Lynch Sat at the far end of the table with the assistant DA on his right. Nola and her lawyer were at the other end. Both of them looked anxious. That was good, Lynch thought. It meant that Nola’s lawyer believed that it was best for her to cooperate.
“This is Assistant District Attorney Robert Harris,” Lynch said by way of introduction. “Mr. Harris, this is Nola Langston and her attorney, Ryan Gold.”
“Charmed,” Harris said, staring at Nola. “I’m sure.”
He took out his copy of the plea agreement. “Mr. Gold,” Harris said, “the state is willing to abstain from filing any serious charges against your client—that is, felony charges—in exchange for full cooperation, with the stipulation that her testimony leads to a conviction in the murder of Commissioner Darrell Freeman. Of course, we have no say concerning any federal charges, but
we’re willing to recommend leniency with respect to any federal charges that may be filed.”
Gold looked at Nola. “I’m not sure we can take that agreement,” he said.
“I’m offering your client the moon and stars,” Harris said, grinning seductively at Nola. “She can’t possibly want any more than that.”
Gold looked at Nola, then back at the flirting assistant DA, and shook his head.
“My client maintains that she doesn’t know anything about the circumstances of Commissioner Freeman’s murder, simply because she was not in Philadelphia at the time. What she can give in exchange for that agreement—the moon and stars, as you call it—is testimony about the events leading up to the shootings that have taken place over the past few days.”
“Will it give us Nichols?” Lynch asked.
“It’ll give you the truth,” Nola said, speaking up for the first time.
Lynch looked at Nola and saw that the flirtatious grin was gone, and her legs were no longer crossed. Her flawless hair was beginning to contract in the humidity of the closed-in room, and she had a haggard look in her eyes. She was tired, from what Lynch could see. And she just wanted to get it over with.
“Okay,” Lynch said. “Tell us the truth.”
“In exchange for what?” her lawyer interjected.
Harris leaned over and whispered something to Lynch.
“We can give her the same deal if her testimony leads to a conviction in at least one of the three murders connected with this thing, and a racketeering conviction against Nichols,” Lynch said.
Nola looked at her lawyer. He nodded.
She leaned back in her chair and took a deep breath.
“First of all, you’re on the wrong track,” she said. “If you think this thing is about Frank and Jamal Nichols, you’re wrong.”
“Well, who is it about, then?” Lynch asked.
“It’s about Reverend Anderson. It’s about money. And it’s about me.”
Nola smiled at the assistant district attorney, who was once again enthralled with her, because he could see in her eyes that she was ruthless.
“I used to date mobsters,” she said, returning the prosecutor’s hungry gaze. “Something about bad boys and their big guns has always turned me on.”
She paused as the men in the room shifted uncomfortably in their seats, no doubt picturing the double entendre.
“They can afford to feed my expensive tastes. But they always seem to die. A few years ago, I decided that if I kept dating those kinds of men, it was only a matter of time before I got caught in the crossfire. So I figured I needed a different type of man—a good man.
“A friend suggested I try church, and told me about this growing congregation down in North Philly. So I decided to give it a whirl.
“I got there and I was pleasantly surprised. There was a lot to choose from—businessmen and lawyers, even a doctor or two. But they all seemed to have these problems.”
She sat back in her chair and crossed her legs again as she thought back on the power that her body had given her, even in the church.
“After a few Sundays,” she said, fixing her eyes on each man at the table, “I decided that the only man I wanted there was the
pastor. He seemed so big and strong standing up there in that pulpit.
“So I went to him after the service one Sunday and asked if he could come and pray with me. I told him I needed a special kind of healing. Then I stuck my business card in his Bible, and right before my eyes, he went from man of God to just man. And that’s when I knew I had him.”
“That’s all very interesting, Ms. Langston,” Lynch said impatiently. “But we need to know how all this plays into the commissioner’s murder. And if it doesn’t have anything to do with it, we need to know what does.”
Nola smiled. “The commissioner was murdered because I slept with Reverend Anderson. I slept with him, and he did what men do because he was weak, just like every man I’ve ever known.”
She spoke directly to Lynch, daring him to refute what she was saying.
“You see, Lieutenant, men want what they want, and they do whatever they have to do to get it,” she said with a wicked grin. “But they never think of consequences, only pleasure. They think that just because a woman sleeps with them, she’s their friend. And so they talk. They tell us all of their problems—the things their wives don’t want to hear.
“And then they expect us to spread our legs and solve each and every one of them.”
She paused to revel in the shocked expressions on their faces.
“Reverend Anderson was no different,” she continued. “He was a nice man, a spiritual man, but a man nonetheless. So after we’d been seeing each other for a while, sneaking away to places where his congregation and his wife couldn’t see, he started to open up to me.
“He told me about this man, Frank Nichols, who’d killed his father and stolen everything he had. He told me how Nichols had become one of the biggest drug dealers in the city. He told me that he was going to bring Nichols down one day.
“The good reverend also told me about his own past in the drug business,” Nola said, speaking with some degree of satisfaction, as if the pastor’s sins justified her own.
“He talked about hurting people, even killing people, back in the sixties.”
“People like who?” Harris interjected.
“He didn’t say,” Nola answered. “He just said that he’d made some mistakes as a young man, and that the only thing that could make him kill again was his daughter, Keisha. He said that if anyone ever laid a hand on her, he would kill them, just as sure as he was sitting there talking to me.”
“So it seems you had your bad boy and your good boy, all rolled up into one,” Lynch said. “Why’d you leave him? Because he was married?”
“Don’t be silly,” Nola said with a smile. “I really didn’t want to leave him, because sleeping with him was … spiritual. But he couldn’t support my lifestyle on what he made. I need money, Lieutenant. I can get sex from anybody.”
“So you found Frank Nichols,” Lynch said matter-of-factly.
“Yes, I did. And oh, what a find he was. See, there’s something about small-time gangsters like Frank. They’re always looking for a woman with class—someone to lend them social standing. So that was the first thing I offered.
“I walked into his bar one day with a business proposition. I told him that I’d heard a lot about him, and that I wanted him to invest in a company I was starting. Of course, the only thing he could see was how I looked. So he flirted, and I let him. And for
six months, I strung him along while I learned everything I could about his business.
“By the time we finally laid down, I had my finger on the pulse of everything he was doing. The drugs, the prostitution, everything.
“Soon after that, he started giving me little assignments, telling me to make phone calls and deliver messages.”
“What kind of messages?” Lynch asked.
Nola shrugged. “The same kind of message you saw. Words on a strip of paper that could have been about anything. He’d just leave them in my purse and tell me to make a phone call at a certain time, and that was it. I never knew what it was about. And to be honest with you, I didn’t care. The only thing I cared about was what was in it for me. I brought up my business proposition to him again, and he acted like he didn’t want to hear it. So I did what I had to do to make him listen. I played with his manhood.”
Harris and Lynch exchanged glances as Nola’s lawyer turned his head, embarrassed and at the same time intrigued by her choice of words.
“I bought him a tailor-made Armani tuxedo,” she said with a self-satisfied grin. “And I took him to see the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Kimmel Center. He’d never been there before, but I could tell, by the way he was sitting there, looking around at the people with real money—people with fortunes he could never dream of having—that he felt inferior, just like I wanted him to.
“Then I took him home that night and made him feel like a man again. I told him he needed some legitimate money to fall back on. Something that could take him to the next level, and make him like the people we’d seen that night. I started Alon Enterprises for him, made myself the second signer on his account,
and watched him filter the drug money through the business. Then something crazy happened.”
“What do you mean?” Lynch asked.
“Reverend Anderson got wind of my relationship with Frank, and he started calling me five times a day,” she said. “Sometimes he’d hang up. Sometimes he’d leave these long, pitiful messages, asking why I’d betrayed him with Frank. I never returned the calls, and eventually I changed my number. When he couldn’t take his anger out on me anymore, he did what any man would do. He turned his anger on Frank.
“John was determined to get him for stealing me. That’s why he started trying to drive crack out of the neighborhood. It had nothing to do with healing people and saving lives, like he claimed it did. It had everything to do with hurting Frank Nichols.
“Frank knew that, and it pissed him off. When I saw how it was affecting him, I saw it as an opportunity.”
“What kind of opportunity?” Lynch asked.
“It was a chance to take control of the situation,” she said. “I got in Frank’s ear, and told him that the only way to get back at John was through Keisha. I convinced him to get Jamal to follow her, and he did it. They started talking about kidnapping her and holding her for ransom, but I didn’t think they were really gonna do it, and I didn’t feel like sitting around waiting.
“So I hired two guys to scare the girl last night,” she said. “I didn’t tell them to hit her, but I knew she would go back to her father and tell him what happened. I figured he would blame Frank.”
“So what did you expect to happen?” Lynch said.
“I expected that John would go after them, and Frank would do something stupid and get himself in trouble. I figured, no matter what, that I would end up with the money.”
Lynch shot a troubled look in the prosecutor’s direction. Then both men looked at Nola’s lawyer. They were all thinking the same thing: Nola was diabolical, and dangerous. But she still needed to give them more, if she was going to walk for her part in it.
Lynch stood up, reached back, and massaged his neck. It had been a long day.
“Ms. Langston,” Lynch said with a frustrated sigh. “There’s really only one thing I need to know. Did Frank Nichols ever give the order for Jamal to kill John Anderson?”
“Frank gave a few orders in the last few days,” Nola said, looking around the table and connecting with each face. “Orders he told me he was going to give, to put the whole feud with John to rest.”
“Did you hear him give these orders?” Lynch asked.
“No, but right before I left for New York, he told me that he was planning to have Jamal murder John Anderson.”
“So Jamal takes a shot at John last night, misses, and hits the old woman on Diamond Street?” Lynch said.
“That’s right,” Nola said. “But that wasn’t good enough. Frank wanted Jamal to finish the job. That’s why he had him take another shot this morning. Of course, we all know how that turned out.”
“So where does the whole kidnapping thing come in?” Lynch asked, shooting a look in Robert Harris’s direction.
“I’m really not sure,” Nola said. “I mean, I know that was something they’d discussed before, but like I told you, I never believed it would happen.”
“So if you never believed it would happen, how’d you know what to tell Jamal when he called you this morning after he’d snatched the girl?” Lynch asked.
“The same way I always knew,” Nola said, growing nervous.
“Frank had given me a message to relay to him, and that’s what I did. I relayed the message.”
“If you were in New York and he was with your daughter, when did he have a chance to tell you what to say?” Lynch asked.
“He gave it to me before I left to go to New York,” Nola said. “He said, ‘If Jamal calls you, I want you to tell him this.’ Then he stuffed the paper into my bag, and I left.”
Lynch sat back in his chair and looked at the assistant district attorney sitting next to him. Harris was no longer impressed with Nola’s looks. From the look on his face, Lynch could tell that he was more concerned with the gaping holes in her story.
Nola’s lawyer watched the two of them and felt the need to interject, because he saw that things were going badly for his client.
“She’s given you what you asked for,” Ryan Gold said, sitting up in his chair. “She’s willing to testify that Frank Nichols gave the order to kill John Anderson, and that Jamal Nichols attempted to carry it out, killing Commissioner Darrell Freeman and Emma Jean Johnson.”
“That would be fine if your client’s testimony were true,” the prosecutor said, getting up from his seat. “But we all know there’s something missing here. It’s up to Ms. Langston to tell us what it is.”
“I can’t give you what I don’t have, Mr. Harris,” Nola said anxiously. “All I can give you is what I know. The rest is up to you.”
“No, the rest is up to you, Ms. Langston,” Lynch said, getting up from his seat. “If you want the deal, you have to give us something we can use.
“And when you revise your story, I want you to consider this. Keisha Anderson isn’t with Jamal Nichols because she was forced to be. She’s with him because she wants to be.”
The young lovers had spent the last hour devouring one another with their hands and with their mouths. Now, as they sat in the quiet of the simple room, listening to the echoes of the voices emanating from the bar downstairs, they were feeding their hungry eyes with the only sight they wanted to see—each other.
They lay on the small bed together, Keisha feeling the whisper of Jamal’s breath against her neck. She tried to think only of the moment, only of their love, only of herself. But she couldn’t, because something inside her kept bringing her back to the tragedy that had created this perfect moment.
It was difficult for her to reconcile her own pleasure with the death and destruction that had taken place all around them. She knew that she should be mourning with those who mourned, and praying for the families of those who’d lost people whom they loved as much as she loved Jamal.
But Keisha swept those thoughts aside, and instead immersed herself in thoughts of Jamal. She wanted to know who he was. She wanted to know who he wanted to be. But more than anything, she wanted to know what had brought him to her.
“Where’d you come from?” she whispered.
“From the playground,” he said with a playful smile. “Remember?”
She tapped his arm. “Stop playing, Jamal. I really want to know. I mean, Frank Nichols is your father, and I’ve always seen him. But I only saw you that one summer, and this past month. How come?”
Jamal’s smile faded as he considered a question that he’d never posed to himself. Where did he come from? In many ways, he didn’t know. But what he did know, he was willing to share with Keisha, just as he was willing to share everything else.
“My mom and pop met in the early ‘eighties, somewhere between heroin and crack. That’s how my pop tells time. Whatever his hustle was, that’s what time it was. The ’seventies was heroin. The ‘eighties was cocaine. Then, around ’eighty-five or so, it was crack.
“Of course, he had other things that helped tell time, too. Women and whatnot. But they was just somethin’ to do while he waited for his money to roll in off them corners.
“Some o’ his women knew that, some of ’em didn’t.”
“Did your mother know?” Keisha asked.
“Like I told you before, my mom was a college girl,” Jamal said, flipping onto his back and putting his hands behind his head as he stared at the ceiling. “She wasn’t like them hoes he was used to. She was strong, smart, too good for his sorry ass.”
Keisha could see that the memory had stirred something bitter inside him.
“Jamal, if you don’t want to talk about it anymore, it’s okay,” she said, reaching over to caress his chest.
“It ain’t like I don’t wanna talk about it,” he said. “I guess I just never had a reason to get too deep with it.”
“Don’t let me be the reason for you talking about something that hurts you,” she said, running her fingers along his face.
“You the best reason I got,” he said, touching her hand with his own.
He took a deep breath before he continued.
“My mom was goin’ to Temple law school when she met my pop,” Jamal said. “She wanted to practice international law, travel around the world, see things she ain’t never see before.
“She ain’t care who Frank Nichols was, or what he could do for her. My mom was the type who could always do for herself. Frank liked that, at least he did at first.”
Jamal smiled as he imagined his parents in their younger days.
“My mom told me that when they met, Frank was talkin’ all this revolutionary shit about how black folks should work inside the system, get what they needed from it, then go back and use what they learned to do they own thing.”
Jamal laughed. “He ain’t tell her ’bout the system he came through. And he ain’t tell her what business he was in, either. All she knew was, he gave her a ride home in a nice Benz, and asked if he could take her out the next day.
“My mom was a year away from finishin’ law school when she had me, and she dropped out. She remind me o’ that every time she get a chance, like it’s my fault she ain’t finish when she wanted to.”
“But you know it’s not your fault, right, Jamal?” Keisha asked earnestly. “You know you couldn’t have done anything to change what happened before you were born, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I know,” he said, with a grim look on his face. “I know ‘cause my mom spent years tellin’ me it was Frank’s fault. And for years, I believed her. Still do.”
Jamal was silent for a moment, trying not to remember the things that had shaped the violence that raged in his heart. But he couldn’t deny the memories, even though he’d tried to suppress them. They were there. And he had to tell Keisha about them, because he didn’t want to be like his father.
“My mom went back to Temple when I was little, and finished her last year o’ law school. My pop kept comin’ around and tryin’ to make it work with her. But she ain’t want no drug dealer, and after a while he hated her for bein’ too good for him.
“The first time I saw him hit my mother, I was five. She was talkin’ ’bout takin’ me away somewhere like California—someplace where Frank could never see me. He smacked her in the mouth and told her she better not ever say nothin’ like that again. She got a restrainin’ order to keep him away for a year.”
Jamal sighed and tried to keep the memories from consuming him.
Keisha kissed him on his cheek. “It’s okay, Jamal,” she said in the hope that it would take his pain away. “It’s okay.”
He turned and looked into her eyes, and knew that what she’d said to him was right. It was okay. At least, it was going to be. As long as the two of them could be together, it was all going to be okay.
“Is that why I never saw you?” Keisha asked. “Because your parents couldn’t get along?”
Jamal nodded. “My mom thought she was protectin’ me from him,” he said. “And maybe she was. But the only thing I saw was, I ain’t have no father. And I was mad about it.”
He reached down and held her hand as he recalled the only piece of his childhood that really mattered. The piece that Keisha had given to him all those years before.
“For years, she wouldn’t let me see him,” Jamal said. “She wouldn’t even let me talk to him on the phone. When I turned thirteen, I had to beg her to let me go down there, just that one time.
“When I finally did come down to North Philly to spend the day with him, he ain’t have time for me. He was too busy makin’ money. When I asked him if he was gon’ take me out, he handed me fifty dollars, said, ‘Happy Birthday,’ and sent me on my way.
“I walked around the corner to the playground on Fifteenth Street,” Jamal said. “Then I met this little girl who looked like she needed somebody.”
Jamal touched Keisha’s face as she smiled and looked into his eyes.
“That little girl made me forget about what was wrong,” he said. “And she made think about what was right. I told her I would come back and see her every Friday after that. And even though I had to sneak out the house to do it, I did.”
“Is that why your mother sent you down South?” Keisha asked, searching his eyes.
“Yeah, but it ain’t make no difference. I started gettin’ in trouble in school, and then I stopped goin’, ‘cause they wasn’t teachin’ me nothin’ anyway. I started doin’ what I wanted to do, ’cause, what difference did it make? I ain’t have no father.”
Keisha looked at the pain in his face and knew that it was the source of his anger. And as he continued to tell her where he’d been, she couldn’t help wondering where he would go from here.
“My mom brought me back up here two years ago,” he said, breaking into her thoughts. “But by then it was too late. By the time I was sixteen, I had got locked up twice for hustlin’. It wasn’t even like I had to do it, ’cause my mom had enough money to get me whatever I wanted.
“But I ain’t wanna get it like that. I wanted to get it myself. She finally gave up. She told me if I wanted to be like my pop, I could go down North Philly and see what it was like to be him.”
Jamal turned away from Keisha and looked back up toward the ceiling.
“That’s when she put me out,” he said gravely. “And my pop, he put me to work.”
John Anderson had spent the past half-hour wandering through Lord & Taylor, trying to summon the courage to go to Nola’s office and ask her about Keisha.
It was odd, he thought, that he could draw from the Bible to
counsel others. But in recent years, he had seemingly lost the ability to apply it to his own life.
In his mind, there was only one word that could explain his spiritual malaise: Nola.
He hadn’t talked to her in months, and he wasn’t keen on doing so now. And so he walked to the sportswear section, pretending to browse through tank tops and shorts, sneakers and socks.
Of course, John wasn’t really sorting through clothing. He was sorting through his memories of Nola.
Their affair had been a whirlwind—one that had snatched him into its vortex and spun his life completely out of control.
She’d shown him things he’d never seen before, and seduced him with more than just her stunning beauty. There were lunches at five-star restaurants on Rittenhouse Square, and afternoons filled with the shouts and whispers of their frantic lovemaking.
They often rented suites in Center City’s finest hotels. But they made love in other places as well. Places that excited him in ways he’d never imagined. The Crystal Tea Room, located on the upper floors of the Wanamaker Building, was a vast, exquisitely appointed dining room that had hosted presidents and royalty alike. But on the days when Nola wanted him, it played host to their sin. So did her office, and her living room, and the executive washroom at Lord & Taylor.
He tried not to think about the way she felt in his arms, or the scent of her perfume in his nostrils, or the sensation of her lips against his. He tried to block out the incredible sense of guilt he felt every time he’d taken her. He attempted to forget the heartbreak she’d imposed on him by sleeping with his enemy.
Instead, he willed himself to the escalators for the one-floor climb to her office. He dragged his feet as he stepped off the moving stairs and rounded the corner.
He wondered if the sick feeling he had about Nola’s meeting
Keisha was correct. Nola had, after all, betrayed him with Frank Nichols. Perhaps she had betrayed him with his daughter as well.
What if she had told Keisha of their affair? What if she had taken her to the places where they had gone? What if she had shared the things that he had told her about his past?
John didn’t really want the answers to those questions. He was about to go back to the escalator and leave the building when one of Nola’s coworkers—a manager in the evening wear section of the store—spotted him and called out his name.
“Reverend Anderson,” she said, walking over to him, with her hand extended. “It’s been such a long time since we’ve seen you. How have you been?”
“Fine,” he said, hiding behind a fake smile.
He wondered if Nola’s colleagues still believed that he was just her pastor, or if they knew that he’d stepped over that line long ago.
“I guess you’re looking for Nola,” said the blonde manager.
“Yes, I am,” John said.
“Well, she was here this morning,” she said. “But she only stayed for a minute.”
“Do you know if she went home?”
“I’m not sure. But I do know that she won’t be back here today. Is there anything I can help you with?”
“I actually just came to ask Nola a few questions about my daughter, Keisha. I understand the two of them worked together a few times this summer.”
The woman’s smile brightened. “Oh, yes, Keisha’s a wonderful young lady. She and Nola hit it off very well. How’s she doing, by the way?”
“She’s missing,” John said solemnly.
The woman’s smile disappeared. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah,” John said. “Me, too.”
He clutched the bag he was holding and half-turned to walk away. “If you hear anything from Nola, can you ask her to give me a call?”
“That’s not a problem. I’m sure we’ll hear from her tomorrow.
“Thanks,” John said with a weak grin.
As he descended the escalator and walked toward the door, he asked himself the questions he hadn’t dared to think about until then.
What if the secrets he’d told Nola had led to his daughter’s kidnapping? Would he be able to forgive himself if they had?