No Time to Die (2 page)

The Saturday crowd moving along 125th Street probably had as little faith in the forecast as I and went about business as usual, ignoring the heat and the haze.

I sneaked another glance at my watch and wondered how long Elizabeth was going to wait. It was nearly 6:30.

“Claudine should’ve been here by now,” I said, trying but failing to hide my impatience. “As long as we’ve known her, she’s always been late, but this is something special.”

I was annoyed because we three had arranged a week ago to go out to dinner to celebrate her impending liberation. I knew James Thomas, her soon-to-be ex, and I had detested him from the day we confronted each other three years ago at their wedding reception.

Now I pictured his smooth face and silky soft voice and felt a fleeting panic, imagining that he might have
talked Claudine into changing her mind about the divorce, that he would get a job again, stop drinking, stop blaming and beating her for what he imagined the world was doing to him.

I turned from the window and faced into the office to watch Elizabeth lean back in her chair, an old swivel model of glossy dark walnut and vintage leather upholstery. The chair had belonged to her father when he’d had his own law practice uptown over the old Smalls Paradise next door to the Poro School of Beauty Culture. That was years ago. Elizabeth’s office was smaller, and probably a lot more expensive. Space on 125th Street near the Apollo didn’t come cheap.

The coil beneath the chair squeaked as she leaned forward. She pushed her cascade of brown dreadlocks away from her face and folded her arms on the desk.

“Calm down, Mali. I don’t know if you’re annoyed because Claudine’s late or because of the advice I just offered you. We can discuss this another time if you’d like. I only want you to understand that if you have to attend another hearing, you may very well lose the case. There’s a new police commissioner on the job; the city claims it’s trying to save money, and the cop—the principal in your lawsuit—is now dead. The department’s offering you reinstatement and a possible promotion for helping break that drug ring.”

I listened and allowed her voice to trail into a familiar silence before I answered. As an attorney, Elizabeth Jackson had a very good reputation and a practice lucrative enough to afford a four-story brownstone near Marcus Garvey Park. My dad knew her father and she and I had gone to school together. She went into law and I opted for social work—except I’d taken a short detour into the NYPD and gotten fired for punching out a racist cop.

When I answered, it was the same reply she’d heard since taking the case.

“Possible promotion? Possible? Sounds like a word game to me. That’s not the best they can do and they know it. I’m not backing down and I’m not compromising. You know as well as I that I have no intention of rejoining the department.”

I watched her shrug. “I can understand that. Why you joined in the first place will always be a mystery to me.”

She caught my stare and quickly said, “Okay, I’m just letting you know what the situation is; what you stand to lose.”

“I’ll take the chance,” I said, and turned to look out of the window again.

I’d planned to enter the social work doctoral program at NYU. To hell with rejoining NYPD. Just show me Mr. Benjamin Franklin and all of his brothers. They’ll help with my tuition.

I gazed at the Apollo’s marquee, which hung like a dark outcropping over the crowd moving below. The theater was once known as Hurtig and Seaman’s Music Hall, a vaudeville house catering to white audiences. It reopened in 1934 as a showcase for black entertainment, and the new owners renamed it the Apollo. Benny Carter’s band played the opening, Ralph Cooper was the M.C., and there were sixteen dancers called the Hot Steppers.

My father, a self-named Harlem historian as well as a jazz musician, tells me this stuff. He remembers a lot and spends his free time entertaining me with information he says I should have if I’m to be an authentic Harlemite. I thought I was authentic enough, having been born thirty-two years ago in Harlem Hospital and raised on Strivers’ Row.

In addition to the big bands that played the Apollo, Dad also loved the comedy of Moms Mabley, Pigmeat (“Here Comes the Judge”) Markham, and early Redd Foxx, who later sanitized his act for TV. Ella Fitzgerald got her start here, winning the Amateur Hour with “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” a song someone advised her not to sing because “it didn’t have enough rhythm for black folks.”

I turned away from the marquee and stared down the street, looking for Claudine in the crowd. The thoroughfare was clogged with the end-of-day confusion of buses and cars. I did not spot her familiar face and I glanced at my watch again. Nearly seven o’clock. Two hours overdue. Elizabeth had left three messages on Claudine’s machine.

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

“Few days ago. To confirm dinner.”

“I think we should head on up to her place,” I sighed. “See what’s going on.”

The temperature had dropped a few degrees but the humidity still hung like a blanket as we strolled up Frederick Douglass Boulevard. Before we approached the Sugar Shack near 139th Street, my silk dress was clinging in all the wrong places and I regretted having worn it. Cotton would have deflected some of the more pointed observations of the stoop loungers. We passed the restaurant and waved to the manager, who was chatting with a crowd of Asian tourists.

“We’ll be a bit late,” I said to him, smiling.

“Don’t worry about it. We’ll hold your reservation. Seven o’ clock, right?”

At 140th Street young girls were jumping rope in the Mahalia Jackson school yard, ignoring the heat radiating
up through their Keds. Two teams—one jumping double Dutch and the other jumping straight rope—tried to outperform each other with in-the-air splits, double skips, and what looked like pretzel twists before feet touched the ground again. They performed like Olympic aspirants and I wondered why they had no audience.

We turned the corner onto Edgecombe Avenue and the crowd around Claudine’s building surprised me.

No one, for the short time she’d lived here, had ever sat, leaned, lounged, or otherwise “hung” on her stoop. The kids played in the school yard and the grown-ups lounged on the benches in St. Nicholas Park a block away.

Perhaps it was the polished brass trim around the doors, the ornate knobs, or the trace of the arc in the stonework above the entrance that suggested an elegant canopy had once stretched to the curb. Now the entrance was so crowded we had to work our way through.

Several people looked at us expectantly and I felt a pull in the pit of my stomach. In the lobby the odor hit like a fist in the face. It was the smell of something or someone rotting and I began to sweat even as I rushed up the stairs. I wanted to shut down all my senses against that peculiar odor that let me know there was a body near.

On the fourth floor Mr. William, the super, held out his arms. “Miss Mali, I guess you don’t want to go any further.”

“What happened?”

He shook his head and I stared at him, my throat suddenly gone dry. “Mr. William, what happened?”

“I don’t know, but somethin’ ain’t right in your friend’s apartment. I ain’t seen her in a couple a days
now—usually see her go joggin’ when I’m out sweepin’, you know—but for a couple days now, people been complainin’ about the smell. I ain’t got a key so I called the cops. Oughtta be here any minute.”

I looked at Elizabeth leaning against the wall. Her eyes were closed and beads of sweat covered her forehead. Mr. William saw her also. “Whyn’t y’all go on back downstairs and wait.” His voice was soft and consoling, as if he already knew what I refused to even imagine.

“Ain’t nuthin’ else to do …” he said gently.

I held onto Elizabeth’s arm, not so much to guide her as to steady myself, and retreated down the stairs and into the street.

“Maybe it’s from another apartment,” Elizabeth whispered as we moved back through the crowd. I didn’t answer because I knew better. Of the four apartments on the floor, only Claudine’s had the mat of flies covering the door.

People stared as we passed and there was a silence about them that I tried to ignore. We moved away from the building to the curb, where I finally drew a breath so deep my chest hurt.

The ambulance and the squad car turned the corner at the same time with sirens blaring. The rotating lights splashed over us as the officers and EMS technicians disappeared inside.

Minutes later Elizabeth tapped my arm. “Mali …” Her voice was soft as she pointed, and I turned to watch another car pull up behind the squad car. Detective Tad Honeywell stepped out. He spotted me before I called.

“What’s going on, Mali? You all right?”

“I … don’t know. I won’t know until I find out
what’s causing the odor. Super thinks it’s apartment 4G, where my friend Claudine lives.”

“You were up there?”

“Yes. We three were supposed to have dinner together.”

“When did you last speak to her?”

“Three days ago,” Elizabeth said. “And I left a message yesterday and two messages earlier today.”

Tad shook his head but he had already taken on that professional cover and I could read nothing in his expression.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

He made his way through the crowd, which had grown larger, drawn by the spinning lights of the squad car and ambulance. I moved to the other side of the avenue, taking Elizabeth with me. The intersection of 140th Street and Edgecombe was now blocked and traffic had to detour. Several minutes later the EMS workers came back through the crowd, placed their kits in the ambulance, and pulled away.

Tad emerged from the building and walked toward us, moving slowly, shaking his head. The odor had saturated his clothing and I wondered how close he was able to get before he had to turn away.

“Is it 4G?” I asked, not wanting to say Claudine’s name.

“Yeah. I’m sorry, Mali. I’m sorry.”

Elizabeth put her hands to her head and I held her shoulders and began to cry. The three of us had been friends. Claudine had first been a friend of my older sister, Benin, whom she’d met in graduate school. My sister died in Europe several years ago. Claudine had taught school in Philadelphia for a while, then returned to New York. The times we’d gone out, she’d talked so much about Benin that I’d come home close to tears. I
looked at Tad now and asked, “What … happened to her?”

“Strangulation.”

“What?”

“Wire.”

I stood there in the fading light of the early evening, not wanting to understand what I’d just heard.

“A wire?”

I turned to Elizabeth but her wide eyes only confirmed what I didn’t want to believe. Through the fog of shock, Tad’s voice came to me: “I’m putting you two in a cab. I’ll call you as soon as I can, Mali. I’m sorry.”

“No!” I backed away. “No cab! No nothing!” I screamed, watching the surprise and confusion as Elizabeth moved toward me. “No!”

I turned and ran toward the building, tearing through the crowd and muscling my way around the patrolman near the stairs. I heard a voice, Tad saying, “Let her go! She can see it.”

I ran up four flights, with my hand against my mouth, which did not help at all. The odor was at once powerful, numbing. If it was Claudine, I wanted to see her, connect her to it; otherwise I’d wonder the rest of my life how it happened. As I’d been left to wonder about Benin. Tad was behind me but did not try to restrain me.

I made my way to the kitchen, almost dizzy from lack of air, then leaned against the table and stared. A chair had been overturned, the canisters on the counter near the fridge were covered with dried black stains. The body on the floor was Claudine but I only recognized the bathrobe I had given her as a birthday present last year, pale pink silk with a corded belt with tassles on the end.

The robe had been spread open, her stomach a
mountain of gas, and her face flattened as if a steamroller had gone over it. Her features had disintegrated in the humidity. On her face where her mouth once was were flakes of some kind. Cereal. It had been scattered in her eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. It was on her chest and between her sprawled legs.

I fell back against Tad and a minute later found myself back out in the street, sitting on the curb, staring, Elizabeth shouting, and Tad pressing a handkerchief against my mouth as I retched until my stomach was on fire.

“Turn that fuckin’ radio off! How long we got to listen to the news? You hoppin’ and jumpin’ from ’INS to CBS every time they mention that girl gettin’ strangled. Got it blastin’ so loud, who the hell was she, anyway? Your dumb-ass girlfriend?”

Hazel’s laughter stopped long enough for her to raise the forty-ounce bottle of Colt 45 to her swollen face. She stood in the doorway of her son’s room and he could hear the loud swallowing from where he lay on his bed, hoping, praying, that maybe this time she’d misswallow and the liquid would rush down the wrong pipe. He glared at her upturned arm, and in the dim light, imagined a ham with the fat clinging to it, sliding along the meat rack at a slaughterhouse.

“And another thing, when you gonna git to this room? Smell like a shithouse in here. Now you got you a little jay-oh-bee again, it done gone to your head and you takin’ showers two times a day, but don’t tell me you can’t smell this dirt.”