Mahogany's Dream Read online

  Brian waved her over and she brought the file to him.

  The tension in the air was palpable. All conversation ceased the moment she entered the room.

  On her way out, she glanced over at him and their eyes met.

  _________

  When Dyson saw her, he didn’t believe his eyes.

  He immediately excused himself from the proffer session, ignoring the befuddled stares of everyone in the room.

  _________

  In the hall, he called out to her. “Excuse me.”

  She was half shocked and half confused. “Yes?”

  He just stared at her like she was a ghost.

  “Are you looking for the restroom?” she offered helpfully.

  “No, I’m looking for you.”

  She blushed. “Why would you be doing that?”

  “You mean besides the fact that you’re beautiful?”

  Her smile could have lit up Broadway during a blackout. She gestured in the direction of the conference room. “Don’t you have some place to be, Romeo?”

  “I know you from somewhere,” he said.

  She rolled her eyes. “All that fancy education and that’s the best you could come up with?”

  “It wasn’t a line. But if you want a line, how’s this: When I saw your rare essence, I told those Bamas’ in there that I had to go. They said, ‘Where are you going?’ and I told them, ‘Did you see that red bone? I gotta book her, Joe!”

  She had her hardest laugh since she came to Philadelphia.

  “I see you’ve spent some time in D.C.,” she said.

  “Enough to recognize your accent. Do you have a name Ms. D.C.?”

  “Janaya.”

  He said the name to himself several times, almost as if he were trying to determine if it fit.

  “I better get back to my desk,” she said.

  “I’m Dyson,” he announced.

  “I know who you are, Dr. Conwell.”

  Now he was the one smiling. “Listen, can I make a deal with you?”

  “I don’t make deals with strange men.”

  “Then this is perfect for you.”

  Okay, I’ll bite, she thought. “What’s the deal?”

  “The deal is that if I tell you something about yourself that no one but you could possible know, you’ll go to lunch with me on Thursday.”

  Right, she thought. He doesn’t know my name, but he knows my secrets. “If you do that, then I’ll pay for lunch,” she said.

  He lifted his right palm in the air. “Put your palm against mine.”

  “Touching wasn’t part of the deal.”

  “It wasn’t, but now that I know I’ll be getting a free lunch, I want to make sure I get it right.”

  “I don’t know,” she said hesitantly.

  “Then just put it close,” he proposed in compromise.

  She didn’t see any harm in that. “Okay,” she said, placing her palm in the air very near his.

  He closed his eyes for several seconds.

  I can’t believe I’m doing this, she thought.

  He opened his eyes and flashed that dangerous smile again.

  “Well, Mr. Cleo?” she asked.

  He said, “Last night you had a dream in which you were asleep in the upstairs bedroom of a small house when the smell of breakfast cooking in the kitchen woke you up. A woman whom you call ‘Nanna’ was yelling out to you from the bottom of the stairs. You wanted to go to her, but in the dream you couldn’t rise from the bed, even though you were wide awake.”

  Janaya’s jaw dropped. She was stunned silent.

  “Thursday at one?” he asked.

  She nodded her head in agreement.

  “I’ll see you then,” he said. Then he turned back towards the conference room.

  She turned to leave as well, trying to wrap her mind around what had just happened.

  Then he called out again. “Wait. One more thing.”

  “Now what?” she asked playfully. “Are you going to tell me what color my panties are?”

  He laughed. “No, I was actually planning to use that trick on Special Agent Lessor.”

  Despite herself, Janaya cracked up at the thought of that. She contemptuously wondered if Jill even wore panties.

  “I just wanted to tell you to meet me outside the Constitution Center on Thursday.”

  “Got it,” she said.

  Then he disappeared back into the conference room.

  Janaya lingered in the hall with the fading scent of Dyson’s cologne, thinking how much better he looked in person.

  CHAPTER

  28

  Dyson returned to his seat at the conference table. Reed leaned over and whispered, “Nice of you to join your own proffer session.”

  Dyson only said, “Nature called,” which was not untrue.

  “As I was explaining before my client disappeared,” Danny said, glancing over at Dyson, “Agent Lessor had no right to contact my client once she was made aware that he was represented by counsel. It violates every precedent and protocol I can think of. If it happens again, I’ll personally speak with the Inspector General. And I’ll petition the Bar Association to disbar you and you,” he threatened, pointing at Joyce and Shelly. He pounded his fist on the table, startling Shelly. “It is inappropriate and I WILL NOT TOLERATE IT!”

  Joyce was unfazed by his theatrics. “Give me a break, Danny. You know as well as I do that your client is neither a target nor a subject of any grand jury proceeding. At the moment, he’s merely a potential witness for a Homeland Security inquiry. And both the AEDPA and the Patriot Act gives the Bureau full authority to contact—and even detain—potential witnesses. Your argument would only hold water in the context of a formal enforcement action, which this is not.”

  “It might be considered one under United States vs. Padilla,” Reed cut in.

  “Not in this circuit,” Joyce retorted immediately. “USA vs. Kemp, Third Circuit, 1997.”

  “We didn’t call this meeting to debate case law,” Danny said. “There won’t be any grand jury proceeding or enforcement action involving my client.”

  “And how do you know that?” Brian asked.

  “Because,” Danny answered, “none of you could initiate anything from federal prison.”

  Joyce sighed loudly. “I hope you didn’t arrange this meeting just to waste my time, Danny. I have better things to do.”

  “I would never do such a thing, Joyce. To prove how much I value your time, I’ll cut right to the chase.” He pushed a folder across the table. “Exhibit A.”

  Joyce opened it. It was an affidavit from Geraldine Wallace attesting that, under Jill’s authority, she had illegally tampered with her neighbor’s mail in an effort to circumvent a court-ordered ban on subpoenas related to Dyson Conwell.

  Joyce slid the folder over to Brian and glowered at Jill.

  “Judge Glaser won’t be pleased about that,” Danny said.

  “Maybe,” Joyce said with her best poker face.

  “And he’ll be even less pleased about Exhibit B,” Danny remarked as he produced a Sony minirecorder from his briefcase.

  “Exhibit B?” Joyce asked, expecting another document.

  Danny pressed the play button and they were all treated to an edited collage of Jill’s more colorful comments from her meeting with Dyson at Freedom Theater, including “So have a march on Washington” and “Fuck the Constitution.” Danny said, “Please, allow me to fast forward to my favorite part.” The recording skipped ahead to the place where it had recorded Jill calling his firm “Bruce Lee & Associates.”

  Joyce said, “That’s quite entertaining, but it would never be admissible in court. You can’t record people without their consent or a court order.”

  This time Reed pushed a folder across the table. It contained a dated photo of the bright yellow sign affixed to the front door of the Woodson Auditorium at Freedom Theater. The sign said that anyone who enters the auditorium consents to be recorded by its audio system.<
br />
  “Thanks to the generosity of my client,” Reed said, “the Woodson Auditorium is equipped with a state-of-the-art audio system which continuously samples the theater for sounds that affect its acoustical map. It’s designed to maximize the fidelity of voices on the stage, but as you can see, it works quite well for sounds in other places.”

  Danny smiled mischievously, which made him look him look a tad bit like Bruce Lee. “If the good Judge is not moved by that patriotic performance, then I’m certain the Senate Intelligence Committee will be moved by Exhibit C.”

  “There’s more?” Joyce asked in disbelief.

  Danny slid a folder to Brian this time. It was a request for an investigation into the Philadelphia field office’s repeated dissemination of classified information to civilians. It was attached to an appendix with enough national security details to land Brian and Jill in jail for life. Not all of the information in the appendix had come from people in the room, but all of it made Brian appear incompetent.

  “Four words,” Danny said. “Ken Starr. Independent Counsel.”

  It was an implication they all understood.

  “Of course, if I’m so busy listening to my client tell me how much he enjoys his life now that the Government has left him alone, I might never find the time to distribute any of this.”

  Brian turned redder than the surface of Mars.

  Jill stared imaginary javelins through Danny’s heart.

  Shelly just looked down.

  Joyce said, “Always a pleasure, Danny.”

  Then Dyson said something in Chinese that made everyone on his side of the table break out in laughter.

  When Dyson and his lawyers had gone, Jill asked Shelly, “Well? What was so goddamed comical?”

  Shelly drummed her pen into her legal pad. “He said a great philosopher once told him that the cartoon is not as funny when the rabbit has the gun.”

  CHAPTER

  29

  2:15 AM

  Identity theft. Murder. And now, Breaking and Entering.

  Damien knew he was sliding down a slippery slope into perdition, but everything he’d done to try to stop it had only made him fall faster.

  He crouched in the darkness outside Dyson’s Mt. Airy house, wishing he had a time machine to take him back to the morning before he snapped that first picture at the bank. But he didn’t have a time machine. What he had were a pair of black gloves, a glasscutter and a nine millimeter pistol with the serial number chiseled away. The gun was tucked into the waistband of his jeans and the metal felt cold against the skin on the small of his back.

  ________

  Charlene had asked him where he got the money, but she didn’t really want to know, so she hadn’t pressed him when he told her that it was part of long delayed severance package from the bank. It wasn’t like Charlene not to press him. In his mind, that was simply validation of his theory about women and money. Charlene said she had family in Virginia Beach and she wanted the three of them to move there. He knew that was just her way of saying Let’s run and hope that the source of this money doesn’t follow us.

  But Damien wasn’t running anywhere. He recognized the pattern by now: Every time he made a plan, it blew up in his face. So he had decided not to make any more plans. He would just take life day by day, playing the cards that were dealt to him.

  Starting tomorrow.

  Tonight he had one last plan to execute.

  Tonight he was going to kill Dyson Conwell.

  Blake had told him that this guy Conwell knew what had really happened in that parking lot and was threatening to go to the cops. Damien wasn’t stupid. He knew Blake was a proven liar. That’s why he got half the money upfront this time. But what if Blake were telling the truth? What if he were not? The possibilities gave him headaches. All he knew for certain was that this Conwell character was standing between him and the rest of his money. The rest of his life really. From any angle he thought about it, Conwell had to go.

  And so did Blake.

  That’s why he had insisted that Blake meet him in person later that night to settle their transaction. To ensure his coconspirator would show up, he had confiscated Blake’s BMW until then.

  _________

  In the middle of the night, Mt. Airy was dead quiet. Damien hadn’t imagined that any part of the city could be so absent of noise. He wondered if Virginia Beach was that quiet.

  He approached the house from the backyard. It had rained, so the sod under the grass was still moist. His brand new Lebron James Nikes made squishing sounds with every step.

  There was a small security lamp shining a weak light over the backdoor to Dyson’s house. It was a problem, but Damien had an idea. He removed his wool skullcap, then ran past the door and covered the lamp with it. It wasn’t a bad idea for an amateur. The only problem was that the soles of his sneakers were wet from the grass and he slipped on the concrete step beneath the door. The gun in his waistband made a muffled clacking sound when his back hit the ground. It wasn’t very loud and he felt sure no one had heard it. The houses were spaced pretty far apart.

  Inside the house, Rock opened his eyes.

  Damien waited a full ten minutes before approaching the door again. He had never used a glasscutter before and was somewhat nervous. He was afraid that he would apply too much pressure and break the pane. It turned out to be a moot issue because the backdoor was unlocked. The moment he had pressed the blade against the pane, the door creaked open.

  A professional thief would have turned back at that point.

  But Damien was not a professional anything, so he took out his pistol and stepped across the threshold. Although the house was dark, he figured he had stepped into some kind of laundry room because he could smell bleach. Beyond the laundry room he found the kitchen.

  A fast moving blur reflected off the shiny metal toaster, but it was already too late by the time Damien noticed it. Something blunt slammed into his Adam’s apple. He reflexively dropped the gun and clutched at his throat with both hands. His larynx was crushed, so he couldn’t even scream.

  He briefly heard his gun sliding across the floor before the next blow came, this time to his abdomen. He crumpled to his knees. Then a bare foot kicked him in the face, knocking him to the floor.

  Rock stood over Damien’s writhing body.

  From Damien’s vantage point, the darkened figure looked no smaller than the Empire State Building. It occurred to him then that Blake might have given him the wrong address. Either that or Dyson Conwell was a linebacker. On steroids.

  Rock poured bleach on Damien’s face. The intruder’s head swung wildly as he tried to shake off the liquid fire flooding his eyes, nose and mouth.

  Moments later, Damien felt his body being lifted off the ground by his belt. Then he was flying through the air like a rag doll. His rib cage crashed into something hard and beveled, like a doorframe.

  He slumped to the floor in a heap.

  Rock picked him up again. Damien’s stinging eyes could not see anything, but he felt hot breath close to his face. In a last act of turpitude, he spat right into his attacker’s face.

  That was his unique way of asking to die.

  CHAPTER

  30

  Luminous shafts of fall sunshine bathed Independence Mall. It was a temperate day. Throngs of tourists with their offspring in tow swarmed about the National Constitution Center.

  Janaya sat on a bench waiting for her lunch date. Because it was such a nice day, she had arrived fifteen minutes early, hoping to enjoy the scenery. But in the short time she had been sitting there, no less than three different men had tried to pick her up. Now, as a defensive measure, she pretended to read a paperback novel. She hoped Dyson would be on time.

  She had mentally recounted their first encounter at least a dozen times. She couldn’t think of any way he could have known about her dream. Even if he had hired a private investigator, or had seen her at her grandmother’s house, there is no way he could’ve known the deta
ils that he did. Finding out how he knew what he knew had intrigued her like nothing else she could remember. That was at least half the reason she had so eagerly anticipated seeing him again.

  __________

  Dyson spotted Janaya from across the crowded plaza. She was a long legged work of art in a business suit. In the natural sunlight, her hair showed subtle streaks of auburn at the shoulders, something he hadn’t noticed in the artificial light of the Federal Building. She was fight-to-the-death beautiful. But for a change, that wasn’t the main reason he was interested in her.

  He found it curious that she was only pretending to read. In the ten minutes he had been watching, she hadn’t turned a page.

  __________

  His shadow reached her before his body did. She looked up and smiled.

  “It’s a nice day for a walk,” he said.

  “Lead the way,” she said, gathering her purse.

  They strolled across the plaza to Arch Street and headed south towards the old Liberty Bell pavilion.

  “You look incredible,” he said.

  “Thanks,” she said shyly. “You don’t look half bad yourself. I like your watch.”

  He lifted his wrist. “I got this in Zurich. They have a store there called Festiners that has every kind of Swiss watch you can imagine. I think they saw me coming though.”

  “You went all the way to Switzerland to buy a watch? I thought Potomac Mills was out the way.”

  “I was actually there to ski, but that’s not to say I haven’t gone out of my way for a nice watch. I think I have a little fetish for them.”

  “I guess that’s not a bad fetish to have,” she said, holding out her wrist to show him her ladies Patek Philippe.

  “That’s nice. Maybe I should pick a more expensive restaurant.”

  “Please don’t. The watch was a gift.” He wasn’t surprised. “Can I ask you something?” she asked.