by Shelly Ellis
“Wait, even if we can get two undercover cops to do it, won’t Dolla know that these women didn’t work at your club?” Ramsey asked.
“Yeah, wouldn’t he realize he’s never seen these chicks before?” Dominguez chimed in.
Ricky shook his head. “No, because I was responsible for hiring all the girls at Club Majesty. He didn’t know who the fuck they were. He didn’t care! And the few times he showed up at the club in person, he was either high or drunk. He wouldn’t remember them either way. Don’t worry. As long as they look good, he won’t ask too many questions.”
Both men fell silent in the front seat and Ricky started to wonder if they were going to tell him no. If they did, he didn’t know how he was going to pull this off, but to his relief Ramsey eventually nodded.
“All right. All right,” Ramsey said. “We’ll set it up. We’ll talk to the lieutenant and see what we can do . . . who we can get, but we may need a little more time than a week.”
“Just make sure it ain’t much longer than that,” Ricky said, “or his partner may not want to wait that long.”
“We won’t,” Ramsey assured him. “This moves to the top of our list. Don’t worry.”
“Good,” Ricky said. “And while y’all are working on that, I’ve got something else I need from you.”
“I’m sorry. Did you mistake us for Santa Claus and his reindeer?” Dominguez asked sarcastically. “Or maybe you thought we were a genie in a lamp that grants wishes.” Dominguez rolled his eyes. “Can you believe this guy?” he asked Ramsey, who seemed to be pointedly ignoring him.
“What do you need, Ricky?” Ramsey asked.
“A mike that I can use with my phone to record. It has to be one that I can hide though.”
“I thought you said you can’t bring any mikes around Dolla,” Dominguez said. “You told us his bodyguards might find them.”
“This ain’t for Dolla. It’s for something else . . . someone else.”
“For what? For who?” Dominguez pestered, maddening Ricky even more.
“Don’t worry about it. Just get it!”
“Ricky,” Ramsey began. “We can’t just lend out recording equipment. If we’re going to collect surveillance, we need a warrant. We need—”
“No, you don’t,” Ricky interrupted. “Y’all find a way around that shit when you need to. This time is no different. Besides, the info I’m gonna collect, you’ll be able to use later against Dolla. Just give me what I need to get it done.”
“Great! Well, is there anything else you need, Mr. Reynaud? Anything else we can get you?” Dominguez asked dryly. “Would you like us to take you to lunch? Do you need us to pick up your laundry, too?”
“Nah, I’m good.” Ricky gave an icy smile. “But you can drop me off on the corner over there. I’ll walk back to my car.”
When the Ford Taurus pulled to a stop, Ricky threw open the door and hopped out.
“Well, stay in touch and we’ll get you what you need,” Ramsey said as Ricky slammed the door closed.
“I bet you will,” Ricky muttered as he watched the car pull off. He took a quick glance around him and then walked down the block in the other direction.
Chapter 18
Derrick
Derrick hesitated before knocking on the screen door. He glanced over his shoulder at the pristine lawn and cluttered screened-in porch and contemplated heading back to his car. He knew he shouldn’t be here. He’d be lucky if the door wasn’t slammed in his face as soon as the person inside realized who had been knocking. Or maybe they wouldn’t open the door at all. But he had no other option; he desperately needed advice, and this was the only place he could get it. This was the only person whose advice he trusted without question.
He knocked and shoved his hands into his jeans pockets. He soon heard the sound of a dog barking. He then heard the click of claws against hardwood and the rhythmic thump of heavy footsteps approaching.
“Otis! Otis! Stop makin’ all that damn noise! It’s just the door,” Mr. Theo, Melissa’s father, said to his Labrador as he swung the front door open. He peered through the metal screen and saw Derrick standing on his welcome mat. When he did, a scowl settled onto his dark, wrinkled face.
“Uh, hey, Mr. Theo,” Derrick said awkwardly. “How are you doin’, sir?”
He hadn’t called him sir in years, probably not since the early days when he’d arrived at the Institute for his assault charge. Mr. Theo, the then director of the Institute, had seemed like yet another authority figure who was there to boss him around, to knock him down with his hands or his words if he got out of line. It would take them months to build trust and a relationship that wasn’t so tentative or formal back then. But now, after his nasty breakup with Melissa, his relationship with her father felt stilted and formal again.
“What you doin’ here, Dee?” Mr. Theo asked, shoving his barking dog aside.
“I just came here to talk to you. I had something I wanted to—”
“I’m sorry, but I ain’t got nothin’ to say to you. You broke my baby girl’s heart. That’s not somethin’ I take lightly.”
Derrick lowered his gaze to his feet. “I know. I didn’t want to break her heart. That wasn’t my intention.”
“But it’s what you did.” He pointed at him. “I warned you. I warned you about having your cake and eatin’ it, too. But you didn’t listen. You stood in my house . . . in my own damn kitchen and lied to me. You told me I had nothin’ to worry about. You said whatever you had goin’ on with that girl at the Institute you had ended it. You said you had it covered.”
“And I really thought I did. I thought I had it all covered. I thought I had it all fixed, but I didn’t. That’s obvious now. I still don’t have it covered and nothing is fixed. That’s . . . that’s why I’m here.”
Mr. Theo eyed him warily, but he didn’t slam the door in his face. That was a small relief.
“What are you talking about, Dee?” the older man said. “You’re not comin’ here to try to convince me to help you to get Lissa back, are you? I hope that ain’t it, because I don’t think—”
“No, Mr. Theo.” Derrick shook his head. “She and I are done. I’ve accepted that.”
“So why are you here?”
“Everything is falling apart, and it’s not just my personal life. It’s at the Institute, too. One of my boys . . . one of my boys was arrested for attempted murder. He tried to kill Jay.”
“What?” Mr. Theo cried. “Lucas and I sent Jay flowers and a card when he was in the hospital, but I didn’t know the boy that shot him went to the Institute.”
“Yeah, well, believe it or not, that boy is mixed up in bigger things than just the shooting—and now he’s gotten me and the Institute tangled up in it, too. I don’t know what to do. All the choices I have seem like bad ones and I . . . I just . . .”
Derrick stopped talking and slowly raised his eyes when he heard the screen door creak open. Mr. Theo waved him inside.
“Come on. Ain’t no point having a conversation like this on my front porch. Not something this big.” He glanced down at his Labrador. “Go on and have a seat in the dining room while I put the dog in the backyard where he can run around and make all the damn noise he wants.”
* * *
“It’s probably a little early for a drink,” Mr. Theo said a few minutes later as he walked into the dining room with two cold beers, “but we’ll just tell ourselves it’s nighttime somewhere. Maybe in London. Here you go.”
Derrick smiled and took the beer Mr. Theo offered to him. “Thanks.”
Mr. Theo pulled out a chair on the opposite side of the oak table and sat down.
“I’m out of Michelob,” he said as he twisted off the beer bottle’s lid. “All we got is this orange-flavored shit that Lucas likes. I think it tastes too much like soda, but it’ll work in a pinch.”
Derrick twisted off his lid, too, and took a drink. Mr. Theo was right. It did taste a lot like soda.
“Wher
e is Lucas?” Derrick asked.
Lucas was Mr. Theo’s boyfriend. They had become a couple not too long after Mr. Theo came out of the closet and he and his wife separated.
Mr. Theo lowered the bottle from his mouth. “Lucas is with his mama. They go shopping about once a week.”
“You didn’t want to go with them?”
“Oh, hell no!” Mr. Theo said with a chuckle before taking another drink. “I wouldn’t want them dragging me around shopping malls all day, while I carried their bags like some bellhop. Besides”—he inclined his head—“his mama is still a little uncomfortable around me. It’s been an adjustment for her like it was for Melissa. I don’t want to push it by being all up in her face. It’ll just . . . you know . . . take some time. That’s what I tell Lucas. If my baby eventually got comfortable with the idea of me being with a man, his mama will have to get used to him being with one, too. Especially since he’s been out a lot longer than me.”
Derrick stared at his bottle label, at the smiling orange in sunglasses. “So Melissa is around more now?”
Mr. Theo nodded. “She stops by to have dinner with us twice a month. Sometimes she and Lucas cook dinner together. She hasn’t brought anybody new with her, though I’ve been asking when she plans to get back out there. You moved on. She may as well, too.”
Derrick looked up from the bottle label. He wondered why Melissa hadn’t told her father about Jamal. From what he had witnessed at the hospital more than a month ago, the two seemed pretty hot and heavy. But maybe their relationship wasn’t as serious as he’d thought. Maybe it had already fizzled out. But he guessed it wasn’t his place to say anything to Mr. Theo about them. If Melissa had decided not to discuss her romantic life with her father, that was up to her.
“But you didn’t come here to talk about Melissa,” Mr. Theo said. “You said things at the Institute have gotten worse. How bad we talkin’?”
“Real bad,” Derrick said.
He started from the beginning and told the story of when he discovered the two suitcases in the dormitory: one filled with cocaine, the other filled with money. He talked about how Cole had been working for Dolla Dolla and how he and Morgan had finally convinced him to stop doing it—or at least, they thought they had. But now that the boy was in prison and Dolla Dolla was sniffing around the Institute again, Derrick was pretty sure his assumptions had been all wrong.
“I don’t know what to do,” Derrick said when he finished his story. “I can’t let him bring more of those suitcases in there. I don’t want to have a damn thing to do with any of that shady shit. But if I tell him no, if I tell him I won’t do it, I know there’s a price to pay.”
“So it sounds like you know what you gotta do, but you’re scared to do it. You know what it will mean,” Mr. Theo said. “You already know the price you’ll have to pay, Dee.”
“But I’m not just scared of what will happen to me. It’s what will happen to the boys at the Institute and the teachers there if I don’t go along with this. That has me really worried. If it was just me, I would take that stand and deal with the consequences.” Derrick lowered his eyes. “But it’s not just me. I’ve hurt a lot of people lately thinking about myself, thinking selfishly. I don’t want to do that shit again.”
Mr. Theo nodded. “But when you hurt other people in the past, it wasn’t because you made a hard decision to keep them first in mind. You told yourself that, but the truth was, it was all about you, Dee. It was all about what you wanted and what you were trying to keep secret to protect yourself. Ain’t that right?”
Derrick winced. Mr. Theo may be giving him a dose of the truth, but it was a bitter dose. It was also one he badly needed.
“This is different though, son. You really are trying to do right by everybody. I know that ain’t an easy choice but I bet, deep down, you already know the choice you have to make.”
Derrick hesitated, then nodded.
“And I support you in whatever you decide. You know that.”
Derrick nodded solemnly. “Thank you, Mr. Theo. Thank you.”
It was the little relief he could take, knowing what he would have to do in the near future.
Chapter 19
Jamal
“I feel like a failure,” Melissa announced.
Jamal paused, stopping them mid-step on the sidewalk. He frowned at her.
They had just left the Cuban restaurant where they’d had dinner. She’d invited him out to eat after the disastrous job interview he’d had earlier that day. But even during the meal he couldn’t stop replaying the interview in his mind: how he’d stumbled over answers to the simplest questions, how he’d fidgeted nervously in his chair. He could tell from the expression on the face of the interviewer at the law firm that he wasn’t getting a callback.
It hadn’t been a panic attack, just nerves, but he wondered if anxiety would always plague him now.
It had been well over a month since the shooting. The sling was finally gone and the scars would start to fade. Physically, he was getting closer to being back to his old self, but psychologically he still wasn’t. Something told him that as long as things were unsettled with Mayor Johnson, his life would probably stay that way, too. Ricky said he would help him take care of it, but who knew how long that would take? Who knew if his friend would be able to follow through.
“Why do you feel like a failure?” he asked Melissa now.
“Because I’ve been trying all night to cheer you up and it’s not working!” She linked her arm through his as they started walking again. “I’m out of ideas.”
“Just hanging out with you cheers me up, Lissa. It always does.”
She grinned and kissed his cheek, and suddenly, he did feel a bit better.
Jamal always did around her, no matter how dark his mood. Even before they started hooking up, even before they started hanging out all the time, he’d found it hard to be depressed when Melissa was around. No matter what seemed to be going haywire in his life, she was the one thing that always seemed right.
“You’re sweet,” she whispered, wiping her smudged lipstick off his cheek. “So what’s next? Do you want to head to a movie? Maybe play some pool? It’s not really my thing, but I’ll try.”
“Why would you play pool if it’s not your thing?”
“Because I thought you liked to play pool! It’s not that big of a deal. Plus, it might distract you . . . you know, cheer you up!”
He stopped again and faced her. “You’re amazing, you know that?”
“Oh, here we go!” She laughed in exasperation. “Because I’m willing to play pool?”
“No! Because you . . . well, because you . . .”
“Because I what?”
He wanted to say so much, to confess everything he was feeling right now. It was hard to believe emotions he had harbored for years hadn’t waned but had grown and gained even more depth. He wanted her. He loved her. But did she feel the same way? Could she?
“What?” she repeated.
Instead of responding, he brought his mouth to hers and kissed her, long and hard. When he pulled back a minute later, they were both gasping for air.
She laughed again. “Well, if you wanted to skip all that, you should’ve just said so.” She cocked an eyebrow and gave him a quick peck. “Back to my place, it is.”
* * *
Melissa gripped the headboard and threw back her head, shouting out his name. He loosened his hold on her bottom and fell back hard against the mattress when she collapsed on top of him. They both landed on the sheets in a big sweaty heap.
“Oh, damn!” she cried. “I’d say we should do that again, but it might kill me.”
She gave him a sultry kiss.
He knew she was joking, but he was too high on euphoria to joke.
“I love you,” Jamal whispered as soon as Melissa pulled her mouth away from his. He gazed up at her adoringly and ran his thumb along the plump bottom lip he’d been sucking on only seconds ago.
He co
uldn’t keep his feelings inside anymore. He had to say the words. “I love you, Melissa, with every part of me.”
She nipped his thumb playfully and laughed. “You get so sappy after sex.”
He flinched, not because of the nip, but because of what she’d said. “Sappy? You think I’m . . . I’m sappy?”
“Not all the time! Just after we . . . you know.” She rolled off of him, resting her head on the pillow beside his. Her smile disappeared as her eyes scanned over his face. “What? What’s wrong?”
“Why do you think it’s sappy for me to tell you I love you?”
She shrugged. “You’re just in a mushy mood. It’s the sex high. I get it!”
When he didn’t reply, she leaned over and licked his shoulder. “Oh, come on. Lighten up, Jay!”
“Lighten up?” he repeated, narrowing his eyes. “Lighten up?”
He couldn’t keep the hard edge out of his voice. Frankly, he didn’t want to.
“I’m sorry. I know you’re having a rough day. That sounded callous and I hadn’t meant it to be. I was just saying I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad. I noticed you always say I love you after we have sex, that’s all. We’ll forget about it though. We can move on.”
“But I don’t wanna move on, Lissa.”
She frowned.
So they were finally going to have “the conversation.”
Guess it’s about time, he thought. I’ve been avoiding it long enough.
“Look, I don’t . . . I don’t tell you that I love you because of a ‘sex high.’ I really do love you.” He turned onto his side, rested on his elbow, and gazed at her. “I got shot. Remember? I lost two pints of blood. I didn’t think I was going to make it. When something like that happens, it makes you see the world differently. You see things clearer. When you almost die, you realize that you have to put aside all the bullshit. So I’m not gonna pretend that I don’t feel what I feel—not anymore. Or that I’m only saying it because I’m drunk or hyped up from good sex. I love you, Melissa Stone. I have since I was twelve years old, and I hid it way longer than I should’ve.” He pursed his lips and took a deep breath. “And I wanna know if you love me, too, or is this just a passing thing for you? Am I wasting my time?”