No Time to Die Read online

  Dad said that when Florence Mills, a popular entertainer in the 1920s, died, the funeral procession had moved down this street and 100,000 people had lined the sidewalk watching in silence as a low-flying plane released a huge flock of blackbirds.

  “They don’t have send-offs like that anymore,” he complained, but I reminded him of James Baldwin’s funeral: how Olatunji’s Drums of Passion had echoed against the vaulted stone of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and how the dancers, dressed in elaborate flowing white pantaloons, pranced and somersaulted down the aisles to the sound of the drums. The ceremony had ended with thousands of candles held aloft and there wasn’t a dry eye in the place. That was a send-off that I remembered.

  On St. Nicholas Avenue I walked past the Bowery Building apartments where Dinah Washington had lived, then I slowed at Malcolm X Boulevard. I began to peek at darkened doorways, cellar entrances, steps leading down to doors below the stoops of sealed houses. If I spotted James, the police could have what was left of him.

  “Hey, hey. Good mornin’, Mali.”

  I turned around, pulling Ruffin up short. “Dr. De. Good morning. Sorry I didn’t see you.”

  “Yeah well, I see you, and from the look on your face, I don’t know who you after, but I wouldn’t wanna be it. Between you and the horse, I wouldn’t stand a chance …”

  Dr. De owned Creative Cuts and was known for correcting the serious mistakes other barbers had made. His technique was so precise that he’d earned the title of doctor of tonsorial arts, and the weekends saw standing-room-only in his place.

  I started going to Creative Cuts after the Klip Joint on 116th Street had closed. Between Dr. De and Bertha, the hairdresser I visited for deep conditioning and light gossip, I managed to keep my hair in shape.

  Dr. De had been sweeping in front of the shop and paused to lean on his broom. “Look, Mali. I know how you’re feelin’ about Claudine but believe me, time’ll take care of things.”

  I did not mention the latest killing but continued to glance up and down the avenue.

  “How’s everything else?” he said, changing the subject and eyeing my hair. “Can’t let yourself fall apart, you know. The beat goes on whether we like it or not and we got to keep steppin’ to it.”

  I nodded but still could not reply. I was aware that I hadn’t had a haircut in nearly a month. I mean I couldn’t exactly challenge Rapunzel, but Dr. De was responsible for keeping the growth I had somewhat under control. Lately I’d convinced myself that a quick shampoo under the shower was enough to get me through the day. I hadn’t even stopped in to say hello to Bertha at her shop. I told myself that I had too many other things to think about, but the reality was that I couldn’t shake the grief that had wound its way inside, gnawing at me.

  I stopped glancing around long enough to focus on Dr. De, a young man with a handsome face and round glasses set on the edge of his thin nose. His short beard and knit kufi gave him a scholarly appearance. Most barbershops had magazines and newspapers lying around but Dr. De had books.

  “I’ll be in soon,” I said. “I … have to—get myself together.”

  “I hear you. You take it easy. Things’ll work out.”

  He probably wanted to step up and hug me but he glanced again at Ruffin and thought better of it. “Things’ll work out,” he said again.

  By the time I reached home, the constriction in my throat had not completely disappeared but I was able to breathe a little easier. Alvin was in his room, chatting on the Internet, and I could hear faint notes from Dad in the studio downstairs.

  On my night table, the message light was blinking, and Tad’s voice filled the room when I pressed the button.

  “Hi, baby. It’s ten o’clock. If you get this message within the hour, I’ll be in Wells Restaurant till noon. Let’s have chicken and waffles or a cup of coffee. Or both. I love you.”

  I changed from my sweats and put on a pair of silk slacks and a cotton top. Before I left again, I peeped in on Alvin. He was hunched in concentration in front of his PC, holding the mouse as if it were the key to lost treasure. He glanced up and smiled.

  “I know. I know,” he said, holding out his free hand. “Five more minutes, then I log off. Grandpa doesn’t want me to spend the entire summer on this thing. Says it leads to social isolation. But I’m not isolated. I can connect with people in Africa, Japan, Australia, Germany. All over the world.”

  Before I could open my mouth, he knew what I was going to say, knew I agreed with Dad, so he glanced quickly at his watch and cut me off at the pass. “Uh-oh. He’s waitin’ for me now. Bass.”

  He turned the machine off. Bass practice for two hours. Dad was teaching him, a day at a time, everything he himself had ever learned about music. I worried that the computer was becoming serious competition and was glad when Dad put his foot down.

  “Boy! Unless you’re on dialysis,” he had said, “there’s no reason to be hooked to a machine for so many hours. Two hours is enough for any sane person to sit in front of a blinking screen. I don’t care if you’re able to access the winning lottery number from it. Enough is enough.”

  “What are you doing after practice?” I asked, knowing that he couldn’t go back to the computer.

  “Basketball. Morris called while you were out. I’m gonna meet him and Clarence at the court.”

  … Thank God. Let him get the exercise. Feel some sweat. Talk and yell and laugh with real people.

  I nodded, somewhat mollified, and left the house again.

  The rebirth of Wells Restaurant on Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard near 132nd Street added to the number of trend-setting restaurants in the area. Of course, most folks still remembered the original Wells that catered to the 3:00 A.M. crowds when the dance halls—the Savoy, the Rennie, the Audubon, the Park Palace, and Rockland Palace—emptied out and the true night owls who wouldn’t dream of going home without fueling up on a platter of chicken and waffles.

  From its opening in 1938 and before it closed in 1982, Pearl Bailey, Aretha Franklin, Jackie Robinson, Frank Sinatra, and any politician worth a vote had visited Wells at least once.

  Joe Wells died in 1987, and in 1992 his widow reopened the place. The dance halls are a memory but the Monday night big-band sessions and Sunday brunches pull a respectable number.

  I walked past the bar and into the large dining room where Tad was sitting at a table gazing out at Seventh Avenue. I slid into the seat opposite him and he leaned over to brush his fingers near my ear. His face looked as if he’d just come off a rendezvous with a bad dentist.

  “Sorry I had to give you more bad news. How you doin’, baby?”

  “Not too good,” I whispered. “Any word on James?”

  “No, but I got a call about an hour ago. Buddy of mine works homicide in the Four-Eight. Said there was a similar situation in the Bronx a few years ago. Three murders within a ten-block radius. There was the wire, cereal, no forced entry or prints, but some fibers were picked up from the back of the women’s clothing. They came from a dark brown jogging suit. From there, the case went cold. He’s sending me samples for a matchup. Also, all the murders took place within six weeks and then stopped. The women were killed on Thursdays, early to midevening. Same M.O.”

  “So what are you thinking?”

  He continued to gaze out of the window, frowning. His eyes were deep-set and his pupils appeared to take on the intense gold of the sunlight spilling into the room. He moved his hand to send his fingers through his close-cut, silver-edged hair, and I caught myself drifting away from the nightmare and easing into something warm, lush, and licentious.

  “I’m thinking,” Tad said, quietly bringing me back, “that either the guy got busted for something else that maybe took him off the street for a while, or he skipped one step ahead of the net and decided to lay low until the urge hit him again.

  “We’re loading everything into the computer to check the in and out dates of known violent offenders.”

  “Does this l
et James off the hook?”

  “Not hardly. I want to know about—”

  A small ring interrupted and he flipped his cell phone. His expression hardened and he rose from the table, snapping the phone off.

  “I’ll let you know about James in an hour. Maybe less,” he whispered. “He’s at the precinct. They just brought him in.”

  We skipped the chicken and waffles and I returned home to lie across the bed and stare at the play of light and shadows on the ceiling. Dad and Alvin were practicing and bass notes and piano filtered through the quiet. I breathed hard, listening to the pump of my heart, gazing at the rise of my chest, counting a number with each rise. At one hundred, I switched to the alphabet and breathed deeper. Perspiration—or was it tears?—slid down the side of my face, trickling into my ear before settling into a blot on the pillow.

  … Why doesn’t Tad call! It’s been over an hour. A whole hour, dammit!

  I closed my eyes and imagined James seated at the far end of the table in the interview room at the precinct. Wiping his face, shaking his head as more sweat gathered. I saw his stone-broken face and heard the whiny voice afloat on the thick air in the room. “… don’t know nuthin’, ain’t done nuthin’, ain’t seen nuthin’.”

  The sound filled me with an unmanageable anger and I found myself wishing I were back in uniform, in that room, on my way to becoming that thing people hate most in a bad cop.

  I thought of Argentina and Chile where interrogators broke bones and pulled teeth and tongues and fingernails without passion or purpose. And wondered what Tad and the other detectives were doing. But I knew the video was on, the tape recorder was on. And James was safe, unafraid, and maybe even a little arrogant behind the veil of his noisy whining.

  Tad was present, so James was assured, after all was said and done and he’d escaped the death penalty, that he’d walk into state prison with all his toes and fingers and brains intact. If he escaped the death penalty.

  I rolled over on the pillow and looked at the circles left by my tears. The circles felt cold and I moved away from them. The ceiling shadows blurred again as the phone rang and sent a current of shock to my arm, then to my chest. But it was the message, not the instrument.

  Tad’s voice was tight with frustration.

  “He had been in Bellevue, Mali. Alcoholic ward. He was in restraints with that pink elephant kicking his ass the whole time. Before, during, and after Marie’s murder. They cut him loose this morning and the stakeout collared him when he got home. He was sober and cried like a baby when we told ’im …”

  “Bellevue?”

  “Yeah. We had to cut him loose. He’s not the one. So he had to walk.”

  Tad probably said “good-bye” or “so long” or something but I couldn’t hear it. A roar had packed the space between the phone and my ear and I lay back on the bed.

  Sometime later, a minute perhaps, Dad and Alvin were in the room, bending over me. Alvin shook me and Dad was squeezing my hands. Alvin’s face was misshapen by fright.

  “What happened? You were screamin’. What … what’s the matter?”

  I stared at them. I didn’t know. I couldn’t answer.

  I sent flowers but did not attend Marie’s funeral. After Claudine, this was just too much for me. Two days after, I went back to the Lido. The mood was different when I stepped in, although the crowd was the same. The four retirees were at their usual table, nursing bottles of beer and bent in silent concentration over a chessboard. When I walked in, they tipped their caps but the gesture was perfunctory, polite, and their eyes had lost whatever was there when they had glanced at Marie.

  Despite the hum of the air conditioner, the atmosphere seemed close, made more melancholy by Gladys Knight’s “Midnight Train to Georgia” flowing in a current of remorse from the jukebox.

  I took a seat near the front and waited as Betty poured a gin and tonic for a customer seated at the other end. Then she moved toward me and rested her arms on the bar. “How you doin’, Mali?”

  Before I could answer, she shook her head. “Girl, ain’t this some terrible stuff happenin’? Marie. I can’t believe that girl is gone.”

  I nodded, and although it was only three o’clock, too early in the day to be drinking, ordered an Absolut on the rocks. “I wanted to go to the service,” I said, “but after Claudine, I just couldn’t handle it.”

  “Don’t feel bad.” She reached over and touched my arm. “I know how it is. Too much get dumped on you at one time, you don’t know whether to face it or fold. Life’s a bitch sometimes. But I can say this: she had a big, beautiful sendoff. All her coworkers were there. And Clyde sent a blanket of roses. A blanket. And oh, did he cry! You know how they say some love is strong enough to move heaven and earth? Well, Clyde was strong enough to move earth, but heaven had the last word. Now see, he had eyes for her for years and he was the one she shoulda hooked up with in the first place. Not that low-down James. Now, just as she and Clyde was about to get together, she gets killed. That was no time to die. Girl hardly had a chance to live.”

  I lifted my glass and thought of Claudine, who was just getting her life back together. It was no time for her to die either.

  “And as for James, he didn’t even show. Probably too embarrassed at the way he came off at the party. Man is a complete fool. How she put up with him longer than one day is beyond me. I always say a woman can do bad by herself.”

  I didn’t mention that one jug too many of Gypsy Rose had James laid up in a fog at Bellevue. Instead I said, “Has he been in here since she—”

  “Hell no. Not after the way he mouthed off, he better not show his face in this place.”

  She leaned over the bar, lowering her voice. “And I’ll tell you this, Mali. I heard through the vine—one of his drinkin’ buddies was in here the other night—he was sayin’ that James is goin’ ’round blamin’ you for interfering in his business. Said you turned Claudine against him and that’s why she left.”

  “What?”

  “And that ain’t all. Said he saw you talkin’ to Marie the night of the party and you musta told her somethin’ about him. So you watch your back, girl. He is sneaky and he’s crazy. Bad combination.”

  Two men came in and she moved away to take their order. Aretha Franklin’s burning voice filtered from the jukebox now, a praise song for feeling like a natural woman. When the tribute ended, I listened in the short silence to the tap of the chess pieces at the retirees’ table and wondered what their days would be like without the presence of Marie, or someone like her, whose young and easy smile helped make them forget the injury of growing old.

  “Where does James live now?” I asked when Betty returned to perch on a stool near the register. The two men had bought her a brandy and she brought the small glass to her mouth before she spoke.

  “Last place I heard was a rooming house on 136th Street, couple doors off Malcolm X Boulevard, but he’s probably long gone from there now. You ain’t goin’ lookin’ for him, are you?”

  “Not particularly, but it’s always good to know where the enemy is hiding.”

  … And also to find out why he’s spreading these lies. I had never interfered between him and Claudine. I’d never mentioned a thing, especially about the incident on her wedding day. I was willing to let sleeping dogs lie, but this lying dog has to be straightened out.

  “Well,” Betty sighed, “I’m hoping that they catch whoever did this. I mean I heard she wasn’t even robbed. Just murdered. Nothing was taken from the apartment.”

  “That’s strange,” I said, waiting to hear what else might be on the vine. If anything was there, Betty would know, but she only shrugged and finished her drink. I finished mine and paid my check but she pushed the money back at me as I rose from the stool.

  “Listen, Mali.” She leaned over now. “You be cool. Watch your back. Your dad’ll be no more good if something happens to you. He already lost one daughter. This ain’t no time for you to die. You still got your sister’s ki
d to raise.”

  “You ’re right, Betty. I’ll remember.”

  It was a little after four, and the afternoon sky was a cloudless pale blue. I went across the street and joined the waiting line outside Georgie’s Bakery and bought a dozen of the donuts that folks would mug you for. Then I walked toward Malcolm X Boulevard, again passing the chorus of African hair braiders with their flowing colors and accents, calling to the sisters to visit their salon.

  At 127th Street I called Tad. “How about a walk down near the lake?”

  “Baby, you sound out of it. You all right?”

  “I’m okay,” I said. “I just … need to talk.”

  He was there in ten minutes, and twenty minutes later we were strolling down 110th Street heading for the Fifth Avenue entrance to the Central Park lake, devouring the donuts. But instead of the quiet talk I’d planned, I found myself trying to figure different angles, arguing.

  “James is schizoid,” I said. “He’s not particularly bright but he’s cunning. Who’s to say he didn’t slip out or talk his way out of the hospital and make it back before bed check? Who’s to say he wasn’t faking when he went in there in the first place? Two women involved with the same man and killed the same way? It can’t be anyone else but James.”

  “No ifs, ands, or buts, Mali. James is not it. You can’t pin a rap on someone just because you hate his guts.”

  “Too bad,” I said, wondering how he’d react if he knew how James felt about me. When James had walked away in front of the Lido, he said he would see me again, and sooner or later I knew he was going to keep his promise.

  We continued to walk. The pale blue disappeared in the shadows of early evening and the sky turned almost crimson, bathing the walkers, runners, skaters, and cyclists in a singular red cast. As we approached the park, the lake, resembling a large jewel, beckoned us. I wanted to gaze at the water and recall some calming mantra that would help me sort through my feelings.

  But Tad stopped suddenly and turned to face me. “Listen, Mali. You’re angry and don’t know where to direct it. I—”