The Incident (Chase Barnes Series Book 1) (21 page)

              I was curious as to why that was chosen as the meeting place but didn’t stress it too much.  I decided to head home and strategize a plan of action of how to approach my meeting with Jamal. 

              I had a late dinner with Lindsey when I got home.  She had made grilled chicken, brown rice, and a vegetable mixture with colored peppers, onions, carrots, and mushrooms.  The chicken and the vegetables were seasoned to perfection.  We discussed my meeting in a couple of hours.

              “You really think this is a good idea?” Lindsey asked.

              “Why wouldn’t it be?  I need to meet him to find out why Esteban had his phone number stashed away in a desk and figure out if he has or knows anything about where Esteban might be.  And to hopefully rule him out as a possible kidnapping suspect.  I don’t know why, but he just doesn’t feel like it to me.”

              “You really think it’s going to be that simple?”

              “You may have forgotten, my love, but I am quite the dapper charmer.  Although, I’m thinking it might not be quite that simple,” I said, serving myself more chicken and rice.  Lindsey hadn’t touched her plate since we began our conversation.  “I really don’t know how simple- or impossible- it will be.  But there’s only one way to find out.”

              She made a face of disapproval but I disregarded it.  Even back when I was a beat cop, I’d come home telling stories of my day as loving married couples often do and she’d make the same face when I’d tell her about the car chases, arrests, and run- downs.

              “Anyway, can you believe all that stuff about Esteban and his uncle?” I said, steering the conversation away from my potential rendezvous with a real drug dealer and back onto Esteban.  I had filled Lindsey in on what I found out from Ms. Cruz when I called her as soon as I left the house.  I stared at Lindsey while she sat quietly, watching the cooked vegetables on her plate start to congeal. 

              “I can’t believe I had no idea,” she finally said.

              “Don’t go blaming yourself like you were the one who forced Pedro Cruz onto Esteban.  He wasn’t even your student back then and even if he was, there’s nothing you could have done.”

              “I know.  It’s just horrible.  I feel some level of responsibility since the kid would come into class and I didn’t notice a thing,” Lindsey replied.  She got up from the table, her dinner was still untouched and I heard her close the door to the bathroom.

              After dinner, I helped clean up and excused myself to the bedroom.  I retrieved my gun.  I’d held my gun a few times since the incident but had never taken it out of the house, anticipating that I might actually have to use it again.  The thought and the astounding comfort level startled me a bit.  But, come to think of it, I guess Dr. Sharper was right that time does eventually heal all wounds.  Holding the gun, I had a level of comfort that I hadn’t had in a long time. 

              Sitting on the bed, staring at the gun in my hand, I came across an idea.  I knew I was taking a shot in the dark but remembered seeing Jake store boxes of old clothes in our basement.  I descended the basement stairs off the back end of the kitchen, flipping a light switch on my way down.  Our basement was semi- finished with a living room area at the bottom of the stairs with an adjacent door leading to a concrete- floored storage area.  Your typical basement things were kept down here: holiday decorations, seasonal items, cleaning supplies, bags of unused clothes and boxes of unused crap that we couldn’t part ways with just yet. 

In the storage area I knew we had the baggy jeans, the loose t- shirts, and designer sneakers that were part of the apparent latest trend.  Showing up to meet Jamal in my slim- fit jeans and designer Sketcher sneakers might not give off a solid vibe and ruin what I had in the works. 

              I had on a pair of Levi Loose Fit jeans, an Aeropostale zip- up hoodie, and a pair of Nike SBs, whatever the hell they were.  The sneakers were about a half- size too small but would do the trick for the short time I needed them.  I didn’t feel comfortable in this type of clothing, not because they didn’t fit well and looked completely ridiculous, but because it made me feel like a part of Jake was alive again. 

FIFTY THREE

It was just before eleven when I kissed Lindsey goodbye and drove my Santa Fe into Paterson and quickly found Hinchliffe Stadium.  Traffic was light and I made most of the lights on the way.  I parked down the block and walked the rest of the way.  I didn’t want my car to give me away either.  How many recently- released- from- prison junkies drove a beige- colored Hyundai Santa Fe?  I knew I was early but I wanted to familiarize myself with the area.  It had been a while since I cruised the area as a cop and Dr. Sharper always told me that trauma tends to block out even the most simplest of things.  I had seen my sense of direction deteriorate immediately following the incident but has since slowly started to come back. 

              Hinchliffe Stadium, once the goliath of the Paterson community, is now riddled with overgrown weeds and the walls are tagged with graffiti.  I stood by the front entrance and looked through the wrought iron gate to catch a glimpse of the inside.  I’d done plenty of drive- bys on my beat as a cop because the stadium is clearly used as a popular spot to trade drugs and sex and set up gang square- offs.   Only now I realized I never stopped to take in the nostalgia of what once was a place rich in history.  The ticket booths that once fed thousands of people admission to so many events, now looked desolate and deserted.  I had my hands in the pockets of the sweatshirt and leaned against the dry cement wall next to the front gate with my left foot pressed against the wall behind me. I kept it there until I realized I must look like a tie- dyed flamingo. 

              I saw people pass by in cars and on foot that could have been Jamal but since they paid me no mind I figured they weren’t him.  While I was waiting I put a call in to Fitzgerald, even though I knew how late it was, and requested a trace on the phone number I lifted off of Garvey’s phone earlier in the day.  He told me he’d get it back to me as soon as he could.  Seems to be the likely story lately.  When I ended the call I saw the shadow of a taller, thin yet built man with some boyish features approach me.  He looked me dead in the eyes and gave a slight lift of the chin as to say, “What up.”  He had his hands in the pocket across his stomach of his sweatshirt. 

              Jamal was about an inch taller than me but I had him by at least thirty pounds.  He was wearing a navy blue Yankees hat with the brim as straight as the day it was manufactured and two sizes too big so the ears can be tucked into the hat, which was another pet peeve of mine.  Don’t even get me started on the brand’s sticker purposely left on the bill as another fashion trend.  He had on a plain white t- shirt with dark blue jeans that nearly sank beyond his thighs.  The belt was clearly just for decoration.  I tried my best to return the casual chin flip and suddenly felt the cold steel of my gun resting against the small of my back. 

              “What kinda shit you lookin’ for?” Jamal asked.

              “What kinda shit you got?” I instantly shot back, trying to sound desperate.  My slang was pretty up to par so I was able to have the natural conversation with him.  He gave me a look and held out his hands as if to say, ‘Whatever you want, I got.’ 

              “How much you lookin’ to spend?” he asked.  I wasn’t sure if I should imitate the true behaviors of a desperate junkie with the shakes and jitters of a trapped spider.

              “That depends on what you’re willing to give me?” I replied.  I was beginning to like toying with him but I didn’t want to press it too hard.  These stupid questions were getting us nowhere.

              “Stop fuckin’ with me, my dude.  If you want some shit, I’ll hook you up.  Otherwise, stop fuckin’ with me,” Jamal stated a little too firmly.

              I stepped up my game too and tried to sway the control my way.  I pushed myself off the wall and took a firm step towards him.  “What I’m really looking for is information.”

FIFTY FOUR

Jamal looked like he was ready to turn and head for the hills, but I managed to stop him in his tracks.  “I’ll still pay you,” I said and he turned back to me.

              “What kinda fuckin’ game you playing, chief?  You call me up to score some shit and now you twistin’ me.  You some kinda cop?” he said.

              I told him my objective and why I set it up the way I did.  He understood why I played it as a potential buyer and he agreed that if I requested a truthful meeting from the start that we wouldn’t be here.  Scared it might be a set up.  Jamal was much more intelligent than his appearance had people believe. 

              “So, what can you tell me about Esteban?” I asked and he seemed to relax after we agreed that I’d pay him a hundred bucks up front for agreeing to stay and talk and an additional bonus, depending on how valuable I found his information to be. 

              “Not much.  He came to me a few weeks ago looking to pick up some extra cash and I never turn away some cheap help,” Jamal said.  He suddenly sounded somewhat articulate.  “And I remembered him from when his brother Javier used to work for me.”

              “What kind of things did he do for you?”

              “Simple shit, man.  Take some small stashes for me and run them to the park, to the streets around the neighborhood, or within the building.  I knew I couldn’t have him handle too much, you know.  Gotta break ‘em in and he had just started.  I didn’t want him going too far, you know.  Gotta look out for the best interest of my crew.”

              “What happened the night he disappeared?”

              Jamal scratched his chin and thought for a moment.  “He showed up on time, as he always did, but seemed real nervous this time.  For someone new, he was usually pretty confident.  Little man was scared this time.  I don’t know why but I mighta scared him a bit.  Still gotta treat this like a business, you know.  So, I told him to get going or get out ‘cause I ain’t got time to waste.  He was supposed to go across the street from my apartment and drop it to a green Explorer.  He left but never came back with my money.  I just figured he took off with my dough.  I went to his house and his ma said he ain’t been home since the morning.”

              I thought about the green Explorer.  That was at least worth another fifty bucks in Jamal’s droopy pockets. 

              “Do you remember who you talked to when you set up the deal?” I asked.

              Jamal thought some more.  “Nah, man.  Dude just said he wanted a few hits of rock.  I told him how it was gonna go down.  I’d never met the dude before so I told him to meet me at the park.  Never bring some new blood up to the crib, you know.  Dude never gave me his name either and I don’t ask.  He did say something strange once though.  Like he was threatening me or something.  Said if I kept sellin’ ‘round here, I was gonna deal with some dude named Chooch.”

FIFTY FIVE

I paid Jamal another hundred for his valuable information and ensured him that he’d have nothing to worry about with the cops so long as he stopped recruiting young boys to run his drugs.  I told him I had some connections to the cops and if they heard anything about his dealings, we’d have a big problem. He hesitated at first, almost as a reflex but eventually caved and agreed.  I also told him I’d keep tabs on him myself.  It was after midnight by the time I started up my Santa Fe and headed home.  I made a pit stop at the Rite Aid on Hamburg to grab a Snapple.  I slugged half of it down before I got back in the car. 

              Back on Hamburg, my phone buzzed.  It was Fitzgerald.

              “Working late,” I said. 

              “Crime never sleeps, my friend,” he said.

              “What’s up?”

              “I got some info on that number you gave me.  Believe it or not it came back to somewhere in a local school,” Fitzgerald said.

              “What school?”

              “School Five on Main.” 

              I appreciated Fitzgerald’s help and updated him on my meeting with Jamal.  He was just as puzzled as I was about the situation.  I told him about the green Explorer and he offered to look for any reported thefts.  It was just then that I really could get used to being a private investigator if Fitzgerald was going to do the leg work on my cases.  As long as he offered I wasn’t going to tell him no.

              Somehow Garvey and Klein were connected.  Remembering back to earlier in the day when I was hiding in Garvey’s closet and overheard Garvey’s conversation.  I now knew that Garvey was on the phone with Klein and he and Klein were connected in something.

              Lindsey was cleaning the kitchen counters when I walked in, more out of nervousness than obsessive cleanliness.  She had on the same relieved face that she always wore when I returned home from a night out on my beat.  I gave her a hug.  I could tell she was just doing something to keep herself busy until I came home.  She kissed my neck.  We embraced for a full minute before she let go and told me she was tired and was going to head up to bed. 

              “Do you know how ridiculous you look or do you need a mirror?” Lindsey asked.  “Can I take a picture?”                I laughed.  “I’ll be up in a few minutes,” I said.

              I sat at the kitchen table with my iPad and updated the list of what I’d gathered so far while it was fresh in my mind: (1) Esteban was definitely running drugs for Jamal, (2) Jamal did not kidnap Esteban, (3) the green Explorer, (4) Garvey and Klein connected, but in what?, (5) Chooch?- what does it mean?  Who is he?

              Then it dawned on me as I added a number six to my list.  Based on how the conversation between Garvey and Klein went, Klein was Chooch.

FIFTY SIX

I turned off the lights and set the house alarm before I went upstairs to wash up for bed.  Lindsey was already lying in bed with her nightstand lamp on its lowest setting, reading a book on her iPad.  I went into the bathroom and rinsed my face and brushed my teeth.  When I pulled back the bedspread I was expecting to join Lindsey in a little light reading before I fell asleep.  Instead, she surprised me by climbing on top of me and kissing me.  It was the deepest, most passionate kiss we’d shared in a long time. 

              “What was that for?” I stupidly asked.  Men, me in particular, tend to have impeccable timing with ridiculous questions. 

              She gave me a look I hadn’t seen in a long time.  “I’m just so turned on by how well you are doing with this case.  Being a big- time private eye is so hot,” she said and kissed me again. 

              “I haven’t even done anything.  The kid is still out there somewhere and I technically don’t have my license to practice private investigation yet.”

              “Shut up,” she said with a smile.  Those were the last words I spoke for the rest of the night.  After we were done, I had a hard time falling asleep.  Not because of the sexual ecstasy but because I always have a hard time falling asleep.  I’d been trying to wean myself off the Ambien lately.  Some nights were much easier and others were much more difficult.  I kept thinking about the night’s events. 

              Beginning with my willingness to dress like Jake to go meet Jamal.  My meeting with Jamal.  Coming home and having to replace Jake’s clothes back in his box in the basement.  Realizing I couldn’t sleep anytime soon, I trekked to the basement and started out trying to place the clothes back exactly as I’d found them but I couldn’t be that messy if I’d been hogtied, blindfolded and forced to roll around in a pile of mud.  I decided to fold them and put them away as neatly as I could.  Attempting to hang up the sweatshirt on a clothes rack tucked away in a nook where a spare refrigerator used to be, I was instantly absorbed by the amount of nostalgia resting on the shelves above the clothes hanging on the rack.  After the fridge died, I put in a makeshift storage shelf in the cutout space to keep more stuff.  All of these thoughts began to rock, not only my brainwaves, but my entire inner being.

              I needed a chair to stand on in order to gain a clear vantage point of what exactly was on the shelf.  Turning on a light also helped.  I took down a large cardboard box and brought it to a workbench behind me.  In it were some of my old baseball cards, gloves, baseballs I kept from significant games in my youth career, and an old photo album that I had no current interest in thumbing through, and some smaller cardboard boxes labeled with a variety of titles.

              I set the box down on the floor and went into the shelf again.  I shifted a few more shoeboxes that contained what they were supposed to- shoes.  Another medium- sized box had ‘winter shit’ written in Jake’s handwriting.  It made me think of our trip to Park City, Utah two winters ago when Jake tried snowboarding for the first time.  I didn’t want to rummage through too much and run the risk of disturbing Lindsey’s peaceful sleep.  Someone should be allowed to sleep around here. 

              Just as I was coming down off the chair again and reaching to turn out the light, something caught my eye.  Even on the chair I needed to stand on the ends of my toes to get a better view but from what I could see it appeared to be a padlock securing a small crawl space.  I didn’t remember seeing such a thing when we looked at the house to purchase. 

              Being able to bust the lock with the heel of one of the sneakers from a shoebox led me to believe it was purchased at the local convenience store for a few bucks.  I needed to stand on the chair to reach the contents hidden inside.  I pulled out a small wooden box.  It was smaller than a shoebox but bigger than a pencil case.  It looked to be a cigar box of some sort but had no labels or writing of any kind on it.  

              I brought it to the workbench to open it and, at one time I might’ve been astonished by what I found inside, but wasn’t very surprised since he died.  I found a year- old issue of Playboy rolled up and twisted to fit inside the box, a half- empty- or half- full- (lately, I’d been thinking more on the half- empty spectrum) bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey, and several scraps of paper that had different handwritings in different colors on them.  Some were notes that could have traded hands or even been to- do lists.  I wasn’t interested.  Underneath the stack of papers were a few empty dime bags and a half- used package of rolling papers used to make your own joints.

              Taped to the top of the box was another scrap of paper that drew my curiosity.  Why did this one get special treatment?  Why was this one chosen to be plastered with Scotch tape to the inside cover of the box?  I needed a scissor from my toolbox to pry off the paper.  I had to be careful to only rip the tape and not the paper.  I saw thick black handwriting seeping through.  When I was able to get it open I saw a phone number written by someone who apparently called himself Source. 

              I began to think who it belonged to.  Was it Lindsey’s?  Did she have some sort of drug relapse that I hadn’t been privy to?  The issue of Playboy forced me to deny that claim. Was it left here by the previous owners since this was the first time I’d even known this hideaway existed?  I had no idea, but I had a feeling.  In connection with the rest of the belongings in the boxes in this area of the basement, I was starting to think it belonged to Jake.

Fourth Journal Entry:

Is it all really
that
worth it? 

What am I talking about?  Is life worth it?  Am I worth it?

Ahhh, fuck it.  Not today.

FIFTY SEVEN

Trying to piece this case together was like doing a connect- the- dots blindfolded.  Or trying to draw a circle with my toes.  While I was eating breakfast- Fruit Loops and chocolate milk- I thought more about where I stood. 

              Klein and Garvey were in on something and I knew that for a fact.  Klein was also referred to as Chooch.  Jamal recruited Esteban to run drugs for him but didn’t know anything about his disappearance.  Klein had set up the fake drug deal with Jamal only to make it easier to kidnap Esteban.  That much I knew as truth.                      

              Now the question came up of, why?  Why did Klein stage the deal?  Why did he want to kidnap Esteban?  Then there was a what.  What did Klein want with Jamal?  My brain started to wrap itself around some of these questions.  Klein clearly staged the deal for the purposes of kidnapping Esteban.  That was clear.  Was it Esteban specifically or whichever minor- league runner Jamal was using for that run?  And if Jamal was a small- time drug dealer, did that mean Klein was in on the business too?  Was Klein trying to take out Jamal’s business for the purposes of helping his own grow?  Destroy the competition?   Was Jamal’s small- time gig interfering with Klein’s potentially booming empire?  I’d say yes, which meant that Garvey was in on the business too. 

              It’s amazing to rationalize but Jamal, a small- time drug pusher was somewhat of an innocent bystander in all of this.  The dealing of an occasional bag of marijuana and a minute vial of rock or smack was obsolete and a minor detail in this case so Jamal was safe in my book.  He seemed reliable, based on the information I had gotten from him, albeit for two hundred dollars.  I’d keep him in my pocket for the future.

              I was rinsing out my bowl when Lindsey came into the kitchen.  She looked stunning in a vibrant floral print thigh- length skirt and a lime green blouse.  We exchanged good mornings.  Lindsey typically ate breakfast at school during the work week while she was preparing for the day and if I was lucky, we’d have a few minutes to sit at the table, she with seltzer and I with orange juice.  We sat silently for a few minutes before she got up to make eggs for breakfast.  Saturday was her day to make a homemade breakfast.

              “Morning, hon,” I said.  She said the same thing in reply.  Lindsey never kissed me in the morning because she didn’t want to ruin her lipstick.  Priorities. 

              Surprisingly, my phone buzzed so early in the morning.  I saw it was Fitzgerald.

              “Crime never sleeps, right?” I said.  I sat at the kitchen table.

              “That’s right,” he said.  His voice was very chipper and radiant for seven- forty five in the morning.  Come to think of it, when did Fitzy not sound chipper and radiant?

              “What’s up?” 

              “Nothing good,” he said, “another one has been reported missing.”

FIFTY EIGHT

Fitzgerald wasn’t sure if the new boy that went missing was related to Esteban’s case but he thought I’d like to know, just in case it was.  His name was Malcolm Freeman, also a local Paterson kid.  Malcolm’s dad called the police when Malcolm didn’t answer his cell phone after a dozen attempts and hadn’t been home since yesterday.  Malcolm had begged his father to let him walk to the deli two blocks away to pick up a quart of milk his mother needed for dinner.  Malcolm was only thirteen.  My brain immediately began to swarm around a few questions.  Who grabbed up Malcolm?  Did he and Esteban know each other?  And priority number one:  Was Malcolm really going to pick up a quart of milk or an ounce of drugs?