The Man in 3B (28 page)

At first I figured it was a false alarm. We had a couple families in the building with some bad-ass kids, and it wouldn’t be the first time one of them set the alarm off on purpose. But after a few minutes, I got concerned when the alarm didn’t stop. I heard a commotion down on the street, and I went to the edge of the roof to check it out. It looked like half of the tenants were outside, most of them looking up at something that scared the shit out of me. There was smoke billowing out of a window a few floors below where I was standing.

I don’t know if it was the alcohol giving me false courage or the fact that I was a fireman’s kid, but I chose to head back into the building instead of going down the fire escape. I felt an obligation to make sure everyone was out. I knocked on every door on the fourth and fifth floors, but it looked like the tenants had already evacuated. Things didn’t get scary until I entered the third floor, where the hallway was full of smoke. My heart nearly stopped when I saw that the door to Daryl’s apartment was open and a coughing figure was stumbling out.

I screamed out Daryl’s name as I rushed down the hall. Instead of Daryl, I found my father, leaning against the doorjamb with a fire extinguisher in his hands.

“Benny, don’t go in there. The fire’s out,” he coughed.

He dropped the fire extinguisher and reached out to me. I could feel from the weight of his body against mine that he was too weak to walk on his own, so I guided him to the stairs and down to the first floor. In the lobby, we were met by four firemen rushing into the building.

My father called one of them by name. “Richards, fire’s out, but we’ve got a DOA in 3B.”

“Got it,” Richards said.

My father’s words were so unfathomable that it took a while to figure out what he might have meant.

“What do you mean DOA?” I finally asked as I followed Pop out of the building.

“He’s dead, Benny. Daryl. He died in the fire,” he said as he sat down on the sidewalk.

I pointed an accusatory finger in my father’s face. “You’re lying. He’s not dead. He can’t be dead. I just spoke to him fifteen minutes ago.” We’d argued in the past, but I’d never directly challenged my father’s words, never called him a liar. But he had to be lying. There was no other explanation—at least not one my heart was ready to accept.

Pop stared at me for a couple of seconds, his soot-streaked face full of pity. He finally spoke in a caring, fatherly voice. “I’m sorry, son, but he is. He’s dead.”

“No!” I screamed. I felt the urge to reach out and strangle my father, and having no place to channel all that rage, my arms flailed about wildly. “If he’s dead, then you killed him, because he was alive last time I saw him.”

Pop stood up and put his hands firmly on my arms. He said forcefully, “Benny, calm down. You’re talking crazy. I didn’t kill that man.” He was speaking to me but looking around at the crowd, as if he wanted to make sure the bystanders heard his denial.

I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head, wishing I could make everything go away. “Yes, you did. You knew how I felt about him and you killed him. I’ll never forgive you for this.”

Pop sounded more angry than fatherly now. “Son, don’t say that! I didn’t kill him. He was already gone by the time I got inside his apartment.”

“You’re a liar!” I tore free from his grasp and forced my way to the stairs. “I have to see him!”

“Benny! Goddammit, don’t go up…” My father’s voice faded as I ran up the stairs two steps at a time. There was no way I was letting him stop me now. I couldn’t accept reality any other way than to see for myself.

He can’t be dead. He can’t be,
I kept repeating as I raced to the third floor. I’d just seen him in the hallway a little while ago. I’d just argued with him about nothing.

“Hey! Stop!” a firefighter yelled when I caught up to them on the
stairs near the second floor. They were carrying heavy equipment that slowed them down, so I easily sprinted past them to the third floor.

Stepping into the third-floor hallway, I was overwhelmed by the smoke still lingering in the air. It sent my lungs into a coughing fit, and I had to stop and catch my breath before I made my way down the hall to Daryl’s apartment. At the entrance, I looked down and saw the fire extinguisher my father had dropped there. Seeing it sent a wave of panic through me as my brain finally registered that this was real.

I stepped into the apartment. Considering how much smoke had been pouring out of the place, it didn’t look as bad as I had expected—until I got halfway into the living room.

“No, no, no…” I dropped to my knees as I looked up at my friend’s lifeless body. He was slouched over on the sofa, his face and body burned beyond recognition. The gold chain and Star of David he always wore still hung from his blackened neck. I don’t know how long I sat there sobbing before I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“Son.”

I turned to see my father standing behind me. The firemen and a couple of uniformed cops were right behind him. “Come on, Benny. Let’s go.”

“No! Get off me!” I shook his hand off my shoulder, then turned back to Daryl’s charred body. “I wanna know why, Pop. He was my friend. I was gonna come back down and apologize to him, and now he’s gone. Why?”

My father took me by the shoulders and tried to lift me up, but I couldn’t leave the spot I was in. It was like Daryl’s soul was pulling me toward him. I managed to get close enough to barely touch what was left of the electronic bracelet that cuffed his ankle.

“Young man, you could be tampering with evidence.” I turned to see a police officer giving me an order. “You’re going to have to leave.”

At this point, the room was beginning to fill with more men in uniforms.

“As a matter of fact,” the officer said to me, “I’m sure the detectives would like to speak to you downstairs.” He looked at my father. “You as well, sir.”

Pop gently tugged me by the elbow, and the officer led us out of the apartment. I was still in a haze of confusion as we retraced our steps back down to the first floor. I was in such a state of shock that I didn’t know what to feel, but when we stepped out onto the stoop, a hysterical, ear-piercing scream from someone in the crowd shot right through my haze and broke my heart.

“Nooooooooooooooooo!” I screamed so loud that my throat felt raw. I must have looked like a woman possessed, because that’s how I felt when Pam, one of the stoop regulars, told me Daryl was dead.

Not ten minutes earlier, I’d felt like I was on the top of the world, the wind blowing through my hair as Slim and I cruised back to the building in my new convertible Benz. The car was given to me as a going-away present from my father, who I hoped was lying on some tropical beach with a fruity drink. He’d sent me a text promising me that he’d be back when the heat died down. I was glad to hear that he was safe and even happier that the text also said Connie had the keys to his Benz, which was now mine.

I still couldn’t believe the cops were after him and he had to leave town under the cover of darkness, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it at this point except pray he was safe. In the meantime, I was damn sure going to enjoy riding around town in a car that cost more than I made in a year. Oh, and I was definitely going to make sure all the gossiping heifers in my building saw me riding around in it. That’s why Slim and I had circled the block a few times before we went joyriding that morning.

Slim was as happy about the car as I was. In fact, he’d been pretty happy in general lately, which was such a relief to me. Things between us had gotten much better lately, and he’d even stopped bringing up Daryl all the time. It’s amazing what a little passing time and a couple of good blow jobs will do. Don’t get me wrong, Slim still didn’t like Daryl, but at least now I didn’t have to constantly worry about
him trying to take Daryl out. Well, that’s what I thought before I saw the scene in front of my apartment building.

Before we rounded the corner to go back home, I had planned on having Slim drop me off right in front, so I could stroll past all the ladies and rub it in their faces. But it turned out there was no way we were getting anywhere close to the building. It looked like all hell had broken loose on the block. There were cop cars, fire engines, and ambulances all over the place.

“What the hell is going on?” I asked Slim.

Slim kind of shrugged his shoulders, looking unconcerned. I didn’t understand how he could be all calm, cool, and collected. Everything I had in this world was in that apartment—along with the man who still had my heart. I don’t think Slim had even brought the car to a full stop before I hopped out and ran toward the crowd.

“Yo, I’m going around the block to find somewhere to park!” Slim yelled at me.

“What the hell happened?” I asked a woman who was standing in the back of the crowd.

“There was a fire. A man got killed.”

“Oh my God. Who got killed?”

The woman didn’t even look at me. She was too busy gawking at all the action on the sidewalk. “I don’t know,” she said. “I just heard someone got killed.”

I turned to Pam. I knew she hung out on the stoop all the time. If anyone would know who was dead, it would be one of the gossipmongers from the stoop.

“Who got killed?” I asked her.

Pam turned to me with this glint in her eyes, like she didn’t give a shit who died—she was just proud to be the one with the information. “The pretty thug, you know the one with the nice body and the beard that everyone been talking about.”

It was as if my heart stopped beating and everything around me went into slow motion. There was only one man who fit that description. “You mean Daryl Graham?” I tried to tell myself she couldn’t be right. Daryl couldn’t be dead.

“Yeah, I think that’s his name. Damn shame too, because he was so—”

She never got to finish her sentence because I started screaming at the top of my lungs. I swear it felt like I lost consciousness for a second, because I don’t remember moving away from Pam, but the next thing I knew, I was pushing my way through the crowd.

As I stumbled around trying to come to grips with the news, a terrifying thought entered my mind. If Daryl was really dead, could Slim have had something to do with it? Sure, we were doing well lately, but Slim obviously hadn’t forgotten about my affair. That very morning when we drove by Daryl on his jog, Slim had pointed his finger at him like it was a gun, saying, “Bang, nigga, you dead.” At the time, I’d ignored it, but now I was scared that maybe he hated him enough to have him killed.

I ran toward the stoop when I saw two familiar faces, Benny and his father.

“Oh my God, Benny, is it true? Is Daryl really dead?”

Benny stood there like a zombie, saying nothing. I grabbed him by the shirt collar and shook him violently, but even that didn’t get a reaction.

“Goddammit, Benny, answer me!”

“Benny’s in shock, Krystal,” Ben Senior answered for his son. He sounded exhausted. “And yes, Daryl’s dead.”

I stared at Ben’s face for a minute, refusing to accept his words. It was like I was waiting for him to tell me he was joking. When he didn’t say anything else, I turned back to Benny and said, “Please tell me he’s lying.”

Benny spoke for the first time. “It’s true, Kris,” he whispered with lifeless eyes. “Daryl’s dead. I saw his body myself.”

My hands eased off of Benny’s collar and fell to my side. My knees gave out, and I slumped down to sit on the sidewalk. Through trembling lips I cried, “He can’t be dead. I haven’t had a chance to apologize yet.”

Benny sat down next to me. “I know. Me neither.” He reached out to hold my hand, and we cried together.

“How’d he die?” I asked. Part of me was afraid to hear the answer.

“His apartment was on fire,” Benny responded, his tears now uncontrollable. “He was burned up in a fire.”

A fire. Just like my mother. What a horrible way to die. I felt my stomach tighten and my morning’s breakfast rise into my throat as I thought about what Daryl must have gone through. And Benny… the poor kid had seen the body.

“Oh my God. I could have stopped it,” I cried.

Suddenly Benny’s face transformed from a look of grief to something closer to anger. He looked up at his father, then said to me, “This wasn’t your fault, Kris.”

Benny’s father sat down on the other side of me. He said, “No, this wasn’t anything more than an accident.”

I shook my head adamantly. “You don’t understand. This wasn’t an accident. This was a murder, and I know exactly who did it.”

At that moment, I felt someone’s hands on my shoulders, and I looked up to see Slim still calm, cool, and collected in the midst of the chaos surrounding us.

“So what’d I miss?” he asked. “Y’all look like somebody died around here.”

The morning after Daryl’s death, the building was quieter than usual as I made my way down to the stoop. There was a lingering smell of smoke that was mostly concentrated on the third floor, but there’d been no serious damage except for Daryl’s apartment. The cops had roped off 3B, but we were all eventually allowed back into the building late that afternoon. A lot of residents had still chosen to go stay with friends or family somewhere else. My husband took the kids over to stay at his mother’s place because he got sick of waiting around on the sidewalk. A few of the regulars from the stoop stayed around long enough to get some of their things but then left. One of them said she couldn’t stand the thought of staying in a building where someone had just died. I understood where they were coming from because it was a little eerie thinking that Daryl had burned up in that fire, but I wasn’t about to go somewhere else and miss all the action.

Only Ms. Bertha was on the stoop when I walked outside. I could see from the tired look on her face that yesterday’s activity had taken its toll on her too. It looked like she hadn’t gotten any sleep. Not that I could blame her. I hadn’t gotten much myself. Daryl’s death had taken its toll on everyone in the building. We hadn’t known him long, but in the little time he lived here, he’d made a big impact on our lives. Never again would we sit outside on the steps and wait to see his fine ass jog by. Yeah, I was gonna miss that for sure.