If I Should Die (17 page)

“A woman named Lexi was getting her hair together …”

“I know her. Her mama was a big-time dope dealer when smack first came on the scene. She did time in Lexington and had her baby there. Not too much imagination when it came to naming the kid …”

“Lexi’s living with a man called Nightlife.”

“Small-time thief uses Riker’s as his vacation spot. Go on.”

“From what she said, I think Nightlife may be connected
to Erskin’s death. He may’ve been in the car that day.”

Tad leaned back now as his expression changed. His eyes were as narrow as a cat’s. “What exactly did she say?”

“Nightlife had some gold caps punched out about a month ago. Lexi was complaining about it. A few minutes after she left, Johnnie Harding came strolling in.”

“Harding. What did he do? Did you hear anything?”

“Nothing. He went straight to the back of the shop and Maizie must’ve had some envelopes or something for him. He left in a matter of minutes.”

Tad passed his hands over his face and I decided not to mention that Johnnie had stared at me as if he knew me. Tad gazed out of the window, absently rearranging his knife and fork on the table. I waited. Finally he leaned over and whispered, “Don’t go there again. At least not for a while. That’s a hot spot.”

And just as quickly, his face changed. His eyes were alight and he was on the verge of a smile. “Anything else interesting going on?”

“Yes,” I said, glad to change the subject. “Clarence is out. Who stood the bail?”

“You don’t give up, do you?”

“Depends on what I’m after …”

He shifted in his seat, choosing to ignore the double meaning of my remark and said, “Seems a J. Harding contacted a bondsman—”

“But why would Johnnie—”

“It’s not our boy Johnnie. It was Julia Harding that done the deed.”

Julia Harding. Erskin’s mother. Good for her and bless her soul. I sat back and nodded my head. This was something to think about, take my mind off Nightlife and Erskin and concentrate on something else. Like that time
when a very refined woman, much like Julia Harding, had come into the precinct along with the man who had tried to rob her in her elevator. She hadn’t screamed, but simply opened her purse and shot him in the arm with a .22.

Naturally the robber fled only to be arrested in the E.R. and naturally the woman had been arrested for carrying an unlicensed handgun. She explained to the detectives that the gun had been a gift from her late husband and she had had no idea that it was unlicensed. When the holdup occurred, she said, there was no time to call a séance to ask his advice. “Just aim and shoot,” he had once told her.

And that’s what she did.

She was small and thin with striking silver hair and went through the fingerprint process with an amazing calm, wiping her hands as if she were brushing away crumbs at high tea. When she saw me watching, she had smiled. “Honey, I’m not rough or tough, but mama don’t take much stuff.”

That had been a woman after my own heart. Now here was Mrs. Julia Harding, a woman who followed her own intuition and everyone else could kiss her refined behind.

No need to ask if Danny knew. He probably did. No need to worry about him visiting Mrs. Harding. He probably would. But no need to worry about her holding her own against his relentless, roundabout questioning. Julia Harding, just like that little lady with the .22, would let him know in a few words that she could do as she pleased. She was not rough or tough but she didn’t take no stuff.

“You have a look in your eye,” Tad said.

“I do?”

“Yes. A look that says you can’t wait to fly out of
here to stick your nose in something that doesn’t concern you.”

The man seemed able to read me but not well enough.

I didn’t look up and we ate in silence when the food arrived.

Of course I was going to see Mrs. Harding, but I also needed to know more about Nightlife.

T
he construction near Mrs. Harding’s building was finished, but across the avenue, another phase was under way with the slow driving noise of the bulldozers lifting the soil from the community garden the neighbors had started several summers ago.

This time I called instead of barging in unannounced. It was perfectly all right, she said, to come right over.

The place looked the same, the book-lined walls, the fish tank, plants, and the shining baby grand piano that seemed to dwarf everything around it.

“That was a wonderful thing you did for Clarence,” I said, settling onto the sofa.

She offered me a glass of sherry but I opted for a cup of tea since I had not fully recovered from last night.

“Clarence doesn’t know who you are but he certainly appreciates what you did.”

“You spoke to him?”

“Saw him earlier today when I took Alvin to rehearsal.”

“Is the boy—is Clarence back in the Chorus?”

“Not yet, but he will be once this … situation is resolved. He’s very grateful. Wants to know why anyone would do something like that for him.”

Mrs. Harding looked at me, then rose and walked over to the piano, where she lifted the lid.

“This is why I did it,” she whispered, keeping her voice soft as if someone else were in the room with us. She handed me a small manila envelope. Inside was a four-by-six-inch spiral notepad.

I thumbed through it and recognized Erskin’s precise script. There were six pages of numbers aligned in two columns on each page. The numbers were mostly nine or ten digits and some had a line drawn through them. The rest of the pad was blank.

“When did you find this?”

“About two days before I bailed the boy out. It pays to do a thorough housecleaning once in a while. I was dusting and polishing, lifted the lid and there it was, taped to the inside.”

I continued to look at the numbers and remembered what Dad had said about an artist recording events that occurred in other people’s lives. Erskin had left a record after all, except that the entries were coded—like the message on his calendar.

“There’re too many digits to be anyone’s address. What do you think these numbers mean?” I asked.

“I have no idea, unless Erskin scrambled them. But those notations, whatever they mean, convinced me that Clarence had nothing to do with Erskin’s death and that something far more sophisticated is going on. That’s why I posted the bond and that’s why I want you to have this book.”

“You want me—are you certain?”

She moved toward the window and stared out. The grinding noise of the bulldozers now blended with the other sounds of the avenue and the construction seemed far away.

“I want to know who killed my son, Mali. If I depend on the police for answers, I will be waiting until the middle of the next century. And at my age, I don’t have the luxury of time.”

She turned away from the window to face me. “There’s something I didn’t mention earlier because I didn’t see what good it would do to tell you, but now I think you should know how my son felt about you.”

I looked at her. “Erskin?”

“Yes. He … liked you very much. Very, very much. When I asked why he hadn’t approached you, he said … he said that you were very beautiful and would probably turn him down.”

“What?”

“I never intended to tell you because he’s gone now, but you know, aside from my pastor and a few members of my church, no one has been to see me since the funeral except you. You were there when Erskin died. You tried to save him. I like to think that the last face he saw was yours. I want you to have that book.”

I did not know what to say. Erskin had been shot point-blank. He probably died before he fell to the ground.

A minute passed before I hugged her, then slipped the envelope carefully into my shoulder bag.

“Mrs. Harding, I ought to tell you that the police—probably a Detective Williams—will be here to ask why you bailed a prime suspect.”

“Clarence may be a suspect, but not for the murder of my son.”

She looked at me now and I remembered the enigmatic smile of the .22-caliber lady at the precinct.

“So let Mr. Williams—or whoever they decide to send—let them come. I’m not as frail as I look. When I get through reading them about their foot-dragging, it’ll be a while before they decide to darken my doorstep again.”

She walked me as far as the landing. The veined marble walls reminded me of an old sanctuary and I imagined how full and rich Erskin’s music must have sounded floating through these halls.

I tried to think back, to recall the times we’d spoken, or recall the look in his eyes. But the only image that came to me was the final blank gaze.

Mrs. Harding touched my arm. “Next time you visit, please bring Alvin. I’d love to see him.”

Back home in my own room, I studied the calendar again and compared the handwriting in the pad. Then I went over my notes. When nothing clicked, I began to feel a grudging admiration for Tad and Danny—Tad for being able to take the smallest clue and dissect it until the layers fell away to reveal the answer, clear as day. And Danny for hanging on to a shred of evidence, shaking it like a pit bull would until something finally fell apart.

I felt tired and closed the book.

Maybe I should give this stuff to Tad right now. Let him figure it all out—the Motor Vehicles printout, the calendar, my notes, everything. But then he’d be obliged to turn everything over to Danny and that would bring up too many other questions. Like how I came by the calendar in the first place. And the addresses of the license plates. Not to mention the notepad I got today from Erskin’s mother.

And who knows? Despite Danny’s ambition, all of this might simply be filed away and forgotten. There’s a murder every week. Sheer numbers could grind down the
most conscientious investigation. And the dust almost always gathers in an open file. I can’t let that happen to Erskin.

I started through my own notes a final time before going downstairs to prepare dinner. Dad would be home soon with Alvin and both would be hungry enough to chew the leg off the dining table.

Two murders, one attempt, and one attempted kidnapping. Morris’s hand was bleeding. The bloodstain is probably still in that car, wherever it is …

Morris had punched Nightlife but who had actually driven the car? Who pulled the trigger? Were Erskin and Gary killed by the same gun? By the same person? And how come the police are moving so slow on this?

I closed my notebook. Sometimes, moving away from a problem brought the solution. Sometimes when I least expected it.

At dinner, I nodded politely at intervals as Dad talked about the Club Harlem. He was negotiating for a steady gig at their Sunday brunches and I only half listened until he said, “Bunch a gangsters, all of ’em, but I’m not settlin’ for nothing less than top dollar.”

“Who owns the place?” I asked.

“Who knows? They’ve probably set up so many dummy corporations, even the IRS would have a hard time trying to figure it out. But the street talk is that it’s a laundrymat for narc-dollars.”

“You sure you want to work steady in that place?”

“I don’t know. Is there any difference between that place and Wall Street? Or some of the precincts? Or some private clubs in Washington where the pols hang out? The very ones who write the laws against drugs? You know how many of those folks are literally drowning in drug money?”

I had no answer but I knew that Wall Street and certain parts of Washington and the precincts were safe from the nightly drive-by shootings that were part of the street-level battle for control of the drugs. They were safe from boys barely in their teens who packed enough heat to start World War III. These kids traded Tec-9s like baseball cards and routinely blew away anyone stupid enough to step to the wrong corner phone.

So if the Club Harlem was in the money game and something went wrong, who could stop an arsonist from easing into the basement and putting the torch to a custom-soaked tablecloth as the band played on?

Dad glanced at me.

“Listen, kiddo. Everything’ll be all right. I know how to quit a sinking ship. I know the exits.”

It was as if he had read my mind. I did not feel any better.

S
unday morning dawned with a gray drizzle but cleared by the time I left the house to visit Deborah. The Lenox Avenue bus turned down Fifth and fifteen minutes later I stepped off into a neighborhood where private homes resembled small museums and the high-rises were guarded by doormen decked out like Russian generals.

The rehab institute was an old converted mansion next door to a private club. The institute’s palm-filled lobby and soft music made it seem more like a small posh hotel than a hospital. I wondered if Deborah’s insurance covered all of this or if her sister was more well off than she appeared and was paying the cost to be the boss.

On the fifth floor, a nurse, the only person I saw in uniform, left her desk to escort me down a carpeted hallway to Deborah’s room. It had been two weeks since anyone except family had been permitted to visit. Although I kept in touch with her sister by phone, I didn’t know what to expect.

When I stepped inside, Deborah was sitting in a chair near the window, reading. When she looked up, her eyes were clear and her smile was radiant.

“Mali! Am I glad to see you!”

I stood near the door, shocked to hear the sound of her voice. She was speaking again. Her sister had never mentioned it; just said that she was doing all right.

“Well, don’t just stand there,” she said, rising from her seat. “Let me give you a hug. Come on now, Mali, don’t start crying. I’ve seen enough of Mama’s tears to last me a lifetime.”

She had found her voice again, had pulled it back from wherever it had fled that horrible morning.

“Deborah! Am I glad to see you! And glad to hear you, girl! It’s been a damn long time.”

“To say the least. What I’ve been through, I wouldn’t wish on a dog, but everything—the treatment, the people in this place—has been wonderful. I’ve even had acupuncture and a few sessions of hypnosis.”

“They managed to hypnotize you?”

“Well, let’s put it this way. I think they tried. Anyway, the place isn’t bad at all.”