Do or Die Read online

  When she was eleven, she sang at the Apollo and even though she didn’t win, she didn’t exactly lose either. Dad said anyone who made it through without getting the hook from the Sandman should consider herself a winner. Ozzie had bought tickets for us all and had later taken us to Snookies Sugar Bowl, where we forgot about the Apollo the minute those double dark chocolate ice cream sundaes had been placed before us.

  I remembered how she had been blessed with a childlike beauty: a small frame, a round dark brown face with doll-like features that folks said would remain the same no matter how old she’d get. But she didn’t live long enough to prove it one way or the other. She’d had business to take care of, Ozzie said. And someone instead had managed to take care of her. She didn’t live to see her twenty-eighth birthday.

  Hours later, I rolled over and stared at the clock on the night table: 5 P.M. I had been more tired than I thought. A cool shower and two cups of coffee revived me enough to collar Ruffin and walk to Frederick Douglass Boulevard. I needed to see my beautician—not to have my two-inch Afro tended, but to find out if she’d heard anything about Starr.

  Bertha, my twenty-year friend, owns Bertha’s Beauty Salon and is a reliable source of street news, gossip, and any scandal worth repeating. She has been at the same location on Eighth Avenue years before it was renamed for Frederick Douglass and she doesn’t have to poke her head out the door to catch a whisper. It flows in automatically as early as 7 A.M., when the regulars from Miss Laura’s luncheonette arrive with breakfast and news hotter than the grits. This is the early edition, followed by periodic updates. Then the after-work crowd wraps it up in the evening.

  Bulletins, like who caught a digit, who got busted with someone else’s spouse, or who didn’t survive a shootout, come in immediately. For bulletins, Bert sacrifices the soaps and turns the TV not down, but off completely.

  On Saturdays, she supplements the hot oil treatments and deep conditioners with “The Week in Review Special.”

  I had been away seven days, so I was in desperate need of the Review.

  When I walked in, she was twisting the last row of Senegalese braids on her customer’s head, shaping the hair like a finely sculpted tiara. I had tied Ruffin to the parking meter and took a seat near the window in order to keep an eye on him.

  “Girl, look at you!” Bertha said. “First time I ever seen a dark person get a tan. Your eyes look like traffic lights.”

  The woman in the chair peered in my face, blinked, and glanced away. I half expected her to make the sign of the cross to ward off the evil that was sure to come her way, but I said hello and she managed a weak smile.

  Before I could get comfortable in the chair, Bert said, “I know you got a lot to tell, so start at the beginnin’ and don’t leave a comma out.”

  Her fingers flew along the deep furrows of the woman’s hair, applying a light patina of shea oil to the scalp. Then she added three cowrie shells at the base of the tiara and removed the plastic capelet from the woman’s shoulders.

  The woman studied herself in the wide mirror, paid generously for the transformation, and left smiling. She even waved good-bye in my direction.

  “You had dinner yet?” Bert asked as she counted the dollars.

  “I’m not hungry,” I said, remembering the shipboard menus and the flourish with which the waiters presented them at the table. Diners were addressed as sir or madame with the accent on “dam’.” The petite packets of Philadelphia Lite cream cheese were manufactured in Germany, and the sommelier wore a medallion heavy enough to anchor the ship in a hurricane.

  I sighed myself back to reality, knowing that in a day or two the candlelit ambiance and the taste of filet mignon and escargot would be a dim memory, and fried chicken, collard greens, and red rice would once more loom large on the palate. Especially the collard greens.

  “Then again,” I said, “maybe I am a little hungry. What do you have in mind?”

  “What else but Charleston’s barbecued ribs and chicken with candied yams, red rice, and greens. He got delivery service now. Nuthin’ fancy. Just some young brother hangs outside who Charleston got a bike for and put ’im to work. Just hiccup and I’m on the horn.”

  A half hour later, I bit into a crisp chicken leg and the tangy barbecue sauce obliterated everything related to cruise cuisine. Between bites, I described the jazz lineup: Lou Rawls’s throaty voice floating over the crowd in the ship’s two-tiered grand salon; the Milt Jackson Quartet, Slide Hampton’s trombone, and Christian McBride’s Quartet at the after-midnight jam session. James Moody, and of course, my dad’s group, which played side by side with some of jazz’s best innovators.

  Bert listened, openmouthed, when I described how the audience rose to its feet when Ruth Brown strutted the stage in her sequined gowns and high heels and dished her down-home humor.

  “She sing about her old antique chair?”

  “You know she did. And she’s still sitting on it. Said if she can’t sell it, she ain’t gonna give it away.”

  “Damn, the girl’s all right. Sorry I missed that trip.”

  “And,” I said, working my way through the red rice, “you should’ve heard Aretha riff with one of the Temptations at Newport.”

  “That’s it! Next year, I’m goin’ even if I have to close shop for two weeks. I’m missin’ all this good stuff. Life’s too short. Me and my honey is gonna be there.”

  Her face lit with anticipation and I smiled at this, at her sudden, surprising, and perfect happiness. One day last month, Bert had worked on Mrs. Gibson, an elderly woman from uptown, and had gotten her to smile in satisfaction when she had finished styling her hair. The woman’s son came to pick her up and Mrs. Gibson, as plainspoken as Bertha, pointed to him as he walked in.

  “This is Franklin, my son. Forty years old. Only thing wrong is a touch of diabetes. Otherwise he’s perfect. Good eyesight, good upbringing, and good jay-oh-bee. Windower two years. Take my word for it ’cause I don’t lie for nobody. Take his phone number too.”

  And Franklin, accustomed to his mother, had simply smiled, reached out, and shaken Bertha’s hand. Bertha, for once in her life, had been too astounded to open her mouth.

  Franklin was a shade under six feet, slim and brown, and had a smile, Bert saw, that was bright enough to chase blues a woman didn’t even know she had.

  The next day, he’d sent a dozen yellow roses with a card thanking her for the way she’d styled his mother’s hair.

  “You see that.” Bert had smiled. “Any man who looks out for his mama will look out for you.”

  When he called for a date, Bert didn’t have to think too hard or too long.

  “How’s Franklin?” I said, watching her smile widen.

  “Doin’ fine,” she murmured. “Matter of fact, he just left here.”

  I nodded, watching her, and unable to believe that her voice actually dropped an octave when she mentioned his name.

  “So what else happened?” she asked, changing the subject back to the cruise. “How’d your dad like it? Who else was aboard? Anybody from the neighborhood?”

  “The trip would’ve been perfect,” I said, “but I had the bad luck to be seated at the same table as Christine Morgan. Girl couldn’t keep her eyes off Tad.”

  Bert looked up from her dinner plate, her mouth rounding to form a small O. “You kiddin’? Damn. That is bad! Wait a minute. I seen her hubbie last week. Drivin’ by in that shiny Mercedes. You mean he didn’t go with her?”

  “No. And first night out, she announced in no uncertain terms, to every man at the table, that she was traveling solo. It was practically an invitation to her open house.”

  “Well, I can understand that. Me and Franklin was at the club, probably a few nights before you sailed. Travis was there, and Christine come huffin’ in. Got all in his grille, accusin’ him of steppin’ with his ‘other bitch,’ as she put it.”

  “What?”

  “Yep. Even though he was solo, the mama staged some drama. Before
the waiters could rush her, she stormed the ladies’ room, hopin’ to jam the woman in there. Thank God it was empty but she musta scanned each booth like an inspector from the health department ’cause by the time she came out, Travis had paid his check and faded.

  “Your pop upped the tempo ’til the tourists got tired of stretchin’ their necks. You shoulda seen those cameras break out. Ready to snap a real Harlem happening. Something to take home to the folks. But she left after a while, probably tryin’ to catch up with poor Travis someplace else.”

  I frowned. “Maybe that’s why she was alone on the cruise. That last-minute fight probably soured him and he canceled.”

  And, I thought, that’s why she had strolled the deck in those outrageous outfits, ready to hit on any man whose shadow fell across her path.

  Dad hadn’t mentioned the scene at the club. And he certainly hadn’t seemed uncomfortable when he found she had been assigned to our table. But then, a musician’s life is not quiet. He’s probably seen so much stuff that some things weren’t worth mentioning. For a second, I felt a pocket of sympathy open within me. But it was a small pocket, not quite deep enough to make me forget her remark about my eyes. Then I remembered how she had eagle-eyed Tad and I concluded that she was still a bitch and the pocket zipped closed.

  Bert dipped her last spare rib into the sauce and raised it to her mouth. “Miss Chrissie’s uptight ’cause you know she’s a bit older than Travis. But girlfriend also oughta know by now that age ain’t nuthin’ but a number.”

  “One would think so,” I said. “What else did I miss?”

  “Well, I know you know about Starr ’cause her daddy in your daddy’s band. And it was all on the vine this morning.”

  “I know. We were at her place around four this morning. Whoever did it must have really had it in for her.”

  Bert shook her head. “You know, the good die young. That girl had a special voice. Coulda been the next Sarah Vaughn or somethin’. Talk has it that her throat was open ear to ear. If you ask me, I think somebody was jealous, didn’t want her gittin’ ahead. Or maybe it was Short Change. You know how low down he could get.”

  Short Change, I knew, was a pimp who’d once tried to recruit Starr and in the process had introduced her to a heroin habit that had dragged her through hell and back. Last summer, Ozzie had tracked Short Change and played taps on his skull with a metal pipe, played so hard no one expected him to recover, but somehow he did. Now Ozzie would probably be looking for him again.

  “Well,” Bert said as she folded her empty carton into a plastic garbage bag, “if I was Short Change, I’d be pullin’ a fade for parts unknown.”

  “Short Change is not going anywhere,” I said. “This is his territory. He’s probably packing and ready to go toe to toe with Ozzie.”

  “Maybe. But then again, suppose it wasn’t him. Suppose it was somebody else?”

  “Like who?”

  Bert shrugged and sighed. “Too soon to tell. But you know me. I keeps my ear open.”

  5

  I retrieved Ruffin from the parking meter and walked east on 135th Street toward Malcolm X Boulevard. The floodlit basketball court adjoining the Harlem YMCA was filled with the whoop and yell of young men choreographing lickety-split moves, dribbling, dodging, feinting at an opening, then charging with the ball free and fast down the asphalt for the layup.

  The shouting drifted on the wind as I walked past the gray-marbled facade of Harlem Hospital, where I had recently started my new job. I knew I could live comfortably on my impending settlement but I needed to put my MSW degree to use. The hospital was ideal because I could walk to work, interact with the community, and make myself generally useful. In the social work department I was assigned three days a week to the support group for AIDS patients.

  Dad was ecstatic, Tad was happy, Elizabeth Jackson, my longtime friend and attorney, was relieved. I was doing what I should have been doing the day my diploma hit the palm of my hand. Instead I had opted for the NYPD, where meeting Tad was the only good thing that happened.

  Near Lenox Terrace, I peeked in the window of Twenty-Two West, the neighborhood bar, but with Ruffin in tow, I couldn’t step in, nor could I tie him to another parking meter. He was a patient dog but he had his limits, so I retraced my steps, threading my way through the sunglass, umbrella, and T-shirt vendors in front of Pan Pan’s restaurant. I wandered through this brisk commerce and wondered if any of the vendors realized they were operating in the tradition of “Pig Foot Mary,” a woman who once peddled boiled pigs’ feet next to a newsstand on this very site in the ’30s. Dad said that she then parlayed her nickels into brick and mortar and eventually acquired enough real estate to make her a very wealthy woman.

  Strains of Randy Crawford’s “Wishing on a Star” drifting from downstairs let me know Dad was home. I poked my head in the door leading down to his studio. “How’s Ozzie?”

  Dad, looking as if he hadn’t slept in a month, came up the stairs. “Not too good. I’m going back in a little while. Want to come?”

  “Why not,” I said, wondering what else I could do besides maybe fix a hot meal for them. I was sure neither had eaten in the last twenty-four hours.

  Seventeen blocks to Ozzie’s place wasn’t that far and I could’ve covered the distance in a few minutes, but I matched my pace with Dad, who walked so slow, I thought he was inspecting for potholes. His head was down, making it hard for me to read his face. I wondered if the slowdown was brought on by fatigue or the thought of what awaited him when he saw Ozzie again.

  Grief drains everything except rage and the unscratchable itch for revenge. I knew how Ozzie felt and I knew that Dad had absorbed his anger and the fearful realization that it could’ve been me. He had already lost my sister, Benin, to an accident in Europe, and so Ozzie’s pain became his, reopening a door he had fought hard to close.

  Not until we’d strolled for several blocks and passed the Unity Funeral Home on 126th Street, where a small crowd was gathered, did Dad look up and draw a deep breath. “I have to watch my man, keep tabs on him for the next couple of weeks. He thinks that pimp did it. That Short Change got to Starr because she had testified against him when he was busted on that drug deal.”

  “Why would he kill her?” I said. “He didn’t do that much time, considering the weight he’d been caught with.”

  “I know. Folks in the know are saying he cut a deal, gave up some names. So they weren’t surprised to see him back on the street two weeks ago. Even though rumor had it that he was good for at least twenty years.

  “He was into a lot of things. Drugs. Prostitution. And when he pulled Starr into it, Ozzie whipped his butt so bad, it was a miracle he survived. Ozzie can’t go that way again. If he does, he’s gotta go with correct stuff.”

  I glanced at Dad, suddenly afraid for him as well as for his friend. “Can’t you talk him out of it?”

  The only answer I heard was a hard grunt.

  At 125th Street, we turned west and made our way through the evening crowd emerging from the subway at St. Nicholas Avenue. We passed the old Sydenham Hospital, closed years ago amid intense community opposition. Edward I. Koch, the mayor at the time, who’d spent most of his energy asking “How’m I doin’?” had added fuel to the fire of protest by donning an Afro wig at a political function and commenting, “Why do I hear the sounds of hospitals closing?” The photo, and the statement, had propelled thousands of people into the streets in outrage. Barricades had been thrown up. Mounted police patrolled. Dr. Eugene Callender led the full choir from the Church of the Master on Morningside Avenue and joined the crowd where they circled the hospital and prayed. The days that followed saw several arrests but in the end, the Wigged One prevailed, the institution was closed, and the patients were shifted elsewhere. After the bedlam subsided, the facility was modernized and converted into a residence for seniors; however, even today I cannot pass the gracious exterior and tranquil garden without all these memories getting in the way.

&
nbsp; On Manhattan Avenue, some of the subway crowd stepped into the soft and elegant interior of Perk’s Restaurant. For a brief second, I thought of trying to pull Dad and Ozzie out of the house for dinner but tonight was not the time. What was needed at the moment was what Mom used to call “wake and worry” food. Eat all you can at the wake and worry about your weight later.

  Wake food, she had said, was down-home heavy, with enough fat and calories to drown the deepest sorrow and heavy enough to have you back on your feet in no time. Not necessarily smiling, but back on your feet where you belonged.

  I missed Mom. And her cooking. The nearest thing to it and the most practical option under the circumstances was to call Charleston for a delivery.

  At Ozzie’s door, Dad produced a key. “If he’s asleep, this way we won’t disturb him. We’ll just sit ’til he wakes. The shape he’s in, he’ll be glad to see someone when he opens his eyes.”

  We entered the wide foyer and our footsteps echoed across the oak floor. Then I felt silence close in like a veil. Off the foyer to the left was a large room dominated by a Steinway grand facing the window. The window was large and bare of curtains and I could see a tree outside, thick and green, and I imagined Ozzie sitting here with the sun’s rays slanting across his broad shoulders.

  We found him slouched at the small bar in the living room, a half-empty quart bottle of Absolut and an empty orange juice carton at his elbow. His eyes, when he focused on us, were like warning lights stuck on red. I expected Dad to move the bottle but he surprised me by bringing two more glasses from behind the bar and filling them half full. He handed one to me. One drink later, Dad spoke. “How you doin’, man? You get any sleep?” He waited for an answer and got none.

  “Listen, Ozzie. There’s stuff I need to know before I can get started.”