A Toast Before Dying (6 page)

She waved her hand toward the computers on the desk. “Right now, I’m completely out of it.”

She walked over to one of the cabinets, her bare feet soundless on the thick carpet, and returned with a quart of Absolut and a bottle of ginger ale.

“Sorry. Our ice maker’s acting up. Haven’t seen a cube in a week now. Hope you don’t mind.” She placed two glasses on the desk and poured. “We pull this out on celebratory occasions—a half-million contract, a multiple closing, whatever. We offer a toast.”

She raised her glass and suddenly put it down. Then picked it up again and closed her eyes. “Well, Thea. We had fun …”

Feeling like a hypocrite, I sighed and lifted my own glass. But the toast was a good opening.

“How long had you known Thea?”

“Let’s see …” Gladys had gone light on the ginger ale and the drink made her cough. She held her breath until the initial burning subsided. “Let’s see. We met at the pageant in 1985. In Albany. She was first runner-up and I was second. She should’ve won, but …”

“But what?”

Gladys shrugged, changing the subject as if she had not heard me. “We shared a suite. There were so many chaperones, you wouldn’t believe. We couldn’t smoke, drink, chew gum. Not that we wanted to, you understand, and I think Thea was a little more
driven—motivated—than I was, at least in the beginning.”

I nodded, not certain if it was the Absolut or the well of memory, but she seemed suddenly animated. Her mouth curved into a small smile and she seemed even younger.

“Thea was twenty-one and I was twenty-three,” she said, “and we wanted everything to be picture perfect, so chewing and drinking were the least of our problems. I mean we went through all the phases of the competition—talent, swimsuit, evening wear. Every curl in place and the smiles pasted on. We were gorgeous. Here, look.”

She reached into the bottom drawer and pulled out a thick album held together with a swath of black-and-white kente cloth. The pictures were not fastened in place and spilled out when she opened the cover.

I studied them, mostly eight-by-tens. The 1985 Thea had paler skin; the smile was softer, more expectant; but there was something around the eyes that the smile couldn’t hide.

“Were these taken before or after the winners were announced?”

Gladys put on her glasses and leaned over. “These were taken before.” She paused and sighed. “They hadn’t yet decided that we weren’t quite good enough.”

I looked at her quickly. She was pouring a second drink and I wondered if she’d had any before I’d shown up.

“The gowns must’ve cost a fortune,” I said.

“Not only the gowns,” Gladys said, gathering the
pictures and putting them back in the album. “That doesn’t begin to explain the price we paid. You see, every contestant had to have a sponsor, someone to underwrite expenses. My church and my family had sponsored me, and Thea’s voice coach had sponsored her …”

“Her voice coach? Where was her family?”

Gladys lifted her shoulders again. “In all the years I’ve known her, that’s one area I could never get into. She always seemed angry whenever I mentioned my mother, or my aunt, or cousins.

“My family had been in real estate for years, and I was already planning to enter the business. I didn’t need a beauty title as a stepping-stone. My future was mapped. Five years ago, when my dad retired, I took over. Thea didn’t have that kind of backup. If you ask me, she seemed to not have any security at all, except her grandmother, who’d taken ill, and Thea flew home for a day to see her. The only calls she received were from her voice coach.

“The day before we returned to the city, the grandmother died. I dropped by Thea’s place from time to time, but there were no pictures of family. No albums. It was as if she’d been dropped from another planet to make out here as best she could. One thing I must say: She was gorgeous, but even with that I didn’t envy her. Most of the time she was angry, and I never understood that.”

She returned the album to the bottom drawer. “And that’s the personal side. At that pageant, there was a lot of pressure. Publicly, we had to keep our cool
when some redneck cow from one of those one-light towns tried to flaunt her whiteness in our faces, tried in so many words to call us out of our names, smiling as she did it. We had to smile back, grit our teeth, and work hard to keep from acting colored, so to speak.”

“How did Thea take it?”

“Early on, she was determined to grit and grin. But then the cows turned up the heat. I’m telling you, there were some slick heifers behind all that lipstick. They tried things like hiding or destroying parts of our wardrobe, shoes, music, makeup, anything to make us misstep, miss a note, sweat, frown at the wrong time …”

“Losing must have been hard for Thea.”

“Yes, toward the end she was crying every night, all night, and in the morning I would put ice packs on her eyes to reduce the swelling and redness. I kept telling her not to let those fat cows get to her. After a while, though, I wondered if it was the cows or the fact that no one was there to support her, no family to back her up …”

“Who’s her voice coach?”

“Miss Adele. You know her. Everyone in Harlem knows her. Retired from the Met and pulled a lot of weight downtown. Lived in the Dunbar Apartments years ago but she’s across Seventh Avenue in Esplanade Gardens now. She’s in her seventies and still going strong, still coaching. A remarkable woman.”

I nodded. Her name sounded vaguely familiar. I’d have to ask Dad more about her. Anyone having the slightest connection to the music scene—even if they
only whistled their way through the
Apollo Amateur Hour
without being booed off the stage—Dad either knew or had heard of.

“How often did you see Thea?”

“About every month or so. She was modeling, singing. We called each other quite a lot, probably because she had no one else to confide in.”

“Who’s handling the funeral arrangements?”

“I suppose I’ll do it. Her husband—”

“Husband? Thea was married?”

“Yes, in 1991, but Roger had left her. Wanted a divorce, but she refused for some reason. I couldn’t understand that.”

“Did she love him?”

She picked up her glass again, twirled it from habit, then put it down. “I don’t know. They met when she was modeling. Married quickly and broke up just as fast. I mean before the wedding pictures came from the photographer she was back in her apartment on 116th Street and Seventh Avenue.”

“Graham Court?”

“Yes. I was glad she hadn’t given that up. In some ways, the girl was smart. Place has seven large rooms, beautiful fireplaces, fabulous floors.”

Gladys looked at me, aware that she had slipped momentarily into her broker’s role.

“Then she demanded a settlement. A very expensive one. Roger’s a successful architect and I suppose Thea thought he should meet her price. Personally, I was disappointed. Roger could have given her the love and security she seemed to need so badly.”

The smile had vanished and Gladys seemed ready to cry, so I remained quiet as she refilled the glasses. Alcohol usually loosens the tongue, but if tears came there might be no more conversation. She had turned the answering machine down but not entirely off and several messages—more like murmurs—filtered into the silence. Gladys ignored them and I remained silent, thinking about Thea.

Damn. The girl had been married. Not even the papers mentioned that. Dad, who knew all about everyone in the business, didn’t mention that. It must have truly been one of those blink-and-you-miss-it moments.

“If I’m not being too inquisitive, how much was Thea asking to cut this guy loose?”

Gladys looked at her watch, a paper-thin gold Piaget, and rose to get another bottle of ginger ale. She moved toward the small refrigerator and her voice when she answered trailed after her. “The last figure I heard was around fifty thousand. That was three years ago. She suggested he could pay it in installments.”

Installments. How thoughtful. And not a bad payoff for a few months’ inconvenience. Whatever the hell was wrong with her, the girl was definitely a high-maintenance sister.

Gladys must have anticipated my next question.

“I called his office as soon as I heard about Thea,” she said. “Roger is in Puerto Rico at a conference.”

“A conference. Out of town.”

“Out of the country, actually.”

“I see …”

I also saw that it was one thing to pay fifty thousand
for your freedom. And quite a bargain to perhaps pay someone—when you were off the scene—five thousand to do a job for you. Maybe get it done for as little as five hundred if your connections were good. A crackhead might do it for fifty. Except they couldn’t be trusted. If Roger had hired someone, it would’ve been a professional. But why wait so many years to do it? And why kill her on her birthday?

“When did you last speak to her?” I asked.

I watched her carefully as her eyes filled again, but the tears did not spill over. It was a few seconds before she said, “I talked to her shortly before she died. Called the bar to tell her I was on my way. I had been working on a closing late into the evening. When I got there, the place was in chaos. The police hadn’t even roped it off yet. There were people, two women I think, still in the place …”

“Drinking?” I asked.

Gladys shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t remember. I only remember hearing Kendrick’s name. And I saw his sister, Bertha, screaming at the police, at Laws, at anybody who’d listen.”

“Speaking of Bertha: Do you know the two women who came into her shop when you were there?”

She looked at me and shrugged. “I have no idea who they were. I was so upset I barely noticed them.” She touched her forehead and closed her eyes. “Wait. Wait a minute. Yes. One of the women, the dark pretty one, had been in the bar when I walked in. There was another woman with her at the counter who was short, a bit on the heavy side, light brown complexion with a
head full of thick hair that didn’t seem to do much for her face. I remember the hair falling over her face and practically covering her eyeglasses. Strange, the things you remember …

“The glasses had rhinestone frames, and I remember thinking how tacky they looked. Can you imagine thinking about something so insignificant at a time like that?”

“I can imagine,” I said. “Rhinestones can make a statement. Did you notice anything else?”

“No.”

“What about the other woman? The white one?”

“I have no idea who she is.”

Gladys rose to clear away the glasses and I looked toward the window. The sun had moved beyond the ridge of buildings across the avenue, and purplish shadows were easing into the room. Gladys pressed a button and plant lights flickered on in the window, bathing the front of the office in a surreal chalky white glow. In the artificial light, the fish in the narrow tank seemed to trail a bubbling phosphorescence as they moved through the water. The rest of the room remained in semidarkness. I checked my watch, a modest Timex, which read nearly 7:30.

“I suppose I’ll see you at the service,” she said.

Her voice had changed again, gotten softer, and I glanced at her and wondered how long she’d sit here after I left. Her eyes were still watery, but at least she had put the bottle back.

“Of course,” I said. “She sang with my father’s band.”

O
utside, the shadows gave way to vivid strands of pink and yellow and glimmered in an uneven wedge above the buildings’ silhouettes.

Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream Parlor on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 125th Street was crowded. Across the street, the National Black Theater was open, and a few doors away on Fifth, people strolled in and out of the Africarts Gallery.

I turned at 126th Street and headed west toward Lenox Avenue. This block, like many others in Harlem, was a study in contrasts where magnificent four-story brownstones stood side by side with structures long vacant. On the top floors of the vacant buildings, ubiquitous “city palms” had somehow taken root and their thin trunks spiraled toward the twilit sky. The broad-leaved branches jutted out of the yawning windows, waving like tenants in the yellow flare of the streetlight. I wondered who owned these buildings and how much
longer they would be held off the market. Trees took years to grow.

At Lenox Avenue I walked uptown, thinking of the view from Tad’s balcony in the Riverbend Apartments complex, seeing in my mind’s eye early-morning sunlight on the Harlem River and feeling the wind damp against my skin. I imagined the small whoosh of water rushing to close in on itself in the wake of a passing barge and the dark current settling into a pattern again, easing and ebbing and waiting for the next boat to disturb it. I needed to speak to him.

I paused at a bodega and waited under its Christmas-lit canopy for a young girl to run out of quarters and free up the phone. Her conversation must have taken a turn because her free hand flipped to her hip and her neck went into the classic swan boogie. “Listen, you think I’m sweatin’ you? Negro, lemme put this to you: By the time I get there you better have that bitch’s ass in the wind, you hear? Yeah. Tell me somethin’ new. She’d fuck a lamppost if it had a dick. Yeah … same to you and your mama too!”

With that she slammed down the phone and turned to me with a stare that could have cut stone. “Got that low-budget ho’ in his crib. Ain’t good for nuthin’ but chokin’. Lucky I got my fuckin’ other man.”

I shrugged in sympathy, remembering when my younger hair-trigger temper had caused me to act just as foolishly. I remembered that when I wasn’t screaming, I was crying, wearing out the grooves on “Love Don’t Love Nobody” by the Spinners and “Kiss and Say
Goodbye” by the Manhattans, two anthems for every love that had ever gone wrong.

I wanted to tell this girl that nothing has changed but that she will change, cool out in six months, and laugh at this. But right now she was moving down the street, cloaked in righteous anger. I waited another minute for the mouthpiece to cool off before I lifted it and dialed.

Tad came on before the ring was completed.

“Mali, where are you?”