“How else we gonna verify all these rumors about what Fisher been up to?” He leaned forward, hands on his knees and said with a sly smile, “Ain’t you been listening?”
“Sorry. I got a little distracted looking through the records.” I switched gears to Tina’s case. “You think he’ll talk to you?”
“Oh, he’ll talk to me.” Little D beamed confidence. “Eventually.”
His smile made me nervous. “You think Fisher had Narsh kill Shanae?”
“With a baseball bat? Hired killers don’t beat people to death.”
“It looks more like a crime of passion,” I said. “Unless that was the intent.”
Little D shrugged and shook his head. “Nah. Too subtle. If Narsh was hired to kill Shanae, he woulda just capped her ass.”
Little D’s tendency to alternate between the Queen’s English and street slang was amusing. A cross between a Rhodes Scholar and a gangsta rapper. Just the kind of guy I needed to help me with this case. “If you’re going to talk to Narsh, I want to be there.”
“This may not be the friendliest discussion. Be better if I handled it and got back to you.”
“No,” I said. He stared at me, as if I’d spoken a foreign language. “I want to meet him. Look at him while he answers the questions. Size him up for myself. Not that I don’t trust you. There are just some things I have to do myself.”
Little D leaned back and smiled. “Damn, girl. Well, all right. You want to meet Narsh, I’ll have to take you to him, ’cause he ain’t gonna come to you. And we’re talking about Southern Avenue, babe. So you will want me to be there.”
I thought about that decaying stretch of road, dividing the worst of D.C. from its mirror image in P.G. County. “Yeah,” I said. “I will.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
With no client meetings or court appearances, I wore jeans and an old long-sleeve pullover to the office the next day. Casual dress seemed in order for a trip to the ’hood. Though I had other work to do, my thoughts were stuck on Little D’s promise to take me that afternoon to meet Narsh at a local bar serving as his office. My cases kept me occupied, but anticipation charged through me.
For the umpteenth time, I called Hirschbeck and got his voice mail. I left another message for him to arrange an audit and check the company’s computers for tampering. I was beginning to feel like a parrot.
The deeper I got into the Higgins embezzlement case, the more certain I was that our client was getting hosed. I had no clue what to do about it. Brad Higgins hadn’t been fired, so we couldn’t sue for wrongful termination. And, as an “at-will” employee, I didn’t see how we could sue Kozmik even if they let Higgins go. Still, I had to do something. For the moment, that “something” was to stay on Hirschbeck like a yellow jacket on a picnicker.
Walt called to tell me Higgins was a free man, for the time being. The police seemed suspicious, he said, due to Brad’s appearance on the security video. Walt thought the cops might try to get a warrant to search Brad’s condo. I updated Walt on my conversation with Little D—the records he’d found and our plan to see Narsh. I also told him about hiring Alex Kramer to find Cooper while Duvall was out of town.
“Maybe Cooper knows something about the pawn shop connection,” Walt said.
“I hope so.” I thought back to my conversation with the lovely Elva McKutcheon. “There was also a black man in a blue jumpsuit looking for Cooper in Philadelphia. Maybe it was Narsh or Fisher.”
“Whoever it was may be able to identify the real embezzler.”
“I hope to find out more from Narsh today.”
“Good luck,” Walt said. “I’ll keep you posted on Brad’s situation.”
I hung up and went to meet Little D out front. The weather was still mild. A breeze showered colorful leaves onto the ground and sent them scampering down the street. I found their rustling soothing, like the patter of gentle rain.
I’d been in bad neighborhoods before—my childhood home in Bed-Stuy being the worst by far—but times had changed. Today’s ’hoods made those of the past look pretty tame. Having Little D as a guide would help, but even he couldn’t guarantee safe passage through the war zone shared by D.C. and P.G. County. The area had a reputation for harboring perps who evaded the law by crossing to the other jurisdiction. Cooperative enforcement was a work in progress.
Despite the risks, I won’t delegate some work, like questioning people for information that might make or break my cases. I had to question Narsh face-to-face and judge his answers for myself.
At a couple minutes past th
ree, Little D pulled up, his green Lexus sparkling, chrome wheels spinning and shining. Sliding onto the tan leather seat, I said, “Nice car to be driving in such a crappy area.”
“Don’t matter,” he said. He turned to me. “Don’t nobody mess with my car.”
“You sure everyone on Southern Avenue got the memo on that?”
“If they didn’t, they gonna hear it from me personally, after I find their sorry asses.” He hunched over the wheel, his oversized frame filling the space, already scoping the streets for would-be car thieves.