A Toast Before Dying (3 page)

Thea had had several gigs at the Club Harlem with Dad’s jazz quartet and she had been pretty popular. She had been popular in the Half-Moon also, yet when she stepped out in the middle of the night someone had been waiting.

Bertha’s usually steady hands were shaking, and I was glad I wasn’t having my hair straightened. Considering how distracted she was, I was grateful I was only getting a deep conditioner.

“What happened when you got to the bar, before Thea got shot?” I asked.

“Well”—she settled on the high stool and reached for a second cup of coffee—“Kendrick also said there was a party goin’ on. Thea’s birthday. Wall-to-wall men. That kinda stuff. He think I’m lookin’ for a husband again and I should check out the scene. I keep tellin’ him one bad round was enough, but he don’t believe me. Think a woman ain’t complete without
somethin’ warmin’ her in the winter and coolin’ her in the summer. Right now, I try to be cool all by myself, ’cause the last friend I had said he was steppin’ out for some Trojans and musta gone to a store in Australia ’cause that was Christmas Eve and I ain’t even got a postcard.

“Anyway, the place was crowded but I got a seat at the end of the bar. Whatever had gone down between Kendrick and Thea musta been heavy ’cause he looked like he was still mad even though he was smilin’ for the crowd. But I could tell he was upset.

“Place was so busy Kendrick didn’t have time for more than three words to me. And that politician Edwin Michaels was there. I guess he’s makin’ the rounds now that it’s election time. People comin’ up shakin’ his hand like he was a king or somethin’. Man been in office twelve years and I ain’t seen shit he done except maybe hop a plane to the islands every other month.”

I knew Edwin Michaels vaguely. I had met him when my neighbor Dr. Thomas had hosted a fundraiser for him three years ago and again when he had dropped into the Club Harlem to hear Dad play. He imagined himself irresistible, and unfortunately some women, seduced by the aphrodisiac of power, reinforced the idea.

“Like I said, the place was jammed. I looked around and it seemed like everybody was stargazin’ at themselves in the mirror over the bar as if the only person they wanted to meet was that one in the mirror.

“I didn’t bother to waste my time ’cause this wasn’t hardly my show. I got up to leave and waved to Kendrick as he came from behind the bar. Said he was
goin’ to get towels or somethin’. Then I waved to Thea. She had champagne in her hand, raisin’ it in a toast, when the wall phone behind her rang. She picked it up and put down her glass real quick. Her face changed, like the call had surprised her. The volume was pumped so I couldn’t hear what she said, but it couldn’t have been more than two words. She hung up and slipped from behind the bar, movin’ like she was Pryor on fire. I shoulda kept a tag on Kendrick. Things woulda been different if I had …

“I came out through that side door, the one lets you out on 140th Street instead of Seventh Avenue. That alleyway there should’ve had a light. It usually does but it was out. I wasn’t scared ’cause it ain’t but a hop and skip to the sidewalk. The streetlight was also out and I remember steppin’ in somethin’ and couldn’t see exactly what. I was hopin’ it was water and not somethin’ some damn dog had left.

“Well, out the side of my eye as I’m bendin’ down, I see somethin’ move and realize somebody was there in front of me in the dark. No more than two feet away.

“I hear Thea’s voice, soundin’ kinda surprised. Maybe happy, even. I don’t know. She made a little sound—like she was short of breath—then she said: ‘It’s you! Oh, it’s you!’

“And that gun went off, not more than two inches from her nose. Me and Kendrick got to her at the same time. I don’t know where he came from. I heard footsteps. But not runnin’ footsteps. Somewhere in front of me.

“Next thing I know, he on his knees, yellin’, ‘I
didn’t mean it! I didn’t mean it!’ and holdin’ what was left of her head in his hands.

“I took one look and ran to the curb and everything in my stomach came up. By that time, the bar had emptied out into that alley. Couldn’t even move. Henderson Laws was screamin’ and grabbed Kendrick and started punchin’ him. I ran back and started swingin’ at Laws. I mean we got into it, I tried my best to snatch that dusty toupee, but he musta had that number cemented on. Somebody separated us but I got in some good licks. Never did like that man. And when the cops come, Laws right away said he heard Kendrick say he had did it, had killed her.”

She paused and in the silence we listened to the early rush of Eighth Avenue traffic. The air still held that slight damp coolness but by noontime the July sun would be on us and the baking asphalt would be throwing the heat back at anyone on the street.

Most of the stores were now open and ready for the Saturday crowd. We watched the Wonder-bread truck unload its delivery to the grocery store across the avenue. The mailman passed, slipped some envelopes through the slot, waved, and moved on.

Finally I said, “Are you … sure Kendrick didn’t do it?”

Bert’s eyes narrowed and her lips grew thin and I knew if she could have tapped one of those hot straightening combs against my scalp she would have done so.

“I mean,” I said quickly, “what are you going to do?”

She turned on the stool and seemed to fold into
herself as she spoke. “Girl, I don’t even know where to start. What few coins I stashed, you know I’m willin’ to spend …”

“But any attorney worth his fee is going to ask you the same thing: Did Kendrick shoot her? You were on the scene. You heard him say, ‘I didn’t mean it.’ Why would he say that?”

“I don’t know, but listen here: What I told you about Kendrick and Thea, I haven’t mentioned to nobody else. As much as they questioned me, I didn’t and wouldn’t tell them cops shit. That’s all them lazy, doughnut-eatin’ sorry asses is lookin’ for is an open-and-shut case. No offense ’cause you was once a cop yourself. But they ain’t sendin’ another black man upstate to be meat for them racist jail guards. It ain’t gonna happen. He’s my brother and I ain’t gonna let it happen!”

“All right. All right. I was just asking. Just trying to …”

She turned away, and in the mirror I watched her raise the edge of the towel to her face and hold it there.

“Mali, what are they gonna do to him? Boy’s twenty-six years old. I’ve looked after him since he was sixteen. After Mama died, between me and my daddy, he stayed straight. Daddy’s gone so it’s him and me. If he gets convicted, what’s gonna happen? I can’t even think …”

I left my chair to go stand at her side. I knew she had plenty to worry about. I could have told her that her brother didn’t have to be sent upstate for bad things to happen. It could happen right here in my old precinct,
or in the house of detention, or out at Rikers. No need to travel to be beaten or gang-raped or killed. And his damn good looks would only add to his problems. I didn’t tell her that. Instead, I put my arm around her shoulder.

“Listen, Bertha: We’re going to beat this … we’re going to get Kendrick out.” I realized I was making a promise I didn’t know how to keep, but I had to find a way. And fast.

And Bertha was willing to put out every cent she had earned from her twelve-hour days. Sweating in the summer when the AC acted up and sometimes freezing in the winter until she managed to get the furnace working again. Days standing on her feet smiling while her favorite corn called her name out loud.

The shop had a steady stream of regulars, and she was familiar with the hurtful core of many lives: how a fancy hairdo might help to keep a man close; a different tint to attract a new one; a massage to the neck to deal with drunken blows to the head. Bert knew and kept her mouth shut and distracted them with the larger-than-life chaos of the TV soaps.

I watched her in the mirror as she wiped her eyes. They were red-rimmed and would probably get worse as more people dropped by to add their opinions to the news.

“I’ll stay here, Bert. Run interference. Let everyone know that what happened last night is no one else’s business. I could say it without you losing a customer.”

She put the towel down and shook her head.

“No. It’s probably all in the papers today. I have to handle this ’cause there’s more to come. A lot more.”

The warm water splashing against my scalp did not relax me. My eyes remained open and thoughts came fast and heavy. Last night Bert had heard footsteps. Then Thea’s voice and the blast of the pistol. Where had Kendrick come from? What had he meant by his outburst? Who else could have been there? Who had made the call to get her out in the alley in the first place? Did Henderson Laws know that the light was out in the alley? Cheap as he was, he might’ve turned it off himself.

“Bert, why don’t you close for the day?”

“I can’t. Right now, I’m gonna need every dollar that come through that door.”

And she was right. O.J.’s dream team was not available for what Bert was able to scrape together. I couldn’t help her either because I was scheduled to start more graduate courses in September and I was working for my dad. He was doing well enough with his music to get himself incorporated. My salary would help pay my tuition.

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.

E
ighth 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
.