He snarled and flicked his cigarette at her. She raised her arms to protect her face. The glowing butt stung her forearm, and she stifled a scream.
He stomped out of the room and slammed the door behind him, the sound echoing through the house.
As he left, she was still smiling, even though smiling worsened the ache in her face. She had finally discovered a chink in his armor, a weakness for potential exploitation, if it ever came to that.
But she hoped to God that it didn’t, and that Corey came through for them.
30
Corey arrived at Lenox Square Mall a half hour early. This was one time when he couldn’t let Atlanta’s crazy traffic jam up his plans.
Lenox Square Mall was located in Buckhead, north of downtown, a district of upscale restaurants and trendy boutiques, posh condos and gleaming office towers, and picturesque homes tucked away in tree-shaded enclaves. The mall itself featured a wide range of high-end stores and even offered valet parking. Considering Leon’s aspirations to the finer things, it made a twisted kind of sense to Corey that he would have picked this place for the drop-off. Lenox was usually busy, too, a popular shopping destination for tourists, and would make it easy for someone to disappear in the crowd.
He parked at the far edge of the parking lot on the eastern side. As he waited in the car, cracking his knuckles obsessively, he checked out the sky. The sun had not only vanished, but the clouds had thickened, too. They hung low and dark over the city, threatening a storm, and a breeze had picked up, tossing scraps of debris across the asphalt and teasing the skirts of the young women sauntering in and out of the doors.
The black leather Hermes briefcase that Todd had given him lay on the passenger seat. It contained fifty thousand dollars, in rubber-banded packets of fifties and hundreds. When Corey had met Todd at his Midtown condo after leaving the bank, Todd had invited him to count the money, but Corey had given the cash only a brief glance. Looking at it, counting it, would have only pissed him off, would have reminded him that Leon had won.
By ten minutes to four, he was too antsy to wait any longer. He grabbed the briefcase and got out of the car.
Although it was probably only in his imagination, the briefcase felt so heavy it could have contained a load of bricks. As he walked slowly across the parking lot, he had a nightmarish vision of dropping the case and seeing the money spill out and scatter across the pavement, drawing the attention of security and eventually the police, the cops searching him, finding the gun on his hip, adding up the money and the handgun and assuming he was there for a drug buy.
Relax, man, just relax.
God, he hoped this worked, he couldn’t wait for this to be over, Simone and Jada in his arms again, safe.
He reached the revolving doors. He couldn’t remember if Leon had told him to go inside and await his call or to hang around outside, but he felt vulnerable and exposed outdoors, so he headed in.
Indoors, the refrigerated air crystallized the sweat on his face. He read his watch. Seven minutes to four.
He looked around. No Leon.
He drifted toward an empty bench not far from the entrance. He considered sitting, but his knees felt so watery he worried he wouldn’t be able to get up. Remaining on his feet, he unclipped the cell phone from the belt holster and clutched it in a clammy grip.
A security guard walked past, but ignored him. Shoppers of all ages and ethnicities streamed around him, laughing and talking, chatting on cell phones, making dinner plans and hook-up plans and plans for who knew what else, going about normal everyday business, and seeing the casual happiness on their faces intensified Corey’s aching desire to bring this awful episode of his life to a close so he and his family could resume their ordinary lives.
After what felt like an eternity, his watch hit four o’clock.
The phone rang. Before the ring completed Corey had the cell against his ear.
“I’m here,” Corey said.
“Right on time,” Leon said. “That’s why I liked having you as a wingman. You’re dependable as the day is long, yep, yep.”
Squinting against beads of sweat dripping into his eyes, Corey looked from the lower level where he stood to the upper floor. “Where are you?”
“I’m all around you, I’m like the Force, I’m everywhere like chi, permeating the ether and the ozone and the oxygen you breathe, can you feel me?”
“Listen, knock it off, will you?” Corey wiped his brow with the back of his hand. “I want to do this, okay? Where do you want me to go?”
“What’s my most favoritest thing in the whole wide world?”
“I. . Jesus, I don’t know. Cigarettes?”
“Man, you disappoint me. What would I be carrying around with me all the time back when we used to rock and roll? Have you forgotten, has it slipped that sputtering hippocampus of yours in your middle age, you coming down with a hard case of Alzheimer’s?”
“Why don’t you cut to the chase and tell me, Einstein?”
“Books, my illiterate brother, books. Iceberg Slim, Donald Goines, Chester Himes-those were my heroes, gave me my joie de vivre, my inspiration.”
Corey did recall that Leon would carry books with him, but Leon would boast that he never read any of them cover to cover, that he would skim them to find the juicy parts and then toss them aside to pick up another one; he claimed that his mind was so quick and brilliant that no author could keep up with him and therefore even the best books failed to hold his attention for more than a few pages.
Corey tightened his grip on the briefcase. “Okay, books, so what? You want me to go to a bookstore?”
“There’s one on the second floor next to an antique furniture boutique. Take the escalator behind you. Keep the phone to your ear. Move it, my man, time is money and time is a wasting.”
Corey moved toward the escalator. He scanned for Leon again, but didn’t see him. Where the hell was he hiding?
He mounted the rising steps. There was a gaggle of adolescent girls ahead of him, gabbing on their cell phones and giggling amongst themselves, and they made him think about his daughter.
“Is my family okay?” Corey asked.
“They’re snug as pigs in a blanket. That wifey of yours has a hellified mouth on her, though, good Lord, I think you’ve been sparing the rod and spoiling the bitch. If she was mine I’d be going upside her head on the regular like Mister from The Color Purple. Did you skip the part during the exchange of vows when she was supposed to agree to kiss your ass?”
Corey tuned out Leon’s meaningless patter and stepped off the escalator. “I’m upstairs now.”
“The bookstore is a hundred paces ahead, forward march, left, left, left, right, left.”
Corey strode forward briskly. “I see it coming up. But I don’t see you.”
“I told you, you’re not supposed to see me. I’m like the Matrix. I’m all around us.”
“I’m standing outside the bookstore now.” His fingers were curled so tightly around the briefcase they had begun to ache.
“Go inside,” Leon said.
Corey walked inside the store. A handful of customers browsed the magazine racks, oblivious to him. A strawberry-haired female clerk behind the counter was on the telephone, flipping through a catalog, and she didn’t notice him, either.
“Now what?” Corey asked in a low voice.
“Walk to the rear, on the left-hand side.”
Corey marched down the center aisle. All of the customers were apparently gathered at the front; the rear sections were deserted.
The back of the store was devoted to children’s literature. Colorful unicorns and dragons and other fanciful creatures cavorted on the walls, and splashy floor displays advertised Dr. Seuss books.
On the left side, the area was set up for story time: ten miniature green plastic chairs were arranged in a semicircle around a normal-size folding chair. A small, low wooden bench stood against the wall, bracketed by shelves on either side.