The Photograph 5.3: A Meeting Gone Bad  

5.3:
The rain had blown out by Wednesday, leaving great fall weather for Thanksgiving and the Friday afterwards. A pristine blue sky, scrubbed clean by the recent rain, stretched from horizon to horizon. The sun sliced through the canyon walls of downtown Atlanta as we made our way down Peachtree Street. Darius Murphy’s last known address was out on East Ponce de Leon. We’d try there first.

While I wanted to talk to Darius Murphy, I didn’t want to talk to him with Frank around. It had nothing to do with not trusting Frank, but everything to do with keeping my word. Even though he forced my hand, I had to be someone Murphy could trust. If he didn’t trust me, he wouldn’t talk to me.

Frank Hobbs or no Frank Hobbs.

There was a festive air about downtown Atlanta this morning.

Crisp fall day.

Clear blue sky.

The tailgate parties had started to set up along Techwood Drive down from Bobby Dodd Stadium before sunrise. The Georgia – Georgia Tech annual football game would be played in Atlanta this year and the tailgate parties started to set up early, securing those prime locations street side before tomorrow’s noon kickoff.

Plus, you couple that with this being Black Friday, the traditional start of the Christmas shopping season and all the holiday trimmings adorning the downtown buildings that have been there since before Halloween that we can now officially enjoy.

The Friday after Thanksgiving had become one of those unofficial holidays.

Nobody worked.

Everybody shopped.

It was Christmas time.

Santa would be coming soon.

And here I was about to completely ruin somebody’s day.

It’s funny how things happen though.

Frank seemed to know exactly where to find him.

In Midtown, at the corner of Monroe Drive and 10th Streets, opposite the southeast corner of Piedmont Park, that’s where Darius Murphy stood.

And the funnier thing about this is that Darius Murphy seemed to be standing there on the street corner waiting on him.

Or me.

We pulled to a stop at the curb and Frank hopped out quickly, circling around the car and grabbing Darius Murphy by the scruff of his jacket, just in case Darius had any notions about changing his mind.

He didn’t, and he said so.

“Get your hands off me,” Darius said. “I want to talk to Miss Daisy.”

I guess Darius wasn’t the only one to make the Morgan Freeman connection.

I nodded at Frank as I got out of the car and he let go.

Darius wore an Atlanta Braves baseball cap cocked to the side and one of those Atlanta Falcons designer jackets that was a couple sizes too big. I’m sure the fashion oversight had a reason… more room to hide things... like guns.

Darius Murphy was decked out in all his ceremonial bling, brand new Air Jordans gleaming virgin white in the sun and unlaced, baggy pants cinched about half way down the crack of his a$$, gold chains draped around his neck, right down to the silver tinted three-hundred-dollar Oakley sunglasses.

Darius nodded hello, a single tilting of the head to the right.

Too cool to move, I thought.

Or scared.

Not cool for a gang-banger like Darius to be seen talking to the cops.

“Nice to see you Darius,” I said with my hands stuffed in my jacket pockets. It was still a bit crisp this morning. “How’s life on the outside?”

“Hate it,” he said and cut a nod at Frank. “Lose your driver okay? I only talk to you.”

“Take a drive, Frank,” I said, and Frank let Darius go with a shove. “Don’t go far.”

“Don’t plan on it,” Frank said and smiled at Darius from across the car, chewing on a piece of gum. He offered a wink, then put his index and forefingers together and pressed them to his temple, cocking and pulling an imaginary trigger. “You’re dead on the streets Darius, but I guess you’re aware of that already.”

Darius looked at me and swallowed thickly. I could see his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.

He’s scared.

Frank slid behind the wheel and pulled away from the curb.

After he had left Darius turned to me and said, “Let’s walk. I don’t like being out here like this.”

“What’s with the get up?” I asked as we crossed 10th Street and entered the park at the south gate, the Charles Allen Drive gate. “Can’t run very fast or far with your Jordans undone.”

“Won’t have to,” Darius replied with a shrug as we passed beneath the broad bare limbs of generations old oaks framing Oak Hill, a sloping knoll dotted with a stand of dormant oak trees that were probably saplings during the time of Sherman’s March on Atlanta. “You got my deal yet?”

I looked at him and shrugged, “Your ex-wife didn’t press charges. I didn’t think you needed a deal.”

“Man, can’t you see I need protection?”

“From what?” I asked.

“You just don’t know, Miss Daisy. Lots of stuff you just don’t know. All I care about is how are you gonna protect me?”

“I can’t protect you if I don’t know what I’m protecting you from,” I said.

“Just get me outa here,” Darius said in a low voice. “Get Chantelle and the boys out of here. I want out.”

“Tell me what’s got you scared. I can help you.”

“You can’t help me like you think you’re helping me. You’re in this too, Miss Daisy. You got too close once and they took out your wife. Don’t think they can’t or won’t do it again.”

I felt the walls of my chest slowly collapse, as his words struck home like the blows from a ball peen hammer.

They took out your wife.

Don’t think they can’t or won’t do it again.

The message and the threat were crystal clear.

Not me.

Stacy.

“Don’t threaten me Darius,” I said evenly. “Or my family. I don’t take to threats well.”

I tried to control the rapidly mounting rage in my voice, surging up the back of my throat in a bubbling shudder.

“I’m not the one you need to worry about. I’m small fry. I know who did it the first time. The drivers. And I know what happened to them afterwards.”

He shook his head in a bewildered daze.

“They just… disappeared. Like they were never here. They say there are two types of people in this world, the motherf*ckers and the motherf*cked. Which one are you?”

The rage bubbled forth and surged over the top. I turned and grabbed him by the shoulders.

“Tell me who, god d@mmit!”

That’s when I heard the very slight, high-pitched whine buzz past my ear.

It stung.

An angry metallic hornet.

“Tink!”

That came from the right lens of Darius Murphy’s three-hundred-dollar Oakleys, where a quarter-sized hole had been punched out of the tinted plastic.

You could see through to where his right eye should have been.

Only it wasn’t there.

Neither was the back of his head.

It exploded, sending scalp, bone, tissue, the Atlanta Braves baseball cap and Darius Murphy’s brains splattering out behind him in a chunky pink spray.
Darius Murphy fell like a sack of dirt.

I grabbed my ear and it came away wet.

And red.

Damn, that was close.

Too close.

I hit the ground next to Darius, speed-dialing Frank on the cell phone, but I could already hear the roar of the engines as his car bounced over the curb at the park entrance and wove through the stand of oaks, gouging out twin rivets in the soft lawn of the hillside.

Darius gave a last twitch, his body heaving a final involuntary spasm; since its brain was no longer there to tell it what to do, it shut down.
I made myself one with the ground, hugging the dormant lawn, the thick carpet of fallen leaves, and spinning around to look behind me, to see if I could tell from where the shot came.

That detective's voice started inside my head.

You heard no gunfire.

Rifle was high powered.

Thousand yard range at least.

You heard nothing.

Just that tink! when the bullet punched a hole in the Oakleys lens and the heavy wet splat of Darius Murphy’s head exploding.

That was all.

The shot could have come from anywhere.

I saw nothing.

No retreating assassin.

I heard less.

No roar of a gunned engine as the getaway car made its escape.

Just the whisper of ambient city noise in the distance as it rode the morning breeze, and the occasional chirps of the birds in the treetops.

Above the tree line, the downtown Atlanta skyline reached for the sky, the morning sunlight glinting off glass as a thousand light diamonds being thrown back at the sky from which they came.