If I Should Die (6 page)

Funerals will do that, I thought, looking at her.

“Did Morris say who it was that threatened Dr. Harding?”

The frown deepened and her fingers played along the menu, curling the edges. “Said it was Clarence. Boy used to be a problem but somehow he started actin’ right even before he joined up with the Chorus. Used to hang out on the basketball court all hours of the night, even past midnight, sometimes playin’ ball out there all by himself. Felt sorry for him. ’Specially when it was cold. Talk travels in those projects so I know for a fact that many a times that boy would open his fridge hopin’ that for once, the food stamps had been used to buy food. I mean how you expect a child to study fractions and French while his belly button is pressin’ on his backbone?

“Most of the times, I just call out the window for
’im to come on up and eat dinner with Morris. Even though there’s a difference in their ages. Clarence probably seventeen now—” She closed her eyes to calculate, then said, “Yeah, he’s seventeen and Morris ain’t but eleven, but when a boy’s starvin’, you don’t look at age, you just try to step in and help out … but I want to tell you God has blessed me for what I did ’cause you stepped in and saved my son.”

She sucked her teeth and avoided my eyes as if anticipating my next question.

“Clarence’s mama got a little problem. Ain’t too straight right now.”

She said no more and I let it go. There were so many euphemisms for crack addiction.

“What did Morris hear Clarence say?” I kept my voice low and tried not to sound too eager.

“Seems like Dr. Harding had called Clarence into the office to tell him he wasn’t gonna go on that trip to France. He had failed some grades in somethin’ or other, Morris wasn’t sure.”

“How did Morris hear all of this?”

“He was standin’ right outside the office, waitin’ to bring some sheet music Harding had sent him for. The voices was so loud, Morris said he was embarrassed just bein’ there, but he didn’t know what to do. Said Clarence even used some street language with Dr. Harding and I know for a fact that kinda stuff just don’t go in there … they don’t stand still for nuthin’ like that.”

I shook my head, remembering the long, grueling orientation session I had attended when Alvin joined earlier. If a child survived that lecture, he could survive anything.

That day the goals of the organization had been stressed, along with the responsibility of each chorister to “act as an ambassador representing every Harlemite who ever lived, past and present.”

Three thousand singers had applied and one hundred had been chosen to join. The incoming hundred, fifty boys and fifty girls, had to dress, act, think, and speak with the utmost decorum. Just as the other, more seasoned choristers had been taught. That meant no profanity—“off-language” the director had called it. No oversize T-shirts, no gold-capped teeth that did nothing but cause bad breath, no baggy trousers falling off the hips, and no short skirts.

As I saw it, the director didn’t care if it was the style for the nineties, if the pants couldn’t stay up and the skirts down, he wasn’t cuttin’ no slack. The kid was out the door. Plain and simple.

I often wondered how anyone could have delivered a four-and-a-half-hour speech that didn’t include lunch.

At the end of that day, everyone, parents and new choristers alike, had straggled from the auditorium in a daze, the choristers only too happy in their newfound roles as cultural ambassadors.

I had gone home, taken two aspirin, and put on a Wynton Marsalis tape to calm my last nerve before falling into bed.

“What does Clarence look like?”

Mrs. Johnson shrugged. “Tall, thin, gangly, like he ain’t never had enough to eat since the day he opened his eyes. Kinda brown-skin with one a them flattop fade-away haircuts. Don’t look too nice on him, though, ’cause his face is real thin.”

“And you think … Morris thinks … Clarence might have had something to do with Dr. Harding’s death?”

“Might have. But who knows? Who knows? I, for one, don’t buy that but he did threaten him. Last thing he said when he rushed out the office was ‘You ain’t seen no attitude, Mr. Harding. You ain’t seen nuthin’.’

“Morris said Clarence stomped so hard the steps
shook when he ran down … Now, I suppose ain’t nobody gonna parlez-vous anytime soon ’cause all the trips have been canceled.”

I said nothing, wondering if the trips had been canceled out of fear and general confusion or merely postponed out of respect for the dead.

“Where does Clarence live?”

“In the same projects as me, only he’s in a different building.”

She opened a patent-leather purse and slipped a piece of paper across the table. “Here’s his address. And his phone number. Lord, I hope he ain’t mixed up in none of this. He got a voice that was heaven-sent. I mean that boy can sing.”

“Did he sing today?”

“Matter a fact, he did. He was with the senior chorus, standin’ toward the left, on the very end. I didn’t even think to point him out to you.”

“That’s all right. Here comes the waitress again. At last.”

We ate in silence. I did not mention the well-dressed man who had touched Erskin’s mother. Instead I wondered about Clarence.

Seventeen-year-old kids committed murder often enough that it was no longer front-page, but did a seventeen-year-old find enough nerve to attend the funeral and sing over the casket?

Did he know how to drive? If so, whose car had he commandeered or stolen? I thought of the HO plates and decided that I needed answers to a lot of things—answers that didn’t seem possible.

T
he “Welcome” banner hung limply over the precinct’s entrance, and the main lobby was crowded as usual. An old woman with an empty carrying case was screaming at the desk sergeant because someone had stolen her two Persian cats while she was out shopping for pet food. A short stocky man wanted the police to put out an all-points bulletin for his girlfriend who had disappeared from the Half-Moon Bar while he was taking care of business in the men’s room. Two adolescents sat hunched over on the bench cocooned in their sweat hoods, coating their fear with loud meaningless talk.

People moved around them, in and out of the area. The air had a slightly medicinal odor which I had never noticed the whole time I’d worked here. I saw that the beige rubber tile floor still had the same indelible coffee stains and gum marks, and the spool of flypaper still hung ineffectually from the ceiling.

I walked in just after the evening shift had come on.
The cordiality surprised me and several officers approached to shake my hand, though several of the others hung back, pretending not to see me.

I signed in and was accompanied up the stairs to the investigation unit. On the landing, I encountered the man who had caused me to lose my job. Patrolman Terry Keenan smiled and stepped out of the way with an elaborate flourish.

He was five feet ten, with a thin, pockmarked face, stooped shoulders, and concave chest that seemed to fill out and look healthy only when he donned his bulletproof vest. He said nothing but I remembered that thin nasal voice, whining about never making enough money for this dangerous job and how his taxes alone seemed to be financing the entire welfare system.

The high point of his career happened when he, in a mob of a thousand other officers of the law, egged on by a prosecuter who bore a striking resemblance to Frankenstein’s monster, stormed City Hall, threatening and cursing Mayor Dinkins. Keenan and several others had been caught on camera but Keenan still had his job. His father was a captain somewhere in Brooklyn so I supposed that counted for something.

Still, I paused long enough to size him up and regret that I had not punched him twice as hard when I had had the chance. I took comfort in the fact that I’d named him in my lawsuit against the department.

At the top of the stairs to the left, the door to the investigation unit was open. Detective Danny Williams rose from the desk and approached with his hands outstretched. “Come on in, Miss Anderson—Mali. Good to see you again despite the circumstances.”

Danny Williams was Tad’s partner and everyone said they made a good pair. Both were as tenacious as pit bulls once they got hold of a clue, no matter how slight or where it led them. But the similarity ended there. Tad
lived in a two-bedroom co-op apartment in the Riverbend complex on 140th Street facing the Harlem River, but Danny had recently moved from a brownstone on 128th Street to a split-level on the tip of Long Island.

“Nobody’s gonna get back at me through my kids,” he liked to say. Yet he remained in the neighborhood spending as many off-work hours as Tad. He tracked down leads and most of the time he was successful, but rumor had it that his wife and daughters rarely saw him.

At one time, Tad had hinted that Danny might have some other reason for hanging around Harlem so much. A lot of calls came in on Danny’s line, and when Tad offered to take a message, a woman’s soft voice usually said, “No message,” and hung up. Of course, he could have traced the calls if he wanted to, but what Dan did was his business. Tad was trying to get a handle on his own problems at the time and had no interest in another man’s personal stuff, even if he was his partner.

I looked at Danny now and wanted to shake my head. Here was this slightly chubby, middle-aged man with a wife, three daughters, a new car, and a house mortgaged up to his eyeballs. Was he still trying to burn his candle at both ends?

He pulled out a chair for me, then walked around his desk to sit facing me. His movements were languid, and although he did not weigh as much as Tad, the roundness of his stomach made him appear heavier.

Up close, I saw that he had less hair than when I had last worked in the precinct. His suit bore the hallmarks of very good tailoring and his dark brown face was clean-shaven, but under the fluorescent lights, he appeared tired.

“So how’s it going, Mali? Private life must be all right. You look like you just stepped off the cover of
Essence
. Our mutual friend mentions you all the time.
Talks my ear off. Hey, a Ph.D. I’m damn proud of you and I’m glad to see my man smiling again.”

I had dressed carefully for this visit. Fresh haircut, small gold Nefertiti earrings, and shoes and shoulder bag to complement a beige wool suit. At five nine and 120 pounds, people often mistook me for a model or a disciplined athlete. Now I felt uncomfortable, wondering if Tad had been smiling because of my schoolwork (my graduate study) or my “homework” (my activities with him). But I hadn’t made love to him yet, so what was he so happy about?

The safest answer was no answer at all so I smiled and remained quiet. Danny fingered his notebook and spoke of his family. “Teenagers are the hardest thing to raise,” he complained. “They think they know everything.”

I thought of Alvin, who was not yet a teenager but who also pretended, once upon a time, to know everything. Now the silences have grown longer, and when he does speak, it is the echo of grief I pretend not to hear.

Danny unfolded a wallet-size collection of pictures. “This is Harriet, the oldest. That’s Claudia, and the one next to her is Louise.”

His fingers moved across the surface pointing out the split-level in the background complete with the brick barbecue grill. The final picture was that of a small, light brown woman seated in a wheelchair near a curved sofa inside the house.

“This is my wife.”

I smiled, waiting to hear her name, but he folded the collection up and slipped the wallet in his jacket again.

“It’s wonderful that your children have such old-fashioned names.”

He leaned back in the chair. “Yep. I left that decision to my wife.”

I nodded again, waiting for him to continue, to at
least talk about why she was in the wheelchair, but he said nothing more.

I looked around the small room with its two desks, the battered chairs, and the three filing cabinets in the corner supporting a huge spathiphyllum plant, its leaves grown wide as palms and pointing up toward the lights.

A row of “Wanted” posters hung from the wall at eye level in stacks as thick as telephone directories. They were suspended from large hooks with photos and sketches of America’s Most Wanted. The wall nearest Danny’s desk was covered with a glossy “Just Say No” poster and next to that was the sector map with its black, yellow, white, and green pins representing the incidents of homicide, rape, burglary, and robbery.

I glanced at the map and wanted to ask “How’s business?” but knew that I’d be there all night if I had to listen to his answer.

I was beginning to wonder if this was a social call when he finally got around to the first question. I gave my statement, describing the event as well as I remembered but omitted finding the gold caps. Let Tad discuss that with him. I’d had enough of a lecture when I’d given them to him four nights ago. I didn’t need a further reminder about “tampering with evidence.” If indeed it was evidence. But I did mention speaking that night to Mrs. Johnson, the boy’s mother.

Danny looked up from his report sheet.

“Oh? What did she say?”

“Nothing revelant. Just thanked me for saving Morris.”

I also didn’t mention the later conversation in the restaurant.

Danny put his pen down and leaned across the desk. “We all thank you, Mali. I mean it. You know, when I look at my daughters, it hurts to see something like this …”

I nodded, wondering if, in his busy schedule, he got the chance to look at his daughters. It was common knowledge in the precinct that he wanted to take on every homicide case that came in. And when he got a case, he submerged himself in it. I wondered if it was his way of crowding out the situation at home.

“I dropped by to see Mrs. Johnson yesterday,” he continued. “She was just coming in from the funeral so I guess my timing was off. Nice woman but nervous. I guess anybody’d be nervous trying to raise a kid nowadays with all that’s going on … By the way, what can you tell me about the boy?”

“Nothing, except that he’s a member of the Chorus and a friend of my nephew. They play ball together sometimes.”