I stopped at the McDonald’s counter and ordered a large coffee on the way out. Resettled in the car, I chugged down half a cup before my eyes opened and my nerves hardened a bit.
An old man, bent and unsteady, with a woman of the same stature on his arm, passed in front of my car. Next to me, a beat-up Chevy Bel Air had four children in the back, slumped right, each one’s head anchored on the other’s shoulder except for the last kid, whose head hung back, mouth gaping. A woman driver leaned forward, her head resting on the steering wheel. Three cars down to the left and across the lane a dark SUV was parked. The burn of a cigarette signaled an occupant.
My full attention on the SUV, I sipped more coffee and attempted to set the cup in the holder between the driver and passenger seats, but missed and dumped the contents in my lap. I pushed the car door open. It banged back and caught my foot. “Shit!” The coffee cup whipped from my hand and washed coffee over the passenger seat, door, and dashboard, then settled on the floor on the passenger side.
I leaned forward, removed my shoe, and jammed my shoulder on the steering wheel on the way up. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” I kneaded the pained spot in my shoulder with one hand and coddled my injured foot with the other. A second attempt to get out succeeded. I got a roll of paper towels from the backseat, dabbed at my lap, and wiped my hands, then moved around to the passenger side and did the same to the seat and carpet, though the paper towels were hardly the solution for the stains. I got back in the car and started the engine. I checked out the SUV again and did not notice anyone inside—at least no more smoking was going on.
My phone rang, but stopped before I clicked to answer. The lit screen showed 1:25 a.m. and Laughton as the missed caller. I pushed the button to call back, and after five rings was about to click off, when he answered.
“Why didn’t you pick up?” Laughton shouted.
“You can’t say, ‘hi, how are you?’ I’ve been driving.” I pulled out of the rest stop and back onto the Jersey Turnpike. “What do you mean, why didn’t I pick up? Why haven’t you answered any of my calls?” I waited for a response. We challenged each other’s silence, two minutes, three maybe.
He broke it. “Where are you?”
“I’m about two hours out.”
“Meet me. Please.”
“Laughton, Reece has been kidnapped, and I know it’s Jesse Boone.”
“Muriel, meet me,” he demanded and spouted off an address.
“Laughton, did you hear me?”
He clicked off. I was rattled. What did he have to do with what was going on with Nareece? I hoped the answer would lead me to her.
I stayed wired for the rest of the two-hour ride. The car clock flashed 3:38 when I turned right down a dead-end street in the affluent residential neighborhood of Chestnut Hill in Northwest Philly. I pulled in the driveway of a sprawling white colonial nestled on a secluded property at the end of the street and double-checked the address, 740 Thomas Road. It was the right one.
Laughton answered the door dressed in tan slacks and a seafoam-green shirt topped with a tan and green jacket. I checked him out with an exaggerated look from head to toe. He had slick Italian leather loafers on and no socks. Laughton never wore socks, another of his quirks. I decided not to comment on his look, which I found alluring. Instead, I entered and turned my attention to the surroundings.
“Pretty ritzy,” I said.
“Thanks,” he answered.
I glanced at him sideways. “Yours?”
“A little pleasure I picked up along the way.”
“You’ll have to school me so I can pick one up, too.”
“Not a problem.” He closed the door and gestured toward the left. “Please, after you, Mademoiselle.”
“I’ll ‘mademoiselle’ you.”
The entryway opened to a large living room with a bar at the far end and a manteled fireplace at the halfway point. At the other end was a large taupe couch shaped into a half circle, with two cushy burgundy chairs set in the room’s center.
Laughton rushed past me to the bar. “Drink?”
“At three thirty in the morning?” I said. He stood by the bar waiting for my answer. “No thanks.” I plopped down and sank into the couch cushions, feigning a nonchalant attitude but singed with curiosity. He poured a Scotch, sipped, added ice, and stirred before gulping it to empty. He poured more, then set it down and slid out a long-stemmed wineglass from an overhead rack.
“I said no.”
He continued what he’d started, then brought both drinks to the couch and sat down next to me, handing me the wine.
“Are you deaf? I said, ‘No thank you.’” I set the drink on the coffee table and slid back so I could see him better. “Okay, I’m here. What’s going on?”
He shook his head. “I should have figured you wouldn’t listen to me. I told you to back off. I told you I’d handle everything. I just needed a few days.” I held his glare even after he continued. His voice caused a prickly sensation up my arm. “Now John’s dead and Jesse’s got Carmella.” He slugged back his drink and went for another.
“Carmella? Wha . . . What the hell do you know about Carmella?”
“I knew, know, Carmella when she was Carmella, not now, not as Nareece or whatever the hell her name is now. I didn’t know she was your sister until recently.”
Now it was my turn. I gulped the wine.
“The situation is off the hook now.”
“What ‘situation’, Laughton? I can’t believe you’ve been running with this and didn’t tell me what’s been going on and the danger my sister was in. That you even know I have a sister and didn’t tell me before now.”
Laughton finished his drink and went for another.
“You might as well spill it, Laughton. I’m not going anywhere until you do. And nothing is going to happen from here on without me.”
Laughton took his time making another drink. He dropped one, two, three ice cubes into the glass, a squeeze of lime, the Scotch: two fingers, no, three. I resisted the urge to voice my irritation with his drinking, compounded by the heat building deep inside me. He lifted his glass and strolled to the window. Then he just stood there, looking out. I was about done when he said, “Jesse Boone is my brother.”
Only my eyes worked. They kept Laughton in range and watched him fall from grace, slamming his beautiful face into the pavement. He’s waiting for a response, I thought. Then I saw my reflection splashed against the nighttime backdrop of the picture window. My mouth was gaped open, eyes wide, face frozen. Anger quickly blew the shock away, anger that carved a path from my heart to my brain, blowing through my nose, ringing in my ears, burning my eyes, drying my mouth to desert status, and ramming my stomach. I stayed anchored to the couch.
Laughton turned from the window to look at me. His face was drawn, accentuated by dark bags under his now-hollowed eyes. Silence perched on the now-stagnated air between us.
“What are you saying, Laughton? How can Jesse be your brother? You can’t be part of Jesse Boone. You’re not . . .” I ditched his eyes, taking it in. I was reeling.
He came to the couch, sat down, and in the same motion grabbed my shoulders and twisted me around to look at him. I let him, still in disbelief.
“Muriel, I’m telling you because Jesse’s crazy and he has Carmella or Nareece, whatever you call her, and we can’t get her back alive if I don’t square up.”
“The only reason you’re telling me this now is because you think Jesse will kill Reecey and you don’t want that on your conscience?” It came out all screechy.
I pulled away from him and rested my head on the couch, willing my stomach to settle. Gold specks in the ceiling twinkled and danced from side to side depending on which eye I kept open.
“Listen to me. My father is . . . was . . . a big deal back in the days when the Black Mafia had Philly bagged. He was a real sick fuck. He killed people, made people beg for their lives and killed them anyway. Pistol-whipped them ’til their bones broke throug
h flesh. He only cared about two things: power and money.”
I jumped up off the couch and shouted, “Stop! I don’t need a breakdown of your family history, Laughton. What I do need to know is where’s Jesse holding Nareece?”
“You need to hear this now, M. You have to let me tell you.”
“I don’t have to let you tell me a damn thing.”
Laughton snagged my arm and yanked me back down on the couch. “My father was third in command with the Black Mafia running with guys like Sam Christian and Ron Harvey, all deadly. For as far back as I can remember, guys with guns watched while people cried, begged, pleaded, and bowed down to my father like he was the Black Godfather. He’d be soft as a baby’s butt one minute, and mess you up in the last five seconds before the minute was up, then he’d walk away settled and composed, going on with his day like nothing had happened, leaving the mess for his soldiers to sterilize.” He hesitated, then leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, holding his glass with both hands. When he spoke again, his voice was light and easy in an insane way.
“But I loved him. He was my father. All I could see was how great I thought he was, how powerful, how people came to him with everything and he fixed everything.” The light and easy tone faded quickly. “One night we were at the dinner table—Mom, Jesse, me, and Pop. Jesse and I were talking about something, I can’t remember what now, and my father reached over and started choking Mom at the dinner table while Jesse and I watched, too fucked up to stop him. I was seventeen and Jesse was only twenty-one—we weren’t about nothing. When he let her go, her head dropped like a brick onto her plate and broke it.” Laughton deepened his voice. “C’mon, boys, it’s your time to shine now.’ On the way out, he said to his soldiers, ‘Clean up in there.’” He gestured with his arms as though her body was nearby. “I thought I didn’t care. She wasn’t my real mother. Jesse and I have different mothers. But she was the mother I really remember, the mother who had raised me. He threw my real mother out when I was five, and I never saw her again until I found her seven years ago.”
In a hushed tone, I said, “Where’s your real mother now?”
“In a nursing home outside the city. She has Alzheimer’s. Man, she has some fierce nightmares and talks really crazy about some scary shit. I’d bet it was some real shit, too.
“Anyway, I left. I disappeared a year later, after he killed Harriet, Jesse’s mom. Jesse stayed and became much like my father. Got involved in the heroin and cocaine trade, prostitution, numbers, and whatever else made money and hurt good people.
“About a year and a half after I’d left, Jesse came looking. He found me down in Baltimore and had some pros work me over good. He was there for the finale. They beat me, broke my legs, and bashed my teeth in. He kicked my face ’til there wasn’t anything left: no face, just raw flesh. He left me for dead. I always wondered if my father gave the order.” Laughton set his drink down, got shakily to his feet, and shuffled back to the window. “A lot of plastic surgery, a new identity, then a few tours overseas, special ops. When I got out, I joined the force.”
“How’d you get in the department?”
“I got folks on the force who helped me. I’m nothing like Jesse or my father.”
“You mean, you got people you bought? You hate what your father and Jesse stand for, but you like the benefits.” I spread my arms and gestured to the surroundings.
He went back to the bar for another drink.
“So, where does all of this leave my sister? Will Jesse kill her?”
He stumbled on the trip back to the couch. “No. He won’t kill her, but he’ll mess her up. He’s obsessed with her.”
“Jesse isn’t capable of love.”
“I said he’s obsessed. Hasn’t got a damn thing to do with love.”
“He already tried at the Vineyard,” I said, unable to find a smooth place in my mind to settle.
Laughton’s raised eyebrows registered a glint of surprise before he said, “M, please shut up and listen to me.” He sat down again. His stare burned through to the backs of my eyeballs. “Carmella was Jesse’s girl. She was everything to him. But Jesse’s crazy and badass jealous. One day he accused Carmella of messin’ around on him, and it got really ugly. She had enough on him to put him away, so he’d been shooting her up awhile with drugs to control her. I couldn’t stand seeing her keep coming back for more of his drugs and abuse. But still, I didn’t know she’d ripped Jesse off until the next day.”
“. . . of a pound of heroin and two million dollars,” I said, almost absentmindedly.
“You knew about it?”
“Not then. Reece just told me. What would Reecey do . . . How could she do anything with two million dollars without me knowing?” No sooner had the words escaped my mouth than my thoughts traveled to Nareece’s expensive house in Milton, how I didn’t really know John’s occupation, the exclusive private school the girls attended . . . “Where was I? How’d all this get by me?”
I gagged on overlapping images flashing in front of me, spoiling Laughton’s beautiful couch with vomit. Laughton rushed to the kitchen and returned with a wet cloth and a glass of water for me. He leaned over and tried to wipe my face. I slapped his hand away. He put the cloth and the water on the coffee table in front of me and sat down.
“This isn’t easy, M. I didn’t . . .”
“Didn’t what? Think it was important to tell me you had a fake identity? That you’re Jesse’s brother? Or that Jesse might try to kill my sister? What, Laughton?”
“I didn’t even know you were related to Carmella until a few weeks ago! Remember? Carmella was in my family back then. And she wanted to hurt Jesse because he treated her like shit and wouldn’t let her go. So she took the two million, destroyed a stash of heroin and coke, and split.” Laughton snatched his glass off the coffee table and went for another drink. “Her dumb move was going back home. She had to know he wasn’t just going to let her get away.”
“She was barely sixteen, Laughton. Did she even have a choice about anything? And the three men who almost killed her, were you one of them?”
He shot me a hard look that melted almost immediately. “I can’t believe you would even ask me if I was involved.”
“It was twenty years ago. You were someone else. You are someone else.”
He hesitated, then said, “It was Jesse, Wade Taylor, and a cat named Billy Davis. Davis died in prison a while back.”
“Did you know?”
“I found out my father ordered Jesse to get rid of her, so I went to Carmella’s house, your house. When I drove up, I heard gunshots and Jesse, Wade, and Billy came running out. I drove off when I saw them run out.”
“Why now? Why’s Jesse coming at her now?”
“He’s been in prison for the past fifteen years, serving out time for killing our father.”
“All these years, the anguish, the guilt, and you said nothing?” I lashed out. “You bastard!”
“First off, I didn’t know who you were, and I certainly didn’t know about Nareece being your sister or that she was even still alive.”
I picked up my glass and threw it at him, then rushed him, punching and clawing. Laughton got his arms around my arms, so I kicked and tried to head-butt him away. He released me and stumbled backward. I grabbed his shirt by both shoulders, flipped him over to the floor, and lodged my knee in his neck. My heart banged against my chest at breakthrough force. Laughton swung his arm up and knocked me away, flipped me over, and put his knee in my neck. After a few minutes he lowered his body on top of mine, his face inches away.
“I felt you, girl, the moment we met,” he whispered.
My heart leaped, but my mouth spoke on its own accord. “Oh, please,” I spat back with all the sarcasm I could muster.
He stayed put until my breathing slowed, and stayed longer, then kissed me. I struggled against his hold, but his lips stayed on mine no matter which way I turned, and the “no” I screamed in my head, stopped. I floppe
d like a fish out of water and turned my head away.
“Have you lost your mind?” I yelped.
He loosened his grip on my wrists and rested his head on my shoulder.
A wave of guilt swallowed my anger, mostly. I pushed at him to get him off of me. He responded and moved aside, lying on his back with his arms spread-eagle. I sat up and slid back to lean against the wall. I would never have imagined how anything could dampen my feelings for Laughton until now.
“Did you get Jesse off?”
“No. He doesn’t even suspect I’m his brother,” he said, sitting up. “He thinks I’m dead. Kelvin Boone is dead.”
“A new face doesn’t make a new person,” I said, buttoning my blouse, which had come undone. I felt my face flush. “How’d he find out Nareece’s name and where she lived?”
“Good question. I also think Jesse is controlling someone in the department.”
“What about John? Do you think he knew about Jesse?”
“I’d bet John only learned about the whole mess a few weeks ago, after Jesse found out about Carmella and went to her house.”
I thought about the note Nareece had told me about, the note I’d ignored because I figured she was exaggerating again and just being paranoid. I also reflected on the photograph John’s sister and Bates had shown me of Jesse going into Nareece’s house.
Laughton sat up on the floor in front of me and put his hand on my leg. I pushed it off. He stood up and moved away.
“Wade Taylor found out who I was and tried to blackmail me. I don’t know how he knew. He was scared of Jesse and said I’d have to kill him before he’d tell me anything about what Jesse was into. I know Jesse has someone inside the department. Wade told me Jesse was looking for Nareece . . . Carmella. He was scared Jesse would come after him. I think Jesse killed him just to tie up loose ends.”
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