“You know, there’s nothing that appeals to my instincts more than a man with sweat running down his face. Reminds me of my father. He had a farm in Michigan. Every morning he would come into the house after working for more than two hours in his fields with sweat streaming down his face. It was beautiful.”
“That’s very nice. But I’m already married.”
“But does your wife like to see you sweat?”
I chuckled. “I didn’t realize sweating was a spectator sport.”
“This is America. We’re all a bunch of bored nuts. Everything is sport. Everything is entertainment.”
“So you’re here to see me sweat. Is that all?”
A lefty. The yogurt cup she was holding was lost in the palm of her right hand.
“I bet I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I have very large hands,” she said.
Volcano bubbling in my stomach again. “I was thinking I’d love to stay and watch you eat but . . .”
Stirring the spoon into the bottom of the cup, she said, “Tell me about Maxwell Burns.”
“Who?”
“The Bahamian deputy ambassador to the United States. We found him last night shot to death in Queens.”
“Did someone tell you I knew him?”
“We found your card in a limousine he left the airport in. Perhaps he visited your club sometime.”
“It’s possible.”
“But you don’t remember?”
“Can’t say I do.”
“Would you walk with me to my car?”
I stared at her, uninspired. “It’s a pretty safe neighborhood, Agent.”
She crumpled the yogurt cup in her hand. “I was thinking if you saw a picture of Mr. Burns it might jog your memory. I have one in my car. It’s right over there. Only take a moment.”
She turned and walked briskly to a car parked about ten feet down the block. For a big woman she was as nimble as a show horse, walking on her toes, it seemed. I followed reluctantly. She opened the passenger door and scooted across the seat to the driver’s side. Leaning on the open door I peered into the black Impala.
“Get in,” she said, her voice weighted with confidence.
I hesitated, not particularly taken with her bossy attitude. She opened a manila envelope and took out a large photograph. She looked up and saw that I hadn’t moved.
“Please, get in,” she said.
I slumped into the seat and she dropped the picture in my lap. The car’s roof light illuminated the photo, which I examined with little interest. As River had said he had a handsome face, though not as handsome as I’d expected. His eyes looked tired and scornful, his ears far too big for his small face. Then again, it might not have been a good picture.
“Does that face do anything for you?”
I shook my head.
“You’ve never met him or had any dealing with him whatsoever?”
“None.” I couldn’t hold back the sneeze. “Achew!”
“Bless you! How do you think he got your business card?”
“When you find out thank whoever it was that’s drumming up business for me.”
She took the picture from my hands and started the car. “Thank you.”
“I’m free to go now?” I said.
Her teeth were bright when she smiled. “They told me to watch out for you.”
“Who told you that?”
“My momma always told me not to kiss and tell.”
“Someone should’ve told you this town’s full of liars.”
“Good night, Mr. Overstreet.”
The car drove away and I stood watching, no longer feeling fatigued. The crisp air that I inhaled seemed to be sharpening my senses. I locked my fingers together under my chin and that’s when my stomach erupted.
THAT EVENING I cooked dinner for Chesney and myself. She ate hardly anything. She pleaded for a beef roti, but I was too tired to walk to the roti shop on Flatbush and they didn’t deliver. I ordered her to eat what was on her plate. That’s what my grandmother would’ve done.
I had wanted to cook fish but one of the things we were discovering about our new neighborhood was that fresh fish was a scarce commodity. The two fish stores we found reeked of stale fish as soon as you stepped through the door. We just couldn’t give them business under those conditions.
Chesney picked reticently at her chicken, her mouth high on a mountain. I got tired of her antics and excused her from the table. Not hungry myself, I stopped eating soon after she disappeared upstairs.
I cracked open a bottle of Banks beer—which to my delight I had found available in this neighborhood—and went into the living room, where I sat staring at a painting I’d bought in Barbados from one of my father’s friends, a young painter named Neville Crawford. Detailing two young boys wrestling on a beach, their scrawny backs reflecting the sun’s rays while a group of older boys looked on, this oil on canvas was one of my favorite paintings. As I drank the Barbadian lager, the tropical flavor of the painting set my mind flowing across the Atlantic sea and for a moment I felt the sun’s rays bearing down on my bare back.
The phone rang, shocking me back to the cold. It rang twice before Chesney picked up and called down from the top of the stairs.
“Daddy, it’s Auntie Anais,” she said.
I walked into the family room behind the stairwell and picked up the cordless lying on the sofa.
“I’ve got it,” I hollered to Chesney, and waited for the click of her phone settling into its cradle. “Where’re you?” I said to Anais.
“On my way home.”
I waited a second for her to elaborate as she breathed unevenly into the phone. But she said nothing more.
“I was worried about you,” I said.
“Sorry. Should’ve called earlier.”
“Where’d you go?”
“The movies.”
“Long movie.”
“No need to get sarky.”
“Sarcasm or tears? Which do you prefer?”
She gave a little laugh. “Tears from you? Now that would turn me on.”
I clucked my tongue twice, mockingly. “Now who’s being sarky?”
“I’m sorry about this afternoon, Blades. Why don’t you open a bottle of wine and light some candles in the bedroom. I’m feeling quite penitent tonight. It’s a night when you could probably do anything you want to me.”
“Anything?”
“Anything your little heart desires.”
I laughed out loud. “You sound like you’re drunk already.”
“See, there. You can take absolute advantage of me.”
“I didn’t know they served alcohol at the movies.”
“I ran into some old friends after the movie.”
“Anybody I know?”
“I don’t think so. People from the theater.”
“I know people in the theater.”
“The only person you know in theater is Noah Peltier. And he’s not really in theater. He’s a professor. More interested in theory than practice.”
“I think Noah would dispute that.”
“If he didn’t he wouldn’t be Noah. But nobody can dispute this, Blades, my love. I’m horny as hell. I’m drunk. And I’m ovulating. You know how I get when I’m ovulating.”
I didn’t say anything.
Her voice echoed wetly in my ear. “Did you hear what I said? I’m ovulating.”
“I heard you.”
“I’ll be home soon. You still gonna be mad at me?”
“We’ll see.”
“No, Blades. Let’s finish it now. You can start something else when I get home. Something that’ll give us both some pleasure.”
“See you when you get here.”
Her voice turned silky. “I love you, sweetie.”
Like a centipede those words wormed into my ear, sucking the fight out of me. “I love you too, baby.”
I waited for the thud of dead air before sliding the phone away from me onto the sofa. I d
on’t know if it was anger or confusion, but there was something clawing deep in my chest and I was afraid to release it. Had Anais been mysterious about where she’d been or was I being paranoid?
The pale light from the street shone through the window. I got up to draw the blinds and happened to glance across the street. There was a man standing in my garden who had absolutely no business being there.
TWELVE
i kept an empty nine-millimeter Glock locked in a desk in my bedroom. I grabbed my keys from the rack in the kitchen and hurried upstairs. Unlocking the drawer, I pulled out the nine, fitted a clip into the grip, uncatched the safety, and yanked the slide back to send a pepper into the chamber. I took one more peek out the window to see if the man was still there. He was staring up at me and I thought I saw him smile.
As I made my way to the stairs with the gun in my waist I stopped to make sure Chesney was in her room. Her television was on and she was lying across the bed already in pj’s. I continued down the stairs and opened the front door.
The man had disappeared. I ran into the street, looked left and right, but the street was empty as far as my eyes could see. I walked south one block. A group of young men approached on foot, laughing and jabbering excitedly about sports, their arms flapping wildly. They breezed past me without a glance in my direction. My eyes followed them until they turned down the next block. Then the street was quiet and empty. I turned to walk back.
A yellow cab, one of those new Honda SUVs, with a neon ad for an upcoming movie starring Denzel strapped to its roof rack, pulled up in front of the house the same time I got there. I stood in full bore of its headlights as the passenger got out. Anais.
She dropped the shopping bags and stood looking at me as the cab spun its wheels and zoomed down the block. I could not make out the expression on her face, but as I walked toward her I realized she was smiling, the soft curled-lip smile she unleashes when she gets high.
When I got within distance she reached for my hand. “What’re you doing out here?”
“Waiting for you,” I lied.
Her smile broadened, showing rows of even teeth. “Really? That’s so sweet.”
“It’s my job to be sweet to you.”
“Does that mean the candles are aflame?”
I drew her into my arms. “What do you think?”
“I think we should go upstairs and get wicked.”
I picked up her bags from the sidewalk. “You went shopping?”
The soft curled-lip smile again. She was drunk all right. “Didn’t you say we were out of Maxim?”
She walked ahead of me. I watched the sensual swing of her high-stepping jig. She turned and crooked her finger, beckoning me inside.
STARVED, AND still tingling from the long night of lovemaking with Anais, I wolfed down a tower of blueberry pancakes the size of hubcaps at breakfast. I caught Chesney staring at me as I gobbled my food. Embarrassed by the probing eyes of my daughter, I slowed down, sipping hazelnut-flavored coffee.
She has my eyes, Chesney does. Every day I see it more and more. The adjustment to New York, to a new school, and to a man she’d only known roughly nine months—a man she now had to call Dad—had been difficult for her. In the first few months there were times when I wondered if it’d not been selfish of me to bring her to New York knowing that not only would she have to adjust to a new city, making new friends, but also a stepmother who had no children of her own. Though Anais sometimes spoke in wistful buzzwords about not having a child—I’ve still got time; I’m too busy right now—the issue, I suspected, would one day hit critical mass as she raced toward the big four-O. Did she need to be confronted with my daughter, a reminder that her clock was ticking?
Anais and Chesney took off for the Prospect Park skating rink after breakfast. Half an hour later I left the house.
FLATBUSH AVENUE was as lively as any marketplace—double-parked cars and streaking dollar-vans honking their musical horns, women pushing strollers crossing the street against traffic. I drove along tapping my foot to bebop on WFUB, the lone jazz station remaining in the New York area.
I reached Downtown Brooklyn, parked in the lot on Livingston Street, and walked back one block on Smith to the Brooklyn Tabernacle. I had not seen the inside of a church since I got married. Grandma Blades would’ve been horrified at how I turned out. Until her death when I was ten, she made sure I went to church and Sunday School every week.
The Brooklyn Tabernacle was located a few blocks from Voodoo. I passed it every time I went to the club, and it was the first church that came to mind this morning when I woke up and felt a need to give thanks for the daughter I didn’t know I had nine months ago. I’m sure Anais would’ve gladly gone to church with me that morning, but it was something I felt I needed to do alone.
It was after twelve when I left the church. I was scheduled to meet Negus at the club around two. Enough time to pay River a visit.
The sky was a graveyard of gray clouds, as if everyone who’d ever had a broken dream had climbed up and hung their busted heart on a cloud. I reached my old neighborhood and parked a block away from the apartment and walked along President, a walk still very familiar to me, whistling “Papa Was a Rolling Stone.”
I’d given River my keys so I buzzed and waited. Before River could let me in, a man appeared in the lobby and came outside singing “Papa Was a Rolling Stone.”
We looked at each other and began laughing, realizing that it was one of those inexplicable coincidences. I slipped inside, singing now instead of whistling, and climbed the two flights to the apartment. I knocked three times on the door.
Low voices in the apartment.
Muffled giggles.
A man’s voice.
River was not alone.
“Who is it?” Her malt-thick voice trickled through the heavy door.
“Blades.”
Feet shuffling quickly inside, furniture shifting, feet scampering across the floor, then River’s voice at the door, high pitched, trying to sound calm, the voice of a woman trying to stifle sexual energy.
“Blades? What you doing here?”
“Need to talk to you.”
“I just got up.”
“You alone?”
“Gimme a minute, Blades.”
“If you’re not alone I can come back.”
Hands fumbling with the lock. The door opened and she stood before me wrapped in a black and gold African-style robe, her eyes jumpy and bright. She twitched uncomfortably and wiggled her eyes around, which made her look as though she was having some kind of spasm.
“Are you okay?” I said.
She was striking in that flowing gown, her impressive height more commanding somehow, her skin the color of strong black tea, and her broad face more expressive than I’d ever seen it. “I’m fine. Look, you wanna come back later?”
I stared at her without speaking, the undeveloped gentleman in me telling me to turn around and walk away. But the devil was coaxing me to find out who was inside my apartment with River.
“You aren’t alone, are you?”
“If you must know . . .”
A voice boomed from deep inside the apartment, “I’m here, man.”
It was my partner, Negus. River pushed the door open; the effort caused her gown to open slightly. She was naked underneath and though I wanted to turn my head away, I stared as if seeing an accident occurring before my eyes.
“Come in,” she said, drawing her gown around her.
I stepped into the apartment, into the sweaty scent of coitus interruptus, into a cloud of memories. I’d bought this apartment on impulse after I sold the house in Queens. I’d wanted to move closer to Manhattan and while I couldn’t afford Brooklyn Heights, this neighborhood offered the same delights without the rent surcharge—restaurants, bars, bookstores, and one of the best fish stores in Brooklyn—with its own charm, its own unruly, uninhibited nightlife on Smith Street, and dark claustrophobic side streets where shady figures cohabitated und
er the wings of the 76th Precinct.
“Listen, River, perhaps you’re right. I should come back.”
She turned to me and laughed, the high-pitched song of a kettle boiling. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Come on in. I’ll make some coffee.”
Negus appeared from the bedroom in black slacks and a body-tight cream sweater, his size filling up the space in the tight corridor, his linebacker shoulders hunched, his eyes inspecting the floor as if he were a guilty schoolboy.
River had already turned and gone into the kitchen. Negus and I looked at each other, the awkwardness of the moment as titillating as a punch in the gut. I had no idea she and Negus were fucking each other, not that I cared, but I wished I didn’t have to find out this way. Actually, this was good news for me. I could use this to convince my wife that River was just an employee in trouble who I was trying to help, nothing more.
“I guess we can have our meeting here,” I joked to Negus.
“Look, Blades, I . . . Ah . . .”
“Hey, you don’t need to explain anything.”
River chirped in from the kitchen. “I think what he’s trying to tell you, Blades, is that there’s really nothing going on between us. It was just a fuck, that’s all. I came out of the movies last night and felt like talking to somebody. I called him and he came by. We had some wine and things just got freaky.”
“Look, I really think I should go,” I said.
River came to stand in the kitchen door. “You came to see me, what did you want?”
“It can wait.”
She stared straight at Negus. “If anybody is leaving, it’s Negus.”
Negus demurred. “Yeah, I should go. We still meeting at the club?”
“Yeah,” I said. “We gotta talk about the show this weekend.”
“I spoke to Papa Smooth last night. He’s very excited,” River said.
Negus spun and went into the bedroom. He returned with a black leather jacket slung over his shoulder like a limp piece of cloth and walked past me. He stopped at the door.
“I’ll see you at the club then,” he said to me.
River said, “Negus, thanks for last night. It was fun. Oh, and this morning, too.”
Negus smiled awkwardly. “I’ll call you later.” He opened the door and went out, leaving it ajar.
Love and Death in Brooklyn Page 9