A Toast Before Dying (4 page)

Diagonally across from Mickey Dee’s, at 140th Street, the door of the Half-Moon was in motion. I glanced at my watch. It was noon, less than twelve hours after the murder of one of his employees, and it seemed that Henderson Laws had nothing better to do than to reopen for business.

On the side street, someone had placed a bunch of roses and a candle near the police tape that was blocking the alley. People walking by paused. Some went inside the bar, others moved on.

I went inside. The place was long and narrow with an oak bar and a mirrored wall behind it. The booths near the brick wall opposite the counter were filled with nearly everyone from the neighborhood.

The lights had been turned off and I had to pause to get my bearings. Only the small neon crescent over the register was lit, and flickering in the dark were more candles than I’d seen at a High Mass. Votives placed among the tiers of liquor refracted the red, brown, and amber casts of the bottles.

At the counter, the crowd leaned elbow to elbow, dipping into platters of chicken, ribs, greens, salad, and rolls.

I moved farther in and saw that the solid stuff was gratis but the liquid was not, and the ring of the cash register cut through the noise like an Atlantic City slot machine.

 … A paying wake. That crafty ’bajan was holding
a paying wake for one of his own employees. I knew he had a knack for a nickel, but damn …

Henderson Laws was short and slim and still spoke with the faint trace of an island accent, although he had been in Harlem nearly thirty years. At fifty-something, his dark skin was still unlined and he sported a silver goatee shaved to an arrow below his lower lip, which reminded me of spittle he had somehow neglected to wipe away. Despite this, he might have been called handsome except for the tendency of his left eye to cross every now and then. Anyone else might have felt handicapped but Laws used it like he used everything else in his life: With his “floating eye,” as he called it, he’d stand at one end of the bar, gaze at the other end, and nobody would really know which way he was looking. That kept the bartender’s fingers straight and also kept folks from staring too closely at his toupee, which always seemed a little lopsided to me.

He was leaning now in his favorite spot near the end of the bar, watching the platters move through the swinging door. He nodded and sighed heavily when someone approached to shake his hand or touch his shoulder in sympathy, but the good eye remained trained on the register.

The counter had twelve stools, and the two new barkeeps, pressed into sudden service, struggled to keep up with the orders.

TooHot, the numbers runner, sat on a stool nearest the window, watching a small mountain of slips expanding before him. Everyone, it seemed, was “combinating” 967—the number for the dead—though
I heard a few other digits floating in the air, probably Thea’s address or variations on her phone number.

“Gimme another Walker Black,” TooHot yelled, rapping his finely manicured fingers on the counter. He pushed his panama away from his brown face, bit into a chicken wing, and allowed the slips to pile up, knowing that the cops would think twice before busting a wake. He was dressed appropriately for the occasion in a dark gray silk suit and black shirt.

More people pushed in and I wondered if it was the food, the numbers, or the sympathy that brought them. Familiar faces called to me from the booths, but there was no one I wanted to slide into conversation with except TooHot, and he was too busy.

I scanned the bar trying to figure who might have been on the scene last night. I spotted Jesse Long still sporting his gray Elvis sideburns and denim bell-bottoms that were so old they were new again. He had angled a strategic spot next to Big-Time Colloway, who was busy setting up the bar. Big-Time was a Rikers guard who bragged about his “heavy dime from overtime,” yet rumor had it that he’d cussed his own mama when she demanded he pay room and board. He and Jesse now wiped out a platter between them and reached for a new one. I guessed that Jesse was filling up on enough greens and potato salad to last until the food stamps rolled in, but Big-Time—who had a job—was putting away enough for three starving people.

It was likely that both had been here last night, but I didn’t approach them because Jesse would probably want a drink and Big Time, an NYPD wanna-be,
would want to flash his latest pay stub and crack on the fact that I was no longer on the force, a big thing in his world.

Someone turned on the jukebox and the uproar retreated somewhere behind the cry of Whitney Houston.

The heat from the open candles and press of the crowd was beginning to get to me. I would have to catch TooHot another time, perhaps when he passed by Bertha’s place. I turned to leave but I felt a light touch on my arm.

“Good morning. Care for a drink?”

Detective Lieutenant Tad Honeywell pressed against me, using the crowd as an excuse. I glanced up into eyes that even in this darkness resembled heavy smoke. He was casually dressed in a beige silk shirt and dark brown herringbone linen slacks. I took in his soft deliberate expression, which reminded me of the midnights on his terrace.

“Absolut and orange?” he whispered.

“No thanks. I—it’s too early.”

Not only was it too early for a drink but it was too early to be feeling this unsteady on my feet. Which happened every time I saw him.

“It’s twelve noon.”

“I know, but I had a hard night.”

“That,” he whispered, “is because you didn’t spend it with me.”

I gazed at him, beginning to really feel the heat. I was having a hard time breathing, concentrating. I got
like that sometimes. At other times, when he touched me, I had to sit or lie down.

“It—it’s warm in here,” I whispered. “Let’s step outside.”

He nodded and I followed him through the crowd. As we passed TooHot he held out his hand and whispered.

“Say, Lieutenant. Great job y’all did on that crew uptown. Cleaned up things pretty good ’round here.”

“We try. We try …,” Tad said, staring pointedly at the pile of slips on the counter.

TooHot ignored the look and tipped his five-hundred-dollar panama to me. “And how you doin’, Miss Mali? How’s your dad? Saw him at the club the other night. Still kickin’ it.”

“Yes, he is.” I smiled.

“Great job, Lieutenant,” he said again, tipping his hat higher. I smiled because I knew what he really meant: Since that notorious drug enterprise had been busted and several cops had gone down with the gang, the spotlight was hot on the precinct now, so strong in fact that every cop in Harlem was walking with his shield pinned on straight—and TooHot wasn’t under pressure to pay his weekly “social security” (“secure us and we’ll be social” was the way some poet at the precinct had put it to him).

Lately, TooHot had been able to keep that extra thousand dollars a week in his pocket, and he was making the most of the temporary lull. And Thea’s passing, unfortunate as it was, created another spike in earnings.
So here he was, taking advantage of what circumstances had thrown his way.

Outside in the street, I shook my head. “No respect. That man has no respect.”

Tad shrugged. “Well, he’s how old—seventy, seventy-one? What else is he going to do?”

“He could retire. He certainly has enough money. A duplex condo in St. Thomas ain’t cheap.”

The tape stretched like a plastic snake across the alley, and the single offering of roses had grown to include carnations, a pot of never-dies, and a fragile wisp of baby’s breath enclosed in an irregular semicircle of candles. The roses had already begun to wilt from the heat jetting like ribbons from the stained pavement.

“How come you’re in the Half-Moon? And so early?”

I shrugged at the question. It was just like Tad to veer from one topic to another. It worked with the suspects, but it always caught me off guard and I found it annoying.

“You know Bert’s my friend,” I reminded him. “And Kendrick’s her brother. She’s trying to figure out what happened.”

“But she was here last night,” he answered, holding his gaze steady. “You weren’t.”

I shaded my eyes and leaned against the car, debating whether I should remind Tad how Kendrick had stepped in and helped Alvin—and me—after my sister had died. And he’d had a hundred other things to do—he didn’t have to help me, but he did …

“Damned good-lookin’ brother,” Tad went on.

Lord, so are you, I wanted to say. I glanced up, smiling, ready to tell him so, but the look in his eyes stopped me cold. I was amazed. We stood there in the July heat, looking everywhere now but at each other. It was one of those silences that should have remained unbroken but I had to say what was on my mind.

“Tad! For heaven’s sake, I’m not interested. Kendrick’s like a brother to me. A kid brother. He’s a child, a boy!” I emphasized
child
and
boy
and didn’t mention
man
, but that didn’t cool the temperature rising behind Tad’s eyes.

“Kendrick’s not a boy. He’s not a child. He’s a good-looking twenty-six-year-old man.”

“He’s six years younger than me, for God’s sake!”

“And I’m eight years older than you, Mali. Age is just a number, up or down.”

I closed my eyes and said no more, hoping this stupid conversation would blow away on the wind. Last year, he’d been jealous of a dead man. Now here he was acting crazy because of a … boy. Well, let him think what he wanted to. I owed Kendrick something.

Finally he sighed and I knew word-for-word what was coming.

“Mali, remember the last time you stuck your neck out, you nearly lost it.”

I did not answer, remembering everything from last summer: the odor of that crackhouse; the handcuffs biting into my skin; a .38 fired so near my ear I was dizzy for days after. And the body count. I would have been one of those bodies if it hadn’t been for Tad. If he
had stepped out on that roof a second later, I’d have gone down with a bullet in my face.

“Listen, Mali: Bert is your friend, but let the department handle this, okay?”

I concentrated on the police tape and did not answer. Seventh Avenue was busy and more passersby paused to look. An old woman made the sign of the cross and murmured something too soft for me to hear.

Tad cleared his throat and veered again.

“So, how often did Kendrick stop by the shop?”

“Often enough,” I said, trying to keep my tone neutral.

“I understand he’s a model …”

“Yes.”

“And an actor.”

“Yes.”

“Is he planning to have his ear pierced?”

“Who knows?” I said, beginning to feel really annoyed. “So what if he is? Every other brother and his father these days has his ear, nose, or navel ringed. What are you saying …?”

“Nothing. Just trying to figure his taste in jewelry.”

“You planning to give him a present?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. We found a small stud earring near the body. Square-cut diamond. Very high-quality stone. That one earring is probably worth nearly two thousand dollars.”

I whistled. Two thousand dollars was a lot of earring for a struggling actor, but it probably wasn’t his.
Bert said the alley had been so jammed she couldn’t move, so the earring could have belonged to anyone.

“I don’t know what his plans were and I’m not familiar with his taste in jewelry,” I said. “All I know is he dressed well, looked good”—and added for good measure—“and he was very much in love with Thea.”

He looked at me and there was a pause before he spoke. “Love. Mm-hmm. Love. It’ll undo you every time.”

He said it with a soft singsong rhythm but I heard the bitter undercurrent, and it was like glimpsing a sudden flare on a dark horizon. Brief, natural, and dangerous. I quickly changed the subject.

“What else did you find?”

“She had her own earrings on. A .45 slug shattered her nose and right cheekbone and exited the back of her skull.”

“A .45. I didn’t think anyone bothered with those anymore. Must be a museum piece.”

“May be old but it did the job. Took most of her face and all of the back of her skull completely away.”

“Was the weapon recovered?”

“Not yet. There were a lot of people in the alley before we got there. Bert was battling Laws. People were trying to break that up. Some were trying to help Thea. There was so much confusion anyone could’ve scooped it and walked. Piece like that’ll still get a good price on the market.”

I frowned. Then I watched as Tad’s fingers slid over the door handle of his car, but I made no move to
get in. As much as I wanted—needed—to be with him, I also needed to see how Bert was holding up.

Tad’s voice, much softer now, interrupted my thoughts: “You know, I haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Last Friday night,” I murmured, gazing up at him. He was six foot three and his brown skin seemed to glow in the noon heat.

“Last Friday,” he repeated. “Baby, that’s seven days. Seven days too long.”

He stepped closer and I looked up, catching the wisp of mint as he whispered, “How about tonight?”

“What time?” I whispered, hoping he’d say, What about right now?

“Nine?”

The slight smile deepened and I felt the sweat gather in the small of my back. I reached for his hand, which was hot against the metal of the car. I wanted to touch his mouth but he was gazing beyond me at the flowers on the pavement.

His fingers brushed somewhere near my ear and he spoke again, voice still low. “You know how I feel about you, girl. See you tonight. Remember what I said. Let the department handle this.”

Then he was in the car and pulling away from the curb. Fast. Before I could consider what was really the issue. “Let the department handle it.”

By that he meant “stay away from the brother.”

I
went home instead of returning to the shop. Dad was in the living room, his six-foot frame stretched the length of the sofa and pages of the
Daily Challenge
spread on the floor beside him. Ruffin was stretched out on the cool tiles in front of the fireplace.

Both of them sat up when I walked in. “Bertha called three times. She’s upset. Got every right to be. This thing’s in all the papers. Even on WINS. I can’t believe this. Thea. Gone just like that, and they blamin’ it on Kendrick, of all people.”