Suzy's Case: A Novel (23 page)

“Oh my God. I never heard of that,” responds June.

“It’s a recent discovery. Who knows how many there were in the past. How old was she when she died?”

“Young, twenty-six. I was just a child. And as I understand it, breast and ovarian cancer were rare in a woman her age. But we stayed strong, my father and I. He was devoted to me, but fell victim to an act of violence, shot dead when I was twelve. My aunt took me in after that until I was old enough to be on my own. I know you didn’t ask me all that, but I’m just saying. It came to mind,” she finishes, glassy-eyed, with a tone of sorrow in her voice.

Mom turns to me. She’s a champion of sorts in transitioning away from a sad moment given all she has gone through. “You better win the case for June’s daughter or expect to hear from me! I’m going to stay alive as long as it takes to make sure you do your job right. By the way, June, I love your handbag, and the boots, too.”

“Thank you so much, Adele,” June tells her. They beam at each other. Mom dishes out pad Thai and basil chicken onto everybody’s plate and we eat.

After dinner, my sister and I watch June and my mother bond. My mother gives June the recipe for her famous salmon mousse in exchange for June’s cheddar-corn soufflé. All of the funeral planning stopped after June arrived, but for some reason the salmon mousse recipe brings us full circle.

“We still have to talk about what you’re going to serve at my shiva,” Mom says thoughtfully. “I’m going to make a couple of my salmon mousses just before the end so you can put them out with the buffet. I like the idea of cooking for my mourners.”

June and I leave just after midnight. “May I get you a cab?” the white-gloved doorman asks.

“Yes, please,” I say.

“No, thank you,” June overrides me. “We don’t need one.”

I turn to her. “Okay, then. How are we going to get to Brooklyn?”

She responds with a wave. The 1962 black Impala bubble top with the checkered flag badge on the front grille comes roaring toward us from down the block. You can hear the cylinders scream through the stainless dual exhaust pipes as it accelerates. Its tires screech as it slides up to the curb and stops abruptly.

The doorman jumps back, eyeballing the plate. “What’s ‘the Fidge’?” he asks.

“The Fidge,” I reply, “is not a what, it’s a who. He takes care of things that need taking care of around the hood and keeps his peeps safe. Right, June?”

“Right, counselor,” she confirms with a wink.

I hear superloud gangsta music emanating through the smoked-out windows of the Impala. Under the SS badge on the side fender the number 409 appears, signifying the cubic size of the engine. It has aftermarket Cragar mag wheels with redline tires flared by chromed curb feelers. I see the passenger-side window slowly descend into the doorframe, allowing the music to make a blasting escape. Passersby slow their pace and stare at the menacing piece of 1960s muscle.

A large black man with a shaved head and a full, neatly trimmed beard is leaning toward the passenger side. He speaks commandingly as he throws the door open of the Fidge’s lowrider. “Get in.” It’s the same guy who picked June up after we ate our dogs in front of the courthouse.

June looks at me. “This is my friend Trace. He’s going to take us to Fred’s. It’s safer to go with Trace in the neighborhoods we’re going to travel through than in a taxi.”

“Trace, like in Trace Adkins, the famous country singer?”

“Uh, no,” June replies. “More like ‘if anyone messes, they’re gonna disappear without a trace’ Trace.”

“Hmm. I see.” I look in at the colossus behind the wheel. “Good evening, Trace.”

“It’s morning,” he informs me in a slow, deep voice.

“I stand corrected, Trace. Good morning.” I reach down and pick
up the chrome release lever allowing the front passenger seat to fold forward so I can get in the back, observing as I do that the interior is a sea of red. There are high-grade custom red leather seats stitched in the original pattern, red carpet, door panels, and dash. Even the fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror are red.

June gets in the front. “Thanks for waiting, Trace.”

He responds with a gentlemanly nod.

The doorman watches as we ready ourselves for takeoff. Trace catches his attention waving him over. He makes his way around to the driver’s side and bends down. Trace shoots up two fingers with a twenty wedged between. “Compliments of the Fidge.”

The doorman stops his nervous shaking and slowly takes the bill. “Please tell the Fidge I say thank you.”

“Yeah,” Trace says pleasantly, then peels away from the curb with the doorman standing street side.

“June, can I see the wire and patch, please?” I ask over the interior rumble.

Her hand disappears into her bag and she pulls out the wire. This has been one long-ass day, and it ain’t over yet. I wish I were home right about now. Home! Crap! My wife. I forgot to call and tell her I had to go to my mother’s and wouldn’t be home for dinner. I’m in deep mud. If I call now and wake her from her precious sleep I’ll be in deeper, waist high. But if I don’t call and tell her of my whereabouts, the mud will act as quicksand. I pull out my phone.

“Who you calling?” June asks on the third ring.

“My wife.”

“Hang up. You don’t have to—”

“Shush,” I say, putting my index finger to my lips.

“Did you just shush me? I know you didn’t just shush me. Nobody shushes me—”

I hold my finger up to my lips. For a second or two this compounds her anger, but then June smiles. “Okay, be that way. Call your wife.”

Tyler answers in a sleepy, annoyed voice, “What?”

“It’s me. Sorry, honey. I’ve been running around and forgot to call
you to say I wouldn’t be home for dinner. I had to go to my mom’s to plan her funeral and now I’m in a gangsta lowrider heading to the hood to meet an electrical expert at his junkyard.”

As usual, she’s full of questions. “Plan a funeral? Gangsta lowrider? Meet an expert? At a junkyard in the hood?” She pauses, but only briefly. “You’re an asshole. Don’t call here so late ever again!”
Click.

“That didn’t go over so well,” I comment as I stuff my phone away.

June laughs. “Domestic problems?”

“You might say that.” She hands me the patch and wire.

“White girls. She’s got to understand you’re a hardworking man and you got the power to change people’s lives. That’s a big responsibility. If you don’t win our case, me, Suzy, and Dog will be stuck forever, dependent on the system—and the system doesn’t work.”

“I really don’t know how to respond to that, June. I’d like to believe my wife understands how important a lawsuit can be for a person in your circumstance.”

“It’s probably just another payday to her. I’m sure she just wants to know if you won. Bet she never asked you how winning your case changed somebody’s life, did she?”

“I’m not really sure she has, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t know or care.”

“We’ll see. After you win this one for us, we’ll pay her a visit and set things straight if they need setting straight.”

“That might not be a bad idea. On the other hand, it might be a really bad idea.”

I look up at the bubble-shaped ceiling, which I know to be one of the unique design features of the 1962 Impala. Cool. I take in the red-and-white houndstooth pattern and see there’s a courtesy light on the ceiling. I reach up and click it on, sending light into my lap right where I’m holding the stolen goods.

The stainless steel lead wire is three feet long, an eighth of an inch thick, and is covered with clear plastic coating. At one end there’s an inch-long metal prong that I know from my visit to Dr. Vargas’s office gets inserted into a housing attached to a cable that leads to the heart monitor. I bring the prong up to the light for closer inspection and
see a bunch of black spots on the shiny steel wire inside the plastic right where the prong exits the coating. At the other end, there’s a smaller prong still attached to the patch by being inserted into a tiny metal receptor that protrudes from the center of the patch. I look at its flip side, the part placed on Suzy’s chest, and see some kind of substance residue. The residue on the patch at one end and the spots inside the plastic coating on the other are the only presumed abnormalities I see.

I take out a legal pad and jot down a few notes on the top sheet. I then rip off the page, fold it up, and stuff it in my front shirt pocket. I look up to notice June has been observing my very scientific inspection. I hand her the wire and patch. “Here, take this back. I want you to keep it in your possession at all times for issues surrounding chain of custody. Please don’t lose them.”

“Don’t you worry. I have a feeling about this wire, and that’s why I called Fred in on this.”

“I have a feeling, too, but right now it’s just that—a feeling.” A few quiet minutes pass as I look out at parts of Brooklyn I never thought I’d visit. We’re driving through Brownsville and it’s one low-income housing project after another. Little kids who should be in bed asleep are out in the streets, some smoking, others drinking, some playing like, well, little kids. Groups of people are hanging out on street corners, some looking scary, at least from my perspective. And I would’ve said
gangs
of people if I weren’t such an uptight nervous bald cracker from privileged beginnings cruising through a neighborhood I have no place being but for the task at hand. At least I admit it.

I know, however, despite the poverty, violent crime, and drug addiction and running that have been associated with Brownsville, Brooklyn, it also produced many talented and influential people. Rappers, boxers, basketball players, and entertainment personalities. I appreciate this neighborhood in eastern Brooklyn has given the world people who have had impact. Mike Tyson, Red Holzman, Larry King, Al Sharpton, and yes, the Three Stooges, among others. The thing that connects so many of Brownsville’s notable natives is their ability to touch others in some way, shape, fashion, or form.

So now I ask, “June, who is this Fred we’re going to see and what can you tell me about him?”

“His name is Fred Sanford. He owns a television repair shop as well as the junkyard next to the shop, which he operates with his son, Lenny.”

“Hold on. You mean to tell me we’re going to a junkyard owned by a guy named Fred Sanford and he operates it with his son, Lenny?”

“Yeah. Why you asking like that?”

“Doesn’t that remind you of anything? Any television show from the seventies starring Redd Foxx?”

“You mean
Sanford and Son
?”

“Yes, June.
Sanford and Son
.”

“In the TV show the son’s name was Lamont, not Lenny. Plus, this Fred Sanford is educated and in the television repair business, unlike the Fred Sanford in the sitcom who seemed uneducated and strictly a junk dealer. So, what’s your point?”

“Oh, no point, June. No point at all. Now that you’ve put it into proper perspective for me, I feel silly for bringing it up.”

“I can sense sarcasm in your voice.”

“That’s because I’m being sarcastic. Now can you tell me why this Fred Sanford who does both television repair and deals junk is such a
genius,
as you’ve termed him?”

“He just is. Everybody knows it. And he’s the Fidge’s number one advisor on anything related to electronics or technology, among other things.”

“Oh, well, why didn’t you say so in the first place? If he’s good enough for the Fidge, then he’s good enough for me.”

“Despite your continued sarcasm, Fred is the real deal. You’ll see. He went to Yale undergrad and Harvard grad school for rocket science. And don’t use the Fidge’s name in vain. You never know when you might need him.”

Trace, who’s been scary-quiet, pipes up. “Yeah. Respect to the Fidge.”

“My apologies to the Fidge,” I tell them both. “So Fred Sanford, the junk dealer and television repairman, is also a rocket scientist?”

“Yes.” She looks at me. “He was one of the principal engineers for the Apollo space missions in the 1960s. You know? ‘One small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.’ ”

“I know the moon walk thing. I just find it interesting a Brooklyn television repairman and junk dealer was involved in the space mission.”

“Would it change your mind any if you knew he owns miles of waterfront real estate in Red Hook, and has been offered hundreds of millions for it?”

“At this point, June, nothing surprises me. But why would he be living in this area if he owns land out in Red Hook and has so much money?”

“Fred’s true to himself.”

Trace pulls up to a three-story brownstone with a business at the street level. In the window hangs a red neon sign that reads:
TELEVISION REPAIR
. A sign above the window reads:
FRED’S FIX-IT AND JUNKYARD. FRED SANFORD AND SON, PROPRIETORS
. To the left of the brownstone looms a large gated lot with all kinds of junk in it. It’s too dark to make out what’s in there, but it’s most definitely a boatload of junk. The activity on the streets we just drove through is absent here, wherever we are, ten minutes from Brownsville.

Trace gets out. He’s taller and wider than I projected, seeing him at a distance the other day. He looks up, down, and across the quiet street while June and I wait in the car. “Are we going to get out?” I ask.

“Of course. We just wait till Trace says so.” He now does just that. It’s weird how there’s not one person in the street yet its emptiness is what’s making me uneasy.

June hits the buzzer. A few seconds later, a light comes on and we hear a voice. “Wait a minute, I’m coming.”

The door opens to reveal an elderly gray-haired black man with a pair of Ben Franklins resting on the end of his nose. He’s wearing a multicolored Missoni bathrobe and a silk ascot perfectly knotted under his neck and neatly tucked into his robe. He’s just shy of six feet, sports a distinguished gray mustache and goatee, has a small belly sticking out right where the robe is tied, and is wearing a pair of authentic leopard fur house slippers on his feet.

“June, you’re beautiful, just like your mother,” he tells her. “It’s a shame you were deprived so young of knowing what a great woman she was. How long has it been since I’ve seen you, my dear? Ten years?”