Ride or Die

by Solomon Jones

  “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 pro
secutor 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.

  Sarah thought back twenty years, and saw herself sitting at her mother’s kitchen table, listening to her go on about how Sarah had just gotten her life together, and how she was taking an incredible risk in joining a family like the Andersons. She remembered that talk like it was yesterday. It was that talk that convinced her that she should marry John. Years after that fateful talk, she’d shared her mother’s sentiments with her husband, and he’d apparently shared them with Aunt Margaret.

  “Yes, I do remember that,” Sarah said. “It was a turning point for me.”

  “I guess it was,” the old woman said. “I imagine if somebody tried to tell me about my future husband’s family being drug dealers and murderers, I wouldn’t want to listen, either. ‘Cause when you love somebody, can’t nobody tell you nothin’ about ‘em. And if they do, that just make you love ’em even more.”

  Sarah looked up at Lynch, who was standing there listening to the old woman confirm what he’d tried not to believe.

  “Keisha just like you, Sarah. She come from a preacher’s family, and she done spent her whole life tryin’ to do right. She told me she knew Jamal from when they was little. He was the first boy she ever kissed. And she loved him ever since then.”

  “Why didn’t she tell me anything about that?” Sarah asked, confused.

  “Same reason you ain’t tell your parents everything you did,” Aunt Margaret said with a sad smile.

  “This isn’t about me, Aunt Margaret,” Sarah snapped.

  The old woman reared back, surprised at Sarah’s attitude.

  “I know it ain’t about you,” she said. “It ain’t about me, either, Sarah. It’s about Keisha’s choice. I tried to tell her that boy wasn’t no good for her, even told her ’bout what his father did to my brother. But she ain’t wanna hear that.”

  “She wasn’t afraid?” Sarah asked.

  Aunt Margaret tried to figure out a way to make her understand, just as Keisha had made her understand.

  “Sarah,” she said, speaking in hushed, motherly tones, “I think Keisha just tired. She wanna live without worryin’ ’bout what anybody think about her.”

  “But she’s out there with a murderer,” Sarah said.

  “She don’t think so,” the old woman said. “She said the boy ain’t do it, and that’s why they runnin’. She don’t wanna see him go to jail for somethin’ he ain’t do.”

  “If that’s what she believes, she could come back and tell the police that,” Sarah said frantically. “She doesn’t have to stay out there with him.”

  “She love the boy, Sarah. And he said he loved her, too. And when they said it, I could feel it down in my soul.”

  “So you let Keisha go out on the streets with him because you thought you felt something?” Sarah said in disbelief.

  “Sarah, I couldn’t have stopped her if I wanted to,” Aunt Margaret said gently. “I’m ninety years old, and I’m blind. I’m gettin’ weaker all the time. But they gettin’ stronger, ’cause they love each other.”

  “I just want her to come home,” Sarah said, sounding anguished. “I just want to know she’s all right.”

  Lynch watched the old woman and saw in her face that there was a conviction to her actions. She believed she’d done the right thing in helping them. And when she spoke again, he understood why.

  “I done learned a few things in my life, Sarah,” she said, her soft voice growing louder with each word. “And one o’ the things I learned is that you might only get one chance in life to really love somebody. The only one who should be able to take that chance away is God.”

  The old woman smiled and squeezed Sarah’s hand. “I ain’t God, Sarah. And neither is you. Let the child be.”

  Sarah looked around at Kevin Lynch, then back at her husband’s aunt. “I’m not trying to take away her chance to love somebody, Aunt Margaret. I just want to know where she is.”

  “I can’t help you there,” Aunt Margaret said. “But I do know this. Keisha growin’ up and tryin’ to find her own way. You was a preacher’s daughter, just like she is, and you tried to find your way, too.”

  “But I came back,” Sarah said.

  “And she will, too,” Aunt Margaret shot back.

  Then her face softened, and she reminded Sarah of the reason why her daughter would eventually return to her roots.

  “Bring up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he won’t depart from it,” she whispered.

  At that, Sarah dropped her eyes and began to weep. Aunt Margaret put her hand against her face and wiped her tears.

  “You got to believe God, Sarah. You got to believe he can take care o’ Keisha better than you and John ever could.”

  Sarah wiped her eyes, patted Aunt Margaret’s hand, and stood up.

  And as she and Lynch left the room and walked back down the hallway toward his office, Lynch received a phone call.

  Keisha and Jamal had carjacked another vehicle, and an officer had been injured in a pursuit.

  Homicide detectives were already on the scene along with district officers, and Acting Commissioner Dilsheimer was en route.

  Though their victims had provided fresh descriptions that were already being broadcast on police radio, the two of them had escaped once again.

  14

  Jamal and Keisha sat in the back room of the bar on Kensington Avenue as the owner looked Jamal in the eye and told him everything that Keisha had made him forget.

  Joe Vega, an old white man with a pockmarked face and a nose that had been flattened by too many bar fights, wore his white hair slicked back in the style of days gone by and walked with a slight limp. But his knowledge of the streets was as fresh as that of an eighteen-year-old. And today, it was much better than Jamal’s.

  Keisha listened along with Jamal as Joe voiced the very things that Frank Nichols would have, if he were there. Jamal took it all in because, if he’d learned anything from his father, it was that Joe Vega was like family, and he was to be trusted above anyone else whom Frank dealt with.

  Frank’s relationship with the old man had begun ten years before, when they were cellmates in Graterford State Prison. Frank did a year with Joe before he was acquitted at trial for a murder in which the witnesses disappeared. Joe wasn’t as fortunate. He was found guilty of armed robbery, and ended up doing the minimum of a five- to ten-year sentence.

  But the two stayed in touch. And during those years that Joe remained there, Frank regularly sent money, and accepted the occasional collect call. When Joe got out, he looked Frank up, and Frank helped him to open a bar. The place was nothing fancy, but it was enough to pay the bills and keep Joe out of jail.

  Over the years, whenever things got too hot in North Philly, Frank went to Joe
’s bar to conduct the transactions necessary to keep his drug business flourishing. Million-dollar deals had taken place in the back of Joe’s seedy little establishment. And whenever they did, Frank was always sure to pay Joe a little something off the top.

  Joe never forgot that. And so, when he heard about Jamal’s supposed involvement in the police commissioner’s murder, he expected Jamal to come to him, because he knew that the police would have all of Frank’s places staked out.

  Now, as Jamal sat before him with Keisha by his side, Joe paced in front of the two of them, asking the one question that had plagued him since he’d heard the news.

  “Why?” he asked, his face twisted in anguish. “Why would you shoot the police commissioner? Are you outta your mind, Jamal? Or don’t you even have one?”

  “I didn’t do it,” Jamal answered calmly.

  “Bullshit! They’ve got your picture all over the television. Everybody in Philadelphia knows what you look like. You and your little girlfriend here. She’s gonna get you jammed, you know. You do know that, don’t you?”

  “I’m willin’ to take my chances.”

  “Are you? Well, let me tell you this, Jamal. They said on the news that they’ve been holdin’ your father for questioning for the last hour. Nola, too.”

  For the first time, Jamal began to look worried. But then he thought about the way he’d disobeyed his father’s orders. And he began to think that he was better off with his father in jail than he was with his father on the outside.

  He knew what his father would tell him to do. He would tell him to keep running. And Jamal intended to do just that.

  “Jamal, it’s hot out here right now,” Joe said. “You can still go someplace nice and forget about all this. But you gotta lose the girl.”

  “I can’t do that,” Jamal said matter-of-factly.

  “Why?”

  “’Cause I love her.”

  Keisha looked at Jamal, grateful that he could embrace their love so easily. The two of them clasped hands, their fingers interlocked with one another.