Harlem Redux (28 page)
Authors: Persia Walker
Early Tuesday, David went to see the family physician. Dr. Steve Johnson had delivered David and his sisters. Known to them as “Dr. Steve,” he was short, chubby, and dapper. He had a habit of looking at patients over the top of his glasses. When David was a child, Dr. Steve’s dark, merry eyes had reminded him of Santa Claus.
“I heard you were back,” Dr. Steve
said. He shook David’s hand and offered him a seat. “It’s good to see you. I’m so sorry about Lilian.”
“It was a shock.”
“I can imagine.”
“I want to know what caused it. Did you see her during that last illness?”
“No,” Dr. Steve shook his head. “No, I didn’t. The last time I saw her was more than a year ago. She was pregnant and fairly healthy.”
“Pregnant?” David felt his stomach tighten. “How far along was she?”
“In her third month.”
“Was it a normal pregnancy?”
“Up to that point, it certainly was. But I never heard from her again, so I don’t know how the rest of it went. It broke my heart to read about her dying like that. Odd, how the papers didn’t mention a surviving child. What did she have? A boy or a girl?”
David paused. “There was no child.”
Dr. Steve looked at him with disbelief. “But that’s impossible. Was there a miscarriage?”
“Not that I know of.”
Dr. Steve cleared his throat uncomfortably. Abortion was unmentionable.
“Well, then I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I,” David said. “Neither do I.”
David returned home. So Lilian
had
been pregnant ... but there was no baby. Only a couple of explanations were possible. She wouldn’t have had an abortion, because she wanted the child. Not unless she told Sweet and he forced her to it. David felt sick with anger at the thought of her in some filthy room with a back-alley cutter. But in all fairness, he couldn’t accuse Sweet of that. Not yet.
According to Lilian’s diary, she’d never even told Sweet about the pregnancy. Perhaps she’d had a miscarriage. But if so, then surely she couldn’t have kept it a secret. Sweet would’ve learned about it. But if he
had
known, then he would’ve mentioned it, wouldn’t he? He would’ve had no reason not to. On the other hand, Annie had said nothing. And she must’ve known. She must’ve.
But had she?
Now back at home, he went looking for her and found her in the kitchen. She was wiping down the top of the stove, humming to herself. She stopped when she looked up and saw his expression.
“What’s the matter?”
“Did you know that Lilian was pregnant?”
Annie moaned and got a pained look on her face.
David felt his temper rise. He fought to keep his voice steady. “So you did know. And you said nothing to me?”
Her forehead creased with worry. “How’d you find out?”
“Her diary. And Dr. Steve just confirmed it. Why didn’t you tell me?”
She sighed and shook her head. “I just didn’t know what to say. Truth is, she never said nothing to me. I caught her being sick in the bathroom. And she was tired all the time. I guessed what was going on. I tried to help her, but there wasn’t much I could do.”
“But the baby ... She didn’t have it, did she?”
“No, she didn’t. And I don’t know why. I don’t know what happened. One week she was sick every day. The next, she was fine.” Annie snapped her fingers. “Just like that and she was okay. Months went by. There was no baby. No nothing. She never mentioned it no more.”
“And you didn’t ask her?”
She gave him a strange look. “I had a feeling it’d be better not to. I had a feeling... it was too late.”
He felt a terrible disquiet. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know, Mr. David. I just had the feeling that whatever was gonna happen had happened, that it was, well... over and done with.”
It was a strange answer, one more intuitive than rational, one that chilled him. He started to ask her more but then stopped. She’d said exactly what she meant. She didn’t know how to say more.
So he asked another question, on another subject, and framed it carefully.
“After that scene in the parlor, are you sure you didn’t notice any particular ... closeness ... between Miss Gem and Mr. Jameson?”
“No,” she shook her head. “Definitely not. There weren’t no closeness between them two. Miss Gem certainly had an affection for Mr. Jameson. She sure did. But that man didn’t care nothing for her. He was polite, but cool.”
He felt he could trust Annie’s observations in most instances, but this time he was unsure. Sweet would have taken great pains to hide his feelings for Gem, especially from Annie.
“He says he was in Newark that weekend.”
“That’s right. Mr. Jameson said he had a conference. He
said
he’d be gone till Mond’y. He left Thursd’y. When he come back, Miss Lilian was already gone.” She gave him a shrewd look. “Now, there ain’t no way anybody
reason’ble
would say Mr. Jameson had anything to do with it. But ...”
“Annie, you’ve never liked Mr. Jameson, have you?”
She hesitated. “Mr. David, you know I’m not one to judge people. But I distrusted that man the moment he walked in the door. It was how he looked at the house. He stared so hard. At the furniture, the silverware, even the paintings on the walls. I couldn’t understand why Miss Rachel put that man in Miss Lilian’s path. There was greed in his face. Greed. Just like the moneychangers Our Lord Jesus threw outta the Temple.”
“Do you remember the name of the hotel Mr. Jameson stayed at that weekend?”
She squinted, trying to recall. “The Newfield, I think.” She nodded. “Yes, it was, the Newfield.”
“And where’s Mr. Jameson now?”
“He done left for work already. But he’ll be back later.”
He needed to talk to Sweet. But maybe he could use the fact that Sweet wasn’t home to his advantage. Leaving Annie, David went to his father’s office door, put his hand on the knob, and turned. Naturally, it resisted, but this time, he expected it to. With a little effort, he could pick the lock. And a little while later, he did.
“What’d you say the name of that hotel was?” the driver asked.
“The Newfield,” David said.
It was twenty minutes later. The break into Sweet’s office had yielded results, but not the results David expected. Now he was out looking to check Sweet’s alibi.
The hotel was a modest but attractive establishment. The woman behind the counter was polite but uncooperative. She refused to confirm or deny that Jameson Sweet had had a reservation at the hotel on the night David mentioned.
“We respect our guests’ confidentiality.”
“Listen, his wife died that night and I’m her brother. I just want to make sure he was where he said he was.”
The woman’s eyes became knowing. She looked to be in her mid-fifties, plump and gossipy. “You mean, you think he was stepping out on her?”
“I don’t know what to think. That’s the problem. All we know is that she’s gone and there’s a question ...”
The woman nodded. “My baby girl had a cheating husband. It was terrible.” She considered. “Look, I’ve got to go in the back for a second to check on something. People think I’ve got eyes in the back of my head, but I’ll tell you a secret: I don’t. So I won’t have no idea of what you’re up to while I’m gone. Just make sure you’ve cleared out before I get back. You hear?”
“Thank you.”
With a wink, she turned her broad back to him and bustled into the back office. David spun the register book around and flipped the pages back for several weeks. He found Sweet’s signature for the weekend that Lilian died. David scanned the room numbers and saw that Sweet had shared a room with another Movement official, Charlie Epps. David quickly copied Epps’s name and address.
He took the hired car back to Manhattan and found Epps’s building on 145th Street. It was midday. There was a small chance that Epps had come home for lunch. David rang the doorbell and waited. No reply. He rang again, long and loud, and waited. Still, no reply.
Disappointed, he turned away and went down the two steps leading to the street, then headed home.
Annie met him at the front door. “Mr. Jameson’s back. He’s sitting in the parlor.”
“Good,” David said. “I want to talk to him.”
Sweet sat on Augustus’s throne, reading a best-seller,
The Man Nobody Knows
by Bruce Barton. He glanced up when David entered and gave him a slight nod.
David leaned against the fireplace mantel. “So, Sweet,” he said casually, “did you know that Lilian believed she was pregnant last year?”
Sweet looked up. He appeared to be stunned.
“What?”
“Lilian told Rachel she was expecting a child.”
“That’s impossible. Lilian never said anything to me about it.”
“Maybe she was afraid to.”
“Why? I would’ve been thrilled.” He frowned, apparently thinking it over, and then shook his head. “No, there was no pregnancy. There couldn’t have been.” He spoke more to himself than to David and his tone held the urgency of a man who as trying to convince himself more than another. “A pregnancy,” he muttered. “That can’t be true.”
“How can you be so sure?”
Sweet regarded David with resentment. “She would’ve told me. I was her husband.”
“Yes, you were, weren’t you?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Just how well did you get to know Gem?”
Sweet’s dark eyes took on a hard glint. “Not so well.”
“How well?”
“Not as well as you’d like to imply.”
“Gem is a stunning woman—”
“But obvious. It was easy to see what she was after.”
“And did you give her ... what she was after?”
Sweet snickered. “Your train is running on the wrong track.”
Annie came in with a coffee tray. David asked about Gem’s absence.
“Strange that she hasn’t responded to word of Lilian’s death. I heard that they became close.”
Sweet was quiet for a moment, then he laid his book aside.
“As far as I know, they
did
become close. Lilian told me she was receiving regular news from Gem.”
“Letters?”
“Postcards.”
“I’d like to see them, if you don’t mind.”
Sweet hesitated.
Did he burn them, too?
David wondered.
