Hold Me in Contempt (27 page)

“McDonnell, where were you the night before last? The night Vonn was murdered?” Strickland asked.

“No—ain't no old heads watching me right now,” King said, seemingly in a trance at what he saw in the mirror. He wasn't listening to Strickland. I knew he couldn't see me, but that wasn't how it felt. “New people. Who's watching me? Hunh?” He smiled slyly and winked.

Paul and Reddy looked at me like they thought King could see me too.

“Stop fucking around!” Strickland shot. “Where were you that night? You let me know and we can be done with this. You say you had nothing to do with Vonn's murder? Prove it. Where were you?” Strickland leaned in toward King again.

“Busy,” King answered, looking back at him.

“Busy doing what?”

“Busy out. Doing shit I always do,” King said.

“Where?”

“I was at home.”

“Were you with anyone?” Strickland asked, and the blood circulating in my body turned to ice. I couldn't move. The only thing of use inside of me was my heart, which pounded with so much fear.

King paused and looked at the mirror again.

“What night were you asking about?” he asked, looking perturbed. “Oh yeah. Two nights ago? I wasn't home. I was out.” King looked down and to his right.

“Were you with anyone? Can someone confirm that?”

“He's lying,” Delli said. “Covering something up.” He looked back at Reddy. “He doesn't want us to know something—​something about his home.”

“No one can confirm where I was. I was out alone.” King kept his eyes down. “Riding on my Hayabosa—the Queen. It was a nice night. Wanted to take her out. Open her up.”

“The night your boy was killed you were out on a motorcycle alone? No alibi anyone can confirm?”

“Nope. Just me and the wind.” King looked at Strickland and sighed dramatically before straightening his shirt like he was getting ready to stand up and walk out the door. “We done here?”

“Done?”

“Yeah. You're not charging me with anything, right? Just a chat.” King chuckled. “If I was going to be arrested, you boys would've charged me with something by now. I think I've said enough without a lawyer or some reason I need to be here. Anything more and I might incriminate myself. Wouldn't that be a shame?”

Strickland looked at the mirror. He had no choice but to let King go. He stood, picked up the folder, and signaled for King to follow him out.

When he opened the door and King exited, I felt like my body of frozen veins had been thrown into a pot of boiling water. Everything I'd witnessed flashed before me in a fury of accusations and questions about where I'd been and how I knew King and how long we'd been sleeping together. I heard all of these things and imagined it like I'd been sitting in the room beside King and Paul was the one asking the questions. My back started hurting immediately, and the pain was so bad I was afraid to stand.

Strickland walked into the room with his head lower than mine had been when we'd arrived.

“He's hiding something,” he said. “I know it. I've interviewed this guy, like, three times, and as cool as he seemed, this was the most nervous I've ever seen him.”

“What do you think it is?” Paul asked.

“Something about where he was,” Delli tried. “Who he was with. Maybe that's who killed Vonn. Maybe that's why he doesn't want to say anything.” He looked at me. “What do you think, Kind? McDonnell looked right at you—seemed to anyway. What did you see in his eyes?”

All of the men with their arms crossed over their chests looked at me for a response.

I struggled not to look down or to the right, signs they'd be looking for if they thought I might have any reason to lie. I kept my eyes glued on the person asking the questions.

“Didn't seem like he knew anything,” I said to Norman's eyes. “I think we might be overthinking this.”

Outside the Eighty-Fourth, I had to refuse three of Paul's offers of rides back to the office by saying my back was hurting.

“No, I'm fine. I'm just going to hop in a cab and go home to get into bed. I'll get up in a few and start working on the case,” I said.

“Great idea! I'll come with you. We're cocounsel, right?”

“Paul, you know we can't do that,” I said, looking behind him to be sure King wasn't anywhere around. “Let's not even start that way. I'll go and read over the rest of the files and meet you at the office tomorrow.”

“Why do you keep doing this, Kim?” he asked.

“Doing what?”

“Putting this barrier between us like you don't know what's happening.”

“What's happening?” I looked at a silver car behind Paul that turned out to be a Chrysler 300.

“I'm doing this for you. For us. If I become mayor, you know what that means. I'm done with my old life. We can be together.”

I looked Paul in the eye. “Be together? Don't make me say it again, Paul. You know the deal. You're mar—”

“She signed the papers this morning,” Paul revealed, cutting me off. “I didn't want to tell you we'd decided to move forward with the divorce until it was final. Didn't want you to think I was lying or trying to get you into bed again. This is it. I'm signing the papers tomorrow.”

“A divorce?” The new panic sprang up in me. “You're getting a divorce?”

“Yes!” Paul chuckled gleefully. “God, yes! I'm divorced—well, when I sign the papers.”

“I don't get it. What about the kids? The house? How did you come to an agreement on all of that? You two had a life together, and you—”

“I gave her everything, Kim. She's keeping the house. The cars. We're sharing custody. I get a new life though.” He smiled at me and cupped my chin in his hands in a way he never would have in public before—and definitely not in front of a precinct where officers we knew were walking in and out and waving at us. “A new life with you.”

I stepped back to remove my chin from his hold.

“What is it? What's wrong?” he asked.

“I need to think about this,” I said.

“Think about what?” he spat out. “This is what we wanted, right?”

“Before . . .  ​but now you . . .  ​and I . . . ” I couldn't complete one thought without my mind going back to King with a confusion that actually led to clarity about my feelings. “I can't do this right now. There's too much going on.”

“With that other nigger?” Paul asked, pulling me to the side of the door. “With the motherfucker you were with the other night?”

“I wasn't with anyone. There is no one,” I said.

“You say that, but that's not how you act. You cut me off and I was okay with that. I thought it was because you wanted something definitive, and now I'm giving you that and you don't want to talk about it? What the fuck, Kim? How is it not another motherfucker?”

“Just stop,” I said to Paul as Reddy walked out with Strickland and nodded to us. “We can't do this here. Not here! I'm going home and I'll talk to you about it later. I just need to think. That's it. There's no one else. I just need to think.”

Chapter 11

“I
need you to meet me at that cheap rental-car place on Adams by Borough Hall. Can you be there in an hour?” That's all I said to Tamika when she answered her phone. All I had to say. Her response was just as direct: “I got you. I'll tell Leah to get Miles from fencing. Walking out of the job in ten minutes. See you there.” She hung up without saying good-bye. It was the always satisfying result of the emergency response system we'd been taught as children growing up in the ghetto in New York. When someone called you and uses a certain voice, no matter what you were doing, you asked where they were, slid on a hoodie and Timberland boots, and set out in less than five minutes. If you had a car, the gun would be under the front seat, the music would be down, the windows would be up, and you'd be on your way to scoop whomever from wherever they were, ready to do whatever was next. And that really meant whatever—stalking, tire slashing, breaking and entering, breaking up, or moving on.

Tamika wouldn't let me down. Though we were a few feet out of the ghetto and it was only a little after 5 p.m. and the new summer heat would make showing up in a hoodie and Timbs look ridiculous and suspicious, she rolled up in front of the car-rental place in less than an hour.

I'd already gotten one of those dated compact cars with roll-down windows, powerless-locks, and an actual CD player. I'd requested a low-key color, something black or gray, but the thing was white with absolutely no tint on the windows. I don't know why I thought the tint would be of use or that the car needed to be a dull color. I wasn't even sure of why I was renting the car yet. Or whether that was a bad move or could be seen as one by someone later on at some point. What was I about to do? After I'd gotten away from Paul, I'd thought back to the nights I'd spent at King's place. Who knew I was there. Who'd seen me and could confirm that I'd been with King. There was Baboo and Frantz. They didn't know who I was, and if it came down to it, neither could say how long I'd been at King's place. Then I remembered the video cameras all over the Clocktower. On the corner, in the lobby. They'd been watching and recording everything since I'd walked in the door the first time. Delli and his suspicion about where King was the night of the murder, and why he'd switched so quickly from talking about being at home during his interrogation—it was only a matter of time before he passed his speculations on to the detectives, and that would lead them back to the Clocktower and those video cameras.

I was parked outside the car-rental place going over the plan when Tamika got out of her cab. I beeped so she could find me.

“What's up?” she said, getting into the car wearing a silk navy Lauren dress and the Louboutin flats I'd bought her for her birthday. It wasn't the emergency-response attire for what I had in mind, but it would do.

“It's bad, Mika. It's really,
really
, really bad,” I said, keeping my hands on the steering wheel though we weren't moving. I looked at her. “It's King. He's a . . . ” I searched for the words to describe what I'd just learned about the white man I'd been sleeping with. “He's a drug dealer—a kingpin.”

Without interruption, I sped through the details of the slide show in the conference room, King looking through the one-way mirror, the fact that I was on the other side of his stare and that I was the one he'd been with the night Vonn was killed. No one could ever know that. No one.

“Why didn't he say anything? Why wouldn't he say he was with you?” Tamika asked. “Do you think he knows who you are?”

“I never told him. I never let on about anything. He doesn't even know my last name.”

“Does he know where you live?”

“No—well . . .  ​yes. He's never been to my place. But yes, he does,” I said, remembering Baboo dropping me off. “He knows people who do, but I'm not worried about that. I don't think he would do anything to me. He's not like—”

“Are you joking, Kim?” Tamika widened her eyes on me. “You just said it yourself. He's a fucking drug dealer, which, I might add, isn't all that surprising.”

“Don't do that. I've already beat myself up about it. How didn't I know—whatever. This isn't about that. This is about right now,” I shot back. “I get it. I fucked up. And that's it, but I can't change that right now. And besides, you were the one who told me to sleep with him. Remember? ‘
Try something new'? ‘Get a little dick'?”

“Yes. I said to fuck that white boy
one
time. Not make him your fucking boyfriend!” Tamika scolded me like I was a wayward teenager.

“He's not my boyfriend.”

“You have feelings for him. Don't lie to me, Kiki. I've known you forever. You've been feeling dude since day one.” Tamika waited, and we let my lack of response confirm her pronouncement. “I'm not going to cuss you out about it right now. We ride with each other and that's it. What's the plan?”

“I need to get that tape. I have to figure out how to get the videotape of me at the Clocktower before the detectives from the Eighty-Fourth figure out what King is hiding.”

“How are we going to do that?” Tamika asked, looking out the front windshield in the direction of the Clocktower, which poked up just a little over the other buildings downtown.

“I guess we're about to find out.”

“No doubt! I got you, cuz. You know that!” Tamika squinted at me and puckered her lips mischievously in a way that told me trouble was on the way for both of us.

Now, if this was
NCIS
, there would be a freeze-frame shot of me pulling out of the space in front of the car-rental agency. The director would want to give viewers a chance to really think about what was about to happen. At that moment, I could've stopped everything: dropped my crazy cousin off at home, driven straight to the office, told Paul that I'd slept with Rig McDonnell and needed to be removed from the case, and vowed to never ever hear anything about King again. If only life were that easy and people always made those right decisions. In that moment, nothing in that line of thinking sounded rational to me. In fact, it seemed irrational. It would've meant career suicide, because if I opened up to Paul about anything concerning King, he'd want to know everything about our short fling. Legally speaking, by telling the truth, I'd then be obligated to tell the “whole truth and nothing but the truth.” And that would mean me being dragged into the case, too. I could already see the headline on the cover of the
Daily News
:
ada
blows
dealer
. They'd be all over me. Stuff would come out about my family, my mother, maybe even my involvement with Paul. I'd seen it done too many times not to know how a headline assassination could annihilate a career in a New York minute. I'd end up with no career, no future, and no place to go but back home with my father and Kent.