Buying Time (32 page)

“You, bitch! How dare you pull a gun on me. I’ll kill you!”

They were both wrestling for the gun when Angela felt a heavy weight on her back. A long arm reached over her shoulder and down between her and Cornell.

“I got it, Angela!” Dre yelled. “Let go!”

She heard Dre’s voice, but was too paralyzed with fear to do anything except grip the gun tighter.

“Angela,” Dre yelled, “let go!”

She tried to comply, but terror disabled her.

Suddenly, a gunshot echoed through the garage like a dozen firecrackers going off in a tunnel and time slowed. Cornell’s eyes grew wide and both hands clutched his stomach. He lurched forward as his lanky body plunged to the pavement. Expletives continued to spew from his lips as an expanding circle of bright, red blood darkened his white shirt.

Angela looked down at the gun in her hand and began wailing. “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”

Dre eased the weapon from her hand and set it on the hood of the car. He pulled her to him, encircling her with both arms.

A security guard rushed over. He stared down at Cornell lying in a pool of blood.

“What happened?” the man yelled, pulling out his useless baton.

“He was attackin’ her,” Dre said calmly. “I shot him. The gun’s over there.”

Angela stiffened. “What? No, I—”

Dre pressed her mouth to his chest, cutting her off. “Call an ambulance,” he told the rent-a-cop, “and the police.”

The man fumbled for the cell phone in his back pocket.

“Let me handle this,” Dre whispered into Angela’s ear. “When the police get here, just listen to everything I say and repeat it. Okay?”

“But you didn’t shoot him. I—”

“No,” Dre said firmly. “You got way more to lose than I do. This is straight up self-defense. Cornell was attackin’ you. You’ve got the bruises to prove it. We all struggled for the gun. I had my hand on top of yours and
I
pulled the trigger, not
you
. That’s the way this is goin’ down.”

Angela grew even more hysterical and almost slipped from Dre’s grasp.

“Baby, you have to calm down.” Dre buried his face in her hair and struggled to keep her from sliding to the ground. “Everything’s goin’ to be fine.  I promise you, I got this.”

W
averly stood a few feet away, behind a large post, watching Britney enter her apartment.

She was struggling to hold on to three plastic grocery bags and seemed to be having trouble finding the right key. On the third try, she let out a long sigh and turned the doorknob. The second she opened the door, Waverly ran in after her, closing the door behind him.

“Please don’t kill me!” Britney shrieked, dropping her bags to the floor. She tried to dash down a hallway, but Waverly caught the end of her T-shirt, pulling her back toward him.

“Just calm down!” Waverly said, throwing an arm around her waist from behind. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Let me go!” Britney struggled violently to escape, wildly swinging her arms and legs. Surprised by her strength, Waverly had to work hard to restrain her.

When he tried to cover her mouth with his hand, she bit him.

“Ow!” Waverly yelled. “Please stop and listen to me. I promise I’m not going to hurt you.”

Britney continued to fling her arms like a windmill. Waverly finally lifted her high in the air. “I’ll let you go, but only if you stop fighting me.”

“I read that newspaper article about you murdering your clients!” Britney cried. “Please don’t kill me!”

“That article never said I was murdering my clients,” Waverly shouted, “because I’m not. But somebody else is. I’m only here to keep you from becoming the next victim.”

The intensity of her movements slowed and she finally stopped struggling. Waverly could feel her chest heave up and down from the workout.

“If I let you go, are you going to cooperate?”

Britney nodded slowly.

Waverly put her back on the ground, but kept a firm grip around her waist.

“I just want to talk to you, okay?”

She nodded again and he finally released her. She turned to face him and he saw sheer fright in her eyes.

“We need to sit down and talk,” Waverly said.

“In here.” Britney shakily pointed toward a tiny living room. Just as Waverly took a step in that direction, Britney dashed down the hallway and Waverly took off after her. She reached the bathroom seconds ahead of him. She darted inside and tried to close the door, but Waverly managed to get an arm inside.

“Ow!” Waverly yelled, as Britney pressed against the door, trapping his arm. “You’re going to break my arm!”

“Get out of my apartment!”

“Just listen to me,” Waverly pleaded, his arm throbbing in pain. “Let me get my arm out of the door and I’ll step back so you can close it. But I really need you to listen to me.”

Waverly waited and Britney finally released her pressure on the bathroom door and he pulled his arm free. She quickly closed and locked the door.

“If you want the money back, I’ll give it to you,” she screeched through the door. “But please don’t kill me!”

Now, Waverly had reason to be fearful. The neighbors were likely to call the police any minute if he didn’t quiet her down. “I told you I’m not here to hurt you. I need you to listen to my story. I’m going to tell you everything. Things my wife doesn’t even know. And when I’m done, you’re going to have to trust me.”

“No, wait!” Britney whimpered. “I have to tell you something first. Somebody just—”

“No,” Waverly interrupted. “You can tell me later.  I need you to listen to me first.”

Waverly pressed his head against the door and began telling Britney his story. All of it. He started with being disbarred, then explained how he had landed in the viatical business. When he got to the part about his brother being beaten up and Rico threatening Deidra, he heard Britney gasp and hoped that meant she believed him.

“I didn’t know somebody was killing my clients,” he said through the door. “I swear I didn’t. I’m only here because I was concerned that you might be next. You can’t stay here. It’s not safe. Do you understand? Do you believe me?”

After a long pause, he heard the click of the lock and Britney opened the door. “Thank you for caring about me.” She threw her arms around him and pressed her face to his chest.

Waverly hoped she wasn’t just humoring him until she had another opportunity to escape. “I have to tell you something,” she said.

“You can tell me later. We have to get out of here because—”

“No, I have to tell you now!” Britney insisted. “Somebody just got shot downstairs!”

Waverly could feel her body quivering. “What? When?”

“Just now. In my garage.”

“Please don’t let them get me, too!”

“Tell me what happened.”

“I had just left the garage and stepped into the stairwell with my groceries when I heard this couple arguing. I put down my groceries and cracked open the door to watch. The woman kept telling the guy to leave her alone, but he wouldn’t. Then he grabbed her and hit her and started choking her. She pulled out a gun and told him she was going to shoot him and he backed away. I got scared and picked up my groceries. The next thing I heard was a gunshot.”

Waverly rushed back down the hallway to the front of the apartment. He peered through a small slit in the curtains to the street below. Cop cars were everywhere. It didn’t seem likely that the shooting had a connection to Rico, but Waverly wasn’t taking any chances.

He turned back to Britney. “The police will probably be going door-to-door interviewing tenants and looking for witnesses. We need to get out of here. Is there a back way out?”

D
re sat in the back of a police cruiser, cradling Angela as she bawled hysterically into his chest.

He felt like everything around him was spinning out of control and he couldn’t make it stop. Within minutes of the shooting, cops with guns drawn flooded the garage. At first, they had talked in harsh, angry tones, ordering them both to put their hands up. They were roughly frisked and had questions thrown at them faster than they could respond.

But when Angela told them she was an assistant U.S. attorney, which an officer confirmed by pulling her credentials from her purse, everything changed. She actually knew one of the female cops from her stint as a deputy D.A. They went from accusing and condescending to deferential and concerned.

He would not have believed it if he had not seen it for himself. A judge lay on the ground with a bullet in his gut and Dre had confessed to shooting him. Yet, he was sitting in the back of a police cruiser, uncuffed, holding his woman and being treated like a victim, not a suspect.
Was this how the other half lived?

The car door opened and a female officer stuck her head inside. “I’m Officer Dickson. How’s she doing?”

“Not good,” Dre said.

He had already explained that Cornell had been stalking Angela and had assaulted her twice. He told them that Angela and Cornell had been wrestling over the gun when he arrived on the scene and rushed to her aid. As the three of them struggled for control of the gun, it went off. Dre said he was pretty sure that he was the one who pulled the trigger.

Another cop approached and pulled Officer Dickson aside.

Dre desperately needed Angela to stop crying so they could get their stories straight.

“Angela, we need to—”

A male officer opened the driver’s door and got behind the wheel while Officer Dickson rode shotgun. She looked back at them through a screen that stretched the width of the car. “We need you two to go down to the station so we can go over what happened, okay?”

Were they actually asking for permission? This shit was too weird.
Dre nodded. “Sure.”

As the cruiser drove away, Dre saw a coroner’s van pull up, giving him the answer to the question he’d been too afraid to ask. This was now a murder case, which meant that he and Angela were murder suspects.

Dre held Angela closer. Her sobs had turned into dry hiccups and his shirt was soaking wet from her tears. He needed to hear her version of events. If their stories didn’t match, that would present a major problem.

He grazed his cheek along the top of her head. When he looked up, his eyes met the driver’s in the rearview mirror. The cop’s gaze telegraphed malice and distrust. Now
this
was the kind of pig he was used to dealing with. Dre finally turned away and stared out of the window.

A half an hour later, they pulled into a police substation. The female officer pried Angela from Dre’s arms and led her away. Dre was taken down a separate hallway and placed in an interrogation room that smelled badly of body odor.
Yeah, this was more like it
.

Dre had sat alone in the room for forty-five minutes before he started to get antsy. He figured they were questioning Angela first, which made him even more uptight.

When two detectives eventually entered the room, one black, one Asian, Dre immediately sensed that his special treatment had ended. He could see the cynicism in their macho body language. The black cop, a balding, heavyset guy, was carrying a thin manila folder.

Neither cop bothered to introduce himself. “Looks like you’re picking in some pretty high cotton, my brother,” the black cop began.

Dre wasn’t sure what the guy was getting at, so he said nothing. When a cop—black or white—began an interrogation by addressing you as
brother
, you were no doubt in trouble.

“Are you and that prosecutor an item?”

“I didn’t get your names,” Dre said.

“Forgive us for being rude,” the Asian cop cut in. He had badly scarred skin and spoke with a noticeable accent. Dre assumed he was Korean. “I’m Detective Martin Tao and this is my buddy, Detective Dwayne Davis. What’s up with you and that prosecutor?” 

Dre formed a teepee with his fingertips and rested his elbows on the table. “We’re friends,” he finally said.

“Close friends?” Detective Davis asked, taking a seat across from him.

“Yeah.”

“How close?”

“Close,” Dre said.

Detective Davis looked at his partner. “You know, we were just wondering. Do you think she’s seen this?” He opened the folder and pulled out a stapled document. He dangled it between two fingers, waving it back and forth. “Does she know her
close
friend is a convicted drug dealer who should still be locked up, but caught a break because the state doesn’t have enough prison space to hold all of its scum?”

Dre flexed his fingers. These clowns were straight out of some bad sitcom. “She knows.”

Suspicious glances ricocheted between the two detectives. They had apparently assumed she didn’t.

Detective Davis moved his chair closer to the table. “This really has nothing to do with the case, but I was just wondering.” He paused and smiled up at his partner. “I’ve never had any prosecutor pussy. What’s it like?”

Detective Tao burst out laughing, pressing his fist to his mouth.

Dre grew even more heated, but knew there was no place to safely channel his rage. The smart part of him wanted to try to reason with these bozos. Tell them there was no need for the disrespect. But instead, he decided to give back what he got.

“Actually, it’s pretty nice.” He smiled and stroked his goatee. “You outta try it some time. But I suspect you couldn’t even pay a hooker to screw your fat ass. Don’t cops have a weight requirement?”

Detective Davis charged across the table, stopping when his nose was only an inch from Dre’s.

Dre never moved a muscle.

Detective Tao grabbed his partner by the shoulder and pulled him back into the chair.

“I read the account you gave at the scene,” Detective Tao said, his mannerism more professional now. “Tell us what happened. How’d that judge end up dead?”

Dre knew he should ask for an attorney, but if he did, that would only make them think he had something to hide. That innocent until proven guilty bullshit was just that. He directed his attention solely to Detective Tao, leaving Detective Davis to seethe.