If I Should Die Read online

  I climbed out of the tub, paged Tad, and punched in my number. He would be here in one minute and out of town the next.

  chapter twenty-five

  I could not go to Deborah’s apartment because the vision of Jackson Lee stepping back behind her door and the sight of her in the bloodstained bathtub was there every time I closed my eyes. I did not mention this but she agreed to meet me at the Pepper Pot Restaurant.

  “A farewell dinner? Girl, I’m not leaving forever.”

  “I know. Any excuse for a good meal.”

  “Suits me. See you in an hour.”

  A warm late spring rain had begun to fall, and by the time we met in front of the restaurant, it had developed into a steady drizzle. Inside, the music of Bob Marley floated from the CD and the aroma of cayenne and basil filtered from the kitchen. Except for one other patron—an elderly man dining alone in the corner—the place was empty, probably due to the rain. We took a table by the window and I ordered broiled red snapper again, the dish I had not been able to enjoy the time I was here with Tad.

  “I’ll have the same,” Deborah said, and the waiter left us alone to look out onto the rainy street. There were few passersby and we drank beer silently.

  “Moving got you down?”

  Except for ordering, she had not said a word since we sat down and I wondered if she was feeling depressed. She reached for her glass again and emptied it before she answered. “Yes. That … and the fact that I have something to tell you.”

  I watched her face, waiting. Was she afraid of going away? Was her father sicker than she realized? Was her sister acting up, threatening her because she had gone against her? I leaned across the table and kept my voice low, although we were alone in the place.

  “What is it? What’s going on?”

  She hesitated, then stared out of the window at the wet shiny pavement.

  “You know, I don’t even know where to start. I told you I wouldn’t talk about what … happened to me even if my memory came back. Well, I remember some things—not the event itself—but I remember the envelope.”

  She looked at me now and I saw a trace of the vacant stare I had seen in the hospital.

  “The memory comes and goes, but in the moments when it comes, I’m afraid to write it down.”

  “Wait. Wait a minute, Deborah.” I held up my hands, wishing I could place them over her mouth to silence her. “You don’t need to do this. Don’t say anything. Not to me. Not to anyone, you understand? Let sleeping dogs lie. I don’t want to know.”

  Of course I wanted to know, if only for Erskin’s sake, and it would be so easy to let her talk. But Erskin is gone. Deborah is here. Alive by some miracle but barely able to keep herself together. If she starts to talk, she will remember more than she wants and she’ll disintegrate.

  I saw how much and how fast she was drinking and I wondered about her medication. I’d find out what I needed to know but not this way …

  “Please Deborah, let it lay.”

  She seemed surprised and somewhat disappointed.

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure, Deborah.”

  Besides, we already had a solid connection—at least to Gary’s murder—and as soon as Viv turned up, Johnnie Harding would be out of business.

  A third round of beer arrived and I watched her empty her bottle, pouring quickly. Then she traced a pattern in the tablecloth with the glass, making small circles and merging the wet outlines.

  “This has been one hell of a time. I’ve been through so much. I want to try to get it out of me, out of my system, so I can start to breathe again.”

  I kept quiet. To say that I understood would have been insulting. But the glass continued in the small circles and finally I had to say something:

  “Once you’ve settled down with your family, talked to your Mom and Dad, you’ll begin to heal, but all of it will take time. It will take time. Right now you don’t need any more weight on you.”

  The waiter arrived and, from sheer gratitude, I wanted to kiss him. Food had a way of taking one’s mind off a lot of problems.

  “We’re leaving early tomorrow morning. Martha’s rented a car, and I suppose by the time we hit D.C., we’ll have smoothed over our differences enough to present a happy face to our folks. Right now she’s still fuming, but I can deal with it. I want to thank you, Mali, for being there for me. I’m going to miss you …”

  I stared out of the window. A few solitary figures hurried past, pointing their umbrellas into the wind.

  I thought of the movies, book parties, and plays we’d attended during those dry spells when there had been no man in our lives. Even when there was a man, we’d burn up the phone wire advising and commiserating.

  I thought of the nights when we had rushed from some evening class or other just in time to catch the last set at the Lickety Split. We always sat at the bar with our books on the floor, nursing watery rum and Cokes, whispering and laughing as the finger-snapping riffs flowed through us. Men smiled and phone numbers were doled out and I could hear her laughter way, way above the riff.

  The rain had slacked off by the time we left the restaurant but we hailed a cab anyway. We pulled to a stop in front of my place and I got out.

  “Have a good trip, Deborah. I’m going to miss you too. Call me when you get settled.”

  I closed the door and Deborah rolled down the window, touched my hand, and spoke in a rush as if to prevent me from silencing her:

  “Listen. What I wanted to say was that … Johnnie didn’t have anything to do with … what happened to his brother.”

  The cabbie gunned his engine and Deborah spoke faster.

  “It was someone else. I think it’s someone you know, Mali … I can’t tell you any more than that. I don’t know any more …”

  The cab pulled away and I stood at the curb, almost dizzy with the words spinning in my head.

  She waved from the window and in the distance her arm looked as fragile as a bird’s wing. The car disappeared and I wanted to go into the house and get out of the dress clinging to me in the dampness but I could not move.

  It’s someone I know …

  chapter twenty-six

  Sleep never comes when you want it but when it does, sometimes you wish it hadn’t. No sooner had my head hit the pillow than the voices began all at once: a cacophony of sound—shouts and cries and whispers—and none of it intelligible. Then the voice that I had not heard in so long it sounded new broke through:

  … Careful. Be careful.

  … Of whom? I wanted to ask, but the voice had begun to weaken even as I tried to call it back. Through all this, I seemed to float in a shadowy ether, not peacefully but fighting the successive waves bringing me to the edge of wakefulness. I struggled to remain submerged, hoping the voice would grow stronger but it got weaker, then faded entirely.

  The small clock on the night table read 4 A.M. when I turned over into wakefulness. The house held the peculiar stillness that let me know I was alone. Even the curtains at the open window seemed held in place by small steel ball bearings, the delicate ones found in the linings of pricey jackets.

  The sound of a car pulling up got me out of bed and to the window in time to see Dad moving his bass toward the steps. When he reached the door, I was there to greet him.

  “You still up?”

  “I just woke up. Weird dream …”

  “Most dreams are,” he said, resting the instrument near the sofa and heading toward the kitchen. “So what was it about?”

  He filled the pot with water and put it on the stove, then opened the fridge to prepare his after-hours/early A.M. snack. That way, he could sleep until noon and not be disturbed by any unscheduled hunger pangs.

  I sat at the table, thinking of Deborah and what she said and then thinking of the voice in the dream, and suddenly I felt tired.

  “I don’t remember the dream exactly. It was confusing but I remember the voice. I think it was Mama’s …”

  He closed
the door of the fridge slowly and turned to rest his hands on the table.

  “You know. It’s funny. Lately, she been talkin’ to me too.”

  Perhaps it was fatigue or simply an escape mechanism, but neither the white shafts of sunlight slanting across my bed nor the chattering birds on the window ledge prevented me from falling asleep again and I slept late. I came downstairs at noon and Dad had already finished a second breakfast and gone out with Ruffin.

  I looked around me. Alvin was gone. Tad was still down on John’s Island and Deborah was the latest one to leave. I wondered who was next.

  I think it’s someone you know, Mali …

  Her voice followed me as I moved up the stairs and into the bathroom and it grew stronger as I prepared my bath.

  Just slip into the water, close my eyes, and concentrate. It will come to me. It will come …

  Forty-five minutes later I climbed out cleaner but no wiser. Dad still had not returned and I could hear the echo of my footfalls.

  In Alvin’s room, I retrieved the “Profoundly Blue” cassette and, not wanting to deal with the glaring basketball posters, took it to my own room and slipped it into the tape deck.

  The recording was made from a very old 78 rpm wax album. Dad had used a high-quality tape but the nicks and scratches still came through with the notes. Once the music took hold, though, I was able to ignore the scratching and let the somber sounds of clarinet, celesta, bass, and guitar—Meade “Lux” Lewis, Edmond Hall, and Charlie Christian—come through deep and rich.

  Two minutes into the tape, there was a click—as if someone had stepped up to a radio and turned the dial to another station. Voices filled the room and I held my breath, listening in wonder to the deep, angry inflection of Erskin’s voice:

  “Look, man. How many times do I have to tell you? The answer is no! Get it? No!”

  “Erskin, this is the chance of a lifetime. Your brother’s in charge of the whole setup. You say the word and I’ll go to him and things’ll start rolling. Believe me, it can’t go wrong.”

  “Wait a minute. Let’s get one thing clear. He’s my half brother. Johnnie is my half brother. My father had two wives. And precisely because Johnnie’s involved is the reason I want nothing to do with it. He’s poison. I’m not that hard up. And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll dump this scheme also.”

  There was the soft sound of laughter, placating but with an edge of tension.

  “You know we’re not talking hardship, Erskin. We’re talking nine hundred grand. Nearly a million dollars. Three trips. Three hundred grand a trip off the top that we split two ways. You and me. The kids won’t even know what they’re carrying. The stuff is already in Marseille from Lyon and the payoffs in place. They’ll blow through customs. I mean, who’s going to search through two hundred pieces of luggage belonging to a bunch of young choir kids. No one. I’m asking you, where’s the risk?”

  A muted, shuffling sound, probably a chair being moved abruptly over carpeted floor.

  “Get the hell out of my office, you son of a bitch! Where’s the risk? You want to know where’s the risk? The risk is when an old grandmother tries to go to the damn corner store, and before she makes it home, some demented crackhead takes her off and leaves her lying in the gutter in a pool of her own blood. The risk is having some young girl give up on life and go with any man who will lead her to her next hit on the pipe. At the hospital just blocks away, nurses are quitting left and right because they can’t listen any longer to the screaming of those addicted babies. That’s the risk! But you wouldn’t know about that. You don’t live in this neighborhood so you wouldn’t think twice about flooding it with as much shit as you can. They don’t do these things downtown where you live, do they?”

  And the same voice went on, lower and more deliberate. “And you want to know what the next risk is? If I hear of you approaching anyone else in this organization with your idea, I will personally kick your ass back downtown where it belongs!”

  “Now wait a minute, Erskin. You know Johnnie and I go back a long way. A long way. So you watch your words. And speaking of Johnnie, he lives in the community. Lives large, as they say. How come you’re not concerned about the fact that he’s flooding his own people with the stuff? You don’t have an answer for that, do you? Now let me tell you something else. I have some heavy contacts, Erskin. Some good. Some not so good. It pays to know people on both sides. A lot of people owe me, including some who are very well placed. They owe me!”

  “So what? You probably owe somebody also. That’s why you’re in up to your ass and can’t get out. But one thing you can do is get the hell out of my office. Right now!”

  The sound of a door opening, a creaky sound, then voices again.

  “All right. But just remember one thing. I may be in—as you say—up to my ass, but I’ve got plenty of company. This is no small thing. Johnnie thought you might be interested, that’s all. If you’re not, then you better forget I ever mentioned the idea. It’s just three hundred grand extra income for a onetime deal, that’s all.”

  “A onetime deal? Gary, you’re planning to bring kilos of dope into this neighborhood where it’ll be killing people for years and you’re calling it a onetime deal?”

  “Call it what you want, Erskin. At any rate, I wouldn’t take this any further, if I were you.”

  “But you’re not me. You’re Gary Mark, ex—Wall Street ex-wonder boy who still thinks he can outslick the suckers. Well, this one’s not buying. Now if you don’t mind, just close the door on the way out!”

  The sound of footsteps. Silence. Then Erskin’s voice again, breaking.

  “Well, I’ll be damned. I’ll be damned. They want to use the Chorus. The kids …”

  There was another click. The fading notes of “Profoundly Blue” came back, and the tape ended several minutes later.

  I played the tape again. And again. To confirm what I didn’t want to believe; to hear Erskin’s voice again so strong and steady, and to figure out Gary Mark’s connections on “both sides” of the line.

  Alvin had taken this tape the day Erskin died, and all this time it had lain in the closet. Here were the voices of two men from the grave to point their fingers at Johnnie Harding. Suppose Alvin had played it? Suppose Dad had found it …

  I took a blank tape, copied it, and took the original downstairs. My hand was unsteady even as I pressed the wall panel near the bar and placed the cassette inside behind an old dusty bottle of cognac that someone had given Dad twenty years ago. Then I got dressed quickly and left the house.

  chapter twenty-seven

  Do you have an appointment?” the secretary said, reaching for her calendar. “The director sees people only by appointment.”

  I shifted from one foot to the other and bit my tongue in a losing effort to remain calm. “I don’t have an appointment. My nephew’s in the Chorus and this is an emergency.”

  She swiveled her chair around to look up at me. She was new on the job and obviously trying to do the right thing but seemed to have too much attitude for the easygoing atmosphere of an arts organization.

  “Is it anything I can help you with?”

  “No, ma’am. Please ask Lloyd if he’ll see me for five minutes.”

  I think it was the first-name reference that finally got her to pick up the phone.

  Lloyd Benton’s office was the same size as Erskin’s but it was better furnished. There was the usual leather executive chair behind the walnut desk and the carpet with the muted design on the floor, but where the walls in Erskin’s office had been covered with posters and flyers of the various tours, Lloyd’s space held several original artworks by African American masters: Henry Tanner, Elizabeth Catlett, and Jacob Lawrence. And there was a small Bearden collage on the wall near the coffeemaker.

  I looked around me. This was a cash-strapped organization. Where had this art come from? Had Gary Mark loaned or given it to him? Or had Lloyd been paying himself a salary far in excess of what he was
worth?

  Lloyd, tall and slim, moved with the grace of a man much younger than his forty-five years. His features were dominated by the shaggy eyebrows, which everyone said were a perfect indicator of his mood.

  He came from behind the desk to shake my hand.

  “Mali. It’s good to see you. I haven’t had a chance to let you know personally how much the organization appreciates your support.”

  “Well, thank you, Lloyd, I—”

  “You know, Erskin spoke of you a great deal. Talked about how pretty you were. And he was right, of course.” He pulled up a chair and waved me toward it, then he perched on the edge of his desk. “Erskin’s sorely missed around here. He was a good man. Dedicated. A shameful, needless death …”

  “That’s what I want to talk to you about, Lloyd. Erskin knew something and it probably got him killed.”

  When bad news comes calling, some folks sweat, others tremble, and some have eyebrows that speak for them. I watched Lloyd move from the desk to the window, and when he turned to face me, his brows shot up like the back of a porcupine.

  “Erskin? He knew something? I thought he was killed trying to prevent a kidnapping. I thought he … I mean, you were there. Didn’t you say they tried to take Morris and drag him into that car?”

  “Yes. But I think the kidnapping was only to get Erskin to cooperate.”

  “With whom?”

  I reached into my bag and pulled the cassette out. “I want you to listen to this.”

  “What is it?” He checked his watch as if I had taken up too much of his time already.

  “Listen to this, Lloyd. It’s an eye-opener.”

  Thirty minutes later he sat with his hands covering his face. When he removed them, his brows had come together in that telltale line and his normally brown skin was flushed a frightening dark red, as if his blood pressure had blown off the chart. His first question surprised me.

  “Have you gone to the police?”

  Since Tad was still out of town, I had not, so my answer was honest enough.