Murder in Germantown (38 page)

I was in no way going to let them badger my wife and son’s mother. “Where the hell is she now?” I asked and paced the floor.

“
Probably waiting for you to return home, or work, or to the courthouse,” Aramis said to my back.

Dajuan walked up to me and touched my shoulder. I gave in and spun and hugged him tightly. Tears fell down my face. How could I have had a baby with Mr. 357? He was a terrorist in the highest form. Could Ariel have fooled me so easily? Why marry and have a baby by me?

“
I never wanted to hear myself say this, but I need to go to the FBI.”

CHAPTER 87

Armed with a neat, concise legal brief, I barged into the FBI office headquarters like I owned the joint. I would brook no superiority complexes from the agents who would perceive my ideas as wildly unbelievable. My brief was written in very clear layman’s terms because I was fully aware that despite the degrees earned by the agents, they had a brutish lack of thoroughly devoting energy to civilian ideas.

I, along with Aramis, sat in what was the war room for the plans to capture Mr. 357. It was 9:20 according to a digital clock on the wall. As three agents consumed the Mr. 357 Brief, I took the free time to steal what information that I could from the pushpin maps and many bulletin boards around the room. Despite Aramis’s neutral expression, I was sure as a thirsty reporter he was doing the same as I. The agents should have put us in an empty interview room. Aramis should never, never, never be in a room that confided so many worthy developments.

All of the civilian leads appeared to be verbal descriptions or forensic artist’s sketches of alleged eye witnesses. To my supposition, all of those leads were moot. Mr. 357 was not only a master of disguise, he could cross racial lines. That was a compelling skill that many men of the criminal cloak were not privileged to. There was no police or what they called, “trained eye” leads because the only three judicial figures to encounter Mr. 357 were all dead.

The only evidenced personal history were Mr. 357’s crimes. Which to me was not personal. Every piece of data on the crimes was public information, and that’s hardly a fair description of personal.

There was a lovely photo array of any surveillance which had been used to print a photo of Mr. 357. I looked at the photos very closely to see if I could see any likeness of Ariel Greenland. My mind also rewound and pictured Ariel in my office two weeks prior. Before she left me for Hollywood her canines on both sides of her mouth were slightly off, which forced an appearance of crowding. However, the only thing I noticed was her fabulous veneer job and the enamel was the brightest white. The new look was toothsome, but could they have been faux teeth? Pure theatrical?

So many suppositions needed to morph into facts. I was in a war room inside of the FBI headquarters where facts were to be found and later used to prosecute. I never thought I’d be on this side of the table.

The agents seemed to be eating every word on the page like beef Wellington. I was not fooled one bit, though. I knew a tsunami of questions would follow. First, they’d interrogate the hell out of me with tedious questions about the car bomb. Probably force me to convince them that I did not plant the bomb myself. They could satisfy all of the prongs to try and substantiate it, too.

Carlos Savino, my boss and lead counsel at my firm, would beat the bologna down with a bat, but I imagined them claiming that I had a criminal connection to Mr. 357 as Mark Artis, and I had a means to garner explosives. They could make the motive car insurance. A joke right? The FBI usually cooked up beautiful
con somme
prior to arrest as they did with Mark Artis. However, I added power steering fluid to the soup, so no jury bought it. Now, I had the balls to press upon them a conceivable theory of who the true Mr. 357 was. I imagined the media beating they’d get. Not to mention the deflated egos. One of the agents closed the brief that I had written and the interrogation began.

It was brief, and ended with them kicking me out with two conditions: no contact with Ariel Greenland, and I could not leave Philadelphia.

MONDAY, JANUARY 15, 2007

CHAPTER 88

After leaving the Federal Bureau of Ignoramus office, Kensan drove Dajuan and Brandon to the Amtrak Station at 30th Street. We had planned for them to take an Amtrak train headed to Boston, but they would depart the train in Trenton, NJ, then take a SEPTA train from Trenton back to the Philadelphia Airport and board non-stop flights for LAX to join Constance. Meanwhile, I had work to do.

We drove Aramis to his apartment to grab his laptop and clothing. He would be with me for a while, and needed to be prepared. He also retrieved his car, and Kensan and I followed him back to my home where we had met Jonathan Rude. Rude had swept my condo for bugs and hidden cameras and stayed there until I got there.

At nearly three a.m., I was lying in my waterbed after taking a cat nap. Kensan was in the bed with me when I awoke, when I distinctly recalled going to bed alone. He was in boxers and a tank top and lay on top of the covers. I briefly admired his body, which wasn’t perfect, but attractive. I slithered out of the bed because I was afraid to wake him. I was more afraid of what may have ensued when human desires took over.

I headed to my office and found Aramis typing away. He was determined to have an article about the exciting night of attorney, Ravonne Lemmelle, on the presses. We had decided to exclude all references to Ariel Greenland and the FBI. We focused on the car explosion, the attempted kidnapping of Brandon, and the threats that I received via telephone and instant message. We excluded the stolen car portion for obvious reasons. I saw that he was busy and just left him there. I had my own masterpiece to glue together.

Back in my bedroom, I pulled out my notes and the motion to dismiss relevant to Wydell James’ case. That did not vanish, despite my drama.

One habit that I had was that I loved rehearsing my lines long before I had to say them. Oftentimes, I prepared a speech for George Bush in the event that I ever met the President. I even edited and revised the words in my head. At that point, I lay in bed and rehearsed my private conversation that I’d hold with the judge to have Wydell’s charges dismissed.

I sat up on the bed and grabbed the remote to the stereo. I needed to get pumped. Despite my personal crisis, I had a job, which I could have ignored and postponed for two weeks, but I couldn’t subject Mr. James to my problems. That was what my colleagues did, and that was what separated me from them. I had a Motion to Dismiss to prepare for, that would go on as planned, as long as I was not dead or otherwise mentally unable to stand trial.

I did a quick bathroom tour before I tried to recall the last meal that I had. I couldn’t. I popped a TV dinner in the microwave and knocked it down. I was eating when the telephone rang. It was Dajuan. He was in a city on a layover. I won’t bore you with the details of this conversation. Just know that there were a lot of reservations and tickets purchase to confuse anyone trying to find my family. Had someone tried to track them, they’d be dizzy. I assured that.

I annihilated the Salisbury steak, mash potatoes, and mixed vegetables. Afterward, I dug into my briefcase for my Wydell James file and composition book. After a refresher read, I pulled out my tape recorder and blasted off questions for prosecutorial witnesses and my own. As I brooded, a fascinating development stumbled upon me. At that precise moment a shadowy figure stepped into the kitchen.

CHAPTER 89

He hit me with a ferocious punch. My forehead felt as if I was socked by a Barry Bonds swing of the bat. The back of my head slammed into the wall behind me. Whoever it was had tremendous power. He was absurdly horny-handed. I heard sounds that were unidentifiable. I was sure that I had seen Betsy Ross stitching the flag. I was dizzy. Everything spun faster than Earth.

I assessed my options, which were scarce. Undoubtedly, the intruder had a gun. Had to! They knew that I was thoroughly trained to use my hands in ways only watched on karate flicks. The ones that had the voice-overs that never ran their course with the actors actually speaking. Besides that, my eyes were no longer 20/20, so I nixed a toe-to-toe battle. If I had charged the man, he would have shot me in the process. However, if I somehow got through the man’s zone and got my hands on him, I would have been able to tear his ass apart. All of my thoughts were arrested when the intruder parked in a chair opposite me. Very casually, by the way.

Through blurred vision, I saw that man, Prince Charming, that was with Ariel at Sole Food. His hair was long as far as I could tell. To fully open my eyes burned terribly. I saw a full beard and mustache. Dark brown. No coat. There was a scarf, though. Wrapped casually as if he never intended to be in a fight.

Aramis lay on the sofa, totally oblivious to what happened. And, where the hell was Kensan? Certainly,
both of them had to be sleeping lightly considering the danger that we were exposed to over the past hours. I placed my hands on the table to use as leverage to push my chair back to free my legs from under the table.

The man wiggled a long, slim finger at me, indicating, no.

He said, “I guarantee you that I have a gun. A very big gun. Before you decide to do anything other than sit quietly, know that it’ll take two seconds for you to hit the ground, and you’d never even know.”

I knew the answer to my next question, but I still asked, “Why the hell not?”

“
Because you’d be dead in a nano-second,” the man confirmed.

I tried to place the accent to no avail. His voice was deep and dark, and he may have made the accent up.

“
Now that we are clear, allow me to formally introduce myself. My name is Skylar Juday, and your beloved media simpletons refer to me as Mr. 357.”

This was going to be a poignant
tete-a-tete
. By far, the most unwelcomed one that I had ever engaged in during my life. However, I was
prepared for it and that scared me. I had spent countless minutes devoted to this encounter. It would’ve been better, had it been under my terms, but I had to settle for being on my turf. Somehow, I didn’t think that I had home advantage, though. I had no doubt that Mr. 357 had been in my domicile many times when no one was home.

I sat silent and waited for him to speak because I did not want to start off on the wrong foot. He had warned me not to patronize him. He also knew all about my subtle sardonism. He knew a zillion other things about me, too, probably. Like which hand I used to scratch my ass.

“
I must say that you are a clever fellow. I genuinely applaud you. Make no error that I vehemently hate you, too.”

His voice was robotic and it seemed that the lines were rehearsed.

“
For what reason?” I asked without a touch of anger or sarcasm.

I was no dummy. On my best behavior.

“
Which one? The applause or the hate?” he asked. On top of that, he stacked, “With your disrespectful arrogance, I am sure you want both, starting with the praise. Your trickery to get Constance, Dajuan, and Brandon to safety was brilliant. My people haven’t nabbed them, but I will personally after I am done with you.”

Gee thanks
, I refrained from saying. The escape system that we had set up was very slick. I had read too many espionage novels not to know how to get away. When I told Constance to go to the hotel that we stayed at for my law school graduation, anyone listening would go to the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada, but she would go to the LeMeridien in Las Angeles, California. She would later meet Dajuan and Brandon at LAX and board a non-stop flight back to Philly. They would check into the Lowes Hotel, my favorite hotel, and be taken care of.

He interrupted my thoughts by saying, “There are so many reasons that I hate you. I’ll recap the ones I told you before, you being born and studying law.”

He confirmed for me that he had indeed called me and tried to kill me.

“
What does that mean? I did not request that.”

“
You’d better lose that base in your voice, quickly, Mr. Lemmelle.”

“
Sorry.”

I was a patsy at that moment.

“
You’re not,” he said. “Let’s cut to the chase. You were always the smart one. The one with the BMW at seventeen, thanks to mom. Best graduation gift after law school, Las Vegas. You even won a three million dollar jackpot. Married the prettiest girl, who by chance, was bi-sexual like you. Your mother gave you everything, and she was afforded that luxury thanks to your father’s salary. Guess what my father gave me? A fare-the-well when I was an embryo and never looked back. Well, once, but it didn’t matter.”