Do or Die Read online

  We guided him across the street to a bench near the park. He held his head and we listened to his halting breath in the silence. Finally, he looked up and stared across the street. He gazed at the small crowd, the crime scene van, and the squad cars with their rotating lights disturbing the gray morning.

  “You know, Jeffrey, I shoulda brought her on the trip. Just had her pack a bag and come on with us. This woulda never happened if she hadda been with me …”

  “How did it happen?” I whispered. “Was it a break-in? Was she robbed?”

  He hunched his shoulder and shook his head at an angle, as if a weight held it to one side. “Can’t tell if anything’s missing. Didn’t have time to look. I went to use the key she gave me, but the door was unlocked, closed but unlocked. Something was behind the door when I pushed. It was her, laid out, throat cut ear to ear.”

  He drew a deep breath and seemed to stop breathing for a second before he continued.

  “She shoulda came with me. But no. Said she had to be here. Had some business she had to take care of. And look what happened. Look at what happened.”

  Look at what happened … He closed his eyes and repeated this slowly, as if in the repetition he might uncover some mistake, some error of the eye that would self-correct—she’d only been sleeping after all and eventually would awaken and make things whole again.

  “I called her, soon as we cleared the deck,” he continued. “No answer. Machine didn’t kick in and I thought she mighta been in the shower or something. So I came straight here. Knew we didn’t have much time and I wanted her to be ready for this gig. Especially for this gig. And I found her layin’ there. Don’t know how long she been dead. God, if I’d only been here. If I’d only …”

  I glanced over his shoulder and caught my father’s eye. His expression seemed to say, “Don’t ask any more questions. Not now. He’s not up to it.”

  I nodded and pointed toward the building, then left them and walked across the street. I eased around the crowd again, smaller now that most of the onlookers, disappointed that the body was not forthcoming, had wandered back to the double- and triple-locked security of their own homes. Some of the cruisers had also dispersed, leaving two cars to flash on the remaining spectators clustered in tight whispering knots.

  Tad stood in the doorway of the building, talking in a low voice to one of the identifying technicians. I waited until the tech disappeared inside again before I signaled. Tad’s face, when he approached, was like stone. His mouth was a fine, thin line and his eyes, usually pools so calm and deep I wanted to dive into them, were now narrowed and focused like a laser on this latest circumstance.

  “How’s Ozzie doing?” he asked.

  “Not too well. Probably still in shock,” I whispered, following his gaze across the street to the bench. Ozzie sat with his head resting against the iron railing and Dad sat next to him, whispering in a voice too low to carry on the humid air.

  Spears of pale pink light were pushing through the gray and Ozzie appeared to be sleeping but I knew he wasn’t. He nodded every now and then as Dad continued to speak. I’d find out later what he’d said. Right now, Tad was guiding me away from the nearby knot of onlookers.

  We settled in the front seat of his favorite unmarked car, a battered Olds with molting paint and a loose spring in the front seat that let the passenger know that even the shortest ride was not meant to be a joy but one of serious butt-kicking official business.

  He folded an old thick copy of the Sunday Times over the spring and I was able to slide in without too much damage to my hips.

  “Any ideas?” I asked. My voice was soft in the closed space and he looked at me. I saw fatigue shade his eyes and he glanced through the window.

  “Whoever did her in must’ve really had it in for her. The cut’s so deep, it severed her windpipe and carotid artery and more than likely she bled to death in a matter of minutes.”

  I waited, wondering if he was going to tell me the rest. Things that I and some folks already knew.

  “There’re old track marks on her arms and the insides of her ankles.”

  “But she wasn’t into that anymore,” I said. “In fact, she’d turned her life completely around, had gotten herself together and was ready to sing at—”

  “I know. There’s a blowup of the poster in her living room. With an X slashed across it top to bottom.”

  “Damn. Somebody was mad.”

  He closed his eyes and shook his head and now with the smile gone I saw weariness catching up with him also.

  “She may’ve started a new life, Mali, but sometimes it pays to settle some outstanding debts before closing the book.”

  I did not answer but wondered if that’s what Ozzie meant.

  She had some business, something she had to take care of …

  Through the window, I watched the medical examiner step from the house and walk the few feet to his car. Then two other men—morgue attendants with latex-gloved hands ghost white against their dark work clothes—emerged carrying a canvas bag shaped like a small rolled carpet. Starr had been only five feet tall and inside the bag could have been the body of a child. The onlookers stirred and a young woman in the crowd started to cry. Then someone else, someone who’d probably known Starr or had heard her practicing—started to sing in a voice that was very old, then gave way to a hollow call. When the others joined in, the hollow echo filled out, thickened with grief.

  I had one foot out of the car when I heard Ozzie cry out as if he were locked in a stranglehold. Then he sprang up from the bench, his eyes wide as if searching out the voice. And before Dad could catch him, he collapsed to the ground.

  3

  He had managed to sit up just as Tad and I reached him. Dad knelt down, steadying him.

  “We’re taking you to the hospital, Ozzie. You’ve had a terrible shock. You—”

  “No. No, man. I’m … I’m all right. Just get me home. Just take me home.”

  We piled into Tad’s car and drove west on 125th Street. At this hour, traffic was slow but smooth. I gazed out the window at the landscape of steel-shuttered stores and deserted sidewalks, streets that in a few hours would be dense with people. But even in the density, in the flow and rush of pedestrians, I knew there was an absence, a large hole lying like a presence just beneath the high-noon hustle. An absence so palpable it had become a presence to me.

  I closed my eyes and listened to Ozzie’s labored breathing above the whir of the tires. Part of me flitted away from him, back to the street, the crossroads of black America where, despite the feel-good political hoopla, those streets were not open to certain traffic. I gazed at the Apollo Theatre where Inner City Broadcasting was under seige by the politicians. Across from the theatre, Mart 125 was still battling to control their enterprise. The African street vendors had been swept away by the “Downtown Clown” in City Hall to parts unknown. Black America’s crossroads with someone else directing the traffic. I felt the large hole growing larger.

  I opened my eyes and gazed straight ahead. This was a hell of a time for political musing, but I suppose I did it to avoid the reality of Ozzie’s nightmare. Two years ago, his wife had lost her battle with cancer. He had pulled his only child from a swamp of drugs only to lose her also. This time to murder. How could this have happened?

  Ozzie was probably thinking the same thing as we pulled up in front of his house, a large brownstone situated between Manhattan and Morningside avenues two blocks from the old Sydenham Hospital. He occupied the parlor floor and garden level and had left the upper floor vacant, ready for Starr in case she ever needed to return.

  His wife and daughter were gone. No one was coming back. Now he would be competely alone in this house.

  Ozzie stood at the curb staring vacantly past the iron gate. His gaze traveled up to the top floor with its curtained windows and shades half drawn. “Well, I guess … I guess this is it. I suppose …”

  Dad took his arm and led him through the gate and up the st
airs.

  “You two head on home,” he said. “I’m gonna stay with him a while. I’ll see you later.”

  Tad nodded. Any further questions at this point would have been fruitless.

  “Dad, call me if you need anything.”

  I kissed him and hugged Ozzie and returned to sit in the car. Daylight flooded everything now. Trees, shrubs, and planters, clipped and cultivated, bloomed behind high wrought-iron railings. Folks were opening doors, stepping out to a new August day, and moving in a steady stream toward the subway. The block was small and lovely and held a closed feeling of privacy, of tranquillity. I listened to the birds chatter and wondered how a dream could have disintegrated so quickly and plunged us all into a nightmare.

  A week earlier, we had been aboard ship and I was lounging in a deck chair scanning the flat Atlantic horizon. Calm sea. Bright sun breaking through scudding pink-tinted clouds. Tad was massaging a lavender-scented oil on my legs and concentrating so hard, I couldn’t keep the smile from my face.

  He had surprised me when he booked the jazz cruise, not only because Dad’s group was scheduled to perform on board but also as a kind of therapy for me. He felt that I needed to get away, to try to forget the nightmare I’d just gone through with that serial killer who had terrified most of Harlem. The scars on my legs from the episode were still visible and Tad was determined to slowly smooth them away.

  He looked up from his labors and whispered, “How we doin’, baby? Need more lotion or more motion?”

  I leaned over and tilted his visor so I could look into his sun-flecked eyes. Sometimes, he asked the damnedest questions. Most of the time he already had the answer. My fingers traced the edge of silver at his temples, then I kissed him quickly, without a word, and we left the deck, heading for the cabin, intending to explore this motion thing in more detail. He slipped the key in the door when someone called, “Going in so soon?”

  I heard Tad murmur, “Oh, shit,” as Chrissie Morgan strolled toward us clad in a see-through, knotted midriff blouse and a pair of pressure-resistant Daisy Dukes and not a varicose vein in sight on her fifty-year-old legs. The rest of her wasn’t too bad either, what with her short-cut hair streaked gold to cover the gray and her green contacts glimmering in her cruise-tanned face.

  Her stomach was flat as a board and she raised her hands casually to emphasize her ample hips. “You two aren’t going to nap, are you? It’s barely past noon.”

  “Ah, yes, Christine.” Tad smiled. “Sun kinda got to us so we’re gonna—”

  “How about a round of poker. I could use a partner.” Her voice was so low, I wondered if that tight bra had cut off her oxygen.

  “We’re rather tired,” I interjected, dispensing with decorum. “Perhaps another time.”

  “Yes, perhaps.” She looked at Tad and parted her mouth. The smile was large and off-center, like those of the portraits on the new money. Then she waved her hand and continued down the corridor.

  Inside the cabin, I sprawled across the bed watching Tad mix two Bellinis.

  “What’s with that woman?” he said, handing me a tall frosted glass. “Just because we’re all seated at the same dining table doesn’t mean we’re joined at the hip for the entire trip.”

  I sipped the peach-flavored champagne, offering no comment. I knew what her problem was. She hadn’t been able to keep her eyes off Tad the minute he’d walked up the gangway. And at dinner the first night out, it had taken less than a minute for me to decide I couldn’t stand her. An opinion confirmed when she had smiled at me and said, “What lovely eyes, but gray? A bit startling for your … uhm … for you.”

  I had felt the steady pressure of Tad’s hand on my knee under the table, signaling me to ignore her. Hell no. Here she was, sporting contacts so filmy they looked like cataracts. Girl had more nerve than a bad tooth and I intended to fix her, tooth and all, in the first round.

  “Some folks,” I said slowly, “have had a problem with my gray eyes and dark complexion ever since I was born. I can’t tell you what a joy it is to advise such stupid people to look the other way if they’re so disturbed.”

  We had been seated at a table for eight and a discreet silence descended, broken only by the soft clink of soup spoons quietly dipping into bowls of consommé.

  When it was safe for conversation to resume, she casually announced among other things that she was cruising as a single. “My girlfriend couldn’t make it,” she had murmured, “so I have the stateroom all to myself.” Her eyes had flitted around the table, lighting on each man before settling like a moth on Tad.

  Lying across the bed now, I wondered about her husband. Travis Morgan was well known in Harlem, a nice guy with a growing business selling and repairing computers. He was in his early forties, not bad-looking, a jazz lover who frequently dropped by the club. Why wasn’t he with her on this trip?

  The ship was due to dock in Bar Harbor the next day and I was looking forward to a shore dinner of Maine lobster—the real thing—with cole slaw and french fries and a king-sized napkin tucked under my chin to catch the drippings. I looked forward to drawn butter to dip the claws in. Even though the main meat was in the tail, I preferred the claws. Tad mixed another round of Bellinis and refilled my glass. Then he drew the curtains over the porthole and the cabin was suffused in a soft half-light. I felt the slow, undulating rhythm of the ship and watched as Tad moved toward me. For a brief second, I thought of Chrissie and hoped that before the cruise ended, I wouldn’t have to dip my claws in her hide.

  4

  That was several days ago. Now I stood outside Ozzie’s place and watched Dad lead him up the steps. The door closed behind them, shutting the world off from the grief I knew was coming. With no other relatives, it would probably fall to Dad to make the necessary arrangements: contact the undertaker, get the body released from the morgue, get in touch with friends and all the musicians Ozzie had played with.

  On the way home, Tad detoured to Pan Pan’s restaurant on 135th Street for breakfast. We ate silently, too tired to lift anything heavier than the waffles, bacon, sausage, and eggs. Talk was limited to “pass the biscuits, pass the butter, pass the check.”

  He dropped me off and I let myself into the house. Ruffin, our Great Dane, rose from his favorite spot near the fireplace, stretched, and approached with an accusatory look—reminding me that we had left him in our neighbor’s care, retrieved him yesterday, only to desert him again for several hours when Ozzie called.

  Even Alvin, my nephew, was away. He had chosen to spend the time on our friend Captain Bo’s schooner in St. Croix rather than cruise on the QE2.

  “Can I dive from the deck? Can I throw a line from the side? Can I hoist a sail?” he had asked, knowing very well that he could not.

  When Dad had nodded, Alvin said, “Then I’d rather hang out with Captain Bo. Besides, if the QE ain’t into hip-hop, I’m not interested.”

  “Isn’t. Isn’t into hip-hop,” Dad had corrected. He had rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and was still rolling them when we’d waved Alvin off at Kennedy to spend the time with the captain, Tad’s friend who owned a ninety-foot, four-masted sailboat in St. Croix. Dad had fumed as we drove back from the airport. “Hip-hop! After all I’ve taught that boy about jazz …”

  “Alvin’s still a kid,” Tad had said as he maneuvered through stop-and-slow traffic on the Grand Central Parkway. “He’ll get through this stage and eventually come to appreciate what you’re teaching him: that jazz is our religion, our heritage, our way of expressing who we are. He’ll come to understand that.”

  I said nothing, but privately nursed a quiet disappointment. This was the vacation of a lifetime, with performers who might not even be around when Alvin got through his stage, whatever it was.

  The cruise was over but Alvin was still away and the house seemed large in its emptiness. I picked up the phone and seconds later his voice came scratchily through a bad connection.

  “Hey, Mali? What’s goin’ on?”

&nbs
p; “Everything and nothing,” I replied. “Just called because I miss you and wanted to hear your voice.”

  “How was the cruise? I know Grandpa was hangin’ with the heavies. He make it through all right?”

  “Of course he did. He’s a pro himself,” I said. “He was great.”

  “I knew it. I knew he’d do it.” His voice faded into static again and I caught a fragment.

  “… home in two weeks, okay?”

  “Two weeks? You’ll be home?”

  “Yeah. Fishin’s great. Swimmin’s great. Weather’s fine. This is the bomb, man. I mean the bomb …”

  More static and I caught something pertaining to hang time and had a vision of him swinging from the yardarm, so I said, “How’s the captain?”

  “Bo said hello. Wants to know when you guys are comin’ down. I told him that after bein’ on the Queen, this’ll seem like small change.”

  “Oh, Alvin, you didn’t.” I had a vision of Bo canceling future invites. “Tell him we’d love to come, perhaps next summer, okay?”

  “No problem. Gotta go. Tell Morris and Clarence hello if you run into ’em. Tell Grandpa I love him.”

  More static and he clicked off, leaving me alone again, conscious of the quiet that seemed to close in.

  I wandered upstairs and lay across the bed, too tired to undress. Maybe I had gone beyond ordinary fatigue because for a time I seemed to float in a bodiless state somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, listening to a voice inside my head that would not turn off.

  “Starlight, star bright, first star I see tonight …”

  Ozzie had named his daughter Starr because, he said, she was destined to be one. She was three years younger than me but had always acted at least three years older. We hadn’t been particularly close, so she had grown in my imagination through Dad’s friendship with her father.

  As a child, she had come to the house with Ozzie from time to time and instead of hanging with me, she had preferred to sit in on rehearsals. There, she learned to handle a mike probably before she learned to properly handle a fork. While other girls I knew were sewing doll clothes, Starr was making stage costumes for herself.