A Toast Before Dying

by Grace F. Edwards

  “Jeffrey, my door is always open. I’d love to see you other than at somebody’s funeral.”

  With that, she kissed his cheek and stepped out into the street. Dad held open the door of the cab and waved as she pulled away.

  Dad was quiet as we walked the short distance home. Finally I asked, “Who’s Dessie?”

  “Dessie Hamilton. Barmaid back in the day who worked in the Half-Moon. So popular that the place was supposed to close for a week when she died. Folks in the know said she’d been the world’s oldest living barmaid till one night she strolled to Harlem Hospital in her famous five-inch heels, complaining of a bad stomach, but it was a bad liver kept her there, and days later took her away.

  “At her age, she deserved the honor of a bar closing, but rumor had it that the owner of the place—who everybody called Dandy Dan when he paid off on the numbers and Goddamn Dan when he didn’t—used the occasion of her passing to realize a dream of his own.

  “When she died, Goddamn Dan closed the bar and stepped off the earth. Ain’t been seen or heard from since. Later, we found that he’d stepped with a quarter million in numbers receipts—big, big dollars in those days.

  “Now rumor also had it that if a place reopened with new management but didn’t ‘clean the four corners,’ nothing but bad luck would come of it. Half-Moon reopened ten years ago, and for the next few years must’ve broken the record for bad luck. So many shoot-outs, knife fights, and thrown lye that the place was known as the Body-of-the-Month Club. Stuff like that kept the sensible folks away. Then the owner, who nobody ever saw anyway, wised up and walked.

  “Then Henderson Laws came in with new dollars and new decor but was too cheap to pay the spiritualist man who had ‘cleaned’ the four corners with a special water one hour before the grand opening. Instead, he pushed a fifth of bottom-shelf gin on him. Well, you know how that goes. Everybody in the know kept quiet, and kinda waited.”

  “Why was Thea working there when she could’ve done so much better? I mean, with her talent and her sophistication, why would she settle for that place?”

  “Who knows …”

  We turned into 139th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues and reconnected with the ordinary rhythm of our lives. We waved across the street to a neighbor who was trimming her hedges, and to another who was walking his dog.

  Inside, Dad picked up Ruffin’s leash. “Back in a little while.” He waved to me, and I watched him leave the house with the dog at his side. He was upset and wanted to be alone. I’d ask about Dessie, the old barmaid, and her connection to Thea, later.

  chapter eleven

  When Dad returned home, I held up Dr. Thomas’s invitation from among the three piles of mail divided into “important,” “not-so,” and “discard.” The letter had a two-week-old postmark.

  “Dad, why is this at the bottom of the ‘not-so’ pile? Aren’t you going?”

  “Of course I am and I already told him so. The invite’s only a formality. I didn’t mention it because I didn’t think you’d be interested in another boring social—‘B.S. gathering,’ as you called them.”

  “I want to go to this one,” I said, surprising him. He had taken off his jacket and was helping to sort the rest of the mail, even though he was paying me to do that.

  “You know, Mali, I can’t understand you sometimes. Three years ago, I had to practically drag you to the affair. This time, you can’t wait to get there.”

  He rose from the table and headed for the window. “Let me see if there’s a full moon or something …”

  “Very funny. I said I’d go and you get all—”

  “Well, I know how you feel about Michaels. Your nose gets narrow if I mention his name.”

  “And I still don’t like him. But since Blaine Thomas expects a major musical contribution from you, I may as well enjoy a major meal.”

  I slit open the envelope and read the silver-edged card.

  THE COMMITTEE TO REELECT EDWIN MICHAELS

  REQUESTS YOUR PRESENCE AT

  A FUND-RAISING DINNER

  AT THE HOME OF DR. AND MRS. BLAINE THOMAS

  WEDNESDAY, JULY 23

  I read further, noting Dad’s name on the bottom, just under the address.

  Dr. Thomas lived two doors away with his wife and twin sons in a three-story limestone. Their double parlor was large enough to accommodate at least one hundred guests, and the rear garden, though overgrown with rose of Sharon and a spreading bed of ivy around an old bronze fountain, could probably hold twenty or so more.

  Each guest was expected to pledge a minimum of five hundred dollars for the privilege of calling Senator Michaels by his first name for a few hours. More out of friendship with Dr. Thomas than as a contribution, Dad had offered to sit at the piano for a few hours.

  This crowd, depending on to whom you spoke, made up the movers and shakers of Harlem, so I didn’t expect to come away with any information about Thea. But I needed to observe Michaels, see how he was holding up in the face of his loss. He hadn’t shown up for the funeral, and on one of the local talk shows he had seemed subdued and distracted. On television, the lines at the corners of his mouth were so deep that no amount of makeup could hide them.

  I folded the card back into the envelope. It wasn’t the meal that interested me. Dad said that the cops had moved too fast when they’d arrested Kendrick. I needed to be in the same room with Michaels again, to watch his moves up close.

  The next day, Friday, dawned gray and drizzly, and I had slept badly. Tad had called at 2 A.M. and his voice, loving and soothing, still could not soften the fact that he was being held over in Los Angeles an additional week. I listened, nodding my head as if he were sitting next to me on the bed.

  When he hung up, I clicked on WRKS-FM and sat by the window, staring out on the empty street, waiting patiently for the sounds of Billy Ocean to dissolve the numb feeling that had inched its way into my stomach. I gave up at 4:30 and stepped into the shower.

  An hour later, a cup of Dad’s Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee made me feel more human, better able to open my mouth without howling. I picked up Ruffin’s leash, and we stepped out into the deserted street.

  The dawn spreading over the street by inches dissolved some of the mist but patches of gray remained. We strolled down 135th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues where the tinge of pale, early sunlight delineated the row of star-shaped plaques embedded in the pavement—testaments to folks who had impacted the lives and culture of African-Americans: Malcolm X; Tito Puente; Percy Sutton. The bronze-edged stars continued for half a block: David Dinkins, Lois Alexander, Hope Stevens, Arturo Schomburg, Ella Fitzgerald.

  Alvin had made a point of going to the Research Center to write a bio on each of these people.

  In the quiet, the pad of Ruffin’s paws tipped lightly as we retraced our steps and strolled past St. Mark’s Church on Edgecombe Avenue. The sun was up now and splashing orange against the stained-glass windows. I thought about Kendrick’s nightmares. And Bertha remembering not only the howling but the ordinary barking. How near had Flyin’ Home been to the alley?

  Back on Eighth Avenue and a few blocks south, I walked through a small scattering of street people. Some of the homeless—men, women, and children together in a tight phalanx—moved slowly, steering broken shopping carts crammed with the pitiful detritus of their shattered lives. Some others, wiry young men, moved faster than most nine-to-fivers and I recognized the nervous tic, the need to connect with the next hit. Their eyes, old and fever-bright, scanned me and slid away at the sight of Ruffin.

  At 133rd Street I heard the whine of wheels before Flyin’ Home turned the corner onto Eighth Avenue. A click sound through his teeth halted the dogs. They seemed more polite this time and sat without a bark. I reined in Ruffin anyway.

  “How you doin’, Mali? You out early again.”

  “Ruffin needs his exercise and so do I,” I said. “How’re you doing?”

  He brought his hand up and tipped his c
ap forward, shading his eyes. Sweat had already stained the T-shirt under his powerful arms. “I’m a finish my business and head right back to the crib. Things ain’t too cool ’round here lately.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like at the Half-Moon, that’s what.”

  “That’s what I wanted to ask you about, Flyin’. I need to know if—”

  He jerked his head back as if I’d slapped him. Then he pulled his chair back. “Naw, Mali. I don’t know nuthin’. I don’t know shit this time.”

  I heard the sharp snap sound of his teeth and once again he was gone before I could ask what in the world he meant.

  When I walked in, Dad was at the table with a cup of coffee, thumbing through the Daily Challenge.

  “Heard the news?”

  “No. What happened?”

  “Look at this,” he said, pushing the paper toward me. “Damn joint still jinxed.”

  I looked at the headline, then sat down quickly to read.

  Bad luck, like a bolt of lightning, struck again as death visited the Half-Moon for the second time. Henderson Laws, the fifty-eight-year-old owner and manager of the popular watering hole, was murdered last night, a little more than one week after his barmaid, Thea Morris, a former New York State beauty finalist, was fatally shot. Laws was discovered at 5 A.M. when the night porter arrived to clean the premises. The body, with a dozen stab wounds to the neck and back, was found lying facedown on the floor of his rear office. No money had been taken. There were no signs of forced entry, but police believe Laws had interrupted a robbery and the thief panicked, fleeing empty-handed after the killing. The weapon was not recovered.

  So this was what Flyin’ Home had meant.

  I looked at Dad sipping his coffee and before I could frame the question he put his cup down and said, “Well, they can’t pin that one on Kendrick, can they?”

  I moved from the table, taking the paper with me. A robbery. And so many wounds, most of them in the back. Why was he at the bar at that late hour? No sign of forced entry. It had to be someone he knew.

  Bertha had a full house when I walked into the shop. It was noon, time enough for this latest news to have circulated as far as it needed to go.

  A thin teenager with smooth copper skin was in the chair having a finger wave, and another, older girl of about twenty or so sat under the dryer. Next to her, a heavy-set vanilla-faced woman of about thirty sat sipping coffee and thumbing through a back issue of Black Hair. I could have told her to put the magazine away because in the end Bert would decide what was best and change the woman’s mind in less time than it took to pop the cap on a bottle of Dark and Lovely.

  Bert looked up when I walked in. “Well, I see that lyin’ ass got what was comin’. Bodies fallin’ like flies, but they can’t blame it on Kendrick this time. Need to be careful what we do ’cause shit got a way of rollin’ back.”

  I let that go for the moment and made my way to the coffee-maker. I returned with a steaming cup and took a seat next to the woman with the magazine. The younger girl on the other side appeared to be dozing despite the noise from the dryer.

  Bert said no more and I sipped the coffee and looked around the small shop. The TV was not on and the hum of the hair dryer was almost pleasant.

  As often as I came here, I was still fascinated by the pictures of the assorted hairstyles Bert had pasted on the walls. Faces young and pretty enough to pass muster even if they were bald, but there they were, smiling from the circular cutouts, with hair blond, strawberry, auburn, and black; streaked, straightened, slicked, puffed, curled, crunched, waved, permed, relaxed, leisured, woven, wigged, glued, bleached, and braided. Smiling a promise of a better image that naturally translated into a vision of a better job, better man, and endless nights of knockout sex—though I wondered how much sex could be on the menu without disturbing the elaborate waves and curls framing some of the faces.

  But hope, being what it is, brought them through the door to settle themselves in the chair and point to a picture and declare, “That’s me.”

  Sometimes Bert suggested an alternative. Sometimes she didn’t and nodded and smiled and went on with the alternative anyway. So skillfully, in fact, that in the end, the satisfied sister doubled the tip.

  For a while—a short while—Bert had had Thea’s picture pasted among the cutouts. But after Thea and Kendrick split up, Bert had removed it without a word.

  I watched her hands now, moving over her customer’s head, shaping each wave.

  “What goes around, comes around,” she said.

  The woman sitting next to me closed the Black Hair magazine and said, “They shoulda named that place the Bad-Luck Bar for all the strange shit that went down in there … I’m talkin’ grimy stuff!”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  She shrugged and looked at me as though I were a visitor from out of town. “That used to be my chill spot once upon a time, but like I said, some funny stuff was happenin’ …”

  “Like what?” I asked again.

  She raised her cup to her mouth, trying to make up her mind whether I was friend or foe. Bert said nothing and continued to style the girl’s hair. The hum of the dryer competed with the drone of the air conditioner over the door. Outside, a jeep with stadium-size speakers pulled up to the traffic light. A sonic boom passed through the shop and the coffee cup vibrated in my hand. The light changed, the jeep’s presence faded, and the electronic drones dominated again.

  Finally, the woman yawned, and the chance to be the first with the news got the better of her. She leaned forward and her voice, like an invisible hand, drew us into an imperceptible circle.

  “Everybody knows that place, but not everybody knows how Henderson Laws is. Was. I had a cousin we used to call Wild Thing. Young boy, pretty, and lived down to his name. Ended up HIV and went out on the A-train three months ago.

  “Last summer, he spotted me in the Moon and pulled my coat. Said, ‘Girlfriend, ain’t no need chillin’ here. If you ain’t got no lollipop need workin’, you wastin’ your good time …’

  “And you know, for the longest rime I hadn’t been able to figure why I couldn’t get not one a those brothers to say hello, let alone buy me a glass of water. But once Wild Thing hipped me to the program, I peeped what was goin’ down. I mean it wasn’t exactly an out-’n’-out scene, you know what I’m sayin’. There was a lotta other folks droppin’ in, but Laws kinda set the tone, you know … so I stopped hangin’, ’cause I couldn’t see past them undercover lovers he had strollin’ in.…”

  I looked at Bertha in the mirror, watched her bland expression as she continued to frame the face of the young woman in the chair. She glanced up and saw me watching, but her expression did not change and her hands did not stop moving. So far, she had not said a word.

  “My cousin was part of that stroll,” the woman continued, rolling up the magazine and tapping her palm. “And I know for a fact that a lot more gonna come out before all is said and done. I mean, talk had it that Laws was workin’ it when he went.”

  “Who said?”

  “Street said.” She smiled, putting the magazine down and picking up the coffee cup again. It had to be cold by now but she sipped anyway, mostly for effect, I thought. “Street said,” she repeated.

  It was like the end of debating a point in religion or politics when someone declares, “The Bible said,” or “The Constitution said.” In some circles, “Street said” carried the same weight.

  When no one broke the silence, I finally spoke: “I heard Laws was married.”

  She rolled her eyes as if that were the joke of the year: “Coupla times. Had an assembly line, three of which he managed to lend his name to at one time or other. But everybody knows he was pullin’ shade.”

  “He was frontin’?”

  “Frontin’ and backin’ and everything else, and as an extra bonus he was knockin’ his star barmaid …”

  “Thea?”

  “That’s the one. But through it all, he loved
that other stuff too. Seem like he couldn’t pass up nothin’ with a hole in it. Too bad he didn’t stick to doughnuts.”

  At the mention of Thea’s name, Bert’s hand froze, then a second later resumed combing the girl’s hair.

  “Looks is deceivin’,” Bert said quietly. “Looks is damn sure deceivin’.”

  I had expected her to say more, but instead she snatched a towel and wiped the sweat from her palms. Then she adjusted the plastic cape on the girl’s shoulders and motioned her toward the other hair dryer. The magazine woman took her place in the chair and pointed to a picture on the wall.

  “That’s what I want,” she said.

  I saw Bert’s expression. “Let’s get your hair washed.” She smiled. “Then after the conditioner is in for a few minutes, we can look and see what’s what …”

  Which meant that an alternative was already in the works. She positioned the woman’s head over the basin and turned on the faucet. I heard her voice above the spray.

  “So you say Laws was that busy. And even with Thea. I never woulda guessed it. Not in a million years. Used to drop by there once in while myself, you know.”

  I did not look at Bert but knew that a whole detailed history that Bert would share with me later would be extracted from the woman before the shampoo was rinsed out. I drained my cup and headed for the door.

  Traffic had picked up and Eighth Avenue was clogged. The exhaust mingled with the heat radiating from the pavement, and standing under the shop’s wide awning did not help. Five minutes later, I was still standing there when the door opened again and Bert stepped out to stand beside me.

  “I got a conditioner on her now. Good for a few more minutes of gossip.”

  I nodded and said nothing. Finally, she said, “This heat gonna kill somebody.” She watched the cars and continued. “Lotta old people who don’t have no air-conditionin’.”

  I still waited.

  Then: “Who you think did Laws in?”

  “I have no idea,” I said, looking at her.