Tough Lessons

by Chris Freeman

  Was that what he was supposed to do to Brigitte? He didn’t think so. In fact, he was a little annoyed at her himself, for he had never promised her anything more than friendship. Sure, there had been some harmless flirting and they spent time together outside of school hours but he had never even asked her out on a date—the shooting gallery didn’t count, nor did coffee afterward in the crumbling diner. Now, apparently, she felt hurt and rejected. Since when did it become bad manners to not sleep with a woman, damn it?

  “Always open doors for a lady,” his father had counselled him when he was a boy. “Pull out her chair when she wants to sit at the table and stand up when she wishes to leave the room,” he had added gravely. His father was big on old-school manners but he had never once said to Joseph, “And above all make sure you go to bed with them whenever they want, or you might hurt their feelings!”

  So what was he supposed to do now? Drive back over there, knock on her door, and apologize or belatedly climb into bed with Brigitte and run the risk of hurting her further when things didn’t work out, as was entirely likely?

  In truth, he couldn’t see beyond his current situation right now. Even allowing for the crummy job and apartment, the knife-carrying son, the seriously injured friend, and the unsolved murder that Yomi was caught up in, he had enough to contend with, without attempting a relationship as well. Brigitte De Moyne was probably cursing him right now but what could he do about it? Everyone has their problems.

  17

  There was no moon, so Joseph parked his cab in a blind spot by the wreckage of a burned-out garage. From here he could not be seen but he could easily make out the row of vandalized lockups Eddie had been staking out when he was beaten senseless. It was a bitterly cold night and Joseph was unable to leave the cab’s engine running so instead he had taken a thick woollen blanket from his apartment and wrapped it round himself. It was nowhere near sufficient. After more than two hours, Joseph could no longer feel his feet and he had grown tired of watching his breath come out before him in little white clouds that misted up the windscreen of the Crown Victoria.

  He had put his phone on silent setting and the little screen suddenly lit up on the dashboard with an incoming call. It was Cyrus, phoning yet again to see if Joseph had decided to talk to his manager about the concierge job. Joseph turned off his phone.

  This was the third night he had put aside some precious hours to watch the lockups and there had been no sign of the Crips’ Killers or anyone else. He was about to give up for the night and maybe forever when an ancient pickup truck rattled round the corner. As it drew nearer, Joseph could see that there were boxes of stolen electrical items tied down on the flatbed with lengths of rope, only partially covered with a greasy length of tarpaulin. The gang didn’t seem to care too much if anyone saw them or their precious cargo.

  When the vehicle drew to a halt, the doors of the double-cab van opened and out stepped a small gang of tough-looking girls, though that seemed an inappropriate word to describe these youthful gangsters. They all had a wild and wired look and there was precious little about them that was feminine in Joseph’s eyes. Probably high on something, he thought, to give them the courage to go ahead with their heists. Joseph understood how this kind of operation might work. All it needed was someone on the inside. Some low-paid worker who could keep his or her eye open down at a warehouse or the dockside and supply a tip-off when a suitably heavy-laden lorry or container was coming in. Then either someone was paid off and a small percentage of a large haul was ripped off, or the gang could use force and take the lot. Joseph suspected it would be more likely that this gang would have a contact in a low-key security position, someone who could leave doors open or steal keys for copying down at a yard like De Luca’s

  They had trained the headlights of the truck on one of the few lockups that still had a working door on it. This way they could see what they were doing as they began to unload their bounty. It allowed Joseph to watch them closely in the beams. There were five girls dressed in a similar street style, all leather jackets, blue-and-white bandanas, and a couple of baseball caps turned back to front. They moved quickly, efficiently, like they’d done this often enough before and knew what they were doing. Joseph counted the boxes and it seemed like a pretty good haul. The large, flat cardboard ones looked like plasma TV sets and the smaller, heavier loads that took longer to offload had to be computers. Joseph wondered casually who they were ripping off to get all this stuff, but that wasn’t why he was here. He waited until they had almost completed their task and then he calmly climbed out of the car and strode right up to the gang.

  Joseph stepped from the shadows and said softly, “I’m looking for Rihanna Letts.”

  They all started and one of them cried, “Motherfucker!” like he had almost given her a heart attack.

  “She ain’t here,” said the girl who had recovered the quickest, the one who seemed to carry the most authority in the group. By the way she spoke up, with no fear of contradiction, Joseph assumed she was the leader. He also recognized her face. She had been the swaggering, hip-rolling little madam who had told the assembled parents and teachers of Antoinette Irving, “We done with you.”

  “You need to get a new line, Rihanna,” said Joseph. “Your momma’s already worn that one out.”

  “Who the fuck are you?” she challenged him.

  The other girls adopted threatening poses like they were all set to rush this stranger who was threatening their leader.

  “Just a guy with some questions,” he said.

  “About what?”

  “’Bout an old man who got his head busted open right here on this very spot by a bunch of gals around your age.”

  Rihanna laughed. “He told you then.” And she sneered. “Didn’t think he would ever tell nobody ’bout that—too shamed. I bet that interfering piece of shit wasn’t expecting to get his white ass bitch-slapped like that when he came down here. You looking for the same treatment?”

  “No, I’m just looking for some answers.” The girls were all watching him intently, waiting on a cue from their leader. “I want to know why Macy Williams wasn’t with you that night, the night you put my friend Eddie in the hospital.”

  “Mr., have you got a gun?” she asked incredulously. “You must have, you come down here talking to me like that. I ain’t got to tell you shit. You’ve got some balls, on our turf, ’dissing us like this.”

  “This ain’t your turf, Rihanna. I live here, so do a lot of other people, and they are getting tired of you, your friends, and all of your bullshit. Eddie tried to tell you that but you didn’t get the message. I’m telling you the same thing. Close your operation in this project before someone shuts it down for you.”

  “You?” she sneered. “No way.”

  “I won’t need to, believe me, and that ain’t even why I’m here.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “I just want to know about Macy Williams and why she isn’t in your gang no more.”

  “Fuck you,” she told him. “I don’t answer no questions from no one. Cops can’t make me, you sure as hell won’t make me.” She was trying real hard to be tough, which was bad news for Joseph because it made her a dangerous person, a leader with a point to prove. “Maybe we should give you some of what your friend got,” she said menacingly and she started to move toward him then. “You want to wake up in the hospital? You want us to stomp your motherfuckin’ head all over here, huh?”

  They were all moving toward him now.

  Joseph had never struck a woman before. He would never even have considered himself capable of such an act until now, but it seemed, as the girls started to walk forward, forming a menacing semicircle around him, that they might not leave him with a choice. Hands were delving into pockets, reaching for hidden weapons. He had to assume there would be knives, homemade coshes, clumsily fashioned knuckle-dusters, the usual paraphernalia of the small-time street gang. They looked like the
y were a close-knit group who would fight ferociously for each other, more like young men than girls, and he would have to treat them accordingly if he didn’t want to end up like Eddie. Joseph stood straight, tall, and unmoving. He puffed out his chest and bunched his hands into fists so they could see them.

  “Just one thing you gotta remember before you start something with me,” he said quietly, very calmly. “I’m no old man,” and he looked her straight in the eye.

  Rihanna hesitated for just a second but it was long enough for Joseph to see the doubt in her eyes. The question was, would she back down in front of her crew?

  “You the guy who called on my momma, ain’t ya?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Upset my kid brother.” Joseph shrugged like it was of no consequence. It didn’t do to show weakness in front of these people. “Said you believed him in the end, though.” Joseph nodded. “Must be the only one thinks he didn’t kill that teacher.”

  “Maybe at first, but the police believe it now. Surprised you ain’t heard—they took Coach Geller into custody, looking to pin Lopez’s death on him.”

  “No!” She said it with glee. “You shitting me, right?” Joseph shook his head. “Was it ’cos you said something to them about him?” Joseph would never normally have taken any credit for that but he realized what she was doing. She was giving herself an out, a reason not to try and take him. Rihanna Letts wasn’t sure she could beat Joseph in a fight and now she needed an excuse to avoid starting one.

  “I came to the same conclusion the police did, around the same time,” he said noncommittally.

  “Then it looks like my brother owes you,” and the gang visibly relaxed around him, stepping down from their collective sense of high alert. “But what’s this shit about Macy? What do you care she ain’t in our crew no more?”

  “Guess you fell out over a boy, huh?”

  “A boy?” She laughed at that and the rest of the gang laughed with her. “No, weren’t no boy. Macy’s into men, not boys. She likes men so much we don’t never see her no more. There was no fight. I didn’t kick her out of the crew. She did that herself. She’s just not around these days.”

  “So that’s why you took your little brother out with you.” And that was all he really needed to know.

  “Where you going?” she asked, as if they had unfinished business to discuss, but he had already turned and was walking back to his cab.

  “Just you make sure you take my advice, Rihanna,” he called back over his shoulder. “Quit using these lockups.”

  “Fuck you, motherfucker!” she screamed after him. “Crips’ Killers gonna git you, you ever come round here again! You going down, you hear!” But Joseph wasn’t listening. He climbed into the cab and got the hell out of there.

  As he drove, his mind went back to the day when he had stood on the line with Brigitte at the football practice, watching Yomi being put through his paces by Coach Geller. Macy Williams had driven by then, tooting the horn of her silver Honda Accord, windows rolled down, and waving like a diva, all blonde hair and attitude. She was making sure everybody could see her, like she was trying to impress somebody. At the time he’d assumed it must have been a boy whose head she was attempting to turn, but it had puzzled him, as the oldest one on the pitch had to be fourteen and she was a good three years older than that. Macy Williams was practically a woman. It was only when Rihanna Letts had said, “Macy’s into men, not boys” that it all fell into place and, in that same instance, Joseph finally knew who had killed Hernando Lopez.

  18

  What was it Marjorie said was the cause of most normal, average, everyday murders? Money and fucking, that’s what. Joseph was about to put that notion to the test.

  The apartment block was quiet when he pulled up outside. It was another cold, late evening and all but the most daring or foolish were safely at home by now, waiting for Letterman. At least he would be indoors tonight, after three cold spells in his car down by the lockups. Joseph had staked out the Crips’ Killers and warned them off. Predictably, they hadn’t listened. His time there had been more than worth it, though. Rihanna Letts didn’t know it but her words last night had just blown the lid off the Hernando Lopez case and she had left Joseph cursing that he had not spotted it sooner.

  He parked his cab in a tiny space, right next to a shiny new Honda Accord in front of a big yellow van with the name of an energy company stencilled on it. Then he walked up to the main door of the building. Merve Williams’s family had a good-sized apartment in the Port Morris Clock Tower, an imposing, five-story, redbrick building that dominated its surroundings. The Bloomberg administration had famously eased New York’s planning restrictions and the tower was one of many old warehouse buildings eagerly bastardized by developers. Now the area known as the Gateway to the Bronx was filling up with wannabe yuppies and local families on the up, like the Williams clan.

  Merve seemed pretty surprised to hear Joseph’s voice on the intercom. “Joseph? It’s a little late.”

  “It’s important, Merve. I need to speak to you. It’s about Macy.”

  There was no response from Merve. The silence had Joseph wondering if the hardware-store owner had decided he didn’t need to speak to anyone at this hour. Perhaps he left him hanging on the doorstep talking to himself. Just as Joseph was about to speak again, he heard the loud, jarring buzz of the automated door, followed by a heavy click as it sprang open to permit him entry.

  The building was new enough to trust the lift and Joseph was greeted by the man himself standing at his front door, which he held open a little reluctantly to admit his unexpected guest. Joseph followed Merve into a small study. The desk light and laptop were already on, so it looked like Merve was working late, balancing his books.

  “As you can see, I’m a little busy right now,” he said hesitantly.

  “This won’t take long. Anyone else in?”

  “My wife’s taken Laura and her brother to see some movie. Macy’s out.” He attempted a rueful smile. “She’s never in. You know kids.” Then he seemed to remember Joseph was an uninvited guest.

  “What’s this about?” Merve was grim-faced as he sat behind his desk. “You said it was something to do with Macy?” He was trying to look surprised.

  “Well, partly.”

  “Either it is or it isn’t, Joseph,” answered Merve irritably.

  “Like I say, Merve, it’s partly about Macy and partly about someone else.”

  “I don’t think I understand.”

  “The part about Macy involves her seeing someone she shouldn’t have been seeing, someone in a position of authority who should have known better than to spend his time chasing after a seventeen-year-old girl.”

  Merve listened to Joseph intently, but his face was a mask. He was giving nothing away. “Now, are you going to tell me that Macy wasn’t seeing one of her teachers, Merve?” Merve straightened, but he did not contradict Joseph. “And are you then going to deny you recently found out about it?”

  “I don’t know who you’ve been listening to, Joseph, and I can’t imagine why you would believe every bit of malicious gossip you hear.”

  “Oh, I talk to a lot of people but this isn’t just gossip.”

  Merve seemed to make a decision then. “I haven’t got time for this,” he said and started to rise from his chair. Evidently he was about to ask Joseph to leave.

  “Fine, I guess I’ll just have to go and talk to Assistant Chief McCavity down at the precinct instead. She always has time to talk, particularly when it’s about a murder case she’s working on.”

  “Murder?” Merve said the word scornfully but he sat right back down. “We both know Macy had nothing to do with that school teacher getting stabbed.”

  “Oh, yes, she did,” said Joseph firmly. “She had everything to do with it.”

  “Now just you wait a minute…”

  “No, you wait,” interrupted Joseph. “Do you want to hear
me out? That way you’ll know everything I know. Or do you want to wait till the cops and the lawyers are involved and you are trying to second-guess them all? Do you really want to run that risk, or would you rather hear all about how your daughter got mixed up in a murder? Do you want to know what I’ve got?”

  Merve snorted. “You just go ahead with your half-assed theories, Joseph. I ain’t stopping you.” And he folded his arms defiantly across his chest.

  “I should have noticed sooner, at the football practice when they arrested Jermaine Letts. You were there with Laura, watching her brother, and you had your car with you, so they didn’t need a ride from their big sister. But along came Macy anyhow, in that hatchback you gave her, sounding the horn and waving so that everybody could see her. I remember thinking at the time she must have been showing off like that to catch the eye of some boy, but they were all younger than her, so why would she want to be there? Unless it wasn’t a boy whose eye she was looking to catch.”

  “Just what are you accusing my daughter of?”

  “An affair,” said Joseph simply. “It’s a strange, old-fashioned word these days and it isn’t illegal, not in this country at any rate, but I guess that’s what you would call it. It’s an affair if she’s having a relationship with a married man, isn’t it? I mean, what would you call it, Merve?”

  Merve stayed silent. Instead, he opened up his desk draw and put a hand in, and for a second Joseph thought he might actually be reaching for a gun. Instead, he brought out a pack of cigarettes and an old silver lighter. He lit himself a cigarette and sat back like he was waiting for the story to continue. Joseph didn’t disappoint him. “Coach Geller admitted to the police that he had a spare set of keys for the school. He shouldn’t have had them and he wasn’t too keen to own up to it, until they accused him of the murder of Hernando Lopez. Finally, he told them he had the keys because of a girl. Not a woman, I remember, but a girl. You would have expected a man of his age to use a more mature word to describe someone he might be having a secret affair with. That is unless the man in question is a teacher and we are talking about a former pupil, who is still only seventeen, then of course ‘girl’ would be the right word.”