Strange Bedfellows v5

by Paula L. Woods

  It was an assessment Taft accepted without question, but I wasn’t convinced. There was something about Verdelle Shabazz that made the hairs stand up on my neck. A medium-complected, average-looking brother whose only distinguishing characteristics were patches of acne scars on his cheeks, Shabazz certainly had that bow-tie-wearing, clean-cut look you would expect from men in the Nation, but on him it looked a little too clean, a little too square. Moreover, he had seemed way too comfortable sitting in the FBI’s interview room, as if he’d been there many times before. The question was—was he telling the truth, or just saying what Taft and I wanted to hear so he could get paid?

  Once we were downtown, we circled the one-way streets at Seventeenth, Webster, Eighteenth, and Franklin a couple of times to get the lay of the land. I had to admit that Shabazz’s assessment of this Muslim bakery seemed solid, judging by the diverse appearance of the young men and women I saw either working behind the counter or coming and going from the establishment. Shabazz had said that although the place where Muhammad worked was famous for giving all kinds of down-and-out brothers and sisters a second chance, it was and probably always would be family owned. “From entrepreneur to shift supervisor at a Muslim bakery in a few short years. That would be enough to make Muhammad a bona fide BBM.”

  Taft had pulled up on the opposite side of the street, a few doors away from the bakery, and was shifting the car into park. “Pardon?”

  “BBM—bitter black man.”

  “I gotta remember that one.” Taft chuckled, but his eyes were on the bakery, which was bustling with last-minute customers emerging with pink boxes and brown paper bags. “You heard what Shabazz said: Muhammad’s failed investment in the Shareefs bankrupted him. He was lucky the owners of the bakery gave him a job.”

  “I wonder if he’d see it that way.” According to a copy of the driver’s license that Taft had gotten from the DMV, Rashaan Muhammad was forty-seven, way too old for a black man to be starting over. Five-eight and two-ten, Muhammad had glared morosely at the camera, his deep-set brown eyes little pinpricks behind the oversized black eyeglasses that covered a third of his face. With a faded kente-cloth bow tie and his suit jacket just visible in the photo, he reminded me of a slightly threadbare Muslim version of Heavy D. But other than his beat-down appearance, I was damned if I saw anything in that photo that made me think Rashaan Muhammad would withhold information about the death of his brother. “Has Verdelle Shabazz been a reliable informant?”

  “What kind of question is that?”

  Not a good one, judging by the challenge in Taft’s voice. “Has he ever steered you wrong?”

  “Not in the four years he’s been working with the northern California field offices.”

  “How’d he end up being an FBI informant in the first place?” I pressed, unnerved to find Taft watching my lips as I spoke.

  Then his eyes were back on the bakery. “How about I tell you over dinner later? Art’s Crab Shack’s not far from here. They have the best—”

  “You’d better tell me now.” I could feel the anger rising at the back of my throat and a different kind of heat growing elsewhere in my body. I fingered the marble in my pocket that I’d lifted from my session with Dr. P., letting its smoothness center my mind. “I’ve made plans for dinner.”

  “Too bad. Seeing that sister of yours?” In response to my startled look, he explained: “I overheard you on the phone at the office.”

  During a break in the Shabazz interview, I had slipped out and called my younger sister Macon, aka Fugitive from Justice. Macon had stopped communicating with the family since Thanksgiving a couple of years before, for reasons my father didn’t know and my mother was unwilling to say. When I wrote a message in her last birthday card asking what was up, she’d written back that she was willing to talk about it, but not on Justice Family turf. So while she seemed surprised by my unexpected call, she’d needed little coaxing to agree to meet for dinner that night.

  It felt weird knowing Taft had overheard my conversation. “Maybe some other time,” I muttered uneasily.

  He glanced my way and smiled. “I’m going to take you up on that, Detective.”

  “Do you smile all the time?”

  “Is it bothering you?”

  “It just strikes me as a little excessive for someone in law enforcement.”

  “I take my inspiration from Al Capone.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Capone once said: ‘You can go a long way with a smile.’ ” Taft demonstrated with another dazzler, then patted the breast pocket of his jacket. Capone also said: ‘You can go a lot farther with a smile and a gun.’ I’ve been following his advice ever since.”

  I could feel the corners of my mouth creep up. “Now you’ve given me one to remember.”

  “Besides, I only smile when I see something I like.”

  I concentrated on the foot traffic going into the barbershop just ahead of us on the left. Taft leaned over until he caught my eye. “Are you blushing, Detective Justice?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself.”

  “You’re too young to be having hot flashes. What are you, thirty-five?”

  “Can we just stick to business?” I said, smiling inwardly at the compliment.

  “Whatever you say. I like a woman who takes charge.” A few moments passed in blessed silence, then: “I’m forty-eight myself. Been with the Bureau since ’seventy-three.”

  “What made you apply?” I asked, grateful he’d stopped flirting.

  “I’d been on the NYPD for a few years and had just gotten my master’s in Criminal Justice from John Jay when—”

  “That’s funny, I’ve got a master’s in criminology, too.”

  Taft gave me a surprised look. “Really? What were you going to do with it?”

  “Research, maybe teach after I got the Ph.D., which I never did.”

  “Me, I was thinking of a command position in the NYPD, but a recruiter from the FBI was on campus, so I listened to what he had to say. I think they were as surprised to see me as I was to be there.”

  “Do they really transfer agents around a lot?”

  “Oh, yeah. I’ve been in four cities since Quantico.”

  “From what you were saying yesterday, you’ve been in L.A. twice now? When was the first time?”

  “’Seventy-three to ’seventy-eight.”

  “Then you probably remember a case involving Cinque Lewis and the Black Freedom Militia. He killed a father and child in a drive-by, then disappeared.”

  Taft shook his head, the corners of his mouth twitching downward.

  “I’m surprised you wouldn’t have heard of it. Lewis disappeared afterward, wasn’t found until just last year during the riots. The Feds were looking for him in five states back in the day.”

  “Sorry,” he murmured. “There were so many cases like that in those days. The Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation Army assassinating Marcus Foster up here, tracking down that Weathermen gang. Those were some crazy times in the Bureau.”

  “I’m sure.” It was disappointing to think that the murder of Keith and Erica, an event so central in my life, didn’t even merit a footnote in this FBI agent’s memory bank. “Maybe you knew my brother.”

  Taft’s gaze went back out the window. “I doubt it. I didn’t run into too many locals the time I was there.”

  “What was your assignment?”

  “A little of this and that,” he replied, “which was why I put in for a transfer after five years to Birmingham. I was there for nine years, then San Francisco for five before transferring back to L.A. in January.”

  “That’s a lot of moving around.”

  Taft was watching my lips again. “I think I’m going to like being in L.A. a whole lot better this time around.”

  I ignored the comment, but I couldn’t ignore the tingling sensation Taft’s words were creating in my body. “I can’t imagine being in Birmingham, Alabama, for nine years. My parents used to call it Bombingham, af
ter those little girls were killed.”

  He turned away, his eyes back on the bakery. “Your parents weren’t the only ones.”

  I followed his gaze, noticed the lettering on the window, which proclaimed A TASTE OF THE HEREAFTER, and the people moving about inside. “I remember the day it happened.” It was September 15, 1963, less than a month after the March on Washington, and Reverend King’s words of hope were still ringing in our ears. I’d just started the sixth grade when twenty-one children were injured and four black girls, ages eleven to fourteen, were killed in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. I remember being afraid to go to Sunday School, afraid the Ku Klux Klan would bomb our church in Los Angeles with Perris, little Macon, and me in it. I remember my parents and Grandmama Cile holding our hands as we walked into Allen A.M.E. the following Sunday and found the altar covered in flower arrangements bearing the names of Cynthia Wesley, Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, and Carole Robertson, as if they were lost members of our own congregation. What might they have become, our minister asked in his sermon, had they not been cut down by hate? It was the same question I’d asked, some thirty years later, about my own daughter. “Did you work on the team that arrested that KKK guy?”

  Taft shook his head. “I was transferred to Birmingham the year after Chambliss was convicted for Denise McNair’s murder. And I left Birmingham right before Gary Tucker confessed. It was a hard time to be in the Bureau, even harder to be black and in Birmingham.”

  “These days, I feel the same way about being on the LAPD.”

  “Yours is a completely different situation.”

  “It doesn’t feel like it sometimes.”

  “I’m telling you, if our new AG has anything to say about it, those good old boys in the LAPD are going down.”

  “Kicking and screaming every step of the way. Makes me wonder if I should try and ride it out.”

  “It’ll get better,” he assured me. “It has to.”

  “From your lips to God’s ear.”

  “Have you considered going federal? If you’re interested, I’d be willing to make a couple of calls.”

  “Why, thank you, Special Agent Taft. I appreciate the thought, but—”

  “I thought we were past the formalities,” he broke in with a smile.

  “I actually know a black female in the Bureau, but I think she was fairly young when she joined. Aren’t I a little long in the tooth to be starting over with the Bureau?”

  “You wouldn’t be starting over. With your experience, you’d probably get a plum assignment. And a black woman, too?” He snorted. “The Bureau needs black females worse than the LAPD does!”

  We fell into a more comfortable silence this time, until I asked him if moving around that much was hard on his family.

  “That’s why I don’t have one.” He raised a bare left hand for me to see for myself. “I mean, I have a mother in San Jose, but that’s about it.”

  As big a flirt as he appeared to be, I was sure there were some ex-wives or ex-girlfriends in the picture somewhere. “Why don’t you drive down and see your mom after this? San Jose’s—what—an hour south of here?”

  “I’d rather have dinner with you.”

  You gotta give him high marks for persistence. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “I’m a Scorpio.”

  I almost punched his arm. “Were there many black agents when you joined the Bureau?”

  “Damn,” he laughed. “You say that like it was back in the days of Bonnie and Clyde! A few. Not enough, especially given the number of investigations we do in our communities.”

  “You ever investigate this bakery?”

  A smile played on his lips as he murmured: “You don’t give up, do you, Charlotte?”

  I smiled back. “It’s another thing we have in common.”

  He leaned over and whispered: “I’ll tell all over a nightcap. Instead of going back tonight, why don’t we check into the Marriott over on—”

  I tapped him, hard, on the shoulder. “Heads up. Here comes Muhammad.”

  Four high school–aged girls in plaid uniforms emerged from the bakery, shoving quarters of bean pie in their mouths. Behind them shuffled Rashaan Muhammad, a Windbreaker bulking up his already ample frame and a baseball cap pulled low on his brow.

  “Brother looks like he’s trying to be incognegro,” I deadpanned. “You think Shabazz tipped him?”

  “No way.”

  “How can you be so certain?”

  Taft had to tear his eyes away from Muhammad, whom he’d been watching intently. “Huh? Uh—I left one of the agents at the office to babysit him, with strict instructions to hold him incommunicado until I called in with the all clear. You see me make a call?”

  The girls turned right toward Webster, while Muhammad turned left as he made his way toward Franklin. Taft guided the Crown Vic around the block again, ending up on Franklin, where we tailed the big man from a discreet distance. He settled in at a bus stop while Taft circled that block as well. “Just in case he suspects something,” he explained.

  A couple of minutes later, we pulled up alongside the bus bench where Muhammad was still waiting, the window on my side rolled down. “Asalaam aleikum, my brother!” Taft called. “Can we talk with you for a minute?”

  Muhammad’s welcoming smile and response died on his lips as he checked out the car, then looked at the other passengers scattered around the bench. “You talkin’ to me?”

  Taft’s smile, however, remained bright. “You are Brother Muhammad, right? Brother over at the mosque thought you might be able to help us out.”

  Muhammad frowned behind his thick glasses while his stained sneakers tapped out an anxious syncopation on the concrete. “Who’d you say referred you?”

  I started to say Brother Shabazz, but was silenced by Taft’s hand over mine. “We want to discuss a business proposition with you,” he told Muhammad. “Won’t take more than thirty minutes of your time.”

  Muhammad rolled a big shoulder. “I ’ont know. I gotta get over to my mother’s.”

  “Just give us a call and we’ll set it up for tomorrow. But we’re only in town until noon.”

  “Lemme get your number and I’ll think about it,” he said, and started for the car.

  Taft looked at me and winked. “Hand me that notepad in the glove compartment.”

  I leaned forward to get the pad while Taft reached into his breast pocket for a pen. As I looked back to hand him the pad I leaned back quickly, hoping my movement would keep Muhammad from seeing Taft’s holster.

  It didn’t. Muhammad took off, lumbering down the side street faster than I would have thought possible for a man of his size. Taft cursed and slammed the car into gear but was hemmed in by a minivan in the lane to our left and a Q-tip in front of us, an old man slowing as he looked for an address.

  I already had the door open and was scrambling out of my seat. “I’ll run him down on foot; you back me up with the car.” I could hear Taft shouting something, but I was already tearing down the street, my holster banging against my side.

  At a driveway a few doors up, I noticed that Muhammad had lost his eyeglasses. But he was still barreling down the driveway at full speed, his poor vision probably making him unaware that the driveway emptied into a large parking lot hemmed in by buildings on all sides. I scooped up his broken eyeglasses and was about a third of the way down the driveway when I heard a car skidding behind me. I squeezed between a couple of Dumpsters as Taft sped by, stopping just short of Muhammad, who was pounding on the back door of one of the buildings.

  The door opened from the inside, and Muhammad was about to shove aside the old woman who had opened it when Taft drew his weapon. I was right behind him with my nine. “Stop right there, nigger!”

  As much as I hated Taft’s language, it had the desired effect. Muhammad froze like a cockroach when the lights are turned on. Seeing the situation, the woman screamed something in Chinese and quickly closed the d
oor.

  “Put your hands where I can see them!” Taft ordered.

  “Don’t be stupid, Mr. Muhammad,” I called. “No sudden moves!”

  Muhammad was sputtering and gasping, trying to catch his breath. “What you want with me?”

  “Why’d you run, nigger?” Taft shouted, his voice bouncing off the walls of the building surrounding us.

  “I ain’t no fool! I saw that gun!”

  “Easy, Agent Taft, I’ve got him!” I’d seen cases go wrong like this. A sudden flick of movement, a twitch, and someone is dead, leaving ruined lives and careers in their wake. So I shouted as much to encourage Taft to calm down as to let him know that I had my weapon drawn and was prepared to fire if necessary.

  But instead of a nod of gratitude, Taft gave me a dirty look as he holstered his weapon. “Who the hell are you?” Muhammad asked.

  In one swift movement, Taft slammed Muhammad’s face into the door and pulled out his cuffs. “Special Agent Taft, FBI.”

  Muhammad yelped in pain. Taft cuffed one of his wrists roughly, then the other, and spun him around. “L-l-lemme see some ID!” Muhammad stuttered. He squinted at the badge Taft waved under his nose. “I can’t read that damn thing!”

  Taft popped him in the back of the head. “Mind your manners! You Muslim brothers are usually more polite than that.”

  Muhammad tried to bat away Taft’s hand. “You saw that?” Taft asked me. “This nigger is trying to assault an agent of the U.S. government!”

  “I ain’t no nigger,” Muhammad whispered fiercely.

  Taft’s smile wasn’t nice at all this time. “Get in the car, Mr. Muhammad.” He pushed the big man into the back of the Crown Vic and made him crouch behind the seats. He adjusted his seat back, virtually pinning Muhammad into position, then threw the keys at me. “Let’s get out of here before Mama-san calls the cops.”