"Another round!" Reheema called to the bartender, who arrived after a minute, poured them both a shot, and wisely withdrew. She sighed, shaking her head. "Oh man. This is bad, real bad."
"Try to focus and tell me."
"Well, I walked by Browning twice, in the store. I had my hat and sunglasses off and made sure he saw my face. He looked me over both times, like I was a stranger. I don't think he knew me."
"You're sure?"
Reheema downed her second shot. "Yeah. He was in the diaper aisle, and he and the driver were joking. It sounded like he forgot which diapers he was supposed to buy, and I walked down the aisle. I was pretending I was buying some baby oil, and he asked me what size diapers do six-month-olds get." Reheema started rolling her empty shot glass on its end. "I knew that was crap, because it says it on the package."
"I wonder what baby he's buying for? The kid we saw was about four." Vicki tried to reason, despite the gunshots reverberating in her ears. "If there was a baby in that house, his wife, or whatever, wouldn't have left it alone to go to yoga."
"The man is a playa, a gangsta." Reheema's tone was weary. "He got kids everywhere."
"Okay. Right."
"He asked me about my kids." Reheema kept playing with her glass. "I said I didn't have any, I wanted the baby oil for my skin."
"Good save."
"Then he asked me my name and I said Marcia, and I asked him his and he said Jamal, and he said did I live around here, and I said no, I was in from D.C. for the day, visitin' my sister."
"You're a better liar than I am."
"My mother's daughter."
Ouch. Vicki felt a twinge of sympathy, and regret. "Look, maybe we should wait a little to talk about this. We're both upset, and you almost got-"
"I'm fine."
"You could have been killed."
"I wasn't." Reheema stop playing with her glass. "So, anyway, he and I, we kep' talking and the driver got the diapers, then Jamal said could he walk me out and I started to get worried, and I said I was gonna take the bus, and when we got outside he asked me what was my number and I was about to give him a fake one when the shooting started."
"That's it?"
"That's all."
Vicki eyed her second shot, untouched. "So what have we learned? One, Browning doesn't know you. Two, somebody wanted Browning dead and he got his wish. And three, the new bad guy drives a white van."
"Wait, look." Reheema pointed above the bar at the TV, and on the screen was a blue BREAKING NEWS banner.
"Can you turn that up?" Vicki called to the bartender, who reached up and increased the volume loud enough to overcome Britney. The TV screen switched to a scene of the parking lot, above a red caption that read TOYS "R" US MASSACRE. A pretty reporter came on in a red suit and stiff haircut, saying into a bubble microphone:
"Seven people were shot and killed, and fifteen more wounded, five critically, in what appeared to be a drive-by shooting this afternoon at about twelve-thirty, in front of the Toys ‘R' Us store on Regon Avenue. The injured have been taken to area hospitals-"
Vicki could barely watch, sickened. Seven dead. Browning. His driver. The salesclerk. The mother. The baby, the toddler, other children, who else?
The reporter continued, "Police are on the lookout for a white Dodge van, 2003, which had a small American flag decal in the back left window, and was being driven without license plates. We realize there may be many such vans in the Delaware Valley area, but viewers who see a 2003 white Dodge van, with a flag in the rear window, are encouraged to call the police tip line or Action News at…"
Vicki's shoulders sagged. Morty. Jackson. The baby.
The TV screen switched to the next story, a warehouse fire, in the Northeast, and both women turned away. Reheema sighed. "So where were we?"
Vicki straightened up. "Now it's possible that Jay-Boy and Teeg, the kids who shot my partner and Jackson, don't work for Jamal Browning at all. I had thought they did and that the attack was against Shayla Jackson, because of you or your trial, and because Jackson and Browning were evidently breaking up." Vicki forced her brain to reason, despite the shock and the whisky. "But after this, and because Browning didn't know you, I think the real target was Browning, and he's being attacked by a rival gang."
Reheema nodded. "You mean, the teenage kids who shot your partner worked for the white van guy or his boss?"
"Yes."
"But why would they shoot the guy's girlfriend? 'Cause she was pregnant, to hurt him?" Reheema frowned, puzzled. "That man, Browning, he got enough kids already."
The fish-scale coke. Vicki made a judgment call and filled Reheema in, then concluded, "So the rival gang, if that's what they are, struck at Browning to steal his coke stash. They only killed Jackson because she was there, in the way."
"So it wasn't personal. Okay, I'm with you. Lotta business at stake." Reheema thought a minute. "Still doesn't say why your snitch set me up."
"No, it doesn't. That's an open question." Vicki made a mental note. "It must be a turf war." "And we walked into the middle." "Wonder if it's over Cater Street." "There's a thousand Cater Streets in this city." Vicki nodded. "At least we know it's directed at Browning." "Oh, it's directed, all right." Reheema laughed, but it was hollow. "The problem is that now we don't have anybody to follow back up the chain." "Unless the white van supplies from the same place." "Right." "How likely is that?" Reheema's eyes glittered under her cap. "Likely. It's the little guys that fight it out, block by block, brick by brick. The supplier doesn't care who moves his product." "So we gotta find the white van." "Us and Action News. And, oh yeah, the cops. A white work van with an American flag? No license plate? No sweat." "Hold on, I have an idea," Vicki said, her thoughts racing ahead. "Let's go."
Vicki sat in front of her desktop computer at home, wolfing down a Big Mac while Reheema ate a McDonald's shaker of salad over her shoulder, watching the screen.
"Okay, they're loaded," Vicki said, snapping in the photo card and clicking to slide show, and they both sat back and watched. The pictures, downloaded from her digital camera, started last night in the dark and played out like a short film with a miserably unhappy ending. A shot appeared of Browning and his driver digging the car out, almost pitch black, then bright shots of Browning's wife and son coming out of the house, getting in the car, and the photos continued all the way to the Toys "R" Us, with Reheema going in and out, then finally appearing with Browning, slipping on her cap and smiling at him.
Vicki clicked and pointed. "There, in the right corner. The front bumper of the white van."
"Got it."
"I thought it was waiting for a space. What an idiot."
"Keep going."
Vicki double-clicked and the slide show restarted, each picture dissolving into the next, in that corny way the software dictated, horribly inappropriate in context. The scene changed to a laughing Browning and Reheema, in close-up, cutting out the white van, and then the last shot caught the salesclerk going down, before Vicki had dropped the camera in horror.
"Sweet Jesus," Reheema said, and Vicki put down her sandwich, her stomach upset.
"Somebody has to stop these guys. This is just lawlessness. They're turning the city into the wild, wild West. No order, no justice. Only money and murder." It gave Vicki a second wind. She clicked though the slide show, searching. She had taken so many pictures, one had to have the driver of the white van. The van had been pointing out of the lot, ready to make a quick getaway, and the driver's side had been facing Vicki, full on. She'd been only half a lot away. She had to have him on film. She moved the mouse to the right corner of the photo, then clicked. The front end of the white van peeked onto the corner of the frame.