Eyes of the Innocent: A Mystery (34 page)

“No!” Primo replied. “There will be no more checking and rerechecking! You will find it. Now.”

“But I don’t—” Akilah began.

“Perhaps I have not explained myself clearly,” Primo interrupted. “You
are
going to give me what I need. The only question is how much you suffer first. Do I have to make you suffer? Do you need to feel pain?”

“But I—” Akilah started.

“I’ve heard enough,” Primo barked. “Gag her, Johnny.”

I heard the sound of duct tape—a lot of it—being peeled off a roll. Akilah protested but was quickly silenced.

“Now,” Primo said. “Break her arm.”

Akilah struggled and grunted, then gave a muted yelp of pain. Sweet Thang protested, “Stop it! Stop it! You’re hurting her!”

But that was exactly the point. Even with Akilah gagged, the howls poured through my phone, growing increasingly frantic, crescendoing into something that could only be described as animalistic. It stayed at that bloodcurdling pitch for fifteen long seconds until it finally subsided into soft moaning. Just listening to it was horrible. Tommy, who had no trouble hearing it from five feet away, looked like he was going to vomit.

Akilah was starting to talk. But it was impossible to understand what she was saying. Apparently Primo couldn’t figure it out, either, because I heard duct tape ripping and suddenly Akilah’s voice became distinct: “My arm … my arm … Oh Jesus … Oh my God … My arm…”

“Oh, honey,” I heard Sweet Thang start to say, but she was cut off by Primo.

“You touch her, you die,” he spat. “You scream, you die. You move, you die. Davi, make sure she doesn’t move.”

“Get your hands off me,” Sweet Thang squealed.

“He can put his hands wherever he likes,” Primo insisted.

The phone jostled and I missed what came next. Primo was saying something, but it remained unhearable until either Sweet Thang stopped struggling or Davi stopped fondling her.

“… like that,” I finally heard him say. “If you think I can’t break someone, look at what I did to your boyfriend. By the end, he was begging to tell me about the thumb drive.”

Thumb drive. Thumb drive? As in the computer storage device? The kind you plug into the USB port? Why would someone possibly go this berserk just to get a thumb drive?

Then I got it. The thumb drive must have contained a copy of the Excel spreadsheet Denardo told me about, the one where Windy logged all the illegal campaign contributions Primo made. He obviously made a copy for Akilah, as a kind of insurance policy.

In the hands of, say, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, that data file was an indictment, conviction, and twenty-year prison sentence waiting to happen. It would also go a long way to establish motive for a murder prosecution should the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office get to it first.

So it made sense Primo would do anything to either possess or destroy that file or the thumb drive that contained it—burn down a house, torture a man, kidnap and kill two women.

After all, that thumb drive represented his freedom.

*   *   *

The sound of Akilah panting, moaning, or sobbing—or some combination of all three—still filled the phone.

“Now,” Primo said. “Are you going to tell me where I can find it? Or is Johnny going to work on that arm a little more?”

There was no reply. Akilah was tough and stubborn, a kid from the projects who’d surely had some scrapes in her life. But I don’t care who you are, a broken arm hurts like hell. I didn’t know how much more she could take.

“Please,” Sweet Thang pleaded through choked vocal cords. “Please stop. Please, she’s had enough.”

“It stops when she tells me what I need to know,” Primo said. “Johnny, gag her again. I don’t need the neighbors to hear her screaming.”

“Just tell him, Akilah, tell him,” Sweet Thang begged.

I heard more duct tape being unrolled, then more muffled agony. Maybe I was just imagining it, but the sound was different from the first time. There was more anger this time. This was the man who had set her house afire, killed her children, and killed her (ex-) lover. I felt like Akilah was finding the resolve, somewhere deep inside herself, not to give him anything.

There may have been some self-preservation at work, too. Because, really, once Primo had the thumb drive, what incentive would he have to keep Akilah—or Sweet Thang, for that matter—alive? They were just witnesses at that point, and why would he hesitate to kill witnesses? He had already killed three people, one of them a public official. Two more bodies on top of that wouldn’t change Primo’s bet. He was already all in.

I was just figuring this out, but I bet Akilah had already done the math. Now I hoped she could hold on until we got there. We were already approaching the Pulaski Skyway. It wouldn’t be far now. Denardo was pushing ninety when he could, but the road had enough other travelers that he didn’t get many openings. Five minutes. Maybe seven.

There was still the question of what we would do once we got there. It wasn’t going to be physical—there were four of us, sure, but Tommy and I weren’t exactly street toughs, and Hector didn’t have pants on. Denardo was the only one of us you’d draft for your ultimate fighting team. And he was several thousand chicken wings on the wrong side of being in good shape. We’d have no chance against Primo and his thugs, who were armed and, from the sound of things, ruthless.

But maybe we could convince him it was in his best interests to leave the girls and make a run for it. Hell, I’d buy him his ticket back to Brazil or whatever South American country currently lacked an extradition treaty with the United States.

The phone had gone strangely quiet, to the point where I worried I had lost the call. I studied the display—still connected. I pressed the phone harder against my ear, then plugged a finger in my other ear to block out more ambient noise.

Faintly, I could hear Akilah straining to breathe against her gag. We had crossed over the Hackensack River and were bearing down on the Tonnelle Avenue exit, the one for Sweet Thang’s place. Not far now.

Then I heard Primo’s voice.

“Let’s try this again,” Primo said. “I can continue to find ways to hurt you. If you think your arm hurts right now, you can only imagine what it will feel like when I have Johhny here dislocate your kneecaps.”

Johnny actually laughed, the sick bastard.

“So, Johnny is going to remove the tape, and you’re going to tell me where that thumb drive is. Then this ends.”

I heard ripping tape, then Akilah gulping air in between sobs.

“Now,” Primo said. “Where is it?”

Akilah was maybe trying to say something, but her own hyperventilating was making it difficult.

“Does Johnny need to do some more convincing? He can be very persuasive, you know.”

“No! No!” Akilah finally said, whimpering. “Please … please … please…”

Something had changed again in her voice. The anger was gone. She sounded like a wounded little girl. The imperative to avoid pain at all costs had finally won out. Primo had broken her. She was going to tell him, and the next sound I’d hear is gunshots. We were too late.

“Okay. Where is it,” Primo demanded.

“It’s … it’s … it’s in the jewelry box,” Akilah blurted, forcing out the words. “I hid … I hid it in her jewelry box.”

The jewelry box? As in, Sweet Thang’s jewelry box? But that wasn’t in the apartment anymore. That was …

I put my finger on the mouthpiece.

“Turn around!” I shouted at Denardo. “Now!”

“What the … it’s a divided highway, man,” Denardo said.

“Find a way. We’ve got to get back to Newark.”

Primo had been barking at one of his goons to find the jewelry box, figuring it must have been somewhere in the apartment. But it sounded like the guy was coming back empty-handed.

“Where is it?” Primo asked.

Akilah was battling to catch her breath and couldn’t get any more words out. Meanwhile, Denardo barreled down the exit for Broadway, a quirky little left exit that, fortunately for us, was also an entrance ramp on the other side. He hooked around and was soon back on the highway, heading in the opposite direction.

“Where is it?” Primo asked again.

“Akilah, do you mean
my
jewelry box?” I heard Sweet Thang say.

Akilah must have signaled affirmatively because Sweet Thang said, “It’s at a pawnshop.”

“A pawnshop?” Primo asked. “What the—”

“She stole all my jewelry and pawned it,” Sweet Thang explained. “See, after you burned down her house, I felt bad she had no place to go, so I let her stay—”

“Stop talking! You talk too much. I don’t care about your stories,” Primo said. “Where is this pawnshop?”

“I don’t … I don’t know,” Sweet Thang said, her voice rising an octave. “This friend of mine went there and got my bracelet back, but I told him not to bother with the rest of it. He never told me the name of the place. Akilah, honey, please just tell him.”

There was silence.

“Akilah, please,” Sweet Thang begged.

“Tell me or I break your friend’s arm, too,” Primo said.

Finally, I could hear Akilah moan: “M-M-Maury’s.”

“Maury’s Pawnshop. I know where it is,” a new, deeper voice said. It sounded African-American. It must have been one of the goons, probably Johnny—I didn’t know a lot of black guys named Davi.

“I’ll go get it for you, boss,” Johnny said.

“No,” Primo said. “We’re all going to get it.”

Not if we could get it first.

*   *   *

By my best guess, figuring it would take Primo and his entourage at least five minutes to usher the girls down into a car, we had a ten-minute head start on Primo. Ten minutes to negotiate the release of one jewelry box from one slimy pawnbroker. Having seen how Maury operated—speed did not appear to be among his customer service priorities—I just hoped it was enough time.

“Now, it’s just like before,” I could hear Primo saying. “One of these men will have his finger on a trigger at all times. If you want to live, you do as I say. If you try to run, you die. If you scream, you die. If that thumb drive isn’t at the pawnshop, you die. You understand?”

The answer was inaudible, but the rubbing noises coming through my earpiece told me Sweet Thang was on the move again. Then the sound stopped. I looked at my phone, which was flashing. The call had been terminated. Maybe she went into the elevator.

“I lost her,” I said.

“Okay, what the hell is going on? Where are we going?” Denardo asked.

“We’re heading to a place called Maury’s Pawnshop,” I said. “It’s—”

“Oh, I know Maury,” Denardo said. “Everyone in the hood knows Maury.”

I filled in our crew on what I had been able to piece together from my eavesdropping.

“So, basically, we’re using the thumb drive as leverage in a hostage negotiation,” Tommy said.

“Yep,” I said.

“Have you ever negotiated a hostage release before?”

“Nope,” I said.

And we left it at that. As soon as we got off the highway and entered Newark, Denardo flipped his siren back on and began an aggressive grand slalom through the city streets. Presumably, Primo would be obeying traffic laws—what with two kidnapped women in the car—so Denardo’s maneuvering increased our lead by another minute or two. At this point, every second mattered.

We screeched to a stop outside Maury’s, leaving some taxpayer-funded rubber on the asphalt.

“Keep an eye out for Primo,” I told Tommy. “Call me the second you see him.”

I leaped out of the SUV, charged up the crumbled front steps, and burst through the spiderwebbed glass door that separated Maury’s Pawnshop, Check-Cashing, and Payday Loans from the outside world. Inside, the same pudgy Hispanic guy as before—what was his supposed name? Pedro?—was staring at the same overwrought Mexican soap opera. Or perhaps it was a different one. The mustaches looked the same.

I was about to start the whole routine where I asked to see Maury while Pedro stalled us—a dance that would waste precious minutes—but Denardo, who had decided to follow me in, took a shortcut.

“Yo, Tracy, get your black ass out here,” he boomed, loud enough to be heard on the other side of the bulletproof glass. “We got some business to conduct.”

“Maury’s real name is
Tracy
?” I asked.

“Yeah. Between that and the lisp, he got beat up a lot at recess.”

“How do you know him?”

“You been around this city your whole life, eventually you know everyone, one way or another,” Denardo said. “My cousin used to date his sister. They all went to West Side back in the day.”

Maury emerged from the back, his Jheri curls looking freshly lubricated, wearing a lime-green suit and, of course, sunglasses. Again, I couldn’t see the shoes. But I was guessing white imitation-snakeskin cowboy boots. Or perhaps some pointy-toed slip-ons.

Maury slid open the small piece of Plexiglas that covered the airholes and pointed at me.

“You,” he said. “I thpecifically inthtructed you not to return here.”

“Tracy, shut the hell up,” Denardo said. “He ain’t none of your concern.”

Maury looked a little cowed. I wondered if Denardo had been one of the kids who administered those playground beatings.

“Now,” Denardo continued. “You got a jewelry box I need.”

“How would you dethcribe thith…?”

“It’s the one you took off that little skank Akilah Harris.”

“Thkank!” Maury said, like it offended him. “Thuch language!”

“Yeah. Now go back to your little hole and get it.”

“Thkank!” he said again, then turned and disappeared into the stockroom.

A minute passed. Then two. I kept glancing at the clock on my cell phone, watching our time advantage slip by as Maury screwed around. I didn’t want to know what this scene would turn into if Primo got here and we still weren’t in possession of that thumb drive. Would it become an open auction? Or would he just decide to depress the price by shooting the other bidders?

I looked at some of the guns Maury was selling in his display. But they weren’t going to solve anything. Not for me. I had never handled or fired one in my life and wouldn’t know where to begin. Mostly, I found myself yearning to be on the other side of that bulletproof glass, safely ogling buxom Mexican women with Pedro.