Wingo had considerable skills as a courtroom lawyer, and his presence before a jury had not been diminished one iota by his
confinement two years ago to a wheelchair because of ongoing diabetes and kidney and liver ailments. In some ways, he felt
his ability to reach out to a jury had been enhanced by his physical predicament. And many a member of the state bar envied
Wingo’s string of victories. He was also loathed by those who felt he was simply a means for rich criminals to avoid the rightful
consequences of their terrible misdeeds. Wingo naturally didn’t see it that way, but he had long ago stopped trying to win
that argument because it was one of the very few issues he had ever come upon that didn’t seem worth arguing about.
He lived in a substantial home in Windsor Farms, a very affluent and coveted area of Richmond; drove a specially configured
Jag sedan to accommodate his disability; took luxurious trips overseas when he wanted to; was good to his children and generous
and on good terms with his ex-wife, who still lived in their old home. But mostly he worked. At age fifty-nine Wingo had outlived
many predictions of his premature death. Those had come either because of his various medical conditions or because of threats
from disgruntled clients or folks on the other side of a crime who felt justice had not been served largely through Wingo
doing what he did best, which was finding reasonable doubt in twelve peers of the defendant. Yet he knew that his time was
running out. He could feel it in his tired organs, in his poor circulation, his general fatigue. He figured he would work
until he died; it wouldn’t be such a bad way to go.
He took a sip of coffee and Gentleman Jim and picked up the phone. He liked to work the phones, even on the weekends, particularly
in calling back people he didn’t want to talk with. Rarely would they be in on Saturday morning and he’d leave a polite message
telling them he was sorry to have missed them. He did ten of these and felt like he was being very productive. His mouth was
growing very dry, probably from all the talking, and he took another shot of the whiskey coffee. He turned to a brief he was
working on that would, if granted, suppress evidence in a burglary ring matter he was involved in. Most people didn’t realize
that trials were often won before anyone stepped foot inside a courtroom. In this case if the motion were granted there would
be no trial because the prosecution would have no case.
After several hours of work and more phone calls, he took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. The damn diabetes was wreaking
havoc with just about every part of him and he had found out last week that he had glaucoma. Maybe the Lord was getting him
back for the work he was doing here on earth.
He thought he heard a door open somewhere and figured one of his overpaid associates might have wandered in to actually perform
some weekend labor. The young folks these days, they just didn’t have the same work ethic of Wingo’s generation, even though
they made outrageous sums. When had he
not
worked a weekend for the first fifteen years of his practice? The kids today grumbled about working past six. Damn if his
eyes weren’t killing him. He finished the cup of coffee, but his thirst returned just as bad. He popped open a desk drawer
and drank from the bottle of water he kept there. Now his head was throbbing. And his back was aching. He put a finger on
his wrist and counted. Well, hell, his pulse was out of whack too; yet that happened just about every day. He had already
taken his insulin and wouldn’t need another shot for a while; still, he wondered about speeding up the schedule. Maybe his
blood sugar had plummeted somehow. He was always adjusting his insulin, because he could never get the damn right dosage.
His doctor had told him to stop drinking, but that was just not going to happen, Wingo knew. For him, bourbon was a necessity,
not a luxury.
He was sure he heard the door that time. “Hello,” he called out.
“Is that you, Missy?” Missy, he thought, Missy was his damn dog that had died ten years ago. Where the hell had that come
from? He tried to focus on the brief, but his vision was now so badly blurred and his body was doing such funny things that
Wingo finally started to get scared. Hell, maybe he was having a coronary, though he felt no pain in his chest, no dull throb
in his left shoulder and arm.
He looked at the clock but couldn’t make out the time. Okay, he needed to do something here. “Hello,” he called out again.
“I need some help here.” He thought he heard approaching footsteps, but then no one ever came.
Okay, damn it,
he thought. “Sons of bitches,” he yelled. He picked up the phone and managed to guide his hand to the nine and then twice
on the one. He waited, but no one came on the line. That was our tax dollars at work. You dial 911 and get jack. “I need some
help here,” he called into the phone. And then he noted there was no dial tone. He hung up and lifted the receiver again.
No dial tone. Well, shit. He slammed the phone down and missed the cradle and the receiver fell to the floor. He pulled at
his shirt collar because it was getting hard to breathe. He’d been meaning to get one of those cell phones but never had gotten
around to it. “Is anybody out there, damn it?” Now he could hear the footsteps. His breathing was becoming impossible, like
something was wedged down his gullet. Sweat was pouring off him. He looked up at the doorway. Through his clouded vision he
could see the door opening. The person came in.
“Mother?” Damn if it wasn’t his mother, and she would be dead twenty years this November. “Mother, I need some help, I’m not
feeling too good.”
There was no one there, of course. Wingo was just hallucinating.
Wingo slid to the floor now, because he couldn’t keep himself up in the chair any longer. He crawled along the floor to her,
gasping and wheezing as he did so. “Mother,” he said hoarsely to the vision he was experiencing. “You got to help your boy,
he ain’t doing too good.” He got to her and then she just disappeared on him, just like that, right when he needed her. Wingo
put his head on the floor and slowly closed his eyes.
“Anybody out there? I need help,” he said one last time.
F
rancis Westbrook was feeling seriously hampered. His usual haunts, his normal places of conducting business were not available
to him. The Feds, he knew, were looking for him, and whoever had set him up was no doubt trying to get the jump on him too.
Westbrook couldn’t assume anything else. In his line of work extreme paranoia was really the only thing keeping him alive.
Thus he was hanging out, at least for the next hour, in the back of a meat warehouse in Southeast D.C. Ten minutes’ drive
from where he was sitting and freezing his ass off was the Capitol and other great national buildings. Westbrook had lived
his whole life in Washington and had never been to a single monument. These grand edifices to a great nation meant absolutely
nothing to him. He didn’t consider himself an American, a Washingtonian or a citizen of anything. He was just another brother
looking to get by. His goal when he was ten was to live to fifteen. Then his objective was to make it to twenty before he
was killed. Then twenty-five. When he hit thirty a couple of years ago he had given himself a party worthy of a person achieving
octogenarian status, because in his world, he had. Everything was relative, maybe more so in the eyes of Francis Westbrook
than other people.
What was occupying most of his thinking now was how he had screwed up with Kevin. His desire to let the boy have a somewhat
normal life had led him to be careless about Kevin’s safety. He had once had Kevin with him all the time, but then a crew
dispute had erupted into a full-fledged battle and Kevin had been shot in the face and almost died. Francis hadn’t even been
able to take him to the hospital because he probably would’ve been arrested. After that, he let Kevin live with some quasi-family,
an old lady and her grandson. He kept close watch on Kevin and visited him as often as he could; however, he let the boy have
his freedom because every child needed that.
And the fact was Kevin was not going to grow up like Francis. He was going to have a real life, away from guns and drugs and
the quick drive to the medical examiner’s office with a tag on your toe. Being around Francis too much, being witness to such
a life, any young man might be tempted to stick his toes in the water. And once you did, you were caught for life, because
that sweet-looking pond was pure quicksand and filled with water moccasins all claiming to be your friend until you weren’t
looking and one of them sunk his fangs in your neck. That was not going to happen to Kevin, Francis had pledged when Kevin
had been born, and yet maybe it already had. It would be truly ironic if Kevin did not outlive him.
While Westbrook headed up one of the more lucrative drug operations in the D.C. metro area, he had never been arrested for
anything, not even a misdemeanor, though he was going on his twenty-third year in the “bizness,” having started very young
and never looked back, because there was nothing to look back to. He was proud of that clean record, despite his felonious
ways. It was not all luck; in fact, most of it was due to his carefully crafted survival plans, the way he gave information
when it was needed to the right people, who in return then let him carry on his thing peacefully. That was key, don’t rock
the boat, don’t be causing trouble on the street, don’t be shooting nobody or nothing if you can help it. Don’t give the Feds
a hard time, because they got the manpower and money to make your life hell and who needed that shit. His life was complicated
enough as it was. And yet without Kevin his life was nothing.
He looked over at Macy and Peebles, his twin shadows. He trusted them as much as he trusted anyone, which was not all that
much. He always carried a gun and had needed it on more than one occasion to save his life. You only had to learn that lesson
once. He glanced toward the door where big Toona had just come in.
“Toona, you got me some news, ain’t you? Some good news ’bout Kevin.”
“Nothing yet, boss.”
“Then get your sorry ass back out there till you do.”
A sour-looking Toona immediately left and Westbrook looked at Peebles.
“Talk to me, Twan.”
Antoine “Twan” Peebles looked chagrined and carefully adjusted his expensive reading glasses. The man’s eyesight was excellent,
Westbrook knew, he just thought wearing spectacles helped him to look the part of an executive, trying to be something he
never would be, legitimate. Westbrook had made his peace with that issue a long time ago. Really the choice had been made
for him the moment he had been born in the backseat of a Cadillac up on cinder blocks, his mother snorting coke even as Francis
had slipped out between her legs into the arms of her man of the moment, who had promptly set the child aside, cut the cord
with a dirty knife and forced the new mother to perform oral sex on him. His mother had told him about this later, in graphic
detail, as though it were the funniest story she had ever heard.
“It’s not good news,” said Peebles. “Our main distributor said until the heat died down on you, he wasn’t sure he could provide
us with any more product. And our inventory levels are pretty low as it is.”
“Damn, now ain’t
that
a shock,” said Westbrook. He sat back. Westbrook had to put on a strong front before Peebles and Macy and his people, yet
the fact was he had a real problem. Like any reseller of sorts, Westbrook had obligations to folks down the line. And if they
couldn’t get what they needed from him, they would get it from somebody else. His survival time would not be long. And once
you disappointed folks, they almost never did business with you again. “Okay, I’ll deal with that later. This Web London dude,
what you got?”
Peebles opened a file he had pulled from a leather briefcase and adjusted his reading glasses once more. Using his monogrammed
handkerchief, Peebles had carefully wiped off the seat he was sitting on and had made it clear that holding a meeting inside
a meat warehouse was far beneath his dignity. Peebles liked rolls of cash in his pockets and nice clothes and nice restaurants
and the nice ladies doing whatever he wanted for him or to him. He didn’t carry a gun, and for all Westbrook knew, Peebles
didn’t even know how to shoot one. He had come up at a time when drug operations had been far less violent and run in a more
orderly way, with accountants and computers and business files, and taking dirty money and making it clean, and having stock
portfolios and even vacation homes that one traveled to in one’s private jet.
Ten years older than Peebles, Westbrook had come up purely on the streets. He had run crack for pennies a bag, slept in rat
holes, gone hungry more often than not, dodged bullets and fired them into others when he had to. Peebles was good at what
he did; he made sure that Westbrook’s operation ran smoothly and that product came in when it was supposed to and went out
to the people that it was intended for. And he also ensured that accounts receivable—Westbrook had belly laughed when Peebles
had first used that term with him—that accounts receivable were promptly paid. Money was efficiently laundered, excess cash
flow prudently invested, innovations in the industry kept abreast of, the latest technology utilized, all under the watchful
eyes of Antoine Peebles. And still Westbrook couldn’t bring himself to respect the man.
When personnel issues arose, though, which basically meant that somebody was trying screw them, Antoine Peebles quickly stepped
aside. He had no stomach for that part of the business. That’s when Westbrook took over and handled things. And that’s where
Clyde Macy really earned all the dollars that he was paid.
Westbrook looked over at his little white boy. He had thought it a joke when Macy had come to him for work. “You on the wrong
side of town, boy,” he had told Macy. “Whitey-town’s up Northwest way. You go get your ass to where it belongs.” He had figured
that would be the end of that until Macy had popped two gents trying to mess with Westbrook and, as Macy had explained at
the time, he’d done it on a
pro bono
basis, just to prove his value. And the little skinhead had never failed his boss. Who would have thought it, big black Francis
Westbrook being an equal opportunity employer?