As the Wicked Watch(107)

“Demetrius!” I called out, and the kid stopped as if he heard a fan calling out for an autograph.

“Over here.” I waved to him and he turned in my direction.

“Isn’t she a reporter?” I heard one of the boys say.

“Hey, Turner! What’re doing, man? That’s a reporter!”

“Aw! Okay, damn,” Demetrius said, and turned in the other direction.

“Demetrius, wait!” I said, chasing behind him. “I’m not here about football. Demetrius, remember the Asian girl you spoke with a couple weeks back about Masey James?”

He stopped and let his teammates file past him, then stepped toward me. “Yeah. I remember her,” he said, proudly stroking his fully grown-in goatee. “What about it?”

“She told me that you saw Masey James get in the car with a guy after school. Can you describe him?”

“You talking about Terrence?”

My eyes widened. I couldn’t believe how matter-of-factly he just identified the driver who’d been giving Masey rides from school: the man I’d suspected all along.

“You know him?”

“Yeah. I see him at the barbershop sometimes,” he said. “That was her dude.”

“Whose?”

“Masey’s,” he said like there wasn’t a thing in the world wrong with a thirty-year-old man being a fifteen-year-old girl’s “dude.”

“You do know that Terrence Bankhead is a grown man?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Hey, got nothing to do with me.”

“Why didn’t you tell my colleague his name?”

“I don’t know her,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

You don’t know me, either. Oh, but I’m a Black woman. I get it.

He started to walk away, then turned and asked, “Are you coming to the game?”

“No, I don’t cover sports. But good luck, Demetrius.”

What happened to right and wrong? Had values been canceled? What the hell was wrong with people?

Terrence Bankhead had groomed Masey James in broad daylight. She hid their picture in the bottom of that silly pumpkin, but she might as well have taped it to her bedroom mirror. They were an open secret. Not even a secret, really, just open. And to think that nobody told her mother, nobody told an adult who could have intervened, nobody tried to save her. Vampires walked the streets in the daytime, surrounded by people who could’ve grabbed a stake or a cross to dispatch them but didn’t do a damn thing.

I pulled the Mad Cash Talent Management card from my wallet and walked toward the United Center. It would be easier to hail a cab from there, but I lucked out about a block away. I wasn’t headed back to the newsroom but to Uptown.

“The 4700 block of North Racine,” I told the driver.

I sank down into the too-low back seat of the taxicab, my knees practically in my chest, and texted Joey. JUST GOT CONFIRMATION, TERRENCE IS THE MYSTERY DRIVER.

What I failed to mention was that I was headed to Terrence’s office. Terrence, I now realized, was smart. Smart enough to notice the police surveillance. Smart enough to notice when it stopped.

Uptown wasn’t a neighborhood I’d frequented since moving to Chicago. It was known for its iconic bars and music venues—such as the Green Mill, the Uptown Theatre, and the Aragon Ballroom—that helped to cement Chicago’s reputation as a hotbed of emerging musical talent.

Terrence’s office was located in a run-down building next door to the Riviera, an aged but popular concert venue that primarily booked alternative and acid rock bands. The Uptown area came alive at night, so there weren’t many places open during the day for me to duck into and keep watch from a safe distance. I walked up and down the block until I noticed a woman wiping down the counter of a bar called the Python. The door was open, so I walked in.

What if Terrence and Brent are in here?

I shuddered. I hadn’t really thought this through, had I? My reasoning was sound. They were liable to recognize my car if I was driving around the area. I could be more clandestine moving around on my stilettoed feet.

“Good afternoon. What can I get for you?” asked the tattooed bartender. She had multiple piercings and a nose ring in the shape of a bat with a fake diamond stud on the side. I sat at the bar, which gave me a direct line of sight to Terrence’s office building.

“What kind of wine ya got?” I asked, though my expectations weren’t high in a place with a wall of dart boards.

“Here, take a look at the menu,” she said.

“Thanks.”

I swiveled the barstool around to face the street and held the menu up close to my face, just below my eyes. There was no sign of life in the building.

What a dump.

“Did you find something you like?” the bartender returned.

“You know, um, I’ll have a draft beer,” I said.

“We’ve got Leine’s Red on special,” she said. Leine’s was short for Leinenkugel’s, a local brewery.

“Okay, that sounds good.”

I could have used something stronger, but the ice-cold beer soothed the burning sensation in my belly. Fear.

“Pardon me, but that building next to the Riviera . . . do you know what’s in there?” I asked the bartender.

“Yeah, it’s some sort of artists’ loft,” she said. “Musicians, painters, dancers, jewelry makers . . .”