Games Divas Play (A Diva Mystery Novel) (16 page)

It was time for rule number three of celebrity relations: show them that you identify with their work in your own life, and then quote their work from their movies, TV shows, or songs bac
k to them.

“Last year I must have worn out your hit song ‘Strong Woman’ when I dumped my own man after finding out he was cheating on me and I got fired from my job all on the
same day.”

“Damn, sis, you broke up with your man and got fired on the same day?” she asked. She still hadn’t answered the call although the phone kep
t ringing.

“Yes, and it was the most painful period in my life, but what got me through were your words: ‘You can’t beat me down. You can’t take my pride. You can’t make me fear. Because I’m a strong woman. Strong woman. Stron
g woman.’ ”

As I sang the last line of the song that I certainly had downloaded on my iPod but hadn’t listened to more than twice, Janelle joined in, her husky voice becoming stronger with each word. She looked down at the phone screen with Tech’s long dreadlocks hanging over his mean mug staring back at her, and she punched “Ignore” on the phone. She turned back to the mirror and stared a
t herself.

“I can do this. I am a stro
ng woman.”

“Yes, you are, Janelle. Yes, you are. And the world needs to hear your music and your story. You’re going to help so many sisters with your powerf
ul voice.”

I wasn’t going to take any chances that she’d get another call from crazy man, so I slipped her phone in the pocket of my sweater and took her hand to help her down from the directo
r’s chair.

“Let’s go make some pretty pictures, girl,” I said as we headed out the door. The room erupted in cheers and applause when we came out of the dressing room. The hair and makeup team started touching Janelle up. When MJ came over to me to give me my bag so that I could leave, I slipped him Janelle’s phone and whispered in his ear that she shouldn’t get this back until after the shoot and the
interview.

Glancing down at my watch, I could see I needed to get a move on to meet Terrence. If Janelle hadn’t wasted most of the day in her dressing room meltdown, I would have been able to preview some of the images, but I had
to leave.

“Hey, Renaldo, make sure you e-mail me some images as you’re shooting. I want to see how things are coming along.” As I grabbed my Louis Vuitton tote stuffed with work from the office, I saw Janelle’s assistant, Aisha, carrying Sunshine and Moon out of the dressing room onto the set, which reminded me of one l
ast thing.

“MJ, make sure you tell Sharan to get all the merch from this shoot. Someone in the entourage thinks they are going on a shopping spree on
our dime.”

When I made my way downstairs from the studio, I saw Terrence leaning against a beat-up gray Linc
oln sedan.

“New ride?” I asked. Dressed in dark jeans and a beige cashmere V-neck sweater and leather jacket, even standing against that beat-up car he still looked good. “This doesn’t seem like the type of chariot your supermodel fiancée would
ride in.”

“Very funny,” he said, making his way around to the passenger side door to let me in. “I checked it out from a buddy at my old precinct so we can go check on som
e things.”

“Oooh, are we going on a stakeout?” I said as I laughed and rubbed my hands together. The comment about the fiancée had just slipped out before I could st
op myself.

I caught another whiff of his new cologne. The smell was nice enough, but I preferred the natural clean soap scent he used to have when we were together. Well that doesn’t matter anymore, I told myself. There’s a new woman calling the shots in that department. Terrence walked around to the other side of the car and got in as I dropped my heavy bag on the floor. I dug around and pulled out the white
envelope.

“It’s not quite a stakeout, but you’ll see, Detective,” Terrence said as he started the car and pulled into the downtown traffic to head south down
Broadway.

“Did you talk to Vanessa today? She’s home, right?” Terre
nce asked.

“Yes, she’s home, but I haven’t talked to her since she left the doctor’s office. She and Marcus are holed up in their apartment. I think they’re trying to keep a low profile with the story about the attack coupled with the affair. I’m sure Kareem and his publicist are working overtime with the Gladiators to calm their concerns. This is not a good way to start off this new relationship. They don’t seem like the type of organization that thinks that all press is go
od press.”

“Definitely not. The Gladiators like to keep it clean and the focus on the team’s performance on the court. But given that Marcus’s wife was assaulted, they may be cutting him some slack as long as there are no new stories about Laila James and he doesn’t appear in that real
ity show.”

Within a few short blocks I started seeing signs for the Brookl
yn Bridge.

“Where are we going?
” I asked.

“
Brooklyn.”

“Why
Brooklyn?”

“You’ll see when we get there. Have patience.” He chuckled, knowing that wasn’t and had never been one of my strong suits. I reached over and began to fiddle with the radio dial in th
e old car.

“Hey, don’t you know you don’t ever touch a black man’s radio?” he said in his best Chris Tucker impression as he swatted my hand way from the
dashboard.

“Whatever, man,” I said, laughing. “I was just trying to turn on 1010 WINS for some news after being trapped in a crazy episode of VH1’s
Love and Hip-Hop
for the past fi
ve hours.”

“Well that had t
o be fun.”

“Oh, you have no idea the laughs we had. How was your day?” We were having a nice, normal after-work conversation, exchanging benign pleasantries just like any normal couple. But we were not a couple. I wondered if this felt weird to
him, too.

“Good day. Very good day. Take out my iPad from my briefcase. I want you to look at a video.” I picked up his black leather briefcase and put it on my lap. I could tell it was expensive; the leather was shiny and supple, and the platinum hardware gleamed. He’d never buy something like this for himself, so I knew she must have bought it. I opened up the iPad to the ho
me screen.

“Where’s t
he video?”

“It’s in my e-mail. Look for the message from Ray Rogers with ‘King Surveillance Video’ in the subject line.” I scanned his in-box, noticing there were quite a few unopened messages from his fiancée. When I located the e-mail from Ray, I opened the message. I pushed the button, and a grainy black-and-white video began to play, showing a steady stream of cars and cabs going by and people walking hurriedly down a street in
Manhattan.

“What am I watching?” I asked, balancing the iPad
on my lap.

“Keep watching,” Terrence said as we crossed over the bridge into
Brooklyn.

Suddenly out of the left side of the screen a large man dressed in all black came running down the street into the frame. He jumped into a car that was parked on the opposite side of the street and sped away. Then I realized what I was watching. This was the man who attacke
d Vanessa.

“Where did you get this?” I asked excitedly as I pushed the button to replay the video and held the iPad closer to see if I could make out the details of the m
an’s face.

“My buddy, Detective Ray Rogers, is working the case out of the first precinct. He sent the file over. The video is from one of the city’s thousands of crime watch cameras that happened to be located on the corner of Vanessa’s street. Based on the time stamp on the video and Vanessa’s description of her attacker, we believe this is
our guy.”

“Wow, this is amazing. Were you able to enhance the video to get a better look at the guy? Were there any other cameras in the area that may have provided a different angle so we could cross-reference and see his face?” I asked
anxiously.

“What? Do you think this is my first case?” Terrence chuckled at my eagerness. “Of course we checked for other cameras in the area, and luckily Vanessa’s building also had a camera outside that captured the license plate on
the car.”

“So you ran the plate, and what did you find?” I said as I twisted around to lo
ok at him.

“Yes, we ran the plate, and what we found was a name and address of one Carlo Esposito. We ran his sheet, and the twenty-three-year-old Mr. Esposito of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, has been a very busy man. He’s got gang ties to the Diablo Negro crew—a cocaine, racketeering, guns, gambling, and sex-trafficking outfit with operations in Mexico, California, Arizona, Texas, and they’ve been pushing aggressively into New York over the last t
wo years.”

“And what is Carlo’s specialty in this crew?” My body tensed. Was Vanessa targeted to be in a sex-traffic
king ring?

“He’s a pretty low-level enforcer type from what we can tell, but he was on the come up. Diablo Negro is one of the most vicious gangs we’ve ever seen, and young Carlo was trying to make a name for
himself.”

“But what’s a guy like Carlo and a gang like Diablo Negro want with Vanessa? And is Carlo the one that’s been leaving the
messages?”

“Well, that’s where things get even more interesting,” Terrence said as he headed into the Crown Heights area of
Brooklyn.

“What do
you mean?”

“Carlo probably isn’t even related to the threatening notes. He doesn’t fit the profile worked up by my guy at Quantico. We’ll look for prints on the envelope, but my best guess at this point is that he was waiting for Vanessa by her car and picked up the envelope off the windshield, just being nosy, when she came up on him. When he chased her, he still had the envelope, but he wasn’t the one that left it. The stalker is someone else entirely d
ifferent.”

“So what you’re saying is, Vanessa and Marcus are being stalked by someone, but this Carlo person attacked her for some completely unrelated reason? Was it a random attack, or was she
targeted?”

“Yes, there are two people out there who have taken a very dangerous interest in Vanessa and Marcus. Carlo didn’t attack Vanessa randomly—these guys don’t work that way. They don’t freelance. He was definitely acting on someone
’s order.”

A chill ran down my spine as I shut down the iPad and slipped it back into Terrence’s briefcase. Dealing with a crazy stalker fan was one thing, and sometimes par for the course in the high-profile world of professional sports, but why would a Mexican drug gang be after Vanessa? That piece of new information didn’t make
any sense.

“The police are arresting him as we speak, so hopefully we’ll have some more informat
ion soon.”

The car began to slow down as we approached the Quad, a nondescript four-unit brick housing project. A fleet of police cars and an ambulance were out front. A crowd of residents from the towers stood around, watching and gossiping. This wasn’t looking good. I immediately wondered if the ambulance had anything to do w
ith Carlo.

Suddenly the crowd parted as two paramedics burst through the doors of the building, wheeling a stretcher. I could see there was a large body underneath the white sheet. Terrence told me to wait by the car. He walked over to the group of police officers holding back the onlookers and then shook hands with one of the officers he seemed to know. He then ducked under the tape holding back the crowd and walked over to the stretcher. He lifted up the sheet and looked at the body. He then looked over at me and nodded his head in my
direction.

Carlo
was dead.

As we made our way back into Manhattan, I sent MJ a text and asked him to pull everything he could find on Carlo Esposito and Diablo Negro. I needed to learn as much as I could about all of these players because since Carlo’s throat had been cut, Terrence was only going to tell m
e so much.