Shot Girl (23 page)

"Did you get what you needed from the young people?" It was as if we’d had no other conversation until this point, and it told me that he wasn’t about to tell me shit about what went down the night before.

I nodded.

"The boy, Jamond, I hope you’ll protect him in the story." He was referring to the pot plants, and I nodded again. Felt like a bobble-head doll.

"Seems like a nice kid, but he runs with a fast crowd," I said after I swallowed.

Shaw frowned. "What do you mean?"

"The kid who was arrested yesterday for shooting at that girl downtown, he was a friend of Jamond’s. I saw Jamond afterward."

"Did you talk to him?"

"Yeah."

"Was he helpful?"

Shaw was fishing for something, but I couldn’t pinpoint what it was. "Yeah, I guess you could say he was helpful." He didn’t need to know about the phone conversation just half an hour ago.

"I saw in your story this morning that you spoke to Ms. Ellis."

"Ashley?" I asked. "That’s right. Do you know her?" I thought about her comment about "Reggie" when Vinny was talking to her at Bar.

"Yes. She’s the one who recommended Jamond for the community-garden program."

My confusion must have been written all over my face.

"She was his student teacher this past semester at Hillhouse," Shaw explained patiently, as if to a small child. I didn’t like being condescended to, but this was interesting shit. Jamond had never indicated that he knew Ashley outside Michael and the guns. I still had his number in my phone. I was going to have to give him a call back.

"So you’ve met Ashley?" I asked.

Shaw nodded, and for the first time his eyes looked behind me instead of at me. "She was lovely. Very caring. A good teacher. She wanted to do right by Jamond, saw his potential."

That’s for fucking sure, if she was hooking him and his friends up with guns.

Shaw’s eyes sank back into mine. "I don’t know what was going on yesterday, but those young people are the reason why I’m here. Someone needs to show them that people of color do not need to resort to crime and violence."

If he didn’t watch out, he’d break his own arm from patting himself on the back. And from what I’d seen of Ashley Ellis, she wasn’t Mother Fucking Teresa. I pushed my plate and cup back and looked at the check, but before I could pick it up, Shaw’s hand had covered it. "Let me buy you breakfast," he said, the gleaming smile back.

I shook my head. "My boss wouldn’t like that very much. I can’t have sources pay for anything for me."

"I’m not a source. You did me a favor, writing that story. I’d like to repay that."

I looked more closely at him. "I would prefer it if you didn’t." I pulled the check out from under his hand and got up, slinging my bag over my shoulder. "How many guns did they find in that apartment last night?" I asked casually.

He looked me straight in the eye. Didn’t flinch.

"Twenty-five."

"Had Ralph bought all of them?"

His stare never wavered. "I don’t know." He paused a second, then said, "I know you’re suspicious of me and my relationship with your ex-husband. But he was trying to do the right thing after doing the wrong thing. He was paying penance for his sin."

I snorted. "Ralph never paid penance for shit. He did what he wanted to do and to hell with everyone else. He was just trying to save his ass and send someone else to prison longer than he’d have to go. What I want to know is, who was he giving up to the feds?"

He didn’t take the bait. He continued to smile at me. "Have a lovely day, Ms. Seymour. And I’m pleased that Jamond was such a help to you, for both stories. He’s a good boy. I have hope for him."

I was dismissed. I pretended I wasn’t as pissed as I felt as I went up to the cashier and handed him the money for my food. While I waited for my change, I felt someone behind me and turned to see Shaw leaning down.

"Watch your back," he whispered in my ear before disappearing out into the sunlight.

Chapter 30

I stepped outside and looked up and down the sidewalk, but Shaw had disappeared. Watch my back, he’d said. Yeah, right. Someone had been watching it all right. It was time to call my friend Paula Conrad, a special agent with the local FBI office. I’d waited too long as it was.

I found myself back in my car and heading home. This conversation needed to be had in the confines of my own living room, on my landline. As I eased the car against the curb in front of my brownstone, I glanced over toward Vinny’s place, but his Explorer was nowhere to be seen. I wondered if he’d followed me downtown, if he was following me now.

I still wondered how I could call Tom and ask about the condo, the blood, what might be going on, without letting on how I knew about it.

Maybe I could let Dick Whitfield do my dirty work, somehow get him to find out. But I couldn’t do that without some plausible story, and one just wasn’t coming to me at the moment.

When I got into my apartment, I hit the top of my air conditioner a couple of times to see if it would start working again, but it just whirred loudly and spit out more hot air. The big fan might be too much, so I rummaged in my closet and came up with a smaller one, setting it on the floor in the living room before plugging it in. I sat on the couch in front of it, and it managed to do a mediocre job of cooling me off.

I picked up the phone handset and dialed Paula’s home number.

"Hello?" She sounded perky; she would, since she had central air in her house.

"Hey, there," I said simply.

"I was wondering when you’d call. Jeff Parker said he saw you last night on Arch Street. Wanted to know if I’d talked to you. I told him I hadn’t, that you hadn’t heard about this from me. Who’d you hear about it from?"

"Another source," I lied easily. "I heard you guys found twenty-five guns in that apartment."

"Jesus, how did you hear that?"

I chuckled. "You know better than to ask me that."

"And you know better than to try to get information out of me." She paused a second. "Really, Annie, this is big. Your ex was into some serious shit."

"So they
were
his guns." I said it as fact.

"Don’t trick me into telling you anything more." By saying that, she confirmed it. It was easy, too, for him. Use the apartment next door for storage. I wondered if Shaw really didn’t know, or if he had just been closing his eyes to it.

"Can you at least tell me when you started this investigation?" I pushed further.

"No."

"Come on, Paula. Off the record." I hated saying it, but I didn’t have a choice.

"No."

"How about Ashley Ellis? I hear she was hooking up kids with guns."

"How the hell do you get your information?"

So Jamond was right.

"What are you guys doing about that?"

"I can’t tell you shit, Annie."

I had another card to play. "What about Felicia Kowalski? She’s missing. Was she involved with this, too?"

"What do you know about her?" Paula’s question came quickly, too quickly.

"She called me. Said to tell the cops it wasn’t her fault. What wasn’t her fault, Paula?"

"She called you?"

"Yeah. On my cell. If you answer my questions, I can give you the number she called from."

"Fuck you." But it was said halfheartedly; she might be persuaded by my little bribe.

"What wasn’t her fault?" I tried again.

I could almost hear the wheels in her brain whirring. She didn’t say anything, though.

"She was involved with Ralph, right? With the guns? Her and Ashley?" I couldn’t stop pushing. I needed to know.

"It’s not been verified, but they have been identified as possible accomplices." Sometimes Paula got way too official with me.

"So they helped him sell the guns?"

"I can’t say. This is all part of a grand jury investigation." She paused. "As you may know, those proceedings are secret until an indictment is handed down."

"Fuck that shit," I said.

"Okay, listen. The minute we can release anything, I’ll call you first. But can you give me that number? We need to check it out."

I gave it to her, again caught between a rock and a hard place about that condo. Paula should know about it, too. But with my luck, Tom and Paula might actually join forces—against me if they knew I’d been there and not fessed up immediately.

"What about Reggie Shaw? What does he have to do with this?" I asked.

"Why won’t you let up? I can’t say anything." She was getting pissed. I didn’t care.

"Did you know Ralph was stalking me?"

That stopped her. I heard her catch her breath. "What?"

"So you didn’t know about the pictures of me in his apartment?"

"Damn." She was silent for a few seconds, then, "Listen, Jeff Parker’s been asking me a lot of questions about you. I wasn’t there when they raided the place, but now the questions make sense to me."

"Questions like what?"

"Like, how much do I know about your relationship with him? You know, I really don’t know anything."

"There’s not much to know,"I lied. I was getting good at lying, feeling more comfortable with it these days. That wasn’t a good thing, but it was necessary for the moment. "We weren’t married too long—it just wasn’t going to work out." I’d told Tom more than that, but somehow having the feds know what really happened didn’t sit right with me. And telling Paula was telling the feds, friend or no.

"There’s got to be a story—," she started, but the buzzer interrupted.

"Hey, Paula, someone’s here. I have to see who. I’ll call you later." I hung up before she could say anything else.

I probably should’ve just stayed on the phone. Ned Winters was standing on my stoop. I didn’t want to let him in, so I picked up my bag and locked the door behind me before making my way downstairs.

For someone I hadn’t seen in years, I was certainly getting my fill of him.

"Hey, Ned," I said, but his presence unnerved me. "What’s up?"

Ned leaned toward me and air-kissed my cheek. His eyes were downcast. "I’m sorry about getting all worked up the other day." His voice was soft.

I actually found myself feeling sorry for the guy. "That’s okay."

His eyes lifted and rested on my face. "Priscilla called. She said she’s on her way in and I thought we could pick her up together." He indicated a red Jeep parked in front of the building.

"She was going to call me when she hit Milford," I said.

"She just called me."

"Huh?" Why hadn’t she called me? That had been the plan. I tried to shrug off my discomfort.

"She said your phone was busy."

Oh, yeah, I was talking to Paula. But why didn’t she try my cell?

Ned opened the passenger door to the Jeep, and I climbed in reluctantly. I wanted to drive. I didn’t like the idea of not having my own car. At the first light, I turned to him.

"How did you know where I live?" I asked.

Ned shrugged. "Priscilla told me you lived over here."

I didn’t like it that Priscilla had told Ned anything. It felt like there had been a lot of talking going on behind my back, and it creeped me out.

"I thought maybe we could go out to lunch, the three of us. Downtown somewhere," Ned was saying.

I was still a bit uncomfortable about getting too chummy with Ned, but on second thought, Ned and Ralph had remained friends. He knew about Felicia and the grand jury investigation. I wondered what else he knew.

Ned stuck a Springsteen CD into the player on the dash. I wanted to turn it up to discourage conversation, but he turned it down so we could barely hear it. Why he even put it in in the first place, I didn’t know.

"I talked to Ralph’s parents yesterday," he said.

So maybe this wasn’t such a great idea. I stifled a yawn. "You know, I’m just doing this for you and Priscilla," I said, staring out the window. The Jeep didn’t have air-conditioning, and I was glad I’d put my hair up. We stopped at another light, right near the station, and I fought an urge to jump out of the Jeep and hightail it back to my place. Even though I might get some questions answered, I didn’t want to mourn Ralph. He didn’t deserve it.

But I stayed in the Jeep, and we pulled up in front of the train station just as a throng of people came out. The train must have just arrived, and I saw Priscilla step through the doors.

She was like a goddamn walking rainbow.

Priscilla was a head shorter than me, with close-cropped, spiky red hair that would’ve been darker if she didn’t frequent the salon every month. A row of silver earrings framed each ear, and the sleeveless yellow T-SHIRT showed off the baby blue butterfly tattoo that draped over her shoulder. She wore stretchy gray capri sweats, and the platform flip-flops that gave her a little more height were orange. An army green messenger bag was slung across her upper body, accentuating the breasts she always tried to hide. It didn’t matter that she had amazing cheekbones that gave her face a pixie look despite the few extra pounds she’d put on over the years. No one looked at her face. Women pay good money for breasts like that, and Priscilla lamented that she couldn’t just give them away to a needy flat-chested girl.

Priscilla leaned in the window and gave me a kiss on the cheek and nodded at Ned before climbing into the backseat.

"Hey, there," Priscilla said, greeting both of us. "I’m starved. Where to?"

Again I wished Ned weren’t there, that Priscilla and I could just go to Clark’s Dairy and get a turkey club and hang out.

"Union League Café," Ned said. "My treat."

The fancy French place on Chapel Street that served foie gras and duck confit and individual French coffee presses was one of the most pricey restaurants in the city.

Priscilla was reading my mind as we both shook our heads, indicating that neither of us was dressed for it. Ned just smiled condescendingly, putting a hand on my knee and caressing it slightly. "You look great," he said quietly. Then, as an afterthought, he looked back at Priscilla. "Both of you."