Ride or Die (8 page)

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Authors: Solomon Jones

BOOK: Ride or Die
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She gasped and jumped back as Lieutenant Lynch almost walked into her.
“I'm sorry, Mrs. Anderson,” he said, as she stepped aside. “I didn't mean to startle you.”
He walked into the office sensing that there was something in the air. He didn't want to add to the tension, but he had no choice.
“About a half hour ago, we spotted Frank Nichols at his girlfriend's house on Rittenhouse Square,” he said. “He got away from us, but we think we should be able to find him fairly soon.”
“And what about Keisha?” Reverend Anderson asked hopefully.
“We haven't found her yet. But we've been studying some of the footage that the news crews took this morning.”
He stopped and looked at them both. “We've got an ID on the man who was last seen with her.”
“Well, who is it?” Sarah asked anxiously.
“Looks like it may be the same man we're looking for in connection with the commissioner's murder. Frank Nichols's son, Jamal.”
 
 
Ishmael smiled when he heard Jamal's name blaring over the police radios on the street below in connection with the commissioner's murder.
He didn't care that the police had it wrong. He was only sorry that he'd gotten it wrong. By missing his intended target, he'd prolonged the first step in the plan she'd told him to carry out, and created complications that would delay his ultimate reward.
But if delaying that step meant hurting Frank Nichols, even hurting him through Jamal, then he'd killed two birds with one stone.
Not that it mattered. Neither Frank nor Jamal Nichols was his first concern. The most important thing on his mind was her. She was the reason he was here. She was the one who gave him purpose. Indeed, she had become his reason for being.
He hadn't talked to her since seven o'clock that morning. And he didn't know if he could go on without at least hearing her voice once more.
He'd tried calling her three times from his cell phone, and each time he'd gotten her voice mail. Not that he was worried. Knowing her as he did, he knew that she was probably a step ahead of everyone else. More importantly, he knew that she would be there for him in the end.
Thinking of that brought a smile to his lips, even as he hid like a rat on the dank, crumbling second floor of the house-turned-storefront-church.
He wiped a bead of sweat from his eyes and leaned forward to peer out the window at the Strike Force and SWAT units searching empty buildings and questioning tight-lipped neighbors. He knew that there was a chance that time, and the police, could catch up with him.
Ishmael couldn't allow that to happen. Reaching into a hole in the wall, he retrieved the semiautomatic handgun he'd hidden there several days before. He reached further into the hole and grabbed three fully loaded clips.
Then he put on his shirt, stood up, and set out toward the staircase. Calmly making his way downstairs, he walked through the makeshift sanctuary and out the back door of the church onto narrow Sydenham Street.
As police milled about just half a block away, in front of the bar at Fifteenth and Susquehanna, he crossed the alleywide street, his dreadlocks flopping against his back, and walked onto one of the lots of overgrown and rock-strewn earth where houses had once stood.
Walking between the man-sized weeds that seemed to grow on every lot during North Philadelphia's long, hot summers, he made his way to a shack made of rusted, corrugated tin.
He paused to look behind him. When he was sure that no one had followed, he pulled back the rusting metal to reveal a motorcycle.
Calmly, methodically, he removed his clothes and changed into the denim jacket and jeans she'd left for him in a neatly wrapped brown package next to the bike. He put on the helmet that rested on its back seat, tucking his dreadlocks beneath it. Pulling a cell phone from the pocket of the jacket, he pressed a button. When the call connected and her computerized voice mail picked up, he left a message.
“Don't worry about what happened this morning,” he said, his voice deadly calm. “Everything is still on schedule. I'll meet you at the safe house tonight.”
He disconnected the call and snapped the helmet's dark visor into place.
Seconds later, he was gone.
 
 
Keisha listened to the radio news emanating from the Buick's static-filled radio. She was hoping to hear word of her father. But in the sixty minutes they'd been driving, she hadn't heard his name even once.
But that was the least of her worries.
Both Jamal and the driver were now ominously silent as they circled a Hispanic neighborhood where drowsy-eyed zombies with swollen hands stumbled toward corners manned by boys yelling brand names like Tombstone and DOA, Pac Man and Grim Reaper. She saw cars lining up as if they were at a drive-through, their drivers rolling down windows to trade cash for heroin-filled plastic bags.
She noticed that Jamal was no longer trying to steal glimpses of her, as he'd done so many times throughout the morning. And the driver, a husky young man whose beard was split by a scar that ran the length of his jaw, wore a scowl on his wide, flat face.
Both of them looked like they were preoccupied. And so was Keisha. She was growing more anxious by the moment, trying to fight her growing suspicion that Jamal was about to betray her.
Her stomach knotted as she observed Jamal looking down at his watch. He glanced at her before looking in the mirror at the driver, who was watching him and waiting for orders.
“I guess we ain't gon' get that call,” Jamal said, his face growing hard as he steeled himself for what he had to do.
The driver nodded, reached into his jacket for his gun, and laid it on the seat beside him as Keisha felt her heart beating wildly against her chest.
Jamal pointed to a nearby street. “Turn in there. Stop at the alley at the end of the block.”
The driver hung a left at a deserted street where abandoned factories with broken windows loomed on one side, and a vast stretch of packed earth spread across the other.
Keisha pressed her face against the window and saw women parading the desolate strip, wearing little more than hard looks. There were cars parked along the crumbling sidewalks, rocking to and fro as men took what they had paid for.
“Let me out of this car!” Keisha shouted, turning to him as her eyes filled with tears.
The driver parked and turned around for the first time. His eyes were cold and hard. “Shut up,” he said through clenched teeth.
Jamal felt a twinge of anger as he watched fear overtake Keisha. She looked at him with a question in her eyes, and he refused to answer it.
The driver watched them both as Keisha began to sob. He could see that Jamal cared for her. Indeed, he had seen it from the time they'd picked up the girl. He knew he couldn't allow Jamal to make any foolish decisions. So he turned up the radio to drown
out the sound of Keisha's weeping, and prepared to do what they'd come there to do.
At that moment, a radio announcer's voice made them all go silent.
“Police have identified Jamal Nichols, son of alleged drug dealer Frank Nichols, as the man wanted in connection with the fatal shooting of Police Commissioner Darrell Freeman and the disappearance of sixteen-year-old Keisha Anderson. A six-foot-tall black male with dreadlocks, he is considered—”
The driver turned off the radio, looked at Jamal, and started to get out of the car.
“What they talkin' about?” Jamal said, his voice panicky. “I ain't shoot nobody!”
Keisha began to cry uncontrollably. The driver reached back to smack her, but Jamal caught his hand.
“Don't do that, man,” Jamal said with an edge to his voice.
The driver locked eyes with him for a moment, then snatched his hand away. “Look, man, this bitch drawin'.”
“Let her go, then,” Jamal said quickly. “They already tryin' to gimme a body. I don't need another one.”
“You don't need a lot o' things, Jamal,” the driver snapped. “And I don't, either. Now if we fuck this up 'cause you feel some type o' way about some bitch, you takin'
my
life in your hands. And I can't have that.”
Keisha couldn't wait any longer. She turned suddenly and kicked open the door. She was halfway out when the driver grabbed his gun and jumped out of the front seat. He gripped Keisha's arms and pulled her out of the car as she screamed out to Jamal for help.
Jamal froze, because he knew that the next few moments would forever define him. For the first time, he was unsure of what he wanted.
“Jamal, come on, man!” the driver yelled over his shoulder as he carried Keisha into the alley. “You know what we gotta do!”
Jamal wrestled with his conscience for all of five seconds. His decision made, he got out of the car.
Keisha bit the driver's hand and punched him as he carried her through the alley. And when he loosened his grip on her legs to turn his gun on her, she launched her foot into his groin.
His gun dropped to the ground as he fell to his knees in agony. Keisha hit the ground as well, and scrambled on her stomach toward the gun. Squinting through the pain, the driver reached for her. But she kicked his hand away and grabbed the gun.
By the time Jamal entered the alley, she had flipped onto her back and was aiming the gun at the driver's face.
“Look, baby, just gimme the gun,” he said nervously.
“Get away from me!” Keisha said, her voice quivering.
When the driver saw that she was afraid, he smiled and began to move toward her.
Keisha gripped the gun tightly as her hands began to tremble, because she knew that she would have to pull the trigger.
 
 
With most of East Division reassigned in the wake of the commissioner's murder, Officer Chuck MacAleer and his partner were working half of the Twenty-fifth District by themselves. That would have been quite a strain if they were actually patrolling. But police work was the last thing on their minds.
From the time they'd hit the street at eight o' clock, they'd engrossed themselves in their own brand of policing, the kind that allowed the drug scourge to flourish.
Almost everyone who plied a trade in MacAleer's sector knew. When his paddy wagon came by, someone had to pay. On
some days, it was the dealers. On others, it was the addicts. Today, it was the prostitutes. And as always, the officers had taken the pick of the litter.
The girl they'd chosen was about twenty, and had yet to surrender her curves to the ravages of the crack pipe. She was so new to the game that she didn't know about street tax. So they plucked her from the corner, handcuffed her, and locked her in the wagon. Then they went back and showed her the price she would have to pay for feeding her addiction on their streets.
They subjected her to all kinds of indignities, forcing her to endure perversions that even her worst trick wouldn't dare request. They humiliated her with their viciousness. She cried, and they smacked her. She screamed, and they covered her mouth. She begged, and they exploded with laughter.
Now they were finished, at least for the moment. And as the girl remained handcuffed in the back of the wagon, they parked just half a block from the strip, watching the other whores work in the shadow of the abandoned factory.
The officers smoked cigarettes and prepared themselves for another round with the girl as they listened absently to the dispatcher read the general radio message describing Jamal Nichols.
MacAleer reached over and turned down the radio.
“I'm tired of hearing about this Nichols kid,” he said.
“If you ask me, he did us a favor,” his partner said with a smirk. “Who needs a nigger running the department, anyway? That's like the fuckin' inmates runnin' the asylum.”
“You got
that
right,” MacAleer said with a nod.
His partner extinguished his cigarette and plucked it out the window. “What do you want to do about our girlfriend back there?”
MacAleer's face creased in a sickening leer. “I'm gonna have
another talk with her,” he said. “Just in case she didn't get it the first time.”
His partner shook his head and chuckled as he got out of the wagon. “I'm gonna take a piss. I'll be right back.”
He walked up the block toward an alley. The prostitutes he passed along the way ignored him, knowing that the girl had already paid for their privilege to work that day. In turn, the officer ignored the cars that were parked along the street. All of them were occupied except for one. And as he drew nearer to the Buick with the open doors and blasting radio, he sensed that something was wrong.

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