Shattered Trust (19 page)

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Authors: Leslie Esdaile Banks

BOOK: Shattered Trust
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“Yes, and things sometimes come full circle,” she said, picking up on a hunch.
“They come home to roost ... by any means necessary.”
The huge framed poster of Malcolm X that graced Akhan's dining room immediately came into her mind. Yes ... X marked the spot, and portions of his famous quotes.
“I understand,” she said quickly.
“But we must also overstand to gain insight, above all else,” he said, dropping his voice. “The efficiency of the universe is as neat as mathematics.”
She rubbed her hands down her face. Math. OK. X could also be the Roman numeral ten. “Ten to one, everything always runs its course.”
“Ten to one, indeed.” Akhan said.
This was the essence of crazy-making! She wanted to scream. Ten to one could be numerically ten plus one, or eleven. One hundred and one. What?
Sensing her frustration as her hard sigh filled the line, Akhan pressed on. “One times out of a hundred, if you travel by
bus
, train, plane, whatever, you'll run into snags. But if you're patient, bring something along to read, then you'll be able to endure the tests of time. Just remember the
key
is going back to basics and
land
ing on your feet by employing patience.” He sighed. “You understand?”
“I think so. Thank you. I love you. Travel well, and be safe. See you guys soon.”
“Ashé.”
Laura hung up the telephone quietly and paused, and then changed into a different sweat top to go along with the ruse in case the feds were getting nervous outside. A key was in the house. Near or above the poster of Malcolm X—”overstand” meant above it, or over a stand near it. A bus terminal locker, one hundred and ten, had something for her to read.
Land
—ing ... land was involved. Real estate. What was Akhan into with Haines?
 
 
“You ready, honey?” James asked when she'd rejoined him at the counter.
“Yeah, I liked this one better,” she said, turning around to show off the pink and white baseball shirt and then striding out toward the fresh air and waiting feds.
The old shopkeeper slapped his helper five once James had cleared the door. “Lady's got good taste ... bouncin' and behavin', have mercy!”
 
 
“You think you guys can get us into her uncle's house for a quick look around?” James bluntly asked, leaning into the agents' passenger's side window after he'd stashed the bag of clothing in the trunk.
“It's not on the detail,” the driver said flatly.
Laura placed both hands on her hips and glared at the men who strangely resembled The Men In Black to her. “If we're not under arrest,” she said in a quiet voice, leaning into their window. “If his house is no longer an active crime scene,” she added. “If I'm risking my life to aid an investigation that you gentlemen desperately want to see wrapped up nice and neatly ... I'd like to go to my uncle's home to check on that poor old man's property to be sure it's all right, and all his belongings are still there. After all we've been through, is that too much to ask?”
 
 
Sure that the house was sound-wired, Laura crossed the threshold once agents had gone through to clear it. But they didn't have to tell either of them twice to stay away from the windows.
Everything in Akhan's North Philadelphia row home had been riffled through, pored over, examined, and violated by external hands and eyes—the long arm of justice, seeking his assailant, but victimizing his privacy in the process.
All his papers, clothing, food boxes in the metal kitchen cabinets and pantry, items on the tiny linoleum kitchen table, his dining room breakfront ... posters and pictures had been moved about, and she had to use her old memories of where he'd always placed things to find Malcolm, who was cast on the floor.
She didn't need to go upstairs, just seeing the upheaval on the first floor. Floral sofa cushions had been overturned, chairs pulled away from the wall. Her uncle's worst nightmare had come true;
the man
had come into his fortress with impunity. She could only imagine the sense of utter violation a proud and very private man like her uncle Akhan would feel, or the roiling emotions that would sweep through her once she opened her own front door. Homeland security, kiss her ass. This was a police state, a nation under siege. The Patriot Act was a fucking joke that wasn't funny—conspiracy theory manifest in a political manifesto.
The worst part of it all was egress had been taken by force within her Philadelphia and Cayman island oases. No home was left sacrosanct. That was unforgivable. But she focused on the task at hand, namely, finding the key so she could overstand it all.
James shadowed her as she made quick work of righting pillows for the observant eyes outside the house, calmly body-blocking her as though he were her human shield ... but it served a dual purpose of blocking their view as she made her way to what had been Malcolm's wall.
Clearly, they'd been looking for a wall safe behind the tossed pictures. Laura glanced up. Overstand ... She walked up the steps and looked at the badly cracked crown molding along the edge of the living room ceiling that was too thin to slide a key between. She walked back down the stairs in frustration, then glanced up at the central ceiling light, then to the floor. The small poster light that had been affixed to the edge of the ebony framed poster by double-back sticky squares had never worked, to her recall. It lay on the floor, yanked down from its sticky back placement. A small brass thing with batteries in it. She went to the poster, James blocking her from window view, and quickly opened the back of the light unit. A small silver key slid into her palm, which she immediately shoved into her pocket.
“There's nothing for me to do here,” she said loudly with disgust, “but to call a cleaning and restoration service.” Laura shook her head and strode out the front door. “Nice work, gentlemen,” she said with attitude, and jumped into the passenger's side of her Jag.
James was in the driver's seat in a flash. “You wanna go home now,
honey
?”
She shook her head no. “Sure,
sweetheart
. But first I need to stop at one of those cell phone/beeper stores ... I think there's one up on Cecil B. Moore Avenue. In all the drama, I lost my cell phone charger. I can at least plug it into the lighter and maybe see if I can call family to be sure everyone is all right.”
“Sure, honey,” James said, pulling off from the curb. “Anything you want.”
Chapter 19
T
hey entered the electronics store and watched the agents lean against their head rests in exasperation. There was nothing like a woman to drive a man insane, and if they wanted to play games, she could play all day, driving them in errant circles. She knew what she wanted, a way to get the key to Rick, and it was simple.
With James as her shield to the window, she picked up an inexpensive prepaid phone and charger.
“I want to buy this stuff,” she said, calmly producing cold cash. “But I want to be sure it works before I give it to my friend.”
“Do what you want, sis, but once you break the seal on the box, you bought it.” The young clerk dismissed her with a glance.
“OK,” she said, and passed him the payment, then hurriedly opened the box, entered the prepay code and dialed Rick, half shielded by James and a rack. Laura discreetly slid the key into the box and waited for Rick to pick up. “Listen to me,” she said quickly under her breath. “There's a locker with papers in it downtown at the Greyhound Station. One-ten. This will put topspin on your Pulitzer. I'm going to give you the location of a phone store. Pick up a phone I just bought for you, and find the key in it. Get the papers, then call me once on my cell, one ring, hang up, and meet me at Kinko's on Spring Garden. Got it?”
“Yeah,” Rick said, sounding out of breath. “What the hell—”
“When you go to Kinko's, you make me a good copy of whatever you find. Use self service and accidentally leave it on the copier. You don't know me or James when you see us. We'll pass each other like strangers. I'll pick the papers up. You keep going with the originals. Scan them, send them to a safe source in the media, put them in a vault, lock box, wherever. Do not screw this up, Rick. I'm not sure what's in them, but this probably goes all the way to Washington—Deep Throat action. OK? Ditch the phone after you call me once.”
“Done,” Rick unnecessarily whispered.
Laura hung up and called the bored, young male clerk over to assist her again. “It works. OK. Can I leave it here for my friend, though, in a bag that says paid? He's all slow, I can't take it to him right now, but he said he'll come get it in an hour.”
“This ain't no layaway joint, and I can't be responsible if the phone walks,” the young man protested.
She discreetly passed him a twenty. “He'll be here in an hour, okaaaay. Can't you just put it in a bag under the register with a note that says ‘paid,' and when he comes, just hand it to him—if you ain't too busy?”
“Aw'ight, aw'ight,” the clerk grumbled. “What's his name?”
 
 
“I'm hungry,” Laura announced, once they got back into the Jag.
“What do you feel like?” James said, issuing her a lopsided grin.
“A deli sandwich. There's a great diner right down on Spring Garden, not far from my house. Around Eighteenth or Nineteenth, I think? You know ... right next to that Kinko's and the video store.”
 
 
“You gentlemen want a sandwich?” James asked the agents in the car with a wide grin as he passed them. He let Laura go ahead of him and hung back as they wiped their palms down their faces in frustration.
“How do you deal with this all day everyday?” one agent said, shaking his head.
James shrugged and chuckled. “Guess I'm just used to her ways by now.”
“Oh, James, sweetheart, can you get my phone out of my purse in case family calls? It's in the trunk,” she yelled over her shoulder and then went into the deli.
“Sure, honey. ” James glanced over his shoulder, trying not to laugh. “I'll bring you guys a corned beef on rye.”
He watched her pick at her food, stalling, every so often glancing down at her phone.
“Midday traffic is thick,” he murmured and then noisily sipped his soda through a straw. Before she spoke, he motioned to the phone, giving her the nod to put it in a hip pocket and keep her voice extremely low, given the unit might have also been tampered with and turned into a bugging device.
“He works on
North Broad Street
at the newspaper,” she hissed. “It shouldn't have taken that long to get uptown, pick up the key ... if that little knucklehead in the store tried to steal the phone—”
“Relax. It's not the uptown drive; it's fighting Center City traffic close to midday. Then circling back up this way to Spring Garden.”
Laura dropped her head into her hands and sighed. “I don't even know what's in that locker.”
“Never stopped you before, has it.”
She peered up at James and smiled. “I'm getting too old for this mess, sweetheart.”
She became still as her phone vibrated in her pocket. Laura casually pulled it out, flipped it open, then closed her eyes as she slid it away again. Wrapping up the remains of her turkey club, she ditched it, and walked out the store toward the Jag with James on her heels, and then quickly spun. “Oh, shit. I need boxes for all that mess at my uncle's. Let me just run next door to Kinko's and pick up some for the trunk. OK, sweetheart?”
James let out a loud, theatrical sigh. “Oh, for crying out loud, honey, c'mon!”
She blew him a kiss, passed Rick like a stranger, and heard him say three. Cool. Self-service machine three. Peeping over her shoulder, she saw James engaging the agents, keeping them briefly distracted, long enough for her to pick up the copies that had been on the machine and slip them under her shirt. The bulge was enormous. Shit, she should have kept the sweat top. But she was too close to her goal of knowing to give up. Rather than do that, she wrapped her arms around her waist and leaned against the desk.
“Hi. Got any boxes?”
“Yeah. What size?”
“Oh, I don't know. What's the biggest you've got?”
The clerk rolled his eyes. “Wanna see?”
“If it's not too much trouble.”
He pulled out an assortment, brandishing them for her to choose from. Laura pointed at three sizes, paid the clerk quickly, and pressed them to her belly to cover the papers.
“All set,” she said.
James gave her a curious look. “You wanna put those in the trunk?”
Her eyes widened. “No! And crush my good suit? Are you crazy? We're just around the corner, sweetheart. Besides, I want to get in the house, make a cup of tea, chill out, catch up on some reading, sort the mail ... look over old paperwork to see if there's anything that can help us that I might have left in the house.”
“I understand,” James said with a yawn. “Not that my nerves would allow it, but I for one could use a good nap.”
 
 
When they pulled into her block, evidence of police incursion was clear. A white florist's van was parked half a block down the street. Her front door opened and a suited agent gave the thumbs up, and then glanced at the rooftops, talking into the wire in his ear. The neighbor's white poodle was barking furiously, and Laura wondered if the poor animal had been freaked out all day.
James got out of the vehicle, rounded it to get their clothes out of the trunk, and then traded her the bag to press against her stomach for the boxes she'd been clutching.
“Why don't you go upstairs and drop that bag of clothes and I'll bring you some tea up to your office while you go through whatever docs you have in the house?”
“Thanks, James,” she said, kissing him softly, and then went into the house.
 
 
The trick was going to be getting past all the FBI agents crawling all over her house, picking up a file from her hallway secretary along the way, and then going to the bedroom to set down the bag—while simultaneously, accidentally on purpose, dropping the old file and new papers in a heap at her feet. Not knowing where hidden cameras were posed a problem, so she had to do a sleight of hand without being sure which way her audience was facing or where any blind spots were in the room.
Yes, she knew that this was all a part of her and James's so-called protection. Yes, she'd maneuvered the feds into allowing her and James to be a part of the sting. Yes, she'd wanted to bait the hit man to her, and had wanted to smoke out who'd ordered the trigger man on so many people. Yes, she knew that all of this was a necessary evil ... but she didn't trust them, didn't want them in her house, and had no way of ever being sure every bug was gone, once this thing was put to rest.
Laura feigned tripping on the edge of her plush teal and ivory Oriental carpet as she entered the bedroom, spilling the contents of the folder and bag she carried, along with the papers from beneath her shirt. Quickly standing, she muttered a curse, gathered the papers in one communal pile, and strode to her office down the hall, blotting nervous perspiration from her forehead with the back of her wrist.
She could do this, she could do this ... had to do this and do it smooth. She sat down in the butter-soft, high-back leather chair that she'd abandoned for more than a year, and closed her eyes for a moment to steady herself against the wonderful, familiar sensation. She glimpsed out the window, noting the greenness of the trees and how beautiful the view of the Art Museum was at any time of the year.
The first thing she sorted out in the top page of Akhan's documents was a letter addressed to her.
Dear Laura,
I trust that if you have this letter, then something has gone terribly awry. Haines and I go way back, as you know. There was a level of trust between us that cannot be defined on paper. Suffice to say that he and I silently partnered on helping people get mortgages during a time when banks weren't lending to us, especially in regions down South. It was his good show of faith and my good fortune, now yours to manage. X always marks the spot. I love you. Be well and be gentle with yourself and our people. Follow the Xavier Mortgage Company memos and juxtapose that to all you heard as a child. Remember, follow the money ... always.
Laura tried to calmly turn the pages of the one will she'd never fully seen, Akhan's. The addendum she was holding in her hands nearly drew an audible gasp.
She knew all about her uncle and Haines's early business; on the surface, he was Haines's manservant. A layer below that, he was an enforcer. That had all quietly come out in the wash and had been viscerally understood between them when Haines had been murdered by his own wife's lover. Yet, until now, Laura had to admit that she never quite understood the unlikely relationship between Akhan and Haines, or how they came to be so inextricably linked. Now she did as she read on.
Old family whispers and partial oral histories made a memory quilt told in grown-folks-business hushed tones over dozing children's heads ... but every shut eye ain't asleep. Laura read the will, read between the lines, remembered the murmurs and rethreaded old mental needles, stitching until she put the entire patchwork together to follow the drinking gourd. None of that subtext was on paper; all of it was stored in painful cellular memory. The ancestors wept. Nothing in print would incriminate her uncle or the dearly departed, but, oh ... did the snippits that were written all make so much sense.
Laura made a neat tent with her fingers before her mouth, tears rising as her eyes sought to escape through the window and inner vision.
Her uncle Akhan had been on the run from the South, having quietly righted the unspeakable wrong against her mother's dignity, his niece. A rape avenged ... first by her mother's father, who went forth with hope to a young, Main-Line-bred, Northern attorney just out of law school, Haines ... who was too overconfident and too eager to make a name for himself by lobbying the system via demanding justice from the law of Jim Crow.
But that young attorney, Haines, couldn't fathom the way of the world, then, and was bitterly aggrieved to learn that his client's father had paid for his naiveté and lack of experience in unspoken Southern politics by hanging at the end of a rope slung over the branch of a tree ... for overspeaking and overstanding what he nor a black father could never understand or countenance, overstepping their bounds during a time when everyone was forced to stay within the narrow highway divide of white lines.
An unpardonable debt was levied; a rapist caught and lynched in eye-for-an-eye justice; the silent case was brought to the court of unspoken back wood appeals. A brother on a mission found that good ole boy from North Carolina, who wound up riding in a car trunk across many state lines, then wound up fed to gators in the Bayou, perhaps Lake Ponchatraine, Mississippi burning, sweet home Alabama, amid Louisiana Creole gumbo jazz. It was all in there, the history.
Uncle Xavier Hewitt, a.k.a. Uncle Akhan, her grandfather's younger brother, her mother's dearest hero uncle-turned-Northern-state-street-warrior by way of Philadelphia, ultimately becoming Donald Haines, Senior's living ghost of injustice, dealt a blow—haunting him with his own spiritual deflowering, stealing the young attorney's mental virginity, when Haines could no longer believe in the system he'd spent his life worshipping.

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