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Authors: Solomon Jones

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BOOK: Ride or Die
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“I'm fine,” she said finally.
Jamal reached back and replaced the metal vent in the wall. Then he took out a cell phone and pushed a single button to make a call.
It didn't go through. He tried again. Nothing.
“Who are you calling?” Keisha asked.
“The lady who gives the orders,” Jamal said. “Once she hear I got you, she'll call my pop, and that'll buy us some time. By the time they figure out what's goin' on, we'll be out.”
There was a short, skidding sound on the street outside. Jamal and Keisha hurried to the front window, looked out, and saw an old Buick idling in the middle of the whip-thin street.
Jamal closed the shade. “That's the driver.”
“So what do we do now?” Keisha asked nervously.
Jamal paused long enough to kiss her on her lips. “We trust each other,” he said quickly.
Too nervous to speak, Keisha nodded.
Jamal walked her through the living room and out the front door. Keisha turned right and saw people straggling up Dauphin Street, walking away from the botched protest. She turned left and saw a deserted Susquehanna Avenue.
A second later, the Buick's back door was flung open for them, and Jamal pushed her inside. When he got in behind her and closed the door, it was like a cold breeze blew in with them.
She shivered, knowing that what she felt was a sense of dread. As the driver pulled away and the car disappeared into North Philadelphia's maze of tiny streets, she watched Jamal dial the number on his cell phone again.
 
 
The call connected just as the statuesque brown-skinned woman took her seat on the Acela Express that was departing New York's Penn Station. She tried to answer, but she lost the signal as the train entered the tunnel.
A business-class regular on the train that shuttled between New York and Philadelphia, she was something more than a cog in the machine that was the Nichols empire. She was the linchpin, and a beautiful one at that.
Everywhere she went, with her flawless skin, smoldering eyes, and curves that twentysomethings envied, she drew stares from every man within eyeshot. Today was no different.
Her champagne-colored silk blouse, revealing just the hint of cleavage, was the perfect complement to her bone-colored miniskirt and matching jacket. She wore no stockings with her open-toed, high-heeled sandals. And her crossed legs were covered with smooth skin stretched tight over muscle that she'd earned with countless trips to the gym.
Nola Langston carried her forty-four years well. And though her work as a buyer for a high-end department store took her around the world and paid for the endless pampering that helped to maintain her stunning looks, she had never been the type to settle for a lot. She wanted it all. And she got most of it from Frank Nichols.
She'd been seeing him for over a year, and despite his mistrust of nearly everyone, she had touched him in a way that few women ever had, partly because he wanted more from her than she was willing to give, but also because she was smarter than any man he'd ever known.
With an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton
School and a fashion industry pedigree that few Philadelphians could match, she was a model-turned-businesswoman who'd helped Nichols to start several legitimate ventures under a fictitious name. His Internet cafés and coffee shops near Temple's campus were her ideas, as were his vending machines in and around the department stores of Center City.
She'd nearly doubled his income in less than a year, and made almost half of it legal. In the process, she'd given herself to him in ways that she'd never imagined she would, ways that transcended the physical. She'd become a go-between for all manner of communications, delivering his messages in cryptic words, via cell phone.
She'd also become his lover. And on mornings like this, when she was aboard the train and thinking anxiously of seeing him again, she often closed her eyes and imagined his lips on hers.
She thought of his moist tongue, probing every crevice of her body, and she blushed as the thought made its way from her head to her thighs. Crossing her legs tightly, she hoped that the thought wouldn't overflow in a liquid gush.
Nola wanted more than just his body, after all. And she couldn't allow the fringe benefits of being Frank Nichols's lover to keep her from attaining her ultimate goal.
Still, it was nice to have someone who understood her desires and could fulfill them. Until she could get him where she wanted him, she would enjoy the ride. And she would make sure that he did, too.
When the train emerged from the tunnel, she took her cell phone from her purse and dialed his number to let him know she was returning early from her business trip. When his voice mail came on, she disconnected and retried the call. Voice mail again. No matter. He'd enjoy the surprise.
As she began to put the cell phone away, she received a call. She looked at the number and recognized it as a number belonging to Frank's son, Jamal.
She connected the call and said nothing, just as Frank had instructed her to do.
“It's Jamal,” he said quietly. “I got the package.”
“Okay,” she said, looking around carefully, as if the other passengers could hear her conversation.
Reaching into her purse, she retrieved a small, folded strip of paper. Opening it, she read the message that it conveyed.
“Keep the package for an hour,” she said. “If you don't hear anything, get rid of it.”
She hung up when she'd relayed the message. Then she turned the phone off, and waited for the final result.
It Was
eight o'clock, a half-hour removed from the end of the botched protest, and John Anderson—witness to two murders in less than twenty-four hours—had already given the police another statement.
Sitting in a scarred wooden chair at the Homicide Division, his face fixed in an expression of shock, he looked around the quiet, antiseptic room with its metal file cabinets, scuffed floor tiles, and dull beige walls, and watched the detectives, whose facial expressions mirrored his own.
They'd each seen their own mortality flash before their eyes when the police commissioner was caught in the crossfire of a war that Reverend Anderson had begun. And in their minds, Anderson was as much to blame for the commissioner's death as the man who'd pulled the trigger.
It had happened so quickly: the protest spinning out of control,
the clap of gunshots echoing through the streets, the commissioner and one of his men dragging Anderson from the top of the car.
Even as he sat in the room filled with detectives, Anderson could hear the gunshot and sense the commissioner's grip on his arm loosening. He could see the body dropping to the ground, and the red, gaping hole where the right side of the commissioner's face had been.
As Anderson recounted the shooting in his mind, a door opened, dragging him from his thoughts. When he turned around, he saw a bald, black plainclothes officer walking toward him with a bandage on his head.
“I'm Lieutenant Lynch,” the officer said, extending his hand.
Anderson took it and gripped it tightly. “I'm sorry about the commissioner. He was a good man.”
“I'm sorry, too,” Lynch said, releasing the handshake and turning toward a back room. “You can come on back here with me.”
Anderson hesitated. “I already talked to the detectives about the shooting,” he said politely. “I'm just waiting for my wife to pick me up.”
Lynch was surprised. “I thought your wife was with you at the protest.”
“Protests make her nervous,” Anderson said, smiling stiffly.
“I see.” Lynch walked to the door and opened it. “This'll only take a minute.”
Anderson sighed, then got up and followed him inside. Lynch closed the door, and the two men sat down on opposite sides of a steel table that had seen better days.
“Can we get you some coffee or something?” Lynch asked.
“No,” Anderson said, placing his hands on the table.
“Okay, then I'll get right to the point,” Lynch said, opening a file and looking through it as he spoke. “You've been at the center
of two shootings in less than twenty-four hours. If I didn't know better, I'd think you were the drug dealer.”
“Well, I'm not.”
Lynch looked up from the file. “Not anymore, you mean.”
Anderson could tell that Lynch knew more about him than he was letting on. So he perched his hands in a steeple and tapped his forefingers against his lips, contemplating what he should say.
“You know, Reverend Anderson, I had a case a few years ago in the East Bridge Housing Projects that kind of reminded me of this one,” Lynch said, breaking the silence. “A little girl disappeared, and I went in to try to find her.
“It took me back to my roots, I guess, because I grew up there, watching the people in that building destroying each other, a little at a time.”
Anderson looked up at him. “What's that got to do with me?”
“You said this whole thing was about someone trying to rape your daughter,” Lynch said evenly. “I've got a daughter of my own, so I can understand that. But it's not just about your daughter, is it? It's not even about that woman they shot last night. It's about you and Nichols destroying each other a little at a time. Except now you're destroying other people, too.”
“Look, I just wanted to help—”
“Help who?” Lynch snapped. “You took matters into your own hands. Now the police commissioner's dead, and right this minute, cops are on every street in this city trying to find his killer, and they don't care who gets in their way.”
Anderson started to speak, but Lynch wouldn't allow it.
“That means people are gonna die, Reverend Anderson. So if you really wanna help as much as you say you do, you'll tell me what I need to know, and you'll tell me now.”
Anderson wanted to attack Lynch for having the audacity to look beyond his rhetoric. His war against North Philly's drug
trade was, after all, a just war, waged to take back the souls of mothers who'd become whores, fathers who'd become murderers, and sons who'd become victims. It was a war to save his people. At least, that's what Anderson told himself.
But now, as he sat at the table, with Lynch waiting for him to offer something real, he knew that it was time for him to admit the truth. Not only to the cop, but to himself.
Anderson folded his hands on the table and took a deep breath.
“Frank's parents died when he was seventeen,” he said haltingly. “Got killed in a bus accident on a trip to visit relatives down South. Since Frank and I were pretty good friends and my father needed another set of hands in the family business, we took him in.”
“And what was the family business?” Lynch asked.
“Drug dealing, numbers, prostitution. My father ran his business like the mob. Had it all set up in crews with lieutenants and captains and a boss.”
The pastor looked up at Lynch uncomfortably and waited for judgment to sweep across his face. When it didn't, he went on.
“My father was John Anderson Sr. They called him Johnny Hands, 'cause he could strangle a man with one of them.”
“I remember the name,” Lynch said. “First real gangster in North Philly.”
“Yeah,” Anderson said, nodding his head. “And he taught us well, me and Frank. Taught us according to our strengths.”
“And what were your strengths?”
“Me? I was strong and big, so I was an enforcer. You crossed my pop, he sent me out with one of his soldiers, and we handled it. After a while, I got so good at it, he started sending me out on my own.”
“So you hurt people for your father?”
“I knocked a few heads here and there,” Anderson said. “Nothing major. But what I did is beside the point, if you wanna know about me and Nichols.”
“Okay,” Lynch said. “Go on.”
“The same way my father trained me to my strengths, he trained Frank to his. And Frank's strength was his mind. After three years in the business, my father made him a lieutenant, and then a captain, gave him a few corners to run and taught him how to get men to do things. Terrible things.”
“And your father didn't do the same thing for you?” Lynch asked.
“He tried, but when I saw what it would take for me to be like my father, I couldn't do it. I didn't have the stomach for it. But Frank did.”
Lynch nodded and sat back in his seat.
“When I was about twenty, there was a problem with my father's corn liquor suppliers in North Carolina,” Anderson said. “Frank suggested that I take care of it, and my father agreed.
“It was the first time I'd ever left my father for more than a day, but it was okay. Frank was like my father's second son, the one who would watch his back if anything ever went wrong. Not that anything could. My father was so strong, not even the white boys down South Philly would mess with him.
“So when Frank put together this big surprise party for him at the bar on Eighth and Diamond, nobody batted an eye. They just came. Everybody who worked for my father was there. All his dealers, all his whores, all his soldiers. Everybody except me.”
Anderson laughed bitterly. And then he shook his head slowly from side to side.
“Frank had these strippers come in,” he said, as if in a trance. “And right behind them, these guys came in and shot up the
place. My father and three of his closest lieutenants died. Frank took a bullet in the shoulder. But none of the men in Frank's crew were shot. And the guys who shot my father got away clean.
“I got word down South that something had happened, and Frank was handling it. They told me that it was too dangerous for me to come back. I ignored them and drove back here as fast as I could. And when I walked into my father's bar, there was Frank, sitting there in my father's seat, with his arm bandaged, red-eyed, like he'd been crying, with three of my father's men around him.
“I ran to him and we hugged and cried together, swearing we were gonna get the men who'd killed my father.
Our
father. But I knew in my heart that I couldn't do it anymore. So I just backed further and further away from the business. And Frank got more and more ruthless. Before I knew it, he had everything that had belonged to my father. And he offered me crumbs. Crumbs I didn't want.”
Lynch looked over at him. “How long did it take you to figure out what happened to your father?”
Tears welled up in Anderson's eyes. “I guess I always knew,” he said. “I just didn't want to believe the man I'd loved like a brother, the man my father had treated like a son, would turn around and set him up that way.”
Lynch nodded and waited for Anderson to wipe the tears from his face.
“Even after I got saved and went into the ministry, I didn't want to believe it. But I knew. I knew in my heart that Frank had killed him. And I hated him for it. Still do.”
“And you never tried to avenge your father's death?”
Anderson stared at Lynch for a long while before he answered. “I guess I'm like the people you grew up with in the projects,” he said finally. “I just want to destroy him a little bit at a time.”
As Anderson's words hung in the air between them, the door opened and a police officer rushed in and whispered something to Lynch, whose deep brown face turned ashen gray.
When the officer left, Lynch turned to the preacher. “Reverend Anderson,” he said. “Your wife is downstairs.”
“Good,” Anderson said, getting up from his chair. “You can call me if you need me.”
“Wait, Reverend Anderson.”
“I've had a rough day, Lieutenant. So if it's all the same to you, I just wanna go home with my wife, hug my daughter, and forget about this for a little while.”
“That's just it,” Lynch said solemnly. “Your wife hasn't seen your daughter. She's been missing since the shooting.”
 
 
Ishmael squinted as the sun shone through the front windows of the storefront church.
With the temperature outside approaching ninety and the windows of the church shut tight, the entire second floor was stifling. But he couldn't afford to leave, because the police still believed that he was somewhere close to the crime scene. And they were right.
Sitting shirtless in the window, with his strapping frame drenched in sweat and his dreadlocks draped about his shoulders, he would have made for an imposing figure if anyone had seen him. But he didn't care to be seen. At least not yet.
For now, he had to do what he'd done for the last forty minutes—watch the police milling about on the street below, and wait for her to call him with the next move. In the moments in between, he tried to remember what had brought him to this point.
When he looked in his past, he saw heartbreak and fear, anger and hurt, betrayal and pain. But all of those things had
been there for as long as he could remember. None of them had ever caused him to want to kill.
He hadn't known bloodlust until he'd known pleasure unimaginable. And he hadn't known such pleasure until he'd met her.
She had walked into his life three months ago, and told him that there was hope for something more. And when he looked at her, he couldn't help believing her, because he couldn't see anything beyond her smoky eyes, seductive curves, and creamy skin.
He was captivated by her husky voice, echoing through his mind in the quiet of his dreams. It was a voice that seduced him with half-truths and beguiling flattery.
She told him that his crime-riddled past didn't matter, that the only thing that counted was his future. She told him that his black skin reminded her of sunsets on the African savannah. She told him that his mind was keen, that he would someday lead men to greatness.
She told him everything that he had always longed to hear. And then she used the very things that had always made him feel inferior, and she turned them to rage.
It was like she knew everything about him. From his tortured childhood, spent moving from one house to another, to his adult dreams of becoming something more than what anyone had expected him to be.
She was the only person who'd ever truly understood him. Based solely upon that, he would have done anything she asked. But when she wrapped herself around him and showed him how love should be made, slowly and deliberately, with each touch serving a purpose, each movement taking him higher, each kiss stoking the flame, he was enslaved.
BOOK: Ride or Die
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