“But he could be. Or he could know who is.”
“No. Ray James has my phone, is all we know.”
“So when do these ATF suits go talk to him?”
“ATF may not have jurisdiction and they’ll have to work with Philly, because murder is a state-law crime. The Philly cops were represented at this meeting last night, and this would come under their jurisdiction—”
“Stop.” Reheema held up a palm. “Bottom line.”
“Your mother’s murder is a matter for the Philly police. They’re on it. You met Detective Melvin that morning, right? He’s a good guy. He’ll question James as soon as he lawfully can. Understand?”
“Understand.”
“Any questions? It is kind of complicated.”
“No questions.” Reheema turned in the driver’s seat, twisted on the ignition, and backed out of the space. She went forward too fast, almost hitting the bumper of the PECO truck.
“Reheema, where are we going?”
“Where’d you think?”
“Reheema, we can’t go over there.” Vicki held on tight, literally and figuratively, as the Intrepid took off down the street.
“I can.”
“It could compromise their investigation.”
“They ain’t investigatin’.”
“Yes, they are.”
“No, they’re not.” Reheema hit the gas to pass a furniture truck. “My mother’s last in line, behind your ATF friend and the little blond kids at the Toys ‘R’ Us. You said so yourself.”
Vicki flushed. “We can do this the right way.”
“I’m not gonna do anything wrong.”
“You can’t.”
“I’m not.” Reheema ran a red light, ignoring a loud HONK! “All I’m gonna do is go over and ask the man a few questions.”
“But it’s not our place to do that.”
“It’s my place.”
“I have another idea.”
“Me, too, but you took my gun.”
Vicki was pretty sure Reheema was kidding. “Instead, why don’t we call Homicide and ask them what progress they’re making? Make sure that they got the word about Ray James? Find out what they’re doing about him?”
“Go ahead. Call ’em. Tell ’em I said how they doin’.” Reheema barely slowed at the corner of the street, then took a right, heading for the main road.
“Okay, I will.” Vicki reached in her purse, bypassed the loaded gun, and retrieved her cell phone, then dialed Philly Homicide. She knew the number from her old D.A. days. “Detective Al Melvin, please.”
“He’s not in,” answered a gruff male voice, which Vicki knew belonged to the desk officer, a detective stuck with answering the phones this tour.
“Detective, this is Vicki Allegretti. I’m an AUSA and I’m calling about the Arissa Bristow case.”
“Who?”
“Allegretti.”
“No, the case.”
“The victim’s name is Arissa Bristow.”
“Is it open?”
Reheema’s eyes shifted knowingly, and Vicki hit a button to lower the volume on the cell.
“Yes, of course, it’s open. Ms. Bristow was killed last Friday night, stabbed to death in a house on Lincoln Street.”
“What’s your office have to do with it?”
“I’m calling as a friend of the family.”
Reheema snorted. The detective asked, “Okay, how can I help you?”
“Detective Melvin was investigating the case, with a partner.”
“Melvin and his partner are both over at City Hall.”
Gulp. “Is there a number there where I can reach them?”
“Listen Mrs. Bristow—”
“Allegretti.”
“I’ll leave a message you called, that’s the best I can do.”
“When will they get the message?”
“Soon as they can. We’re all a little busy lately, with what happened at Toys ‘R’ Us.” Sarcasm tinged his tone. “You seen the news lately?”
Reheema’s mouth flattened to an I-told-you-so line, and Vicki got mad.
“You know, I wouldn’t think you guys would drop the ball just because another murder comes along. There was an ongoing investigation, and I’m here with a member of the victim’s family.”
“My condolences to the family, and I assure you, Detective Melvin is working the case. Is that what you wanted? What you called for?”
“No. I wanted to know what progress Detective Melvin had made, and specifically, if he has contacted a lead named Ray James yet.”
“I’ll let him know you asked. Thanks for calling.”
“Thank you.” Vicki gave him her cell number and flipped the phone closed as the Intrepid veered around a corner, racing to Lincoln Street. At this point, they were half an hour away.
“So, did they say hey?”
“We’re not gonna go crazy here.”
“No one’s goin’ crazy,” Reheema said, and ran another red light.
“You keep running the lights, we’re gonna pick up a cop.”
“No, we won’t. Didn’t you see your boss on TV? The cops are at Toys ‘R’ Us.”
“Think of it this way,” Vicki said, changing tacks. “If we go there now, we’ll be showing our hand, like you said. Right now, James doesn’t know that HIDTA is recording his phone calls. He doesn’t know they’re building a case against him. If we go over and start asking questions about the phone, he’s gonna ditch the phone for sure.”
“You might be right.”
“Good,” Vicki sighed, relieved.
“You might also be wrong. Or what happens to him after might not matter.”
Vicki felt her first tingle of true fear. “He’s dangerous. James is a dangerous man.”
Reheema smiled. “You got a gun.”
“I won’t use it, and neither will you.”
“I’m dangerous, either way.”
“Oh, that’s great.” Vicki started to lose her temper, which she knew wouldn’t help her cause. “Reheema. I guarantee that however tough you think you are, James is a lot tougher.”
“I can handle him. Record says he’s five six, one fifty. I got a couple inches on him and I’ve been lifting for almost a year.”
Yikes. “That’s not the point.”
“Listen, if you’re scared, don’t come.” Suddenly Reheema twisted the black wheel of the Intrepid to the right, yanked the car to the curb in front of Popeyes fried chicken, and pressed the brakes. The car lurched to a stop. “Get out.”
“What?” Vicki asked, startled.
“Go. Leave. This is a decent neighborhood, you’ll be fine. Get yourself some chicken wings and I’ll come back for you.”
“No.” Vicki knew she should go, at the same moment she knew she’d stay.
“Get out.”
Vicki sat stiff in her seat. “I don’t want to.”
“Why not? You’ll lose your job.”
“Not if you behave yourself, I won’t. I’m in. You need me.”
Reheema burst into merry laughter, like her old self, and the two almost became friends again.
“I’m saving you from yourself, Reheema.”
“The hell you are!”
“Also you’d miss me. You’d have separation anxiety.”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
Vicki waved a hand. “Go ahead, tough girl. Drive.”
Reheema laughed again. “You’re kiddin’.”
“Go.” Vicki turned to her, grave. “But I’m watching every single move you make. And if I have to shoot you, I will.”
“Damn!” Reheema said, and hit the gas. They arrived at James’s house faster than most rockets, and the Intrepid pulled up in front of a crumbling brick row house. Reheema cut the ignition, took out the key, and started to leave the car, when Vicki put a hand on her arm to stop her.
“How about this?” Vicki asked, as a last-ditch effort. “How about you let me do the talking and we don’t tell him who you are?”
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“How about not?” Reheema’s features had fallen into lines as fixed as dark marble.
“If I question him, maybe I can convince him to come in and confess, as opposed to muscling him.”
“I want to muscle him.”
Vicki experienced another fear tingle. She’d had so many on the way over, she felt electrified. “Reheema, I’m begging you, please be smart.”
“Enough talk.” Reheema broke Vicki’s grasp and got out of the car, slamming the door behind her.
Oh, great. Vicki jumped out of the passenger seat and ran around the other side as Reheema climbed the concrete steps to James’s front door in two bounds and started pounding. James’s row house stood in the middle of the block, in worse repair than the rest of the neighborhood. It had only one black shutter on the first floor, for two windows, and its front door had been painted a bright, mismatched green, as if bought used or poached from a junkyard.
“Stay calm,” Vicki said, but Reheema kept knocking.
“James! Ray James!”
“Calm!” Vicki eyed the street, which was still except for Reheema’s banging on the door. In one of the houses, a dog started barking.
“Ray James! Open up!”
“Maybe he’s not home.”
“James! Open this door!”
“We could call him on the cell, see if he’s home.”
“Open this door!” Reheema shouted, and before Vicki could realize what was happening, much less could stop her, Reheema had reared back and shoved the door with all her might, breaking it open at the lock. “That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout!”
“Reheema!” Vicki shouted, terrified.
But Reheema was already pushing the door the rest of the way open and breaking into the house.
THIRTY-FIVE
“James! Ray James!” Reheema shouted over a blaring TV, and Vicki hurried inside the dark row house after her. A short hall ended at an arched entrance to a living room, where the noise was coming from.
“Oh! Who’re you?” a man asked, his voice fearful.
“You Ray James?” Reheema demanded.
“Yes, don’ hurt me!”
“Reheema! Stop!” Vicki rounded the corner just in time to catch Reheema yelling at a man who was lying in a bed in the darkened living room. He raised his arms partway, as if she had a gun. He was youngish, black, and obviously ill, because the bed was an adjustable hospital bed with an orange-and-green Brophy’s Medical Supply sticker on the footboard. Next to it sat a plastic white commode with the same sticker, and the coffee table was serving as a makeshift night table, littered with tall brown bottles of medication, a pebbled plastic pitcher, a box of blue Kleenex, and a scalloped paper plate holding two pizza crusts.
“Reheema Bristow! Know that name? BRISTOW!” Reheema yelled, and Vicki grabbed her arm.
“Get a grip! The man is sick!”
“So what?” Reheema shot back, her fury abated, if only by degree, like a hurricane downgraded to a tropical storm. She turned to James.
“Gimme your cell phone!”
“Okay, okay, okay.” James’s eyes widened in fear and he fished a cell phone from the bedcovers, then thrust it at Reheema. “Here. You can have it. Take it.”
“Ha!” Reheema grabbed the phone with its blue daisy cover and showed it to Vicki. “Yours?”
“Reheema, take it easy, look at the man,” Vicki said, holding fast to Reheema’s arm. Something was wrong with James. His head listed to the left, he hadn’t shaved in days, and his words slurred slightly when he spoke. He wasn’t drunk but seemed loopy, as if he was on medication.
“Where’d you get this phone?” Reheema demanded, brandishing it.
“My home.”
“Who?”
“Wha’?”
“TELL ME WHERE YOU GOT THE PHONE!”
Vicki squeezed Reheema’s arm. “Reheema, take it easy.”
James’s eyes flared. “Chucky! Chucky gi’ it to me.”
“Chucky WHO?”
“Call him Chucky Cheese. Look like the Chucky doll.”
“Where’s Chucky live?”
“Dunno,” James answered.
“Yes you do! Where!” Reheema broke Vicki’s grip with ease, stepping to the edge of the bed, so Vicki stepped neatly between them and faced the prone man.
“Mr. James,” she asked, “do you know where Chucky lives? Just tell us and we’ll go. We’re trying to find out where he got the phone.”
“I forget the street name. The street, with the bank.”
“Which bank?”
“Dunno. Blue sign, ’bout ten blocks up.” James pointed over his head, and Reheema shoved Vicki aside.
“The PNC that’s on Jefferson Street?”
James nodded weakly.
“Okay, he lives on Jefferson. What house number on Jefferson, Ray?”
“I dunno.”
“THINK!”
Vicki jumped. “Reheema, don’t bully him!”
“Middle… of the block, red… door,” James stammered, and Reheema exploded.
“You got this phone when you killed my mother!”
“No!” James’s eyes widened, holding his hands higher. “I ain’t killed nobody! I been inna hospital, gettin’ ma damn foot cut off! Look!” He lowered a hand, pulled back the bedcovers, and revealed a bandaged stump on his left foot, sitting in a foam-blue holder. Vicki hid her surprise at the sight, and even Reheema took a step back.
“When’d you get that?”
“Saturday morning.”
Vicki interjected, “So you were in the hospital Friday night?”
“Yeah. They took me in to run the tests, then they cut it off the next day, jus’ like that.”
Vicki planted herself in front of Reheema. “Mr. James, when did you get the phone?”
“When I ge’ home, next day.”
“When was that?”
James blinked dully. “What’s today?”
“Thursday. When did you come home from the hospital?”
“I come home Saturday.” James seemed to lose focus, his eyelids drooping to a close. “Saturday mornin’.”
Vicki nodded. “So Chucky gave you the cell phone on Monday.”
“Yeah, Chucky gi’ it to me.”
“Did Chucky tell you where he got the phone?”
“No.”
Reheema couldn’t take it anymore, demanding, “Where’d you get the phone, Ray?”
“I tole you. Chucky. Chucky got everythin’, everythin’ you need, he got it. Chucky like a store,” James mumbled, his eyes still closed. “Alls I do now lay here and talk onna phone. Can’t do no business, can’t do nothin’. I watch the TV and talk to my homes, all day long.”
Hmm. Vicki realized that would explain the HIDTA frequency reports; James was making the same calls but the substance was different, and in time the call pattern would change. ATF never would have gotten the warrant for James, on that record.
“You better be tellin’ me the TRUTH!” Reheema spat out, and James waved her away like a fly.
“Le’ me alone, le’ me in peace. I din’ kill nobody. I din’ do nothin’.”
“Thank you, Mr. James,” Vicki said, then turned to Reheema. “I think we’re finished here, don’t you?”
“Hmph!” Reheema edged away from the bed.
Now. Vicki walked ahead of her, because she had a Secret Plan. She couldn’t let this happen again. Suddenly, she bumped Reheema’s side like a common pickpocket, grabbed the car keys from her hand, and ran down the hall and toward the front door with them.
“What are you doing?” Reheema shouted, caught by surprise and momentarily left behind.
Go, go, go! Vicki flew out the front door and into the cold, ran for the Intrepid and jumped inside, locking the doors.
“What the HELL YOU DOIN’?” Reheema reached the car a split second later and hit the glass window, furious.
But Vicki wasn’t staying to answer. She’d twisted on the ignition, hit the gas, and driven o
ff, with Reheema giving chase.
Yikes! Vicki hadn’t counted on Reheema trying to run down a car, so she floored the gas pedal. The Intrepid picked up nicely, and she tore down the street and took a swift right onto the main drag, heading for the PNC Bank at Jefferson Street. She checked the rearview, and Reheema was sprinting down the block. Vicki hit the gas, caught the next two green lights, and spotted the PNC Bank. By then, Reheema had disappeared from the rearview mirror.
Yippee! Vicki turned right onto Jefferson and raced toward the house with the red door. She would get this job done without bullies, interference, or illegality. Chucky Cheese didn’t sound dangerous. And if Vicki had to defend herself, she had a law degree.
It turned out that Chucky was not only harmless, he was eighty-proof, and he leaned way too close to Vicki as they sat in the front seat of the Intrepid. They had parked behind a CVS three blocks from his house, where Reheema would never find them. Chucky was about sixty-five years old, African-American, and a diminutive five foot three in a thick green parka. He had shrewd brown eyes with a mercantile glint and, as James had suggested, served as the eBay of the hood.
“Ya want information, that’ll be twenty bucks,” Chucky said, his breath scented with Budweiser.
“Another twenty?” Vicki had already spent twenty to get him in the car with her, once she had convinced him she didn’t want to “party.”
“Money talks, or Mr. Chucky walks.” Chucky grinned, showing the gap between his front teeth that had undoubtedly given him his nickname.
“Fine.” Vicki reached into her wallet yet again and handed him the twenty. “Okay, so tell me—”
“Ya need a watch, a new watch?”
“I got a watch.”
“Classy girl like ye’self, ya gotta wear Rolex.”
“I don’t want a fake Rolex, Chucky.”
“Ain’t fake!”
“Of course it is.” Vicki had already bought from him a fake Vuitton bag, a counterfeit pink-and-black Burberry scarf, and a bootleg copy of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The stuff sat between them on the seat like a barricade of knockoffs. She watched with dismay as Chucky started digging again in the backseat, where he’d insisted on putting his bedsheet, like Santa with his bag of copyright violations.