Do or Die Page 16

  ——

  What day is this. Gotten so bad I am completely in love with heroin, would marry it if I could …

  ——

  Dad. I’m sorry. I felt ground giving way with each step. The further the walk, the greater the distance, the softer the sand sucking around my ankles. I felt it, knew it, and wouldn’t turn back. You pulled me out of the swamp but now my legs, my legs look as if rats had gotten to them.

  ——

  Pain. I would do anything to make it stop. I shot three grams and I didn’t die. I didn’t die and I’m pissed off. I didn’t die, dammit.

  I don’t know why or how I let him talk me into this. He did it because he hated you, Dad. I mean you love me. That’s why you beat him and nearly killed him. Nobody had ever loved him like you loved me and he couldn’t understand.

  ——

  I know now that I need to breathe. I’m clean now and have everything but the air I need in order to live. I am smothered. Twenty-eight and still the little girl whom you don’t want to see grow up. Maybe if Mom had been here, it would’ve been different. I’m making excuses again. I purposely went looking for a way out. Tried to test myself by hanging on the edge and, still being the little girl, I figured if I let go I’d fly rather than fall. And if I fell, you or somebody would be there. I look at my veins now and I can’t find them. They’re all used up.

  ——

  Glad I told him to kiss my ass. Since that’s all he seemed able to do. I was tired of lip service. He short-changed me and everybody else, only everybody else doesn’t know it. I can’t believe I was so stupid.

  ——

  I testified and glad I did. Didn’t know much about [smudged] operation but knew he kept a lot in the spare, the glove compartment and in that custom made slot [smudged] below the cup holder.

  ——

  Travis called. Spoke for two hours. Finally made up his mind to leave her, not for me, I think. But for his sanity. Which is well. I don’t need a crazy person to love. I’m crazy enough.

  ——

  Travis is coming here. I’m telling him that it’s all over. And my business will be settled.

  Ozzie was sitting up again when Dad closed the book.

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know, Ozzie. It’s hard to say anything behind this. No parent wants to see his kid fail, but sometimes—”

  Ozzie quieted him with a wave of his hand. “What did she mean by needing to breathe? That she was bein’ smothered? What did she mean?”

  Before Dad could frame an answer, he went on. “You know, Jeffrey, I tried my best. The best I could. Took every gig that came my way, through good times and bad. Worked them all ’cause I never knew when bad times would come around again. Everything comes in cycles, you know. Everything. So I made hay. And we tried to give her all the stuff I never had, you know, private school, music, the tennis. I didn’t realize …”

  He closed his eyes and raised both hands, palms up, as if to extract the answer from the air. Then just as quickly he dropped them and gripped his knees. “I shoulda called you earlier, Jeffrey, but I needed time to try to figure this out. That’s all I’ve been doin’, night and day and night. I sit by that window and watch dawn break, thinkin’ this is the day the answer’s gonna come to me. Then at night, I dream and try to piece together something from the dream. A sign or something. I come up with nothing. Nothing.”

  What about Travis? I wanted to ask. That was the last entry in the journal. There was not a line after that, but I decided to keep quiet until I could speak to Travis myself.

  I looked from Ozzie to my father and back again and wondered in the silence that surrounded us if, this time, Starr’s wake had finally begun.

  24

  At 3 A.M. I took Ruffin and walked home. On the way I stopped by Charleston’s to order some food for Dad and Ozzie but Jo Jo had gone home hours ago.

  “Things is slow around this time so I’m a lock up in a minute and make the run myself,” Charleston said as he filled two large take-out orders.

  “You’d do that for me?”

  “Hell no, not for you. But for the piano man. I like his sounds and want to keep on hearing them.”

  He winked and I laughed. A minute later I stepped out onto Malcolm X Boulevard. There had been no break in the heat and the avenue was crowded with folks strolling as casually as if they were making a run to the neighborhood bodega at high noon. Cars moved with stereos blasting in their wake; tenement stoops were crowded and those who were able to sleep in the apartments above did so with windows opened wide to the noise of the night. Whirring fans rotated below knotted curtains, trying in vain to pull in a wisp of air.

  A few people detoured at the sight of Ruffin and one commented on his size: “What do you feed your horse, sister?” This from a stoop lounger poised to fly inside his apartment if Ruffin so much as yawned.

  I chose not to answer but waved and continued walking, zigzagging through the blocks to Powell Boulevard. I passed under the weathered marquee of the old Renaissance Ballroom and hurried across the avenue just as the light changed.

  A step ahead of me, a man with a distinctive, pigeon-toed walk turned at the sound of Ruffin and froze at the sight of him.

  “My God, that’s a big dog …”

  “Yes, he is,” I said. “I hope we didn’t frighten you.”

  I looked at Travis Morgan as he stared at Ruffin. “Is he a show dog?” he asked, keeping a careful distance.

  “Not exactly,” I said, “but he’s worth his weight in gold, diamonds, and platinum.”

  “Now that’s what I call love,” he said.

  When he laughed, he tilted his head and half closed his eyes. He has nice teeth, I thought. His teeth are bright and perfect just like Tad’s.

  “I’m Mali Anderson,” I said and waited in the silence for him to make the connection. He gazed at me for a second and then extended his hand. “Right. Mali Anderson, the bass player’s daughter. I’ve seen you at the club. You know Ozzie Hendrix.”

  “I also knew his daughter,” I said. “As a child, Starr came to my house several times with her dad. For rehearsals.”

  I watched Travis’s shoulders fall and a fire seemed to go out of his eyes as he glanced away. “Small world, isn’t it,” he murmured. “How’s her father, how’s he holding—?”

  “Not too well,” I whispered. “As a matter of fact, I’m trying to help him find out what he can about her death.”

  I heard the deep intake of breath and caught his sidelong glance as we turned into Strivers Row.

  There is never a good time or place to talk about death. We were not in a bar, where that second drink might help to recall a forgotten detail, or, if necessary, quench painful memory; we were not in a restaurant, or even sitting in a park.

  A walk would have to do, so I did not stop, but moved on past my house. We walked past the other houses with their closed windows and drawn curtains, and small ornamental lights casting warm pools of yellow on the front steps.

  At intervals, the streetlights pulled our shadows before us and I remembered the childhood game of skipping and jumping and trying to catch up, and the shadow always remaining a step ahead.

  “I saw Starr the day she was killed,” Travis whispered. “The same day. We had some words and—”

  “Words? What did you argue about?”

  “Well, it wasn’t exactly an argument. I had phoned her and she said she had to see me, wanted to tell me something. I went over there but what she told me, I didn’t want to hear. Wasn’t prepared for it, I guess.”

  “What happened then?”

  “I left. Said I was going someplace to cool off.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “No place in particular. Just walked. Just like I’m doing now. I was trying to make sense of what she’d said. How it would be better if we didn’t see each other anymore. She had to get her life on track. ‘Move on’ was the way she put it. And I just wasn’t prepared to hear
that.”

  His voice had dropped to a whisper and he strode with his head down as if the cracked pavement would reveal the answer to his confusion.

  “You know, this’ll sound strange but she had become like an anchor. Even when she was going through her bad time, I always felt I needed her more than she needed me. I loved her. I never imagined we’d be apart.”

  “Not ever?”

  He stopped and shook his head. “I know what you’re asking,” he said, gazing at me. “Here I am a married man trying to eat his cake and have it too. Trying to play the game, both ends against the middle. That’s what you’re thinking, right? Well, even if I sound like I’m lying, I want you to know that I was working on a divorce when Starr died. That’s the truth. Starr was special. She was talented and passionate about what she wanted out of life.”

  “What did she want?”

  He stopped again to stare at me. “You’re asking me what she wanted and you knew her all her life?”

  “I knew she had at one time wanted to be the best damn jazz singer there ever was,” I replied. “She wanted to be like Sarah, Ella, and Betty Carter.”

  “Ah … yes.” He grew silent as we reached Frederick Douglass Boulevard and turned south, moving under the shade trees gracing the front of the St. Charles townhouses. We walked past the Harlem Collective boutique and at 135th Street strolled back to Powell Boulevard. He spoke again when we paused in front of the sealed windows of the old Small’s Paradise.

  “Starr had plans,” he said, gazing at the traffic moving past us. “She was very direct. Said no one was going to detour her again. To hell with everybody. When she said that, I knew it was only a matter of time before she said good-bye to me but even so, until that time I was willing to hang on to a small part of her. I just didn’t think the time would come so soon.

  “It’s one thing for someone to say good-bye, maybe move to another town, even another country. There’s always that chance you’ll run into them again. But when the person dies, that good-bye is forever.”

  He gazed across the avenue, adrift in memory. I let a minute pass before I spoke.

  “Who do you think killed her?”

  It took several seconds for him to answer. The sweat glistened on his face and neck and on the brown triangle of chest where his silk shirt was unbuttoned. He had really nice features, thick eyebrows and a strong jawline. I remembered what Amanda said about his pigeon-toed walk. He was a good-looking brother and I wondered if Starr had been the only other woman in his life besides his wife.

  “That pimp, that damn pimp killed her! Son of a bitch stopped everything. Stopped her life, everything.”

  He was shaking now and said this loud enough for a couple passing by to turn and stare. When they moved on, I said, “And did you kill him?”

  “No, but I wish I had.”

  “It was your gun they found at the scene.”

  “I know it but I didn’t do it.”

  “How could someone have gotten hold of your weapon?”

  He shook his head now. “It’s like I told Miss Jackson. The weapon was in the store. Under the counter near the register. The place is crowded most of the time, people asking questions, parents bringing the kids in for accessories. Folks just dropping in to talk about the latest software. As busy as the place is, I don’t have an assistant yet.”

  “So anyone could’ve reached under there, picked it up, sold it for some quick cash, and it ends up being used in a murder,” I said.

  “Stolen guns are used in murders all the time,” he said. “Except that my prints were found in her apartment. The police are saying I was out to avenge Starr’s death.”

  We continued down Powell Boulevard, passing the Jamaican Hot Pot. I felt a strong hunger pang and wished the restaurant had been open. I could have hitched my horse to a parking meter and we could have stopped in for a fried shrimp dinner and a glass of sorrel.

  “Do you usually stroll around at this late hour?” I asked. Of course he could have asked the same of me but he shrugged again.

  “Only when I have to figure something out,” he murmured. “Right now, I’m in the process of retrieving some data from my hard drives. Some of the units have been tampered with. The systems are down and I’ve hired someone to help me retrieve the information. Walking helps me to figure things out.”

  At 139th Street, we parted company and I turned into the block. I was alone with Ruffin and it was empty and quiet enough for me to pick up a sound of movement beyond the pad of his paws. His ears had perked up and he was alert. I turned quickly, only to stare at an empty street where light and shadow played through the thick-leaved trees. Had someone slipped between the parked cars? Or deep within the hedges of one of the gardens?

  An icy awareness crept up my spine and I remembered the old folks saying: “When you shake like that means somebody walkin’ on your grave.”

  I thought of the masked man and his parting words. My hand went to my pocket and I palmed the small canister of mace as I unlocked the door.

  Inside I called Dad to see if he was okay. What I really needed was to hear his voice, hear him cough, hiccup, sneeze, make some noise to connect me to anything but the specter I imagined hovering just beyond the locked door.

  “Yeah, we’re fine, Mali. The food arrived. Ozzie downed enough to take care of a busload of starvin’ dudes. That Charleston can cook, I’m tellin’ you.”

  I calmed down then, relaxed enough to fix a cup of chamomile tea, shower, and then climb into bed knowing that Ruffin was on duty at the front door. But sleep didn’t come easily. All the ins and outs of Starr’s diary—the things she had said and the stuff she didn’t—played in my head. I thought of Ozzie struggling to understand and come to terms with her need for “air to breathe.”

  I wanted to know more about S.C.’s lip service and why Travis had not killed him. He certainly had been angry enough. And the final notation in Starr’s diary was about Travis. He was coming to see her.

  There was nothing after that.

  25

  The thing I liked about the Lenox Lounge was that you could step in at any time and find something happening, something going on: the jukebox blasting, a combo playing, the piano man in the back riffing through a new number, a middle-aged couple in the middle of the floor dancing with arms entwined and eyes closed as if they were in the center of their own living room.

  There’s the clatter of conversation. Laughter curling up through the smoke of cigarettes to graze against the leather ceiling. The door opening to admit a breath of new air and a new face to scan the old ones and New Face stepping out again to disappear into the flow of the crowded avenue.

  When I stepped in, Too Hot was not there. I looked at my watch then slipped into the booth nearest the door, ordered an Absolut currant on the rocks with an orange juice chaser, and decided to wait. It was early evening and the place was just getting crowded. The piano man was into his sound, the door opened and closed, and folks came and went.

  I sipped my drink and thought of Alvin, who would be home in less than a week. His call had awakened me and I could hear the crash of the surf in the background as he spoke. “Like I said, Mali. This is the bomb, but I gotta kick it with the crew for a few days before school starts. I gotta work out on the court and connect with Clarence before he leaves for Savannah State College.”

  Through the usual bad connection, he could barely contain his enthusiasm. “You know, Clarence is gonna be on the basketball team, and all them honeys are gonna be fallin’ on him like rain.”

  Dad, who had been on the extension, cut in. “Those honeys, Alvin. And Clarence is going to hit those books or he’ll hit the road and wind up back here with no degree and no future.”

  “Yeah, I know, Grandpa. That’s why I have to hook up with my boy before he leaves. He’s gonna be into some serious study down there.”

  “Just so you understand that, son.”

  “Oh, I understand. Yes, sir. I understand. That why I think I oughta
come home before he leaves.”

  “We miss you too,” I said. “We’ll be glad to see you.”

  I thought about him and wondered how much taller he’d gotten since I’d last seen him six weeks ago. Some boys seemed to grow a foot a day.

  My thoughts wandered and I remembered last night’s encounter with Travis and decided that Chrissie was a fool. Then again, maybe so was I. The idea of calling Tad began to take shape and I thought of what I could say to apologize. Just then the door opened and Too Hot stepped in and moved toward the bar. He smiled at the barmaid, peeked into the back room to wave at the piano player, then turned and worked his way through the crowd again.

  I held up my hand and he came over and sat beside me. As usual, he was impeccably dressed in a light gray linen suit, white shirt, and dark tie. He always wore a tie, perfectly knotted, even in toaster-hot temperatures. His cologne left a faint apple fragrance when he moved.

  “Miss Mali. What’s goin’ on?”

  He removed his hat and placed it on the table as the barmaid strolled over. She was tall, thin, and in good humor.

  “What’re you havin’ today?”

  “You forgot?”

  “No, but sometimes folks like to change up every now and then,” she said, glancing from me to give him a meaningful look. Too Hot caught the look and the message behind it. “This is Jeffrey Anderson’s daughter,” he said by way of introduction and advising by his formality that the meeting was strictly on the up-and-up. She looked at me again and straightened her shoulders. “I’m sorry. How are you?”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “So bring me my usual,” Too Hot said, “and another drink for Miss Anderson.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She practically saluted before she left us.

  “I don’t mean to be so hard,” he sighed, shaking his head as she moved across the floor, “but sometimes it don’t pay to be too friendly.”

  I nodded, wondering how he could avoid it. He was a fixture on the scene and everyone knew him and he knew everyone. Even though he had retired from his lucrative numbers business, he still held title to several parcels of private and commercial property in the area. So it was not friendship so much as respect that he expected.