The Importance of Being Dangerous (31 page)

“Oh, Sidarra.”

“Look, damnit! I'm not playing and I don't need any ‘Oh, Sidarra's.' This shit is serious!”

There was a pause. “I'm sure you'll explain that one to me when I see you.”

“I'm sorry. I will. But right now I need you to pack your most favorite things. What you can't fit into a couple of suitcases, try to pack into something else, and I'll arrange to have them picked up later. I know this sounds crazy. I know it's not fair. But just trust me right now. This guy is dangerous. We'll sort it all out soon. I'm on my way.”

There was another long pause. “Okay. I'll do the best I can.”

“Thank you, Aunt Chickie. Thank you. I gotta go now. Whatever you do, do not answer the door, and keep the lights off in the front of the house until I get there.”

Aunt Chickie sighed. Sidarra could imagine the look she was giving the phone. “So much drama all the time, geez. You know, Sidarra, when we get a moment, I'd like to talk to you about the men in your life. Meantime, is there anything we should get for you?”

Sidarra thought for a second. “No. No, I'm okay. Just take care of yourselves and I'll be right there. Goodbye. Now, hang up and don't answer the phone again till you see me.”

Sidarra hung up only to see the cabdriver's eyes bulging at her in the rearview mirror. “Just drive, please,” she said as politely as she could. “I, uh, have an abusive ex-boyfriend. There's an order of protection out for him.”

The man nodded. “I hope they get the guy,” he said in a thick Middle Eastern accent. “They should cut off his balls!”

“Thank you, sir. Please, just drive as fast as you can. I'll be all right.”

The driver muttered curses the whole rest of the way across the Triborough Bridge and onto the 138th Street bridge over the Harlem River. He raced like a professional, and they were in front of the garage where Sidarra had parked her Mercedes in about eleven minutes.

“No charge, lady. But please, get yourself a gun, okay? The Glock is good. I have one.”

“That's very kind of you, sir. You're probably right.”

“Pow pow!” he said. “Beautiful lady like you should not be running.”

Sidarra ran up to the third floor of the parking garage and got into her car. She circled her block three times and finally double-parked in front of her brownstone. She raced up the stairs, realized she'd left the car running, ran back for the keys, and bolted into the house. “I'm home!” she screamed. Raquel came to the top of the stairs to greet her. Sidarra flew up and nearly tackled her, smothered her in wet kisses, and grabbed her up in one arm like Hercules. Raquel tried to protest and get down. She wanted to explain all that she had done already, including packing the cat and some of Sidarra's most precious things, but Sidarra wouldn't put her down. Instead, Sidarra listened and asked questions as she roamed frantically from room to room with the not-so-little girl hanging from her clenched bicep. Sidarra was ten minutes into packing up her own stuff and ready to move to the third floor when Aunt Chickie finally made it up the stairs.

“Sit down, Sidarra,” she ordered.

“I can't, Aunt Chickie.”

“Oh yes you can.”

Sidarra finally stopped. She stood with Raquel still a few inches
sideways off the floor and looked at her aunt, who absolutely was not playing. It struck her then. She could not breathe. She hadn't breathed since she got out of the cab. Raquel drifted slowly down to her feet. Aunt Chickie walked carefully to the banister and leaned back, staring suspiciously at her niece. “We can't stop till we go,” Sidarra explained.

“I don't go like that. I'm a little too old for escapes. You wanna tell me what's going on?”

Sidarra looked around helplessly. She clenched her fingers and wiped sweat off her brow. “Okay. But quickly. Raquel, please go upstairs and put Grandma and Grandpa's shrine in a careful pile. That's coming too. Don't touch the photographs. I'll get the photographs.” Only too glad to be part of the mad dash, Raquel raced upstairs with energy nobody else in the house could match. When they had both watched her skinny legs make it to the top of the stairs, Sidarra returned her aunt's powerful gaze. “I know this contradicts some of the good things you might have thought about me, Aunt Chickie. I know I seem wild. I want to explain it all to you. But right now, I want us all to be safe, and I think I know how to do it. So, please?”

Aunt Chickie washed her face with her hand. She began at the cheek and slowly moved it down her supple jowl and around her chin to her neck, where it rested in the gentle skin for a minute. “Baby, this is not how we do it. Let me try to help you.”

Sidarra stared at her, first angrily for slowing things down, then desperately, and finally Sidarra's bottom lip began to quiver. Her eyes welled up with tears that soon streamed down her face. “I fucked up,” she cried. “I fucked up, Aunt Chickie. It's a dangerous situation for all of us, okay? And I'm sorry,” she sobbed. “I'm sorry to do this to you.”

Aunt Chickie raced over to her as quickly as her body could manage and wrapped her arms around Sidarra's neck. “I'm here. What is it, baby? I'm here.”

“I'm in trouble. I took advantage. I could lose you all,” she cried. “We have to go. I need you, Aunt Chickie. We have to get out. We have to get away. Far away.”

“Yes, yes,” Aunt Chickie cooed, stroking the back of Sidarra's head. “It's gonna be all right. Let Aunt Chickie know. Calm down. You're hysterical. Slow down. Tell me about it, and we'll get through it.”

“No, sweetie, this isn't like that,” Sidarra wept, and pulled back enough to look her aunt in the eye. “They could come at any minute. I did something wrong, Aunt Chickie. I could go to jail!”

That did it. Aunt Chickie's expression changed all of a sudden. Her own eyes glassed up, and she searched Sidarra's face for exaggeration, but found none. She wiped Sidarra's tears away, but more just fell in their place. “I need you to concentrate, Sidarra. The baby's upstairs. You two are all I got. Now, tell me this: Do we really have to go? Right this minute? Do we?” she demanded.

Sidarra tried to hold her gaze. Her legs felt limp and she wanted to drop into her aunt's arms. Her lips quivered and tears streaked all over her face. “Yes. Please believe me. They already have the others. We have to go, Aunt Chickie. Please. I can't lose my child!”

Aunt Chickie shook Sidarra about the shoulders with a force she had not possessed in many years. “Okay, Sidarra! Okay. Then we'll go. C'mon now. I'll finish getting my things. You get yours. This is the time. We'll go.”

“Thank you. Thank you,” she cried.

“No. Thank me later. If you say we must go, then let's go. C'mon.
Go!
”

Sidarra sprang back into action. She turned and hurdled up the stairs to find Raquel. She helped her finish gathering the shrine and collected all the pictures. She found a box in a closet and threw all the things in it, trying to remember to get all the photos, hats, shoes, scarves, and CDs they might need. She found another
box and threw a hundred small items in it that Darrius might not be able to find for her. Then she checked to make sure Raquel could handle the weight and told her to carry the things down to the vestibule so they could put them in the trunk of the car.

Finally she had to make the rounds of her own clothes and other items on the second floor. Raquel had done a hell of a job putting things into a few suitcases. Sidarra tried to make a mental picture of the trunk space, and so far everything seemed to fit. Raquel swore that she had everything she might need. Sidarra ordered her back up to see if there were other things in the house she might need for a really, really long vacation. Then Sidarra went to her bedroom and started putting her very best clothes, shoes, and some jewelry in a silver box she'd saved from Bergdorf Goodman's. It even had a small latch, and when it was full, she closed it. Next, she went to a drawer and pulled out her special jewelry. There was the gem-studded tiara Yakoob had so foolishly bought her for her fortieth birthday. She wrapped that in a scarf and tried to fit it in her coat pocket. It barely fit. She wormed her hand down to the bottom of the pocket, tossed away some napkins she'd hidden there along with a few idle pieces of crumpled paper, and found Michael's ring. She pulled that out and tried it on her finger. It fit perfectly. She stuffed the tiara in the empty pocket. Then she went to her bathroom closet, pulled back a makeup mirror, and retrieved $85,000 in cash from a box. She stuffed the money into several boxes. Nothing else remained. She looked around, trying to calm herself so she could think twice about things she might regret leaving behind. She pulled a mascara pen off the dressing table and put an
X
on the silver Bergdorf bag. Everything else was either in her pockets or stowed in the suitcases Raquel had mostly packed. She pushed them all down the stairs, ran after them, grabbed her family, and set the alarm. Sidarra paused for a moment and noticed that the huge mirror in the front hall had been neglected, it was covered in dust, and she al
most thought to clean it. Then she saw her reflection, a resolute expression of pure craziness taunting her, and moved quickly out of the frame. She turned off the lights, locked the door, and headed down the stoop to help load the Mercedes.

“Where are we going, Bond? James Bond,” Raquel asked as her mother tried to stuff the trunk with their life.

“Oh, I thought we'd visit your uncle for a while,” Sidarra said.

“Goody! Can I sit in the front?” Raquel asked.

“Most definitely. I need a good copilot.”

With the doors shut and no cars behind them, Sidarra, Raquel, Aunt Chickie, and Pussy Galore took off into the long July sunset. Sidarra drove around and around before settling onto the West Side Highway heading south.

While Raquel sang songs quietly to herself, Sidarra and Aunt Chickie remained mostly silent in their own heads. Sidarra finally pulled the car off at Chambers Street and headed east toward the Brooklyn Bridge. The early Sunday evening traffic was moving well enough, but not too fast, just as she wanted. Crossing the bridge, she was just another car. On the other side, she drove down Adams as usual and pulled up by the side entrance to her office at the Board of Miseducation.

“This is where your mommy used to work,” she told Raquel. “I'll be right back,” she told Aunt Chickie, and left the engine running. Sidarra then used her key to get in the side entrance, waved to the guard, and went upstairs. When she got to her floor, she went through her drawers and pulled out any personal information. So many idle years left few things of value. She grabbed up pictures, a few pens, and some stationery just in case. Then she logged on to her computer and sent a quick memo to everyone in her unit saying there had been a death in her family and that she would be taking an indefinite leave of absence. She listed a few important document numbers of things she had been working on since becoming a deputy and logged off. The next part was the
hardest, and she took a long breath. She needed to create the impression of confusion in the administrative record. She needed to look like a victim and disappear from the file. Her name and employee record had to go. This moment and almost two decades would vanish with a few simple keystrokes: Control-86 Transfer Command.

Next, Sidarra tiptoed down the hall to the back stairs and went up to the chancellor's floor, her new floor, if only she had waited for her new executive office to be cleaned out. She was surprised to find Dr. Blackwell's office door unlocked. Sidarra feared turning on the light and instead walked carefully in the dark to the big leather chair behind the grand old desk. There she pulled from her pocket the gem-studded tiara Yakoob had given her and placed it carefully in the middle drawer of the desk. Then she made her way back downstairs, past the guard, who was covered in the sports pages, and left the building for the last time. Eight minutes later, she was on the Verrazano Bridge, speeding toward New Jersey.

Finding the Short Hills Mall after dark was tricky, but she did. It was the only place in New Jersey she knew, and New Jersey was roughly south and west, which is the direction the navigational system on her Mercedes told her to go. At the mall, she, Raquel, and Aunt Chickie had a bite to eat, bought a few items to make the ride more comfortable for them, and headed to a mailbox store that was about ready to close. Sidarra left the other two outside and went in to mail a few items. She sent the silver Bergdorf box full of clothes, jewelry, and just under $25,000 cash to Marilyn at the pharmacy where she worked at the corner of Duane and Reade streets. Then she scribbled a short note to Darrius and included the key and a little thank-you cash in the envelope, and sent that off too. Driving most of the night, they pulled into an Ohio motel by 3:00
A.M
. The important thing, she realized as her head adjusted to the strange-smelling pillow, was that they were gone. Long gone in the slow lane to New Mexico.

ORIGINALLY
,
THE CASE OF THE UNITED STATES
versus Griffin Haley Coleman and Yakoobiah B. Jones was tried as one. The two men sat in court with their lawyers at the defendants' table for several hearings at which they wore the same crisp dark suits and faced ahead like silent soldiers captured behind enemy lines. They sat beside each other and listened to the lawyers exchange technical arguments with the judge as the prosecution began disclosing evidence of the crimes with which they were charged. They were alleged to have violated both state and federal laws, but the charges were combined for a single trial in federal court. After some internal office wrangling, Jeffrey Geiger was named the lead prosecutor.

At times the case seemed stronger than Griff had thought. The police hackers had indeed reproduced the computer traces of credit card fraud by recovering files long deleted from Yakoob's hard drive. They identified a grand total of $172,000 which had
been misappropriated from a victim list of twenty-one individuals. Geiger was one of them, but the judge allowed him to proceed with the prosecution despite the possible conflict of interest. The handwriting on the yellow piece of legal paper was identified as Griff's. Their bank accounts started to increase, then fluctuate wildly shortly after the first names were found on the system. Since the illicit monies had been used in stock purchases across state lines, the two men had engaged in interstate commerce, which could land them in federal, not state, prison. Anything purchased with the kitty was considered ill-gotten gain.

The rest of the case would have to proceed from that basis. And the prosecution would, of course, have to prove that the incredible accumulation of stock market wealth connected to the death of Chancellor Eagleton, a Solutions, Inc. director and shareholder, was more than coincidence—say, a lucky online bet. Griff and Koob would not only have to have known Raul Rodriguez, they would have to be shown to conspire with him for homicidal ends. That would amount to both securities fraud and murder. The only problem, Geiger discovered after the second court hearing before the judge, was that the key was in showing that Griff and Yakoob had benefited from the Solutions, Inc. IPO as illegal insiders. If they weren't invited to buy stock in their own identities, the government would have to show that they had somehow disguised themselves as angels during the angel round of financing. But, as Griff's attorney pointed out in pretrial conferences inside the judge's chambers, that would entitle the defense to examine the records of
all
the shareholders who were allowed to participate in the IPO. With a little resourcefulness, he had already learned that Jack Eagleton was not so upstanding after all. The chancellor had made timely announcements on education policy intended to artificially drive up the value of the company just before it went public. At the last minute he had also personally authorized the issuance of a thousand shares of Solutions, Inc. to his wife and
children in the name of a nonexistent trust fund. That was insider trading. A trial on that charge would reveal publicly that the good chancellor was dirty. So the government decided to leave that count out.

Griff was right about one thing—that it was a good time to make a deal. All that was left of the charges against him were the credit card thefts, conspiracy to commit fraud, receipt of stolen goods, and, for failing to pay a cent in capital gains taxes on dividends, tax evasion for almost a million dollars' worth of traceable wealth. It was not nice to make online bets on the deaths of public figures, but it was not illegal to do so. Much to Jeffrey Geiger's supreme personal disgust, the United States Attorney's office agreed to a plea arrangement by which Griffin Haley Coleman would pay about $75,000 in restitution to his victims with interest, settle his debt plus penalties to the Internal Revenue Service, and serve a required minimum of seventeen months in a medium-security federal penitentiary designed for white-collar convicts. His license to practice law was also revoked. He would never vote again. The Full Count would be sold at auction—in all likelihood, back to Q. Griff's wife Belinda, who did not fly back from Japan to attend any of the proceedings, filed for immediate divorce and put their brownstone up for sale.

Encouraged by the busted securities fraud case, Yakoob stayed on to fight at trial. While Marilyn watched every day from the seat behind her husband, the prosecution showed a jury reams of technical computer evidence. They called Yakoob a “terrorist mastermind” and, over the objections of his defense lawyer, hammered repeated references to Yakoob's association with a neighborhood friend, Raul Rodriguez, a.k.a. the notorious “Candy Man,” who had viciously assassinated the city's beloved schools chancellor in his home. When it was all over, Raul had been linked to at least two murders, the unprovoked near-bludgeoning-to-death of a
Harlem man named Tyrell Johnson, and assorted acts of wanton thuggery. It didn't matter that Raul was dead or that he was not on trial. Nor did the jury think Yakoob was the least bit funny. He faced all the same charges as Griff and was convicted of them all.

Yet the real problem with deciding not to take a plea as Griff had was that Yakoob's continuing trial gave the prosecution the time it needed to connect him to Fidelity. It wasn't just that by then the police hackers had become intimately familiar with Koob's hacking fingerprint—his methods and patterns of field deduction and decoding. It was that his computer showed him to be inside the bank itself. It was almost so obvious that for weeks they missed it. His own bank had been hit by rare identity thefts that, when properly traced, had to come from either a customer or an employee. The thief had to have a password, because the firewall had not yet been breached. Griff was fortunate that these facts came out
after
his plea was accepted for related crimes; he could not be retried. Yakoob was lucky that Cavanaugh was alive. Still, the judge sentenced Koob to a mandatory minimum of six years in prison.

Immediately after the sentence was announced, both Marilyn and Yakoob dropped lifelessly to the floor. Koob bumped his head on the defendant's table going down. He was still unconscious when Marilyn came to, crying to say goodbye and holding her stomach. While she waited for an ambulance with her mother, she watched them wheel her husband away on a gurney. An hour later, an emergency room doctor would tell her the good news. That cramp in her stomach was the developing embryo the fall did not injure at all. Koob too would survive.

Before the judge adjourned the trial, he had explained that the court would retain jurisdiction over the matter in the event the prosecution's unsuccessful efforts to locate the missing Desiree Galore changed. Unfortunately, she did not seem to exist. Unlike
Griff, this coconspirator used no password, left no computer trail, and received whatever gains she got through a fictitious identity. For all the government knew, she too was dead.

 

PERHAPS IT WAS SIDARRA'S SLOW
, careful driving and too much air blowing through the car's open windows, but Raquel came down with one of those terrible summer colds that prevented her from seeing the beauty of the country they crossed. On the fever's first evening, Sidarra made a comfortable bed of blankets in the backseat for her to curl up on beside the cat. Aunt Chickie sat up front with Sidarra where they could finally talk. But they didn't really. It had been a pretty miserable first three days, and instead they began to argue. They argued and argued. The subject never got much bigger than its common beginnings—that Sidarra was hopelessly lost and refused to accept the fact and get help—but the pitch peaked quickly and stayed there. Sidarra's voice ranged high with short, sharp shrieks of defensiveness, while Chickie's loud accusations filled the small space with low, raspy sweeps of disgust and incredulity. It really came down to: How could you be so stupid? And Sidarra claiming that she was doing everything in her power not to be stupid. Back and forth, over and around each other it went, while Raquel and the old cat slept. It was never clear if they were arguing the same point. But it was true they were lost. After a while, Sidarra admitted that and pulled over onto the shoulder to look at a map.

“You just need to know how disappointed I am in you, Sidarra,” Chickie said calmly to the landscape in front of the windshield as Sidarra puzzled over interstates.

“I know you are. You have a right to be,” Sidarra whispered.

“Yes, but you must still hear it.”

She heard it. With the car stopped, she even confessed a lot of what the Cicero Club did to get investment money. She didn't tell
about the blood, though; Sidarra herself had trouble imagining what happened to Blane and the chancellor. She and Aunt Chickie continued on in silence for a while save for a few sniffles that signaled the spread of Raquel's cold.

“You think Alex will understand?” Sidarra asked.

“Your brother?” Aunt Chickie smirked. “Sure. He's not your problem. You can tell him a lot. He'll want to help you. Heck, he'll be glad to
get
some help, as many kids as he and that woman have running around that big place. No, I wouldn't worry about Alex. I'd worry about your brother Charles.”

Sidarra grew somber. “You know we don't talk. Not in many years.”

“That may be so, but him and Alex talk all the time. Alex moved out there to be near Charles. You need to remember that Charles has some strong feelings about this kind of stuff. You're not the first criminal in the family, you know.”

Sidarra's eyes blinked hard and she turned to her aunt. “What's Kenny's record got to do with Charles?” she asked, recalling her youngest brother's bouts with the law.

“I'm not talking about Kenny, Sidarra.” Aunt Chickie took a deep breath and tried to blow down the road ahead. “I'm talking about your father.”

“Daddy?” Sidarra said in shock.

“Yes, precious. Your father. Your father spent most of the first two years of your brother Kenny's life in jail for running numbers. I guess you were too young to remember that. Maybe you blotted it out. So did Kenny. But Charles didn't.”

“My God,” Sidarra said softly. “Charles never forgave him?”

“Charles does not forgive.”

Sidarra scanned the horizon, then looked over at her aunt, whose face looked tired yet peaceful bathed in the deep auburn light of late sunset, and smiled. She took a long breath, checked the rearview mirror for cars, and pulled out again onto the high
way. The words stayed in the air. The long road had grown lonely of other travelers.

“Sidarra, are you done wasting yourself for men?” Aunt Chickie asked, surprising her.

“I didn't do this for a man, Aunt Chickie. I was broke. That cat managed money better than I did. Hell, I was past broke, I was broken. I'd run out of expectations. If it weren't for Raquel, I was ready to die. You might have noticed, but I was angry too. After Mommy and Daddy died. Very angry. So I was trying to live again, I think. I had forgotten how.”

“You remember now?” Chickie grunted.

Sidarra shook her head. “I'm not sure. You think you know the secrets after a while—about your own feelings, about how to get the images out of your head, how you're gonna go on without your people. The pain subsides just enough for you to put your work clothes on again every day, and off you go, you know? On to the next best thing to save yourself from drowning in it all. Pretty soon you think you're really doing something. You've really turned a corner. Because you now have an understanding that you paid for with all that pain, and at least it's paid and you're out the other side. You know?” She looked over and Aunt Chickie had drifted off to sleep, her mouth open. Sidarra could speak freely, and aloud she continued. “But you're not. You're not on the other side of grief. Time has just passed. You thought your depression would kill you, but it didn't. So you had days and days to fill; you had a job and a daughter and needs to fulfill. No matter how selfish it seemed, you just couldn't stop thinking about your own life. You got distracted from your parents and stopped seeing them in their final moment of violence, stopped thinking about what they were supposed to be doing this day and that, stopped hoping they'd magically call and continue the conversation you never finished. You never decided to do your own thing again, you just did it. And lo and behold, your thing became some other thing that
would
never
have been possible before, or desirable, when they were here. You never would have even looked at it. You would have seen it for the trouble that it is. But now you just did it, naturally, it seemed, because for all its stupid mischief it contained
love,
the one thing you knew you had to have. Again.

“I guess it takes longer to figure out than I thought.”

 

THE TWO-LANE HIGHWAY CURVED
gently through the earth. Aunt Chickie was fast asleep beside her while Pussy Galore's marigold eyes peered out at the sky from deep in the corner of her box. Still a little congested, Raquel snored gently in the backseat. So this is flight, Sidarra thought. Dusk fell in slow motion. The engine was a mere purr; the tires followed the asphalt edges effortlessly. An aimless observation struck her: the car really was pretty nice after all. This was what Alex was talking about when he first recommended it. Sidarra leaned way back in the seat with her knee pressed lightly against the steering wheel. One long-nailed finger, like a pool cue sketching angles, was all it took to continue along the line of progress westward. She was fleeing. The countryside in this light resembled the flat, rough terrain she and Griff had watched from planes overhead, the occasional ridge of beige hills like cattle backs, sun-singed bush, and gnarled trees. Down low, it made for peaceful escape. There was a good chance the police weren't even looking for her, but she was running anyway. Now, almost alone on this unknown highway, reality began to catch up. The loss of her beautiful home, maybe forever, and the room she had made. The loss of her job and what she was finally gonna be able to do. The loss of the only city she ever knew. The loss of Harlem in the morning. It would be forgiveness or insanity that would cure her. She had already tried insanity.