by Teri Woods
“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON NOW?
TERRORISTS ATTACKING THE MALLS?”
Goldilocks’s comment stopped Angel dead in her tracks. Roc and Zoom had used the same tactic. Create confusion, murder, and then escape in the chaos.
It was a timely thought that made her instantly aware of her surroundings. She felt her life was in danger, saw it coming for a split second, and then all hell broke loose as the mall erupted in gunfire and screams…
The first shot from Rahman’s bullet grazed Angel in the upper arm as she pushed people out of her way. The second shattered the window behind her as she dove for cover.
“F—k!” Angel cursed at the sight of her own blood, adrenaline pumping too fast to feel the pain.
“Angel!” Goldilocks screamed, not knowing how serious her wound was.
“I’m good! Move!”
“A major pioneer of street fiction.”
—Library Journal
RAVES FOR TERI WOODS AND HER NOVELS
DUTCH
“Almost unparalleled in its shock value… thoroughly absorbing… a fast-moving story with ruthless dialogue… vividly highlights the crime-riddled existence of notorious Newark gangster Bernard James, aka Dutch… will keep any lover of this genre captivated.”
—The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers
“A bone-chilling story of murder, violence, and the struggle for power. It is a harrowing tale.”
— MyShelf.com
ALIBI
“The classic investigative query—‘Where were you on the night in question?’—allows Woods to once again prove why she’s in a league of her own.”
—Philadelphia Tribune
“Gritty… While giving a sympathetic voice to her financially desperate heroine… Woods observes that easy cash comes with a steep price.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“Woods writes with feeling a strong sense of Philadelphia setting… Fast-paced and exciting, Alibi is an action-filled story about the desperate life of one urban girl and the consequences of trying to break away.”
—Booklist
“Blistering… This wickedly satisfying page-turner will leave readers eager for the next installment.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Woods has established herself as the Queen of Urban Fiction… launching a revolution in reading… Her hustle made real the dream of every wannabe author, the fantasy that your work will inspire a generation, will create a wave of response and thought, that posits you as a leader and a vanguard of a movement all your own.”
— Heavy.com
“A fast-paced, action-filled page-turner.”
— MyShelf.com
“Gritty drama that only Woods can deliver… [she] writes with the suspense and ingenuity of a crime novelist and has crafted a literary adrenaline rush for mystery, thriller, and urban fiction fans alike.”
— The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers
“An engaging thriller with an intricate plot.”
— BlackVoices.com
“A fast-paced read… Teri Woods is quite a good writer.”
—Sacramento Book Review
TRUE TO THE GAME III
“Vividly depicts the 1990s drug culture… urban fiction fans will welcome the melodramatic final entry in bestseller Woods’s True to the Game trilogy.”
—Publishers Weekly
TRUE TO THE GAME II
“Raw… gutsy.”
—Essence
“Four out of five… Wonderful… a great story… a fast-paced, exciting read that will surely keep you on your toes.”
— Urban-Reviews.com
“Explosive… excellent… masterful… A must-have… definitely worth waiting for… solidifies Ms. Woods’s place as one of the Queens of Street Lit.”
—The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Grand Central Publishing Edition
Copyright © 2005, 2010 by Teri Woods
Story by Dutch
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Previously published by Teri Woods Publishing
Grand Central Publishing
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com
www.twitter.com/grandcentralpub
First eBook Edition: March 2010
Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
ISBN: 978-0-446-56743-5
Contents
“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON NOW? TERRORISTS ATTACKING THE MALLS?”
RAVES FOR TERI WOODS AND HER NOVELS
COPYRIGHT
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
THREE YEARS LATER
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
RAHMAN
CHAPTER SIX
PUSSY CONTROL
CHAPTER SEVEN
WAR
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
PEACE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
QUANTICO, VIRGINIA
CHAPTER TWELVE
READING GROUP GUIDE
A Preview of Alibi
This book is dedicated to my nephew, Andrew Wansel.
Boy oh boy, I knew it was bad in the beginning. I didn’t know how bad it would get, and it was really touch and go there, nephew, because it wasn’t just business; the personal fell apart, too. The funny thing about it is you are the last person on earth I thought I would ever call a hundred and ninety-nine times a day. But I did, and you answered a hundred and ninety-nine times and you really were the only person that I could trust and talk to. And not only that, but you actually knew what I was talking about! WOW! And you listened to me, every day, day after day, after day, after day, and you really helped me and I really appreciate it. You are a good nephew. Thanks for the ear time.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank my family, Phyllis and Corel, Chucky, Dexter and Judy, Andrew, Christopher, Carl, my children, Jessica, Lucas and Brandon, Brett, and my assistant, Tracey.
PROLOGUE
Get these people out of here!” Detective Smalls bellowed.
The Essex County Courthouse had become a madhouse. Screams of confusion and cries of pain filled the air and seared the ears of the seasoned detective. In all of his thirteen years on the force, he had never seen anything like this. It was like a terrorist had dropped a bomb on the courthouse and transformed it into a war zone. Paramedics, uniformed police officers, and Newark’s Special Unit, along with the Newark Fire Department, all struggled to maintain order in the aftermath of the massacre.
“Move aside, please. Move aside!” Smalls commanded as he directed the curious who had filed into the bullet-ridden courtroom door.
“Officer! Officer! My son was in there, please…”
“Please don’t let my wife be dead! Someone help me!”
The faces and voices reminded Smalls of a recurring nightmare, one he could not wake up from. He had been one of the first on the scene and had seen the human remains strewn like discarded waste. As he entered the sm
oke-filled courtroom, the smell of death hit him in the face. It now lingered in his nostrils as he looked around in disbelief. The tragedy was an unbelievable sight.
Frank Sorbonno’s body lay grotesquely twisted against the rear wall. District Attorney Anthony Jacobs’s body had been blown to pieces, his headless remains sprawled on the prosecution’s table. The judge was slumped over his gavel, and nine of the twelve jury members leaned every which way on top of each other.
Innocent bystanders and the disguised Charlies lay strewn on the floor. Their blood was splattered all over the courtroom and even on the American flag that hung limp in the corner. That sight in particular caught Smalls’s eye and etched itself in his memory.
Smalls sat down in the back row of the courtroom and ran his hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. How could this have happened? he asked himself as he continued to inspect the room. Dutch had single-handedly taken the American justice system and slapped it with his bloody hand. If gunshots had been applause, the courtroom would have received a deadly standing ovation with Dutch as orchestrator.
Smalls silently watched as ambulance workers rolled corpse after corpse onto soiled gurneys and out the courtroom doors. All he could think of was Dutch. He prayed he would be found among the dead. He’d give his right arm to have Dutch in front of him, bleeding, dying, and begging to atone for the atrocity he had inflicted on the flesh of the American justice system. But Dutch was nowhere to be found. The police had sealed off the building and a ten-block radius around it. The Feds had stopped airline flights and bus and train departures. But all to no avail. Dutch had managed to slip through the tight noose they had meticulously prepared for him and escaped unscathed. He mocked them all.
But more than how he did it, everyone wanted to know where he had gone.
The question was very simple.
Where was Dutch?
CHAPTER ONE
Fuck all y’all!” was Dutch’s emphatic verdict on the entire courtroom, and the Charlies stood ready to impose his sentence. Bullets filled the unsuspecting courtroom. Dutch pulled out the twin forty calibers strapped under the defense table and fired into the face of the bailiff to his right as he reached for his service revolver. The second bailiff was spun off his feet by a Charlie in the front row. People leaped and ducked, but to no avail, because there was nowhere to hide.
Gripping both pistols like death’s sickle, ready to claim his next victim, Dutch cut the judge down with a shot to the chest. “Guilty, muthafucka! Guilty!” Dutch laughed, firing a second shot that exploded the judge’s head like a melon. “Gavel that, pussy!”
Anthony Jacobs felt the muzzle at the back of his head, and before he could even pray, lead filled his thoughts.
The jury was mercilessly sprayed with a barrage of gunfire by four Charlies. All the while, Dutch searched the frenzied rows looking for Frank Sorbonno. He found him crouched under a row at the rear of the courtroom. Dutch smiled down on him.
“Frankie Bonno! It’s the black Al Capone, muthafucka!” Dutch quipped as he aimed the muzzle at his bald dome. “Happy Valentine’s Day, sweetheart!”
“Dutch please! I—”
Bonno’s cowardly plea was silenced by six hollow-point messengers of death.
Meanwhile, courthouse officers had begun to converge on the room. Shots flew through the door, killing two Charlies, while Dutch and six other Charlies made their way to the exit and out the door.
Three more Charlies, positioned in the rear of the building, were exchanging fire with several officers, clearing the way for Dutch and his team.
“Dutch, this way, baby,” one of the Charlies beckoned before her lungs filled with blood from a gunshot in the back. She fell, silenced forever, as Dutch and the others made it to the stairs.
Outside, police and ambulances had arrived.
One of the ambulances, however, arrived with two Charlies dressed as EMT workers and was conveniently parked adjacent to the rear of the courthouse.
With eyes alert to the police and all their activity, Craze cautiously emerged from behind a Dumpster and opened the back door.
To the average eye, the ambulance didn’t appear out of place. The melee had panicked everyone, and no one knew what to expect next… Certainly not an ambulance escape.
“The basement!” Dutch ordered the remaining three Charlies with him. “Make sure my man is compensated for his assistance,” he smirked, then shot out the rear door and hopped into the ambulance.
Craze looked at his longtime friend, relieved that he had made it, then screamed at the Charlie in the driver’s seat, “Fuck you waitin’ for, tomorrow? Drive!” She flipped on the siren and sped off. As the ambulance turned the corner, Detective Smalls and his partner, Detective Meritti, skidded up and jumped out of their car, ready for war.
“Where is Dutch?” Smalls demanded, but he became distracted when Detective Meritti entered the courthouse behind him. Smalls could tell by the look on his partner’s face that he was the bearer of bad news. Smalls had been dealing with the press throughout the ordeal, keeping them informed of what was going on. But he had postponed leaking any information concerning Dutch until the chief of police got back to him. And today Meritti was the chief’s messenger.
“What’s the world coming to, eh?” Meritti asked in his Brooklyn Italian accent. “First 9/11, now this?” He scanned the crime scene in disbelief. “This is the beginning of anarchism.”
Smalls agreed. “So?” he inquired, studying Meritti’s blue eyes.
Meritti sat down and lit a Winston. “I can see the headlines now. ‘Gangster kills judge and jury and escapes,’” he bitterly remarked with a flourish, tapping the ashes from his cigarette.
“Do you know what kind of message that would send?” Meritti continued his rant. “Every fuckin’ nut with a gun and half a heart will think he can do the same thing!”
Smalls nodded. “No courtroom in America will be safe. The next thing you know, people will be shooting DAs and judges in the street!”
“And rioting in county jails to bust out the kingpins,” Meritti added in a tone of disgust.
Smalls knew where Meritti was going with the conversation. “I take it chief feels the same way?” Smalls asked, already knowing he did.
Meritti nodded, watching his partner of six years, knowing what the chief was asking of him, and he knew Smalls didn’t like to lie. To Meritti, Smalls had always been an annoyingly honest detective.
“If I go out there and tell those people that James is dead… if we cover up his escape and it gets out…”
“It won’t get out,” Meritti said cutting him off.
“But if it does?”
“It won’t.”
Smalls saw the logic in the decision.
Even though Dutch had committed a heinous act, if the world thought he was dead, potential copycats would think twice because Dutch didn’t survive. But to Smalls, a lie was still a lie.
However, if the truth was told, Dutch would become a legend—the gangster’s hero, the outlaw that blasted his way to freedom. No, Smalls’s heart decided, the truth couldn’t be told—yet. Not until James was firmly in his grasp. For the sake of justice everywhere, the truth had to be concealed.
Smalls rose slowly, feeling the full weight of his fifty-four years in his arthritic knees.
“Okay, let’s go meet the press,” he said, smiling at Meritti weakly.
Meritti took one last look at the room and wondered aloud, “But HOW did he do it? There are metal detectors on every floor, even right outside this door, and he smuggled in a fuckin’ arsenal? How?”
Smalls looked at Meritti with steel in his eyes. “I don’t know. But I promise you, I will find out.”
With that, they left the courtroom.
CHAPTER TWO
Delores Murphy clicked the power button to her television and heard the reporter confirm her son’s demise.
“Thank you,” she whispered, grateful that it was finally over.
Delores h
ad silently witnessed the rise of her only child from a petty car thief to a vicious drug lord. Now, she was too numb to cry. Pain and a sense of relief mingled in her soul, and for the first time, Delores questioned herself.
Where did I go wrong?
She had tried to raise Bernard like any other single black mother in the grip of poverty. She tried to instill in him the basic moral principles of love, honesty, and a belief in God. She had also tried to teach him the value of his freedom, of his black manhood, and of his own self-worth in a society that wanted to brainwash the black man into believing that he was worthless.
Materially, Delores never spoiled Dutch, but she always tried to give him the best, just like any mother would. But Delores still felt that she had gone wrong somewhere. She felt that the hate and rage she carried against the system in her youth had somehow seeped into her son.
She wondered if hate so deep could be genetically inherited.
She also wondered if every lesson she had taught Dutch had been filtered through her own bitterness and resentment. And maybe her very own breast milk had contaminated his soul.
“Nigga, go on out there and take back what them people took from you!”
Delores remembered preaching those words when Dutch came home from prison. He had gone away a man-child and returned a man. Had her words somehow unlocked the fury trapped inside him and unleashed her son’s demons onto the streets?
As Dutch emptied the book bag on Delores’s worn kitchen table, stacks upon stacks of rubber-banded rolls of money landed with soft thuds.
“Ma, we movin’,” Dutch announced proudly, wearing his father’s smile like it was his own.
Delores’s eyes widened. She was weary from working two jobs, and her son, not even a year out of prison, had brought home more money than she’d seen in her entire life.
“Bernard, where did you…”
