“That’s right,” added the one in pink, on the aisle.
The uninspired minister went on, seemingly preaching from cue cards, stacking passages from Scripture without explication, without direct reference to the life of the deceased. I made another quiet wager: This man never knew Aubrey Brown, and he and the three sisters were hired for this morning’s event.
“He that believeth in the Son hath everlasting life.”
“Tell it.”
The two men looked at each other, barely containing their bemusement. They realized they were in a fixed game. They had expected to participate, and now they were as much mere spectators as I was.
“Oh, you know the Lord works in strange ways.”
Now Shirley Tuper began to tilt, and her head, matted hair in disarray, landed on the shoulder of the man to her left. He pushed her off with a gentle nudge, and she snapped alert, recoiled, and nodded off again.
Meanwhile, the sermon continued to degenerate, as a string of rank clichés replaced the litany of Scriptural references.
“And, as you know, my brothers and sisters, life is short.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a figure quickly pass the back entrance; and then he returned, and stuck his head in the room: a teenager, about 14, 15 years old, his hair up top in tassel-like dreadlocks above shaved sides, skin the color of copper; in profile, his features seemed almost fragile, almost feminine. He wore a black down coat, too much for the mild October morning, baggy jeans, stylish black high-top basketball shoes; he kneaded a red stocking cap in his small hands. He shifted uncomfortably.
He turned and looked directly at me; now I could see the right side of his face. He had a mean scar that ran from the corner of his right eye and hooked to just below his lips, and he scowled at me with an intensity that was anything but fragile. Without a word, he spun and left.
I inched my way out into the corridor. At the end of the narrow hall, the door swung shut. I went to the door and looked out onto Malcolm X Boulevard, into the parade of people passing on the busy street, heading to the Peter Pan Diner on the corner, to the Lenox Cleaners next door, suits, skirts and shirts tucked under their arms, or toward Wilson’s Optometry up the block. But I couldn’t spot the boy: He’d either gone north and dashed into Harlem Hospital, or crossed the wide boulevard and torn down the entrance to the 2 and 3 subway lines. In less than 20 seconds, he had vanished.
“Can I help you?”
I turned to find a man about my age. Short, stocky, he wore a crisp blue suit with a vest, a conservative club tie and a white button-down shirt. His hair was cropped close to his head, perhaps to conceal an expanding bald spot, and his brown eyes, which matched the tone of his skin, were cold with suspicion behind glasses.
“I saw a boy, a teenager,” I said. “He seems to have disappeared.”
“I saw no one.” He removed his glasses and wiped them carefully with a small chamois cloth. “And you say he was in here?”
“I was in the Brown service and he looked in.” I ran my finger along the side of my face. “A nasty scar on his cheek.”
He returned the cloth to his side pocket. By way of introduction, he said, “Lionel Henderson.” He didn’t offer his hand.
I withdrew my wallet and gave him a business card.
He frowned. “There’s nothing for you here, Mr. Orr.”
“Meaning?”
“Aubrey Brown. He has no family. There’s no money for private investigators.”
“I don’t look for business in funeral parlors,” I said.
“So you knew Mr. Brown.”
“I found the body.”
Henderson remained skeptical. “And then you attend the service?”
If he wanted to intimidate me, he was heading the wrong way. “I do what I want, Mr. Henderson. I go where I go.”
“Apparently.”
“I sense you’ve got a problem with that.”
“Aubrey Brown deserves a little peace. I thought we’d have to accommodate a reporter or two, and we didn’t want that either.”
“A businessman who doesn’t like publicity?” I thought of Bella’s quip about a press agent. “No, I guess—”
“We don’t need publicity, Mr. Orr. There’s no shortage of business for us here. Old women and young men. Or a young woman on the pipe, like Shirley Tuper. A sad, steady flow.”
As I considered his remarks, it occurred to me that Henderson was protecting Aubrey Brown, giving him a friend he may not have known he had. I decided to pull back: He was right to question why I was in his funeral parlor. He couldn’t know of my agenda, nor would he, unless he asked around and his questions found their way to the Midtown Precinct.
“He was alone,” I offered. “I had this image of him by himself at the end.” That was true: Brown’s tale could chisel a heart gone to stone.
Henderson nodded. “We take care of our own. But I appreciate your intentions.” He stepped back and gestured toward the broad vestibule. “Let me tell you what I know about Aubrey Brown.”
He opened the door and I followed him to his office, a small, neat suite with a mahogany desk, two hardwood chairs and a large oil portrait of a middle-aged man in a starched collar and wire-framed glasses who seemed to cast a wary eye on me.
“Is that your father?” I asked.
“My grandfather,” he replied, as he switched on a desk lamp. “He founded this business in 1926. He’s the original Henderson and my father is the original son. We never felt a need to change the name.”
On the credenza behind his high-backed chair, Henderson had framed photos of his children and wife. Two of the three girls bore a strong resemblance to their father, while the boy, who was the oldest, looked very much like his mother.
I said, “Maybe you’ll be calling it Henderson & Daughters.”
He smiled and shook his head. “Mr. Orr, I did my undergraduate work at Columbia and intended to go to Columbia Law School. Then my grandfather died. I’ve told my father that he has to live until all four of my kids are well into their own practices.”
A row of old khaki-colored file cabinets lined the papered wall to my left. I imagined contracts and standard forms, requisite carbons and photocopies, dates and names, countless links that together told the story of Harlem from the early teens of the last century to today, through the Harlem Renaissance, from the times of W. E. B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey through the decline brought on by the Great Depression, through Adam Clayton Powell and Malcolm X and the dichotomy of today: the thriving businesses all along 125th Street viewed against the abandoned brownstones that dotted the side streets off Frederick Douglass Boulevard; the beauty of Central Park at 110th and entire blocks of burnt-out and ransacked buildings, now drug dens whose occupants entertained the white middle-class from the other side of the G.W. Bridge in their Volvos with car seats for their infants in back; and the majestic stone spire of the Ephesus Church and the sunlight on Manhattan Avenue and the smiles on the faces of Lionel Henderson’s four children and the anger in the glare of the boy who had just disappeared.
“What about Aubrey Brown?” I asked.
“You needed to know his mother. Augusta Brown. In some ways, this is her day.” He leaned on his elbows, which he placed on the blotter at the center of his desk. “Augusta Brown arranged this more than ten years ago, when she was closing in on ninety.”
“She prepaid her son’s funeral?”
“More than that,” he replied. “Reverend Ramsay and those women? They’re from the Good Shepherd. Augusta arranged that as well. She knew Aubrey would fade away after she died. She knew he’d be lost without her.”
“Yes, but he didn’t fade away,” I said. “He was killed.”
“That’s how he died. But he was gone before that.” He removed his glasses and put them on the desktop, near the black multi-line phone, a pair of scissors and a letter opener. “My father knew Aubrey when he was young, and he knew Ruby.”
“His wife.”
“Ac
cording to my father, Aubrey was a quiet man, an industrious type, but when Ruby passed, that was it. He went back to living with Augusta, and he more or less shriveled up.”
“Christ.”
“He blamed himself, but Ruby caught a bad flu, and it turned to pneumonia and she died.” He shrugged. “It happens, but you can’t tell that to a man. It’s important that they come to terms with it by themselves, in time.”
“But Aubrey Brown never did.”
“Not according to my father.”
“And what about his job? Some men see some sort of romance in hacking all night.”
“Not a man like Aubrey,” he said quickly. “He would never think like that. He took whatever he could get. Not because he was pragmatic. He was sickly.”
“Emphysema.”
“He was generally weak. As I said, he shriveled up. But he had his mother. Until she died as well.”
“And what about the men in there?” I gestured toward the wall behind Henderson, as if we could see into the room that held Brown’s body. “Were they his friends?”
“They worked with him, but I wouldn’t call them friends.” He sat back. “I can recognize it when it’s obligation that brings them in. But I don’t judge those men too harshly. Just the opposite. Most nights, a livery cab on a gypsy run is the only one who’ll come up here.”
I saw Henderson look over my shoulder and, when I turned, I saw a thin, older man in a dark overcoat and fedora. He slipped his long fingers into white gloves.
“Mr. Henderson, we’re ready for you.”
“Thank you, Lee.” Henderson stood. He said to me, “It’s time to go up to the cemetery.”
I thanked him for his time and insight. We shook hands.
“I should apologize for my suspicions,” he said.
I waved him off. “You’re right to protect your clients from people with business cards.”
He came around the desk. “Are you going to look into Aubrey’s death?”
I nodded. “Something there is about a lonely man…”
“Perhaps I can contribute. I can ask around.”
“A robbery gone bad. A lot of hacks get killed in this city and I understand that’s the main reason.” I shrugged. “Maybe the cops will catch a break.”
“Maybe.” He sounded disappointed. “Maybe not.”
“No, probably not,” I agreed, as he went for his black topcoat hung behind the door.
THREE
I reached Little West 12th before noon, but not before Luther Addison, who was sitting in his big, black city-issued car, staring, it seemed, at the river, at the jagged cliffs on the Jersey side.
I tapped on the passenger’s-side window. He reached over and popped open the door.
“We’ll sit,” he offered.
I shook my head. “Let’s look around.” I pushed the door until it shut.
Addison pulled himself out of the car. He was a lightskinned black man with freckles sprinkled across the bridge of his nose, his eyes a pale green. A big man, Luther Addison was broad-shouldered and fit, but with the beginnings of a belt overhang. He wore his customary black suit, white shirt and thin black tie; I guess I’ve seen him at least 100 times since he drew Marina and Davy’s case, and I’ve never seen him without the black suit, white shirt and thin black tie. Early on, before it went the way it went, he took me to New Jersey to see Duncan against the Nets: black suit and tie, white shirt. I imagined it was some sort of symbol that he was always on duty, ever the vigilant cop. There are people who do things like that: Live with symbols instead of what’s real.
He came around the back of the car and we shook hands. “What do you know?” he asked.
“Tsumeb can’t handle agricultural goods. Only minerals, like vanadium, copper and zinc. No refrigeration. Be a good fuckin’ idea to put a freezer in Namibia.”
“Man walks from 135th and Lenox to Little West 12th and the river and all he can talk about is southern Africa.”
He put his hand on the small of my back and nudged me toward Little West 12th.
“Hard to believe nobody saw it,” I said as we crossed the cobblestone street. Before us, the Gansevoort Market was alive with workers in white smocks and thick blood-smeared gloves pushing sides of beef into refrigerated delivery trucks. Perhaps 50 men and a few women were on the stone docks, using fat black hoses to clear viscera. They wore hooks on their shoulders, and heavy rubber boots, and for all the grunting and shouting, they seemed engaged in their work, as trucks lined up to deliver meat throughout the tri-state area or haul the unusable parts of the carcasses through the Lincoln Tunnel to the New Jersey soap factories.
On a weekend night, though, this was a dark, menacing place, as the long, brawny warehouses shut down and amber streetlights cast a meager glow, providing a sordid spotlight for the male, female and transvestite hookers who worked the dark, brick-lined alleys and the crannies beneath the dilapidated piers.
I pointed east, away from the river’s black water. “And you’ve got nightlife over there.”
Funky restaurants and all-night dance clubs had popped up near the old haunts like Hector’s Place and Dizzy Izzy’s, bringing taxis and limos and new cars into the area. Majestic old buildings had been converted to a series of 25,000-square-foot lofts for the upscale, and now there were florists and coffee bars, and movie stars queuing up outside a joint called Hogs & Heifers, the first in a franchise. It was as if the West Village was spreading east, or Chelsea sliding south. The meatpacking district—some were calling it the West Coast, perhaps dreaming that the Pacific, and not the Hudson, splashed against the barnacled stanchions and limestone—might very well become the new SoHo, the new TriBeCa, and that would be a far cry from a decade ago, when S&M clubs were two to a block, when more than 100 meat-related businesses operated in century-old warehouses.
“I haven’t heard anyone say no one saw it,” Addison replied. “We just haven’t found him yet.”
“Happened like that,” I said, snapping my fingers. “Guy slams Brown’s head against the steering wheel, breaking his nose. Picks up the Club, finishes the job. Ten seconds.”
“We got four men in the neighborhood, day and night,” he said sharply. “We’ll turn up something.”
We kept walking toward the spot where I came across Brown’s body. A red Corvette heading south squealed as it came to a stop under a traffic light.
“You went uptown for a reason,” he said.
“I went to the service.”
“Why’d you do that? Wait—” He held up a hand. “You read the Times. You felt sorry for him.”
He wasn’t wrong, but there was a way to go before he’d be right. “You don’t?”
“I don’t feel for the victim. I feel for the survivors.” That, I had to admit, was true: Addison was a man of boundless sympathy and understanding. Which was why I called him.
But I’ve learned that sympathy and understanding mean shit when the job hasn’t been done.
We came upon the spot. Addison looked up as a truck backed away from a loading dock, its horn sounding odd, sour.
The wind off the Hudson was so mild it was meek. “How’s Gabriella?” he asked.
“Great. Brilliant. A noodge.”
He smiled. “You taking good care of her?”
“When she’s not taking care of me.”
“And what about you?”
“I get by.”
“You look good,” he said.
“Yeah, I’m all right.” I looked north along West Street, at the stream of cars flowing from uptown. “We done dancing?”
Calmly, he asked, “More than sympathy sent you uptown, Terry. Isn’t that right?”
“You tell me.”
“You’re going to work the case.”
“And?”
He shook his head. “It can’t be that way. My guys need no help.”
“We’ll see.”
“The problem, Terry, is I haven’t asked for help.” He had locked his eyes on me. “You
r turn.”
“I got nothing,” I said. “I’m going to do what I can to help Brown.”
Addison’s tried to warn me off before—he helped me get my P.I. license; apparently, he thought I was going to use it to make photocopies for Sharon and the other A.D.A.s or to snap photos of Johnny cheating on Mary—but he had to know that sooner or later I’d be in his territory. If he’d thought about it, he’d have realized there could be no other reason I’d consider going P.I., even if it wasn’t clear to me at the start. He’s smart enough to know that if I’m going to make good, I’ve got to learn how and learn it live.
A city bus wheezed toward us, then passed and caught the light at the corner. I pointed at it. “The red light. Maybe when the guy who whacked Brown could’ve been seen by somebody waiting for the green light. When the dome—”
“Terry.” He turned back to me. “What is it? You identify with this guy? Brown’s out there, lost because his wife is gone, drifting. Dangerous job, putting himself at risk.”
“Luther, I’ve already got a shrink. All right?”
“Because you’re not like him. Not as long as your daughter is with you.”
I leaned against the fire hydrant.
“And you don’t have to learn to work it, Terry. Weisz, we’ll turn him out. I told you that.”
I shook my head. “No, Luther, you won’t. Your guys let him get away.”
To the NYPD, Raymond Montgomery Weisz is now the man who never was. “Maybe we made the wrong guy” is how it was put to me, with a diffident shrug, by a sloe-eyed desk sergeant named Tannon. I took it for what it was: an admission that they couldn’t find Weisz and they didn’t want to keep looking.
Weisz. A red-haired madman, caked with dirt, his tattered, urine-soaked pants tied together with hemp, torn sneakers flopping on his feet. Had been in Bellevue 19 times in the past four years. They knew he was living below ground. They might’ve known he would one day toss a baby’s stroller onto the tracks, and that the baby’s mother would scramble into the mire to save her son.
Weisz was one of 14 people who watched as the subway roared through the 66th Street station.
Closing Time Page 4