After Death(24)

“He’s on the run from the law,” Calaphas says. “There’s no way he could collect the insurance anyway. Mace started the fire to destroy evidence.”

“If that was his intention,” Freeman says, “he did a damn fine job of it.”





OUT OF HERE




With window shades closed and lamplight low and rain rumbling, the small house feels like a claustrophobic bombproof warren beneath a city under attack. Nina and John hurry on their appointed tasks with heads thrust forward and shoulders bent as though worried that the ceiling might collapse on them.

She can imagine only one reason why Aleem didn’t take the boy with him. To commit a kidnapping, even of his own son, he needs the approval of someone above him or equal to him on the ladder of gang authority. He could receive that dispensation tonight. Chafing at any restraint, which is his nature, he might decide to snatch the boy without gaining consent.

The law offers Nina no assistance. The police are underfunded and demoralized. Key figures in the government are patrons of the gangs and get their cut of the drug trade.

Her pistol was once her father’s. It came with a belt holster. Her dad had no concealed-carry permit, but sometimes he carried the gun anyway. Because criminals respect no legitimate authority, the law often restricts only the law-abiding, who are expected to go defenseless in the name of social order. She fits the holster on her belt and slips the pistol into it.

When the luggage is loaded into her well-used Ford Explorer, after she and John put on rain jackets, she takes the duffel bag from the pantry and puts it on the kitchen table. She withdraws four packets of hundred-dollar bills, forty thousand dollars, and pushes two of them toward John.

“Twenty thousand each. It’s our desperation money in case something happens to the duffel bag or it gets taken away from us.”

“Forty thousand.”

“My son the math whiz.”

“That’s a lot.”

“Not when we have to build a whole new life.”

He pulls a single hundred out of one packet and examines it with something like wonder. “It’s real.”

“I gave up counterfeiting.”

“How much is in the bag?” he asks.

“Another three hundred sixty thousand.”

“You serious?”

“When am I not?”

“Where’d you get it?”

“I’ve been saving pocket change.”

“From how many people’s pockets?”

“It was a gift,” she says.

“Who gives anyone four hundred thousand?”

“You better thank God somebody did. Your jacket has zippered pockets. Tuck those two bundles away, keep them dry.”

He puts the loose bill in an exterior pocket. “It’s like a lucky penny. A lucky penny except ten thousand times over.” He slips the bundled bills into inner pockets. “It was that Michael guy.”

“Well, Aleem didn’t suddenly get a conscience.”

“Why’s that guy giving you so much?”

Pocketing her two wads of cash, she says, “You remember Shelby Shrewsberry?”

“The really big guy, your client.”

“Michael’s doing this for him.”

“What’s Shrewsberry got to do with it?”

“Michael can explain it better than I can.”

“When?”

“When the time comes. Carry the bag for me.”

John picks up the duffel and follows her into the garage. “Is Michael rich?”

“He’s better than rich. He’s a miracle. Put the bag in front of your seat, prop your feet on it. We need to keep it where we can get at it quick.”

In the Explorer, as Nina puts up the garage door with a remote, the boy says, “We left lights on in the house. I’ll go back.”

Although Nina is always penny-wise, she says, “Stay put. We’re out of here. Lights look better if Aleem’s homeys cruise by.”

She drives out of the garage and puts the door down and turns left into the street. In a get-down gangsta mood, the wind brags loudly, shatters rain against the windshield, tumbles an empty trash can along the street. Filthy water rolls along gutters and shears up from the tires as the Explorer cuts across a flooded intersection.

John says, “He’s white.”

“Who is?”

“This Michael guy.”

“You have a problem with white?”

“No.”

“You better not. We don’t do color.”

“I know we don’t.”

“You better know.”

“I’m just wondering.”

“Tell me.”

“Well, you know.”

“Yeah, honey, I know.”

“I need to say it?”

“Say it to own it.”

“Are you and him . . . ?”

“No. He’s cute. He’s smart. Maybe it could be, him and me, once I had enough time to study him. But that isn’t what this is.”

“I’m just trying to understand.”

“Me too. It’s crazy but it’s real. Until he has a chance to explain it to you, just think of him as maybe like Moses.”