No Time to Die Read online

  People stared as we passed and there was a silence about them that I tried to ignore. We moved away from the building to the curb, where I finally drew a breath so deep my chest hurt.

  The ambulance and the squad car turned the corner at the same time with sirens blaring. The rotating lights splashed over us as the officers and EMS technicians disappeared inside.

  Minutes later Elizabeth tapped my arm. “Mali …” Her voice was soft as she pointed, and I turned to watch another car pull up behind the squad car. Detective Tad Honeywell stepped out. He spotted me before I called.

  “What’s going on, Mali? You all right?”

  “I … don’t know. I won’t know until I find out what’s causing the odor. Super thinks it’s apartment 4G, where my friend Claudine lives.”

  “You were up there?”

  “Yes. We three were supposed to have dinner together.”

  “When did you last speak to her?”

  “Three days ago,” Elizabeth said. “And I left a message yesterday and two messages earlier today.”

  Tad shook his head but he had already taken on that professional cover and I could read nothing in his expression.

  “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  He made his way through the crowd, which had grown larger, drawn by the spinning lights of the squad car and ambulance. I moved to the other side of the avenue, taking Elizabeth with me. The intersection of 140th Street and Edgecombe was now blocked and traffic had to detour. Several minutes later the EMS workers came back through the crowd, placed their kits in the ambulance, and pulled away.

  Tad emerged from the building and walked toward us, moving slowly, shaking his head. The odor had saturated his clothing and I wondered how close he was able to get before he had to turn away.

  “Is it 4G?” I asked, not wanting to say Claudine’s name.

  “Yeah. I’m sorry, Mali. I’m sorry.”

  Elizabeth put her hands to her head and I held her shoulders and began to cry. The three of us had been friends. Claudine had first been a friend of my older sister, Benin, whom she’d met in graduate school. My sister died in Europe several years ago. Claudine had taught school in Philadelphia for a while, then returned to New York. The times we’d gone out, she’d talked so much about Benin that I’d come home close to tears. I looked at Tad now and asked, “What … happened to her?”

  “Strangulation.”

  “What?”

  “Wire.”

  I stood there in the fading light of the early evening, not wanting to understand what I’d just heard.

  “A wire?”

  I turned to Elizabeth but her wide eyes only confirmed what I didn’t want to believe. Through the fog of shock, Tad’s voice came to me: “I’m putting you two in a cab. I’ll call you as soon as I can, Mali. I’m sorry.”

  “No!” I backed away. “No cab! No nothing!” I screamed, watching the surprise and confusion as Elizabeth moved toward me. “No!”

  I turned and ran toward the building, tearing through the crowd and muscling my way around the patrolman near the stairs. I heard a voice, Tad saying, “Let her go! She can see it.”

  I ran up four flights, with my hand against my mouth, which did not help at all. The odor was at once powerful, numbing. If it was Claudine, I wanted to see her, connect her to it; otherwise I’d wonder the rest of my life how it happened. As I’d been left to wonder about Benin. Tad was behind me but did not try to restrain me.

  I made my way to the kitchen, almost dizzy from lack of air, then leaned against the table and stared. A chair had been overturned, the canisters on the counter near the fridge were covered with dried black stains. The body on the floor was Claudine but I only recognized the bathrobe I had given her as a birthday present last year, pale pink silk with a corded belt with tassles on the end.

  The robe had been spread open, her stomach a mountain of gas, and her face flattened as if a steamroller had gone over it. Her features had disintegrated in the humidity. On her face where her mouth once was were flakes of some kind. Cereal. It had been scattered in her eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. It was on her chest and between her sprawled legs.

  I fell back against Tad and a minute later found myself back out in the street, sitting on the curb, staring, Elizabeth shouting, and Tad pressing a handkerchief against my mouth as I retched until my stomach was on fire.

  “Turn that fuckin’ radio off! How long we got to listen to the news? You hoppin’ and jumpin’ from ’INS to CBS every time they mention that girl gettin’ strangled. Got it blastin’ so loud, who the hell was she, anyway? Your dumb-ass girlfriend?”

  Hazel’s laughter stopped long enough for her to raise the forty-ounce bottle of Colt 45 to her swollen face. She stood in the doorway of her son’s room and he could hear the loud swallowing from where he lay on his bed, hoping, praying, that maybe this time she’d misswallow and the liquid would rush down the wrong pipe. He glared at her upturned arm, and in the dim light, imagined a ham with the fat clinging to it, sliding along the meat rack at a slaughterhouse.

  “And another thing, when you gonna git to this room? Smell like a shithouse in here. Now you got you a little jay-oh-bee again, it done gone to your head and you takin’ showers two times a day, but don’t tell me you can’t smell this dirt.”

  He sat up on the edge of his bed, stiff as a soldier at reveille, still gazing at his mother. Her 350-pound bulk crowded the door, blocking out what light there was. And he could feel rage and terror competing for space within him.

  Shithouse. Like she one to talk. I know she here before I even put my key in the door. When the fuck was the last time she seen water? Maybe two, no, three months ago? And that punk-ass boyfriend had to call the fire department to jack her out the tub. From then on, it was “bird baths” as she like to call it.

  He wanted to squeal with laughter, but fright held the sound to the back of his throat. Bird baths. There was no bird on earth, in fact or fiction, that resembled this woman. Except maybe something roaming Jurassic Park. And then you’d need a double-size wraparound drive-in movie screen to get the full picture. No wonder the fuckin’ dumb boyfriend split. Probably figured what little he was snatchin’ from her check wasn’t worth it.

  He bit his tongue and kept his shaking hands balled at his sides as he watched her drain the bottle and luxuriate in a long-drawn-out belch. Her stubby fingers pushed the Dutch-bob wig from her sweating face and then jabbed at him.

  “Now, you throw your ass down from your shoulder and git this room in some kinda shape. ’Cause you got a piece a job again don’t cut no ice. Ain’t no maid service in here!”

  He remained silent, thinking: It ain’t about no maid service. It ain’t about that and she know it. Not the way her room lookin’. Even the roaches ’fraid to step in there …

  She turned away and he watched her waddle back down the hall. He could hear her moving through the living room past the battered sofa resting on the six cinder blocks; the two milk crates with the thin piece of Formica tattooed with cigarette burns that served as a coffee table. The tattoos were no longer visible beneath the pile of Chinese takeout cartons and moldy pizza boxes.

  He heard her curse and kick empty beer cans out of her path. The television, broken for the last three days and resting on a pyramid of plastic crates, would probably be the next target. She had cursed at it too many days. It was time to do more.

  He heard the crash and didn’t move, but waited to find out if she had fallen. Even if she had, he didn’t intend to do anything. Except to step over her on his way out of the dark smelly place. But the other, private voice was quiet. Nobody told him he had to go out.

  So he crept forward only far enough to close his bedroom door and muffle the sound of the cursing. Then he sprawled back against the greasy pillows. Naw. Ain’t goin’ nowhere. Not tonight. I’m on the news. How ’bout that. Just like last time. I’m on the news … Keep this up, I be on Geraldo!

  I stood with Elizabeth near the curb outside o
f Benta’s Funeral Home less than two blocks from where Claudine had lived and watched a bank of clouds scatter before the light wind. The sun broke through in white, midday brilliance, and I knew if Claudine were alive, we’d be planning a quick run out to Jones Beach. Instead, we were about to head uptown to Woodlawn Cemetery. Woodlawn. With a sealed bronze box covered with bouquets of roses, wreaths, sprays of lilacs.

  Last year around this time Elizabeth and I had gone to a weekend party at Sag Harbor where Claudine had finally agreed to wear a thigh-high two-piece swimsuit while Elizabeth and I sported the thong thing. Claudine was five-six with braided hair so thick that folks thought she’d had someone else’s hair woven in. She had walked along the beach that day in her deep orange two-piece with her hands on her hips and her head bent against the breeze, smiling.

  The water eddied around her ankles, and her brown skin had sparkled where the spray hit. Two guys, mid-thirties but just entering adolescence, it seemed, trailed behind her, emerging from their trance long enough to playfully elbow each other out of the way.

  They must have called out or said something because she’d turned to face them and her laughter drifted back to where Elizabeth and I sat on the blanket. We looked at each other, then at Claudine again. She was laughing, soft and spontaneous, not so much at the antics but finally laughing her way out of the box that her husband had beaten her into.

  She had shone, had actually begun to move away from what she’d gone through with James. The two guys came back with her to the blanket, and when Claudine pulled a bottle of Veuve Clicquot from the cooler and couldn’t find extra glasses, Brandon, the one who’d introduced himself first, must have set a record racing to the beach house to get some. Claudine had watched him and laughed again, laughed until her eyes filled.

  “You think it was James, don’t you?” Elizabeth said, interrupting my reverie. “I can see it in your face that you think it was him. You know how wild he’d gotten when she had him served with the papers.”

  She’d suggested this several times over the last few days, even as we went through the motions of helping Claudine’s parents with the funeral arrangements. I even contacted Brandon, who had opened the champagne that day and who had been e-mailing her every day since then. He’d been shocked into silence, and when he caught his breath, he said, “Not Claudine. Not her. What happened?”

  I had no answer.

  The Daily Challenge and the Amsterdam News had come up with their own theories, but it was speculation. There were no clues—at least none that the papers knew about.

  The service ended and I watched Claudine’s parents emerge from the dim interior of the funeral home. Mrs. Hastings held her husband’s arm, her face a map of anguish as she walked toward the limousine. Yesterday at home, she couldn’t contain her bewilderment when she finally held the obituary and began to read it as if it had belonged to someone else. Then she pronounced Claudine’s name and birth date, and the scream that came did not stop until the doctor arrived.

  Later, when she had dropped into a fitful sleep, Mr. Hastings left her bedside and approached me. He was tall, reed-thin, and usually stood straight as a rod. Now he was shaking, as if sixty-seven years of life had sneaked up from behind and knocked him sideways. Even his voice wavered. “Mali, you were once a cop. What …? How …?”

  He raised his hands, trying to pull the answer from the air, then lowered them to hold onto my arm. I felt the tremor through my jacket sleeve. “Listen, Mali.” He softened his voice and nodded toward the bedroom where his wife lay oblivious of the activity going on around her. “My old queen will grieve herself into her grave, right behind our child. God knows I can’t let that happen. Somebody’s got to do something …”

  The only times I’d seen an older man cry was when Dad broke down at Mom’s funeral and again at the news of my sister Benin’s death. Mom had been so healthy, a nonsmoker, a dancer, walker, jogger, but in an instant her heart had pumped that erratic, extra beat and taken her away.

  Benin and her husband died in a hiking accident in Europe. I thought of them now as I watched Mr. Hastings and knew it was too late, too useless, to ask how death could arrive so quickly and in so many guises.

  Elizabeth and I watched the rest of the mourners step forward to enlarge the crowd gathered in tight nervous knots. Deborah, our longtime friend, who had flown in from Washington, stepped from the door and moved toward us. Her face was swollen, as if the tears hadn’t stopped from the moment I’d called with the news.

  No greetings, only whispered amazement that something like this could have happened. Claudine’s building was supposed to be safe. The lobby door was always locked. Just as her own door was supposed to have been.

  “Mali. Elizabeth. How could this … how could something like this happen? Claudine was …”

  I held her arm and moved toward Elizabeth’s car a few feet away. Once seated inside, Deborah leaned back and closed her eyes. I saw fear imprinted on her face and a faint trace of the scar on her neck—the result of a push-in robbery that caused her to abandon the city for Washington. She had planned to return, but now with this latest circumstance, I doubted it. I watched the tremor in her hands and wondered if it had been a good idea to have called her at all. But we were old friends. She would have wanted to know.

  Elizabeth tapped my arm and I stepped away from the car. “You do think it was James. I can see it in your face.”

  I didn’t answer but concentrated on the traffic, which had slowed to a crawl. I scanned the cars, then glanced across the avenue and spotted Tad sitting in his car near St. James Church. He inclined his head slightly when our eyes met, and a minute later he pulled away, heading downtown.

  My breath caught in my throat as I remembered how he’d pulled me away from the bloated form in the kitchen. He had put his hand over my mouth and nose and kept me from throwing up.

  I turned back to Elizabeth. “I don’t know what to think. James was capable of some really bad stuff. I mean the things that girl went through, I can’t believe she stayed in the marriage as long as she did. The first black eye should’ve been the last.”

  I spoke quietly so that Deborah wouldn’t hear but I grew angrier thinking of James Thomas, who was still inside. He had shown up late, eased his way into a front-row seat, and when one of Mrs. Hastings’s friends rose to sing Claudine’s favorite song, James had fallen to his knees in a flood of grief loud enough to drown out the solo. If the casket had been open, he surely would’ve tried to climb in.

  Glances were exchanged among those who knew about the abuse, and I heard a few patient sighs. I had been so angry I brushed past Dad, ignoring his frown, and walked out. Elizabeth had joined me outside a few minutes later. I concentrated on the crowd again in an effort to shake away the thought of James’s performance.

  I recognized some of Claudine’s colleagues from the high school where she’d taught, and thought of the impact on her students in September, and wondered if grief counselors would be available the same way they were provided in the more affluent districts. Her neighbors and other familiar faces from Edgecombe Avenue filed out, and the doors of limos and private cars swung open.

  James now stepped out of the building, trailing the pack, blinking rapidly as if unaccustomed to functioning in daylight. The dark suit hung loose on his five-foot, eight-inch frame, and sunlight caught the telltale wrinkles and worn cuffs. This convinced me he had scrounged it at the last minute, probably from one of his drinking buddies.

  He twisted his sweat-stained straw hat in his hands, inspecting the crowd, prepared to further stretch his performance on anyone willing to watch. He glanced at me and I stared until his gaze faltered and fell away.

  The cars were filling up. Dad had gotten in another car. Elizabeth was driving and I climbed in beside her. Bertha Owen, my friend and favorite hairdresser, approached, rapped on the window, then climbed in to sit beside Deborah. “Girl, how you doin’? I didn’t know you were in town.”

  “I came for th
e service. Mali called. I … I …”

  Bertha reached over and gathered her in her arms. “Poor baby. Nobody knows why these things happen but they do. Claudine’s restin’ now. Restin’.”

  I turned to add my own words of comfort and found Bertha glaring at me, as if asking how I could have told Deborah, knowing what she had experienced. I swallowed my words and turned away.

  Other car doors opened and slammed. Through the window I watched James twist the hat as he shifted from one foot to the other. His once slickly handsome face now seemed ragged with humiliation as the cortege glided from the curb in a veil of silence. Elizabeth’s car was last in line and I turned to look. James stared back and held the battered hat at an angle. His frown melted into a hollow grin as he shook his fist.

  I closed my eyes and murmured something and Elizabeth tapped my arm.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. Yes.” I stared ahead, not trusting myself to say any more. The car in front lost focus and I blinked hard, trying to fight the feeling boiling in my chest.

  James had killed Claudine. I was sure of it. He was a psychopath because how else to reconcile the scene in Claudine’s apartment with the image of him howling on his knees in front of the casket.

  I still could not bring myself to tell Elizabeth what I’d seen. Or how I really felt about James. Perhaps later, after the pain and heartache of the wake, after Deborah had returned to Washington to deal with new fears and nightmares, I could probably talk. But not now. The wound was too deep.

  “You don’t want to talk about it,” Tad whispered, “but I have to go over this ’cause maybe there’s something you might remember. Maybe someone was in the crowd around Claudine’s that night who might’ve caught your eye. Or maybe there’s something about James you might’ve forgotten.”

  His voice was soft but insistent and I turned from the balcony, wishing I could forget everything about James. The sun, already setting, left a fast-fading gold wash against the gray stone walls of the Riverbend complex. Tad’s fourteenth-floor apartment faced out over the calm of the Harlem River and the bustle of the Drive below. Across the river, the tracks of Metro-North stretched past. To the north of the complex, the steel webbing of the 145th Street and 155th Street Bridges gleamed in the dying light, and the Willis Avenue Bridge to the south cast a latticed shadow on the water.