Of Blood and Sorrow (9 page)

I glanced down at Sweet Thing’s handbag and realized he was talking about a gun. Older women who grew up in the South often kept their .22s next to their compacts and combs in their fancy handbags. My aunt Odessa, a strong, beautiful woman as tough as nails,
never
left the house without “protection,” and she wasn’t talking condoms. Sweet Thing was of the same generation, so she was probably packing, too. All the more reason to get these two out of my office…and out of my life.

“Do you know where the baby is?” I asked.

They shook their heads in unison, as if they were attached by a string.

“Last we saw her she was with Thelma Lee,” said Sweet Thing. She shifted her eyes to Jimson, then glanced down at her hands. He stood mum, good soldier that he was.

I sat for a moment, taking them both in, wondering how much they really knew about anything.

“What can I do for you today?” I said, praying this would be the last time I said those words today.

“We come about our niece, Thelma Lee. She’s disappeared, and we don’t know what’s happened to her,” said Sweet Thing. “We want you to find our niece for us. I want us all to be a family again—me, Jimson, Thelma Lee, and that baby.”

“The baby doesn’t belong to you,” I said firmly, but not without sympathy for these poor souls, as lost in yesterday’s lives as they were in its clothes. I wondered if they knew about the death of the other niece yet, the one Sweet Thing called Lily. Was it my place to tell them? Best to leave it to the cops. “It’s very important that you talk to the police about Thelma Lee’s disappearance. There have been some other…developments that you should know about as soon as possible.” The police must know Lilah’s next of kin by now, and when they asked about Thelma Lee, Lilah was bound to come up. Let the cops break the bad news. They knew how to do it better than me, and they got paid for it.

“I called them this morning when she didn’t come home last night, but they said she was a runaway before and they wouldn’t look for her. She hadn’t been gone a day, so that’s why we came to you,” said Sweet Thing.

“She’s only been gone a day?”

“She came home late on Tuesday. She was real scared like, and—”

“And what?” I asked.

Sweet Thing took a deep breath. “I think somebody tried to hurt her. She had blood on her clothes. She came in and…and dropped something off…then left real quick. Said she’d call me later, but then she didn’t come back.”

“What did she drop off?”

Sweet Thing glanced at Jimson Weed, who shrugged.

“Did you tell the cops about the blood?” I said, trying a different direction.

She nodded that she had. “Maybe you should call them again. There might be some new…information. Please. Call them again.”

“All they’ll say was she’s a runaway, and that’s all she is to them,” Sweet Thing said.

“How many times has she run away?”

“That girl ain’t no good. She don’t cause you nothing but grief, Sweet Thing. Take what she give you and enjoy it. It’s a good thing she’s gone.”

“Don’t say that, Jimson,” she said, the first time she’d raised her voice at him since I’d seen them together.

“I’m sorry, baby.” He brought her fingers to his lips and kissed them. I glanced away, embarrassed. “She ain’t interested in looking for the girl. Let’s be on our way, baby. Let’s just be on our way.”

“Okay, my sweet Jimson,” she said, her voice soft and broken.

You ever have a man love you like that?

What would that
really
feel like, I wondered.

Sweet Thing went out first, head bowed low. He opened the door, following behind her. Before he closed it, he turned around for one last look at me, then spit right in the center of my newly cleaned rug.

“For devilish ways,” he said as he slammed the door behind him.

I sat there for a moment too shocked to move. What could have made him do it? I wondered. I’d seen my grandma do it once, spit sideways at somebody, but never on somebody’s floor. It was what people did to rid themselves of evil, she said, to get it out of your mouth. What was he trying to get out of his mouth? Or was it me he was spitting at? Maybe he was just losing his mind, and I should leave it at that. I looked at that spit for a minute, nasty as it was on my office floor, not sure what to do next. Then I started to laugh.

They say tears and laughter come from about the same place, and sometimes it’s just a matter of chance what comes out first. It was laughter for me today, and I laughed until my sides ached. I laughed at that fool of a man and what he had just done, and Treyman Barnes and his silly ass self, and the look on DeWayne’s face when I threw that glass against the wall. Then I started feeling “devilish” (like Jimson Weed might say) and laughed about the way DeWayne’s latest wife had left him high and dry, and about how all of those damn people—Lilah Love, Jimson Weed, Treyman Barnes—were finally out of my life. I started thinking about Jamal then, and I felt tears coming, but I wasn’t ready to cry yet, not until this whole thing was good and over. So I got up, smudged that man’s spit into the carpet with the toe of my shoe, and headed downstairs to Wyvetta Green’s to see what she could do for me.

NINE

W
YVETTA GREEN BENT OVER
an elderly client, tenderly arranging her sunset red curls into thin ringlets. The client, Miss Peterson, was roughly the same age as Sweet Thing and wore a hot pink jumpsuit and a thick gold chain around her long, birdlike neck. She was a tiny woman who was further dwarfed by Wyvetta’s lush pink chair.

“There you go, Miss Peterson. This color really suits you,” Wyvetta said, giving her a motherly pat as she glanced over her shoulder at me. “Hey, girl, how you doing?”

“I’ve seen better days.”

“Wasn’t that you up there doing all that laughing?”

“You could hear me down here?”

“I hear a lot of stuff you don’t think I can,” Wyvetta said with a chuckle.

“Some days you gotta laugh to keep from crying,” Miss Peterson chimed in.

Wyvetta shook her head. “I seen some strange ones climbing those stairs to your office, honey, but this morning just about took the cake.”

All I could do was roll my eyes.

“Wyvetta, was that Treyman Barnes parked outside the Biscuit just now?” Miss Peterson asked.

“Yes, I believe it was.”

“What’s he doing in this neighborhood?”

Wyvetta shrugged, throwing me a covert glance.

“I knew his daddy,” Miss Peterson continued. “We called him Trey. Knew him
good,
too. Inside
and
out. Didn’t you tell me once you knew the son? Maybe he was over here to see you?” She added a sly wink.

“I knew his son, but not like you knew his daddy, Miss Peterson,” Wyvetta corrected her.

“You’re an inspiration, Wyvetta. I just wish I’d known you when I had more hair.” Miss Peterson, taking the hint, changed the subject.

“You look just fine with the hair you have, Miss Peterson. Why don’t you settle down in that chair across the room and Maydell will do something with them nails? How about a pedicure?”

“Ooh, I like that! Today I feel like treating myself like the treasure I am!” Maydell, seated in a rolling chair across the room, dragged the cart of lotions and polishes to where Miss Peterson sat. A recent hire, Maydell was a plump, light-skinned woman in her mid twenties with blond dreadlocks and bright red lipstick. She was dressed in a cerise and pink smock, which matched the color scheme of the shop. She had a charming, lazy smile that made you like her, but her slowness in other departments got on Wyvetta’s nerves, who threatened to fire her “do-nothing behind” at least once a week. But Maydell was good with customers, and they were generous with tips, so it all worked out.

Wyvetta studied my face. “You down here for them brows?”

“The works, Wyvetta. I need the works.”

She nodded as if she understood, then whispered, “You know I got that you-know-what stashed in the back room if you want to grab yourself a nip.”

I shook my head. If I got started on that bourbon, no telling when I’d stop.

“Well, you’re in luck today, sweetie. I just had a cancellation. Come on in here and sit down. I’ll be with you in a New York minute.”

I settled down in one of her cushiony chairs, and she fastened a cerise smock around my neck.

“You gonna have some color today, Miss Tamara? Everyone loves that Sunset Red!” said Maydell from her perch at Miss Peterson’s fingertips.

“Not today, Maydell.” I leaned back in my chair, closed my eyes, and let Wvyetta’s magical fingers go to work on my scalp.

I thought about my son. There had been such fear in his eyes when I’d left him this morning, and I’d never seen that before.
Goodbye, Jamal, I’ll see you soon,
I’d told him, but we both knew there was no truth in that. There was no telling when I’d see him again. Too many things—cops, Lilah’s murder, her killer—stood in the way.

She got real mad, and she kept arguing with whoever it was and said it was nobody’s business what she did with what was hers.

So what was hers? Baby Dal, of course.

Stolen property, you might say.

Lilah Love had left home and come back in town, and more than likely had been killed because of it. I just had to figure out why.

“Miss Peterson, you used to go out with Mr. Barnes. I used to go out with his grandson, Troy. We didn’t have a lot in common, but we got real serious, for a while. He was always sweet and polite. My mama was mad as a hornet when I broke up with him.” Maydell’s high-pitched voice brought me into the present.

Miss Peterson sucked her teeth. “Is he a hoodlum like his granddaddy was? The fruit don’t fall far from the tree.”

“Nooo, Troy ain’t no gangster, Miss Peterson. He’s a hero. That’s what I call him anyway. He joined the army to fight for his country. He’s a true-blue hero. Was his granddaddy a hoodlum?”

“Yes, he was.”

“You used to go out with gangstas, Miss Peterson?” Maydell didn’t hide her curiosity bordering on admiration.

“Ain’t nothing good about going out with a gangster, Maydell,” said Miss Peterson. “But I was wild when I was young, and Treyman Barnes was the wildest hoodlum in town. Boy was so light-skinned, folks thought he was white. Had the white folks fooled, too, ’cause they let him run the rackets in all them fancy clubs used to serve the colored.”

“Fancy clubs in Newark? You putting me on, Miss Peterson.”

“Fancy as some of them over there in Atlantic City. Why there was the Kinney over there on August and Arlington, that place on Boston Street. There was the Key Club and half a dozen other spots where folks—hustlers, gangsters, anybody with good money looking for a good time—could hang out. And the hoodlums dressed as clean as your mama’s mouth. You didn’t see nobody’s trousers dropped down around their drawers like you do nowadays. Trey Barnes was the cleanest of the clean.”

Her words brought back the tales my grandmother used to tell of a Newark long gone. This had once been a town of fun and folly that people had been proud to call their home. But all that was left were memories, and they’d soon be as dead as the gardenias the women once pinned in their hair.

“Kids shooting each other up over nothing—this town wasn’t always like that. This town had class, even the robbers and thugs.”

“Even the robbers and thugs? That’s something, Miss Peterson. Things sure have changed.”

“Yes, they have, Maydell, and not for the better. Wyvetta, where you know Treyman Barnes from?” She glanced back at Wyvetta.

“School,” Wyvetta said, rinsing my hair with warm water.

“You think Troy’s daddy, Mr. Barnes, is a gangster like his granddaddy was?” asked Maydell.

Wyvetta eased my head off the sink, and as she wrapped it with a towel, she threw Maydell a look that made the girl drop her eyes and put down her polish. But a look wasn’t enough to stop Miss Peterson.

“You know, Wyvetta, they say he’s tied up in the rackets, too, and he was mixed up in that mess that went on over there on Avon Avenue a while back. They say there wasn’t a trace of nothing on his hands, ’cept blood. Five good men died that day, and one of ’em went to my church. You think Treyman Barnes was mixed up in that mess?”

I felt Wyvetta’s hands tense as she toweled my hair, and her voice dropped an octave when she spoke. “I don’t know nothing about no mess on Avon Avenue, and I don’t know nothing about where Treyman Barnes sticks his hands, and if I were you, Miss Peterson, I’d keep my thoughts about Treyman Barnes and Avon Avenue to myself,” she said.

“Ooooh!” squealed Maydell.

“Hush your mouth, girl,” said Wyvetta. “Time for you to go under the dryer,” she said to me, and promptly guided me to the bank of pink hair dryers at the far end of the room and turned the dryer on high, effectively blocking any more eavesdropping.

Wyvetta must have thought my ears needed protecting from whatever it was Miss Peterson might have had to say, but I wasn’t so sure. The more I knew about the man, the better off I’d be. The evil look he’d given me had sent a chill up my spine, and despite the heat of the dryer on my neck, I could still feel it.

But Barnes was much too smart to murder Lilah. Yet murderers, particularly very powerful ones, rarely thought about consequences until it was too late. Men like that considered themselves above the law. But what would he gain? Maybe she had something on him that he couldn’t afford to have get out. Or on someone he loved. His wife? His son? He wasn’t strong enough to kill her himself, so he would have had somebody do it for him. Somebody strong with a grudge against Lilah. But then that person would have something on him, too. Unless he, or she, had as much to lose as Barnes. Or as much to gain. Who could that be? Turk? Barnes’s son? The cops might even think it was me, particularly if they could connect us through our Jamaica days. And if they connected her to me, they could connect her to my son.

By the time my hair was dry, Miss Peterson had left, and Maydell had wheeled her chair and cart in position to do my nails. She broke out something called Vixen Red, and when the polish was dry on my finger-and toenails, I felt right vixenish. Wvyetta did my brows like she’d promised, and I had to admit, it made a big difference.

“Once a month,” she said, as she picked off the last piece of wax, then soothed my skin with cream that smelled like strawberries. She wouldn’t take any money for my brows, said it was a favor between friends, and I didn’t fight her on it. My three hours in the Biscuit had cost me as much as a silk blouse from Bendel’s. But it was money well spent; I felt like a new woman when I walked out of the salon.

It was raining by then, a fine, prickly drizzle too light for an umbrella but good on my skin. I turned my head up and breathed in the air. It smelled fresh and clean, and suddenly I knew that everything just might turn out all right. It had to. I hadn’t gone a dozen steps when I heard his voice.

“Tamara.”

I turned to face him. “Basil, why are you here?”

“You, of course,” he said, with that dazzling smile that breaks me down. “Rain becomes you.”

“Where did you get that line?” I asked, and smiled despite myself.

“Pretty corny, huh?”

“Not your style, Basil.”

“You bring out the foolish boy in me.”

“Oh, go away!” I said, and almost meant it.

He glanced at his watch. “Time for a drink before you go home?”

“How do you know that’s where I’m going?”

“Wild guess. For old times? Come.” He grabbed my hand, and, as it always did, his touch went straight down my spine, but I pulled away.

“I don’t think so, Basil. You know where our drinks usually end up.”

He smiled then, and I returned it. There was no lying about that. Maybe it was the memory of those old times or that smile, or that I realized perhaps this was the best way to say goodbye. Or simply because I didn’t want all that money I’d just spent on looking good going back to an empty house and a sink of dirty dishes, so I said I would come.

A new bar called Illusions had opened up down the street from Wyvetta’s salon, and we headed to it. I remembered the place when it was called The Rainbow’s Inn, a tacky little dive with a bad color scheme, and some of the old décor remained. Each stool was a different color, and the ceiling was filled with multicolored rainbows arching nowhere. But they’d added new subdued lighting and tables in the back, and as we walked toward them, I remembered all the times we’d been together: that first kiss, so innocently given, which had rocked my joke of a marriage to DeWayne; the mountains in Jamaica when I thought he was dead; and the night in Atlantic City when he’d wept about his daughter’s death. I wondered if he remembered those times, too, and what he was feeling.

But this was goodbye, I reminded myself. I had a man now, and I didn’t want to blow it. We didn’t speak as we sat down at a small table in the back. Our knees touched, and I pulled away. I’d remembered how carefully I’d avoided DeWayne Curtis’s leg under his kitchen table. Seemed like I was always trying to pull away from the touch of some man’s knee these days. But it was definitely not revulsion this time.

“May I help you?” A honey brown sister with fake green eyes and too much cleavage sauntered to our table, her emerald eyes locked squarely on Basil.

“Wine, please. Red.”

“Ain’t got no red wine. We got bourbon, scotch, gin. Stuff folks usually get in a bar.”

“Diet Coke, do you have that?” She took her eyes off Basil long enough to throw me a nasty glance.

“And for the gentleman?”

“Red Stripe, please,” Basil said with his usual smile, which she coyly returned.

No tip for this hussy,
I said to myself.

When she’d left, he said, “Let’s go somewhere else. There’s a better place not too far from here, and you can get whatever you want. Champagne, good rum—”

“I’ll stick with the Coke.” Alcohol would loosen my tongue, to say nothing of everything else. The waitress brought our drinks, and I took a sip of mine, which was as weak as water.

“Fate is having its way with us these days. First Monday and now today. Although I had a hand in things today. I wanted to see you again. But surely you know my feelings by now.”

I nodded before I thought better of it. I did know much about him but really knew nothing at all.

Or was I fooling myself?

“Why were you there Monday, in Treyman Barnes’s building?” I asked, trying to turn the conversation away from my—and his—feelings.

“How do you know I was there to see him?” His eyes read mine as quickly as I read those of other people.

“Were you?”

“No.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“Business. Ask me no more,” he said, with a finality that told me I’d get nothing more from him. There were things about Basil I didn’t understand, hidden places he went, secrets he told no one. Sometimes I guessed them, but most I didn’t want to know. And that added to his mystery, and as dangerous as I knew he was, it made him irresistible.

“I promise, it had nothing to do with you.” He sensed my next question.

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Then what did he want?”

“I turned him down, so it doesn’t matter.”

“Are you telling me the truth?”

“I don’t lie to you…about important things,” he said, shifting his eyes from mine, a sure sign he did.