Most Wanted (42 page)

“If you let my friend go, I have some information for you.”

Melanie heard the deadly calm in her own voice. She wasn’t afraid. This felt like a dream. Or a nightmare, really. A nightmare she’d lived through before.
The man behind the door, the blast, her father lying in a pool of blood, eyes staring, breathing ragged
.

“What information?” Slice asked.

“No. First you show me she’s okay,” Melanie insisted.

“Who you talking about? That Chinese bitch? The architect?”

“Yes.”

“She your friend? Small world, ain’t it? She inside, resting. Come on in, we’ll have a nice talk.” He laughed deep in his throat, like a growl.

Slice went inside, and Bigga shoved her through the door after him. The lights were on, the foyer looking just as it had when she’d been there the night of the murder. It smelled different, though—the burned-flesh odor replaced by a powerful, acrid combination of basement damp, water damage, and the smoky aftermath of the fire. Thick enough to taste, but better than a charred corpse. Slice headed down the hallway toward Jed Benson’s office, and Bigga pushed her from behind, making her follow.

As she walked through the office door, she saw two feet sticking out from behind the blackened remains of Jed Benson’s desk, and she gasped. The feet were clad in Sophie Cho’s favorite black Nikes. Melanie lurched forward, trying to reach her friend, but Bigga grabbed her arm savagely and stopped her.

“Where the fuck you think you going?” Bigga yelled.

“That’s Sophie! What did you do to her?” Melanie exclaimed, craning her neck but unable to see any more of Sophie than her feet.

“She fine. We just give her a little taste of something, keep her quiet on the way here,” Slice replied, a sadistic glint in his tiny eyes.

If Sophie had been unconscious since they brought her here, Melanie realized, they couldn’t have gotten any information from her yet. That was a positive sign. Because the second they had what they wanted, Melanie knew, they would have no reason for keeping Sophie alive. Or Melanie either.

Slice shoved Melanie down into a damaged leather swivel chair. Popped springs from the scorched seat poked into her back and thighs. She wondered if it was the same chair Jed Benson had been tortured and died in. The thought made her angry rather than afraid. Slice leaned close, his sweaty ski mask emitting a sour wool smell.

“Listen up, Melanie,” he said, “we can do this real easy or we can do it the hard way. The easy way, you tell me what I want to know. The hard way, you end up dead like Jed.”

“Dead like Jed,” Bigga said. “My man shootin’ the rhymes.”

“You a pretty girl. Be a shame if you got cut so you wasn’t pretty no more,” Slice said, rubbing his gun along her cheek, pushing back her hair with the barrel. The sexual menace in the gesture enraged and nauseated her. She honed the anger, realizing that it was helping her stay in control.

“If you want to talk to me, Slice, back the fuck off,” she commanded icily, as if she were in her office. She’d talked to scumbag criminals like him a hundred times before. Pretend this is no different, she told herself. She was the boss. She wasn’t surprised when it worked. Confidence was everything in life. Slice laughed and took several steps backward, dropping the gun down to his side.

“The bitch got cojones, I say that much,” he said to Bigga. “And she know our names. No point in being uncomfortable, then. We can go plain-face.”

Slice stripped off his ski mask. Bigga did the same. Melanie was overwhelmed with rage, this time at herself. By using his name, showing him she knew who he was, she’d signed her own death warrant for sure. No way he would ever let her live, now that he knew she could identify him. Her only remaining chance was to drag out giving him the information he wanted as long as possible, and try to figure a way to escape. She had no hope that anybody would come save her. She’d have to rely on her wits.

“What is it exactly that you want to know?” she asked, making an effort to keep her voice steady.

“Don’t play games, bitch. Where the product?” Slice demanded. “We know it’s here. You show us where.”

“We know it’s here, you show us where,” Bigga chanted, laughing. Slice shot him a look, and he fell silent.

So her theory was right. There was an elaborate trap built into the walls of Jed Benson’s town house, concealing a king’s ransom of drugs, revealed in the blueprints she’d left outside. Sophie, Sophie, what did you do? But Sophie, lying on the floor in deep sleep, couldn’t answer her silent question. It had been a classic home invasion from the start. The bad guys were looking for drugs, like they always were. When Jed Benson wouldn’t give up the goods, Slice killed him, as often happened. The same brutal story had played out a thousand times before on the streets of Bushwick. She just hadn’t recognized it in this fancy neighborhood.

Just then the cell phone in her pocket began to howl. Somehow she knew it was Steve; she could feel his worry in each piercing shriek. Slice leaned over and dug his hand into her pocket, his fingers creeping grotesquely against her thigh. He withdrew the phone, turned it off, and threw it to the floor. It skidded to rest against the desk. Melanie looked at it longingly, saying a silent prayer that he would call the police.

“Guess they’ll have to leave you a voice mail,” Slice said, smiling sarcastically. “Now, about the merchandise…”

Drag it out longer. Maybe somebody will come, she told herself. “What merchandise?”

“Don’t be acting like you don’t know. That would upset me. You don’t wanna see some shit I do when I’m upset, you feel me?” he said in a low, intense tone. He had the eyes of some night creature—tiny, gleaming, dead eyes much too small even for his narrow face.

“I’m gonna tell you everything, okay? I don’t want to get hurt. I need to make sure we understand each other, that’s all.”

“What the fuck merchandise you think I’m talking about? Ladies’ underwear?” Slice yelled. Bigga laughed uproariously.

“You’re saying there are drugs hidden here? Why would there be drugs hidden in Jed Benson’s house?”

She didn’t even see it coming, he was that fast. In the blink of an eye, Slice smashed the butt of his gun against the side of her head. Pain exploded in her skull. She shot back in time. “
Daddy! No! Noooo!” “Shut the fuck up, bitch!” A blinding blow to her head, then darkness
. But a second later, she was back in Jed Benson’s office, conscious, hearing and seeing better than she wanted to. She raised her fingers to the spot the pain radiated from. They came away bloody.

The blow might have thrown somebody else into a panic. But for Melanie it served as a wake-up call. It reminded her. You had to fight back, or the animals would win. They’d won last time. Things had never been the same after the robbery. Her father had never spent another night under their roof. Years of rehab in San Juan, and then he ended up leaving them, marrying his nurse. She’d seen him twice in the last ten years. She wouldn’t let the animals win this time, goddamn it. She found her rage and, at the heart of it, her calm.

“You think I won’t hurt you? Next time it’s a bullet, bitch!”

“Okay,” she said, “I hear you. I’ll play ball.” Until I can figure out how to kill you, you scum.

“Where the fuck the drugs? And don’t you be acting like you don’t know, because I know that’s why you came here.”

“I’m getting to it. You know we were up at Benson’s place in Millbrook this morning, right?” She was breathing heavily, her ears still ringing, but she was more determined than ever before.

“That true, Bigga?” Slice asked.

“Toldja they’s somebody with that police who killed No Joke,” Bigga said.

“It was her? Why the fuck you didn’t body ’em when you had a clear shot, then? They killed my dog.” He grabbed Melanie by the throat. She struggled for air. “Fucking bitch, you killed my dog! That dog was a warrior. You know what his name was? No Joke, because he wasn’t no fucking joke. Me and him been through mad shit together. You gonna have to pay for that.”

He let go of her throat, took a step back, and raised his gun. She couldn’t let him shoot her, because then he would win. She didn’t care if
she
lived or died, but she cared if he did.

“Stop!” she yelled. “We found the trap. The trap in the car, okay? I have the blueprints to this house.”

“Yeah, Slice, get the product first, then body her,” Bigga said.

“Okay, right, Big.” Slice dropped his arm. Melanie breathed again. “I get carried away. Then I don’t get the information I need. I got to focus. One thing at a time. Yo, thank you, son.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” Bigga said.

“So you found the blueprints. Where they at? ’Cause this bitch useless,” Slice said, pointing at Sophie, lying so still she might have been dead. “Think you mighta OD’d her on that shit, Big.”

Melanie’s brain felt intensely focused. She saw an opening.

“Dan O’Reilly, the FBI agent, he took them to my office and put them in the evidence vault,” she lied coolly. “We were planning to show them to a trap expert to help us figure it out.”

“If that’s true, why you here now?” Slice asked.

“I wanted to get a head start. You know, take credit for finding it first.”

Slice nodded. He believed her.

“So she got to call O’Reilly and tell him to bring the blueprints here, then,” Bigga interjected.

Yes! That was exactly the result she was aiming for. Better Dan than nobody. At least she thought he’d try to prevent her death. But Slice was too smart.

“What the fuck, Big? This why I tell you to keep your stupid-ass mouth shut. That would get us locked up. We use our own people. Here, take my heat and watch her while I make some calls.”

Slice handed Bigga the gun and retreated to the hallway, pulling his cell phone from his pocket as he went. She heard beeping as he hung up and dialed repeatedly. He was paging somebody. Melanie tried to focus, but she couldn’t help replaying what he’d said a moment earlier. Calling Dan would get them locked up. So Dan wasn’t on their payroll? He wasn’t working with them? God, she prayed that was what it meant!

Out in the hallway, Slice’s cell phone rang, and he answered. His voice filtered, low and intense but clearly audible, through the open doorway.

“Yo, son, you ain’t jumpin’ on my beeps like you should be,” Slice said. “Don’t gimme that shit. Now you gotta prove your loyalty. I need you to do something for me…. Yes, now! …I don’t give a fuck if you busy. This more important…. Don’t you be making me think nothing. …I ain’t your bitch, so why you trying to fuck me?…You better be jumping on this, or you gonna wake up dead. …Okay, that’s more like it…. Good…. This is what you do. The blueprints be in the vault in the prosecutor’s office. I need you to go in there and get ’em.”

Slice had spoken of using his own people, but he was obviously talking to an insider, to one of Melanie’s people, somebody who could get into the vault in her office. Rommie Ramirez. It had to be.

While Slice talked, Bigga stood leaning against the massive wooden desk. He had the sort of fat, doughy face that looked benevolent on some people. On him it was merely vacant and self-indulgent. His arms crossed, he held the gun casually against his chest, watching Melanie quietly.

“Who’s that on the phone with Slice, Rommie Ramirez?” she asked.

“Shut the fuck up. We ask the questions ’round here,” Bigga said.

“Whoever it is, maybe if I talked to them, I could give them a better sense of where to look for the blueprints.”

“Open your mouth again and I tape it shut.”

As she watched him warily, something clicked inside her throbbing head. She put two and two together. Bigga was the one who’d shot at her at the Benson estate this morning. Bigga was Dan’s snitch. But no sooner had she taken heart from that thought than warning bells went off. Which way did it shake out for her prospects of survival that Dan and Bigga were working together?

A FEW MINUTES LATER, SLICE WALKED BACK into the room. “Now we in play. If the blueprints be where she say, they’re on the way. If not, she don’t live another day.”

“Awright!” Bigga said admiringly. “Now what?”

“We wait. Keep the gun on her.”

Slice kicked aside debris to clear a space on the floor and, extracting a small GameBoy from the pocket of his baggy pants, slid down to a sitting position against the wall near the doorway. The beeps emitted by the video game lent an incongruously festive air to the dismal basement. Bigga stood watching Slice.

“I said watch
her
. What the fuck you watching me for?” Slice barked.

“Nuthin’. Whatever.”

“So don’t fucking look. You disturbing my concentration.”

“I’m hungry,” Bigga whined.

“You always hungry. That’s how come you so fat.”

“I’m starving, bro. I need me something delicious. Lemme go get some Chinese or something before the action start. I saw a place when we was driving.”

Slice looked up from his game, annoyed. “You remember that last job we pulled in Bushwick? You couldn’t climb in the window because you was so fucking fat, and that motherfucker Arturo broke out. We didn’t get nothing off’n him?”

“Yeah?”

“So I’m putting you on a diet. No food for you.”

Melanie had followed this conversation intently, flooded with relief that Slice wouldn’t let Bigga leave. She cherished the hope that Bigga was on Team America, working for Dan, and that when push came to shove, he would help her out. Despite her bravado, she had no interest in being left alone with Slice. She might be reckless, but she wasn’t stupid. Slice would kill her just for kicks, even if it made no sense for his game plan, so how could she predict his next move?

Bigga sighed and sat back down on the desk. Slice returned to his GameBoy. As they sat there, the silence broken only by beeps from the GameBoy and the noise of Bigga’s stomach growling, the air putrid with a wet, burned smell, Melanie’s confidence withered and disappeared. She realized she was right near her apartment, that her beautiful baby was mere blocks away. She thought about going out with the stroller on Monday night, smelling the smoke, following it here. Her foolish pride had made her run after the Benson case, and now it would cost her her life. And ruin Maya’s. Maya would be motherless, Steve left to raise her alone, and Melanie had only her own ego to blame. She knew what it was like, growing up with one parent, always feeling the absence of the other, and now she’d inflicted it on her daughter, something she’d vowed never to let happen. In spite of herself, Melanie started to heave and shake with suppressed sobs. Goddamn it, she was thinking, she wouldn’t give that bastard the satisfaction of seeing her cry! But thinking also about the gaping hole she’d be leaving in her daughter’s life, she couldn’t help it.