Lost Witness

by Rebecca Forster

25

  Day 2 @5:00 P.M

  "There was no place else to go, Jamal. If you don't want us here just say so."

  Jamal stood by the stories-tall windows. The dappled late afternoon light speckled his dark skin, filtered as it was by the dirt and grime the city air had left on the glass. He listened to Hannah, but was distracted by the vintage Cadillac parked on the street. The artist in him admired the beauty of that '59 Caddy; the fact that somehow the driver had been lucky enough to score a parking space big enough for it right outside his building was a miracle. Yep, a miracle and a curse because that beautiful car had brought with it a mess of a situation and a mishmash of passengers who were now waiting for him to make a decision.

  "Jamal?"

  Hannah was impatient with his silence, anxious because she didn't know what was going on at the hospital, and terrified that if they left this place that detective would somehow find them and take Billy away. Finally, her frustration bubbled over.

  "Okay, fine. I'm out of here."

  Jamal turned around and grabbed her arm. Hannah pulled against his grip, her green eyes sparking. She opened her mouth to speak but Jamal beat her to it.

  "For God's sake, Hannah, give me a minute." He gave her arm a little shake as he dipped his head and lowered his voice. "Okay? A minute."

  Slowly he opened his fingers. When he was sure she wasn't going to bolt he kissed her forehead, tossed the paint-stained cloth he was holding onto his worktable, and went to the back of the space. She followed behind and leaned up against the industrial size sink as he washed his hands.

  "It's going take a second to process all this," he said. "It would have been easier if you just dropped a marble slab on my head. Good grief."

  "I'm sorry. I know. I'm sorry. It's just that we've got to hide. We've got to—"

  "You are talking about hiding from the cops, Hannah." Jamal finished washing the paint off his hands and slapped at the faucet but the water didn't turn off. He hit it again, and again, and finally twisted the ancient hardware until the flow slowed to a drip. "Cops just have never been in my wheelhouse, you know what I mean?"

  When he finished at the sink he walked the space, picking up tools and putting them down only to pick them up again. Hannah remained silent, knowing that she was asking a lot of him. Most importantly she was asking it for Billy, the boy - the man - who loved her. Hannah knew it wasn't fair, but she had no choice.

  "Isn't Josie taking care of all this? She can't think this is a good idea."

  "Josie's in the hospital," Hannah said, realizing suddenly that she had burst in on Jamal without even a hello much less an explanation of the circumstances.

  "What?" Jamal said. "What happened?"

  "I don't know. I haven't heard from Archer yet. The paramedics came and took her."

  "Then why aren't you there with her?" Jamal said. "Get back home, girl. Go to the hospital. I'll drive you if your friend won't."

  "No, no," Hannah insisted. "Josie told me to leave. I was going with her in the ambulance then she kind of half woke up, and she told me to take Billy somewhere safe. This was the safest place I could think of. I guess she thinks the police are going to try to . . ."

  Hannah sighed. How could she say it? How could she say the cops might arrest Billy for murder? The deja vu was too awful to consider. Jamal had walked the straight and narrow all his life and his only purpose was to create beautiful things for the world. She understood how unsettling what she had to tell him would be; she knew how crazy it would sound. Hannah never questioned anything because life had always been crazy for her and Billy, Josie and Archer. For them it was fight and never flight, face down injustice or die. She had no idea why they were like that, they just were.

  Not that Jamal wasn't a just man, but he was no justice warrior. He lived in harmony with the world, Jamal was her safe place, her artistic twin. He had shown her another way to live in the world and she loved him for it. Now she was asking him to disrupt the balance of his life and for what? More chaos than he could ever imagine? For a man he hadn't met? For a woman who no one believed existed? Sadly that was exactly what she wanted, but wanting something did not make the thing fair or right.

  "It's okay, Jamal. I shouldn't have put you in this position." She tiptoed up, and kissed his cheek. "I'll let you know when things are worked out."

  With that, Hannah hurried across the studio and out the door. It took nothing more than the sound of the door closing for Jamal to come to his senses.

  "Hannah, wait!"

  He ran after her, ripping open the door, throwing himself onto the landing, hanging over the railing as he called her name. When she didn't respond, when the sound of her pounding down the staircase didn't stop, Jamal twisted and turned as he tried to decide what to do.

  “Good grief, Hannah," Jamal muttered and took off after her.

  He made it to the street just as she was getting into the Cadillac. The door was starting to close when Jamal took hold, ripped it out of her hand, and hunkered down beside the car to check out the three people inside. He gave Sparkle a nod. When he caught Hannah's eye he shook his head, put a hand on her knee, and gave it a squeeze. Finally Billy Zuni and Jamal locked eyes. They sized each other up, and it was Jamal who reached over Hannah and offered Billy his hand.

  "I've heard a lot about you, man."

  When Billy took it, Sparkle threw her arm over the back seat, looked at Hannah and grinned.

  "You sure know how to pick 'em, honey."

  26

  Day 2 @8:00 P.M

  "Do you like it?"

  Jamal and Sparkle looked at the underside of the green butterfly where Jamal had painted Pablo Neuruda's poem, Despair.

  "Yeah, I like it," Sparkle said. "I've never been in love like that, but I know people who have. All of themselves sunk in love."

  "Did it turn out well?" Jamal asked.

  "Naw. That kind of love never does. You gotta keep yourself separate to be good together. My first husband knew that. He was a fine man."

  "That's an interesting take. I thought common wisdom was that love united two people into one, and that's what made the union strong."

  "Oh, please. If you do that then you can't tell the other person they're being an ass." Sparkle scoffed. "See, if you're like one person then you don't see the stupid stuff 'cause you're just the other half of the ass."

  "Sparkle, you missed your calling," Jamal said. "You should have been a psychologist or a philosopher."

  "No thanks. I don't want to muck around in anyone's head. It's hard enough living in my own."

  "Okay, then you should be queen of the world. We'd all be better off."

  Jamal laughed but the sound of it evaporated as his gaze wandered to Hannah. She stood near the window talking on the phone. Jamal looked at Billy who was cleaning up the last of the food they shared while they brought Jamal up to speed. Then his eyes went back to Hannah.

  "She's a good woman, but she's young," Sparkle said.

  "She's been through a lot," Jamal said. "It galvanized her."

  "That doesn't mean she's done cooking. You gotta go a few miles to figure out where you really stand in this life. If you're lucky you do that before the best part of your days are gone, but she's not even half way." Sparkle gave a nod toward Billy. "Him too. That one isn't where he should be yet, but he knows about love. He had him a bad case the minute he laid eyes on Hannah."

  "There's all kinds of love, Sparkle. There's all sorts of end points," Jamal said.

  "So true." She sighed a little. "But you've already reached yours. You know exactly who you are, my friend, so don't think you can change yourself just to tip the scales in your favor when it comes to Hannah. She'll see right through you."

  "I wouldn't dream of it, Sparkle. In fact, I don't think I could change if I tried," Jamal said.

  "But you could do that." She pointed at the poem.

  "Despair for love?" He chuckled. "Are you throwing that back at me?"

  "I'm just saying it ain't
worth it," Sparkle said. "Hannah will choose. One will lose; one will win. Or who knows, maybe all three of you will crap out on this one. You never can tell."

  "Then I guess I'll just have to set my mind to win," Jamal said. "But I'll do it honestly. I promise."

  "You know what they say about the good guys, baby."

  "What?"

  "They go to bed alone," Sparkle said. "Besides, you don't know who's throwing the dice. The man upstairs might have already rigged the game. . ."

  Before Sparkle could say anything more, Hannah called:

  "Josie's okay. She had surgery. It went well."

  Billy clapped. Sparkle blessed the lord and Jamal grinned. It was what they had all been waiting to hear and the four of them left their respective corners in the cavernous studio, converging on the rough-hewn refectory table that was the heart of Jamal's place. Billy threw his legs over the bench and sat down. Sparkle took a chair on the other side. Hannah sat at the edge of the table, her feet up on another chair. Jamal leaned against one of the big pillars that held the building up.

  "What happened?" Sparkle asked.

  "She had a ruptured fallopian tube," Hannah said. "There was a lot of internal bleeding. I guess it's been going on for a while. The doctor said she was lucky he got her when he did."

  "Did Archer say what caused it?" Jamal asked.

  "No," Hannah said.

  "Girl stuff. That's what it was," Sparkle said, and reached for the bottle of wine Jamal had opened.

  She held it toward Hannah who shook her head. Billy fiddled with a fat pencil, tapping it against his hand until the graphite mark it made was so dark it looked like he had a hole in his palm. Through the open window, the sound of commuters heading to the freeway came at them. The wind had picked up and blew intermittent gusts of wind through the windows making the big metal butterflies shiver just as they had been designed to do.

  "So what now?" Jamal asked.

  "What do you mean?" Hannah said.

  "I mean, what now?"

  He opened his hands and tilted his head. When he didn't get an answer, Jamal pushed himself away from the pole and walked toward them, asking the question again.

  "What do you do now that Josie is out of commission?"

  Jamal looked directly at Billy.

  "Josie was bleeding bad, barely conscious, but she's worried enough to tell Hannah to hide you out, man," he said. "I mean, if that woman would rather die than see anything happen to Hannah, and yet she put Hannah in the middle of what you brought with you. Hannah could be like, you know, aiding and abetting. We all could. But Josie wanted Hannah to help you, so what do we do? There's got to be an end game."

  "There's nothing to aid and abet. I didn't commit any crime," Billy said and that pencil pushed harder into his palm.

  "I didn't say you did, man. I'm just saying that Josie knew she wasn't going to be able to run interference, and she thought whatever was coming your way was going to be bad. Or does she always tell people not to trust the cops? That's no five-hundred-dollar-an-hour lawyer talk I ever heard."

  "He's right." Sparkle spoke up. "Josie wouldn't have sent you running if she thought you were going to get a fair shake. Hannah, did Archer say how long she would be out of commission?"

  "It doesn't matter how long."

  Billy tossed the pencil on the table. Unable to sit still, uncomfortable under Jamal's gaze, he got off the bench, went to the windows. He shut one, and then another, and another. When the sounds from the city were no more than a dull roar, when the wind stopped whistling through the loft, he turned around and propped himself up against the sill.

  "Whatever is going to happen with the Faret Vild is going to happen in hours, not days. Josie knew she couldn't help me or Tala. Jamal's right, she has left it to us."

  Sparkle and Hannah exchanged a look and Jamal caught it.

  "What? What aren't you telling me?"

  Hannah pulled out the paper she had folded and put in her pocket. She passed it to Jamal, glancing at Billy as she spoke.

  "This is the information Archer got on Tala, but Billy says the picture isn't her."

  "Oh, man, you're chasing after someone who isn't who she says she is?"

  "We don't know that. The manifest was changed. That information could have been changed or mixed up or something," Billy said.

  "Oh, come on." Jamal threw up his hands. "You really think that captain had time to get to someone in the Philippines and convince. . ."

  "It could have been done, but it doesn't matter if this was a mistake or intentional. Tala Reyes is the woman I know. I owe her my life, and the fact that I can't help her . . ." He raised his chin as if he could swallow the words he was about to speak.

  "You owe her?" Hannah said.

  He turned to Hannah and the words he spoke now were sure and true.

  "And I love her the same as I love you and Josie. I owe you all, I love you all, and a lot of good any of it is."

  Hannah understood exactly what Billy was saying. Loving, obligation, and admiration were separate ropes that tied a knot around a heart so tight it was impossible to tell if one was stronger than the other. That was a knot to be unraveled later.

  "Then I guess all of us are going to have to figure out how to help," Hannah said.

  "I'm in." Sparkle raised her glass.

  Hannah turned her face up to Jamal. He put a hand on her shoulder. He was not claiming her, just showing solidarity. Finally, he sat down at the table, sighed, shook his head, and covered his face with his hands. When he came up for air he said:

  "I guess we need a plan," he said.

  Hannah and Billy looked at one another. Sparkle took the wine bottle, filled her glass, sat back and said:

  "I've got an idea if anyone's interested."

  Detective Charles Armstrong was a good looking guy in that solid way a man can be in middle age. Look closer and anybody would see that he had been a stone cold fox as a young cop with his roman nose, square jaw, bright hazel eyes, and a headful of mink-brown hair. With age that nose grew a little sharper, the jaw a little softer, and those hazel eyes had faded to the color of tea. He didn't wear a wedding ring, but every once in a while his thumb rubbed his ring finger as if it hadn't been naked all that long. It wasn't that Bree Nelson was in the market for a relationship, but she wouldn't spit in a decent man's eye if he happened to show an interest, and Charles Armstrong seemed more than decent.

  Still Bree's social life and Armstrong's marital status were neither here nor there because this was business. She was just glad that he didn't mind conducting it over a drink. The local TGI Fridays wasn't the best place for a chat like this, but it was geographically desirable for them both. So here they were, Bree in her jeans and a pink jacket, Armstrong still dressed in his coat and tie. They were sitting in a corner booth, close enough for him to smell her perfume.

  "So, if you find him are you going to arrest him?"

  "You tell me," Armstrong said. "I mean, you're the one with all the inside info. Why don't you show me yours, and I'll show you mine."

  "Cute." Bree laughed. "You must keep your wife all hot and bothered with lines like that."

  "Not married." Armstrong took a drink of his beer and set it back down. "Think that's why she left me?"

  "If that's your only flaw the woman was crazy." Bree opened the satchel on the seat beside her.

  "Nice of you to say so," Armstrong said, but his heart wasn't in the banter. His head was wrapped around the case. "I'll tell you the truth. I don't have anything solid. I've got a knife that I'm hoping to lift some prints off, but it looks pretty clean. I've got this kid tied up a little in terms of his description of the body. That doesn't mean he's responsible for the death. I've collared suspects on less, but I'm not feeling it."

  "You're feeling something though, or we wouldn't be here," Bree said.

  "It's this woman that's got me confused. The captain says she doesn't exist, the Manila authorities show a woman with that name signed onto the Fa
ret Vild, but then Zogaj or Zuni or whatever he calls himself says it's not her. I'd sure like to know what game that kid is playing because all I am is confused. If I was Sherlock Holmes I could figure it out by the time I'm done with this beer, but I'll admit I'm feeling more like Sherlock schlep."

  "A man who admits he isn't God. You're getting more attractive by the minute, detective."

  Bree pushed aside her drink, opened a folder, and scooted toward Armstrong. He took his cue and moved her way. When they met in the middle, Bree opened her file and the first thing he saw was the picture of a Filipino man in uniform. It was held in place by a long grommet at the top of the page. On the other side were loose papers. Bree started with the picture.

  "Natalie came up with the I.D.," Bree said.

  "Yay, Homeland Security," Armstrong muttered.

  "Go team." Bree snorted a laugh. "State is in the process of confirming, but right now we think you're looking at none other than Rambo Talaningo."

  "Rambo? Seriously?" Armstrong crossed the back of his hand under nose to stifle his amusement.

  "Don't laugh. Or at least you wouldn't want to laugh if he was still kicking. The planet's a better place without this guy." She reached for her wine, finished it off, and said: "If you repeat that, I'll deny I said it."

  "My lips are sealed, but my curiosity is piqued," he said. "Who is he?"

  "He is no less than the head of the Philippines Drug Enforcement Agency."

  "A big shot." Amstrong whistled.

  "A very, very big shot who comes with a ton of baggage," Bree said. "He was one of the police officers detained in the Wheel of Torture scandal in the Philippines. Seems a couple of local cops were torturing suspects to get them to confess to crimes even if they were innocent. I guess the good old electrodes to the nuts got boring, so they made a wheel of torture. Spin the wheel and —"

  Armstrong said, "You get what the arrow lands on? Tell me that's not it."

  "Yep. They were quite inventive and good old Rambo ran the whole shebang. If you want to see what the wheel looked like, I can make a copy of the report for you."