The Other Brother (21 page)

Chapter 37

F efore taking action, Isaiah wanted to verify his suspicions, as any good big brother would do before assigning blame and dispensing punishment. He found Marge in the grand salon, watching a local gospel program on television-some slick, brother-man preacher pacing the pulpit in a ridiculous orange suit, probably haranguing the audience to send him donations so he could buy a new Cadillac. A humongous Bible, as big as the stone tablets Moses had hauled down from Mt. Sinai, rested on Marge's lap.

This woman carried the Bible around with her so much it might as well have been chained to her wrist. She reminded him, in that sense, of Mama. But Marge had been blessed with good fortune. Mama had been cursed.

"Hi, Isaiah," Marge said. "Did you and your father have a good time tonight?"

"We sure did." Earlier Pops said he'd told Marge only that they were going out for drinks, and mentioned nothing about where they would be enjoying said libations. Isaiah wondered if this Holy Roller woman knew her husband was a strip-club junkie-or if she knew and was living in denial.

He sat in the chair beside her. "What did you do this evening? Something at church?"

"How did you know?" She smiled. "I had a meeting with the women's auxiliary and then came home and had dinner with Nicole. By the way, if you're hungry there are leftovers in the refrigerator."

"Okay." So Nicole had visited. "What was Nicole doing tonight? Hanging out with her girlfriends?"

"She said she was going home. She doesn't run the streets like a lot of young folks do. She's always been a quiet, studious girl."

A quiet, studious girl who likes to snoop through people shit.

Isaiah got to his feet. "I'm guilty of wanting to do a little street running. I think I'm going to head out again, see what I can get into."

"Be careful," Marge said. "Folks in Atlanta are crazy."

Not as crazy as I am.

He went into the kitchen. On the wall beside the telephone there was a plastic board on which Gabriel and Nicole's contact information was written: telephone numbers, home and work addresses, e-mail addresses.

He jotted Nicole's home address on a scrap of paper.

He also noted that an assortment of keys hung on a peg board. He read the labels above the hooks. Spare keys to the house, spares for the cars. Keys to his father's cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

While he was out, he might as well get some copies of those keys made, too. It was late, but there had to be a hardware store or some such place in ATL that did that stuff around the clock. He dropped a few of the keys in his pocket and then he headed for the door.

Little sis had violated his privacy and he wanted to know why. Before he doled out punishment.

Gabriel read the newspaper article again. Then again.

His fingers on the keyboard were cold, as though dipped in ice water.

He struggled to wrap his brain around the story. Isaiah had been declared dead of gunshot wounds, but he had come back to life. Miraculously. Like some modern-age Lazarus.

How?

Gabriel called Sean.

"I read it," Gabriel said. "This is definitely him. What do you make of it?"

"I was hoping you might know," Sean said. "'Cause I have no clue, chief. Does this information fit anything you already know about him?"

"No. I had no idea this had happened" He paused. "Wait, he did tell me his mother had been murdered, that she'd died in his arms. But he didn't say anything about getting shot or killing anyone"

"Must've been a gang war, something like that," Sean said. "Moms probably got caught in the crossfire. That happens all the time these days, man. Shame"

Gabriel felt an unexpected push of sympathy for Isaiah. He could not imagine how it would feel to see his own mother gunned down, to be there when her eyes slid shut for the final time. Although he did not endorse Isaiah's actions, he could understand why the guy was so furious.

"It's clear that they made a mistake when they declared him dead," Sean said. "That happens, too. Not often, but it happens. Sort of like a premature-burial deal. Someone has an accident and wakes up to find himself in a body bag, hollers his head off, and then they let him out. It's a good thing this dude got up before they started the autopsy and cut into him."

"You think it was a simple mistake, then?" Gabriel said. "You don't think he actually died and then came back?"

Sean made a scoffing sound in his throat. "Of course not. Do you?"

Maybe. Because I think the same thing happened to me.

But he said, "Nah, man. So, what else did you find?"

"That mistaken-death story was the most fascinating thing. Otherwise, like you said, he's got a record as long as Yao Ming's wingspan. Armed robberies, grand-theft auto, burglary-if it involves taking something that doesn't belong to him, he's done it. He's bounced in and out of jail since he was eighteen, and, judging from the pattern of criminal activity, I'm positive he was knee-deep in crime during his juvenile years, too, but those records are sealed by the courts"

"He's been a thug from the start, then," Gabriel said. "Anything else?"

"Minor stuff. Bad credit history. He took out a few credit cards back in the day, ran up the balances, and never paid them. Crashed a couple of cars, has a bunch of unpaid parking tickets for which a warrant had been issued for his arrest in Chicago. That might be part of why he's in ATL. He is here, right?"

"Yeah" Gabriel sighed.

"Like the article said, he's wanted for questioning in the murder investigation. Do you know where this dude is, chief? I don't want to tell you how to handle your business, but I think you need to call the cops. This guy is major trouble."

"It's not that simple, Sean," he said. "Listen, I gotta go. Thanks for digging up all this. The check's in the mail."

"Whatever you're doing, be careful. Peace, out"

He got up and paced through the house. Thinking about what he'd learned.

He had initially contacted Sean because he wanted his friend to dig up dirt on Isaiah he could present to his family as a justification for them to cut Isaiah out of their lives. What had he discovered that could cast Isaiah in a bad light? The guy had a bunch of unpaid parking tickets, and a warrant for his arrest had been issued. And he was a suspect in an ongoing murder investigation.

It was irrefutable evidence. Information that, if he shared it with Mom and Pops, would persuade them to doubt the wisdom of allowing Isaiah to hang around. They were, after all, harboring a suspected murderer.

But Gabriel was not convinced that running to his parents with this info was a good idea.

He was thinking about Isaiah being declared dead and reportedly rising from a slab in the morgue. He was thinking about what Nicole had said.

He could have told me to jump out a window and I would have done it.

If Nicole's dream or vision had actually happened to her-and Gabriel had a hunch that it had-then Isaiah was far more than a thug on the run from the law.

Isaiah might possess some kind of power.

A few days ago Gabriel would have dismissed such thoughts as ludicrous. Now, anything seemed possible. He believed he'd acquired his own telekinetic ability as a consequence of his car wreck and subsequent brush with death. Did it require a great leap of imagination to think that something similar might have happened to Isaiah?

Isaiah could only have mastered the art of hypnosis, could only have used his skill as a hypnotist to bend Nicole's will to his own. But that didn't feel right to Gabriel. Intuition told him that Isaiah had picked up a paranormal talent.

Assuming that Isaiah had gained a psychic ability of some kind meant Gabriel had to be careful. When Isaiah came to their house, he had to know that the family could easily delve into his background and learn about the murder investigation. He wasn't stupid; he simply didn't care. His mysterious skill might have given him so much confidence that he considered himself untouchable.

But what was the extent of Isaiah's talents? Could he move objects, like Gabriel? Perform telepathy? Mind control? Something else?

Gabriel decided that, until he learned more, going to his family would be imprudent. Dangerous, even.

His main advantage at this stage was that Isaiah was not aware of how much he had learned about him. Gabriel did not want to reveal his hand until he had stacked the deck in his favor.

Another question troubled him: Why had he and Isaiah undergone such similar experiences in the first place? Was it coincidence?

Or was something else at work?

Nicole was at her town house watching TV in her bedroom with Allen, her sometime boyfriend, when someone knocked on her front door.

"Who could that be?" Allen asked. He was a broadshouldered, stout brother, an all-American wrestler in his undergrad days. They'd been classmates at Duke law school and had been seeing each other on and off since he had moved to Atlanta five months ago. Nicole would have preferred a monogamous relationship, but Allen, like so many other men she met, claimed that he wasn't ready for commitment and wanted to play the field (and, of course, sleep with her when it was convenient). Nicole knew she should have demanded more, or stopped seeing him altogether. But she got lonely sometimes and he was good company. And, to be honest, she liked Allen a lot-maybe loved him. She didn't dare tell him that or else he would stop coming around.

Allen lay sprawled on the bed stroking her legs, which she had stretched across his lap. He claimed that she had the nicest legs he'd ever seen and liked for her to wear shorts when they were home together. Personally, she thought he liked for her to prance around in shorts so he could get his hands on her bare flesh and gradually entice her out of her panties. But she didn't usually mind the coaxing and actu ally had been looking forward to a night rolling in the sheets when the visitor tapped on the door.

She looked at the clock on the nightstand. It was almost midnight.

"I've no idea who that could be," she said. She lowered the volume on the TV with the remote control. "I'm not expecting any visitors."

"You sure about that?" Allen asked.

"Whatever." She ignored the thinly veiled accusation. He was the only man she was seeing, and, hell, she saw him only once every couple of weeks. Who did he think she was, a loose woman?

"Maybe I should answer," Allen said. He cracked the knuckles of his strong hands. "Scare that buster off."

"Maybe you should start paying the mortgage here before you talk about answering my door."

"I was kidding, Nicole. Don't be so sensitive."

But she knew he wasn't. He had the nerve to be jealous. Men were a trip.

Another knock, more insistent.

"Nicole, it's Gabe," said a loud voice that sounded like her brother.

Why was Gabe coming over this late? It wasn't like him to visit without calling in advance. It was a pet peeve of his and he made sure he never did it to anyone else.

But things had been strange for their family lately since Isaiah had come into the picture.

"That's your big brother?" Worry came over Allen's face. He sat up and buckled his jeans. "Need me to leave?"

"I'm a grown woman. I don't need to hide my business from my brother." Nicole smiled a little. "Be right back"

She climbed off the bed. Allen swatted playfully at her backside as she walked out of the bedroom and she gave him a look of mock anger.

She went to the front door. She glanced through the peephole. Gabriel had his face turned away from the door and wore an Atlanta Braves baseball cap, but she recognized him from the spread of his shoulders, the angle of his chin.

She opened the door.

Gabriel turned to her.

Except it wasn't Gabriel. It was Isaiah.

"Hey, little sis," he said. "Mind telling me why you were looking through my shit?"

Chapter 38

Isaiah had intended only to question Nicole and then dispense appropriate punishment. But as often happened to him, matters quickly spun out of control.

After he said to her, "Mind telling me why you were looking through my shit?" she screamed, like the scaredy-cat, never-been-to-the-projects princess she was. What the hell? It was a simple question.

Isaiah slapped his hand over her mouth, stifling her scream. He forced his way inside and shut the door behind him with the heel of his shoe.

Nicole's eyes were huge and terrified behind her glasses.

"Hey, what's going on?" A stocky, dark-skinned brother moved out of a room and into the hallway. He had the muscular build of a wrestler and a neck as thick as a bull's.

This is going to get messy in a hurry, Isaiah thought. But he didn't remove his hand from Nicole's mouth.

Bull Neck hitched up his jeans around his narrow waist. "What're you doing to her, man?"

"This is family business," Isaiah said. "It's between me and my little sis. Go back in the bedroom and finish whacking off, all right?"

"What did you say?" Bull Neck flexed his muscles.

"Look, man, go-"

Nicole stomped on Isaiah's foot. Isaiah snarled like a wounded beast, his hand falling away from her mouth. She slipped out of his arms.

"He's not my brother!" she cried. She stumbled away. "Please help me!"

This bitch was going to force him to do something he didn't want to do, something he hadn't planned to do.

As always, trouble shadowed him.

There was no time to focus and command. Not with the two of them to handle. He had to take care of this guy quickly before Nicole's screams drew the attention of her neighbors.

Bull Neck lowered himself into a wrestler's crouch. He charged at Isaiah like a rhinoceros, hard and fast.

Hadn't this guy watched the TV news? Brothers didn't scrap with their bare hands anymore. That shit had gone out of style like Jheri curls and MEMBERS ONLY jackets. These days you had to stay strapped with a gun or, at minimum, a knife. Isaiah always had something on him in case a rumble broke out. Tonight he wore his Buck switchblade in a pocket clip.

He stealthily snapped out the blade. As Bull Neck rushed him, Isaiah whisked the knife across the guy's neck with the deadly grace of a surgeon, severing the carotid artery. Blood spurted from the wound. The guy crumpled to the floor. Clawing at his throat, he croaked, like a creature in a horror flick. Blood flowed from his neck, spread like a halo around his head.

Nicole was on the other side of the living room, the telephone in her hands.

"Put that down " He hurled the knife at her. It flashed across the room in a lethal blur and sank into the sofa, barely missing her.

She screamed and dropped the phone.

"You forced me to do this," Isaiah said calmly. "This is all your fault, really. This brother's death is on your hands, you stupid, snooping bitch."

Nicole tried to run into the hallway.

Isaiah caught her by her arm. He lifted her in the air-she felt as light as a Barbie doll-and slammed her onto the sofa. Her glasses bounced off her face and clattered to the carpet.

He stepped forward, crushing her glasses beneath his heel. He planted his knee on her fragile chest, pinning her to the sofa cushions. She struggled to breathe, tried to squirm from underneath him, but he had her nailed in place like an insect on an examining board.

He yanked the knife out of the couch, and brought the blood-stained switchblade close to her face. He swept it back and forth slowly, like a hypnotist's pendulum.

"Now let's try this again, little sis," he said. "Why were you going through my shit?"

"Please don't hurt me. Please." Tears hung in her eyes. "Please don't kill me"

"I'm not going to kill you," he said. "Why would I do that? We're family, right? Just tell me what I want to know. Why were you in my room?"

"Had a ... a bad feeling 'bout you" Snot congealed in her nostrils. "You'd done something to me ... something sick...

How did she remember what he'd done to her in the bedroom? He'd given her the command that she would not remember the incident.

That disturbed him, but he said, "So why did you snoop around?"

"Wanted to find proof... that you were bad"

"Oh?" He laughed. "Shit, you could've asked Gabe that. He would've told you I'm a bad motherfucker."

"W-why?"

"Why? Why what?"

"Why'd you ... do that to me?"

He shrugged. "Seemed like a good idea at the time. And you do have a hot bod" He nodded toward the dead man on the floor. "Can't say I blame the Junkyard Dog there for wanting to tap that ass"

She began to weep again, perhaps thinking about her boyfriend.

He rapped the knife against her nose. "One more thing. Have you told anyone else what happened?"

She stared at the blade, not answering.

He inserted the tip of the knife in one of her nostrils. She started to squeal.

"Don't make me slice up this pretty little nose of yours. Tell me the truth"

"G-Gabe," she said. "I told Gabe."

That made sense. Gabriel had made it abundantly clear to the family that he despised Isaiah. It only followed that Nicole would share her misgivings with him.

But it meant nothing. Gabriel already knew Isaiah's agenda and he couldn't do anything about it. Gabriel had no idea what Isaiah was capable of doing, the power he held.

"You did good, girl." Isaiah folded away the switchblade. He pushed off the couch.

"You're ... you're letting me go?"

"In a way, yes, I am. I'm going to set you free"

Hope surfaced on her face.

"But I have to teach you a lesson first," he said. "You invaded my privacy, little sis. It's only fair that I invade yours"

A vein began to throb in his forehead.

Focus ... command ...

Twenty minutes later, Isaiah was driving through the night-darkened city.

Nicole rode beside him. She gazed out the window with a vacant expression. She hadn't spoken since they had left her town house, though her lips were slightly parted. Nothing had come from her mouth but a thread of drool that streamed down her chin like cheap taffy.

Isaiah had made good on his promise to invade her privacy-the privacy of her mind. He'd stormed into her consciousness like a hurricane, dismantling logic, reason, memory ... sanity. He'd left her as addled as an Alzheimer's patient.

It was a particularly fitting punishment for a girl who liked to think she was so smart.

He was driving toward the hood, the cut, the trap, a crimeand-drug-infested area of Atlanta. A buppie princess like her needed to witness firsthand how the other half lived, for at least once in her privileged life.

He had never planned on doing anything like this to her. It had been his intention to tear apart Gabriel's life and then his father's. But Nicole, like women tended to do, had to stick her nose in his business. For that she had to pay the consequences.

Isaiah arrived on Bankhead Highway, now called Hollowell Parkway-though a mere name change could not transform the notorious urban jungle that countless ATL rappers waxed poetic about in their lyrics. Isaiah had never driven through the area, had only heard about it and identified it on a map. But ghettos were the same all over the country. It was a Friday night, past midnight, and the thugs and prostitutes and crack heads were out in full force. They watched Isaiah cruising by, their eyes cold, hungry, suspicious, angry.

"I bet you've never so much as driven through this part of town," Isaiah said to Nicole. "Even though you've lived in ATL all your life. Have you?"

Of course she didn't answer. Didn't even look at him. Lights washed over her face and she didn't blink, as though her vision were attuned to some blasted inner mind-scape.

Isaiah pulled to a stop across the street from an apartment complex that looked as though it should be condemned. Peo ple swarmed around the crumbling buildings like giant roaches.

Isaiah got out of the car and walked around to the passenger side. He opened the door and took Nicole by the arm. Gooseflesh pimpled her skin. On some level she was frightened.

He pulled her out of the car; she moved stiffly as though stricken with arthritis. He cupped her clammy cheeks between his hands and tilted her head upward so he could look into her eyes.

Her eyes were directed at his face, but she saw right through him.

If she were lucky-truly lucky-some compassionate soul would discover her and take her to a hospital, and they would attempt to identify her. However, Isaiah had taken care to strip her of all identification. If she ever made it back to her family, she would have to be one blessed girl.

He kissed her on the forehead like any loving big brother would do when saying good-bye.

"Bye, little sis. Enjoy getting acquainted with your people."

He climbed back in the car and drove away. He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw her standing on the curb, shivering alone.

But not for long, he thought as he cruised past the fierce hordes of young men. Not for long.