“I’m on my way,” I said and ended the call.
“Who was that?”
“That was Rain.”
“What does she want?”
“She’s got a line on the guys I’m lookin’ for,” I said and headed for the shower. The next sound I heard was Wanda slamming the door.
The first round went to me. But I knew as long as I kept seeing Rain that Wanda would be back at me and this fight would continue.
When I picked up Rain, she told me that the bandits were holed up in some apartments in the south Bronx. “How’d you find out where to find them?”
“’Cause niggas talk.”
“What you mean?”
“I mean last night they were talkin’ about it.”
“To who?”
“Damn, why I gotta give up all that?”
“To who?”
“Like I said, last night at a strip club in Manhattan that a friend of mine dances at; she said this guy was braggin’ to her that he was a robber, and this and that, and that he’s robbed everything from banks to fish and chicken joints for small change. He does it for the rush, not the money. But she says he was flashin’ plenty of money. So she asks him if he ever killed anybody. He said if the money is right. Then he said, sometimes the robbin’ is just to cover the hit.”
“That’s all you got?”
“It’s more than you got.”
“They your people?”
“No, but I know some people that know them.”
“I hate to even have to ask you this, but this ain’t more of your personal shit, is it?”
“I hate you gotta ask me that shit too. I thought we were past that; especially after last night. If I needed you to go down with me on some shit, I would tell you. So no,” Rain said with an attitude. “This is not more of my personal shit.”
“Sorry.”
“Accepted.”
When we got to the building we went inside. On the way up the steps Rain asked, “How you wanna do this?”
“I don’t know, but I want them alive. If these are the guys, and the robbery was just to cover the hit, I want to know who hired them.”
“Then we’ll kill them.” Rain smiled.
When we got to their floor we could hear somebody blastin’ their music. As we got closer to the apartment it was obvious that the music was coming from there.
Rain and I stood off to the side of the door with our guns out and I banged on it a few times, but nobody answered. “Kick it in,” Rain suggested.
I tried the doorknob instead.
The door was unlocked.
“That works too,” she commented as I opened the door and went in carefully. The fact that the door was opened and the music was playing didn’t give me a good feeling. “Stay close to me,” I whispered to Rain as we moved through the apartment.
When we got to the bedroom I opened the door slowly, halfway expecting to catch somebody fuckin’.
“Damn,” I said and walked in the room.
Rain came in behind me. “Shit.”
There before us in the bed lay two naked men; one with long dreads. They weren’t fuckin’, they were dead.
“From looks of it, somebody got them with an automatic weapon.”
“So was the music to cover them fuckin’ or to cover the sound of shooting?” Rain asked.
“I don’t know, probably both.” I walked over to the bed and tried to get a feel for how long they had been dead. “This happened sometime this morning.”
“How do you know?”
“Rigor mortis has begun to set in. It begins about three hours after death, and lasts about seventy-two hours.”
“That nice, but how do you know this?”
“Rigor mortis is caused by a chemical change in the muscles after death, causing the limbs of the corpse to become stiff. Come here, feel this.”
“Oh, hell no. Let’s get outta here,” Rain said and left the room.
I followed her out of the bedroom and closed the door behind me, but we weren’t leaving yet. “Search the place.”
“What are we looking for?”
“Anything.”
“Anything?”
We turned down the music and quickly searched the apartment looking for anything that confirmed that these were actually the men who shot Zakiya, or who paid them to do it. We didn’t find anything.
Once again, I was back to square one and wondering how much more time I was gonna put into this. All I really had was a picture that she took at JR’s and some e-mail that could have been sent by anybody who worked at the club. I still felt that Nice N. Slow could be Miles. What I needed was to get a picture of him so I could show it to people at Paradise.
“Where you goin’?” Rain asked.
“I’m takin’ you to the club.”
“Good. I need to pick up my car; tired of you leavin’ me stranded and shit.” Rain ran her hand across my thigh and down to my crotch. “Unless you wanna go get a room first.”
It was after five when we left the room. I drove Rain to the club and hoped Miles would still be there. I got lucky. When we pulled up in the parking lot, Miles was just coming out of the building.
Rain got out of the car quickly and stopped Miles before he got to his car. I got out of the car, got a small camera out of the trunk and snapped a few shots of Miles. I spent the next couple of hours with Rain before I told her that I had to go.
Chapter 32
Mike Black
“Monika on the phone for you, boss,” Kevon said and handed me the phone.
“What’s up, Monika?
“I got something for you. Any way you can drop by here to see it?”
“I’m on my way,” I told Monika and Kevon drove in that direction.
When we got to her apartment, Kevon turned off the car and turned to me. “You want me to come with you, boss?”
I thought for a minute. “Yeah, I think you should.”
We went inside the building and up to her apartment. When Monika opened the door she looked surprised to see Kevon standing there with me. “Come on in,” Monika said and walked away from the door. When Kevon closed the door, Monika turned around. “Your friend isn’t coming in with you?”
“He waits at the door for me. Makes sure no one comes in on me.”
Monika laughed. “Believe me, I got so much firepower in here that you’ll be safe.”
“So I heard. One day we’ll have to have a conversation about you and your skills.”
“Be sure that you do. I’d be very interested to hear what you have in mind for my skills,” Monika said in a way that told me that I could fuck her right now. But I was there for business.
“What you got for me?”
“You were right. Eileen McManus is the key to everything.”
“Who is she?”
“She’s Vinnelli’s mistress. I thought the name sounded familiar but couldn’t place it. Her name is Amanda White. McManus is her maiden name, Eileen is her middle name.”
“Mistress, huh?”
“Bad boy.”
“Does his wife know?”
“Near as I can tell she doesn’t.”
“So what do you have on Eileen McManus?”
“Just about everything is in her name. He uses her to hide his money. I got financials on the offshore accounts he has.”
“Is there any way to link it to him?”
“Yes. There’s one company that filed for bankruptcy that lists Eileen McManus as CEO, and Vinnelli and DeFrancisco as being on the board of directors. It was originally the holding company, for lack of a better term, that hid all their other shit. After DeFrancisco went to jail, Vinnelli got careful and cleaned up a lot. She sold off all the other companies and they changed hands through a series of dummy companies that move the money out of the country, and it all ends up back in her hands.”
“How much money we talkin’ about?”
“I’d say about seven or eight million. Maybe more; give me some time, I’m still looking.”
“All of it in offshore accounts?”
“Pretty much.”
“I guess this would be a good time to have that conversation about some of your skills.”
“Okay, lets.”
“How good are you?”