The Trials of Nikki Hill (13 page)

“And I will,” he said. “You can count on it.”

N
INETEEN

T
he deputies came for Jamal at 6
P.M.

When Jesse Fallon had visited earlier in the afternoon, the lawyer had said nothing about him being moved to a new jail. What Fallon had said was that, because of the polygraph, he’d probably be a free man within twenty-four hours. The case against him had all but fallen apart.

Jamal tried to explain this to the deputies. The only one who bothered to listen showed him the computerized removal slip ordering his relocation to Wayside, a facility sixty miles north of the city.

“What’s the point, if I’m getting out tomorrow?”

The guard was big and burly, a buzz-cut redneck version of William “The Refrigerator” Perry. His lazy eyes stayed on Jamal for a beat. “I don’t know nuthin’ about you getting out. I don’t know nuthin’ about nuthin’ except this removal slip. So get your stuff.”

They transported him in a yellow bus, along with four other men in prison garb. Each was handcuffed to his respective seat. Two armed guards went along for the ride, sitting behind wire mesh, one at the rear, shotgun on his lap, one at the front, beside the driver but facing back.

In spite of shouted orders from the guards to shut up, two of his fellow prisoners kept up a steady stream of mouth music all the way to the new jail. Judging by their chatter, the little one, with what appeared to be several pink burn splashes on his dark face and neck, was nicknamed PhillyQ. His beefy, slack-jawed, droopy-lidded friend answered to a name that Jamal assumed was Mar-ket, because the guy looked like he was full of groceries. He discovered later it was Mark-It, because he liked to leave his mark on things. With a knife.

They arrived at Wayside shortly after the dinner hour and were quickly logged in and led to the dining hall. They were treated to a meal of chicken and potatoes, heavy on the lumpy white gravy, what Jamal used to call “gran’ma food,” along with the usual dessert, “gorilla biscuits,” oatmeal cookies so thick it was rumored the kitchen crew used their armpits to mold them.

That image did nothing to improve Jamal’s appetite. He moved the food around his plate while idly observing his fellow inmates. He’d been spoiled by the private digs near the courthouse. He didn’t like being a member of the general jailhouse population. He was worried about being beaten or raped before Fallon could get there with the golden key. And he was picking up weird vibes from PhillyQ and Mark-It, who were sitting across from him, no longer talking, just staring at him like it was him who cut the cheese.

Feeling definitely creeped out, he stood, picked up his plate, and began to carry it to the dirty-dish counter. Mark-It rose, too, then PhillyQ. The big man suddenly elbowed the little brother, forcing him to drop his plate. It clattered on the floor, followed by the sound of nervous laughter. Then silence.

PhillyQ shoved back against the big man, but Mark-It barely budged. When he returned the shove, PhillyQ went reeling toward Jamal.

Jamal saw something in the little con’s hand that caught the light. A metal spoon.
Oh, shit, a shiv!
He took a step backward and bumped against somebody. A glance told him it was a big con he’d never seen before, glaring at him like he was a bug on the floor.

PhillyQ was almost where he wanted to be. He flipped the spoon so that its handle was pointed at Jamal’s stomach.

Without hesitation, Jamal kicked out, the toe of his shoe connecting with PhillyQ’s family jewels just as the sharpened spoon handle sliced a groove along his inner thigh.

As PhillyQ folded and hit the deck on his side, squealing, Jamal felt a push from the rear, then a hot, stinging sensation deep in his back, beneath his left shoulder blade. The room shifted and the floor rose up to greet him, moving much too fast. He landed hard only a few feet away from the puking PhillyQ.

Everybody in the room seemed to be screaming and yelling, but Jamal was having trouble hearing. Something was wrong with his eyesight as well. Colors were fading. Just before blackness took over he thought he saw beige uniforms moving toward him through the crush of county-jail blue.

T
WENTY

A
t eight that night, when Nikki arrived at Loreen’s beauty salon, she found it crowded and overflowing with hip-hop, talk, and laughter. The establishment had begun to outgrow its neighborhood strip mall origins back when Rose Battles was still its proprietor. Once Rose’s Beauty Palace had been passed on to Loreen, she acquired the store space to the west, knocked down the common wall, and expanded the operation from four to eight chairs, each of which rented to an independent stylist at $650 a month. Nikki had never seen an empty chair in the place.

When she entered, the women filling them looked up from their magazines or paused mid-gossip.
Ain’t celebrity grand.

“Well, hello, missy,” her stylist, Baron, said, deserting his customer to study her hair. “We plan on makin’ any more TV appearances, we’re gonna need a little topside tidyin’ up.”

“Gee, Mr. Silver Tongue, you sure got a way with a compliment.”

“Honey,” he said, indicating with a toss of his head the gimlet-eyed woman sitting in his chair, “tonight Mr. Silver Tongue’s all complimented out.”

“I’ll try to make it in Monday, let you do your magic on my topside,” she said, glancing around the shop. “Where’s the boss lady?”

Baron pantomimed the smoking of a cigarette.

Jocasta, the manicurist, a news junkie who’d been dividing her attention between her customer’s cuticles and the television set suspended from the ceiling in a corner of the room, called out to her. “Hey, Nikki, what’s with Jamal Des-champs? Court TV says he’s innocent.”

“Court TV probably knows more about it than I do,” Nikki said.

She found Loreen sitting on a white plastic chair behind the building, puffing on a cigarette and staring at a scruffy garbage dump just off the mall’s rear access road. “Enjoying the sunset, huh, girlfriend?” Nikki said.

Loreen’s foxlike face brightened and she smiled, exhaling a plume of smoke into the still evening air. “Nikki,” she said. “Don’t tell me it’s that late already?”

“Depends on what you call late.” She watched Loreen toss away the cigarette and use both hands to push herself from the chair, wincing. “Hip giving you trouble again?”

“It’s nothing,” Loreen said, hobbling a little as she approached. They hugged.

“I missed lunch,” Loreen said. “Had a last-minute press and curl. So I’m hungry enough to max out both our credit cards.”

She led the way back through the shop. As they passed a screened-off area where a hair weaver plied her trade, a customer was just leaving. She was a big, flashy woman wearing a glittery tank top and shorts. One look at Nikki and the smile on her face froze, then disappeared. “You bitch,” she screamed. “Took away my man.”

The shop went silent, except for LL Cool J rapping away and the thrum of the dryers.

“Oh, hell,” Loreen said, moving between Nikki and the woman. “Violet, you got your weave done to your satisfaction?”

“Ain’t ’bout my weave,” Violet said. “It’s ’bout that Oreo bitch hidin’ behind you.”

Nikki stepped away from her friend to face the furious woman. “No reason for me to hide, Violet,” she said, surprising herself with the calmness of her voice. “You’re angry at the wrong person and you know it.”

“Wrong person?” Violet took a step toward her. “You the one sent my man to San Quentin for no reason.”

Nikki shifted her stance only slightly and stood her ground. “Girl, they must’ve tied your weave too tight. Your man shot a Brink’s guard. Came near killing him.”

“He say he didn’t do it,” Violet shrieked.

“He also says he never laid hand to you,” Nikki said. “That the truth?”

Violet was momentarily silent.

“You’re what, about twenty-five, girl?” Nikki went on. “I guess you needed a weave because your nice nappy twenty-five-year-old hair fell out in one clump all by itself. Your truthful man didn’t get drunk one night and yank it out by the roots.”

Violet’s eyes filled with tears. “Don’t make you no less a bitch,” she said before pivoting on her heel and heading for the cashier. All other eyes in the shop were still on Nikki. She could feel her skin tingling. Loreen moved behind her and said, “You figuring on taking a bow, or can we just go?”

“We can go,” Nikki said. “Where’d she get that hair for

the weave, anyhow? Can’t be human. Must be a goat some

where with his ass all naked.”

The two friends left the shop staggering with laughter.

They dined on Caribbean food at Mo Bay in Venice. They covered the usual topics: family problems (Loreen’s little sister was hanging with a guy who looked to her like he was cracked out), the men that should have been in their lives but weren’t, women they couldn’t stand, movies bad and good, general gossip, their hatred of general gossip.

“Speaking of which,” Loreen said, “Jocasta said she heard it mighta been Satanists who murdered Maddie Gray.”

“She didn’t get that from Court TV, I hope,” Nikki said. “Satanists! I’ll have to pass that along to Joe Wal—”

A pager sounded. Both women grabbed their purses, then looked at one another and laughed. “Who’s got the problem?” Loreen asked.

It was Nikki. The digital number on her pager belonged to the D.A. He’d added a double “8,” which indicated an emergency.

She fished a cellular phone from her purse.

While Nikki listened to what the district attorney had to say, Loreen sat back in her chair, looking at the other diners and pretending she wasn’t the least bit interested in their conversation. “Everything all right?” she asked as soon as Nikki clicked off the phone.

“I’ve got to drive out to Wayside Park,” Nikki said, waving to the waiter for the check.

“What’s goin’ on there?”

“Some cons stabbed Jamal Deschamps about an hour ago. It’s not clear how much damage they did. Joe wants me to drive there and find out.”

“Save yourself some time and travel,” Loreen said. “Come back to the shop with me. By now Jocasta’s got the whole story.”

T
WENTY-ONE

A
t just after ten the next morning, Eddie Goodman sat on the couch in the district attorney’s office watching Joe Walden pace while engaged in a telephone conversation with some unidentified party. Morales was at the other end of the couch, slurping a cup of hot coffee. Ray Wise sat stiffly in his chair near the D.A.

The room’s other occupant was the attractive but cold deputy D.A., Nikki Hill. Goodman had read in the paper that her old man, William Hill, had retired after putting in twenty-five years as a cop.
Maybe I should look the guy up, find out what you do with your days.

The morning
L.A. Times
lay scattered on the floor as if Walden had thrown it down in disgust. The headline read “Maddie Murder Suspect Attacked.”
What a cluster fuck this is turning into.

The D.A. hung up the phone and announced to the room, “He’s lost some blood, but he’s out of danger. Fortunately for us, since, as his lawyer has been informing me hourly, he should not have been in jail in the first place.” His tone was definitely accusatory, Goodman thought, aimed primarily at Wise. But he and Morales were not there to be patted on the back.

They’d already had their session with their supervisor, Lieutenant Corben, whose salty comments about their handling of the case were still ringing in his ears. Hoping to forestall more agony, he asked the D.A., “How’d Jamal wind up at Wayside, anyway?”

Walden leaned back in his chair and looked at Nikki. She said, “They claim it was a computer glitch. The removal slip was supposed to be for a prisoner named Desmond.”

Walden used his thumb and middle finger to massage his eyes. He looked worked over. Probably had had a rough night, fielding calls from irate, insecure politicians and pit-bull members of the media. Well, Goodman had had a pretty rough night himself.

He tried to put it out of his mind. This was no time to be caught off base, mooning over something that had nothing to do with the Gray murder.

“Any idea why he was cut?” he asked.

“What’s the difference?” Wise said. “Can’t we get this meeting back on track?”

“Damn it, Ray,” Walden said heatedly, “I’ve had just about enough of your bloody impatience. That’s what got us into this jackpot. You and your ‘slam dunk’ case.”

Wise paled and seemed to shrink in his chair.

“The two cons who cut him were third-strike lifers,” Nikki replied to Goodman’s question. “Maybe Deschamps gave ’em a sideways glance. That’s all it would take.”

“What do they say?” Goodman asked.

“They say they’re innocent. It was two other guys.”

“Let me talk with ’em,” Morales said.

“You? Why?” Walden looked surprised.

“I know how to get bangers to open up.”

“What makes you think they’re bangers?” Walden asked. “Nothing in their jack—”

“They’re Crazy Eights,” Morales said flatly. “Gang names are PhillyQ and Mark-It. Sorta a hobby of mine, keepin’ up on the Crazies.”

“Well, they’re not our immediate problem,” Walden said. “And maybe if you’d spend as much time on the job as you do on your hobbies, you and Detective Goodman might have provided us with a better suspect than Deschamps. I’m now in a position where I have to eat shit every time the phone rings. I don’t like shit on my menu, gentlemen. I need a suspect who’ll go the distance, and I need him fast. Stop dragging your feet, and do your bloody job.”

Jesus, Goodman thought, was the miserable night he’d just spent going to be a harbinger of a downward slope his life was taking? He saw Morales’s shiny black eyes suddenly dull and his mustache begin to twitch. Before his partner could say something that would dump them even further into the crapper, he addressed Walden himself. “We’ve been putting in nineteen- and twenty-hour days on this. Not exactly dragging our feet. We’ve given Mr. Wise evidence suggesting other lines of inquiry.”

Walden looked questioningly at his head deputy. “The blackmail theory,” Wise said. “We talked about it.”