If I Should Die Read online

  The men backed away, instinctively raising their hands as they moved out of Nightlife’s orbit. Just then I waved my arms excitedly and yelled, “Police! Over here! Over here!”

  The two men glanced around, bobbing and weaving as if they were on a basketball court.

  “Is the 911?”

  “Uh-oh! Cops! I ain’t in this shit, let’s split!”

  They took off, hustling in different directions as Nightlife quickly stepped back, scanning for the cruiser.

  In that half second of confusion, I raised my foot and planted a hard kick to his groin. When he fell to his knees, the knife in his hand clattered to the pavement and I kicked it to the curb beneath a parked car. Then I raised the bag. “Is this what you wanted?” I slammed it hard against the bridge of his nose, and again across the top of his skull. He was still doubled over when I ran to the corner and a passing gypsy screeched and stopped on a dime.

  As I scrambled into the cab, I yelled, “Get a Jay Oh Bee, a job, you fuckin’ asshole!”

  I peered through the rear window as we pulled away and saw him still on his knees, holding his stomach and gasping for air.

  “Slight disagreement?” the cabbie asked in a flat voice that implied he’d seen a whole lot worse in his career.

  I rubbed my knees. My stockings were shredded and my jacket was torn at the elbows.

  “You might say that,” I whispered. “I’m going to the Riverbend Apartments. 140th Street and Fifth.”

  I was trying to brush the dirt from my skirt when the cab turned the corner at Fifth Avenue and 141st Street and pulled up in front of the Riverbend complex. Modern, gray stone, terraced structures of fourteen stories or so running for several blocks facing the river and the Harlem River Drive. Trees and planters lined the avenue and not even a candy wrapper marred the sidewalks.

  The security man in the lobby stared at me as I signed the logbook. I met his gaze as he dialed Tad’s apartment.

  “Yes. Mr. Honeywell. There’s … uh … a Miss Anderson to see you?”

  He hung up the phone but now kept his eyes on the terrazzo floor as he gestured toward the elevator. “All right, miss. He’s expecting you.”

  No one else was on the elevator, which was just as well. When the door opened on the top floor, Tad was waiting and the expectant smile faded.

  “Mali, what the hell happened?”

  Maybe it was his voice. Or the touch of his hands on my shoulder and around my waist as he led me into the apartment. Or maybe it was the pain that shot through my swollen knee and the sudden realization that I was in more danger than I thought. I felt vulnerable, soft, and in need of protection. And I was angry at having forgotten everything I had learned in the academy and had allowed someone to catch me unawares. More than anything else, I had come face to face with the man who might have killed Erskin. Why was this son of a bitch still walking the street?

  The tears came even as I tried to control the hurt and anger.

  “Someone, that man called Nightlife, tried to steal my bag. He must have been watching me, followed as I left the house … He had a knife but I got away. I—”

  “A knife! That’s his trademark. Don’t say any more. Let me make a call.”

  I lay on the sofa with a pillow under my legs and stared at the ceiling. He had candles lit just as he had promised and the shadows danced around the room. I closed my eyes and listened.

  “Yeah … Nightlife. That’s what they call him. About thirty years old, five feet eight, medium brown skin with braided hair, one-sixty or so … Got out a month or so ago … No, he don’t walk with no weight. Couple years ago, he used to pack a pistol in his waist—and tried to hop like those Jamaican boys, but he tripped one time and nearly shot his dick off …

  “Uh-huh. So a blade is all he works with now, but when he swings, you stay cut because he runs that knife through fresh garlic before he steps out … Yeah, in front of the Half-Moon. Never has any cash to go in for a real drink … Okay. I’ll get back to you in two hours.”

  He slammed the phone down and the room went silent. I could hear him breathing hard, cursing under his breath as he made his way to the kitchen. The refrigerator door slammed and his footfalls were silent on the rug. I kept my eyes closed until he touched my knee with the ice pack, and the pain shot through me and the tears came again.

  “Listen, baby. Everything’s gonna be taken care of. Your dad doesn’t know, does he?”

  “No. And I don’t want him to know. That’s why I came here instead of going back home. This wasn’t a random thing, Tad. When I got home from class today, there was a message on the machine. A death threat.”

  “What?”

  “The tape’s in the bag. You can listen to it.” I tried to sit up, to reposition myself on the sofa and ignore the pain moving through my leg. “You know, I wanted this evening—this night—to be good for us. Now look at me. I can barely walk. All I did was fall down … well, he pulled me down trying to get at the bag, but I didn’t expect to become a basket case. I didn’t … I didn’t expect our evening to turn out like this.”

  He brushed his hand lightly over my face. “You’re getting upset. Don’t do this, baby.” His hands moved over my legs and his fingers pressed my knees.

  “It’s swollen and right now you’re hurting, but just lie still. I’ll take care of everything.”

  The running water in the bath was softened by music drifting in from a Trinidadian steel pan. Someone next door was playing and the quiet clear notes of “Black Orpheus” seemed to float into the room, old and mournful and beautiful.

  Tad opened the terrace door and each note became more distinct. The mild breeze from the river caused the candles to flicker and I watched the shadows moving and falling against the ceiling. This was enough for me. No dinner. No champagne. Right now this was enough.

  “Can you make it?” he whispered, easing me up from the sofa.

  Everything in the bathroom was a straightforward mix of black and white: wallpaper, towels, double shower curtains, and small black rug with a thick knotted fringe spreading over a white carpet. The tub was filled with a scented bubble bath and candles glowed on a glass shelf over the toilet tank. Near the tub, splits of champagne rested in an ice-filled, brass wine cooler.

  “I didn’t forget anything, did I?”

  He stood behind me, opening my blouse one slow button at a time and pressing his mouth to the bare space on my back as his fingers moved.

  All at once I started to tremble and could not look around. The scent from the bathwater entered my nostrils and I closed my eyes and breathed deeply as my brassiere came off.

  “Eucalyptus,” he said. “Best thing for pain …”

  “No,” I whispered, stepping out of my panties and turning to face him. “The second best thing …”

  In the tub, my head rested on his shoulder. His skin was smooth and I could feel the rhythm of his heart against my back as the water lapped around us.

  “Now, let’s see … We’re supposed to be taking care of a swollen knee.”

  “Uhn-hunh …”

  “Well, let’s see,” he whispered again, turning me easily so that I lay atop him. I tightened my arms around his neck, and his mouth tasted sweet from champagne when I kissed him. His fingers moved along my back, tracing a pattern under the water, and I pressed in, moving against him.

  “Mali, take it easy, baby. Easy …”

  “I am. I am taking it easy. You know how long I’ve wanted to do this, to feel you just the way I’m feeling you now, and tell you how much I love you …”

  “Mali, as long as I’ve known you, I never thought I’d wait this long to get to you. I love you, baby. I mean it. I love you, girl.”

  I rested back on my heels in the water, my legs moving effortlessly. Either the pain had gone to some other place or I was too busy to care. My hands slid beneath the water to the place between his legs and a smile eased across his face in the glow of the candles.

  “Aah, yeah … come on,
baby. Come on. Let’s take it to bed …”

  There were no candles in the bedroom and it was dark except for a tortoiseshell lamp spreading a small circle of yellow light on the floor near the bed. I stood in the dark outside the circle hugging the towel and not understanding this new, hesitant feeling. I was here. In his bedroom. Finally about to lie in his arms. I didn’t have to think about Dad putting his key in the door or a badnews phone call coming out of the blue. I was here. What was the matter?

  He came around the bed to stand near me and I tried to look at his face in the dark. I needed to see his eyes as he spoke. I gave up and settled for his nearness. I looked down at his brown legs in the circle of yellow light and wondered what I would have felt for him if we had met under other circumstances: perhaps at a dance, jazz concert, church, or even in a bar where there was no talk of bodies and bullets. No death threats. When I left the softness of this candlelit place, fear would be waiting. Perhaps in the elevator before I even got downstairs.

  When he touched me, I jumped.

  “Mali, what is it?”

  “I don’t know … I—”

  “Listen, if you’re hesitating because of what happened to you earlier, I can understand … Sometimes things have a way of knocking the good feeling out of us …”

  He looked at the clock.

  “Just a minute, baby …”

  He sat on the edge of the bed and whoever he dialed must have been waiting for the call because there was no hello or other introduction. He spoke immediately.

  “Uh-huh? … No, listen, man. Do as I say and nothing else, you understand me? Just that and nothing more. No point in putting him in a wheelchair to cruise around on a check the rest of his life … Yeah, couple of hours. When he gets to the hospital, I’ll pick it up from there. Talk to you later … Yeah, you got it …”

  “What was that about, Tad?”

  He did not look at me but lay back on the bed and pulled me down so that I lay in his arms. My head rested on his chest. His skin was warm and held the faint scent of eucalyptus. I could feel his calm and measured breathing. Very calm. A minute passed before he spoke again.

  “How’re you feeling?”

  “Better, I guess.”

  He rolled over and leaned on one elbow to look at me. “Earlier tonight, a man tried to touch the wrong woman. And he has to be set straight … Had to have someone else do it, though, because if I went uptown and found him, he’d be dead. No question. Nightlife would be dead. Now,” he whispered, “let me hear you talk about something else …”

  His hands moved down and over my stomach. “I want to hear you talking to me in a different language.”

  When his mouth covered my navel, the things I thought of talking about went completely out of my mind.

  chapter twenty

  The small clock by the bed glowed Tuesday 4 A.M. I was alone in the room.

  “Tad?”

  “I’m out here, baby.”

  The ache in my knee had subsided to a manageable level, low enough for me to ignore.

  I picked up the terry bathrobe—large enough to wrap around me twice—and stepped out on the terrace. Fog hung like a ragged curtain over the river, and the wind skimming the whitecaps reminded me that winter had not completely left town.

  Tad leaned with his arms folded on the stone balcony, gazing northward toward the dim outline of the 145th Street bridge. A lone tug passed under it towing a line of barges. They slid by in complete silence, moving with the current. Minutes later the last barge disappeared and the water was still again.

  I leaned half against the balcony and half against Tad, waiting. He put his arm around me, but when he finally spoke, it wasn’t what I had expected to hear.

  “Let’s shower, baby, and I’ll take you home.”

  It was more like a sigh, sad and disappointed.

  I looked at him. This was the man who had made love to me just a few hours ago, hot and heavy, and who couldn’t get enough; who could barely wait for me to get my strawberry-flavored stuff in place. He never wanted to stop, he said. And neither did I. It was not a hurried, hungry, fumbling kind of love thing. He knew what he was doing and made me feel so good I cried.

  But I also knew that the morning after could sometimes be dangerous. Sometimes, when two lovers disconnect, midnight euphoria will slide into midday depression, raging and unbearable.

  But this couldn’t be happening, not to us. Not after what we felt and the things we said. Not unless one of us was lying.

  “What is it, Tad? What’s happening—”

  “I’m okay …”

  I continued to gaze at him. He was okay. Not good. Not fine. Not coming down from cloud nine. Just okay—as if he’d only just helped himself to a Mickey Dee fast fat snack instead of a three-course, four-star gourmet meal.

  I wanted to say something but the words caught in my throat. I turned from him and was about to step into the living room. He caught my arm.

  “Wait a minute. Don’t make this any harder. I listened to the tape while you slept. I need to talk to your dad.”

  “Why?”

  “To persuade him to lay low and get your nephew out of town for a while.”

  The resentment evaporated and the fear I had held in check when I stood near the circle of light came back.

  “My dad? Alvin? Leave town? What is going on?”

  “I’m not sure yet, but I don’t want to take any chances. It’ll only be for a few days, possibly a week—till I can ask some questions and get some answers.”

  “How’re you going to convince him? My father can be pretty stubborn.”

  “He’s gonna listen to the tape, and then hopefully, he’ll listen to me.”

  I glanced through the terrace door again. Here and there, the impenetrable darkness of the water had softened to reveal narrow streaks of gray-green as dawn burned through the fog. The whitecaps had disappeared and the bridges shone now in high relief. A flock of seagulls spiraled up from the narrow edge of the highway. They flew high then fell away from the rising arc of the sun like old-fashioned fighter planes to skim the flat water. I wondered if they were also searching for something.

  “What answers, what are you looking for, Tad?”

  He was headed toward the bathroom and stopped and leaned against the door. “Mali, even if I knew for sure, I wouldn’t tell you. It’s better if you didn’t know.”

  “Even though I’ve been threatened?” My voice rose. “My family has been threatened and may be forced to hide out for I don’t know how long? Next thing you’ll tell us is that we may be hustled off into some witness protection program. Don’t you think I have a right to know?”

  He put his finger to his mouth, signaling me to calm down. “You have a right to know, Mali, but at the moment there’s something more important. And don’t think about any witness protection program. You can bet your bottom buck it won’t come to that. I can promise you.” He held out his hand. “Come on, now …”

  He leaned against the door and closed his arms around me. I could feel him through the robe. I backed away.

  “No. I have to be home before Alvin wakes. I usually fix his breakfast and Dad walks him to school.”

  Dad wakes early when he doesn’t have a gig. When I walked in, he was already seated at the dining table. He rested his morning paper and made a point of squinting at his watch. It was a large, exaggerated gesture, then he folded his arms and waited.

  I stood at the entrance to the dining room and my anger flared up immediately. I felt foolish, as if I was sixteen again and unprepared to explain my night out.

  “Good morning, Mr. Anderson,” Tad said.

  “Good morning, young man. Nice to see you again. And you too, Mali.”

  He stared down at my legs and shook his head. “One of these days, you’re going to come home fully dressed. One night it’s no shoes, the next night it’s no stockings.”

  I bit my tongue and ignored the remark, preferring to let Tad handle everything.


  “I didn’t mean to keep Mali out all this time,” Tad said, “but something came up—”

  “I bet it did.”

  I closed my eyes, not wanting to believe that my father had actually made that crude remark.

  Tad held up his hands. “Mr. Anderson, let me explain. There’s something going on, something that may pose a significant danger to your family unless we can resolve it quickly.”

  Significant danger. Tad had decided to take the official approach, sliding into bureau lingo and using three- and four-syllable words where usually one would do.

  Dad’s sour expression changed, but not by much. “What do you mean—significant danger?”

  “Let’s listen to this tape, then we’ll talk.”

  I didn’t want to hear the message again with Dad present, so I used the moment to check on Alvin.

  He lay on his stomach asleep, with one arm under his head and the other dangling from the side of the bed. I felt a stab of guilt. I had missed saying his prayers with him. Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die …

  I knelt beside his bed a few minutes longer listening to him breathe. His breath was light and even now, but I wondered if he’d had a nightmare while I had been gone.

  He moved but did not wake when I tucked his arm beneath the blanket. I left his bedroom door half-open.

  In the kitchen, I poured two cups of coffee and returned to the dining room, where Dad was standing near the window looking out. At this hour of the morning, there was nothing much to see.

  “Sure, it could be a crank call, Mr. Anderson, but she’s received too many of them.”

  “But she never mentioned anything.” Dad turned to face me, trying to hide the hurt expression. “Mali, you never mentioned anything.”

  “Because I didn’t think the calls were important and you would’ve worried needlessly. I didn’t think they were serious until last night.”

  I also hadn’t mentioned them because Dad hadn’t wanted me to pursue the lawsuit. If I won, he was afraid I’d return to the force. But I had no intention of going back. I’d seen too much.