Slowing down, he sidled up to the alley and peered around the edge of the brick wall. When he did, his suspicions were confirmed.
The girl with the gun in her hand was holding one man at bay, while a second man with dreadlocks stood in back of the first, holding what looked like a gun of his own.
The officer's eyes stretched wide as he ducked back and flattened himself against the wall. His suddenly damp blond hair matted against his scalp as he drew his gun.
He looked toward the wagon and saw that his partner was in the back with the girl. He reached for his radio, and realized, with a muffled curse, that he'd left it on his seat.
As he did so, he remembered the description he'd heard just a few minutes before. And his anxiety became full-blown fear.
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“I ain't gon' hurt you, baby,” the driver whispered as he inched ever closer to Keisha. “Just like you ain't gon' hurt me. Right?”
She was still trying to convince herself to shoot when, suddenly, he lunged at her.
She shut her eyes and gripped the gun. A shot split the air like thunder, and the driver fell just inches from her lap.
When Keisha opened her eyes, she saw the dead man lying on his side, his lifeless eyes stretched wide. Jamal was standing at the end of the alley, his right arm still pointing the gun as the smoke that rose from the barrel shrouded his face.
His dreadlocks draped his shoulders as his chest heaved up and down, and his brown eyes stared into hers.
These were the eyes that she remembered. The eyes of the boy who'd picked her up after she'd fallen and carried her to safety. They were the eyes of the boy who'd shared her first kiss, the eyes of the man who'd fought off her attackers and saved her life, not once, but twice. These were the eyes she'd seen every night for the past few weeks, and fallen in love with yet again. They were eyes that she wanted to gaze into for the rest of her life.
He watched her with those eyes, unable to move, unable to do anything but hope that she hadn't changed her mind about going with him.
He had disobeyed his father's orders, and killed one of his best men in the process. He was wanted for the police commissioner's murder, and he'd cut almost every tie to his past. His life was as good as over, unless he could live it with her.
As Jamal began to lower the gun and walk toward a frightened Keisha, he didn't care about his life. His only concern was her.
That's why he didn't hear the footsteps approach him from behind.
“Jamal!” the voice came from the end of the alley. “Drop it!”
He dove to the ground, twisting his body in an effort to get off a shot. The figure at the end of the alley took aim and a bullet whizzed past Jamal's ear, striking the ground beside him.
He tucked his chin into his chest, closed his eyes, and rolled
left as another bullet flew. There was a thud, the release of air, and the sound of a body hitting the ground.
This time it was Jamal who opened his eyes to bloodshed. The police officer who'd tried to arrest him lay on his face, and a widening pool of blood spread out from his head. Keisha sat on the ground, her breath coming in quick gasps as she held the gun in her still-trembling hands.
It was all Jamal could do to grab Keisha and run toward the other end of the alley.
It was all she could do to let him.
Frank Nichols
parked the Volvo at Sixteenth and Girard, between a hospital and the sprawling campus of a century-old private school. The car would be inconspicuous there, at least for the time being.
Throwing the car in park, he grabbed his lover by the hand and bolted toward one of the tiny, crumbling streets that lined the surrounding community.
He dragged her up three steps to a seemingly abandoned house and banged on the door while holding his gun at his side. His eyes darted up and down the block, watching for the police.
“How many?” said a voice from behind the tin-covered window.
“Open the damn door!” he snapped. “It's Frank.”
He listened, along with the girl, as a series of locks was disengaged. When the door cracked open, Frank pushed his way inside with the girl in tow, and slammed the door behind him.
“You all right, Frank?” said a young dealer as he looked at his boss with a confused expression.
“Gimme some clothes,” Frank said, ignoring the question as he stomped into the living room.
Without a word, the dealer pointed to the closet, where he and the other dealers kept extra clothing in case they had to change and leave quickly to elude the police.
Frank pulled the girl to the closet with him and began rummaging through it. As he did so, another dealer walked in from the back room with a nine-millimeter tucked into his waistband.
“Frank, I don't want to be here,” the young woman said in a timid voice as the stocky young man groped her with his eyes.
Frank ignored her. “What happened at the bar this morning?” he said, pulling on a pair of jeans and a hooded sweatshirt.
“John Anderson bought some people down there,” said the young man who'd answered the door.
As he spoke, his eyes weren't on Frank. His gaze was on the half-dressed, petrified young woman at Frank's side.
“Somebody started shootin'.”
“Who?” Frank said.
“I don't know. But whoever it was, they killed the commissioner.”
“And nobody called me?” Frank said while stepping into a pair of sneakers.
“Everybody was tryin' to get you, but you ain't answer your phone.”
The wornan's eyes grew wide with fear as she listened.
“Frank, I want to leave,” she said in a trembling voice. “I don't want to be involved with this.”
“Shut up,” Nichols said dismissively.
She looked at him, and for the first time saw him as he was, and not as the debonair older man she'd wanted him to be.
Frank was oblivious to the hurt look she wore on her face.
“Where's Jamal?” he asked the one with the gun.
“They said somethin' on the news about Jamal snatchin' Keisha Anderson and shootin' the commissioner,” he answered. “But ain't nobody seen him since this mornin'.”
Frank grinned. “You ain't supposed to see him,” he said. “When he get everything straight on his end, he'll call me. In the meantime, I got some other shit to take care of.”
The dealers both nodded while the frightened girl tried to get his attention.
“Frank, please,” the girl said, almost begging. “I want to leave.”
“Shut up,” Frank said menacingly. “I ain't gon' tell you again.”
Unaccustomed to being talked to that way, she looked angrily from Frank to his minions.
“Oh, so it's shut up now?” she said, saucily. “Is that what you're gonna tell my mother when she comes back from New York and finds out her man was fucking her daughter in her own house?”
Frank took her face in his hand and roughly pulled her close to him.
“Your mother?” he asked incredulously. “You think I give a fuck about your mother?”
The two young dealers took a step backward as Frank's face contorted into that of a madman.
The girl opened her mouth to speak. But before she could make another sound, Frank slapped her hard across the face, and she fell to the floor in a heap.
“I
own
your mother,” he said, standing over her with a wild-eyed stare. “And I own you, too.”
He looked at his dealers, who smiled like the yes-men they were while the woman tried to drag herself from the floor.
Frank reached down and slapped her again. “You don't get up 'til I tell you to, you understand me, bitch?”
The petrified girl nodded vigorously.
“Good,” he said, reaching into the closet. “Put on these clothes while we shut this house down. Then you got a phone call to make.”
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Nola got off the train at Philadelphia's Thirtieth Street Station, walked across the dimly lit platform, and climbed aboard the escalator for the trip upstairs.
She'd turned off her phone for the final half-hour of the trip, preferring silence to the mangled signal that often made cell phone calls on the train undecipherable.
As she rode up to the terminal, she looked at her screen and saw that she had four messages. She was walking across the terminal, about to check the messages, when her phone rang. She smiled expectantly as she answered.
“Hello?”
“I'm ⦠so ⦠sorry,” someone whispered, then broke down in heart-wrenching sobs.
Nola's smile faded as she listened to the distraught voice on the other end. She stopped walking and stood in the middle of the Thirtieth Street Station, holding the phone to her ear, a dark suspicion rising in her mind.
“What is it, Marquita?” she asked in a demanding voice.
“I didn't mean to do it,” her daughter said, sobbing all the while.
Nola could feel the bile rising in her throat, even before her
daughter spoke the truth she already knew. And along with the sick feeling, something else rose up. It was anger, pure and simple, the kind of anger that a woman feels when she's betrayed.
“I tried to walk away, Mom, but I couldn't,” Marquita said, breaking into her mother's thoughts. “I just couldn't. But I want you to know that I didn't mean to hurt you.”
“Just say it,” Nola spat. “Say it and get it over with.”
There was a long silence on the phone, punctuated by the sound of Marquita's tortured whimpering.
“Tell me!” Nola yelled, as passersby looked at her quizzically.
“I spent the night with Frank,” Marquita said softly.
Nola said nothing. She stood there, her breath barely a whisper, and allowed her daughter to twist in the wind.
She'd always known in the back of her mind that this was a possibility. She'd seen the way his eyes had roamed over her daughter's body on the few occasions when she'd allowed the two of them to meet.
Still, it was a shock to know that he would actually do this to her. No matter how much he wanted to.
It didn't matter that she didn't love him. Nor did it matter that she had other men. The thought of her daughter taking something that belonged to her was galling. It brought her face-to-face with the realities of age. There was always someone younger, and prettier, and more vulnerable. But as Frank and her daughter were about to find out, there were few people who were smarter or more vicious than Nola.
“Can I ask you something, Marquita?” she said coolly.
“Yes,” her daughter said, her voice barely a croak.
“Why would you tell me about it? I mean, why not just keep it to yourself? Let it be your little secret?”
Marquita was silent for a long time.
“The police came to the house this morning,” she said, sounding every bit the little girl again.
“Did they disturb any of my things?” Nola asked.
“No. They just wanted Frank.”
Nola thought about what her daughter had just told her.
“Why would they come to my house for Frank?”
“I guess you didn't hear about it since you were on the train,” Marquita said. “Somebody killed the police commissioner this morning, and some girl is missing, too. Keisha something. They think Frank had something to do with it.”
“Where's Frank now?”
Again, there was a long pause. “I don't know. He got out of the house before they could get him.”
“And where are you?”
“I'm ⦠out,” Marquita said hesitantly. “The police asked me a few questions and left.”
“Did they ask you anything about me?”
“No,” Marquita said nervously.
“Okay,” Nola said, ignoring her daughter's anxiousness in favor of her own.
“I've got some things I need to handle,” Nola said quickly, “and so do you.”
Marquita didn't answer.
“I want you out of my house in an hour.”
Nola disconnected the call and rushed to the taxi stand to take the trip home. She knew she didn't have much time.
On the other end of the line, Frank Nichols took the phone from Marquita. Then he took her outside and pushed her into a minivan for the trip to Center City.
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As he turned the motorcycle onto Jefferson Street, Ishmael reached into his jacket pocket, extracted a remote control, and pointed it toward the garage on an awning-bedecked house in the quiet section of North Philadelphia known as Yorktown.
He pulled into the garage slowly, and parked the bike next to the old car that occupied the garage. Closing the door behind him and removing his helmet, he moved quickly through the garage and jogged up the stairs to the second-floor bathroom he'd used so many times before.
As he turned on the water in the bathtub and began to undress, he tried not to think of what the house meant to him. But he couldn't help remembering, because this house was a constant reminder of the one person who'd reached out to him and asked for nothing in return.
Two years ago, with no real family to turn to after his second upstate prison bid, he was about to return to the embrace of the streets before Anna Thornby stepped in.
The woman he came to know as Aunt Annie had seen something in him during her stints as a volunteer at the halfway house he was remanded to after two years in Albion State Correctional Institution. And so, when it was clear that he would have no place to go upon his release, she took him in.
A kindly old woman with a ready smile and stringent rules, she was everything to him: the mother he'd always wanted, the father he'd never known, and the confidante he'd always needed. It took him a while to open up and trust her enough to reveal his secrets. But once he began to talk, he couldn't stop. He told her about everythingâthe abuse he'd endured at the hands of his mother, his unsuccessful efforts to forge relationships with women, the atrocities he'd committed as an angry young man on the streets.
She listened to him carefully. And when he finished pouring
out his soul, she gently reminded him that nothing was an excuse for failure. No one was to blame for what he'd done. He could only control his here and now, because his past was already behind him. If he remembered those few truths and trusted God to reveal the rest, he would always be able to succeed.
He took her messages to heart, and used them to rebuild himself. First he found a job. Then he opened a bank account. He enrolled in a course to complete his GED. But on the day he passed the test and applied for admission to community college, he came home to find Aunt Annie stretched out on the floor, dead of a heart attack.
Her death made him bitter. He felt that she'd abandoned him, and he vowed to never love again. He couldn't live in the house she'd left him in her will, not with such anger in his heart. Because even in death, she'd see what he had become, and she would be ashamed.
But a funny thing happened when he returned to the streets to lose himself in the vicious rules of the drug game. He broke the only promise that he'd ever made to himself. He allowed his heart to feel.
He'd seen her for the first time walking past him as he shopped in Center City. She smiled at him, and something in him changed. It didn't matter that she was different from any woman he'd ever known. Nor did it matter that he was angry. He spoke to her, and she spoke back. They sat down on a bench on Market Street and talked until the sun went down, and there was no one left on the street but them.
She understood his pain, knew it like she'd experienced it for herself. He loved her because, in her empathy, she made that pain go away. Even now, as he prepared to return the favor, he marveled at the mark she'd left on his soul.