CHAPTER 6
I sped down I-95 cursing and pounding the steering wheel throughout the twenty-minute drive to the station. When I arrived, I blew past Parker and another of his stupid remarks, something about me looking like Cruella de Vil. I destroyed the hinges and almost shattered the glass window on Captain Butler’s office door, causing it to bang into the wall and bounce back to slam shut behind me.
“How’d this happen, Cap?” My voice squeaked.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Mabley? Knocking is out of the question now?”
I fell into the chair in front of Cap’s desk and rested my forehead in my palms to stave off a throbbing headache.
“Look, Mabley. It’s out of our hands.”
I sat up and snapped, “What the hell does that mean, ‘it’s out of our hands’?”
Laughton stormed in a moment later. He sat down in the chair next to mine. I resumed my position trying to lessen the pain of my headache.
The creaking of both Cap’s and Laughton’s chairs and the silence between them made me look up again. Laughton got up and leaned over the captain’s desk, his fists balled on the desktop as anchors for his taut arms. They glared at each other like boys crazed with proving whose testosterone level was mightier.
The captain said, “Bastard’s skippin’ on some technicality, or at least that’s what they’re saying went down. Something about prosecutors let too much time pass between arresting him and taking him to trial. He’s got one shrewd attorney. Got a call in to Bandizzi, the lead on the case. Don’t expect things will change. But for now, Boone’s a free man. Fact is, he may stay a free man. Word is they may have to drop the charges altogether, including assault. Then we’re back to square one.”
There was more silence while the staring duel continued.
“Okay, so what am I missing? I definitely get the feeling there is something more to this episode than I’m privy to. Cap?” My stomach growled loud enough to disturb the dander contaminating the air. “Laughton?”
“Damn,” Laughton said, pounding his fist on the desktop, then he stormed out. When the door slammed shut, a photograph of Cap’s wife and two daughters that hung on a side wall crashed to the floor. I resumed the headache position.
“I’m sorry, Mabley,” Cap said. “You did your job. No fault of yours. Take a few days. You got plenty on the books. Laughton can handle the lead on the Taylor business.”
I lifted my head and sat straight up in the chair. “That’s it? That’s all you’re going to tell me to take a few days off?”
“That’s all there is to tell you.”
“I’m no damn victim,” I squealed. “God knows I know the drill. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get the guy,’” I mimicked Cap’s baritone voice. “I’ve said it at least a thousand times to victims. But how do you tell the parents that their daughter’s killer is free because the police messed up?”
“Not your call, that’s Homicide’s job.” He got up and came around to sit on the desk facing me. “Are you okay?”
I hung on to his question. “This whole thing doesn’t feel right. Boone’s killed at least four people that we’re sure of, but we can’t seem to prove it and he’s out there, fancy-free. A technicality, my ass.”
“They’ll get him.”
“There’s something about this guy, Cap. He’s so sure of himself. Cocky, even.”
“Why’d he call you that night? Or was it just that you were the one who answered the call?” He hesitated, then continued. “You know you need to be clear on what happened that night and how you ended up at Boone’s house without backup.”
“Yeah, I know. Internal Affairs contacted me.”
“Not much to worry about right now anyway, with the case against him dropped for the moment.”
“Doesn’t feel right, Cap. He’s guilty and we know he’s guilty of way more than we had him on. Someone’s giving the man a hand up. Laughton’s right, it has to be someone in the department. Why doesn’t anyone else in the department get that?”
The captain shifted his weight so his right leg was the anchor and his left knee dangled and crammed my personal space. I leaned back in the chair and sighed.
“What else is on your mind, Muriel?”
My intention was to tell Cap about the letter after I knew what was in it and then only if it was warranted, but then I considered he might have some good insight. At the very least I wanted to catch his reaction. “Cap, Reecey got a letter addressed to Carmella Ann Mabley.”
Cap is a five-foot-eight Irish-Catholic, with red hair and a red complexion from all the freckles fighting for space on his face. Now the color drained from Cap’s face; it almost reached transparency, his freckles seemingly floating unattached.
In a hushed tone, he asked, “What’d it say?”
I masked my alarm at his reaction by getting up to leave, not sure why I felt the need to pretend. Reece was living because of Cap. He’d helped me get her out of Philly after her attack, and into an unofficial version of the witness protection program.
“She won’t open it without me. I’m driving down this weekend.”
He shifted his weight again so his left leg was now the anchor, and cleared his throat. “I’m sure it’s nothing. After twenty years, it has to be nothing,” he said. Cap got up and went back to sit in his chair. “She’s been doing real well for herself. Husband, two kids, big house. Her husband . . . what’s his name, James? John? What’s he do for a living anyway?”
“His name is John. I can never get a straight answer, or I’m too much of a flat foot to understand exactly.” It was a lame attempt at humor that got my lone chuckle. “He does something with computers, technology. As long as he’s taking good care of Reecey and those babies, and it’s legal . . .” I shrugged my shoulders.
“When you find out what’s in the letter, call me. Let me know what’s going on.” Cap flipped open a folder and picked up his phone, my cue to leave.
Laughton was gone when I came out of Cap’s office. He was good at that lately, disappearing. I sat at my cubicle and sighed at the array of cases assigned to me that covered my desktop.
Bullets from an automatic handgun used in a drive-by in Germantown that left an eight-year-old girl paralyzed, bullets from a .38 that killed two teens outside of a graduation party in North Philly, bullets and a .22 from a shooting in a Nicetown bar by a patron who had been kicked out because he wouldn’t stop smoking. Nicetown is a not-so-nice neighborhood in North Philly. The smoker, James Waller, came back and opened fire. He was the only shooter who had been caught, and a trial date was set for September 26. I had time. The bullets that killed two men and injured four others definitely came from Waller’s gun, but nothing is ever that pat. Shooters got off despite the certainty of the testimony our unit provided, and oftentimes they killed again before justice finally reigned. I spent a few hours organizing the contents on my desk, then clicked off my desk lamp and left.
I landed a flurry of kicks into the punching bag and countered with several punches, back kicks, then more punches, unable to stop the pounding in my head. The face of my unmoved opponent flashed the maniacal grin of Jesse Boone. It remained undeterred by more punches and kicks until I fell into the bag, taken down by the force of my own punch that grazed the side of the bag and pulled me forward.
“You are defeating yourself with no focus.” It was Kim. He surprised me. He hadn’t been home when I entered using the key he’d given me.
“Yes, I’m doing a fine job at defeating myself lately,” I agreed.
“Focus,” Kim commanded.
“Too much going on to focus on this freakin’ bag, Mr. Kim.”
“If you focus on what you are doing, the rest will come.”
Kim squatted on the sidelines and nodded for me to continue. Thirty minutes later, sweaty and sucking air, I hugged the bag for support, expecting another “Focus” from Kim, but he was gone. When I left, he was nowhere in the house, or at least he didn’t answer my call.
There was a voice mail from Calvin when I got home. I called back.
“Ms. Mabley. Good to hear your sweet voice,” he said.
“I’m sorry I’ve been AWOL lately. Work is consuming me as usual.”
“I can help soothe that if you’ll allow me to dazzle you with dinner at Bistrot La Minette, French wine, soft music, kneading of your most tender spots.”
I laughed at his attempt to pronounce the restaurant name with a French accent. I’d never been to La Minette, as it was way out of my league. I told Calvin I would be ready in an hour. I showered and went the distance to make the mess on my head presentable. I already knew what I would wear—a Red Valentino, a black slinky number I had scooped up on sale at Banje’s last year, along with black velvet pumps to match. I had agreed to a blind date orchestrated by Travis’s friend’s mother’s sister, whom I barely knew. I know, sounds desperate. Rather it was just me trying to accommodate my son and everyone else in my world. Maybe a little part of me was hopeful. Anyway, the dress was the bomb; the blind date needed bombing.
Calvin came with corsage in hand and thugged out, wearing a black shirt against a black two-button vested suit with peak lapels and accented with a lavender tie. The presentation was a little overstated for my taste, but there was that charisma thing going on that gave me a hard-on, and the gentleman thing, and the “I’m the queen for the evening” thing, and the “I’m the most beautiful and sexiest woman on the planet” thing. All of which was slathered on, none overstated.
He held the door to a late-model silver Porsche 911, black interior with red trim. Nice. Midlife-crisis car, no doubt. Calvin’s other car was an older Mercedes S430, white with black interior. Not too shabby by any means.
He closed the door and scooted around to the driver’s side.
“Nice,” I said when we pulled away from the curb.
“Just a little something I picked up for special occasions.”
“Special occasions, huh.” We chuckled.
“Tell me again what you do.”
“That would take a while, when I’d much rather talk about you, what you do, and what I would like to do to you and with you.”
“Really, Calvin. It’s been what, three months? And all I know about you is that you own the club and you can sing. Oh yeah, you live over the club, you’ve never been married—or so you say—and you don’t have any children. You’re a Philly boy by way of Alabama and . . .”
“I’d say you know quite a bit.”
“Sooner or later you’re going to have to spill it. All of it.”
“So be it,” he whispered. He reached over and took my hand, kissed it, and held it next to his chest while he drove the rest of the way to the restaurant and Etta James crooned from the car stereo how she’d rather be a blind girl than watch her man leave.
When we arrived at the restaurant, everyone, from the parking attendant to the hostess and the wait staff, lionized Calvin, and since I was on his arm, me too. I won’t say I did not get caught up in the attention from the get-go. It was mesmerizing. I was spellbound—until the first time my phone buzzed.
It was Nareece.
We nibbled on the appetizer of escargot with butter, garlic and parsley and made goo-goo eyes at each other like a scene from a sweet-sixteen-and-never-been-kissed movie. No direction needed. By the sixth Nareece disturbance, I was sufficiently stupefied and needed a break to shake off the trance anyway. After one heavenly bite of the entrée, poulet—French for chicken—with aligot potatoes, I excused myself and went to the ladies’ room to take the call.
Before I could say a word, Nareece pounced. “What happened? Where are you?” She was teetering on hysterical, her voice piercing my ear.
“Is everything all right?”
“No. Everything is not all right. I’m scared, Muriel. I’m scared for my life and my family’s life. Why aren’t you here? I need you here so we can open the envelope and fix things.”
“Nareece, did something happen? What do you mean, you’re scared for your life? Did someone threaten you?”
“No, not exactly.”
“Then what are you talking about? You just sent my blood pressure through the roof.” I struggled to keep my voice in check. “You’re taking this thing to someplace it doesn’t need to be. We don’t even know what’s in the envelope. It could be somebody playing some kind of a joke.”
“Yeah, right.” She snorted with sarcastic laughter. “Who the hell do you know that can make that kind of joke or even knows that much about me to make that kind of joke? Who?”
For a moment I listened to the hollowness of her heavy, fast breathing in the phone.
“I’ll be there tomorrow, Reece. I promise. I’ll call you when I get on the road.”
She clicked off without even a grunt of acknowledgment. It seemed her regular modus operandi of late.
I rang her back, but it went straight to her voice mail. I left a message. “Reecey, I love you. Whatever it is, we’ll work it out. I’ll call you tomorrow when I get on the road.” I hung up and called back again just in case, but it went to voice mail again.
When I returned to the table, Calvin stood and pulled out my chair for me, a gesture I thought long retired from all existing etiquette teachings. On second thought, it probably was gone from existing etiquette teachings. Calvin was old school.
“You good, babe?” he asked, scooting his chair in. When he was done, he reached out and covered my hand with his. “Anything you want to talk about?”
“No. I mean, it’s my sister.” I sighed. “I’m going to visit her for a few days. There are . . . issues.”
“Can I help?”
“Believe me, you are helping right now.”
A pretty salad of persimmon, pear, and avocado followed the entrée. Calvin explained that while Americans tend to eat salad before the entrée, it was customary in many European countries to eat it after.
The best part was the wine, Four Bears Sauvignon Blanc 2010, that accompanied the appetizer and the Byron Pinot Noir 1996 that complemented the entrée. It was the effect of the wine I’d say that would not let me leave our getting-to-know-each-other conversation alone.
“Calvin, this is lovely. Thank you.”
“Muriel, I would love to spoil you for the rest of your life.” He leaned in. “I get the most pleasure out of pleasing you, seeing that smile of yours light up your beautiful face. And best of all, that ugly face you make when you come.”
“Ugly face! I make an ugly face, huh? So you’re saying you have a problem with the way I look when I’m—”
We laughed. I probably could have been embarrassed or insulted or something in one of those corners. Instead it felt right, a quirk of mine that only he knew about and loved.
Over dessert, pot de crème, or custard, that was orgasmic, Calvin talked about his singing days and how he’d almost recorded an album and made it to overnight stardom. He and his band were famous in Europe, Japan, and Korea in the sixties and seventies. It was then that they were offered a record deal by a label out of London. At the same time, he received word that his mother was ill and he rushed back to America—Philadelphia, to be exact. He took care of his mother for ten years before she passed away, and here he’d stayed.
Something signaled me that Calvin was holding back. I made a note to check him out more, then wiped it away thinking I was overreacting or worse, acting like a police officer.
We left the restaurant and drove down Sixteenth to Market Street to Fifteenth and around Penn Square. Calvin bypassed I-95 and drove the streets, the long way home. A sweet, comfortable silence settled between us. I gazed at him in adoration. Bright lights flashed. I screamed and then nothing.