Darkness Descending

by Penny Mickelbury

  “‘Cause he used to come around there in uniform, in the police car, with this other cop, a white dude, always preaching about how homosexuality is against God and how we’re all going to hell and how he wasn’t going to protect us no matter what the law said. God’s law was the only law that mattered to him.”

  Mimi made a sudden movement, then groaned in pain. Gianna turned to her, concerned, but Mimi waved her off and Gianna turned back to Terry. “Come around where, Terry? Where did this happen?”

  “At the Pink Panther, in the back room.”

  Gianna tensed. “What back room?” There was nothing in any of the reports about a back room at the Pink Panther.

  Terry gave a sideways grin and the kind of head shake that suggests a feeling of pity. “That bastard thinks he’s so cool. You get back there through the toilets. He has to tell you how to do it, and he doesn’t tell everybody. It’s supposed to make you feel special.” She spat the word out.

  “Ray Washington?”

  Terry nodded, then looked at Baby. “Tell them, Marlene. You said we both could trust them, so you have to tell your part, too.”

  Baby looked like she’d rather eat worms than tell her part. “I know him from when I...from before, you know? He used to have a place over off Columbia Road.” She looked directly at Mimi. “You dropped me off over there one night, remember? That night when you picked me up after I saw—”

  “I remember,” Mimi said quickly to spare the girl from the weight and pain of having to dredge up any more of her ugly past than was absolutely necessary. “That was the night you first maligned my old car.”

  Baby gave her a high wattage smile of gratitude and got on with her story. “He wasn’t nothing but a pimp calling himself having a bar. But that’s how you got to the trick rooms, through the bathrooms. Police tried lots of times to bust him ‘cause they knew he was up to shit, but they couldn’t ever find anything.”

  Baby enjoyed that memory briefly, then continued with her story: When crack and AIDS and a serial killer negatively impacted the number of women on the street, she said, Washington just changed locations and his customer base but kept the same business. “Boys turn just as many tricks as girls, and those DL’s are so paranoid about somebody catching on to ‘em, they keep that back room real busy.”

  “So the back of the Pink Panther is a brothel?”

  “Not totally,” Terry said. “There’s a pool table and some pinball machines back there, and a slot machine he stole from one of the casinos on the Eastern Shore. That stuff’s in the main room. The private rooms are back behind this main room.”

  “Will you come with me, both of you, to give statements? Nobody will know who you are and you won’t have to see or talk to anyone but my people. You know who they are, you’ve met them, so you know you can trust them.”

  “I won’t talk to anybody but you,” Terry declared.

  Gianna nodded assent and looked at Baby. “Marlene?”

  She looked from Gianna to Terry and back to Gianna and nodded. “I’ll talk to whoever, I just can’t miss no more work. I took today off to be here with Terry, so can we do it now?”

  “After we eat,” Gianna said, piling orange chicken on her plate.

  Marlene Jefferson and Terry Carson spent the remainder of the afternoon and into the evening behind the closed and locked doors of the Think Tank. There was an initially tense but ultimately amusing moment when Terry spied Alice, whom she recognized from the Pink Panther. When she finally understood that Alice was working undercover, she had a good laugh. “I knew you didn’t belong in that place,” Terry said.

  “I thought the same thing about you,” Alice said, and Terry sobered and saddened and it took a few moments to get her back into the moment. Once back, though, she delivered.

  Terry’s memory of events was sharp and clear, her descriptions of people detailed, her speculations and opinions, when requested, well-founded and logical. She’d been a regular at the Pink Panther for the past year, almost always on the nights she worked the late shift because she liked to wind down after work and she didn’t want to disturb Marlene, who had to rise early to be at her own job by seven o’clock. Terry’s pattern was to sit at the bar and have one beer, then take a second one to the back and play the pinball machines for about an hour, then head for home. Yes, she said, she did this every week. No, Ray Washington didn’t treat her any better or worse than any other customer, aside from giving her access to the back room. If she stopped frequenting the bar he wouldn’t care, wouldn’t ask if she were ill, wouldn’t know whom to ask, probably didn’t even know her name. The only people who interested him were the men who rented his back rooms by the hour, and his cop friends.

  “Well,” Linda said releasing a sigh of relief for all of them after Marlene and Terry were gone, “we knew there was something hinctey about Mr. Washington, but wow!”

  “No shit, Sherlock,” Cassie said.

  “How do we handle this, Boss?” Eric asked.

  “Use what we know to leverage information about Joyce Brown’s rape, then turn the whole thing over to IAD and Vice,” Gianna said.

  “You gonna cut Washington a deal?” Kenny asked, frowning slightly.

  Gianna shook her head. “Lawyers make deals with criminals, we don’t. We tell him what we know about him and his operation, what we can prove. We tell him we want to know who raped Joyce Brown, we tell him how much better it will be for him in the long run if he cooperates. His lawyer gets to play Let’s Make a Deal with the government’s lawyers, not with us. Now. About these cops.”

  The thought sickened her. A dirty cop was bad enough—a cop on the take, a rogue cop stealing from the drug dealers, a vigilante cop dispensing his own brand of justice—but cops withholding protection from victims and leaving the door open for rape and murder—that was much too much. She considered, then rejected, the idea of talking to the Chief or to Inspector Davis before taking action against Ray Washington. If these cops were that bad she didn’t want to leave them in place another day. If she could take them down today, tomorrow, that’s what she’d do, and let the chips fall where they fell. After all, it wouldn’t be her job to clean up the mess. And anyway, she was still smarting from losing Mike Nelson to the Feds. She wasn’t about to lose Ray Washington to the Internal Affairs spooks, in many ways, worse than the Feebies.

  Bobby had supplied the name of his former Training Academy classmate, Roger Holcomb, and the information that he indeed was assigned to Mid-Town. Alice had learned from the Mid-Town undercovers that the cop she’d seen at the Pink Panther, the one she thought to be a friend of Ray Washington, was named Thomas Murphy. He’d spied the undercovers coming in the door two nights ago and jumped off his bar stool and headed for the bathroom so fast that Washington was still talking to him after he’d gone. The undercovers had gotten a glimpse of him, though, enough to ID him, and she, in turn, had told the undercovers that they’d been made. Fortunately, it no longer mattered.

  Roger Holcomb and Thomas Murphy. How many more were there, Gianna wondered, because if there were two, she was certain that there were more. What about Ferrell, the young Mid-Town Command cop who’d called her a dyke? Some situation, some set of circumstances must exist to allow him to feel comfortable enough to challenge her like that. That argued for telling the Chief first and letting him deal with it, or for telling Eddie Davis about the snakes crawling around in the grass in his field. No. She’d made her decision. She’d tell them after the fact. After Ray Washington was in lock-up, arrested and charged.

  Her cell phone rang. She flipped it open and frowned at the caller identification info on the screen. Who would be calling her from George Washington University Hospital?

  She put the phone to her ear. “Yes?” Then, “Don’t let them do anything until I get there. Fifteen minutes.”

  She snapped the phone shut and looked at her team, all of whom were looking at her. “Miss Patterson—Mimi—apparently sustained a couple of cracked ribs and a possible c
oncussion in the assault yesterday. She’s at GW ER.”

  “I’ll drive you,” Cassie said, grabbing her briefcase and coat.

  “I’ve got everything covered here, Boss,” Eric said. “Cassie can keep the lines open between us. Go.”

  And she left, for a moment feeling more grateful than worried; grateful that the people who worked for her cared about her life, grateful that she’d learned to trust them enough to let them care. Cassie drove so that Gianna could think about what Mimi had said and not about how she had sounded, because if she focused on that, she might start to unravel, for Mimi had barely been able to speak, so intense was the pain. Apparently a rib was poking something somewhere, and the pain was excruciating. She also was dizzy and beginning to sound incoherent. Thank goodness she’d called Beverly when she did, otherwise...no, don’t go there. No need. Mimi had recognized that she was in trouble and she had called her best friend and she was at the hospital about to go into surgery, and she would be fine.

  She’d told Mimi fifteen minutes but with lights and siren activated, Cassie made it in twelve. She pulled into the Emergency Room portico. “I’ll park and find you inside,” Cassie said.

  Gianna rushed inside. She’d been in every emergency room in town during the course of her career and they all looked, felt and smelled pretty much the same, though recent renovations here at GW had certainly improved the look of the place, and she imagined that changes in the way medical care was delivered these days accounted for the fact that the place wasn’t overrun with the destitute and the indigent. No longer was patient care the first mission of the medical establishment. Securing a signature on the insurance form was. She walked directly to the intake desk, then spied Beverly Connors, who saw her at the same time. She and her lover, Sylvia, rushed toward Gianna.

  “God, I’m glad you’re here,” Bev said, hugging her tightly. “Of course they won’t let us in or tell us anything.

  “Why not?”

  “We’re not family,” Sylvia said.

  “Come on,” Bev said, pulling Gianna toward the desk. “She wants to see you before they take her to surgery. She’s got something crucial to tell you. Her words, not mine,” Bev hastened to add when she saw the look on Gianna’s face.

  “I need to see Marilyn Patterson,” Gianna told the nurse at the desk.

  “Are you a family member?” the nurse asked, not looking up from the chart she was writing in.

  “I’m Lieutenant Maglione, Metropolitan Police Department,” Gianna said, holding up her gold shield. The nurse raised her eyes long enough to get a good look. “Now where is Miss Patterson?”

  The nurse sighed, got up, quick-stepped down a short hallway and swished through a curtain into a room full of beds, all of which were surrounded by the accouterments of modern day emergency medicine. Mimi was in one of the beds, hooked up to an intravenous line of some sort, and a heart monitor. Her eyes were closed and she looked small and frail. She wore a hospital gown, pale green with some kind of design pattern on it. The plastic identification strip encircled her wrist. Her too-long hair spread out over the pillow, its dark, mahogany color in stark contrast against the institutional white. Her breathing was shallow. Gianna reached out to touch her but couldn’t. She felt paralyzed. Mimi must have sensed her presence because she opened her eyes and smiled. It was a weak smile, one that held pain dulled by the administration of narcotics, but it still was Mimi’s smile. The one that always welcomed Gianna.

  “You really came. You’re really here.”

  “Of course I did. This is where I belong.” Gianna leaned over the railing and kissed her forehead, smoothing back her hair. “You know that haircut you were going to get last week? And the week before?” Gianna whispered the words through tears that choked the back of her throat.

  “You can’t nag me, I’m sick. Besides, I’ve got something to tell you before I can’t.” And that would be soon; already her words were dragging and slurring.

  Gianna leaned in closer, her ear against Mimi’s mouth, holding Mimi’s hands in her own as she listened, understanding dawning about why Mimi’s focus had been on O’Connell. He was worse than a dirty cop, he was a dangerous one. Mimi knew she had just the tip of the iceberg, just like Gianna did with Holcomb and Murphy, but it was clear that the problem was large and pervasive. She gave Gianna the passwords to her computers—the one at the paper, the one at home, and her laptop—and the codes she’d used to hide all the different files. And she told her where the cassettes and computer diskettes were, locked in her desk at home, and where to find the key. Gianna wrote it all down as Mimi instructed.

  “You can do this yourself tomorrow, you know,” Gianna told her.

  “Just in case I can’t,” Mimi mumbled. Her eyes fluttered as she struggled to keep them open, to keep her brain functioning.

  “You will,” Gianna said, resting her face on Mimi’s, on the side that had turned ugly shades of green and purple where Michael Nelson had hit her.

  “I told them, at the admitting desk, that you’re my domestic partner. It’s on the form, so they have to tell you everything—”

  “You’ll have to leave now, Lieutenant.” Two nurses and a doctor had appeared at the foot of Mimi’s bed. “We’ve got to get her into surgery.” The medical personnel moved in, clearly accustomed to being in charge, to getting their way, to having civilians move out of that way. Gianna stepped away from the bed.

  “Is that safe? I thought she had a concussion.”

  “She’s also got a piece of a rib poking into the side of her chest wall. We’ve got to put it back where it belongs before it pokes into something more dangerous,” said the doctor, a young Asian woman with spiky hair, three earrings, all in the same ear, and a killer smile. “She’s in no danger,” the doctor said. “As long as we get that rib put back in place,” she added.

  Gianna peered at her name tag: Ellen Chang, MD. She was about to ask another question when the two nurses, both Black women roughly her own age, started to push the bed, with Mimi in it, past her. The doctor followed. Gianna reached out to touch Mimi, touched hair, and watched the procession leave her standing there. “How long?” she called out.

  Dr. Chang turned back but didn’t stop walking. “If all goes well, she should be in recovery in a couple of hours.”

  “All better go well,” Gianna muttered to herself, and returned to the waiting room. Cassie, Beverly and Sylvia were sitting together and she joined them, told them what she knew. She was about to sit down when Bev jumped up, grabbed her arm, and dragged her to the opposite side of the room.

  “That business with the badge, Gianna, what was that all about?” Beverly was a therapist, the no-nonsense kind, the kind who took charge, not one of those who tiptoed all around issues and problems.

  “I had to get in to see Mimi. That always does the trick.”

  “So does being the registered domestic partner of the patient do the trick,” Beverly said, and waited. When Gianna had no response, Bev lit into her. “You two are really unbelievable. You’re ridiculous. This is insane. Neither of you has family here, and even if you did, would you want Mimi’s father or her brother making decisions about her life? And suppose something happened to you? Mimi doesn’t have a badge to flash to get in to see you. Come on, Gianna! If you two are going to be together, then be together. You don’t flash your badge to get in to see her, she’s not a perp, she’s your next of kin.”

  Bev looked at her watch. “I’ve got to go, I’ve got late call at the clinic tonight, but Sylvia will be at home. Call us when you know something.” She gave Gianna a hug and a kiss and left her standing beneath a wall-mounted television tuned to ESPN and a football game. She hugged Cassie, took Sylvia’s hand, waved good-bye, and they were gone.

  Cassie hurried over to her. “Everything OK, Boss?”

  “They’re taking her to surgery. You don’t have to sit here, Cassie, though I appreciate it,” Gianna said quickly when she saw Cassie’s face about to change.

 
“I don’t mind,” Cassie said. “Besides, we can always work.”

  Work. Gianna actually had forgotten it for a few, brief minutes, and being reminded of what was hanging over her mind suddenly made her so tired she needed to sit down. Cassie had taken out her laptop and was pulling up the Hilliard and Brown case files. She gave Gianna the stack of Michael Nelson’s diaries and notebooks. “You said you wanted to do these yourself.”

  “I do. Thanks.” But first. She took out her cell phone. Cassie pointed to a sign on the wall prohibiting the use of cellular phones inside the hospital. “I’ll be right back,” she said, and headed for the door.

  Outside felt good. It finally was cooler in D.C., summer fading into memory. She called Eric, told him what was happening, and told him to send everybody home for a good night’s sleep and an eight a.m. report time. She started to call Mimi’s father and brother, but decided to wait until had something definitive to tell them. Until then, she’d sit in the waiting room with Cassie, trying not to think about what was going on in an operating theater somewhere in side the hospital, and trying, instead to understand what was going on in Michael Nelson’s mind.

  It felt funny being in Mimi’s house without her, but it would have been even stranger being in her own home knowing that Mimi’s house was empty, not because she was out of town, but across town in the hospital. She’d be home in twenty-four hours, Dr. Chang said, with her ribs tightly taped and very sore, woozy from the drugs, and on complete bed rest for another forty-eight hours. Gianna hoped they planned on sending enough drugs to keep her woozy, otherwise keeping her in bed for two days would be a real challenge. Especially since sex was out of the question.

  Gianna turned on the lights in the living room, in the kitchen, in the bedroom, so the place would look like it looked when Mimi was here. She lit one of the presto logs in the fire place and a stick of Mimi’s favorite incense, and she turned on the CD player and pushed the play button. She’d listen to whatever Mimi had listened to last, and have a glass of wine while she fixed something to eat and tried to calm her body and her mind. She was relieved that Mimi’s surgery had gone well and that Mimi was, in hospital parlance, resting comfortably, though the truth was, she was too drugged for anyone to know whether or not she was comfortable. She’d made all the necessary phone calls—to Mimi’s family, to her own mother, to Bev and Sylvia, to Freddie and Cedric, to Eric, who, along with Cassie, would inform the others.