Too Beautiful to Die

by Glenville Lovell

“Did you get a visit from the FBI?” I said, changing the subject. She was a little too clever for me, and I was in no mood to debate race and American society when the FBI was looking to pin a murder rap on me.

  She set down her cup. “No. Why?”

  “I need you to tell me the truth,” I said.

  She glanced away, staring off into space. “I’ve told you the truth.”

  “Did you ever meet this man?”

  Her eyes darkened and she shook her head silently.

  “Did you know he was an FBI agent?” I said.

  “I didn’t know anything about him.”

  “Is there anything at all you can tell me about your father?”

  She sipped her cappuccino. “Nothing.”

  “Your mother, where was she from?”

  “Jamaica.”

  “Why did she take you to live in England?”

  “I don’t know. She was a nurse. She might’ve been running from my father. But that’s only a guess. She never explained anything to me.”

  “What was this proof the FBI agent had? Did he tell you?”

  “He never said.”

  “Think. Did he give you any clue as to what it might be? A birth certificate maybe?”

  “Nothing. I just remember how convincing his voice was. He just seemed to be sure of what he was saying. Maybe I just wanted to believe something.” She pushed her glass to the middle of the table. “When I was ten, my ballet school had a recital. And I was given a little solo. I was very proud of myself. My best friend, Rebecca, was also in the recital. Both her parents came. After the recital we went out together to get a bite to eat: Rebecca and her family and my mother and me. At the restaurant Rebecca was sitting in her daddy’s lap, and he was kissing and hugging her and telling her how good she was. I was a better dancer. And I know my mother was very proud of me, but I remember feeling jealous and hurt. When I got home I told my mother I would like to see my father. She beat me with a strap and forbade me to ever mention it again. I don’t know how close I am to finding him, but the fact that this man was an FBI agent makes me feel even more hopeful that my father might one day be more than a phantom to me.”

  “You may not like what you find, you know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I hesitated, not wanting to burst her optimistic bubble. I knew intimately the hazards of digging through the rubble of the past. There was always the chance of unearthing something detrimental to your mental health. I’d found that out the hard way when I’d gone searching for my own father a few years before.

  “There’s probably a good reason why your father disappeared.”

  “I don’t know that. I don’t know that he disappeared. As far as I’ve been told he never existed. I want to make him exist. I don’t care if he’s some kind of criminal. I want to know.”

  “This could be like searching for a needle in a haystack.”

  “Unless you have a magnet. And maybe that’s what you are. Just the right magnet.” She glanced at her watch and stood up. “I’m sorry, but I have to go. I have an audition.”

  “You still audition for roles?”

  “For certain directors. Spike Lee is casting a new movie. Soap stars don’t register on certain radars in the movie business. It’s a chance for me to move to the next level.”

  “Good luck.”

  She smiled and opened her bag, taking out a blue leather wallet. “Thank you.”

  “I’ve got it,” I said, standing up and reaching into my back pocket.

  “Nonsense,” she said. “Besides, you’re buying me dinner tomorrow night.”

  “Oh, am I?” I laughed.

  “Yes. And I like very expensive restaurants, so you’d better save your money.”

  She put twenty dollars on the table and closed her wallet.

  “Come, walk me back to my apartment so I can change.”

  She hooked her arm in the crook of my elbow as we walked along Tenth Street. I couldn’t help but feel privileged. She was an incredibly beautiful woman, assured and warmly sensuous.

  Outside her apartment building she kissed my cheek.

  “Pick me up at eight,” she said.

  “What if I can’t make it?”

  “I hate being stood up, Mr. Overstreet.”

  “Blades. Call me Blades.”

  She smiled. “Eight sharp?”

  I watched her disappear inside, her rampaging hips doing a silent rumba on the air.

  7

  AROUND SIX THAT evening I parked my ’96 Volvo opposite a funeral home two blocks from the murder scene. With an easy gait, hoping not to look like the aggressive detective I used to be, I swung through the open gate. Festivity buzzed about the courtyard, which had been turned into a picnic ground.

  Preteen girls jutting precocious breasts in the face of older boys, their wiry bodies snapping like elastic, daring the young pups to match their sauciness, jitterbugged to rap music rat-a-tat-ting from open windows like automatic gunfire. Tattered lounge chairs held up the meaty bodies of old men and women in the throes of storytelling. Barbecue grills of all sizes staked out family lots in the yard, spitting smoke and that sickening smell of burnt stale meat.

  Squinting, I rolled through the yard with the appropriate nonchalance, offering a stiff smile to a young toothless woman in red shorts who had the emaciated look of a drug addict.

  As I entered the building I was struck by the manic urge to puke. There was something menacing and mysterious about large apartment buildings.

  A dried-out old man, barely a fleck of flesh left on his bones, held the elevator door open for me. I thanked him and sidled to a corner as the warped graffiti-covered door closed. I took my car keys out of my pocket and spun them around on my finger. The old man, wearing shimmering disco-colored shorts and matching shirt, stared at me dolefully.

  “Heard about the guy who got smoked in here yesterday,” I muttered, sounding like a disgruntled insider.

  The old man continued to stare as if I was speaking Greek. The elevator shook to a halt at the fourth floor. Before he got off, the old man shot me a weary smile. “Muthafuckers always getting killed in here,” he said.

  The entrance to Ricardo’s apartment was sealed with yellow police tape. I tested the door. It was still unlocked. Ducking under the tape, I entered and stood on the rubber mat as the door creaked to a close behind me.

  Tiptoeing through the debris, I wondered why the hell an FBI agent was living in this dump. Was he undercover? The air was thick with the sweet sickly odor of rot and death. Homicide had taken the garbage bucket from the kitchen, but scabs of decaying food spotted the floor, enough to keep the vermin partying. I left them to their carnival and headed for the bedroom.

  What did I expect to find?

  The bedroom was pretty much as I’d left it, except the mattress had been removed. Sunlight, smashing through trees and the clear glass window, pasted a pattern of leaves to the wall. Aimlessly I opened the same drawers Precious had searched, knowing I would find them empty.

  There was nothing here. I was about to leave when I heard voices at the door. The door creaked open. For a second I froze, looking around for the fire escape. My eyes caught the open walk-in closet and I scuttled inside, pulling the door tightly behind me as the voices got closer.

  I recognized the voices as belonging to Bressler and Slate as they entered the bedroom.

  “You’d think he could find a better place to live,” Slate was saying.

  “If your wife kicked you out and the Bureau was getting ready to tie your ass to the back of a moving train, where would you hide?” Bressler said.

  “He brought it all on himself, the fucking traitor.”

  The window opened and closed. Someone hawked and spat on the floor.

  “You’re a dirty son-of-a-bitch,” Bressler said.

  Slate laughed. “What? Who the fuck cares? This whole neighborhood is a pigsty.”

  “What do you think about this Blades?” Bressler said.
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  “We should arrest him.”

  “You’re new to New York. But I’ve been here awhile. This guy was one of the best undercover cops around.”

  “So what? Edwards was one of our best agents. Look what he done. I did some checking on Blades. Do you know about his father?”

  “Yes, I know all about his father.”

  Slate growled. “And you’re convinced Blades is a good guy?”

  “I’m telling you the guy was a good cop.”

  “People change. Do you know about Miami?”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “He was down in Miami with his father a few years ago.”

  “So what?”

  “An ex-Panther turned up dead around the same time in Miami. Word was he went gunning for Blades’ father. What if Blades popped him to protect his old man?”

  “Wouldn’t you do the same thing?”

  “Why’re you so protective of this guy, anyway?”

  “I know someone in undercover. Told me a story about how Blades pulled him out of a tight spot in Brighton Beach where he was investigating some Russians involved in a money-laundering scheme. Saved his life.”

  “So are we supposed to kiss his ass now?”

  “This someone is my brother.”

  “I don’t care if it was your mama. I don’t like him. He’s arrogant. Nothing like a nigger with a little white blood. I bet when he was a kid his mother convinced him he was better than other niggers cause he’s mixed.”

  “Shut up!”

  “Don’t tell me to shut up. You shut up!”

  “I’m getting outta here,” Bressler said.

  I listened to their heavy retreating footsteps and waited for the friendly creak of the door before leaving my hiding place. As I stepped out, the floor beneath me buckled. I hesitated. Bouncing my full weight on it confirmed my suspicion. There was a hollow underneath. I got down on my knees to inspect the joints. A small section of the floor had been taken up and replaced.

  I found a hammer in the kitchen and returned to the bedroom, where I used the claw to pry the boards from their flimsy moorings. Reaching into the tiny hollow chamber, I felt around. There was something tucked away in the tight cavern, which I grasped and pulled out into the light. It was a laptop computer.

  With the computer tucked under my arm I stepped out into the hallway, drawing deep breaths. The hallway was musty and dank, but much better than the acrid smell of decay I’d left behind. Across the hall, a few feet to my left, the door to apartment 10-C was slightly ajar. I took a step toward it. The door closed quickly.

  I went ahead and knocked on the door.

  “What the fuck you want?” a throaty, phlegm-crusted voice barked from behind the door.

  “Just wanna ask you a few questions,” I said.

  “I already talk to you muthafuckers.”

  “This won’t take long.”

  A moment later I heard the shuffle of slippers and the door cracked slightly. I flashed my friendliest smile. The door swung open and a fleshy woman, her head tied with a yellow bandana, stood scowling.

  “Can I come in?” I said.

  “You think this is a muthafucking hotel?”

  She looked like she’d not long ago gotten out of bed. The black robe draped around her was tattered and tied carelessly at the waist. She wore absolutely nothing underneath. I could understand that. It was a hot evening by any standard.

  “I promise it’ll only take a few minutes,” I pleaded.

  Leaving the door ajar, she turned and walked into the apartment. By the time I stepped in she was already sitting on a green sofa with zebra stripes, lighting a cigarette. The floor was strewn with magazines and newspapers; I surmised she’d just moved in. Several large unpacked boxes filled the room. Above a shiny grand piano set against the far wall was a framed picture of Harriet Tubman.

  I must’ve been staring at the grand piano.

  “It’s my daughter’s,” she said, puffing a bar of smoke in my direction. “The piano. She just got into Juilliard. Will be starting in September. She so good they gave her a scholarship and accepted her a year early. She’s going to be a concert pianist. If she don’t, I’ma kill her for making me fuck these nasty-ass men who ain’t wash their balls in months.”

  “I hope for her sake she does,” I joked.

  “Ain’t no muthafucking joke.”

  “Well, she must be good for you to go to all this trouble for her.”

  She smiled. “Yeah, she good. She be having that fucking piano talking in tongues and shit ’cause I don’t understand anything she be playing. But I go to all her concerts. She the best thing going in this fucked-up city. Now what the fuck you want with me?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Why you gotta know my name? You planning to propose?”

  Her eyes dimmed insolently, and through the gray maze of smoke she looked like a Buddha in rags. Blowing a cloud straight up in the air, she then snuffed the cigarette in an ashtray.

  “T-J’s the name,” she said, tilting her chin. “What’s your?”

  “Blades Overstreet.”

  She smiled. “Are you a sharp or dull blade?”

  “Neither. I bet you knew the guy across the hall who was killed.”

  Her eyes grew keen. “What makes you think that?”

  “Well, you see, I heard he was a ladies’ man. And I’m thinking, if I were him, and a woman as beautiful as you lived across from me, I’d make it my business to get to know you.”

  She smiled, showing evenly spaced teeth. “Why don’t you sid-down?”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Not to me. I don’t like you standing up over me like you some fucking foreman. I used to work in a factory one time. That’s all the foreman be doing. Standing up over people. I wanted to kill him.”

  I sat on the sofa next to her.

  “Ain’t that better?” she said. “Are you a ladies’ man?”

  “I know good work when I see it.”

  Her body quivered as though she’d just felt a draft. She rubbed her chest vigorously. “You think you slick, muthafucker. Where’d you hear he was a ladies’ man?”

  “What kind of person was he?” I said with a smile.

  “Big spender. Big drinker. Big feet, if you know what I mean. One night he took me to Atlantic City and blew ten grand on blackjack.”

  “Did you know he was FBI?”

  “You kidding? I didn’t even know the muthafucker’s real name. Didn’t talk much, that one. Very quiet.”

  “When’s the last time you saw him?”

  “Three nights ago.”

  “Where?”

  “In his apartment.”

  “Did he seem normal?”

  “What’s normal? He gave me a hundred bucks for some pussy. His dick got hard after some effort. That’s normal for me.”

  “And you didn’t see him after that?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see anyone go into his apartment the day he was killed?”

  “I already told the other detectives. No. Don’t you guys talk to each other?”

  “Thanks for your time,” I said, getting up.

  “You leaving already?” She got up and drew the robe around her. Her breasts threatened to jump out of the terry-cloth garment. I could see a scar just above her left breast. She inched over to me, her round brown eyes focused on my face. “Thanks? That’s all I get?” she said. “You ain’t even giving me a card? Them other two muthafuckers gave me a card. Where’s your card? Suppose I remember something and want to call you?”

  I hesitated.

  “You ain’t no muthafucking detective, are you?” she said.

  “I used to be a cop.”

  “What’re you now? A private dick?” She laughed. “That’s what they call them in the detective novels. I always wanted to get my own private dick. Why you in such a hurry, Mr. Private Dick? Ain’t you supposed to come gimme some of that private dick now? That’s how it be
in the novels and movies. The detective goes to question the whore, she be wearing nothing underneath her robe and he can’t resist her.”

  She broke into raucous laughter.

  “Perhaps another time,” I said.

  “Yeah. Whatever. Don’t trip on the way out, Mr. Dull Blade.”

  She opened the door and I stepped outside. I could feel her eyes on me as I strolled down the hallway. I was getting hungry.

  8

  MY MOTHER CALLED as soon as I walked into my apartment, to remind me of my brother’s birthday party the next day, which I’d completely forgotten about. After our conversation, I dumped the roti I’d bought onto a plate and sat at my desk, where I flipped the cover and powered up the laptop. It was a powerful machine, an IBM Thinkpad with a Pentium III processor. That’s as far as I got. Anything beyond that needed a password.

  I ate my roti and drank a beer. Then I rang Trevor Lester, a young man I’d met roughly seven years before. He was nineteen then. Had been in and out of the system from the time he was fourteen. At the time he lived with his old man, a sanitation worker. His mother split when he was nine. Trevor’s story was that of many young black kids in New York City. It started with harassment by the police, who would stop and frisk him anytime they wanted. Then they’d release him without so much as an apology. It was sport to them. One day, after one of these stops, Trevor threw the apple he was eating at the squad car. The cops came back and kicked him around. After that the cops would pick him up anytime they saw him on the street. Day or night.

  One day the cops charged him with possession of marijuana. That charge was dropped. From then the number of arrests escalated for offenses ranging from drug possession to arms possession to second-degree attempted murder. He was never convicted on any of these charges, but spent a lot of time in jail, being ground to dust by the system.

  When he was charged with the attempted murder of an off-duty narcotics officer, he fled to Fayetteville, North Carolina, where he worked as a hotel clerk for three years. In his spare time he studied computers and became an expert hacker. He was arrested for breaking into the computer network of Citibank, which blew his cover. I was sent to bring him back to New York.

  I took a liking to the brother. It’s not usual that this happens to me. But he was a smart kid. He said he didn’t shoot the officer, and I believed him. I helped him get a good attorney and he beat the rap. Four years later, armed with a degree in computer technology from New York University, he started his own Internet security company.