Patterson, James - Alex Cross 14 - Cross Country

“Game” shouted the Tiger and raised both arms high over his head. He loved to play basketball-what great fun it was to beat these loudmouthed African Americans who didn't know anything about the real world.

On the sidelines, his boys cheered as if he were Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant rolled into one. He wasn't any of that, he knew. He didn't want to be like Mike or Kobe. He was much better.

He decided life and death on a daily basis.

He walked off the court, and a man came up to him. This particular man couldn't have been more out of place, since he wore a gray suit and he was white.

“Ghedi Ahmed,” said the white devil. “You know who he is?”

The Tiger nodded. “I know who he used to be.”

“Make an example of him.”

“And his family.”

“Of course,” said the white devil. “His family too.”

Cross Country

Chapter 8

I PUT IN a call for help to my friend Avie Glazer, who headed up the Gang Intervention Project in the Third District. I told Avie why it was important to me.

“ 'Course I'll help. You know me, Alex. I'm more tapped into La Mara R, Vatos Locos, Northwest gangs. But you can come over here and ask around Seventeenth and R if you want. See if anybody's tuned in.”

“Any way you could meet us?” I asked him. “I'll owe you one. Buy you a beer.”

“Which makes it how many total? Favors and beers?”

That was his way of saying yes, though. Bree and I met Avie at a shitty little pool hall called Forty-Four. The owner told us that was how old he was when he opened the place. Avie already knew the story but listened politely anyway.

“Seemed like as good a name as any,” the owner said. His what-ever attitude struck me as that of a long-term stoner.For sure, he wasn't making his nut on billiards and sodas. His name was Jaime Ramirez, and Avie Glazer had advised me to give him room and a little respect.

“You know anything about the murders in Georgetown last night?” I asked Ramirez after we'd chitchatted some. “Multiple perps?”

“That was some awful shit,” he said, leaning on the bottom half of a Dutch door, a brown cigarette held between stubby fingers and tilted at the same angle as his body.

He chinned up at the television in the corner. “Channel Four's all I get in here, Detective.”

“How about any new games opening up?” Bree asked. “Players we might not have heard about? Somebody who would wipe a family out?”

“Hard to keep up,” Ramirez said and shrugged. That's when Glazer gave him a look. “But yeah, matter of fact, there has been some talk.”

His dark eyes flicked almost involuntarily past me and Bree. “Africans,” he said to Avie.

“African American?” I asked. “Or-”

“African African.” He turned back to Avie. “Yo, Toto, I'm gonna get something for this? Or this a freebie?”

Avie Glazer looked at me first and then at Ramirez. “Let's say I owe you one.”

“What kind of African?” I asked.

He shrugged and blew out air. “How'm I supposed to know that? Black-guys-from-Africa kind of African.”

“English speaking?”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “But I never spoke to them. Sounds like they're into a little bit of everything. You know, four-H club? Hits, ho's, heroin, and heists. This ain't your graffiti-and-skip-party kind of gang.”

He opened a glass-fronted cooler and took out a can of Coke. “Anyone thirsty? Two dollars.”

“I'll take one,” Glazer said. He cupped a couple of bills into Ramirez's hand, and they didn't look like singles.

Then Glazer turned to me. “And I will collect from you too. Count on it.”

“Africans,” Ramirez repeated as we headed toward the door, “from Africa.”

Cross Country

Chapter 9

THIS WAS THE last place I wanted to be in DC, or probably anyplace else.

So unbelievably sad, and eerie, and tragic. So many memories rising to the surface for me.

Ellie's office was up on the second floor of the house in Georgetown. It was as tidy and meticulously organized as I remembered her being back when we thought we might love each other.

A copy of Sidney Poitier's The Measure of a Man was open on the arm of an easy chair. I'd liked the autobiography and remembered that Ellie and I had similar tastes in books, music, and politics.

The shades were all drawn to exactly the same height. The desk held an iMac, a phone, an appointment book, and a few family photos in silver frames. The room felt strange compared with the downstairs of the house, which had been ransacked by the killers last night.

I started with Ellie's appointment book and then went on to the desk drawers. I wasn't sure yet what I was looking for, only that I'd had to come back here with a clearer head than I'd had last night.

I booted up Ellie's computer and went into her e-mail- checking the in-box, sent items, and deleted folders, working backward in time. I was trying to get as close as possible to the moment of the murders. Had Ellie known the killers?

The first thing to catch my attention was a note from an editor at Georgetown University Press. It concerned her completion schedule for “the new book.”

Ellie had a new book coming out? I knew she was on the history faculty at Georgetown, but I didn't know much more than that. We had seen each other at a few charity events during the past fifteen years or so, but that was about it. She was married, I wasn't for much of that time, and that fact can sometimes cut down contact and communication.

I ran her name through Amazon and Barnes & Noble and found three book titles. Each had something to do with African sociopolitics. The most recent one, Critical Juncture, had been published four years ago.

So where was the new book? Was there a partial manuscript I could read?

I swiveled around to look over the floor-to-ceiling bookcases that took up two entire walls of the office. Ellie had hundreds of volumes here, mixed in with a collection of awards and citations.

Kids' artwork and framed photos covered the rest of the space.

Then all of a sudden I was looking at a picture of myself.

Cross Country

Chapter 10

IT WAS AN old snapshot from our college days. I remembered the time as soon as I saw it. Ellie and I were sitting on a blanket on the National Mall. We had just finished finals. I had a summer internship lined up at Sibley Memorial, and I was falling in love for the first time. Ellie told me that she was too. In the photograph, we were smiling and hugging one another, and it looked as if we could be that way forever.

Now here I was in her house, responsible for Ellie in a way I never could have imagined.

I let myself stare nostalgically at the picture for a few more seconds, then forced myself to move on, to come back to the present mess.

It didn't take long to find three hundred typed pages of a manuscript titled Deathtrip. The subtitle on the title page read Crime as a Way of Life, of Doing Business, in Central Africa.

A copy of a plane ticket had been inserted in the manuscript. The ticket was round-trip from Washington to Lagos, Nigeria. Ellie had returned from there two weeks ago.

I looked through the index at the back of the manuscript and found a listing for “Violence, African Style,” and a subhead, “Family Massacre.”

I turned to the relevant manuscript page and read: “There are gang leaders for hire all through Nigeria and especially in Sudan. These brutal men and their groups-often made up of boys as young as ten-have an unlimited appetite for violence and sadism. A favorite target is entire families, since that spreads both news and fear the farthest. Families are massacred in their huts and shacks, and even boiled in oil, a trademark of a few of the worst gang leaders.”