Shakedown

Chapter Eight

Latrell was smoothing Oleta’s hair when he heard the sirens. He cradled the back of her head with one hand, massaging the tangled strands of hair clotted around her face and unraveling knots with the other as he lay her head gently onto the plastic tarp lying on the basement?oor.

Oleta’s features were smooth, her dark skin fading to a dingy gray. Any pain she may have felt when he crushed her throat had passed without leaving a furrow in her brow or a grimace in her cheeks. Latrell had released her from that pain as surely as he had released her from whatever torment had brought her to that place in the middle of the night, in the rain, beneath that tree, as if she had been waiting for him. Maybe she’d come there to die, he thought, and that’s why she had thanked him.

It didn’t matter to Latrell any more than it mattered that he’d killed her. She was as dead as his mother, as dead as Jalise. They were all the same. Finished with her hair, he brushed out the wrinkles in her dress, his hands and heart as steady as when he’d walked out of Marcellus’s house.

He cocked his ear toward the window well near the top of the basement wall. The rain beat against the glass, a weak accompaniment to the wailing police cars rushing toward the neighborhood. Latrell listened, calculating how long it would be before someone with a badge knocked on his door asking whether he’d seen or heard anything unusual in the house behind his.

The police would block off the streets, sneak up on Marcellus’s house like they were making a surprise attack, uncertain of who or what they would find inside. Once they knew, they’d start searching for witnesses. He had plenty of time. No reason to hurry. After they were gone, he’d bury Oleta in the basement.

Tomorrow Latrell would take the gun, goggles, and bloody galoshes to the cave and everything would be right. Until then, all he had to do was be smart. He could do that.

He unlaced his shoes, peeled off each layer of his clothes until he was naked. He tucked one edge of the tarp under her body, rolling her over, wrapping her inside the plastic, and securing it with duct tape until she was mummified.

The basement was dark, damp from a leak along the base of the west wall, with water trickling into a drain in the center of the concrete?oor. A washtub sat on a stand, a faucet sticking out from the wall. Latrell connected a garden hose to the faucet, turned the water on strong enough to wash the?oor but not loud enough to be heard, and rinsed his feet before he went back upstairs.

He showered, nearly scalding himself with hot water, scrubbing hard. Afterward he changed into boxers and a ratty black T-shirt he slept in, padding downstairs to wait in the kitchen. When the police came, he’d tell them that he’d been asleep, the storm mixing with his dreams. He’d say he woke to the sirens, turned on his lights, and was unable to fall back asleep, like everyone else.

He repeated it again and again, the soundtrack to the image he saw when he closed his eyes: he was standing at his front door, rubbing his chin, answering the cop’s questions, tired but polite, believing the story he told. Latrell sat in a chair at his kitchen table and waited, nodding his head with the repeated rhythm of what he would say, what he decided was true, what he would make them believe.

The window from his kitchen gave him a view of the back of Marcellus’s house. The porch light came on. A man came out the back door carrying a dog. Sat the dog on the ground. Stood still and quiet. The dog disappeared, then came back. The man bent down to the dog, then followed the dog into the shadows where Latrell couldn’t see them, though he knew where they were.

He heard the helicopter, felt the wash of the rotors breaking against his house, and blinked when the spotlight lit the backyard like it was Yankee Stadium. The man he’d seen was in the center of the spotlight, bent over. Even from where he was watching, Latrell could tell that there was something wrong with the man, like he’d had a seizure. The cops surrounded him, one of them taking him away. Latrell went back to his kitchen chair and waited.

Soon the doorbell rang. He listened, counting until the chimes had sounded five times. He shouldn’t be in a hurry to answer and he wasn’t.

He looked out the keyhole at a square-shouldered white man, the man’s dark eyes staring back at him as if he could see inside the house. A tall black woman stood at his side, her eyes studying the windows as if Latrell might jump out of one. Both of them wore navy windbreakers, FBI stenciled in yellow letters over their hearts. He smiled. He’d been right, after all. The man on the utility pole had been FBI.

Latrell eased the door open, leaving the chain latched to the frame, cautious as he should be, looking at them without saying anything, rubbing his chin. Just as they expected he would.

“Sorry to bother you,” the woman said. “I’m Agent Iverson. This is Agent Day. We’re with the FBI.”

Ammara Iverson and Jim Day held up their badges and IDs. Latrell took his time, comparing the faces on the IDs to the two people at his door. He didn’t doubt who they were, but it was important to take his time. He nodded, unlatching the chain and opening the door, still not talking.

“Something happened at the house behind yours tonight,” the woman said. “We’re going door-to-door. Trying to find out if anyone heard anything unusual, maybe saw something, heard something.”

Latrell shook his head, answering slowly. “Only thing I heard was the storm. Kept me up at first, but I finally fell asleep. Next thing I heard is the sirens. Now I can’t get back to sleep.”

This time it was Agent Day who nodded. “You know who lives in the house behind you?”

“Marcellus and his people. I know him but I don’t know him. You understand what I’m saying.”

“You know what Marcellus had going on at his house?” Iverson asked.

“Everybody knows he deals crack,” Latrell answered. “But like I said, I know him but I don’t know him. That’s what I’m sayin’.”

“You do any business with him?” Iverson asked.

“No way,” Latrell answered. “I don’t want nothing to do with that shit. I got a job. I got a house. I don’t need no trouble.”

“You ever have any trouble with Marcellus?” Agent Day asked.

Latrell shook his head. “I stay out of his business and he don’t bother me.”

“Good for you,” Day said with a tight smile. “How about the other people in the neighborhood? You know anybody had a reason to come after Marcellus?”

“Nobody except you and the cops,” Latrell answered.

“And I’m glad you finally got around to it. Hope you put him away.”

“We won’t have to,” the woman said. “Someone beat us to it.”

Latrell looked at them, his breathing steady. “Marcellus? He’s dead?”

“Yeah,” the woman said. “He’s dead.”

“It don’t matter.”

“How’s that?” she asked.

“There’ll be someone else dealin’ that shit tomorrow afternoon. That’s why.”

“Mattered to Marcellus and it matters to us,” Ammara Iverson said. “You know Marcellus’s girlfriend?”

“Seen her around, that’s all. Her and her kid.”

“You know anyone might want to hurt either one of them?”

Latrell took a shallow breath, shaking his head again. “You saying they dead, too?”

“Both of them. Rondell and DeMarcus Winston, also,” she said. “You sure you didn’t hear anything? They lived right behind you.”

“Wish now I did,” Latrell said. “That’s not right. Kill all those people. Don’t care what they did. That’s not right.”

Ammara Iverson handed him a card. “No, it isn’t. You think of anything that might be important, give us a call.”

Jim Day also handed Latrell his card. “We need your name, sir. Just to complete our report. And where you work. If you don’t mind.”

“Latrell Kelly. I work at the rail yard in Argentine, in the terminal building. And I don’t mind.”