Authors: Solomon Jones

Ride or Die (15 page)

BOOK: Ride or Die

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But before Keisha could answer, there was a hard knock on the front door. The old woman turned her blind eyes in the direction of the noise and, without a word, got up to answer it.

Flattening themselves against the wall that separated the living room from the kitchen, Keisha and Jamal stood stock-still, holding their collective breath and waiting nervously for the inevitable.

Lieutenant Kevin
Lynch was leaving the commissioner's office when he got another call. A Highway Patrol officer had spotted Jamal and Keisha in a car on I-95 and lost them on Frankford Avenue.

From the sketchy information he'd received over the radio, it seemed that the prostitutes back at the abandoned factory were correct in their assertion. Jamal and Keisha were working together.

But as he rode north on I-95 to meet his detectives at Keisha and Jamal's last known location, Lynch still couldn't understand why.

“Dan two-five,” the dispatcher's voice came over the radio.

Lynch picked up the handset. “This is Dan two-five.”

“Meet Fifteen Command at Frankford and Academy.”

“I'm at the Academy exit now. I'll be there in a second.”

Putting down the handset, Lynch rounded the arcing exit
and made the left onto Frankford Avenue. He spotted the blue Dodge Neon, surrounded by officers from Highway Patrol and the Fifteenth District.

Parking in back of the other cars, Lynch walked over to the dark-haired lieutenant from the Fifteenth District who'd called for him on the radio.

“Any sign of our suspects?” Lynch asked.

“Not yet,” he said. “But we've got officers checking all the stores, and three teams in the projects going door-to-door.”

“Good,” Lynch said. “I've got some detectives en route, too. In the meantime, I need to talk to the guy they carjacked.”

“He's pretty shaken up,” the lieutenant said, pointing to a man sitting in the back of a Highway Patrol vehicle. “But he's right over there.”

“Thanks,” Lynch said, walking over to the car and opening the back door.

“I'm Lieutenant Lynch, Homicide,” he said to the rotund man with the blanket over his shoulders. “How are you?”

The man looked up at him with a sad smile. “I've been better.”

“That's understandable,” he said. “I've only got a couple of questions.”

“Sure,” the man said. “Go ahead.”

“We were under the impression that the girl had been kidnapped by the guy,” Lynch said. “But apparently they were working together. And I'm trying to understand why.”

The man shivered, though the temperature outside was approaching ninety.

“It's funny you should ask that,” he said. “Because I heard the guy ask the girl if she was scared.”

Lynch took out his notepad and pencil. “And what did the girl say?” he said, with his pencil poised over the page.

The man sat there for a few moments, trying to recall the words that had filtered into the closed-in space as he lay curled up and sweating in the trunk.

“She said, âI always did what I was supposed to do. Now I wanna see what it's like not to.'”

Lynch was aghast. Even after all he'd seen over the years, it was hard for him to believe that the frightened, beautiful woman-child he'd seen at that morning's protest could be that heartless.

“Could the voices you heard have been the radio or something?” Lynch asked.

The man looked over at Lynch with a certainty that was born of fear.

“I know it was them, I know what they said, and I'll never forget it,” he whispered. “Because it made me think I'd never see daylight again.”

Lynch nodded and slowly put his notepad and pencil back into his pocket.

Closing the door of the car, he waved over two homicide detectives who'd just arrived on the scene.

Moments later, as the three of them walked together into the projects, Lynch found that he had yet another death to mourn: the death of Keisha Anderson's innocence.

The old woman wore a bewildered expression as she opened the door for the white, uniformed police officers. It was the look she always wore when she wanted people to believe that she was fragile.

“Can I help you, officers?”

“There's a murder suspect on the loose in this area,” one of them said.

She responded with a blank stare.

“His name is Jamal Nichols,” the other officer said, holding up an old mug shot. “Have you seen him?”

The old woman smiled. “I ain't seen nothin' in a long while. I'm blind.”

“Oh,” the officer said, looking into her eyes for the first time. “I'm sorry.”

“That's okay,” she said as she imagined what must be going through Keisha and Jamal's minds while they hid in the kitchen.

“Maybe we should take a look around,” one of the cops said. “Just in case.”

“That won't be necessary. But if I hear somethin', I'll be sure to call 911.”

The officers nodded and walked away as she shut the door, returned to her seat, turned off her television, and listened.

A minute later, Jamal and Keisha meekly came out of hiding, and she held out her withered hand.

“Y'all come here,” she said quietly.

Hesitantly, they both walked over to the chair. The old woman reached up and ran her hand over Keisha's face.

“You see what I just did, child?” she asked softly. “That's what you do when you love somebody. You look out for 'em.”

She turned her head toward Jamal, and though he knew she couldn't see him, he could feel her looking through him with something that went far beyond sight.

“Your grandfather looked out for this boy's father,” she said, pointing an accusing finger in his direction. “Looked out for him when he ain't have - else to go. Treated him like a son. Three years later, Frank set him up. Killed your grandfather and took over what he built.”

Jamal and Keisha looked at one another uneasily. Neither of
them had ever heard the history that had put their families at odds. And both of them were sorry to hear it now.

“You say you don't care why your father feel the way he do about Frank Nichols, Keisha. But you should. 'Cause wise folks learn from other people mistakes, and fools don't even learn from their own.”

The room was deadly still as the old woman sat back in her chair and pursed her lips, satisfied that she'd done what was right. She'd warned Keisha. The rest was up to her.

Keisha looked at Jamal, her eyes filled with the same uncertainty that she'd felt in the moments after saving his life. Only now her fear was anchored by the reality that had split their families all those years before.

Jamal saw the look in her eyes. And he knew that he couldn't allow it to remain there. So he turned to the old woman and spoke from his heart.

“I ain't my pop,” he said with conviction. “And she ain't her grandfather. This ain't forty years ago, either. This is now. And right here, right now, it's only two things in this world I know. I know I wouldn't be alive without Keisha. And I know I wouldn't want to.”

He looked at Keisha.

“You rollin' with me or not?” he said, holding out his hand.

She looked down at her great-aunt, then turned her gaze on Jamal. Releasing the old woman's tired grip, she gave her hand to him. And she gave him her heart as well.

“Ride or die,” Keisha whispered.

It was a line from a song she'd heard in passingâone that she'd never fully understood until that moment. As she stood there looking into Jamal's eyes, she pledged her loyalty and her life to him. She was going to ride with him until the end of their journey, or she was going to die trying.

Aunt Margaret felt the message in their silence, and leaned back in her chair. If she'd learned anything in her ninety years, it was that you can't tell a person whom to love. You can only try to soften the hurt that love inevitably brings.

“Well, Keisha,” she said softly. “If you willin' to live with that decision, I guess I am, too. It's only one thing I wanna know. Did Jamal really kill Commissioner Freeman?”

Keisha opened her mouth and was about to answer.

“I can speak for myself,” Jamal said. “The answer is no.”

There was a long silence as Aunt Margaret contemplated his answer.

“Okay, then,” the old woman said, getting up from her chair and walking into the kitchen.

“Only thing I can tell you is, don't get caught,” she said, speaking over her shoulder. “âCause if you do, they gon' kill you. And ain't no comin' back from that.”

She opened a kitchen drawer, pulled out a pair of scissors, and walked back to the living room.

“First thing they talk about on the news is them dreadlocks, or whatever you call âem,” she said, handing the scissors to Jamal. “Cut 'em off.”

Keisha glanced at Jamal, who didn't hesitate before taking the old woman's advice. He held his locks up, three or four at a time, and cut as close to the roots as possible. He would have done more, but he knew that they didn't have time.

The old woman turned toward Keisha.

“You know you gotta find the truth, don't you?” she asked.

“The truth about what?”

“Who killed the commissioner, and why.”

“We're just trying to make it to another day, Aunt Margaret,” Keisha said. “We don't have time to find the truth.”

“If you ever wanna live your life without lookin' over your
shoulder, you
better
find it,” she said, reaching back for her chair and sitting down.

“You can only spend so much time runnin'. After a while, you gotta stop, turn around, and fight.”

Aunt Margaret's words reverberated in Keisha's ears as the last of Jamal's dreadlocks fell to the floor.

Keisha turned and looked at him. He was even more handsome without the hair spilling against his cheeks. As she stared into his eyes, she found herself imagining him with all his other coverings removed.

Jamal saw the lust in her eyes, and fought to keep it out of his own.

“I got a friend âcross town who can help us,” he said, looking around. “I just don't know how we gon' get to him.”

“First, you gotta get outta here,” the old woman said. “But you gotta change first. Go upstairs and get you some fresh clothes out the closet. Your uncle's clothes still up there, Keisha, so it should be somethin' up there to fit Jamal. You can put on one o' my Sunday dresses and a hat or somethin'.”

“Then what?” Keisha asked.

“Then the two o' y'all gon' take a walk.”

Lynch had his detectives do a second sweep of the projects. But he did so knowing that they'd be hard-pressed to find anything in such a place.

These projects, with their neat, two-story houses and quiet walks and driveways, looked nothing like the high-rise buildings he knew. But Lynch had the eerie feeling that its brick walls and pothole-ridden asphalt held the same kinds of secrets that had destroyed generations in his old housing project.

As detectives and uniformed police went door-to-door with
pictures of Jamal Nichols, Lynch went to the management office and knocked.

A frightened-looking older woman cracked the door.

“What do you want?” she said with an attitude.

Lynch pulled his badge. “A little touchy, aren't we, Miss â¦”

“Bagwell,” the woman said, exhaling and opening the door as she stepped back to allow Lynch inside. “My name is Miss Bagwell.”

“Lieutenant Kevin Lynch, Homicide.”

The woman's face twitched as she smiled nervously. “I'm sorry I was a little rude. I guess I'm just used to residents coming here and harassing me.”

She shook her head. “Their rent is a couple dollars a month, and they won't pay it. Then when they get an eviction notice, they wanna come here and curse me out. I guess I should expect that, though. They're all that way.”

Lynch looked at her for a long moment.

“I grew up in the projects, Ms. Bagwell,” he said with an edge to his voice. “Some people are like that, some aren't. But if I've learned anything over the years, it's that it takes a lot to survive when you've got everybody looking down on you.”

Ms. Bagwell started to respond, but thought better of it. Instead, she put on her glasses, in the hope that he couldn't see the embarrassment in her eyes.

“So I see you've got officers going door-to-door,” she said, changing the subject. “What's going on?”

“There's a murder suspect on the loose,” Lynch said. “We think he may be hiding somewhere nearby.”

BOOK: Ride or Die

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