Ride or Die (19 page)

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Authors: Solomon Jones

BOOK: Ride or Die
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“Okay,” Lynch said, sliding her withdrawal slip across the table. “Tell me how Alon Enterprises sells a million dollars' worth of coffee to college kids in a year.”
Nola looked up at Lynch with a seductive grin. “It was
really
good coffee, Lieutenant. Some people have even called it addictive.”
“Cut the shit, Ms. Langston,” Lynch said impatiently. “I don't have time for it. And frankly, neither do you. Your name is on a business that launders drug money under the direction of Frank
Nichols, and you made an illegal transaction in an attempt to clean out the assets of that business.”
“I made an emotional decision that any woman might make if she found out her man was sleeping with her daughter,” Nola said with a knowing smile.
“An emotional decision to steal a million dollars in drug money?”
“I don't know anything about drug money, Lieutenant. As far as I know, that money is all legitimate. I'm the second signer on the business account, I created the business, I grew the business, and given the fact that Frank is wanted in connection with the commissioner's murder and tried to kill me this afternoon, I think a jury would agree that I had every right to try to protect my interests.”
“Frank didn't seem to think so.”
“He's a hothead,” she said, crossing her legs so her short linen dress rose up to the top of her thighs.
Lynch walked back around to his end of the table and picked up her cell phone from the pile of personal effects.
Nola's self-assuredness seemed to waver as she watched him walk toward her with the phone in his hand.
“Cell phones are interesting little pieces of technology,” he said as he toyed with the buttons. “Yours, for instance, is billed to Jamal Nichols—Frank's son, and his right-hand man in his drug business.”
“That doesn't mean I know anything about any drugs,” Nola said.
“Maybe not. But it doesn't mean you don't, either.”
“Look, Frank gave me that as a business phone, and that's what I use it for,” Nola said, her voice a little more jittery. “How am I supposed to know who the phone's billed to?”
“I understand,” Lynch said. “I think cell phones are one of the best business tools you can have. You can make calls from virtually anywhere. You're always accessible, and you always have the ability to get in touch with the people you need to.”
Lynch began to press her buttons—all of them.
“I keep my schedule on my cell phone,” he said with a grin. “I send e-mails with it, too. I even use the calculator and that little picture phone thing. But you know, sometimes it's the simple things that make technology so great. Things like the phone book function.”
Nola looked up at Lynch, who was once again standing over her.
“It lets you put all your important numbers in one place,” he said as he scrolled through her list. “For example, you've got Frank Nichols, your daughter, Marquita, your job. You've even got Jamal Nichols here.”
He bent down in front of her and put the phone on the table so she could see what he was doing.
“And when you go back and scroll through the recent calls on your phone, you've got a call to Frank this morning, which explains one of the calls we saw on his phone from Jamal. But then there's three others that are a little more difficult to explain. Calls to you from Jamal Nichols. One at seven-forty, another at seven-forty-one, and another at seven-forty-two.”
He stood up and looked down into Nola's face. “That's after he snatched Keisha Anderson. But, of course, you already know that, because you're the one who told him what to do with her.”
“So what am I, a crime boss now?” Nola said with a nervous giggle. “That's ridiculous.”
“Is it?” Lynch said over his shoulder as he walked to the other end of the table and sat down. “Then what's this?”
Lynch reached into the pile and extracted a small slip of paper. He unfolded it, slowly, and read the message that it contained.
“Keep the package for an hour. If you don't hear anything, get rid of it.”
Lynch put the paper down and stared across the table at Nola. “You wanna tell me what that means?”
“Could be a note from work,” she said, looking away from him. “I don't really remember, to be honest with you.”
Lynch stared at her for along moment. “Okay,” he said. “That's fine. The notes and the calls could all be a coincidence.
“The business stuff, that's a little different. Because frankly, Ms. Langston, a first-year accounting student could look at the books of Alon Enterprises and see that there's drug money there.
“Now, maybe you can get away with it,” Lynch said as he began to gather her things. “Maybe you lick your lips just so, and bat those beautiful eyes, and a jury believes that a Wharton graduate like yourself was a partner in a business and knew nothing about its primary source of revenue.”
Lynch stood up.
“But why chance it? You've still got a lot of years ahead of you, Ms. Langston. Would you rather spend those years in prison for laundering drug money, or would you rather just tell us what we need to know about Frank and Jamal's involvement in the commissioner's murder, and come out with a slap on the wrist?”
Nola wanted to respond, but she couldn't speak. She was too afraid.
Lynch knew that, so he walked toward the door to give her fear a chance to set in.
“Whatever you decide,” he said as he reached for the doorknob, “you need to make it quick, because Jamal Nichols is still on the loose with Keisha Anderson. And you don't want him to do anything else that might be traced back to you.”
Lynch was about to leave the room when Nola finally relented.
“Lieutenant?”
“Yes, Ms. Langston?”
“I'm ready to call my attorney.”
“Gimme the
gun,” Jamal whispered to Keisha.
They were sitting between seats that obscured their hands from the view of the other passengers on the nearly empty elevated train.
Just one day before, Keisha would've been afraid to remove the gun from her purse, regardless of the fact that no one could see her. But now she didn't care.
She took the gun out of the purse and handed it to Jamal, knowing that it was better for him to have it, in case they needed to use it.
She wouldn't have trusted him enough to hand over the weapon just a few hours before. But each of them had demonstrated what the other meant to them, not only through their words, but through their actions.
Her life was literally in his hands, she thought as she looked
down into the streets below the fast-moving train. And his life was in her hands as well.
As the el train slowed down and pulled into the Allegheny Avenue station, Keisha thought of the struggle in the car, and the look she'd glimpsed in the woman's eyes as she'd choked her. Keisha imagined that it was a look much like the one she had worn the night before, when the men attacked her in the playground.
It was odd, she thought as she looked at Jamal, that loving him had made her stronger. Perhaps it was because she had something worth fighting for now. Or maybe it was because she had someone who was willing to fight for her.
Whatever it was—the energy of the streets, the struggle to survive, or the power of their love—it was enough to transform her from a victim to a conqueror, from a little girl to a woman. It was enough to make her into someone she had always wanted to be.
As the doors closed and the train pulled away from the station, she was concerned with only one thing—their next move.
“Where do you think we should go?” she asked, laying her head on Jamal's shoulder.
“I don't know,” he said. “But wherever it is, I want it to be away from all this.”
“Away from all what?” she said, looking up at him.
“My father, your father, the drugs, the guns, the lies, everything.”
He looked at her and imagined that she was still the little girl he'd met five years before.
“I want to go someplace where we can be those two little kids again. Where it don't matter what family we from. I wanna go where we ain't gotta be lookin' over our shoulders to see who comin' at us, tryin' to take what's ours.”
Keisha furled her brow. “We don't have anything that anyone would want to take.”
“You wrong,” Jamal said. “We got what everybody else tryin' to get. All them people chasin' paper, chasin' men, chasin' women, chasin' ghosts, they tryin' to get what we got. They tryin' to get somebody to care about them.”
Jamal shook his head and sat back in the seat. “You got people out here doin' whatever—workin' theyself to death, slingin' dope, sellin' ass, takin' loot—doin' whatever they gotta do just to get somebody to notice them. And you know what? None o' that shit they doin' don't mean nothin'.”
Keisha looked out the window as the train passed by spray-painted names scrawled upon walls, and wondered if the people who'd written them were looking for someone to notice them.
“Are you trying to get noticed, too?” she asked absently.
He took her chin in his hand. “Only if you the one lookin'.”
Keisha touched his face. “I am,” she said.
Jamal looked into her eyes and pressed his lips against hers. She pressed back, and their bodies told them that it was time. They each felt their hearts beating faster than they'd ever beaten before. And as their blood rushed to the nether regions of their bodies, stiffening Jamal and softening Keisha, they knew that they would explode if they couldn't touch one another.
“Keisha,” he said, suddenly disengaging from their kiss, “we here.”
He hastily peered out the window and looked at the placard identifying the station name. It said Somerset.
“Follow me,” he said, jumping from his seat and running toward the door with Keisha in tow.
The train squealed to a stop, and he took her by the hand and led her across the platform and down the steps to Kensington Avenue. They crossed against the busy street's traffic, walked into a
dilapidated bar, and in the next instant they were face to face with Frank Nichols's only friend.
 
 
Kevin Lynch sat in his office with an assistant district attorney whom he'd called in to draw up a plea agreement for Nola Langston. True to his reputation, Robert Harris handled it immediately.
One of the few black assistants on staff at the DA's office, Harris was there for only one reason: he was good. He had the highest conviction rate of any assistant DA. But there was more to his winning ways than his ability to manipulate the law.
With boyish good looks that often yielded comparisons to Denzel Washington and an enduring sense of style that never seemed to fail him, Robert Harris cut a dashing figure in the courtroom. But he had higher aspirations. And winning a conviction in the murder of the police commissioner would help him to achieve them.
“Thanks for handling this so quickly, Robert,” Lynch said, sitting down behind his desk as he looked over the plea agreement that Harris had drawn up in exchange for Nola's cooperation.
“Not a problem,” he said while flicking a speck of dust from his tailored, single-breasted pinstriped suit. “Darrell Freeman was a good man. If this Langston woman can connect Frank Nichols to his murder, I think it's well worth the deal.”
“Good,” Lynch said, flipping to the last page of the agreement. “Now if her lawyer can just convince her to take it, we can get the ball rolling.”
“I took a good look at Ms. Langston, Kevin. You're not going to have a problem getting her to take it. She's not jail material.”
Harris smiled a mischievous grin. “Nothing that fine should go to waste behind bars.”
Lynch shot a sidelong glance in the attorney's direction. He was well past the point of being mesmerized by Nola, and was about to tell Harris as much when a detective knocked on his office door.
“Lieutenant Lynch,” the detective said, “Mrs. Anderson is here about her daughter. Do you want to talk to her now, or would you rather wait until you're finished with Ms. Langston?”
“Is Reverend Anderson with her?” Lynch asked.
“No. She says she doesn't know where he is.”
“Okay,” Lynch said. “Send her in:”
The detective nodded and went outside to get Sarah.
“Robert, could you give me a few minutes with Mrs. Anderson? I need to talk to her about her daughter.”
“No problem,” the assistant DA said. “I'll be right outside when you're ready.
“Thanks.”
The prosecutor opened the door just as Sarah walked in. He nodded a greeting and left the room while she sat down with Kevin Lynch.
“I got here as soon as I could,” Sarah said, rushing to the seat in front of his desk. “Is Keisha okay?”
“As far as we know,” Lynch said uncomfortably.
“Why does everyone keep saying that?” Sarah said, exasperated. “Just tell me what's wrong!”
“Okay,” Lynch said, getting up from his seat and sitting down on the side of his desk. “We think your daughter is helping Jamal Nichols.”
“What do you mean, ‘helping'? He kidnapped her—took her right off the street this morning, and we haven't seen her since. She would've come home if she could have. She wouldn't be—”
“Mrs. Anderson,” Lynch said, cutting her off. “Jamal and one
of his father's men traded shots with a police officer in an alley about an hour ago and shot that officer to death. Keisha was apparently with them when it happened, and she chose to run away from the scene with Jamal.”
Sarah was momentarily shocked into silence.
“That's impossible,” she finally said. “Keisha would never do anything like that on her own. He must have forced her to go with him.”
Lynch didn't want to make her feel worse, but he didn't want to spare her the reality, either. So he told her the truth.
“Mrs. Anderson, your daughter helped Jamal Nichols escape from the scene of that shooting. They stole clothing from two prostitutes and carjacked a man at gunpoint. After that, she helped him hide in her great-aunt's house up in the Northeast, and the two of them disappeared.”
“What are you talking about?” Sarah asked, sounding confused. “Carjacking? Guns? Keisha's never used a gun in her life.”
“That remains to be seen,” he said carefully. “But Keisha
did
hide Jamal in a woman's house off Frankford and Academy. The woman identified herself as your husband's aunt. Her name is Margaret Jackson.”
Sarah was about to argue, but then she remembered. Margaret was her dead father-in-law's oldest sister. She'd come to visit the church occasionally over the years, but had stopped coming as she'd gotten older.
“Okay, I remember Margaret,” Sarah said. “But why would Keisha hide Jamal there, and why would Margaret let her do that? I don't understand.”
“Neither do we,” Lynch said, folding his arms. “That's why I asked you to come down here.”
Sarah tried to digest what Lynch was saying to her, but it was
impossible for her to focus. She couldn't imagine her daughter going along with such a thing. It wasn't like her.
“Maybe Keisha knows Jamal from the neighborhood or from church, or something,” Lynch suggested.
“She doesn't know him,” Sarah said firmly. “And even if she did, she would know to stay away from him. Not just because of what he does, but because of who he is. We don't associate with the Nichols family.”
“Could the two of them have had some kind of friendship that you and your husband didn't know about?”
“I really can't believe what you're asking me,” Sarah said. “You act like I don't know my own daughter.”
Lynch tried to be gentle. He could tell that Sarah was truly shocked by the news.
“Mrs. Anderson,” he said, “I know all this must be very hard to believe, and maybe there's a reasonable explanation for it. We think Margaret Jackson could give us at least part of it, but so far she's refused to talk to us. I was actually hoping that your husband could talk to her—maybe get her to give us an idea of where they went.”
“I haven't seen John in hours,” Sarah said, wringing her hands. “He left the house saying he was going to find Keisha, and he hasn't been back since.”
“Do you know where he went?” Lynch asked.
“God only knows,” she said with a sigh.
Sarah leaned forward and looked into Lynch's eyes. “Lieutenant, I want you to let me talk to Margaret,” she said earnestly.
Lynch saw that she was determined. She was not going to be denied the opportunity to find out for herself what was going on with her daughter.
That was good, Lynch thought, because the old woman was at least as headstrong as Sarah.
“Okay,” Lynch said, getting up from the desk, opening the door, and leading her past the waiting assistant DA.
“I'll be right back, Robert,” Lynch said quickly.
The prosecutor nodded and watched them walk down the hall to an office where the old woman was waiting.
When he opened the door and led Sarah inside, Lynch saw Margaret Jackson begin to look around as if she could see who had walked into the room.
“Mrs. Jackson, I've brought someone to see you,” Lynch said.
“I hope it's somebody who can tell me when y‘all gon' fix the doors you busted down out at my house.”
“Actually, Aunt Margaret, it's me, Sarah,” she said, sitting down in front of the old woman and grasping her hand. “It's good to see you again.”
“I wish I could say the same,” Aunt Margaret said. “But I'm not seein' too well these days.”
“I'm sorry to hear that,” Sarah said, shifting in her seat as she tried to think of a way to broach the subject.
The old woman spared her the trouble.
“You here to ask me about Keisha,” she said, settling back into her seat.
“Yes, Aunt Margaret, I am. Do you know where she went?”
The old woman looked up toward the ceiling. She closed her eyes tightly, like she was concentrating on retrieving some distant memory.
“Do you remember how your family acted when you were about to marry my nephew?” she said.

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