Shades of Black: Crime and Mystery Stories by African-American Authors (33 page)

At the bottom of the steps, I pulled a string to turn on one of several bulbs hanging from the ceiling.

The basement was filled to overflowing, but orderly in the way that a maze is.

“Are you looking for evidence, again?” Officer Shirley asked, with just a touch of exasperation in her voice.

I turned to the right. I had heard the first warning. “I'm looking for a canary yellow backpack. I'll take the right side; you can take the left. A light hangs from the ceiling about ten feet from the steps.”

I was tired and sweaty, and I don't like musty places. I also knew that we still had mice. So, while she didn't have to take orders from me and I really shouldn't have been giving any, I wanted to get this over with. I'd apologize later if she didn't piss me off with another warning.

She stood at the bottom of the steps surveying the area. Her right hand was on her gun, and she shined the flashlight around with her left. By the time I heard her move, I had pulled another string to light the right side of the basement and had cut off the MegaLite, which was beginning to flicker.

I moved quickly from one cubicle to the next, passed Books and Educational Material, Donated Clothes, and Lingerie and Personal Items.
No woman wants to wear another woman's throwaway panties, so I stopped keeping such donations.
I stumbled over something in the middle of the
path and dropped the MegaLite. It rolled to the left just out of reach. With my right foot, I pushed the box of files that had fallen in the aisle. I picked up the MegaLite and turned the corner at Resident Storage Area 1. Area 4 was one cubicle down on the right.

Mel's backpack was easy to spot on top of a four-shelf bookcase. I sat on a rusty gray folding chair next to a large cardboard box labeled “Do Not Tuch My Stuff” and opened the backpack. It contained five paperback books, a Race for the Cure T-shirt, a black sweat suit, three matching sets of embroidered silk panties and bras wrapped in red tissue paper, a small bottle of Jean Paul Gaultier wrapped in the same paper, and a framed 3 x 5 photograph of Mel beaming, while the man beside her appeared to intentionally look away. If he had not made himself so hard to ignore at our earlier meeting, I might not have recognized him here. I really should have asked his name.

The zippered front compartment of the backpack was empty except for her EPA employee identification card, a wallet-sized high school diploma, a flyer from Prince George's County Community College, and a handwritten card containing the address and telephone number of John and Maybell Johnson—her parents I assumed.

All I could do for her now was cry and be angry. What could have brought her so far from home?

“I have it. Res Storage 4, the last cubicle on the right,” I yelled while carefully returning Mel's life to her backpack and reclaiming my voice. There was no response or movement in my direction. “Shirley?” Again, no response.

There are only two ways out of the basement. The stairwell and door were not an option, and the one window was at least six feet high and many inches too narrow for this body to squeeze through. Besides, I couldn't leave the basement without making sure Officer Shirley was okay.

I knew I'd have to wait for him to come to me and prayed. I put the backpack across my left shoulder, stooped in a corner diagonally across from the entrance, and gripped the MegaLite so tightly my fingers ached.

Only one thing in sight and reach had major weapon potential. When I heard steady movement toward Area 4 and bulbs breaking, I dashed for the fire extinguisher just as the basement plunged into darkness.

With one hand, I frantically felt along the wall for the extinguisher. I wanted to cut on the MegaLite but was afraid of lighting his way and of draining the remaining battery power. I'd need a fully functioning flashlight if he found me before D.C.'s finest did.

Partitions crashed, and movement stopped. It started again, but I didn't see the pinpoint light.

When I turned from the wall, my eyes had adjusted to the darkness a little. I could feel his presence, hear labored breathing. He was in the cubicle. Suddenly, I was facing him, close enough to reach out and touch his chest. Something—blood, I hope—ran down the middle of his face. He raised a hammer. I lifted the MegaLite in my right hand, pointed it at his face, and cut it on. He dropped the hammer when he covered his eyes. The light flickered, so I dropped the flashlight, stepped out of his reach, and—with both hands—lifted and aimed the fire extinguisher for his eyes, waiting for him to drop his hands. He did; I pressed hard.

I hope this stuff can dissolve a face. He won't be looking so pleased with himself anymore.

He stumbled backward. I raised the extinguisher and hit his right temple. He staggered toward the entrance, then turned back toward me and lunged forward. Backing out of his reach, I felt the top of the cardboard box for my back-up weapon. My hand found it—rough and rectangular—as his hands reached for my throat. This was my last chance to get out of there alive. I kneed him. He doubled over, and I prayed my scripture of choice, “Jesus wept,” before hitting him for Mel and for Arlene.

I don't know when or why I lost consciousness. But, when I opened my eyes, Officer Shirley was kneeling at my side holding my hand. She had a very nasty bruise on her forehead.

“Did he get away? Where is her backpack?” I tried to get up.

“No, he didn't have a chance.” She smiled. “And your head is resting on the backpack.”

She looked to the left, where he was lying face-down. Since he was handcuffed, I assumed he was alive.

“What happened? He grabbed my throat or tried, I think, and I hit him with something.”

“A brick, ma'am. When I got here, you were pounding him with it.
Then you just collapsed on top of him. I came as soon as I could, but you really didn't need my help. He grazed my head with a hammer. The last thing I remember is falling backward. I guess he thought I was dead.”

I tried to stand again, and she gently pushed my head and shoulders back on the backpack. “You're not standing until an ambulance arrives. Lt. Davis will have me suspended if anything happens, anything
else
happens to you.” She smiled but didn't decrease the pressure on my shoulders.

While waiting for the ambulance, I told her what I knew and turned the backpack over to her. I wasn't sure why Arlene was murdered, but I was pretty sure about Mel. Mel must have known too much, and Arlene probably knew absolutely nothing.

At 9:00
P
.
M
. when Officer Shirley dropped me by the precinct, the B had been languishing in a holding cell for three hours. She had been arrested as a result of Janice's statements and Lew's anger. I hoped she was making friends. Mel's camera-shy boyfriend had arrived a bit later after receiving several stitches. Unfortunately, I hadn't done any real damage.

Janice La Wanda Scott was ensconced in a conference room on the second floor, with a uniformed guard outside.

I waited for Lew in his spartan office.

“I will continue to have officers stationed at A Woman's Place, at least for the next few days. And, there will be additional arrests,” he said upon entering the office, kissing my cheek, and sitting behind his desk. “Are you okay, Glo?”

“I'm fine. When can I see Janice?”

“In the morning, after she meets with a court-appointed attorney and gives an official statement. She's asked for you. I'll let her know you came.”

“What is she likely to be charged with? All she did was try to protect her child.”

“She held you against your will at gunpoint, and she withheld evidence that could have saved one or both women. She knew something bad was going to happen at or near the shelter, and she only warned one person—her daughter. I can't ignore that even for you . . . but she is cooperating.”

I had given a complete statement to Officer Shirley after refusing any treatment that the paramedics could not give at A Woman's Place.

Now, it was Lew's turn to tell me all that he knew.

Apparently, as soon as Bernetta saw John Holland—Mel's camera-shy boyfriend—being brought into an interrogation room across from hers, she began to sweat profusely and asked for more time with her lawyer, who then began to negotiate a plea bargain.

The interrogating officers now know everything but her real weight. She admitted coercing Janice to deliver the manila envelope and to paying a child to read the message left on my answering machine. Neither incident had anything to do with the real crimes. She'd just taken the opportunity—the murders of two young women—to get even with me for dislodging her from A Woman's Place. Janice supplied access and information in exchange for Taywanda's safety and Bernetta's silence about her parenthood.

Bernetta also volunteered that John Holland worked for a development company planning to build a pricey condominium development in the neighborhood. The deal was contingent on A Woman's Place closing, so he used poor Mel to get information, hoping to find something to discredit staff at the shelter. The company wanted the property and barring that, wanted to stop the expansion. He had intended to have her plant drugs at A Woman's Place, if necessary.

Also according to Bernetta, two days before Mel's death, Mel overheard a telephone conversation in which John Holland talked about his progress in closing A Woman's Place and then ridiculed his two inside connections: Bernetta and Mel. Mel told Bernetta because they had formed a mother-daughter relationship. They had met through Janice. The morning she died, she confronted John Holland and threatened to expose him, so he killed her, dumped her body by the pay phone near A Woman's Place, and then called my office to ensure that a connection was made. Bernetta said that she thinks that he called her number as well from the pay phone, so she is quite angry. He denied calling her number. She has not explained why he was so forthcoming with so much incriminating information except perhaps to implicate her.

Instead of sitting back and waiting for the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department to do its investigative job, John Holland decided to put icing on the cake—his words according to Bernetta—by having another woman killed and dumped on the steps of the shelter. Arlene's was a random killing to ensure a strong connection to A Woman's Place and lots of negative press. Arguably, Mel's death might not have been linked back to the shelter, but a death on the steps the same day definitely would.

When John Holland discovered that Mel had taken, from his apartment, the only photograph of them together, he came to A Woman's Place looking for her backpack—the only place that she would have kept it. Not knowing that a student who volunteers at the shelter had given Mel a new canary yellow backpack the day before, he was looking for a soiled gray one.

Both of these disgusting creatures claimed the other was responsible for the actual murders. Bernetta even claimed that she'd had no idea that John Holland would kill anyone and that, when she found out about the murders, he'd threatened to say she was an accomplice if she came forward. She was not quite able to explain how she managed to taunt me simultaneously with the murders occurring if she only became aware of them after the fact.

John Holland contended that he worked within the Advisory Neighborhood Commission and other community mechanisms to influence change. He also said that the expansion proposal was providing sufficient community opposition to the shelter and that he'd had no reason to work outside of the law. And he doesn't have a clue why Officer Shirley and I attacked him. He was just looking for his girlfriend's belongings. On last report, he was still waiting for the development firm to arrange for his legal representation.

I'm not sure how he will explain the hair and other DNA evidence on that hammer with his fingerprints all over it.

John Holland stood to earn several hundred thousand for his time and effort.

Bernetta stood to earn $25,000 for hers and to get revenge on me.

I will do more for Mel than simply cry and be angry. I will do one other thing—make sure the monster who'd bought her expensive perfume and sexy underwear and then killed her, pays.

And, I will make sure he pays for Arlene being the icing on his cake.

Bernetta Bennett, aka the B, is still on my list, and now, she is on Lew's and the federal prosecutor's as well. Handcuffs had gone nicely with her Barney slippers, and she is sure to meet at least one woman in lockup whom she mistreated at A Woman's Place.

He had come up from one of those islands in the Caribbean, Jamaica it was, leaving behind a girlfriend, a mother, three sisters, and cracked airless land. He came brimming with confidence, with expectations heaped on him by family and friends; by people who didn't even know him. That didn't matter because he was going North. To the big city. Countless others had made promises to come back rich. To send money. Countless others had forgotten their promises. But he made no such promises. His only promise was to himself. Don't be a sucker.

He was barely twenty-five, when he got here. Broad shoulders. Lean. Swift hands. Swift dick. Swift dick like his father. A dick swift enough to fly him to New York.

It took four months in Edmonton and two weeks in Toronto to secure passage to New York. Beautiful as it was, Canada was not in his plans, but he'd felt obligated to stay briefly with the woman who got him there, a pretty blond from Edmonton, with laughing blue eyes and fluffy marshmallow skin. Toting a smile as white as her skin, she turned up at Fisherman's Club in Negril with her policeman boyfriend one night. In his four years as the barman at Fisherman's Club he'd seen many near-perfect
smiles. But hers was perfect. She sipped cognac; her boyfriend wolfed down rum and cokes as if it was lemonade; by closing he was drunk.

Jeffrey drove them back to their condo on the beach and helped put her boyfriend to bed. She was drunk and beside herself with disappointment; seducing her that night was easy.

For the next week he shadowed the two of them, showing up just when her boyfriend was ready to pass out, having drunk himself into a near stupor. Once the policeman was safely tucked in, Jeffrey would help her live her fantasy of romance under a Caribbean moonlit sky her boyfriend had promised but failed to deliver. When she returned to Edmonton she dumped her boyfriend, and sent him a ticket.

There was no way a woman could be more accommodating, more deferential to a man. His plan was to stay three weeks, but the lifestyle she allowed him—from her condominium in town grandly furnished and decorated with paintings and antiques, to the presents and uninhibited sex—was more seductive than a story from Sheherazade, and he almost changed his mind. In the end, his mother's voice restored his resolve. One Sunday morning while his girlfriend was at church he boarded a plane for Ontario.

He landed in Mississauga, where he had a friend who once worked with him at the Fisherman's Club. His stay there was short. Unhappily married, his friend was not at all happy to see him; his wife of five years, a producer at CBC, drank too much, and was an incorrigible flirt.

After two weeks of searching, he found a woman who said she could get him across the border for a fee. They left after midnight, and four hours later he was in Buffalo, where he boarded a Greyhound bus to Manhattan later that morning.

The picture in his wallet of his three-year-old daughter, Karina, was taken when she was six weeks old. What did she look like now? More like him than her mother?

Several times he tried to get a visa to visit; he was turned down each time. What guarantee do we have that you will not stay in the United States? the consul officer wanted to know.
All I want to do is see my daughter.
The consular officer was unimpressed with his paternal yearning.

Karina's mother, Maria, had not returned to the island since that
summer of '95. In one of her letters she declared that the only reason she didn't get an abortion was because of God. She was a good Catholic girl from Queens.

Why weren't you thinking of God when I was fucking you? he wrote back.

That was the last time he heard from her until the picture came. He cursed himself for being so swift. Dick too swift. Mouth too swift.

On the corner of Forty-second and Broadway he took out his tiny black book. He leafed through sea-water-stained leaves, halting at the page with his father's Brooklyn address. Cars, trucks, and buses pounded the air about him, creating a jungle of noise at decibel levels he'd never before experienced.

He stared at his father's address with surreal intensity, unmoved by the army of passersby who jostled him on their way to the subway or the bus. The logic of what he was about to do finally releasing a bubble of doubt in his stomach. The only memory of his father was of a tall bald man leaning against a beat-up Vauxhall car, with a wide white woman at his side.

“That's your father over there.” His mother hissed. “You see, he married a white woman, so him got nuff money. Go ask him what him bring back from America for yuh?”

He was nine. His father, who'd been a myth up until then, had brought nothing. Only harsh words.

Who tell you I am you father? Tell the woman me say she lie. You don't look like me.

Was the address for the man his mother called Jockey correct? He'd gotten it from his cousin, who'd gotten it from her grandmother, his father's aunt.

With the help of the African cab driver he found the house on East Forty-seventh Street. He thanked the driver and stepped backward on the sidewalk to watch the yellow car drive off. His stomach suddenly felt hollow, as if some evil spirit had invaded his body and scooped out his intestines. The flat gray sky seemed to rise and drift off like a heavy balloon.

What if it was the wrong address? What if Jockey denied him like he did that time back in Jamaica? Like water on his brain, those words still floated in his head. Where would he go? Where would he sleep?

Contrary to his friend Nail's opinion, this trip was not about his father. There was nothing there. It was too late to make up for the pain. All he hoped for was a spot of kindness. A place to sleep for a while, until he got his stake in the big city. He didn't expect love. Love had always been a luxury to him. He'd never been capable of following love's narrow path. But his mother never let him forget who his father was.
You look just like your father. Don't let nobody fool you, Jockey is your father.

Slowly he started up the steps with his suitcase, which contained a few pieces of clothing, three pairs of shoes, and his CDs. Music was the liquid in which he bathed his soul, drowning the nightmares he'd had since he was a child, and he never went anywhere without his music.

He rapped on the door and waited. Presently a tall bald man with a thin gray mustache peeped through Venetian blinds at an unwashed window.

“Yes?”

“Jockey?”

“Who want to know?”

“Jeffrey. Your son.”

The long pause brimmed with confusion and deliberation. Jeffrey breathed deeply, the heavy November air, and strained to hear the other man's thoughts.

The man left the window; then the front door opened slightly.

“You coming in?”

Jeffrey knuckled his way through the crack between the doorjamb and the gaunt man.

“You get tall, boy,” the man whispered.

Now standing in a dim hallway opposite his father he wanted to say.
I'm twenty-five. Hardly a boy.
Instead he grinned nervously and said, “Tall like you.”

Jockey grunted and closed the door. “Come in and sit down. You want a beer? I got some Bacardi rum. It ain't Appleton, but it gets you drunk the same.”

“No thanks. Me nah drink,” he lied.

“You don't drink? What kind of man are you? Boy, you ain't my son if you don't drink.”

“Me don't care about being your son. Me just want a place to stay for a little while.”

Curtly spoken and laced with anger, these words were born sixteen years ago and had been laying in the grass of his shame, coiled, aged, ready to strike.

The older man swayed like a palm tree in a high wind, then shrugged and crawled back into his aloof skin, drawing his lips tight around him. His eyes closed briefly, as though he was about to fall asleep on his feet. Then he stumbled backward.

Jeffrey, already beginning to curse his swiftness, realized the man was drunk. “I'm sorry.”

His father fell into a chair and sat like a straightjacket staring dead ahead. The sultry silence blew up a storm of soul-searching for memories that didn't exist.

Jeffrey picked up his suitcase.

“You can stay. Stay as long as you want. It's a big house. Three bedrooms and a finished basement. Nobody in it but me. Gets lonely as hell sometimes.”

“Me don't expect to be here long.”

“Look, boy, I know you must be angry with me. I wish things was different. But them ain't. I wish we had some memories to joke about. If that's what you come up here for . . .”

“Me nah come up here for you,” Jeffrey blurted.

Jockey twisted around to face him. “What you come up here for, if you ain't come looking for the past?”

“The past maybe, but not yours. My own. Me here to find my daughter.”

“You got a daughter?”

“Three years old.”

“You got any pictures?” There was a drip of excitement in the man's voice.

Jeffrey scooped the tattered picture from his wallet. He handed it to his father and saw the man's body relax, saw a sudden transformation in his face; the eyes suddenly opening wide enough to engulf an eclipse, his smile exploding into a grin.

“White woman?”

Jeffrey nodded.

“You like them white women?”

Jeffrey wondered if his father was trying to make fun of him. “They like me.”

“Yeah, I think I know why.”

“It ain't what you thinking.”

His father chuckled. “What I thinking?”

“Me know what you thinking. And it ain't what you thinking.”

Maria had written three letters. In the first letter, she loved and missed him and wished she could've stayed longer on the island. By the next letter, she had found out she was pregnant and cursed him for being so careless. That was when she declared herself too good a Catholic to have an abortion. She did not respond to his letter until nine months later. That last letter contained a picture itemized on the back with the baby's name and weight at birth. His first week in New York he tried calling the telephone number she'd given him, but nobody ever seemed to be home.

It irked him every time his father posed as the concerned grandfather.

“Where this grandchild of mine?”

Why didn't you ask for me like this? he wanted to reply. Instead, he would feign temporary deafness.

Fifteen years divorced, his father never remarried and had no other children. From the look of things he received a decent pension from his retired post office job. The untidy house sat in the middle of a well-kept block in a neighborhood of single and two-family homes, mostly owned by West Indians. The expanse and energy of the city thrilled Jeffrey, and he tried to ignore his father's slovenliness while trying to figure out a way to find his daughter.

New York's well-publicized reputation for violence and crime didn't intimidate him. In his mind he was born for the big city. It didn't take him long to find the West Indian clubs. The Cave on Rutland Road was one
such joint. There he ran into Tallabo, someone he knew casually from the nightclub scene back home.

He'd first seen Maria in Tallabo's company and concluded that she was much too pretty for him. Being the bartender it was easy to strike up a conversation with Maria, and before the night was over he had all the information he needed: where she was staying and her room and telephone number. The rest was easy. Tallabo didn't have his looks, his style, didn't have a job, and didn't have a car. He picked Maria up the next day in his Honda and took her on a tour of the island. That night they ran into Tallabo in a club. After a juvenile attempt to intimidate him, Tallabo accepted that he'd lost Maria and took up with her traveling companion.

Over rum punch in the Cave they joked about the
life.

“Them was some nice day,” said Tallabo. “The pussy was flowing, and them touristwomen was some freaky bitches.”

“Remember that short fat chick you picked at Golden Sands? She was traveling with a dark-haired, fire-in-her-eyes beauty name Maria.”

“Yeah, the Maria you stole from me.”

“That was the life. The big dog gets the big bone. What was Shorty's name again?”

“Samantha Seltzer.”

“You ever tried to contact her when you got up here?”

Tallabo was a big dude, broad at the hip and shoulders, with a square ridge for a forehead. He traced a circle on his forehead with his fingers and cracked a block of ice in his mouth. His eyes flickered like damp fire. “Why would I wanna do that?”

“You got her number? Me wanna call her.”

“No. And if I did I wouldn't give it to you.”

“Man, what's your problem?”

“Me nah have no problem. Everything cool.”

When he got home he called information and got numbers for S. A. Seltzer in Brooklyn and Samantha Seltzer in Queens. He called both numbers. Neither party was home, and he left his number.