Do or Die Page 19
His voice was soft but strong enough to turn off the noise in my head. When I turned, I saw that his face had softened also, though I could see he was in pain. Whether it was physical or emotional, I couldn’t tell. I watched as he moved toward me. The space grew smaller until we were eye to eye, then nose to cheek. Then I felt his mouth moving against the nape of my neck and his arms were around me squeezing so hard, I lost what little breath I had been holding. I heard his voice and felt his breath against my skin. “Girl. Don’t you know me by now?”
It was all he said, or at least all I heard or cared to hear. Then I felt the tremor in his chest, shoulders, arms, until it bubbled up, frightening me as laughter broke through.
“What?” I whispered, stepping back, hoping he wasn’t on the edge of a nervous break. “What is it?”
“Nothing. Everything,” he said, nodding his head.
“One of these days I’m going to see the light before I lose you forever.”
“That was just a warm-up,” I said, trying to calm down myself. “You should see me when I’m angry.”
We did not speak then. Instead, we sat on the sofa and I concentrated on the faint cry of a tugboat horn that floated in from the river, filled the silence, then died. The squawk of a gull followed. I thought of stepping out on the terrace but we remained as we were. I heard his deep breathing, the tick of the clock on the shelf above the rows of books, a car fourteen stories below sliding to a halt on bad brakes. I listened intently to these sounds, heard everything except the voice circling in my own head.
What had happened to this relationship? I was ready to beat down Chrissie and he was ready to beat Travis. If it wasn’t so damned sad, it would be truly funny. I made an effort and the voice turned off. Win, lose, or draw, I still had to do the right thing.
“The whole thing is there,” I said, breaking the silence and pointing to my envelope on the coffee table. “My notes, conclusions, everything.”
Then I remembered what Elizabeth had said about negotiating one’s way out of a tight spot without making the other guy look bad. Though I didn’t know how much worse the other guy could look, what with his face in a frown so tight, you’d think he’d just had his front teeth extracted.
But under normal circumstances, if you can negotiate, you can walk away with your life, your pride, even your love. So I added: “Perhaps there’s something, perhaps there’s nothing at all.”
“We’ll see,” he whispered.
In the dim light, I saw that his teeth were intact and perfect. Perfectly suitable to leave any mark he wanted on my neck.
“And how about staying for dinner? You’ll have to man the burners. The chef is totally emotionally incapacitated.”
29
I stared out Elizabeth’s office window at the crowd below and tried not to focus on the previous night. But I still tasted the wine, saw the candlelight, and heard Sade’s soft sound. Above all, I heard Tad’s sounds when he found he wasn’t as emotionally incapacitated as he thought.
But afterward, as I slept, he had gone over the notes and earlier this morning, before he said good morning, before he framed the question, he had shaken his head and I knew what was coming. By now, it sounded as familiar as saying hello.
“You sure you’re not allowing your emotions to …”
And I had not answered because the evening (except for the photo incident) had gone so well.
So I had listened, biting my tongue, as he outlined the same arguments Dad had laid out. Chrissie was on the cruise. Another woman had the same or similar shoes, and so on.
I had wanted to ask why and how he had come to have so many pictures of her, but he still seemed disturbed about Travis being with me so I decided to wait until we were back on firmer ground.
I reached for the phone and dialed Ozzie. Elizabeth came in and deposited a half dozen credit slips on the table as Ozzie’s voice rumbled in my ear.
“Yeah?”
Well, at least he was answering. A great improvement over a week ago so I tried to sound upbeat as I spoke. “Hi, this is Mali. Just called to say that I’ll be passing by Charleston’s in a minute and thought I’d bring you something. Is that okay?”
“Yeah. Say, that’s fine. Look, Mali, I want to apologize for being so rough on you and your dad all this time. You know what I mean, not calling and stuff. Your dad is the best friend I’ve got and I know I had him kinda worried about me. I didn’t mean—”
“I know, Ozzie. I know. No need to say anything.”
I hung up, wondering how I was going to talk him into letting me see Starr’s apartment. I needed to know if there was something, some small clue that might have been overlooked. I wondered if Ozzie had gone back since the night he had discovered her.
I sifted through the new receipts: an American Express printout of the purchases made on board included a spa treatment, three sweaters from the Cunard Collection shop, champagne at dinner, several liters of duty-free alcohol delivered to her cabin prior to disembarkation in New York, casino chips, laundry service, and several rolls of film. What I was looking for was not on her American Express but another credit card. I held the copy in my hand and studied it carefully.
I need one more thing and it’ll pull everything together. I cleared the table and placed the file in the cabinet.
“Still on Chrissie’s trail?” Elizabeth said, glancing up as I passed. Her expression told me that she had swelled the ranks of the unbelievers.
“I’m going to see Ozzie,” I said, sidestepping the question.
Outside, to my surprise, I found that the weather had finally given us a break. In a matter of a few hours, the sweltering blanket had rolled away and a brisk, cool breeze wrapped around me as I moved under the Apollo Theatre’s marquee. At Malcolm X Boulevard, I turned north and strolled to Charleston’s, where a slow-moving line stretched to the curb.
Charleston, a few months after he had opened, had cut a small window in the plate glass and from time to time he angled it open. The aroma now spilled out to drift over the crowd, whetting appetites and reminding the impatient ones that no matter how long the wait, it was worth it.
I had suggested that the vent was probably illegal and a cheap marketing ploy.
“So what,” he’d said. “Them burners is hot. I need some air.”
“How’s my piano man?” he now asked when I finally reached the counter.
“I’ll let you know later,” I said. “One thing for sure, your meals are just what he needs.”
His face was wreathed in smiles as he packed an extra order and then pushed the money back toward me.
“Least I can do,” he whispered.
When I turned into the block the music flowed toward me, so haunting I hesitated to ring the bell. It seemed like ages since I’d heard his fingers on the keys and now I was afraid to disturb him. I sat on the steps, listening until the last note faded twenty minutes later. Before I could ring the bell, he opened the door.
“Saw you sittin’ out there,” he said, walking back to sit at the piano. “It’s somethin’ I’m workin’ on. What do you think?”
“It’s beautiful, Ozzie. Really beautiful.”
“It’s for Starr,” he murmured, taking the package I extended. “It came to me last night. The notes, the melody, they just came to me about three A.M. and I got up, got myself together, and started puttin’ ’em on paper, just started playin’.”
“I didn’t want it to end,” I whispered, “that’s why I waited.” And for the first time, I thought I saw a trace of a smile.
Charleston had packed so much food, it was easy enough to share everything. But not so easy to say why I had come to visit. I filled two plates with chicken, ribs, sweet potatoes, collard greens, and red rice. We ate in silence until he said, “You know, I was thinkin’, I need to go over there. See what’s what. Ain’t been back since it happened, you know.”
I remained quiet and he looked at me and shrugged. “Now’s as good a time as any. Gotta do it while I’m in a frame
of mind, you know what I mean?”
“You’re right,” I said, gathering the paper plates and putting them in the trash. Then I grabbed my bag and was waiting at the door when he came back down the stairs. He had changed into a light cotton sweater and a pair of jeans and sandals. He appeared calm but a second later, he brushed his hand over his eyes and drew in a deep breath, as if venturing out was a critical move. I waited, holding the door open and holding my breath, hoping he would not find an excuse to retreat back upstairs.
We avoided the density of 125th Street and chose instead to walk across 124th Street but even on this relatively quiet block, several people recognized him.
We strolled past Rice High School and in the middle of the block, people left their stoops to offer handshakes and condolences:
“Sorry about Starr, Ozzie.”
“Man, I’m sorry about what happened. Hope to see you back on track soon.”
“Sorry, brother. I’m real sorry.”
He hugged a lot, received several pats on the shoulder, and the short distance turned out to be a very long walk.
A half hour later, we sat down on the bench across the street from her house. It had grown dark and the cast-iron frame of the Mount Morris fire watch tower loomed seventy feet above us in the center of the park.
The streetlights blinked on and lights circling the perimeter of the tower also beamed up. I gazed at the octagonal structure and the spiral staircase leading to the covered observatory where the old fire bell hung.
When Harlem had been largely rural, one hundred fifty years earlier, the bell was used as an alarm but it hadn’t been used since 1870, when fire alarm boxes were installed.
“You know,” Ozzie said, gazing up at the tower, “in 1973, they renamed this park after Marcus Garvey, the black nationalist leader.
“Sometimes I wonder about all these names and places,” he went on. “Look how we just strolled across Lenox Avenue, a street now named for Malcolm X, a man the FBI once called the most dangerous man in America. Now he has a movie that makes me stop what I’m doin’ to sit down and press my nose to the screen every time it comes on television.
“He died ’cause he was able to dissect the lies that were put on us from the time we stepped ashore dragging those chains.
“He taught us to reread history, so you know he had to be cut loose. Now he has a postage stamp and the only danger is crossing the avenue named after him.
“Marcus Garvey was just as dangerous, you know,” he said, pointing over his shoulder at the park. “With that Universal Negro Improvement Association, he led the largest black mass movement this country had ever seen. Who knows where we could’ve been today if they hadn’t deported him.
“He wanted us to take control of our lives and that made him a double threat.
“Today we got a large park, a little history, and not much else. Things ain’t changed.”
He continued to stare at the bell tower and murmured, “Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it.”
“Worth what?” I asked.
“Worth goin’ on. Worth tryin’ … you know, the drugs are still killin’ our kids, wipin’ out whole families. We—”
“Ozzie, don’t. Please don’t. Starr wouldn’t want you thinking like this. We’ve always managed to face the odds and beat them. We take on life day by day, and some days are not as good as others. No one expects you to bounce back overnight. You’ve got to take it slow.”
He looked at me in the shadow of the park lights.
“Jeffrey’s a lucky man. He got a wonderful daughter. Thanks for listenin’ to me go on and on. I know you already know all this stuff but I was talkin’ to keep from thinkin’ about what’s waitin’ upstairs. Behind her door …”
He rose from the bench, holding his back as if pain would not give him a break. Then he looked at the key in his hand.
“Now is not the time, Mali. I just can’t do it. Not right now. Not tonight. Maybe if folks hadn’t stopped me, called her name. Maybe if—”
“But, Ozzie, there might be something in the apartment that was overlooked, something that—”
“No,” he said, glancing around. “But you can step in if you want to. And call me later if you want. Let me know what’s what.”
With that, he dropped the key in my hand and left me sitting there. I watched him move along the sidewalk, in and out of the small pools of streetlight, until he disappeared.
I remained where I was, staring at the cars racing around the traffic circle. I did not want to enter that apartment alone and I watched for him, listened for his footsteps, hoping he would change his mind.
A few minutes passed and I resigned myself. He wasn’t coming back. I felt my own resolve draining away and knew if I waited, I wouldn’t be going any place but home.
30
After the forensic team had finished its work, the apartment had been left unsealed. I turned the key in the lock and stepped into the darkened space. The flick of the light switch bathed the living room in a soft, almost romantic ambience and I wished I were stepping in under different circumstances. The Victorian-style furniture made the room seem smaller than it was but Starr had had good taste and the pieces, though not authentic, were well made.
Her image, larger than life, still smiled from the X-slashed poster leaning against the wall, and two chairs were overturned, their cushions scattered across the floor like plump, oversized Frisbees. I wasn’t sure if they had been moved during the attack or during the police investigation so I left them where they were.
The stains on the floor near the door had turned black and although they were dry, I avoided stepping on them as I made my way to the center of the room. The stillness unnerved me and I was glad I had left the door unlocked and partly open. Rap music sounded from the apartment near the end of the hall; I needed a connection to the noise of the living.
I heard no movement beyond the living room and knew I was alone. The windows were closed and stale heat, which hadn’t circulated for days, now pressed down, almost suffocating me. But even in this hot place, the narrow trickle of perspiration trailing down the small of my back triggered a chill.
I dismissed the feeling and looked around me. The apartment was laid out in a perfect square, and from where I stood in the living room I could see the large bedroom to my left and the kitchen with replicas of old-fashioned appliances—hooded stove, free-standing sink—straight ahead of me.
From the bedroom, a door led to the bathroom. There was also a door leading from the kitchen to the bathroom.
I decided to look into the bathroom first, the bedroom next, then the kitchen, and finally the living room.
The oval-mirrored medicine cabinet held the usual supply of aspirin, toothpaste, Band-Aids, and mouth-wash. The claw-foot bathtub had a faint ring, as if Starr had bathed just before she was attacked. She had been found in her bathrobe so she had probably left the bathroom to answer the doorbell.
Ozzie had said the gown she had planned to wear that night had been draped across the chair in the bedroom. It was not there now and I wondered if she had been cremated in it.
The cosmetics on the dresser reminded me of a still life: brilliant red lipstick spiraling up from an uncapped tube. A small jar of face cream. An eyebrow pencil, and several tissues, some faintly smudged with makeup. A wide-tooth comb lying near a brush and an old, Victorian-style gilt-edged hand mirror completed the tableau but told me nothing except I was glad Ozzie had not come in with me. Maybe later, after Dad and I could return and clear away this painful inventory.
The wastebasket near the dresser had been emptied, as had the basket in the bathroom, probably by the investigation unit. All the drawers were opened and clothing hung over the sides. The closet was crammed, and coat pockets already turned inside out.
I saw that the corners of the rug had also been turned back so I returned to the bathroom and stood in the doorway, my gaze sweeping the area near the commode, the tub, the basin, under the basin. Nothing.
Exactly like the delicate picks nestled near the mound of dessert chocolates on the tables in the Queen’s Grille, the cruise ship’s dining room.
I slipped a napkin under it and rolled it up, humming along with the rap beat that floated in but adding my own words: “Whatcha gonna say when the DNA … gotcha on the run and you can’t have fun … Whatcha gonna do when they …”
If the results matched, then Miss Big Hips would soon be swinging them at the guards, some of whom had no taste anyway when it came to prisoners.
The rap beat disappeared, shut off as if a door had been closed. I stood still, a cascade of deep feeling flowing through me: not fear but intense bitterness. Hatred. Jealousy. Strange emotions capable of draining the soul and the spirit and emptying the mind of rational thought. And capable of making the hair on one’s head stand on end in moments of intuition.
I sensed her presence before I actually saw her. When I turned around she was standing in the living room near one of the chair cushions, hands on hips in that familiar pose.
“You make this mess?” she asked pleasantly.
“I was about to ask you the same thing,” I replied, stepping into the room to face her. I looked at the size 10 sweater stretched over the size 14 frame and wondered again how the sister managed to draw breath. More important, I wondered if she had a weapon. None was visible but I knew she wouldn’t have stepped into a situation unprepared to go the distance.
“So what did you hope to find out by coming on to my husband the other night? Or should I say the other morning?”
Coming on to her husband? I knew folks had been in the street to beat the heat that night but I didn’t realize a whole damn parade was trailing me. First Tad. Now her. Who else was on the scene?
“I was trying to tie up some loose ends,” I said, watching her hands to make sure they didn’t find their way to her jacket. Her boldness let me know she indeed had a weapon, I was certain of that, but what kind, I didn’t yet know.