Something she has in common with my sister, unfortunately. I just don’t want Kristin’s decisions to end up hurting Tucker, too.”
He parked behind a rusted-up small pickup and opened the door. She joined him on the street, but both of them paused before heading toward the apartment building. “Looks a little different from last time,” she murmured.
The street was nearly deserted. Across the way there was someone hurrying up a cracked concrete porch and into a building. But there was no one on the sidewalk up ahead. And as they approached, Risa saw that the porch to Juicy’s apartment building—the one that had been jammed with young men when they’d been here two days ago—was empty.
They walked up the stoop, pushed open the unlocked front door. Retraced their steps to the apartment upstairs. But this time when Nate pounded on the door, no one answered it. They knocked at every single door on that floor and not at one did anyone acknowledge their presence.
Babies still cried. Music still played too loudly. People were inside. They just weren’t interested in talking to Nate and Risa. They headed back downstairs. Nate rapped at the building super’s apartment door. “Philadelphia PD. Open the door now or you’ll have a whole lot of unwanted company on this street. In this building. And then you can come downtown and explain your shyness there.”
A chain rattled. The door was pulled open the length of it. A visual slice of a short, stocky African American man clad in a tank-style undershirt and shorts could be seen through it. “Don’t have nothing to say to you.” The door began to close. Was halted by Nate’s foot.
“Where’s Jasmine? The woman in apartment two eighteen?”
“Moved out. Yesterday. Don’t know where she went and didn’t ask questions. Rent’s paid up and it’s none of my business anyways. It don’t pay to ask too many questions.”
“What about the guys who hang out on your stoop?”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about. Let me shut the door.” The one brown eye that was visible in the wedge of opening had worry flickering in it.
“Where’s Javon Emmons? Juicy?”
“Don’t know him. Don’t know where he is.”
Nate and Risa exchanged a look, and Nate stepped back. The door was shut firmly.
“I think he found a different place to live,” she observed as they headed back down the empty steps.
“And made damn sure no one around here talked about him after he was gone.”
Spying an ancient stooped man sweeping the porch a couple doors down, she hurried toward him. “Excuse me.” She saw his lips moving. Couldn’t hear what he was saying until she drew much closer.
“Don’t know nuthin’. Don’t see nuthin’.”
“Yeah.” She blew out a disgusted breath as she turned back to rejoin Nate. “There’s a lot of that going around.”
“He’s not far,” Nate said after they’d gotten back into the car. “He can’t be and still be able to run his business.”
“Think Randolph was working the protection profit angle with Emmons?”
“He was his arresting officer,” Nate pointed out, turning the key in the ignition. “On the other hand, as such, he was in a perfect position to make sure evidence disappeared before the appeal. Maybe that’s how he worked out the deal with him.” He pulled away from the curb. “At any rate, even if we get to talk to Juicy again, I’m not going to be able to ask any questions like that. But I’d sure like to ask a few regarding Lamont.”
“He’ll have to come up for air sometime.” It took effort to tamp down her impatience. “A man like him doesn’t trust his business dealings to underlings for long.”
“Earlier you said you had time for a couple stops. Did you have somewhere else in mind?”
She turned toward him in the seat, as much as the belt would allow. “When I found Tory Baltes’s obituary earlier today, it listed a surviving sister, a Carly Williams. I’ve got her address. We could always stop by and see if she’s more forthcoming about her sister than Juicy’s neighbors are about him.”
As it turned out, Carly Williams had plenty to say in answer to their questions. And all of it was delivered in a selfrighteous half sneer that did little to endear her to Risa.
“I don’t like speaking ill of the dead.” The bone-thin woman spoke the words with the relish reserved for people who thrived on doing just that. “Tory and I took different paths all our lives. She followed a path of self-indulgence and it