Ride or Die (20 page)

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Authors: Solomon Jones

BOOK: Ride or Die
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Sarah thought back twenty years, and saw herself sitting at her mother's kitchen table, listening to her go on about how Sarah had just gotten her life together, and how she was taking an incredible risk in joining a family like the Andersons. She remembered that talk like it was yesterday. It was that talk that
convinced her that she should marry John. Years after that fateful talk, she'd shared her mother's sentiments with her husband, and he'd apparently shared them with Aunt Margaret.
“Yes, I do remember that,” Sarah said. “It was a turning point for me.”
“I guess it was,” the old woman said. “I imagine if somebody tried to tell me about my future husband's family being drug dealers and murderers, I wouldn't want to listen, either. ‘Cause when you love somebody, can't nobody tell you nothin' about ‘em. And if they do, that just make you love 'em even more.”
Sarah looked up at Lynch, who was standing there listening to the old woman confirm what he'd tried not to believe.
“Keisha just like you, Sarah. She come from a preacher's family, and she done spent her whole life tryin' to do right. She told me she knew Jamal from when they was little. He was the first boy she ever kissed. And she loved him ever since then.”
“Why didn't she tell me anything about that?” Sarah asked, confused.
“Same reason you ain't tell your parents everything you did,” Aunt Margaret said with a sad smile.
“This isn't about me, Aunt Margaret,” Sarah snapped.
The old woman reared back, surprised at Sarah's attitude.
“I know it ain't about you,” she said. “It ain't about me, either, Sarah. It's about Keisha's choice. I tried to tell her that boy wasn't no good for her, even told her 'bout what his father did to my brother. But she ain't wanna hear that.”
“She wasn't afraid?” Sarah asked.
Aunt Margaret tried to figure out a way to make her understand, just as Keisha had made her understand.
“Sarah,” she said, speaking in hushed, motherly tones, “I think Keisha just tired. She wanna live without worryin' 'bout what anybody think about her.”
“But she's out there with a murderer,” Sarah said.
“She don't think so,” the old woman said. “She said the boy ain't do it, and that's why they runnin'. She don't wanna see him go to jail for somethin' he ain't do.”
“If that's what she believes, she could come back and tell the police that,” Sarah said frantically. “She doesn't have to stay out there with him.”
“She love the boy, Sarah. And he said he loved her, too. And when they said it, I could feel it down in my soul.”
“So you let Keisha go out on the streets with him because you thought you felt something?” Sarah said in disbelief.
“Sarah, I couldn't have stopped her if I wanted to,” Aunt Margaret said gently. “I'm ninety years old, and I'm blind. I'm gettin' weaker all the time. But they gettin' stronger, 'cause they love each other.”
“I just want her to come home,” Sarah said, sounding anguished. “I just want to know she's all right.”
Lynch watched the old woman and saw in her face that there was a conviction to her actions. She believed she'd done the right thing in helping them. And when she spoke again, he understood why.
“I done learned a few things in my life, Sarah,” she said, her soft voice growing louder with each word. “And one o' the things I learned is that you might only get one chance in life to really love somebody. The only one who should be able to take that chance away is God.”
The old woman smiled and squeezed Sarah's hand. “I ain't God, Sarah. And neither is you. Let the child be.”
Sarah looked around at Kevin Lynch, then back at her husband's aunt. “I'm not trying to take away her chance to love somebody, Aunt Margaret. I just want to know where she is.”
“I can't help you there,” Aunt Margaret said. “But I do know
this. Keisha growin' up and tryin' to find her own way. You was a preacher's daughter, just like she is, and you tried to find your way, too.”
“But I came back,” Sarah said.
“And she will, too,” Aunt Margaret shot back.
Then her face softened, and she reminded Sarah of the reason why her daughter would eventually return to her roots.
“Bring up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he won't depart from it,” she whispered.
At that, Sarah dropped her eyes and began to weep. Aunt Margaret put her hand against her face and wiped her tears.
“You got to believe God, Sarah. You got to believe he can take care o' Keisha better than you and John ever could.”
Sarah wiped her eyes, patted Aunt Margaret's hand, and stood up.
And as she and Lynch left the room and walked back down the hallway toward his office, Lynch received a phone call.
Keisha and Jamal had carjacked another vehicle, and an officer had been injured in a pursuit.
Homicide detectives were already on the scene along with district officers, and Acting Commissioner Dilsheimer was en route.
Though their victims had provided fresh descriptions that were already being broadcast on police radio, the two of them had escaped once again.
Jamal and
Keisha sat in the back room of the bar on Kensington Avenue as the owner looked Jamal in the eye and told him everything that Keisha had made him forget.
Joe Vega, an old white man with a pockmarked face and a nose that had been flattened by too many bar fights, wore his white hair slicked back in the style of days gone by and walked with a slight limp. But his knowledge of the streets was as fresh as that of an eighteen-year-old. And today, it was much better than Jamal's.
Keisha listened along with Jamal as Joe voiced the very things that Frank Nichols would have, if he were there. Jamal took it all in because, if he'd learned anything from his father, it was that Joe Vega was like family, and he was to be trusted above anyone else whom Frank dealt with.
Frank's relationship with the old man had begun ten years before, when they were cellmates in Graterford State Prison.
Frank did a year with Joe before he was acquitted at trial for a murder in which the witnesses disappeared. Joe wasn't as fortunate. He was found guilty of armed robbery, and ended up doing the minimum of a five- to ten-year sentence.
But the two stayed in touch. And during those years that Joe remained there, Frank regularly sent money, and accepted the occasional collect call. When Joe got out, he looked Frank up, and Frank helped him to open a bar. The place was nothing fancy, but it was enough to pay the bills and keep Joe out of jail.
Over the years, whenever things got too hot in North Philly, Frank went to Joe's bar to conduct the transactions necessary to keep his drug business flourishing. Million-dollar deals had taken place in the back of Joe's seedy little establishment. And whenever they did, Frank was always sure to pay Joe a little something off the top.
Joe never forgot that. And so, when he heard about Jamal's supposed involvement in the police commissioner's murder, he expected Jamal to come to him, because he knew that the police would have all of Frank's places staked out.
Now, as Jamal sat before him with Keisha by his side, Joe paced in front of the two of them, asking the one question that had plagued him since he'd heard the news.
“Why?” he asked, his face twisted in anguish. “Why would you shoot the police commissioner? Are you outta your mind, Jamal? Or don't you even have one?”
“I didn't do it,” Jamal answered calmly.
“Bullshit! They've got your picture all over the television. Everybody in Philadelphia knows what you look like. You
and
your little girlfriend here. She's gonna get you jammed, you know. You do know that, don't you?”
“I'm willin' to take my chances.”
“Are you? Well, let me tell you this, Jamal. They said on the news that they've been holdin' your father for questioning for the last hour. Nola, too.”
For the first time, Jamal began to look worried. But then he thought about the way he'd disobeyed his father's orders. And he began to think that he was better off with his father in jail than he was with his father on the outside.
He knew what his father would tell him to do. He would tell him to keep running. And Jamal intended to do just that.
“Jamal, it's hot out here right now,” Joe said. “You can still go someplace nice and forget about all this. But you gotta lose the girl.”
“I can't do that,” Jamal said matter-of-factly.
“Why?”
“'Cause I love her.”
Keisha looked at Jamal, grateful that he could embrace their love so easily. The two of them clasped hands, their fingers interlocked with one another.
Joe watched their display of affection and rolled his eyes in disgust.
“You're jokin' about this, right?” he asked hopefully. “I'm sure she's a nice girl and all, but she don't know nothin' about the streets. She's a preacher's daughter, for God sakes!”
“She saved my life, Joe. She had my back when anybody else woulda jetted. That gotta mean something, right?”
Joe put both hands on Jamal's shoulders and looked him in the eye.
“She's gonna get you caught, Jamal,” he said in measured tones.
“Caught for what?” Jamal said. “I ain't do nothin' to get caught for.”
“Then stop runnin' right now and turn yourself in. Tell 'em you ain't shoot the commissioner, and it's all a big misunderstanding. Tell 'em you can explain.”
“You know I can't do that, Joe.”
“Yeah, I know you can't, 'cause they don't wanna hear that shit.”
Joe stood back and ran his fingers through his hair as he tried to think of the best course of action for Jamal to take. He didn't want to see Frank's son make a mistake that could cost him his life. But it looked to him like the boy was going down that path.
“Jamal, let's forget about whether you did what they said you did,” Joe said while holding his hands out in a placating gesture. “I'm not even worried about that right now. I'm worried about you.
“I'm worried that you screwed up somehow, didn't do what your father told you, and now what shoulda been a little problem is bigger than anything I seen in all my sixty years. But it ain't too late to make it right, Jamal. Ditch the girl. I can keep her here for an hour or two, you can go wherever you're gonna go, and she can just reappear—presto. You're gone, she's back home. Problem solved.”
Jamal looked at Joe, and he knew that what he was telling him was the right advice, if the streets and their codes were the only thing worthy of consideration. But then he looked at Keisha. He thought of her fierce loyalty and her willingness to leave everything for him. He knew that there was no way he could leave her. Not now, not ever.
“You right, Joe,” he said, turning his gaze on the grizzled barkeep. “I messed up. I ain't do what my father wanted me to do. I did what
I
wanted to do. But Joe, if you love my father—and I know you do—you'll help me out this one time, and you won't ever have to worry about seein' me again.”
Joe looked from Keisha to Jamal, and knew that he would never get through to him. The kid was making a mistake, Joe thought. But his father had prepared for this day, just like he'd prepared for everything else over the years. So all Joe had to do was pass on what his father had left.
“What do you need?” Joe asked with a frustrated sigh.
“We need money, some clothes, and a ride,” Jamal said. “Anything we need after that, I can get it myself.”
Joe stared at them for a moment. Then he shook his head and walked to the back of the room. Unlocking a cabinet, he reached in and removed a sealed manila envelope with Jamal's name on it, and walked back over to Jamal and Keisha.
“Your father must have known this day was coming,” Joe said, handing the envelope to Jamal. “He left this for you.”
Jamal unsealed the envelope and began counting hundred-dollar bills. He knew before he'd finished counting that there was more than enough for the both of them.
He counted out five thousand dollars. “This is for you,” he said, offering the money to Joe.
“Your father already took care o' me,” Joe said. “I got an envelope stuffed away somewhere, too. You keep that for yourself. You're gonna need it.”
Joe went to the back of the room and opened a door. There was a stairway on the other side.
“There's men's and women's clothes upstairs in the closet. I'm sure my girlfriend won't mind if you borrow a pair o' jeans and a blouse or somethin'. You might want to shower and get somethin' to eat, too.”
Joe looked at his watch. “It's one o' clock now,” he said. “Lay low here for a couple hours, let' em look for you up in Frankford ‘til the trail goes cold. At five o' clock, I'll close up the bar and take you wherever you want to go. That's rush hour. Lot of traffic,
but you're a lot less likely to be stopped for somethin' stupid. Until then, Jamal, my home is your home. My apartment is through that door and up those stairs.”
Jamal got down off the stool, and Keisha followed.
Joe looked at Keisha and spoke to her for the first time. “I wasn't tryin' to be hard on you,” he said. “But his father's like a brother to me. He's really the only family I got.”
Keisha smiled. “I understand,” she said. “Just know that you can never care for Jamal more than I do. As long as we understand that, I think we'll all be fine.”
Joe was surprised. He hadn't expected her to respond that way. But it was the right response. Maybe Jamal wasn't so stupid after all.
“Thanks for everything, Joe,” Jamal said with all the sincerity he could muster.
“Thank me when this is over,” Joe said with a wave of his hand. “We're not out of the woods yet.”
 
 
Swirling red and blue lights painted the dark street under the el tracks as a crowd of onlookers watched a disheveled police tow truck driver load the mangled police car onto his flatbed.
The officer who'd chased Keisha and Jamal had already been transported to the hospital with a head injury, and officers from the department's Northeast division had fanned out to search for Keisha and Jamal.
The streets around the accident site had been blocked off quickly. The el was no longer running into or out of the Bridge-Pratt station. Transit police had boarded every one of the twenty or so buses that were idling in the transportation hub when the accident took place.
In an ambitious effort to ramp up the search, Transit police were also going door-to-door in the vicinity of every el stop from Bridge-Pratt to Center City. And housing police were assisting with the search of a housing project that was within walking distance of the Bridge-Pratt station.
Still, no one was operating under the illusion that it would be easy to find Keisha and Jamal in the streets of Frankford, a working-class, integrated neighborhood that was suffering, like communities all over the city, under the weight of an out-of-control drug epidemic. There were people on every block who looked just like Keisha and Jamal.
But their saving grace was the couple whose car they had tried to use to escape. The husband and wife were still traumatized from their short ordeal with the gun-wielding teens. But their anger at being victimized outstripped their fear.
Unlike those who remained silent in the wake of crimes committed against them, these two were willing to talk. They'd already given Keisha and Jamal's descriptions to the police. And now, as they stood before the first camera to arrive at the scene, they were about to repeat the descriptions for the world.
A white-haired reporter stood before the wreckage of the police car, with the couple's green Ford, cordoned off by crime scene tape, visible in the background.
As his cameraman turned on his light, the reporter checked his notepad and, after a silent countdown from the station, spoke with a mixture of grave sincerity and shocked disbelief.
“This is Frank Wilson, reporting live from the latest scene of an incredible crime spree that has thus far claimed the lives of seventy-year-old Emma Jean Johnson, Police Commissioner Darrell Freeman, and Officer Jim Hickey. Just about fifteen minutes ago, an unidentified police officer was seriously wounded while
chasing a car belonging to this couple—the second vehicle to be carjacked in connection with these crimes.”
The reporter held out his arm to allow the couple to step into the frame.
“Mr. and Mrs. Jack Williams have agreed to speak exclusively to Channel Ten about their ordeal,” he said before turning to the couple. “Mr. Williams, how did this happen?”
“My wife and I were in the drive-through at KFC when an elderly couple approached us. When I rolled down the window to see what they wanted, the woman put a gun to my head and they forced their way into our car.”
“And these two elderly-looking people, what did they look like?”
“From the pictures I've seen, it looked like Jamal Nichols, the man who shot the police commissioner this morning, and Keisha Anderson, the girl he supposedly kidnapped.
“But Nichols didn't have the dreadlocks anymore, and he was wearing an old-looking fedora and an oversized gray suit. He was wearing glasses and using a walker. Keisha Anderson had on a long flower-print dress with a wide-brimmed straw hat and a purse.
“The odd thing about it is, she was the one with the gun,” Mrs. Williams said. “She didn't look like someone who'd been kidnapped to me.”
“So it appeared that she was working with Jamal Nichols?” the reporter asked.
“I'm not sure if working is the right word for it,” Mr. Williams said. “She looked like she was enjoying it. At one point she even laughed. That's when I slammed on the brakes and tried to take the gun, but I couldn't get it, and they forced us out of the car.

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