she gets out of the hood, has a good, respectable job, and stays clean. The D.A. already loves her. Any jury will love her.”
“I hear you, but I don’t like it.”
“Whatever. Cut her loose.”
*
At the lieutenant’s request, Michelle agreed to have the detectives return her to the hospital, but the Black detective, Glover, drove past the turn.
“Why aren’t I surprised?” Michelle said. “We’re not going back to the hospital, are we? Where are you taking me?”
“Shut up. Just sit back there and be quiet.”
What’s this about? Not Jerome, that’s for sure. What, then?
A few minutes later, they were in an isolated area deep inside Parkway Cemetery, where Gerard opened the cruiser’s back door and motioned to Michelle.
“Get out,” he said.
Michelle glanced around. As she expected, there was no one close enough to hear her if she shouted. “This is very interesting. A cemetery? Are you guys trying to make a statement or something?”
“We know you did Jerome,” Glover said, “but we don’t much care about him. More importantly, we think you’re involved with the triple homicide that happened last night on the 405, but we don’t know how. And that pisses us off. You want to know why?”
“No, I don’t care what pisses you off,” Michelle said, though she seriously did want to know what pissed off these cops. These two were operating on their own, outside of the official rules, and she needed to find out what they wanted. “Piss on you being pissed off. Doesn’t mean squat to me.”
“We’re pissed, because two of them were the nephews of a man named Jackson. He has juice in our city, and he’ll want us to deal with their killer. That means extra work. We don’t like extra work.”
Michelle stayed quiet. The longer she did, the more others would fill in the silence. Gerard didn’t disappoint.
“While we checked your alibi on Jerome, we also checked over at the hospital. Your friends swear you were with them all night, which means exactly shit. But, several of the staff remember you being there all night, so maybe you didn’t do it. But you’re involved somehow. We also heard about why you were at the hospital: apparently you and your friend with the busted nose were in a fight with one of the men who was killed. We just can’t figure out how you’re involved with the killings. Not yet. Give it a minute and we will.”
“Yeah, well, that’s all very interesting,” Michelle said. “I’m not sad that sorry prick who broke Deja’s nose is dead. But if you thought any of that shit was close to real, you wouldn’t have me out here; we’d be back in booking. So what’s all this about?”
“We’ll do our job for the city and for Mr. Jackson on those homicides, and if you’re the one who did it, we’ll get you. But that isn’t what truly pisses us off.”
“Really? I can’t imagine what would piss off a couple of upstanding po-lice like you.”
“What pisses us off is you have our money,” Glover said.
What the fuck?
“Three years ago,” Glover continued, “your brother and two other bangers got their sorry asses killed in your house. Someone ran off with our money. We believe you’re that someone. The first cops on the scene reported finding a briefcase full of drugs, but no money. We know better, because Lewis told us the money was still there when he left.”
Michelle’s blood ran cold at hearing Lewis’s name, and for an instant, she squinted in a hate-filled stare. This cop knew who murdered her brother.
“Yeah, we knew Lewis shot your brother,” he confirmed. “You see, we know a lot about you. What we can’t figure out is, why wait three years to come back and kill Lewis? It’ll all come clear in time, but the one thing you need to get straight is we want our money. Where is our muthafucking money, bitch?”
“So that’s what this is all about. You’re a couple of chickenshit dirty cops who think I stole your money. Fuck you! I lost my brother. A bunch of lowlife assholes killed him, and now I learn you were part of it. I didn’t take any goddamned money; I wasn’t even at the house. All I know is my brother was murdered and you pricks never did anything about it. Now I know why—you’re in the mix just as much as the assholes who shot him.”
Glover growled. “Where. Is. Our. Money. Bitch!”
“I don’t have any money that belongs to you. Now take me back to the station and arrest me, or step off, Jack.”
Glover leaned close and spoke low in her ear. “We know you’re a bitch, like your brother, who was a nobody. He had to be killed to get to his boss. We made sure everyone involved stayed out of the light, that’s why nobody was arrested for those killings. We made sure. And when the time comes, we’ll do the same to you. You’ll be nothing but one more dead girl in the hood, and you’ll be buried right here where we’re standing. Or, you could do the smart thing and give us our money.” He stepped back.
“I told you, I don’t have any money. But I do have to get even for this bullshit right here. You’ll be hearing from my attorney when she sues your asses off.” Michelle knew she’d never call her attorney; she just wanted to plant the idea she could be an innocent citizen, as opposed to the player she really was.
“We’ll be in touch,” Gl
over said, and they drove off.
Dressed in borrowed hospital scrubs and stranded in the middle of a large cemetery, Michelle was very, very pleased. She’d learned more than she expected. And now, she was going to kill two cops.
Twenty-Three: Cop Killer
IT’D BEEN A very busy day. Michelle pulled up to G‑Baby’s house, parked, and took a moment to collect her thoughts. With the top up, the smell of the takeout dinner in the passenger seat filled the car, and as the last of the light faded from the western sky, the lights in the windows of the houses grew brighter.
Baby‑Sister opened the front door for Michelle.
“Hey, Baby‑Sister.”
“Sup, Michelle? G‑Baby said you were coming over with some takeout from T‑Bones. I hate to miss it, but I have to run.”
“There’s enough for you if you want to stay.”
“Naw, can’t. Not this time. I promised my momma I’d go to her house. She’s got the Right Reverend Marion and his wife, Barbara, coming over for Sunday dinner. Having them visit is a big deal for her. They’re okay for church people; they don’t press others with their religion too much. I’ll stay and eat next time.” Baby‑Sister hugged Michelle and stepped off the porch.
“Okay, sorry you can’t stay. Holla at you later.” Michelle entered the house, calling out, “Uncle G?” She walked into the kitchen to find some plates for dinner.
“Hey, Michelle.”
G‑Baby strolled in, and she gave him a hug.
“Hey, Unc. What happened in here?”
“What do you mean?” He looked around. “It’s my kitchen, like it’s always been.”
“Uh-uh, no. It’s not always been like this. You’ve had a woman in here. Her touch is everywhere. It’s too clean, and there’s things put up.” Michelle opened cabinets, pointing. “New spices, which I know you didn’t buy. What’s up?”
“Yeah, well, Baby‑Sister did some cooking the other night. That’s all.”
“Oh really? That’s all, huh?”
“Yeah, that’s all. Now you mind your own business.”
“Hell, I’m glad you’re seeing someone. That, and your kitchen needed the help.”
Sister's Revenge: Action Adventure Assassin Pulp Thriller Book #1 (Michelle Angelique Avenging Angel Assassin) Page 13