Prayers for the assassin

CHAPTER 55

Rakkim and Sarah walked up the apartment steps just as two women came out the front door. They embraced. “You take care of yourself, Jeri Lynn,” said the pregnant blonde.

“If I don’t, who will?” said the short brunette. She waited until the blonde eased down the steps. “You here for Fancy’s wake?”

“Yes, we are,” Sarah said quickly.

“Come on in,” said Jeri Lynn. “There’s mostly just cheese balls and orange soda supreme, and the sherbet is melting.” She tried to smile. “I guess you didn’t come for the food-” Her mouth formed a big O. “That isn’t…? Cameron? Cameron!” She barreled past them, scooped the kid up, and swung him around as if he were a stuffed animal. She waved to Sarah, tears in her eyes. “Come inside, honey, you made my day.”

Sarah and Rakkim followed them into the living room. A couple of other women sat on the couch-a chubby teenager with a baby on her shoulder, and a henna redhead, with a face like a plow horse, looking through a photo album and clucking.

“Girls, this is…Sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” said Jeri Lynn.

“I’m Sarah and this is my friend Rakkim.”

“Little mama’s Ella, and that’s Charlotte,” said Jeri Lynn.

Pleased-to-meet-you all around. The baby let out a deep, rumbling fart and everyone smiled. His mother patted him on the back. “Feel better now?” She stood up, popped a cheese ball into her mouth from the paper plate on the coffee table. “We got to go home and start working on dinner.” She kissed Jeri Lynn. “I am just so sorry.”

The henna redhead closed the album. “I should get going too.” She gave Jeri Lynn’s arm a squeeze. “She was a sweet, sweet girl and we’ll all miss her.”

Jeri Lynn walked them to the door.

The previous night Rakkim and Sarah had driven into Los Angeles and headed straight for Disneyland. It took them a few hours to find someone who could tell them about Fancy’s girlfriend, and even then, they only got a general idea of where the two of them lived. Someplace on the outskirts of New Fallujah, almost to Orange. None of the other rent-wives had ever been invited to visit. It seemed to annoy them. Rakkim wanted to canvass the supermarkets and drugstores with Fancy’s picture, but Sarah had a better idea. She said they should wait until tomorrow, get some rest, and then go back to Long Beach and pick up Cameron. The kid who said he would be waiting for Fancy every day at St. Xavier’s Church. Noon. Sarah said that way they could drive around New Fallujah until Cameron recognized the apartment. Showing up with Cameron would open the gates.

Jeri Lynn came back, waved them toward the couch, a short woman with frizzy hair, smooth skin, and exhausted eyes. “Sit down. I see people standing up in the house and I think they’re bill collectors.” She had a brave smile. “You aren’t bill collectors, are you?”

Sarah and Rakkim sat on the lumpy, corduroy couch. It was still warm from the other two. The living room had a few pieces of cast-off furniture, a small wall screen, and a giveaway hologram of President Kingsley on one wall. A family holo of Fancy, Jeri Lynn, and three kids was on the cabinet, the kids in shorts and matching tops. They looked happy. Dried cereal was ground into the lime shag carpet. Chocolate-Soy’Os. Breakfast of Champions. A wooden salad bowl on the coffee table contained a couple hundred dollars in crumpled bills, along with a few sympathy cards.

Jeri Lynn grabbed Cameron, rubbed his hair. “Damn, I wish Fancy was here to see you.” The hem of her black dress had been altered too many times and was coming loose. She didn’t seem to care. She pushed the tray of cheese balls at them. “Eat something, will you?” She plopped in a chair across from the couch. “How did you folks know Fancy? Do you live in her old neighborhood?”

“We…we were with her when she died,” said Sarah. It was probably a good idea to get it over with, but Rakkim would have approached it more obliquely.

Jeri Lynn looked back and forth between them. “You were the ones asking around for her that night.”

“Yes,” said Sarah.

“Cameron, why don’t you go in the kitchen and fix yourself something to eat?” said Jeri Lynn. “I know you’re hungry.”

“I’d rather take a shower first,” said Cameron. “If it’s okay?”

“Second door on the right. Let me know when you’re done and I’ll get you some clean clothes. You’re about Dylan’s size.” Jeri Lynn waited until he had disappeared into the bathroom. “I appreciate you bringing him here. Fancy…she had a real sweet spot for him. Always talking about bringing him here to live with us.” She arranged her black dress, blew a strand of hair that fell over her face. “What do you want?” she said to Sarah. She had hardly looked at Rakkim since they’d arrived. “You must want something.”

“We’re very sorry for what happened,” said Sarah. “Fancy was-”

“My kids are coming home from school in about an hour. I don’t want you here upsetting them. They’ve already been through enough. Cameron can stay. The kids like Cameron.”

“The men who killed her…they were trying to stop us-”

“I haven’t even been able to bury her.” Jeri Lynn twisted the gold band on her left ring finger. “Her body is in a cooler at the funeral home, waiting for me to come up with the money to bury her properly.” She glanced at the bills in the wooden bowl.

“We would-”

“The local mosque wouldn’t help us. They said Fancy wasn’t a Muslim anymore. I don’t blame them. She prayed at home, but she was too ashamed to go to mosque. Muslims have their rules. Body has to be buried within twenty-four hours. Fine.” She kept twisting her ring. “Catholics are no better. I’m Catholic, but I’m not their kind of Catholic. So they won’t bury her.” She looked at Sarah. “My kids keep asking when they can put flowers on her grave, and I keep telling them soon.” She kept her eyes on the holo portrait of her and Fancy holding hands. “We had a good life before you people showed up looking for her. Not a perfect life…She hated what she did and so did I, but that was her night self. That wasn’t who she really was, that was just a game she played. The rest of the time, we were a family and we were happy. We were happy.”

“We’ll pay for the funeral,” said Sarah. “No strings.”

Jeri Lynn didn’t react.

“Did Fancy own a necklace from when she was a little girl?” said Sarah. “A small, round medallion with Chinese characters on it?”

“What do you want that thing for?” said Jeri Lynn. “It’s not worth nothing, except to Fancy.”

“Could I please see it?” said Sarah.

“It’s not for sale, I don’t care how much money you got. Fancy’s going to be buried in her favorite dress. In her favorite shoes. She’s going to be buried with her hair fixed just right, and her makeup perfect…and with that medallion around her neck.”

“That medallion is part of an investigation,” said Sarah. “That medallion-”

“What are you, cops? The cops are the ones who killed her.”

“Cops didn’t kill her,” said Rakkim.

Jeri Lynn stared at him.

“His name is Darwin,” said Rakkim. “I saw him do it. I tried to help, but-”

“The police shot Rakkim,” said Sarah. “He almost died.”

“Why did this Darwin do it?” Jeri Lynn’s face was flushed.

“That’s what he does,” said Rakkim.

“Could we please see the medallion?” asked Sarah. “Help us, Jeri Lynn.”

“Jeri Lynn!” Cameron stuck his dripping head out of the bathroom door. “Can I have some clothes, please?”

Jeri Lynn got up with a sigh, walked down the hall toward the bathroom.

“We know the medallion is here,” Rakkim said to Sarah. “At a certain point we have to stop asking.”

Sarah placed a small pile of $100 bills in the wooden bowl. “We’re not at that point yet.”

“You’re the one who thinks the medallion is the answer to all our prayers.”

“I said not yet.”

“I was remembering when we first met, Maurice,” said Redbeard. “You were adjutant to General Sinclair. I saw this tall African with the bearing of a king and wondered if you’d last a year with all the officers arrayed against you. The things they said behind your back…”

“It couldn’t have been worse than the things they said to my face,” said General Kidd.

Redbeard had shown up unbidden and unannounced at the small conservative mosque, the only white face among the Somali worshipers. He and General Kidd now sat cross-legged on rugs spread under a wisteria tree, eating dates and sipping strong, sweetened coffee that Kidd’s youngest wife brought them. No bodyguards in sight. None needed.

“We’ve seen a lot of history.” Redbeard spat out a date seed. “You and I sailed some dangerous waters together, yet I feel the worst of our voyage still lies ahead.”

“The nation has gone off course, Thomas.” Kidd blew across his cup. “We were to be a light upon the world. Now, we might as well be kaffirs, the way the young people behave. They are soft and given to indolence and idolatry.”

“The young should be given time to find the way.”

“The young should be instructed in the way.”

Redbeard slurped his coffee. “Would you want Ibn Azziz to do the instructing?”

Kidd popped a fat date into his mouth, chewed slowly. “I heard you had a death in the family. The men responsible…they are dead?”

“The men who stole her from outside her mosque are dead. Killed by the man who sent them before I could find them. As if I needed to question them to know who was responsible.” Redbeard tore at his beard. “Allah has given you a choice. You can keep your oath and stand beside your president, or you can become the sword of a mullah who abducts and murders devout women. A mullah who takes refuge in the Grand Mosque with a hundred bodyguards. Is the protection of Allah not enough for him?”

Kidd’s face was a mask, but his eyes betrayed his turmoil. “I love President Kingsley as my own father, but he is old. He is dying.”

“We’re all dying, Maurice.”

“Did you come to tell me that, old friend?”

Redbeard reached into the basket of sweets, smiled. “I came for the dates.”

Rakkim had just finished checking the street again when Jeri Lynn came back. She was carrying a small, red enamel box.

“God bless you,” said Sarah.

“Don’t get excited yet.” Jeri Lynn sat down beside Sarah, opened the box. “Fancy said her daddy give this to her when he came back from China that last time.” Jeri Lynn took it out of the box, dangled it by the black woven-fiber cord, the beaten-copper amulet decorated with Chinese ideograms. The amulet slowly turned as she held it up. “Fancy said she didn’t take it off for years, called it her good-luck charm, but then I guess her luck turned. She was older then and it made the skin underneath flake off, and things went downhill from there. She said she thought it was a judgment from Allah, because of the way she was living, so she put it away for safekeeping. I used to see her wearing it sometimes, looking in the mirror and smiling.” Jeri Lynn tucked it back in the box. “It’s not much to look at, but Fancy loved this necklace.”

Sarah made no move to take the box.

Jeri Lynn replaced the lid. She looked at Rakkim. “Cameron told me some things about you. He said he saw you kill a man with your bare hands. Said he never seen anything like it. I want your promise. I want you to promise that if I give you this medallion, you’re going to find this Darwin. You’re going to find him and you’re going to kill him.”

“It could take a while,” said Rakkim.

“Just promise that you’ll do it. I’m not asking for a schedule.”

“I promise.”

Jeri Lynn turned to Sarah beside her. “Can I trust him to keep his word? Fancy never had much luck with men, and I had even less.”

Sarah stared at Rakkim. She was thinking about what he had told her about the assassin. That he had no chance against him. “I trust him.”

Jeri Lynn handed her the case. “I hope this does what you think it will.”

Sarah tucked the box away.

“I don’t know if it makes a difference to you, but I would have killed Darwin anyway,” Rakkim said to Jeri Lynn. “I would have killed him for Fancy and a few others he’s butchered. I made up my mind about that a long time ago.”

Cameron wandered out from the back of the house. His hair was combed. He was wearing clean pants and a frayed L.A. Ramadan 2035 T-shirt. He sat in Jeri Lynn’s lap and didn’t even look embarrassed. “You sure I can stay?”

“Long as you want, baby.” Jeri Lynn put her arms around him, but kept her eyes on Rakkim. “You keep your promise, and if you can make this Darwin suffer, that’s all the better. Make it hurt. Make him howl so loud the demons in hell will know he’s on the way.”