No Time to Die (13 page)

After an awkward pause, Tad seemed elated to hear from me and gladder about the latest news.

“A box of cereal, Mali? On video?”

“That’s what I understand …”

“Listen, I’m coming over. Okay?”

And ten minutes later he knocked at the door.

When I opened it and gazed at his deepset eyes, his honeyed skin, and the silver in his close-cut hair, I almost forgot why I’d called him. I focused on his black silk shirt open at the throat and studied the soft pleat in his gray linen trousers until my head cleared somewhat.

He sat on the edge of the sofa and listened, then shook his head. “Maybe something to it. Maybe not.”

“What else do we have to go on right now?” I said as I dialed Billy’s number. Luckily he was at home.

We walked the few blocks to St. Nicholas Avenue and then south toward 133rd Street, making small talk after I’d related the conversation in Dr. De’s, but mostly we walked in silence.

The elevator was old and sluggish and we were
alone. I stared at the flickering indicator like a stranger as the floors moved by, much too slow to suit me.

“Nice haircut,” he said.

“Thanks,” I replied, studying the walls as if they were hung with rare paintings. The silence closed in and I wanted to close my eyes.

“Still mad at me?” he whispered.

He was behind me now and his hands eased around my shoulders to turn me around. “Still mad?”

He pressed me against him and I breathed in his cologne. I could feel the fast hard rhythm in his chest. My arms flew up and around him and I backed him against the wall. It was easy to do because he was willing, and right now I needed him to be willing. His mouth opened and I tasted mint and wanted to swallow his tongue. His mustache tickled and I wondered if the elevator had ever gotten stuck between floors.

“You’re not still mad, are you, baby?”

“About what?” I whispered.

His mouth covered my ear now and I heard his breathing and felt the dizzyingly familiar rhythm of the rest of him. When the door slid open with a noisy groan, I was soaked, stressed, and ready to see Billy another time, any other time but now.

It took a few minutes to get myself together, so we lingered in the corridor, glancing around at the mottled beige walls and etched-glass light fixtures. The mauve carpet leading from the elevator was soft and thick.

The apartment was on the fifth floor of a seven-story limestone facing the steep green rise of St. Nicholas Park. It was an old building, kept intact by the strength of the locked lobby door and the will of the older tenants who remembered how it used to be “when you could sleep on your fire escape on a muggy night without getting mugged.”

We rang the bell and waited. Footsteps approached behind the door and Billy opened it with a flourish.

“How are you?” he whispered, gazing at Tad as if he were a birthday present sent special delivery from Neiman-Marcus.

“I’m fine,” I said, even though he hadn’t even seen me. “I’m Mali Anderson and this is Detective Tad Honeywell.”

“Yes. You’re the one who called,” and looking at Tad, he said, “A detective. My, my, my. I’m sure you must do very interesting work. A detective.”

Billy was about five-nine, with locked hair down to his shoulders and eyes that reminded me of old amber. He wore a white top and drawstring pants made of light East Indian cotton.

“The place is a wreck,” he said. “Y’all gotta excuse me. This week I’ve been too busy to clean anything except my body.”

He led the way through a narrow foyer with walls covered in red silk and into a living room painted a high-gloss chocolate and every inch covered with artwork: oil on canvas, acrylic on Masonite, mixed media on paper, acrylic and pastel on board, and pen-and-ink studies.

The sun filtered through a collection of old blue glass bottles arranged in tiers in the curtainless windows, and the room was furnished entirely with antiques. I did not see a speck of dust.

“Have a seat,” he said, waving us toward a burgundy velvet sofa. “I know you could use something cool to drink. Beer, iced tea, or soda?”

“Soda,” Tad said.

He stepped into a small kitchen and this gave me a chance to look closely at the artwork.

When he returned, I was staring at a ten-by-twelve-inch
drawing by Keith Haring. It had been inscribed to Billy.

“You knew Keith Haring?”

Billy nodded. His teeth were perfect when he smiled. “Knew him way before he became famous,” he said, placing a large bottle of ginger ale on the coffee table. “Played handball together in the East Village years ago. I never had the work appraised because I don’t ever intend to sell it.”

“I don’t blame you,” I said.

He opened an old ebony cabinet inlaid with ivory paneling and brought out three cut-crystal glasses. “Now, let’s see. Just soda or would y’all like it mixed with something stronger?”

“Soda is fine,” I said, settling back on the sofa. “You’re quite a collector. Your place is filled with such beautiful things.”

He smiled again as he filled the glasses, pleased that I’d noticed. Then he positioned himself on a leather ottoman with his legs curled under him yoga style, ready to talk business.

“You said you wanted to speak to me about a video? What’s the occasion?”

“Well, actually,” I said, “the occasion has passed.”

Billy looked from me to Tad, then back at me, his eyes narrowing. “Passed? You want me to video a funeral? Darling, I don’t do funerals. Only fun things. My nerves can’t take no grim stuff.”

“No,” I said. “This was a wedding took place maybe a few weeks ago. You were taping it, but first you had tested your equipment near a church, near a supermarket, and caught someone in the window taking some groceries. Do you recall that?”

Billy placed his glass on the table and leaned forward with his hands under his chin. “Do I remember. Do I
remember. It was right outside the Good Tidings African Apostolic Church on Lenox Avenue. Supermarket’s right next door.”

I looked at Billy. “Is it a small church with a white front next to that new supermarket near 130th Street?”

“That’s the one. We ain’t hardly talkin’ cathedral here,” Billy said.

“Do you have the tape?” Tad said. “We’re trying to find the man who took that box of cereal.”

“Boy, I don’t believe this,” Billy sighed, throwing up his hands. “I heard of ‘quality of life’ offenses, but I can’t believe a detective, a detective lieutenant no less, is assigned to look for a cereal thief. That fool in City Hall must not have anything else to think about.”

“This guy is wanted for something else,” I said.

Billy looked at me again, then narrowed his eyes even further. “Oh! What?”

“Right now we can’t say because he may very well be innocent. But once we see the tape, we’ll be able to—”

“Well, that’s just it. I don’t have it.”

“Not even a copy?” Tad asked, a look coming over his face that said he didn’t believe him.

“Not even a copy. And that’s not like me to bypass something like that. But—well, here’s what happened. The bride was so anxious to see the tape, I gave it to her with the understanding that it hadn’t been edited or anything. There was a lot of stuff, raw stuff, that I planned to cut out. For one thing, her man’s mama had drunk too much and fell off her chair and I needed to take that out. Plus there was a fistfight near the punch bowl and some girl got separated from her weave. I’m tellin’ you, some colored folks just need to stay home till they can get their act together.

“So a week goes by and she doesn’t return the tape,
doesn’t call, or anything. I mean I practically jammed her machine with at least a hundred messages and not one call was returned. Well, lo and behold, when I finally caught up with her—must have called on an off day—she said she had no intention of giving me back the tape. She said she’d destroyed it.”

“Why would she do that?” I asked, aware now that Tad probably wanted me to do most of the talking. Billy was making the most of his bold amber eyes and Tad, behind his bland professionalism, was not at ease.

Billy lifted his shoulders in a slow, elegant dancer’s move. “She claimed I had deliberately angled the camera in such a way as to make her look fat. Please! I’m an artist. Half the paintings on these walls, I did them. I’m a professional. I know my job and this three-hundred-fifty-pound heifer with a behind so wide you could sit on didn’t need no help from me or my camera. She was fat before video was invented. Period.

“I don’t believe she destroyed that tape and I got her broad behind in court right now to get my money. A deal is a deal. And if you ask me, she shoulda invested in a little Slim-Fast before she cornered the market on spandex.”

I took a sip of my soda, waiting for the two snaps up, but he calmed down and continued. “But yes, the supermarket was right next to that two-by-four church she got hitched in. All I saw in the window was the hands and arms, dark, and with enough muscle to lift a car. Why was that man—and it had to be a man—into small shit like pilferin’ groceries? I know times are hard, what with these cutbacks and all, but with arms like that, he could be pullin’ big dollars in professional wrestling.”

“Could we have the name and address of the bride?” I asked.

“With pleasure,” Billy said, moving quickly from the ottoman to get his appointment book. He thumbed through the pages, and when he looked up, his amber eyes shone. “Here it is. Now, let’s see the heifer get attitude with you.”

We were quiet in the elevator until Tad said, “You asked about the supermarket?”

We stepped out into the lobby and hit the sidewalk. I wondered if the tape had been destroyed or if the bride, embarrassed, was simply holding on to it. I wondered about the strong hands lifting the cereal. Were there any tattoos, marks, or moles visible? Did the guy work at the grocery store? Or was he someone off the street who wandered in to bag groceries?

“I was there a few nights ago. For ice cream.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing particularly. Place had already closed but the manager let me in. Only one other person was in there. A man, but I barely glimpsed him. I was mainly thinking about Häagen-Dazs butter pecan.”

He nodded and glanced at his watch. “Want to take a walk uptown?”

“To see the bride?”

“I was thinking about it …”

“I also thought you wanted to work a solo thing.”

He looked away, drew a breath of deep exasperation,
then gazed at me again. “Mali. Don’t make this hard on me. I said I was sorry, didn’t I?”

“So you did. Kinda …”

I glanced down St. Nicholas Avenue while trying to make up my mind, trying to decide if the tension that had risen between us the last time was because of my attitude toward James or the fact that I was intruding into an area best left to the police. After all, Tad was the detective, and I was only—it took me a while to say it—only an ordinary person relying mainly on intuition and street smarts to get to the bottom of things.

An ordinary person with an ounce of common sense would know to leave well enough alone and let the police do whatever they’re supposed to do. Stay out of the way.

But to hell with it. Common sense was in short supply tonight, and when I gazed up into Tad’s deep, gold-flecked eyes, logic left also.

“Aah, what’re we doing afterward?”

“What would you like?” he whispered. His fingers touched the side of my face, describing a slow arc around my left eyebrow, ear, and under my chin. “Whatever you want, baby, you know I’m for it.”

All I could do was smile as I grabbed his hand and moved away from the lobby door for the short walk uptown.

The bride’s name was Isabelle Oliver and lived with her husband, Duncan, on Bradhurst Avenue near 148th Street in a small three-room apartment facing Jackie Robinson Park.

When she opened the door, we saw that Billy had not exaggerated. She was five feet four and weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of three hundred
pounds. Her face was dark and round and extremely pretty with large eyes and a mouth that seemed ready to let out a sigh, and when she smiled, she showed bright, beautiful teeth. She had a child’s face, and despite her size, it was evident that she was very young, maybe twenty, twenty-two at most.