No Time to Die Page 7

  “Well, what did you expect?” I cried. “Of course I’m angry. I’m damn mad and—”

  “And you’re not gonna take it anymore. Right? So here’s what we’re gonna do.” He took my arm and we walked past the Duke Ellington monument at the Fifth Avenue circle. The huge piano appeared to float above the elongated arms of the Muses and cast a crisscross of shadow lines on the sidewalk. Inside the park, all the benches were filled, so we sat on the grass at the edge of the lake.

  “You’ve got to make an effort,” he said quietly. “An effort to be objective. Get over the idea that it was James. I know what he did to Claudine. He did terrible things but he did not kill her.”

  “How do you know? How can you be so damn sure?”

  My high voice caused people sitting nearby to glance at us. Tad looked out across the lake and let a minute pass. “Lack of evidence,” he finally said. “It’s just not there, Mali. That’s what you have to go by, not your emotion. No matter how much you dislike him, feelings don’t count in a court of law.”

  I remained quiet but inside I was boiling with an anger I knew was irrational.

  “Let’s look at this from another angle,” he said. “There was no money, jewelry, or other property taken, so it wasn’t robbery. The guy is probably a psycho, just as you said, but there were no prints or semen to trace. So maybe we should focus on what might have triggered him.

  “Claudine and Marie were killed on Thursdays—like the women in the Bronx. It wasn’t a copycat because the Bronx details were never publicized. So it’s most likely the same person.

  “What is it that happens on Thursdays? Or Wednesday nights for that matter? Is the moon full? Is there an electrical storm? Does he run out of medication at that particular time? And the ten-block radius in the Bronx. Was it random or was there something within those blocks that the women might have had in common? Did he live or work there or did he prowl the area looking for likely victims? What’s driving him?”

  I thought of John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Son of Sam, Jeffrey Dahmer, and a chill went through me. “You think we have a serial killer loose in Harlem?”

  He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Anything’s possible, though we don’t get many black serial killers.”

  “What about Atlanta in the seventies and eighties?”

  “They only convicted Williams for one of those murders and I have my doubts about that one.”

  He fell silent again and gazed out at the lake. Across the water, children were launching small sailboats, guiding them by remote control. Their laughter wafted toward us as some of the boats collided. A few minutes passed before Tad spoke: “In any event, Mali, from now on, I’m gonna do this investigation solo. You’re still grieving and it’s making you crazy.”

  “What do you mean by solo,” I asked, ignoring everything else he’d said.

  “Just what I said. It’d be better if you weren’t so involved. You’re too close to this … this …”

  I gazed hard at the toy boats and the children. I thought of Claudine and Marie and the life that had been taken from them. They’d had no chance to feel the love of their own child, no chance to watch it grow and sail toy boats.

  Despite Tad’s argument, I still believed James did it, had taken all of this from Claudine and Marie, and I intended to find him, with or without help.

  Tad was still searching for the right word and I didn’t wait for him to find it. I got to my feet and walked out of the park without a backward glance.

  I strolled uptown, and by the time I’d walked past the Lenox Lounge near 125th Street, I’d made up my mind to look for James. He was sneaky and crazy. He’d come up on Marie from behind to beat her. And I knew all too well what he’d done to Claudine. Now they were dead. I intended to let him know that if he was looking for me, he was looking for trouble and I was ready to meet him face-to-face.

  Between Malcolm X and Powell Boulevards, 136th Street was lined with three-story row houses—brick, lime, and brownstone—and anchored by the Countee Cullen Library near Malcolm X and a community center near Powell. Most of the houses were occupied and many others were sealed. One had been abandoned for so long a tree was growing inside. Others had been converted into funeral establishments, small churches, and rooming houses.

  A long time ago, my mother had said, “Learn to look at the bells. Five bells or more in a three-story house usually means its a rooming house. Not always, but most of the time.”

  I counted the bells at a house next door to a sealed building and hit a jackpot of sorts when I pressed the bottom one. It chimed like a church bell and a thin, brown, middle-aged woman in black linen slacks and a yellow cotton pullover appeared at the wrought-iron gate and eyed me carefully before she opened it. A curly wig slanted over her left eye and an unlit cigarette hung from the corner of her mouth and bobbed up and down as she spoke.

  “You lookin’ for who?”

  “James. James Thomas,” I repeated.

  “Where you from?”

  I didn’t know if she meant which city, state, or finance company, so I said, “I’m a friend. I was told he—”

  She removed the cigarette and rested her hand against the door frame. “Who you foolin’, girl? Did Maxie send you?”

  “Maxie?”

  “From the number hole.”

  I knew of Maxie from my days on the force. A young Jamaican who sported long silken dreadlocks and who was into loan-sharking, numbers, and a whole lot of other stuff. Rumor had it that he was a man of extremes: loyal to friends, generous with strangers, and vicious with anyone who crossed him. I nodded and shrugged.

  “I heard of him but I don’t know Maxie personally.”

  She brushed her hair back from her eyes and looked at me even closer now. And smiled. “You ever go to the Club Harlem? On Fridays? Somehow you look kinda familiar.”

  “I’m there on Fridays, some Saturdays, and even some Tuesdays,” I said. “My dad’s group plays—”

  “Jeffrey Anderson? He’s your father? Well I’ll be! Girl, you come on in. We gotta talk. And you don’t have to bullshit me to find James. You don’t even look like a friend of his, but he probably scammed you too.”

  She leaned against the gate to unlock it, then swung it open for me to step in. She was comfortable now, and eager for conversation.

  “Everybody calls me ‘Miss Dottie,’ ” she said after I had introduced myself. I followed her up a carpeted flight of steps and into a large front parlor. The room was well furnished with old art deco pieces, and a lemon wax fragrance hung in the air. A wing chair with matching footstool faced an enormous marble fireplace flanked by glass-enclosed bookcases. A settee covered in crewel and edged in carved wood was near the window, and a pair of old-fashioned torchieres sent a soft light over the oak wainscoting.

  “This is a gas fireplace,” she said when she noticed my stare. “Rooms are large, but come winter, these units heat up the rooms faster and better than a log fire.”

  She motioned me to a seat. “Be right back. Would you like a soda or something?” And without waiting for an answer, disappeared back down the stairs—presumably to the kitchen. This gave me the chance to really look around and admire the Aubusson carpet, the window curtains made of old lace—fine and fragile—and a chandelier dripping crystal-covered lights.

  I listened to the slam of a cabinet door, then her footsteps on the stairs again. She placed a black-lacquered tray with two glasses and a large bottle of ginger ale on the table.

  “This is quite a place you have. The furnishings are exquisite.”

  “Thanks. I don’t have much company since my husband passed, but those who visit, especially for the first time, are always surprised, because the outside looks so shabby. Well, I ain’t dumb. All these pieces was left to me by my folks and I don’t want a stick to walk. Fix up the outside, people think you doing good inside. Must have somethin’ worth breakin’ in for.

  “Plenty homes on this block just like mine but we don’t adverti
se. Right down the block where the Countee Cullen Library stands is where Madam C. J. Walker had her town house and next door was her beauty salon. Right there at number 108 and 110. The town house was named the Dark Tower, and poetry by Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes was scripted right on the walls. And she had that fabulous mansion designed and built in Irvington-on-Hudson by New York City’s first certified black architect. Imagine Madam C. J., a black lady, doin’ all that. And startin’ out with only $1.25 in her pocket and becoming the first self-made female millionaire, black or white, in this man’s country?

  “I mean this block has history. What some of us are tryin’ to do now is pressure the city to sell these sealed buildings. Couple of ’em already been broken into and no tellin’ what’s behind those walls. I think about one a them catchin’ fire and spreadin’, you know, like they did in Philly. You remember the MOVE people, how the cops had ’em surrounded and dropped that bomb on their house. All for playin’ loud music and disturbin’ the peace. Fire started and the cops and firemen let it burn until the entire square block was nuthin’ but ashes. Gone. I saw the whole thing on TV and never forgot. Cops and firemen just standin’ around like they at a picnic. Probably thinkin’ black folks had no business with those kind a homes in the first place.”

  She filled both glasses and settled down.

  “Didn’t mean to go off on a Lenox Avenue soapbox. Ah, you too young to remember that too. Probably just a baby back then.”

  I nodded. Of course I remembered standing on the corner of 125th and Lenox. It was Lenox Avenue then, and I recall listening to the orators: Black nationalists, Garveyites, Pan-Africans, all preaching pride, self-determination, plus independence for Africa. The crowd was so thick at times I could barely move.

  “Anyway, Mali, how’d a pretty young woman like you get mixed up with James? If he owe you, you ain’t the only one, I can tell you that. Just take a number and step to the back of the line.”

  “Well,” I said, “it’s a bit more complicated than that. He was married to a friend of mine and he abused her very badly. She’s dead now and—”

  “Whoa. What a minute.” Miss Dottie put her glass down and leaned forward, frowning. “Did he do it? You sayin’ he killed her?”

  “I don’t know. The cops don’t think so, that’s why he’s still out here, but … I have other ideas. He recently threatened me and I’m trying to find him, to talk to him.”

  “Well, you outta luck ‘cause he on the lam. Skipped out owin’ me eight weeks’ back rent.”

  “When did he move?”

  “About a week ago. I didn’t even know till I checked his room. You see, I have the parlor and street floors. Upstairs, I have three rooms rented. All working folks. Single, quiet, and respectable. But that James …” She shook her head and took a sip from her glass. “I guess I was stupid. He talked me into feeling sorry for him and I let him have the room I was gonna rent to my cousin.

  “Anyway, for a few days I hadn’t heard any footsteps over my head or any of his loud talk, so I said lemme check and see what’s happenin’. Maybe he croaked in there or somethin’. But I opened his door and saw he had eased on down the road.

  “I sure hope you find him before I do ’cause I’m gonna strip it outta his skin. Use up my gas, my light and electricity, and walked leavin’ a room full a funky clothes. What I’m supposed to do with them rags? Boy slicker than goose grease but he gonna get paid. And you know, he also ran up a monster tab—loans and numbers—and Maxie and his crew don’t play. They take your legs.”

  She finished her soda and offered me another glass, which I declined, but I listened for another five minutes. No, she knew none of his relatives, otherwise she would’ve been kicking their door in. She knew none of his friends but bet they were probably out scouting for him also.

  James seemed to have skipped owing half of Harlem. He wasn’t likely to roll up on me anytime soon, so I left my personal card and took her phone number.

  “You know I’m in the club every Friday,” she said. “I love your father’s music. Brings back memories, times when there was serious jazz all over Harlem.”

  “It’s coming back,” I said. “Things come full circle if you hang in there long enough.”

  I said good-bye and headed toward Powell Boulevard, passing the Heaven’s Gate Funeral Home and the Sunset Funeral Services.

  A minute later I doubled back to Lenox Avenue remembering that Alvin wanted Häagen-Dazs butter pecan and I wanted mango-raspberry sorbet. The flyer from the supermarket near 130th Street advertised it and the price was right.

  “So what you sayin’? I gotta pay you seventy a week now? An extra twenty?”

  “That’s right. I need to pay for this TV.”

  Ache stood in the doorway of the junk-filled living room and stared at Hazel and then at the television, a thirty-three-inch behemoth propped on the pyramid of milk crates where the old twelve-inch set once rested. The old one, smashed, had been taken out by the two men who’d sold her the new model. They’d scooped it, they said, as “it fell off the back of a truck” and figured she’d be interested, seein’ as how she was disabled and not able to get around and all …

  “And ’cause your boy’s our boy, we lettin’ it go for just a couple dollars down and then twenty dollars a week,” they had said.

  Once they’d hooked it up, Hazel had not bothered to ask how many weeks. She had given them what was left of her SSI check and then sat there as if she’d been planted, mesmerized by Jerry Springer, Ricki Lake, and Jenny Jones.

  No, she didn’t like Oprah. Didn’t go for her at all. The nerve of that black woman earning a million a minute. The nerve of her losing all that weight. And had that fine, fine man draped on her arm. No, she didn’t like Oprah at all, at all.

  She felt so much better watching those young girls, hair flying, duking it out over some grinning man on Jerry’s show. Or watching the fat woman crying on “Jenny Jones” when the ex-husband, same size, confessed he couldn’t cut it anymore and Jenny, her face pinched with as much concern as plastic would allow, offering last-minute counseling as the credits rolled.

  “I got to pay ’em twenty every Friday,” Hazel said, briefly pulling her eyes away from the screen to count the money he’d handed her. “Listen,” she continued. Her voice remained in the low normal octaves because she did not want to miss a line of Jerry Springer running up the steps to push the mike under someone’s outraged nose. “It’s more’n you thought a doin’ for me. TV in pieces on the floor and you didn’t give a shit. If it wasn’t for Junebug next door, tellin’ me how this set was available, I don’t know where I’d be.”

  Jerry broke for a commercial and allowed Hazel to devote her full attention to her son. “And shit, seventy dollars a week is cheap. Where you gonna pay that for a place to lay your stupid head. Remember couple years ago you thought you could do better and walked out with your ass on your shoulder. Bronx ate you up, didn’t it? Lucky your room was here when you come crawlin’ back …”

  He leaned against the wall, remembering and feeling the rage well up in him again.

  Fat sloppy bitch. Ass on my shoulder? You come in on me in the bathroom, bust in like you the Five-O with a fuckin’ no-knock warrant. Me, I’m standin’ there. You starin’ and laughin’.

  Memory came back and hit him in the face. Hazel standing with her arms in a tight knot across her chest like a judge passing sentence, and her voice—loud and hoarse from laughing.

  “… coulda told you all along you was wastin’ your money. All them pills ’n’ shit. Ain’t done nuthin’. Dick still small as the day you was born. Steroids ain’t done shit ’cept shrink your wallet. That’s money coulda been comin’ my way. You ain’t got nuthin’ hangin’. Just like your no-good daddy …”

  He’d left in the middle of the night, ran to the Bronx, and got an equally dirty room and a job bagging and stocking groceries in a small supermarket. The few months he was there—three women, ordinary to the point of anonymity w
hile living, but spectacular in death—restored his balance, and Hazel’s laughter eventually faded. He’d kept the news clippings but was furious at the lack of detail. No mention of the cereal. Didn’t they know the cereal was important? The dumb cops weren’t doing their job.

  Now he looked at Hazel sprawled on the couch, her dress hiked between her knees. The same dress she’d put on day after day after day until some parts had stiffened from the dirt and grease. He peered at the table in front of her piled high with empty food containers where the residue had hardened to a black crust.

  The commercial died and she pulled a family-size box of frosted cornflakes onto her lap, dug in, and put a fist to her mouth, chewing absently. Like popcorn at the movies.

  He stared at the box and a wave of revulsion rose in his throat, knotting his tongue so that he couldn’t speak.

  The crunching noise followed as he retreated down the hall to his room, where he closed the door to shut out the sound. He sat on the edge of the bed and gazed into the blank darkness.

  Cereal. Stuffin’ her face with it. That same cereal …

  Even in the dark, his head started to spin and he tried to shift, to think of something else that might ease the pressure.

  Twenty dollars more a week. I ain’t even watchin’ no TV. Twenty dollars. Only time I looked was when they had my man, Jeffrey Dahmer, on. Hell, I had to see him. He was famous. Now I gotta give up twenty more? How long she got to pay? Bet the fuck she don’t even know.

  He leaned forward and unfolded the small paper bag he’d brought home. It contained one of the borderline-fresh rolls the store gave away to the help at the end of each day. An alternative to having them remain in the bin overnight as entrees for various nocturnal crawlers.

  He broke the roll open with his thumbs and stuffed it with the slices from the ham and the cheese packets he’d stolen during the day. That and a warm can of the cheapest soda he’d made a big show of paying for when he checked out. He ate in the murky glow of the fifteen-watt light near his bed, licking his fingers, then wiping them against the edge of the worn blanket.