Desperate Souls (31 page)

“I’m afraid I come bearing bad news. Don’t shoot the messenger.” He waited for a reaction but got none. “Your brother Joe is dead. He was murdered early this morning.”

She didn’t bat an eye. “I know. One of your people already called me. I guess you didn’t get the memo.”

I guess you aren’t too broken up by the news.
“Did they also tell you that your son murdered him?”

She froze.

That got a rise out of her.

“No, they didn’t. Because it isn’t true.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because Daryl loved his uncle.”

“Even after Joe threw him out of the family business?”

“There is no family business. Whatever Joe does, he does on his own.”

“That’s funny, because with Joe out of the way, Daryl’s the city’s biggest drug kingpin. Everyone in the NYPD and FBI knows it. You’d better get used to seeing strange faces around here. Word is Malachai ordered two cops killed. We’re going to do whatever it takes to bring him down, even if that means going through you.”

“I’m calling my lawyer,” the woman said, waving Gary’s card at Jake.

“That’s premature, but you’ll need that lawyer soon enough.”

She closed the door in his face and locked it.

Charming family,
Jake thought as he returned to the rental SUV. After setting the black radio receiver on the dashboard, he inserted a miniature speaker into his ear and waited. The listening device inside the CD mailer transmitted the bass of a rap song. Then the music cut off.

That’s it. Call your boy.

“Hello, Daryl?”

I wish I could hear the other side of this conversation.

“I don’t care what you call yourself. I’m your mother, and I’m going to call you by the name I gave you.” A pause. “Never mind that.

You’ve got big trouble. A man in a blue suit was just here doing a survey. He said my favorite family TV show was canceled. Also said two cop shows were canceled.”

Jake waited in suspense.

“How could you be so stupid? Didn’t Joe and I teach you anything?”

Son of a bitch.

“I don’t care what Katrina said. How many times have I told you that bitch is bad news? She’s just using your ass.”

Katrina.
A new name for the file. Jake had suspected that Malachai’s bokor had been behind the two detectives’ deaths, and now he was sure of it.

“What are we going to do about these cops?”

Good question.
And she had dropped her coded language.

“Gary Brown. Yeah, Gary Brown. That’s what his card says. Detective, Narcotics. He isn’t from credit card fraud.”

Jake snorted.

“I don’t want no motherfucking cops sniffing around my motherfucking house; that’s why.”

Come on. Come on.

“I need to see you.”

That a girl!

“No, not this weekend. Tonight. Where you gonna be at?”

Repeat the location. Repeat the location …

“Send a car for me.”

Shit.
Nothing ever came easy.

“Because I don’t want to take the subway or a cab into the city.”

Not specific enough.

“Just have someone here by nine sharp.” Then she snapped her phone closed.

Sighing, Jake removed the earpiece. Malachai’s mother planned to meet him somewhere in the city, and someone was picking her up at 9:00 p.m. Plenty of time for him to switch vehicles.

Sitting at the dining room table in Katrina’s apartment, Malachai shut off his phone and stared at it.

“What is it?” Marcus said from across the table.

“My mother says a cop just came to see her.”

Katrina served them each a bottle of cold beer and sat down.

“So? She’d better get used to it. We’re big time now.”

Malachai turned the cell phone end over end in the palm of his hand. “She said the cops know we had those two pigs killed.”

Marcus raised his eyebrows, then glanced in Katrina’s direction. “I thought you said they would never know it was murder.”

“They never will,” Katrina said in an even tone. “Whoever this cop is, he’s guessing or bluffing.”

“Why would anyone bluff about that? One of those pigs OD’d, and the other blew his brains out. How could they know we had anything to do with either one of them?”

“They don’t know a thing.” She looked at Malachai. “I don’t suppose your mother got this guy’s name?”

Malachai nodded. “Gary Brown.”

Katrina narrowed her eyes. “That’s the name of one of the two cops I killed. The one with the stomach cancer. Baby, somebody is fucking around with your mother.”

“And that means they’re fucking around with
you,”
Marcus said.

Malachai stared at each of them in turn. “A fake cop.”

“Or a private eye,” Katrina said.

“Wait a minute,” Marcus said. “A scarecrow came by my crib last night. He was a small-time coke dealer I supplied before all of this here. He told me this ex-cop who used to shake him down for cash and coke gave him a beat down because he wanted to know where you were at.”

Malachai closed his fingers into a fist around the cell phone. “What ex-cop?”

“He said the name, but I don’t remember.”

“What did you do?”

“I gave him a handful of Magic and told him there’d be more if he took the guy out.”

“Was the name Jake Helman?”

Marcus shrugged. “Yeah, I think so.”

Malachai turned to Katrina, whose face hardened.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said.

Marcus looked at her in disbelief, trying to keep his anger in check. “Say
what
?”

Katrina drummed her long fingernails on the tabletop. “You have no idea what plans we have for Helman.”

Marcus looked at Malachai for support. Seeing none, he turned back to Katrina. “You’re right; I don’t know. Because I never heard of this cracker before, and you don’t tell me shit.”

Staring into his eyes, Katrina said in a tight voice, “We tell you what you need to know.”

“Who are
you
? I was in this organization long before you. I’m Malachai’s right-hand man. I don’t need your say-so to make a move.”

“Well, you didn’t serve him very well, then, did you? Because I’m the one who put him on top.”

“Your voodoo shit can only go so far. This is New York, not Haiti.”

Katrina opened her mouth to speak, but Malachai raised his hand. “Enough. I need both of y’all, and I don’t need to be listening to this shit right now. You want to take someone out, you run it by me. Period.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t go out tonight,” Marcus said. “Maybe we should keep staying low.”

Malachai shook his head. “Nah, nah. Fuck that. We’re going out for the whole world to see where we stand now. If Helman’s dead, he can’t touch us. If he’s alive, he doesn’t know shit, and we still get what we want out of him. Have a car pick up my moms and bring her to us.”

Jake returned to Alice Morton’s house in a fresh change of clothes and a black Monte Carlo at 8:30 p.m., half an hour before her scheduled pickup. Having ditched the sunglasses when the sun went down, he wore a baseball cap pulled low over his eye and pressure pad. At 8:40, Edgar called his cell phone, which Jake set on speaker. “Talk to me.”

“How’s your eye?”

“The one in my head or the one in the medical waste Dumpster at Saint Vincent’s?”

“The one that’s keeping your head from being completely empty.”

“That one’s fine. A little tired, but it’s getting the job done. What’s new on your end?”

“Papa Joe and his entire crew were shot, then hacked apart with machetes. Medical examiner’s going to have a hell of a time putting all these pieces together.”

“Any witnesses?”

“One, but she isn’t talking. Joe’s little girl. I don’t know why they let her live, but she’s in deep shock.”

I
wonder if she’ll live with her aunt Alice.
“When are you coming back to the city?”

“Couple of hours. We’re getting dinner with the Rockaway detectives, then dealing with a mountain of paperwork. What’s up?”

“I might have a lead on our runaway prince.”

“He’s wanted for questioning. You see him—call me. Understand?”

“Why? So you can tip him off, and he can skate circles around us?”

“That’s my job. That’s the law. That’s the way it’s going to be.”

By the book.
“Okay, okay.”

“Maria’s coming. I’ll call you later.”

“Right.” Jake felt relieved to have Edgar for backup, so he ignored any frustration he felt at being hamstrung by the legal system.

An hour later, a white SUV pulled up to Alice’s house.

Half an hour late. Good help is hard to find. Unless Malachai wanted to show his moms who the boss is.

Jake took out his Canon digital camera and set it to high-def video mode with night vision. He recorded a bulky black man with baggy jeans, a red shirt, and a cap getting out on the passenger side and strutting to Alice’s front door. The man pressed the doorbell and waited. When Alice came out, dressed to the nines in a black dress with sparkles, she said something to the man, who snatched the hat off his head, making Jake laugh. The man escorted Alice to the vehicle and opened the back door for her. After she got in, he climbed into the front, and the SUV took off.

Jake zoomed in on the license plate, then set the camera aside and followed.

They took the Triborough Bridge to Harlem River Drive. Jake’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. With his altered depth perception, driving at night felt like an entirely new experience. He kept squinting, which sent pain lancing through the nerves in his left eye socket.

Switching lanes, he dropped back, switched lanes again, came forward. He was sure the driver of the SUV had no idea he was being followed. On 125th Street, a block away from the Apollo Theater, the SUV pulled in front of a nightclub called Caribbean. The bodyguard got out, opened the door for Alice, and walked her inside. The SUV idled at the curb.

Meaning she’s coming right back out.

Twenty minutes later, she did. Jake could not read her expression.

The bodyguard helped her into the waiting vehicle and got in himself. Then the SUV pulled into traffic, and Jake faced a decision. If Malachai was not inside, and Alice had simply been given another rendezvous point, he would be unable to relocate the SUV.

Damn, damn, damn.

He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. Then he located a parking spot for the Monte Carlo. From the bag at his side, he took out a canister of styling mousse and sculpted his hair into a slick shape that he hoped would serve as an adequate disguise in case anyone he knew saw him. At least his strawberry blond hair appeared darker. Hopefully the pressure pad over his eye altered his features enough. Next question:
Do I take my Glock or not?
These days, nightclubs often employed metal detectors to stem violence.

But that fat boy got in.
He couldn’t imagine the bodyguard wasn’t strapped.
Which means Malachai really is King Shit around here.

Jake stowed the gun under the seat and got out. As he crossed 125th Street, the sound of calypso music grew louder. Inside the lobby, he paid a twenty-dollar admission fee and walked right in. No metal detector.
Damn it.