Badge of Evil (7 page)

“That's the one.” A. J. nodded. “Kevin Anderson.”

“The papers said it looked like a murder-suicide. Like maybe he beat the hooker and then OD'd on drugs. Bizarre.”

“It was beyond bizarre. And then the story just went away. Which was even more bizarre, given how much pop the tabloids could've gotten out of it. It was like the department shut it down or something. Anyway, Supreme claims to know something about it. Something big. Says it's all very sensitive and explosive. No idea if it's legit, but it's worth finding out. Call him and set up a meeting. If nothing else, it'll be a good exercise for you.”

“Sure, okay.”

“Anything else? No? Okay, then we're done here. Lemme know what happens.”

•  •  •

Lucy had called Supreme as soon as they were finished. She said she was calling on behalf of A. J. Ross, almost like she was his secretary, which worked to get Supreme on the phone.

“Yo, when's he wanna sit down?” Supreme asked.

“Actually, he wants me to come and talk to you first so—”

“No deal,” he snapped. “You tryin' to play me? I don't get to talk to the man himself, I ain't talkin'. Simple as that, know what I'm sayin'? You want the four-one-one, get me Ross. This shit's too important. Hey, I ain't frontin' here, people could end up dead over this.
I could end up dead.
And I ain't about to let that happen, know what I'm sayin'?”

Lucy remained calm, striking just the right balance of deference and resolve as she patiently explained to Supreme that this was standard operating procedure. “Please,” she assured him, “there's no disrespect intended here. At any other time, given how important you are, I know A. J. would come see you himself. But surely you can understand that he can't always personally check out every tip that comes in—especially with everything going on in the city right now. Just as I'm sure you can't always personally go and listen to every new artist someone gives you a tip about. I'm sure there are times when you have no choice but to send a trusted associate to catch the performance first. Right?”

Lucy's gambit with Supreme worked perfectly. His attitude softened and he gave in. “I hope you as fine to look at as you are to listen to,” he said. “C'mon up to my place tomorrow around lunchtime. You know, like one o'clock.”

So, on a beautiful Saturday, Lucy was on her way to see Supreme. She got off the subway at Fifty-Ninth Street and Lexington Avenue. The street was crowded with shoppers, and Lucy had to maneuver to find a spot where she could pause for a moment and collect herself. She closed her eyes and took a few long, slow, deep breaths. She steadied her breathing, and her mind, which had been racing, gradually began to slow down.

As she started to walk uptown, she glanced in the windows of Bloomingdale's and stared at her own reflection. She paused, intending to smooth her clothes and maybe fix her hair a little. Instead, she just stood there, admiring the way she looked—the snug, but not too snug, fit of her dark low-rise pants and the irresistible silhouette her long legs created. Her short dark jacket with its little flared bottom and her man-tailored white shirt were perfect. She had a talent for creating a style that looked unstudied, like she'd grabbed the first things she saw in her closet and put them on. But the effect was irresistible, a casual look admired by both men and women. She got so completely absorbed in her reflection she didn't notice several harried people bump into her as they rushed by.

When the moment passed, Lucy was embarrassed and quickly looked around to see if anyone was watching. She felt a little silly, and a little mischievous, at having lost herself that way on a busy street. She took one more deep breath, shook her head side to side a couple of times as if literally trying to shake off the distractions, and started walking again.

Lucy realized she hadn't gone shopping in a long time. Though money was tight on her puny salary at the magazine, she tried to treat herself to something nice every once in a while—especially after completing a difficult assignment—and she made a mental note that it was time. She still had some money stashed away from her modeling days that she only touched occasionally, to reward herself with something she really wanted.

Supreme's elegant five-story town house was on East Sixty-Eighth Street between Madison and Park Avenues. Lucy had a pretty good sense of the Manhattan real estate market, mostly from the magazine's frequent coverage, and she was sure the town house was an eight-figure property. Given the location, the size, and the condition, it had to have cost Supreme at least $30 million. A small video camera was perched over the front door and another was focused on the garage.
Amazing
, Lucy thought.
How many people in Manhattan have their own garage?
At that moment, she noticed a huge, hulking figure about to get into a bright yellow, $300,000 Maybach.

“Afternoon,” said the big man. “You Lucy?” She nodded. “The boss is expecting you. Ring the bell and someone will come right down.”

Less than five minutes later, Lucy was sitting in a beyond-opulent living room with a ten-foot coffered ceiling. The furniture was classic, old-white-money stuffy and uncomfortable, with a few stunning antiques mixed in—the kind of pieces they sold at the auction houses.
Who was this guy?
she thought. She'd done some background work on him and knew he'd made some real money in the record business, but she didn't think it was this kind of money. And what was with the furnishings? The place looked like the Astors or the Vanderbilts were living in it. In fact, it probably had been owned by one of New York's old-line families at one time. You didn't have to watch BET to recognize this was not the way people who made hip-hop music decorated their houses. Where was all the contemporary stuff? The glass and stainless steel and leopard skin and the huge leather couches as big as minivans? Where were all the giant flat-screen TVs and the grown men wearing thick gold jewelry and brand-new, unlaced $300 sneakers, and sitting around playing Xbox?

Suddenly, two toddlers came running into the room, chased by a pretty nanny wearing a gray and white uniform. She apologized to Lucy in a German accent and said Mr. Clarence (Supreme's real name was Clarence Carter; his mother had named him after her favorite blues singer) was running a little late, but he'd be with her shortly. Just then, a trim white man in his forties walked in, wearing a trendy-looking black suit (Prada, Lucy guessed), and introduced himself as Ira Kleinberg. He was Supreme's business partner.

“How're you, Ms. Chapin?” Kleinberg asked with a smile.

“Please, call me Lucy. I'm—”

“Mmm, mmm, mmmmm.” Supreme had come into the room and he was staring at Lucy. “Woman, you are a fine sight. Props to A. J. Ross.”

Supreme was about five feet nine inches with a small but gym-produced muscular build. He had glistening skin that was so smooth it looked like it had just been buffed, and he was wearing a cream-colored velour tracksuit with a black stripe down the side of the pants. He had a small diamond stud in each ear and two big gold rings on each hand but no visible chains around his neck. He carried himself with the slouchy swagger of someone from the streets.

“How you doin', girl?” Supreme said to Lucy.

“Very well, thanks. And you?”

“Not bad for somebody with a motherfuckin' target on his head, know what I'm sayin'?”

“Actually, no, I—”

“Well, listen up. This is some serious shit I'm talkin' 'bout. I ain't playin'. I gotta cover my back on this 'cause I'm in it up to my motherfuckin' neck, okay?”

“Okay,” Lucy responded, though she wasn't at all sure she knew what he was talking about. “If you're referring to A. J. and me honoring whatever kind of deal we make, you don't have to worry about that. I assume you called A. J. because you know his reputation.”

“Girl, I got to worry 'bout everything. My stomach has more knots than the dreads on a Kingston reggae band. This goes bad, it's my black ass that's fucked,” Supreme said, his mood suddenly darkening. “Maybe this is a bad idea, man. Shit, maybe I should just forget talkin'. I don't need to make this worse.”

Lucy didn't really know what to say, so she didn't say anything. The wrong word, a misread facial expression, and Supreme could pull the plug on the whole thing. She looked at Kleinberg, who had been sitting quietly in a big, green velvet wingback chair. He stood up, walked around behind the chair, leaned forward against it on his forearms, and began talking.

“We've gone over this very carefully several times,” Kleinberg said. “And we decided this was the best way to go, right? In fact, it's about the only way to go. Your life's on the line here, and unless we can get someone to pay some attention, the danger's only going to increase.”

“No doubt,” Supreme said softly, shaking his head back and forth. “No doubt. All right,” he said with somewhat renewed spirit. “I ain't no fuckin' little girl, all scared and shit. Let's do this, let's rock somebody's world.”

Relieved, Lucy reached into her bag without looking down and slowly, almost surreptitiously, removed her notebook and digital recorder.

“About four weeks ago, I got a call from Big K, telling me he wants to get together. You know, like old times. So I thought he was lookin' to get up on me, to shake me down for some money.”

As Supreme talked, Lucy quietly turned on the recorder and placed it on the side table. “No way,” Supreme said almost immediately, reaching for the recorder. “What the fuck? Take all the motherfuckin' notes you want, but ain't nobody gonna hear my voice except when I'm talkin' right now. No playback shit gonna be goin' on here, know what I'm sayin'?”

“Sorry,” Lucy said without getting flustered. “We'll do this however you're comfortable. Could you start at the beginning? Like I don't know anything about this story, which I actually don't. Big K is Kevin Anderson? How do you know him?”

“I can't say no to those eyes again, baby,” Supreme said with a smile. “Okay, you want it from the beginning, I'll give you the book of fuckin' Genesis. In the beginning, there was Church Jackson. Church was the baddest, smartest motherfucker in Harlem. He owned the drug business. I started runnin' for one of his crews when I was fourteen. You know, doing errands and shit. Gettin' them cigarettes, food, whatever they needed. It was what people downtown would call my internship. Slowly, I started doin' more serious shit. Drop-offs, pickups, and selling a little weed they'd throw me. I didn't actually meet Master Mind till I was like eighteen. He's layers removed from the street, insulated, for protection. Anyway, by the time I was twenty I was one of his go-to guys.”

“So this all started around the mid-1990s?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah, I hooked up with them in '96. I met Big K like eight years later. February of 2004. I remember 'cause it was Valentine's Day and I was with my girl. It was a motherfuckin' cold night. I mean freeze-your-ass-right-off cold. Coldest night I can remember. I'd bought my girl some scorchin' Victoria's Secret shit, for a little holiday romance. But it was so cold that night she didn't even wanna take off her sweater.

“Anyway, Church Jackson called me around ten thirty, and I had to get all up outta bed, get dressed and shit, and meet him at an apartment on One Hundred Forty-Eighth Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard. It was an unusual situation. Let's just say one of our sales managers seemed to be having a little problem with his bookkeeping, and we had a large shipment coming in that the motherfucker was supposed to be responsible for. So Church wanted us to pay him a little visit and make sure, you know, his spreadsheets were in order.”

As Supreme talked, Lucy frantically took notes. She noticed that every once in a while the former drug dealer would lose the attitude and the edgy street argot and sound a lot smarter and more sophisticated than maybe he wanted to. Even though he lived in a Beaux Arts mansion, the whole gangsta thing was critical, she figured, to who he was and everything he was about.

Lucy didn't say anything while Supreme told his story, except to quietly utter an occasional “right,” just to make sure he knew she was listening. A. J. had always told her to stay out of the way once someone gets rolling. “Let the momentum work. Allow your subject to unload whatever it is they need to unload. Do not interrupt,” he'd tell her over and over. “Too many reporters want to hear themselves talk. They want their subject to like them or they want to show how smart they are. This is not about you. Save your questions until later. Even when a subject stops talking, don't say anything for a few minutes. Silence makes people uncomfortable, and their instinct is to keep talking to fill up the space. And sometimes that's when they let their guard down and give you the best stuff.”

“So we're in this apartment, which we used for an ‘office,' ” Supreme said, actually making air quotes with his two hands around the word “office.” He did it in such an exaggerated way that Lucy knew he was teasing her, making fun, she guessed, of what he considered an overused, twentysomething-white-girl gesture. He smiled at her in a surprisingly gentle way and she couldn't help but smile back.

“There was some serious fuckin' weight in that room and a substantial amount of cash too. We were explaining the importance of accurate accounting to this ignorant motherfucker who worked for us when the five-oh showed up. No knock, no shouted identification from the hallway, no nothin', man. Two fuckin' uniforms, patrolmen of all goddamned things, came through the door with their guns drawn. I'm tellin' you, it was no joke. There was enough rock and pure coke in that room to send some niggas away for life, know what I'm sayin'? And the whole thing was supposedly some stupid-ass screwup. A fuckin' mistake,” Supreme said in disbelief, as if the incident had just happened.