If I Should Die (2 page)

Ruffin’s bark should have been enough. He looked like a young colt as he leaped away, covering the distance to the car in less than a second.

I heard a muffled shout and a light pinging sound. A hand shoved the child away from the car and the door slammed shut. The automobile, a black, late-model Cadillac, accelerated and turned screeching onto Seventh Avenue.

I caught sight of “HO” on the plate before it disappeared in the rain.

The child, ten or eleven years old, sat sprawled on the curb in a daze, his hand bleeding and his jeans and jacket rain-soaked. Ruffin paced the ground beside him, quiet now, then trotted over to the middle of the street where a man lay, motionless.

I knelt beside the man, took a closer look, and pressed my hands to my mouth. My friend Erskin Harding, the tour director of the Uptown Children’s Chorus, lay in the rain-soaked street, his eyes wide, seeing nothing.

Y
ellow tape cordoned off the scene, and the uniformed officers kept the crowd back. The detectives sent someone to get the child’s mother while the EMS workers examined the boy and bandaged his hand.

I remained near the yellow tape, watching the forensic unit snap several rolls of film. I held tightly to Ruffin’s collar, concentrating on the photographer because that was easier than trying to absorb the reality of the body lying there in the street.

Erskin was in his early thirties, perhaps even younger. And handsome. He had long curling lashes and a trace of mustache and I remembered his smile, especially after a concert when the applause was still ringing in his ears. His shirt and tie, pale gray, were spoiled now by the bloodstains. I looked at his loafers—one still on and the other about ten feet away near the curb—and idly wondered why a shoe always came off when the spirit leaves.

When the car had sped away, it looked as if it had been a hit-and-run. But then, when I had knelt down and pressed lightly under Erskin’s throat, the pulse was no longer there and I saw the small round hole over his left eyebrow, neat and effective.

When I had finally found my voice, it brought out neighbors from both ends of the block.

I remained near the tape, feeling the crowd move around in a ritual of activity. The detectives looked busy and the uniformed cops looked anxious, though the crowd was still small. The rain was coming down hard one minute, then slacked off, as if a giant hand had discovered a faucet and couldn’t decide what to do with it. My jacket was soaked through and droplets were easing under my collar. It was time to leave. Just then I felt, rather than saw, someone approach, and turned to face my old nemesis from the precinct.

“Mali, I understand you were—”

“Miss Anderson, sir.”

I stared hard into the blue eyes of Sergeant Cotter as I corrected him, letting him know that I was no longer under his command and I was still not taking any foolishness from him or anyone else. A pinkish color flared above his collar as if the air had suddenly been cut off and I knew, word for word, what he was calling me under his breath.

Words that would remain unspoken because the weight of one lawsuit against the NYPD was heavy enough.

I was exactly his height, five feet nine, and did not have to look up or down, but directly at him, staring straight into his eyes, knowing that most people found it easier, after a minute or so, to look away from me. Folks sometimes had trouble matching pale gray eyes with dark brown skin.

When I was growing up, older folks frowned and came right to the point: “Where you get them eyes, girl?”

I was well mannered then and held my tongue. Now I say, “Got ’em from the same place you got yours.” And my eyes are more prominent since having my hair cut close, finally giving up what Dad had tactfully called my “Angela Davis do.”

At fifteen, caught up in the remembered rapture of Huey, Rap Brown, and Eldridge, I had taken Angela as my heroine and my father had stared in amazement at my sky-high afro
.

“Where are you going with all that hair?
”

“To join the movement …
”

Mom had moved to lock the door and Dad called our neighbor, a practicing psychiatrist. Luckily, he was available and agreed to see me in exchange for music lessons for his twin sons
.

“Two lessons for one session?” my father had protested
.

“Mali is a difficult case,” Dr. Thomas had said
.

Some say I’m still difficult and I still wear my hair in its natural state—allowing no wigs, weaves, or waves—but now it’s cut so close that Dad says he can read my thoughts.

With less hair to frame the face, the eyes were … well, to be frank, sometimes I scared myself. Especially on a morning when I’d woken up hung over and staggered to the bathroom unprepared for the sight in the mirror.

I continued to stare at Sergeant Cotter, waiting for him to speak.

“Look,” he said, averting his eyes and sidestepping the issue of Miss, Mrs., or Ms. by not calling my name at all, “I understand you were on the scene when this occurred.”

“No.”

Silence. If he wanted more information, he would have to pull it out of me, syllable by syllable.

“But you witnessed the incident?”

“Which incident, sir?”

“Was there more than one? We have a body here with a bullet in it. I have no time for games.”

“Neither have I. I wasn’t sure which incident you were referring to—the murder of that man or the attempted kidnap of the child.”

I hadn’t meant to refer to Erskin as “that man” but the anger I felt toward Cotter—an old and corrosive anger—outweighed my grief. He had protected the cop who had gotten me fired. What little information I now had would go to the detectives eventually assigned to the case, not to this man.

Cotter stared and his expression told me that he could have wrung my neck and would have smiled as I gasped my last breath.

I turned away from him and saw that more people were gathering despite the rain. Umbrellas grazed against each other and I tried to listen, hoping to hear a reason for another senseless death. Instead, the predictable comments drifted back and forth:

“Why did it have to happen here? This is a quiet block.”

“Still is. The dead don’t talk.”

“Anybody seen him before?”

“Some big shot in the Children’s Chorus …”

“You kiddin’ … why anybody wanna shoot him?”

“What about the child? Lookin’ like he scared to death …”

I listened but learned nothing more than what I already knew. The boy’s name was Morris, he was eleven years old, and had been returning from rehearsal, the same Uptown Children’s Chorus rehearsal where I was going to meet Alvin.

An involuntary chill went through me and I held
Ruffin’s leash tighter. This boy was the same age as Alvin, same small wiry build. Suppose, if this was a random unplanned kidnapping, and I had not called to have Alvin wait for me, the man in the car could have somehow snatched him instead.

Then again, suppose it wasn’t random. The Uptown Children’s Chorus was a Harlem institution and a worldwide attraction. The several small groups which made up the Chorus had appeared at the White House, traveled across the country, and performed in Europe and Asia at least three times in any given year.

 … Why would someone want one of the choristers? Why would they want a chorister badly enough to murder the tour director?

I tried not to take the thought any further. My friend was lying in the street, dead. Worse yet, my nephew could have been sitting on this curb, crying.

Before the police had arrived, I tried to get some answers.

“Morris, why did the man grab you? Did you know him? Was there more than one person in the car?”

I had asked the questions softly while the boy stared at Erskin’s body without blinking. As if he wanted to remember something to call up in another time.

Finally, a murmur. “I don’t know … I don’t … I don’t know …” He had rubbed his hand and the blood was smeared over his knuckles. “The man in the backseat … he was choking me so I couldn’t breathe. I hit him in the mouth, punched him three times … hard as I could … then Mr. Harding tried to help me, yellin’ at the man to leave me alone. Now look, Mr. Harding is dead. Maybe if I hadna punched the man …”

He could not stop crying. There was nothing anyone could do for Erskin, but I held Morris to me, knowing
that I was going to hold Alvin the same way when he found out.

“It’s not your fault, Morris, it’s not.”

I had whispered this over and over but he had not heard me.

I moved away from the crowd now, easing up on Ruffin’s leash as we stepped back onto the sidewalk. My free hand moved into my pocket and fingered the tissue that held a bridge of three gold-edged tooth caps with a small diamond chip which I’d picked up from the ground near Erskin Harding.

Kneeling beside his body, I’d seen the bullet hole in his forehead, the shoe in the gutter, and the gold caps glistening on the dark, wet ground.

 … I’ll call Tad, give these to him to trace. If they assign him to this case, all the better. He’ll know what to do. Maybe these caps have no connection. Maybe they were in the street before all this happened. But Tad is good at his job. He’ll find out.

Sergeant Cotter called again. “Mali—Miss Anderson. We’ll need you to come to the station later … Witness.”

I acknowledged him with the barest shake of my head and continued to study the photographer documenting the position of the body and the angle at which the bullet entered. Another detective searched the area for a deformed bullet—one that had been fired. Then I heard Tad speak.

“So. You can’t stay off the job, it seems.”

His voice was quiet, deep, and familiar as he moved through the crowd toward me. Even in the rain, Detective Tad Honeywell looked good. How could someone look so good in the rain?

I managed to smile in spite of the confusion, in spite of myself, and in spite of all the heated debates—arguments—we’d
had at the precinct and sometimes over dinner.

“Hardheaded” had been his favorite term for me
.

“Nothing wrong with that,” I had answered. “I won’t let anyone step on me, that’s all.
”

More times than I cared to count, he had suggested: “Why don’t you let that chip roll off your shoulder?
”

“Who put it there?” I asked. “It didn’t grow out naturally, now did it?” And he never answered because we both knew what the deal was—we were acutely aware of that ever-present undercurrent of racism that infected everything in our daily lives
.

Our last date had been at Sylvia’s, seated at a small table in the back. My chip by then had grown to the size of a California redwood
.

Outside, on Lenox Avenue, tour buses were lined up for three blocks and the restaurant was packed with Japanese and Germans and cameras. The silverware clinked above the murmur, and waitresses moved with dishes trailing aromas that could make the dead wake up hungry. There was a mood in the place, lively and wonderful, but that evening, after what happened that day at the precinct, I had lost my appetite
.

“You see how no one reprimands the white boys when they get out of hand. What was I supposed to do? Grin and bear it? Grinning days are over and I ain’t barin’ nothin’ but my fist in their face. I joined the force to make a difference in the community, not to take crap from the people who’re supposed to be protecting it.
”

Tad had looked around, then held up his hands, as if to push me and my anger away from him
.

“Okay, Ali, take it easy.
”

“Mali …
”

“Whatever. Sometimes I can hardly tell the difference.
”

The official letter, the notice of my termination, was unfolded and pressed flat on the table, each corner anchored
by an empty cocktail glass. The waitress arrived with dinner but by then I had been too busy counting vodka calories
.

I had been on the force less than two years when I was fired for punching another officer. What they couldn’t understand was that the creep deserved it. He had been harassing me from the time I stepped in the door, so I figured enough was enough. How could he tape that picture to my locker and expect to get away with it? Probably would have if I hadn’t come up the stairs so quietly
.

I had sneaked up on him, spun him around, and landed a sharp punch before he knew what hit him. Then I snatched the picture—a perfectly normal picture of two apes copulating, except that my name had been scrawled in red across one of them
.

The cop, Terry Keenan, was fined three days’ pay for being in the female locker room, a restricted area. After two hearings, I was terminated and went to my attorney to get my job back
.

The rain was coming down steadily now as I stood near the edge of the crowd, forgetting how wet I was, and waiting for Tad to speak.

“How’s the lawsuit going?”

“It’s still going, but you know how the city takes its time, hoping you’ll be six feet under before the case comes to trial.”

I talked but tried not to stare at him so brazenly. Detective Honeywell was six feet three, 220 pounds, with skin I could only describe as “well honeyed” or “honeyed well,” depending on how high my temperature peaked when I saw him. His eyes were like burned brown butter, soft and liquid, which belied a toughness that had surprised me.

I recalled two summers ago when the precinct had been on alert because a rapist had sodomized a six-year-old girl and then thrown her from the roof of the twenty-seven-story project building where she lived. Honeywell
had spent his vacation tracking a slim lead until he caught up with the man in a one-light town in Tennessee. When he finally pulled him into the precinct, somehow both of the fugitive’s kneecaps had been rearranged.

“Son of a bitch tripped. Running too fast,” was all Honeywell had ever said about it. The DNA test did the rest.

I gazed at him now, wanting to tell him that he was the only thing I missed at the precinct.

“The lawsuit is still alive. But even after I win, I won’t be coming back. I’ve nearly completed my thesis and I’ve decided to look into a Ph.D. program.”