“Man needs a whuppin’,” she grumbled, working her way toward the back. As she went to turn the lights out in her office, the phone rang.
All she knew about Jace was that once she had been shopping in Chinatown, and she had seen him across the street with a boy about eight or nine. They had probably been there for fun. She had watched them go into a fish market. When she had mentioned it to him the following Monday, he had denied being there. Must have been someone else, he’d said, but she knew it hadn’t been.
She wouldn’t have answered the phone, but she thought it might be him.
“Speed Couriers,” she said. “What you want, honey? We closed for the day.”
“This is Detective Davis, ma’am. I need to ask you a few questions.”
Eta scowled at the phone, as if he could see her. “Don’t you people talk to each other? What am I paying taxes for? For y’all to all go running around asking the same questions over and over like a bunch of damn morons?”
“No, ma’am. I’m sorry, ma’am. I just have a couple of questions about one of your messengers, J. Damon.”
“I know that,” she said with annoyance. “You got to get up to speed. What are you? The third string? I got better things to do with my night than talk to you, honey. I got babies at home need me. I’m hanging up.”
She slammed the receiver down, her gaze going to the radio. One last try.
She keyed the mike. “Base to Sixteen. Where you at, Lone Ranger? You gotta come home to Mama, sugar. ASAP. You got that? I’m still holding money for you. You copy?”
Silence. No static. No nothing. She had no idea if he even had his two-way with him. She wondered where he was, what he was doing. She tried to picture him safe someplace. She could only picture him alone.
Eta shut off the lights. As she made her way toward the kitchen, she pulled on her raincoat. It was late already. If Jace was going to call, he would have done it by now. She had her own two-way with her, just in case.
The alley was black as pitch. It had started to rain again. The light above the door had gone out like it did every time it rained. She’d told Rocco to call an electrician the last time it happened, but of course he hadn’t. He’d wait until the entire electrical system shorted out and burned the damn building to the ground.
Eta shook her head at the hopelessness of thinking Rocco might one day have some sense in his head. She dug her car keys out of her tote bag.
And then a light was in her face, blinding her.
“Detective Davis, ma’am,” he said.
“I really need to get an address from you, ma’am.”
Eta inched her way to the side, a strange feeling crawling over her. This wasn’t right. She wanted to go. “What address?” she asked, inching toward the van.
“Your messenger, Damon.”
“I don’t know how many times I got to say this,” Eta complained, taking another step. “I don’t have no address for the boy. I don’t have no phone number. I don’t know where he lives. I don’t know nothin’ about him.”
The light moved closer. Davis moved closer. “Come on. He’s worked here awhile, hasn’t he? How can you not know anything about him? You can’t keep that up.”
“I can and I will. I can’t tell you nothin’ I don’t know.”
Her escape ended at the side of her van. She clutched the keys in her hand.
The light moved closer. She had nowhere to go.
“You want to do this the hard way?” he asked.
“I don’t want to do this at all,” Eta said, sidling toward the back of the van. If she could get in the van, lock the doors . . . She turned her key ring in her hand.
“I don’t care what you want, bitch,” he said, and lunged.
Eta brought her hand up, pressing the trigger on the mini-can of pepper spray she kept on her key chain. She guessed where his eyes might be and fired, a primal shout tearing up out of her throat.
Davis yelped and swore. The flashlight beam went straight up, then came down, the heavy flashlight missing her head, hitting her shoulder.
Eta cried out, kicked blindly, connected with some part of his anatomy.
“Fucking cunt!”
Davis spat the words at her, grabbed a handful of braids as Eta tried to bolt. He probably thought he could stop her in her tracks, or pull her back. But Eta was a large lady, and for once that was in her favor.
She kept her momentum moving forward. Davis swore and flung himself on her back, trying to knock her down. The flashlight went flying, beam flashing up, down, skimming the ground as it rolled.
One knee buckled beneath her and she fell, throwing him off. She tried to scramble up off the ground, but she was awkward and unbalanced, and she fell against the van, and had to get her feet back under her and try again.
Davis threw himself at her, slamming her back against the vehicle. She clawed at him, her long nails scratching down his face, and he cried out again. He hit her hard across the face. And then his body was pressed up against hers, and something sharp was at her throat.
“Tell me,” he demanded, his voice low, breath rasping in and out of his lungs, bitter with the scent of stale cigarettes and sour beer.
“I don’t know,” Eta said. Her own voice was unrecognizable to her, soft, shaking, frightened. She was crying. She thought of her kids. Her mother would have them at the dinner table by now. Jamal would be begging to stay up late. Kylie would be talking nonstop about what had gone on in fifth grade today.
“You want to live, bitch?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Where is he? Answer me and you go home to your family.”
She was trembling. She was going to die for keeping a secret she had no answer for.
The knife caressed her throat. “Give me an answer. You go home to your kids. If it’s the truth, I won’t come back for you—or them.”
Eta didn’t know the truth. She gave him the only answer she could.
“I seen him in Chinatown.”
“Chinatown.”
She drew breath to answer him, but when she tried to speak no words came out of her mouth, just strange wet sounds. Davis stepped back from her, picked up the flashlight, shined it on her. She lifted a hand to touch her throat and felt her life running out of her. Her hand was red with it.
Horrified, she wanted to scream, but she couldn’t. She wanted to shout for help, but she seemed not to have control of her tongue. She needed to cough, but she couldn’t breathe. She was drowning in her own blood.
She staggered forward. Her legs buckled beneath her. She fell like an anvil to the wet, oily pavement.
She thought of her husband . . . and then she went to him.
20
Diane Nicholson sipped at a glass of mediocre champagne and rolled an eye around the elegantly appointed room, bored. The Peninsula Beverly Hills Hotel was the epitome of class and wealth, two things required to attend a political fund-raiser for the district attorney of Los Angeles. But very little in the political world impressed Diane. The glow had worn off long ago.
Her husband had spent a dozen years involved in city politics. Joseph’s second great love. His job was his first, the love that made him a wealthy man. Diane had been ranked somewhere further down the list—after golfing and his boat. The last couple of years of the marriage, the most they saw of each other had been at events like this one. And even then, all she had been was an accessory on his arm, like a pair of diamond cuff links.
At his funeral all his friends had given her their sympathy and had gone on about how much she would miss him. But they had seen more of him than she ever had. Joseph’s absence from her life was an absence of the
