Nola Langston tugged at the bottom of her dress and swept her hands over the front of it, smoothing it back into place. Then she reapplied her flaming red lipstick and checked her hair as a sweaty, panting Mr. Johanssen leaned against his desk.
In the twenty minutes they’d spent behind the locked doors of his office, she’d given him what he’d wanted, transforming herself from polished executive to street whore in an instant.
In exchange, he’d made the call that allowed the million dollars to be brought up from the vault.
Now, as she waited for the cash to be delivered to Johanssen’s office, the bank executive stood up straight, adjusted his clothing, and watched her. He knew that she had given him more than he could handle. Still, he wished his body would allow him to take her again.
“Ms. Langston,” he said, straightening his tie. “It was a pleasure helping you to expedite your transaction.”
Nola smiled and sat down in the chair in front of his desk. “The pleasure was all mine,” she said.
They both knew this was a lie.
As Johanssen walked slowly around his desk and sat down, there was a knock on the door. His secretary entered, along with a security guard. She was carrying a metal briefcase. She looked at Nola and then at Johanssen. Her eyes said that she knew what had transpired.
She handed the briefcase to Johanssen, who handed it to Nola. She opened it and examined its contents. Satisfied that everything was in order, Nola took a pen from him and signed for the transaction.
As the secretary left the office with the guard, she glanced at Nola, rolled her eyes, and walked out with her lips pursed in a look of disgust.
“I’ll take care of closing the account for you, Ms. Langston,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said, nodding her good-bye as she stood up and began to walk toward the door.
“Ms. Langston?” Johanssen called out to her.
“Yes?” she said, turning around.
“If there’s anything else I can ever do for you …”
Nola smiled and looked down at the briefcase. “Anything I need done from here on out,” she said, “I’m sure I can do for myself.”
She turned around and walked out of his office, crossed the bank’s lobby, and was about to walk out into the warm embrace of the summer air when she saw them out of the corner of her eye.
Frank was walking quickly across the lobby, pushing Marquita while holding something at the small of her back.
Marquita’s eyes pleaded with Nola, silently begging her to do something.
For an instant, Nola was frozen. She looked at Marquita and saw her eyes stretched wide by fear. She looked at Frank, and knew that he would harm Marquita if he had to. She looked at the two of them, and imagined them together in her bed.
Forced to choose between her own flesh and blood and money, Nola chose the latter.
She bolted out the bank’s doors with the briefcase in hand, and dashed into Center Square’s lobby. Frank pushed Marquita out of the way and ran after Nola.
Pushing past the people lined up on the escalator, Nola weaved her way to the bottom, with Frank in hot pursuit.
She pushed through a set of revolving doors and past a donut shop beneath the giant clothespin, and ran right, through the transit system tunnels that had helped her to escape from the detective.
“Nola!”
Frank was behind her, closing fast, as she ran between the curving, tiled walls that separated Philadelphia’s subway system from the New Jersey Transit lines.
“Nola, wait!”
As he rounded the curve, Frank spotted Nola and fired. The bullet whizzed past her and ricocheted off the tiled walls as she ducked left and ran back toward City Hall.
Dashing past the fountains, Nola ran up the steps to Dilworth Plaza as Frank stumbled behind her.
When he reached the top, he stopped and watched her run toward Fifteenth Street. With Nola out in the open, he could take her down. Holding the weapon out in front of him, he prepared to take his final shot.
“Drop the gun, Frank!” a voice said from across the courtyard.
Nichols looked over at Detective Hubert, who had him in his sights. Then he looked around and saw uniformed police running at him from every direction.
Two of them had grabbed Nola and were bringing her back with the briefcase.
Knowing that it was all but over, Nichols knelt down and placed his weapon on the ground beside him.
As the police took him into custody, he wasn’t thinking of the money, or of Nola, or his business. When they stood him up and walked him across the courtyard to a waiting vehicle, his only concern was Jamal.
Keisha and Jamal had already decided that they would make the couple drive them as far as the last stop on the Market Frankford elevated train line, and that they would find their way to Jamal’s friend from there. Neither of them had thought any further than that. And in reality, they didn’t want to.
Jamal knew, just as Keisha did, that the longer they stayed on the run, the slimmer the chance for them to end it all peacefully. There was only one certainty at this point: Jamal would be blamed for the commissioner’s murder. And if he was caught, he would die, one way or the other. Their only chance of being together was starting their lives anew, because life as they knew it had already ended.
Keisha glanced over at Jamal as the car’s driver stopped at a red light. And as the thirtysomething, brown-skinned couple with the wedding rings and fearful expressions sat stiffly in the front seat, Keisha imagined herself and Jamal as a real couple. She imagined spending her life looking at him.
When she’d glimpsed his body as the two of them changed clothes, both in the factory and at her aunt’s house, she’d marveled at his black skin and his muscles, taut and strong, stretched over his sturdy frame. She’d forced herself to look away, only to have her eyes drawn back to him by an attraction that went well beyond what she saw.
She was attracted to the dark side—to a lifestyle she’d seen, but never been a part of. It was an attraction that she couldn’t shake, because the sight of him was the opposite of everything she’d ever known.
It was a different reality. One that was hard and powerful, like the gun she now held in her hand.
“Can you tell us where we’re going?” the driver asked, snatching her back to the moment.
“Just keep movin’,” Jamal said as the smell of the chicken the couple had purchased at KFC permeated the car.
Keisha could feel her stomach beginning to turn. She hadn’t eaten since the night before, and apparently Jamal hadn’t, either.
Reaching over the front seat, he snatched the bag of chicken and opened it.
“Why don’t we just stop now?” the driver said, glancing over at his wife, whose face was now red with fear and humiliation. “You take the car, and we walk away.”
“You heard what he said,” Keisha warned. “Keep moving.”
Jamal ripped open the striped box and tore into its contents with ferocity born of hunger.
“You want some o’ this?” he said, turning to Keisha with hot grease and chicken crumbs smeared against his face.
Still holding the gun at the back of the driver’s head, she turned and looked at Jamal, whose jaws were filled to capacity.
He looked like one of the squirrels she’d often seen on her strolls along Temple University’s campus, the ones that picked the
heels of cheesesteaks out of the trash and gnawed them with reckless abandon.
She started to smile.
“What you laughin’ at?” he said, chomping into a breast and ripping the meat from the bone.
The woman looked at her husband, her eyes pleading for him to do something. He looked into the rearview mirror and saw Jamal eating and Keisha laughing, and he knew that this was his chance.
He slammed on the brakes and the car skidded forward. The gun flew out of Keisha’s hand and landed on the dashboard as the car came to a halt in the middle of Frankford Avenue.
The driver threw the car into park and reached for the gun as Jamal, his eyes stretched wide, leaped over the seat and grabbed him by the neck.
The man’s wife reached over and started hitting Jamal, and Keisha climbed over and started punching the back of her head.
The gun fell onto the floor, near the accelerator. The driver tried to bend down to get it, but Jamal dived headfirst onto the floor. The driver tried to stomp him while his wife tried to grab Jamal’s legs. Keisha reached around and locked her forearm around the woman’s neck, choking her as Jamal fought his way off the floor and held the gun aloft.
With the driver staring down the barrel of the nine-millimeter and his wife immobilized by a forearm at her throat, the struggle was over.
“Get out,” Jamal said, his chest heaving up and down. “Get out ‘fore I kill both o’ y’all.”
The man reached behind him and pulled the door handle, getting out of the car on one side. Keisha released the wife, who got out on the other side.
Jamal took the wheel and drove off with a skid. But by then a police car was behind them.
Jamal’s breath caught in his throat as he told himself not to panic. He took one hand off the steering wheel and placed it on the butt of the gun.
The cop began to blast his horn. At that moment, Jamal knew that his only choice was to run.
He slowed down slightly and angled toward the curb as if he were pulling over. The cop followed. Then Jamal whipped the steering wheel around, stomped on the accelerator, and darted back into traffic.
He swerved along Frankford Avenue, the car’s engine humming as he shot between the huge steel columns that held up the Market Frankford elevated line.
The cop followed, his siren echoing off the steel girders as he tried to keep up with Jamal. The heavy traffic and the relatively narrow street made the chase hazardous. But both the hunter and the prey knew that what happened in the next few moments could change their lives.
Jamal slammed on the brakes, whipped the car to the left, and moved into the opposing traffic. The cop tried to do the same, but swerved back into his own lane to dodge an oncoming SUV.
Jamal looked in the rearview mirror and saw the cop coming up fast. In seconds they would be parallel to each other. Jamal reached down and grabbed the gun, then looked up and saw a bus coming straight at him.
He stood on the brakes while snatching the steering wheel to the right. His tires screamed against the asphalt and he stopped on an angle, right in front of the speeding police car. He put his head down and braced for the collision.
The police officer swerved at the last second, barely avoiding Jamal’s car. He tried to stop but couldn’t, and the car smacked
into one of the steel girders holding up the train tracks. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as his siren died and his spinning lights flashed against the walls of the bars and stores lining the avenue.
When Jamal and Keisha looked up, the officer was unconscious in his car. There was the sound of fast-approaching sirens in the distance, and the smell of gasoline in the air.
They both got out of the car and walked quickly away from the crash, melting into the crowd of commuters who stopped to look at the wreck. By the time the police began to arrive, Keisha and Jamal had climbed the steps leading to the train tracks.
Keisha reached into the purse her aunt had given her and found a few wrinkled dollars in the bottom.
She thrust them at the cashier, and the two of them went through the turnstile, squeezed between the train’s closing doors, and boarded the Market Frankford elevated line toward Center City.
John Anderson’s mind was racing as he pulled into a rare metered parking space on Ninth Street between Market and Chestnut in downtown Philadelphia.
As he looked across the street at patrons walking in and out of the post office, his thoughts were a hodgepodge of love, hatred, confusion, and fear. He wanted to kill Jamal. He wanted to embrace his daughter. He wanted to love his wife.
But as he turned off the car and put it in park, his recent past came flooding back in fuchsia-colored snapshots, and he remembered why he couldn’t do any of those things.
He saw his tongue against the skin of the woman who’d seduced him, his lips on a vodka-filled bottle, his laughter in the shadows of her bedroom, and his tears in the middle of the night.
He saw each of them, separately and together, as he unbuckled
his seat belt and tried, unsuccessfully, to focus on the matter at hand.
John looked at the passenger seat, and the gym bag containing the sawed-off shotgun. Then he opened the glove compartment and searched for the Bible that he’d pushed to the rear.
He found it and laid it on the seat next to the gun. Then he looked at them both, and tried to decide which one was of more value. Which one would bring his daughter back to him? Which one would earn his wife’s respect? Which one would change his life from the miserable mess it had become?
With those questions lingering in his mind, John reached up and turned the rearview mirror toward him. He examined his red eyes, the gray stubble of his beard, and the haggard expression on his face. He was tired, in more ways than he cared to think about. But he would have to cast the weariness aside in order to do what he must.
He pushed the mirror back into place. As he did so, he noticed a car about thirty feet to his rear with its hazard lights on. It was sitting in one of the two lanes of traffic.
This was a fairly common sight in Center City, where couriers often made deliveries to office buildings. But the driver of the blue Chrysler wasn’t moving. He was sitting in his car, waiting, though it wasn’t clear for what.
John took his hand off the mirror, but he continued to watch the driver in the blue car. He was young and dressed like an older man, in a conservative blue suit, and glasses that didn’t quite fit his face.
John couldn’t be sure, because weariness played tricks with his vision. But even from a distance, it looked like the man was watching him.
John opened the door as if he were exiting the car. Then he looked back and saw the man in the Chrysler do the same.
He closed the door and saw the other driver hesitate before closing his own. John was sure that the man was following him.
Reaching across the seat for the gym bag containing the sawed-off shotgun, John clenched his jaw and opened the door. He was about to get out of the car and make the first stop on his quest to find Keisha. But then he thought about it, and knew that he’d forgotten something. He reached across the seat and grabbed his Bible as well.
He put two quarters in the meter and looked back for the man in the blue car. He was gone. John looked down the street to see if he had driven away, but there was no sign of the man or the car.
John shook his head and hoped that fatigue hadn’t caused him to imagine it. Then he turned and walked down Ninth Street, toward the Gallery Mall and the Strawbridge’s where Keisha worked.
He descended the steps into the mall and turned left before climbing the steps that led to Keisha’s job. He hadn’t been there in a while, and was momentarily confused.
He found a directory near the bank of ornately designed elevators in the middle of the store, took one of the elevators to the upper floors, and walked quickly to the management offices, glancing behind him all the while.
A secretary greeted him as he walked through a set of glass doors.
“Can I help you, sir?” she asked with a smile.
“I’m looking for a manager,” John said while nervously clutching his bag.
“Do you need to talk to a manager from a certain department?”
“I’m not sure. See, my daughter’s been working here for the summer. And now, she’s missing.”
John paused to allow the truth of those words to sink in. He didn’t know that speaking them would cause him such pain.
“I’m so sorry,” the secretary said, her face creasing in sympathy. “Please have a seat.”
“No, I’m fine standing. If I sit down I might go to sleep. I’ve been up all night.”
“That’s understandable.”
“Anyway, I’m wondering if I might be able to talk to her supervisor, or someone who could tell me some of the places she liked to go, the people she hung around with, that sort of thing.”
“What’s your daughter’s name?”
“Keisha Anderson.”
“Oh, that’s your daughter. I’ve been seeing that on the news all morning. I’m sorry.”
“If you could just get me her supervisor,” John said impatiently. He was already growing tired of the sympathy.
“Of course,” the secretary said, getting on the intercom and calling for a manager.
It took a few minutes for the woman to come up on the elevator. But when she arrived, with her hair curled perfectly and her slim brown frame ensconced in a flowing summer print, it was clear that she was a woman of style. The type of woman that Keisha had always wanted to be.
“Mr. Anderson,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m Sheila Jackson. I work with your daughter in Women’s Wear.”
“My pleasure,” he said, taking her hand.
“Would you like to rest your bag?”
“No,” he said, a bit too quickly, and held the bag tightly to his side. “I really don’t plan to be here that long.”
“I see,” she said, looking at him strangely. “Well, I heard about what happened on the news, and I have to say, I’m a bit
confused. I thought they knew who your daughter was with. So I’m wondering exactly how I can help you.”
“I just think there’s more to this than what the cops are saying,” he said. “I think there might even be more people involved.”
“Well, in any case, Keisha’s a lovely girl. Whatever I can do to help, I’d be happy to.”
“Actually, I was hoping you could answer a few questions for me.”
“Sure.”
“Do you know if Keisha had any friends who stopped by when she was at work? Male friends?”
“Not that I know of,” the manager said. “She generally stayed by herself. I mean, there were boys, and, frankly, men, who were interested in her. But Keisha never gave them the time of day.”
“Did she make a lot of phone calls or receive a lot of phone calls here at work?”
“No,” the manager said. “She was a little bit of a loner. She usually ate in the food court by herself. The only person I ever saw her have lunch with was your wife.”
“My wife?” John was surprised. He’d never heard his wife talk about meeting Keisha for lunch.
“Her name is Sarah, right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“I met her once,” the manager said. “She seemed very nice. Pretty, too. You’re a very lucky man.”
“Thank you,” he said, taking a business card from his back pocket. “If you remember anything else, can you give me a call?”
She looked at his card as he turned to walk away.
“Actually, Reverend, there was one other thing.”
“What’s that?” he said, stopping in his tracks.
“I always thought Keisha might make a great buyer. So I sent her down to our sister store, Lord & Taylor, to meet with our regional buyer for women’s wear—Nola Langston.”
The color drained from John Anderson’s face.
“Maybe Nola might remember something that could help you. Would you like her number?”
“No, thanks,” John said, walking out of the office. “I think I know how to reach her.”
Ishmael parked the Chrysler in the public parking garage on Tenth Street and walked half a block to a phone booth on Market. If things happened the way he wanted them to, he would walk back to the garage and drive away before anyone could catch him. But first he had to kill John Anderson.
He stood at the phone booth, holding the phone while pretending to make a call. He didn’t want to chance John spotting him the way he had a few minutes before. So he stood with his back to the mall entrance that John had used, waiting for the reverend to come out.
Reaching into his jacket, he wrapped his hand around the butt of his nine-millimeter and imagined how it would feel to pull the trigger. The thought of it made him anxious to do it. But he told himself that he would have to wait. Disposing of John Anderson on a Center City street, where Ishmael was most likely to be caught, would only defeat the purpose.
He couldn’t spend the rest of his life with his lover if he was jailed for murder. But he knew in the back of his mind, where secrets and rage dwelled together in an uneasy union, that his lover’s embrace would not be his only reward for killing the preacher.
Ishmael’s greater prize would be the look in John Anderson’s
eyes when he told John what he knew. It was a look that he’d imagined for weeks. Ishmael would have the satisfaction of that look because he would deliver the killing blow while standing face to face with him.
With that thought fresh in his mind, Ishmael turned around and watched as John walked up the steps that led out of the Gallery Mall. When he saw that John was walking toward him, Ishmael hung up the phone and walked to the corner of Tenth Street.
He ducked inside a bank and stood at a counter by its large window, which overlooked Market Street. Picking up a pen, he pretended to fill out a deposit slip while waiting for John to pass by.
A few seconds later, John did. His gait was a step slower than it had been a few minutes before. His eyes were unfocused, as if he were walking in a dream. His face was ashen gray, and his mouth hung open in apparent shock.
Ishmael could have walked up from behind and put a bullet in his brain. John would have never known what hit him.
But this wasn’t the time or the place. So Ishmael waited a few more seconds before putting down the pen and walking out of the bank to follow John Anderson.
It wasn’t until he saw John walk to Thirteenth Street and into Lord & Taylor that he stopped. He knew that the pastor would have to come back to his car sooner or later. So he walked back to Ninth Street to prepare for the confrontation as his mind filled with thoughts of the woman who would give him his ultimate reward.
Kevin Lynch and Detective Hubert had spent the last half-hour going through the wealth of material they’d gotten from Nola
and Frank upon their capture, and splitting the information into separate files.
Lynch believed that it was best to talk to Nola first. With all Frank Nichols had done to her, she should be more than willing to talk. And the more information she gave, the easier it would be to pursue a case against Nichols for the commissioner’s death.
Although Lynch was angry that he had missed Keisha and Jamal back at the projects, the evidence laid out before him was encouraging.
If Lynch’s hunch was right, Nola was the missing link in the Nichols organization. And if he was able to break her, finding Jamal and Keisha would be easy.
He grabbed the file, a plastic bag filled with Nola’s personal effects, and the briefcase filled with the money. Then he walked out of his office and down the hall to the interrogation room.
“How are you, Ms. Langston?” he asked as he walked inside.
Nola was sitting at the head of the table with a detective on either side of her.
“Annoyed,” she said, sounding like a petulant child.
“You guys can take a break,” Lynch said, dismissing the detectives as he sat down at the other end of the table.
As they walked out of the room, taking great pains to steal final glances at Nola, Lynch opened the file, taking his time so she could watch him remove all the personal papers and cards they’d taken from her purse. Next he removed her makeup and cell phone from the plastic bag.
Finally he put down the cash-filled briefcase, hoping that the sight of it would make her nervous. But as he looked across the table and saw the arrogant smirk that played on her lips, he could see that it did no such thing.
“Why’d you try to elude the detective I had trailing you this morning?” Lynch asked.
“I didn’t try to elude him. I did,” she said with a chuckle. “I don’t like people following me around.”
“Frank followed you,” Lynch retorted.
“And I got away from him, too.”
“Yeah, you did,” Lynch said while flipping through the file. “Was that before or after he screwed your daughter and tried to kill you?”
Nola stopped smiling, and Lynch knew he had her.
“Tell me something,” he said. “You and Frank Nichols, I assumed the two of you were just lovers, but you’re business partners, too?”
“You know what they say about assuming,” Nola said coolly.
Lynch smiled. “Alon Enterprises. That’s Nola spelled backward. Clever name. Was it your idea?”
“Actually, it was Frank’s. He thought it would be nice to name the business after me, since I was the one who came up with the concept.”
“And what concept was that, Ms. Langston?”
“I told him that he should open some coffee shops on a few college campuses. Maybe do some vending as well.”
“Did you tell him to filter the drug money through the business, too?”
Nola smiled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Okay,” Lynch said, sliding her withdrawal slip across the table. “Tell me how Alon Enterprises sells a million dollars’ worth of coffee to college kids in a year.”
Nola looked up at Lynch with a seductive grin. “It was really good coffee, Lieutenant. Some people have even called it addictive.”
“Cut the shit, Ms. Langston,” Lynch said impatiently. “I don’t have time for it. And frankly, neither do you. Your name is on a business that launders drug money under the direction of Frank
Nichols, and you made an illegal transaction in an attempt to clean out the assets of that business.”
“I made an emotional decision that any woman might make if she found out her man was sleeping with her daughter,” Nola said with a knowing smile.
“An emotional decision to steal a million dollars in drug money?”
“I don’t know anything about drug money, Lieutenant. As far as I know, that money is all legitimate. I’m the second signer on the business account, I created the business, I grew the business, and given the fact that Frank is wanted in connection with the commissioner’s murder and tried to kill me this afternoon, I think a jury would agree that I had every right to try to protect my interests.”
“Frank didn’t seem to think so.”
“He’s a hothead,” she said, crossing her legs so her short linen dress rose up to the top of her thighs.
Lynch walked back around to his end of the table and picked up her cell phone from the pile of personal effects.
Nola’s self-assuredness seemed to waver as she watched him walk toward her with the phone in his hand.
“Cell phones are interesting little pieces of technology,” he said as he toyed with the buttons. “Yours, for instance, is billed to Jamal Nichols—Frank’s son, and his right-hand man in his drug business.”
“That doesn’t mean I know anything about any drugs,” Nola said.
“Maybe not. But it doesn’t mean you don’t, either.”
“Look, Frank gave me that as a business phone, and that’s what I use it for,” Nola said, her voice a little more jittery. “How am I supposed to know who the phone’s billed to?”
“I understand,” Lynch said. “I think cell phones are one of the best business tools you can have. You can make calls from virtually anywhere. You’re always accessible, and you always have the ability to get in touch with the people you need to.”
Lynch began to press her buttons—all of them.
“I keep my schedule on my cell phone,” he said with a grin. “I send e-mails with it, too. I even use the calculator and that little picture phone thing. But you know, sometimes it’s the simple things that make technology so great. Things like the phone book function.”
Nola looked up at Lynch, who was once again standing over her.
“It lets you put all your important numbers in one place,” he said as he scrolled through her list. “For example, you’ve got Frank Nichols, your daughter, Marquita, your job. You’ve even got Jamal Nichols here.”
He bent down in front of her and put the phone on the table so she could see what he was doing.
“And when you go back and scroll through the recent calls on your phone, you’ve got a call to Frank this morning, which explains one of the calls we saw on his phone from Jamal. But then there’s three others that are a little more difficult to explain. Calls to you from Jamal Nichols. One at seven-forty, another at seven-forty-one, and another at seven-forty-two.”
He stood up and looked down into Nola’s face. “That’s after he snatched Keisha Anderson. But, of course, you already know that, because you’re the one who told him what to do with her.”
“So what am I, a crime boss now?” Nola said with a nervous giggle. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?” Lynch said over his shoulder as he walked to the other end of the table and sat down. “Then what’s this?”
Lynch reached into the pile and extracted a small slip of paper. He unfolded it, slowly, and read the message that it contained.
“Keep the package for an hour. If you don’t hear anything, get rid of it.”
Lynch put the paper down and stared across the table at Nola. “You wanna tell me what that means?”
“Could be a note from work,” she said, looking away from him. “I don’t really remember, to be honest with you.”
Lynch stared at her for along moment. “Okay,” he said. “That’s fine. The notes and the calls could all be a coincidence.
“The business stuff, that’s a little different. Because frankly, Ms. Langston, a first-year accounting student could look at the books of Alon Enterprises and see that there’s drug money there.
“Now, maybe you can get away with it,” Lynch said as he began to gather her things. “Maybe you lick your lips just so, and bat those beautiful eyes, and a jury believes that a Wharton graduate like yourself was a partner in a business and knew nothing about its primary source of revenue.”
Lynch stood up.
“But why chance it? You’ve still got a lot of years ahead of you, Ms. Langston. Would you rather spend those years in prison for laundering drug money, or would you rather just tell us what we need to know about Frank and Jamal’s involvement in the commissioner’s murder, and come out with a slap on the wrist?”
Nola wanted to respond, but she couldn’t speak. She was too afraid.
Lynch knew that, so he walked toward the door to give her fear a chance to set in.
“Whatever you decide,” he said as he reached for the doorknob, “you need to make it quick, because Jamal Nichols is still on the loose with Keisha Anderson. And you don’t want him to do anything else that might be traced back to you.”
Lynch was about to leave the room when Nola finally relented.
“Lieutenant?”
“Yes, Ms. Langston?”
“I’m ready to call my attorney.”