Hold Me in Contempt (26 page)

“So no charges?” Paul added.

“No. We're just bringing him in for questioning. Try to shake things up. But these guys always have alibis,” Reddy jumped in, switching the picture back to a close-up of King's mug shot that spread so wide on the screen, his blues eyes became huge pixelated cubes that nearly looked demonic. “We'll ask where he was the night Vonn was murdered. And there will be something. A girlfriend. Probably one of the strippers. You know the drill.”

The men at the table traded knowing stares.

The Cronut pieces shot up my throat, and I jumped out of my seat to stop myself from vomiting.

“Bathroom,” I said, rushing out with my hand over my mouth.

I locked myself in the bathroom before staggering into a stall and vomiting Cronut bits into the latrine.

“Oh my God,” I said, bending down over the yellowing water, my knees on the dirty floor and hands embracing the bowl. “Fuck! Fuck!”

Hunched over and heaving, I kicked the wall and cursed some more. Vonn's waterlogged body washed up on the shore and Reddy's comments about King's alibi sent the last bits of Cronut and bile up my throat, and my body contorted to stop myself from vomiting.

“Get it together, Kim!” I cried with the bile in my throat burning so much it forced tears to my eyes. “Please! Please! What the fuck is going on?”

I felt in my pocket for my phone and pulled it out.

“No! Don't call! Don't call!”

There was knocking at the door.

“Kim? You okay?” It was Carol.

“I'm fine, Carol!” I answered. “Tell them I'll be right back. Just a little nausea. I'm fine.”

Still heaving, I looked up at the ceiling and asked myself what was happening.

“Just get it together!” I cried as a tear rolled down my cheek. “Please!”

When I left the stall and stood in the mirror to wipe my tears, I looked at myself and thought of how my father always said he could see my mother in my eyes. I never saw it. Sometimes I thought maybe I couldn't remember what her eyes looked like. Still, I looked at my eyes and pretended they were hers. Thought of what she might say if she was standing there looking at me. How she might say it. But I heard nothing. Maybe I couldn't remember her voice either.

“I got this! Yes! I do. I can do this,” I snapped, and suddenly wiped my tears and sucked up the snot in my nose. “We're good. We can do this,” I said to myself before washing my hands with methodic coolness to redirect my tension. “This is your career, Kim. You will not let anyone fuck it up.” I stared into my eyes. “No one.”

“Kim! Come open the door. It's Paul.”

Paul started knocking in a way that made it clear he wasn't going to stop until I unlocked the bathroom door.

“Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize I'd been gone so long,” I called from the sink.

“Open the door,” he said again, as if he hadn't heard me, and continued his annoying slow knocks.

I left the mirror and opened the door. “Yes,” I said, stepping out into the hallway with him.

He looked at me suspiciously from head to toe to head.

“You sick?” he asked. “You look like you've been crying. What happened in there?” He nodded toward the bathroom.

“Nothing. I was just feeling sick,” I said defensively as I tried to lead him back to the conference room. “I didn't think I'd been in there that long. Why did you leave the meeting?”

Paul grabbed my arm.

“Sick like what? Did you vomit in there?” he asked, sounding rather nervous.

“Now you care if I'm sick? Really?” I laughed at his clear desperation. “Wait. This isn't about you caring. You're”—I pointed at the bathroom—“Wait. You think I'm”—I pointed at my stomach. “And by you?” I laughed again. “Not a chance.”

“You have been acting funny lately. And not talking to me.” He stepped closer to me and whispered, “Maybe that's what all of this not-wanting-to-see-me bullshit is about.”

“Get over yourself, dickhead. I'm not pregnant with your child,” I said. “And if I was, I wouldn't be here. I'd be at a clinic. Look, let's just go back into the meeting. We can
not
talk about this later.” I started walking toward the conference room again.

“Too late. Everyone's gone,” Paul said, stopping me.

“Gone?”

Paul said, “The detective squad from the Eighty-Fourth Precinct picked McDonnell up an hour ago. Reddy said we can sit in on the interview. See what kind of animal we're dealing with.”

“We? I don't want to sit in on the interview. I'm not—”

“Now you're joking right? Come on. If we're going to take this guy down, we have to be in the loop with the cops. You know that.” Paul chuckled, pulling the keys to the police wagon from his pocket. “Ride with me. We'll use the sirens. Be in Brooklyn in ten minutes.”

The Eighty-Fourth was the big bad bully of the Kings County precincts. Its choke hold on a grid of the moneymaking businesses in downtown Brooklyn, signature-signing aristocrats in Borough Hall, and the major courts in Brooklyn that called the precinct home made it a lion with a silent growl and an invisible reach that few could ignore. That probably sounds strange when speaking about an entity that was essentially created to shuffle criminals in and out as law enforcement sought to make Brooklyn a pleasant place to call home, but there was so much more the officers in any precinct controlled. As the old saying goes, “If you want to do business in Brooklyn, it'd better be a blue business.” That meant you needed the cops on your side to survive. Sometimes those cops were good guys. Sometimes those cops were bad guys.

The Eighty-Fourth's close proximity to the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges meant that officers, officials, and attorneys on either side of the East River often worked together or bumped heads over crimes and casualties.

When Paul and I walked into the Eighty-Fourth, it felt the same way it always had—like walking into a room filled with sorority sisters who may have slept with your husband. Everyone was all hugs and “Hey, it's been a while,” but careful with what they said and what they didn't say because too much of either one wouldn't be good for anyone.

Greeting everyone as we walked in, I kept my smile wide and casual as I had in the police wagon with Paul on the way over. Under the blare of the siren, he'd told me about what I'd missed at the meeting with Reddy after I left. With so much pressure on his operation, Vonn had let on that King was slowly moving his business into Manhattan and had set up a new operation just a few blocks from the DA's office. His goal was simple. He wanted to move on from the college crowd in Brooklyn and into the deeper pockets of the upper class in Manhattan—entertainers, executives, socialites, and tech geeks, an entire population of addicts who preferred drugs that came with prescriptions. In the wagon, I kept up the conversation with Paul, trying so hard to seem concerned, but King's next move wasn't at the top of my list. While no one aside from Tamika and her friends knew about King, just the thought of me being attached to him in any way was heartbreaking and even embarrassing. I was worrying about where he'd been and whether everyone else was going to find out that I'd been with him. I didn't want King to see me—I couldn't let him see me. But I couldn't exactly refuse to go into the interrogation. I didn't know why, but I could feel Paul watching me. I could tell he was trying to figure some-thing out.

One of the detectives who'd just been at the meeting chatted with Paul as they led us into the observation room, where we could watch King's interrogation through the one-way mirror. The room was dark and as small as a walk-in closet. Four chairs were lined up in front of the glass.

I kept my eyes on my feet to avoid looking at King, whose presence I immediately sensed. Even in my nervousness, I could smell and feel him. Memories of our every second together made the scene surreal and what I knew I should be thinking about and feeling at that moment. The stranger on the other side of the glass was my enemy. The lover on the other side of the glass was no stranger.

Paul and I sat beside each other, leaving two seats for Reddy and Norman Delli, the Eighty-Fourth's Egyptian psychologist who used to sit in on interrogations in Manhattan before he transferred to Brooklyn. He'd once told me that people always thought the traditional one-way mirror was a joke—cops spying on suspects, as other cops played “good cop, bad cop,” taking turns trying to push a confession. But the one-way mirror was no failure. Its success, he'd said, was about the psychology of what happens when someone knows he's being watched. Most guilty people looked away from the mirror when they felt anxious or trapped in the small interrogation room. Sometimes they'd lash out or curse at whoever was spying from the other side. The innocent always looked right into the glass, as if they were looking for allies or some support system, someone to witness what they were going through.

“Motherfucker ain't look over here yet,” Paul said, elbowing me to get my attention when Reddy and Delli came and sat beside Paul, signaling that they were about to start the interview. Paul leaned over to me. “Always a bad sign when they don't look up at the mirror,” he whispered.

I quickly rolled my eyes over to Paul to avoid the spotlights on King. “Yes. It is.”

Paul turned from me and started talking to Reddy.

The door in the interrogation room opened and slammed close. I raised my eyelids just enough to see Strickland's shoes walking toward the table where I knew King was sitting.

He pulled out his chair and sat down. I kept my eyes on his feet the entire time.

“Some weather out there. Looks like it's going to be a hot summer.” He used his feet to drag the chair closer to King, and it scraped loudly against the concrete floor. “I don't care if it's hot. I prefer the heat. I hate those rainy summers. I was raised in Seattle. Moved to New York to escape all that rain.” He paused. “You ever been to Seattle?”

“I'm not in Seattle right now?”

I heard King's voice, and without any internal agreement on the matter, my eyes went to find him. He was smiling at the detective. Had pulled his chair to the table and was sitting back, holding a coffee cup in his hand like he was meeting a friend at a café.

“Do you think you're in Seattle?” Strickland said. He was holding a folder in his hands. He slid it onto the table slowly.

“Come on, Strickland. You know we've been on this date before. What you want from me?” King asked in the deep voice that rang with more authority than the detective's bassless tone.

“Can you believe this motherfucker?” Paul said, crossing his arms.

“What do you think I want?” Strickland asked.

“Fuck I know? Dick?” King put his cup down and leaned toward him. “You know I don't get down like that.”

They laughed. King tilted his head back and looked at the detective smugly.

“Y'all brought me in here. Got me in this room for two hours by myself. You come in here to talk about Seattle?” King said.

“He's annoyed,” Delli whispered.

“I know you're from Seattle, Strickland. You already told me that story about your wife and moving to New York to escape the rain. Fine. We're friends. What the fuck do you want from me?” King asked.

Strickland sat back in his seat too, leaving more space between himself and King.

Delli stood and walked to the mirror. “Strickland's messing up.”

“LaVonnte Russell,” Strickland started, but then he paused.

“La—who?” King looked confused.

“LaVonnte Russell,” Strickland repeated.

“I don't know who that is. Is that what this is about? Why you have me down here?”

“You know who he is. We both know you know who he is. Vonn—one of your boys. He hangs with you at the club, Damaged Goods. You have him doing your dirty work. Right?”

“I don't know what you're talking about, Strickland. I really don't. I know Vonn, but I didn't know his name was LaVonnte Russell. We're just cool. That's it. Why? What did he do? He got locked up? Baby mama tripping again?”

“No, McDonnell. He's dead. Vonn is dead.” Strickland plucked the folder from the table and handed it to King.

King took the folder and leafed through it. From the look on King's face it was clear that he'd found pictures of Vonn's dead body inside.

“Nigga fucked up. Shit. Who did it?” he asked coolly, looking at the pictures with a detachment I knew Delli was looking for. People who are guilty usually focus on one part of the picture, the victim's eyes or some piece of the crime scene they remember or wish to recall. The innocent look at the entire puzzle with clear detachment. Their eyes bounce around at everything they don't know or haven't seen as they try to understand what they're looking at.

King's eyes were bouncing.

“He wasn't there,” Delli confirmed, looking at us over his shoulder.

Strickland exhaled and stretched his arms and neck as if he'd heard Delli or knew the same thing. “We're trying to find out who did it. You know anything about it?”

“I didn't even know Vonn was dead,” King said, sliding the folder and picture back onto the table like an old newspaper he'd read.

“Seems unlikely. A member of your crew goes missing. Body washes up in the East River and you don't know anything. Give me something.”

“Nothing to give. I'm a businessman. I keep telling y'all that. I don't have a crew. Whatever Vonn was doing to get himself killed and thrown in the East River was on him,” King said. “I actually heard he had a pretty long rap sheet. Y'all look into that? Shit, all the tips I'm giving y'all, maybe I should be the detective.” King looked at the mirror. “Who back there watching? Reddy? Fucking Delli? LaPaze? Williams? All y'all sitting around watching me like I got the answers. I don't have any answers. I'm a businessman. I told y'all that.” He smiled at us, and when his stare came closer to where I was sitting, he peered more directly into the glass.