Devil's Corner (23 page)

Reheema shot her a look. They fell silent in the next minute, and Vicki raised the camera again when Mr. Black Leather reappeared, hustled out of the lot, and to the Navigator, knocking snow off his shoes before he climbed inside. The Navigator backed out the way it had come, and Vicki raised the camera to see if she could shoot his plate number. When the Navigator turned at the top of the street, she tried to catch a glimpse, but it was too far away.

"Rats!" Vicki said, and Reheema's only response was to start the engine of the Sunbird, which struggled to life.

Half an hour later, the women sat parked in a space on Aspinall Street down from Jamal Browning's house, and they were on their second girl stakeout. Unlike Cater, there was no activity on Aspinall; it was a static scene of a snow-covered city street. No one had answered the row house door when Mr. Black Leather went inside, and there were no comings or goings for Reheema not to identify people. Vicki had taken all the pictures she needed and none of them mattered. In short, she was beginning to doubt the viability of Phase II.

"Cheeto?" Vicki offered, discouraged, pointing the fragrant end of the bag to Reheema. "It's lunch. And dinner."

Reheema didn't say anything.

"You're not
feelin'
the Cheetos?"

Reheema didn't smile.

"You didn't want the Doritos either. You off carbs, too?"

"No, just food that glows in the dark."

"Seems unduly restrictive." Vicki brushed orange dust off the front of her parka. She had consumed one 64-ounce Wawa coffee, and six hundred thousand calories. The Sunbird reeked of Cigar-Smoke-in-a-Can and her Master Plan sucked. Vicki scanned the cars parked in front of the house, but they were covered with snow mounded like sugar frosting. "Wonder which car is Browning's. They use the crappy ones for work, right? So which is the crappiest?"

"Ours."

Vicki eyed Browning's row house, her frustration intensifying. "This isn't going well, none of it. You know, I feel like your neighborhood is right on the brink of something. Like it could go either way, up or down, depending on what happens on Cater. You know what I mean?"

Reheema didn't say anything.

"The crack dealers get established in the hole, making addicts, then they buy a house and sell crack in it, making more crack addicts, and there goes a perfectly fine neighborhood, with law-abiding people and Christmas wreaths. And if that happens all over the city, pretty soon the city is lost. And city after city, it happens all over."

Reheema still didn't reply.

"That's why I want to shut them down, get them behind bars. Not only because of Morty and your mother, but because we can actually save your neighborhood."

"It's not my neighborhood," Reheema said, finally. "You keep saying Devil's Corner is my neighborhood, and it's not. I told you, I'm only living there until I sell."

"It's my dad's old neighborhood."

"Oh, I get it.
That's
why you care." Reheema snorted. "You're doing it for your daddy. To get Daddy's approval."

"No. He hated it there."

Reheema faced Vicki, her sunglasses masking her eyes. "Then why do you care?"

"Why don't you?" Vicki asked, glad for some reason that she was wearing sunglasses, too. Suddenly, something caught her attention at Browning's house. The front door was opening. She grabbed the camera and snapped a photo as a man emerged. But it wasn't Mr. Black Leather, it was Eagles Coat. "Here's the other go-between. So they take turns. Alternate, like last time."

"So there's two on a shift," Reheema said, from behind the binoculars. "And two shifts a day, maybe three. I don't see anybody at the door."

"Me, neither." Vicki took a photo anyway, then lowered the camera and watched Eagles Coat walk to the Navigator, get in, pull out of the space, and take off. This time she got a clear shot of the license plate and lowered the camera. She knew cops who could run the plate for her, and maybe Dan would have an idea. Then she realized she'd gone the whole day without thinking about him; she'd even left her phone turned off. She was in Married Man Rehab.

Reheema twisted on the ignition, but Vicki raised a palm.

"Don't follow him. We know where he's going. Probably back to Cater, if the pattern is the same, right?"

"Probably."

"So he's just the runner, he brings the crack back and forth." Vicki was thinking out loud, which was okay to do in front of someone who barely liked you, and vice versa. "He's not the one we really want."

"What do you mean?"

"This is Jamal Browning's house, where he brings the stuff and bags it for sale. Odds are he doesn't live here, right? You tell me, you're the bad-guy expert." Vicki thought back to what she knew about the crack trade. "I mean, I know that most drug dealers have a separate car for business. Do they have more than one address, too?"

"Yeah. Browning won't live here. This is where he does his business."

"That's what I thought." Vicki flashed on the unopened bills of Jackson's. "And where would he keep his supply? Here?"

"Probably."

"Not at his house."

"Not usually. The idea is to keep that clean."

"And he'd keep some at a stash house, like his girlfriend's. Shayla Jackson." Vicki couldn't put the memory of the murdered Jackson out of her mind. Or Morty. "I want to get to Browning, not his delivery boy. I want to understand this whole organization, then I can bring it down."

"You serious?" Reheema slid off her sunglasses, her gaze dead even. "This could be big, an operation this size, this much money, two guys on each shift, three shifts. Plus two lookouts on three shifts, and the dealer, three of them twenty-four/seven?" She rattled it off like the business student she used to be. "Probably got three cooks and coupla baggers. And an army of young 'uns like the ones you ran into, Jay and Teeg. Helpers. Runners. Gofers. That's a lotta personnel, and this might not be Browning's only operation."

Okay, I knew that
. "Then that's all on the Master Plan."

"Browning might even be a connect."

"Meaning the one who deals weight?" Vicki asked, but it wasn't a question. The answer was the bricks in Jackson's house. "He might be. If he is, he's going down."

"Why? He's not the one who killed your partner. You know who killed your partner, those kids did."

"That's right, but they were just kids. Pawns." Vicki thought a minute. "It's all of a piece. I'm gonna find and indict those kids, but that won't go far enough. This month it's Morty, but next month it'll be another agent, or a cop, or an AUSA. This has to stop."

Reheema smiled crookedly. "What got into you?"

"It's time to change things, to get things right. I'm tired of the way things are. And I'm tired of eating Cheetos and crushing on the wrong guy." Vicki sensed there was a connection, but she had no idea what it was. She pointed at Browning's house. "Either Browning's in that house and he's got to come out. Or he's coming here. Or he's not in there at all and he won't be coming anytime soon."

"Somebody's in there."

"So let's see who comes out, and see if he looks like Browning, the guy in the photo on Shayla Jackson's dresser. If it's him, wherever he goes, we follow him." Vicki liked it the more she thought about it. "We don't take any unnecessary chances. We just take a little ride and a few pictures. No big deal."

"We got the car for it." Reheema laughed, her features relaxing into a beautiful smile, for the first time since they'd met.

"So, you wanna?"

"Why not?" Reheema settled back into the driver's seat, facing the house.

"Goody." Vicki did the same, newly content in the passenger seat, and after a minute, Reheema asked:

"So, who's the wrong guy?"

TWENTY-EIGHT

"GO!" Vicki couldn't help shouting. It was almost midnight and there was finally activity at Browning's house. The front door opened, barely visible in the streetlight, and two men emerged, mere shadow figures.

"Not yet. I'll start the engine after they're in their car. Then they won't hear it."

"Of course. Right. Good thinking. That's what I meant, too."

"Calm down, girl." Reheema laughed softly

"I can't." Vicki fumbled to find the camera, shivering with cold and excitement, as the two men walked down the steps in front of the row house. It was impossible to tell if either of them was Browning. "Damn!"

"Don't take a picture."

"I won't use the flash." Vicki disabled the flash and used the telephoto to see the men more clearly. It was absurd in the dark, but she took three photos anyway. They were both about average height and wore thick dark coats and dark knit caps, pulled low over their foreheads. "What is it with the knit caps?"

"Another black culture question? It's cold out."

"Damn it to hell! I can't see their faces." Vicki still couldn't tell if either was Browning and she gave up trying, for now.

The two men walked close together, and she could tell they were talking because little clouds puffed from their mouths. It had to be twenty degrees outside and ten in the Sunbird. Circulation to her extremities had stopped four thousand Doritos ago. Reheema turned on the ignition as the two men walked to a snow-covered car, three down from the row house. The two men straight-armed snow off the car, clearing the hood and roof in one swoop.

"They'll never get it out. Look at the wheels." Reheema pointed at the car, and Vicki took pictures as the one man cleared a cake of snow from the back window with his arm and shook the powder off, and the other pounded the car door to break ice on the lock and get the key inside. She laughed behind her camera.

"It's not easy being a drug dealer."

"Maybe we should help 'em out." Reheema smiled.

"The car's a white Neon, same one as the other day." The women watched with amusement as the men struggled for fifteen minutes, then went back inside the house and came back out with a Back-Saver snow shovel, a blanket, and two cans of beer. "Drug dealers care about their backs, too."

"Nobody wants back trouble."

"So the maroon Navigator is Browning's good car."

"Yeah. He lends the go-between the four-wheel drive to get down Cater."

"He has to take the chance, because of the snow. When it clears up, he won't. He can't risk the car being spotted."

Vicki raised the camera and took a picture of one of the dealers shoving a blanket under the car tires and digging them out, while the other slid into the driver's seat and hit the gas. "Tell you which one I think is Browning, if it is Browning."

"The driver."

"Right." Vicki laughed. "I still can't tell if it's Browning for sure."

"So let's follow him anyway. We got nothin' better to do."

Reheema sat up, and after ten more minutes of struggling, the dealers had freed the Neon. She leaned forward in her seat and rested her hand on the ignition key. "Okay, good to go."

"Finally!" Vicki said, and when the Neon took off, Reheema started the engine and so did they, following from a safe distance and at lawful speed. There was enough traffic to provide the Sunbird great cover, especially since it was dark and nondescript, and Vicki was able to take as many pictures of the Neon's license plate as she wanted, though one would have sufficed. She felt her adrenaline ebb away. "Not quite the high-speed chase I imagined."

"These guys don't want to get picked up for anything. This'll be the safest ride you ever took. Sit back and relax."

So Vicki did, but when she looked over, Reheema's mouth was tense.

"Home, sweet home," Vicki said, when the Sunbird pulled up at the end of the block. They had been driving for an hour and had ended up in one of the middle-class residential neighborhoods in the city, Overbrook Mills. The brick row houses here were semidetached, sitting together in pairs, like happy couples. Each double house had a front yard, bisected by a cyclone fence and dotted with children's bikes and plastic playhouses, padlocked to the fences.

"We don't know if this is home or his supplier's," Reheema said.

"It doesn't look like a drug supplier's house."

"Tells you nothin'."

"It's the end of the day. Browning has to get tired sometime, doesn't he? I'm gonna say this isn't his supplier's, it's his house."

"How you know he hasn't been sleepin' all day? When do you think he makes his pickups, in broad daylight?" Reheema's mouth formed a grim line, and her eyes glittered in the dark interior. "If they both get out of the car, it's the supplier."

Vicki nodded. Reheema was right. They were making assumptions, but reasonable ones. They both leaned forward as the Neon's doors opened and the two men got out. Vicki took pictures of the driver, albeit too dark and too far away, as he hurried from the car and toward the row house. The streetlights were brighter here, but the man's features remained impossible to discern, so she still didn't know if he was Browning. The passenger went around to the driver's side of the car, got inside, and drove off. Vicki lowered the camera. "So if it's Browning, it's his house."

"How you know the one got dropped off is Browning? You didn't recognize him. We got two players."

Vicki sighed. She was getting tired, and ATF legwork was harder than she'd thought. "Our theory was that the driver was Browning, or the boss, and this confirms it. I say, the boss gets dropped off."

"I agree, but we need to cover all bases." Reheema started the ignition.

"We're leaving? I wanted to get another picture."

"Get it another time. We know where he lives."

Vicki took a final picture as the Sunbird took off and snagged a close-up of the back of Browning's knit cap, where a shiny silver shield caught the light. She recognized it in the telephoto. "He wears a Raiders cap."

"Everybody likes football," Reheema said, and hit the gas.

Half an hour later they were in a lesser neighborhood closer to the city, with attached brick row houses in various stages of disrepair. The Sunbird followed as the Neon drove around, evidently hunting for a parking space. Huge piles of plowed snow sat at the corners of the block and cut down on the number of available spaces.