The Importance of Being Dangerous (29 page)

Griff slept hard for most of the next morning. She watched him twitch and jerk occasionally as if he were having nightmares, and she finally put on a robe and went outside on the balcony to watch the waves scatter against the shore. Clouds seemed painted on the horizon a thousand miles away like file tabs God had placed above the ocean to lift when He pleased and set the tides in motion. She had fallen back to sleep and only woke when a breeze rattled her teacup. Inside the suite, Griff was snoring gently. Sidarra decided to take a shower.

Perhaps the best thing about the suite was that shower. It was a circular glass enclosure in a triangular room furnished in bamboo and rattan fixtures. On the far side of the circle, the shower opened to a sunlit doorway, the doorway to a long tub, and the tub appeared to extend directly to the sea. Sidarra gently scrubbed her skin under the water and daydreamed to the vista. She had no idea how much time had passed when she felt a strong hand cup her hip. Griff had stood long enough absorbing the sight of her silhouette and now stepped into the water behind her. Realizing it was he, Sidarra closed her eyes and moaned happily. Their groggy hands awakened the skin all over their bodies, sudsing and cleansing until they were locked in full writhing embrace. They clawed and pulled and stretched against the sunlight.

Sidarra let his lips go for a minute to say, “I do love you, Griff.” She roamed his eyes with her own. “I'm not sure I ever said that before. But I love you, statue man.”

Griff's face took her in. A smile began to grow. “Don't you remember from high school, you're not supposed to say I love you during shower sex?”

Having attended a very different high school, Sidarra grinned,
reached for the faucet handles, and turned off the water. “I love you,” she repeated. “You're a good man.”

He chuckled into her neck. “I was on my way there once, but thanks.”

“The way is not closed, baby,” she whispered. And they finished against the wet glass wall.

THEY HAD BREAKFAST
brought up from a restaurant nearby and sat together on the balcony's two sun chairs in white terry cloth. They sat like married people, naked under robes that kept falling open, rubbing toes against each other in playful foot combat. But they ate like a first date, nibbling the edges of things and finishing nothing.

“I let some things slip past me, Griff. I know that,” she said. He just listened. “It's hard to believe how needy I was, how scared I must have been. Maybe I should be more terrified now.” The waves receded like old applause. “When Koob gave me that first credit card, I don't know, I felt liberated. I felt strong. I wanted to run through places and buy myself.”

“Buy yourself what?”

“No, just buy myself. I was trying to buy the person I hoped to become.”

Their feet tangled momentarily, then he stroked her calf with
his big toe. You could hear children playing in a swimming pool twelve stories below.

“You're not gonna believe me, Sid, but I used to be a sucker for this country.”

“Belize?”

“No, ours. That's part of why I went to law school. I really believed the hype. I was proud to say how much I loved America. I remember there were radical classmates of mine who used to assume I was a Republican. Me. I wanted to know all the first principles cold and be able to recite the Constitution as I defended it. Boy, what a wacko I was.” He stared at the sea. “Or became.”

Neither said a word. She scooted her lounge chair right up close to him so that there was no longer any distance between them and she could see the exact same view of the horizon he did. “Griff, what happened really? Why did people have to die so we could join the stock market?”

Griff turned his long neck up at the sky and almost laughed. Then he rested it back against the chair, grabbed her hand in both of his, and looked out. “I've been wondering a little of that myself, sugar. Basically,” he said, turning on his side to face her, “we took advantage of opportunities that nobody expected would come to us. We got carried away with the Whiteboy talk. Once the Raul shit went down with that dealer he shot, he was eager to prove himself. When Koob was getting him ready to get into the chancellor's house, Raul would say shit about what he could do; he'd brag about what he could get away with. Koob always told him not to be so ambitious. One night Koob and I waited for you and talked about it. We talked about ‘what if.' What if Raul goes into that house and gets trapped. We figured he's gonna shoot his way out. As long as no one could trace him to us, we might have a dead schools chancellor on our hands. Was there any profit in that? Hell yeah, it turned out, if you could stomach that online mayhem casino. Koob thought you might even be down with it,
but I didn't. It didn't seem like something to bother you with at the time, because it didn't seem like something that was gonna happen. When it did, well, we took advantage of situations, Sidarra. I don't know what else to say.”

She pulled back from him in her seat as if her stomach had turned. Disbelief grew on her forehead, and his words were starting to make her angry. A huge rush of anger swelled inside her like a rough tide. When Sidarra turned to him, she felt the urge to ball up her fist and punch him in the face. “‘We,' ‘we,' ‘we,'” she repeated, shaking her head.

“What do you mean ‘
we
,' Sidarra?”

She turned directly into his eyes with a sharp coldness. “Et tu, Griff?” she asked.

His face twisted up in confusion. “What?” he almost whimpered. Somewhere in the back of his mind he recalled the reference, something from college, but he wasn't sure. “What?” he repeated. Then it came back to him. Shakespeare. Julius Caesar.

“Et tu,
nigga
?” she repeated, cocked her elbow back, and slapped Griff hard across his cheek.

“Sidarra, I didn't betray you.”

“No? Then who the fuck is ‘we'? The Eagleton thing was bad enough, but
we
had to keep on going? Koob gets pissed off and wants to rob a fucking bank even after he knows a public official's been assassinated—”

“A corrupt corporate director, Sid,” he interrupted. “A master pimp hoing black children for shareholder profit.”

“He was a human being!” Sidarra screamed to the sky. She stood up and walked in a deliberate little circle before turning back to him. “Listen to how you talk about it even now, Griff. ‘We.' Like I had any goddamned say at all. Like I'm just the girl in the movie. This ain't no movie, Griff! I ain't no girl!
This is real life,
man! This is
my
life!”

His eyes grew desperate. All his smarts dropped into the sea. “I know it is, baby. I got caught up.”

She waited for him to come with something more, but she couldn't wait. It was all too clear now. “I'm afraid this is bullshit. You've been lying to me all this time, Griff, and now you're just rationalizing. What's wrong with you? How could you do this to me? I have a
child,
man! I'm all she's got.” Suddenly tears pierced her rage. “You said you loved me!”

“I do.”

“Then why would you take away from me the first chance I had to control my own life? I decided to invest in the stock market to save my life. I joined that club so that I would stop waking up wondering who was gonna fuck with me today. I had already rejected a man who wanted to run my show. Now you. So fucking typical, Griff. I really thought you were different. I thought you got it.” Sidarra leaned on the banister and squinted at the sea.
“‘We'!”
she repeated. “What the fuck is wrong with men?”

At first it actually took Griff a moment to realize that Sidarra's horrified look of rage was meant for him. Had he lied? He guessed so. Did he love her? More than anyone or anything he could remember. Did he try to control her the way he couldn't control his own wife? Not on purpose, but the wrong he had put on her face panicked him. He searched it, hoping the anger would leave, but when it refused he was powerless to hold back his own tears.

“I never got to protect a woman,” he said quietly. “I always wanted that, Sidarra. And then when I realized that I loved you, how deeply I respected you and wanted you to have, well, it seemed like…You're right.” He shook his head and stared at his feet for a minute. Then he stood up. “I'm sorry,” he nearly asked. “I'm so sorry, baby.” He cried into her arms. “I really wanted to help.” And locked in tears, they held and swayed.

After a while, their arms slowly fell off each other. Sidarra snif
fled a bit and wiped her face with the wide sleeve of the terry cloth robe. She was okay. She even wiped his face dry. They settled back into their chairs.

“Why in the world didn't Yakoob just stop Raul?” she asked in a whisper. “Was he afraid of him?”

Griff pulled up a little surprised. “Yeah, he was.” He paused. “Me too. That man was not just a little dangerous. He was completely dangerous. I mean, I failed, Sidarra, hard as it is to say it. The thing was complicated. They seemed to have some kind of undetectable history going on, like a big brother-little brother thing. By the time I really got it, it was too late.”

Sidarra rubbed her eyes and shook her head. “Jesus, you guys really needed me. Thugs are my specialty.” She closed her robe, folded her legs, and squinted at the blue wall of water before them for a while. “Are you going to prison, Griff?”

“Probably.”

“Is the case strong?”

“Not nearly as strong as they'd like to think, I figure.” He cleared his throat and got his strength back. “First of all, nobody really believes there's more than one black person on earth who could ever pull this off—and he's a Supreme Court justice. Second of all, they've got so many agencies involved—the Manhattan and Brooklyn D.A.s' offices, the U.S. Attorney, DEA, FBI, the IRS—that they're all probably tripping over themselves right now, I would guess, trying to get us on everything and giving each other as little as they can. At the end of the day, sugar, I think they'll have no chance of proving we knew anything certain about the chancellor's death. Whatever we gained is gonna look awfully lucky. There were three types of accounts, you know, and the cash ones are out of the question. The shell corporations are still an X factor, but I think we're probably okay on those. It's just the early ones, the ones we did on credit cards where we might have slipped up a little. I'm pretty sure Koob used some real names before that
money got converted into stocks. They can't really follow them, I don't think. But they'll try. That's why people say you always want to follow the money. That's also why people say what they do about dead men talking.”

“You could stand to be in prison?”

“Are you kidding?” He laughed a little falsely. “I've got more friends in there than I can count, Sid.”

She turned toward Griff's face. “What about Yakoob? Is he gonna do time?”

“I have to think so, sweetheart. He's in as deep as me at least. They obviously started with his passwords and may not get too far, so they tend to want to stay with that first guy. If the Fidelity shit ever comes up, he could really go away. But he promised us both he'd never open an account in there, he'd just hack from outside. He should be clear of that one. Yakoob is a good brother. In a way, he's like
my
brother now. He just has to accept the system for what it is and not try to get too bold.”

“Yakoob?” she giggled. “C'mon. What do you mean?”

“I mean, he told me he wants to go to trial. He still wants to plead innocent to everything and make 'em prove their shit. That's too risky. You gotta plea this shit out. You do that and all the colors of the masterpiece they want to paint for a jury sink down in a puddle. They already know my life is ruined. They know I'll be disbarred, won't practice another day of law in New York. They probably even know Belinda will never lay eyes on me again and will take everything I didn't hide. But Koob's got a woman. Nobody's gonna miss me but the brothers I meet inside. On the other hand, he's got somebody to get back to fast. So he's the last one who should be beating his chest.” Griff turned close to Sidarra, grabbed her hand even tighter, and sat up a little. “The only question is whether I will have someone waiting for me, Sidarra.”

“What are you talking about, baby? I, I assumed from all you've been saying that I'm going down too, for something anyway.”

“No, darling,” he said very clearly. “The ‘we' ends there. If you just lay low and don't make it easy for them, I really don't think they're gonna get to you, Sid.”

“Why not?”

Griff smiled into her eyes with an almost fatherly admiration. He seemed to be counting the things he could say to her, just as he had spent the last half hour expressing conclusions he had reached over many sleepless and calculating days. But this answer had nothing to do with the law.

“Because you're loved.”

 

YAKOOB WOKE HAPPILY
to the sculpture of Marilyn's sleeping body and sat up in the Sunday calm of a July morning, occasionally kissing points along her side. Periwinkle sheets twisted in long lines between her tawny thighs, up over one shoulder, and into a ball of clenched fingers against her peaceful face. He studied her eyelids for a long time, blew light breaths upon a single peeking nipple, and inhaled the warm weight of her scent. Then, for the first time in many months, Yakoob leaned into his wife's outstretched body and made love to her without the hope of pregnancy, but just to love her soundly.

Maybe an hour or so later it was Marilyn's turn to take in the unguarded perfection of her partner. His naked feet were never as bad as he made out, she smiled as her toes gently caressed his. He self-consciously snatched them back under the sheets and stirred with a chuckle. Her eyes looked distracted.

“What you thinking 'bout, baby?” he whispered hoarsely.

Marilyn leaned on her elbow and began to stroke Yakoob's chest hairs. “Is it really that good?” she asked.

“It's all good,” he assured her, turning in the pillow to look into her eyes.

“No, sweetie. I mean, all the stuff we got now. Amazon.com and McDonald's. Somebody told me you don't really see the money so fast with the stock market. I'm not doubting you. But how come we do, baby?”

The sun nearly fell across them like truth serum, and Yakoob felt the light of lies nearly blind him. He blinked hard and felt his pulse change. “Dividends, sugar,” he said calmly. “Some people don't cash them when they come. We do.”

She thought for a long moment, not completely satisfied with his response. “That makes me feel kind of stupid, Koob.” He sat up beside her. “The idea that I don't know anything about the stock market, you know? And people just saying things about the stuff that's changed my
life
with you, baby, and I'm thinking I don't know
shit
about this.
I
want to be someone's mother? A
mother
—who doesn't know adult things?” Her brown eyes creased as they stared into his, and she drew up and kneeled on the mattress while squeezing the fingers on one hand with the other. “That's bullshit, isn't it? That shit's got to change for me. I have to know all about shit like that. You need to be a teacher, Yakoob. Okay?”

Suddenly disappointed in himself, he took a deep breath as he gazed back and forth between her eyes. “You're right, baby. I will. I'll try,” he said with all the courage he could muster.

It was still early in the morning when they came, and well before there was any chance he might get away. They came with two vans, a few squad cars, a battering ram, and a warrant. Yakoob and Marilyn had both fallen back to sleep when the banging began at their front door. The neighbors woke too and watched as Yakoob was brought out into the sunlight in handcuffs, slippers, and only his velour warm-up pants to clothe him. Thing by thing, one by one, the marshals and agents carried his personal belongings into
the street and onto the vans. The plasma TVs, sound systems, video games, racks of clothes, boxes of jewelry, a stash of herb, the basketball trophies, Bally shoes, three fur coats, a recliner stuffed with hundred-dollar bills, and, most importantly, the last of all his hard drives, monitors, backup systems and CD-ROMs were tagged with yellow “evidence” tape and removed. The black Escalade sat atop a flatbed truck waiting obliviously to be towed away. Yakoob lowered his head into his chest and dragged himself through the neighborhood perp walk while Marilyn, wearing only an old silk nightgown, screamed through her hysterical tears,
“Maricón, maricones, you fucking bastards!”
into the July air.