Pipe Dream (11 page)

Under other circumstances, he’d have called for backup and checked the car. But the women looked like what they told him was true. They were coming from a revival. They were lost. They were tired. So he gave them directions to I-76 and left it at that. Still, there was something.

He was trying to put his finger on it—contemplating going to lunch so he could think about it over a hamburger—when he heard a detective come over the air with additional flash on the suspects from the Park Avenue job. He turned up his radio and listened.

“ . . . in connection with a founded shooting on the 3700 block of Park Avenue and an assault on a police officer on Roberts Avenue off-ramp of the northbound Roosevelt Expressway, two black males, Leroy Johnson and Samuel Everett Jackson . . .”

The cop tuned out the descriptions he’d heard five or six times in the last hour. He sipped his coffee and thought about taking another spin around 6th Street. But just as he began to turn the corner, he heard something that caused him to pull his car over and look at the radio in disbelief.

“ . . . last seen traveling south on Broad Street from Dell Street fifteen minutes ago in a 1991 Honda Accord painted black, license tag C—Charlie, W—William, R—Robert, N—Nelson. All four of the occupants are wearing wide-brimmed ladies’ hats and ladies’ trench coats. One or more of the occupants may be wearing sunglasses.”

That’s what had been strange about them, he thought. The driver and the one in the backseat were wearing sunglasses. And they weren’t unattractive women, as he’d originally thought. They were men. And they were wanted for murder.

As he picked up his handset, not wanting to tell anyone that he’d seen them, talked to them, and let them ride away, the officer felt himself slipping into what could only be described as an embarrassment-induced state of shock. Still, he did what he had to do.

“611,” he said, speaking over J band.

“611 proceed.”

“I saw that vehicle ten minutes ago. It was occupied by four . . . people who fit that description. The driver and a passenger were wearing sunglasses.”

The officer released his talk button and drew a deep breath. He knew what he was about to say was unforgivable. But there was no other way. He pressed his talk button again.

“I gave them directions to I-76 from Girard and Mascher,” he said, wincing. “They said they were going to Valley Forge. They were heading west on Girard from Second approximately ten minutes ago.”

There was a cacophony of clicks as everyone on J band depressed their talk buttons repeatedly to show their displeasure at what they’d just heard.

“Dummy!” someone said between the clicks.

“Can’t you tell a woman from a man?” someone else said.

There were more clicks and more anonymous comments. Someone gave a short rendition of “Sunglasses at Night” by Corey Hart.

“Six Command,” his lieutenant finally said. “Have 611 take headquarters.”

“611 okay,” the officer said quickly, no doubt relieved that he wouldn’t have to see another cop on the street for the twenty minutes or so it would take for him to get chewed out at headquarters.

If only the detectives from Homicide would find the suspects, he thought, no one else would have to endure the embarrassment of allowing them to slip away.

Reds Hillman heard Ramirez give out the flash information on J band, then listened as the 6th District cop confirmed the suspects’ most recent location.

Hillman knew that they would need information in order to find them. So he went to the one person who could tell him all he needed to know.

When he arrived at Ruth Jackson’s three-story house, Hillman saw two detectives staking out the property. One of them stepped out of the car and tried to wave him away as he walked up the steps. But Hillman had already rung the bell.

“Mrs. Jackson?” he said, holding up his badge when she lifted the blinds. “I’m here about Samuel.”

Her face hardened at the mention of her son. “I used to know a Samuel,” she said, her melancholy voice drifting through the closed door. “But I don’t know him anymore.”

“Mrs. Jackson, please,” Hillman said. “You might be the only person who can help your son now.”

The blinds closed and Hillman stood on the steps, waiting for the thought of her son’s plight to work its way through Ruth Jackson’s mind. After what seemed like forever, he heard a series of clicks as she disengaged the locks.

“Come in,” she said, stepping aside to allow Hillman to walk into her living room. “Would you like some coffee or something?”

“No, thank you,” Hillman said, standing awkwardly in the middle of the floor.

As he looked around the sparsely furnished living room, Hillman could see that the Jackson home held a lifetime of memories. On the mantelpiece, there were two pictures: Black in a cap and gown at his high-school graduation, and an old wedding photo of Mrs. Jackson and her late husband.

The hardwood floors were swept and waxed to a shine, and the end tables were covered with framed snapshots from happier times. In one of them, a small boy hugged a puppy in front of a Christmas tree. In another, he rode on the broad shoulders of his father. In each of them, the laughter was almost audible.

Now the smiles were part of a long-forgotten past. All that remained was the pride of the woman who had helped to shape them. And nothing—not even the detective standing in her living room—could take that away from Ruth Jackson.

“Please,” Mrs. Jackson said, pointing to a chair. “Sit down.”

Hillman sat in the chair and watched as the woman walked to the opposite side of the room.

“Mrs. Jackson,” he said soberly, “I’m going to cut to the chase. My name is Detective Reds Hillman. I’m here because we’re looking for your son for murder.”

“I know you’re looking for him,” she said, staring at Hillman’s reflection in the mirror that stood over the mantelpiece. “I saw his picture on television and I see the detectives outside.”

Hillman adjusted himself in his seat and asked the question that only Mrs. Jackson could answer.

“Do you believe that your son is capable of killing someone?”

Ruth Jackson turned from the mirror and sat down, twisting a handkerchief in her hands as she looked into the detective’s eyes. Hillman returned her gaze, and he saw sadness and strength staring out at him as if they were alive.

“I knew a boy once,” she said softly. “He was talkative, smart, curious. He wanted to know about everything in the world around him. And at the rate he was going, I was sure that he would find out all about it someday.

“Samuel wasn’t like other children, Detective. And I’m not just saying that because he was my son. Other people noticed it, too.”

Mrs. Jackson smiled fondly and walked back over to the mantelpiece, picking up the picture of her son and polishing it with her handkerchief before placing it back in its appointed space.

“When he was in kindergarten, his teacher told me that he had a way of letting you know he was there,” she said, chuckling at the memory. “I guess that didn’t change when he got older. He was just . . . special.”

Hillman saw the strength in her eyes overtake the sadness. For a moment, she almost looked proud.

“When he was twelve, his father had a heart attack and died. I felt like I was going to fall apart. But Samuel stayed strong. It was like he knew something I didn’t—like he knew everything was going to be all right. And seeing that gave me the strength I needed to go on.

“When he graduated from high school, he didn’t even study and he had a B average. He went to college for a minute, but that bored him, so he got a job.

“I guess what I’m saying is, no matter what he did, no matter where he went, there was one thing about him that didn’t change. He was smart—too smart. He could pick up on things faster than other people.

“Maybe that’s why, when he started messing with that crack, he lost himself to it so quickly. He knew that he couldn’t control it, so he gave up trying. He let it take over his life, and he lost everything because of it.”

Mrs. Jackson looked at Reds Hillman, and her lips formed themselves into a wan smile.

“So, to answer your question, the Samuel Jackson I knew wouldn’t have killed anyone. He couldn’t have, because he had already killed himself.”

The smile disappeared and was replaced by an almost tangible pain that poured out from her eyes like tears.

“My son is dead, Detective Hillman. And the only thing that keeps me going sometimes is my faith in God. I pray every night for my dead son. I pray because I know that only God can bring back the dead.”

Reds Hillman sat for almost a full minute, staring down at the floor. Then he got up from the chair and walked toward the door.

“Thank you, Mrs. Jackson. If we hear anything about your son we’ll be in touch.”

“No,” she said. “If God chooses to bring him back, he’ll be in touch. Until then, if you want to know something about the man who’s walking around masquerading as my son, know this: He’s probably already one step ahead of you.”

Chapter 10

A
s Black pulled up at the hotel entrance off the Woodhaven Road exit of I-95, Clarisse gave him a puzzled look but said nothing. And Pookie, who had been silent for most of the ride, seemed to strain forward, as if she were ready to bolt from the backseat. Only Leroy spoke.

“How we gon’ stay in a hotel behind a damn police station?” Leroy said as they pulled into the parking lot.

“Same way you stay in any other hotel,” Black said.

When no one said anything, he started giving orders. “They got a garage around back where the valets park the cars.”

“The who?” Leroy said.

“Valets. Car parkers.”

“Oh.”

“Pookie, I want you to walk up to the valet in the lobby and tell him you parked your car in the garage and you checkin’ out. If he ask you for your ticket, say you lost it. When he go the garage, ask the desk clerk if you can use the bathroom.”

“For what?”

“So when he come back lookin’ for you, you don’t have to explain why you don’t have no car in there. And you’ll already be inside when Clarisse check in, so you can just come out and follow her and Leroy to the room.”

“How you gon’ get in?” Leroy asked.

“The elevator go straight from the garage to the hotel. After I park, I’ll take it to the fifth floor. I want y’all to meet me there and we can all go to the room from there.”

“How you know so much about this hotel?” Pookie said.

“I used to bring my hoes up here.”

“Hoes?” Clarisse said, obviously offended.

“Yeah, hoes,” Black said, looking at her as if she shouldn’t expect women to be referred to any differently.

“You so damn ignorant,” she said.

“Yeah, and I love you, too.”

“Well, I don’t love that plan,” she said, looking at Black like he was crazy.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“I know you don’t expect me to check into a hotel with a man dressed up like RuPaul,” she said, looking Leroy up and down.

Leroy and Black looked down at their outfits. Then they began to take off the trench coats, hats, and sunglasses to reveal the oversized suits they wore underneath.

“Keep on the glasses,” Black said to Leroy.

“What about me?” Clarisse said.

“You can wear mine.”

“Wear yours for what? They’re looking for you, not me.”

“Just in case. And when they ask you for a driver’s license and a license tag, make up a tag number. Say you forgot your license—you left it in the car or whatever. If they say somethin’, just make up a driver’s license number. I think it’s like eight numbers.”

Black looked around to see that no one was approaching, then turned his attention to Pookie. “It’s on you.”

“How come I’m always the one kickin’ shit off?” she said.

“Pookie . . . ,” Leroy began.

“No, for real,” she said. “Every time I turn around it’s somethin’ else. Lay down in the street, get on the bus. Y’all steady givin’ orders and I still ain’t seen no breakdown.”

“You want a breakdown?” Leroy said. “Here.”

He pulled out five hundred-dollar bills. When she reached for them, he pulled them back.

“When we get in the room,” he said, placing the bills in the inside pocket of his suit jacket.

Pookie looked into his eyes, searching them to see if he was telling the truth. Then she got out of the car and began to walk toward the valet. She hesitated, looking around as if she might do something other than what she was supposed to do. But she must have decided that she had no choice, and began to walk toward the valet with purpose.

“Leroy,” Black said as they all watched her go through her routine. “Don’t trust her. I’m tellin’ you.”

Leroy tried to say something in her defense, but Black didn’t give him a chance.

“She ain’t been doin’ nothin’ but settin’ niggers up since the day I met her. What, you think you different?”

When he didn’t respond, Black looked in the rearview mirror and saw that Leroy knew he was right.

“Dig this here,” Black said, tapping Clarisse on the arm. “Soon as she finish talkin’ to the . . . No, matter fact, y’all go ’head in there now.”

“You sure?” Clarisse said.

“Yeah. Make it look like y’all not with her.”

Clarisse opened the door and got out. When Leroy got ready to follow, Black grabbed his arm. “Watch Pookie.”

“I’m watchin’ you,” he said, and walked away from the car, looking back over his shoulder before continuing toward the hotel.

Black didn’t answer him. The truth was, he had thought about driving away and leaving them there. But something wouldn’t allow him to do it. It wasn’t loyalty. It was something deeper than that, and something much more selfish. It was fear: the same fear that told him to tell Clarisse to give the desk clerk a phony name and a phony tag number; the same fear that told him he had to park the car off the street; the same fear that told him they hadn’t gotten away as clean as they thought.

He watched as Leroy caught up with Clarisse and walked through the doors of the hotel. A minute or so later, the valet walked out of the vestibule leading toward the lobby and started toward the garage. Black shut off the headlights and tapped the gas, putting the car in neutral and allowing it to roll behind the hedges that lined the hotel driveway.

Black figured the parking attendant would use his electronic garage door opener to open the door, leaving him with a few seconds to shut off the engine and coast in behind him. If Black was lucky, the timer would be set at ten seconds, giving him enough time to wait until the attendant was well into the garage before following him inside. If he wasn’t lucky, he’d know soon enough, when the garage door closed on the hood of the car.

Black hoped that having the engine and the lights off was enough to keep the valet from seeing him. If it didn’t work out that way, he’d say that he thought garage parking was free. Then he’d park the car outside, because parking it legitimately meant going to the valet and filling out an information form with the tag number and his name. He couldn’t do that. They’d already taken enough risks.

Watching from behind the shrubbery, Black saw the valet half jog to the garage to retrieve Pookie’s nonexistent car. Black was sure the valet was about to open the door. But he suddenly stopped, felt his pockets, turned, and started back toward the hotel as if he’d forgotten something. Quickly, Black put the car in reverse and backed in behind the hedges. The engine revved slightly, causing the valet to stop for a moment and look toward the shrubs. Black leaned back in the seat and watched the valet watch him. It became obvious after a few minutes, however, that the valet couldn’t see very well. He had to lean forward and strain to see past the bushes.

When he was satisfied that nothing was there, the valet walked to the hotel lobby, came back, opened the garage door with a remote control, then walked down the ramp that led to the garage. Black put the car in drive, drove toward the entrance, shifted into neutral, and killed the engine. Then Murphy’s Law took over.

The door started to close. To make matters worse, the car was slowing down, like it might stop before it got to the door. Black knew he couldn’t start it again, because the noise of the engine would be a dead giveaway. So he did what he was accustomed to doing whenever something like that happened. He shot up a prayer and hoped that the garage door wouldn’t close before he got inside.

Just as he got ready to open the car door to get out and push, he saw another car’s headlights pulling into the driveway of the hotel. From the car’s outline, he thought it might have been a cop car. He could only hope, as he watched the car drive the winding path that led to the entrance of the hotel, that it wasn’t.

Black looked from the garage to the rearview mirror, then back to the garage. In about three seconds, the approaching car would disappear behind the shrubs. The garage door would close in about two.

He looked in the rearview mirror once again, saw the other car approaching the shrubbery, and decided to make a break for the garage. Half crawling out of the car, he pushed against the car door with one hand and maneuvered the steering wheel with the other. By doing so, he was able to gather enough momentum to make it past the garage door before it closed. When he got inside, he jumped back into the car and negotiated the curve that led to the far corner of the garage.

Hoping that the valet couldn’t see the red glow from the brake lights, Black pulled into a space between a black BMW and another black Honda. Crouching, he got out of the car and crept toward the elevator on the other side of the garage. The valet came walking toward him, looking around like he was confused about something. From the look on his face, he was probably wondering if he’d looked in the right space for Pookie’s nonexistent car.

Black knelt behind a red Cadillac and waited for the valet to walk by. When he did, Black crawled around the side of the car and scurried over to the elevator. He hit the up button and the light over the elevator door lit the number 5. After a long pause, the number 4 lit up. It took what seemed like forever for it to descend to the garage level. When it did, there was a loud chime. The valet looked, and started to walk toward the elevator. Black crawled on board, pushed 5, and hoped that the doors would close before the valet got there. They did. Barely. Black caught a glimpse of the valet’s hand moving toward the “open door” button right before the elevator started up.

“What took you so long?” Leroy said when Black got off the elevator at the fifth floor.

“We can talk about all that when we get to the room. Where Clarisse and them?”

“They already went to the room. It’s on the seventh floor.”

“All right. Let’s go.”

Leroy pushed the up button and the other elevator came up from the parking garage. When the doors opened, Black found himself looking into the eyes of a very confused parking attendant. He looked from Leroy to Black and then back again. Then he paused to push a very thick pair of glasses back up on the bridge of his nose.

The three of them stood there and looked at one another across the elevator threshold. Leroy, who was unaware that the parking attendant had seen Black sneaking out of the garage, was the first to speak.

“You g-gettin’ off?” he said to the valet with an impatient stutter.

“I, uh . . .” The parking attendant hesitated and looked at the knees of Black’s pants, which were smudged with gray dust from the garage floor.

“Yeah, so like I was sayin’ . . . ,” Black said, looking at the attendant as he and Leroy got on the elevator. “Excuse me, brother, could you push twelve please?”

“Sure,” the parking attendant said, pushing the button for the twelfth floor.

“Yeah, so anyway,” Black continued, giving Leroy a look that begged him not to say anything. “She couldn’t even wait until we got to the bed. She wanted to do it on the floor and I’m like, ‘Damn, baby, can I at least take my pants off first?’ But she just got on the floor and was like, ‘Let’s have it.’ Straight freak. You see she got my pants all dirty. Man, I’m tellin’ you . . .”

Black kept talking, and as the elevator reached the twelfth floor, he felt the tension ease considerably. The valet obviously believed he couldn’t have been the person he saw sneaking out of the garage. Black even saw a smile creep over the valet’s lips.

“All right, man,” Black told him when they got off the elevator. “Have a good one.”

“You, too.”

When the doors closed behind them, Black steered Leroy around the corner and toward the stairs.

“Why you do that?” Leroy said.

“That was the valet. I think he mighta seen me sneakin’ out the garage.”

“That nigger be lucky if he can see his hand in front o’ his face with them thick-ass glasses on,” Leroy said.

Black nodded his agreement. “Nigger had on microscopes.”

When they got to the seventh floor, Leroy led Black to the room and Clarisse answered the door.

“What took you so long?”

“Don’t worry about what took us so long,” Black said, rushing in and closing the door behind them. “Just don’t come openin’ doors like that no more if you don’t know who it is. It woulda been the same thing if it was five-o.”

“Well you weren’t five-o. Now, where’s my car?”

“It’s in the garage. I parked it in the corner between a BMW and another black Honda.”

“Well, give me my keys so I can get out of here. I have to be at work in three hours.”

Black looked at her in disbelief.

“You said you just wanted me to take you somewhere outside the city,” she said.

“Well, we ain’t outside the city yet,” he said.

“Is that my problem?”

“You talkin’ ’bout don’t trust Pookie,” Leroy said. “You need to be worried ’bout
this
siditty-ass bitch.”

Black glanced at Leroy, then looked at Clarisse with his mouth hanging open.

“Don’t look at me like that, Everett. I’ve helped you as much as I could, and you know it.”

“I know we gon’ be stuck in this damn hotel if you leave,” he said, thinking that they’d have to steal someone’s car out of the garage.

“Look,” she said, placing her hand on her hip. “When you wanted clothes, I gave you clothes. When you wanted a ride, I gave you that, too. When that cop pulled up on Girard Avenue, I helped you get out of that. Damn, what more do you want?”

“I want to get out of this thing alive.”

“So do I. That’s why I’m leaving.”

“Clarisse,” Black said as he moved closer and tried to put his hand against her face.

“Clarisse nothing,” she said, pushing his hand away. “I really don’t want to be caught up in this anymore, Everett. And you can call me a bitch or whatever you want to call me. I don’t care. I just want to get back to real life. Now, hand me my keys so I can go.”

Without another word, Black handed her the keys and turned on the radio. A commercial for a local car dealership ended with a man screaming something about deals as Clarisse gathered her pocketbook and coat.

“Well, while y’all handin’ out stuff,” Pookie said, “can I get mine? ’Cause I wanna go with her.”

“You’re not going anywhere with me. So you can get that out of your head right now.”