The Importance of Being Dangerous (27 page)

“Raquel, my love?”

“Yes, mom?”

“Would you mind going upstairs for a bit and changing into your bedclothes? I'd like to speak to your aunt a minute.”

“She's your aunt too, you know.”

“She knows that, fresh girl,” said Aunt Chickie. “Now do as your mama says.”

Off she went. One of the best things about their life with Aunt Chickie in the house was having a grown-up echo. Sidarra wondered for a moment if that was an advantage married parents had. “You want some wine, Aunt Chickie?”

“No, baby,” she said, slowly squatting into a chair. “Whatcha thinkin' 'bout?”

“More than I can say, I'm afraid. But what I wanted to talk to you about is—” Sidarra suddenly realized she had forgotten the script she'd been writing in her head along the ride from Brooklyn. “Well, see, I want to do some estate planning, you know, for Raquel's sake. And I was wondering if I could have the deed redone and put you on as the owner of this place. It'd be easy. Then we'd get a lawyer to write your will so that you'd put the house in trust for Raquel. Sort of kill two birds with one stone.”

“Who are the birds? You and me?” she asked skeptically.

“Figure of speech.”

Aunt Chickie sat back and stared at her flowers for a moment. Then she turned to Sidarra, expecting the horns and tail to have disappeared by then. The look on her face said she still saw them. “I'ma tell you something, Sidarra. Maybe one or two things, come to think of it. I know you're busy doing what you do. I'm sure you have your reasons, and I probably wouldn't understand them if you explained them carefully to me. To tell you God's honest truth, I really don't care what you do with the deed as long as you don't create a family mess out of it. By the time you get it all done the way you plan, I will most likely be dead. See, I'm old. You prob'ly figured that out.”

“Yes, ma'am, I was aware of that.”

“Are you?” Aunt Chickie's eyelids seemed to hang halfway over her eyes, lending gravity to the slight look of disbelief she wanted Sidarra to notice. “Those flowers,” she said, pointing, “they're perennials, you know. You heard my singing voice? That's what doctors call early-stage emphysema from all that smoking in France and whatnot. Diabetes is also a strange thing. It never likes you for long. Living in this city, breathing this air, walking up and down the steps in this house, I would have to say that there is an excellent chance I will not be around to see these little orange smiles bud again once they go down in a few weeks. Are you with me?”

“I'm with you, but I won't believe you,” Sidarra said gently.

“Then do what you want. But don't say I didn't warn you.”

EVEN THOUGH JEFF GEIGER HAD HEARD WATERCOOLER RUMORS
about his name, it was damned exciting to see it appear on the victim list of a file being opened by his own office, the federal prosecutor for the Eastern District of New York in downtown Brooklyn. Geiger had leaped to the U.S. attorney's office after doing serious felony trials as an assistant in the Manhattan district attorney's office. His leap was not quite what he intended, though. He now prosecuted federal securities fraud offenses with a lot less rush and intrigue than the grand larceny cases he was starting to handle at the time he left the D.A.'s office. Not two years later, those two lives collided in a file.

At first the detectives thought there might be an African connection. No one was home at the time, but a search of the East Harlem apartment of a suspect named Yakoob who had known ties to another suspect wanted for murder turned up a yellow slice of legal-pad paper. Much of what was written there had been
crossed out beyond recognition. A few notations appeared to be in code, but still decipherable were some personal names on a list that matched a state reporting bureau's list of people who had been victims of electronic funds misappropriation and credit card fraud. The dollar amounts were there too, small, but sure enough, there lay Geiger's long-lost $5,000 in black and white. Other units were piecing together whatever links might exist between the suspects and the crime or crimes involved. It could have been a terrorist murder-for-hire financing ring. Or gang activity. Or totally unrelated criminals whose paths crossed at convenient moments in time. Without knowing what to look for, the police hackers had done as much as they could. For his part, Geiger had to try to trace the small amounts of cash to larger stock purchases, transfers, and gains—securities violations.

The yellow slice of paper was not a lot to go on, and nothing else was found to incriminate “the African guy,” as one detective called him. After interviewing him at the station house, they gave Yakoob what amounted to a summons to appear before a judge later. Without the main suspect, it wasn't clear whether Yakoob could even be linked to Geiger's $5,000 or anything else. But the file indicated that Yakoob would be put under surveillance, at least in the hours after work. And they knew where his wife worked.

Geiger studied the slender file for as many hours as he could spare from his docket of cases ready for trial. It was so random, nothing made sense. His unit chief wanted him to prepare a list of specific things police and FBI hackers could go back in for and to articulate legal grounds for a warrant to examine all of Yakoob's computer files and financial information. That had to be done within days. Whatever was going on in the case, Geiger was told, it was moving quickly. So Geiger set out on an aimless search for coincidences and petty identity theft. The murder suspect still had no name.

Soon enough, the main guy's predilections started to emerge.
The NYPD received a tip from a sickly inmate on Rikers Island about a guy who an illegal drug chemist named Manny called “the Candy Man.” The chemist might have sold him a powerful sedative used in a high-level homicide. The kid in jail, who could at least call the suspect by his first name, Raul, had given the cops detailed information about Raul's mother's apartment, daytime habits, and a full physical description. Both men—Manny and Tyrell—had plea deals pending. That page of the file also said in bold letters that the suspect was probably aware that he was under suspicion and should be considered armed and extremely dangerous. Geiger did what he could about the money trail, but mostly he waited to hear if and when they brought in the Candy Man—Raul—for questioning.

 

NOT A FULL BLOCK AWAY FROM JEFF GEIGER'S OFFICE
, in tall buildings that stood almost shoulder to shoulder, Sidarra was sitting at her desk cubicle at the Board of Miseducation about to receive her own promotion. “You've got to be kidding,” she told Dr. Blackwell.

“Don't be too happy just yet,” said the chancellor. “We plan on doing it differently than you're used to.”

“Our reorganization of the executive staff may look a lot like putting you right back where you were before the last reorganization had you reporting to what's her name,” Stanley explained, “but we need your ideas.”

“Actually, I'd like you to be one of my deputies, Sidarra,” the chancellor added.

As soon as she had covered Dr. Blackwell with both arms, Sidarra realized that she probably had not really hugged another woman since she last held her mother. In fact, as the embrace nearly tripped them both over, she knew that was true.

However, Sidarra did not know that Yakoob had been in and
out of police custody the day before. She did not know what a wild chase was on for computer evidence of illegal stock trades involving her and the Cicero Club. And nobody knew exactly how close a small army of unmarked police cars was to closing in on Raul as he ate a late lunch at Conrad's Chicken & Waffle. The only thing Sidarra considered in that rare moment of rapture was that she had good news to tell her crew at the Full Count tonight, something she had worked long and hard for, and for the feeling, she would not creep through an alley tonight but would walk through the front door, proud of her own damned self for the first time in a long time.

 

EXACTLY WHAT RAUL WAS FINALLY GOING TO DO
to Cavanaugh—short of murder—was going to hurt a lot. That much he knew. The man had been on vacation for at least three weeks, and the wait did not sit well with Raul. It took only a phone call to the receptionist to learn that this was the Monday Cavanaugh would return to his desk. All day Raul considered various options. It had to be good. It had to be memorable. It might be fatal, and for that reason it should come as Cavanaugh was leaving work around five. The hours grew long. Raul got hungry.

Conrad's Chicken & Waffle was located on West 145th Street. Raul loved their birds almost as much as he loved a chocolate bar. Waffles were a new thing he was trying out, and he bathed his in syrup. The breasts were so succulent he decided to have three. The waffles were so good, he asked the waitress for another round. Strawberry soda was the drink of the day. Together with the fist-sized corn biscuits, he had eaten so much and was bulging so bad that by two-thirty he had to move his Glock to the back of his waist. Home cooking has blinded many men. Being high on indica weed helps too. Raul sat in a lone booth near the back, fat on sweetness and protein, watching the door with a little less focus
than usual. It was a small ecstasy he decided right then to start doing daily. He didn't even want to get up, but nature called.

“
Papi,
where's your bathroom?” he asked a middle-aged man with gray hair and a chef's white shirt.

“Just to the rear,” the man replied in Spanish.

Raul lumbered to the back and practically fell into the little room.

As soon as the bathroom door closed shut, a SWAT-like commotion converged on the street outside. While Raul rested his Glock on the sink and lowered his baggy pants, six unmarked cars dove to a halt outside Conrad's. Pedestrians fell into form, checking the cops' eyes, seeing guns drawn, and scurrying to a safe place from which to watch. There was no bullhorn; folks knew what six cars meant. A paddy wagon screeched to a stop just down the street and men in black fatigues and helmets flew out of the doors and went racing front to back through adjacent stores with automatic rifles ready. While frenzied moms lifted paralyzed children out of the way, Raul enjoyed what a body does best. He sat with his arm on his knee and his hand on his chin and studied cracks in the linoleum floor. He finished just in time to hear what sounded like a chair fall over. Then his ears pricked up. He wasn't full anymore and grabbed his gun.

Raul let the door swing open on its own. The bustling restaurant suddenly had gone silent. The man with the white shirt was just trying to shuffle past him when Raul reached out and yanked him in by the collar. His eyes said everything.

“How many?” Raul asked in Spanish.

The man tried to unlock his jaw. “Don't,” he stammered in Spanish. “Too many.”

Before either man could say another word, a single gunshot rang past them and through the narrow hallway. Raul jerked away from the man, and the man darted through a door on the other side marked “Employees Only.” Raul crouched. What the fuck? he
thought. How you just be shooting in a fucking New York City restaurant like that?

“Raul!” came the loudspeaker at last. “Throw your weapon on the floor and show us your hands!”

Too mean to be scared, all Raul could think of was, New York's Fucking Finest. He waited for the first sound of them rushing him. He knew they would. His knees creaked in his crouch. He craned his short neck to peep down the hallway. At the end of it was a door, probably an exit. That's the way he would go, he decided, but he'd probably have to take a motherfucker out first to clear his way. And hope if he got hit they'd miss center mass. He started to count: one, two—then he heard the quick footsteps approaching and bolted out of the bathroom. The first shot missed him and he got off three or four devastating rounds of fiery light. Raul was almost to the back door when he felt the back of his thigh go numb. With one hand firing behind him, he pushed the exit open with the other. The door swung out to reveal a weed-ravaged garbage area and two rifles opening fire on him. The bullets shredded his chest and neck while others tore up his behind. His body could not fall at first, jerked back and forth by lead into a lifeless spasm. And though he was done, somebody's good measure blew his shoulder off. Raul's body finally dropped one way and his head another. In the quiet, his pooling blood seemed to smoke.

 

THEY EACH CAME TO THE FULL COUNT
in different ways and in different looks than they had in a while, if ever. Sidarra parked her Mercedes right in front and bounced out of the driver's door in a short royal blue sundress, black heels, and her hair in a dark blue scarf. She walked straight through the bar scene to the back. Griff took three different cabs, a bus, and another cab, eventually walking carefully through the back door wearing thick black nerd
glasses, ill-fitting pants, and a crooked-collared shirt with a pharmacist's pens lined up in the breast pocket. Yakoob parked his Escalade in the alley after circling the neighborhood five or six times and wore platform shoes, a nylon floral shirt, and polyester bell-bottoms. Before he walked through the back door, he put on a wig. The first thing they did was ask Koob why he looked like a clown. He told them he had a gig, the guy who went on after him was dressed in the wig, and the rest was pure pimp. No one said much more. Then Griff's music came on. The disk began, appropriately enough, with B.B. King's live version of “The Thrill Is Gone.”

For the first little while, it just felt right to play pool, to talk pool, and to be billiard artists again as they had been that first night together. Nobody got high. Sidarra brought their drinks in along with bottles so she would not be seen at the bar again. Of course she and Griff wanted to know exactly what Yakoob had said to the police, but they let him unwind to himself.

“I'm okay,” Koob told them before looking up. “Really,” he added, finally looking into both their eyes. “They expected a dumb nigga, and that's what I gave 'em. They want Raul.”

Griff and Sid remained quiet, editing questions in their heads until none were left. Koob had suffered enough interrogation for them all. Instead, they just enjoyed each other's company, complimenting each other's good shots and all-righting the missed ones.

“Fellas, I made deputy today,” Sidarra finally said. They looked at her and smiled. It was clear they didn't understand. “Deputy to the new chancellor. She's a sister, you know. Maybe the mentor I never had. Dr. Grace Blackwell. She might be the first person in many years who actually read the things I used to write about the schools.”

“Hey!” the men chimed. They raised their glasses. They hugged her each the same. They all wanted to say more, as if today were a
different day and tomorrow completely unknown, but whatever it was, it wasn't that. So they just smiled about it and went on playing pool. Sidarra's news did not fit the mood and would have to wait.

A few minutes later, Q walked in through the maroon curtains. In the glint of low light, he looked like a man of steel. His presence was suddenly more welcome than ever before. They each could have used a superhero at the moment. Q greeted them all, kissed Sidarra on the cheek, and motioned to Griff with his index finger to come close. It looked at first like a phone call was waiting, but Q immediately leaned into Griff's ear and whispered a few words. Griff whispered back while Sid and Koob stopped playing. Q said something else, then turned to the other two and said, “I'm sorry, y'all.” Then his big frame shook through the curtains and disappeared.

They waited for Griff to speak. He put his hands on his hips, searched the carpet, and took a few wandering steps toward the Amistad. Still they waited. “Raul's gone, folks. Had a shoot-out with the cops this afternoon, and he's dead.”

Each of them stepped zombie-like toward the table, and one after the other rested their hands against the siderails. They studied the loose balls with blank faces. All hands were calm but Yakoob's, whose fingers began to squeeze the hard felt cushion and whose nails dug in with an anger he couldn't find words for. Griff stated the last of what he knew in a deadpan way, while Yakoob listened without letting go.

Sidarra wanted to say a prayer, but she was long lost for those words. Raquel would have known better, but Raquel had better never know. “I'm sorry for his mother,” was all she could think to say. “He leaves for one journey, she starts on another.”

“He loved you, girl, you know that, right?” Koob said, turning to her.

She nodded and whispered yes, then turned back to the balls
on the table. The huge stuffed purple teddy bear still sat in Raul's favorite corner, a dumb, inanimate smile forever on his mug, a bag or two of weed and a handful of candy bars in suspended spill from an opening in its side. For the moment, Griff said nothing and showed nothing.