I racked my brain to think of another way to find Dom, but couldn’t. I tried to remember our conversations, but nothing else came to mind. I handed Flossie back her phone. “Thanks.”
“You know, I got a sweatsuit that’ll fit you, one of John’s. I keep it for cold nights. It’ll feel better than those wet clothes.”
“Great, thanks.”
Flossie smiled slyly. “You can have it if I can watch you change.”
Chapter Fifty-Eight
I reached West Philly well after dark, which worked for me. I hustled down Banning Avenue with my head down, wearing John’s boxy jean jacket over a generic gray sweatsuit. I had on Flossie’s light blue Collins Consolidated ballcap, and we had eaten Filet-O-Fish sandwiches from McDonald’s, so I felt almost human again. I kept my eyes peeled for a check-cashing agency, but so far hadn’t seen one.
Banning Avenue was well-lit, a main thoroughfare I had driven many times, using it as a shortcut when the Schuylkill was congested. Lining the street were a variety of shops: a nail salon, a children’s shoe store, a take-out place with a sign that read southern style cooking, an old-school barbershop, a Jamaican jerk restaurant, and a storefront church. There were families shopping, talking in groups, or heading to cars at the curb. An old-fashioned trolley rumbled past on rails, and traffic was light but steady.
I walked under a blue scaffolding and reached Gibbons Street, so I took a left. The street turned residential, lined with brick rowhouses, each with a different door, window treatment, or front porch, typical of Philly neighborhoods.
I kept going, passing houses with porches or small front yards surrounded by wrought-iron fences. Light emanated from the houses with the sound of talking, laughing, music, or TV. I approached the intersection of Gibbons and Masterman, recognizing it from Google’s Street View. There was no check-cashing agency.
I scanned the corners and noticed something that I hadn’t seen on Google. The rowhouse across the street had new brick in its fa?ade, a lighter color around a small window in the center, as if a storefront had been replaced. It could have been the check-cashing agency.
I crossed to the rowhouse, and a TV set flickered behind the curtains. The front door was painted black, next to yellow mums in a concrete planter. I rang the bell, and after a moment, a young woman in a T-shirt and jeans answered the door, with a baby in diapers on her hip.
“Excuse me,” I started right in. “I’m looking for a man named Tig. I think he used to have a check-cashing agency here, maybe before this was a—”
“For real?” The woman stepped back and slammed the door.
I turned away, but I’d have to start knocking on doors. I had no other options. Sooner or later, maybe somebody would remember Tig. Philly was like that, if people moved, they didn’t move far.
I knocked on five more doors, then another five, zigzagging across the block in an orderly fashion and getting nowhere. I struck out at the next five houses after that, beginning to feel desperate, but I stayed the course for doors 17 and 18. No luck.
I felt my heart lift when door number 19 was opened by an older African-American woman. She had steel gray hair, and she looked at me with dark, lively eyes through her bifocals. She had a kind smile, her mouth bracketed by laugh lines. In her hand was a thick hardcover, and she had on a white sweatshirt that read so many books, so little time and black leggings.
I started my spiel. “Excuse me, I’m looking for someone named Tig. He used to have a check-cashing agency on the other corner, over there.”
The woman’s face lit up. “Oh, Tig? I know Tig.”
“Yes!” I almost cried out. “I’m a friend of his nephew Dom.”
“Oh, I remember Dom, from when he was a little boy.”
My heart soared. “Yes, he used to work for Tig when he was younger, after school.”
“Haven’t seen him around lately.”
“Do you know where I can find Tig?”
“No, I lost track of him.” The woman frowned in thought. “What did you say your name was?”
“John Flossie,” I answered, to play it safe.
“I do know somebody who’s good friends with Tig.”
“Can you tell me, please? Or call them? It’s really important.”
“Hold on.” The woman nodded. “You wait right there. I’m going to make a call, and I’ll be right back.”
* * *
—
The woman’s name turned out to be Mary Ward. A retired library aide, she let me into the house and showed me to a blue paisley couch to wait for one Leonard Richardson. She said it wouldn’t be long, since he lived only two doors away.
I thanked her, looking around. The living room was small and cozy, lined with books on three sides, and her reading chair was catty-corner to the couch. A framed poster of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers hung above a walnut console table that held a boxy television and an old Dell laptop, with a chair underneath.
In no time, there was a knock on the door, and Mary answered it, admitting a balding African-American man in his seventies, lanky and tall in a tan windbreaker over a T-shirt and saggy jeans. His lined face was long, his lips pursed. Milky cataracts rimmed his brown eyes, and a scar nicked his top lip.
Mary stepped aside as he entered the living room. “Leonard, this is John Flossie, and—”
“Bullshit!” Richardson pulled a gun from his pocket and aimed it at me. “On your knees! Hands up!”
Chapter Fifty-Nine
“Don’t shoot!” I knelt down and raised my hands.
“No games!”
“Please, I’m just trying to find—”
“Shut up!” Richardson turned to Mary. “Woman, what are you doing lettin’ him in? Look at ’im, beat to shit! What were you thinking?”
Mary’s fingers flew to her mouth. “Leonard, put that gun away!”
“I tell you all the time! You’re too damn trusting! Don’t you know who he is?”
“I was trying to tell you, his name is John Flossie.”
“That’s not his real name! Soon as you said he looked beat up, I went on the computer. He lied to you.” Richardson turned to me, glaring. “You say you’re a friend of Dom’s? Liar! You tell her what you did!”
“I didn’t do anything! I swear—”
“Mary, where’s your damn computer? Oh!” Richardson crossed to the Dell, keeping the weapon trained on me.
“Mr. Richardson, I can explain everything. What happened was that—”
“I said, shut up!” Richardson hit a key. “Mary, what’s your password?”
“Mary123.”
“How do you even exist in this world?” Richardson typed it in and scrolled to Google as I watched, worrying how this was going to turn out. I couldn’t have him call the cops. Then Lucinda and Ethan could be gone for good.
“Mr. Richardson, I didn’t tell her my real name because—”
“You’re damn right you didn’t!” Richardson hit another key, and onto the screen popped a headline: LOCAL MAN SOUGHT FOR MURDER OF FBI AGENT, then the subhead: jason bennett at large after family disappearance. Under that was my photo from the conference room.