Reheema walked over. "I'm not feelin' it. S'boring." "Exactly." Vicki peeked inside. "Only one problem. It's a gearshift. I don't drive a stick." "Can't you learn, Harvard?" "You know how to drive a stick?" "Sure, I went to a real college. Temple." Vicki was distracted by a short white man in a gray coat, coming out of a one-room building in the middle of the lot, presumably the office. A Fotomat sign was a painted ghost under the building's grimy white. Vicki said under her breath,
"Let me do the talking."
"No, I'll do the talking."
"But I know how to negotiate."
"So do I."
"I'm the lawyer."
"You couldn't get me to plead out."
Ouch.
"And you can't even drive a damn stick."
"Okay, fine. Go get 'em, girlfriend."
Reheema's eyes shifted under her cap. "Black people stopped saying girlfriend a long time ago. We talk just like you white folks now, since you done give us the vote."
"Gimme a break," Vicki said, just as the little salesman came chugging up, his breath puffing in the cold air like a toy locomotive.
"Welcome, ladies!" he sang out. His bald head looked cold and the tip of his nose had already turned red. His blue eyes were bright behind thick glasses and he clapped his gloved hands together, as if to generate excitement. Or heat. "How are you two lovely ladies doing today?"
"Fine," they answered in unison, with equal enthusiasm, which is to say, none.
"Great day to buy a car! You girls have my undivided attention! No waiting, right? Ha ha!"
Reheema stepped forward. "I want me a cheap car that don' look like crap. And don't be rippin' me off. You messin' with the wrong girl."
Huh? Vicki did a double-take at the appearance of Street Reheema, especially after the lecture she'd just received.
"Certainly, certainly." The salesman edged away from Reheema and looked at Vicki. "And, miss, you are?"
"Her life partner."
Reheema burst into startled laughter, and Vicki smiled to herself.
Half an hour later, Reheema was driving the Sunbird off the lot with Vicki in the passenger seat, because they didn't have time for her stick lesson after dropping the Cabrio back at home and going to the bank, where she had withdrawn the cash to rent the car. They had jointly negotiated ten bucks off the price, and the dealer had agreed to "detail" the car, that is, hose it down and spray the interior with Garden in a Can. The Sunbird was a washed-out light blue inside, and its floor was covered with aftermarket shag rugs, somebody's idea of pimp-my-ride. Armor All greased the blue vinyl bucket seats, and there was no cute little H on the rear window, in crimson or even in red.
By noon, the two women were rolling, and one of them was missing her Cabrio very much.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Vicki and Reheema staked out Cater Street, parking the Sunbird behind a tall snowbank made by a city plow when the cross street had been cleared. The tall, triangulated mound hid them from view of the lookout, smoking a cigarette halfway down the block. And both women were in extraordinarily professional disguise; Reheema's knit cap covered her hair and Exxon-station sunglasses hid her eyes, and Vicki wore Dan's Phillies cap and Chanel sunglasses, to fashionably conceal her forbidden whiteness. Even so, she was pretty sure that they looked like two women, one white and one black, driving while blind.
Cars couldn't drive for the snow on Cater, which hadn't been cleared yet because the street was too narrow to fit the conventional wide plows, and only a few row houses had their walks shoveled, but it didn't deter steady foot traffic to the vacant lot. The pace was as brisk as the other day, and addicts braved the elements, showing unusual hardiness. Vicki wondered if watching them bothered Reheema, so soon after her mother's murder.
"You okay?" she asked, looking over at that perfect, if impassive, profile.
"Fine." Reheema nodded, her sunglasses reflecting the snow.
The woman of few words had become the woman of no words. Vicki had been previously unaware that you could be a woman and say so very little. It seemed biologically impossible.
"Is this weird for you, since what happened to your mother? Is it upsetting?"
"I look upset?" Reheema didn't move, just kept gazing out the windshield, and then Vicki gave up and looked, too. A bundled-up couple, a man and a woman, walked in the snow to the vacant lot, arm in arm, like a crack date.
"You recognize them?"
"No."
Vicki had hoped otherwise. This was Phase One of the Master Plan. They'd been here an hour, and Reheema hadn't recognized either of the lookouts or any of the customers. "But they're your neighbors."
"I don't know the neighbors."
Vicki didn't get it. "You lived here, right?"
"Moved here senior year high school, and not since then."
"Where were you before you moved here?"
"Somewhere else."
That clears things up. "And your mother stayed here. When did she start using, if I can ask?"
"I was in college."
"Is that why you didn't come back?"
"Yes."
Now the conversational ball was really rolling. "It must have been hard."
Reheema didn't say anything.
"What did you major in?"
"Business."
"Did you like it?"
"No."
Try another tack. "You know, my dad lived right on your street. He had the corner house on Washington. He went to Willowbrook, too."
"Where'd you go to high school?" "Episcopal." "Private school." "Guilty," Vicki said, and she was. They both watched as a young man in long dreads and a brown coat walked down the street, kicking snow as he shuffled along, heading for the hole. "How about him? Do you know him?"
"You know, he does look familiar." "Goody!" "Did you just say goody?" Reheema peered at Vicki over the top of her sunglasses. "Never. Again."
Excited, Vicki handed Reheema a pair of binoculars she'd brought from home. She'd packed her backpack full of equipment they might need for the Master Plan, including guacamole Doritos. Episcopal Academy taught its grads to plan well for their stakeouts.
Reheema turned and raised the binoculars to her eyes. "Yo, that's Cal!" she said, dangerously animated. "Cal what?" "Cal Moore. Was in my math class. I think he dropped out, and now he's a crackhead." Reheema lowered the binoculars.
"Always was a loser." "It's sad." "No, it isn't." Vicki let it go and noted Cal Moore's name in the Filofax.
So far his was the only name. Phase One wasn't working out so hot, but then again, it took only one name for a lead. She dug inside the backpack again, grabbed the silvery Cybershot camera, pressed the button so the lens was on telephoto, and snapped a digital close-up of Cal Moore.
"Why're you doin' that?" "In case we need it." "Why would we need it?" Good question. "I don't know yet. But this is what the ATF would do on a stakeout, and so I'm doing it, too." Vicki knew the basics from Morty, but she was trying not to think about him today. "If it turns out we need an ID on Moore, we have a picture." They both watched as Moore trudged though the snow to the vacant lot, then went inside, past the bare trees. Vicki couldn't help but wonder. "What do they have in there anyway? Like a shack or something?"
"You mean, what's in the hole? Just the man, standing there, behind some trash cans and an old wood wall from one of the houses."
"A wall in the middle of the lot?"
"Toward the back. Looks like the house got torn down and the old wall, like maybe the backyard, got left. It makes a screen, so you can't see what's goin' on from the street."