"So you're Tamara Hayle," said the tall, gaunt man who stalked into my office without knocking. "DeLorca says you're the best PI in Essex County. I only do business with the best." He had flawless dark skin, thick silver-gray hair and was dressed like a banker in a navy pin-striped suit and wing-tipped black shoes. But he had the dead eyes of a street thug. Killer's eyes, I thought to myself, even though I knew better.
Lincoln E. Storey was a legend in Newark, and I wondered why the photos that always ran in Black Enterprise and on the business pages of The Star-Ledger never captured the predatory glint in those eyes. I also wondered why DeLorca, chief of the Belvington Heights Police Force and my grumpy ex-boss, had given me such a sparkling endorsement.
"Yes, I'm Tamara Hayle. Would you like to sit down?" I asked, extending a hand that he glanced at but didn't take. I reached for his overcoat, a dove-gray cashmere number that felt as soft as mink and hung it up on the rocky coat rack in a dark corner of my office.
"I assume you know who I am," he said with an arrogant thrust of his chin.
"Is there anyone in the state of New Jersey who doesn't?" I hated the ingratiating sound of my voice, but it was too late to call it back. "What can I do for you, Mr. Storey?" I asked, trying hard to tone down my eagerness.
"I'll get to that," he snapped in a way that told me he was a man who was used to taking his own time and getting his own way. His tone caught me short, but I tossed him a sugary smile, deciding in that instant to listen to my pocketbook rather than my pride.
For "the best PI in Essex County," I was as broke as hell. With a 1982 diesel Jetta that needed a new transmission and a big-mouthed teenage son to feed, being anything but pleasant to the biggest client who had ever graced my funky little office would be just plain foolish.
Spring had touched everything in Newark but me. The cherry trees were blossoming in Weequahic and Branch Brook Parks, and folks, sick and tired of the Hawk and the harshest winter in fifteen years, were stepping out into the sun. My best friend Annie had fallen in love with her husband of the last ten years...again. After the worst year of his young life, my son Jamal had beaten down grief and discovered, with a vengeance, the opposite sex. And Wyvetta Green, the owner of Jan's Beauty Biscuit the beauty salon downstairs, who I could always count on for her sweet spirit and sour words, had dyed her hair a hot-to-trot blonde and was planning a week in Jamaica with her gold-toothed boyfriend Earl. But I was horny and broke, and I couldn't think of two worst things to be in spring, which up until this year had always been my best season. It didn't bode well for the rest of the year. I'd been sitting at my desk, lamenting my sorry state, when Lincoln E. Storey had walked through my door. I wasn't about to let him walk out.
"Could I get you something to drink, Mr. Storey?" I asked. "A cup of tea?"
"I don't drink tea."
"How about some coffee?"
"Freshly brewed?"
"Sorry, I don't have a pot. Instant okay?" I asked. I don't like instant, but I keep it in my office to be polite.
"I don't drink the shit."
That "shit" business threw me for a minute, but I swallowed the urge to tell him to kiss my behind and watched him as he crossed his long legs and surveyed, I feared, the second-hand computer that separated us, the film on the window that dimmed the sun and the streak of brown gravy that had found its way to the front of my blouse when I'd shared some egg foo young with Wyvetta for lunch.
"How long have you been in this business?" Storey asked.
"Five years going on six."
"You're licensed by the state?"
"Of course."
"What kind of things do you handle?"
"Anything that comes my way. Disappearances. Missing persons. Occasionally, the Public Defender's will ask me to help on a homicide or larceny. Insurance fraud."
"And your rates?"
"Depends on the job, plus all my expenses."
"And you're worth the money?"
"That's what they tell me."
"Do you find this line of work hard for a woman, a black woman?"
"No harder than being a cop."
"You used to work for DeLorca, I take it."
"Six years ago."
"Why did you leave?"
"I got sick of it," I said, wondering how much DeLorca had told him about me.
"Sick of..."
"Sick of being calling a nigger bitch every day of my beat by my brethren in blue," I said, the old anger surfacing again, coloring the edge of my words. Storey chuckled deep in his throat, and our eyes locked for a moment telling me he hadn't forgotten his roots. "So I take it you live in Belvington Heights?" I asked, knowing the answer but tired of answering his questions.
"You grew up around here?" he asked, changing the subject. His thin hand swept elegantly toward the window indicating that "around here" meant Main Street, East Orange, Newark and beyond.
"East Orange. Newark. The same ward as you."
A glint of something I couldn't read came and left his eyes.
"Discretion means as much to me as money," he said, out of nowhere.
"I know how to keep my mouth shut."
"You do surveillance work?"
"I've done it."
"You like it?"
"It depends."
"On?"
"On who they are and where they lead me."
He smiled a crooked smile that told me nothing. "I need to get some...information on somebody." He paused. "I need to know every bit of shit about this motherfucking cocksucker that I can possibly get. Do you understand me?"
It wasn't the words that got me. I've heard men curse before, my dead brother Johnny could belt them out harder than anybody I ever knew. But the way Storey's face broke when he spoke, the way he lost control and his lower lip trembled and his eyes squinted was downright scary. Whoever the "motherfucking cocksucker" was, he had made Storey's shit-list big time.
"Is this person an employee?" I asked neutrally, cooling my voice against the heat I heard in his.
Storey smirked. "You could say that, I guess, depending upon how you define employee."
He was being cagey, and I wondered why he wasn't giving it to me straight.
"I take it this is somebody who has betrayed your trust?" I asked, stating the obvious.
"I want to know where he sleeps and who he fucks," he answered bluntly.
"Does he sleep with someone you know?" I asked innocently, making my voice sound caring, sister-gentle, willing to share a brother's pain. Somebody you sleep with? I didn't ask.
He straightened his back, uncrossed his legs, folded his hands. "My stepdaughter," he said after a minute. "I assume they're sleeping together. My stepdaughter Alexa is involved with this person, this character. I don't trust him. I think he is primarily after my money, and I want to find out everything I can about him."
"So what's his name?" I asked.
"Brandon Pike.
"Brandon Pike," I uttered the name once softly, to myself, like I'd never heard it before, but it had hit me like a fast, hard punch in the gut and lower, because when I had known and loved him, that was where Brandon Pike had hurt me, my female center, the most vulnerable part of me.
Lincoln Storey studied my face taking in the change that I knew was there.
"You know him then?" He watched my eyes as they dropped. I forced them back up, confronting his.
"Years ago," I mumbled. "Not well," I lied. I wondered if I'd convinced him, and figured I had because he looked away, and spoke fast, his words clipped:
"He has been seeing Alexa for about a year. She's 23. Dropped out of school in upstate New York. Vassar. Trying to find herself. He's, how old would you say, 30s? He's come into her life. After my money, anyone can tell that. She's got nothing to offer him. He's that kind of man. My wife Daphne and I, are very concerned." His eyes sought mine for a reaction, and then he continued. "If I can get something on him, I can confront her with it. It's clear she has nothing to give him."
What is he giving her? I asked myself because that had been Brandon's special talent, giving women what he thought they needed.
I had spent the years after our "affair" (as good a word as any, I guess) trying to figure him out. And all I really knew in the end was that I'd left my joke of a marriage to my ex DeWayne Curtis with my head high, and Brandon Pike had brought it low, lower than I'd ever let it fall for any man again.
"I want you to follow him. Find out what you can on him. See what he's up to. Report it to me," Storey continued.
I wondered for a moment if getting into Brandon's business was really an ethical thing for me to do. Using your professional skills to get even with somebody who has done you wrong is definitely not what good PIs ("the best PI in Essex County!" ) are supposed to be about. You're supposed to be objective in this business, removed from the subject. Cool, detached. I wondered if I could be that way with Brandon Pike. But it had been three years since he'd left me--me wondering what I'd done wrong and how I'd failed him-- and he'd severed everything then. Professionally. Personally. Permanently.
And ethics aside, I truly needed the money. And on the real tip, the son of a bitch deserved it.
"I think we can do business together, Ms. Hayle," he said with a tight smile.
As he reached for his coat off the rack and turned to leave, a sharp, hard rap on the door drew the attention of us both.
"You in there, Tamara?" asked Wyvetta from downstairs as she jiggled the knob on my door. "I still got some of those egg rolls left over from lunch if you want to take them home to Jamal."
"Wyvetta, I have somebody in here with me. A client!" I added firmly and quickly, but not quick enough to head her off. Wyvetta, grinning and waving a greasy bag from The Golden Dragon, barged through the door.
"Oh, girl, I'm sorry..." she said as soon as she spotted Lincoln Storey, but just as quickly the smile dropped from her face.
Storey, with a look that could have turned hell cold, stepped away from both of us his eyes darting nervously to Wyvetta, then back to me and finally settling on Wyvetta. "Please excuse me, ladies," sputtered formally, sweeping his coat over his shoulders and nearly stepping on my foot in his rush to get out the door.
"Wyvetta..." I asked, surprised. "You know..."
"Yeah, I know him," Wyvetta said cutting me off, her eyes filled with contempt. "I know him better than he thinks." She spat twice then, like a cat, in Lincoln Storey's path, and her spit spread in a thin, nasty line down the hallway that he'd just left.
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