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“I want to go home!” I was yelling and pounding my fists on the seat like a two-year-old.
Paul pulled my head onto his chest. “You’re always welcome at my place.”
“No. I need to know that Jackie is safe,” Keith said firmly. “I have a place down in Greenwich Village. There isn’t much furniture, but she needs to stay there until this is all over.”
There is something about being arrested, fingerprinted, and photographed and then wearing the same panties for forty-eight hours that can put a woman in a really foul mood. “I’m going home as soon as I can, but take me to Mama’s for right now.”
“Fine,” he replied. He slid back the partition and gave new instructions to the driver and then picked up a newspaper that was lying on the seat. The headline blared, HARLEM WOMAN CHARGED IN EXECUTIVE’S DEATH.
It was the Comet. I snatched it from his hand, causing Mama to give me a look that said you were raised better. I didn’t care. I had just emerged from the bowels of hell and my manners would not return until there was a decent plate of food in front of me and some clean clothes on my body.
HARLEM WOMAN CHARGED IN EXECUTIVE’S
DEATH
by Roy Breyer
A Welburn Books editor was arrested on Saturday after police said she strangled her employer, Annabelle Welburn, to death three months ago.
Jacqueline Blue, 32, of Harlem was charged with second-degree murder.
“It was just senseless. Senseless and needless,” Manhattan District Attorney Darryl Givan said at a press conference.
According to Givan, Ms. Blue cornered Welburn in the vestibule of her eighth-floor penthouse and the two argued over a job promotion that had been denied Miss Blue. Enraged, Miss Blue forced the beautiful, blond publisher into a bathroom, where the vicious attack took place. If convicted, Blue could be sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.
His story was only one of many on the subject, but I didn’t read the rest. Even though the charges were false, I took some comfort in the fact that Mr. Breyer had simply reported the events as they were told to him—unlike the vicious attacks that were Ms. Nixon’s specialty.
I gave the paper back to Keith and didn’t say another word all the way to Hell’s Kitchen.
There was a knot of journalists and
photographers waiting in front of Mama’s building when Keith’s limousine pulled up. Worse, her neighbors were talking to them. What stories were they telling about me? That I once fell off the monkey bars and skinned my knee on the ground? That I had cheated my classmate, a tiny Chinese boy named Weng Loo, out of fifteen cents when we were in the third grade? That Mama wouldn’t make friends with any of the women on the block because she distrusted all females? That I almost got hit by a car while dashing across the street to buy a popsicle when I was ten? What were they saying that caused the journalists to nod up and down as seriously as though they were listening to a scientist explain the cure for cancer?
“How did they know I would come here?” I whispered.
Keith sighed. “They didn’t. But your mother had to come home sooner or later. I’ll bet they’re willing to pay her a lot of money just for a few photos and stories of your childhood.”
“I ain’t got nuthin’ to say to those people,” Mama declared.
Keith rubbed his chin. “Actually, I think you should talk to them—we need public sympathy for Jackie. So far, the only photo they have seen is the video of her running across the lobby. Tomorrow morning her mug shot will be on the cover of every major newspaper in the country. Jackie desperately needs someone to balance that image.”
Mama looked bewildered. “What do you want me to tell ’em?”
“Just the truth, Mrs. Blue.”
The pack turned away from the common people and surrounded the limousine. Since the windows were tinted, they couldn’t see inside.
“This is absolutely incredible,” Paul said.
Keith grimaced. “There is probably three times this number outside Jackie’s place, and they’ll be there every day until the juice has been totally sucked from this story. Even worse, someone looking to get famous might take a shot at her. She can’t go home or stay here.”
The lump in my throat wouldn’t allow me to respond.
He slid the partition back and gave orders to the driver. “Mrs. Blue and I are getting out here. Take Jackie and her friend downtown to the apartment and then come back for me later.” He carefully removed three keys from a ring and gave them to me.
Mama folded her arms across her chest. “Nobody is gonna run me outta my own house.”
“I can’t leave her here alone,” I said.
