Alibi II Read online

  “He used to look out for me when I was in jail. He always sent packages and money for my books. I been trying to get at him, you know where he at?”

  “Yeah, I think they gave Dizzy like forty years. He’s upstate running the shit out of Graterford, and Simon he’s been dead now, what, about five years?”

  “Wow, Simon’s dead?”

  “Yeah, man, this game’s crazy, here today, gone tomorrow,” said Liddles, thinking about the years, time, and how it traveled.

  “I need to get at Dizzy bad,” said Nard.

  “Go on up to Graterford, all you need is your ID.”

  “Damn,” said Nard, “life is really crazy, but if I had known this shit, I’da found you a lot sooner.”

  “Been waiting for you, Nard, I been waiting for you.”

  “So, that’s how you came up?”

  “Yup, that nigga was pleading for his life and really had all that fucking money in the basement.”

  “Wow,” said Nard, “that’s unbelievable.”

  “Yeah, that was my come up, that dead nigga’s spare change, his ones and his fives, in his momma’s basement.”

  “Good thing you went back.”

  “Yeah, it was a good thing, even though it couldn’t bring back Poncho, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “But you killed those bastards trying to save Ponch’s life. You killed them and I been holding this for you waiting for you to come home,” said Liddles, sliding Nard a briefcase. He took one look inside at the stacks of money.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s for you, man, I flipped and put your fifty to the side. I’ve been holding that for you, waiting for you to come home.”

  Nard looked at the money. He couldn’t believe Poncho’s little brother.

  “Damn, I really would have been here a lot sooner, if I knew you had all this for me.” Nard smiled, full of zest and glee. He didn’t know what to say. He was frozen. This was the most that anyone besides his mother had done for him in his whole entire forty-two years of life. He looked at Liddles, his man’s little brother. He now felt that his time was well served, if for nothing else, for Poncho.

  The two sat for hours and talked shop. Liddles had his hands in all kinds of pies, some that baked legally and others that baked illegally. At the end of the day they all baked the same, fruitfully. On the strength of his brother, and some real-life gangster shit, Liddles had not only passed Nard a suitcase full of money, but the key to the city along with it.

  Graterford Prison, Graterford, Pennsylvania

  Two Weeks Later

  It took Liddles a minute to get Dizzy’s government, but once he got it, he passed the information to Nard, who was rolling through the city with his top down screaming money at a thing.

  He went through the rigorous security checkpoint and sat down at the assigned visiting room table.

  It was then that he saw an old man walk through the door to the visiting room and make his way slowly over to the table. Dizzy had aged tremendously over the past ten years behind bars. The thought of dying in prison wasn’t a happy one, but it was inevitable.

  “How you doing,” said Nard, standing and extending his hand.

  “Well, I guess I’m doing as good as I’m going to in this rat trap they got me in,” said Dizzy.

  “Thanks for seeing me,” said Nard.

  “You entitled,” spat back Dizzy, letting him know that even at eighty-three he still had his street swagger.

  The two men talked and Dizzy soon realized that all Nard’s small talk and beating around the bush led to one thing, a series of questions that could give him what he needed, and what he needed was answers and closure.

  “Who killed Sticks?” asked Nard, wanting to know what happened.

  Dizzy sat still and quiet for a moment, thinking of whether he should speak on the matter. He remembered everything like it was yesterday.

  “I was locked up, I knew nothing. I stuck to my guns and next thing I knew, the girl was on the stand saying she never saw me in her life. That bitch ruined my life, man, ruined my shit, for real.”

  It was then that Dizzy understood where Nard was coming from, and it was then that he decided to give him what he came for…knowledge.

  “See, Sticks was running around in them streets and he was like a loose cannon. Every time we turned around he had another body, another mess, and Simon never liked messes. So, when he killed the girl’s landlord, that was the final straw, you understand. And Simon made the call, he sent a hitter down to Nashville with Sticks with the orders to bring back the girl, and leave Sticks behind.”

  Nard lowered his head as he sat and listened to Dizzy tell him that it was his own team that turned on him.

  “I’m not sure what went wrong, but the cops brought back the girl, Sticks and the hitter were both killed, and the girl didn’t testify like she was supposed to. That’s all I know.”

  “What happened to her, where did she go?”

  “Oh, the police took the girl into protective custody, and of course you got sentenced, and Simon felt so bad, you know we did everything for you, everything, after you went to jail.”

  “I appreciate it, too, ’cause they had me fucked up in Green. If it hadn’t been for those packages, I don’t know what I would have done.”

  The two men sat for a moment as Nard registered the story that Dizzy was unfolding.

  “You said Nashville?” questioned Nard.

  “Yeah, when Sticks got hold of the girl’s landlord, he was the one that gave up the girl, said she had family down in Nashville.”

  That was it. That was all he needed to start his search for Daisy Mae Fothergill and her family in Nashville, Tennessee.

  He sat with Dizzy for the afternoon and talked. They talked about the mix-up, how Nard was supposed to go to Graterford, but was shipped to Green inadvertently, and how the message to protect the young man went to the wrong facility. That explained the second mishap, which had caused Nard’s sentence to be altered from one to twenty.

  After a long afternoon, Nard had more answers to a life he hadn’t lived than a person who had. Dizzy was one of the coolest old heads he’d ever have the pleasure of spending an afternoon with. He definitely knew his shit, and he definitely knew the streets. He wasn’t missing a beat either, and the fact that he was spending the rest of his life in prison didn’t stop his roll. He was doing the same thing he did in the street, he was just doing it behind bars.

  After an afternoon of conversation, Nard rose, ready to go. He had gotten all that he needed and then some. And thanks to Liddles’s breaking him off, he had the finances to track down Daisy. Thanks to Dizzy, he had a direction to begin with. It would only be a matter of time, and vengeance would be his, and so would Daisy’s ass.

  Freeze

  Early one morning, just as the sun was rising, the FBI stationed themselves on Daniel Boone’s front lawn. Through a long series of investigations over the past twenty years and video enhancement, the FBI had finally cracked the code on the abandoned baby cases from 1986.

  Vivian and her team positioned themselves as she rang the doorbell.

  As soon as Boone opened the door, Vivian flashed her badge and announced herself.

  “I’m Special Agent Vivian Lang; are you Mr. Daniel Adam Boone?”

  “Um…yeah…what’s this all about?”

  He asked the question as if he had no clue why a special agent for the FBI could possibly be standing on his front porch. He was, after all, a law-abiding citizen, if ever there was one.

  “I’m investigating several abandoned baby cases from the late eighties to early nineties and I was wondering if I could ask you a couple of questions? May I come in?” she said, moving closer to the door.

  Daniel Boone looked as if he had seen a ghost. His skin turned pale white, his pupils dilated, and a bead of sweat rolled down the side of his face.

  “Mr. Boone, do you mind if I come in?” asked Vivian again, standing at the door
toe to toe with him, waiting for a response.

  Without warning or hesitation, Daniel Boone used all his strength and shoved Vivian’s chest so hard that she fell backward against one of the porch beams. She lunged toward him, but Daniel slammed the door with all his might as Vivian’s shoulder took the impact. He was running through the house when she crashed through the wooden door, dislocating her shoulder, but pursuing Boone all the same.

  “Freeze,” she shouted, popping off two rounds at Daniel’s back as he dipped into the kitchen, grabbing a steak knife and running toward the basement staircase where he planned to kill her. Daniel ran though his house, Vivian and the other FBI agents right behind him screaming “FBI, freeze!” and a bunch of other orders Daniel Boone paid no attention to. He reached the staircase, and was almost to the top when he felt his leg being pulled from behind, causing him to loose his balance. He tripped, tumbling backward into Vivian as they both fell back down the flight of stairs.

  “Please, please, please don’t hurt me,” Daniel Boone screamed as Vivian pounced on him at the bottom of the staircase. She placed him in a headlock.

  “I didn’t do nothing, it was the doctor. Please, you got to believe me. I didn’t do nothing to them babies. I just did like Dr. Vistane told me to. Please, don’t send me to jail.”

  “I can’t believe you made me break my god damn nail,” said Vivian, slapping the shit out of him and roughing the frail older man up a bit.

  “Please, you’re hurting me,” he said as Vivian pulled out handcuffs and held his hands tightly behind his back.

  “Shut up. You are under arrest for kidnapping and child endangerment. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be appointed for you.”

  “Please, I swear, it wasn’t me, it wasn’t. It was the doctor, Dr. Vistane, he’s crazy, you know. He made me do it, he made me do it,” the man said as he began to sob. “I never wanted to leave them. I never wanted to leave them. It’s haunted me all my life, all my life. Please don’t put me in jail. Please, somebody help me,” Vivian watched the man break down in front of her, crying and sobbing uncontrollably. “Help me!”

  “Shut up!” she said as she threw him to the floor, his hands handcuffed behind him, and finished reading him his rights.

  “Please, ma’am, it wasn’t me, it was the doctor,” he cried over and over again.

  Her backup team was on the scene in a matter of seconds. The local boys were always somewhere nearby, too, when she needed them. They assisted Vivian with the arrest and had the man placed in the back of a paddy wagon where he would be transported to the FBI building for questioning. As with any arrest, news leaked immediately and a team of reporters was on the scene.

  “Excuse me, Special Agent Lang, the abandoned church baby case is twenty years old, how did the FBI finally crack the case to make an arrest?”

  “Who is the doctor?”

  “Do you know where the babies came from or who their parents are?”

  A hundred and one questions were thrown at Vivian, and she calmly replied.

  “We believe the suspect abandoned the babies on the steps of Catholic churches from 1982 to 1992, and we have taken him into custody for questioning. That’s all I can tell you at this time.”

  The mob of reporters wouldn’t settle for that and bombarded her with more questions. Of course, with their assistance, this would become one of the biggest news stories in the history of Philadelphia, and Vivian would be at the forefront of the investigation as the arresting officer.

  “She held up her hands, shrugged a “Sorry, Charlie,” smiled for the cameras, and waved at the tuned-in audience.

  “Jesus fucking Christ, what the fuck, they got this bitch on every fucking channel,” yelled Tommy, using the remote to turn the television off before throwing it on the sofa.

  “Tommy, calm down, you’ll give yourself a heart attack,” said Gabby, rubbing his back, trying to calm him down. “You always get yourself upset with her.”

  “I fucking hate her, she’s the biggest bitch in the world, the entire fucking world,” he said, jealous and pissed that she was getting the glory for solving a case and he wasn’t.

  Two Months Later

  Nard pulled his Escalade up to the sidewalk and threw it in park. He hopped out of the car. It was Thanksgiving and almost a year since he’d been home. He looked at the writing on a tiny piece of paper he held in his hand. It held the initials KSW and an address in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

  “Hey, ma,” he said kissing his mom’s cheek as he walked past her sitting on the porch.

  “Hey, them people called, left you a number in there on the counter so you can call them back.”

  “Where’s Uncle Ray Ray?”

  “He’s upstairs lying down. I don’t think he was feeling too good today. He said he was tired,” said Beverly.

  Nard ran upstairs, grabbed a bag that he had packed the night before, and ran back down the stairs.

  “Where are you going?” Beverly asked, confused and concerned at the sight of the overnight bag.

  He had no response, and stopped in his tracks to think of one.

  “I got to go out of town and take care of something.”

  And he did. It turned out the same private investigator who was hired on his behalf to get a statement from Daisy had been hired by Simon Shuller, and Dizzy was able to give Nard the contact. When Daisy met with private investigator to give the alibi statement for Nard and collect her two thousand dollars, she had completed an intake sheet, and she listed her mother, Abigail Wright, as her next of kin. That same investigator tracked down the entire family and her closest living relative, her cousin, Kimmie Sue, still living in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Once Nard was informed of his findings, he immediately stopped what he was doing, went home, and began to pack his bags.

  “You going out of town to take care of something?” asked Beverly, looking at her son as if she knew better. “Take care of what, like you some traveling salesman? Them parole people know you going out of town?”

  Nard didn’t answer her, and his silence told her what she would have to do, should they come around while he was gone…LIE. And of course she would, because she would do anything to keep him safe and keep them from locking up her baby. Nard passed her a plastic bag wrapped tightly with rubber bands. He didn’t say a word, simply looking piercingly at Beverly, letting her know he wasn’t playing games. Inside the plastic bag he passed to his moms was forty thousand dollars.

  “What’s this?” she asked, and he again ignored her question.

  “Take that,” said Nard, watching his mother gasp at the contents of the plastic bag. “Hold that, just in case you need something.”

  “Oh, my God, boy, what the hell you done did? Nard, you robbed a bank? What, you selling drugs again?” she asked with her “what the hell” expression still on her face.

  “No, Mom, I ain’t selling drugs again,” said Nard, and while he wasn’t at the present time, he did have real big triple-beam plans in his future alongside Liddles.

  “Well, where is you going then? And where’d all this money come from?”

  Nard put his arms around her as if he was only five and hugged her.

  “I love you, Mom.”

  “I love you too, son.”

  He let her go and Beverly watched as Nard walked out the door, never answering her questions, never speaking of where he was going or when he’d return.

  “Please don’t let nothing bad happen to him,” she whispered to God, as the porch door closed behind him and he faded down the steps.

  Just as Nard turned the corner of the block, Beverly heard her best friend for the past fifty years knocking at the door.

  “What in the hell is Maeleen doing?” asked Donna, as Beverly opened the door. Donna pointed across the street to Maeleen.

  The two women stood quietly as they watched Maeleen lighting candle
s that she had placed in a long row on the sidewalk in front of her house.

  “What is she doing?” asked Beverly, squinting and wishing she had her glasses.

  “Who the hell knows, you’re her neighbor. Shit, she’s probably over there lighting her candles so she can chant it up with the Moonlight God,” Donna joked.

  “I think you’re right,” said Beverly as the two women went inside, falling out with laughter as they closed the door behind them so Maeleen wouldn’t hear them.

  Death Becomes Her

  One Week Later

  It was a rainy Tuesday as the funeral home prepared for the services for Kimberly Sue Wright. Nard looked on as if he were her closest friend or a friend of the family. He took a seat in the back of the church, sitting in the third row from the last row of pews, watching and waiting. He was quiet and reserved, dressed in a dark black suit, and extremely well groomed. He looked nothing out of the ordinary and when approached was calm and collected.

  “Kimmie”—he had learned her nickname by reading the pamphlet being passed out that was on display as you entered the church—had lived a full life.

  “She was a very dear friend to me, always there when I needed someone to lean on, always a kind spirit to me, and she is someone that I will miss dearly,” he said as he looked down at her lifeless body.

  “She was a friend to many,” said a stranger, patting him on the back.

  He looked so dashing, so debonair, that his presence suggested he was a previous suitor in her life and had come to say good-bye. Kimmie was a beautiful woman, even in death. Nard looked at her body lying in the casket in the front of the church. He couldn’t escape thoughts of killing her as he stared at her cold, dead body. He desperately wanted to project a look of sadness, of a broken man, maybe an old boyfriend, so he tried to think sad thoughts, but he couldn’t. All he could think of was climbing into her bedroom window and waiting in the closet for her to come home, as any other normal intruder would. He was wearing a black ski-mask, with gloves on his hands and shoe mitts covering his Tims. The rope in his pants pocket, long enough to strangle her, was all it would take.