A Toast Before Dying (12 page)

Even the bar around the corner, with a crowd so tough it should have kept sawdust on the floor for the blood, advertised a “live” deejay on Thursdays, prompting speculation about his condition on the other nights.

The Club Harlem took note and quickly reduced their prices—and the size of their dinner plates—and with their fancy decor they managed to remain ahead of the game. Dad’s ensemble was a regular and his name in the window guaranteed a full house on the weekends.

When I stepped out of the cab, I saw that the club’s double-height brass inlaid doors were still graffiti-free, the evergreens on each side still swayed in the huge terra-cotta planters, and the maître d’ still escorted patrons to the tables. The tourists had breathed more life into the area, and the weekend special prix-fixe jazz supper of broiled catfish, red rice, yams, and collard greens made the place busier than ever.

My table was off to the side but well within the sight line of the recessed stage in the center of the sloping
floor. A minute after I had eased into my seat, I spotted TooHot striding up the aisle, heading for the door. He brushed by me in the dim light. I made out his angry expression and quickly tapped his arm.

“You all right?”

“Shit, no. I—” He peered closer and then shook his head. “Mali. Oh, I’m sorry. ’Scuse the language …”

“What’s wrong?”

“Plenty,” he murmured, looking around. “Mind if I join you?”

Without waiting for an answer, he pulled up the chair opposite me, sat down, took out a handkerchief, and dabbed at his dark forehead. His light gray silk suit gave off a discreet sheen against his dark shirt and white tie. He had checked his panama at the door.

“Mali, if I’d known I was gonna be bumped from my table ’cause a some damn tourist, I never woulda showed up tonight. No offense. You know I go for your pop’s sounds, that’s why I’m here. But this thing’s gittin’ outta hand. Everywhere you look, every corner, you trippin’ over mobs a palefaces peepin’ ’round, droolin’ at the architecture, linin’ up Sunday mornin’ to sit in our churches, crowdin’ us outta Sylvia’s and Copeland’s. We got more sightseein’ buses up here than regular buses.”

“But their money spends, you know, just like ours.”

“Well I ain’t sayin’ otherwise, but don’t come bustin’ in like they got a court order or somethin’. It’s like comin’ into your house and pushin’ you out your own bed.”

I wanted to remind him that Harlem, Nieuw Haarlem as the Dutch had called it before the British snatched it from them and anglicized the name in 1664, was originally filled with Huguenots, Danes, Swedes, and Germans. The area was almost all-white until about 1910, six years after the IRT subway was completed.

Before that, most black folks were crowded in the Tenderloin District—24th Street to 42nd Street, west of Fifth Avenue. Or we were in Hell’s Kitchen battling the Irish. But TooHot was too hot right now. He wanted his table, not a history session. He had a permanent spot here, front and center, that he’d paid for the same way wealthy folks paid for special pews in some churches. No matter how late they arrived, the space had better be there, available.

TooHot didn’t have much of a grievance as far as I could tell. According to Dad, he was something of an outsider himself, having come to Harlem from St. Thomas in the fifties. And quicker than you could mouth the words “free enterprise,” he had decided that pushing those garment-center Cadillacs nine-to-five straight-time wasn’t his stick, and had promptly started taking the single action uptown for a Georgia boy named Pete “Walrus” Jackson.

TooHot had been known as Willie Jackson back then—no relation to Walrus—and had resembled a six-foot stick, so they called him Wee Willie. That stuck until the day he mistakenly popped into the Rock Tavern on Eighth Avenue near 117th Street where the cops were waiting in the back booth to discuss some overdue
payments. The barmaid had looked around, then yelled the famous “Shit-it’s-too-hot!” warning that sent Wee Willie in the wind.

Days later, he had resurfaced, rechristened, and had resumed business as usual, which after a time helped him buy a florist shop, a Laundromat, three brownstones, two cars, one condo, and one police sergeant. Now he sat here, acting ugly because other foreigners had stepped to his turf.

I raised my hand and a waiter appeared before I lowered it. “Walker black, straight up, and Absolut and orange, please.”

The waiter disappeared and TooHot smiled. “You sound like a pro. Needed to put you behind the counter in the Half-Moon.”

In the dim light, I didn’t know if he was smiling or frowning, so I settled for the slight lift of his shoulders.

More people had come in and a line of standing-room-only patrons had gathered along the side walls waiting for the set to start. Their faces took on varying tints as the sconces above them flickered like candles.

The waiter returned and TooHot said, “Put this on my tab and bring another round. I’ll be sittin’ here tonight.”

He drank slowly, lifting the glass several times to take small sips like a chef testing a new recipe. He made no sound at all.

I said, “Too bad about Laws … papers said it was robbery. What do you think?”

“I think that those who know ain’t sayin’ and those who sayin’ don’t know.”

“Come on, TooHot, what does that mean?” I gave him my brightest smile but in the semidarkness its effect was lost.

“Just what I said,” he replied.

“Okay.” I sighed. “It’s just that the place had such a bad-luck rep. Kendrick’s in jail. Thea’s dead. Now Laws. You’d think somebody was burning black candles in the basement and sticking pins through the walls.”

He glanced at me quickly and I thought I saw a shade pass over his eyes. Superstition, strong enough, will motivate everyone.

“Well,” he paused and looked around at the table nearest us. They were tourists, complete with accent, camcorder, and the ubiquitous street map folded into a manageable square near the glass of white wine. Satisfied they were not from the neighborhood, he leaned forward, his voice falling so that it was barely audible above the background hum.

“You ask me, Henderson Laws was lookin’ for trouble.”

“You mean with that private parade?”

He had raised his glass, then stopped. “You know about that?”

“Who doesn’t?”

“Yeah, you right. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Till it’s too late. Henderson was drivin’ two ways on a one-way street. Took on all comers. I know ’cause I was in there every day.”

“Every day?”

“Every day. He was one a my best customers. Don’t know too many who’d lay half a yard a day each on two numbers: 252 and 148 were his favorites.”

“Fifty dollars each? A hundred dollars a day?” I sat there, amazed, imagining what I could do with a hundred dollars a day.

The waiter returned with the second round. I had not finished my first, but TooHot, though he drank slowly, was ahead of me and going through the chef’s testing ritual again.

“A yard a day ain’t much,” he said, “dependin’ on what you takin’ in. Laws didn’t feel no weight ’cause he was pullin’ a heavy dime.”

“He ever hit?”

“Oh, yeah. Not too often ’cause he played ’em straight. Didn’t combinate ’em like he did his other stuff.” He smiled briefly and became serious again. “Laws used to say, ‘When I hit, I want it heavy,’ and that’s what he got. Maybe three, four times in a year. Got so I had to spread his investment around with several bankers. Once or twice I rode his luck myself. You know how that goes.”

I shrugged, never having played a number in my life. My math was so bad I could barely add up a grocery receipt. If I played a number and hit, I’d have a serious problem figuring how I did it. What would I get for betting a three-way number, or a six-way number? It was bad enough back in the day when you could play “the bolito,” a two-way number. Now you can bet a four-way.

If I played and hit, I wouldn’t know if it paid six
hundred, five hundred, or ten-to-one, and every time TooHot strolled by I’d be looking beady-eyed, thinking he had held out on me. So the best bet was to keep my dollar in my pocket and remain friends.

“With all that money,” I said, “maybe somebody was trying to rob him. Had he hit recently?”

“No.”

I watched him rub his chin as if trying to decide if he should continue. Then he said, “There’s a little more to the story, though I can’t figure how it fits.”

“What?”

“Well, you know Henderson Laws was a jealous man.”

“He was jealous of Thea?”

“No. Of Kendrick.”

“Well, if Kendrick liked Thea, I guess—”

“No, no,” he interrupted, waving his glass in a small circle. “Laws had eyes for Kendrick. Woulda licked dog-doo from the bottom of his Nikes if Kendrick had asked him.”

“You’re kidding.”

“But Kendrick was straight-up. He wasn’t interested. He woulda quit, been outta there long ago, but some time back Laws had talked him into borrowin’ some dollars from him. Kendrick was into some Off Broadway production group or somethin’ and needed funds. Laws, instead of becomin’ one of the backers, loaned Kendrick a couple a grand, thinkin’ he could buy him, I guess.

“Anyway, the production folded and Kendrick still owed Laws the dollars. So he was workin’ there for
zip and tips and doin’ his other gigs to make ends meet. But you know how actors are. That bar job meant nuthin’ to him. Plus he liked Thea.”

“And Thea was involved with Laws.”

He raised his shoulders slightly and confirmed by his silence what I didn’t want to believe.

“Laws plus some others,” he said finally.

I raised my glass and swallowed until it was empty.

“She was a busy woman.”

“No restriction on the friction,” he said.

“What else do you know about her?” I asked.

“Not much.”

He held up his hand for the waiter again, and then another round was placed on the table.

“Listen, TooHot, I need an address.”

“Who we talkin’ about?”

“Flyin’ Home.”

He put his glass down and peered at me in the dim light. “You mean wheelchair Flyin’ Home?”

“Is there any other?”

“Mali, listen to me: Back off. I don’t have to tell you the boy’s bad news.”

“I know. I saw him the night Thea died. He—”

“What is it you want from him?”

“Information.”

“Like what? Come on. Don’t beat ’round the bush.”

“Like who he might’ve seen leaving the alley the night Thea was killed.”

“How you know that?”

“He told me he was there—or near there. He might know something.”

“Whyn’t you leave that to the five-oh. They’ll get the wire sooner or later.”

“Or never. And Kendrick’ll remain in jail for something he didn’t do. Come on, TooHot, I need this.”

He rubbed his hands over his face, and in the dark I could see he was having trouble making up his mind. “Okay. Look, Mali, I’ll put it on the drum. He’ll find you, okay?”

The show was about to start. The lights dimmed further and the general hum of the patrons subsided.

“Here come your pop,” TooHot whispered. The lights went out completely except for the spotlight on center stage, and TooHot joined in the applause with the enthusiasm of a schoolboy, completely forgetting my presence.

O
n the way home, if Dad had asked me what I’d thought of the set I would have had to lie. After listening to TooHot I couldn’t concentrate on anything, and I had sat there allowing all the sounds, all the applause of the evening, to slip right past me.

Now I tried to get everything straight. Laws had been eyeing Kendrick while practicing with Thea. Probably out of spite, he accused Kendrick of killing her. But who really did her in? And after that, who had gotten to him? TooHot figured that with the private parade Laws had goin’ on, it could’ve been anyone. It could’ve been the person that Flyin’ Home might’ve seen near the alley.

That whole scene was like a swamp, dense and ugly, and I imagined unnameable creatures slithering through the murk. Had Thea known about Laws and his private parade? Did she know he’d had a thing for
Kendrick? Did she care? And Laws had to have known about Edwin Michaels, as hot as Michaels had been on Thea’s tail. That floating eye didn’t miss much.

I wondered how much of this news was worth repeating to Bert. Did she know that Kendrick’s legal bill was being paid? Did she know about the money he had owed Laws? And she had been so calm when we’d talked about how Laws had been found leaking like a sieve from all those puncture wounds.

The cab let us out in front of the house and Ruffin greeted us as Dad unlocked the door, laid his bass against the sofa, and headed for the kitchen to brew his customary cup of coffee.

I crawled up the stairs to my bedroom and didn’t have to look at the clock to know it was nearly 5
A.M.
The sun was coming up and the chorus of birds, right on time, was already in motion and seemed to favor the branch nearest my window. Before I fell asleep, I made a note to climb that tree and cut down that branch.

My intentions must have been telegraphed on the wind because when I woke at 10 it was so quiet it scared me. I lay under the sheet wondering where the birds had gone. I was about to slip on my robe and check on Dad when the phone rang.

Let it be Tad, I thought. Let him say he’s on his way home. Today.

It was Bertha, calling for an update on Laws.

“Nothing’s new,” I said, trying to hide my disappointment. “Tad’s still away so I can’t get any information. When the phone rang, I thought it was him.”

“Well, let me get off the line. I don’t want you missin’ out. Talk to you later.”

“No, wait a minute,” I said before she disconnected. “What’s goin’ on?”

“Miss Viv dropped by the shop last night. You remember her?”

Indeed I did. She was the beautician who’d temporarily rented space from Bert the previous summer. Viv had been dumped by her boyfriend, the biggest dope dealer uptown, and in the process had lost her beauty shop to his new girl.

To even things up, Viv had spoken to me and dropped a dime to the Narcotics Strike Force. Things turned out all right for her, but not before I’d been caught in the middle.