Ride or Die

by Solomon Jones

Keisha turned and looked at him. He was even more handsome without the hair spilling against his cheeks. As she stared into his eyes, she found herself imagining him with all his other coverings removed.

  Jamal saw the lust in her eyes, and fought to keep it out of his own.

  “I got a friend ‘cross town who can help us,” he said, looking around. “I just don’t know how we gon’ get to him.”

  “First, you gotta get outta here,” the old woman said. “But you gotta change first. Go upstairs and get you some fresh clothes out the closet. Your uncle’s clothes still up there, Keisha, so it should be somethin’ up there to fit Jamal. You can put on one o’ my Sunday dresses and a hat or somethin’.”

  “Then what?” Keisha asked.

  “Then the two o’ y’all gon’ take a walk.”

  Lynch had his detectives do a second sweep of the projects. But he did so knowing that they’d be hard-pressed to find anything in such a place.

  These projects, with their neat, two-story houses and quiet walks and driveways, looked nothing like the high-rise buildings he knew. But Lynch had the eerie feeling that its brick walls and pothole-ridden asphalt held the same kinds of secrets that had destroyed generations in his old housing project.

  As detectives and uniformed police went door-to-door with pictures of Jamal Nichols, Lynch went to the management office and knocked.

  A frightened-looking older woman cracked the door.

  “What do you want?” she said with an attitude.

  Lynch pulled his badge. “A little touchy, aren’t we, Miss …”

  “Bagwell,” the woman said, exhaling and opening the door as she stepped back to allow Lynch inside. “My name is Miss Bagwell.”

  “Lieutenant Kevin Lynch, Homicide.”

  The woman’s face twitched as she smiled nervously. “I’m sorry I was a little rude. I guess I’m just used to residents coming here and harassing me.”

  She shook her head. “Their rent is a couple dollars a month, and they won’t pay it. Then when they get an eviction notice, they wanna come here and curse me out. I guess I should expect that, though. They’re all that way.”

  Lynch looked at her for a long moment.

  “I grew up in the projects, Ms. Bagwell,” he said with an edge to his voice. “Some people are like that, some aren’t. But if I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that it takes a lot to survive when you’ve got everybody looking down on you.”

  Ms. Bagwell started to respond, but thought better of it. Instead, she put on her glasses, in the hope that he couldn’t see the embarrassment in her eyes.

  “So I see you’ve got officers going door-to-door,” she said, changing the subject. “What’s going on?”

  “There’s a murder suspect on the loose,” Lynch said. “We think he may be hiding somewhere nearby.”

  “Well, he’s not in my office, if that’s what you wanted to know,” she said, going to her desk and shuffling through papers as if to dismiss him.

  “Actually, I wanted to look through the names of the residents. I was thinking he might have come here because he knows someone who lives here.”

  “I’d have to call down to the main office to get permission,” she said without looking up.

  “Ms. Bagwell,” Lynch said, moving a step closer to her. “You’ve made it clear that you don’t care about these people. But I do. Now, there’s a murderer on the loose, and I’m not gonna sit here and let him kill somebody else because you wanted to put me through a bunch of red tape. Give me the list of residents. Now.”

  The woman swallowed hard, reached into her desk, and gave it to him.

  Lynch snatched it and began going down the list of names.

  “Were there any names in particular you were looking for?” Ms. Bagwell asked timidly.

  “Nichols,” he said, while continuing to scan the list. “People with the last name of Nichols.”

  The woman thought for a moment. “There isn’t anyone here by that name.”

  He finished scanning the list and sighed in frustration. Then he thought of the strange relationship between Keisha and Jamal, and turned to Ms. Bagwell.

  “How about Anderson?” he said.

  She shook her head no.

  “Okay,” he said, handing the list to her and walking toward the door.

  She stood at the desk and ran down the list once more, then spotted a name that she recognized.

  “Lieutenant?” she said.

  Lynch turned around.

  “There’s a Margaret Jackson on this list. Really nice old woman I check up on every now and again. She has a nephew named Anderson. John Anderson, I think. She talks about him all the time.”

  Lynch’s eyes lit up. “What unit is she in?”

  “Twelve-C,” she said, pointing out the window. “It’s up that first walkway on your left.”

  The stooped old man leaned heavily on his aluminum walker as he plodded toward Frankford Avenue from the projects. With a canvas shopping bag dangling from one of the walker’s handles, he looked as if he was on his way to the nearby supermarket.

  This was the time of day when the neighborhood’s seniors normally made such trips. The time of day when the streets were less crowded, and the pace a little slower. But today was different.. With police cars lined up on the avenue and officers going door-to-door, there was obviously something going on.

  It was even more obvious that whatever it was had little or nothing to do with the old man.

  He shuffled closer to Frankford Avenue, looking through the gap between the top of his reading glasses and the brim of his fedora. He paused for a moment to catch his breath. Then he wiped his brow, looked up into the noonday sun, and decided against crossing the avenue.

  Instead, he turned left, past the police cars, and walked toward a nearby Kentucky Fried Chicken. There would be air conditioning there, and he could rest before continuing his trek to the market.

  An old woman in a flower-print dress and straw sun hat had already made her way from the projects to the KFC. She was sitting inside, with a soda on the table, when he made his way over to her.

  The two of them sat there for a few minutes. Then they walked slowly out of the restaurant and toward the drive-through. A few minutes later, they got into the back seat of a green Ford.

  The man who was driving turned left onto Frankford Avenue, looked anxiously at the people in his back seat, and cursed himself for lowering the window when they’d asked him a question.

  “Don’t worry,” Keisha said as she removed her sun hat and pointed the gun at the driver’s head. “We won’t hurt you if you do what we say.”

  Jamal took off the reading glasses he was wearing so that he could see clearly as he looked out the rear window at the police cars still gathered on Frankford Avenue.

  “What do you want us to do?” asked the woman in the passenger seat.

  “Keep drivin’,” Jamal said. “Keep drivin’ ’til we tell you to stop.”

  Lynch left the management office with walkie-talkie in hand, screaming into the handset as he half-ran toward Margaret Jackson’s unit.

  “Dan two-five to Fifteen Command, seal off all entrances to this development, and get me some uniformed officers to Unit Twelve-C!”

  After a few seconds of static, the lieutenant responded.

  “Fifteen Command, okay.”

  The district cars on Frankford Avenue moved out of the tight circle they’d formed around the carjacked Dodge Neon. Engines hummed and spinning lights filled the air as they raced to the various entrances of the development.

  Officers ran in from every direction, converging on Unit 12C with their weapons drawn and their resolve evident. They were going to catch the commissioner’s killer, no matter what the cost.

  Lynch could see them as he ran up the walkway. He knew that he only had a few minutes to gain control of the situation. If he didn’t, there would be bloodshed. And there’d been enough of that already.

  He signaled to two of h
is detectives who’d entered the projects with him, and ordered them to take four officers each and post them in the driveway and at the back door of the woman’s home. He took four more officers with him, and approached the front of the house.

  “Fifteen Command,” he said into his radio. “I need officers in position at both ends of that driveway behind this unit.”

  “Fifteen Command, okay.”

  Lynch watched as the officers moved into position, then he drew his weapon and signaled to three officers to take the right side of the door. He and the other officer took the left side.

  Taking a deep breath, Lynch knocked on the door. There was no answer, so he knocked again. When there was no response, he took out his radio.

  “Dan two-five to Dan two-six,” he said to the detective posted at the back door. “Send two guys upstairs. Have two check the kitchen. You meet me in the living room. We go on three.”

  “Dan two-six, okay.”

  Lynch held his gun aloft in his right hand, counted down three seconds with his left, and stood back as one of the cops kicked the door open.

  The five of them rushed into the darkened living room with their weapons held out in front of them. As they did so, the kitchen door burst open, and five more officers rushed in through the back.

  There was shouting and rumbling footsteps as the cops fanned out through the house, checking every room for Keisha and Jamal.

  The detective from the back door met Lynch in the living room. The two of them checked every corner of the room before their eyes came to rest on a frail, dark figure in a chair.

  It took a few moments for Lynch’s eyes to adjust. But when they did, he saw that it was the old woman.

  “Mrs. Jackson?” Lynch said, sounding perplexed.

  “That’s right.”

  The officers upstairs sounded the all-clear, and Lynch and the detective lowered their weapons.

  Lynch went to the windows and raised the shades, then reached over to the wall and flipped the light switch so he could get a better look.

  “I’m Detective Kevin Lynch, Homicide,” he said, walking toward her.

  He stopped at the severed dreadlocks arranged in a pile in the middle of the floor. Bending down, he picked one of them up.

  “I guess I don’t need to ask whose hair this is,” he said, dropping it into her lap.

  The old woman felt the lock of hair and smiled. “I suspect you don’t have to ask me nothin’. The way y’all came bustin’ in here, you must have it all figured out.”

  Lynch bent down in front of her, looked into her eyes, and saw that she was blind. But in spite of her blindness, her stare was far from vacant.

  “The only thing I know is that Keisha came here because she knew you would protect her,” Lynch said.

  “Protect her from what?”

  “Herself. She’s obviously not thinking rationally. If she was, she wouldn’t be running with a murderer.”

  The old woman folded her arms. “She ain’t did nothin’ wrong.”

  “You don’t know that! You only know what she told you. And if, by chance, she is charged with something, then you’ll be the one who protected her. You know what they call that, don’t your?”

  The old woman didn’t answer.

  “They call it obstruction of justice. And it’s a crime.”

  “All I know is, she ain’t did nothin’ wrong, and she ain’t here.”

  “But she was here, and so was Jamal Nichols,” Lynch said.

  Margaret Jackson sat back in her chair, and it was clear that she wasn’t intimidated. So Lynch tried to appeal to her sense of reason.

  “Look, just tell me where they are now. If you do that, we can avoid any charges that could be filed against you.”

  Keisha’s great-aunt pursed her lips. “Honey, I’m ninety years old. You think a judge gon’ put me in jail?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I think.”

  “Now that’s the smartest you done said yet. It don’t matter what you think. I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ about my great-niece, no matter what you think, no matter what you say, no matter how you feel. So if you call yourself ready to lock me up, go ‘head and do it now, ’cause I ain’t tellin’ you nothin’.”

  Before Lynch could respond, an officer walked down the steps with Keisha and Jamal’s clothing in his hand.

  “Lieutenant Lynch, I found these in the bathroom,” he said as he handed over the clothes. “There was a big mess in the bedroom, too, clothes all over the place. Looks like they might have changed before they left.”

  Lynch quickly examined the clothes and saw that they were the outfits that had been taken from the prostitutes in Kensington.

  He turned to one of his detectives. “Have Housing Police secure this place, and take Mrs. Jackson down to headquarters. Have someone call Keisha Anderson’s parents, too, and get them down to Homicide. Maybe they can get the old woman to talk.”

  Lynch got on the radio and relayed the message that Keisha and Jamal had last been seen in Frankford, that they were clothed differently, and that Jamal had cut his hair.

  The police would have to depend on their facial features and body types to describe them, which meant that the chances of catching them had just grown that much slimmer.

  Sarah Anderson sat stoically on her couch, listening to life go on around her.

  The sounds of little girls outside, playing double Dutch on the sidewalk, crept in through her living room windows and reminded her of both the little girls she’d lost: her daughter, and herself.

  Sarah sat and wondered what it would be like to know the joy she should have as a daughter, wife, and mother.

  She’d never experienced it. And she often wondered if she ever would. Was there more to life than striving for goals that one could never reach?

  Sarah didn’t know anymore. All she knew was that the very things that should have brought her joy brought her misery. And the very people she loved were the ones who hurt her the most. The pattern extended back to her childhood, and the man whom she idolized above anyone else—her father.

  She’d spent most of her days running from the legacy of her father—the preacher who’d raised her to seek perfection.

  “Who can find a virtuous woman?” she whispered to herself, recalling the Bible verse that her father often read to her as a child.

  As she thought of the rest of the passage, and the value of such a woman being greater than that of precious gems, she overheard the little girls outside, shouting vulgarities within earshot of the church. And she answered the question for herself.

  “No one can find a virtuous woman,” she said while shaking her head sadly. “Not even me.”

  As she got up to lower the window, to drown out the sounds filtering in from the street, Sarah reflected on how much the world had changed since her youth.

  She could still remember little girls wearing lace gloves and white dresses to church, children respecting the presence of adults, and cleanliness being next to godliness.

  Now there was no respect, for self or for others. People lived in filth. And children ran amok with little regard for any adult, including their own parents.

  Yes, things had changed. But Sarah wasn’t ready to criticize the world for what it had become. In truth, she had changed, too. And she wasn’t about to apologize for the transformation.

  Like her own daughter, she had grown up as the only child of a pastor and his wife. Reverend Henry Fuller was a dynamic preacher whose life revolved around his ministry. Sarah’s mother, Ruth Fuller, had given her life to the ministry as well. But her personality wasn’t as strong as her husband’s. She tended to fade into the background. As beautiful and intelligent as she was, she somehow seemed plain next to her husband. More than anything, she was his servant—a woman to be pitied rather than revered.

  Still, their West Philadelphia church was the center of a community—the place where people went to be healed and energized, rebuilt and refocused. And Sarah had been an integral
part of the culture there.

  She was a junior usher, a member of the youth choir, a junior trustee, and a pastor’s aide. She was Reverend Fuller’s little girl, and she was willing to do anything to win the approval of the man whose approval was sought by everyone. Some days she thought she’d won it. But on most days, she knew that she hadn’t.

  Growing up listening to fiery sermons in which her father chastised his parishioners for their shortcomings while urging them to repent for their sins, she lived her childhood walking on eggshells in an attempt to live up to every word she’d ever heard her father preach. By the time she reached adolescence, she believed that her life should be perfect. And she believed that his should, too.

  She quickly realized that she could never achieve the perfection that she so desperately sought. So she stopped trying, and her life went into a tailspin.

  By the time she reached high school, Sarah had quietly become the opposite of everything she’d ever tried to be. From Monday through Saturday, she drank and smoked, used profanity, and dated men. But on Sunday morning, she was the innocent little girl her father had always imagined her to be. She brought him water after his sermons, and sang solos on second Sundays. And regardless of the things that happened to her while she walked the fine line between the church and the world, she always hid her dark side, out of respect for her father.

  But late one Sunday evening, after the parishioners had gone, she walked into his office to ask him a question about the passage he’d preached from that morning, and saw him in the throes of passion with a woman she didn’t know. She was devastated at learning that her father was human, just like the people to whom he preached. She carried that hurt for years.

  Through every triumph and every defeat, through every hurt and every joy, she always remembered that the man she’d trusted the most, the man she’d always idolized, had disappointed her in a way that she could never quite forgive.

  But in spite of the terrible pain her father had inflicted, she married a man much like him, because her father was the only example of manhood she’d ever seen up close. She didn’t know of any other type of man. And so she didn’t know what else to look for in a man.