Chapter 24
Keith sat upright in his seat when he saw the bathroom door open and Stephanie step out of the doorway. She raised her head and strode toward him.
Since hanging up the phone with Mike, he had given a lot of thought to what his mentor said. Maybe Mike had a point. Maybe he had been too harsh with Stephanie. His wariness of entering a relationship with a woman like her—who he knew had the ability to wrap him around her finger, if she tried hard enough—had made him act colder to her than he intended. No woman deserved this type of treatment—even an opportunistic gold digger like Stephanie Gibbons. She was still a human being. He had to make amends.
He watched as Stephanie opened the car door. She looked a lot better now than she had when she walked into the bathroom fifteen minutes ago. She had touched up her makeup. Her sunglasses were now pushed to the crown of her head and he could see that her eyes were bright and cheerful. She was even smiling.
That’s quite a transformation, he thought, a little bewildered. When he saw the state that she had been in when she left, he hadn’t expected her to come back this way.
She sat in the leather seat beside him and he loudly cleared his throat.
“Uh, look, Stephanie . . . before . . . before we get back on the road, I think we need to talk.”
She buckled her seatbelt. “Talk about what, Keith?”
What did she mean, ‘Talk about what?’? It was pretty damn obvious what they needed to talk about!
“Stephanie, we need to discuss what happened back there at the motel.” He closed his eyes. “Look, I think I came off harsher than I meant to. I shouldn’t have said what I said. I didn’t mean to hur—”
She shook her head. “Keith, it’s all right. We don’t need to talk about it.”
“We don’t?”
“No, we don’t have to rehash what happened last night and this morning.” She shrugged her shoulders. “We just had sex! No big deal. We’re both adults. We had fun. We’ll leave it at that.”
He now gazed at her in amazement as if her body had been taken over by an alien life form. Was this the same woman who had screamed and cried and thrown things at him in the motel room? Was this the same woman who had refused to look at him for the past three hours?
“But . . . but I thought you—”
He stopped mid-sentence when she raised a hand to his lips, silencing him. She shook her head again.
“Keith, it’s all right. Really. I’m OK. I’ve gotten over it.”
“In fifteen minutes?” a voice in his head shouted. “Talk about a rebound!”
“Besides, I think we need to focus on the issue at hand here,” she said.
He cocked an eyebrow. “Which is?”
“Finding Isaac.” Her dark eyes narrowed. “What’s gone on between us is irrelevant. I’m only here for one thing and that’s to find that scheming son of a bitch. I don’t want to be lovers. Hell, we don’t even have to be friends! I just want you to do your job, which is to find him. Understood?”
He stared at her. Maybe this was how women like her operated. Maybe they could click some internal switch to turn off their emotions like some gold-digging Terminator. Either way, it left him totally befuddled.
“Understood,” he mumbled behind her hand.
She dropped her hand from his mouth. “Good. So . . . where to next?”
“Well . . . Mike sent a list of towns we should go to. He said any one of them could be where Big Red is based.”
“Great!” she exclaimed, dropping her sunglasses back to her nose. She rubbed her hands together eagerly. “Then let’s get this show on the road!”
“Yeah . . . sure, Steph,” Keith said, shifting the car into drive. He gave one last cagey glance at Stephanie before finally pulling off.
After about a week of searching for Big Red, each backwater town started to look like the next. They all had the same rundown look. All the neighborhoods were filled with old, beat-up looking houses with weed-infested front yards and chain-link fences. All of the towns had the tired-looking strip malls on the outskirts with the no-name restaurants and stores. Crime was rampant. Drug dealers were on every other street corner. Cars that had been stripped of everything but their steering wheels were on cinderblocks in empty alleyways. A few women stood on street corners in tight-fitting tops and ill-fitting skirts, ready to sell themselves to the next man who pulled up and offered them twenty dollars.
The towns reminded Keith of a slower, more country version of his old neighborhood in East Baltimore. In some ways, they were a lot like home.
Keith could see how an industrious and wayward man like Big Red could quickly take over towns like these, but unfortunately he had yet to find the particular town where Big Red reigned from his drug-dealing throne. They had been looking for days and at each place they went no one knew where they could find a guy named “Big Red,” though a few had tried to point Keith in the right direction.
Keith now pulled to a stop in front of a small convenience store. He turned off the engine. “I’m going to go inside to grab something to drink. Do you want anything?”
Stephanie shook her head. She barely looked up from the magazine that was in her lap. He watched as she flipped to another glossy page.
She had been acting like this all week, not really giving him the outright cold shoulder, but she was aloof to the point that it was almost unnerving. They didn’t argue anymore. They barely said anything to one another, actually. She would sit quietly in the car while he staked out neighborhoods or hopped out of the SUV to go somewhere and ask questions. He would give her an update and she would nod her head and return her attention to her magazine or cell phone.
Her sudden behavior shift was throwing him off. He felt like some undercurrent of anger and hurt still lurked beneath the surface, but Stephanie refused to talk about it and he wasn’t going to press the issue anymore.
He shut the car door behind him and walked inside the convenience store, leaving her behind.
It was a small store with only a few shelves of goods and one freezer in the back filled with beer, soda, and ice-cream cones.
Keith noticed a group of black men standing near the counter. They laughed and joked, slapping each other’s backs while they talked. But when he entered, their conversation came to a sudden halt. Keith noticed a distinct chill enter the room.
He nodded to the four men and only the one in the center of their throng nodded in return. The rest gazed at him suspiciously. He wasn’t surprised. Again, this reminded him a lot of home. If a stranger had walked into a store in his old neighborhood, all the dudes standing around would stare at him cautiously too. Strangers couldn’t always be trusted.
Keith slowly walked to the back of the store, slid back the freezer door, and pulled out a bottle of Coke. As he did, he glanced out the store window and saw that Stephanie had gotten out of the SUV. She must have gotten bored with reading her magazine. She was now slumped against the hood, adjusting her bra straps and the front of her tank top, gazing at nothing in particular. Her brown legs glistened in the bright sun.
Keith walked back toward the front of the store and placed his soda on the counter. He noticed that all of the men were still silent, but now they were staring out the doorway at the parking lot. Stephanie seemed to be the object of their avid interest.
“What’s up, man?” the one in the center called out to Keith.
He was rail thin and wearing a stained tank top and drooping jeans around his hips. The top of his boxer shorts was on full display. He also sported several gold chains and a Rolex watch. The young man nodded and raised his lips, revealing a mouth full of gold teeth.
Keith nodded. “What’s up?”
“That your girl out there?” the young man asked, pointing out the door.
Keith raised his eyebrows in amusement. He followed the path of the guy’s finger and watched as Stephanie grimaced and lazily fanned herself in the scorching sun and sweltering Florida heat. She raised her hair from her shoulders and twisted it into a knot at the crown of her head.
He had to admit, she did look pretty damn good standing out there. He understood why the men couldn’t take their eyes off her.
“Yeah, I guess you can say that,” he finally answered.
“Well, you one lucky nigga! She a dime, man!” the young man exclaimed with a smile. He turned to one of the men beside him. “Ain’t she? She even better lookin’ than Renee!”
One of his companions slowly shook his head. “Oh, nigga, don’t let Big Red hear you say that . . . talkin’ about his chick that way.”
Keith was handing his money to the cashier, but paused at the mention of Big Red’s name.
“Why?” the skinny one argued. “It’s the truth! Tell me she ain’t finer than Renee . . . and Renee’s one bad bitch!”
“I don’t know, man!” one of them protested, glancing at Stephanie again. “I’d have to see those bitches side by side to really say. You can’t really judge this way.”
“Man, you full of shit! You know damn well—”
“Who’s Big Red?” Keith asked, feigning ignorance.
The group of men abruptly stopped arguing. They turned around to face Keith again. The skinny one narrowed his eyes with distrust. “Why you wanna know?”
Keith shrugged casually. “Just because. You said he has a chick that’s finer than mine. I want to know who the dude is.”
The skinny one sucked his teeth. “Man, Big Red’s chick ain’t finer than yours! This nigga just talking shit! You can see her yourself at the Hangar Club on Fridays. She works the center stage. Sometimes, she’s with Big Red down at the bar on 15th too. He’s there all the time.”
Keith nodded, paid the cashier, and grabbed his soda. He then walked back toward the convenience store entrance.
“Hey!” the skinny one shouted. “Yo! Your lady got a sister, man?”
“Several of them!” Keith assured.
“Well, tell them to roll up down here and pay me a visit. Monty knows how to take care of a bitch,” he said, holding up his gold chain as evidence.
Keith nodded. “I’ll do that.”
He walked out of the convenience store and made a beeline to where Stephanie was standing. She was still slumped against the car, fanning herself. She frowned despite the fact that he was now smiling ear to ear.
“Well, that was a long errand,” she muttered testily, crossing her arms over her chest. “You took the car keys with you! I was frying in there. What the hell took you so long?”
He didn’t respond. Instead, he cupped her face, leaned down and gave her the hottest, wettest kiss he could muster. Her eyes widened in surprise, but quickly drifted closed. She wrapped her arms around his neck and he wrapped his around her waist, lifting her off the ground as they kissed hungrily. It was a heady reminder of the passion they had shared a week ago, a passion that he desperately wished he could sample again. When he finally lowered her back to the asphalt and she gazed up at him, her eyes were dazed and her lips were swollen.
“What . . . What was that about?” she whispered, staring up at him dully.
“That’s me thanking you for sticking around,” he said, licking his lips.
He grinned again then walked around the SUV’s hood and opened the driver’s-side door. She climbed in after him.
“What?” she asked.
“Thanks to you, we now know where we can find Big Red.”
“What? Really? You better not be joking, Keith!”
“I’m not joking. He’s at a bar on 15th Street and we’re headed there tonight!”