Black Widow (22 page)

Chapter 27

Tricks of the Trade

It was 5
AM
and Isis was up watching an early morning news program with the volume turned down low. There were too many things running around her head for her to get any rest in Lootchee’s guest room. Just being in his house twice in one day had her feeling guilty. Although she didn’t have sex with Lootchee and had no intentions of doing so, she still felt that she was betraying her husband’s trust. And that wasn’t all that had her restless. She was worried about her sister, big time. It wasn’t easy for a person who didn’t live in the state they got arrested in to get
one
bond, much less two. And this was Texas, which was infamous for its harsh criminal laws.

The words
Breaking Story
came up across the national news channel. The newscaster was saying something about a triple homicide in South Beach and sent the viewers live to the scene. Isis grabbed the remote to turn the volume up a bit.

The reporter was standing in front of a house in a neighborhood that was familiar to her. “This is Michael Rosen, reporting live. Julia, we are in front of the house of famed film producer Tre Wilson, where police were called to the scene by a neighbor. What police discovered in Wilson’s house were three dismembered male bodies,” the reporter announced. “Police would not confirm the identities of any of the deceased and would not say whether one of them is that of Tre Wilson. Someone close to the scene said that it appeared that two of the corpses were Caucasian men dressed as women. As of right now, there are no suspects or motives to this horrific crime. We are not sure if it was a hate crime, a double murder-suicide, or a random act of violence. Police are still at the scene investigating and details are still coming in. Just as soon as we have more information, we will pass it on to you. Reporting live from South Beach, Florida, this is Michael Rosen.”

“Thank you, Michael,” the anchorwoman said, before moving to the next story.

Isis was stunned. The first and the last time she had seen Tre was at the club when Logic took his car from him to hold for collateral. Now that she thought about it, there had been something odd about those giraffe-tall white girls he had left the club with, but she hadn’t quite been able to put her finger on it at the time.

Isis remembered that Logic had said that Tre was one of the people testifying against him, so maybe his death was good news. Her man just might come home sooner than she thought, and if so, maybe she finally would have a shot at happily ever after. She tried to call Sly to find out if she knew anything but wasn’t able to get a signal on her cell phone in Lootchee’s house. She drifted off to sleep thinking about all the things she and Logic would do together, only to be awakened a few hours later by a knock at the door, followed by a familiar voice.

“Sweets,” Lootchee called from the other side. “Sweets, are you up yet?”

“Yes,” she said, and yawned.

“You want to come have breakfast with me in twenty minutes?”

“Sure, that’ll be nice.”

“I tried calling your phone to ask you so that I wouldn’t disturb you if you were asleep, but you didn’t answer.”

“Yeah, I can’t get a signal here. Let me get up and pull it together.”

At breakfast Lootchee explained that he had some running around to do and that he’d be back at 12:30 to pick her up so that they could meet with Phoebe’s attorney. He also informed her that she could use his house phone if she needed to make any calls but to be ready when he returned, because they had a lot to do.

Agent Stephen Newman was at home eating an English muffin with cream cheese and drinking a cup of instant coffee. He had been eating the same breakfast every morning for ten years. He was about to take a sip of the instant caffeine jolt when his phone rang. “Damn,” the FBI agent mumbled. “Sorry, Charlie, StarKist is for tuna with good taste.” Newman answered the phone with the same line he had been using on his partner since the first day they had started working together more than three years earlier.

“Did you catch the news this morning?” Jefferson asked.

“You know I never watch that stuff before breakfast,” Newman reminded his partner. There had to be some balance in his life, a moment that didn’t involve work. And he knew that watching the news channel was like getting an itinerary for the day’s work. Newly reported crimes meant new cases to work. “What did I miss?”

“Only that the lead witness in our case against Wiseman was found slumped in his house along with two high-maintenance transvestites. The word I got, all of them had their wieners chopped off.”

Newman used the thumb and index finger of his left hand to massage his temple in a circular motion. “Tell me that this is a not-funny-at-all joke,” he said.

“Like that sorry tuna bit you won’t let go of?” Jefferson asked. “I’m afraid not. But you haven’t heard the funny part yet. The word is that they found Mr. Tre Wilson’s wiener in his mouth with the balls still attached. Besides a lot of blood—all belonging to the victims—the place was as clean as the ashtray in the pope’s car.”

“Okay,” Newman said, “we need to make sure that our other witness against Mr. Wiseman is protected around the clock. I need you to call—”

Jefferson cut him off. “I’m already ahead of you, partner. Our boy has already skipped. He’s in Tahiti. He left a message for us with his sister.”

“This is getting better by the second,” Newman said. “What was the message?”

“You’re going to love this. According to his sister, he never saw or heard about Logic Wiseman doing anything illegal. He said he made it all up because he was mad at Wiseman and other people offered him money to incriminate him. And if we went to get him, he would spend whatever time he was forced to stay in prison before he continued to lie about an innocent man.”

“This is un-fucking-believable,” Agent Newman said. “Do you know what this does to our case?”

“What case?”

Chapter 28

Really Unique

The clock read noon. Isis was dressed and almost ready. She had tried Sly again on Lootchee’s phone and left a message telling Sly she would call her from her phone when she got a signal. As Isis painted on lip gloss, Lootchee’s house phone started ringing and ringing and ringing. At first she ignored it, but it wouldn’t stop. She didn’t want to answer his phone, but whoever it was sure was determined to speak to someone. She wondered if it was Lootchee calling and decided that maybe she ought to answer it after all.

She reluctantly picked up. “Hello?”

“Hello. Who is this?” a friendly female voice asked.

“Who would you like to speak to?”

“Let me speak to Lootchee?”

“He’s not in; can I take a message?”

“Is his sister, Tee, there?”

“No, I’m sorry, she’s not in either.” Isis was getting tired of playing secretary.

“May I ask who I’m talking to?”

“I’m a friend,” Isis replied, and then added, “Don’t worry, I’m harmless.”

“Harmless?” the caller asked. “There’s no such thing. Even a beautiful rose has thorns.” Isis chuckled at the comment. “Well, hopefully you are taking great care of him and keeping him out of trouble,” the woman on the other end of the phone said. “He needs someone who can keep him focused and bring out his good side. I pray that person is you.”

“Well, I haven’t known him a long time and I’m just a friend.”

“An innocent friend wouldn’t be in his house, trust me. He must
really
think a lot of you.”

“Who is this again?” Isis asked because the caller was giving off a crazy vibe that she couldn’t really read. Was this a setup? Had Lootchee had someone call her just to feel her out or feed her some lines on his behalf?

“I’m not anyone. A fly on the wall that’s all. One of his slaves you might say,” she added.

“You’re saying the man has slaves?”

“Yes, and don’t ask. Anyway, it was really nice talking to you. I hope you have a wonderful day, and by the way, let him know that
Unique
called. Tell him that I have some important information for him.”

“No problem, Unique.”

“Be careful, Miss I’m-Just-a-Friend,” Unique said before she hung up.

Be careful? She’s a slave? What the hell does she mean by all that? What does she do for him?

Isis’s thoughts were interupted when she heard the alarm talking. “System disarmed.” Lootchee had arrived. He greeted her with a large bouquet of flowers and tickets to a play on Friday. She had to give it to the man, he was definitely persistent.

“You ready?” he asked. “The driver is waiting in the car.”

“All set,” Isis replied, grabbing her purse and then following Lootchee out to the car.

They were riding in the Phantom on the way to the attorney’s office when Isis mentioned the strange phone call to Lootchee. “Just ten or fifteen minutes ago, your phone was ringing off the hook, nonstop, and I thought it might be you, so I answered it. The caller said her name was Unique.”

Isis watched as the expression on Lootchee’s face changed from happy-go-lucky to majorly on edge. “What did she say? Was she rude?”

“No. Actually, she was very nice. She just said that she worked for you and had some important information for you.”

“I’ll call her.” Isis left it at that and didn’t inquire anymore about the caller, but Lootchee added, “Yeah, Unique is someone who owes me her life. I got her out of a real bad situation.”

“That was nice of you,” she said. “Do you always get women out of bad situations?”

“When I can, yes. She does work for me out east.”

“Oh, okay.” Isis changed the subject. “So what do you think the lawyer will say about Phoebe?”

“I don’t know, but we’re almost there, so we’ll know for sure in a few minutes. So Unique didn’t tell you what the info was about?” Lootchee asked.

“No, she only wanted to speak to you or your sister; that was it. Is she one of your girlfriends?”

“Not at all,” he answered quickly. “She’s not my type—you are.”

Isis kept a straight face but could feel a blush dying to get out.

They pulled into the parking lot of the lawyer’s office, which was on the twenty-third floor. Isis, Lootchee, and Mr. Lumpkin, the lawyer, sat in his office at a table. Lumpkin got right to the point. “I spoke with the prosecutor who will be handling the case, and he’s a real hard-ass,” Lumpkin said. “He’s going to ask for jail time. I know your sister has no prior criminal history with exception of the earlier arrest, and he knows it too. The only difference is that he doesn’t give a fuck.” The lawyer looked to Isis and blushed. “Excuse my French, little lady.”

“You mean that my sister is going to have to do hard time?” Isis interjected.

“Slow down, Ms…. ah…”

“Tatum,” Lootchee said.

“It’s Mrs. Wiseman, actually,” Isis said, correcting him. It seemed to her that Lootchee was trying to disregard her marriage.

“Hear me out, Mrs. Wiseman. I’m saying we need to let her stay in for ten days or so. That way when I go to trial, I can try to persuade the judge to release her on time served if we can’t win the case outright. If not, that damn prosecutor is going to ask for at least a year in jail.”

“A year in jail? And he was whipping her ass. Now, that’s some bullshit.”

“Yes, we all know that, but she didn’t document it anywhere. If we’d had some police reports of her getting abused by him, then she could walk. It didn’t help either that as soon as she got out of jail, she went straight back home.”

Lumpkin spoke with such authority that Lootchee agreed with him too. Isis didn’t want her sister in jail for one minute longer than necessary, but everything the lawyer said made good sense. Lumpkin said he would tell Phoebe what they discussed about the 10-day jail sentence.

Isis and Lootchee went out for a nice lunch after leaving the attorney, but she didn’t have much of an appetite. She just picked at her food as she thought about the mangy jailhouse food her sister was probably eating.

“Are you going to talk to Randy?” she asked.

“I did, and he agreed to drop the charges, but that prosecutor won’t.”

“So what now?”

“Chris Lumpkin is the best, and he will make sure that he will get the best results,” Lootchee assured her.

After lunch, Lootchee dropped Isis back off at the house with a promise that he would be back soon.

Isis called Sly again.

“What’s up, girl?”

“Hey, Isis, you don’t know the half.”

“I saw the news report on TV about that guy, the witness.”

“I know—ain’t that crazy? He got caught with two men, and all of their dicks were in their mouths. And that changes the game for our team in a fantastic way,” Sly said.

“Tell me everything,” Isis said with a smile.

“I don’t really know anything, but I do know you need to keep checking in with me on the regular until you get phone service.”

“You know I will,” Isis said.

“Wait a minute; someone is on the other line. Let me see who this is.”

Isis held on and waited a long time for Sly to come back to the line. Several times she was tempted to hang up and call back, but she didn’t. Then Sly finally did switch back over to her line, and she was so excited that she damn near screamed through the phone. “Ice, you need to come home. Girl, they are going to let Logic out! That was Michael McGetty, the lawyer, looking for you. He said the feds don’t have a case. Logic will be home as soon as the paperwork is done.”