The Whites: A Novel (29 page)

“Like what?”

“Jesus Christ, look out that window,” Billy exploded, pointing to the TARUs crawling all over the front yard. “And that window, and that one,” Billy spinning like a bottle. “I’m getting shredded here, I’m juggling chain saws, so if I ask you for a straight answer on something and you start playing me like I’m some idiot?”

Whelan held up a hand. “If I tell you this, you cannot tell anyone, you understand?”

“Is it his health?”

Whelan blinked at him. “What’s wrong with his health?”

“Then just say.”

Whelan took a long pull off his coffee. “He’s trying to buy my building from the owner. But it’s kind of very delicate right now, very touch and go, and I just thought maybe he said something to you about it.”

Billy stared at him. “That’s it?”

“What do you mean, ‘That’s it.’ Are you kidding me? He swings this deal, I go from super to building manager at twice the pay. And if that works out, he’s going to throw me more buildings. I mean, you know me, I don’t need much, but I would like a little more than I got.”

One of the security cameras fell out of a tree, nearly braining a passing TARU before smashing against a lawn chair.

“Anyways, this thing with Sweetpea going off the grid?” Whelan rinsed out his cup. “You should tell Redman when you see him today.”

“Why am I seeing Redman today?”

“The funeral.”

“What funeral?”

“For your kid.”

Billy went white.

“I would go,” Whelan said, reaching for his jacket, “but I have a guy coming for the boiler.”

The tenant poured the heated milk into a glass and handed it to Billy.
“Para dormir,”
she said, laying her cheek on her palm and closing her eyes.

Edna Worthy was the only mourner to show up for her granddaughter Martha’s funeral service that afternoon, so the folding chairs that lined Redman’s living room–chapel were populated by a handful of last-minute stand-ins: Redman, his father, his wife, Nola, holding their son, Rafer, four of the old men who hung out every day in the windowless reception area of the parlor like it was their old-man clubhouse, two dragooned cops from the Twenty-eighth Precinct Community Affairs Unit, and Billy, who was paying for the whole thing.

“But Jesus said, ‘Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven,’” the four-hundred-pound minister intoned from the pulpit before pausing to take a hit of asthma spray.

“Suffer, you see, in the, the parlance of those times, did not mean to endure pain, it did not mean to put up with mistreatment. What it meant was to permit, to allow,” pausing again, this time to reach for the diaper cloth draped over the shoulder of his three-piece box-plaid suit and swipe at his face. “You see, in those days children were not allowed to address adults directly, not allowed to speak up without the permission of another adult. Seen but not heard, I know you know that saying, and not just from olden times, I’m sure many of you heard it growing up—when Daddy is talking to Uncle at the dinner table, when Momma is talking to Auntie, you sat there, ate your peas, and maybe raised your hand for permission. But Jesus was saying, ‘I don’t want no middleman between me and these kids, I don’t stand on manners, I don’t need no hand raising, no permission slips, no velvet-rope doorman, just let them kids in, and today, today, Marrisa has come into the club direct . . .”

“Martha,” her grandmother muttered, but loud enough.

“She has come into the club direct, has gone, in fact, straight to the VIP room, where He is waiting for her with two chilled magnums of Holy Ghost love.”

“Are you kidding me?” Billy whispered.

“You said a hundred dollars for the celebrant,” Redman whispered back. “That’s what you get for a hundred dollars.”

“So what’s going on,” Billy asked, as a prelude to bringing up Sweetpea.

“Later,” Redman said.

“‘Blessed are the gentle,’” the celebrant crooned, “‘they shall have the earth as their heritage. Blessed are those who mourn; they shall be comforted . . .’”

“Her name is
Martha
,” the grandmother low-blared again, staring at the floor.

Nola passed her son to Redman, got up, and took a seat next to the old woman, putting an arm around her shoulders and staring without expression at the casket.

After a few minutes of fussing in his father’s lap, Rafer started to cry, and Redman, needing both hands to rise from his chair so he could leave the room, briefly passed him on to Billy. Trying to stabilize the boy, Billy advertently pressed the feeding tube protruding from the kid’s stomach, then jerked his hand away as if he had touched a snake. Embarrassed by his reaction, he reflexively looked to Redman, now waiting for them in the doorway, the grimly knowing look on his face burning Billy to the core.

“So what’s going on?” Billy repeated, once they were settled in Redman’s cubicle.

“There’s some big-foot kid going around the neighborhood,” Redman said, dropping Rafer into his activity walker, then locking the wheels. “Says he’s working for a charity, selling boxes of candy bars to the store owners, fifty dollars a box, the implication being that if they say no they’re gonna get their ass beat or something thrown through the window. Half the damn neighborhood’s got those things by the cash register.”

“For real?”

“Everybody say he’s all soft-spoken about it, but it’s like, Make no mistake.”

“You want me to do something?”

“
I
want to do something,” Redman said.

“Did he try it on you?”

“Hell no. People are too scared of this place. It’s like, muscle an undertaker? Who’s going to take on that kind of karma.”

Enough.

“Can I tell you something?”

Redman waited.

“I think Sweetpea Harris was murdered.”

“Did somebody tell you it was my birthday? Because it is.”

“Well, many happy returns.”

“Who did the honors?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

“Me?”

“He was your guy.”

“My guy, huh?” Redman said. “How’d you come to know about this.”

Billy hesitated, then thinking, In for a penny, he began running down his interviews with Donna Barkley and Ramlear Castro, all the while bracing for another Pavlicek-style outburst about keeping his priorities straight.

“So the window witness tells me that this guy gets out of his car, walks to the back, ducks some shots, and then empties a clip into the trunk. Which to me sounds like maybe, probably, there was someone in there with a gun, like maybe the driver forgot to pat him down before he stuffed his ass inside.”

“Did he give a description of the shooter?”

“Not really.” Then: “He said he had straight hair, like a white guy, maybe a Latino.”

“He saw that from the sixth floor but nothing else?”

“Apparently.”

“Well then,” Redman rubbed what was left of his receding corkscrew crop, “include me out.”

“Done.”

“So I hear you’re moving into one of Pavlicek’s apartments,” Redman said.

“Actually, we’re not.”

“Just as well.”

“Me and him, he and I, we’re not getting on right now,” Billy said, testing the waters to gauge how far he could take this. There would be no coming back from saying too much—that he knew for sure.

From the chapel they could hear Redman’s father up on the podium singing “He’s Prepared a Place for Me” in a high and furry voice.

How far . . . 

“He’s seeing a hematologist, did you know that?” Billy said.

“Who is, John?”

Billy didn’t answer.

“Man, you’re all full of news today.”

“I’m just telling you.”

“The hell he is,” Redman said, sounding annoyed.

How far . . . 

“I hired someone to find out.”

Redman’s stare could have stopped a train.

“I know,” Billy said, “but I was worried about him. I
am
worried about him.”

“I don’t understand why you couldn’t just straight out ask him yourself.”

“I did,” Billy said. “He lied to me.”

A dapperly dressed funeral cosmetics salesman, pulling a sample case on rollers, poked his head into the cubicle.

“Let me ask you something,” Redman said, gesturing for the salesman to step off for a minute. “And I’m not even talking about any shit in the past, but do you have anything going on in your life right now that you don’t want anybody knowing about?”

Billy didn’t answer.

“Exactly. So whatever the hell is going on with Pavlicek these days?” Redman reached down to lift his crying son out of the walker. “If he wants to tell people, he’ll tell people. Meanwhile, why don’t you just respect the man’s privacy and leave him be.”

Too far.

Coming home at two in the afternoon, Billy walked in on Carmen and her brother weeping up a storm on the living room couch.

“What happened,” Billy said.

“Nothing,” Victor said, wiping his eyes. “It’s all good.”

“He’s freaking out about being a parent,” Carmen announced with unnerving happiness. “And he didn’t know where else to come.”

“I feel like an ass,” Victor said.

“You and Richard are going to be the best parents,” she gushed.

“I kill aspidistras,” Victor trying to laugh at himself.

“Hey, you have that dog, right?” Billy just wanting to keep this good thing going.

“It’s Richard’s dog.”

“I was just telling him,” Carmen said, “no one was more freaked about having children than me. The dreams I had before Dec was born?”

Billy nodded, thinking, You still have them.

“I swear, Victor, I’m going to help you every step of the way,” Carmen tearing up again. “Those babies are going to love you.”

“Thank you,” Victor whispered huskily, holding her close.

“Think of it like this,” Billy said to his brother-in-law out in the driveway. “Cavemen had kids, so can you.”

“And the average life expectancy was what?”

“That’s not the point.”

“Billy, I’m playing with you,” he said, waving to Carmen, who was watching them from the living room window.

“You know, Victor, your sister, she’s a real high-wire act but she’s got heart by the mile.”

“I know.”

Billy lit a cigarette, inhaled, then twisted his mouth to divert the smoke.

“So why is she always so tough on you?”

“She’s ashamed.”

“Of you?”

“Of herself, don’t ask me why. Because she left me to take care of our so-called father down south? I was thirteen. And now I’m thirty-six, you know?” Shrugging the whole thing off. “But I do know this. Whenever she acts like she’s trying to push me away? She’s in a lot more pain than I am.”

Billy felt like crying.

“I don’t know,” Victor said, taking his car keys out of his jacket, “with the twins on the way? I find myself thinking about family all the time, and I just want her to feel good about being my big sister. Even for a minute.”

Billy nodded, then leaned in close as if Carmen could hear him through the living room glass. “Can I ask you something? How freaked are you really about these new kids of yours?”

“Not too,” Victor said, waving goodbye to his sister in the window.

Tomika Washington, a tall, slender, light-skinned woman looking to be in her fifties, was stretched out in her bathrobe on the carpetless floor of her railroad-flat living room, the rawhide bootlace that had done the deed still around her neck. A rolled towel was propped under her head, as if to make her comfortable, and a washcloth was carefully draped like a veil over her face, as if to prevent her from staring at her killer—both gestures, Billy knew, textbook signatures of remorse.

With Butter and Mayo canvassing the neighbors and the Crime Scene Unit stuck in traffic, Billy was alone with the body when he heard a knock at the door. On the off chance that the actor had slipped the barricade in order to come back and apologize to his victim, Billy drew his gun before opening up and was surprised to see Gene Feeley, his elusive butterfly of love, standing there in what had to be the last Botany 500 three-piece suit in existence.

“You have Tomika Washington in there?” Feeley asked. Then, sliding past Billy: “I just want to see her.”

“You know her?”

Ignoring the question, Feeley stood motionless over the body for a moment as if paying his respects, then dropped into a squat and delicately parted the lower half of her bathrobe.

“You looking for something, Gene?”

“That right there,” pointing to a fading tattoo of a bird high up on her thigh. “You see that? That was his brand.”

“Whose brand?”

“Frank Baltimore,” he said, closing her robe as carefully as he had opened it. “He was kind of a player around here for a few years in the eighties, used to stamp his bags with a blackbird, same for a girl or two like Tomika here.”