“Come now, Omolola, you can do better than that. Does this have anything to do with . . . you know.”
Alex sighed. “Yes. Some people could be after me.” “What people?”
“I can’t talk about that right now.”
“Is Bobby coming with you?”
“No. I’m coming alone.”
“Oh, Alexandra.”
“Look, Mama, I just need to get out of Atlanta for a while. Please don’t make this harder than it already is. Will you go with me?”
“How long do I have?”
“A few hours.”
“A few hours? How am I supposed to pack and secure the house and meet you at the airport in a few hours?”
“Can’t you get Mr. Howard to watch the house for you?”
“I suppose I could.”
“Then just pack enough for a few days. Whatever you don’t have we’ll buy when we get where we’re going. Please, Mama. I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t important.”
“All right, daughter. Tell me the flight that you’ll be coming in on and I’ll meet you.”
“I need to call airlines and I’ll call you back with the details.”
“Daughter, you be careful.”
“I will.”
Alex called and changed her itinerary to include a layover in New York. After she hung up, she hurried about her apartment, packing and mentally going over anything else she needed to do before leaving Atlanta. She’d already spoken with Travis and knew that he was more than capable, if not overly eager, to take over her legitimate business affairs. She was on edge with Bobby in the hospital, especially knowing who put him there. When she was questioned about the contents of the safe the police found in his apartment she feigned ignorance. There was little comfort in the fact that it had been over a day and the police had not returned with a warrant or any credible evidence that would link her to him in any way other than relational. The drugs they found gave them reason enough to believe he’d been attacked by a disgruntled customer. She rationalized that if Tirrell had done anything with the information he had on her she would have been arrested already.
Alex picked up her .380 from the bed and thought about slipping it into her makeup bag, but there would be no way to get it through airport security. While she thought about what to do, her telephone rang—she nearly jumped out of her skin. It was Xavier Rivera. She debated whether to answer, but ultimately decided it best to talk to him so as not to arouse undue suspicion.
“Hola, Xavier. ¿Cómo estás?”
“Muy bien, Alex. ¿Qué tal?”
“Bien. What can I do for you?”
“I hear that your cousin is in the hospital. Care to fill me in on the details?”
“He was shot. The police believe that he was a victim of a robbery.”
“Was anything stolen?”
“No. Everything was locked in his safe, but the police have the contents now.”
“I see. How unfortunate. What about Señor Ellis? Is he out of commission as well?”
Alex inhaled and threw her head back. Rivera sounded as if he knew something. She didn’t dare try to explain to him what Tirrell was up to. She needed to buy more time.
“Tirrell is fine. But, I don’t think he’s quite ready to make a run on his own.”
“Then perhaps you should come with him.”
“Xavier, I think that we should probably lay low for a while, especially with Bobby’s accident.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“There’s nothing for you to be concerned about.”
“My dear Alexandra. I have need to be concerned about every detail of this operation. If anything goes wrong your beautiful neck will be on the chopping block as well as mine. ¿Entiendas?”
“Yes. I promise you there’s nothing going on that can’t be handled. We just need a couple of weeks.”
“Very well then. I will leave you to take care of things—for now. I’ll be expecting a progress report soon.”
Alex breathed a sigh of relief when the call ended. If Rivera was baiting her she wouldn’t be able to get out of the country fast enough. She dialed Tirrell and got the recording that the line was still disconnected. “Dammit, Tirrell. Where are you?”
The phone rang again. The caller ID registered a restricted number. Alex vacillated before answering, thinking it may be the airlines or some such business she needed to attend to in order to finalize her departure.
“Hello . . . Hello.”
The line went dead.
Tirrell hung up the payphone and scratched his head. He was sure if Kevin had seen what was on that disk—if he’d read the letter attached to it—Alex would be in jail by now. Somethin’ must have gone wrong. Maybe Kevin bein’ Kevin never even looked at the CD. He leaned against the wall in the hall outside the bay in The Mission where he slept, and racked his brain trying to remember his sister-in-law’s number. “Is it 3581 or 5381?” He tried the first permutation—it was wrong. “Dammit.” He tried the second—it was wrong. “Shit.”
“Yo, man. You through with the phone?”
Tirrell moved away to allow the next two people in line the use of the payphone. He paced around the lobby saying aloud numbers of varying combinations until one made sense. “I got it!”
He dashed back to the phone and found one of the guys lingering on his call. Tirrell grunted and cleared his throat and huffed and puffed, but the man paid him no attention.
“Man, please. I gotta use the phone, it’s a matter of life and death.”
“Forget you. I’m talkin’ to my girl.”
Tirrell snatched the phone from the smaller-built man’s hand. “He’s gonna have to call you back.” He slammed down the receiver.
“Man, that was foul.”
“I know. I know. You can kick my ass later, a’ight? I really need to make this call.”
He nearly jumped for joy when Pat answered.
“It’s me, Tirrell. Don’t hang up. This is really important. Please you have to listen to me. Please.”
He could hear Pat sigh into the receiver.
“All right, Tirrell. I’m listening.”
“First tell me that Noonie’s okay.”
“There’s been no change.”
“What about Micah?”
“Tirrell, what do you want?”
“Okay . . . okay . . . I’ll get to the point. I gave Tasha a CD to give to Kevin yesterday. Please tell me he got it.”
“He got it, but he threw it away.”
“Dammit. Listen to me, Pat. The information on that CD was the reason Noonie got shot. There’s stuff on there that can get us all in a lot of shit.”
“What are you talkin’ about? What did you do?”
“Do you remember that woman who came to church a few weeks ago?”
“Yes.”
“She’s a drug dealer.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“I took a file off her computer that had a lot of names of other dealers on it and she sent her cousin after me. He shot Noonie, tryin’ to get to me.”
“Oh my God.”
“She may be tryin’ to get out of town. I have to talk to Kevin and he’s not answering.”
“He went to work for a few hours.”
“Does he have e-mail? Can I send the file to him at work?”
“Yeah, let me give you his address.”
“Mr. P, you gotta let me get on a computer.”
“For what?”
“I gotta send that file to my brother and I gotta do it right now.”
“The file you took from that woman’s computer?”
“Yes.”
Mr. Preston pushed away from his small desk and Tirrell sat down to log into his e-mail account.
Pat called ahead to tell Kevin about the file Tirrell was sending. Kevin couldn’t believe the extent of the danger Tirrell had exposed them all to. He sat at his computer and waited for the e-mail to come through. While he waited there was plenty of time fo
r him to reflect on the voice mail Tirrell left him the night Betty was shot. He thought about how shabbily he’d treated him and he considered his grandmother’s words about giving Tirrell a chance to prove himself.
He clicked the e-mail open the second it popped into his mailbox. “Solomon’s Temple.” Kevin read the names of six alleged dealers who had been under investigation for some time. He did a computer search on Xavier Rivera and several hits came up, including ones detailing his being detained by police on several occasions in Florida and in South America on suspicion of murder, money laundering, and racketeering. Most of the entries on Alex were of events she’d planned for him and an infamous guest list. Kevin scrolled through dozens of pictures of her and an impressive array of celebrities and local officials. But, the story that piqued his interest the most was that of her marriage to a small-time hood out of New York by the name of Ray Williams, who had been associated with Rivera. He shuffled through some papers on his desk and found one with the name Bobby Williams, and the pieces all started coming together.
Kevin took all the data he had to his boss and they got a judge to expedite a warrant to bring Alex in.
“Can I help you?” Travis asked a pair of detectives entering Alex’s Buckhead office.
“We’re looking for Alexandra Solomon.”
“Can I ask what this is about?”
“Is she here or not?”
“Ms. Solomon is out today.”
“Do you know when she’ll be in?”
“What did she do?”
“That’s a police matter, sir.”
Travis smirked. “She called in this morning. From what she told me I don’t expect her back in the office anytime soon.”
“What exactly did she tell you?”
“Not much, just that she needed to take a trip, and she asked me to look after things at the office and in her apartment while she was gone.”
“Did she tell you where she was going?”
“No, and believe me, I asked.”
While the two officers were occupied with Travis, another unit was sent to Alex’s apartment—by the time they arrived she was gone.
“Ladies and gentlemen, last call for Delta flight 667 with nonstop service from Atlanta to New York’s JFK airport. Boarding all rows all sections at gate B-12.”
Running through the concourse, frenetically pulling her bag behind her, Alex rushed toward the gate with her ticket in hand. The gate agent smiled and assured her that she’d made it just in time; not a moment too soon as far as Alex was concerned.
She hurried up the jet-way to her first-class seat, where an attractive man seated in the aisle gallantly assisted her in storing her bag. “Thank you,” she sighed breathlessly, looking over her shoulder. She eased into her window seat and peered out toward the terminal to see if she’d somehow been followed.
“Business or pleasure?”
“Excuse me?”
The stranger next to her smiled. “This trip, business or pleasure?”
“Business.”
“Well, we’ll just have to make the best of the flight then, won’t we?”
“Listen, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’ve got a lot on my mind and I’d really like to be left alone.”
The man clearly took offense and readjusted in his seat. “Okay, not a problem.”
When the plane began to taxi toward takeoff Alex laid her head back and exhaled.
Highway patrol was given a description and the plate number for the Yukon. Rental car outlets, as well as the bus station, had been put on alert, and there was no flight manifest out of Atlanta listing the name Alex or Alexandra Solomon or Williams. The police had only to assume that she was using another alias. When they discovered that her mother lived in New York they had a tangible lead that put them on her trail. The only question was, would she be flying into JFK or LaGuardia?
All the diverse cultures and ethnicities converging on JFK brought hectic energy to it, much like any other massive airport in the country. Upon checking inbound and outbound flights, there was still no indication that Alex was headed there. However, the discovery of a Jamilah Solomon, booked on an international flight to Nigeria, raised a red flag.
Armed with her photo, when the flight landed in New York, the police were waiting. Two plainclothes detectives spied an older woman in the crowd who resembled Alex, and rightly assumed that it must be her mother. They watched vigilantly as the passengers deplaned. When Alex walked past the gate and embraced the woman they pounced.
“Alexandra Solomon?”
Alex looked around as if to suggest they couldn’t possibly be addressing her. “I’m sorry. I think you have the wrong person.”
“No, ma’am,” one of the detectives replied, flashing her photo. “We have exactly who we’re looking for.”
“Please put your hands behind your back, ma’am.”
“You’re making a mistake.”
One of the detectives, a female, reached out to grab her.
Alex jerked away. “Get your hands off me.”
She reached for Alex again. “Ma’am, don’t make this harder on yourself.”
“She didn’t do anything,” her mother defended her, clutching her chest and wheezing.
“We got a call from the Fulton County Police Department in Atlanta, Georgia to detain her.”
“For what?”
“Attempted murder.”
Jamilah Solomon gasped.
Alex continued to struggle. “Get your damn hands off me.”
The more formidable male detective manhandled her and twisted her arm behind her back.
“You’re hurting her,” Jamilah Solomon screamed, and pounded the man in the back.
After cuffing Alex he passed her off to his partner and took hold of the elder Solomon. “Lady, are you trying to get arrested?”
“Let my daughter go!”
“Mama, I’m all right.”
“I’m not going to stand here and let them do this to you.” Jamilah Solomon kicked the officer.
“That’s it. Let’s go.”
She collapsed into the man’s arms.
“You don’t need to be so rough with her, you jackass. She has asthma,” Alex screamed. “Mama, where’s your inhaler?”
The officer grudgingly eased Jamilah into a chair. Alex looked on helplessly as she fumbled through her purse for her medication.
Once her breathing returned to normal, Jamilah regained her composure. Passersby stopped, pointed, and gawked as both she and her belligerent mother were escorted away from the concourse.
27
Tirrell tossed and turned on the uncomfortable cot in The Mission, but he couldn’t sleep. The pain in his muscles was excruciating. His back was drenched with sweat and he was nauseous. Feeling as if he were about to vomit, he sat up and glanced across the dark room, sickened by the sight of a mob of crusty, hard-ankled men just like him. He felt queasy, bolted to the bathroom, and emptied the contents of his stomach. He threw cold water on his face and stared at his drawn image in the mirror. “How the fuck did I get here?” He slid down the wall and sat on the floor, twitching and scratching at invisible insects he felt crawling on his skin.
Several minutes passed before he left the bathroom, fished some change from his pocket, and stole away to the payphone in the corridor. It was after midnight and he knew the phone was off-limits at that hour, but he felt a virulent pull for a fix. He knew that if he walked out the front door of The Mission this time, he wasn’t coming back.
“Mr. P . . . I’m sorry I’m callin’ so late. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Damn, Tirrell. What happened?”
“Nothin’ yet. But, my stomach is burnin’, and my hands won’t stop shakin’. I’m sweatin’. I just need . . .”
“C’mon, Tirrell. You gotta fight it, man. You promised me—thirty days and thirty meetings, right? You can do this. You have to.”
“I can’t.”
“Don’t tell me you can’t. I know
it’s hard, but you gotta do it.”
“Can you come and get me? Maybe we can go get some coffee or somethin’?”
“You know I can’t do that. There are rules and I broke ’em before to get you in there. I can’t do it again.”
“Dude, I’m not gon’ make it.”
“Have you used at all today?”
“No.”
“All right, then. A day clean is a day won. One step at a time, Tirrell. Before you know it you’ll be lookin’ back and you’ll be amazed at how far you’ve come. And I’ll be there to cheer you on, but only if you don’t punk out and give up.”
Tirrell tried to quell his anger. “I don’t need speeches! I need help.”
“What do you think I been tryin’ to give you?”
Tirrell slammed down the receiver without so much as a good-bye. He brushed the dryness of his lips and vacillated between leaving and staying. With tears in his eyes he crept back into the bay of bunks, climbed into his bed, curled up, and rocked like a baby. “I can do this. I can do this. I can do this.”
Tirrell woke up the next morning, cleaned up, and reported to the kitchen to help with breakfast. He was listless and fatigued, but he’d made it through the night.
“Withdrawal’s a bitch, ain’t it?”
He looked up across the counter and saw a gangling, stringy, redheaded, freckle-faced man who couldn’t have been much older than he was.
“It hurts like a son-of-a-bitch,” Tirrell responded.
“It gets better. Doesn’t feel like it, but it does. At least that’s the drill,” the man said.
“Sounds like you’ve had a li’l bit of experience.”
“I’ve been in and out—and in and out—now I’m back in. Third time’s the charm, right?”
Tirrell smirked. “What you’re sayin’ is the program doesn’t work.”
“It works if you work it—sucks if you don’t.”
“So, why’d you come back?”
“I like the food.”
They both laughed.
“My name’s Sean.”
“Tirrell.”
Outcast Page 22
