A Toast Before Dying Read online

  The smell of coffee filled the shop and I sat under the dryer, gazing out the window onto Eighth Avenue.

  Ex-cop. This street had once been my beat. It looked benign now as folks browsed and pushed shopping carts along the steaming sidewalk. Older folks tended to come out early to pick up groceries and gossip and get back home before the purse snatchers, the parasites who say they “gotta get paid,” hit the streets.

  This being the weekend, the later the hour, the younger the crowd. The club people were probably just turning over from last night’s happenings at Mirage or the Tunnel and wouldn’t be fully functional much before noon.

  Still later, a different crew—the “pharmacists”—would take over with their bold pitches. “See me for Ecstasy. Black Tar? Yo. Stop the car! Step on over for Red Rover.”

  The labels changed every week, but the Black Tar Mexican heroin and the rock cocaine brought the same eager buyers cruising by in everything from Broncos to Benzes, and the crew stepped to the windows and filled orders more efficiently than at a fast-food takeout.

  I thought of Kendrick and other young men like him who chose to look beyond the sucker dollars that the drug dealers worshipped, yet Kendrick was now in jail and the dealers were still outside, dealing, poisoning children as young as seven and eight years old. I thought of Alvin sailing aboard Captain Bo’s schooner in St. Croix and was glad that we had someplace to send him for the summer. Though with him gone, the house at times seemed large and empty. Sometimes I even missed the window-rattling hip-hop sounds blasting from his room.

  I studied the two business cards in my hand. Miss Ponytail’s was elaborately designed with grand loops and curlicues around the raised lettering of “Gladys Winston. Winston Associates Real Estate Sales and Management.”

  Her card and Blondie’s had Manhattan phone numbers.

  “I’ll call both of them,” I said, making up my mind to move fast. “But first, I need to speak to someone. Find out what’s going on.”

  She looked at me and smiled for the first time. “You callin’ Detective Honeywell, ain’t you?”

  “Maybe …”

  “Damn. What a honey. I should be that lucky.”

  I did not answer. Maybe I wouldn’t feel so lucky once he found out I was nosing in police business again. I reached for a notepad and jotted down a number.

  “Here. Call my attorney. The thing is to move fast so Kendrick won’t have to spend too much time in jail.”

  The word jail made her face crumple like old linen. I went to the door and flipped the CLOSED sign.

  “Bertha, you’re in no shape. Go upstairs. I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

  I was surprised when she turned off the coffeemaker and picked up the keys without a word.

  chapter three

  Eighth Avenue seemed hard and bright after the dim coziness of the shop. The sun was directly overhead but most people didn’t seem to notice. They moved quickly, ignoring the sonic waves from a boom box on a fire escape that sent ear-aching vibrations across the avenue.

  I cut through 138th Street, where it was more quiet and less crowded, and strolled past number 257, where the office and factory of Black Swan Records once operated. Dad had pointed out the location, saying that Black Swan, in 1921, was the first record company in the United States owned by African-Americans. Ethel Waters had been their most important artist.

  On Seventh Avenue, near the marquee of the old Renaissance Ballroom, a line of cars edged past the farm trucks, most of the cars slowing to discharge passengers who then made their way to the tables of produce set up under the marquee. Watermelons, collard greens, baskets of peaches, yams, and string beans, and large brown bags of paper-shell pecans brought brisk business. People also crowded around the tailgates of the trucks for the smoked ham hocks, jars of honey, and blackstrap molasses. The Renaissance Ballroom was slated for renovation. When it reopened as a catering hall, I wondered what would happen to these long haulers and the folks who sometimes came all the way from Brooklyn to buy the Southern yams and smoked pigtails.

  On the next few blocks, despite the heat, double-Dutch teams of young girls were in business with ropes slapping fast and serious against the pavement. Hoop players had staked out several squares of concrete from stoop to curb and aimed high for the cut-out milk crate tied to the tree.

  The stoop watchers were out also, lounging on whatever was at hand—mostly the abundant milk crates amid a scattering of unsteady plastic chairs. The super of one building, Old Man Johnson, who was perfectly able to walk, lounged with legs crossed in a discarded wheelchair, biting on a dead cigar. They sat in front of houses splintering from decay, busily watching the rhythm and action curling past them, calling loudly to passersby and to one another and waving and laughing and oblivious to last night’s happening.

  On the lot where Better Crust Pie Shop and the Dawn Casino and Stone’s Tire Repair Shop had once stood, a line of cars inched forward at Mickey Dee’s takeout. Among them was a battered red van with a large FOR SALE sign taped to its fender. On its dust-coated windows, someone had finger-inscribed in much larger print: FIRST PLEASE WASH MY ASS.

  Diagonally across from Mickey Dee’s, at 140th Street, the door of the Half-Moon was in motion. I glanced at my watch. It was noon, less than twelve hours after the murder of one of his employees, and it seemed that Henderson Laws had nothing better to do than to reopen for business.

  On the side street, someone had placed a bunch of roses and a candle near the police tape that was blocking the alley. People walking by paused. Some went inside the bar, others moved on.

  I went inside. The place was long and narrow with an oak bar and a mirrored wall behind it. The booths near the brick wall opposite the counter were filled with nearly everyone from the neighborhood.

  The lights had been turned off and I had to pause to get my bearings. Only the small neon crescent over the register was lit, and flickering in the dark were more candles than I’d seen at a High Mass. Votives placed among the tiers of liquor refracted the red, brown, and amber casts of the bottles.

  At the counter, the crowd leaned elbow to elbow, dipping into platters of chicken, ribs, greens, salad, and rolls.

  I moved farther in and saw that the solid stuff was gratis but the liquid was not, and the ring of the cash register cut through the noise like an Atlantic City slot machine.

  … A paying wake. That crafty ’bajan was holding a paying wake for one of his own employees. I knew he had a knack for a nickel, but damn …

  Henderson Laws was short and slim and still spoke with the faint trace of an island accent, although he had been in Harlem nearly thirty years. At fifty-something, his dark skin was still unlined and he sported a silver goatee shaved to an arrow below his lower lip, which reminded me of spittle he had somehow neglected to wipe away. Despite this, he might have been called handsome except for the tendency of his left eye to cross every now and then. Anyone else might have felt handicapped but Laws used it like he used everything else in his life: With his “floating eye,” as he called it, he’d stand at one end of the bar, gaze at the other end, and nobody would really know which way he was looking. That kept the bartender’s fingers straight and also kept folks from staring too closely at his toupee, which always seemed a little lopsided to me.

  He was leaning now in his favorite spot near the end of the bar, watching the platters move through the swinging door. He nodded and sighed heavily when someone approached to shake his hand or touch his shoulder in sympathy, but the good eye remained trained on the register.

  The counter had twelve stools, and the two new barkeeps, pressed into sudden service, struggled to keep up with the orders.

  TooHot, the numbers runner, sat on a stool nearest the window, watching a small mountain of slips expanding before him. Everyone, it seemed, was “combinating” 967—the number for the dead—though I heard a few other digits floating in the air, probably Thea’s address or variations on her phone number.

  “Gimme a
nother Walker Black,” TooHot yelled, rapping his finely manicured fingers on the counter. He pushed his panama away from his brown face, bit into a chicken wing, and allowed the slips to pile up, knowing that the cops would think twice before busting a wake. He was dressed appropriately for the occasion in a dark gray silk suit and black shirt.

  More people pushed in and I wondered if it was the food, the numbers, or the sympathy that brought them. Familiar faces called to me from the booths, but there was no one I wanted to slide into conversation with except TooHot, and he was too busy.

  I scanned the bar trying to figure who might have been on the scene last night. I spotted Jesse Long still sporting his gray Elvis sideburns and denim bell-bottoms that were so old they were new again. He had angled a strategic spot next to Big-Time Colloway, who was busy setting up the bar. Big-Time was a Rikers guard who bragged about his “heavy dime from overtime,” yet rumor had it that he’d cussed his own mama when she demanded he pay room and board. He and Jesse now wiped out a platter between them and reached for a new one. I guessed that Jesse was filling up on enough greens and potato salad to last until the food stamps rolled in, but Big-Time—who had a job—was putting away enough for three starving people.

  It was likely that both had been here last night, but I didn’t approach them because Jesse would probably want a drink and Big Time, an NYPD wanna-be, would want to flash his latest pay stub and crack on the fact that I was no longer on the force, a big thing in his world.

  Someone turned on the jukebox and the uproar retreated somewhere behind the cry of Whitney Houston.

  The heat from the open candles and press of the crowd was beginning to get to me. I would have to catch TooHot another time, perhaps when he passed by Bertha’s place. I turned to leave but I felt a light touch on my arm.

  “Good morning. Care for a drink?”

  Detective Lieutenant Tad Honeywell pressed against me, using the crowd as an excuse. I glanced up into eyes that even in this darkness resembled heavy smoke. He was casually dressed in a beige silk shirt and dark brown herringbone linen slacks. I took in his soft deliberate expression, which reminded me of the midnights on his terrace.

  “Absolut and orange?” he whispered.

  “No thanks. I—it’s too early.”

  Not only was it too early for a drink but it was too early to be feeling this unsteady on my feet. Which happened every time I saw him.

  “It’s twelve noon.”

  “I know, but I had a hard night.”

  “That,” he whispered, “is because you didn’t spend it with me.”

  I gazed at him, beginning to really feel the heat. I was having a hard time breathing, concentrating. I got like that sometimes. At other times, when he touched me, I had to sit or lie down.

  “It—it’s warm in here,” I whispered. “Let’s step outside.”

  He nodded and I followed him through the crowd. As we passed TooHot he held out his hand and whispered.

  “Say, Lieutenant. Great job y’all did on that crew uptown. Cleaned up things pretty good ’round here.”

  “We try. We try …,” Tad said, staring pointedly at the pile of slips on the counter.

  TooHot ignored the look and tipped his five-hundred-dollar panama to me. “And how you doin’, Miss Mali? How’s your dad? Saw him at the club the other night. Still kickin’ it.”

  “Yes, he is.” I smiled.

  “Great job, Lieutenant,” he said again, tipping his hat higher. I smiled because I knew what he really meant: Since that notorious drug enterprise had been busted and several cops had gone down with the gang, the spotlight was hot on the precinct now, so strong in fact that every cop in Harlem was walking with his shield pinned on straight—and TooHot wasn’t under pressure to pay his weekly “social security” (“secure us and we’ll be social” was the way some poet at the precinct had put it to him).

  Lately, TooHot had been able to keep that extra thousand dollars a week in his pocket, and he was making the most of the temporary lull. And Thea’s passing, unfortunate as it was, created another spike in earnings. So here he was, taking advantage of what circumstances had thrown his way.

  Outside in the street, I shook my head. “No respect. That man has no respect.”

  Tad shrugged. “Well, he’s how old—seventy, seventy-one? What else is he going to do?”

  “He could retire. He certainly has enough money. A duplex condo in St. Thomas ain’t cheap.”

  The tape stretched like a plastic snake across the alley, and the single offering of roses had grown to include carnations, a pot of never-dies, and a fragile wisp of baby’s breath enclosed in an irregular semicircle of candles. The roses had already begun to wilt from the heat jetting like ribbons from the stained pavement.

  “How come you’re in the Half-Moon? And so early?”

  I shrugged at the question. It was just like Tad to veer from one topic to another. It worked with the suspects, but it always caught me off guard and I found it annoying.

  “You know Bert’s my friend,” I reminded him. “And Kendrick’s her brother. She’s trying to figure out what happened.”

  “But she was here last night,” he answered, holding his gaze steady. “You weren’t.”

  I shaded my eyes and leaned against the car, debating whether I should remind Tad how Kendrick had stepped in and helped Alvin—and me—after my sister had died. And he’d had a hundred other things to do—he didn’t have to help me, but he did …

  “Damned good-lookin’ brother,” Tad went on.

  Lord, so are you, I wanted to say. I glanced up, smiling, ready to tell him so, but the look in his eyes stopped me cold. I was amazed. We stood there in the July heat, looking everywhere now but at each other. It was one of those silences that should have remained unbroken but I had to say what was on my mind.

  “Tad! For heaven’s sake, I’m not interested. Kendrick’s like a brother to me. A kid brother. He’s a child, a boy!” I emphasized child and boy and didn’t mention man, but that didn’t cool the temperature rising behind Tad’s eyes.

  “Kendrick’s not a boy. He’s not a child. He’s a good-looking twenty-six-year-old man.”

  “He’s six years younger than me, for God’s sake!”

  “And I’m eight years older than you, Mali. Age is just a number, up or down.”

  I closed my eyes and said no more, hoping this stupid conversation would blow away on the wind. Last year, he’d been jealous of a dead man. Now here he was acting crazy because of a … boy. Well, let him think what he wanted to. I owed Kendrick something.

  Finally he sighed and I knew word-for-word what was coming.

  “Mali, remember the last time you stuck your neck out, you nearly lost it.”

  I did not answer, remembering everything from last summer: the odor of that crackhouse; the handcuffs biting into my skin; a .38 fired so near my ear I was dizzy for days after. And the body count. I would have been one of those bodies if it hadn’t been for Tad. If he had stepped out on that roof a second later, I’d have gone down with a bullet in my face.

  “Listen, Mali: Bert is your friend, but let the department handle this, okay?”

  I concentrated on the police tape and did not answer. Seventh Avenue was busy and more passersby paused to look. An old woman made the sign of the cross and murmured something too soft for me to hear.

  Tad cleared his throat and veered again.

  “So, how often did Kendrick stop by the shop?”

  “Often enough,” I said, trying to keep my tone neutral.

  “I understand he’s a model …”

  “Yes.”

  “And an actor.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he planning to have his ear pierced?”

  “Who knows?” I said, beginning to feel really annoyed. “So what if he is? Every other brother and his father these days has his ear, nose, or navel ringed. What are you saying …?”

  “Nothing. Just trying to figure his taste in jewelry.”
>
  “You planning to give him a present?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. We found a small stud earring near the body. Square-cut diamond. Very high-quality stone. That one earring is probably worth nearly two thousand dollars.”

  I whistled. Two thousand dollars was a lot of earring for a struggling actor, but it probably wasn’t his. Bert said the alley had been so jammed she couldn’t move, so the earring could have belonged to anyone.

  “I don’t know what his plans were and I’m not familiar with his taste in jewelry,” I said. “All I know is he dressed well, looked good”—and added for good measure—“and he was very much in love with Thea.”

  He looked at me and there was a pause before he spoke. “Love. Mm-hmm. Love. It’ll undo you every time.”

  He said it with a soft singsong rhythm but I heard the bitter undercurrent, and it was like glimpsing a sudden flare on a dark horizon. Brief, natural, and dangerous. I quickly changed the subject.

  “What else did you find?”

  “She had her own earrings on. A .45 slug shattered her nose and right cheekbone and exited the back of her skull.”

  “A .45. I didn’t think anyone bothered with those anymore. Must be a museum piece.”

  “May be old but it did the job. Took most of her face and all of the back of her skull completely away.”

  “Was the weapon recovered?”

  “Not yet. There were a lot of people in the alley before we got there. Bert was battling Laws. People were trying to break that up. Some were trying to help Thea. There was so much confusion anyone could’ve scooped it and walked. Piece like that’ll still get a good price on the market.”

  I frowned. Then I watched as Tad’s fingers slid over the door handle of his car, but I made no move to get in. As much as I wanted—needed—to be with him, I also needed to see how Bert was holding up.

  Tad’s voice, much softer now, interrupted my thoughts: “You know, I haven’t seen you in a while.”

  “Last Friday night,” I murmured, gazing up at him. He was six foot three and his brown skin seemed to glow in the noon heat.