by Ponzo, Gary
Back in my office I made a to-do list: talk to the neighbor who saw the kid leave the house the night Shanae was killed; try to confirm Tina’s alibi; find out more about Shanae’s friend, Little D; file appeals and motions. I made a mental note to call Hirschbeck ten times a day, or until he would give us something on that damned audit and agree to check the computers. I still wanted to find out where Cooper was hiding in Philly. If he was, in fact, in Philly. Those tasks, plus various and sundry other matters, would keep my plate full for a while. Full enough to push Ray into the far recesses of my mind.
I picked up the phone, then punched in Duvall’s cell number. When he answered, I said, “How are the Carolinas?”
“Lovely, as always. I’d enjoy it more, if it weren’t for this family business we have to take care of.” He explained that they were cleaning out his mother’s house before she went into an assisted living facility. Mom wasn’t happy about it. I couldn’t blame her.
He sounded tired and frustrated. I listened to him grouse and inserted a supportive “uh huh” now and then. Listening to Duvall’s travails wore me out. I had my own shit to deal with.
When there was a break, I said, “Duvall, I hate to bring up business at a time like this.”
“What do you need?” He sounded relieved.
“Can you recommend an investigator I could use while you’re away? I tried to find Cooper at the Philadelphia address you gave me and struck out.”
I recapped my conversations with Marzetti and Elva McCutcheon. My description of Elva made him laugh.
“Try Alex Kramer,” he said. “She’s in Baltimore. Her number’s listed online. I’ve worked with her. If anyone can find Cooper, she can.”
“Thanks. I’ve got too much going on here to find Cooper myself.” I cradled the receiver on my shoulder and entered Kramer’s name and city into Switchboard.com. “By the way, have you ever heard of a guy named Little D?”
“Little D? Sure. Got a lot of street cred, as they say. Don’t tell me he has something to do with this embezzlement case.”
“No, this is for another matter.” I filled him in on Tina’s situation.
“Little D’s okay. I’ve worked with him whenever I’ve needed information from places in P.G. County where I ain’t quite dark enough to pass for a local. See what I’m saying?”
“So he’s a private investigator?”
“Well, technically, no . . . not licensed. He does favors for people, and he usually gets a little something for his efforts. He could help you find witnesses or do background checks for your murder case—unofficially, of course.”
Oh, good, I thought. Another expense with no receipt. I pondered where to place it on my Schedule C. “Does this Little D have a name?”
“Darius Wilson, Jr. He’s Little D and his dad’s Big D.”
“How far can I trust this guy?”
“Well . . . he won’t double-cross you or do anything you specifically ask him not to do. He may use a few methods you don’t like, but only when he needs to. You have to understand the kind of crowd we’re talking about. They don’t always respond to ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ Tell him you know me. He’ll treat you right.”
“Okay. Long as he doesn’t kill or torture people, I can live with that.”
“Let’s put it this way—I’ve never seen him kill anyone. And I don’t think what he does qualifies as torture so much as persuasion.”
“That makes me feel a whole lot better. Are we talking about breaking thumbs or kneecaps here?”
“He won’t do it, if you specifically ask him not to.” A low current of anxiety surged under my skin. What would this guy do if you gave him no direction?
“I’ll have to watch what I say. Assuming I use him.”
“I’d advise you to. Are you going to canvas the neighborhoods around Suitland all by your lonesome? I mean, some of these folks may have no problem talking to you. But if this involves a girl gang, there may be some you can’t take on alone. When it comes to gangs, a lot of people require the gentle art of persuasion to start talking.” Duvall paused. “And it never hurts to have someone looking out for your back. You’ve blundered into enough dangerous situations in neighborhoods where you wouldn’t expect trouble, so why take any chances in this case?”
“Thanks for pointing that out,” I said. My tone was acidic. I took a deep breath and forced myself to calm down. “I’ll keep it in mind. Nobody in law school told me that my cases might require protection from a knee-breaker named Little D.”
Duvall chuckled. “By the way, don’t let the nickname fool you. Little D is anything but little.”
<><><>
I chose to ignore Duvall’s warning for now and visit Shanae’s neighbor. Before going, I called Hirschbeck again and left another message. Maybe it wasn’t fair to push so hard after the death of one of the company’s own, but my first concern had to be Brad Higgins.
I drove to Hillcrest Heights where Shanae and Tina had lived. The neighborhood of small brick ranchers, paired by common walls, was off Fairlawn Street, not far from Branch Avenue and Iverson Mall—the kind of mall where you wouldn’t find a Lord & Taylor or Nordstrom. A small lawn of half-dead grass and a stump fronted their house. I pictured tiny Shanae firing up a chainsaw and felling the lone tree. So much for those damned leaves.
I went to the house next door to Shanae’s, a clone except that its owner had cared for it. Yellow chrysanthemums grew between a pair of azalea bushes, and a tall maple arched over the lot, its branches like protective arms. The house’s brown shutters appeared freshly painted. A pot of purple and yellow pansies hung outside the front window. A faded green mat with “Welcome!” in white script lay on the front stoop.
I rang the bell and noticed a thin elderly black man raking leaves across the street. He stopped and looked at me then resumed raking. But I caught him shooting me sidewise glances.
A short woman with cocoa-colored skin opened the door as far as it would go with the chain in place and peered at me. She wore a yellow floral housedress and brown cardigan.
“Mrs. Mallory, isn’t it?” I said. I handed her one of my cards. She looked it over with a slightly bemused expression. “I’m representing Tina Jackson. She’s been accused in the, uh, unfortunate death of her mother.”
“Dear God, tell me that isn’t so!” The corners of the woman’s mouth curled down and her brown eyes, like hot fudge sauce, gleamed. Worry lines furrowed her brow.
“Unfortunately, it is. I understand you saw Tina or someone who looked like her leave the house Wednesday night.”
“Well . . . yes, I told the police that. But Tina wouldn’t have killed anyone. I told them that too.”
“What time did this person leave the house?”
“I think it was a little after eight. I’d drifted off in fronta the TV and a noise woke me up. People yelling. At first, I thought it was the TV, but no one was yelling on the program. So I got up and looked out the window,” she said. “That’s when I saw her.”
“Are you sure it was Tina?”
“I couldn’t be sure. But who else would it be, leaving her house at that time?”
“Did you get a good look at her face?”
“Not really.” She squinted. “She wore a skullcap, pulled way low. The collar of her jacket was turned up, so it was kind of hard to see.”
“What made you think it was Tina, if you couldn’t see her face?”
“She was about Tina’s height and her complexion was light, like Tina’s. And, like I said, she was coming outta Tina’s house.”
“Maybe it was a friend?”
“I dunno. Tina don’t bring too many friends over.”
“What else was she wearing?”
“Kind of loose-fitting pants with the jacket. You know, what the kids like to wear.”
“But you couldn’t swear it was Tina. Are you even sure it was a girl?”
“Well, I couldn’t swear it was Tina, no. But I think it was a girl. She was carrying
a purse.”
“Can you describe the purse? Did it look like Shanae’s?”
She paused. “It was one of them satchel purses. I may have seen Shanae carry one, but then you see them all over, you know?”
I saw a ray of hope in this woman’s lack of certainty. She couldn’t positively identify Tina. And whoever it was could’ve been carrying Shanae’s missing purse. Could it have been someone from the gang? It would explain the lack of forced entry, if one of Tina’s friend’s had asked Shanae to let her in. But why would a gang member want to kill Shanae? A chilling possibility crossed my mind. Surely, Tina wouldn’t have asked someone to do it, or even paid them. These days, the notion of kids as hired killers wasn’t beyond the pale.
“I’m sorry, how rude of me.” Mrs. Mallory broke the silence following my plunge into morbid thoughts. “Why don’t you come inside so we can talk.”
“Actually, I didn’t have much more to ask.” But Mrs. Mallory had already scrabbled the chain off its groove and opened the door. She was a plump woman, with graying hair and a round, friendly face, its features only slightly eroded by time and the burdens of living. She gestured for me to come inside.
“Was there anything else you saw that night?” I asked, as she led me to a small living room. We sat on a sofa covered in nubby brown fabric. It sagged under our weight. “Anything at all?”
“Why no.” She wrung her hands as she spoke, as if washing them. “I did see Tina come by earlier that day. I remember thinking she should’ve been in school. Then, I heard her mother yelling at her. These walls are thin. They argued quite a bit . . . .” Her voice trailed off and her expression turned wary. Her words were damaging to Tina. And she looked like she knew it.
“Could you hear what they were saying?”
She shook her head. “Not so I could understand it. They was both cursing a lot. But I couldn’t tell you what it was all about.”
“Anything else you remember about that morning?”
“Tina didn’t stay long. They had words and she left.”
“Did you see Shanae at any point after that?”
She nodded, still scrubbing her hands beneath an invisible tap. “I heard her talking to this man outside. He came by to visit in the afternoon. Some friend of hers with a fancy green car.”
Little D, I thought. “When was that? Do you know how long he stayed?”
“Oh, I couldn’t tell you. I just remember they were outside, talking. It was ’round four. She walked him to his car.”
“You’re sure it was four?”
“Yeah. I remember ’cause my stories were going off.”
“Did you see Shanae at all after that?”
“Not alive. I was the one who . . . found her.” Her lips pursed and her eyes were wet. “God rest her soul,” she said, her voice cracking. “Poor woman. But I’m sure Tina couldn’t have done such a brutal thing.” She dabbed at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I know they didn’t always get along, but Tina was a shy, quiet child. They had words, that’s all.”
I thought about Shanae’s history of anger management problems and Tina saying alcohol fueled her mother’s abusive behavior. It reminded me of the interviews you see on the news, after a murderer is caught. “I can’t believe it,” the neighbors say. “He was so quiet. So nice.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I knocked on a few more doors. Either no one was home or they weren’t answering. I considered what Duvall had said about the barriers to finding information in this neighborhood. He’d given me Little D’s number. I could probably afford to use him. William Jackson had agreed to pay me a healthy retainer plus expenses to defend his niece. Even so, I wasn’t going to fork over money to have someone else do what I could manage on my own—at least, not yet. And, bad as this area was, how much worse could it be than Bed-Stuy in the ’70s?
Rochelle Watson lived on the other side of Iverson Mall, in a cross-hatched network of streets near Marlow Heights Park. Another inside-the-Beltway enclave of old brick houses with big trees. The area wasn’t much different than working-class neighborhoods in other parts of the county. Apart from low-end retail stores on the nearby highway, the prevalence of rust-bucket cars and the worn-around-the-edges look of some residences, you’d never know you were in the ’hood.
As I made my way up the walk, I had the familiar feeling of eyes focused on me. Eyes behind window shades and curtains. Two elderly women in porch rockers had stared as my car cruised by. I peered down the street, to see if they were still watching me. They’d probably gone inside to talk about me. Sure, and the CIA and the FBI were probably monitoring me through field glasses. My paranoia was becoming ridiculous.
The woman who answered my knock looked like she’d just rolled out of bed. And it was almost three o’clock. She could have worked—or possibly, played—nights. She had short, blunt-cut, black hair around a thin face with a sallow complexion. After establishing that she was Tanya Watson, Rochelle’s mother, I introduced myself and asked for Rochelle. She took my card and blinked at it.
“Rochelle ain’t here,” she said, sounding listless.
“Tina Jackson says she was here with your daughter the night Shanae died. Can you verify that?”
“Shanae!” She snorted. “She lucky she lived as long as she did.”
“She could rub a person the wrong way,” I said, in a shameless bid to ingratiate myself.
“Heifer ain’t gonna rub nobody anyway no more.” Her eyelids drooped, as if she were fighting to stay awake. The cause was probably more than sleep deprivation. Tanya had the look of a heroin addict in mid-buzz. Her long-sleeved shirt probably hid track marks.
“Last Wednesday night. Do you remember if Tina was here with Rochelle and some friends?” I wondered what her memory would be worth.
I heard a toilet flush and an older woman, rounder than Tanya, came creaking down the stairs. She walked up behind Tanya and peered over her shoulder, making Tanya appear two-headed.
“My niece ain’t feeling right,” the older woman said. “Could this wait?”
“It okay, Aunt Louise,” Tanya said, pronouncing it “ahnt” in that way that always sounds like an affectation to me. “I’ll talk to her now.” She widened her eyes, as if forcing them open.
Aunt Louise noticed the card Tanya held and snatched it from her. Looking it over, she said, “Well, if you gonna talk, why’on’t you invite this lady inside?”
It felt like déjà vu. Gawks from the neighbors, followed by the once-over at the door, then an invitation inside. I began to regret my decision when I got a good look at the place.
Tanya didn’t share Mrs. Mallory’s neat-as-a-pin housekeeping ways. The women led me down a short hallway, its walls smudged with fingerprints and mysterious brown stains, to a living room crammed with furniture. Along one wall, a green velveteen sofa was wedged up against a blue loveseat, leaving barely enough space for a recliner upholstered in a variation of brown plastic. The Salvation Army rejects faced a large-screen plasma TV. Probably being paid for on the forever-and-a-day installment plan with no payments due the first year. Either that or the TV was so hot, you’d get third-degree burns if you touched it. Roaches scampered up the walls and made drunken circles near the ceiling. I glanced down and caught a few lumbering across the burnt orange carpet.
“Would you like something to drink? Coffee? Water?” Aunt Louise asked in a good-hostess tone.
“No, thanks. I’ll keep this short,” I promised. Real short. I perched on the edge of the brown recliner, poised to stomp any roaches that trespassed near me. “I had asked about last Wednesday. Were Tina and Rochelle here?”
“Yeah, they were. I saw them come in,” Tanya said.
“What time was that?”
“Lemmee think. I think it was before dinner . . . .” Tanya’s eyelids drooped again and she doubled over at the waist, nodding toward her lap. I looked at her aunt, who shook her head. She got up, grabbed Tanya’s shoulders and maneuvered her into a reclining positio
n on the sofa. Tanya offered no resistance. I rose to help and was rebuffed. Leaving Tanya to her narcotic dreams, Louise motioned for me to follow her into the kitchen. The dingy yellow appliances matched the curtains.
Louise lowered herself into a chair next to a speckled Formica-topped table. I took the seat near hers, averting my eyes from the roach convention on the counter and checking my immediate surroundings for strays.
“I’ve begged her to join a program,” Louise said, “but will she? No. She keep shooting up that junk. All I can do is come by when I can and make sure she and the kids are okay.”
You could report her to social services, I thought, but kept quiet. Louise might have viewed it as a betrayal, rather than a way to help Tanya. Besides, if Aunt Louise wasn’t volunteering to raise the kids, who would? And who knows if they would be better off in the system than under the care of their own mother? From my brief observation, it appeared that Tanya was managing with her aunt’s help.
Managing? My inner devil’s advocate piped up. You call that managing when your own daughter is in a girl gang? But I could see the other side too. How is taking her away from her mother going to change that?
I squelched these thoughts and continued questioning the aunt.
“Were you here last Wednesday?” I asked. “Can you tell me if Tina was here with Rochelle and some other girls?”
“I was here, but I didn’t get here ’til late. I come over and had to call 911.”
“Tanya OD’ed?”
“No. She didn’t take her insulin. She was fallin’ out, like she was high, but it was cause o’ not taking her meds. So I call 911 and went with her to the hospital.”
I wondered if that was true or just a story for the medics. “What time was this? Did you see any of the girls?”
She shook her head. “I guess it was a bit after nine. And I didn’t see no girls. If they was here, they was downstairs in Rochelle’s room. But there’s no way to know for sure.”
