“Well, she does have a point there, sugar. But this wipes out a lot of old debts.”
“You’re preaching to the choir,” I told him.
“No, the choir’s busy wailing,” he said, and chuckled. “This is definitely a three-hankie evening.”
John and I were squeezed in tight between two women who were weeping and shouting prayers and amens and heartfelt petitions. The occasion was something called “Sister, I’m Sorry,” a special church service that was gaining popularity in D.C. Men came to churches and other venues to pay tribute to the women for all the physical and emotional abuse they had taken, and for the abuse they might have given women in their lifetimes.
“It’s so good of you to come,” the woman next to me suddenly proclaimed in a voice loud enough for me to hear over the shouting and screaming around us. She hugged my shoulder. “You’re a good man, Alex. One of the few.”
“Yeah, that’s my problem,” I muttered under my breath. But then, loud enough for her to hear, I said, “Sister, I’m sorry. You’re a good woman, too. You’re a sweetheart.”
The woman grabbed me harder. She was a sweetheart, actually. Her name was Terri Rashad. She was in her early thirties, attractive, proud, and usually joyful. I had seen her around the neighborhood.
“Sister, I’m sorry,” I heard Sampson say to the woman standing beside him in the church pew.
“Well, you damn well ought to be sorry,” I heard Lace McCray say. “But thank you. You’re not as bad as I thought you were.”
Sampson eventually nudged me and whispered in his deep voice, “It’s kind of emotional when you get into it. Maybe Nana was right to have us come.”
“She knows that. Nana is always right,” I said. “She’s like an octogenarian Oprah.”
“How’re you doing, sugar?” John finally asked as the singing and screeching and sobbing crescendoed.
I thought about it for a few seconds. “Oh, I miss Christine. But we’re happy to have the Boy with us. Nana says it will add years to her life. He lights up our whole house, morning to night. He thinks we’re all his staff.”
Christine had left for Seattle at the end of June. At least she’d finally told me where she was going. I’d gone over to Mitchellville to say good-bye to her. Her new SUV was packed up. Everything was ready. Christine gave me a hug and then she started to cry, to heave against my body. “Maybe someday,” she whispered. Maybe someday.
But now she was out in the state of Washington, and I was here in the Baptist church in my neighborhood. I figured Nana Mama was trying to get me a date. It was a funny idea, actually, and I finally started to laugh.
“You sorry for the sisters, Alex?” Sampson asked. He was getting gabby. I looked at Sampson, then around the church.
“Sure I am. Lots of good people he
re, trying to do the best they can. They just want to be loved a little bit now and then.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” Sampson said, and clasped me hard around the shoulder.
“No. Nothing at all. Just trying to do the best we can.”
Chapter 124
A COUPLE OF NIGHTS LATER, I was home playing the piano on the sunporch at around eleven-thirty. The rest of the house was silent, nice and peaceful, the way I like it sometimes. I had just gone up, checked on the Boy, and found him sleeping like a precious little angel in his crib. I was playing Gershwin, one of my favorites, “Rhapsody in Blue.”
I was thinking about my family, about our old house on Fifth Street and how much I loved it here in spite of everything that was wrong with the neighborhood. I was starting to get my head on straight again. Maybe all that screeching and crying in the Baptist church had helped. Or maybe it was the Gershwin.
The phone rang, and I hurried to the kitchen to get it before it woke everyone up, especially little Alex, or A. J., as Jannie and Damon had started to call him.
It was Kyle Craig.
Kyle almost never called the house and never this late. This was how everything had started on the Mastermind case — with Kyle.
“Kyle,” I said, “why are you calling me here? What’s wrong? I can’t start on another case.”
“It’s bad, Alex. I don’t even know how to tell you this,” he said in the softest, quietest voice. “Oh, shit, Alex . . . Betsey Cavalierre is dead. I’m at her place now. You should come here. Just come.”
I hung up the phone a minute or so later. I must have — because it was back on its hook. My legs and arms had turned to jelly. I was biting the inside of my cheek and I tasted blood. I was reeling. Kyle hadn’t told me everything, just that I should come to Betsey’s house. Someone had broken in there and killed her. Who had killed her? Jesus! Why?
I was throwing on some clothes to go and meet Kyle when the phone rang a second time. I snatched it up. It had to be somebody else with the bad news. Probably Sampson, or maybe Rakeem Powell.