The Man in 3B (22 page)

“From you!” I admitted, standing on my feet. I took one last gulp of tequila, emptying the glass. It went down much smoother this time. I’d become immune. I set the glass down on the table and looked Daryl in the face. “He’s trying to hold me back from being around you,” I said more quietly now.

“From me?” There was a nervous laugh.

“He doesn’t like you, Daryl. You’d have to be blind not to see it.”

“Nah, I can see it. I been meaning to talk to him about it too.” Daryl kind of shrugged. “It’s just that so much shit has been going down with Connie, Avery, and Krystal that I haven’t been able to deal with little stuff.”

“Little?” I was kind of taken aback. Did Daryl view our friendship as something little? Maybe it was the alcohol giving me courage, but I decided to go for it. “He’s trying to keep us apart, Daryl. He’s trying to keep us from being together.”

Daryl’s face became flushed and his eyes got big. “What do you mean,
being together
?”

“Just what I said.” I took a step closer. Before I knew it, I slipped my hand in his robe and leaned in, my lips headed for his.

“Whoa! Whoa! What the hell are you doing, man?” Daryl took a step back from me.

I moved forward, closing the gap between us. He seemed scared, but I wasn’t—not anymore at least. It was time to stop hiding in the shadows.

“Come on, man. It’s me and you here. You don’t have to pretend anymore, Dee. No need to act like you don’t know what’s going on. Hell, evidently even my dad sees it.”

This time Daryl put up two hands and sort of ran away from me backward. “Whoa, wait a minute. If you’re saying what I think you’re… Hold up. You and your dad’s got this thing all—Benny, man, are you saying…?”

Daryl couldn’t get a complete sentence out to save his life. Maybe he didn’t know how to express his feelings, I thought. I couldn’t blame him. I’d been keeping mine sort of bottled up too ever since I was little.

Daryl took a deep breath and seemed to gather himself. “Benny, I’m going to come out and ask you this: Are you gay?”

I thought for a few seconds. “I don’t know what I am yet, but what I do know is how I feel whenever we’re together.” I stepped closer to him, keeping my eyes locked on his as I moved in yet again for a kiss.

“No, no. There is no
we
. There’s no
together
.” He hurried away from me, tripping over the coffee table. “What I mean, Benny, is that you a cool cat. Any girl would be—” He stopped and thought for a minute. “Or any man—or whatever—would be lucky to… you know… with you. But dude, that’s not for me. I like women.”

“I know you like women,” I told him. “But I know you like men too.” I pointed over to his bookshelf. “I’ve seen your books:
Both Sides of the Fence, Invisible Life
. I’ve also checked out those videos you had lying around here last week:
Six Degrees of Separation
.”

Daryl laughed. “You’ve got it all wrong. Connie brought that video over here for us to watch. And those aren’t my books. I mean, they’re my books, but I was just reading them because my little brother is
gay. I was trying to get some sort of insight so I would know how to deal with him… his situation. He was going through a rough time when I came home from jail.”

I was starting to sober up way too soon. Daryl was doing a lot of chuckling, and he had this weird, uncomfortable expression on his face. Was he not ready to come out of the closet yet, or was he truly rejecting my advances? I wasn’t sure which, but I was getting sick to my stomach just thinking it might be the latter. Something told me the tequila wasn’t the only thing straight in the room.

“Come on, Daryl. You did time in jail. You mean to tell me that you never—”

“Never!” he was quick to affirm. “I’ve never been with a man, and I never will be, Benny.”

I almost threw up right then and there, and it didn’t have a damn thing to do with all the tequila I’d downed. “Oh, fuck.” I turned away, my face burning with embarrassment.

Daryl put a brotherly hand on my shoulder. “Come on, man. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. There are a lot of gay people in the world,” he told me. “I’m just not one of them.”

I couldn’t even turn around to look at Daryl as I headed for the door and barged out of his apartment the same way I’d barged in. I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to look him in the eyes again—or myself, for that matter.

I’d been thinking a lot about Avery lately. Not about being with him or anything like that, because as far as I was concerned that phase of my life was over. The kiss he gave me the other night was enough to make me sure of that. I was more than happy with the way things were progressing with Daryl. Still, Avery’s actions were very troubling. He’d changed. There were no
ifs
,
ands
, or
buts
about it. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was something about his demeanor that didn’t sit well with me—that and his newfound wealth. I’m not sure what that was about, but he’d made too much money too soon for me not to be suspicious. I knew Avery well enough to know that he would never give me that much money if he didn’t have a hell of a lot more stashed away somewhere. I’d tried to talk to Daryl about it, but anything concerning Avery seemed to be a sore spot with him. Not that I could blame him with the way Avery was popping up every few days.

Nancy and the stoop ladies speculated that Avery had hit the lotto and was trying to hide it from me until the divorce was final. I could definitely see him doing that, but when I searched the New York State records for recent lottery winners, his name was nowhere to be found. I would have to see about Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania too. I’m not ashamed to say that I was checking because if he hit the lotto, I damn sure wanted my half, no matter how weird he was acting.

I glanced at the clock and realized I didn’t have time to be worrying about whether Avery was hiding assets. I was already late getting
off to work. I made one last sweep of the room to make sure I hadn’t left anything behind, then rushed to the door. If I was lucky, I’d still be able to catch the bus.

Before I could turn the handle, there was a loud banging. I screamed as I opened the front door to see five uniformed police officers and a few plainclothes cops standing there with guns drawn, pointed at me. My hand flew to my breast, trying to keep my heart from beating out of my chest.

One of the plainclothes cops grabbed me and slammed me against the hallway wall and the rest of them stormed my apartment.

“What’s going on?” I asked with tears falling from my eyes. I’d never been so scared in my entire life. I received no answer from the cop who kept me pinned with my face to the wall.

I heard, “Clear!” coming from inside my apartment, and only then was I turned around to face the officers who’d come back out.

“Sorry, Miss. We didn’t mean to scare you,” one of the suited men said. “I’m Detective Wilson. We’re looking for Avery Mack.”

“Avery? He’s—he’s not here.” I’d been expecting them to say they were at the wrong place. It had even crossed my mind for a second that maybe they’d meant to bust into Daryl’s apartment, but no way did I think that they were looking for my soon-to-be ex-husband. I couldn’t imagine what they wanted with him. Maybe he’d seen or heard something. At this point, I still wasn’t putting two and two together.

“Are you Mrs. Mack?”

“Yes,” I whispered as it started to dawn on me that Avery might not have won the lottery after all.

“Well, Mrs. Mack, we have a warrant for your husband’s arrest, along with a search warrant for your apartment.” He looked toward one of the other men, who removed a piece of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and showed it to me. I saw the word
warrant
on it and Avery’s name, but how in the hell was I supposed to know a real warrant from a fake one? I didn’t have any experience with this type of thing.

I took a breath and gathered enough courage to speak up. “Well,
like I said, Avery isn’t here. He moved out. He doesn’t live here anymore.”

“We’re still gonna go ahead and execute the search warrant.” The one who spoke this time was much more of a hard-ass. He got in my face and growled, “Mrs. Mack, let me warn you that if—”

I raised my hand, cutting him off quick. “Oh, no need to warn me. By all means, do what you gotta do. Search your heart out.” I was not about to have them accuse me of being uncooperative, or even worse, of hiding Avery. I’d been a ride-or-die chick all my life, but if it came down to me or Avery, he was ass out. Whatever kind of mess he was wrapped up in now, he was on his own the day he asked me for a divorce.

As I moved out of the way, the cops began to file back into my apartment.

I leaned against the wall, folded my arms across my chest, and waited. The hallway was starting to get crowed with nosy neighbors. How embarrassing. Even Daryl was standing in front of his door. I wished he would come over and place his arm around me or something, but I understood his reluctance with him being on house arrest.

Turning to one of the cops who waited in the hall with me, I asked, “What did Avery do? What are y’all looking for?”

One of the suited-up men looked to the other for approval to answer my question. Once given the nod, he said, “Mrs. Mack, your husband is wanted for questioning in relation to a string of eighteen armed robberies.”

I wanted to laugh. Eighteen robberies? Even if they had the right man, Avery hadn’t been gone long enough to commit eighteen robberies. And as much trouble as he had paying his share of the bills when we were together, he damn sure wasn’t robbing anybody then. I told the cop, “Obviously you’ve got the wrong man. Avery’s been working at the furniture store, barely making enough to pay his share of the bills around here for the past two years. He just finally got a promotion.”

The cop corrected me. “Until he quit under duress.”

“Avery quit his job?” I asked.

“As a matter of fact, we believe his former employer to be one of his victims. There’s no question it was an inside job. Only a person who worked at the store would have known they keep that kind of cash on a Sunday or where they kept the safe.”

“And know the surveillance system,” the other cop chimed in.

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I shook my head, which was already rattling from everything the authorities were telling me.

Oh, God,
I thought as reality finally set in.
That’s where the money came from. And that’s why he didn’t want me to deposit the money… Oh, shit! The money’s in there!

All of a sudden, I didn’t want them going through my apartment anymore. “Um, is this going to be quick? I’m already late for work.”

“It might be a good idea if you call in,” an officer suggested.

“Yes, okay, sure.” I sighed, knowing there was no way out of this. How the hell could Avery be so stupid?

I went into the kitchen and called my boss with the excuse that I had a stomach virus. It might have been a lie, but I sure did feel sick to my stomach as I sat at the kitchen table, waiting for them to finish their search. The whole time I sat there, I was praying none of the cops would look in the cookie jar, where I’d rolled up the cash and hidden it under a layer of Chips Ahoy.

My prayers were answered when a detective finally said, “We do thank you for your cooperation, Mrs. Mack.”

“No problem at all,” I said as I signed the form he’d given me, listing the items they were taking as evidence. The cookie jar was not among them.

“And Mrs. Mack, if you hear from your husband, please let him know that it’s in his best interest to turn himself in. If we find him, it could get… messy.”

The police weren’t out of the apartment a good minute before I picked up my phone to call Avery, not sure if I was going to warn him or cuss his ass out. I would decide that when I heard his voice. I didn’t finish dialing, though, because there was a knock at the door. I threw the phone down as if it were on fire, certain that it was the cops at my door again. If I opened the door with the phone in my hand, they
might think I was helping Avery to elude them. I’d watched enough
Law & Order
to know that wasn’t good.

I straightened myself out and took in a deep breath as I went to open the door. Through the peephole I saw Daryl, and every muscle in my body relaxed. I unlatched the door and collapsed in his arms. All the tears I’d been holding back were pouring down my face now, soaking his shirt.

“What the hell is going on? What was five-o doing here?” He closed the door, then took my trembling hand and walked me over to the couch.

“It’s Avery. The police are after him. They say he’s been doing armed robberies.” Even as I said it, I still couldn’t believe it, but somehow Daryl wasn’t at all surprised.

“Yeah, I guess it all makes sense now,” he said.

“What makes sense?”

“The new clothes, the new car—and the gun he damn near pulled on me the other day.”

“What gun?

“The other day when he was here, Avery threatened me with a gun.”

This was getting stranger by the second. Had I ever really known my husband? “You didn’t tell me that.”

“I’m a big boy,” Daryl said. “I can take care of myself. But I wasn’t about to push him, because he had the look.”

“The look? What look?”

“I really can’t explain it, Connie, other than to say in the street, people carry guns every day, but most of them are just for show because the person doesn’t have the guts to use it.” He pointed at his eyes. “Other people don’t care. It’s like they’re dead already and they don’t have anything to lose. You can see it in their eyes. Avery didn’t have those eyes when I first met him, but he does now.”

I started to cry again because I knew that what he was saying was true. I had seen a change in Avery, and now Daryl was saying he had noticed it too. Avery was in serious trouble.

“Oh no.” I stood up and started pacing. “I need to call him.”

“Whoa, hold up.” Daryl stood up. “You can’t just pick up the phone and call him. You don’t know if your phone is tapped.”

I took in Daryl’s words. As crazy as they sounded, I realized they could be true. “You’re absolutely right,” I agreed. “I’ll go find him and tell him in person.”