Slipping Page 12

  Juanita knew Don was coming for her next and before he could take one step in her direction, she leaped from her seat, grabbed the kilo, and jumped out the window. Don stood with his mouth hanging open until he remembered they were only on the second floor. He made his way over to the window prepared to follow her example. On his way across the living room Wanda grabbed his leg in a feeble attempt to restrain him.

  Don aimed a vicious kick at her face, but her hold on his leg threw him off balance and he landed hard on his butt.

  Now Don was salty.

  Untangling himself enough to get on his feet, Don squeezed the trigger of his .357 and ventilated Wanda's stretch-mark-covered stomach with a dime-sized hole.

  Wanda released Don's leg and began screaming while she clutched her abdomen.

  Ignoring Wanda's howls, Don continued over to the window and prepared to jump. He remembered to look before he leaped. Placing his hands on the windowsill, he peered out into the night.

  Juanita had made the second-story drop without incurring any serious injury—only bruising her butt from an awkward landing. She had taken a moment to make sure no bones were broken, but the sound of Don shooting Wanda in the apartment made her vault to her feet. She was so paranoid from smoking yams she believed Don was shooting at her. Like an Olympic sprinter, she kicked up her heels and ran into the street.

  Cottage Grove has always been one of the busiest boulevards on Chicago's South Side and the early morning hour was no exception. Juanita was so scared for her life she ran into the street, paying no heed to the oncoming traffic.

  Juanita never saw the headlights or heard the protesting squeal of the tires before a speeding flatbed tow truck slammed into her. The grille of the truck struck her high in the chest. Her head whipped back with a grisly snap before she somersaulted thirty feet into the air. Juanita was dead before her body landed and slid to a stop half a block from the initial impact.

  Even in death Juanita refused to let go of the cocaine. The kilo had accompanied Juanita during her airborne somersaults, but it burst when she slammed into the asphalt. A miniature mushroom cloud of cocaine erupted, covering the immediate area with a powdery layer of the controlled substance.

  From Wanda's apartment window, Don watched Juanita's grisly death with a mixture of emotions. He felt a slight twinge of guilt for the part he played in her demise, and anger from witnessing his beautiful cocaine spread all over the street where it was no use to anyone.

  Disgusted, Don turned from the window and walked over to take a seat on the urine-smelling couch. Not paying the slightest bit of attention to the two wounded cluckers, Don picked up a crackpipe. He took a chunk of crack from the mirror on the coffee table and dropped it on the screen in the pipe bowl. After melting the crack with one of the numerous torches on the table, Don put his lips to the stem and sucked the smoke into his nervous system.

  When Don stood up, his head was reeling from taking such a gigantic hit. His heart was beating hard in his chest. He managed to steady himself, then swept the crack off the mirror into the bag he was carrying in his pocket. As he headed for the door, a devious thought entered his haze-shrouded mind. On the dinette table was a bottle of rubbing alcohol that Wanda and Raoul used to rub on their mosquito bites, a side effect of sleeping in an apartment without screens on the window. With a wicked grin on his face Don poured the contents on the ragged furniture. He threw the empty bottle on the floor. He packed his pipe again from the plastic bag and lit a torch. He held the torch to the bowl and took another godfather hit. As he walked toward the door he exhaled the smoke. On the threshold he turned and tossed the flaming torch onto an alcohol-drenched easy chair.

  Instantly the chair ignited. Quickly the fire spread to the sofa and that was all she wrote.

  Not concerned in the slightest about Wanda's and Raoul's welfare or that of her children, Don slammed the door as he left the apartment.

  Raoul rescued all but two of the children with the help of the neighbors. The early morning news carried accounts of the accidental death of an eighteen-year-old girl carrying a large amount of cocaine. They would also milk the topics of the two children murdered in a fire set by an unknown arsonist.

  Detective Carson and Detective Winters were assigned to the case and interviewed the bedridden witnesses at the hospital. The two detectives pieced together a shaky story from Wanda, who was in critical but stable condition with burns on 40 percent of her body and a bullet wound in her stomach.

  The culprit the detectives would come to know as Donald Haskill, alias Don-Don or Don, had vanished into the night. Neither detective knew it, but they would hear that name again and again. When they finally got a chance to interview the boy brought in earlier that night suffering from a gunshot wound, he would blame Don also.

  When the detectives left Wanda's room, she received more visitors. Four distraught young men wanted to know why their baby sister was in a steel drawer in the morgue. One of the men, father of one of Wanda's dead children, wanted to know if the same culprit was responsible for the death of his son, too.

  Recognizing her opportunity for revenge, Wanda lied to the four brothers about Juanita's death. She told them Don pushed Juanita in front of the truck and that he purposely burned up two of Wanda's sons.

  The brothers left in a hurry.

  In the meantime, Don sat alone in his room at home smoking crack. He heard someone banging on the door and a voice called out, “Open up, it's the police!” By the time his sister got up to let them in, he had escaped out the window and was a block away.

  Rhonda opened the door to see what the police wanted and they pushed past her. “Hold on. You can't come in like this. My mother is a policewoman. I know my rights. What's this about?”

  “We're looking for somebody and we have information that he lives here,” Detective Carson said gruffly as he moved into the living room.

  “Where's your warrant?” Rhonda asked defiantly.

  Carson scowled. “We don't need one if we have reason to believe that a suspect fleeing from a crime ran into this residence.”

  “Nobody has fled anywhere. What are you talking about? This don't sound right. I'm calling my mother.”

  Detective Winters grabbed Rhonda's arm softly but firmly. “Does Donald Haskill live here?”

  “Yes, that my little brother. He isn't here. What you want with him?”

  “We just have a couple of questions for him,” Detective Winters said as she nodded her head to two uniformed officers.

  Guns drawn, the two policemen headed up the carpeted steps.

  “Where the hell are they going?” Rhonda asked. “I told you that my brother wasn't here.”

  “But he does live here?” Detective Carson said from over by the mantelpiece. “This him in this photo?”

  The picture was of Don on his sixteenth birthday, taken on the front porch.

  “Yes, that's him. You still haven't told me what this is all about, though.”

  Just then the two cops came down the stairs.

  “Anything?” Carson asked.

  “Nothing,” one of the officers answered. “We found what had to be his room. It's in a shambles. Window was open leading out onto the back porch roof. Looks like our guy left in a hurry.”

  Winters pulled a business card from her pocket and handed it to Rhonda. “If your brother comes home, give him our card and make sure he gives us a call. Tell him that since your mother is on the job, he doesn't have to worry about being mistreated. Let's go.”

  Rhonda noticed Carson trying to slide the photograph of Don in his pocket. “What are you doing? I didn't say that you could take that.”

  Carson's face turned slightly red. “Well, we need this to identify a suspect in an ongoing investigation and …”

  Winters cut in. “Do you mind very much if we take the picture? We'll do our best to get it back to you.”

  “I guess so. Don't hurt my brother. I don't know what he's supposed to have done, but don't hurt him.”
/>
  “We won't,” Winters assured her as she swept the uniformed officers and her partner out the door. “He'll be okay. Good night and sorry to bother you.”

  While the police were leaving his mother's house, the only thing Don cared about was making it to the little, seedy motel on King Drive. There he could rent a room and lay low. As long as he had crack and money he was straight.

  15

  THE COBWEBS AND MURKINESS CLEARED AS LONNIE awoke with a gasp. He plummeted back into the limbo of his partial coma. Before he went under he heard an authoritative voice summon the doctor.

  Three hours later Lonnie awakened for the second time. A million needles of pain stabbed him as he debated whether to open his eyes. Several excruciating attempts resulted in failure. Finally he gave up, content to stare at the inside of his eyelids.

  It was no minor miracle Lonnie was still alive. When the burning slug from Don's pistol burrowed into his flesh it felt like his soul was on fire. Scared that Don was still on his trail, he had cut through a gangway and ran into a backyard. Big mistake. In the dark he had nearly split his skull on the porch as he rounded the small house. Slamming into the ancient wood of the porch had knocked the wind and almost the life out of him. Scarlet blood pumped out of the gash in his forehead and the hole in his stomach. All he could remember was a voice from deep down inside telling him to get up. He tried to ignore the voice, but it was persistent. Marshaling all his strength he somehow maneuvered onto his hands and knees and began to crawl through the gangway that led to the street. The ninety feet of pavement he spanned seemed like ninety miles. Several times he blacked out from losing such a large amount of blood. Finally he made it to the street and flagged down a motorist.

  The motorist summoned emergency assistance via his cell phone. Police and an ambulance arrived in a relatively short time. At Cook County hospital the doctors worked for seven hours to stabilize Lonnie. From there he was moved to intensive care. He was in a drug-induced coma for three days before he regained consciousness for the first time.

  He pretended to be unconscious while he listened for several hours to the doctors and police detectives. Lonnie learned the detectives hoped he would recover so they could question him about Sajak's and Diego's murders. Detectives Winters and Carson had gone over the crime scene with a fine-tooth comb. Their guess was Lonnie was the only survivor of a drug deal gone bad. That was why they were sitting on Lonnie, waiting for any improvement in his condition. It was so rare to find a living witness when drug deals went bad. If Lonnie regained consciousness and could tell them who was responsible for the carnage in the backyard it would be an easy case.

  Detective Arnold Carson was a portly, middle-aged white man of average height. He was raised by hardworking, poor parents in Burbank. He never liked Blacks until he had a chance to meet some of them and work with them. He never considered himself bigoted, but his partner, Detective Almeta Winters, a Black woman, had helped him over the years to dispel his prejudicial tendencies.

  Almeta Winters was a horse of a different color—an eternal optimist and perennial do-gooder. The soft-spoken, dark-skinned woman was tough, cunning, and fair. Her skill at interrogation was renowned in their division, whereas Carson would resort to brutal methods to obtain confessions and information. Together they made a dynamite team of homicide detectives. The differences in their techniques complemented instead of hindered one another.

  Lonnie listened to the detectives talk until he fell asleep. When he woke again he felt stronger than before, but he was still in quite a bit of pain. Gathering up all his courage he opened his eyes. He wiggled his fingers and toes to make sure he could feel them.

  Neither detective noticed Lonnie's movements. Carson was engrossed in a game of solitaire and Winters was staring out of the window, daydreaming about her upcoming vacation. The sound of Lonnie's voice surprised both of them.

  “What a nigga got to do to get a cup of water in this motherfucka?” Lonnie rasped. His tongue felt swollen and sluggish in his mouth.

  Carson jumped to his feet, knocking over the small table he had been playing cards on, and rushed over to Lonnie's bedside. “I'm Detective Carson and I need to ask you a few questions, boy.”

  “First thing you need to know is that boys run from the age of one to twelve,” Lonnie said. “Second, I don't give a fuck if you was Commissioner Gordon, I ain't got shit to say to the police. Now like I said before, I want a cup of water.”

  Carson laughed at Lonnie's sarcasm. He toyed with the teen's IV as he said smoothly, “I bet you think you sounded tough saying that, little punk. They told me you was crying like a baby when they brought you in here. That's okay though, we won't tell any of your gangster friends that you shitted your pants when you got shot in the stomach.”

  Detective Winters stood quietly by the window and watched. “Detective, can I see you out in the hallway for a minute?”

  “Sure, no problem. Make sure you don't go nowhere; we'll be back.”

  In the hallway they walked down by the elevators because the nurses’ station was close to Lonnie's door.

  Winters asked, “How you want to crack this egg?”

  “I don't care,” Carson said with a bored expression on his face. “It really don't even make a difference.”

  “How 'bout a little good cop, bad cop?”

  “No way, Winters. You always get to play the good cop and I've got to come off like the racist bastard every time.

  Not this time. It's my turn to play good cop.”

  Winters twisted her lips.

  “What, you don't think I can play good cop? I've got a good-cop routine. You just never give me a chance to use it. Remember the little girl that was killing johns? I went in there with my good cop and she told me all about killing those two tricks for their wallets. My good-cop routine got that confession.”

  “Man, that don't even count. You didn't have to do nothing on that one but be white. That inbred daughter of a Ku Klux Klan sharecropper didn't want to talk to me 'cause I'm Black. That didn't have nothing to do with your good-cop routine. I've seen you use it before and it's lacking at best. Just face it, I'm the good cop and you're the evil white devil.”

  “Yeah, whatever, sister girl. I'm going to get me some coffee.”

  “Don't put too much cream in it, Nazi.”

  Carson laughed as he punched the button for the elevator. “Sounds like you want this cream in your coffee.”

  “You got to be kidding me,” Winters laughed.

  Carson stepped onto the elevator. Winters replaced her grin with a kind, concerned look. She entered Lonnie's room and pretended to ignore the belligerent boy. She righted the card table and gathered the deck of cards from the floor. She shuffled them and dealt herself a hand of solitaire.

  Lonnie couldn't take the silent treatment.

  “What the fuck you want, Miss Piggy?”

  Winters placed a red six on a black seven. “Don't pay me no attention. I won't bother you. I know that you're in a lot of pain.”

  “This ain't shit,” Lonnie said bravely. “This little shit ain't gone stop me. Where did yo honkey-ass partner go?”

  Winters continued her card game. “He went to get some coffee. He hasn't had much sleep in the last few days, you know. Plus he's a little uptight. You would be too if you hadn't had pussy since pussy had you.”

  Her witticism sponsored a throaty laugh from Lonnie that triggered a coughing fit. Winters jumped up and poured him a glass of water from the bedside pitcher and helped him drink it.

  Lonnie wouldn't say it, but he was grateful for her act of kindness. He had already decided that for a cop she wasn't half bad. He could see that she was really pretty in an understated way and her brownish-black hair had to hang to the middle of her back even though it was swept up in a neat ponytail. Plus she had a body. Even with her blazer on, he could see that she had some nice breasts and her blue jeans hugged her butt.

  Sensing she had his full attention, Winters returned to her se
at and dealt herself another hand of solitaire. Lonnie thought she had forgotten about him when she said, “Lonnie, I just want to help you.”

  “How you gone help me, cop?” Lonnie growled, trying to maintain his tough-guy act.

  “I just want to know who killed your friends and shot you. I know that by the code of the streets you guys don't like to talk to the police, but I swear it's different this time. This guy doesn't deserve your silence. Not for what he did to your friends and to you. By you remaining silent all you're managing to do is protect this guy from what he's got coming to him. It doesn't make sense for you to protect this guy.”

  “You don't give a fuck about me or my homies, so I wish you would stop acting, cop. This shit is yo job! We live this shit every day! It's our lives! Now you sitting up in here acting like the white man's justice is gone do my homies a bit of good. Bullshit! Fuck the white man's justice! The best way is street justice. You and that cracker partner of yours ain't finta get no promotion off my nigga's blood.”

  Winters acknowledged Lonnie's remarks by nodding her head. She dealt herself another hand of solitaire. This kid was turning out to be a little deeper than she had gauged. She decided to try another angle. She still hadn't used her secret weapon. She hated to use it, but this thing needed to be wrapped up so the lieutenant would get off their backs and she could pack for Aruba.

  She continued to play solitaire. “Okay, Lonnie, let me put it in the raw for you. You got bigger problems than this little shit. You and all the rest of them hustling over at Harper Court are about to be indicted. You geniuses and entrepreneurs have been serving drugs to the feds for the last eighteen months. The feds, baby. Y'all aren't going to be at the courts down at 26th and California. Dirksen building. Federal court all the way. They don't even give you your time in years. They give you your sentence in months. You're going to have to go back to your cell and get a piece of paper and a pencil to figure out just how much time they gave you.