Justine fisted her hands and mumbled a prayer not to lose her temper with her son. “Don’t you watch the news, Kenny? Didn’t you see the police arresting members of CORE, an organization dedicated to peaceful protesting? They were just demanding that Gilligan be suspended, and now they’re being treated like criminals. If Black folks see you riding in a car with a White man, they will assume he is the police andwhat do you think would happen if they decide they need to rescue you? Cops aren’t the only ones who have guns, Kenny. Black folks own a lot of guns, too.”
Kenny flopped down on a chair. “Okay, Mom. I’ll stay home.”
“Don’t sound as if you’re doing me a favor, Kenneth Douglas Russell, because I’m trying to keep your Black ass out of jail or the morgue.”
Kenny glared at his mother. “I don’t know what happened between you and Mr. Dee, but I hope you work it out, because you’re always mad with me for no reason.”
“Nothing happened between us.”
“Yeah, right.”
Justine threw up both hands. “I want you to go into your room and stay there, because if you keep mouthing off, I’m going to call Francis D’Allesandro and tell him he’s never to knock at my door to take you anywhere. Do you understand what I’m saying, Kenneth?”
Kenny bowed his head, nodding. “Yes, Mom.”
“Now go!”
Slumping against the sofa, Justine tried to calm the runaway beating of her heart. She didn’t know how to get a thirteen-year-old fatherless boy to understand that every time he stepped out of the apartment, he had a bullseye on his back when it came to a rogue or racist cop, who viewed Black people as less than human. Negroes had come north to escape Jim Crow, but unfortunately, it was waiting for them even before they arrived. On the morning after the shooting, when CORE—the Congress of Racial Equality—demanded a civilian review board to discipline the police, they were met by fifty officers holding nightsticks. So much for peaceful diplomacy.
Justine felt a band of pain tightening around her forehead that made it impossible for her to focus, and she realized she was having a migraine. It had been a while since the last one, which had been so debilitating that one of the doctors at thehospital had written a prescription for pain medicine that had helped to ease the discomfort after she’d spent hours in bed in a darkened room.
Going into the bathroom, she retrieved the bottle with the pills, and took two with a glass of water, then went into her bedroom, lowered the shade, changed out of her clothes and into a nightgown, and got into bed. It took nearly half an hour before the pills kicked in, and she was able to drift off to sleep.
Frank realized he was losing his concentration after he’d counted the stacks of bills in denominations ranging from fives to fifties at least three times before filling out a deposit slip for a night drop at his local bank. The telephone call with Justine was just as disturbing as the conversation he’d had with his police detective cousin. Anthony Esposito had called Gilligan a fool for killing the kid rather than wounding him, because his name and reputation would always be linked to the city’s racial unrest.
He’d driven Gio and his family to the airport for their flight to Italy a day before the Powell kid was killed, so they were spared of the chaos going back home. And when he’d spoken to Justine about picking up Kenny, he’d tried to reassure her he would take another route to her apartment in an attempt to avoid the Tactical Patrol Force, who’d been called in an attempt to break up the crowds of protesters. But everything he’d said had fallen on deaf ears. She just wasn’t hearing it. He wanted to understand her reasoning, and because he wasn’t a parent, he’d been forced to acquiesce.
There was one bit of good news he’d received that morning. Guillermo’s assistant had been truthful about his landlord raising his rent, and he had stopped dealing drugs out of the butcher shop.
Frank smothered a curse when the temperature in the kitchen became unbearable. The temperature was predicted to go above ninety, and the cool air from the unit in his bedroomdidn’t reach the kitchen. He picked up the bag with the cash and secured it next to a registered handgun in the floor safe in a bedroom closet. It was too hot to go out, so he decided to wait until Monday morning to make the drop. After cranking up the air conditioner to the highest setting, he went into the bathroom to shower.
The telephone was ringing when he emerged from the bathroom. Walking quickly into his bedroom, he picked up the receiver. “Hello.”
“Mr. Dee, you need to come quickly. Mom’s in bed, and I can’t wake her up.”
Frank felt his knees buckle as he sank down to the mattress. “Is she breathing?”
“Yes-ss. But I tried to wake her up, but—”
“I’m on my way,” Frank said, cutting him off.
He didn’t remember getting dressed or running to where he’d parked his car, or how fast he was driving to make it across town; he found a spot close to Justine’s apartment building and took the stairs two at a time. His pulse had slowed to a normal rate by the time he rang the doorbell.
The door opened, and he saw fear in the eyes of the teenage boy he unconsciously thought of as his own. A son if he’d married Justine and they’d had a child together. “Stay here,” he said, closing the door.
Frank walked into Justine’s bedroom and sat on the side of her bed, watching the rise and fall of her chest under a cotton nightgown. Leaning over, he smelled her breath to see if she’d drunk something. He didn’t detect alcohol, and then he spied the bottle of pills on the bedside table. He picked it up and read the label. It was a prescription for migraine headaches, with directions for her to take one pill every eight hours as needed for pain. A slight frown creased his forehead. Had she exceeded the dose, and that’s why Kenny couldn’t wake her?
He set the pill bottle on the table, then went into the bathroomto wet a cloth with cold water. By the time he returned to the bedroom, Kenny was standing there watching him as he placed the cloth on his mother’s forehead.
“Is she okay?”
Frank gave him a reassuring smile. “She will be when she wakes up. She had what is called a migraine, and she took some medicine to relieve the pain.”
Kenny slowly blinked. “I know she sometimes gets headaches, but she will take a couple of aspirins, and they will go away.”
“Migraines are ten times worse than a headache, Kenny.”
“Have you ever had one, Mr. Dee?”
