The Man in 3B (37 page)

“I thought you found the cause of the fire in Ben Wilkins’s apartment. He confessed, didn’t he?”

“Yes, we did find kerosene and graphite in his apartment, both of which are key components of WD-40, but WD-40 has a distinc
tive residue signature when it burns. A signature that was prevalent at the Graham crime scene. I’m not sure why he confessed, but Ben Wilkins didn’t kill that man. None of our evidence supports that. I’m sure it would have been overlooked if it wasn’t for my partner’s instincts,” Anderson said.

“And your text messages,” Thomas added.

“My text messages?” God, I didn’t like the sound of that at all. Slim had warned me about text messaging, and I always blew him off. “What are you trying to say? You think I killed Daryl?”

“No, I’m trying to say that your text messages led us to the evidence we needed to solve Daryl Graham’s murder,” Thomas said.

I stared at them both blankly. I’d already come to my own assumption, but I damn sure wasn’t ready to express it. “I don’t understand. Can one of you explain to me what the hell is going on?”

“We knew it was only a matter of time before your father contacted you, so Detective Ryan got a warrant to tap your wireless phone,” Thomas explained. “And bingo! What do you know? Your dear old dad contacted you, and for some reason, he seemed real concerned about you cleaning out the trunk of that car.”

“Now, would you like to explain to me why we found evidence in your car?” Anderson asked.

They kept saying my car, but it wasn’t my car. It was my…“Daddy,” I said under my breath. I think that once they said the knife was found in the trunk, my subconscious mind knew the truth, but it took a while for me to acknowledge it. Daddy killed Daryl. That’s why he wanted me to clean out the trunk of his car. He wanted me to get rid of the evidence.

“Oh my God!” I shouted. “Daddy killed Daryl.”

“You do realize there’s a good possibility he killed your mother too?” Anderson said, sounding almost like she was enjoying herself.

I shook my head adamantly. “I don’t believe that.”

“I’m not asking you to. I’m just asking you to be honest with yourself. If you loved your mother and/or Daryl, you owe it to them to bring their killer to justice, even if it’s your old man.”

“The hell with them. You owe it to yourself,” Anderson said.
“Because if you don’t help us, I can promise you the DA is going to lock your ass up for aiding and abetting a fugitive. Oh, and we’ve got plenty of proof of that.”

I ignored Anderson and turned to Thomas. “Do you really believe my father had something to do with my mother’s death?”

He nodded. “I did a little research. At the time of her demise, your father was worth about two million dollars. He was going to have to split that with your mother, plus pay her alimony. It would have been a pretty tough nut to swallow considering the lifestyle he was living at the time. With your mother gone, he didn’t have to split a thing. So yes, I think he did it.”

I wanted to crawl under the table, curl into the fetal position, and never get up. My whole world had been shattered. How was I supposed to move on after news like this? All those years I’d been blaming Connie for my mother’s death, and it was devastating to learn that it was Daddy who killed her. It was her death that made me what I was today—a damn drug addict. Everything that was wrong with my life was all Daddy’s fucking fault.

“I want him arrested,” I said to the detectives, my voice as cold as ice.

Thomas answered, “Of course. So do we. And you can help us get him, Krystal.”

“Tell me what I have to do. I want that fucker to pay for what he did to my mother. And to Daryl.”

Thomas pulled my cell phone out of his pocket and slid it across the table to me. “We need you to keep in contact with him. This way our techies can track him.”

I was skeptical. “I don’t know if I can talk to him without cursing him out now.”

Anderson rolled her eyes. “Damn junkies can be so weak,” she said.

Thomas shot her a warning look and she shut right up.

He turned to me and said, “We really need you to do this, Krystal. The text messages your father has been sending came from several different countries in the Caribbean, but until he stays in one place
for an extended period of time, we can’t dispatch the local police force to pick him up.”

“Of course, we have to hope he lands in a spot where they have an extradition treaty with the US,” Anderson added, letting me know that they were aware of the list of safe countries I’d compiled for him. All of a sudden, I realized that there was still a possibility they’d try to prosecute me for aiding a fugitive.

“Look, I need some kind of guarantee that the DA won’t be pressing any charges against me. I want some kinda deal,” I said.

Anderson sighed, and Thomas nodded at me. “I’ll see what we can do about that,” he said. He looked down at my phone. “In the meantime, send your father a text.”

I picked up the phone and typed:
daddy, where are you? slim is acting crazy and i want to get away. can i come see you, please?

I followed the movers out of the building as they carried the last two boxes from my apartment. I’d made the decision to put all my stuff in storage until I decided where I was going to finally settle down. I was pretty sure I’d be on the road for a while, so my next stop was to liquidate all my accounts, including my IRA and my 401(k). For now, I intended to travel the world. Montego Bay in Jamaica would be my first stop.

“So you’re really going through with it, huh?” Bertha asked. She was in her usual spot on the stoop, along with a couple of the other girls. Ever since Nancy had stopped spending time out there, it seemed that Bertha had become the new mouthpiece for the group.

“I sure am,” I replied.

“You just up and quit your job, packed your shit, so you can travel the world?”

“Mm-hmm. That about sums it up,” I said. “All I know is I can’t stay in this building anymore after everything that’s happened.”

“I know what you mean. Matter of fact, I think I’m gonna stop drinking the water.”

I gave her a puzzled look.

One of the other stoop ladies asked, “Bertha, what the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m not drinking the water ’cause there’s something wrong with it,” she said in a very stern tone that had me rather concerned. “There has to be because everyone in this building has lost their damn mind.”

Everyone on the stoop laughed, except Bertha, who kept a straight face. “Seriously, Connie, I been thinking about it a lot.”

“Thinking about what?”

“Ever since Daryl moved in, haven’t folks been acting crazy? Think about it now.” Bertha sat up in her chair like she was preparing to deliver a speech. I sat down on the step to listen for a minute.

“To start with, every woman with a slit from eighteen to eighty-five had been sitting out here on this stoop like we’d lost our minds just to get a glimpse of him. Most of us got halfway decent husbands and boyfriends sitting right upstairs, but we couldn’t miss seeing the man in 3B. And that includes me.”

“I know that’s right,” came from one of the other women on the stoop.

“Hell, I burnt up dinner one night staring at his fine ass down here,” one of the other sisters said.

“You weren’t the only one,” Bertha said, pointing at Pam, who nodded. “And that was only the beginning of the craziness. Look at what happened to Benny. One day he’s an awkward college kid; now he’s out of the closet with a boyfriend—Daryl’s brother, of all people. Now ain’t that some crazy shit?”

“Bertha, being gay doesn’t make him crazy,” I said in Benny’s defense.

“No, but it sure drove his daddy’s ass crazy, didn’t it? Confessing to a crime he didn’t commit. Try to tell me that ain’t crazy!” Bertha laughed and we all joined in. “Speaking of his crazy daddy, did you hear?”

“About him being released from jail?” I said. “Yeah, I heard. He knocked on my door the other night. Thank God they let him out.”

“No, not that. That’s yesterday’s news,” Bertha said, obviously proud that she was the one with the latest scoop. Yeah, she’d definitely taken Nancy’s place. “Did you hear about him and Nancy?”

I shook my head. “What about him and Nancy?”

“Ben and Nancy are getting married. She asked her husband for a divorce and moved into Ben’s apartment.”

“Get out! What about the kids?” Usually the gossip on the front stoop didn’t interest me much, but I have to admit that news floored me. After such a long time, I never thought Nancy would leave her husband. Hell, I never thought Ben would propose. I guess after so much tragedy, people start to rethink the choices they’ve made in their lives, and they start making changes.

“Her kids are both teenagers. You think they didn’t know what was going on with their parents? I heard they told their mother they just want her to be happy,” Bertha reported.

“Well, I’m glad to hear Nancy’s happy.”

“Me too,” Bertha replied. “You hear anything about your ex-husband and stepdaughter?”

“Now, talk about crazy.” I chuckled. “The police came by asking if I’d heard from Avery yesterday. They seem to think he’s out of the country and long gone. And no one has heard from Krystal.”

Bertha added what she knew. “Well, she ain’t at Rikers Island. I called over there to see.”

Pam laughed and said, “Leave it to you, Bertha, to be making a call like that.”

“Mm-hmm. You know that’s right! Ain’t no shame in my game,” Bertha said proudly, then shared the rest of her information. “A lot of people think she’s in some type of witness protection program after the way she snitched on Slim. I know his boys have been around asking if we seen her.”

“What a terrible waste,” I said just as my cab pulled up. “Well, y’all, that’s my ride to the airport.” I stood up and picked up my suitcase.

“You take care of yourself, Connie,” Bertha said.

I bent over and hugged Bertha and then waved to the rest of her news crew on the steps.

“Don’t worry. I will.”

I watched Connie from the shadows of Rick’s Café in Negril as she casually searched the pool area for a lounge chair. She found one by the Jacuzzi, took off the colorful sarong she was wearing, and set it down on the chair. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She looked absolutely mesmerizing. She’d firmed up and lost even more weight since I’d left New York. She’d also cut her hair shorter in this remarkable style that I really liked. She was thick and fine just the way I liked my women.

I’d been following her ever since her plane landed in Montego Bay three days ago. I’d purposely kept out of sight, hiding in the shadows to make sure she hadn’t been followed by the police. I wasn’t even sure she knew I was around. The plan was that she would enjoy herself on the island until I felt it was safe to contact her. If there were cops in the area, I sure hadn’t spotted them, so I was about to make my presence known.

I took one more look at the love of my life, then stepped over to a secluded section of the cliffs, taking off my knapsack. Inside were the last remnants of who I used to be, along with five of the six disposable cell phones I’d purchased before leaving the States. I’d already gotten rid of the phone I’d been using to text Krystal. Despite how I felt about her, I knew she couldn’t be trusted. My source back home had told me about her and Slim’s arrest. I almost felt sorry for Slim. The only thing she truly cared about was herself and that damn cocaine. Predictably, right after her arrest, she began blowing up my phone with text messages. I didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand that she was working with the police. I wasn’t about to
fall into that trap, so I tossed the phone over the railing of the cruise ship I’d been traveling on for the past two weeks.

A friend of mine once told me that cruising was the best way to travel. Coincidentally, he was the same friend who sold me a new identity in the form of a passport, birth certificate, and Social Security number. For ten thousand dollars, I had become a whole new person. Well, it turned out that not only was it the best way to travel, but it was also the best way to hide out in plain sight. Vacationers didn’t care if a nuclear bomb went off back home as long as the drinks were flowing on the ship. The crew members were busting their asses so hard to keep guests happy that they couldn’t have cared less about me and the troubles I’d left behind, which suited me just fine. It was also a great way to confuse the cops because I only turned on the cell phones when I disembarked from the boat. Right now I’m sure they thought I was somewhere in the US Virgin Islands.

I reached in the knapsack and picked up the phone that was marked with the number three. I’d written a number on each phone, designating it for a specific purpose or person. Phone number one was the phone I’d been using to text Krystal and Connie. It was somewhere at the bottom of the Caribbean now. Number two was used to call Connie’s disposable. Phone number three was the phone I was using right now, and phone number four was my miscellaneous phone used to check flights, call cabs, and so on. I hadn’t used numbers five and six yet.

I dialed phone number three.

“Hello,” a male voice answered.

“Hey, it’s me,” I replied. “Any word?”

“Yeah, there’s still a warrant out, but the cops have moved on to other cases.”

“Good. Thanks.”

“No problem. You be safe.”

“Always.” I hung up and turned off the phone. This would be the last time I spoke to him. He had been paid well to keep his mouth shut, but unfortunately I wasn’t in a position to trust anyone anymore.

I needed to verify what he’d just told me, so I picked up phone number four and dialed a number I’d committed to memory.

“Homicide. Captain Blake speaking.”

Don’t ask me why, but I stood up straighter as I spoke, trying to sound as proper as possible. “Good afternoon, Captain Blake, this is Theodore Andrews with the
Amsterdam News
in Harlem. We spoke two weeks ago about Daryl Graham’s murder. We’re running a follow-up piece on black-on-black crime, and I was hoping to see how the case was coming along.”