I’M RUNNING ON PRACTICALLY NO SLEEP. IT UPSETS me still, thinking Sam might be the informant. None of my alternate scenarios make any real sense.
Before I tell Leroy, though, I want to confront Sam again, and see if his story changes. I’m walking it off, trying to get out from under the pressure I feel. Taking turns around the blocks and hoping the fresh, chill air will clear my mind.
I catch sight of Raheem walking quickly down a side street. He’s almost a block away, but I know his walk like anything.
Spontaneously I turn in the direction he’s going. Raheem can help me. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner. Except he wasn’t home last night until after I was pretending to sleep. This morning he was out the door before I’d wiped the sleep dust from my eyes.
But the answer is so obvious now. I can trust Raheem with what happened. I’ll run it by him before I do anything else. Ask him if he thinks it’s even possible, what I’m thinking of Sam. And if I should tell Leroy just in case, or keep Sam’s secret, whatever it might be.
“Heem!” I call. He doesn’t hear me. Seems to be in a hurry.
“Heem!” I can’t imagine where he’s going, actually, because this road dead-ends beneath the highway and there’s nothing but alleys to turn off into.
I follow. “Heem!” But he’s already around the corner. I dash after him, but I come up short. What I see does not compute.
Raheem stalks toward a parked car on the deserted street. It’s a clean gray sedan with city plates. A cop car, unmarked. A cop car I’ve seen twice before, staking out the Panthers. Today he’s parked out of the way of everything, but that falls beside the point as Raheem opens the passenger door and gets inside.
I blink. He gets inside. With the cop. If it was anyone else, anyone who didn’t know me, I would walk right by that car. My undercover moves.
But it’s Raheem, and so I stand frozen. No idea how to proceed.
Moving along to the building edge of the sidewalk, I inch closer. I need to see it up close, need to know for sure. They are talking. Silhouettes facing each other for five, maybe ten, minutes. It seems like an eternity, but anything would under the circumstances.
There can be no mistaking it. Plain as day, in front of my eyes, Raheem is ruining everything.