Devil's Corner (26 page)

Reheema was laughing. "I don't know, the wife's at yoga class and he's at Toys ‘R' Us, doin' the shoppin'. You ask me, that boy needs a marriage counselor. He's whipped."

"This would be funny if it weren't such a waste of time." Vicki sat watching the entrance. The Toys "R" Us anchored the huge strip mall, which drew customers from everywhere in the city. The parking lot, two city blocks long, was crowded with cars and minivans looking for spaces. Women and kids walked this way and that with strollers and shopping carts. Vicki sighed. "How will we ever learn something about Browning? His supplier, or even his connection to you?"

Reheema stopped laughing. "What do you think is the connection to me?"

"If you don't recognize Browning, I don't know. Unless he knows you and you don't know him."

"Only one way to find out." Reheema slipped off her sunglasses. "I'm goin' shoppin' ."

"What do you mean?" Vicki felt panicky. This wasn't in the Master Plan or the New Master Plan. "What are you gonna do?"

"Walk by the man, see if he knows me, see if he says anything to me." Reheema opened the door, and a cold blast of air blew inside the car. "You're not the only one gettin' impatient here."

"I don't know." Vicki couldn't process it fast enough. "He might be dangerous."

"In a toy store?" Reheema climbed out of the driver's seat and shut the door.

"Wait, be careful," Vicki called after her, opening her passenger-side window, but Reheema was already striding away from the Sunbird, making a beeline for the Toys "R" Us entrance. She made a tall, dark silhouette with the knit cap, pea coat, and jeans, and in the clunky Timberlands looked almost like a man from the back, but for the sexy swing of her walk. She waded through the moms and kids, grabbed a shopping cart, and wheeled it inside the store. Vicki reached for the camera, to watch her better through the telephoto lens.

Rring! Rring!
Vicki jumped at the sound. Her cell phone. She reached quickly into her backpack, resting on the Sun-bird's blue shag, and pulled out the cell. The electronic display read DAN. Good and bad. She had to get it or he'd be suspicious. Also, she was crazy about him. She juggled the camera to flip the phone open. "Dan, I'm crazy about you but I can't talk now."

"What are you wearing?"

"No time for that. I have to go."

"Listen, last night was—"

"The best night of my life, but I have to go." Vicki kept watching through the camera, in close-up. "Hold on, I have a question. Did you take your clothes off the kitchen floor and wear them again?"

Uh
. "No, I took them to the dry cleaners." Shoppers with their kids in hand moved in and out of the glass entrance doors of the Toys "R" Us. No Reheema.

"You dry-clean your jeans?"

"Sometimes, and I have to go."

"Where
are
you?"

"Shopping."

"Where?"

"Neiman Marcus."

"In the suburbs?" Dan
hmmm
ed. "But your car is still in the garage."

"A friend picked me up."

"I don't believe you, my sweet. What are you really up to?"
Busted
. "Okay, it's a surprise. A surprise for you. Now tell me you're okay so I can hang up."

"I'm better than okay. I'm getting divorced."

"Already?" Vicki watched the store entrance through the camera. An old man in a walker went in, but no sign of Reheema.

"I signed the papers and messengered them to her lawyer, and she's agreed to give me Zoe. She's having
his maid
drop the cat off. Also, that meeting is today, at five, with the FBI and ATF, about Morty's investigation."

The meeting
. Vicki had forgotten, with all that was going on. "I wish I could be there."

"I'll tell you what happens. I may get to go."

"Really?" Vicki eyed the Toys "R" Us entrance, distracted. Two little boys were having a tug-of-war with a new scooter. "Then you have to tell me everything."

"Of course. Be home after, okay?"

It had a nice ring.
"Light a fire under 'em." Vicki figured it sounded like what she would say if she were at Neiman Marcus. "I have to go. Call you later. Bye."

She flipped the phone closed, set it down, and focused her attention on the store entrance, through the telephoto. Her heart was thumping again, but she didn't know if it was true love or true anxiety. If Browning knew Reheema, would he hurt her? Vicki put a hand on the door handle, tempted to go after her, but stopped herself. Vicki's picture had been all over the news, and she could be recognized, even in the sunglasses and Phillies hat. And Browning wouldn't hurt Reheema in a public place, would he? Still, if Reheema wasn't out of the store in five more minutes, Vicki was going in.

She kept her attention on the entrance, taking a few photos of the scene. A salesclerk in a blue apron collected shopping carts from the lot. A white work van slowed near the entrance, waiting for a parking space. A man and his wife, huddled together against the cold, entered the store with two kids, followed by a woman with three kids, holding hands in a daisy chain. And in the next minute, through the telephoto, Vicki recognized Reheema, mostly because of her distinctive walk.

"Yay!" Vicki yelled in the car, and then she couldn't believe her eyes: Reheema was leaving the store with Browning!

What?
Vicki kept her eye plastered to the camera and took a series of photos, in amazement. As they walked, Reheema was putting on her cap against the cold, smiling, and Browning was smiling, too, carrying a plastic bag of red-and-white Huggies. The two of them were talking like old friends, and on Browning's other side walked his driver, also carrying a bag of Huggies.

Reheema was not only safe, she had scored! Vicki didn't understand it, but shot another picture. Did Browning know Reheema or had she struck up a conversation with him inside the store? How did they get to be friends so fast? What the hell was going on? This wasn't in any Plan at all.

Suddenly Vicki heard an earsplitting
pop pop pop
from the store entrance. She blinked, uncomprehending. She knew that sound. It was unmistakable.

Gunfire
.

THIRTY-ONE

"REHEEMA! RUN!" Vicki screamed. She dropped the camera, flung open the car door, and ran for Reheema.

Pop pop pop!
Reheema took off as if from a starter pistol, sprinting in the heavy Timberlands, pounding toward the Sunbird. Mothers screamed in terror, scooping crying toddlers into their arms. A little boy turned toward the gunshots, covering his ears. Two little girls fled in panic, their ponytails flying.

Pop pop pop
came more gunfire, like a war zone. Browning crumpled to his knees, his face hitting the asphalt. A little boy near him was shot, trying to run away. Browning's driver was cut down, dropping the Huggies. A toddler fell beside her mother, the child's pink snowsuit splashed hideously with red.

Pop pop pop!
The salesclerk ran for his life but was cut down. A mother was strafed and tripped, dropping an infant. The white work van that had been idling near the store entrance flew out of the parking lot, its tires squealing. Vicki couldn't read its license plate on the run.

"REHEEMA!" she screamed.

"Back to the car!" Reheema grabbed Vicki by the arm and together they ran back to the Sunbird and jumped inside. Police sirens blared nearby. In this busy part of town, help was already on the way.

"You okay?" Almost breathless, Vicki slammed the car door closed, grabbed her cell phone, and dialed 911. Men and women ran from the store to the victims, and one salesclerk came running out, shouting into a cell phone.

"I'm alive!" Reheema floored the gas pedal.

And they were outta there.

The Sunbird came finally to a stop at the first Irish pub off the expressway. By that time, the two women were finally breathing normally, wet-eyed and shaken as they sat side by side at the far end of a crappy wooden bar. The shellac on its wooden surface peeled like clear nail polish, and its stacks of cocktail napkins smelled strangely of Lysol. The place was empty except for two drunk guys who sat near the bartender at the other end of the bar. The TV overhead was on mute, but Brit-ney Spears sang "Toxic" loud enough to make it almost a song.

Vicki stared stunned at the shot glass in front of her, which was full of amber fluid. "I never drink hard stuff."

Reheema sat slumped before her glass. "I don't drink."

"Then who ordered the shots?"

"You, or maybe me," Reheema answered, then picked up her glass. "Let's do it to it."

Vicki picked up her glass. "One, two, three." They downed their shots together, swallowed in unison, and set the shot glasses down at the exact same moment, with a restaurant-grade
clunk
. Vicki said, still stunned, "It didn't help, did it?"

"No. Nothing can." Reheema shook her head. "I have never seen anything like that in my life. And I've seen some terrible things."

Vicki nodded, her throat burning. "That was carnage. I mean, they shot everywhere. They didn't care who they hit.

Little kids. Babies." She tried not to cry. She was too stunned to cry. She wanted to understand. "But they got who they were after. Browning."

"Looks that way."

"We should have stayed to help."

"They had it under control. The cops were on the way."

"So tell me what happened."

"You
saw
what happened." Reheema wiped her eyes, but Vicki needed to know the details.

"Tell me what happened inside the store, and we'll see if we can piece this thing together. I'm two minutes from going to the cops."

"Another round!" Reheema called to the bartender, who arrived after a minute, poured them both a shot, and wisely withdrew. She sighed, shaking her head. "Oh man. This is bad, real bad."

"Try to focus and tell me."

"Well, I walked by Browning twice, in the store. I had my hat and sunglasses off and made sure he saw my face. He looked me over both times, like I was a stranger. I don't think he knew me."

"You're sure?"

Reheema downed her second shot. "Yeah. He was in the diaper aisle, and he and the driver were joking. It sounded like he forgot which diapers he was supposed to buy, and I walked down the aisle. I was pretending I was buying some baby oil, and he asked me what size diapers do six-month-olds get." Reheema started rolling her empty shot glass on its end. "I knew that was crap, because it says it on the package."

"I wonder what baby he's buying for? The kid we saw was about four." Vicki tried to reason, despite the gunshots reverberating in her ears. "If there was a baby in that house, his wife, or whatever, wouldn't have left it alone to go to yoga."

"The man is a playa, a gangsta." Reheema's tone was weary. "He got kids everywhere."

"Okay. Right."

"He asked me about my kids." Reheema kept playing with her glass. "I said I didn't have any, I wanted the baby oil for my skin."

"Good save."

"Then he asked me my name and I said Marcia, and I asked him his and he said Jamal, and he said did I live around here, and I said no, I was in from D.C. for the day, visitin' my sister."

"You're a better liar than I am."

"My mother's daughter."

Ouch
. Vicki felt a twinge of sympathy, and regret. "Look, maybe we should wait a little to talk about this. We're both upset, and you almost got—"

"I'm fine."

"You could have been killed."

"I wasn't." Reheema stop playing with her glass. "So, anyway, he and I, we kep' talking and the driver got the diapers, then Jamal said could he walk me out and I started to get worried, and I said I was gonna take the bus, and when we got outside he asked me what was my number and I was about to give him a fake one when the shooting started."

"That's it?"

"That's all."

Vicki eyed her second shot, untouched. "So what have we learned? One, Browning doesn't know you. Two, somebody wanted Browning dead and he got his wish. And three, the new bad guy drives a white van."

"Wait, look." Reheema pointed above the bar at the TV, and on the screen was a blue BREAKING NEWS banner.

"Can you turn that up?" Vicki called to the bartender, who reached up and increased the volume loud enough to overcome Britney. The TV screen switched to a scene of the parking lot, above a red caption that read TOYS "R" US MASSACRE. A pretty reporter came on in a red suit and stiff haircut, saying into a bubble microphone:

"Seven people were shot and killed, and fifteen more wounded, five critically, in what appeared to be a drive-by shooting this afternoon at about twelve-thirty, in front of the Toys ‘R' Us store on Regon Avenue. The injured have been taken to area hospitals—"

Vicki could barely watch, sickened.
Seven dead. Browning. His driver. The salesclerk. The mother. The baby, the toddler, other children, who else
?

The reporter continued, "Police are on the lookout for a white Dodge van, 2003, which had a small American flag decal in the back left window, and was being driven without license plates. We realize there may be many such vans in the Delaware Valley area, but viewers who see a 2003 white Dodge van, with a flag in the rear window, are encouraged to call the police tip line or
Action News
at…"

Vicki's shoulders sagged.
Morty. Jackson. The baby
.

The TV screen switched to the next story, a warehouse fire, in the Northeast, and both women turned away. Reheema sighed. "So where were we?"

Vicki straightened up. "Now it's possible that Jay-Boy and Teeg, the kids who shot my partner and Jackson, don't work for Jamal Browning at all. I had thought they did and that the attack was against Shayla Jackson, because of you or your trial, and because Jackson and Browning were evidently breaking up." Vicki forced her brain to reason, despite the shock and the whisky. "But after this, and because Browning didn't know you, I think the real target was Browning, and he's being attacked by a rival gang."

Reheema nodded. "You mean, the teenage kids who shot your partner worked for the white van guy or his boss?"