Casanegra

by Blair Underwood

  Insult to injury. I was annoyed at theminor actor reference, but I was horrified that Nelson was throwing his suspicions around to the press. This guy was trying to rattle me. “That sonofoabitch.”

  “I did some research on the guy before I called him. Lieutenant Nelson and I both went to Florida A&M, it turns out, and my dad was his mentor in the criminal justice department. It’s a family thing, so he gave me inside tips. Go Rattlers, right?”

  The alley seemed to spin. I was genuinely dizzy. I’d forgotten to eat breakfast.

  “So, the suspectis you,” she said. I’d given her all the confirmation she needed. She looked delighted with herself for figuring it out.

  I held her shoulders, as gently as I could. “My father has a bad heart, he just had a stroke, and he’s in a nursing home,” I said. “If you write that in the newspaper—”

  April’s face changed, apologetic. “Oh, don’t worry about that, Mr. Hardwick. For real. To me, off the record means off the record. Some of us still have ethics, believe it or not.”

  I bore into her eyes, not letting her go. “April, I did not kill Serena Johnston.”

  She studied me, her face noncommittal. “You might want to tell Lieutenant Nelson that.”

  “I already have. The police are desperate to close this, and I’m all they’ve got. I knew her before she was a movie star, and I was with her the day she died. I ran into her at Roscoe’s and gave her my card, so it was in her pocket when they found her. But I didnot kill her. I…” I almost saidI loved her. “I really cared about her.”

  “So…you’re here to try to find the real killer. Like O.J.” April’s brow furrowed, and the tip of her pink tongue flicked nervously at her upper lip.

  I released her shoulders. Being grabbed by a murder suspect in an alley was enough to make anyone feel intimidated. I wanted an ally, not a reporter who doubted my sanity. “O.J. was found guilty in civil court, so I’ll say it again:I did not kill Serena Johnston. I’m here to find out who did. I want that person fried.” My voice shook.

  Finally, I saw it in her face: She believed me. There was nothing in her demeanor to show that she had ever believed I had killed Serena, from the instant she approached me. What was it she had said when she saw me?You won’t find the answer up there. A killer wouldn’t be looking for the answer.

  “You know I didn’t do it,” I said as soon as I realized it.

  “All Iknow in this life is that Jesus loves me,” she said. “But do I think you’re the killer type? I could be wrong, but you don’t strike me that way, Mr. Hardwick.”

  Maybe her empathy did something to my eyes, but I noticed April Forrest’s features for the first time then; full lips painted lightly with pink gloss, large eyes, a button nose, and deep dimples when she smiled. With a little rouge, she could look like an actress. And she didn’t have to tell me what Lieutenant Nelson said about me, but she had.

  “My name is Tennyson. Call me Ten.”

  “What happened to your face since I last saw you, Ten?”

  “I had a disagreement with M.C. Glazer’s bodyguards last night. I was trying to get some answers about Serena.”

  She frowned with naked envy. “At Club Magique? I tried to get in, but—”

  “All I learned is that he doesn’t like to be accused of murder.”

  She nodded toward the alley entrance and the morning light. “Come here. I want to show you something. I missed it my first time out here. Maybe you did, too.”

  Without a word, she led me half a block east, toward the corner. She stopped in front of an MTA bus shelter. I glanced up at the route numbers on the sign, wondering when the 2 and 302 Metro Buses ran, if someone might have seen the killer leaving the body. April tugged on my sleeve. “You’re looking the wrong way,” she said.

  I turned around, toward the bench and its shelter. My heart leaped.

  The shelter’s Plexiglas back wall was the victim of street stickering, covered with posters of M.C. Glazer’s face from hisPlugged album cover, the same one I’d seen at Club Magique. His eyes stared back at me, twentyfold.

  “See what I’m saying?” April said. “Seems like a big coincidence. I don’t think even Lieutenant Nelson picked up on it. I just noticed it. It’s going in my story tomorrow.”

  I looked back toward the alleyway, calculating the distance we’d walked. We weren’t even thirty yards away from where the body was found. I examined the shelter again and noticed the LED bulbs overhead, probably solar-powered. So, it was lighted. The lights weren’t on yet, but they would be at night. The Glazer posters would have been in plain view, even more noticeable than during daylight.

  “So…it could have been Glazer or someone on his behalf…” I said, gazing toward the traffic on Sunset, “…or someone with her body in the car saw an opportunity to point the finger in Glazer’s direction. Maybe it wasn’t even planned that way. But they’re driving along, they see the posters…” My eyes went from the posters to the alleyway. “…and they’ve found their spot. They drive a little ways past the bus shelter, back up into the alley.Voilà.”

  April was busy scribbling notes. “I see you know how to think like a killer.”

  “An actor is trained to think like anyone. Besides, the big mistake is to believe a killer doesn’t think like the rest of us.”

  April looked up at me, one eyebrow raised. “Under the circumstances, you can keep your cryptic little adages to yourself.”

  I laughed then, for the first time in a while. She laughed, too. Then she gave a start, gazing at my face in the light.“Damn. You got tore up. I don’t suppose you bothered to put anything on those cuts on your lip or above your eye.”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  She slipped her warm hand into mine, squeezing. “Come on. There’s a convenience store across the street. You need somebody to be your mama today.”

  I don’t remember having a mother, but if it was anything like April Forrest’s gently clinging hand on a day when I felt more alone than ever, I couldn’t argue. While we dodged traffic on Sunset to get to the Korean-run grocery and sundries store across the street, April told me what she’d learned during her own investigation. She talked nonstop, without taking a breath.

  “The police have been canvasing the apartment building behind the alley for two days straight, and the residents there aren’t interested in talking to any more strangers. I don’t think anyone there saw anything, or if they did, they’re not saying so. Auto shop’s been closed for two months, and the camera store closes at five-thirty. Cops have also interviewed the proprietors across the street. I’ve already talked to Mr. Kim, who runs the grocery store. They’re open all night, but he and his sons are pretty much the only ones who work there, and they didn’t see anything either. Like it never happened.”

  The store was cramped with too many aisles and products, and smelled like sweet rotting produce and floor cleanser. April stopped talking only once we reached theCOUGH /COLD/FIRST AIDaisle, studying the disinfectants like she had a medical degree. She picked up a tube of Neosporin and some Band-Aids.

  “Now it’s your turn,” she said, once we had settled into a line six people deep. “What did you learn at Club Magique?”

  I sighed, in no hurry to revisit that memory. “Well, as you suspect, Glazer didn’t like Serena. I don’t know if it was a radio rivalry or something more personal, but he was crowing about her death. Being an asshole doesn’t mean he killed her, though.”

  “Doesn’t mean he didn’t.”

  “Believe me, I like him less than you do. But I’m trying to keep an open mind.”

  “I am, too, Ten, or I wouldn’t be standing here with you.”

  “Touché.”

  “But I really don’t get why the police aren’t more interested in M.C. Glazer. Lieutenant Nelson kind of shrugged him off.”

  “Maybe it’s because M.C. Glazer is up to his ass in LAPD. Those guys on his payroll last night were all cops. LAPD got embarrassed by O.J., Rodney King, and the d
irty cops working security for Suge Knight and Death Row Records. Nobody’s eager for more bad news involving LAPD and rappers. Money buys blue friends.”

  “You have friends, too, don’t you? Your father was a captain.”

  My throat tightened. Dad wasn’t LAPD anymore; Dad was hanging on to the world by his fingernails. “Doesn’t work that way,” I said.

  “Well, here’s something juicy: Lieutenant Nelson said they have DNA. They’re putting a rush on the results.”

  My stomach knotted. “Did he say what kind of samples?”

  “Not specifically, but he mentioned her bedroom, so I got the feeling it was sexual. A condom, maybe?” She saw something in my face that made her decide to look away politely. “Listen…I don’t know what was up with you and Afrodite—Serena—but if you were with her the day she died, you may be about to get cleared, or your life is about to get interesting.”

  May you live in interesting times.Serena had spoken those words the last time I saw her. The dizziness came back. I really needed to eat, not that food would help.

  “Here she is again!” a stranger’s voice exclaimed ahead of us, followed by laughter so carefree that it offended my ears. The shopkeeper was grinning at April.

  Mr. Kim was balding, about sixty, with uneven teeth stained from too much coffee, but the kindness of his face made him striking. “This woman, she is like reporter in that movie…All the President’s Men! She want whole story. Truth and nothing but the truth.” Considering that he had obviously learned English late in life, his mastery of the language was impressive. Humor is difficult to translate.

  “She talk about Afrodite,” he said. He turned to me, gesturing toward his chest. “Big murder on Mr. Kim’s street, you see.”

  “So I heard,” I said.

  His smile faded as he shook his head. “I like Afrodite. She good in that movie.”

  “Mr. Kim sees a lot of movies,” April said to me.

  “Mr. Kim seeevery movie. For two year since I come here, every Saturday, twelve o’clock, Mr. Kim is at movie. Popcorn. M&Ms. In movie, I learn English better. So I know Afrodite—I seeKeeping It Real. She good-looking girl.”

  “Yes, she was,” I said. Mr. Kim’s good nature was a welcome diversion. He pulled me out of my own mind, which had been boiling into panic since April mentioned the DNA. It was easier to feel sad.

  “Mr. Kim didn’t see anything Monday night,” April told me.

  “I no see street from cash register,” he said, pointing to the ads and posters in his windows. It was true. His view of the street was entirely blocked. “If only I see, you know? Maybe Afrodite no dead then.”

  “She was probably dead before she was brought here,” I said.

  He inhaled, his teeth hissing. Mr. Kim shook his head, finally ringing up the items April had bought for me. It was an old-fashioned cash register, with a pleasant-sounding bell. “I still no believe. No believe. I so excited, see, because Afrodite in my store. I say I go tell granddaughter.”

  Between his accent and his butchered English, I couldn’t catch what he’d said despite the way my ears perked.

  April straightened up, leaning forward. “Afrodite was in your store? When?”

  He shook his head. “No,she not in store. I…” He paused, searching for his words for the first time. “Ithink Afrodite in store. I see with eyes. My eyes say, ‘Hey, this Afrodite.’ But she come Tuesday morning. Police say she dead already. She dead before. So, my eyes say wrong.”

  April translated. “You saw someone Tuesday you thought was Afrodite?”

  “What time Tuesday morning?” I said.

  “I say…nine o’clock, maybe. Later, police come and say Afrodite dead.”

  How the hell could Serena have visited this store at 9:00A .M. Tuesday, nearly twelve hours after the police said she died? Was it possible? After all, I hadn’t seen the corpse. Just possibly. Just maybe…

  I was afraid of the hope glowing faintly beneath my breastbone, but I let the idea sit in my mind in case there was a way to make sense of it.

  “Are you sure it wasn’t Monday?” I said. She might have stopped here on her way to Roscoe’s. If so, at least I might get a better idea of why she’d been brought here.

  Could she still be alive? Tired of it all, and slipped away into anonymity, or ready to resurrect herself in the cruelest, most bizarre publicity stunt in history?

  “No,Tuesday. Same day police come. Police come two hour later. But this girl, she wear hair same like Afrodite, clothes same like Afrodite. I say she twin.”

  The glow in my chest was irrepressible. Now, I understood the legions of Tupac and Elvis fans who couldn’t let go. I wanted to erase Serena’s death so badly that I could believe she might not be dead, especially with such an earnest witness.She didn’t look like herself in that photo. Maybe…

  I reached over to borrow April’s notebook. She gave me a puzzled look.

  “Describe the girl to me, Mr. Kim,” I said.

  “He reporter, too?” he asked April.

  “Something like that,” April said.

  “She Afrodite. Look like her. Only different here.” He touched his earlobe, gesturing down the length of it. “She wear earring all over ear. Up and down.”

  There are few genuinely revelatory moments in life, but as Mr. Kim ended his description, I had one of mine.

  My exhilaration melted, and the knot in my stomach tightened into something like nausea. I’d only met Serena’s sister once—at a premiere party at a nightclub on Wilshire—but she’d made an impression on me. Serena was a year older, but the sisters looked remarkably similar, especially considering that they shared only a mother in common. The Johnston family women had strong genes, apparently. And Serena’s sister had littered her ears with piercings, perhaps a dozen in each one. I couldn’t remember her name yet, but I could see her face as sharply as if I’d seen her Tuesday morning, just like Mr. Kim.

  “Did she have earrings in just one ear, or both?” I asked him.

  “Both ear.”

  Tyra Johnston. That was her name. I’d asked Serena about her sister when I saw her.Same shit, different decade, she’d said. They had never gotten along, I remembered. Damn. They had never gotten along, and Tyra might have been within a block of the spot where Serena’s body was found two hours later.

  I didn’t like this idea nearly as much as I’d liked the M.C. Glazer scenario.

  “What are you thinking?” April said.

  “Serena has a half-sister. Right here in L.A.”

  “A sister? I’ve read through all her bios. She never mentioned a sister.”

  “They didn’t like each other. But I’ve met her. She wears earrings like that.”

  Neither of us spoke for a while. April said good-bye to Mr. Kim, and after we walked back outside, she asked me to lean over so she could apply the cream to my wounds. For me, that was a first. I’ve always nursed myself. I enjoyed her care so much that I didn’t mind people staring at us as they passed, or the stinging from her touch.

  “Ten,” April said softly, “I have a sister, too. And a brother. And if I told them I was hanging out with a murder suspect, they would freak out. So don’t think this isn’t against my better judgment.”

  “OK,” I said. Candor isn’t always comfortable, but I appreciate it.

  “I think I trust you, but that doesn’t matter in the end. It could be a mistake.”

  “True. Just like it could be a mistake for me to trust you.”

  Carefully, April applied a bandage above my eye. She pressed with her index finger, steady pressure to hold it in place. “My instinct says we can help each other.”

  “We already have.” April’s inside track with Lieutenant Nelson made her precious.

  “I’m writing a story about Serena’s death. That’s the bottom line. If you tell me anything off the record, I’ll respect that—but I’m going to report on anything I see.”

  “That’s your job,” I said.

  “I’ll t
ell you everything Lieutenant Nelson says that I think might help you clear yourself. But I want you to help me find Serena’s sister today. You want to talk to her, and so do I. We need each other.”

  She was right. April Forrest could be a lifeline. There was no reason not to cooperate with her. But I wasn’t sure I could help her. It had been five years since I’d seen Serena’s sister, and I had never known where she lived. “Maybe she’s still in the Crenshaw district, where Serena grew up. The Jungle. But I don’t know her address.”

  “Do you know her name?”

  “Sure do.”

  April smiled, surveying her dressing. One last pat. “Then I’ll do the rest.”

  On Harvard Avenue near the Crenshaw district stands First AME, a megachurch boasting twenty thousand members. My father used to take me there when I was a kid. He’s actually named for the man who founded the African Methodist Episcopal church in 1787, a former slave named Richard Allen, so Dad didn’t play about church. I wasn’t anybody’s choirboy, but I liked the way Sundays gave me Dad’s undivided attention—he ironed my clothes, pointed out where to find the Bible passages, taught me the songs his mother had sung to him, like “How Great Thou Art” and “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.” When he closed his eyes to talk to God, it was almost as if he left me to ascend to some great height, challenging me to follow.

  I didn’t know how to find God at church like Dad did. If God loved me like the preacher said, why had God cursed me to be motherless? But Dad’s face was rapturous when he closed his eyes to talk to Jesus. Then, he always came back to me, and after church we had a big lunch at M&Ms—smothered chicken, oxtails, greens, candied yams, and sweet iced tea—the only time we ate out other than fast food. Sundays were our best times. Whenever I’m in the Crenshaw district, I think of church. I stopped going to church after I left Dad’s house, but I always went with him to Easter and Christmas services. Were those days gone?

  First AME is nestled in an enclave of grand old gated properties that once housed black Hollywood royalty. Hattie McDaniel, the first black woman to win an Oscar, in 1939—the actress who ordered Scarlett O’Hara around inGone With the Wind— had her house there, and it still stands today alongside other fine homes in a residential island surrounded by what most people would call The ’Hood. Ten minutes southwest of First AME, you’ll find yourself in Baldwin Village, a twisting warren of narrow streets and aging single-family homes and cracker-box apartment buildings. Ironically, nearby Baldwin Hills is one of the wealthiest black neighborhoods in the country.