No Time to Die (4 page)

“You don’t want to talk about it,” Tad whispered, “but I have to go over this ’cause maybe there’s something you might remember. Maybe someone was in the crowd around Claudine’s that night who might’ve caught your eye. Or maybe there’s something about James you might’ve forgotten.”

His voice was soft but insistent and I turned from the balcony, wishing I could forget everything about James. The sun, already setting, left a fast-fading gold wash against the gray stone walls of the Riverbend complex. Tad’s fourteenth-floor apartment faced out over the calm of the Harlem River and the bustle of the Drive below. Across the river, the tracks of Metro-North stretched past. To the north of the complex, the steel webbing of the 145th Street and 155th Street Bridges gleamed in the dying light, and the Willis Avenue Bridge to the south cast a latticed shadow on the water.

Tad leaned against the terrace door, and behind him, the living room was already in shadow. I could not distinguish the chairs or even the sofa I’d been sitting on
just ten minutes ago. He stepped onto the terrace and I regarded his deep brown skin and even deeper eyes, and—the rare occasions when he smiled—teeth so perfect they didn’t seem real.

I wondered why we tended to praise perfection by comparing it to something unreal.

His teeth, his smile, his strong arms, everything about him was authentic and substantial, and for a small moment, this vision pulled me away from the gnawing cavity within me. But only for a moment. Tad was patient and quiet but still in that persistent, tenacious, encircling mode.

“Claudine was my sister’s friend,” I said, “and after Benin died, she sort of hooked onto me when she returned from Philadelphia. She asked me to be her maid of honor and …”

I said nothing more and he looked at me.

“And were you?”

“Yes,” I said, suddenly tired by the questions. “All I know is that they were married for three years but she only lived with him for a year. He’d hit her on three different occasions that I know of. She left him and he started phoning, begging, and finally threatening her if she didn’t come back to him. Even after he’d started seeing someone else, he still phoned, calling her his wife even after she’d dropped her married name and referred to herself as Hastings.”

“There’s no record of an order of protection under either name,” Tad said. “Did she ever mention it—that she was going to get one? Or thought about getting one?”

I shrugged and turned again to look out over the water. The river traffic was quiet for a Saturday evening. No sails, tugs, and only one Circle Line, but there were plenty of birds. Gulls mostly, with gray-white
wings spread wide, passively drifting on a downwind. To the north, the cars had come to a standstill on the 155th Street Bridge.

What did it matter if Claudine had had an order of protection? What was it—a piece of paper. To do what? Flash it in front of her husband’s fist like a silver cross before a vampire?

I had felt foolish even suggesting it to her.

“No,” she’d said quietly. “No. I’m out of his reach. Out of his orbit now. He’ll yell and scream for a time but after a while, he’ll quit. Go on to something else. When he calls, I hear his voice, I hang up without a word. He’s running out of steam. He only called once this week.”

That had been two weeks before she was killed. A piece of paper wouldn’t have meant a thing.

“You see,” Tad said, “I’m trying to figure out if James was motivated to do something as violent as that. We brought him in three times for questioning and we never mentioned what we found on the body. And unless he’s a genuine psychopath, he seemed to have no idea how she really died; kept telling us to check out her new man—the one she’d left him for. But he couldn’t even describe him. No name, address, nothing.”

“There was no new man,” I said, “because Claudine didn’t have time to recuperate from the old one. She was too busy changing locks, getting her life back on track, and getting a new wardrobe—he’d cut up her clothes after accusing her of sneaking out on him. The man is crazy and he’s a coward. He only seems to want to fight women.”

“I know. You said he’d hit his girlfriend.”

“A few years ago. It’s on file. I answered the call. Domestic disturbance. By the time we arrived, he’d
gotten in the wind. Talks loud and runs fast. I wish I could’ve caught up with him that night.”

Tad glanced at me and placed his hands over my balled fists. “Okay, what do you say we take time out?”

He leaned on the balcony with his arm around me and we remained quiet for several minutes, thinking different thoughts. The traffic making its way to the stadium still crawled on the bridge. The Yankees were playing a home game and the grid of lights rippled across the water like a beacon.

Tad cleared his throat and nudged me. “You know, I still make the finest martinis uptown. How about it? Or would you prefer Absolut and orange?”

“Absolut,” I said, resting my head on his shoulder.

We remained there until the last remnant of daylight disappeared. The river lost all dimension and the traffic on the Drive dissolved into narrow streams of light merging and dividing at the 135th Street exit.

I wondered how long he was going to let me use his shoulder to cry on. It had been two weeks since the funeral and I still had not adjusted, had not been able to put the phone down fast enough when I realized that, out of habit, I’d dialed Claudine’s number. I had to get myself together.

It was warmer in the living room. Several pine-scented candles on the coffee table cast a fragile glow of orange and yellow against the walls.

“Here,” he said, “lie down. Stretch out. Let’s see if a massage’ll help loosen some of the knots. Especially in your shoulders.”

The drinks were on the table and he was on his knees unfastening my sandals.

“But I’m gonna start from the bottom,” he murmured, “and work my way up.”

“Are you … stopping along the way?”

“Depends.”

“On what?” I asked, already leaning forward to allow him to untie my halter top. His fingers were warm against my skin.

“If I find something around one of these curves, I might brake,” he whispered. I felt his mouth move soft against my ankles, my calves, and the underside of my knees.

“Oh. Oh … Yes. All right …”

He looked at me and I caught his smile, rare and perfect in the radiance of the red and yellow. I removed his shirt and marveled at the way his skin glowed. My fingers trailed an arc around his shoulders and I pulled him to me to taste his mouth. Then I held onto him so tightly I lost my breath, and for the rest of the evening, the first time in a long while, I allowed my eyes to close without crying.

Ache woke up and stared blankly at the lights flashing through his curtainless window. They rotated around the walls like large stars gone awry, painting the ceiling red, white, and red again. He eased out of the narrow bed feeling the prickle of fear, sudden and sharp, slide down his spine.

Cops. There were no sirens but he knew it was the police. He ducked his head below the flashing lights as if they were incoming missiles and crept to the window. Four squad cars had pulled up to the house across the street, a five-story tenement that had been abandoned to the dealers and squatters and others who’d had nowhere else to run.

One car, surrounded by police, was on the sidewalk with headlights beaming into the garbage-strewn hallway. Three more cars were angled at the curb. A crowd, large for 3:00 A.M., had already gathered. Ache folded his muscular arms and leaned on his windowsill, waiting to see who and how many would be brought out this time and if his dealer had been caught in the sweep.

Five minutes later four cops in flak jackets brought two men out. There were no TV cameras, so neither performed the usual perp walk, but one grinned and flicked his tongue for the benefit of the crowd, who howled their support.

“Hold on, brutha. It ain’t nuthin’ but a ride down and a walk back! Hold on!”

The cops ignored everyone and hustled the two into the car on the sidewalk.

They got Bad Boy again but he oughtta be back before my stash run out. Yeah, two, three days
.

He left the window and pulled the sour-smelling mattress back to check the cache: a small bag of weed and the smaller plastic bag of pills and capsules—steroids necessary for his muscle development program.

This’ll hold me
.

He lay down again and wondered if he should roll a joint to take his mind off the stars painting the walls. He was glad he had woken up because he was getting tired of the dream that seemed to be coming more often lately.

In the dark, wide awake now, it came to him again. Someone was whispering, telling him how slick he was not to have gotten caught yet. And how way back, way back, he’d gotten that name Ache.

He’d been sitting at the dinner table, eight years old and squirming in pants he’d outgrown when he was six, wearing no underwear to speak of, and itching in an old woolen sweater that hadn’t seen water in a year.

Hazel, his mother, had slammed her fork down hard, rattling the salt and pepper shakers, and glared at him. “Every time I look at your ugly ass, you make my head ache. You give me a stomachache. Don’t need you sittin’ here givin’ me eye for eye. Make me throw up. Git outta here. You can eat in your room!”

He had melted out of sight, knowing that she would lock him in the closet like the other times if he didn’t move fast enough. Occasionally one of her men would turn the key and let him out. But sometimes even they forgot.

One time, when he finally heard the key turn and the door opened again, the moon was already pushing a small dim light through the open window. He had gone to his room, waited until his mother was occupied in her own bed, then crept down the fire escape on his belly, carrying a coil of rope.

No one was around to question an eight-year-old prowling the streets after midnight. No one was there to track him through the backyards and alleys, and by dawn, he had killed seven cats and two stray puppies, left them on clotheslines stretched between sheets and socks.

In another part of the dream, he was in a classroom again, sitting alone in the last row, silent in a class of thirty. He did not hear the teacher call his name because he’d been staring at Mercy Anne Tompkins sitting in front of him. Twelve years old and beautiful. Each day he studied her shining braids, full blouses, short skirts, and patent-leather shoes. When she moved, the scent of the fresh soap he rarely had drifted under his nose. Her large eyes were wide and beautiful even though she never looked at him.

But she turned that day and laughed with everyone else when the teacher cut into him with his usual arsenal of wit: “You raised your hand this morning when I took attendance. Are you really here?”

Mercy Anne with the beautiful eyes had laughed with everyone else.

After school, he couldn’t follow her home because a car always came to pick her up. He watched it disappear
in the traffic, then turned and walked fast to catch up with Natalie, a small ten-year-old, always smiling, even when no one was around to see her smile. So he caught up with her and she smiled vacantly and sang words in a baby’s voice that she herself didn’t understand and hid her broken teeth behind her small hands.

He looked at her hair, knotted and gray with lint, her dress too small and too wrinkled, her shoe heels worn to the ground so that the toes curled up. She had no socks to cover ashy legs but she smiled and hummed as he took her hand and led her into a building a block from the school. She followed him to the roof landing, and when she stopped smiling and said she didn’t want to play anymore, he’d left her with her neck bent sideways under a discarded box spring mattress, with old paint cans, a wheelless baby stroller, and garbage-filled plastic bags piled on top.

For weeks, he lounged on the stoop watching Natalie’s mother wander around, looking in garbage cans, alleys, backyards, crazed, crying, asking if anyone had seen her little girl.

See what I mean, Ache? You ain’t never been caught. You slick
.

He lay on the bed watching the flash of the lights and thinking of Mercy Anne until the patrol cars pulled away, plunging the room into darkness again. He smiled and turned over, found a comfortable spot on the sagging mattress, and fell asleep.