by Nancy Rue
But Detective Kylie looked at me with perhaps the first authentic expression I had ever seen on his face.
“This looks like Jude Lowery,” he said.
“Jude Low—Sultan?” I moved from Kylie’s startled gaze to the eye patch and the hideous head. “No. No, I’ve seen Sultan. This isn’t him.”
“When did you see him?”
“The night he was killed.”
“Before that?”
“I only saw him the once.”
“Well, I’ve spent most of the last fifteen years of my career studying his face in photographs and staring at him across interrogation tables and watching him in court.” He tapped the drawing with the back of his hand. “He’s looking a little the worse for wear, but—”
“Worse for wear! The man is dead.”
“Do you know that? Because I never saw his body. Neither did the coroner.” He let the drawing drop to the ottoman between us. “Looks like he’s lost an eye. Has some scars he didn’t have before. Typical injuries for a man who’s been shot in the head and lived to get his revenge.”
“On Desmond? He had nothing to do with Sultan being shot.”
“No,” Kylie said, “but you did.”
I gripped the back of my neck. “This is absurd. There was enough blood in that parking lot to prove he couldn’t possibly have lived.”
“And yet his biological son drew this.”
“From the nightmares he’s been having, yes.”
“Sultan didn’t look like this before he was shot. You said that yourself.”
“You’re saying he’s seen him?”
“How else would he know what he looked like now?”
“But if Sultan wanted to get back at me, why not just shoot me in the alley? Why try to take Desmond?”
He didn’t have to answer. I knew from the place in my soul that wouldn’t have survived if that car had driven off with my son in it.
I reached across the ottoman, ribs on fire, tendons screaming, and grabbed the detective by the rolled-up sleeve of his shirt.
“You cannot breathe a word of this to Desmond. Please. He can’t know.”
He paused for too long. I tightened my grip.
“I’d like to know where he saw Sultan,” Kylie said. “We could get some kind of clue to where he’s staying, how he’s operating.”
“I can tell you that,” I said. “I admit it’s a guess, but just hear me out.”
Kylie nodded me on.
I closed my eyes and watched the pieces move together, forming the picture Desmond had been drawing for us. Then I opened my mouth and shaped it into words.
Desmond coming back more than once from lunch recess to Miss O’Hare’s class, shaken and distracted, one day too terrified to take his history test. Desmond doing a caricature to manage the fear of a man in a car with tinted windows, a man whose threats were spoken in the screams of his nightmares. Desmond being far less frightened of being taken by Priscilla Sanborn than by this man who had come back from the dead.
Until the day he and Chief set out on my bike. Until he thought the accident was his fault, not because he distracted Chief but because he knew the black car with the tinted windows. Because he knew it was after him.
How had he survived these last weeks? Afraid Chief would remember, afraid to go to school because the car might be there at recess, afraid to get on a motorcycle because it might come after him again?
“Today he wasn’t afraid to ride with me, though.”
“The stalking must have stopped as long as your bike wasn’t on the road,” Kylie said. “But he didn’t put that together.”
“Sultan knows where I live. He could have come in here and kidnapped Desmond any time, right out from under my nose.”
Detective Kylie fanned the pages of his notepad.
“What?” I said.
“This guy is a psychopath. He wants it his way or no way, and his way is so twisted you and I can never understand it, much less come up with it. He wanted it the way it was supposed to go down this morning.”
I pulled my good leg up to my chest. “They were waiting for us in that alley,” I said. “How did Sultan know that was where we were going?”
“Have you been there before?” he said.
“Yeah, a few times.”
“Were you ever followed there?”
I caught my breath.
“I’ll venture to say they watched you. When you headed out in that direction today, on your bike, with Desmond, all the conditions were right. They probably took an educated guess and got there before you. If you hadn’t shown up, no problem. They could try again later.”
“What if they do try again later? What’s to keep Sultan from getting another driver?”
“Best-case scenario? Word gets out that we’re onto him and he’ll be hard put to find somebody to chauffeur him around. He’s powerful, but he’s getting less so all the time. If he can’t get out there and muscle people anymore, no one’s going to put their life on the line for him. Especially the caliber of the loser we picked up today. Rydell didn’t have the brains to tell the difference between you and Jack Ellington on a motorcycle. I’m thinking now they would have grabbed Desmond the day of the accident if they hadn’t realized you weren’t there.”
I searched Kylie’s face. “Do you really believe that? Because if you don’t, I have to take Desmond and move somewhere else.”
I shook my head and buried it between my hands as I choked on the pain.
“I believe it,” he said. The gruffness softened. “I think you ought to tell him, so he can report to you if he sees anything. He’s going to need protection until we nab Lowery.”
I brought my head up. “I don’t want him living like he has a specter chasing him.”
“Maybe he does.”
“Then, please, let me take it on.”
A door opened upstairs, and Desmond’s voice filled the stairwell.
“I ain’t got time for a buncha questions,” he was saying to Hank. “I got to go get baptized.”
Detective Kylie turned toward the stairs.
“Please,” I whispered.
Desmond appeared, swaggering and working his eyebrows and otherwise thinly veiling the apprehension I saw lurking.
“We got to make this fast,” he said. “They’s stuff I gotta do.”
Please. Please.
Detective Kylie stood up. “Y’know, your mom’s given me everything I need. You’re off the hook.”
Desmond eyed him. “For now?”
“Forever, unless you get yourself in trouble.”
“Oh, now don’t even be thinkin’ that. I don’t do the T-word.”
Kylie looked at me.
“Trouble,” I said. “But I will call you, detective, if I find any more of my Oreos missing.”
“I didn’t eat alla them, now. Miss Rutabagas done ate her share.”
“I’m not even going to ask,” Detective Kylie said.
I must have talked to everyone I knew in the next two hours. Various HOGs called to tell me they’d seen Troy making his statement to the press in front of the police station, saying he had compassion for the disturbed individual who had set out to frame him. India came by with an envelope from Ms. Willa, who couldn’t get it to me when I was surrounded by sirens and paramedics. Ophelia, India said, was vulnerable, but she’d be there to watch the baptism. Lewis phoned to say he had his letter to the editor drafted; George chuckled in the background. Bonner came by on his way to set up for the Sisters’ baptisms—and now Desmond’s.
He had Zelda with him.
We didn’t have much time to talk. They were on a mission to get flowers and I could only get a promise of five minutes out of Bonner as he lured Desmond into the kitchen
in search of Pop-Tarts. We spent the first thirty seconds stumbling over each other’s sentences.
“I’m sorry, Miss Angel—”
“Did I push you too hard, Zelda—”
Finally, I grabbed both of her hands and looked as far as I could into that small, straining face.
“We have plenty of time to help each other heal,” I said. “But there are two things I need to know.”
She nodded.
“Did you steal that car?” I said.
She looked away. “I can’t tell you that, Miss Angel.”
“Why?”
“’Cause I don’t wanna go back to jail.”
“You’re not going back to jail. This is between you and me.”
She gave me a long look before she said, “I drove it ’cause Marcus tol’ me to. He said it was his, only I knew it wasn’t, so that’s the same as stealin’ and I know it.”
“You knew Marcus Rydell?”
“Me and him was livin’ together ’fore I come to Sacrament House. He’s the one done throwed me out so I didn’t have no place else to go.”
She tried to pull her hands away but I held on.
“This is your chance to get it out,” I said. “Get it out and give it up or you will wind up back in jail.”
“I knew it was stupid, goin’ back to him when I lef’ the House that day. I didn’t even mean to do it. He just saw me walkin’ down King Street and picked me up. I didn’t even know he still around.”
“And he had those expensive drugs,” I said.
“That’s not why I went with him.” She shook her head, a thin sheen in her eyes that she tried to blink away. “It was that car. I always liked me a fine car.”
“The one you wrecked.”
“No. Not that one. This one a black Lincoln, almost like a limousine.” Zelda shook her head again, this time as if to muddy the thoughts within.
“Keep going,” I said.
“I can’t, Miss Angel! Just like I couldn’t that day at the police station when I did everything I could to get you outta there so you wouldn’t aks me these questions!”
It was my turn to blink.
“I didn’t mean none of what I said. I just wanted you to get outta my face, and that was the only way I knew how.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not working, is it?” I said.
She closed her eyes.
“That’s it. Look at it. You need to do this.”
“I thought Marcus done struck it rich, but he just drivin’ that limo for Satan. That’s who give me the drugs, tol’ me I’d forget all about you and my old life and—”
“Satan? Was that his name, or—”
“That’s what Marcus always call him, but not to his face. He don’t really have much face. Marcus said he got messed up in a shootin’ or somethin’. I don’ know. He knew him before. I didn’t know him then and I don’t wanna know him now.” Zelda shuddered. “That’s all I can do right now, Miss Angel. I’ll do more later, I promise. But Miss Liz say I don’t got to do it all at once.”
“Miss Liz has got it going on,” I said. “We’re good, Zelda. And thank you.”
“What’s the other thing?”
“I’m sorry?”
“The other thing you wanted to aks me. You said there was two things.”
I let go of her hands and wiped mine on my shorts. “I just need to know if you’ll help Ophelia.”
“That girl got raped?” Zelda said.
“Yeah.”
“You want me to help her?”
“I think you can.”
“Why?”
“Because you two have a lot in common.”
Zelda pulled in her chin. “She way more high class than me, Miss Angel. You should be the one to help her.”
“No, see, that I learned from you,” I said.
“Whachoo learn from me?”
“That I’m not the only one who can help. Besides, it’s all God anyway.”
I waited and watched.
“Maybe it is,” she said.
That had to be good enough. For now.
So the only two people I didn’t hear from that day were Kade and Chief.
Chief had left the station with Ulysses and Stan the night before without a word to me. I was left to wonder what things he’d warned me he was going to explain to me. Maybe I didn’t want to know. Maybe I never would.
As for Kade, he’d disappeared after he was questioned about Troy. I didn’t ask anyone else about him or Chief. I was too afraid of the answers, and God’s only input was the empty ache that made it hard to get out of the chair after Zelda left.
I realized as I sat there that I hadn’t opened the envelope from Ms. Willa. If the check was enough for at least a down payment on the second house, that would be a good thing, yes, God?
But there was only a letter folded into the envelope, written in Ms. Willa’s own hand, by the looks of it. There weren’t that many flourishes at the bottom of the Declaration of Independence. Dear Spunky Allison, she’d written.
I’ve thought long and hard about this. Every time I’ve come to a decision about what I wanted to donate for your young women, and why I wanted to do it, you’ve given me a shake and I’ve had to rethink. At my age, you can’t count on waking up for another day of thinking, so my decision is now final. I will not be giving you money for a house.
I tried not to feel like I’d just been blindsided by a buffalo, and then decided I had a right to. How many times had this woman invited me in for tea and a donation and sent me home empty-handed? And I was rattling her cage? I almost crumpled the paper. Except that there was the whole business of her saving my life. And Desmond’s.
Yeah. She’d given me enough.
So I went back to the page for the sign-off. But there was more.
I’ve taken your policy to heart, and I agree that these women need to do the work of getting back on their feet themselves. Here is what I propose. I will purchase a building on St. George Street that is currently owned, and just barely, by some old friends of mine. They call it the Monk’s Vineyard or some such nonsense. I told them years ago it would never fly. You and your women can start a business there, perhaps two, one upstairs, one down. I’ll provide you with the capital for the first five years. I trust by then you’ll have everybody off the streets.
I look forward to watching this grow, Spunky Allison. I’ll expect you for tea weekly.
She signed it, Yours very truly, Willa Renfroe Livengood.
At least I thought that was how she signed it. I couldn’t see it through the blur.
“You cryin’, Big Al?”
I looked up at Desmond. He had put on clean jeans and a T-shirt with no writing on it and a plain metal cross on a leather cord I had never seen before.
“Where did you get that?” I said.
“Mr. Chief gave it to me,” he said.
“When?”
“That day we was washin’ everybody’s feet.”
“O-kay,” I said. “Did he tell you why?”
“Yes.”
“Any particular reason why I haven’t seen you wear it before?”
He couldn’t quite contain a small smile. “You gotta wait to hear that, Big Al. You and Mr. Chief are gonna be surprised.”
I closed my eyes and massaged my temples. “Listen, Des, I haven’t heard from Chief today. I don’t know if he’s coming. I mean, he doesn’t even know you decided to be baptized.”
“’Course he does. I called him.” Desmond let the smile go all the way across his face. “He tol’ me he wouldn’t miss it for nothin’.”
I blamed my shakiness on the broken ribs and the torn leg and the crutches I had to hobble out on when Owen escorted us to his car to drive us to
Sacrament House. In truth, every wobble and quiver came from the wavering between dreading and hoping.
“Ally, I think you need to retire that motorcycle. You’re like a poodle on a circus bike with that thing. You’re like—”
“Owen,” I said, “stop. Seriously. Just stop.”
He didn’t look at all offended. In fact he smiled like the proverbial canary-swallowing cat as he settled me in the backseat with my crutches and checked Desmond’s seat belt three times in the front before Desmond said, “If it get any tighter Imma choke, Mr. Schatzie.”
When we pulled out of Palm Row, Owen was still beaming at me in the rearview mirror.
“All right, I give up,” I said. “Give me the rest of the metaphors. I can handle it.”
“Metaphors? No, I’m smiling because I bought something today.”
“You gettin’ a Harley, Mr. Schatzie?” Desmond said. “Cool, dude! You got to let me pick out the color. You got to get you one of them hot paint jobs—”
“Des,” I said. “Mr. Schatz isn’t buying a Harley. You’re not, are you?” Come to think of it, the man would do just about anything for Desmond.
“No. I bought a house.”
“What’s wrong with the one you got?” Desmond said. I saw his head extend over the top of the seat. “You ain’t movin’? Mr. Schatzie, you can’t be movin’, now.”
“It’s a second house,” Owen said with exaggerated patience. “In fact, that’s what I think it should be called: the Second Sacrament House.”
“I don’t get it,” Desmond said.
“Owen?” I said.
“I had breakfast with Bonner Bailey this morning and made him my offer. I buy the house and donate it to your ministry you have going, and you don’t sell your house.” Owen pulled up to the light at St. George and King and flashed his dentures again into the rearview. “He thought you’d agree to that.”
“Oh, Owen …”
“You think that’s a yes?” he said to Desmond.
“I think that’s a ‘I’m fixin’ to cry so don’t ask me no more questions till I get myself back together.’ And then she usually say yes after that.”