A Toast Before Dying Read online

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  She hesitated for a fraction of a second, long enough for me to know a lie was coming.

  “I’m … Teddi Lovette. His agent.”

  She tried to smile but her voice shook.

  “Come in,” I said, even though I knew she was lying.

  Bert still had not shifted gears sufficiently to open her mouth without screaming, and Miss Ponytail used the moment to head out.

  “Well, okay,” I said to no one in particular and followed like a hostess seeing a guest to the door.

  Once outside, I caught Miss Ponytail’s arm.

  “Just a minute. I want to apologize. Bert’s upset.”

  “So am I,” the woman said and continued to walk. My legs are long but the woman moved so fast I had a problem keeping up. I trotted beside her, feeling the egg-and-mayo mixture beginning to ooze down my neck from under the cap.

  “Listen, I knew Thea also. She was a sweet person and what happened to her was terrible. An awful thing.”

  We reached the corner and the light changed.

  “I know you’re too upset to talk right now, but could I call you?”

  She fumbled in her purse. When she finally extended her card, I snatched it before the light changed again.

  “How well did you know Thea?” she asked.

  I stood there, praying for the light to change once more and struggling for an answer that would sound at least half-truthful.

  She nodded her head. “Because you must be mistaken. Thea … was not a sweet person.”

  Then she stepped off the curb, crossed Eighth Avenue, and opened the door to a silver Lexus. I rushed back to the shop but when I entered, Bert’s hot comb was resting in the rack and Blondie and the dark pretty woman had both disappeared.

  chapter two

  I looked around, half-expecting to find them hiding behind the coatrack.

  “What happened?”

  “Nuthin,’ ” Bert said, extending a card. “This is from Blondie. She asked me about Thea. Wants me to call her when I feel-up to talkin’. Then she left. The other one musta been scared to death ’cause she backed out before this one did. Moved like somebody was chasin’ her. Don’t know who she was.”

  “Damn.” I sat down as Bert walked to the sink and filled the small coffeepot again. This was going to be a three-pot day plus aspirin. I studied the card: “Teddi Lovette. Voice Technique and Acting Coach.”

  “I thought she said she was his agent?”

  “Well, who knows what the hell she is.” Bert shrugged. “Probably like Hallmark and got a card for every occasion. I knew she was bogus when she stepped in. Sure is a surprise though. I didn’t know my brother was dippin’ his biscuit in cream.”

  “There you go jumping to conclusions. We don’t know what the connection is.”

  “You right, Mali. I should’na said that. Least till you can call and get the real deal.”

  I looked at her. “Me? You want me to call?”

  “Well, you bein’ an ex-cop ’n’ all, I figured you’d know the kinda stuff to ask.”

  I did not answer. Ex-cop. I’m an ordinary citizen now with a three-year-old lawsuit pending against the NYPD for being fired.

  I sat in the chair and took the plastic cap off my head. The egg-and-mayo combo had congealed into meringue-like peaks and I wondered if I had any hair left under there. Bert saw my expression.

  “Don’t worry. That ain’t no chemical job you lookin’ at. That’s all natural.”

  So is nightshade, I wanted to say, but Bert was in no mood for back talk.

  “Let’s get it washed out and I can finish tellin’ you. See, I don’t know what got me outta the house last night. Maybe it’s this damn July heat and my AC ain’t kickin’ too tough. Maybe I was tired of sleazebag Geraldo gettin’ off on O.J. And tired of listenin’ to Jenny Jones and the same old stupid shit about whose white mama done stole which daughter’s damn dumb black boyfriend. I mean, where do they get those fools from?”

  Her voice sounded as if she’d been running and could not catch her breath. I nodded and leaned back in the chair. She rinsed my hair and lathered on something else.

  “So I got dressed and went out. ’Cause you know the bar’s not that far away. And Kendrick had sounded so angry when he called, like he had just got some more bad news or somethin’. I figured I’d sit with him till maybe he cooled down some.”

  “Angry about what?” I asked.

  I knew Kendrick was working hard to break into acting and tended bar at the Half-Moon between bit parts, fashion shows, and casting calls. He had recently signed a major modeling contract and was about to do a show in Milan.

  “I didn’t know he had time to feel angry,” I said.

  “C’mon, Mali, you know that every good-bye ain’t gone even though he and Thea broke up a couple of months ago. He was still upset about it and they’d had words earlier in the bar. That’s why he called me. To talk.

  “I knew she wasn’t right for him, but what could I say? Imagine tellin’ somebody that you tired of ’im. That’s what she said. Not ‘I don’t love you no more’ or ‘I met somebody else’ but ‘I’m tired of you.’ Just like that. I knew that girl from way back and peeped her card from the jump.

  “From a long time ago, when she first started enterin’ them beauty contests, she was stuck on herself. First it was her wigs, then the weaves—girl bought more hair than Diana Ross. And you know Thea sure didn’t need all that. She already had fine soft hair—what we used to call ‘good stuff’ back in the day. But she wanted her strands even straighter. And the straighter it got, the madder she got, for some reason … till finally I had to tell her I wasn’t puttin’ no more heat to her scalp. I mean I need a dollar but I got my ethics.”

  “Not to mention your insurance premiums,” I reminded her.

  “That too. Then one day, she up and cut her hair as short as yours and didn’t need me no more. But I decided to stay friends with her ’cause by then Kendrick’s nose was wide open. She had him eatin’ outta her hand and I meant to see that the fool didn’t choke.”

  I nodded. Kendrick stopped by every day. When I was here, I was especially glad to see him, because two years ago, as busy as he was, he had taken time out to help me with my nephew, Alvin. Knicks games, fishing trips, movies, in-line skating in Central Park, swimming at the Y. Things that helped the boy cope with the death of his mother and father.

  Kendrick had stepped in and now was like part of my family and I loved him. Thank God Alvin was in St. Croix and not here to see this mess. But he’d be back in August. I wondered what I could do before he returned.

  I looked around the shop as Bertha removed the towel. Of course I didn’t need to visit a salon to have my two inches of hair taken care of, but the deep conditioner and the scalp and neck massage were what kept me coming here. That and my long friendship with Miss Bertha.

  I grew up not too far from the shop—on Strivers Row. Miss Bert—I call her that sometimes even though there’s not much difference in our ages—grew up uptown near the Polo Ground Houses where her daddy’s two-chair barbershop fronted his numbers enterprise.

  Years ago he had hit big and gave his daughter five thousand dollars the day she finished the Poro School of Beauty Culture. “Buy that Cadillac you wanted,” he’d said.

  Instead she’d bought an empty, rundown two-story building on Frederick Douglass Boulevard and transformed it into a cozy beauty shop with two rental apartments upstairs, one in which she now lived.

  I had met her when I was eighteen and my father had finally persuaded me to impose some order on my wild, thick hairstyle. I’d been coming here so long that now I usually strolled in without an appointment, sometimes just to sit and listen to the latest talk—who hit a number, who died, and who black folks oughtta vote for the next time around.

  It was a two-operator shop, and since the other beautician had left to open her own place, Bertha worked alone.

  I sat in the chair, li
stening to Bertha and wanting to see Kendrick poke his handsome face in the door and wave to me, but that wasn’t going to happen. What in the world was I going to tell Alvin when I called him?

  “I don’t know how it all happened,” she continued. “And so quick. I was right there. I heard the shot. Seen that flash from the gun. Now Thea’s gone and my brother’s in jail. I still can’t believe this.”

  The few times I had stopped in the bar, Thea had not been there, but I had seen her here, in this very chair. She was tall and thin with deep-set eyes and skin the color of pale parchment. She was also a singer and Dad had once said that her figure reminded him of a taller version of Vanessa Williams but that her voice had an unalterably sad quality—like an old-time blues singer at an after-hours session nursing a glass of Scotch.

  Thea had had several gigs at the Club Harlem with Dad’s jazz quartet and she had been pretty popular. She had been popular in the Half-Moon also, yet when she stepped out in the middle of the night someone had been waiting.

  Bertha’s usually steady hands were shaking, and I was glad I wasn’t having my hair straightened. Considering how distracted she was, I was grateful I was only getting a deep conditioner.

  “What happened when you got to the bar, before Thea got shot?” I asked.

  “Well”—she settled on the high stool and reached for a second cup of coffee—“Kendrick also said there was a party goin’ on. Thea’s birthday. Wall-to-wall men. That kinda stuff. He think I’m lookin’ for a husband again and I should check out the scene. I keep tellin’ him one bad round was enough, but he don’t believe me. Think a woman ain’t complete without somethin’ warmin’ her in the winter and coolin’ her in the summer. Right now, I try to be cool all by myself, ’cause the last friend I had said he was steppin’ out for some Trojans and musta gone to a store in Australia ’cause that was Christmas Eve and I ain’t even got a postcard.

  “Anyway, the place was crowded but I got a seat at the end of the bar. Whatever had gone down between Kendrick and Thea musta been heavy ’cause he looked like he was still mad even though he was smilin’ for the crowd. But I could tell he was upset.

  “Place was so busy Kendrick didn’t have time for more than three words to me. And that politician Edwin Michaels was there. I guess he’s makin’ the rounds now that it’s election time. People comin’ up shakin’ his hand like he was a king or somethin’. Man been in office twelve years and I ain’t seen shit he done except maybe hop a plane to the islands every other month.”

  I knew Edwin Michaels vaguely. I had met him when my neighbor Dr. Thomas had hosted a fundraiser for him three years ago and again when he had dropped into the Club Harlem to hear Dad play. He imagined himself irresistible, and unfortunately some women, seduced by the aphrodisiac of power, reinforced the idea.

  “Like I said, the place was jammed. I looked around and it seemed like everybody was stargazin’ at themselves in the mirror over the bar as if the only person they wanted to meet was that one in the mirror.

  “I didn’t bother to waste my time ’cause this wasn’t hardly my show. I got up to leave and waved to Kendrick as he came from behind the bar. Said he was goin’ to get towels or somethin’. Then I waved to Thea. She had champagne in her hand, raisin’ it in a toast, when the wall phone behind her rang. She picked it up and put down her glass real quick. Her face changed, like the call had surprised her. The volume was pumped so I couldn’t hear what she said, but it couldn’t have been more than two words. She hung up and slipped from behind the bar, movin’ like she was Pryor on fire. I shoulda kept a tag on Kendrick. Things woulda been different if I had …

  “I came out through that side door, the one lets you out on 140th Street instead of Seventh Avenue. That alleyway there should’ve had a light. It usually does but it was out. I wasn’t scared ’cause it ain’t but a hop and skip to the sidewalk. The streetlight was also out and I remember steppin’ in somethin’ and couldn’t see exactly what. I was hopin’ it was water and not somethin’ some damn dog had left.

  “Well, out the side of my eye as I’m bendin’ down, I see somethin’ move and realize somebody was there in front of me in the dark. No more than two feet away.

  “I hear Thea’s voice, soundin’ kinda surprised. Maybe happy, even. I don’t know. She made a little sound—like she was short of breath—then she said: ‘It’s you! Oh, it’s you!’

  “And that gun went off, not more than two inches from her nose. Me and Kendrick got to her at the same time. I don’t know where he came from. I heard footsteps. But not runnin’ footsteps. Somewhere in front of me.

  “Next thing I know, he on his knees, yellin’, ‘I didn’t mean it! I didn’t mean it!’ and holdin’ what was left of her head in his hands.

  “I took one look and ran to the curb and everything in my stomach came up. By that time, the bar had emptied out into that alley. Couldn’t even move. Henderson Laws was screamin’ and grabbed Kendrick and started punchin’ him. I ran back and started swingin’ at Laws. I mean we got into it, I tried my best to snatch that dusty toupee, but he musta had that number cemented on. Somebody separated us but I got in some good licks. Never did like that man. And when the cops come, Laws right away said he heard Kendrick say he had did it, had killed her.”

  She paused and in the silence we listened to the early rush of Eighth Avenue traffic. The air still held that slight damp coolness but by noontime the July sun would be on us and the baking asphalt would be throwing the heat back at anyone on the street.

  Most of the stores were now open and ready for the Saturday crowd. We watched the Wonder-bread truck unload its delivery to the grocery store across the avenue. The mailman passed, slipped some envelopes through the slot, waved, and moved on.

  Finally I said, “Are you … sure Kendrick didn’t do it?”

  Bert’s eyes narrowed and her lips grew thin and I knew if she could have tapped one of those hot straightening combs against my scalp she would have done so.

  “I mean,” I said quickly, “what are you going to do?”

  She turned on the stool and seemed to fold into herself as she spoke. “Girl, I don’t even know where to start. What few coins I stashed, you know I’m willin’ to spend …”

  “But any attorney worth his fee is going to ask you the same thing: Did Kendrick shoot her? You were on the scene. You heard him say, ‘I didn’t mean it.’ Why would he say that?”

  “I don’t know, but listen here: What I told you about Kendrick and Thea, I haven’t mentioned to nobody else. As much as they questioned me, I didn’t and wouldn’t tell them cops shit. That’s all them lazy, doughnut-eatin’ sorry asses is lookin’ for is an open-and-shut case. No offense ’cause you was once a cop yourself. But they ain’t sendin’ another black man upstate to be meat for them racist jail guards. It ain’t gonna happen. He’s my brother and I ain’t gonna let it happen!”

  “All right. All right. I was just asking. Just trying to …”

  She turned away, and in the mirror I watched her raise the edge of the towel to her face and hold it there.

  “Mali, what are they gonna do to him? Boy’s twenty-six years old. I’ve looked after him since he was sixteen. After Mama died, between me and my daddy, he stayed straight. Daddy’s gone so it’s him and me. If he gets convicted, what’s gonna happen? I can’t even think …”

  I left my chair to go stand at her side. I knew she had plenty to worry about. I could have told her that her brother didn’t have to be sent upstate for bad things to happen. It could happen right here in my old precinct, or in the house of detention, or out at Rikers. No need to travel to be beaten or gang-raped or killed. And his damn good looks would only add to his problems. I didn’t tell her that. Instead, I put my arm around her shoulder.

  “Listen, Bertha: We’re going to beat this … we’re going to get Kendrick out.” I realized I was making a promise I didn’t know how to keep, but I had to find a way. And fast.

  And Bertha was willing to put out every
cent she had earned from her twelve-hour days. Sweating in the summer when the AC acted up and sometimes freezing in the winter until she managed to get the furnace working again. Days standing on her feet smiling while her favorite corn called her name out loud.

  The shop had a steady stream of regulars, and she was familiar with the hurtful core of many lives: how a fancy hairdo might help to keep a man close; a different tint to attract a new one; a massage to the neck to deal with drunken blows to the head. Bert knew and kept her mouth shut and distracted them with the larger-than-life chaos of the TV soaps.

  I watched her in the mirror as she wiped her eyes. They were red-rimmed and would probably get worse as more people dropped by to add their opinions to the news.

  “I’ll stay here, Bert. Run interference. Let everyone know that what happened last night is no one else’s business. I could say it without you losing a customer.”

  She put the towel down and shook her head.

  “No. It’s probably all in the papers today. I have to handle this ’cause there’s more to come. A lot more.”

  The warm water splashing against my scalp did not relax me. My eyes remained open and thoughts came fast and heavy. Last night Bert had heard footsteps. Then Thea’s voice and the blast of the pistol. Where had Kendrick come from? What had he meant by his outburst? Who else could have been there? Who had made the call to get her out in the alley in the first place? Did Henderson Laws know that the light was out in the alley? Cheap as he was, he might’ve turned it off himself.

  “Bert, why don’t you close for the day?”

  “I can’t. Right now, I’m gonna need every dollar that come through that door.”

  And she was right. O.J.’s dream team was not available for what Bert was able to scrape together. I couldn’t help her either because I was scheduled to start more graduate courses in September and I was working for my dad. He was doing well enough with his music to get himself incorporated. My salary would help pay my tuition.