“Dan, I’m crazy about you but I can’t talk now.”
“What are you wearing?”
“No time for that. I have to go.”
“Listen, last night was—”
“The best night of my life, but I have to go.” Vicki kept watching through the camera, in close-up.
“Hold on, I have a question. Did you take your clothes off the kitchen floor and wear them again?”
Uh. “No, I took them to the dry cleaners.” Shoppers with their kids in hand moved in and out of the glass entrance doors of the Toys “R” Us. No Reheema.
“You dry-clean your jeans?”
“Sometimes, and I have to go.”
“Where are you?”
“Shopping.”
“Where?”
“Neiman Marcus.”
“In the suburbs?” Dan hmmmed. “But your car is still in the garage.”
“A friend picked me up.”
“I don’t believe you, my sweet. What are you really up to?”
Busted. “Okay, it’s a surprise. A surprise for you. Now tell me you’re okay so I can hang up.”
“I’m better than okay. I’m getting divorced.”
“Already?” Vicki watched the store entrance through the camera. An old man in a walker went in, but no sign of Reheema.
“I signed the papers and messengered them to her lawyer, and she’s agreed to give me Zoe. She’s having his maid drop the cat off. Also, that meeting is today, at five, with the FBI and ATF, about Morty’s investigation.”
The meeting. Vicki had forgotten, with all that was going on. “I wish I could be there.”
“I’ll tell you what happens. I may get to go.”
“Really?” Vicki eyed the Toys “R” Us entrance, distracted. Two little boys were having a tug-of-war with a new scooter. “Then you have to tell me everything.”
“Of course. Be home after, okay?”
It had a nice ring. “Light a fire under ’em.” Vicki figured it sounded like what she would say if she were at Neiman Marcus. “I have to go. Call you later. Bye.”
She flipped the phone closed, set it down, and focused her attention on the store entrance, through the telephoto. Her heart was thumping again, but she didn’t know if it was true love or true anxiety. If Browning knew Reheema, would he hurt her? Vicki put a hand on the door handle, tempted to go after her, but stopped herself. Vicki’s picture had been all over the news, and she could be recognized, even in the sunglasses and Phillies hat. And Browning wouldn’t hurt Reheema in a public place, would he? Still, if Reheema wasn’t out of the store in five more minutes, Vicki was going in.
She kept her attention on the entrance, taking a few photos of the scene. A salesclerk in a blue apron collected shopping carts from the lot. A white work van slowed near the entrance, waiting for a parking space. A man and his wife, huddled together against the cold, entered the store with two kids, followed by a woman with three kids, holding hands in a daisy chain. And in the next minute, through the telephoto, Vicki recognized Reheema, mostly because of her distinctive walk.
“Yay!” Vicki yelled in the car, and then she couldn’t believe her eyes: Reheema was leaving the store with Browning!
What? Vicki kept her eye plastered to the camera and took a series of photos, in amazement. As they walked, Reheema was putting on her cap against the cold, smiling, and Browning was smiling, too, carrying a plastic bag of red-and-white Huggies. The two of them were talking like old friends, and on Browning’s other side walked his driver, also carrying a bag of Huggies.
Reheema was not only safe, she had scored! Vicki didn’t understand it, but shot another picture. Did Browning know Reheema or had she struck up a conversation with him inside the store? How did they get to be friends so fast? What the hell was going on? This wasn’t in any Plan at all.
Suddenly Vicki heard an earsplitting pop pop pop from the store entrance. She blinked, uncomprehending. She knew that sound. It was unmistakable.
Gunfire.
THIRTY-ONE
“REHEEMA! RUN!” Vicki screamed. She dropped the camera, flung open the car door, and ran for Reheema.
Pop pop pop! Reheema took off as if from a starter pistol, sprinting in the heavy Timberlands, pounding toward the Sunbird. Mothers screamed in terror, scooping crying toddlers into their arms. A little boy turned toward the gunshots, covering his ears. Two little girls fled in panic, their ponytails flying.
Pop pop pop came more gunfire, like a war zone. Browning crumpled to his knees, his face hitting the asphalt. A little boy near him was shot, trying to run away. Browning’s driver was cut down, dropping the Huggies. A toddler fell beside her mother, the child’s pink snowsuit splashed hideously with red.
Pop pop pop! The salesclerk ran for his life but was cut down. A mother was strafed and tripped, dropping an infant. The white work van that had been idling near the store entrance flew out of the parking lot, its tires squealing. Vicki couldn’t read its license plate on the run.
“REHEEMA!” she screamed.
“Back to the car!” Reheema grabbed Vicki by the arm and together they ran back to the Sunbird and jumped inside. Police sirens blared nearby. In this busy part of town, help was already on the way.
“You okay?” Almost breathless, Vicki slammed the car door closed, grabbed her cell phone, and dialed 911. Men and women ran from the store to the victims, and one salesclerk came running out, shouting into a cell phone.
“I’m alive!” Reheema floored the gas pedal.
And they were outta there.
The Sunbird came finally to a stop at the first Irish pub off the expressway. By that time, the two women were finally breathing normally, wet-eyed and shaken as they sat side by side at the far end of a crappy wooden bar. The shellac on its wooden surface peeled like clear nail polish, and its stacks of cocktail napkins smelled strangely of Lysol. The place was empty except for two drunk guys who sat near the bartender at the other end of the bar. The TV overhead was on mute, but Britney Spears sang “Toxic” loud enough to make it almost a song.
Vicki stared stunned at the shot glass in front of her, which was full of amber fluid. “I never drink hard stuff.”
Reheema sat slumped before her glass. “I don’t drink.”
“Then who ordered the shots?”
“You, or maybe me,” Reheema answered, then picked up her glass. “Let’s do it to it.”
Vicki picked up her glass. “One, two, three.” They downed their shots together, swallowed in unison, and set the shot glasses down at the exact same moment, with a restaurant-grade clunk. Vicki said, still stunned, “It didn’t help, did it?”
“No. Nothing can.” Reheema shook her head. “I have never seen anything like that in my life. And I’ve seen some terrible things.”
Vicki nodded, her throat burning. “That was carnage. I mean, they shot everywhere. They didn’t care who they hit. Little kids. Babies.” She tried not to cry. She was too stunned to cry. She wanted to understand. “But they got who they were after. Browning.”
“Looks that way.”
“We should have stayed to help.”
“They had it under control. The cops were on the way.”
“So tell me what happened.”
“You saw what happened.” Reheema wiped her eyes, but Vicki needed to know the details.
“Tell me what happened inside the store, and we’ll see if we can piece this thing together. I’m two minutes from going to the cops.”
“Another round!” Reheema called to the bartender, who arrived after a minute, poured them both a shot, and wisely withdrew. She sighed, shaking her head. “Oh man. This is bad, real bad.”
“Try to focus and tell me.”
“Well, I walked by Browning twice, in the store. I had my hat and sunglasses off and made sure he saw my face. He looked me over both times, like I was a stranger. I don’t think he knew me.”
“You’re sure?”
Reheema downed her second shot. “Yeah.
He was in the diaper aisle, and he and the driver were joking. It sounded like he forgot which diapers he was supposed to buy, and I walked down the aisle. I was pretending I was buying some baby oil, and he asked me what size diapers do six-month-olds get.” Reheema started rolling her empty shot glass on its end. “I knew that was crap, because it says it on the package.”
“I wonder what baby he’s buying for? The kid we saw was about four.” Vicki tried to reason, despite the gunshots reverberating in her ears. “If there was a baby in that house, his wife, or whatever, wouldn’t have left it alone to go to yoga.”
“The man is a playa, a gangsta.” Reheema’s tone was weary. “He got kids everywhere.”
“Okay. Right.”
“He asked me about my kids.” Reheema kept playing with her glass. “I said I didn’t have any, I wanted the baby oil for my skin.”
“Good save.”
“Then he asked me my name and I said Marcia, and I asked him his and he said Jamal, and he said did I live around here, and I said no, I was in from D.C. for the day, visitin’ my sister.”
“You’re a better liar than I am.”
“My mother’s daughter.”
Ouch. Vicki felt a twinge of sympathy, and regret. “Look, maybe we should wait a little to talk about this. We’re both upset, and you almost got—”
“I’m fine.”
“You could have been killed.”
“I wasn’t.” Reheema stop playing with her glass. “So, anyway, he and I, we kep’ talking and the driver got the diapers, then Jamal said could he walk me out and I started to get worried, and I said I was gonna take the bus, and when we got outside he asked me what was my number and I was about to give him a fake one when the shooting started.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s all.”
Vicki eyed her second shot, untouched. “So what have we learned? One, Browning doesn’t know you. Two, somebody wanted Browning dead and he got his wish. And three, the new bad guy drives a white van.”
“Wait, look.” Reheema pointed above the bar at the TV, and on the screen was a blue BREAKING NEWS banner.
“Can you turn that up?” Vicki called to the bartender, who reached up and increased the volume loud enough to overcome Britney. The TV screen switched to a scene of the parking lot, above a red caption that read TOYS “R” US MASSACRE. A pretty reporter came on in a red suit and stiff haircut, saying into a bubble microphone:
“Seven people were shot and killed, and fifteen more wounded, five critically, in what appeared to be a drive-by shooting this afternoon at about twelve-thirty, in front of the Toys ‘R’ Us store on Regon Avenue. The injured have been taken to area hospitals—”
Vicki could barely watch, sickened. Seven dead. Browning. His driver. The salesclerk. The mother. The baby, the toddler, other children, who else?
The reporter continued, “Police are on the lookout for a white Dodge van, 2003, which had a small American flag decal in the back left window, and was being driven without license plates. We realize there may be many such vans in the Delaware Valley area, but viewers who see a 2003 white Dodge van, with a flag in the rear window, are encouraged to call the police tip line or Action News at…”
Vicki’s shoulders sagged. Morty. Jackson. The baby.
The TV screen switched to the next story, a warehouse fire, in the Northeast, and both women turned away. Reheema sighed. “So where were we?”
Vicki straightened up. “Now it’s possible that Jay-Boy and Teeg, the kids who shot my partner and Jackson, don’t work for Jamal Browning at all. I had thought they did and that the attack was against Shayla Jackson, because of you or your trial, and because Jackson and Browning were evidently breaking up.” Vicki forced her brain to reason, despite the shock and the whisky. “But after this, and because Browning didn’t know you, I think the real target was Browning, and he’s being attacked by a rival gang.”
Reheema nodded. “You mean, the teenage kids who shot your partner worked for the white van guy or his boss?”
“Yes.”
“But why would they shoot the guy’s girlfriend? ’Cause she was pregnant, to hurt him?” Reheema frowned, puzzled. “That man, Browning, he got enough kids already.”
The fish-scale coke. Vicki made a judgment call and filled Reheema in, then concluded, “So the rival gang, if that’s what they are, struck at Browning to steal his coke stash. They only killed Jackson because she was there, in the way.”
“So it wasn’t personal. Okay, I’m with you. Lotta business at stake.” Reheema thought a minute. “Still doesn’t say why your snitch set me up.”
“No, it doesn’t. That’s an open question.” Vicki made a mental note. “It must be a turf war.”
“And we walked into the middle.”
“Wonder if it’s over Cater Street.”
“There’s a thousand Cater Streets in this city.”
Vicki nodded. “At least we know it’s directed at Browning.”
“Oh, it’s directed, all right.” Reheema laughed, but it was hollow.
“The problem is that now we don’t have anybody to follow back up the chain.”
“Unless the white van supplies from the same place.”
“Right.”
“How likely is that?”
Reheema’s eyes glittered under her cap. “Likely. It’s the little guys that fight it out, block by block, brick by brick. The supplier doesn’t care who moves his product.”
“So we gotta find the white van.”
“Us and Action News. And, oh yeah, the cops. A white work van with an American flag? No license plate? No sweat.”
“Hold on, I have an idea,” Vicki said, her thoughts racing ahead. “Let’s go.”
Vicki sat in front of her desktop computer at home, wolfing down a Big Mac while Reheema ate a McDonald’s shaker of salad over her shoulder, watching the screen.
“Okay, they’re loaded,” Vicki said, snapping in the photo card and clicking to slide show, and they both sat back and watched. The pictures, downloaded from her digital camera, started last night in the dark and played out like a short film with a miserably unhappy ending. A shot appeared of Browning and his driver digging the car out, almost pitch black, then bright shots of Browning’s wife and son coming out of the house, getting in the car, and the photos continued all the way to the Toys “R” Us, with Reheema going in and out, then finally appearing with Browning, slipping on her cap and smiling at him.
Vicki clicked and pointed. “There, in the right corner. The front bumper of the white van.”
“Got it.”
“I thought it was waiting for a space. What an idiot.”
“Keep going.”
Vicki double-clicked and the slide show restarted, each picture dissolving into the next, in that corny way the software dictated, horribly inappropriate in context. The scene changed to a laughing Browning and Reheema, in close-up, cutting out the white van, and then the last shot caught the salesclerk going down, before Vicki had dropped the camera in horror.
“Sweet Jesus,” Reheema said, and Vicki put down her sandwich, her stomach upset.
“Somebody has to stop these guys. This is just lawlessness. They’re turning the city into the wild, wild West. No order, no justice. Only money and murder.” It gave Vicki a second wind. She clicked though the slide show, searching. She had taken so many pictures, one had to have the driver of the white van. The van had been pointing out of the lot, ready to make a quick getaway, and the driver’s side had been facing Vicki, full on. She’d been only half a lot away. She had to have him on film. She moved the mouse to the right corner of the photo, then clicked. The front end of the white van peeked onto the corner of the frame.
“Yes!” they both said.
“Gotcha, you animal.” Vicki eyed a perfect shot of the driver’s window, but it was small and dark.
“Can you make it bigger?”
“Watch and be amazed.” Vicki moved the mouse to the toolbar and c
licked away. Ten clicks later, her large Gateway monitor had a pixelated photo of the driver, dim but visible.
“All right, girl!”
“Thank you, thank you.” Vicki scrutinized her handiwork. The photo was dim and too grainy to be perfect, but the features of the driver were clearly visible, and he was young and white.
“Ha!” Reheema snorted. “Ice, ice, baby.”
“How does a white boy take over the trade on Cater, street level?”
“He doesn’t show his face, that’s how. He’s the man who talks to the man. He has his boys do his dirty work.” Reheema set down her salad.
The driver looked about twenty-five, his face young and unlined, with large, light eyes, maybe blue or hazel. His hair was shaved into a fade of a light hair, its color impossible to ascertain in this light. Next to him in the seat sat a shadow. Vicki couldn’t make out the features of his accomplice.
“Now what do we do?”
“First thing, we get the photo to the cops. Philly, ATF, FBI, the whole alphabet.”
“Show our hand?”
“No, not if we don’t have to. I still need my job. And I have another lead I want to follow up.” Vicki paused. “If I e-mail this, they’ll know where it came from.”
“Then what?”
“We do it the old-fashioned way.” Vicki checked her watch. Three o’clock. Then she remembered. “They’re having a meeting today at five with all the brass, about Morty’s investigation.”
“Goody.”
“Just so they get started,” Vicki said, and they both smiled. She hit Print. “Maybe this actual photo of the murderer will help?”
“Least we can do.” Reheema laughed. “So what’s the old-fashioned way? Drop it off and run like hell?”
“Bingo.” But Vicki was thinking about that meeting, and what would happen when Dan came home.
THIRTY-TWO
It was cold and dark by the time Vicki and Reheema had finished their mail run, delivering enlargements of the white van driver to receptionists at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the FBI, ATF, Philly Homicide, and the four major news stations. They completed the task in disguise, having Reheema drop off where Vicki would be recognized and vice versa. Vicki had considered taking the next step in the Former Master Plan, but she was exhausted and wanted to find out from Dan how the big meeting had gone. And the shooting had taken a toll on Reheema, who seemed exhausted and had reverted to being remote. After a side trip for some groceries for each of them, they pulled up in front of Vicki’s house.