No Time to Die Page 9

  Dr. De caught my eye and smiled. “Hey, hey, Mali. Good to see you. You number five, okay?” He nodded and clicked his scissors, using his usual psychology. Once a person stepped in, he or she was drawn into the set and leaving was unthinkable. Those who took a number and left, somehow made it back just as the chair was vacated for them.

  I removed my scarf, and my reflection in the mirror stared back, telling me not to bother taking a number, just take a seat and make myself comfortable.

  I settled in, glancing at the other faces, and, as usual, felt the familiar warmth and comfort close around like a cocoon. I watched the men, at ease with themselves. When they glanced out the window, the plate glass seemed to provide an additional buffer as they watched the passing parade.

  “Hey, that’s Kenneth.”

  “Is that Kenneth? Naw.”

  “Yes it is.” The observer turned from the window and raised his voice like an auctioneer: “Anybody in here kin to Kenny? Know Kenny? Owe Kenny? No? Okay, now we can talk about Kenny.”

  “Damn. Mack Daddy ain’t lookin’ too cool,” Charlie’s customer said. “Done lost the glide in his stride.”

  “Just got out. How you expect he be walkin’ after all them years?”

  “Had it goin’ on back in the day. Diamond on every finger, and two on his thumbs. Then his dippin’ ’n’ dabbin’ had him grippin’ ’n’ grabbin’. He be lucky now to even see food stamps.”

  “Ain’t nuthin’ sorrier than a broke-ass pimp,” Charlie concluded.

  In here, where private language prevailed, the verb “to be” was conjugated without igniting a sociological firestorm:

  “Yeah, brother. I be gone a few weeks.”

  “Is that right? Well, I be lookin’ after your lady.”

  “Mm-hmm. And when I git back, you be Dee E Dee. Dead.”

  In here, slow days were never slow. It only meant that Dr. De could step out to the Sugar Shack and maybe sit down to a meal and rest his feet for forty-five minutes instead of sending for a quick takeout from Pan Pan’s.

  Slow days meant space enough for the two old historians, eighty-four and ninety-one, to bend knee-to-knee over a chessboard older than they were and work strategy like Hannibal.

  Dad got his hair cut on the slow days and sometimes stayed all day.

  I preferred Saturdays, when I could catch the latest talk. The television positioned on top of the soda dispenser was turned off and the observers, tired of their window watch, turned to the rap inside.

  “So like I was askin’ y’all,” said Charlie, the middle barber. “Who’s really bein’ empowered by all this empowerment money?” He raised his scissors and spun the chair in a half-circle to close in on the nape of a young boy, the scissors working the outline of a Coptic cross in low relief against his fade.

  “I say it’s like this,” Charlie continued. “The folks inside the barricade—which is us—ain’t gonna see one damn dime a that dollar.”

  “Tell it, brother,” Dr. De nodded. “It’s gonna be just like that last War on Poverty. Buccaneers, brokers, and B.S. artists cleaned up while homeboy on the corner singin’ ‘a change gonna come someday.’

  “Soon as you bust one gate, a wall goes up someplace else. The fight goes on.”

  I glanced at the faces in the silence. Behind the bravado and good humor, everyone in the shop was seeking not just a haircut but respite from shared pain. And, if not a common understanding of why life was the way it was, at least a common idea about how to prevent it from getting any worse.

  “You got to see the big picture,” Dr. De said. “Those buccaneers, brokers, and B.S. artists, their only contact with the barricades happen when they rattlin’ through on Metro-North and gaze out on the scene: Tore-up streets and tenements. Hi-rise cages somebody nicknamed the projects. A ‘project’ is somethin’ you workin’ on, experimentin’ with, you know what I’m sayin’?

  “Some a them dig the scene and don’t see a thing. But there’s one—maybe the buccaneer or the bullshitter—pardon me, ladies—shoots a glance and a lightbulb goes on. Bam! Before he hits the Bronx, that dude has figured out how more gold could be scooped from this zone than from a South African mine.”

  “Now, wait a minute, brother,” a young man said. He was sitting on the bench near the man next to me. “You got it wrong. Sure, back in the day there was a lot of stealin’ and dealin’. But what’s happenin’ now is different.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, the folks are a lot more hip. They’re not gonna stand still for no shady stuff. People gettin’ busted for the smallest things nowadays.”

  “You right. It’s the small things. Them squeegee guys and jaywalkers know the deal. Crime don’t play. P-L-A-Y.”

  “Ah, you talkin’ apples and oranges now.”

  “Naw we ain’t. Crime is crime is crime.”

  “Except the big boys get community time. Cops get overtime. And we get hard time.”

  “What you say, brother!”

  “Tell it so we know it. That’s why we got to stand up for what’s real instead of fallin’ for whatever they throw our way.”

  I closed my eyes, leaned back, and rested my head against the wall intending to listen, but I must have fallen asleep. I saw my Grandaunt Celia and heard my mother saying, “Stand up for what’s right. Don’t let anyone beat you down. Always remember Aunt Celia and how she stood up—”

  “… Mali?”

  I had been dreaming. I heard my name. I heard something else but it was outside the dream. I woke and Dr. De was tapping my shoulder.

  “You ready or you want to nod? I know some of the B.S. is boring but you really let us know it. You was cuttin’ zzzs like a cop on overtime.”

  I raised my head from the shoulder of a man seated next to me, a complete stranger. I hoped I hadn’t drooled on him.

  He held up his hand, cutting into my apology. “Don’t be sorry. Hey, I’m blessed. Can’t remember when somebody pretty as you been within wavin’ distance. You still sleepy? Be my guest.”

  I settled into Dr. De’s chair and listened to the talk, trying to piece together what I thought I’d heard: Jobs lost. Numbers missed. Hard times. Food stamps. Food. I wasn’t dreaming.

  “… man, you kiddin’,” said an older man now seated in Charlie’s chair.

  “Naw, it was Billy told me. He was shootin’ a video over by that supermarket, testin’ his camera before a weddin’. Aimed at the window and caught this dude scoopin’ a box of cereal. Cornflakes. Right outta somebody’s groceries. Caught the brother’s hard times right on tape. Said he felt like goin’ in there and droppin’ coins on ’im but the weddin’ party showed up and he let it go.”

  “Well, they cut welfare everywhere but on Wall Street,” Charlie said. “City ate four hundred million in taxes to keep the big boys from jumpin’ across the Hudson. But they cut food stamps. Got young girls on the streets pushin’ brooms bigger than they are when they should be in school. Got that Gestapo sommabitch downtown talkin’ how he gonna cut children off food stamps if the mamas don’t take any kinda job come their way.”

  “Fuckin’ power gone to his head.”

  “And they warehousin’ more brothers than they got room for. This just the beginnin’. Folks be snatchin’ more than cereal.”

  I listened through the buzz of the clippers, then shifted suddenly as if a current had passed through the chair.

  Dr. De grabbed my neck and held it steady. “Girl, you tryin’ to ruin my rep. I almost cut a groove in your scalp. Hold on a minute and you can go home and slide into a coma if you want.”

  I held up and, twenty minutes later, walked out with a business card I picked from the flyers and ads posted near the door.

  Outside on the crowded avenue, I ignored the sun beating time like a drummer on my newly exposed scalp. I concentrated instead on the elaborately fancy print on the card in my hand.

  Memories Fade

  But Weddings Christenings and Parties

  Live Forever on
Film

  Call Video Billy for Appointment

  After an awkward pause, Tad seemed elated to hear from me and gladder about the latest news.

  “A box of cereal, Mali? On video?”

  “That’s what I understand …”

  “Listen, I’m coming over. Okay?”

  And ten minutes later he knocked at the door.

  When I opened it and gazed at his deepset eyes, his honeyed skin, and the silver in his close-cut hair, I almost forgot why I’d called him. I focused on his black silk shirt open at the throat and studied the soft pleat in his gray linen trousers until my head cleared somewhat.

  He sat on the edge of the sofa and listened, then shook his head. “Maybe something to it. Maybe not.”

  “What else do we have to go on right now?” I said as I dialed Billy’s number. Luckily he was at home.

  We walked the few blocks to St. Nicholas Avenue and then south toward 133rd Street, making small talk after I’d related the conversation in Dr. De’s, but mostly we walked in silence.

  The elevator was old and sluggish and we were alone. I stared at the flickering indicator like a stranger as the floors moved by, much too slow to suit me.

  “Nice haircut,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I replied, studying the walls as if they were hung with rare paintings. The silence closed in and I wanted to close my eyes.

  “Still mad at me?” he whispered.

  He was behind me now and his hands eased around my shoulders to turn me around. “Still mad?”

  He pressed me against him and I breathed in his cologne. I could feel the fast hard rhythm in his chest. My arms flew up and around him and I backed him against the wall. It was easy to do because he was willing, and right now I needed him to be willing. His mouth opened and I tasted mint and wanted to swallow his tongue. His mustache tickled and I wondered if the elevator had ever gotten stuck between floors.

  “You’re not still mad, are you, baby?”

  “About what?” I whispered.

  His mouth covered my ear now and I heard his breathing and felt the dizzyingly familiar rhythm of the rest of him. When the door slid open with a noisy groan, I was soaked, stressed, and ready to see Billy another time, any other time but now.

  It took a few minutes to get myself together, so we lingered in the corridor, glancing around at the mottled beige walls and etched-glass light fixtures. The mauve carpet leading from the elevator was soft and thick.

  The apartment was on the fifth floor of a seven-story limestone facing the steep green rise of St. Nicholas Park. It was an old building, kept intact by the strength of the locked lobby door and the will of the older tenants who remembered how it used to be “when you could sleep on your fire escape on a muggy night without getting mugged.”

  We rang the bell and waited. Footsteps approached behind the door and Billy opened it with a flourish.

  “How are you?” he whispered, gazing at Tad as if he were a birthday present sent special delivery from Neiman-Marcus.

  “I’m fine,” I said, even though he hadn’t even seen me. “I’m Mali Anderson and this is Detective Tad Honeywell.”

  “Yes. You’re the one who called,” and looking at Tad, he said, “A detective. My, my, my. I’m sure you must do very interesting work. A detective.”

  Billy was about five-nine, with locked hair down to his shoulders and eyes that reminded me of old amber. He wore a white top and drawstring pants made of light East Indian cotton.

  “The place is a wreck,” he said. “Y’all gotta excuse me. This week I’ve been too busy to clean anything except my body.”

  He led the way through a narrow foyer with walls covered in red silk and into a living room painted a high-gloss chocolate and every inch covered with artwork: oil on canvas, acrylic on Masonite, mixed media on paper, acrylic and pastel on board, and pen-and-ink studies.

  The sun filtered through a collection of old blue glass bottles arranged in tiers in the curtainless windows, and the room was furnished entirely with antiques. I did not see a speck of dust.

  “Have a seat,” he said, waving us toward a burgundy velvet sofa. “I know you could use something cool to drink. Beer, iced tea, or soda?”

  “Soda,” Tad said.

  He stepped into a small kitchen and this gave me a chance to look closely at the artwork.

  When he returned, I was staring at a ten-by-twelve-inch drawing by Keith Haring. It had been inscribed to Billy.

  “You knew Keith Haring?”

  Billy nodded. His teeth were perfect when he smiled. “Knew him way before he became famous,” he said, placing a large bottle of ginger ale on the coffee table. “Played handball together in the East Village years ago. I never had the work appraised because I don’t ever intend to sell it.”

  “I don’t blame you,” I said.

  He opened an old ebony cabinet inlaid with ivory paneling and brought out three cut-crystal glasses. “Now, let’s see. Just soda or would y’all like it mixed with something stronger?”

  “Soda is fine,” I said, settling back on the sofa. “You’re quite a collector. Your place is filled with such beautiful things.”

  He smiled again as he filled the glasses, pleased that I’d noticed. Then he positioned himself on a leather ottoman with his legs curled under him yoga style, ready to talk business.

  “You said you wanted to speak to me about a video? What’s the occasion?”

  “Well, actually,” I said, “the occasion has passed.”

  Billy looked from me to Tad, then back at me, his eyes narrowing. “Passed? You want me to video a funeral? Darling, I don’t do funerals. Only fun things. My nerves can’t take no grim stuff.”

  “No,” I said. “This was a wedding took place maybe a few weeks ago. You were taping it, but first you had tested your equipment near a church, near a supermarket, and caught someone in the window taking some groceries. Do you recall that?”

  Billy placed his glass on the table and leaned forward with his hands under his chin. “Do I remember. Do I remember. It was right outside the Good Tidings African Apostolic Church on Lenox Avenue. Supermarket’s right next door.”

  I looked at Billy. “Is it a small church with a white front next to that new supermarket near 130th Street?”

  “That’s the one. We ain’t hardly talkin’ cathedral here,” Billy said.

  “Do you have the tape?” Tad said. “We’re trying to find the man who took that box of cereal.”

  “Boy, I don’t believe this,” Billy sighed, throwing up his hands. “I heard of ‘quality of life’ offenses, but I can’t believe a detective, a detective lieutenant no less, is assigned to look for a cereal thief. That fool in City Hall must not have anything else to think about.”

  “This guy is wanted for something else,” I said.

  Billy looked at me again, then narrowed his eyes even further. “Oh! What?”

  “Right now we can’t say because he may very well be innocent. But once we see the tape, we’ll be able to—”

  “Well, that’s just it. I don’t have it.”

  “Not even a copy?” Tad asked, a look coming over his face that said he didn’t believe him.

  “Not even a copy. And that’s not like me to bypass something like that. But—well, here’s what happened. The bride was so anxious to see the tape, I gave it to her with the understanding that it hadn’t been edited or anything. There was a lot of stuff, raw stuff, that I planned to cut out. For one thing, her man’s mama had drunk too much and fell off her chair and I needed to take that out. Plus there was a fistfight near the punch bowl and some girl got separated from her weave. I’m tellin’ you, some colored folks just need to stay home till they can get their act together.

  “So a week goes by and she doesn’t return the tape, doesn’t call, or anything. I mean I practically jammed her machine with at least a hundred messages and not one call was returned. Well, lo and behold, when I finally caught up with her—must have called on an off day—she
said she had no intention of giving me back the tape. She said she’d destroyed it.”

  “Why would she do that?” I asked, aware now that Tad probably wanted me to do most of the talking. Billy was making the most of his bold amber eyes and Tad, behind his bland professionalism, was not at ease.

  Billy lifted his shoulders in a slow, elegant dancer’s move. “She claimed I had deliberately angled the camera in such a way as to make her look fat. Please! I’m an artist. Half the paintings on these walls, I did them. I’m a professional. I know my job and this three-hundred-fifty-pound heifer with a behind so wide you could sit on didn’t need no help from me or my camera. She was fat before video was invented. Period.

  “I don’t believe she destroyed that tape and I got her broad behind in court right now to get my money. A deal is a deal. And if you ask me, she shoulda invested in a little Slim-Fast before she cornered the market on spandex.”

  I took a sip of my soda, waiting for the two snaps up, but he calmed down and continued. “But yes, the supermarket was right next to that two-by-four church she got hitched in. All I saw in the window was the hands and arms, dark, and with enough muscle to lift a car. Why was that man—and it had to be a man—into small shit like pilferin’ groceries? I know times are hard, what with these cutbacks and all, but with arms like that, he could be pullin’ big dollars in professional wrestling.”

  “Could we have the name and address of the bride?” I asked.

  “With pleasure,” Billy said, moving quickly from the ottoman to get his appointment book. He thumbed through the pages, and when he looked up, his amber eyes shone. “Here it is. Now, let’s see the heifer get attitude with you.”

  We were quiet in the elevator until Tad said, “You asked about the supermarket?”

  We stepped out into the lobby and hit the sidewalk. I wondered if the tape had been destroyed or if the bride, embarrassed, was simply holding on to it. I wondered about the strong hands lifting the cereal. Were there any tattoos, marks, or moles visible? Did the guy work at the grocery store? Or was he someone off the street who wandered in to bag groceries?