Hot Flash (22 page)

“That means she still has the money?”

“Somewhere. She has to, and that's why Jesse went after her.”

“Yeah, but he tried to kill her first. He wouldn't have gotten anything if I hadn't gotten her out of the house before it burned down.”

“Yeah, I can't figure that. I'd bet he sent some of his goons and they messed up. You saved their asses.”

“Great. And now we have to save Nareece's ass.”

We resumed our search and ended in Mann's office, which was located in the back of the house. A massive, oval Victorian-style desk was set at one end of the room. Laughton went straight to the desk and began rifling through the drawers.

A brown vinyl-looking sofa, flanked by two matching chairs, was at the opposite end of the room from the desk. Built-in bookcases covered one wall. The back wall was made up of windows above a stretch of cabinets. The other wall was plastered with photographs of Mann shaking hands with Frank Rizzo, the mayor in 1975, and Black Mafia leaders Sam Christian and Eugene Baynes. I peered more closely at one photograph on the wall, where Mann sat at a table in a nightclub, a woman hugged up in each arm and men crowded around him. One face popped out. Calvin's.

C
HAPTER
21

C
alvin. It was a younger, thinner, Afro-ed Calvin, hidden behind dark shades standing guard next to another soldier in a power stance, arms folded across his chest.

The saliva I tried to swallow stuck in my throat, parched and narrowed, causing me to choke on it, the kind of choking when your breath fails and the end of life approaches. A grating, sucking sound escaped my mouth every few seconds until air finally got through my windpipes. Laughton was at my side trying to pat my back as I swatted his hand away. I stumbled to a chair next to the desk and fell into it.

“Yeah, seeing Mann on that wall with all those damn politicians definitely makes you choke.” He feigned a laugh.

I wanted to ask about Calvin's photo, but I figured if Laughton knew Calvin back then, Calvin would not be in my life right now. And then I did not want it to be true. He would have at least pointed him out in the photograph.

“His tentacles reached far,” Laughton said, moving from the front of the desk. “Okay, I'm out. Use this number to call me.” He handed me a piece of paper he tore from a notepad on the desk and, I noticed, slid something from his other hand into his pocket. “FBI is tracking the other one,” he said, turning away and moving toward the door. “You got this?”

“You know I got this.”

After Laughton left, I took the picture off the wall and checked the back for identifying information—names. There were none. I stuffed it in my bag and went to the desk. Indentations of letters and numbers were visible on the notepad Laughton used. I got a pencil from the desk drawer and shaded lightly across the pad to reveal the last letters and numbers written. I tore off a few sheets and pocketed them as Agents Jakes and Janey entered, behind a storm of agents, weapons drawn.

Two hours later, I sat in an interrogation room at FBI Arch Street headquarters.

I figured Jakes and Janey stood behind the two-way mirror either arguing about what strategy to use to get information out of me or they were ogling me. I gave them the award for being the two least intimidating FBI agents I'd ever met. The thought tickled me, for a moment anyway.

A fire sparked in my bones. I waved my hands together in fan fashion, trying to conjure up some breeze. Failing that, I got up and paced, waved harder, faster, gagged, sat, and spread out on top of the table, face-first.

“Can't possibly understand unless you're going through or been through the same,” a female agent said, entering with a glass of water. “You learn to cope.”

I nodded appreciation with a weak smile. “That's what they tell me. You learn to cope. Right.” I drank the water and rubbed an ice cube from the glass on the back of my neck. Cooled, I resumed my position.

The agent left with, “Knock if you need more.”

I rose when I heard the door open again. My composure somewhat regained, I pushed back in the chair and crossed my legs.

Janey sat down and opened a file folder. Jakes stood at the door and leaned against the wall.

“What's this about, Agent Janey?”

“I'm Jakes, he's Janey,” he said, nodding toward Dumbo Ears. He pulled his chair in closer. “Mabley, this is serious. A man's dead, and you were seen along with someone else entering the premises. What was your purpose for being at the Bryn Mawr address?”

I mirrored his glare.

I thought as dark as it was that night, there was no way anyone could identify me specifically. I brushed away the threat.

“Following a lead,” I said.

“Following a lead, huh? What are you working on?”

“Agent . . . Jakes, are you holding me on charges? If not, I'd like to go home.”

“We can hold you as long as we choose without filing any charges. But I'm not telling you anything you don't already know.” He pushed back in his chair. “You had a history with Mann. Did you kill him?”

“If you thought I killed Mann, you wouldn't be questioning me. You'd be arresting me. I went to Mann's to talk to him about Boone's whereabouts. When I got there, the front door was open. I went inside and found Mann dead on the couch. I called in. End of story.”

“And the other person reported entering the premises?”

“Whoever killed him maybe, before I arrived, I guess.”

It was almost noon by the time I left FBI headquarters. I drove north on Seventh Street and thought a dark sedan was following me as I turned onto Fairmont Avenue. The car I focused on kept moving straight when I turned on to Cecile B. Moore, or at least I think it kept moving straight. Headlights at night made all cars look the same. I drove around awhile to make sure before I went to Calvin's.

Calvin's Place, a four-story brick building, housed Calvin's living quarters on the third and fourth floors and a nightclub on the first two. It was the kind of club people waded into with their own sense of rhythm and opinions and walked away from with a semblance of sanity and satisfaction. A large oval bar, a stage area, some booths and tables, and a dance floor made up the first floor and a private party space, the second. Calvin also served the best crab legs and chicken wings in Philly.

I drove by the front on Hunting Park and made a left into the parking lot that led to the rear of the building. The night spot looked shabby compared to the happening, ritzy place presented under the veil of night. I pulled into a dirt parking lot where Calvin's white late-model Mercedes S430 was parked at the stairs to the rear entrance. An old Chevy Malibu and Ford Mustang were the only other cars in the lot.

I knocked on the armored door fastened under a C
ALVIN'S
P
LACE
sign and rang the bell. It took a few minutes of leaning on the bell before Calvin opened the door.

“Frank Mann Johnson, sound familiar? Well, he's dead, and I want to know what your connection is to him. You smiled for a picture with him hanging on his wall, this one.” I took the photograph out of my bag and held it up. “Okay, so maybe you weren't smiling. Remember this?” I shoved the picture at him and stormed into the club. Calvin stayed positioned at the door, seemingly stunned.

I sat bar-side. He closed and locked the door and followed.

“Drink?” He set the picture on the bar facedown.

“Coke, please.”

He retrieved a Coke from a cooler below the counter, filled a glass with ice, and set it on the bar in front of me, then popped the tab top. While he poured he said, “First off, my darling, Mann died years ago, killed in prison if memory serves me.”

“Yeah, says who?”

“You know I will do anything for you, Miss M.” He smirked, setting the glass of Coke in front of me and tossing the can in a barrel at the far end of the bar. “So why don't you tell me what you're into and maybe I can help.”

I gulped the Coke and savored the burn in the back of my throat. Calvin leaned forward, resting his forearms on the bar, and waited for me to finish.

“Where did you get that picture anyway?”

“Off the wall of the residence of Big Daddy Mann. Apparently the FBI lied. He didn't die in prison. He is—was—very much alive until earlier this evening. And there you were in that picture hanging on the wall alongside all his other trophies.”

“And what, you thought I was a gangster?” He cupped my chin with his hand, forcing my attention. “Not even close, though some may think different. You are the last person I would want to think of me in that way.”

I brushed his hand away.

He backed away from the bar. “You can be so sweet, open, and warm, and then”—he snapped his fingers—“in a heartbeat, closed and so, so hard.”

My heart thumped. I resisted the urge to defend myself. “So, what's your connection?”

Calvin moved around to my side of the bar. He sat on a stool next to me and spun my stool around to face him.

“This isn't about Mann. So, why don't you tell me the real deal.”

“Yes, it is. Mann didn't die in prison. He was killed last night. Please, Calvin, just tell me what your connection is. I need to know.”

“Is this official? Am I a suspect?”

“I think Jesse Boone killed Mann. I also think Jesse Boone has my sister and will kill her, too.”

“Frank Mann Johnson was once a pretty decent guy. We were homies before the Black Mafia. He was more like my mentor, a big brother even. I went in the service. Mann didn't. The Black Mafia was in full throttle when I got back from the war, killing anyone who breathed wrong, hooking children on heroin. They were supposed to help folks out of oppression. Like a neighborhood watch–type gig. Instead they became the oppressors.”

“So, where did you fit in?”

“Frank and I started a community center–type gig with a mission to protect the neighborhood, stop the crime and police brutality that grew out of the violence instigated by the Mafia.

“The community center grew into the Black Coalition with an even bigger vision: promoting the socioeconomic conditions of black folks in Philly, educating the youth, providing cultural programs. Mafia served up death threats, scared the hell outta folks. A lot of young bloods looked up to the Mafia ‘godfather,' Sam Christian, thought he was some kind of Shaft or Superfly or some shit.

“Frank got brainwashed by the glitz—the clothes, the cash, the cows. Only takes one time stepping over the line and they got your ass. Frank took a giant step and ended up all the way in with Christian, Baynes, Harvey, Farrington, all major players. Anyway, Frank did well for himself, if you call becoming a kingpin in the kill game good. He got bagged for murder and, well, the FBI does what they want, when they want, and to whom they want. They were all over him.” He quieted and looked around the room as though sizing up its worth. “This place is what's left of the community center.”

“How do you rate? I mean, how did you manage to stay out of the game?”

“We parted ways when Mann got involved with Christian and them. I kept the community center going, then, when that phased out, I opened this club for the community. Always been kind of a dream of mine to own a club, perform in my own place. You know.”

“What about Jesse Boone? You must have known him and his father if you were involved with Mann.”

“Boone's a crazy bastard. He'd kill his own kid for a buck and not even blink. He's got some kind of terminal illness. He'd always been a sickly kid. Some kind of rare disorder makes the boy smell very unsavory. There's a name for it. Trim . . . ethyl . . . ami . . . nu . . . something. TMAU for short. I only know that because this cat who served with me in the military had it, too.”

“Like funk, only worse,” I whispered to myself. I remembered that smell in the house where Marcy Taylor died and where John was killed.

“He had a brother, Kelvin. Don't know what happened to him. He disappeared some years ago. It wouldn't surprise me if Jesse killed him, too.”

I wanted to tell Calvin about Laughton being Kelvin Boone but decided against it right then. Trust between us was still a bit shaky. I could not believe I'd just happened to get involved with a man connected to my past. No, two men—Calvin
and
Laughton.

My phone rang. I rummaged through my bag, but it stopped long before I found it. The screen showed Travis as the missed caller. I clicked the Call Back button, but Travis did not answer.

“Why does Jesse Boone care about your sister?”

“I'm not sure, but I'm going to find out and find her.” Another lie.

“It doesn't sound like you're working on this with the police force behind you.”