Cars couldn’t drive for the snow on Cater, which hadn’t been cleared yet because the street was too narrow to fit the conventional wide plows, and only a few row houses had their walks shoveled, but it didn’t deter steady foot traffic to the vacant lot. The pace was as brisk as the other day, and addicts braved the elements, showing unusual hardiness. Vicki wondered if watching them bothered Reheema, so soon after her mother’s murder.
“You okay?” she asked, looking over at that perfect, if impassive, profile.
“Fine.” Reheema nodded, her sunglasses reflecting the snow. The woman of few words had become the woman of no words. Vicki had been previously unaware that you could be a woman and say so very little. It seemed biologically impossible.
“Is this weird for you, since what happened to your mother? Is it upsetting?”
“I look upset?” Reheema didn’t move, just kept gazing out the windshield, and then Vicki gave up and looked, too. A bundled-up couple, a man and a woman, walked in the snow to the vacant lot, arm in arm, like a crack date.
“You recognize them?”
“No.”
Vicki had hoped otherwise. This was Phase One of the Master Plan. They’d been here an hour, and Reheema hadn’t recognized either of the lookouts or any of the customers. “But they’re your neighbors.”
“I don’t know the neighbors.”
Vicki didn’t get it. “You lived here, right?”
“Moved here senior year high school, and not since then.”
“Where were you before you moved here?”
“Somewhere else.”
That clears things up. “And your mother stayed here. When did she start using, if I can ask?”
“I was in college.”
“Is that why you didn’t come back?”
“Yes.”
Now the conversational ball was really rolling. “It must have been hard.”
Reheema didn’t say anything.
“What did you major in?”
“Business.”
“Did you like it?”
“No.”
Try another tack. “You know, my dad lived right on your street. He had the corner house on Washington. He went to Willowbrook, too.”
“Where’d you go to high school?”
“Episcopal.”
“Private school.”
“Guilty,” Vicki said, and she was. They both watched as a young man in long dreads and a brown coat walked down the street, kicking snow as he shuffled along, heading for the hole. “How about him? Do you know him?”
“You know, he does look familiar.”
“Goody!”
“Did you just say goody?” Reheema peered at Vicki over the top of her sunglasses. “Never. Again.”
Excited, Vicki handed Reheema a pair of binoculars she’d brought from home. She’d packed her backpack full of equipment they might need for the Master Plan, including guacamole Doritos. Episcopal Academy taught its grads to plan well for their stakeouts.
Reheema turned and raised the binoculars to her eyes. “Yo, that’s Cal!” she said, dangerously animated.
“Cal what?”
“Cal Moore. Was in my math class. I think he dropped out, and now he’s a crackhead.” Reheema lowered the binoculars. “Always was a loser.”
“It’s sad.”
“No, it isn’t.”
Vicki let it go and noted Cal Moore’s name in the Filofax. So far his was the only name. Phase One wasn’t working out so hot, but then again, it took only one name for a lead. She dug inside the backpack again, grabbed the silvery Cybershot camera, pressed the button so the lens was on telephoto, and snapped a digital close-up of Cal Moore.
“Why’re you doin’ that?”
“In case we need it.”
“Why would we need it?”
Good question. “I don’t know yet. But this is what the ATF would do on a stakeout, and so I’m doing it, too.” Vicki knew the basics from Morty, but she was trying not to think about him today. “If it turns out we need an ID on Moore, we have a picture.” They both watched as Moore trudged though the snow to the vacant lot, then went inside, past the bare trees. Vicki couldn’t help but wonder. “What do they have in there anyway? Like a shack or something?”
“You mean, what’s in the hole? Just the man, standing there, behind some trash cans and an old wood wall from one of the houses.”
“A wall in the middle of the lot?”
“Toward the back. Looks like the house got torn down and the old wall, like maybe the backyard, got left. It makes a screen, so you can’t see what’s goin’ on from the street.”
Vicki tried to visualize it. “So this guy just stands outside, in the hole?”
“Yeah.”
“I guess the overhead’s low.”
“ ’Cause there’s nothin’ overhead,” Reheema said, and they both laughed.
More bonding! Bonding like crazy! Then Vicki sobered up. “They won’t do business outside forever, will they?”
“No, not for long. They’re just gettin’ a hold. Established. They’ll move into one a the houses soon.”
“When do you think?”
“Soon as they find one.” Reheema snorted. “Hell, I’ll sell ’em mine.”
Vicki assumed she was kidding. “And that will be the end.”
Reheema didn’t say anything.
Vicki set the camera down and skimmed the Filofax notes she’d made today, in her lap. She had counted foot traffic again, and business was better than yesterday; sixty customers in the past hour, even in the bad weather. At sixty bags an hour, for a dime bag, which was conservative, the dealer made six hundred dollars an hour. Vicki looked up from her notes. “Wonder when the go-betweens will show up, the black leather coat or the Eagles coat. They’re late.”
“Maybe he stocked up because of the snow.”
“Funny that they started an outside business in winter.”
“Lotta competition in the city right now. Everybody wants to open a new store.” Reheema’s tone was so certain, Vicki had to wonder.
“How do you know that?”
“Just got outta jail. The FDC’s fulla crack dealers. All the talk is turf, who’s stealing customers from who. Who’s expanding, who’s not.”
Vicki considered it. “Maybe we can put the word out in the FDC. See what anybody knows about Jay and Teeg, or Browning’s operation in general.”
“Did that already.”
“You did? When?”
“Soon as it went down with my mother.”
Vicki felt a twinge. “Did you learn anything?”
“No. Everybody’s afraid to talk about it. Hey, Cal’s back.” Reheema raised the binoculars, and Vicki raised the camera to watch the young man walk out of the hole, hands thrust in pockets and head down, his dreads coiled into a thick rope that came to a point like an alligator tail.
“What’s with the hair? This would be a black culture question.”
Reheema snorted. “Don’t ask me, I hate it. Cal had his that way since high school. Hasn’t been washed in five years.”
At almost the same moment, a shiny maroon Navigator turned onto Cater from the opposite direction and powered toward the vacant lot, spraying fans of fresh snow in its wake, like a speedboat. “Lookout,” Vicki said, taking a photo, and Reheema whistled behind the binoculars.
“Nice ride!”
“Four-wheel drive.”
“We got Daddy’s car today!”
Vicki snapped another close-up as the Navigator stopped in front of the hole and the driver’s door opened. In the next instant, the short man in the black leather coat and cap stepped out into the snow. Vicki took his close-up when he turned. She had never been so happy to see a criminal before. “Bingo!”
“Goody!” Reheema said.
Vicki let it go and took another photo. “Do you know him?”
“No.”
“Damn.”
“More like it,” Reheema said. Vicki looked though the tele
photo lens to see him better. Mr. Black Leather had large, round eyes, a short nose, a tiny little mustache, and photographed rather well. He hustled inside the vacant lot, raising his knees high to avoid getting his feet wet, kicking snow as he went. The Navigator idled in the street, sending a chalky plume of exhaust into the air. Vicki eyed it through the camera but, because of the snow’s glare on the windshield, couldn’t tell if somebody was in the passenger seat. Only a drug dealer could leave a car like that unlocked and running in this neighborhood.
“He might come past us on the way out. Get down.” Vicki lowered the camera and slunk down in her seat, and Reheema laughed.
“Sit up. You’re embarrassing yourself.”
Vicki edged up in the slippery seat and watched the scene again through the camera. Moore was at the top of the block and turned right. “Wonder where he lives. Do you know, from high school?”
“We didn’t travel in the same circles.”
“He wasn’t in National Honor Society, huh?”
Reheema shot her a look. They fell silent in the next minute, and Vicki raised the camera again when Mr. Black Leather reappeared, hustled out of the lot, and to the Navigator, knocking snow off his shoes before he climbed inside. The Navigator backed out the way it had come, and Vicki raised the camera to see if she could shoot his plate number. When the Navigator turned at the top of the street, she tried to catch a glimpse, but it was too far away.
“Rats!” Vicki said, and Reheema’s only response was to start the engine of the Sunbird, which struggled to life.
Half an hour later, the women sat parked in a space on Aspinall Street down from Jamal Browning’s house, and they were on their second girl stakeout. Unlike Cater, there was no activity on Aspinall; it was a static scene of a snow-covered city street. No one had answered the row house door when Mr. Black Leather went inside, and there were no comings or goings for Reheema not to identify people. Vicki had taken all the pictures she needed and none of them mattered. In short, she was beginning to doubt the viability of Phase II.
“Cheeto?” Vicki offered, discouraged, pointing the fragrant end of the bag to Reheema. “It’s lunch. And dinner.”
Reheema didn’t say anything.
“You’re not feelin’ the Cheetos?”
Reheema didn’t smile.
“You didn’t want the Doritos either. You off carbs, too?”
“No, just food that glows in the dark.”
“Seems unduly restrictive.” Vicki brushed orange dust off the front of her parka. She had consumed one 64-ounce Wawa coffee, and six hundred thousand calories. The Sunbird reeked of Cigar-Smoke-in-a-Can and her Master Plan sucked. Vicki scanned the cars parked in front of the house, but they were covered with snow mounded like sugar frosting. “Wonder which car is Browning’s. They use the crappy ones for work, right? So which is the crappiest?”
“Ours.”
Vicki eyed Browning’s row house, her frustration intensifying. “This isn’t going well, none of it. You know, I feel like your neighborhood is right on the brink of something. Like it could go either way, up or down, depending on what happens on Cater. You know what I mean?”
Reheema didn’t say anything.
“The crack dealers get established in the hole, making addicts, then they buy a house and sell crack in it, making more crack addicts, and there goes a perfectly fine neighborhood, with law-abiding people and Christmas wreaths. And if that happens all over the city, pretty soon the city is lost. And city after city, it happens all over.”
Reheema still didn’t reply.
“That’s why I want to shut them down, get them behind bars. Not only because of Morty and your mother, but because we can actually save your neighborhood.”
“It’s not my neighborhood,” Reheema said, finally. “You keep saying Devil’s Corner is my neighborhood, and it’s not. I told you, I’m only living there until I sell.”
“It’s my dad’s old neighborhood.”
“Oh, I get it. That’s why you care.” Reheema snorted. “You’re doing it for your daddy. To get Daddy’s approval.”
“No. He hated it there.”
Reheema faced Vicki, her sunglasses masking her eyes. “Then why do you care?”
“Why don’t you?” Vicki asked, glad for some reason that she was wearing sunglasses, too. Suddenly, something caught her attention at Browning’s house. The front door was opening. She grabbed the camera and snapped a photo as a man emerged. But it wasn’t Mr. Black Leather, it was Eagles Coat. “Here’s the other go-between. So they take turns. Alternate, like last time.”
“So there’s two on a shift,” Reheema said, from behind the binoculars. “And two shifts a day, maybe three. I don’t see anybody at the door.”
“Me, neither.” Vicki took a photo anyway, then lowered the camera and watched Eagles Coat walk to the Navigator, get in, pull out of the space, and take off. This time she got a clear shot of the license plate and lowered the camera. She knew cops who could run the plate for her, and maybe Dan would have an idea. Then she realized she’d gone the whole day without thinking about him; she’d even left her phone turned off. She was in Married Man Rehab.
Reheema twisted on the ignition, but Vicki raised a palm.
“Don’t follow him. We know where he’s going. Probably back to Cater, if the pattern is the same, right?”
“Probably.”
“So he’s just the runner, he brings the crack back and forth.” Vicki was thinking out loud, which was okay to do in front of someone who barely liked you, and vice versa. “He’s not the one we really want.”
“What do you mean?”
“This is Jamal Browning’s house, where he brings the stuff and bags it for sale. Odds are he doesn’t live here, right? You tell me, you’re the bad-guy expert.” Vicki thought back to what she knew about the crack trade. “I mean, I know that most drug dealers have a separate car for business. Do they have more than one address, too?”
“Yeah. Browning won’t live here. This is where he does his business.”
“That’s what I thought.” Vicki flashed on the unopened bills of Jackson’s. “And where would he keep his supply? Here?”
“Probably.”
“Not at his house.”
“Not usually. The idea is to keep that clean.”
“And he’d keep some at a stash house, like his girlfriend’s. Shayla Jackson.” Vicki couldn’t put the memory of the murdered Jackson out of her mind. Or Morty. “I want to get to Browning, not his delivery boy. I want to understand this whole organization, then I can bring it down.”
“You serious?” Reheema slid off her sunglasses, her gaze dead even. “This could be big, an operation this size, this much money, two guys on each shift, three shifts. Plus two lookouts on three shifts, and the dealer, three of them twenty-four/seven?” She rattled it off like the business student she used to be. “Probably got three cooks and coupla baggers. And an army of young ’uns like the ones you ran into, Jay and Teeg. Helpers. Runners. Gofers. That’s a lotta personnel, and this might not be Browning’s only operation.”
Okay, I knew that. “Then that’s all on the Master Plan.”
“Browning might even be a connect.”
“Meaning the one who deals weight?” Vicki asked, but it wasn’t a question. The answer was the bricks in Jackson’s house. “He might be. If he is, he’s going down.”
“Why? He’s not the one who killed your partner. You know who killed your partner, those kids did.”
“That’s right, but they were just kids. Pawns.” Vicki thought a minute. “It’s all of a piece. I’m gonna find and indict those kids, but that won’t go far enough. This month it’s Morty, but next month it’ll be another agent, or a cop, or an AUSA. This has to stop.”
Reheema smiled crookedly. “What got into you?”
“It’s time to change things, to get things right. I’m tired of the way things are. And I’m tired of eating Cheetos and crushing on the wrong guy.” Vicki sensed ther
e was a connection, but she had no idea what it was. She pointed at Browning’s house. “Either Browning’s in that house and he’s got to come out. Or he’s coming here. Or he’s not in there at all and he won’t be coming anytime soon.”
“Somebody’s in there.”
“So let’s see who comes out, and see if he looks like Browning, the guy in the photo on Shayla Jackson’s dresser. If it’s him, wherever he goes, we follow him.” Vicki liked it the more she thought about it. “We don’t take any unnecessary chances. We just take a little ride and a few pictures. No big deal.”
“We got the car for it.” Reheema laughed, her features relaxing into a beautiful smile, for the first time since they’d met.
“So, you wanna?”
“Why not?” Reheema settled back into the driver’s seat, facing the house.
“Goody.” Vicki did the same, newly content in the passenger seat, and after a minute, Reheema asked:
“So, who’s the wrong guy?”
TWENTY-EIGHT
“GO!” Vicki couldn’t help shouting. It was almost midnight and there was finally activity at Browning’s house. The front door opened, barely visible in the streetlight, and two men emerged, mere shadow figures.
“Not yet. I’ll start the engine after they’re in their car. Then they won’t hear it.”
“Of course. Right. Good thinking. That’s what I meant, too.”
“Calm down, girl.” Reheema laughed softly
“I can’t.” Vicki fumbled to find the camera, shivering with cold and excitement, as the two men walked down the steps in front of the row house. It was impossible to tell if either of them was Browning. “Damn!”
“Don’t take a picture.”
“I won’t use the flash.” Vicki disabled the flash and used the telephoto to see the men more clearly. It was absurd in the dark, but she took three photos anyway. They were both about average height and wore thick dark coats and dark knit caps, pulled low over their foreheads. “What is it with the knit caps?”
“Another black culture question? It’s cold out.”