“Yeah, I liked her, too.” Vicki didn’t have all day. “Talk to me about Reheema Bristow. She waitressed here, right?” There had been a note in the file.
“You’re here about Reheema?” Mike brightened, sitting straighter in his black vinyl chair. “Whyn’t you say so? How the hell is she?”
“Fine.” Only because they stopped me from strangling her.
“I went to visit her a couple times, inside. Tell her I said hi, will you?”
“Oh, I’m not her—” Then Vicki caught herself. Mike thought she was Reheema’s lawyer. Well, what’s the harm? “Sure, I will. I’ll tell her you said hi.”
“Thanks. My best to her mom, too. How’s she doin’?’ ”
“Her mom? Fine.” I hope. “Now, you’re a friend of Reheema’s, right?” Vicki was taking her cues from Mike’s demeanor, like a cable TV psychic. “She mentioned you to me. She said you’d be glad to talk to me, if it helped her out.”
“I am. Anything she needs, you just ask.”
“What I need most is information. Background info, for her case.” Vicki thought a minute. “I don’t remember her mentioning anyone but you from here. Didn’t she have any other friends at work? People who know her well? I could use them for character witnesses at her trial.”
“Not really. There’s only the one waitress, the joint is so small. I prolly was the closest one to her, being the boss. I’d be a great character witness.”
“Great, we’ll get to that in a minute.” Vicki made a fake note in her Filofax. “By the way, did she have any boyfriends, that you know of? We don’t get time to talk girl stuff.”
“A boyfriend? Reheema? No way. She worked this job in the day and the housecleaning at night, at Presby, the hospital. She didn’t have the time. She was like a church girl, anyway, you know.”
Church girl? Vicki blinked, nonplussed. “I know, that’s what’s so unfair, with the charges against her. The government indicted her for buying two guns and selling them to someone else.”
“The government can kiss my sainted ass.” Mike snorted. “She would never do that. Reheema was the kind of girl, you know, she took care of people. Her mother, all the customers. Reheema wasn’t ghetto, like some of them.”
Vicki let it go. “Let me ask you something. Why did she work here and at the hospital, if she was a college grad? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“Not at all, I know this ain’t the Ritz. I think she used to work for the city, like a case worker or somethin,’ but she got laid off. I knew she’d leave when something better came along.” Mike was shaking his head. “Then they picked her up. Whatever they said she did, she didn’t do it.”
“How do you know that? I mean, how can I prove it?”
“She never done nothin’ wrong, I’ll come in and testify, I’ll tell ’em. Reheema, she was the best.” Mike pursed his lips, and Vicki read his look. He’d had a crush on her.
“What would you say about her, in detail, if I called you to testify?”
“I’d say she worked the day shift when I started here, opened up each morning, and kept the place always clean as a whistle when I come in. And she took real good care of all the customers. The customers loved her, too. They still ask about her. She worked every day, seven days a week, always on time, super-reliable. The only time she missed work was when her mom was sick. That’s four days in two years.”
“What was her mom sick with?”
“Cancer. Her mom’s big in the church, too.” Mike cocked his spiky head. “Don’t you know, about her having cancer?”
Oops. “Right, she did mention that, but she didn’t go into detail. Reheema keeps the personal stuff to herself.”
“She is quiet, a sweet girl. Very sweet. She’s a beautiful person, inside and out.” Mike got lost in thought, and Vicki could guess where he was going, but didn’t want to follow. “The guys who came in, they’d all hit on her.”
“Of course.”
“But she’d put them off real nice, not to hurt their feelings. And if they got a little too handy, or came in drunk, she could take any of ’em.” Mike straightened in his chair. “You get her offa these charges, tell her she can have her old job back anytime. My business went through the roof when she worked here. Nobody comes here for the food.”
“Great, thanks. Did she ever talk to you about a girlfriend named Shayla Jackson?”
“No.”
“They were best friends,” Vicki said, increasingly puzzled.
“Never heard the name.”
Damn. Were Jackson and Bristow friends or not? Somebody was lying or didn’t know the truth. “How about Jamal Browning?”
“No.”
“Jay-Boy or Teeg?”
“No. She never talked about nobody except her mom. She was a loner.”
“Then how do you think she got mixed up in all this? Any idea? I mean, she just got indicted out of the blue?”
“I wonder about that, sometimes. She sure don’t deserve what happened to her. I think it’s a conspiracy.” Mike sucked his teeth. “The way I figure, somebody set her up. I told her so in my last Christmas card, she mention that?”
“Your Christmas card? Yes, she did mention that. She said it was very thoughtful of you.”
“I send her mom a card, too. Every year.”
Vicki blinked. He hardly looked like the kind of guy to keep a Christmas card list, much less one that included sick mothers. He must have had a major crush on Reheema. Worse than mine on Dan. Vicki hadn’t realized how completely pathetic she was until she started investigating.
“She mention that, too? The card to her mom?” Mike’s eyebrows lifted in a hopeful way. “I ask because I slipped a few bucks in there, you know, like a Christmas present.”
Vicki got an idea. “She never mentioned the card to her mom, which does seem odd. You sure you sent it to the right address? You know, if you send cash to the wrong address, it’ll never get to her.”
“Hmmm, you’re right,” Mike said, leaning forward and reaching across the desk to a grimy old-fashioned Rolodex. He flipped though the wheel of plain white cards written in ballpoint, then stopped at one, and Vicki went over to snoop as he read. “Here we go. Arissa Bristow. Her address is 6847 Lincoln. It’s in West Philly.”
“Sounds right.” Vicki made a mental note. “I’ll check it with Reheema.”
“Appreciate it.”
“One more thing,” Vicki said, deep in thought. None of this was making any sense. Reheema wasn’t earning much at this crummy deli, so she’d have an obvious need to supplement her income by reselling guns. But the whole picture was out of whack. Reheema fit the profile of a typical straw, but it was hard to believe that a church girl or a social worker would conspire to have an informant killed. “Did anybody else come here, asking you about Reheema?”
“No.”
“No detectives?”
“No.”
“Cops?”
“No.”
“How about the feds? FBI?”
“No.”
“Another lawyer? A guy named Melendez, or somebody who works for him?”
“No.”
“Well, thanks,” Vicki said, mystified. What had Melendez intended to do to defend Reheema anyway? “I appreciate your help, and so will Reheema.”
“Sure thing.” Mike rose, a bit of gallantry. “You know, I don’t believe Reheema would even know how to shoot a gun.”
And for a minute, Vicki didn’t either, though she had proof positive that Reheema had bought two and sold them.
Clearly, she wasn’t finished with her errands yet.
THIRTEEN
Vicki had never been in this neighborhood, but something about it had a familiarity she couldn’t place. She was still in West Philly, bundled up in the superbly heated Cabrio. She had no idea why VW had stopped making these cars, but they shouldn’t have. First the Cabrio goes, then The Practice.
She had driven about twenty blocks west and a zillion dollars away from the cam
pus of the University of Penn or even Bennye’s Sandwich Shop, to this rundown neighborhood. Two-story row houses lined the streets, characteristic of Philly, but they were crumbling and scarred with graffiti. Their wooden front porches sagged, the paint blistered and peeling, and some houses had windows boarded up with plywood. Vicki took a right at the corner for the third time, having no idea where she was exactly because the street sign had been taken down. Then she took a right and another left, passing a vacant lot strewn with concrete rubble, beer cans, and other debris, and she finally found Lincoln Street.
She cruised to read the house numbers, crudely painted directly on the brick, fading but still readable. 6837, 6839. At least she was on the odd-numbered side of the street. She had been in bad neighborhoods before at the D.A.’s office, going to question witnesses with and without police escort. She had learned the best way to deal was to be yourself. A very white girl driving a very white Cabrio, conspicuous as all hell in an African-American neighborhood that had seen better days.
Vicki crossed Washington Street, then Jefferson Street; she detected the pattern, now that she was a big-time gumshoe. The cross streets were presidents’ names, but still, they sounded vaguely familiar. In the next second, she remembered. She realized where she had heard about this neighborhood. At home. This was her father’s old neighborhood, Devil’s Corner. She’d never been here, but the name had always intrigued her. There were hundreds of neighborhoods in Philly, all of them named, but few had any relation to reason.
Vicki looked at the houses with new eyes. Her father never liked to talk about his childhood here. The neighborhood had been Italian and Jewish then, the starting place for upwardly mobile immigrant families who puddle-jumped to the City Line area and, if they were lucky, to the Main Line, the classiest of all neighborhood names.
She remembered that the brick house on the corner of Washington Street had belonged to her father’s family. She circled the block, passed the cross street, and found the house, pausing as people do at funerals. It seemed somehow appropriate. Her father’s old house on the corner, a squat two stories, stood obviously vacant and hollowed out, a crumbling brick shell, its windows nailed shut with cheap tin. She experienced a pang of sadness at its disrepair, unaccountably, because she had never been inside. She doubted if her father would shed a tear, either; he never talked fondly of his home or this neighborhood, spoke only of it as having “changed,” which was his code for “black people moved in.” But Vicki wasn’t seeing changed; she was seeing leveled.
There was nobody on the street. She checked her watch: 4:26. Granted, it was cold outside and would soon be dark, but kids should be home from school, playing outside. Adults should be going in and out of their houses, too, whether mothers at home or people out of work. But no one was in sight on these blocks. The streets were oddly deserted. Vicki spotted house number 6847. She slipped into a parking space, cut the ignition, and grabbed her bag and got out of the car. She walked to the house, zipping her coat and finger-combing her hair to meet a church lady. She had been such a hit with Misses Bott and Greenwood, this should be a piece of cake.
Vicki walked to the house and climbed up the concrete steps, which needed to be repaved. The red paint on the front door had alligatored, and a tiny window on the door’s top panel had been duct-taped in place. Vicki was guessing that Reheema’s mother, Arissa Bristow, didn’t have much money. Maybe she gave it all to the church. Or it went for medical bills.
Vicki knocked several times and waited patiently on the sunny front stoop; the door had three locks, including two dead bolts, so she knew it would take time to open. Still, she wasn’t hearing anything. She waited a minute, then knocked again and called out, “Hello? Mrs. Bristow?”
Suddenly, without being unlocked, the front door opened and behind it stood a tall but frail African-American woman. Like her daughter, she wasn’t what Vicki had expected at all.
“Yeah?” the older woman said, slurring her words, almost stuporous. She stood in a flowered housedress that hung on her frame, oblivious to the cold air sweeping in from the door. Her hair, gone gray-white, was sprayed stiff and uncombed from her head. Spittle oozed from the corner of her mouth, and her lips were parched and blistered.
“Mrs. Bristow?” Vicki asked, in surprise.
The woman’s brown eyes registered no response. They had sunk in their sockets; deep folds creased the corners of her eyes and mouth, and she was almost emaciated, her skin stretched so tight that her face was more skull than flesh. Her body swayed slightly, her bony hand evidently hanging on to the doorknob to remain upright, her stick legs in half nylons almost giving out on her. Vicki didn’t know if she was seeing the ravages of cancer, drugs, or both. If the woman was Mrs. Bristow, she should have been about fifty-five years old, but she looked twenty years older, and Vicki wondered if this was the right house.
“Are you Arissa Bristow?”
“Yeah, you got anythin’ for me?” the woman mumbled. Her pupils were a pinpoint and seemed to focus on Vicki without seeing her. “I need to hit, I need to hit. You got anythin’ for me, you got anythin’?”
Drugs. “I wanted to talk to you, about Reheema.”
“Reheema? Reheema?” Mrs. Bristow sounded as if she’d never heard the name.
“Yes, your daughter, Reheema. May I come in?”
Mrs. Bristow opened the door and walked ahead, leaving the front door hanging open, then she shuffled out of the room, as if Vicki hadn’t been there at all.
“Mrs. Bristow?” Vicki called to the receding form, but there was no answer.
A cold draft blew in, so she shut the door behind her and took a quick look around the small living room. The lack of curtains and a southern exposure guaranteed the room would be incongruously sunny, its neglect brightly illuminated. Sun shone on a tattered brown couch, next to a blue beach chair with ripped plastic lattice. Dirt, cigarette wrappers, and old newspapers littered the dark red rug, and the air was thick with filth and stale cigarette smoke. There was no TV, stereo, or radio, and it was almost as cold in here as it was outside. Against the wall, the old-fashioned white radiator had cracked, spilling blackish water onto the floor. The heat must have been turned off, so the pipes had burst. Vicki went into the next room, where she gasped.
Mrs. Bristow lay on a dirty, bare mattress, her eyes closed and her mouth hanging open.
Please don’t be dead. Vicki hurried to Mrs. Bristow’s side, searching her still face, and grabbed her wrist. She was feeling for a pulse when the older woman snored deeply. Vicki started, then relaxed.
“Mrs. Bristow?” she asked softly, jostling her, but the woman didn’t stir. How could Vicki interview her now?
Damn! She scanned the room, stumped for a moment. The floor was strewn with empty Gallo and Thunderbird bottles, and the end table next to the mattress overflowed with crack paraphernalia: an orange glass pipe, another plain pipe, and matches. Empty glassine envelopes of nickel bags, one-inch square, came in pink and purple plastic.
Vicki picked up one of the bags and caught the sweetish whiff of crack; she had prosecuted drug cases in state court and had sniffed more than her share. Her gaze went automatically to Mrs. Bristow’s hands, resting palms up. Burns on her fingerpads, where she’d held a hot glass pipe, confirmed the obvious. Vicki was looking at a long-standing crack habit; she didn’t know if Mrs. Bristow ever had cancer or if she had beaten it, or if those were lies that Reheema had told her boss.
Vicki had questions, but no answers. She checked her watch: 4:45. Reheema would be released from the FDC soon and she might come here to see her mother. Vicki left the sleeping Mrs. Bristow and went into the next room. Fifteen minutes later, she had snooped around the first floor, having learned nothing probative. Empty liquor bottles lay everywhere, some broken. The refrigerator held only fast food and take-out debris; the cabinets were empty except for canned peas, a few loose Newport cigarettes, an open box of Frosted Flakes, and, inexplicably, Libby’s pumpkin pie mix. The grimy kitchen
was overrun with cockroaches too bold to run even from a federal prosecutor.
Vicki checked on Mrs. Bristow, determined she was sleeping deeply, then went upstairs to snoop some more. At the top of the stairs was a small bathroom, and she peeked inside. The stench of human feces almost overpowered her, though the toilet lid was closed. The floor was wet with filth and urine that it was luckily too dark to see. Old rust streaked the sink, and water had frozen in a colossal teardrop at the faucet. A white plastic trash can overflowed with trash and toilet paper. She shuddered, left the bathroom, and went down the hall to the nearest bedroom, in the back of the house.
It was darker here, and cold, but the bedroom was empty, unused. The radiator had cracked in two, draining black water, and the bed and mattress were gone, as was the box spring and the metal rack to hold it; only a darker square remained on the floorboards to tell where a bed had been. A battered end table sat in one corner, and there was no lamp or dresser. Vicki left the room and went back down the hall. If the row house was typical, there’d be another bedroom in the front, facing the street.
She opened the door onto another bedroom, also disemboweled, with everything of value sold off. A lighter square in the floorboards sat against the interior wall, where a double bed used to be, facing the sunny windows. The rug was gone, the empty closet hung open, and a lone battered chair sat in front of a bare corner. She figured a desk used to be there because a cork bulletin board clung to the wall, colorful and cluttered with items, the one cheery sign of human habitation.
She crossed the room and found the bulletin board covered with high school paraphernalia. REHEEMA BRISTOW, read a certificate for the National Honor Society, with a tiny metal pin sunk into the corkboard. A large W made of maroon felt was next to it, with ribbons in red, white, and blue. One ribbon read PENNSYLVANIA TRACK CLASSIC in gold letters, and next to the ribbons, a handwritten list, in a girlish high school scrawl, that was titled Personal Record: