by Dave White
“That’s not—”
“Yes. It is, Jackson.”
He didn’t speak. Susan was no longer staring at the phone; her eyes bored through Donne instead. At least, for the moment, her mind was off Franklin.
“Look at the people you’ve helped since she died. That’s right, I still followed you. You were in the papers. That guy who lost his wife in 9/11. That woman who came all the way here from Fresno. People who isolated themselves as well. No ties to the world. That’s what you want.”
He couldn’t change her mind. Keeping his mouth shut was the only option. Sit there and take it, just like when he was a kid.
“You’re like Dad, you know that? Things get tough and you run off. If you weren’t in the fucking papers, we wouldn’t even know you were alive.”
“I’m sorry, Susan.”
“Don’t apologize to me,” she said. “Apologize to Mom. The one who might never hear you tell her you love her again. Why do you really think I ‘hired’ you? I don’t want to know about the past. Or at least I didn’t before this week. I just wanted to get you back into the family, before it was too late.”
He drank his beer.
“It’s like Uncle George always used to say at Thanksgiving. Do you remember? Family is the most important thing. And for God’s sake, our family needs you now.”
A single tear fell from her right eye. He could only imagine how much she must have cried in the past few days.
They jumped when the silence was broken by the phone ringing.
***
The funny thing about kids, Delshawn thought, was that they couldn’t keep their mouths shut. Even his own kid, Damon, fucking twelve years old and every day he’d say “snitches get stitches,” a phrase warning that anyone talking to the police would be jumped. But when something really gangsta happened, that kid would give you up in a second.
Because they couldn’t keep quiet, and they didn’t even realize it. But for once, it helped Delshawn out. Even though his world kept getting more and more fucked up, you were always better off knowing about it. Then you could do something to control it.
When he’d gotten home yesterday, he’d kissed Shemiah on the mouth. His girlfriend had smiled at him as she cut the chicken. And Damon came running up to him, yelling, “Dad, Dad!”
“What’s up, son?” he said, talkin’ ghetto-like, not like somebody on Leave It to Beaver.
“I gotta tell you what happened to my friend Carlos.”
Even though they lived in Paterson, Damon went to Clifton schools. They snuck his ass in because the system was better there. The teachers seemed to care.
“Tell me about it.”
“Well, he was down by the river the other day, you know. He was on the run from the police.”
Delshawn smiled. Even his son knew cops were shit. “And he was down by the mud, and he found a gun.”
Delshawn didn’t react. Not on the outside, at least. “When was this?”
“I don’t know. He said some Escalade pulled up and an ol’ gangsta just threw it out the window.”
“What did he do with the gun?”
Damon got quiet for a second, like he was thinking. Probably wondering whether or not to tell his father the truth.
“He took it to the police. He didn’t know what else to do with it. He wanted me to come by and shoot it, but I said no. Like you said, Dad, I ain’t old enough to play with guns yet.”
Shit.
Delshawn smiled at his son. “You did the right thing.” Damon smiled and ran out of the kitchen.
“That Carlos a Clifton kid?” Shemiah asked. “Yeah, I think so.”
“He gave the gun back? They got good kids in Clifton.”
“No shit.”
So this afternoon, after his wife went off to work and Damon found a place to go play hoops, Delshawn took the Escalade out of the garage and drove to Clifton. Damon didn’t know where Carlos lived, so Delshawn was gonna have to find out. He had a copy of the middle school yearbook with him, opened to a picture of Carlos Ramierez.
Things weren’t good right now. That dude from the bar was alive. The gun was with the cops, and Carlos was a witness. Whether the kid knew it or not.
Delshawn had a lot of business to take care of. His girlfriend didn’t know that he killed people for a living, so he was going to have to keep it all quiet. But if this hung over his head, Shemiah finding out what he did would be the least of his problems. Fuck if Hackett ever found out about this. That motherfucker had even more to lose than Delshawn.
Best to start small. Find Carlos. And then, like Damon always said: Snitches get stitches.
Chapter 19
“Susan Carter, it’s been so long.”
Susan held the phone tight to her ear. Wanting to squeeze her eyes shut, she instead kept them on Jackson.
“Who is this?” she asked.
Jackson edged off his seat a little more, the beer still cradled in his hand. He turned his head to the right, as if to hear better. She wouldn’t dare put this on speakerphone.
“You know who this is, but I’ll let you figure it out in due time.” The voice on the other end was confident. And it was familiar to Susan, but it seemed to be missing something. She couldn’t tell what.
“What do you want?”
“Are you alone?”
She looked at Jackson and put her finger to her lips. “Yes,” she said. “It’s only me.”
“Good. We’ve had some problems getting in touch with you since the last time we talked.”
Get on with it, asshole.
“I’m sorry. My cell phone broke.”
“Inconvenient for you and your husband. I had to convince Franklin he should give me your home number.”
“Don’t hurt him.”
The voice on the other end laughed. “I’m afraid it’s a little late for that.”
“Oh my God.” Susan’s stomach tightened and she thought she’d retch. Her vision clouded and she felt light-headed. She told herself not to let her emotions take control. Take a deep breath.
Jackson started to approach her, but Susan held out her hand to stop him. He did.
“Is Franklin okay?”
“He’s alive, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I want to talk to him.”
“No, I don’t think so. We have business to discuss, you and I.” The voice sounded so familiar.
“What do you want?”
“Money. Your husband owes me one hundred thousand dollars.” Her grip tightened on the receiver and her knees were weak.
“One hundred thousand? Why?”
“That’s not important to you. All you need to do is get me the money.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“Yeah. Not my problem. All I know is if I don’t get a phone call to 973-555-1980 in twenty hours, you are going to be a widow. I hope you wrote it down.”
“You’re insane.”
Again the voice laughed. “If you call the police, Franklin is a dead man.”
She heard the click of the line being disconnected. Slowly, she lowered her own phone back into the cradle. One hundred thousand dollars. Where was she going to get that? She couldn’t get into Franklin’s bank account without his signature.
Susan felt Jackson’s hand on her own, callused and rough. “What did they say?” he asked.
Taking another deep breath, she told him.
***
Bryan Hackett’s cell phone buzzed. Not the anonymous prepaid one he used to call Susan, not the one he used to call Delshawn, but his private phone. Only one person knew the number.
“I told you not to call me this week.”
“I’m sorry,” Jill said. “But I just checked the messages at home. It’s your old job. They really want you to call them. Something about the explosion in New York City. I can’t believe you don’t have the money yet.”
He hung up. Hackett hadn’t expected this to be as big a deal as it was. The city had enough feds to investigate the expl
osion. But they wanted him to call? He was a former member of the New Jersey State Trooper Bomb Squad.
Could his employers have figured out who was actually behind the bombing?
He was going to have to take some time to think about this before he called them. At least the night to sleep on it.
Chapter 20
Twenty hours
“I don’t know how I’m going to get the money,” Susan said. Donne held her, and expected to feel her tears on his shoulder.
There weren’t any. Her voice was steady.
More proof he didn’t know his sister as well as he thought.
“We have to call the police.” He pushed her back from him and looked into her hazel eyes.
“No,” she answered. “They’ll kill him.”
There were two schools of thought on kidnapping. Pay the ransom and hope for the best. Or don’t pay at all. Not paying a ransom at all was a solution for major kidnappings, and it was the only way to stop them. Donne had read about kidnappings in other countries, and the governments contended that if all ransom paying stopped, then the kidnappers had nothing to gain. That was fine in the abstract, but not so convincing when a loved one’s life was on the line. Their best bet was to get the money, pay up, and hope.
“You can get the money from your joint account. I’m sure he’s good for it.”
“It’s one hundred thousand dollars, Jackson. We don’t have that. Most of our money is invested. In the house, in the restaurant, in stocks. Franklin also has a private account I don’t have access to.”
“For what?”
“It’s for the restaurant. Any money used on repairs, to pay the mortgage on the building. It’s not that he doesn’t trust me,” she said, as if sensing Donne’s skepticism, “but he insists it’s easier that way. I could forge the signature.”
“They would know. If you get caught . . .” Donne paused. “It’s illegal.”
“It’s my husband, Jackson! We have to try.”
“There has to be another way. The banks aren’t even open.”
“It’s all I have.”
“If the bank catches you, if they stop you and you get held up, we’ll have no chance.”
“I’ll get the money somehow.” Susan’s voice was quiet. “I can’t get stopped at the bank. There’s some time. There has to be a way.”
There was another option, but one he wasn’t willing to consider. Months earlier, he’d used a woman as bait and nearly got people killed. No way was he going to put his sister and her husband in that corner. No way was he going to let anyone else in his family die.
“How long do we have?” he asked.
“Twenty hours,” Susan said. “I need to figure something out.”
“We,” he said. “We need to figure something out.”
Susan gave him a hard glare and said, “I don’t have time for this shit.”
She grabbed her purse and left the house.
Still without a car, Donne was stranded. Making his way back to the restaurant wouldn’t help. And just sitting in the house was unproductive. What else could he do?
The sun was setting to his left as he stood on the steps. Susan needed help on this. She wasn’t going to be able to access the money. And he wasn’t going to willingly drag her into a firefight. Donne hesitated only a moment before dialing Iapicca.
Chapter 21
“I need you to take me to see my mother,” Donne said.
“I am not your fucking car service,” Iapicca responded.
“I don’t have a car. Come on, you know how long it takes to get a cab service around here. And the buses don’t take you anywhere but New York and the mall.”
“Have your sister take you. It will be a nice family moment. I’m off for the evening. I’m going to go out on my deck, drink a beer and smoke a cigar.”
“Are you sure you’re in your thirties? Sinatra? Cigars?”
“Shut up.”
Sitting on the steps of his sister’s porch, he could understand the appeal of staying in tonight. Since the sun had set, the air had cooled and it was turning into a comfortable evening.
“My sister’s not around.”
“Why so urgent?”
“My mother has dementia. She’s going to die.”
“I’m sorry for that, but you’ll have your car back tomorrow. The cops were even nice enough to tow it over to the shop to get it fixed for you. Go see her then.”
“She knows what’s going on.”
Silence on the other end of the line. Cicadas buzzed behind him somewhere, and a car sped down the road across the way.
“What do you mean she knows what’s going on?”
Donne told him about the visits. Iapicca didn’t disrupt with questions, just went with it.
When he finished, Iapicca said, “That’s a pretty thin strand to tug on.”
“It’s all I have.”
“Get your sister’s husband to talk to you. This is my job. Not my life. I need some time off too.”
Donne sighed. No avoiding it now.
“Franklin’s been kidnapped,” Donne said. Respecting Susan’s wishes was important to him, but he needed Iapicca. And what were the odds the kidnappers were listening right now? If anything, they’d be following Susan. The thought sent a ripple down his spine.
He heard glass crash to the floor on the other end of the line. “When did this happen?”
“As far as I can tell, sometime last night.”
“Did you call the police?”
“No. I called you.”
“Only because you needed a ride.” Iapicca’s voice was tense now. Angry. “Jesus Christ, Donne, you should have called us.”
“I am now. I couldn’t do it when Susan was around. They told her not to call.”
“Are you at her place now?”
“Yeah, sitting on the front porch.”
“Look down the street, the way we came.”
“Uh-huh.”
“See the car there, the unmarked?”
There was a Chevy half a block down the street, the last remains of sunlight reflecting off the windshield.
“You put a tail on me?”
“Come on, Jackson. I’m not an idiot. I needed to keep an eye on you.”
Donne walked in the direction of the car, phone still to his ear, stride quick but casual.
“You want him to take me to my mother?”
“No. Have him take you to my house. There’s no way I’m going to miss this.”
Snapping the phone shut, Donne tapped on the window of the unmarked with his free hand. It rolled down slowly, revealing a blond woman.
“Made me, huh?” she asked.
“Not without Iapicca’s help. I need you to do me a favor.”
Chapter 22
Nineteen hours
Susan stood outside the building her mother stayed in, remembering the day they decided to bring her there. About a year and a half ago, she’d decided to take her mother in to live with her and Franklin. One of the neighbors had found Mom picking fruit in their garden in her pajamas. It was a sign that she could no longer live by herself.
With a little convincing, lots of tears, and a weeklong packing adventure, they got Mom into their house on Upper Mountain. At first everything seemed okay. Mom was adjusting nicely. She’d help with dinner or set the table, knit, or sit and watch TV. She was quiet, almost sad, but she got by. Susan would sit and talk with her when Franklin was at the restaurant. They’d try and reminisce about the old times, but things seemed to be slipping from Mom’s mind.
That was okay. Susan was happy to have her there. Occasionally, Mom would get up and forget why and Susan would have to help her. It was frustrating, but nothing she couldn’t deal with. Mom would get more frustrated with it, swearing at herself, twisting her hands together in annoyance.
About two months after they’d moved her in, Franklin came home early. He was going to have dinner with them and then go back to the restaurant. He came over and kissed S
usan hello first and then walked over and said hello to Mom. He had barely got into the room when Susan heard him swear. She asked what was the matter.
“Your mother just shit herself on the couch,” he said, backing up into the kitchen.
“Oh, Mom,” Susan said, hurrying into the room.
It was true. Her mother’s pants were stained, the odor permeated the room, and the couch was stained with feces.
“Mom, come on. Let’s get you cleaned up,” Susan said. Her face flushed, and she was embarrassed for her mother.
Her mother, however, didn’t budge from the chair, her own face red. “It’s that bastard’s fault!” she yelled, pointing at Franklin. “He is a curse to this family! I can’t live with him.”
It took half an hour to get her mother cleaned up and out of the room. The entire time, Mom swore at Franklin, cursed a blue streak. “He’s an asshole,” she said. “He’s been stealing from me! He’s been stealing from all of us! Motherfucker.”
Susan cried that day. She and Franklin decided they couldn’t handle Mom on their own anymore.
Now, as she stepped through the front doors, Susan was sure her mother, the one who survived being a single mother and working two jobs, who stood tall and beamed at Susan’s graduation, was still inside her mind somewhere.
The receptionist smiled at Susan as she buzzed the door open. Mom was awake, wide-eyed, smiling.
“Hi, Mom,” Susan said. “Hi.”
“Mom, I need to talk to you.”
“Okay.”
Susan sat next to the bed and took her mother’s hand. The room smelled of Lysol and the sweet flowers that someone had placed next to the bed. Her mother’s hair was still wet, which meant the staff must have just bathed her.
If only they’d kept their mother’s money in a bank account to save for her will. Instead, they used it to pay for the nursing home.
“Mom,” she said. “I miss you.”
Her mother smiled at the sound of Susan’s voice, returned the squeeze of Susan’s hand.
“Franklin’s in a lot of trouble, Mom. I don’t know what to do.” Her mother squeezed her hand tighter at the mention of Franklin’s name. Susan was sure of it. Mom was in there somewhere. “Come on, Mom. Why can’t you help me anymore?”
