by Ponzo, Gary
He pulled himself together and spoke in a controlled voice. “You know, I recall Tina’s mother coming by, claiming one of our employees was involved in some shady business. I wasn’t able to see her at the time. We knew she could be something of a loose cannon. Frankly, we didn’t know whether to take her seriously. Maybe this was what she wanted to talk about.”
My thoughts raced. Maybe Beaufort was another suspect in Shanae’s murder, if he didn’t appear on the DVD during the timeframe in which Shanae was killed. He even fit the description of the “kid” who the neighbor, Mrs. Mallory, saw leaving the house. Light-skinned and built like Tina—around her height and skinny. And he knew the girls were in a gang, so he could have beat up Shanae with the intent to set Tina up. Beaufort might be a viable suspect, if he’d been able to slip away unnoticed during the “festivities.” But I wondered how Shanae had found out about the sex parties.
“Obviously, if this is true,” Thompson continued, “we can’t keep this man on. But I’ll need proof before I can do anything.”
“I can give you a copy of the DVD.”
“I’ll also want to talk to the girls involved in this mess. We will treat this as highly confidential, of course.” He looked at me for confirmation.
“I have to take the disc to the police,” I said. “It’s evidence in other matters. You have my word that I don’t intend to tell anyone else.”
Looking glum, he nodded. I left one of my discs with him, figuring I could get more.
I got in my car and made the short drive to Tina’s. The house was dark. No one answered my knock. Was the house empty? Or was I being ignored? I hoped someone had cleaned up the mess after Shanae was beaten to death. Finding the front door locked, I walked around back. Locked. A shade covered the window. I returned to the front and peered through a crack in the curtains. It was too dark to see.
I knocked at Mrs. Mallory’s to ask if she’d seen Tina recently and struck out. Where was everybody?
Heading to the car, I noticed several black girls, standing around and watching me. I picked out Rochelle. They all wore pink—pink shirts or pink scarves in their hair or around one wrist. They walked toward me, Rochelle in the lead. I counted ten of them—and only one of me.
Her head bowed, Rochelle reminded me of a bull ready to charge. I stared into ten pairs of glaring eyes. I glanced at my watch. “I do believe you ladies are missing class.”
Rochelle fixed me in her crosshairs. “I jus’ talked to Greg. You leave him alone,” she said in a low voice. “You hear me? And you leave Tina alone, too. She ain’t going back to no juvie jail.”
“Rochelle,” I said, holding up my hands. “Wait a second.”
“No, you wait a second,” she snarled. She whipped a straight razor from inside her shirt and snapped it open. “You stay away from them, bitch, or I’ll cut you up.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“Rochelle, listen,” I said, as calmly as I could under the circumstances. “All I want is to help Tina.”
“She was wit’ me all night, okay?” she said, waving the razor in my line of sight. I kept it in view, prepared to duck if she lashed out. “Don’t matter ’zactly where or what we was doing. She was wit’ me.”
I tried to swallow and could not. While my mouth was bone dry, my armpits were soaked. “I want to believe that, Rochelle. But the cops may think you’re lying to protect her.”
“I tole’ you, I don’t wanna be draggin’ Greg into this.”
“It’s too late,” I said. “I already spoke to Mr. Thompson about him.”
“Sheee-it.” She stopped waving the razor, but kept it raised. “Now I’ma have to deal with Mr. Tom, too? Thanks, bitch. You a real help.”
“What Greg was doing is wrong. And it’s illegal. Do you have any idea how serious it is?”
Rochelle looked at me like I was crazy. “So what about it?” She waved the razor, as she spoke. Every move sent shivers up my spine. “Ain’t no thing. We had a sweet deal going wit’ Greg. We was paid to do that shit.”
So some of the embezzled money had trickled down to Rochelle and the gang. And I bet it was a trickle by the time it reached them.
“I’m sorry, Rochelle, but someone had to shut him down.”
She gave an exaggerated shrug. “Fine. I guess we’ll go back to selling drugs and stolen credit cards for money. It’s riskier an’ more work, but at leas’ we won’t be havin’ sex,” she said with mock horror.
Telling Rochelle that the gig was up seemed to defuse her anger. Maybe enough that she would answer some questions. “If you really want to help Tina,” I said, “I could use some information. There was a tall, skinny kid here, around eight o’clock the night Tina’s mother was killed. The neighbor thought it was Tina, but she was with you at the time. It might have been a boy. Or even a short adult. If it was a kid, I don’t know what he or she was doing here.” I paused. “This person could have killed Shanae. Or maybe came to see Tina and stumbled across Shanae’s body.” I stopped to catch my breath. “Is there anyone else you know who looks like Tina?”
Rochelle lowered the razor but kept a wary eye on me. “I dunno. Tina taller than mosta the girls, so she kinda stand out, you know?”
“What about a boy?”
“She don’t have no boyfriend I know about.”
“Do you remember if Greg stayed at the party the entire time you were there?”
“Yeah.” She looked unsure for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, he did.”
Maybe it was true. Maybe she was lying to protect Beaufort. If only we all had foolproof bullshit meters.
“Rochelle, you and Tina and the others got a ride that night. I understand you left the party a little before nine. Is that so?”
Rochelle nodded.
“If the driver could tell the police what time you were picked up, it would provide Tina with an alibi.”
“She can’t.”
“Why not?”
“She don’t have no license. Jus’ a car she borrowed.”
Borrowed or stole, I thought. Scratch another alibi.
“In that case, Greg or someone else who was present will have to make a statement about the time you left Greg’s place. I assume you were at Greg’s.”
“Yep.”
“Whoever gives that statement will have to tell the cops all the details. That means, even if I didn’t tell them, everything would still come out.”
“Anyone can make a statement. They don’t have to say what we was doin’.”
“Rochelle, the DVD is evidence in another case. Apart from what these men did to you, I have to give it to the cops.”
Rochelle gave me a blank stare. “DVD? Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout?”
“Greg didn’t tell you?” I paused to gather my thoughts. She looked at me like I was speaking Sanskrit. “Those parties were recorded. That’s how I learned about this. And the recording provides airtight evidence that Tina was someplace other than at home, at least part of the night her mother was murdered. Getting someone to say exactly when she left is crucial.”
Rochelle’s eyes narrowed. A collective murmur rose from the gang.
“How much are they paying you to do it? The parties?” I asked.
Rochelle snapped the razor shut and slipped it into her bra. She turned to address her posse. “Y’all can go, okay.” They dispersed. When they were outside of earshot, she spoke. “We need to talk bid’ness.”
We both fell silent. The Branch Avenue traffic was a distant hum.
Rochelle fixed me in her gaze. “A hundred dollah a session. For me. The others get fitty. Way I see it, I set ’dis thing up, I should get more o’ the cheese.”
I shook my head. “Someone is paying thousands of dollars for these. They’re doing something with those images, and they’ll probably make much more than they’re spending. And they’re paying you shit.” I paused for effect. “You’re the talent. And they’re screwing you in more ways than one.”
Rochelle may not have giv
en a rat’s ass about statutory rape or child porn, but she sure understood money. She scowled, her eyes reduced to lizard-like slits. “Mutherfuckers. I din’t know they was takin’ pitchers.”
<><><>
I got Rochelle’s cell number and said I’d call her as soon as I was ready to go to the cops. Without pressure from me, she told me she’d heard from Tina but hadn’t seen her since before her arrest. I told her she had to let me know if she heard from Tina. If we all went to the cops together, I hoped we could straighten things out.
I dismissed the thought of stopping at Russell’s to see what was in the FedEx package before going to the police. I was too anxious to get the DVD into police hands, so I went straight to CID and asked for Detective Willard. A uniformed officer escorted me to Willard’s desk.
“I wanted to give this to you,” I said, handing him the disc. “I believe it’s behind Sondra Jones’s murder.” I told him all about the DVD and the game developers who’d bought it from Narsh. I ran through my theory about the two of them stealing from Kozmik by hacking into the computer system to create the phony vendor account. I filled him in on my surprise visit from Diesel plus my hunch that Cooper had been involved and had been silenced permanently because he knew too much. I told him that evidence I expected to receive later in the day might support the scenario.
Willard listened patiently, nodding and taking notes. He looked up. “Could you stop pacing, please? I’m getting motion sickness.”
“Sorry.” I didn’t even know I was doing it.
“No problem. Go ahead and e-mail me the men’s photos and names. I’ll make sure someone looks into this as a separate matter, too.” He waved the disc.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’d like a copy to go to the detective on the Shanae Jackson murder. It shows my client was . . . otherwise occupied when the murder was committed.”
He nodded. “I’ll see that Detective Harris gets a copy.”
Leaving the office, I felt great relief. I’d have good news for Walt. I hoped I could do the same for Tina.
As I walked out to my car, my cell phone rang. The number had been blocked, but I answered anyway.
“Ms. McRae? . . . Sam?” The voice faltered, but it was Tina’s.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
My heart raced. “Tina! Where are you?”
“I . . . I’m all right. I jus’ wanted to talk to you. What’s going to happen to me?”
I didn’t know, so I changed the subject. “Tina, we need to talk about the night your mother died,” I said. “You were at a party that night, not at Rochelle’s.”
She paused long enough for me to know I’d taken her by surprise. “Who tole’ you that?”
“It doesn’t matter. The point is, you had an alibi, and you didn’t say anything.”
“But I was wit’ Rochelle, jus’ like I said. I jus’ didn’t wanna get my friends in trouble. I didn’t wanna get Greg in trouble neither. This was their thing, and I didn’t wanna stir nothin’ up, you see what I’m sayin’?”
“You mean, it was part of the gang’s thing and you didn’t want to tell on them.”
“Well . . . yeah.”
We must be getting somewhere, I thought. At least she’s no longer denying involvement in a gang. “Greg was recording you. That’s how I know about all this.”
“So what if he was?” she said.
“He was selling the recordings for big money and paying you girls peanuts to appear in them,” I said. “He was using you.”
“Ain’t that what people do?”
Unfortunately, she was spot on, I thought.
“So what now?” she said.
“You need to come in,” I said. “You and I need to go to the cops and make a statement about where you were, how late you were out, and all that. Greg Beaufort knows when you left. The cops will want to talk to him anyway, so he can verify your alibi.”
“And then what? They’ll jus’ lock me up again, ’cause I run away.”
“I don’t know. Maybe we can work something out. But you can’t keep running, Tina. You have to deal with it at some point.”
“Deal with it? My moms is dead.” Her voice turned steely. “She may not have been no good, but that’s still some hard-ass shit to deal with.”
“I know it is,” I said. “Really, I do. My parents died when I was nine. It was . . . like they abandoned me.” I hadn’t verbalized that thought in many years. A headache gathered at the bridge of my nose, my eyes filled. I wasn’t sure if I felt sorrier for myself or Tina.
“I’ll be okay. I jus’ wanted to see what was up wit’ us. Don’t worry ’bout me.”
She hung up.
I cursed a blue streak that I hadn’t gotten through to her. Tina didn’t understand that she was hurting herself by avoiding the inevitable.
Suppressing my frustration, I headed for the nearest Starbucks with wi-fi. I fumbled my way through downloading the photos onto my laptop, e-mailed them to the cops, and made a few calls. Dancing Daria, my “bruised knee” client, had decided to accept the settlement offer. No more wasting time and compromising my professional reputation over her. After wrangling with Slippery Steve over the answers to my interrogatories in the divorce case, he promised to send me something “more complete.”
“There’s no such thing as ‘more complete’,” I told him. “Either your answers are complete or they aren’t. I want complete. Nothing less.”
“Ms. McRae,” he said, in a practiced oratorical tone, “your argumentative skills remind me a bit too much of my ex-wife.”
“Really?”
“Yes. That’s why she’s my ex-wife.”
“Lucky her,” I said, before snapping the phone shut.
Next I called Russell. He confirmed the FedEx package had arrived. I needed to take it off his hands soon. The last thing I wanted was to put Russell in harm’s way. And I had to see what Diesel was so worried about.
<><><>
Russell brought the package to me at Starbucks. I accepted it with relief and trepidation. He bought coffee and joined me. Eyeing my healing bruise, he asked how I was holding up.
“Better now,” I said. “If this package contains what I think it does. I can’t thank you enough for your help, Russell.”
“Well,” he said, looking expectant. “Aren’t you going to open it?”
“Not here.” Anxious as I was, I didn’t want to do it in public. My paranoia had kicked into high gear. I pictured Diesel marching through the door as I lifted the box top.
Russell looked baffled. “Would you tell me what the hell this is about?”
“I can’t. Confidential case information. Anyway, you’re better off not knowing, believe me.”
He shook his head. “Why aren’t you one of those lawyers who handles simple cases—wills or real estate closings or collections? How do you always manage to find trouble?”
“I don’t. It finds me. And, if there’s one thing I’ve learned after years of practicing law, it’s that there’s no such thing as a simple case.”
<><><>
Much as I liked Russell, I was dying to find out what was in the package. We finished our coffee quickly, and I hurried back to the motel. Once I was safely locked in my room, I tore the package open.
Inside was a CD and several photos of Diesel with a man I didn’t recognize. Scrawled on the back were the words: “Don Diezman with Max Fullbright” dated last April 26. Max Fullbright—never heard of him. On a hunch, I dug through Brad Higgins’s file and found a copy of the Kozmik employee directory. Fullbright was listed as vice president for game development. Ha! I thought. This does go higher than the two computer geeks, Saltzman and LaRue. Another photo showed Diesel at a conference table with Fullbright and the geeks. On the back: their names and the same date. Co-ink-a-dink? Not likely.
I popped the CD into the laptop and turned up the audio. The sound quality was poor, but I could discern conversation about money transferred into an account earmarked for the development of a new
video game. The money would pay for images to be used in a new interactive adult entertainment video. One man—probably Fullbright, I surmised, from his authoritative tone—said it was essential that this video game only be sold as discs and not be available online because of “possible federal complications.”
Among all the euphemisms and cautionary language bandied about, I heard Diesel’s unmistakable voice. “And what’s my cut for providing protection for your little . . . enterprise?”
Fullbright offered ten grand, flat fee. Diesel made a harsh noise—laughing or coughing, perhaps. “You’ll have to do a lot better than that, office boy,” he said. He wanted a percentage of the profits. A back-and-forth ensued. I shut it off. I didn’t care what they’d settled on. I’d heard enough.
Fullbright and his two-man crew must have decided to invest some of the embezzled money into a side project—an interactive child porn game, in which Rochelle and her gang were the stars. Through computer manipulation, the geeks would take those images and play with them, programming them to respond to user inputs. With the attention online child porn was getting at all levels of law enforcement, it was small wonder the game would be kept off the Internet, sold only as discs, and probably distributed in the same manner as illegal drugs—by word-of-mouth and under-the-table transactions.
As for Cooper, he must have found out about the embezzlement after Marzetti alerted him to the strange vendor account. I also assumed Cooper was paid to keep it hush-hush. Since this idea didn’t surface for several months, he’d probably sensed the deal was headed in a direction he didn’t like. He took the photos and recorded the conversation on the sly, in case he needed them as bargaining chips—either to keep his job, stay out of prison, or both.
I called Detective Willard at CID. He’d gone off-duty until the following morning. A clerk refused to give me Willard’s cell number and put me through to voice mail. After a bad night’s sleep and an exhausting day, I was ready to collapse. In my message I said I’d e-mail him more evidence related to the Jones murder in the morning. One more night in the motel, I thought. Tomorrow, it’s off to Staples to copy the CD and the photos. I would then take them straight to the cops, before Diesel ran into—or over—me again.
