Sampson led me into the backyard, where even more friends were waiting in ambush. Sampson had on baggy black shorts, a pair of combat boots, and his shades. He wore a beat-up Homicide cap and had a silver loop in one ear. He was definitely ready to party, and so was I.
Detectives from all around D.C. had come to offer their hearty congratulations, but also to eat my food and drink my liquor.
Succulent kabobs and racks of baby-back ribs were arranged beside homemade breads, rolls, and an impressive array of hotsauce bottles. It made my eyes water just to look at the feast. Aluminum tubs overflowed with beer and ale and soda pop on ice. There was fresh corn on the cob, colorful fruit salads, and summer pastas by the bowlful.
Sampson grabbed my arm tight, and hollered so I could hear him over the noise of joyful voices and also Toni Braxton wailing her heart out on the CD Player. “You party on, Sugar. Say hello to all your other guests, all your peeps. I plan to be here until closing time.”
“I’ll catch you later,” I told him. “Nice boots, nice shorts, nice legs.”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you. You got that son of a bitch, Alex! You did the right thing. May his evil, hair-bag ass burn and rot in hell. I’m just sorry I wasn’t there with you.”
Christine had taken a quiet spot in the corner of the yard under our shade tree. She was talking with my favorite aunt, Tia, and my sister-in-law, Cilla. It was like her to put herself last on the greeting line.
I kissed Tia and Cilla, and then reached out and gave Christine a hug. I held her and didn’t want to let go. “Thank you for coming here for all this madness,” I said. “You’re the best surprise of all.”
She kissed me, and then we pulled apart. I think we were overly conscious that Damon and Jannie had never seen us together. Not like this anyway.
“Oh shit,” I muttered. “Look there.”
The two little devil-demons were watching us. Damon winked outrageously, and Jannie made an okay sign with her busy and quick little fingers.
“They’re way, way ahead of us,” Christine said and laughed. “Figures, Alex. We should have known.”
“Why don’t you two head on up to bed?” I kidded the kids.
“It’s only six o’clock, Daddy!” Jannie yelped, but she was grinning and laughing and so was everybody else.
It was a wild, let-loose party and everybody quickly got into the spirit. The monkey of Gary Soneji was finally off my back. I spotted Nana talking to some of my police friends.
I heard what she was saying as I passed. It was pure Nana Mama. “There is no history that I know of that has led from slavery to freedom, but there is sure a history from the slingshot to the Uzi,” she said to her audience of homicide detectives. My friends were grinning and nodding their heads as if they understood what she was saying, where she was coming from. I did. For better or for worse, Nana Mama had taught me how to think.
On the lighter side there was dancing to everything, from Marsalis to hip-hop. Nana even danced some. Sampson ran the barbecue in the backyard, featuring hot-and-spicy sausages, barbecued chicken, and more ribs than you would need for a Redskins tailgate party.
I was called upon to play a few tunes, so I banged out “’S Wonderful,” and then a jazzy version of “Ja Da” — “Ja da, Ja da, Ja da, jing, jing, jing!”
“Here’s a stupid little melody,” Jannie hammed it up at my side, “but it’s so soo-thing and appealing to me.”
I grabbed some slow dances with Christine as the sun set and the night progressed. The fit of our bodies was still magical and right. Just as I remembered it from the Rainbow Room. She seemed amazingly comfortable with my family and friends. I could tell that they approved of her big time.
I sang along with a Seal tune as we danced in the moonlight. “No, we’re never going to survive — Unless — We get a little cra-azy.”
“Seal would be sooo proud,” she whispered in my ear.
“Mmm. Sure he would.”
“You are such a good, smooth dancer,” she said against my cheek.
“For a gumshoe and a flatfoot,” I said. “I only dance with you, though.”
She laughed, and then punched my side. “Don’t you lie! I saw you dancing with John Sampson.”
“Yes, but it didn’t mean anything. It was only for the cheap sex.”
Christine laughed and I could feel a small quiver in her stomach. It reminded me of how much life she had in her. It reminded me that she wanted kids, and that she ought to have them. I remembered everything about our night at the Rainbow Room, and afterward at the Astor. I felt as if I had known her forever. She’s the one, Alex.
“I have summer school in the morning,” Christine finally told me. It was already past midnight. “I brought my car. I’m okay. I’ve been drinking kiddie cocktails mostly. You enjoy your party, Alex.”
“You sure?”
Her voice was firm. “Absolutely. I’m fine. I’m cool. And I’m outta here.”
We kissed for a long time, and when we had to come up for air, we both laughed. I walked her out to her car. “Let me drive you home at least,” I protested as I stood with my arms around her. “I want to. I insist.”
“No, then my car would still be here. Please enjoy your party. Be with your friends. You can see me tomorrow, if you like. I’d like that. I won’t take no for an answer.”
We kissed again, and then Christine got in her car and drove away to Mitchellville.
I missed her already.
Chapter 66
I COULD STILL feel Christine’s body against me, smell her new Donna Karan perfume, hear the special music of her voice. Sometimes you just get lucky in life. Sometimes the universe takes care of you pretty good. I wandered back to the party taking place in my house.
Several of my detective friends were still hanging out, including Sampson. There was a joke going around about Soneji having “angel lust.” “Angel lust” was what they called cadavers at the morgue with an erection. The party was going there.
Sampson and I drank way too much beer, and then some B&B on the back porch steps — after everyone else was long gone.
“Now that was a hell of a party,” Two-John said. “The all-singing, all-dancing model.”
“It was pretty damn good. Of course, we are still standing. Sitting up anyway. I feel real good, but I’m going to feel pretty bad.”
Sampson was grinning and his shades were placed slightly crooked on his face. His huge elbows rested on his knees. You could strike a match on his arms or legs, probably even on his head.
“I’m proud of you, man. We all are. You definitely got the twenty-thousand-pound gorilla off your back. I haven’t see you smiling so much in a long, long while. More I see of Ms. Christine Johnson, the more I like her, and I liked her to begin with.”
We were on the porch steps, looking over Nana’s garden of wildflowers, her roses that bloomed so abundantly, and garden lilies, looking over the remains of the party, all that food and booze.
It was late. It was already tomorrow. The wildflower garden had been there since we were little kids. The smell of bonemeal and fresh dirt seemed particularly ageless and reassuring that night.
“You remember the first summer we met?” I asked John. “You called me watermelon-ass, which burned me, because it was complete bullshit. I had a tight butt, even then.”
“We tangled good in Nana’s garden, right in the brier patch over yonder. I couldn’t believe you would tangle with me. Nobody else would do that, still don’t. Even back then you didn’t know your limitations.”
I smiled at Sampson. He finally had taken off his shades. It always surprises me how sensitive and warm his eyes are. “You call me watermelon-ass, we’ll tangle again.”
Sampson continued to nod and grin. Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen him smiling so much in a long while. Life was good tonight. The best it had been in a while.
“You really like Ms. Christine. I think you’ve found yourself another special person. I’m sure of it. Yo
u’re down for the count, champ.”
“You jealous?” I asked him.
“Yeah, of course I am. Damn straight, Christine is all that and a bag of chips. But I would just fuck it up if I ever found somebody sweet and nice like that. You’re easy to be with, Sugar. Always have been, even when you had your little watermelon-ass. Tough when you have to be, but you can show your feelings, too. Whatever it is, Christine likes you a lot. Almost as much as you like her.”.
Sampson pushed himself up off the sagging back porch step, which I needed to replace soon.
“God willing, I’m going to walk on home. Actually, I’m going to Cee Walker’s house. The beautiful diva left the party a little early, but she was kind enough to give me a key. I’ll be back, pick up my car in the morning. Best not to drive when you can hardly walk.”
“Best not to,” I agreed. “Thanks for the party.”
Sampson waved good-bye, saluted, and then he went around the corner of the house, which he bumped on the way out.
I was alone on the back porch steps, staring out over Nana’s moonlit garden, smiling like the fool I can be sometimes, but maybe not often enough.
I heard Sampson call out. Then his deep laugh came from the front of the house.
“Good night, watermelon-ass.”
Chapter 67
I CAME FULLY awake, and I wondered what I was afraid of, what the hell was happening here. My first conscious fear was that I was having a heart attack in my own bed.
I was spacey and woozy, still flying high from the party. My heart was beating loudly, thundering in my chest.
I thought that I had heard a deep, low, pounding noise from somewhere inside the house. The noise was close. It sounded as if a heavy weight, maybe a club, had been striking something down the hallway.
My eyes weren’t adjusted to the darkness yet. I listened for another noise.
I was frightened. I couldn’t remember where I left my Glock last night. What could possibly make that heavy pounding sound inside the house?
I listened with all the concentration I could command.
The refrigerator purred down in the kitchen.
A distant truck changed gears on the mean streets.
Still, something about that sound, the pounding noise, bothered me a lot. Had there even been a sound? I wondered. Was it just the first warnings of a powerful headache coming on?
Before I realized what was happening, a shadowy figure rose from the other side of the bed.
Soneji! He’s kept his promise. He’s here in the house!
“Aaagghhgghh!” the attacker screamed and swung at me with a large club of some sort.
I tried to roll, but my body and mind weren’t cooperating. I’d had too much to drink, too much party, too much fun.
I felt a powerful blow to my shoulder! My whole body went numb. I tried to scream, but suddenly I had no voice. I couldn’t scream. I could barely move.
The club descended swiftly again — this time it struck my lower back.
Someone was trying to beat me to death. Jesus, God. I thought of the loud pounding sounds. Had he gone to Nana’s room first? Damon and Jannie’s? What was happening in our house?
I reached for him and managed to grab his arm. I yanked hard and he shrieked again, a high-pitched sound, but definitely a man’s voice.
Soneji? How could it be? I’d seen him die in the tunnels of Grand Central Station.
What was happening to me? Who was in my bedroom? Who was upstairs in our house?
“Jannie? Damon?—” I finally mumbled, tried to call to them. “Nana? Nana?”
I began scratching at his chest, his arms, felt something sticky, probably drawing blood. I was fighting with only one arm, and barely able to do that.
“Who are you? What are you doing? Damon! Damon!” I called out again. Much louder this time.
He broke loose and I fell out of the bed, face first. The floor came at me hard, struck, and my face went numb.
My whole body was on fire. I began to throw up on the carpet.
The bat, the sledgehammer, the crowbar, whatever in hell it was — came down again and seemed to split me in two. I was burning up with pain. Ax! Has to be ax!
I could feel and smell blood everywhere around me on the floor. My blood?
“I told you there was no way to stop me!” he screamed. “I told you.”
I looked up and thought I recognized the face looming above me. Gary Soneji? Could it possibly be Soneji? How could that possibly be? It couldn’t!
I understood that I was dying, and I didn’t want to die. I wanted to run, to see my kids one more time. Just one more look at them.
I knew I couldn’t stop the attack. Knew there was nothing I could do to stop this horror from happening.
I thought of Nana and Jannie, Damon, Christine. My heart ached for them.
Then I let God do His will.
Part Four
Thomas Pierce
Chapter 68
MATTHEW LEWIS happily drove the graveyard shift on the city bus line that traveled along East Capitol Street in D.C. He was absently whistling a Marvin Gaye song, “What’s Going On,” as he piloted his bus through the night.
He had driven this same route for nineteen years and was mostly glad to have the work. He also enjoyed the solitude. Lewis had always been a fairly deep thinker, according to his friends and Alva, his wife of twenty years. He was a history buff, and interested in government, sometimes a little sociology, too. He had developed the interests in his native Jamaica and had kept up with them.
For the past few months, he had been listening to self-improvement tapes from an outfit called the Teaching Company, in Virginia. As he rode along East Capitol at five in the morning, he was really getting into an excellent lecture called “The Good King — the American Presidency Since the Depression.” Sometimes he’d knock off two or three lectures in a single night, or maybe he’d listen to a particularly good tape a couple of times in a night.
He saw the sudden movement out of the corner of his eye. He swerved the steering wheel. The brakes screeched. His bus skidded hard right and would up diagonally across East Capitol.
The bus emitted a loud hiss. There wasn’t any traffic coming, thank goodness, just a string of green lights as far as he could see.
Matthew Lewis threw open the bus doors and climbed out. He hoped he’d missed whoever, or whatever, had run into the street.
He wasn’t sure, though, and he was afraid of what he might find. Except for the drone of his tape inside the bus, it was quiet. This was so weird, and as bad as can be, he thought to himself.
Then he saw an elderly black woman lying in the street. She was wearing a long, blue-striped bathrobe. Her robe was open and he could see her red nightgown. Her feet were bare. His heart bucked dangerously.
He ran across the street to help her, and thought he was going to be sick. In his headlights he saw that her nightgown wasn’t red. It was bright red blood, all over her. The sight was gruesome and awful. It wasn’t the worst thing he’d encountered in his years on the night route, but it was right up there.
The woman’s eyes were open and she was still conscious. She reached out a frail, thin arm toward him. Must be domestic violence, he thought. Or maybe a robbery at her home.
“Please help us,” Nana Mama whispered. “Please help us.”
Chapter 69
FIFTH STREET was blocked off and completely barricaded to traffic! John Sampson abandoned his black Nissan and ran the rest of the way to Alex’s house. Police cruiser and ambulance sirens were wailing everywhere on the familiar street that he almost thought of as his own.
Sampson ran as he never had before, in the grip of the coldest fear of his life. His feet pounded heavily on the sidewalk stone. His heart felt heavy, ready to break. He couldn’t catch a breath, and he was certain he would throw up if he didn’t stop running this second. The hangover from the night before had dulled his senses, but not nearly enough.
Metro police
personnel were still arriving at the confused, noisy, throbbing scene. Sampson pushed his way past the neighborhood looky-loos. His contempt for them had never been more obvious or more intense. People were crying everywhere Sampson looked — people he knew, neighbors and friends of Alex. He heard Alex’s name being spoken in whispers.
As he reached the familiar wooden picket fence that surrounded the Cross property, he heard something that turned his stomach inside out. He had to steady himself against the whitewashed fence.
“They’re all dead inside. The whole Cross family gone,” a pock-faced woman in the crowd was shooting off her mouth. She looked like a character from the TV show Cops, had the same crude lack of sensitivity.
He spun round toward the source of the words, toward the hurt. Sampson gave the woman a glazed look and pushed forward into the yard, past collapsible sawhorses and yellow crime-scene tape.
He took the front porch steps in two long, athletic strides, and nearly collided with EMS medics hurrying a litter out of the living room.
Sampson stopped cold on the Cross’s front porch. He couldn’t believe any of this. Little Jannie was on the litter and she looked so small. He bent over, and then collapsed hard on his knees. The porch shook beneath his weight.
A low moan escaped his mouth. He was no longer strong, no longer brave. His heart was breaking and he choked back a sob.
When she saw him, Jannie started to cry. “Uncle john, Uncle John.” She said his name in the tiniest, saddest, hurt voice.
Jannie isn’t dead, Jannie is alive, Sampson thought, and the words almost tumbled out of his mouth. He wanted to shout the truth to the looky-loos. Stop your damn rumors and lies! He wanted to know everything, all at once, but that just wasn’t possible.
Sampson leaned in close to Jannie, his goddaughter, whom he loved as if she were his own child. Her nightgown was smeared with blood. The coppery smell of blood was strong and he was almost sick again.