Entangled (21 page)

February 6 was the coldest day of this winter, with temperatures below freezing. Before nightfall Stewart is believed to have made her way into one of the houses to start a fire for warmth. Shortly after that, it is believed that she dozed off, and the fire burned out of control, trapping the victim inside. She is survived by a son whose whereabouts are unknown.

Dream couldn’t believe what she had just read. She sat looking ahead without saying a word. She immediately thought about Jamal and how he would react to the news.
Why hadn’t somebody told him?
she wondered. With all the things Jamal was going through, she didn’t know if now would be a good time to break the bad news to him. She looked at Keisha who was still staring out of the window not saying a word. “Keisha, what should I do?”

“I don’t know. This is one of the saddest stories I have ever read in my life.”
“I know. How did your private eye find it?”
“He searched the Internet and found the article. After reading it he went down to county records and found the death certificate. He’s good, isn’t he?”
“Too damn good,” Dream said, still staring at the article.
“You got your hands full, baby girl, “Keisha sighed. “I suggest that you don’t tell him.”
Dream placed her hand underneath her chin and shook her head sadly. “I can’t tell him. Now is definitely not the time with all that is going on.”
“What’s going on?” Keisha asked curiously.
“Nothing to concern yourself with.”
“I gotta be concerned if my girl is concerned.”
Dream knew Keisha would keep prying for information. It was her nature. Dream could never hide anything from her. In college, Dream had briefly dated Chris Watson, a guy from White Plains, New York. One night after a basketball game, she and Chris had started arguing in front of the sophomore dormitory. Chris got upset and slapped Dream, leaving her with a black eye. Keisha found out, but Dream denied that it had happened. Keisha confronted Chris, and when he admitted to assaulting Dream, Keisha had several guys on the football team rough him up.
Dream didn’t really want to go into detail about what was going on with Jamal, but she felt she had to tell her friend something. “Jamal is being watched,” Dream said in a barely audible voice.
“Watched? What do you mean? Who is he being watched by?”
“I think the Feds are watching him.”
Keisha’s face grew serious. “What makes you say that?”
Dream knew she had just opened the door for a barrage of questions. She knew Keisha would start telling her what she should and shouldn’t do, and she wasn’t in the mood to hear her best friend acting like a mother. “His boy, Dawg got, locked up.”
“That nigga ain’t involved you in his bullshit, has he?”
Dream and Keisha’s eyes met briefly before Dream turned away. She thought about the trips to California. There was no way she could let Keisha know that she and Jamal had been approached by the DEA. Though she had volunteered to bring drugs back, she knew she couldn’t tell Keisha, because she would assume Jamal had forced her to do something she didn’t want to do. “Of course not,” she lied.
“Good. You remember what happened to Kyla Stevens, don’t you?”
Kyla Stevens, a beautiful, light-skinned girl with long, wavy hair, had attended high school with Dream and Keisha. After high school, when Dream and Keisha headed to North Carolina Central University, Kyla went to Clark Atlanta University and got involved with a big drug dealer. After Kyla’s freshman year, she came back to Charlotte driving a Mercedes CLK. A lot of girls were jealous of her—until she was indicted as part of a drug ring. Ten months after her arrest, she was sentenced to twenty-five years in federal prison.
“I remember what happened, but believe me, her situation is nothing like mine,” Dream replied.
“I want you to leave Jamal alone. If you don’t, I’m going to tell your parents what he’s into,” Keisha said, her voice full of emotion.
“Don’t you dare,” Dream said. She thought about the possibility of her parents learning that Jamal was selling drugs. She would never hear the end of it. She could imagine the disappointment on her father’s face. She knew her parents would be hurt, especially if she was ever charged with anything. She knew God had been on her side in San Diego. If she had gotten arrested, she would have embarrassed her parents, and that was something she would never want to do.
“You need to stop seeing him or else I swear to you, I’m going to tell your parents.”
“Keisha, don’t test me. It’s not that easy, especially since we planned to get married. I mean I
am
human. I just can’t cut somebody out of my life and say the hell with them.”
Keisha walked up and placed her arm on Dream’s shoulder. “I know, but please understand, I don’t want to see anything happen to you.”
“Nothing is gonna happen,” Dream said. But she wasn’t so sure.

A
T
8:00A.M. J
AMAL
rolled out of bed, showered, and was putting some frozen blueberry waffles in the toaster when the phone rang. “Jamal?”
“Yeah,” he answered.
“Thomas Henry here. Just calling to touch bases with you.”
The toaster bell sounded. Jamal spread some strawberry jam on his waffles and added maple syrup. “Did you find out anything?”
“Yeah. One of my ex-law partners works in the U.S. Attorney’s office says you are definitely being watched closely. He said something about you being affiliated with Steven Davis.”
“Yeah, that’s my friend, the guy I was telling you about,” Jamal said as he put his plate down and walked to the living room with the cordless phone.
“As of right now, you are in the clear, but it seems like one of those agents down there has a wild hair in his ass. He wants you bad and is asking every new arrestee if they have any information about you.”
Jamal paced nervously and peered through the huge bay window. He was glad Thomas Henry had looked into the investigation, but he wasn’t thrilled with the information that had been relayed. He suddenly lost his appetite. Prison time looked very possible. He thought about Dawg and how he looked in jail with his orange jumpsuit. He thought about not being able to do simple things again such as: chewing gum, driving cars, and dating a woman. He knew he would lose Dream if he went to jail. He sat on the sofa and took a deep breath.
“Actually there is nothing you can do, except hope everything blows over after your friend goes to trial.”
“And if it doesn’t blow over?”
“Just come to my office in the morning.”

The following morning, Jamal was restless and jittery as he sat in the lobby of Thomas Henry’s law firm. He bit his fingernails while looking at a
People
magazine. The lobby brought back many unpleasant memories. He remembered his first visit. He was nineteen the first time he had gotten into trouble. He had gotten locked up for the unlawful possession of a handgun, and the arresting officer had promised that he would go to jail. Jamal was a kid then, and the possibility of being locked up was scary. He had known older guys in the neighborhood who had gone to prison and lost their minds. Some even turned gay. Others became dangerous predators, like child molesters and rapists. He was so afraid of going to jail at nineteen, when he first met Thomas he had told him he would take any amount of probation; he just didn’t want to go to prison. That case was ultimately dismissed. Here it was almost ten years later, and he was a now veteran of the judicial system. The possibility of prison time was still just as unappealing.

Thomas’s desk.
“Jamal, I’m gonna be honest with you. Like I said on the phone,
it seems as though they don’t have anything on you as of yet, but
if your friend is convicted and it doesn’t blow over, they are going
to try to get you and put you away for a long time,” Thomas said
as he adjusted his tie and avoided eye contact with Jamal. Jamal was silent.
Thomas met his gaze. “If you are indicted and the trial blows,
yeah there’s a pretty good chance you’ll go back to prison.” Jamal turned from Thomas. “Fuck that. I’m leaving this place
now. I ain’t sticking around to go to jail for some bullshit.” “Where are you going?”
Jamal stood and turned toward the door. “I ain’t telling you shit.
I don’t trust nobody.”
Thomas hesitated before speaking. “I was just going to tell you
that if you needed a passport I can get you one, but you’ve got to
pay. I don’t suggest you go anywhere until after your friend goes to
trial.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Jamal said.

The first week in June, it had rained for three days straight. Rain was common during this time. Dream sat on her living room floor looking at pictures of wedding dresses as the thunder roared and crackled outside.

It had been four months since Jamal had proposed, and they still hadn’t made any plans and hadn’t set a wedding date. Jamal admitted to her that he was waiting on the outcome of Dawg’s trial. Dream knew that if Dawg was sent to prison, they weren’t going to get married.

The trial was two days away. Dream would be glad when it was all over, regardless of the outcome. She dozed off, lying on the floor, and dreamed of her wedding day. She dreamed of a huge wedding with more than five hundred guests: two pianists, and two soloists, ten bridesmaids and three flower girls. All her friends from school were there, and Keisha was her maid of honor. Jamal wore a black tuxedo with a lavender vest and tie. Everybody stood as she walked down the aisle. Her parents were there, looking proud.

Something was missing from her dream. As she strolled down the aisle, she noticed that there weren’t any family or friends on Jamal’s side of the church, not even a best man. She woke up in a cold sweat and said a quick prayer for Dawg before dozing again.

The morning of Dawg’s trial, Jamal didn’t eat breakfast. He didn’t have an appetite. All he kept thinking about was his friend and what he was in for. Jamal felt kind of guilty that all of this had happened to Dawg. He knew it was going to take a miracle for his friend to win this trial. Jamal had known only one guy to beat a federal drug case, and just before leaving the courtroom, that same guy had a new indictment from another district by fax.

It was ten o’clock when Jamal finally got out of bed. The trial was set, and he knew, regardless of the outcome, his life would never be the same. If Dawg was convicted, Jamal would have to get out of town. If he was acquitted, Jamal knew he had to find something else to do besides drugs, because the Feds would pursue him relentlessly.

Jamal wanted a normal life with a house, a wife, and a dog. He wanted to find a good job and settle down with Dream. She was a good woman, and he knew he was very fortunate to find someone like her. She wanted him to stop selling drugs. She had asked him a long time ago, and he really wanted to stop. He had initially planned on making a half-million dollars, and they had hoped to make it quickly, get out of the business, and stay legitimate. Having set aside all lawyer fees, he now had nearly $100,000.
But how long would he have it?
he wondered. How long could he run with such a relatively small amount? He needed to make preparations for the worst—and fast. He needed a new identity.

Cedric Patterson was a tall, slender, clean-cut man with honeycolored skin and perfect teeth. He had a fetish for designer clothing. He and Jamal had met at a federal prison in Butner, North Carolina. Cedric had been sentenced to twenty-four months for credit card fraud. He had six other co-defendants who were placed on probation, but he was sentenced to prison since he was the mastermind of the little credit-card scheme. Cedric was a fairly intelligent guy who had worked at American Community Financial Company as a loan officer. For six years he took profile information from consumers and stole identities. He would then pass the information on to members of his ring who would get credit cards and loans under the assumed identities. Some even got cars that they would later sell to a chop shop in Pennsylvania, along with fictitious titles that Cedric made on his home computer.

Two months earlier, Jamal had run into Cedric in a local nightclub. Cedric told him he could get him a new identity for four hundred dollars.

Cedric had several identities Jamal could choose from. The first was Jeremy Collins, who was born in 1970 in Indiana. He had excellent credit and only a few minor brushes with the law, according to the criminal record Cedric pulled from the Internet. Jamal liked his profile—except for the fact that he was white. Because of this, Cedric warned that it might raise a red flag if Jamal was ever to get a job, or even use it for credit purposes.

The next identity was Rashaun Ingram. Rashaun was a twentysix-year-old black man with poor credit, and he was wanted for child support. It didn’t take long for Jamal to decide he didn’t want any part of that guy. The last and final identity was for Andre Michael Von, from Tampa, Florida. He was a thirty-one-year-old black man with a decent credit history and a simple possession-ofmarijuana charge. After reviewing his identity, Jamal decided Andre would have to work. “What information do you have on this guy?” Jamal said.

“I’ve got his birth certificate, and I can make you a Social security card. You can either take it down to the Department of Motor Vehicles and get you an ID, or I can make you one of those, too.”

“What do you suggest?”
“I would probably get the one from the DMV, because the one that I make really ain’t the best quality. A veteran cop can tell that it’s fake.”
Jamal was silent for a moment. He didn’t want to use a lowquality ID. He would probably have to get a passport through his lawyer and leave the country soon. Jamal pulled four crisp, onehundred-dollar bills from his wallet and gave them to Cedric.
Cedric smiled and gave Jamal the necessary paperwork. “Let me know if you meet anybody who needs their credit straightened out. I can do that for five hundred dollars,” Cedric said.
Jamal put the documents in his pocket and nodded. He couldn’t believe it had been three years since he and Cedric were at Butner together. They had both gotten out and gone back to the same things that had put them in. It was what they knew best.

Jamal was at home lying across his bed, thinking about the possibility of going back to prison and where he would run if the Feds indicted him. He knew he could not stay in this country without the risk of being spotted by some damn Good Samaritan.