Color of Justice

by Gary Hardwick

  The numbers game got old after the lottery caught on big, so the Locke moved into drug trafficking. The money was great, and he’d set up middle men, mostly juveniles, to do the dirty work. He never got so much as arrested.

  When the Union drug wars started, the Locke got out of narcotics. The organization of all the independent drug groups was a violent undertaking that closed off the avenues for profit. Either you joined, or they killed you. Locke saw this as a sign to move on. He got into all manner of nonviolent sin. If it was stolen, he had it, if you wanted sex, he could arrange it, and if you wanted to bet on anything, he was your man.

  The Locke made peace with the drug dealers and hired enforcers to keep the random criminals away from his deals and businesses. He kept several small legitimate enterprises and paid taxes, so the IRS would look the other way. He greased the palms of the local community activists so they’d do the same.

  The Locke loved “the life,” as they call it, so he always kept close to the action, financing a buy, setting up a pyramid scam or a robbery. Lately, he was doing a lot of auto arson. He’d torch a car for the insurance. With a burned-up car, you could inflate the value. He took 10 percent of the nut. Good money and no one ever resisted because everyone hated insurance companies. The Locke even sold information to the cops if it was safe to do so. He liked the ladies and ran a few girls, taking a modest cut of the earnings. They were a pain in the ass, but he got to sample the girls for free.

  The Locke was a big man. He was only five nine or so, but he weighed in at almost three hundred pounds. He had a large, roundish head covered with thick hair that he never combed. His eyes were deep-set and seemed to be tiny circles of brown in the fleshy folds of his face.

  So the Locke maintained a lifestyle devoid of criminal stench. To the public, he was a man with a small party store and a gas station. Things were good, that is, until someone robbed his store and killed two of his men. They had come into the store and robbed it, making sure to take the surveillance video. Only serious, hard-ass pros did that. But the video theft didn’t stop him from finding out who they were. The Locke had many street connections, and so he quickly discovered who the killers were. The three brothers were from out of town. They were young, ruthless, and were described as crazy more than once.

  The Locke had withheld this information from the cops when they came to investigate the murders. He wanted these men. No one on the street could think that he would not avenge a thing like this. The clerk was a friend of the Locke and also one of the best forgers in the business, a valuable asset gone.

  The Locke popped some M&M’s into his mouth as he checked on his hitters. “Y’all ready?” he asked.

  “We up,” said Dapp.

  “Hit ’em hard,” said the Locke. “If they got any of my money, get it back.”

  Dapp and Grease opened the door to the SUV and rushed toward the house. The Locke turned on the engine and watched. He had faith in his men, but if there was any sign of trouble, he’d get his ass out of there in a hurry. He watched as Grease and Dapp disappeared. He was excited. Sometimes, he did miss the violence.

  Muhammad Bady casually read a newspaper account of the hit on the party store. He was never a good reader and struggled with the long sentences. He also liked to read in front of his brothers because they never read and it made Muhammad feel like a father to them, the man who had all the answers.

  The news account of the robbery was the usual shit, “unknown robbers,” “no witnesses,” and the like. But the thing that bothered him was that the owner of the store’s name was not used and he wasn’t quoted as saying anything. They’d done more than their share of robberies, and if there was a story, the owner always said something, usually how the world was going to hell in a handbasket. But this owner was silent, almost as if he didn’t want anybody to know he owned the joint. That bothered him a little, though he didn’t know why.

  The house they were in had been recently occupied by a crew of drug dealers who’d been taken down by the cops. They’d boarded up the place, but that was easily remedied. Muhammad also knew the utilities would be easy to turn back on.

  Detroit was a wonderful place for them to end up. There were many abandoned houses in forgotten neighborhoods that could be easily lived in with little work. And the people in the hood were nice and stayed out of your business. The brothers took advantage of this as they always needed cheap living space, and free was as cheap as you could get.

  The place was still very cluttered, but that didn’t bother the brothers. They didn’t plan to be there very long. Muhammad had tips on where to find their missing father.

  Rimba was still nursing his cold and was sprawled out on an old sofa in a corner. He had his headphones on and he muttered a rap by Nelly.

  Muhammad made sure his brother took it easy. Rimba was an energetic person who’d only make the sickness worse by his natural tendency to run around. And if he wasn’t careful, Rimba would give the cold to Akema, then they’d both be sick. They did need looking after, he thought.

  Suddenly, there was a loud pounding sound from above them. Akema bounded down the stairs, jumping down the last two.

  “Men comin’,” said Akema. “One in the front, one sneaking round the back way. They got guns.”

  Muhammad cursed then pulled out a gun and yelled to Rimba, who ripped himself from his slumber and grabbed his coat off the floor. Out of the inside pocket, he took a big knife.

  “Go to the back,” said Muhammad. Akema and Rimba rushed to the rear of the house. Akema pulled out a small pistol and waited by the door.

  Dapp kicked in the flimsy front door and raised his gun. He saw no one in the room. He entered slowly, waiting for any sound or movement. He moved out of the living room toward the small den to the right of the front door. Quickly, Dapp approached a closet whose door was ajar, flinging it open, pointing the gun inside. He fired a shot inside the darkness, but soon saw that the closet was empty.

  From across the room, Muhammad rose from behind the old sofa and fired a shot at the man facing the empty closet. The shot caught him in the back of the head. Dapp flew forward, disappearing into the closet. Muhammad kept firing into the closet as he walked across the room.

  In the rear of the house, Grease heard the shots and kicked open the back door. It was sturdier than the one in front and he had to kick it twice before it flew open. He started firing as soon as the door was open. He saw the two people in front of him for only a second before the big knife hit him in the throat. He jerked from the impact and fired off a round. He was shocked at the speed of the attack. His mouth popped open as he tried to make a sound, but none came out.

  Akema’s shot flew right into Grease’s open mouth and out of the back of his head. Grease’s errant shot just missed Akema’s left arm. Both attacks had come right on the heels of one another. Grease faintly heard his gun fire, and saw the blurry images of his killers as he fell on the dirty floor, dead.

  A moment later, Muhammad walked in holding his gun and the one he’d taken off Dapp’s dead body. He moved over to a window and looked out. A street over, through a lot, he saw a white Cadillac Escalade parked on the street. Exhaust came out of the tailpipe, signaling that the engine was running. The vehicle was much too nice to be in a place like this, thought Muhammad. The windows were darkly tinted and he could not see who was in the driver’s seat.

  Muhammad went out of the back door so the driver could see him and know that his men had failed. The Cadillac quickly sped away, burning rubber. Muhammad frowned as the SUV rolled off. He walked back inside.

  “We got us an enemy,” said Muhammad.

  “Who?” asked Rimba.

  “Probably the man whose store that was,” said Muhammad. He now knew why the owner hadn’t wanted his name used and made no comment. He was a player, a criminal, and he wanted revenge. “Akema, put your hat back on,” he said with a little anger.

  Akema’s hat had fallen off, and with it gone you could see what the hat was
designed to hide. Akema was a girl. The baby face she tried so hard to make look tough was now clearly the face of an adolescent girl. Akema stuffed her hair back under the hat, feeling embarrassed. Her brothers didn’t like to think of her as a girl. Years of abuse in the foster care system had turned Akema away from her God-given sexuality and into the one she felt gave her the most security. She was neither female or male. She was tough and that was what it took to be left alone.

  “Get all your shit,” said Muhammad. “We got to go.”

  The Badys gathered their meager belongings and started to vacate the house. They would leave their car and steal another. Muhammad was too smart to keep using the same car now that they had a formidable enemy. This was not good, he thought. They had business and this enemy would be a distraction. But all it meant to Muhammad was that they had to get down to business of finding their father that much quicker.

  Muhammad instructed his brothers to pull the bodies together in one room. They did, dragging them into the center of the floor. Then Muhammad picked up their belongings, started a fire, and left as the house burned to the ground.

  11

  CANDIDATE

  Danny dropped the last page of Fiona’s report on his desk. He’d spent two hours that morning reading it with Police Forensics by Lance Kimbrough at his side. It was the detective’s guide to the subject written in plain English. Fiona liked to use the technical terms in her written work, and Danny sometimes needed translation.

  He could barely keep his focus on what he was reading. Thoughts of his mother’s death had wrecked his mind since he’d started the case. There was nothing to compare to the loss of a family member, he thought. It was awful when someone who had formed the foundation of your life was suddenly taken away. You were left to determine who you were without them, afloat without explanation or reason for the pain. The sadness and horror of it had left a stinging pit in his gut and peeked at him around every image in his head.

  Focus, Danny thought to himself. The report was thorough, but it contained nothing of use. The killer had taken his victims from this earth and left not one clue. The analysis of the dirt had not yielded anything. All of the slugs had been studied and other than the doctoring on the tips, they were just ordinary pieces of lead. The SCU’s routine check uncovered thousands of .22 caliber handguns in the tri-county area. The gun would not be the clue to catch the killer.

  The Bakers had dined on steak, potatoes, Caesar salad, and red wine. For dessert, they’d packed away a chocolate soufflé. A great meal. Sounded as if they knew they were going to die, Danny thought to himself. Mrs. Baker had not been sexually assaulted, and Fiona, always the pro, noted that neither had Mr. Baker. He knew everything, which told him nothing.

  Erik was fresh from the property room of thirteen hundred, where, with an expert from Fraud, he’d looked over the Bakers’ records for New Nubia, the Internet company. He sat down opposite Danny with a smile on his face.

  “I hope you got news,” said Danny, “because Fiona’s report ain’t givin’ me shit.”

  “The list of investors in that company is a who’s who of Detroit’s big-money players,” said Erik. “And the Longs were small-timers in terms of their losses on the deal.” He pushed the thick file across the desk to Danny.

  “Was it on the real?” asked Danny. “Or some kinda scam?”

  “The Fraud guy says the company was real, but the way they ran it was bogus. All we know is the thing went belly-up and a shitload of money disappeared.

  “Where did it go?” asked Danny.

  “A lot of it was spent by the Bakers. They were living pretty large, according to the records, but that doesn’t seem to cover all of it. There’s about two million unaccounted for.”

  New Nubia.com had fallen apart and lost all of its value. The investors had gone down for more than twenty million dollars. People brought in by the Bakers were drawn to the enterprise by the booming tech stocks and the big money being made in the market. Danny imagined someone with dreams of cashing in big and coming out with more money than God, then seeing those hopes dashed. In his experience, that was more than enough for murder.

  “Maybe someone really wants that two million,” said Danny. “More than enough money to kill for. Let’s start with whoever went down the hardest,” said Danny.

  He was silent a moment, thinking about how money drove men to desperate means. If a crackhead would kill for a dollar, two million could drive a desperate person to do almost anything.

  “I’d like to find that hooker,” said Danny finally. “See what other skeletons my man had in his closet. One of them might point us in the right direction.”

  “You read my mind,” said Erik. “Maybe Mr. Baker’s little sins caused him to lose that money.”

  Danny and Erik reported their findings to their boss, who appreciated knowing that they were about to interrogate some of the most powerful and connected people in the city. Jim suggested that they get the lowdown on each of the people on the list as they didn’t want to go in unprepared. Many of these people were powerful, rich, and very intelligent. They would be way ahead of the normal questioning.

  Danny and Erik contacted city hall and the local papers and got all the information they could on the affluent people on their list. Danny left the Sewer thinking that if he found the missing New Nubia money, the killer would not be far from it.

  Virginia Stallworth was regaling a small crowd with a story as Danny and Erik walked into her garden party. She was entertaining, and there was a large crowd of mostly black people in her spacious dining hall. On the far wall was a banner that read: STALLWORTH FOR NOAA PRESIDENT!

  Danny didn’t like the idea of interrupting a party, but Virginia Stallworth and her family had been number one on the list of money losers in New Nubia.com. By making her entire family investors, she had lost more than three million dollars.

  Danny and Erik inquired as to which of the women was Virginia, then made their way through the crowd of well-heeled people.

  The party was a political rally for Virginia, who was running for president of the National Organization of African Americans, which was composed of several civil rights groups. The NOAA was powerful, prestigious, and doing well these days, thanks to powerful allies in Washington.

  The president of the organization was a coveted job. In many ways, he or she was the de facto black president of the United States. His picture was in every major newspaper, his words were quoted as gospel, and he wielded considerable political power. The president of the NOAA also went all over the world meeting with heads of state and was on the A-list of every political party.

  So it was no surprise that the NOAA’s current president, Hamilton Grace, was conspicuously missing from the party. He was Virginia’s opponent in the race and there was no love lost between the two. Hamilton was annoyed at being challenged and even more angry that the competition had come from within his own backyard.

  Danny approached Virginia Stallworth in a corner of the room, a regal-looking black woman. She was in her fifties, but she looked ten years younger than that. Virginia had a head of full, silky dark hair with gray streaks, which cascaded over her shoulders. Her eyes were gray and jumped out at you because she was dressed in an outfit that matched. And if Danny hadn’t known she was black, he might have mistaken her for a white woman as she was very light in complexion.

  Virginia held a flute of champagne as she finished her story. Then she, along with a tall woman, broke off from the crowd. Danny and Erik took the cue and intercepted them before they could get lost in the party.

  “Ms. Stallworth?” asked Danny.

  “Yes,” said Virginia. “May I help you?”

  “I’m Detective Cavanaugh and this is Detective Brown. We need to speak with you.”

  Virginia reacted with surprise to the statement. Danny didn’t know if it was the cadence of his voice or the word detective that elicited the response. He suspected a little of both.

  “Police?” said Vir
ginia. “You picked a terrible time to come around.”

  The tall, black woman with Virginia was stunningly beautiful and about thirty or so. Since Danny and Erik had walked up, Virginia’s companion had not taken her eyes off Danny. In her heels, she looked Danny right in the eyes. After a moment, the tall woman cleared her throat and looked at Virginia.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Virginia. “Gentlemen, this is Olittah Reese.”

  Danny and Erik turned and nodded to Olittah. Danny was surprised to find her thrusting out her hand toward him. Instinctively, Danny shook it. Olittah’s grip was firm and she lingered on it a bit too long. She smiled beautifully at him. For his part, Danny was looking at the big wedding ring on her left hand.

  “Nice to meet you,” she said.

  “Same here,” said Danny.

  Olittah took a second then turned to Erik and said a very businesslike hello.

  Danny ignored the flirtation, but Erik was already smiling like a snake.

  “Ms. Stallworth, is there some place we can speak in private?” asked Danny.

  “Sure,” said Virginia. “Olittah, we’ll finish up later, okay?”

  “Sure,” said Olittah. She took another lingering glance at Danny then walked away.

  Danny, Erik, and Virginia moved in the opposite direction. Danny didn’t want to look after Olittah, but he let himself sneak a peek at her. When he did, he saw her long legs carrying her away. He also saw her turn and look back at him over her shoulder. Embarrassed, he smiled awkwardly and turned to find Erik looking at him with a smile.

  Virginia led Danny and Erik out of the dining hall into an adjacent room. Inside, they found a group of young black people, all in their twenties.

  “Gwen, we need the room,” said Virginia.

  The room emptied on command, and Danny couldn’t tell to whom Virginia had spoken.

  “I suppose you’re here about the Bakers,” said Virginia.