A Toast Before Dying

by Grace F. Edwards

  “What do you think of that story about Thea?”

  Before I could answer, she went on. “Damn! What was goin’ on in that girl’s brain? She had Kendrick’s nose open wide enough to grow a watermelon in; Michaels was actin’ like she was the last bit of booty on the planet; and she was stickin’ it to Laws, too? I mean, it’s almost like she’d fuck a cactus if the wind blew one her way.”

  I still said nothing. As wild as that scene was, I couldn’t imagine Thea being involved with Laws—not after Kendrick, who was so damn handsome you broke into a sweat just looking at him. I simply didn’t believe it.

  “Think they’ll find who put Laws out?” Bert asked, still gazing down the avenue. The sun was in her eyes and she was sweating heavily.

  chapter twelve

  Dad was practicing downstairs when I came in. I went up to my room, stepped out of my sweaty clothes, and filled the tub with rose-scented bubble bath. What I really needed was to run naked at midnight into a crashing surf and then float on my back gazing up at the stars above the St. Croix landscape.

  But that had been last summer, with Tad waiting on the beach, laughing as I waded back to him, telling me how crazy I was and how much he loved my craziness.

  I needed to feel wet sand under my feet again, rubbing the stony calluses away from my sole. Or soul. Or both.

  Right now, the man was as inaccessible as St. Croix. And there was no surf here in the city, so the warm bath and a Tina Turner CD would have to do.

  I slid into the tub and rested my head back, feeling the bubbles dissolve against my skin. I closed my eyes and naturally the phone rang, and naturally I reached for it quickly, hoping it would be Tad calling to say that he was on his way home, or better yet that he was already home and waiting for me. Dreams are like that.

  It was Teddi Lovette finally getting around to doing what she’d promised to do several days ago.

  “Mali. Sorry I couldn’t get to you before now. We’ve been rehearsing pretty hard and—”

  “Listen,” I said, cutting into her apology. “I’d like to know what’s going on. Why that thing about my joining the group? Why am I all of a sudden living in Brooklyn? What’s going on?”

  “Look, Mali. I’m sorry I had to do that to you. My mother—well, I’m having a problem with her. Or I should say, she has a problem.”

  “Let me guess. Anything to do with black folks?”

  There was a pause in which I heard the intake of breath and then a light sigh. “I can’t answer that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t answer because I don’t have an answer. Not yet, anyway.”

  “Does your mother know about Kendrick?”

  “She met him, yes.”

  “Does she know … how you feel about him?”

  “Well, I …”

  “Come on, Teddi. It’s all over your face. If I can see it, surely Mom can see it. The lady’s no fool.”

  There was another silence and I knew I had hit a nerve.

  “Well, I … Listen: this isn’t why I called you. I don’t want to discuss my feelings for Kendrick. Not now, at least. I need to know something about Thea.”

  “But Thea’s dead. She’s gone. How can she—”

  “I still need some information.” There was another pause before she said, “I’ll pay you to deliver it.”

  “Why is this so important to you?”

  “I can’t tell you that. The only thing I can say right now is that I need to know as much about her as I can.”

  “Like what?”

  “Personal stuff. History. Things like that.”

  “What do you intend to do with it?”

  “Nothing that’ll hurt her, I can promise you that.”

  “How can you hurt a dead person?”

  She didn’t answer, but said, “I can also promise you twenty thousand if you get it for me.”

  “Dollars?”

  “If that’s not enough, let me know. I know it’s going to be hard. Folks will say, ‘Let the dead bury the dead,’ but I need this.”

  “Damn.”

  “Will you do it, Mali? I hate to put a dollar amount on something like this, but it’s the only way I know to help Kendrick.”

  “Why don’t you get a private investigator?”

  “I don’t trust them. Sometimes they take your money and then go over to the other side.”

  “What other side?”

  She did not answer again, but went on as if I’d never spoken. “I trust you, though.”

  “Me? Bullshit.”

  “Whatever you say, but you played along in front of my mother, and from that I knew I could trust you.”

  “Well, that act was as far as I’m willing to go.”

  “Listen, twenty thousand is a drop in the bucket for me, and—”

  “Tell me something,” I said, cutting her off again. “What would Mrs. Lovette say when she finds out her daughter is squandering all of those dollars on a dead black barmaid?”

  “My mother—and her name is not Lovette—has nothing to do with my money, thank God. I have my own. A lot of it. And I’m not spending it on a dead black barmaid, but on a live black actor. Will you help me?”

  I thought about what twenty thousand could do. Cover my tuition, a new wardrobe, maybe get to kick sand again on that beach in St. Croix.

  “Listen,” I said, “twenty thousand is a lot for what you’re asking. I’ll see what I can do if you send a check to Elizabeth Jackson, Kendrick’s attorney, she’s—”

  Maybe it was the connection or the static or something, but I thought I heard her say, “I’ve already done that. I’m paying Kendrick’s legal fees.”

  “Shit.”

  “Mali, I believe he’s innocent. And you believe he’s innocent just as I do. There’s something in that girl’s background that’ll prove it.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like if I knew, I wouldn’t be asking you to find out. I’m counting on you.”

  The phone went dead and I slid back into the tub. All the bubbles had disappeared and I ran more hot water until I felt comfortable again. Then I reset the CD and Tina’s voice filled the room. I hummed along to the sound of “Undercover Agent for the Blues.”

  chapter thirteen

  I spent the next day, Saturday, enlarging the file I’d started the day after Kendrick had been arrested. I had amassed a fair amount of information: Thea’s obit, the pageant, the funeral program, her pregnancy. On Kendrick’s card, I noted his feelings (or lack thereof) regarding Teddi and cross-referenced her card with a check mark. Why would she want information on Thea? Would it help Kendrick or help her? I also looked at Flyin’ Home’s card again. I needed to find him. We needed to talk.

  That evening, sitting in my room with all this stuff clogging my brain didn’t help my mood. The house was empty and my footsteps echoed as I moved through the living room. Dad had a gig at the Club Harlem and I needed to be around people. Twenty minutes later, I stepped out of the shower and into the black dress he and I had fought over the day of the funeral.

  Looking in the mirror, I had to admit that the dress looked better in a midnight fog than at a high-noon function. Still, it would have to do until I got a real job or finished school. Or made up my mind to help Teddi. Twenty thousand dollars. I had visions of paying off my entire tuition bill. And seeing Dad smile when I finally received my doctorate.

  “Benin and her husband are gone. It’s you and me and Alvin now, and we gotta keep on keepin’ on.…”

  He had said this one morning when he’d come in and found me sitting on the sofa, gazing at Benin’s picture on the mantel. She had nearly completed her master’s studies in English literature. Her husband, William, had been a physician. But they’d gone on vacation and died in a hiking accident. Dad and I are raising their son. And holding on to memories.

  Dad had made no secret of his disappointment when I had detoured from social work to join the NYPD. In fact, he had been mortified. And later he could
n’t stop smiling when I’d gotten fired for hitting that cop.

  “Now perhaps you’ll do what you were meant to do.”

  So here I was, thirty-two and still facing the books. Still chasing another degree.

  The black silk high-heel pumps that killed me on the rare occasions I was foolish enough to put them on seemed to have shrunk even more. But I loved them the way a woman might love the wrong man: ignore the bad construction and end up crippled or scarred for life. I got into them, practiced five minutes of biofeedback for foot pain, and willed myself to walk to the door. Outside, I’d hail a cab before I got to the curb. In the club, I planned to sit until dawn.

  When the Club Harlem had opened the previous year, there had been great fanfare because for a while it was the only jazz supper club north of 110th Street. A few months later, placards began appearing in the windows of other restaurants up and down Seventh, Eighth, Lenox, and Fifth Avenues offering gospel breakfasts, jazz brunches, and West African high-life music with dinner.

  Even the bar around the corner, with a crowd so tough it should have kept sawdust on the floor for the blood, advertised a “live” deejay on Thursdays, prompting speculation about his condition on the other nights.

  The Club Harlem took note and quickly reduced their prices—and the size of their dinner plates—and with their fancy decor they managed to remain ahead of the game. Dad’s ensemble was a regular and his name in the window guaranteed a full house on the weekends.

  When I stepped out of the cab, I saw that the club’s double-height brass inlaid doors were still graffiti-free, the evergreens on each side still swayed in the huge terra-cotta planters, and the maître d’ still escorted patrons to the tables. The tourists had breathed more life into the area, and the weekend special prix-fixe jazz supper of broiled catfish, red rice, yams, and collard greens made the place busier than ever.

  My table was off to the side but well within the sight line of the recessed stage in the center of the sloping floor. A minute after I had eased into my seat, I spotted TooHot striding up the aisle, heading for the door. He brushed by me in the dim light. I made out his angry expression and quickly tapped his arm.

  “You all right?”

  “Shit, no. I—” He peered closer and then shook his head. “Mali. Oh, I’m sorry. ’Scuse the language …”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Plenty,” he murmured, looking around. “Mind if I join you?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he pulled up the chair opposite me, sat down, took out a handkerchief, and dabbed at his dark forehead. His light gray silk suit gave off a discreet sheen against his dark shirt and white tie. He had checked his panama at the door.

  “Mali, if I’d known I was gonna be bumped from my table ’cause a some damn tourist, I never woulda showed up tonight. No offense. You know I go for your pop’s sounds, that’s why I’m here. But this thing’s gittin’ outta hand. Everywhere you look, every corner, you trippin’ over mobs a palefaces peepin’ ’round, droolin’ at the architecture, linin’ up Sunday mornin’ to sit in our churches, crowdin’ us outta Sylvia’s and Copeland’s. We got more sightseein’ buses up here than regular buses.”

  “But their money spends, you know, just like ours.”

  “Well I ain’t sayin’ otherwise, but don’t come bustin’ in like they got a court order or somethin’. It’s like comin’ into your house and pushin’ you out your own bed.”

  I wanted to remind him that Harlem, Nieuw Haarlem as the Dutch had called it before the British snatched it from them and anglicized the name in 1664, was originally filled with Huguenots, Danes, Swedes, and Germans. The area was almost all-white until about 1910, six years after the IRT subway was completed.

  Before that, most black folks were crowded in the Tenderloin District—24th Street to 42nd Street, west of Fifth Avenue. Or we were in Hell’s Kitchen battling the Irish. But TooHot was too hot right now. He wanted his table, not a history session. He had a permanent spot here, front and center, that he’d paid for the same way wealthy folks paid for special pews in some churches. No matter how late they arrived, the space had better be there, available.

  TooHot didn’t have much of a grievance as far as I could tell. According to Dad, he was something of an outsider himself, having come to Harlem from St. Thomas in the fifties. And quicker than you could mouth the words “free enterprise,” he had decided that pushing those garment-center Cadillacs nine-to-five straight-time wasn’t his stick, and had promptly started taking the single action uptown for a Georgia boy named Pete “Walrus” Jackson.

  TooHot had been known as Willie Jackson back then—no relation to Walrus—and had resembled a six-foot stick, so they called him Wee Willie. That stuck until the day he mistakenly popped into the Rock Tavern on Eighth Avenue near 117th Street where the cops were waiting in the back booth to discuss some overdue payments. The barmaid had looked around, then yelled the famous “Shit-it’s-too-hot!” warning that sent Wee Willie in the wind.

  Days later, he had resurfaced, rechristened, and had resumed business as usual, which after a time helped him buy a florist shop, a Laundromat, three brownstones, two cars, one condo, and one police sergeant. Now he sat here, acting ugly because other foreigners had stepped to his turf.

  I raised my hand and a waiter appeared before I lowered it. “Walker black, straight up, and Absolut and orange, please.”

  The waiter disappeared and TooHot smiled. “You sound like a pro. Needed to put you behind the counter in the Half-Moon.”

  In the dim light, I didn’t know if he was smiling or frowning, so I settled for the slight lift of his shoulders.

  More people had come in and a line of standing-room-only patrons had gathered along the side walls waiting for the set to start. Their faces took on varying tints as the sconces above them flickered like candles.

  The waiter returned and TooHot said, “Put this on my tab and bring another round. I’ll be sittin’ here tonight.”

  He drank slowly, lifting the glass several times to take small sips like a chef testing a new recipe. He made no sound at all.

  I said, “Too bad about Laws … papers said it was robbery. What do you think?”

  “I think that those who know ain’t sayin’ and those who sayin’ don’t know.”

  “Come on, TooHot, what does that mean?” I gave him my brightest smile but in the semidarkness its effect was lost.

  “Just what I said,” he replied.

  “Okay.” I sighed. “It’s just that the place had such a bad-luck rep. Kendrick’s in jail. Thea’s dead. Now Laws. You’d think somebody was burning black candles in the basement and sticking pins through the walls.”

  He glanced at me quickly and I thought I saw a shade pass over his eyes. Superstition, strong enough, will motivate everyone.

  “Well,” he paused and looked around at the table nearest us. They were tourists, complete with accent, camcorder, and the ubiquitous street map folded into a manageable square near the glass of white wine. Satisfied they were not from the neighborhood, he leaned forward, his voice falling so that it was barely audible above the background hum.

  “You ask me, Henderson Laws was lookin’ for trouble.”

  “You mean with that private parade?”

  He had raised his glass, then stopped. “You know about that?”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  “Yeah, you right. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Till it’s too late. Henderson was drivin’ two ways on a one-way street. Took on all comers. I know ’cause I was in there every day.”

  “Every day?”

  “Every day. He was one a my best customers. Don’t know too many who’d lay half a yard a day each on two numbers: 252 and 148 were his favorites.”

  “Fifty dollars each? A hundred dollars a day?” I sat there, amazed, imagining what I could do with a hundred dollars a day.

  The waiter returned with the second round. I had not finished my first, but TooHot, though he drank slowly, was ahead of me and
going through the chef’s testing ritual again.

  “A yard a day ain’t much,” he said, “dependin’ on what you takin’ in. Laws didn’t feel no weight ’cause he was pullin’ a heavy dime.”

  “He ever hit?”

  “Oh, yeah. Not too often ’cause he played ’em straight. Didn’t combinate ’em like he did his other stuff.” He smiled briefly and became serious again. “Laws used to say, ‘When I hit, I want it heavy,’ and that’s what he got. Maybe three, four times in a year. Got so I had to spread his investment around with several bankers. Once or twice I rode his luck myself. You know how that goes.”

  I shrugged, never having played a number in my life. My math was so bad I could barely add up a grocery receipt. If I played a number and hit, I’d have a serious problem figuring how I did it. What would I get for betting a three-way number, or a six-way number? It was bad enough back in the day when you could play “the bolito,” a two-way number. Now you can bet a four-way.

  If I played and hit, I wouldn’t know if it paid six hundred, five hundred, or ten-to-one, and every time TooHot strolled by I’d be looking beady-eyed, thinking he had held out on me. So the best bet was to keep my dollar in my pocket and remain friends.

  “With all that money,” I said, “maybe somebody was trying to rob him. Had he hit recently?”

  “No.”

  I watched him rub his chin as if trying to decide if he should continue. Then he said, “There’s a little more to the story, though I can’t figure how it fits.”

  “What?”

  “Well, you know Henderson Laws was a jealous man.”

  “He was jealous of Thea?”

  “No. Of Kendrick.”

  “Well, if Kendrick liked Thea, I guess—”

  “No, no,” he interrupted, waving his glass in a small circle. “Laws had eyes for Kendrick. Woulda licked dog-doo from the bottom of his Nikes if Kendrick had asked him.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “But Kendrick was straight-up. He wasn’t interested. He woulda quit, been outta there long ago, but some time back Laws had talked him into borrowin’ some dollars from him. Kendrick was into some Off Broadway production group or somethin’ and needed funds. Laws, instead of becomin’ one of the backers, loaned Kendrick a couple a grand, thinkin’ he could buy him, I guess.