The Other Brother Page 20

  She parked in the underground garage and took the elevator to her unit.

  She stopped outside the doorway. The bag of doughnuts dropped out of her fingers.

  Someone had spray-painted a message on the door, in neon orange and green:

  GABE IS MINE, BITCH! STAYAWAY FROM HIM OR ELSE!!!

  Gabriel and Nicole left Fellini's together. He walked her to her car.

  "What's next for you?" he asked her. "Going home?"

  "I have company coming over," she said.

  "Company, huh? As your big brother, I think I need to know more about this `company."'

  Nicole giggled. "I think not"

  He hugged her.

  "Be careful, sis. I'll keep you in the loop if anything develops. Do the same with me, okay?"

  "Good night, Gabe"

  As Gabriel walked to his car, his cell phone rang. It was Dana.

  "Hey," he said. "Thanks for finally calling me back"

  "Get over here to my place, Gabriel," she said. "Right now"

  "What's wrong?"

  "Now! "

  She hung up sharply. He stared at the phone, perplexed.

  What was going on?

  Isaiah was having a grand time at Club Touch. He never realized his old man could be so much fun.

  They sat in the VIP section in a plush leather booth. They were the big ballers of the evening. The club's hottest dancers had been making the rounds at their table all night. Isaiah had stuffed so many dollar bills in G-strings that his fingers were getting sore.

  During a break in the action, when he and his father were lounging and sipping Courvoisier, the waitress, a scantily clad sista with a tiny waist and perfect breasts, stopped by their table to check on them.

  "We'll have another round of drinks," Isaiah said. When Pops started to dig into his wallet, Isaiah presented a credit card. "I got it, Daddy-O. This one's on me °"

  "Thanks, son"

  "Start a tab, baby," Isaiah said to the waitress.

  The Visa card he'd given to her bore Gabriel's nameas did all the accounts Isaiah had opened in the past month. He'd gotten hold of the credit card accounts that Gabe had opened, too.

  He'd learned how to do identity theft in prison, gathering the tricks of the trade from a brainy white prisoner who taught him everything he knew, in exchange for protection from the thugs.

  Don't let anyone tell you that you can't acquire useful skills in prison.

  Chapter 36

  L abriel stared at the words that had been spray-painted on Dana's door.

  Vertigo spun through him. It took all his strength to stay on his feet.

  Still wearing her hospital scrubs, Dana stood beside the door, arms knotted over her bosom. Her face was as tight as a fist.

  "Who did this, Gabriel?"

  "I don't know." He spread his hands helplessly. "I'm as shocked as you are"

  "Bullshit," she said. "Who've you been cheating on me with?"

  "I haven't been cheating on you! I swear it."

  "Then how do you explain this?" She banged her fist against the door.

  "I can't explain it. Maybe someone's trying to get between us, someone jealous... "

  He clapped his mouth shut as the answer struck him.

  Isaiah.

  Taking it all away, little brother ...

  No one else had motive. He hadn't cheated on Dana, hadn't so much as flirted with another woman since he and Dana had begun dating three years ago. This situation reeked of Isaiah and his dirty tricks.

  "Well?" Dana said. She was trembling like a lid on a boiling pot, clearly trying to hold herself together.

  "Isaiah did it," he said.

  "What?"

  "He's trying to ruin my life, like I told you. This is just the kind of thing he'd do, to drive you and me apart"

  "No, no, no" Shaking her head, Dana pressed her hands to her temples. Tears rolled down her cheeks. "Damn it, I can't trust you anymore!"

  `But I didn't do anything wrong! I'm telling you, Isaiah did this."

  "Stop it!" she screamed. "I'm sick of hearing you blame Isaiah for all this shit! It was you. You, you, you!" She mashed her finger into his chest. "You cheated on me!"

  "Dana, please." Gabriel tried to put his arms around her. She slapped his hands away and stepped back.

  "Just get the hell out of here" Sniffling, she wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. "And tell that bitch you fucked if I see her around, I'm gonna kick her ass"

  "Listen, this is bullshit. You've gotta believe me!"

  "I'm through with this." She reached for the doorknob. "I'm not talking about it anymore"

  "Dana, wait-"

  She hurried inside and slammed the door in his face.

  He knocked. "Please open up. Don't shut me out"

  She didn't open the door.

  He started to pound against the door again ... and then dropped his hand to his side. He was wasting his time. She didn't believe him and she wasn't going to talk to him about it, no matter how much he beat on the door and pleaded.

  "I'll call you tomorrow," he said, loud enough for her to hear him. "This is not over."

  She didn't answer. Arms swinging, he stomped away to his car in the parking garage.

  Isaiah was making good on his promise to destroy his life. Gabriel wanted nothing more than to choke the man until his eyeballs popped out.

  He got in the Corvette, jammed the key in the ignition, and then stopped, thinking.

  He dug a card out of his wallet. Isaiah had given him his cell number when he'd first met Gabriel at the office. Cursing under his breath, Gabriel punched the number into his cell.

  Isaiah answered on the third ring. "Whassup, player?"

  Pounding music and chatter flooded the line. Was Isaiah at a club?

  "I know what you did to Dana's door," Gabriel said.

  "Hang on, I can't hear you," Isaiah said. A few seconds passed and the background noise diminished. "Pops and I are chillin' here at Club Touch, celebrating the deal I closed today. Anyway, what do you want?"

  "You know what you did to Dana's door, asshole! Don't play stupid."

  Isaiah laughed. "Wasn't me," he said. "Must've been one of your chicken heads who decided to put your business out on the streets. Dana was pissed off, wasn't she?"

  Gabriel clenched the phone so tightly the casing squeaked.

  "I'll bet she was," Isaiah said. "She looks like the kind of girl who won't tolerate any shit. And why should she-when there's a brother like me waiting in the wings ready to tap that ass."

  "That's it," Gabriel said. He flung the phone to the seat.

  He'd reached his limit. He could take only so much of this shit.

  He was going to the strip club. He was going to kill Isaiah.

  He roared out of the parking garage. Made a wild, squealing turn onto the street.

  The phone chirped.

  It had to be Isaiah, calling back to taunt him.

  "What the fuck do you want?" Gabriel shouted into the phone.

  "Whoa, chief. Guess I called at a bad time."

  It was Sean Miller.

  "Hey," Gabriel said in a calmer voice. "Sorry. I thought you were someone else."

  "I'd hate to be that `someone else,"' Sean said. "You sounded ready to kill a brother."

  Gabriel braked at a red light. He sucked in a breath, counted to ten.

  Sean was right. Rage had overwhelmed him. He needed to cool off before he did something he regretted later. He would get Isaiah, but he had to be smart about it. Bursting into a strip club and attacking the man, while an appealing thought, would be foolish.

  "Okay, I'm cool," Gabriel said. "Do you have something for me?"

  "You near a computer? I sent you an e-mail. You need to read it."

  Dana had a laptop, but there was no way she would allow him inside her place tonight.

  "I have to get home first," Gabriel said. "Gimme twenty minutes."

  Isaiah and Pops arrived home a few minutes after eleven o'c
lock. Isaiah had wanted to stay at the club longer, but Pops pleaded fatigue. Pops retired to bed immediately upon entering the house, exhausted from an evening of squeezing luscious titties and asses. The horny old dog.

  Walking to his room upstairs, Isaiah thought about how angry Gabriel had sounded on the phone. Gabriel hadn't told him what had happened between him and Dana when she discovered the vandalism on the door, and Gabriel didn't need to share it with him his tone had told Isaiah everything. Isaiah had dealt a severe blow to their relationship.

  Smiling to himself, Isaiah walked into the bedroom, unbuttoning his shirt. He sat on the bed and untied his shoes.

  He yawned. Tomorrow would be another full day, what with the big birthday party coming up, and the other activities he had planned. He needed his rest

  He slipped out of his shoes and then walked to the bathroom to shower.

  A large humanoid shape was moving in the mirror.

  Isaiah flicked on the light.

  The shadowy vision-clearly a tall, manlike shape-remained in the glass for several seconds before melting away into nothingness.

  This was the second time this had happened to him. He was no closer to understanding what it meant or who it was. A side effect of his new talent? He didn't know.

  Mulling it over, he began to move to the shower stalland then he saw something.

  A long strand of reddish-brown hair lay on the vanity next to the rim of the sink. Hair from a woman.

  It couldn't have been Marge. She had salt-and-pepper hair, not auburn.

  He believed that the Reids hired housekeepers to clean the house, but it could not have been a maid either because the bathroom had not been cleaned. Tiny black hairs from when he'd shaved that morning littered the sink bowl.

  He picked up the strand and examined it. Thinking. Sensing.

  Nicole's pixie face flickered in his mind's eye.

  Holding the hair between his thumb and forefinger, he walked into the bedroom. He knelt and lifted the satiny bed skirt.

  He had aligned his luggage in a particular way. The suitcases had been moved, maybe only an inch or two, but that was enough to trip his internal alarm system.

  "Little sis," he whispered. "What were you doing in here?"

  At home, Gabriel ran to his office. He turned on the laptop computer and tapped his fingers on the desk as the machine progressed through its maddeningly slow boot-up cycle.

  I need something to bring Isaiah down, he thought. This better be it.

  As soon as the computer was ready, he logged on to the Internet and checked his America Online account. There was an e-mail from Sean with the subject line Isaiah Battle.

  He opened it.

  Here's something I found that I thought you would find interesting, Sean wrote. Read it and then call me, no matter what time it is.

  Gabriel scrolled lower in the message. There was an article from the Chicago Sun Times that had been published on April 13 of that year.

  MURDER SUSPECT ESCAPES MORGUE

  Isaiah Battle, 29, suspected of murder in a South Side home, reportedly left the Cook County Office of the Medical Examiner after being declared legally dead of multiple gunshot wounds.

  A staff member reported seeing Battle leave the premises before the autopsy began, a spokesman said. Paramedics who discovered Battle at his family's home had been unable to resuscitate him and had pronounced him deceased at the scene.

  The suspect's mother Naomi Battle, 52, was killed in the gunfire, in addition to Gary Hughes, 26, a known gang member. Witnesses reported that numerous shots reportedly rang out in the residence. The incident is believed to be gang related.

  Battle had been released in January from the Stateville Correctional Center where he had served five years on an armed-robbery conviction. He is at large and is sought for questioning in connection with the homicides.

  Chapter 37

  F efore taking action, Isaiah wanted to verify his suspicions, as any good big brother would do before assigning blame and dispensing punishment. He found Marge in the grand salon, watching a local gospel program on television-some slick, brother-man preacher pacing the pulpit in a ridiculous orange suit, probably haranguing the audience to send him donations so he could buy a new Cadillac. A humongous Bible, as big as the stone tablets Moses had hauled down from Mt. Sinai, rested on Marge's lap.

  This woman carried the Bible around with her so much it might as well have been chained to her wrist. She reminded him, in that sense, of Mama. But Marge had been blessed with good fortune. Mama had been cursed.

  "Hi, Isaiah," Marge said. "Did you and your father have a good time tonight?"

  "We sure did." Earlier Pops said he'd told Marge only that they were going out for drinks, and mentioned nothing about where they would be enjoying said libations. Isaiah wondered if this Holy Roller woman knew her husband was a strip-club junkie-or if she knew and was living in denial.

  He sat in the chair beside her. "What did you do this evening? Something at church?"

  "How did you know?" She smiled. "I had a meeting with the women's auxiliary and then came home and had dinner with Nicole. By the way, if you're hungry there are leftovers in the refrigerator."

  "Okay." So Nicole had visited. "What was Nicole doing tonight? Hanging out with her girlfriends?"

  "She said she was going home. She doesn't run the streets like a lot of young folks do. She's always been a quiet, studious girl."

  A quiet, studious girl who likes to snoop through people shit.

  Isaiah got to his feet. "I'm guilty of wanting to do a little street running. I think I'm going to head out again, see what I can get into."

  "Be careful," Marge said. "Folks in Atlanta are crazy."

  Not as crazy as I am.

  He went into the kitchen. On the wall beside the telephone there was a plastic board on which Gabriel and Nicole's contact information was written: telephone numbers, home and work addresses, e-mail addresses.

  He jotted Nicole's home address on a scrap of paper.

  He also noted that an assortment of keys hung on a peg board. He read the labels above the hooks. Spare keys to the house, spares for the cars. Keys to his father's cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

  While he was out, he might as well get some copies of those keys made, too. It was late, but there had to be a hardware store or some such place in ATL that did that stuff around the clock. He dropped a few of the keys in his pocket and then he headed for the door.

  Little sis had violated his privacy and he wanted to know why. Before he doled out punishment.

  Gabriel read the newspaper article again. Then again.

  His fingers on the keyboard were cold, as though dipped in ice water.

  He struggled to wrap his brain around the story. Isaiah had been declared dead of gunshot wounds, but he had come back to life. Miraculously. Like some modern-age Lazarus.

  How?

  Gabriel called Sean.

  "I read it," Gabriel said. "This is definitely him. What do you make of it?"

  "I was hoping you might know," Sean said. "'Cause I have no clue, chief. Does this information fit anything you already know about him?"

  "No. I had no idea this had happened" He paused. "Wait, he did tell me his mother had been murdered, that she'd died in his arms. But he didn't say anything about getting shot or killing anyone"

  "Must've been a gang war, something like that," Sean said. "Moms probably got caught in the crossfire. That happens all the time these days, man. Shame"

  Gabriel felt an unexpected push of sympathy for Isaiah. He could not imagine how it would feel to see his own mother gunned down, to be there when her eyes slid shut for the final time. Although he did not endorse Isaiah's actions, he could understand why the guy was so furious.

  "It's clear that they made a mistake when they declared him dead," Sean said. "That happens, too. Not often, but it happens. Sort of like a premature-burial deal. Someone has an accident and wakes up to find himself in a body bag, hollers hi
s head off, and then they let him out. It's a good thing this dude got up before they started the autopsy and cut into him."

  "You think it was a simple mistake, then?" Gabriel said. "You don't think he actually died and then came back?"

  Sean made a scoffing sound in his throat. "Of course not. Do you?"

  Maybe. Because I think the same thing happened to me.

  But he said, "Nah, man. So, what else did you find?"

  "That mistaken-death story was the most fascinating thing. Otherwise, like you said, he's got a record as long as Yao Ming's wingspan. Armed robberies, grand-theft auto, burglary-if it involves taking something that doesn't belong to him, he's done it. He's bounced in and out of jail since he was eighteen, and, judging from the pattern of criminal activity, I'm positive he was knee-deep in crime during his juvenile years, too, but those records are sealed by the courts"

  "He's been a thug from the start, then," Gabriel said. "Anything else?"

  "Minor stuff. Bad credit history. He took out a few credit cards back in the day, ran up the balances, and never paid them. Crashed a couple of cars, has a bunch of unpaid parking tickets for which a warrant had been issued for his arrest in Chicago. That might be part of why he's in ATL. He is here, right?"

  "Yeah" Gabriel sighed.

  "Like the article said, he's wanted for questioning in the murder investigation. Do you know where this dude is, chief? I don't want to tell you how to handle your business, but I think you need to call the cops. This guy is major trouble."

  "It's not that simple, Sean," he said. "Listen, I gotta go. Thanks for digging up all this. The check's in the mail."

  "Whatever you're doing, be careful. Peace, out"

  He got up and paced through the house. Thinking about what he'd learned.

  He had initially contacted Sean because he wanted his friend to dig up dirt on Isaiah he could present to his family as a justification for them to cut Isaiah out of their lives. What had he discovered that could cast Isaiah in a bad light? The guy had a bunch of unpaid parking tickets, and a warrant for his arrest had been issued. And he was a suspect in an ongoing murder investigation.