“Jam,” Mr. Briscombe gasped.
Jamal stiffened and moved back into the shadows. “I can’t be seen with y’all,” he said to Grace in a low voice, having no way of knowing, of course, that his grandfather had recently said the exact same thing.
“They beat you back in,” Grace guessed.
“No,” he said. “They didn’t. This was … for something else.”
And then she guessed the truth. “You never really left.”
“Yeah, well,” he said. He exhaled and adjusted his rag. “Okay, I never did.”
“No,” Mr. Briscombe said, groaning. “Oh, no, baby.” He slumped against Grace and she held on to him, propping him up.
“So why’d they beat you up, man?” Ham asked.
Jamal’s face was a twist of stricken guilt as he stuffed his hands into his big, droopy pant pockets. His two-foot-long wallet chain jingled. Grace wanted to shove his pretty white teeth down his throat.
“I told Tyrell the reason I was working at the foundation was so we could figure out how to rob it,” Jamal confessed. “So he wouldn’t give me shit about it.” Tyrell X was the leader of the Sixty-Sixes. “I kept feeding them bullshit about the floor plans and the security guards. Making stuff up. Because they thought I was a pussy for having a job.”
“So far, that’s totally stupid,” Grace said grimly. But she knew it wasn’t the stupidest part of the story.
“So after my brother … after I told them about Malcolm, Tyrell said we should rob it as soon as we could and use the money to buy my first gun. So I could take care of my business.”
Mr. Briscombe sagged further, and Jamal lowered his head. “But Detective Ada’s mama got me that job. So I told Tyrell I got fired.”
“And Tyrell was pissed,” Grace filled in. “So he beat you up.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jamal murmured.
“You do realize you were working for a nonprofit organization,” Grace said. “By definition, they don’t profit. Not a lot of cash lying around.”
“Oh, they had money, all those rich women hanging around that place to make themselves feel good,” he said bitterly. “They had more diamonds than a jewelry store. There was this one lady, she had a driver for her Mercedes.”
He slid a glance at his grandfather. “A black driver, Daddy D, called her ‘ma’am’ all the time. He told me when she isn’t home he pisses in her swimming pool. I never saw one black woman there.”
“You said you was out. You said it was over,” Mr. Briscombe shouted. “You lied to me!”
Jamal jerked as if his grandfather had hit him. “I didn’t want to hurt you. But I had to stay in, Daddy D,” Jamal pleaded. He sounded desperate. And scared. If he could still feel anything, there was still hope. Life in a gang made you so hard, you became an unfeeling shell. “You know that if you leave they come after you. And your family.”
“You should have told me,” Grace said. “You know I would help you. I thought maybe they let you go, since you were only a Hang Around.”
He shrugged, not meeting her gaze. “Tyrell says anyone who leaves is helping the enemy. But I’ve only been doing little shit. ’Cuz of me being a minor.”
Only doing little shit. When Jamal had flipped, becoming her Confidential Informant rather than face hard time for drug possession, he had shared Sixty-Six secrets that might have shocked a younger cop. He’d told her about armed robberies, extortion, pimping, and murder. He’d sworn he hadn’t done anything like that, that his duties included acting as a courier and a lookout. And recruiting more young potentials from his school, Franklin High.
He had told her about the time that Tyrell had ordered three of his soldiers to gang-rape his girlfriend’s cousin, LaMaya, for saying that his girlfriend was “a skinny, skanky bitch ho.” Grace had never been certain that Jamal was not one of the three rapists, but she had hoped he wasn’t. Today she was inclined to suspect that her smiling poster boy for rehabilitation had brutalized that girl. He lied so well.
“I’m sorry, Daddy D,” he whispered. “The Sixty-Sixes, they got my back. We’re going to find whoever did this to Malcolm and make ’em pay.”
Mr. Briscombe’s face turned purple. He doubled his fists and the veins on his neck stuck out; his eyes got so huge Grace half expected them to pop free from his face. He took one lurching step toward his grandson.
“Then you’ll die! You will die!” Mr. Briscombe threw back his head and wailed like an animal.
Jamal stared at him in alarm. “Make him sit down. Get him some water,” he begged Grace.
“Ham, why don’t you escort Mr. Briscombe to your truck. I need to talk to Jamal,” Grace said, training her attention on the gangbanger. She had to keep him here. Keep him connected to her. Talk some sense into him. She knew his shame would drive him away and she couldn’t let him go.
“C’mon, Mr. Briscombe,” Ham urged.
“No! He’s mine!” Mr. Briscombe shrieked, his voice high and thin. He was shaking. “I am not giving him up!”
Jamal looked set to haul ass. Damn it. She had to get a plan B now.
“You don’t know who did it?” Grace asked Jamal.
He shrugged. “We’ve got our suspicions.”
“But you don’t know. Let’s run it another way. You talk to us, tell us everything you know—”
“I don’t know nothing.”
“And we get you and your grandfather out of here.” She gestured at Ham. “We’ve got places we can move you. A safe house.”
Captain Perry could never authorize anything like that—there was no budget for it—but among the squad, they had resources. Ham’s dad had a fishing shack upriver. Butch’s family was loaded; they must own apartments somewhere off the interstate.
For a second—one second—Jamal teetered. He stood on one side of a chasm and gazed across at her outstretched hand. She remembered when Earl had transported her to the Grand Canyon. Felt again the sensation of teetering on the mountaintop, about to fall. And Earl’s hand had caught hers, saving her.
“Talk to me,” she begged Jamal, her hand open. “Like you used to.”
Jamal’s eyes went cold, hooded. His jaw clamped shut as he gave his head one tiny, fierce shake. In that instant, Grace watched him change from a winsome sixteen-year-old to a hard-case felon; and though she’d seen the transformation before—usually much more slowly, based on her years of cultivating CIs—it stunned her like a taser and broke her heart.
“I talked to you. And now he’s dead.” Before she could frame a reply, he rushed on. “You’ll never stop them. You can’t. You’ve got too much in your way. But we can.”
Grace’s heart stuttered. “Stop who?”
“Everyone.” Jamal gazed at Grace with a mixture of disdain, pity, and envy. “Everyone who is doing all this shit to everybody else.” He raised his chin and stared down his nose with his cold, cold eyes. “We’re starting with the May Street Grandes. We got word they might have done it. You know the Robertson Hood? That mixed gang? Gone. Grandes did it.”
So they were blaming the Grandes, and not the Cholos. She filed that away. “But you’re not sure,” Grace said. “So why go after them?”
Jamal didn’t reply. Probably because he didn’t know.
“You’re living in a war that don’t have to be,” Mr. Briscombe protested. “All this hate, it ain’t right. It’s not what your mama would want for you, boy.”
Jamal set his jaw. “You stood up, Daddy D, when you were my age. At the lunch counter and shit. But you thought you got it done when black men could have the same shit jobs as white trash pigs.” His voice dripped with contempt. “Look how you live. Whipped. And afraid.”
“Afraid of you gangbangers.” Mr. Briscombe spit at Jamal’s feet.
“You’re just as afraid,” Ham said to Jamal.
“Screw you. I am not,” Jamal replied, sneering. “I got backup. Lots of it.”
“You’re not my boy no more,” Mr. Briscombe blurted out. “You’re dead, too.”
>
Jamal blinked. There was silence, except for the wheezing of the old man’s increasingly labored breathing. After a few seconds, Jamal’s lips parted and his eyes welled. “Daddy D—”
The old man turned his head. “You don’t have the right to call me that no more. Don’t come back to my house. You want the streets, live on them.”
Jamal was crestfallen. “It’s for Malcolm—”
“It’s not,” Mr. Briscombe whispered. “You don’t care, you don’t—”
“Of course I do! I’ll get out,” Jamal cried, his voice breaking. “I will. After we do what we need to for Malcolm.”
“How? By killing one of their little brothers?”
Mr. Briscombe wheeled away. Ham gently took his arm and led him toward his truck; the shuffle of the man’s feet was like sandpaper against the blacktop.
Grace studied Jamal’s face as he watched his grandfather. He was torn, and that was good. Maybe that would slow him down, buy her some time. She moved in close.
“What if I can find the people who did this? The individuals? And I arrest their asses and get ’em charged?” she asked.
Jamal snorted. “Even with murder one, y’all will just let them out in a year or two. They know that. Our way … is more permanent.”
Shit. Shit shit shit. It was like she was back in that filthy alley, losing that other boy.
“What if it wasn’t the Grandes? What if all you do is piss them off, and they retaliate? Then you’ll take another swing at them for no good reason. And sooner or later, you’ll die. You know that.”
“Everybody dies,” he said. It was what stupid-ass gang members always said.
“Okay, what if you die twenty years after you’re confined to a wheelchair,” she rejoined. “Or after your face is shot off and when women look at you, they scream. It’s not always zero to sixty, Jamal. Sometimes it’s wearing diapers and a big, hairy guy on probation helping you out of bed.”
They had had this conversation before, when she flipped him. Maybe it would work again. Nothing else was working.
“I got to be loyal,” he insisted.
She jabbed her finger at him. “Hey, I put it on the line for you, more than once. Where’s your loyalty to me, man? What if one of your brothers takes a shot at me?”
At that, his hard, battered face softened. “I-I know,” he said. His eyes welled. “But did you see what they did to Malcolm?” He heaved a sob. Jesus, he was a mess. Only three years older than Clay; she had to remember that.
“I did,” Grace said. “It was horrible.” She laid a hand on his arm.
Somehow it was the wrong thing to do. Stiffening, he raised his chin. “We’re both after the same thing. You do it your way. We’ll do it ours. Whoever gets them first, maybe after that I’ll do what you say. You can take us someplace …”
Then he lost the attitude and stared back down at the ground, and Grace knew he was still lying. He couldn’t see himself leaving the Sixty-Sixes, ever, unless it was in a coffin. And what did she think she could do about it? Gallop into their crib, guns blazing, and sling him onto the back of her horse?
Hell, yeah.
Jamal jerked, and Grace heard the vibration of a cell phone in his baggy-ass jeans. His masters, she guessed, tightening the leash. What incredibly bad timing. “Gotta go.”
“No,” Grace said. “Don’t.”
But Jamal turned and ran down the street. Kicking at a bottle, she wheeled around and headed for the truck. Wind caught at the bottle, making it clink along the cracked sidewalk like a broken wheel.
She called Butch, who answered immediately.
“Follow him,” she said.
“On it,” Butch replied.
One block north, a battered gray Corolla started its engine and slowly moved from the curb.
Standing beside the opened passenger door of Ham’s GMC, Mr. Briscombe staggered in the direction Jamal had disappeared, one step, two, three … and then he collapsed on the sidewalk, grabbing his heart and groaning. Gray face, extreme sweating.
“He’s having a heart attack,” Grace cried, racing to the stricken man. As she fell to her banged-up knees beside him, she felt a terrible sense of déjà vu.
Just last night, she’d lost a citizen to death. Today, she sure as hell was putting up a better fight.
“Detective Ham Dewey,” Ham said into his phone. “We need a bus. Here’s my location.”
“You’re gonna be okay,” Grace promised Mr. Briscombe. “You are.”
CHAPTER
FIVE
Three hours later, Ham and Grace arrived at the scene of Malcolm’s hit and run. It was a stupid potholed street two blocks northeast of an OK All Day minimart-and-gas-station combo. The water in the potholes fluttered with the wind. Yards of straining yellow caution tape and sawhorses cluttered the road, while uniforms waved motorists and pedestrians off. Evidence markers were anchored with weights to prevent them from blowing away. Grace visually traced a serpentine double line of them along skidding tire tracks.
Bobby and Butch, who had trailed Jamal to a known Sixty-Six crib, had arrived at the H&R location two hours ahead of Grace. They’d been canvassing the neighborhood, asking locals if they’d seen anyone slam into Malcolm Briscombe, send him flying halfway down the block, run over him, and take off. Because cops were asking, the answer was always no. No one had seen so much as a cat trot across the blacktop.
If just one person would come forward, say something, anything … But the locals believed the police were the bad guys. Always. If anybody was going to do anything about that poor child’s death, it would never be the cops. If looks could kill, Butch, Bobby, Grace, Ham, and the rest of the responding team would be lying in Henry’s fridge, waiting for their brains to be weighed.
Grace pulled out a cigarette, not lighting it, not wanting to contaminate the crime scene any further than the wind, the dirt, the dust, and the birds overhead, nearly shitting on her head. Cold anger kept her head clear. She let herself freeze a layer of ice over that, and she felt pretty much nothing at all.
On the surface, at least.
Two blocks southwest of the chalk outline of Malcolm’s final resting place, the minimart proper sat behind one line of two gas pumps. Tar shingles flapped like playing cards with the gusts; dusty windows advertised a special on cartons of cigarettes and liters of soda, and there was a faded poster for last year’s Tulsa Powwow.
Rhetta came around the corner of the minimart with a young police photographer in tow—male, six-even, cute, intense, nervous. He must be new; Grace didn’t recognize him. He must be scared, waiting for someone to take a potshot at the cops.
Rhetta was dressed for her brand of work: black OCPD jacket with her name embroidered on the left breast; latex gloves, work boots, jeans, and that plaid ruffled shirt. Her dark hair was pulled into a bun, and her thickly rimmed dark glasses rested on the crown of her head. Her face was drawn and there were circles under her eyes. She and Ronnie were losing the farm.
She acknowledged Grace and Ham with a somber nod. “We’ve got some great tire impressions,” she announced. “Pickup truck, definitely. Also, a patch job on the right front tire.”
“That’s six kinds of fabulous,” Grace said. “A distinguishing mark.”
Ham nodded. His phone buzzed and he pulled it out, checking the caller ID. “It’s Indian,” he announced. Indian was their informant on the Haleem drive-by. So maybe there was more good news.
He took the call, listening. “Yeah, good,” he said. “Cool, man. Sure. Alone. Of course.” He clicked his phone shut. “Indian’s hungry. I’m taking him to that coffee shop over by that strip club.”
“They’ve got good onion rings,” Grace offered.
“Why doesn’t Indian like you?” Rhetta asked Grace. Then Rhetta got a call, too, and opened her phone.
“Maybe he’s a Longhorn fan,” Grace answered. “Or he thinks women shouldn’t be in law enforcement. I don’t give it much thought.” She made a face. “Have you e
ver seen him, Rhetta? His face is like a piece of leather, swear to God. And his hair—”
She fell silent as Rhetta held up a finger, asking for quiet. Her mouth dropped open.
“Are you sure? Yes, of course I mean that rhetorically.” She listened hard, face going a bit sour. Then Rhetta flicked the phone shut.
“Henry got three bullets out of the dealer,” she told Grace and Ham. “Ballistics has them.”
“Three?” Grace echoed. “Guys on the night crew said one.”
“The other two shots entered the body at an entirely different angle. Rooftop, most likely. We’re going back over there.” She looked perturbed; Rhetta prided herself on the Crime Lab’s thoroughness. This one was not Rhetta’s fault. She’d only had so much time to process the crime scene, and the ME assistant on the scene had said one bullet. There’d be no need to go all over kingdom come looking for anything else. You did what you could with what you had. The department was as strapped as the rest of the economy. So many cases, so little time.
“Two shooters,” Grace surmised, raising her brows. She thought about her dream, with the kite going up to the rooftop. Maybe that had been symbolic, going up on a roof. Ham looked equally intrigued, although, of course, he didn’t know anything about any of her dreams. “They really wanted that guy.”
“It appears so,” Rhetta said.
“Why?” Ham asked. “He was just a scummy, low-life dealer. A bottom feeder. What’s the motive?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because he fatally poisoned a lot of people?” Rhetta asked.
Grace shrugged and looked at Ham. “Maybe Indian knows. He’s a bottom feeder, too.” She looked at Rhetta. “What have you got?”
“The dealer had no wallet, but I found fibers consistent with leather—very cheap—in his pocket and he was still wearing a wallet chain. Traces of meth were on the chain and the fibers.”
“Was it a robbery? A dealer might have a lot of cash on him,” Grace surmised, “if he was stupid.”