Quicksand (31 page)

He looked at her, and she could see the loathing even from the distance between them. “You're right. It's not how it should be at all.” In a flash, he pulled out a gun, and shot the bottle nearest to him.

 

CHAPTER
11

The first thing
that Nora saw was Laurie thrown backward against the stairs from the force of the explosion. Then Rashid Baker's body arced up into the air, only to be caught and tossed back and forth by the string of explosions that ensued. Nora felt strong hands grab her collar, dragging her over the threshold of the coal cellar, and the slam of the coal cellar door as John and Ben threw themselves against it.

“Cover your face, cover your face!” Ben was shouting, but the poison in the air had already begun penetrating the tiny room.

“Laurie,” Nora cried, trying to pull Ben out of the way.

“There's nothing you can do for her now!”

Chest heaving, Nora tried to force her brain to function. Her eyes fell on the girl, and she scrambled to the mattress and tugged the girl's bandanna up and over her nose, then yanked off the ties that bound her wrists.

The heat in the room was unbearable, and Nora began to feel dizzy. She yanked off her jacket and was tying it around her own head as Wansbrough began to yell, “Find the coal chute!”

Nora was the first to spy it—“There, John!” She pointed to the small trapdoor in the ceiling that once had received wheelbarrows full of coal, poured in from the backyard.

Calder shoved the huge desk under the trapdoor. John was the tallest, but he couldn't reach the trapdoor. He jumped, stretching, to no avail. They all scanned the room for an object to shove upward, but found nothing at all.

“Lift Nora!” Ben croaked out; he was gasping for air as his eyes watered from the powerful gasses. The sound of sirens penetrated their prison from outside.

Eyes streaming, Nora scrambled up onto the desk and into John's powerful arms. He held her aloft, and her fingertips just brushed the rusty trapdoor. “Stand on my shoulders,” he coughed.

As he held tightly to her legs, Nora thrust herself upward, pounding against the door. Rust cascaded into her eyes, but she kept pushing and pushing. “John,” gasped Nora—“Squat down and thrust yourself up—I can't get enough force—”

“Hold on,” and she felt her partner lower himself slightly, and then, with a loud grunt, he pushed up hard with his legs. Nora put every ounce of force she had into her open palms, and was relieved to feel the trapdoor fly open, ushering in a shaft of cool air. She began screaming with all the sound she could muster, and had never imagined she could be so happy to see Eric Burton's face.

Burton immediately flopped onto his stomach and extended her his arm—

“The girl—” Nora gasped, looking down into the cellar.

“Just
go
!” Wansbrough choked out. “I'll lift her up next!”

Nora scrambled through the trapdoor, and up onto the cool, wet grass of the Bakers' backyard, gasping for air. An emergency worker appeared almost immediately, handing her a gas mask, then forcing one onto Burton's face even as he remained on his stomach attempting to catch the thin girl's wrists.

“We need a ladder!” Nora screamed, and was stumbling across the yard in search of one when she finally passed out.

*   *   *

She awakened in
the back of an ambulance some distance from the Bakers' house.

The girl, Rahma, was next to her, unconscious on a stretcher, a fat oxygen mask strapped to her face. Nora tugged at her own mask, and the EMT worker tending them held up his hand. “Hold on, there, ma'am.”

Nora shook her head. “My team—where's my team?”

“Next ambulance over. They're gonna be fine.”

Nora was just struggling, trying to rise from her own stretcher, when Ben Calder appeared at the ambulance's open door. He had a portable oxygen tank, with a tube hooked up to his nose.

Nora gazed at him, her eyes brimming. “Laurie?”

He shook his head. “They're still putting out the flames. They won't be able to bring her out for a while yet.”

Hot tears streaked Nora's face as she looked beyond him to the still-blazing fire. “John's okay?”

Ben nodded. “Bleeding a lot after using a wounded arm to push you through a ceiling. But okay.”

Burton appeared at Ben's side. “Hey, Nora,” he said, his face concerned.

“Eric,” she said, holding his gaze. “Thanks, man.”

He shook his head. “That was a close one. I'm glad you guys made it out okay.”

“I'm glad you were there,” she said. She let her gaze fall on the little girl at her side. But then a dark realization crept across her still-reeling brain. “With Rashid dead, how are we going to find the Somalis?”

 

CHAPTER
12

They were all
struggling with respiratory problems, but all refused to be admitted to the hospital. For Nora, it was the loss of Laurie Cruz that made it hardest to breathe. She walked slowly to work the next morning, the downtown streets blurry as she blinked back tears. Armies of strangers brushed by her as Nora fought the urge to sit down on the curb and walk no further. Laurie's body crashing against the stairs replayed in her head with every step. Nora had missed something along the way, she was sure, and she could not shake the feeling that she was to blame.

It was as she stood numbly in the jammed elevator, slumped against the wood paneling, that she found the piece that had eluded her. She emerged on the eighth floor in a haze. A few agents intercepted her in the hall to offer condolences and ask about her health, but Nora only gave curt responses. She swallowed hard and walked into the office. “This was my fault,” she said softly, and all three agents looked up from their computer screens.

“What was?” John asked.

Nora clenched her eyes shut, seeing it all again. When she spoke at last, she said, “Class D larceny.”

“Come again?” said Burton.

“I should have seen it earlier,” Nora murmured.

John frowned. “Class D—oh. You mean, Rashid?”

“He was working for a warehouse in South Philly. He filled up a U-Haul with merchandise from several of the companies storing their stuff there. Among them, a beauty supply distributor.” Nora's eyes were full of regret.

Ben Calder understood immediately. “Acetone,” he said.

“He ended up with a lot of shampoo and hair extensions. But, also enough acetone to last him for a long, long time,” she said. “It's not like they made him turn it in when they sent him off to prison. He hadn't been on anyone's radar. No one knew he could cook.”

“But by the time Rashid got out of jail and was ready to start up again, his brother was getting his meth from Mexico,” Burton said.

“And that's not a relationship you sever,” said Ben. “Unless you want to end up wearing your own entrails.”

Wansbrough said, “But Nora, all of us missed something. Rashid and his mother were always coughing, classic sign of having a meth lab on premises. It never occurred to me. Hell, we were in the house together, and I found it hard to breathe. Why didn't we search the basement that day we went into Kylie's room?

“If the part of the story was true that he was angry with Kevin over how he neglected the mom and sister, then leading the Somalis to take Kevin's car would make a certain amount of sense,” John said, adding that line to the report he was working on.

“So Rashid can implicate Kevin in the killing that starts a gang war,” Nora said.

“But what about Kylie? Would he have led the Somalis to her as well?” Ben asked. “Even if he was trying to help the Somalis start a gang war, why would Rashid have consented to Kylie being one of the victims?” Ben asked.

Eric Burton met Nora's eyes. She read his gaze, while appreciating his silence. Not dropping her eyes, she said softly, “Honor killing?”

The other two agents contemplated this theory in silence. Then John said, “We have to find Asad … and that car. If Monty Watt's right, and Kylie was killed in a vehicle, it might have been that one. And Hafsa's body probably took a ride in it before being dumped.”

Nora checked her watch. “Catherine Zucco should almost be there by now,” she said.

“It being a half an hour after we agreed to meet,” Wansbrough said irritably. “She'd sure as hell better be there by now.”

All four stood, gathering files from their desks, and made the short trip to Hahnemann Hospital. Soon they found themselves once again crowding into Kevin Baker's room. This time Laurie hadn't joined them, and only Nora and Eric Burton sat on the wide windowsill. Unlike their past visit, Kevin Baker was lucid and angry. “You take my mama into custody? Old lady like that?”

“First, if we hadn't removed her from the house, she'd be dead now,” John Wansbrough answered. “Second, are you suggesting she
didn't
know what your brother Rashid was up to? That it wasn't part of his plan to have the sweet old lady feeding us all that information?”

Although he could still only really open one eye, Kevin regarded Wansbrough steadily. “What do you know about it?”

Ben interjected, “What do
you
know about it?”

Ever-poised, Catherine Zucco was saying, “I advise you not to answer that.”

Kevin listened, cocked his head slightly, and remained mute.

John Wansbrough was irritated. “You do understand the concept of sentence reduction, right? It implies you will share
information
with us in exchange for a lighter sentence. In your case we are going to be hearing from you all about your contacts in Los Zetas. But first, we want to know when you last saw Rashid?”

Kevin glanced at his lawyer who nodded assent that he answer. “Last week.”

“Before the drive-by in which Benzo was shot?”

“Same day.”

“Did he have a spare key to your car?” John asked.

Kevin shifted uncomfortably in the bed as he considered this. “Maybe. I had left a valet key in the house somewhere…”

“Did Rashid want to participate in your business?”

Kevin nodded.

“And you kept him out?”

His bruised face darkened slightly, in fear, in remembrance. “I'd made a deal with Los Zetas. They had ways of being sure I carried through with my part.” Kevin glanced at his lawyer, who hesitated, but nodded again. He chose his words carefully. “It turned out to be the right decision, keeping him out, though. He was too much of a risk.”

“How?”

“I knew he'd be on probation a long time. But I also figured, you know, with the beard, him comin' home from jail all Muslim … that the FBI'd be watchin' him anyway. To see if he'd gone sand nigger or somethin'…”

From her perch on the windowsill, Nora flinched.

“Tell me about your relationship with Rashid,” Ben was saying.

The lawyer leaned in. “Irrelevant, don't answer personal questions.”

“Relevant,” responded John Wansbrough loudly. “We believe that Rashid might have set Kevin up.”

That got Kevin's attention. He said, “The last time I saw him, he was angry. He'd been approached by one of Dewayne's crew, asking him to cook for them. His cooking was top secret, see. Even when he was supplying the A&As back in the day, nobody was supposed to know it was him. That's how he played it safe.”

“He thought you'd let his secret out?”

Kevin nodded.

“And did you?” John asked.

“Hell no!” Kevin said, indignantly. “Naw, man. I didn't want no trouble from him.”

Ben studied him, then asked, “You were scared of your brother, Kevin?”

Kevin looked from Calder to Wansbrough, his gaze heavy with ugly memories. “My brother been through shit nobody should go through. Saw Mama get beat up all the time. Saw his daddy killed right in front of him. Gangbanger stab the man, right in front of him. Right in front of him, and walk right off. Police don't do nothing. It made him hard, made him, like, dead inside.”

The two agents were silent a moment, waiting to see if he would add anything. Finally, John Wansbrough said, “What was the last thing he said to you?”

“He said I'd betrayed him, sold him out. That all along I hadn't done right by the family, not by Mama or Kylie, and not by him … so he had new friends now, new brothers. He said … He said they were running from war just like him—that life in Kingsessing is war every day, in every way. And so they understand each other just fine. And that they would be taking over my business, and that he would help them. That more war was brewing, and I was next to die.”

“So he thought you had exposed him, put him in danger,” John said. “What did he say when you told him it wasn't you who had ‘sold him out'?”

Kevin Baker's voice became soft. “He wanted to know who it was, then.”

“And you said?”

Kevin looked at his hands, then raised his eyes. Even Nora and Eric could see the remorse there. “I told him he should ask Kylie, cuz word was … word was she was … with Dewayne.”

*   *   *

Eric Burton was
talking very fast as the cluster of agents bent together outside the interview room. “So it wasn't supposed to be Kylie. They were going to start the war by killing Kevin first.”

“But Rashid found out about Kylie,” Ben said.

“And either volunteered her to be their next victim, or killed her himself,” Eric surmised.

“In the Escalade,” Nora said.

“In a car, Monty Watt told us. That probably was the Escalade. The same Escalade that likely delivered Hafsa to the alley. Goddam, I want that car,” John said, frustrated.

Suddenly Ben Calder looked up, eyes bright.

“It's a miracle she hadn't died already, though, right? Isn't that what you said, John?”