CORNERED
Brandon Massey
Pinnacle
Suspense
ISBN: 9780786020850
Chapter 1
The morning that Corey Webb’s past finally caught up with him, he was taking his daughter to a doctor’s appointment.
Tuesday, June 10, began hot, windless, and bright. The clear sky was cobalt blue, the blistering sun giving it the gloss of a glazed porcelain bowl. Although it was two weeks before the first day of summer, the temperature was forecast to peak in the mid-nineties, the heat worsened by a strength-sapping humidity that would guarantee thousands of air conditioners cranked to the max throughout metro Atlanta.
Cool air humming from the vents of his black BMW sedan, Corey navigated the crawling rush-hour traffic on Haynes Bridge Road in Alpharetta. His wife, Simone, and their nine-year-old daughter, Jada, were debating an R&B song that had been playing on the radio, a track apparently titled “Get Me Some.” Corey had changed stations within five seconds of hearing the song’s lewd hook --- and had been treated to Jada singing the rest of it word for word in a pitch-perfect voice, drawing a gasp from Simone and a blush from Corey.
“I can’t believe you knew the words to that awful song, Jada,” Simone was saying. “And you tell me you can’t recall where you’ve heard it, which I simply do not accept.”
Corey had to admit that even after all these years, he got a kick out of watching Simone play mom. With her penny-brown eyes, jet-black hair styled in a cute bob, milk-chocolate complexion, and prominent dimples, she might have been a fresh-faced coed, not a thirty-four-year-old woman with a PhD in clinical psychology.
She was a great mother, though. He liked watching her at work.
Twisted around in the passenger seat, Simone subjected Jada to her penetrating gaze and awaited a satisfactory answer.
“Mom, I said somebody at school played it on their phone,” Jada pleaded from the backseat.
“Who’s this somebody?” Simone asked. Her voice carried a gentle breeze of her Alabama accent. “Give me a name. I want to talk to their parents.”
Last month, Jada had completed fourth grade at Alpharetta Elementary. She currently attended a three-week summer program in Roswell for gifted students. Nevertheless, high-performing youngsters, like all other kids, obviously found the time to enjoy lascivious songs that would have shamed their parents, and they did it on their cutting-edge cell phones that performed every conceivable task short of whisking you to the moon.
“Somebody,” Jada said. “I don’t remember who it was. Everyone in class has a phone except me. When can I get a phone?”
Corey held back a smile. His girl was a clever one. When you couldn’t win the debate, change the debate.
“Don’t try to change the subject,” Simone said.
Jada frowned, caught red-handed. A chuckle slipped out of Corey.
Simone turned to him. “Why are you laughing? This is serious. Your daughter was singing about having sex.”
“No, I wasn’t, Mom,” Jada said. “I was singing about getting some till the morning comes.”
It took every ounce of willpower in Corey to hold back a laugh. Simone flashed him a deadly, don’t-you-dare-laugh glower.
Corey cleared his throat. “Umm, that’s not the kind of song you should be singing, Pumpkin. Seriously.”
“Why not?” Jada asked.
“It’s a song for adults, that’s why,” Simone said. “It’s not appropriate for you to sing. Understood?”
“Okay,” Jada said with a sigh. “Then I won’t sing it any more.”
Idly scanning the dashboard, Corey noticed that he had only twenty miles’ worth of gas left in the tank. A QuikTrip convenience store was coming up ahead, the fuel service islands busy as people gassed up on their way to work.
He turned off the road and parked beside the only available pump.
“That time again?” Simone checked the price of the gasoline, clucked her tongue. “My goodness, remember when it was less than a buck a gallon?”
“Those bygone days,” he said.
“Can I help you put the gas in, Daddy?” Jada asked.
“Sure, Pumpkin.”
“Don’t be too long, guys,” Simone said. “It’s twenty to nine. We can’t be late for our appointment.”
Outside the car, Corey let Jada slide his debit card into the card reader slot, enter his PIN, and select the grade of gasoline. He inserted the spout into the tank, and told Jada the total price he wanted to pay. Her gaze riveted on the digits climbing on the price display, she ran her fingers through her cornrows, absently adjusting the tiny black speech processor hooked behind her left ear.
Jada had been born with profound hearing loss. When she was two years old, Corey and Simone had arranged a cochlear implant, a modern medical miracle that served as a prosthetic replacement for the inner ear, electronically stimulating auditory nerve fibers to produce a sense of hearing. Years of intensive speech therapy had enabled Jada to attend mainstream school from kindergarten onward, and she enjoyed as active a social life as any girl her age --- Girl Scouts, ballet, play dates, the works.
In spite of her social and academic success, she enjoyed hearing in only one ear, a condition that posed unique challenges when she was in environments where sounds came at her from all directions. That morning, they were taking her to a specialist in Marietta who would evaluate whether she was a good candidate for a bilateral implant: a cochlear implant in her other ear.
“Almost there, Daddy,” Jada said.
Corey squeezed in a few more cents and returned the nozzle to the pump. Jada handed the receipt to him.
“Can I go inside and get something to drink?” she asked.
“Actually, I could use some coffee myself.” He tapped on Simone’s window. “Want some coffee or juice, babe?”
Simone checked her watch; the doctor’s appointment was at nine fifteen, and she was a stickler about being on time. “If you can be quick about it, sure, orange juice would be great.”
“You heard your mother,” Corey said to Jada. “Let’s be quick about it.”
“Yeah!” Jada performed a happy dance.
Together, they went inside the minimart, Jada skipping beside him, her hand in his, swinging his arm around between them as if he were a piece of playground equipment. He directed Jada to the glass-fronted coolers at the back of the store, while he went to the hot beverage station adjacent to the cash register.
He filled a large Styrofoam cup with coffee and flavored it with cream and sugar. Checking his watch, he went to collect Jada.
Hands on her hips, she was examining the brands of orange juice inside the refrigerated display case.
“We’ve gotta go, Pumpkin,” he said.
“I don’t know what kind of orange juice Mom likes,” she said.
Corey started to reply that Simone liked Tropicana, when he noticed someone standing in an aisle a few feet away, observing them.
It was a colossus of a man. Corey stood about five-ten and weighed a hundred and seventy-five, and this guy had at least six or seven inches and a hundred pounds on him. Fair-skinned --- what Grandma Louise liked to call “high yella” --- he wore faded denim overalls over a white T-shirt, muddy work boots, and a tattered Atlanta Braves cap cocked on an unkempt, bushy Afro. A stubbly beard made his pudgy face look soiled.
The guy’s brown eyes were oddly flat, as if they were painted on his face. But Corey realized the guy wasn’t looking at him at all.
He was looking at Jada. Gawking at her.
Jada was a beautiful child, but this man’s intense attention was far from that of an innocently admiring adult. His was the naked leer of a pervert, a parent’s ultimate nightmare. Oblivious to Corey standing there, concentrating solely on Jada, the man licked his lips, his tongue leaving a glistening trail of saliva.
Disgust and anger wrenched Corey’s gut. He sat his cup on a shelf, grabbed Jada’s hand and pulled her to his side, shielding her from the giant stranger.
The pervert blinked as if awakening from a reverie, and only then did he look at Corey.
His stare was as empty as a scarecrow’s. A chill trickled down Corey’s spine.
Something’s wrong with this guy, he thought. Dude’s elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top.
“Daddy, what is it?” Jada asked. She hadn’t noticed the
man.
“We need to go, sweetheart.” He nudged his daughter along with a firm hand on her back.
“But I wanted apple juice.” She looked over her shoulder.
“Don’t look back there. We have to go. We’ll get your apple juice later.”
He ushered Jada outside. The hot air was thick as cotton, but refreshing compared to the bone-deep chill he’d felt inside the minimart.
A man called out: “Corey? Corey Webb? That you, man?”
In midstride, Corey stopped. He knew that voice, that piercing falsetto. He had not heard it in probably fifteen years or so, but he would never forget it.
Could that be who I think it is?
As other customers brushed past him, he stepped away from the entrance and turned. Sunlight lanced his eyes. He lifted his hand to his brow to block the glare.
When his vision adjusted, he saw a man leaning against a late-model, blue Ford F-150 parked in front of the store. Brown as a paper bag, he was about six feet tall, leanly muscular, with long arms webbed with tattoos. He had shoulder-length dreadlocks as thick as cables, a bushy salt-and-pepper beard, and deep-set, fiercely intelligent brown eyes. He wore paint-splattered denim overalls and faded leather work boots.
A cigarette dangled in his spindly fingers. He took a puff and exhaled a halo of smoke, and just the acrid scent of the tobacco stirred long-buried memories in Corey’s mind.
“Leon?” Corey asked. He was out of breath, as if he’d been slugged in the stomach.
The guy flashed a gap-toothed grin, an expression that made his elongated face appear wolflike.
“It’s moi, the one and only, the great man himself, live and in the flesh.”
Corey was speechless.
Leon Sharpe, his childhood friend from Detroit, was the last person he’d ever expected to see again.
And for so many reasons, the last person he’d ever wanted to see again, too.
Chapter 2
“My homeboy, C-Note, well, I’ll be damned.” Grinning, Leon pushed off the side of the truck and spread his arms to their full tremendous wingspan. “Gimme some love, man.”
Corey broke his paralysis and gave Leon an awkward brother man hug --- one arm looped around the back, a solid pound on the shoulder blades with his fist. Leon smelled of nicotine, hair oil, and stale sweat.
I’ve gotta be dreaming, Corey thought. If so, someone please wake me up right this minute.
Stepping back, Leon looked down at Jada. She gazed up at him, squinting, partly from the sun’s glare, but mostly, Corey figured, from confusion. None of Corey and Simone’s friends looked or sounded remotely like Leon. He could only imagine the questions tumbling through her mind.
“Who’s this little munchkin here?” Leon asked.
“She’s my daughter,” Corey said.
“Hey, cutie.” Leon extended his hand toward Jada.
Jada regarded his large hand doubtfully, gaze traveling across his dirty fingernails and up the colorful tattoos that adorned his forearm.
Corey touched her shoulder. “Go wait in the car with your mother, Pumpkin. Tell her I’ll be there in a minute.”
Nodding, Jada ambled across the parking lot, repeatedly glancing over her shoulder at them with a puzzled frown.
“Good-looking kid you got there,” Leon said.
“Thanks,” Corey said numbly. He cleared his throat, fighting to overcome a fuzzy sense of unreality. The last time he’d felt this disoriented, it was when he’d learned Grandma Louise had died of a heart attack.
But running into Leon after fifteen years, several hundred miles away from their hometown, had to be the coincidence to end all coincidences.
Leon looked much different than what Corey remembered. When Corey had last seen him, his head had been as hairless as a basketball, and he’d worn a goatee so meticulously trimmed it might have been drawn with a mechanical pencil. His complexion had been smooth, his eyes had been bright with wild, youthful exuberance, and he’d been a sharp dresser, known for sporting the latest fly clothes, the hottest new sneakers.
The Leon in front of him looked, in a word, tougher. There were crow’s-feet under his eyes, and a netting of heavy wrinkles across his forehead and cheeks gave his face the appearance of sun-weathered leather. Dark hollows ringed his sockets, as if he rarely slept. And those eyes of his, always fiercely intelligent, glinted with raw, kinetic energy, reflecting a personality far more dangerous than the young man Corey remembered --- and that was saying a lot, because the Leon that Corey recalled was no one that you wanted to piss off.
Leon took a draw on his cigarette and appraised Corey from head to toe. “You’re looking good, too. How the hell you been? It’s been how long? Fifteen, sixteen years?”
“Something like that,” Corey said. “I’ve been...I’ve been all right.”
“All right?” Leon snickered. “You look like life’s been treating you exceptionally well, I’d say. Pushing the new five series Beemer, got the cute kid, the no-doubt lovely wifey? Do you live in a white castle in the clouds, too? When did you strike the Faustian bargain?”
Leon let out a high-pitched giggle that sounded as if he’d inhaled a dose of helium. Same old Leon laugh --- he sounded like an elf on crystal meth. For a long time, Corey had used to hear that grating laughter in his nightmares.
“A lot of things have changed since I left Detroit,” Corey said. He looked at Leon’s Ford truck, and wondered, automatically, where Leon had stolen it from. “How long have you been in town?”
“Not long at all, a few weeks, I’ve been living the knockabout life, you know, dashing from pillar to post, painting houses, doing odd handyman jobs here and there, trying to make a dollar out of fifteen cents.” He dropped his cigarette on the ground and snuffed it out with his boot. “Need any painting done at your house, man? Seeing you here, all grown up and spit-shined and polished, I know you’ve gotta be living in a mansion somewhere, most definitely, a palace, dozens of rooms, and no doubt the old lady’s been on your back about repainting some of those rooms, a woman is never satisfied, ever, and what better way to get it done than to hire your old, trusty running partner from Motown to do the work? What do you say?”
Listening to Leon’s mercurial patter as sunshine burned into his skull, Corey began to feel a migraine headache coming on.
“Listen, ah, Leon, we don’t exactly need any painting done... right now....”
“I’m only shittin’ you!” Laughing, Leon slapped his shoulder. “I don’t know how much longer I’m gonna be in town, anyway, it’s about time to blow this pop stand and hit the road like Willie Nelson, although, damn, I’ve gotta say, standing here enjoying a tête-à-tête with my homeboy from back in the day ... I might have to change my modus operandi and settle in for a spell.”
Heart knocking, Corey looked toward his car at the gas pump. He could see Simone and Jada watching them, curious about his prolonged interaction with a man they had never seen before.
He’d given them only sketchy details about the life he’d left behind in Detroit. They knew that he had no close family left there, that he’d moved to Atlanta sixteen years ago, shortly after Grandma Louise’s death. They knew that he’d never gone back to visit, on the claim that there was nothing there for him any more.
But they knew nothing whatsoever of Leon. They knew nothing about the past he shared with this man.
And he’d always wanted to keep it that way. There were certain forbidden boxes of memories that, over time, he had closed watertight by sheer force of will, and he’d dared not open them, for his family’s well-being --- and his own.
But now Leon was here. Driving a new truck that had to be stolen. Probably in violation of parole for something or other. Maybe hiding a gun underneath his overalls.
Those hermetically sealed crates of memories were already starting to creak open.
Corey squinted, listening. He could barely understand what Leon was saying, and that brought back memories, too. Leon spoke in dizzying run-on sentences so generously peppered with idioms, foreign phrases, and archaic pop culture references that Corey had often found himself totally confused, and agreeing with whatever he said just to get him to shut up.
Leon said, “Have you been back to Motown, recently? I haven’t, I severed my ties with the Motor City a few years ago, cruised into that wild blue yonder and haven’t looked back, but the last time I was there the downtown scene was exploding with casinos, nouveau riche tourists crawling through like so many cockroaches through the projects, and I’m of half a mind to go back to get a piece of the action for myself, a fresh and lucrative new hustle of some kind, though at this point if I ventured back someone might declare me non compos mentis, I’ll think better of it and keep drinking the wanderlust Kool-Aid and seeing what life brings to my doorstep, that’s the way I live, you know, in the moment, right, remember, huh?”
“Yeah, sure,” Corey said. He made a dramatic show of checking his watch. “Listen, Leon, I’ve got to get going. We have an appointment.”
“All right, all right, all right.” Leon bobbed his head, dreadlocks swinging. “You have a business card? We should get together sometime, grab a Heineken or two, reminisce about how we use to rock and roll back in the day when we were strapping young bucks, yeah, give me your card, all right, all right.”
Without thinking, wanting only to get away, Corey pulled out his wallet and withdrew a card. Leon read it. His eyes got as big as billiard balls.
“Gates-Webb Security Services? You own a security company? You?” Leon laughed his frenetic giggle. “The irony, my man, the irony is too delicious, the irony is downright scrumptious.”
Corey felt blood rising in his face. “Good seeing you again, Leon.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Leon tucked the card into his pocket. “Yeah, yeah, it’s been real. We gotta get that beer sometime soon, don’t forget. We ran in to each other for a reason, there’s no such thing as coincidence, nope, fate’s slammed us together again and we definitely need to reconnect, uh-huh, all right.”
Mumbling in agreement, Corey was turning to go when someone exited the minimart. It was the dull-eyed giant who’d been ogling Jada. Corey’s chest tightened.
The giant tossed Leon a box of Newports and climbed in on the passenger side of the pickup.
Jesus. They’re partners?
Leon slid a cigarette out of the pack and fished a brushed-chrome Zippo lighter out of his pocket. It was a vintage model, and it was the same one Corey had last seen fifteen years ago. He would never forget it; the image was fire-branded in his brain.
That old box of memories opened wider.
Leon caught him looking at it, and winked. He struck a flame, lit his cigarette, and took a slow drag.
“Your lovelies are waiting on you,” Leon said, lips curved in a smug smile. “Adieu.”
Chapter 3
Corey got behind the wheel and gunned the engine. Mashing the accelerator too aggressively for a parking lot, like a hot-rodding kid, he peeled away from the gas station.
In the rearview mirror, he spotted Leon waving at him. He exhaled through clenched teeth.
He still couldn’t believe he had run into Leon, of all people.
He felt Simone and Jada watching him, felt their questions. He tried to will his racing pulse to slow, but it was tough.
“Who were you talking to back there?” Simone finally asked.
“Who was that man, Daddy?” Jada said.
Ignoring their questions, as if by doing so they would go away, he rejoined the sluggish flow of traffic on Haynes Bridge.
That damn cigarette lighter. He couldn’t get it out of his head. What the hell kind of point had Leon been trying to make? Was he taunting him? Making a joke?
With that sick bastard, you never could tell.
He wished he hadn’t given Leon his business card. What had he been thinking? He had reacted to Leon’s request as automatically as he did when someone extended their hand to be shaken or asked how his day was going. Responding in kind was the ingrained, socially correct thing to do.
But he worried about it. If Leon decided to stop by his office...
No, he won’t do that.
But it was an empty attempt at self-assurance. The truth was, he didn’t know what Leon might do --- hell, from one moment to the next, Leon didn’t know what Leon might do. In the past, that was partly what had made being his friend so exhilarating. Leon might, literally, do anything.
He wished he had gone to a different gas station. Then none of this would have happened, and that Pandora’s box of old memories would still be buried in the cellar of his mind.
He took a slurp of coffee, and immediately wished he hadn’t. His stomach was cramped in such a tight bundle that the coffee was likely going to give him indigestion.
He felt both Simone and Jada observing him intently now, and he wished they hadn’t been with him that morning; he wished that he’d run into Leon on his own and they had no clue about any of it.
He took another sip of coffee, and grimaced. It seemed he was wishing for a lot of different things right then.
“Baby?” Simone asked.
“Daddy?” Jada said.
He blinked. “What?”
“We asked you a question,” Simone said.
“Oh, right,” he said. “That guy back there? Just an old friend from back home.”
“From Detroit?” Jada asked.
“Yes, from Detroit.”
“What’s his name?” Simone asked.
“Leon.”
“Leon who?” Jada asked.
Corey glanced at Jada in the mirror. Her eyes sparkled with curiosity. She’d inherited her inquisitiveness from her mother, and for her to have seen a man from her father’s fabled hometown was probably unbearably thrilling for her.
But he wished she would let it go.
“His name is Leon Sharpe,” he said.
“You grew up with him?” Simone asked, eyes as intrigued as Jada’s.
“He lived across the street from us, for a while anyway.”
“What’s a homeboy?” Jada asked.
“A homeboy is a good friend.”
“Oooh, oooh. Really? Was Leon your best friend, Daddy?”
“Mister Leon,” Simone said, gently correcting Jada. “We don’t call adults by their first names, honey.”
“Was Mr. Leon your best friend, Daddy?”
He shrugged. “I guess so.”
“Wow, is that so?” Simone asked. “You’ve never mentioned him before.”
“Well, I haven’t thought about him in years.”
“When was the last time you saw him?” Simone asked.
He looked at her. Simone’s interest was innocent, not suspicious. If he’d seen her run in to a former, admitted best girlfriend who she hadn’t seen in a long time, he might have been asking her similar questions, too.
“Fifteen years ago, I guess,” he said.
Jada’s face bunched into a frown. “You haven’t talked to your best friend in fifteen years, Daddy?”
“He’s not my best friend any more.”
“Why not?” Jada asked.
“Because I moved away from Detroit and came here.”
“But you could have kept talking to him,” Jada said.
“I haven’t.”
“Why?”
Their turn was coming up. Corey took it too fast. Simone knocked against him, and Jada slewed sideways in her seat as if riding a roller coaster.
Simone lightly tapped his thigh. “Take it easy, Mario Andretti. We want to get there in one piece.”
He bit his lip. “Sorry.”
“Daddy?” Jada said.
“Yes?”
“Why didn’t you keep talking to Mr. Leon?”
“I told you, because I moved here.”
“But you never called him?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Jesus, Jada.” He clenched the steering wheel. “Do you plan to be a prosecuting attorney when you grow up? Lay off with the questions, all right? I don’t want to talk about it any more. Period.”
Simone stared at him, lips parted in shock. In the mirror, Jada’s face crumbled.
“Sorry, Daddy,” she said softly. She wiped away tears.
Guilt punctured his heart. He rarely raised his voice with her, and she didn’t deserve to be rebuked. She was only a kid with a natural interest in his past.
“It’s okay, Pumpkin,” he said in a soothing tone. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.”
But Jada wouldn’t look at him. Simone looked away from him, too, jawline rigid.
They were quiet for the rest of the drive.
Excerpted from CORNERED © Copyright 2010 by Brandon Massey. Reprinted with permission by Pinnacle. All rights reserved.
