The Importance of Being Dangerous (28 page)

Fighting a tear, Yakoob said, “He went out like his dad did. The guy just wanted to be a man.”

“The guy was also 'bout to man us all the fuck upstate for life, Koob,” Griff said without flinching. He gestured across the table. “C'mon. Lose the bear. For real, Koob. Don't save a thing.”

Yakoob, in clown wig and pimp clothes, walked listlessly over to the stuffed animal. He lifted it into his arms with no sense of humor and dragged his feet toward the back door. Sidarra opened it for him and he disappeared into the alley. Alone between the buildings, Koob didn't know just what to do. He looked around for someplace to stash the bear. He looked at a small Dumpster, thought not, and squeezed the purple thing to him. He considered a group of trash cans at the far end of the alley, again squeezed the bear indecisively, and turned toward where his truck was parked. He carried the bear a few steps toward the Escalade, then stopped and turned. He turned again, then stopped and reached into the hole for the candy bars and the marijuana. He saved a bag of smoke as a souvenir and threw the rest into a nearby can. More decisively, he grabbed the bear, walked to his trunk, and opened the door. There were better places to toss such a noticeable thing, he figured. Resolved, Koob closed the door and started back along the side of the truck for the back door. Before he could get there, his head felt light. He reached out and put his hand on the brick to keep himself from falling. Suddenly he saw in his mind an image of his friend shot to pieces by police, and Koob's legs buckled at the knees. His back slid down the brick wall until he sat with his elbows on his knees. There by the back door Koob wept.

“Griff,” Sidarra said sternly.

He had already taken a step toward her from behind. “Sidarra, this is a good thing in its way.”

“That may be,” she said, preventing an unexpected kiss. “But, c'mon, man, this has gone entirely too damned far.”

Yakoob walked back inside at that moment. His expression had lightened a little, though his voice remained grave. “Are we cool now?” he said. “Do I need to hire a lawyer?” Before Griff could answer, Koob drained a very large shot of Tanqueray.

“Yeah, you need to hire a lawyer,” Griff said. “We're not that cool.”

“Fellas, wait up a minute,” Sidarra tried to interrupt. “Please. Come sit down with me.” They followed her over to one of the semicircular velvet couches, set down their glasses, and for perhaps the first time, sat down to talk there. “I love y'all. I
love
y'all. But somehow things got taken a little too literally, may I say that? Now, this has all gone too damned far, like—Griff had a term for it—some thug multiplier—”

“The thug is dead,” Griff dryly declared.

“Oh c'mon. We enabled him. We couldn't stop wanting too much, am I right?”

They each loved her too in their own way, but they couldn't bring themselves to admit that just yet. To both of them, Sidarra, in her royal blue, sounded ready to resign herself to a fate just a little better than Raul's. Despite his tears, Yakoob was ready to beat it.

“Nah, baby,” he said, swigging his drink dry. “You can't want too much when you start with nothin'. My lady Marilyn,” he began, pulling a Kool out of his pimp pocket, “she's never been so happy or laughed so much. You don't know what that means to me. She's my heart, y'all. Do you know, you know how we met? We used to be working a night shift at a KFC in East New York. Ever been to East New York? Every other motherfucker in East
New York is dead, but they learn how to keep walking out there. We were there, her, me, and another guy, Ernesto, may he rest in peace. We used to be there till midnight from Tuesday to Saturday nights, scrubbing grease off grills, wearing them stupid hats, hoping the next thug on line was too drunk to shoot straight. That's how we fell in love. Hopin' we'd live to get the fuck outta there. You don't want to die with one of those hats on.”

“What happened to Ernesto?” Griff asked.

“He split. Bounced. Said it was too dangerous. Became a manager of a White Castle on Atlantic Avenue. One night they held him up, took 'em all down to the basement, locked 'em in the freezer. That's where the brother died. Froze to death. Mexican guy. Left three little kids behind. I ain't goin' out like that.” Koob squeezed off a long puff. “We smarter than you think, Sid. We gonna be all right. I'm telling you. They got who they wanted today, and I'm damned sorry they did. But we gonna be all right. Right?”

It sounded a little like he needed her to agree with him. Sidarra smiled knowingly and put her hand on Koob's soft cheek. “I hope you're right, baby. I know you're smart.”

They sat there a moment in silence. Griff let out a long sigh and said, “We're probably looking at something, blood. I doubt we go down for the Eagleton joint, but they have a way of finding something. I know a lawyer you can talk to, a buddy of mine. He's good. He's in Brooklyn too. If it comes to that, he knows how to plead you down.”

Yakoob looked stunned and laughed out loud. “I'm not goin' any damn place, Griff, so you need to man the fuck up. I'll be right here, next to you. Shiiiit.” He looked at Sidarra and pointed at Griff. “Straight ahead, people. Just stay straight.”

Sidarra giggled a little. She wanted to believe him. He was nearly convincing. Griff's heavy silence and distant gaze were the
only things standing in her way. “You don't think we should—?” she began. “No, let me say it like this. Everything Raul ever saw was cash, right?”

“I think so,” Griff said. “Yup.”

“Okay,” she continued. “Then, at this point, what else do we need to do, Koob? You know the files. You know the ins and outs I could never understand. If you were a man of excessive caution, if you had just one more thing you might do to cover your tracks, what would you do now?”

Yakoob was busy rolling a joint of Raul's weed. He had drained yet another full glass of gin. Even so, he pretended to scratch his chin in deep thought. “You know what I would do?” he asked. They looked at him with great suspense. “I would probably dance my motherfuckin' ass off!” He laughed loudly and bent down to feel it. “Man, I wish my woman was here. How 'bout some disco, Griff? This blues shit is giving me some.”

Griff pulled his body off the narrow sofa, pulled some CDs from a shelf, and tossed one to Q through the curtain. The three waited like teenagers for something to happen. Yakoob lit the joint, took a long toke, and coughed out a huge puff of smoke. Then there was silence. Sidarra looked at the joint Yakoob was offering her and reluctantly decided to take it. Soon, fading in was the familiar sound of the Trammps from the
Saturday Night Fever
soundtrack singing “Disco Inferno.”

Yakoob got up and grabbed Sidarra off her seat. He started bucking and jiving to the heavy beat and pretending to hustle. She smiled at him and reluctantly began to move her feet a little. He got a little freaky, spinning and whooping. Koob grabbed his cue stick and used it as a pretend microphone. He lip-synched the words until Sidarra and eventually Griff started to get into it with him. Once they joined him, Yakoob got wild, throwing the wig across the Amistad and juking like it was 1976. There was no denying the beat and nothing for any of them to do but get funky
with it. Yakoob had already begun to break a sweat when the chorus came. He grabbed the stick to his mouth like a mike and screamed,
“I heard somebody say: Burn baby burn!”

Again and again, they each twirled and kicked and shook it like they had back in high school. The longer it grooved, the more serious they danced, until the chorus came back each time, and together they looked at each other with big drunken eyes and sang:
“I heard somebody say!”

RAQUEL WAS TRYING OUT A NEW ATTITUDE
at day camp, Aunt Chickie was in her garden debugging the last tiger lilies of the season, and Sidarra had let her hair back down over her cheekbones. The Saks Fifth Avenue lobby was full of European tourists caring little and buying a lot.

“Good heavens, what the hell happened to you, girlfriend?” Darrius asked her as she leaned over his makeup counter with a friendly expression and tired eyes.

“I got promoted, but it's a long story I don't have time to tell,” Sidarra answered. “When's your break time?”

“Whenever I say so.”

“Then I'd like you to take a little walk with me, baby.”

The cloudy Wednesday began to sprinkle a light rain as Sidarra and Darrius strolled out the side door toward Rockefeller Center. Darrius had one of those golf umbrellas that take up most of the
sidewalk, and they walked under it together, parting incredulous crowds with impunity. The plaza across the street was regaled in its annual summer flower festival, and the wet fragrance slowed their steps.

“Let me get to it, Darrius. The following question has no bearing on my love for you, okay?”

“Shoot.”

“Are you a trustworthy friend?”

“My dear, I am a proud Catholic. You see I work next to St. Patrick's Cathedral. I'm practically a vicar.” He smiled sheepishly. “Practically.”

“That's more than enough,” she said. “Darrius, how would you like to live in Harlem?”

Darrius stopped and looked quizzically at her. “Sidarra, don't feel sorry for me just because I'm the token black faggot in Chelsea. Membership in that neighborhood has its privileges, you know.” She laughed with him. “Justin, on the other hand, would love it. What are you talking about?”

“I'm talking about my place. Well, it's not mine. It's legally my aunt's. I'm thinking of going on a sabbatical for a while. It's not for sure yet, but if I do, I'd need somebody I can trust living there. Underneath the main apartment you saw is a rental unit. It would mean being a landlord too.”

Darrius moved them along again. His brow furrowed a bit as he considered it. “I really don't know. There'd be some negotiation involved at home. How much do you want for it?”

“Nothing. I don't want anything. I would just want you to take care of it, cover your own utilities, be careful about who you rent to, get a fair price, and send most of the rent money to a friend of mine in the Bronx.”

“Normally I wouldn't ask, but can I get some of the drugs you're taking?”

“I'm not on drugs. It's not really about me. It's about my daughter and my aunt. They may force me to do it, but I don't mind. I just need a little help. Can you swing it?”

Darrius pulled her arm closer as they strolled and pointed out a few particular flowers he'd never seen before. Their steps matched nicely. “Life is complicated, isn't it, darling? Never black and white.” She clutched him in silence and breathed up the air. He was thinking. “Okay, Sidarra. I'm sure we can work something out. I'll help you. Don't count me among your troubles. You were so good at getting the sad off your face.”

“Thank you, Darrius. I'll let you know soon if it's gonna happen. If it does, it will probably happen quickly.”

 

IN FACT
,
IT WAS VERY FAST
. When both the local police and the Feds team up over something, it goes down quickly. The death of the Candy Man only slowed it a little. Not when the FBI hackers came back to Jeff Geiger with more names, a possibly defunct shell corporation with what appeared to be large gains from an international betting consortium, and preliminary evidence of tax evasion. They had really wanted Manny. Geiger could have cared less since he didn't prosecute drug dealers anymore, but the Manhattan D.A. still wanted him locked up for a long time. Raul's death killed that. A day into his trial, Manny accepted a plea to illegal weapons possession, reckless endangerment, and drug distribution. His lawyer negotiated two years in state prison in return for the tips that helped nail Raul. With the news of an assassin's violent death in a Harlem shoot-out all over the tabloids for days, his attorney convinced the authorities that what was done was really now done, injured cop or no injured cop. Griff's line was similar for Tyrell. The D.A. almost liked Tyrell, who testified with rare conviction for a snitch. His every word made sense and his story never wavered. Manny might have done much harder time with
out Tyrell's story implicating Raul for him. So when Tyrell walked out of Rikers a free man, he had no one to thank but Griff. Even Griff's casual enemies in the Manhattan D.A.'s office thanked him for prepping his client so well. Until Jeff Geiger recognized Griff's name on a deleted shareholder file.

Realizing who Griff was set Geiger's mind on fire. You rarely forget a humbling and Geiger recalled the humbling he suffered over the stroller thief years ago. Hearing colleagues talk about Griff like an untouchable civil rights leader pissed him off. Geiger slept in his downtown Brooklyn office two nights straight trying to re-create a blueprint of credit card fraud, cash purchases of dummy stock, and an offshore shell corporation's bets on Internet mayhem scenarios. It was a tangled web they'd woven. The computer traces were not all going to hold up in court, he worried. Some might be excluded because the warrant had been issued after the fact. But there were surveillance photographs of Yakoob and Griff. Despite a masking technique, Yakoob had executed two traceable Solutions, Inc. trades on behalf of an oddly named holding company from his personal computer, and he, Griff, and another person were listed as the company's sole shareholders. Since the trades followed the IPO, the dollar amounts skyrocketed, and there were no corresponding capital gains tax filings by either man when the earnings were converted to cash. Where the cash was now was untraceable. It had simply vanished. That it existed once was a certainty, one that kept Geiger up at night—because it all seemed to start with his own $5,000.

Then another coincidence was uncovered. The police hackers performed a routine check of recent bank-related identity thefts based on amounts under $20,000. Because it wasn't a regular bank, Fidelity Investments didn't come up right away. But Fidelity's internal investigation turned up customer addresses—not even names—and one in particular that Geiger somehow found familiar. It was the same one police had gone to first in East Harlem,
belonging to the guy they called “the African.” The police techs were stuck trying to figure out where monies that left several Fidelity accounts wound up. Some seemed to have moved into and out of an account manager's account, but a lot had disappeared.

Yet seventy-two hours after he made the Fidelity connection, Geiger thought he had at least enough to arrest Griff and more than enough to get the Yakoob character. The only complete mystery remaining was the identity of the third shareholder of one of the shell corporations. He'd finally figured out the name that went with the initials “D.G.” But who the hell
was
“Desiree Galore”?

 

“
CAN YOU GET AWAY AGAIN
?” Griff asked her over the phone.

Reluctant to talk, afraid to see him again, Sidarra let her heart speak for her. “Okay.”

“Meet me at the Studio Museum by the last exhibit.”

If Griff wanted to travel, Sidarra thought, then the pressure must have been all in her head. He was being cautiously romantic, not running away. Sidarra would have to check her Aunt Chickie's availability, but Aunt Chickie didn't mind babysitting another weekend as long as there was plenty of food in the house.

Sidarra packed underwear and a sundress in a small bag along with some toiletries and wore a bikini under her clothes. Raquel started to ask her the usual responsible questions about where she had to go in such a hurry.

“You too will be in love one day, darling,” was all Sidarra told her.

“Whatever,” she said.

And Sidarra was off, knowing she had probably forgotten something. She walked briskly to 125th Street, stopping in a couple of stores to make sure no one was following her. When she got to the museum, it was preparing to close. The uniformed guard inside started to give her the business until another woman in a
suit relieved him and let Sidarra in without a word. Sidarra walked the blond shiny wood floors. Hard work and unspeakable passion filled the walls, the canvases crying quietly in their imagery, the halogens above them threatening to quit. The hard heels of one last couple could be heard randomly pacing one room, their voices speaking German, punctuated by “oohs.” In the back corner, by a watercooler, was Griff with his back turned. He carried a leather bag shaped like an old-fashioned doctor's house-call kit.

“Hi,” she said.

He wheeled around as if he were surprised and kissed her gently. “Hey.” They looked at each other, their eyes searching for something new in the midst of something wonderfully familiar. “Let's go to Belize,” he said.

She had a feeling that was his plan, but had to register a mild protest. “C'mon, baby. Isn't it past—”

Griff whipped out a thick envelope with airline tickets in them. “It's crazy, I know, but it's not stupid. You've probably survived the investigation at the Board of Ed or they wouldn't have promoted you. The only crime you're guilty of is having bad friends. If the police came to question you, for now they'd leave your family alone if you weren't home. I wouldn't ask you to do stupid. But crazy is kind of routine for lovers.”

“You're my lover?” she asked.

“Not really,” he said. “I'm just the man who loves you.”

He led them through a side door to a patio. The patio sat between the backs of several buildings like a courtyard. Through a gate, they met a narrow alley which they took to the sidewalk on 124th Street. Griff had a town car waiting for them there.

The James Bond logistics brought Griff's mention of questioning cops to mind again. As the car started across 125th Street, Sidarra remembered the important something she'd left behind. “Wait!” she said. “I have to go back. I have to get something at my house.”

“They could be watching your house,” he whispered.

She looked scared at him. “Then I really have to get back there for something.”

The driver followed her instructions while Griff crept low in the seat. When they reached the brownstone, Sidarra jumped out and Griff remained half hidden in the rear. She ran up the stairs, pulled out her key, and disappeared behind the door. While she was inside, a car pulled up behind the town car. It was an old car, a Chrysler, and a man sat behind the wheel. Griff waited and slumped lower, watching the Chrysler in the rearview mirror. Inside, Sidarra ran to her bedroom to retrieve Michael's engagement ring and hid it in her clothing. If cops came to search her house, she didn't trust them to leave a diamond behind. She made her way down the stairs of the empty upper apartment as fast as she could. Griff tried to decide what to do when she came back out. He saw her appear in the vestibule and open the front door to leave. Once she was visible at the top of the stoop, the driver's side door of the Chrysler opened. Griff looked hard at the man. There was no question. He was heading for Sidarra. Griff told the driver to wait and got out.

“Sidarra, honey,” said the man.

Griff rushed up behind him as though he were about to snap the man's neck.

“Michael,” she said in a frozen panic. “What are you doing here?”

Her fluttering eyes and the unnatural panic on her face made Michael turn around. Just as he did, Griff passed him and joined Sidarra on the bottom step. He looked up at the two of them as Griff brought his arm down around Sidarra's back.

“I was,” Michael stammered, “I was wondering…” Michael interrupted himself to take a long look at Sidarra, then at Griff, who would not flinch or smile, and his shoulders dropped.

“Michael, please,” Sidarra started.

He was past that. “Nah, Sid, I was just in the neighborhood and thought I'd check in on the Rock, that's all.” He wouldn't look at Griff again. “She okay?”

“She's fine, Michael.”

“Great,” he said, resuming a stoic look of full dignity and turning away. “Then I'm off. Give her my love, Sidarra.” He started back toward his car. “Take care of yourself.”

“Let's go,” Griff said as they watched Michael climb gingerly back into the Chrysler and pull away.

Sidarra followed Michael's trail with her eyes in the hope he would at least look back. He did not.

Griff's planning was typically deliberate, even at what must have been the last minute. He overpaid the driver out of the huge billfold of cash in large denominations he was carrying, and he made sure they did not sit together on the flight. Sidarra had a window at least. From there, she watched her country shrink and the countryside of another turn green and mountainous again. The scenery was a little different; the flight was direct this time. Still, it looked like the recurrence of a beautiful dream, one Sidarra started to worry she might never see again.

It had not been so long since their last clandestine visit there, but to Sidarra it still seemed strange that so little had changed about Belize. The weather had not moved. She even thought she recognized the cabdriver as the one they'd met before. And the palm trees still kept up their contorted hope of reaching the shore first. But she and Griff didn't stay in the same villa by the beach. This time Griff had arranged for them to stay in a brand-new high-rise condo British investors had completed months before. The suite was simple but well appointed, fully furnished with a galley kitchen, a bedroom, small living room, and den. Off the main room was a long balcony that overlooked the water and, by then, a long dark sky. The first thing Griff did after they undressed and bared themselves to the humidity was to order up a bottle of
Cuban rum. While Sidarra munched on a snack of good seafood, he promptly got drunk. She sat up on the bed looking out at the moonless night while he curled his worried body up against hers and went to sleep.