“Can we just play cards, please?” Jamilah injected. “Corruptin’ my grandchild with this nonsense . . . I got four uptown.”
The bidding continued around the table until all the women were in. As the game progressed, Ernie Mae persisted in goading Jamilah regarding Ade’s prowess, or lack thereof.
“Well, the important thing is I have a man who’s interested in me, which is more than I can say for you,” Jamilah retorted. “And trust me, when the time is right it’s goin’ to be everything I need it to be and more.”
“All righty then,” Pauline snapped giving Jamilah a high five.
“I guess she told you,” Margaret added.
“Y’all losers can pay up and kiss my fat, yellow ass,” Ernie Mae sneered, slapping down the winning card.
“Uh-oh,” Jamilah said, getting up from the table. “Somebody needs changin’.”
The women got a whiff of the air in the room and unanimously agreed that it was a good time to bring their afternoon to a close.
Ernie Mae snagged a handful of cheese and crackers on her way out the door. “Don’t forget to cash those social security checks, ladies. Next week’s game is at my house.”
The other two women said their good-byes and followed her out. After they left, Jamilah hoisted Cerena from the playpen and hustled her to the bathroom to clean her up. Once she was done with that she went back to the kitchen for a bottle. She noticed Margaret’s bifocals on the table and picked them up as the doorbell rang.
“I figured you’d be back,” she said, opening the door.
She was greeted by the sight of a balding man with old burn scars on the left side of his face. He was dressed in a plain dark suit, holding what appeared to be religious tracts.
“Excuse me, ma’am. I was wondering if I might have a few minutes of your time to talk about Judgment Day.”
Jamilah looked past him into the driveway and spied a black van. It wasn’t the same as Alex described to the police a few weeks earlier, but instinctively she felt something wasn’t right. She attempted to slam the door in his face, but he pushed up against it with his shoulder and knocked her to the floor. The glasses in her hand flew across the room.
“Help,” she screamed, scrambling to her feet as he forced his way in. Unable to get to the panic button on the security keypad Jamilah ran toward the phone.
“911, what is your—”
The man moved quickly, simultaneously snapping on a pair of latex gloves and jerking the phone cord from the wall. He yanked her toward him, and clasped his hand over her mouth. She bit down on his fingers and broke loose.
“Son of a bitch,” he spat.
Jamilah bolted toward the hall and knocked the potted schefflera over in front of him as he ran after her. The man bounded over the discarded plant and snatched her by the arm again, ripping her blouse. He pushed her into the wall, drew out a 9 mm from a back holster, and pressed the butt of it against the side of her head.
“You’re gonna make me do somethin’ I really don’t wanna do.”
On the verge of hysterics, Jamilah pulled at the collar of her blouse as tears filled her eyes. “Please don’t hurt us.”
“If you cooperate nothing’s gonna happen.”
“What are you goin’ to do with me?”
The door opened and Jamilah breathed a sigh of relief to see that it was Ade, until the man addressed him.
“What the hell took you so long?”
An olive-skinned, raven-haired Latina stepped out from behind Ade with a gun in his back. “Our friend here needed a little more convincing.”
Jamilah was confused. “Ade, what is going on?”
He couldn’t look at her.
“Get the kid,” Jamilah’s attacker demanded.
“No,” Jamilah cried. “Don’t do this.”
Ignoring her pleas, the woman forced Ade to the back to retrieve Cerena.
The man shoved Jamilah toward the side door between the kitchen and dining room. “I’m goin’ to open this door and the two of us are gonna walk out of here and get into that van.” He scanned the area around the house from the kitchen window. “If you so much as blink in the wrong direction I’ll drop you like a sack of potatoes, and then I’m gonna put a bullet in the little girl’s head. Do you understand?”
Jamilah nodded.
It was two o’clock in the afternoon. Alex had gone grocery shopping and maybe, by some miracle, she’d soon be pulling up with John in tow. Stepping outside Jamilah prayed that Ernie Mae would at least be out watering her prized azaleas, or Margaret would have realized she’d forgotten her glasses and doubled back with Pauline to get them. The mailman was pulling away from the end of the block and never turned around. She could feel her chest constricting.
“I have asthma. I need my medication.”
“Shut up and keep moving.”
“But, I need—”
“I said shut up.”
The man slid open the side door of the van and heaved her inside. He used a pair of handcuffs to secure her to a rail and darted back into the house to see what was keeping the other two. Jamilah jerked the cuffs futilely, only succeeding in bruising her wrists. She closed her eyes, inhaling and exhaling slowing to steady her breathing.
Oh, God, what if something has already happened to Alexandra? she thought. Her heart stopped when she heard Cerena’s muffled cries. The van door opened again and the woman stepped inside with the baby’s face pressed into her bosom. Ade got into the passenger seat and the gun-toting assailant climbed behind the wheel. He started the van, backed it out of the driveway, and took off up the street.
“Ade, what is going on? Why are you helping these people?”
He sat with his head lowered in shame, not answering.
Cerena resisted her pacifier from the hands of the strange woman and wailed. “¡Ciérrele pequeña mocosa!” the woman insisted.
Struggling to breathe, Jamilah tried to inch closer to her, but the handcuffs didn’t allow her much leeway. The man driving the van cut into an alley and slammed on the breaks, thrusting everyone forward.
“You shut that kid up or I will!”
“You’re scaring her,” Jamilah protested. “She needs her mother.”
The man leveled the gun toward the baby.
“Give her to me,” Jamilah pleaded. “I can quiet her.”
“Gil, no la quiero. No puedo cerrarla,” the Latina implored.
The man motioned for the woman to pass the baby to Jamilah. Whether out of a latent act of bravery or a foolish miscalculation, Ade clumsily lunged for the gun. The man’s reaction was swift and deadly. He cracked Ade in the head.
Jamilah stifled a scream.
“Stop it, Gil,” the Latina commanded.
Stunned, Ade fell into the passenger side window. Blood gushed from a gash in his forehead and he leaned forward, whimpering like a wounded hound.
“Try that again, old man, and it will be your last time.” The man pulled a bandana from his pocket and covered Ade’s eyes before tearing out of the alley.
“Where are you taking us? What have you done to my daughter?”
Veiled behind a large pair of dark glasses, the fiery Latina blindfolded Jamilah and then took out her cell phone and dialed.
“Dígame.”
“Es hecho,” she responded.
“Were there any complications?”
“Nothing that could not be handled.”
Alex pulled up in the drive outside the house and grabbed a couple of bags of groceries from the back seat. Opening the front door with her free hand she was horrified by the sight of the disarray in the living room. She dropped the bags on the floor.
“Mama . . . Mama, where are you?” She ran to Jamilah’s bedroom and found her purse lying on her bed; her cell phone was on the table beside it. A knot formed in her throat when she rushed into Cerena’s room. “Oh, my God!” Alex went to her bedroom and retrieved her .380 from the bedside table. She then picked up the extension and realized the
line was dead.
“Hello? Is anyone home?”
Alex jumped and spun around, pointing her gun in Ernie Mae’s face.
The woman hollered, “What in the world happened here?”
“Where’s my mother?”
“I don’t know. We played cards this afternoon and Margaret said she left her glasses here. I just came down to check. What’s goin’ on?”
“Get out!”
“What?”
“I said get out, you nosy bitch!”
Alex waved the gun and chased the woman back up the hall and out of the house. She found her purse at the door, pulled out her cell phone, and checked to make sure she hadn’t missed any calls; there were none. She promptly called John.
“Mama’s gone! They took her! I was out . . . I went to get my hair done . . . I stopped at the grocery store . . . When I got home I found the place in a wreck. They’re gone, John.”
“Are you in the house now?”
“Yes.”
“Is there any sign of forced entry?”
Alex looked around. “I don’t know. I can’t tell.”
“Lock the door, do you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Have you called the police?”
“No.”
“Don’t do anything until I get there.”
Alex picked up the grocery bags and moved them to the kitchen counter. The pitcher of lemonade was still on the table. Some of the condensation from the ice had run down from the glasses and wet the cards that were left just as they had been. She closed and locked the door and set the alarm. She looked at the pot and dirt on the floor but decided not to touch anything. She didn’t even want to sit in a chair or on the sofa. It was all too surreal. Still holding on to her gun, she leaned against the arch between the living room and kitchen and sank to her knees.
Racing through the congested freeway with his siren blaring and his dashboard lights flashing, John gave himself a good head start before notifying his superiors. He pounded his fist on the steering wheel. “Rivera couldn’t have found her.” His thoughts ran to Lorraine, but despite her threats she couldn’t have jeopardized his work. It didn’t matter now who did what; there was urgency in getting to Alex and getting her out of that house before anything else went down.
It was just after three when he reached the house. He was alarmed to find the police already there. Ernie Mae Hudson was standing on the sidewalk, surrounded by other neighbors, pointing to Alex accusingly. John jumped from his truck and flashed his marshal’s badge. The officer blocking his entrance stepped aside. Alex broke from the detective questioning her and rushed to him.
John approached the portly detective. “Hey, Sam, what’s going on?”
“We got a call from the woman across the street reporting that Miss Sullivan here accosted her with a gun. I figured I should handle this one personally.”
John shot Alex a side-glance.
“When we got here we found the place looking like this. We also found these.”
The man showed John an evidence bag of the tracts that were left scattered on the floor.
“We checked around and couldn’t find anything else. We questioned the neighbors. Nobody saw anything apparently. Some of them say they weren’t even home. Ms. Hudson claims she and two other women who were here earlier hadn’t seen or spoken to the victim since about one this afternoon.”
“She’s not a victim,” Alex barked.
“John, I’m gonna have to file a report.”
“Look, Sam, can you just hold off on that for a day or two?”
“You know I can’t do that. She’s not supposed to have a gun, legally or otherwise.”
“Did you find a gun, Sam?”
“No. Barney Fife here didn’t find a damn thing,” Alex interjected. “I wasn’t going to let them go through my things without a search warrant.”
“C’mon, Sam. Do me a solid. You know how this works.”
The detective’s face suggested he had a scathing comeback to Alex’s sarcastic remark. He rubbed the beard stubble on his dimpled chin. “The only reason I’m even thinkin’ about doin’ this is because of Hank; you know that right?”
“Yeah, I know.”
As the man inhaled and exhaled his rounded belly expanded and contracted. “What about the complaint?”
“Let me worry about that,” John responded. “Right now I gotta get her outta here.”
“All right. I can give you twenty-four hours, but that’s it.”
John shook the man’s hand. “Thanks, Sam. I owe you.”
“Damn right you do.”
John escorted Alex back inside the house.
“What did that detective mean when he said the only reason he was doing this was because of Hank?” Alex asked.
“Hank and Sam were rookies together on this gang task force years ago. They got caught in the crossfire of a drive-by. Sam got shot. Hank saved his life. So, they’ve kind of been looking out for each other ever since.”
“I’m sorry I made that Barney Fife crack now.”
“So where’s this gun that you know is against regulations for you to have?”
“There is no gun.”
John’s jaw clenched and his brow furrowed.
“I’m telling you the truth. Do you see a gun? Neither did he.” Alex reached inside Cerena’s playpen and picked up her stuffed rabbit.
“Goddammit! This is my fault!” John snapped. “I gotta get you out of here.”
“If Rivera found me here, he can find me someplace else, John. What if that really was him I saw in the club that night?”
“What are you talking about?”
“A couple of weeks ago I went to a club in North Hollywood with a coworker, the night you were at your daughter’s dance thing. I saw this man at the end of the bar staring at me. For a moment when the light reflected off his face I thought it might be Rivera.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because, I have been running around for months jumping at every shadow and I dismissed it as just another false alarm. But now . . . it really could have been him.”
“Go pack a bag.”
“John, I’m not going anywhere until we find them.”
He grabbed her arms. “Listen to me, you can’t stay here. It’s not safe anymore.”
She jerked away from him. “It was never safe, John. We were just kidding ourselves. Whatever it takes we have got to get my mother and baby back alive.”
“Then let me do my job. Come on, Adriane—”
“Don’t call me that! I’m sick of the pretense. For over a year I’ve been toeing the line and look where it got me. My name is Alex, dammit! Alex!”
John took a step back, rubbed his head, and put his hands on his hips. “Adri . . . Alex, I’ve got to get you out of here. I promise you I’ll do everything I can to find your mother and baby, but I need you to cooperate.”
“You promise? Your promises aren’t worth shit right now, John.”
“Look, I know you’re pissed off and you have every right to be, but the more time we waste standing around here, the less time I have to start looking for them.”
Alex stared daggers at John before giving in and going to her room to pack. She absently pulled an array of sweaters, blouses, and jeans from her closet. She dumped the contents of her bathroom counter into a bag along with cosmetics and hair essentials; then she removed from under her mattress the .380 she’d hidden from the police, and slipped it in under her lingerie with Cerena’s stuffed toy.
“Did you get everything you needed?”
“I don’t know. I can’t think. It’s not like I’m packing for a cruise or something.”
John secured the house. While Alex waited in his truck he made his way across the street to question Ernie Mae Hudson again.
“So you’re a policeman too, huh?”
“Yeah.” John nodded without clarification.
“Well, like I said before I didn’t see or speak to Jan
ette since we played cards this afternoon. And I didn’t see nobody else. What I didn’t tell that other cop was how often I see you parked outside that house.”
John overlooked her meddlesome commentary. “What time did you say you came back to your place?”
“It was after one. I needed to be back here so I could watch my stories.”
“What about the other ladies?”
Ernie Mae sighed impatiently. “Pauline drove Margaret home. Then about ten or fifteen minutes after two Margaret called me and said she’d been tryin’ to get in touch with Janette because she left her glasses. She said she couldn’t get through the line so I told her I would come and see. That’s when I found your little girlfriend waving a gun in my face.”
“Thank you, Ms. Hudson.”
“If I were you, I’d be lookin’ for that slick-talkin’ African Janette was always blatherin’ about.”
“When was the last time you saw him around?”
“Last night, just after you left. But that don’t mean he didn’t show up today while I was watchin’ TV.”
John turned and headed back across the street. He hopped in his truck and reviewed the information sent to his BlackBerry about Ade Obafemi: his picture, his history, his address.
“Where are we going, John?”
“We’re going to pay a little visit to a ‘slick-talkin’ African.’”
Ade’s address took them three blocks east of Huntington Street. He occupied the lower apartment in a two-story walkup. John insisted Alex wait in the truck; she didn’t. He knocked on Ade’s door and called out to him, but there was no answer. Unwilling to leave any stone unturned John pulled out a small tool kit and jimmied the lock. “Stay here,” he demanded; she didn’t. He cautiously went inside with his gun drawn and looked around. No Ade. No sign of Jamilah. He pulled on latex gloves and picked up framed pictures to examine them, hoping to find any crumbs of a clue. There were pictures of Ade and who he assumed to be his deceased wife among other framed photographs of his family. He sifted through drawers and opened unpaid utility bills, but there was nothing to be found. With the exception of a few dishes in the sink the entire place was clean. After several minutes they exited his apartment and went back to the truck.
Avenging Alex Page 12
