The Man in 3B
Page 29
I put down the Hennessy and poured the pills back into the bottle. Had it been anyone else, I wouldn’t have bothered answering the door, but after the way Connie had been there for me, I had to at least say good-bye.
When I opened the door, I saw something that made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. I took a step back, closing my eyes to see if it was just a mirage. When I opened them, he was still standing there next to Connie.
“Daryl?” I asked the man. He had dreads pulled back in a ponytail and a little less facial hair, but even behind those sunglasses he was sporting, he looked just like Daryl.
“No, this isn’t Daryl.” Connie laughed. “This is Rodney, Daryl’s brother. They do have one hell of a family resemblance, don’t they? Almost made me pee in my pants when I saw him at the wake.”
My mouth hung open. I couldn’t find any words to express what I was feeling as I stared at this person who was the spitting image of the man I loved.
I swear I almost started crying when Rodney stepped up and gave me a warm hug. “So you’re the guy my brother was always telling me about. I’ve heard a lot about you, Benny.” He stepped back and smiled.
“Really?” I was surprised that Daryl had even mentioned me to his family. Just that little bit of information lifted my spirit.
“My brother really liked you, man. He said you were one of his best friends. He just never told me how handsome you were.”
I glanced at Connie, who had a satisfied smirk on her face.
“Thanks.” I could feel myself blushing, and I lowered my head. I would have loved to return the compliment, but I was still a bit flabbergasted by the mere sight of him.
Connie leaned in and whispered, “Daryl had been thinking about hooking you guys up, you know.” She pulled back with a grin on her face. I couldn’t help but smile too. Now, that was something I hadn’t done in a long time.
“Anyway, Rodney, I’m gonna leave you in Benny’s capable hands. I’m sure you two will find something to talk about.”
Was she really going to leave me alone with him? “Where are you going?” I asked, trying not to sound panicked.
“I have to go pack. The movers are coming in a couple of days, and I still have more than half my place to box up. Rodney here wanted to talk with you, so I’ll leave you two alone.”
“You’re really moving, huh?”
“Aint nothing here for me, Benny. Not anymore.” She glanced over at Daryl’s apartment sadly.
“I can relate. I’m planning on checking out myself,” I said, thinking about the pills I’d left in the kitchen.
“Who knows? Maybe you and Rodney can check out together.”
Poor Connie. She had no idea what she’d just said. I hoped she’d forgive me later for committing suicide.
Connie gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. And then it was me and Rodney and an awkward silence at the front door until he spoke.
“I’m sorry. I know this is a little weird. I didn’t think she was gonna drop me off on you like that.”
“I know, but it’s okay. I’m not doing anything.” Other than killing myself, that is.
“Do you mind if I come in?”
“Ah, you know, my place is really a mess…,” I said awkwardly.
“No problem. Why don’t we go have a drink somewhere?” Rodney suggested.
I shoved my hands in my pockets and thought about it for a second. Sure, Rodney was cute, and he seemed nice, but I doubted Connie had told him everything about me. Once he learned the truth, he would probably run, and I didn’t think I could bear it if one more person left me.
“I don’t know about that. I mean, I’d love to get to know you better, and I’m sure there are lots of things about your brother we could share, but—”
“But what? I know you loved my brother, Benny. He loved you too, just not in a romantic way. I think he would have wanted us to be friends.”
I shook my head. “Nah, I’m sorry. I can’t.”
He was persistent. “Oh, come on. Let’s have a drink and shoot the breeze about my brother. I really miss him. Don’t you?” We were both silent for a second, lost in our own private thoughts about Daryl. “Besides, it’s my birthday. Daryl told me that he went with you on your twenty-first, so you owe me at least that much. Everybody needs somebody to hang out with on their twenty-first birthday.”
I smiled as I thought about how I’d used the same tactic to convince Daryl to spend my birthday with me.
“Is that a yes?” Rodney said, playfully jabbing me in the arm.
“Before I say yes, there’s something I’ve got to tell you. Something that might change your mind about having that drink with me.” I couldn’t even finish the sentence without my eyes welling up with tears.
“What’s that?”
“My father’s the one who killed your brother.” I took a step back just in case he decided to swing. “He killed him because he thought Daryl turned me gay. I’m sorry. It was all my fault.”
Rodney looked down at the ground and blew out a long, slow breath; then he looked up at me. He lifted his hand, and I tensed up, expecting a slap in the face. Instead, he placed it gently on my cheek. “I know. I was there when your father got arrested, Benny. Me and my family have made our peace with God about that. The rest is up to the court system. We don’t blame you. I’m just sorry that you don’t have your father and I don’t have my brother.”
He leaned in and gently kissed my cheek.
“You ready for that drink now?”
I wiped the tears from my eyes. “Let me go clean up some stuff in the kitchen, and I’ll be right out.”
Krystal
47
I had never been so scared in my life. I put my hands together, got down on my knees, and prayed to God for the first time in years.
“Please, God, if you can somehow get me out of this mess, I will never, ever use drugs again, I swear. And I’ll go to church too. In Jesus’s name I pray. Amen.”
I got up off my knees and sat down on the chair in the interrogation room, wondering how much longer the detectives were going to make me wait. It had been almost an hour since that hard-ass Detective Ryan read me my rights, then drilled me about Slim and his operation. I tried to be strong, but when he showed me the blue boxes they’d found in our apartment, I threw Slim so far under the bus he might not ever get out from under it. I hated what I’d done to Slim, but at this point, it was either him or me, and it damn sure wasn’t gonna be me. I just hoped the DA cut me a deal to go to one of those drug programs like Ryan had promised instead of jail.
“You know you’re in big trouble, right?” Detective Thomas entered the room, followed by his female partner, Detective Anderson. Neither one of them looked happy, and Thomas sounded pissed.
“What are you talking about? I’ve been cooperating. I already told Detective Ryan everything I know. He’s trying to get me into a substance abuse program.”
“I wouldn’t be worrying about going to a program yet if I were you,” he said, sitting across the table from me. “What I’d be worried about is this.”
Anderson handed him a brown paper bag and he dumped out its contents. At least a dozen aerosol cans rolled across the table.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“We’ll get to those in a minute.” He picked up a plastic bag containing a knife. “Do you know what this is?”
“Uh, yeah. It’s a steak knife. Most people use them to cut their food.” What the fuck was going on here? I was still scared, but now I was becoming a little irritated. Why were they bothering me with this bullshit that had nothing to do with my drug use?
“I believe this particular knife was used to end Daryl Graham’s life. We’ll know for sure in a couple of days.”
“So that’s what Ben used to kill Daryl?” I asked. “What’s that got to do with me?”
“Is that what Ben used?” Anderson mocked me angrily. “Somehow I doubt it. We found this bag in the trunk of your car.”
“We got the final lab report back this afternoon on the cause of that fire. It turns out that the accelerant used to start the fire was WD-40.” He picked up one of the cans that had rolled off the table and stood it up for me to see the label. It read, WD-40.
“My—My mother was burned with that.” I lowered my head to the table so I didn’t have to look at the detectives, the knife, or the aerosol can anymore. If there was ever a time I needed some cocaine, this was it.
“Hey, I think she’s getting it now, Anderson,” Thomas said to his partner before turning his attention back to me. “You are getting it, aren’t you?”
Yes, I was getting it, but that didn’t mean it made any sense.
“I thought you found the cause of the fire in Ben Wilkins’s apartment. He confessed, didn’t he?”
“Yes, we did find kerosene and graphite in his apartment, both of which are key components of WD-40, but WD-40 has a distinctive residue signature when it burns. A signature that was prevalent at the Graham crime scene. I’m not sure why he confessed, but Ben Wilkins didn’t kill that man. None of our evidence supports that. I’m sure it would have been overlooked if it wasn’t for my partner’s instincts,” Anderson said.
“And your text messages,” Thomas added.
“My text messages?” God, I didn’t like the sound of that at all. Slim had warned me about text messaging, and I always blew him off. “What are you trying to say? You think I killed Daryl?”
“No, I’m trying to say that your text messages led us to the evidence we needed to solve Daryl Graham’s murder,” Thomas said.
I stared at them both blankly. I’d already come to my own assumption, but I damn sure wasn’t ready to express it. “I don’t understand. Can one of you explain to me what the hell is going on?”
“We knew it was only a matter of time before your father contacted you, so Detective Ryan got a warrant to tap your wireless phone,” Thomas explained. “And bingo! What do you know? Your dear old dad contacted you, and for some reason, he seemed real concerned about you cleaning out the trunk of that car.”
“Now, would you like to explain to me why we found evidence in your car?” Anderson asked.
They kept saying my car, but it wasn’t my car. It was my…“Daddy,” I said under my breath. I think that once they said the knife was found in the trunk, my subconscious mind knew the truth, but it took a while for me to acknowledge it. Daddy killed Daryl. That’s why he wanted me to clean out the trunk of his car. He wanted me to get rid of the evidence.
“Oh my God!” I shouted. “Daddy killed Daryl.”
“You do realize there’s a good possibility he killed your mother too?” Anderson said, sounding almost like she was enjoying herself.
I shook my head adamantly. “I don’t believe that.”
“I’m not asking you to. I’m just asking you to be honest with yourself. If you loved your mother and/or Daryl, you owe it to them to bring their killer to justice, even if it’s your old man.”
“The hell with them. You owe it to yourself,” Anderson said. “Because if you don’t help us, I can promise you the DA is going to lock your ass up for aiding and abetting a fugitive. Oh, and we’ve got plenty of proof of that.”
I ignored Anderson and turned to Thomas. “Do you really believe my father had something to do with my mother’s death?”
He nodded. “I did a little research. At the time of her demise, your father was worth about two million dollars. He was going to have to split that with your mother, plus pay her alimony. It would have been a pretty tough nut to swallow considering the lifestyle he was living at the time. With your mother gone, he didn’t have to split a thing. So yes, I think he did it.”
I wanted to crawl under the table, curl into the fetal position, and never get up. My whole world had been shattered. How was I supposed to move on after news like this? All those years I’d been blaming Connie for my mother’s death, and it was devastating to learn that it was Daddy who killed her. It was her death that made me what I was today—a damn drug addict. Everything that was wrong with my life was all Daddy’s fucking fault.
“I want him arrested,” I said to the detectives, my voice as cold as ice.
Thomas answered, “Of course. So do we. And you can help us get him, Krystal.”
“Tell me what I have to do. I want that fucker to pay for what he did to my mother. And to Daryl.”
Thomas pulled my cell phone out of his pocket and slid it across the table to me. “We need you to keep in contact with him. This way our techies can track him.”
I was skeptical. “I don’t know if I can talk to him without cursing him out now.”
Anderson rolled her eyes. “Damn junkies can be so weak,” she said.
Thomas shot her a warning look and she shut right up.
He turned to me and said, “We really need you to do this, Krystal. The text messages your father has been sending came from several different countries in the Caribbean, but until he stays in one place for an extended period of time, we can’t dispatch the local police force to pick him up.”
“Of course, we have to hope he lands in a spot where they have an extradition treaty with the US,” Anderson added, letting me know that they were aware of the list of safe countries I’d compiled for him. All of a sudden, I realized that there was still a possibility they’d try to prosecute me for aiding a fugitive.
“Look, I need some kind of guarantee that the DA won’t be pressing any charges against me. I want some kinda deal,” I said.
Anderson sighed, and Thomas nodded at me. “I’ll see what we can do about that,” he said. He looked down at my phone. “In the meantime, send your father a text.”
I picked up the phone and typed: daddy, where are you? slim is acting crazy and i want to get away. can i come see you, please?
Connie
48
I followed the movers out of the building as they carried the last two boxes from my apartment. I’d made the decision to put all my stuff in storage until I decided where I was going to finally settle down. I was pretty sure I’d be on the road for a while, so my next stop was to liquidate all my accounts, including my IRA and my 401(k). For now, I intended to travel the world. Montego Bay in Jamaica would be my first stop.
“So you’re really going through with it, huh?” Bertha asked. She was in her usual spot on the stoop, along with a couple of the other girls. Ever since Nancy had stopped spending time out there, it seemed that Bertha had become the new mouthpiece for the group.
“I sure am,” I replied.
“You just up and quit your job, packed your shit, so you can travel the world?”
“Mm-hmm. That about sums it up,” I said. “All I know is I can’t stay in this building anymore after everything that’s happened.”
“I know what you mean. Matter of fact, I think I’m gonna stop drinking the water.”
I gave her a puzzled look.
One of the other stoop ladies asked, “Bertha, what the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m not drinking the water ’cause there’s something wrong with it,” she said in a very stern tone that had me rather concerned. “There has to be because everyone in this building has lost their damn mind.”
Everyone on the stoop laughed, except Bertha, who kept a straight face. “Seriously, Connie, I been thinking about it a lot.”
“Thinking about what?”
“Ever since Daryl moved in, haven’t folks been acting crazy? Think about it now.” Bertha sat up in her chair like she was preparing to deliver a speech. I sat down on the step to listen for a minute.
“To start with, every woman with a slit from eighteen to eighty-five had been sitting out here on this stoop like we’d lost our minds just to g
et a glimpse of him. Most of us got halfway decent husbands and boyfriends sitting right upstairs, but we couldn’t miss seeing the man in 3B. And that includes me.”
“I know that’s right,” came from one of the other women on the stoop.
“Hell, I burnt up dinner one night staring at his fine ass down here,” one of the other sisters said.
“You weren’t the only one,” Bertha said, pointing at Pam, who nodded. “And that was only the beginning of the craziness. Look at what happened to Benny. One day he’s an awkward college kid; now he’s out of the closet with a boyfriend—Daryl’s brother, of all people. Now ain’t that some crazy shit?”
“Bertha, being gay doesn’t make him crazy,” I said in Benny’s defense.
“No, but it sure drove his daddy’s ass crazy, didn’t it? Confessing to a crime he didn’t commit. Try to tell me that ain’t crazy!” Bertha laughed and we all joined in. “Speaking of his crazy daddy, did you hear?”
“About him being released from jail?” I said. “Yeah, I heard. He knocked on my door the other night. Thank God they let him out.”
“No, not that. That’s yesterday’s news,” Bertha said, obviously proud that she was the one with the latest scoop. Yeah, she’d definitely taken Nancy’s place. “Did you hear about him and Nancy?”
I shook my head. “What about him and Nancy?”
“Ben and Nancy are getting married. She asked her husband for a divorce and moved into Ben’s apartment.”
“Get out! What about the kids?” Usually the gossip on the front stoop didn’t interest me much, but I have to admit that news floored me. After such a long time, I never thought Nancy would leave her husband. Hell, I never thought Ben would propose. I guess after so much tragedy, people start to rethink the choices they’ve made in their lives, and they start making changes.