“Ya need a Rolex, Miss Vicki.” Chucky plopped back into the passenger seat, holding a fake stainless Rolex. “Ya need ta buy this.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Ya do if you wanna know where I got that cell phone.”
“Do you really know where you got it?”
“Yes, I do, swear I do.” Chucky nodded, his bald head dotted with tiny gray hairs, covering a veiny brown scalp.
“I don’t believe you. I’m guessing you sell a lot of cell phones.”
“I do all right with the phones, this time a year.”
“So tell me what my phone looked like.”
“Little silver one, Samsung, blue daisies, green center in each one.”
Vicki couldn’t help but be impressed. She liked a fence who knew his inventory.
“Watch is thirty dollars.” Chucky handed her a Rolex that gleamed like Reynolds Wrap.
“Thirty dollars for this? Come on!”
“ ’Scuse me, twenty.”
“Excuse me! Ten!”
“Twenty.”
Maybe bribes are deductible. Vicki handed over another twenty, and Chucky slipped it into his pocket.
“You won’t be sorry, Miss Vicki. Lemme show you what I been savin’ for you, special for you.” Chucky reached for the backseat, rummaging again.
“No, I’m not buying anything else. Now tell me where you got that cell phone.”
Chucky sat down and dangled a fake gold chain with a humongous Mercedes symbol. “Like it?”
“No.”
“It’s real big.”
“True, no subtlety there.”
“Eighteen karat!”
“I’m sure.”
“P. Diddy got one just like it.” Chucky swung the necklace back and forth like a cartoon hypnotist. “Yours for twenty bucks.”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“Come on! Ten bucks! You got ten bucks, girl!”
“No!” Vicki raised a firm, final hand. “Now tell me what I need to know.”
Half an hour later, Vicki was steering the Intrepid back onto the main drag. She had dropped Chucky off at his house and picked up Reheema, who had been sitting on his front steps, simmering despite the frigid temperature. Reheema didn’t say anything, remaining opaque behind her sunglasses and knit hat. Or maybe she was just thawing out.
“Reheema, you don’t have to talk to me, if you don’t want to.” Vicki slipped on her sunglasses against the sunlight. “Even though I bought you all this nice stuff, including that lovely Mercedes-Benz necklace.”
Reheema looked out the window.
“P. Diddy has one, you know. It’s twenty-four karat.”
Reheema didn’t respond.
“Okay, have it your way. I found out where Chucky says he got the cell phone and I’m taking you there, right now. I’m taking you with me this time, because even you will behave yourself in these circumstances.”
Reheema stayed turned away.
“I understand why you’re angry, and I would be, too. Very angry and very hurt. In pain. But you were way out of line with James, and I couldn’t let you do that again. It was wrong.”
Reheema didn’t budge.
“We’re trying to find out who killed your mother and bring him to justice. Maybe it’s not technically our job, but we aren’t doing anything wrong or illegal.” Vicki paused for a response that didn’t come. “You crossed the line with James. You can’t terrorize someone in the name of justice. If you do, you’re worse than the worst criminals. You’re shooting kids at Toys ‘R’ Us.”
Reheema didn’t speak, but by this point, Vicki was thinking out loud anyway, and for once not worrying about whether it was a good thing to do or not.
Ten silent minutes later, the Intrepid found Pergola Street and pulled up in front of the house.
THIRTY-SIX
The kitchen was painted a bright white, ringed with refaced white cabinets, and smelled pleasantly of baked chocolate and watered-down Lysol. A white plastic tablecloth with scalloped edges covered the table, topped with a chipped plate of crusty brownies. Vicki and Reheema sat catty-corner in two chairs, opposite Mrs. Bethave. She wore the cheery red-and-white uniform of a waitress at Bennigan’s, but her eyes sloped down at the corners with evident fatigue. Next to her sat her son, Albertus, an undersize eight-year-old engulfed by a hooded gray sweatshirt. He sat behind an open math book, a notebook page with a pointy protractor lying on it, and a half-eaten brownie on a pebbled napkin next to a glass of milk.
“I’m Vicki Allegretti, as I said at the door, and this is my friend Reheema Bristow. Thank you so much for letting us in.”
“Fine,” Mrs. Bethave said coldly. “I don’t have a lot of time. Soon as the sitter gets here, I gotta get to work.”
“Okay, I’ll make this quick. We’re here because I just met a man named Chucky, who lives a few blocks away on Jefferson Street. Do you know Chucky?”
“Everybody knows Chucky.” Mrs. Bethave half-smiled, but Vicki was watching Albertus for a reaction. The boy had huge brown eyes and a somber milk mustache.
“Chucky said that last weekend, on Sunday afternoon, he paid your son Albertus five dollars for a cell phone that he had.”
Albertus blinked, one movement of his baby-camel’s eyelashes.
Vicki continued, “I need to know if that’s true, and if it is, where Albertus got the cell phone, and when.”
“Why do you want to know?”
“It’s my cell phone and it was taken from me—”
“Albertus don’t steal.”
“I didn’t mean that. Of course he doesn’t. The phone was stolen from me by a woman who was later murdered.” Vicki gestured to Reheema. “Her mother, Arissa Bristow.”
Mrs. Bethave’s eyes shifted to Reheema and back again.
“The cell phone was an unusual one,” Vicki said. “It had a cover with blue daisies on it. It was pretty.”
Albertus blinked again, his forehead creased with the guileless anxiety of a child. He was afraid he was going to get in trouble.
“I think that whoever stole my cell phone from Mrs. Bristow might have information about who killed her.”
“Or mighta killed her hisself,” Mrs. Bethave shot back, her tone colder.
“Yes, of course, that’s possible. We’re following the cell phone back in time, to see where it leads.” Vicki tensed, now that their cards were on the table, and Mrs. Bethave must have sensed it, too, because she turned to Reheema.
“You wanna know who killed your mama.”
“Yes, I do,” Reheema said, and Mrs. Bethave turned back to Vicki.
“What about you? Why’d you care?”
Reheema answered for her, “She’s my friend.”
Wow.
Mrs. Bethave thought a minute, then looked down at Albertus. “Mook, you know what these ladies talkin’ ’bout?”
Albertus glanced timidly up at her face, then nodded.
Yes! Vicki felt like cheering.
“Look at me, son.” Mrs. Bethave cupped Albertus’s chin and turned his face up to her. “Chucky gave you fi’ dollars for the phone?”
Albertus nodded, his chin tight in his mother’s hand.
“Where’d you get that phone? You find it somewhere?”
Albertus shook his head, no.
“Then where’d you get it?”
Albertus raised his hands and signed rapidly, his dark fingers flying, and Vicki held her breath for the translation. Chucky had told her that the little boy was deaf and that he read lips.
Albertus finished signing, and Mrs. Bethave’s eyes filled with alarm. Her hand dropped from his chin and her lips parted. She jumped to her feet so abruptly, she bumped the three-ring notebook, startling all of them.
“Oh no! No, no, no!” Suddenly panicky, Mrs. Bethave hurried around the table and almost lifted Vicki bodily from her chair. “Go now, out, you two! That’s the way it is, you two got to go.”
“Mrs. Bethave, please, what did he say?” Vicki
rose rather than be thrown out, but Reheema stood her ground.
“I’m not goin’ anywhere, lady! Whoever gave him that phone killed my mother! Who gave it to him?”
“I can’t, I can’t say, you have to go.”
“I need to know who!”
“You wanna get my child killed?” Mrs. Bethave shouted back, standing toe-to-toe with Reheema. With a mother’s ferocity, Mrs. Bethave more than matched the taller and younger woman. “I’ll never tell, no matter what! That man is a killer! He kills for money and he’ll kill my boy, sure as we stand!”
He kills for money? The words broke the standoff, and Vicki and Reheema exchanged looks.
“Go! Don’t tell anybody you were here!” A terrified Mrs. Bethave shooed them both out of the kitchen and to the front door. “Please! Jesus!”
“Wait, no!” Reheema shouted, recovering first, but Mrs. Bethave had pulled open the door and was physically pushing them out into the cold.
“Never tell anybody you were here, never!”
Mrs. Bethave slammed the door closed and dead-bolted it with a loud, final ca-thunk.
Vicki steered the Intrepid onto the cross street, driving from the Bethave house faster than necessary. She worried for Mrs. Bethave’s safety and for Albertus, and it had been all she could do to stop Reheema from breaking down the Bethaves’ front door.
“Look, we got our answer, for the present time,” Vicki said. “We followed my phone down the line and we know where it ends. And it leads to another question. Why did she say it was someone who kills for money? What did she mean by that?”
Reheema was shaking her head. “I shoulda broken down that door.”
“I had assumed it was an opportunistic crime. An addict or someone from the neighborhood.” Vicki thought back to that night, to poor Arissa straggling in only her housedress down the cold street. The older woman had been easy prey for anyone, but Vicki didn’t need to draw a picture for her grieving daughter. “It doesn’t seem likely it was a murder for hire. Maybe that’s not what she meant. You think that’s what she meant?”
“You can sit here and guess all you want, but Bethave knows who killed my mother.”
“And we’re not going to get her killed for it, or that little boy. She’s protecting her family.”
“And I’m protecting mine. I shoulda beat it out of her.”
“You don’t mean that, and she wouldn’t have told you anyway.” Vicki looked over to double-check, but it was darkening in the car, and Reheema had her sunglasses on. “Look, it’s getting late. Let’s grab something to eat and go over to Cater.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Then let’s go over to Cater now and pick up the black van. It’s dark, and I feel better.”
“I feel worse.” Reheema was still shaking her head. “She knows who did it, and we’re drivin’ away like it’s nothin’.”
“We’ll figure it out, just give me some time.” Vicki tried to think of a lawful solution but kept coming up dry. “If we tell the cops, that’ll put her in danger, and she’ll deny she said anything anyway. At least we know where she lives and we have the information.”
“What if she leaves?”
“She won’t. She has a job and a kid in school.”
“What about witness protection? Don’t the feds do that all the time?”
“Only for federal crimes, like racketeering. Murder is a state-law crime.”
Reheema scoffed. “Lawyer talk.”
“I’m sorry,” Vicki said, meaning it. She had been raised with a reverence for her profession, but for the first time, she was beginning to understand what people meant by legalese.
“You talk about making sense, now something else makes sense. I couldn’t figure why a killer would give up a cell phone like that. But he gives it to a kid who can’t talk.”
“Yeah.” Vicki nodded. It was why Chucky hadn’t known when or where Albertus had gotten the phone. The child hadn’t been able to tell him.
“But why not throw the phone away? Why take it at all?”
“Maybe he liked Albertus, was trying to do him a favor.”
“A killer with a heart of gold. Stabbed my mother to death. We should go back.”
“No.”
“Turn around. I want to go back.”
“No.”
“I’ll go back without you. Ditch you like you ditched me.”
“Then I won’t let you out of my sight. We’ll have a sleepover at your house. I’ll bring the nail polish. You got popcorn?” Vicki accelerated into light traffic, which had picked up now that people were coming home from work. She switched lanes, then took a right, a left, and another right, and in time, Reheema looked over.
“Where you goin’?”
“Cater Street.”
“Then turn around, Harvard,” Reheema said, with a soft chuckle, and Vicki knew they were back on track.
Darkness descended as Vicki and Reheema sat in the front seat of the Intrepid, parked near the end of Cater. They’d found a new parking space across the street; they were changing things to avoid signaling the watchers, and now that they’d identified the van, didn’t need to see it pull up in front of the vacant lot.
“They’ll pull in from the far side, and we’ll see them when they come out. This is safer.” Vicki eyed the watcher at their end of the street, four houses up from the corner. He wore a long green army coat and a dark knit cap, and he tended to face the other end of the street. “It helps that the action comes from the far side. We caught a break.”
“Yeah.” Reheema’s tone echoed in the cold, hollow interior of the car. She had grown progressively quieter since their discovery at the Bethaves’ house, and Vicki’s heart went out to her.
“We’ll find your mother’s killer.”
“You’re damn right, we will. Your way or mine.”
Vicki let it go, her eyes retrained on the dark street. Thick clouds conspired to hide the moon. “Hope we didn’t miss the run to the supplier’s.”
“Yeah.” Reheema checked the car’s dashboard clock. “It’s seven already. Won’t your boyfriend wonder where you are?”
“I left him a note, saying I’d be out shopping.”
“He’ll believe that?”
“I shop a lot.” Vicki reached in her pocket for her cell. “I figured I’d call him about now and say hi.”
“Go for it.”
Vicki retrieved the phone and flipped it open, making a bright blue spot in the car. She was about to press in Dan’s cell number when she heard a car engine and looked up.
“It’s them!” Reheema said, pointing needlessly, as the black van veered around the corner, spraying snow.
Vicki closed the phone and twisted on the ignition, and they took off.
THIRTY-SEVEN
An hour later, Vicki and Reheema had successfully followed the black van from Devil’s Corner through the city to a seamy section of Southwest Philly, on Getson Street, not ten blocks from Aspinall, where Browning lived. Dilapidated row houses lined the street, but lights shone from within some. Vicki could see that people lived here, but not as many or as middle class as the solid families of Devil’s Corner. Fewer cars stood parked outside and many of the houses were dark shells, tall black rectangles that stood out like missing teeth against the lighted homes.
Vicki pulled into an empty space near the end of the street, about six houses down from the row house that Eagles Coat had gone into with his gym bag. As far as she could tell in the dark, the row house was number 8372 Getson; it was two stories of brick facade with a tumbledown front porch and snowy AstroTurf on its front steps. Lights were lit inside but curtains covered the windows. Getson Street stood silent except for the occasional car driving down it, and nobody walked dogs or set out trash; it was too cold or dangerous for anybody to be outside tonight. On one corner was a seedy bar, and at the corner opposite a lighted yellow sign read THE RITE SPOT; it hung over a mom-and-pop grocery store, with black bars covering the door and a smudgy p
lastic window, a bulletproof square of fluorescent light.
Vicki cut the ignition. “Maybe this is his work home, or whatever they call it.”
“Yeah.” Reheema looked around, sliding off her sunglasses. “This neighborhood isn’t nice enough to be where he lives.”
“Good, and it’s only eight, he has to be still doing business tonight.” Vicki double-checked the clock. “Maybe he’ll even pay a visit to his connect.”
“It’s possible. You got the gun?”
“We won’t need it.”
“Probably not, it’s not like they’re violent or anything.” Reheema smiled. “Is it still in your purse?”
“Not telling.”
“Backpack?”
“No comment.” Actually, Vicki had moved the gun to her left coat pocket, where it could shoot out an ovary.
“Have it your way.”
“The plan is we wait and we watch. Then if we see Toner, we call the cops. Otherwise, we follow where they go and give that info to the cops.”
“You sure you don’t want to gimme my gun?”
“Absolutely not.” Vicki eased back in the driver’s seat, her adrenaline buzzing. It had been more exciting to follow the van than she wanted to admit and she became acutely aware of her body; the residual ache of the teenager’s blows still hurt her sides, and she could almost recall the tenderness of last night, in bed with Dan. So much had happened in such a short time, since Morty had been killed. Vicki felt oddly as if she’d lived her entire life in one week and realized that perhaps she hadn’t been living it well enough before.
“You should call your boyfriend. We don’t want him calling later.”
“Yeah, thanks. I’ll make sure of it.” Vicki retrieved her phone from her purse, covered the blue light so it didn’t give them away, and pressed speed dial for Dan. His phone rang, then his voicemail picked up, and Vicki faked a light tone. “Hey, babe, I’m out shopping and ran into an old friend from law school, so I’ll be home late. This new phone keeps cutting out, so if you can’t get through, don’t worry. See you way later or I’ll call. Love you.” She hit the Power button, turned off the phone, and slipped it back into her pocket. “Okay, we won’t be interrupted.”