No Time to Die Read online

  “How’s David?” I asked, changing the subject.

  Now her eyes regained their color and she was smiling broadly. “He’s getting better by the day, but that’s another story for another day.”

  She glanced at her watch and took a sheaf of papers out of her case. “Gotta go but I’ll stop by tomorrow. I’ve outlined everything. Cross out whatever you disagree with and we can discuss it. They want an answer within ten days.”

  I glanced up from the thick packet she handed me. “Ten days? After three years, they now want an answer in ten days?”

  “Mali, you know how the system works,” Elizabeth sighed, gathering her bag. “It’s held together by Krazy Glue and run by folks who’re inhaling it.”

  Our rear garden is probably small enough to fit (with room to spare) inside one of Martha Stewart’s small henhouses, but in my confinement, my appreciation for this tiny crowded patch of Eden had grown daily by sizable increments.

  I suddenly admired the rear wall, though the only visible work of art was the out-of-control ivy spreading like a green plague. I found belated comfort in one of the two Adirondack chairs, its wood worn and scratched but still serviceable after years of benign neglect.

  I reacquainted myself with the beauty and utility of the terra-cotta planters where Dad and Alvin cultivated cherry tomatoes and strawberries and where I’d promised to pitch in year after year but never got around to doing anything except maybe to eat the fruits of their labor.

  Two days ago, when I was able to maneuver down the three steps to the garden, I’d settled in one of the chairs, thankful for the sight of the drifting clouds overhead, the music of the birds as they helped themselves to the strawberries, and thankful that the garden had saved me from breaking down like a con in a late-night grade Z prison movie.

  This feeling now dissolved, ingrate that I was, as I stood on the front steps watching Elizabeth, shoulder bag in one arm and attaché in the other, walk toward Seventh Avenue. She did not have to think twice about James crawling out of a hole and surprising her.

  She disappeared around the corner and I forgot about the reading and went to the backyard to sit on the steps and stare at the tomatoes. I was plotting a way to get out without Dad threatening to chain me to the radiator when I heard the front door close and Alvin’s quick footsteps on the stairs. A minute later he was running back down.

  I pushed myself up from the steps. I could not run, and by the time I walked through the house, he was out the door. I leaned on the railing, my leg aching from the sudden effort, and called after him. “Where’re you going?”

  He turned to face me but kept walking backward, putting distance between us.

  “Play some ball,” he said, pointing to the bat he carried. He waved and disappeared around the corner onto Seventh Avenue. I shooed Ruffin back inside and headed toward the garden again, but the bell rang. Ruffin’s bark didn’t discourage the caller and I stood in the middle of the hallway, deciding whether to answer.

  When I opened the door again, Clarence and Morris were staring at me, wide-eyed and out of breath.

  “Miss Mali, is Alvin here?”

  “He just left a minute ago,” I said. “Said he was going to play ball. Is … something the matter?”

  “Well,” said Morris, leaning on one foot then the other, “it’s like …”

  “Naw, Morris. This ain’t no time for slow dancin’,” Clarence said, tapping him on the arm. “We gotta step to it.”

  “What? What happened?”

  “Miss Mali. We found out where James is.”

  “What?”

  “He’s holed up right there in 136th Street. And that’s where Alvin’s headed. Said he’s gonna take care a him.”

  My knees were about to give way but I held onto the wall and made my way to the phone. Dad was downtown, shopping for a new jacket, and I had no idea what store he’d gone to.

  James was on 136th Street. I couldn’t believe it. Right under Maxie’s nose. I found the small tray on the bar where I’d dropped Miss Dottie’s phone number and prayed that she’d be home when I dialed.

  She came on sounding out of breath. “Wanted to pick up before the machine came on,” she said. “People hear a machine, they hang up. Oh, yeah, I remember. You the gray-eyed girl, Jeffrey Anderson’s daughter. You were lookin’ for James. How you doin’? Found him yet?” Morris and Clarence had now stepped inside, waiting, and I glanced at them.

  “I know where James is,” I said, “and I want Maxie to get to him before my nephew does. The boy is only twelve years old and he’s no match for James. He’s on his way there now.”

  “Only twelve?” I heard the outtake of her breath. “The boy got brass, that’s for sure, but say the word. I can get to Maxie.”

  I handed the phone to Clarence. “Tell her where James is.”

  “He’s in his old stompin’ grounds, ’cept now he’s squattin’ in an abandoned building and only comes out at night …”

  “To steal,” Morris said. “Tell her he’s in that gray house next to the funeral parlor with the awning, the one in the middle of the block. Crackerjack, the crackhead named Jackie, come in the park. She asked for two dollars and told us what we wanted to know …”

  “Right under Maxie’s nose,” I said.

  Morris looked at me. “You mean he dodgin’ Maxie too? Dang. That’s deep!”

  Clarence handed the phone to me again and I listened to Miss Dottie’s heavy breathing. “Don’t worry, Mali. I’m gettin’ on the drum right now. I’ll take care of it. Your nephew’ll be all right. What’s his name?”

  “Alvin. He’s medium height, dark brown, wearing a white T-shirt, and he’s carrying a baseball bat.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said again, and the phone went dead.

  I called Tad but there was no answer. I called the squad room at the precinct and the machine said that he was in a meeting. I beeped him, left a message, then struggled to collar Ruffin. Brace or no brace, I was going to 136th Street even if I had to travel on Ruffin’s back.

  At Powell Boulevard Clarence stepped into the street with his hand held high. He whistled, waved, and finally yelled at the procession of gypsy cabs who slowed momentarily, then pumped the pedal to weave back into the stream of traffic.

  “Morris,” Clarence yelled, “step back with Ruffin. We can hike but Miss Mali gotta cab it.”

  As he spoke, a yellow cab halted a few feet away and discharged two passengers, tourists complete with cameras and maps. They hesitated and looked around and I wondered if they were preparing to don pith helmets.

  The man smiled and waved to Clarence.

  The woman, lean as an athlete, with short-cut hair the color of sand, bent toward her companion, a blunt-looking young man with tiny square glasses perched dangerously on the tip of his nose. They conferred in a language none of us could decipher. Was it Dutch? Flemish? Croatian? We heard four English words—“block of hard workers.” They looked at us and waited, smiling expectantly.

  “If you lookin’ for Strivers’ Row,” Clarence said, “this is it.”

  He stepped toward the cab before they closed the door but the off-duty sign flashed on and the cabbie sped away with a shimmying fishtail that left the smell of burning rubber in the air. The maneuver slammed the door shut, leaving all of us, tourists and locals together, staring.

  “I seen ’em get outta Dodge but never like that,” Clarence murmured.

  We left the tourists and walked. Even with the pain pill, and with Morris holding Ruffin’s leash and Clarence holding me, it took nearly fifteen minutes to navigate three and a half blocks. The last half-block was the worst and my leg felt as if I had walked through fire.

  At 136th Street we stood watching the rotating lights of an ambulance fade down the block and across Malcolm X Boulevard.

  Alvin. Where was Alvin? There was no one in sight and the silence was stunning. No one was sitting on a stoop, or lounging in a doorway, or walking by. What had happened?

 
Clarence and Morris also gazed up and down the block, shrugging and whispering in the unnatural silence.

  My nerves disintegrated and I collapsed against a car, convinced that Alvin had confronted James and James had somehow managed to get the bat away and had used it on him. “Miss Dottie would know.” My voice broke the silence and I grabbed Clarence’s arm. We limped to the middle of the block and I tried not to let my imagination run wild. I had never seen this or any other block in Harlem so quiet. I pointed to her house and Morris rang the bell. She opened the door and Alvin was standing behind her. In the rose glow of the overhead lamp, his face looked ruddy, almost wholesome in the dim light, but I saw the shaking in his shoulders.

  “Take the child home, Mali. He seen too much tonight.” Miss Dottie’s voice was a hoarse whisper afloat in the silence.

  Alvin stepped away from the light and I looked closely. His eyes were half closed and an ashy tinge had broken through the deep brown of his coloring.

  “Alvin, you all right?”

  “I’m … fine. Let’s go.” He turned to Miss Dottie and hugged her. “Thanks, ma’am. I mean it. Thanks …”

  “That’s all right, baby. You go get a good night’s sleep and all this’ll be behind you come tomorrow. It’ll be just a bad dream.”

  I looked from one to the other and asked again, “What happened?”

  Miss Dottie beckoned to me but I could no longer move. She saw the brace on my leg and came outside. Alvin had moved away to join Morris and Clarence. There were no high fives, only whispered conversation and Alvin pointing to the sealed house where the front door had been broken in.

  “Maxie got ’im,” Miss Dottie said. “Sent his callin’ cards, Eeny, Meanie, Miney, and Moe, into the building.”

  “Who’re they?”

  “You mean what’re they. Those are his pit bulls. Four of ’em. First one got in and chased James out to the street where the other three was circlin’. I peeped through the blinds and watched Maxie sittin’ right over there on that stoop.” She pointed across the street. “Loungin’ there the whole time, flingin’ all that hair out his eyes, and drawin’ on the fattest blunt you ever seen. And watchin’ the whole thing.

  “Nobody called the cops or ambulance or nuthin’ ’cause they knew who those dogs belonged to and figured whoever was gettin’ it probably deserved it. Maxie don’t get dirty unless he figure you trying to play him.

  “Dogs did a job. Ambulance finally came and picked up what was left but this is one time where the old line don’t mean a thing.” I nodded, knowing what the old line was. Harlem Hospital. “If you go in there squawkin’, guaranteed you’ll come out walkin’.”

  “Undertaker can try to fix him up a little but I bet his own mama’ll have a time recognizin’ him. Best thing is a closed casket.”

  “Did … Alvin see it?”

  She shook her head. “ ’Fraid so. Some of it, at least. He came down the block at the tail end of everything, so he probably saw the worst part. James was really spread out … I’m sorry I couldn’t stop ’im from seein’ that, Mali. I’m sorry.”

  I followed her glance down the street and saw the bits and pieces of stained clothing. She touched my shoulder and then handed me a tissue. I didn’t know if I had started to cry because Alvin had witnessed it, or because I knew what Claudine and Marie had suffered. It was over. All the hard feeling I’d harbored was finally gone. James was gone.

  But as they say, be careful what you wish for.

  James was no longer here but Alvin saw him taken out. He had witnessed a bloodbath.

  “You take it easy on that leg now, Mali,” Miss Dottie said. “It looks kinda swollen to me. How’d you get that anyway?”

  “James ran me down in a stolen car.”

  She looked at me and whispered, “Well, I’ll be damned. I’ll be damned.”

  We made our way back to Seventh Avenue to try to hail a cab again when Tad pulled up and the car’s tinted window slid down. He parked, allowing me to slide into the backseat. Alvin now had Ruffin’s collar.

  “Listen,” I said. “Why don’t you and your boys walk Ruffin back to the house?”

  He shook his head, still silent. A slight breeze caused his shirt to billow around his chest, making the shirt look large, as if it did not belong to him. I wanted to pull him into the car and cry with him in my arms, but he would never allow that. Not with his crew watching.

  They walked away with Ruffin leading. I watched them: Clarence’s tall thin frame overshadowing Morris and Alvin by a foot and a half and Morris’s hair finely rolled into the thin locks his mother had only recently allowed him to cultivate. And Alvin, leading Ruffin, who had disobeyed Dad to try to settle a score the way he knew Aunt Celia would have done.

  I watched until they were out of sight, then glanced at the bat Alvin had placed on the seat beside me, but I said nothing. I was too numb and words would not come.

  Tad was quiet also. By the time we reached home, my leg was twice its normal size and he had to carry me inside where Dad was waiting.

  Getting that brace off was like performing major surgery. I was glad that Morris and Clarence had gone home and Alvin was upstairs in his room and Tad had turned the stereo up louder than usual. I am no hero and I invented new words to describe James and hoped he heard them wherever Maxie had sent him.

  The chime, soft as it was, jolted me. I opened my eyes and lay on the sofa, waiting for Ruffin to trot to the door. The bell sounded again and I realized in the silence that Dad had taken him out for his morning run.

  Alvin came downstairs in his pajamas, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. When he opened the door, Elizabeth was outside, searching in her purse for her cell phone. She rushed past him, checked herself, and turned back to give him a peck on the cheek. “Sorry. Good morning, handsome. How’re you doing?”

  “Okay, I guess.”

  He said no more and we both watched him retreat up the stairs like a ghost. I swung my legs off the sofa as she entered the room, and when she saw me, she stopped short.

  “Girl! What on earth? What happened to you?”

  “I had a bad night,” I said, waving her to a chair.

  She pushed a copy of the Daily Challenge toward me but I pushed it away. “I know what it says,” I whispered. “I was there.”

  Her expression changed and her voice dropped to a whisper. “Mali, for God’s sake. What’s going on?”

  She leaned forward and her face resembled a wreath of frowns. But I looked at her crisp linen suit not yet affected by the heat of the day and I saw the beautiful black patent-leather shoes on her feet. I looked at them and wondered if I’d ever be able to walk again in similar shoes; or run with Ruffin in the park, or dance barefoot at midnight on the beach again with Tad. I thought of Alvin and how Dad and I had spent most of last night trying to figure out how best to deal with what the boy had seen. I thought of James and how I’d arrived at this point.

  “How about some coffee?” I said. “Just switch on the machine in the kitchen. I’ll take mine black.”

  She took off her jacket and a few minutes later returned and set a tray with two steaming cups of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee on the low table in front of the sofa. Then she settled into the chair opposite, waiting. I glanced at the paper near the tray and said, “You ever wondered why I disliked James? I mean from day one?”

  “Disliked? Despised would be more accurate,” she said, reaching for her cup and cradling it in her hands. “I always thought your feelings were too … intense, too discordant relative to what was happening to Claudine. Don’t get me wrong. I hated what he’d done. And I hated the idea that what was happening was happening between two married people and it was hardly any of our business to interfere, but you … you seemed ready to cancel his contract every time you ran into him.”

  “Well, as it turned out, he ran into me.”

  “What?”

  “That’s right. That’s how I ended up in the hospital. The incident last night was the culminati
on of a long, long mutual antagonism.”

  “What happened?”

  I leaned back on the sofa and pressed my hand to my knee, trying to ignore the pain and trying not to look at the swelling. And I tried to keep my voice steady as I spoke: “James stepped out of line from day one. The day he and Claudine got married. At the reception.”

  Elizabeth put her cup down and shook her head. The auburn highlights in her locks caught the rays of the early sun and looked almost golden against her brown skin. She shook her hair again, scattering the light. Then she stared at me but remained silent, allowing me to go on.

  “You remember the reception, high-octane crowd, everyone partying, the bubbly flowing, threatening to drown us all; Claudine looked so radiant, smiling for everyone. And the band even had the seniors on the floor strutting the electric slide.

  “Well, too much bubbly had me ready to pee. I left the ballroom and walked down the hall to the bathroom. When I opened the door, James pushed in behind me …”

  “Damn!”

  “He came in with some damn slick talk, stepped up with a proposition, and I popped him in the mouth. He got crazy and tried to lock us both in there, saying no bitch was gonna get away with hitting him.

  “Remember you’d asked me how the sleeve of my gown had gotten torn and I said I’d caught it on a nail in the ladies’ room. Well, the nail was James. I didn’t back up or shut up. I was ready to go one-on-one and let him know. When he saw that I meant business, he opened the door but not before he warned that if I ever mentioned it, he’d tell Claudine that I had tried to come on to him. Imagine. The damn band hadn’t even cooled off from playing the wedding march and the son of a bitch is in the ladies’ room coming on to his wife’s maid of honor.

  “He challenged me, dared me to go running to Claudine. Said she’d believe him before she’d believe me. Claudine had been Benin’s friend. And almost like a sister to me. Whether she took my word or his, I wasn’t ready to break up her marriage or our friendship. But I was so damn mad I sat out the rest of the party. Said I had a headache, said my feet hurt. Actually, everything inside me was hurting.