He was there to ask her about the argument she’d had with her sister, just two days before Teo had fallen into a coma. It had apparently been a fracas for the ages, as all four flats with adjoining walls, floors, or ceilings had, upon questioning, given either him or Barb Havers chapter and verse about two women going at it at full volume. When two of them reported a shouted “Get out of here, Rosie,” prior to the crash-slamming of a door, it was no major effort to suss out the identity of one of the arguers. To his question of what they’d been arguing about, Rosie’s response had been, “I’m not surprised someone heard us. We’ve been arguing for years.” He’d asked why, arguing about what? Her statement about her sister “going African” had been her reply.
Did she know that Teo also called herself Adaku? he’d asked her.
’Course she knew. Adaku was her birth name. Adaku Obiaka. “I just said she went African, didn’t I?” Rosie declared. “The clothes, the hair, the jewellery . . . She, like, disappeared behind a new persona. We were lucky she didn’t make us all call her Adaku. Not that it matters, because once she became Adaku, we barely saw her. And that, by the way, is what she and I were arguing about. I’d gone to her because she’d not been to see Papá in weeks. He had a stroke—well, you saw him yourself—and one would think she’d be just a little concerned about him. Even remotely concerned. I mean, she even could have pretended to be concerned, couldn’t she? But he’s not Black—our dad—so he doesn’t count. Maman doesn’t either. They don’t register with her any longer. It was like she woke up one day and looked in the mirror and made a decision and that was that. It was, I mean, totally stupid. I think she wanted to punish them.”
“For what? Being white?”
“There’s that, yes. No one could possibly deny that they’ve got to where they are today because they’re white. But for her the bigger issue was that they had to take her from the orphanage or they wouldn’t’ve been able to adopt me. I was a baby and they wanted a baby. She was just something on the side that they had to put up with.”
Nkata glanced at her as she said this. He caught the twitch of her lips that appeared to rein in her smile. “Seems harsh, that.”
“Yes. Well. The facts often are, aren’t they.” She looked at him. She seemed to evaluate him. She said, “Why’s your face scarred? Were you attacked somewhere?”
“Knife fight,” he told her.
“Oh my God. How awful!”
“No God was involved. I was willin’ enough to be part of it.”
“Were you arresting a criminal or something?”
“I was in a gang,” he told her.
Her eyes widened. “A gang? Did you lot have . . . what do they call it . . . turf wars or something?”
He shook his head. “We jus’ liked to fight.”
“You’re quite big, though, aren’t you. I’m surprised anyone was willing to take you on.”
“So was I,” he replied. “Then I got myself more surprised when the bloke turned out to have a blade and know how to use it. I ’as lucky not to lose an eye.”
“So you left the gang?”
“That would’ve been way too clever and clever was not my middle name. Three more years of it but I got better with the knife. Then I met a bloke an’ he got me out of it an’ I never went back.”
“Are you gay, then?”
He shot her a look. “Sayin’ what?”
“Are you gay? You said a bloke got you out of the gang life. And you don’t even flirt, so that made me think . . . I mean, you looked at my legs but that was all. Do you not like Black women? Are you married? And don’t tell me it’s because you’re working a case because you aren’t working a case twenty-four/seven. We could meet for a drink if you’d like that.”
“I’m not gay,” he told her. “An’ I ’preciate the offer, but I gen’rally don’t have drinks with . . .” He wasn’t sure what to call her. The correct word was suspect, but he didn’t like to apply it to her.
“。 . . with people who might be murderers?” she finished for him. She downed the rest of the macchiato and walked over to a rubbish bin to toss the cup, thus affording him another opportunity to give her shapely form a look. She was beautiful in every possible respect, no doubt about it. She was also sexy as bloody hell. But his antennae for trouble were finely tuned. And Rosie Bontempi was trouble squared, no question.