Two Graves Dug

by Penny Mickelbury

  “Good evening, Phillip. Come in. If you’ll leave your shoes at the door, I’ll take your coat and hang it up.”

  I gave her the overcoat and untied and removed my shoes and followed her into the room. When I reached mid-point, I just stopped and stared. From this moment on, Yolanda would have no difficulty convincing me of the need for financial growth. To come home at night to this must soothe a whole heard of savage beasts. I must have said the thought out loud because she laughed.

  “That’s a most appropriate way to phrase it, and you’re absolutely correct. I am completely at peace here.” And she looked it. Her face, of course, was a mess, but her eyes were calm and free of fear, and she moved loosely and easily—as loosely and easily as anyone who’d been in hand-to-hand combat earlier that morning could. She wore sweat clothes. Regular, ordinary sweat clothes, like every other New Yorker: plain black bottoms, a white Columbia University top, and thick white socks. Her hair was combed straight back, accentuating both the beauty of, and the damage to, her face. She waved me toward a couple of love seats and arm chairs in front of the fireplace, and I sank gratefully into a chair that could have been a womb. I hadn’t noticed the fire from the front door; nor had I noticed the music, which I now heard—Miles Davis? I looked around. Not a speaker in sight. I stood up and conducted a mini-search and couldn’t find a likely source for the music.

  She returned with an open bottle of wine and two glasses on a tray and a jar of nuts tucked under her arm. I stopped myself from asking for water. I could safely have a couple of glasses of wine, my dismay at my drunken debacle still a clear and fresh and horrible memory. She gave me the nuts and told me to help myself— she couldn’t chew them— then sat down and poured the wine. I took one sip and started talking. I told her everything that Gertrude Bader had told me. I hadn’t intended that; hadn’t known that’s what I would say to her; didn’t know why I did. She listened carefully and completely. Her eyes never left my face, she never raised her glass to her lips, she never moved an inch.

  “I know Gertrude,” she said when I was finished. “She taught me in medical school, before she moved downtown to NYU. She’s brilliant. And a wonderful teacher.” Then she thanked me for the soup. She had never, she said, tasted anything as wonderful. And she had me write down the address of El Caribe. When she could chew again, she said, her first dinner would be there. Since she clearly had no intention of responding or reacting to my description of the rapist that Dr. Bader had profiled, I asked about her health. She’d slept most of the day, she said, having taken a couple of the pain pills. Then her mother had come over and bathed her wounds and held ice packs on her face until the swelling was reduced. In fact, her mother had been here when Bradley Edwards delivered the soups and had shared them. We talked on in that vein for a while and sipped wine and I munched nuts— I’d eaten almost all of them— like we were friends and my presence was a social call. And since we were being sociable, I couldn’t go another second without asking.

  “Tell me about the sound system.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “You know what I want to know.” What I was dying to know. “Where the hell are the speakers?”

  “Everywhere,” she said. “Literally.” And then she explained her love of music, her need for it. “I like to experience it, as if I’m always in a concert hall.” So the speakers, she said, were in the ceiling and in the walls and beneath the flooring. “That part was tricky. Drove the architect and his engineer crazy.”

  “Why speakers beneath you?”

  She got up, crossed to the rear of the room, and slid open a cabinet recessed into the wall. There was a moment of silence. Then the music changed. A deep, dark, rich sound rose up and surrounded me. It was everywhere, that sound. I wanted to stand up but felt pinned to my chair. It wasn’t loud or vibrating sound. It was just...everywhere. I closed my eyes and went with the music. Then it ceased and Miles was back: Definitely Miles because I recognized Sketches of Spain. When I opened my eyes, Dr. Mason was back in the seat opposite me. “That’s why. It’s not appropriate for all music, but for Wagner—”

  I wasn’t sure who Wagner was and was certain I’d probably never again have a reason to listen to him, but if I did, I’d want to listen to it exactly like I’d just heard it. “When my ship finally finds its way to the dock, I’m getting the name of your architect,” said, and then changed the subject. Completely. “We’ll have to talk about it some time,” I said, and, I hoped, gently.

  She nodded. “I know, Phillip.” Then she got up and walked to the far end of the room and disappeared, returning almost immediately with an envelope, which she gave to me. “A signed contract and a retainer. I spoke with Yolanda earlier and asked her how to become a client.”

  But you’re already—”

  She cut me off. “Mr. Aiello is your client but now I need to be, officially and on my own. I may even add a little bombast.” She tried a smile but it hurt too much. Then, “Yolanda told me you want to talk to my parents. I can’t let you do that. Please believe me when I tell you that they can be of no help to you, Phillip.”

  I had no choice but to accept that, whether I believed it or not, since the way she’d spoken left no room for discussion or argument. I put the envelope with her signed contract in my pocket, along with the Golson/Stein contract which I’d used against Bill Delaney. I stood up. “I ate all the nuts.”

  “I ate all the soup. I’d intended to save some for your visit, but Mama and I ate it all.”

  “We’re even then,” I said, heading for the door. I bent down and put my shoes back on. When I straightened up, she was holding my coat open for me to slip my arms into.

  “Day after tomorrow, Dr. Mason,” I said. “Three o’clock. Your office or mine, doesn’t matter.” I’d chosen that day and time because I knew that she would be free at three o’clock on Saturday afternoon.

  She nodded and watched me button my coat. “Don’t you have a scarf?” she asked with a frown. “And gloves? It’s twenty degrees out there, Phillip.” She sounded much more like a mother than a shrink and I ached for the children she would never have the chance nurture into adulthood. Two little girls...

  I thanked her for the wine and the nuts and told her good night. “Saturday afternoon,” I said just before the door closed.

  The night was just as clear at ground level as it was in the penthouse, though the view was less dramatic. I turned left and began walking, slowly, because I didn’t know where I was going. I should go home and to bed. I was exhausted, but I wasn’t sleepy. I knew I’d just toss and turn if I went to bed. I didn’t want to go back to the office; that would just depress me. I consoled myself by remembering that Gregory Jenkins was about to be history. One down, one to go. When I was able to sit with Jill Mason for a while, get some decent background, maybe we could close that case, too. Day after tomorrow was Saturday. Saturday...

  I walked faster. I knew where I was going.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Are you sure his face wasn’t scratched?”

  Am I sure his face wasn’t scratched.” Eddie repeated the words like he was a finalist in the Stupidest Thing I Ever Heard contest. It made me wish Mike were there so they could exchange the look that suggested that maybe I didn’t always play with a full deck; this way, I had to hear what that thought sounded like. But Mike was occupied watching the squirrel’s place, a basement room on Avenue D beneath the elevated tracks of the JMZ trains. Talk about shitty neighborhoods. Appropriate, though, for a squirrel.

  “If his face wasn’t scratched, Eddie, that means there are two of them out for Jill Mason.”

  “No, Bro, what that means is you’re believing Willie’s nephew.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I believe him.”

  “You don’t even know his name, how do you believe him?”

  “Why are you fixated on my knowing this guy’s name?”

  Eddie looked hard at me. “Fixated.” He leaned out of the narrow booth and perused me
from toe to head. “You look real good lately, Phil. And you always did talk good, like a college educated man should.”

  “I’ve got a meeting with a seventy-something year old woman this morning, Eddie, you know that. And I had meetings with women all day yesterday. You know that, too. Why are you busting my chops about what I’m wearing? And why are you fixated on whether or not I know some ex-hype’s name?” I’d put some emphasis on ‘fixated’ but it was lost. Eddie was fixated elsewhere.

  “You didn’t tell me the snitch was an ex-hype,” he said accusingly.

  “It matters?”

  He nodded. “Yeah it matters. Ex-hypes don’t tell nobody their names. They had a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy before Clinton knew what his dick was for.”

  I couldn’t help laughing. And remembering that Eddie Ortiz had earned his gold shield working undercover narc in The Bronx long before such activity was glamorized by television detectives. “Eddie, after you eat, go get a haircut at Itchy’s, will you? And while you’re there, find out what else you can get at Itchy’s.”

  “You can get any damn thing you want at Itchy’s,” Jose Carbajal said, delivering our breakfasts. “Only it’s not exactly at Itchy’s. You order it, pay for it, then go pick it up. Kinda like the old Sears and Roebuck catalog stores, you know what I mean?”

  I had no idea and said so. Jose was a native of Puerto Rico, the city of Mayaguez, the home, also, of my mother’s mother. He had lived in New York City for almost fifty years, but he still called Puerto Rico home. He also insisted that he was as American as the next guy, and often proudly displayed his knowledge of things American like Sears, Roebuck catalog stores.

  “You young people got no pride in the past. How you expect to understand your present if you don’t understand the past?” He posed the question expecting an answer.

  “You make a good point, Jose,” I said, and he did. I just didn’t have the time to explore it with him. “But I’m really in a hurry and I’d appreciate anything you can tell me about Itchy. I’ve got a meeting about him uptown in a little while.”

  The restaurant was tiny, the five tables on one aisle so close to the five booths on the opposite and narrow aisle, that patrons never needed to strain to overhear other peoples’ conversations. Eddie and I had been leaning across the table, almost whispering. Now Jose followed suit. “Anything can be had through Itchy’s— TV, CD, computer, cell phone, pager, jewelry, smack, crack, reefer. You tell one of those barbers what you want, he tells you how much, you pay him, and then he tells you when and where to pick up. Usually later that same day, unless it’s a special order.”

  I was speechless. That old bastard had been running a scam right in my face and I’d never seen it. Not even a hint of it. I felt drop-kicked and must have looked it because Jose said, “That’s what I mean about understanding the past.”

  “What?”

  “If you knew your history, Phil, you’d know about Itchy.”

  I looked from Jose to Eddie, who shrugged, and back to Jose. “What would I know, Jose, if I knew my history?”

  “You need to talk to somebody from Black Harlem, Phil, one of the viejos, somebody who knows about the old days.”

  “Why can’t I talk to you since you obviously know something?”

  “What I know is second hand stuff,” Jose said, straightening up as the pick-up bell sounded. “Find somebody who knows the history first hand.”

  Louise Gillespie had lived in the same fourteen room apartment on the top floor of a building perched on the top of Sugar Hill for fifty-six years. She’d moved in as a newlywed at the beginning of the end of Harlem’s glory days, when all the whites finally had run away, and she had refused to abandon her home when the neighborhood hit rock bottom. Her faith had paid off. The late twentieth century rejuvenation of Harlem sprouted tendrils of hope that, in the early twenty-first century, had blossomed into a full blown revival. Sugar Hill, which never had deteriorated to the same extent as some of the Valley neighborhoods, once again was a desirable address, and Louise Gillespie could easily pocket a seven figure fortune should she decide to sell her condo, which she steadfastly refused even to contemplate.

  She was a tall, stately woman— I could see Sandra in her face and in her carriage. Her hair was pure white and hugged her head like a cap. She was brown as a pecan shell and wore a russet-colored pant suit and the kind of shoes referred to in literature as “sensible.” She welcomed me warmly and led me down a Persian carpeted entrance foyer that was as large as some living rooms downtown in my neighborhood, past an elegant living room where I glimpsed a shiny grand piano which made me remember that Sandra’s grandfather had been a musician, and into comfortable sitting room. Floor-to-ceiling book shelves occupied two walls. The television and music system were relatively new, but the sofa and reading chair and tasseled floor lamp were throwbacks to another era. She told me to make myself at home and offered me food and drink. I told her I’d just left breakfast. She asked me where I’d eaten and I told her and she launched into a vivid remembrance of the Puerto Rican restaurants and night clubs of Spanish Harlem of her youth, places I’d heard my grandparents speak of. Places long gone like most of Harlem itself— Black Harlem and Spanish Harlem.

  “I appreciate your seeing me, Mrs. Gillespie.”

  “I’m glad to be able to talk to you, Phillip, to tell somebody I trust what I’ve never told anyone else, not even Sandra.”

  Another “woman of a certain age” calling me Phillip. How would I ever be just plain “Phil” again? “You know Itchy?”

  “Malachi. Yes, I know him. Have known him for more than sixty years. I didn’t know the other night that what was troubling Yolanda had anything to do with him.”

  “Well, it doesn’t, not directly.”

  “Sandra explained it all to me, and I understand the situation. What I want to tell you about is what he did to that Mason girl. I may be speaking out of turn, and if I am, well, then, I’m sorry. But I don’t think I am.”

  I sat still and quiet and waited. I’d had enough experience with Louise Gillespie’s generation— including with Itchy Johnson— to know that they did not like being pushed and hurried. Indeed, would not be pushed and hurried.

  “He...he raped her when she was just a little thing. No more than seven or eight. And then her granddaddy cut off his...cut...castrated him.” She spoke quickly, forcing the words out of her mouth, wanting to get rid of them quickly. Then she wiped her mouth on a white lace handkerchief which materialized from the sleeve of her jacket.

  “Mrs. Gillespie, I don’t under...who raped... Itchy... Malachi... you’re saying that he, ah, assaulted Jill Mason when she was a child?”

  The old woman was nodding her head rapidly up and down and still wiping her mouth with the handkerchief and looking like she was sorry she’d told me.

  “...and that Jill Mason’s grandfather...?”

  The head with it cap of white hair still moved up and down; then it shifted directions. Back and forth now. “Back then, you couldn’t go to the police with that kind of thing. And Colored couldn’t— wouldn’t— go to the police for anything. So a situation such as that had to be settled personally. You know? For example, if a boy did something to a girl, a teenager, if that girl had brothers, then her brothers took care of that boy. You understand my meaning? Jill was a baby. A grown man had hurt her. So it was a grown man who had to make it right, you see?” And she wiped her mouth again.

  I told her everything Itchy had told me about the Graves and Mason families and she nodded. “All that’s correct. Only Malachi didn’t move downtown ‘til way later. He left Harlem for a while, after Jill’s granddaddy...afterwards. He went back down South somewhere, Loo’siana or South Car’lina. Used to have conjure folks and root doctors in Loo’siana and South Car’lina. ‘Cause just like we couldn’t go to the police back then? No way in the world he could go to the doctor or the hospital with that kind of problem, you understand my meaning?”

  I told
her I did, and was about to ask a question when she answered it. “He came back in the 1960s some time, came back up here to Harlem, but enough people still remembered him and what he’d done to that baby, so he moved on downtown. He didn’t move back up here until three or four years ago.”

  “Itchy...Malachi...he lives up here? In Harlem?”

  Louise Gillespie nodded her head and pursed her lips in what I knew to be a disapproving gesture. “On 139th Street. He finally made it to Strivers Row. Sixty years too late, but he finally made it.”

  I was calculating, matching her words with the dates. “So he didn’t own that barber shop he has now, the one on Essex Avenue, he didn’t have that in 1955?”

  “I’m sure not,” she said with absolute certainty. “In the first place, he wasn’t back in New York in 1955, but more importantly and in the second place, there weren’t enough Negroes in that part of downtown to support their own barber shop.”

  “Not enough Negroes—” The words stopped on my tongue as the thought froze up in my brain. I understood her words but not what they meant, and I must have looked as dumb as I felt because she bailed me out, gently and humorously, but not without some small sigh of exasperation.

  “You young people really should know more about your history. But maybe that’s our fault for not teaching you better. Anyway.” She took in some breath and let it out in a string of words that told me more than I’d ever before known about the part of New York City in which I’d grown up. Black people who lived on the lower east side of New York by and large lived in the housing projects along the East River: The Jacob Riis, the Alfred Smith or the Lillian Wald projects. “And not projects like you see today. These were beautiful places, where families lived, where parents raised their children and taught them things and sent them to school to learn more. Two parents in the home, and both of them working. Green grass and trees outside, and a view of the river from inside. A Black man owning a barber shop back then, it would have been along FDR Drive somewhere, not over where you’re talking about.”