"A Murder in Harlem"

by G Miki Hayden

“And if we happen to find the killer some other way, these fingerprints might actually do us some good.” Fingerprints were a wonderful thing, but they only worked if the perpetrator’s prints were already on file. The same might be said for that modern miracle of DNA.

  “Should we go home tonight and try again tomorrow?” proposed Sheldon in hopeful tones.

  Russo shrugged. “You go,” he said. He had begun to prepare the murder book. He didn’t feel right arriving home on time the day they were assigned a new homicide. Something about that didn’t seem respectful to the vic.

  Sheldon made a face, acknowledging Russo’s unspoken point. He sat and leaned back in a chair, demonstrating, Russo supposed, his willingness to go the nine yards required.

  In the bedroom, Miriam found the red-eyed girl lying on the bed and sniffling into a thick wad of toilet paper. Tight-jawed, the senior wife sat down on the mattress next to the junior. “All right,” she said, “you might as well tell me everything. I’m going to find out sooner or later.” Her heartbeat quickened against her will. She must admit to herself a fear of the unthinkable—that the girl had actually killed the man. In which case, what was Miriam to do? Turn Nana in and get rid of her, while all their family secrets came out in court, and maybe she and Kofi were thrown into jail as well? Not that he didn’t deserve it for how he’d behaved…

  Nana sat up and propped her head against the wall. “Thank you, Mama, for lying to the police. I do speak English, you know.”

  “Naturally, you speak English,” Miriam said. “So does our husband. But not as well as I, of course.” Everyone in Ghana spoke some degree of English, the official language. That was obvious, but the police wouldn’t know.

  “I was in his room when he got killed.” They both spoke Twi for such an intimate conversation.

  “Yes, I know,” said Miriam, as if she had been certain from the first. And maybe she had been.

  “I was… beneath him on the bed…” Nana’s eyes flickered hesitantly over her older co-wife, as if evaluating Miriam’s ability to deal with this news.

  “Yes, yes,” agreed Miriam briskly, even though actually hearing what she suspected was a bit painful. The morality of her household had been breached. She tried to understand just why she cared.

  “And the woman came in and was angry,” said Nana. “Very angry.”

  “Yes,” said Miriam. With the sudden knowledge that neither her husband nor the girl had actually killed the man downstairs, a great gasp of relief escaped her lips. She was glad.

  “She had a knife and she stabbed him twice, very fast,” Nana went on. “I shoved him away before the blood could get on me and jumped up.” Her face wrinkled in disgust. “Then the woman and I just stood there and looked at him. That was all. She went away and I came upstairs. You were in the kitchen weaving your crafts.”

  “You didn’t check to see if he was still alive? You didn’t call the emergency number?” Miriam was amazed at the girl’s simple-minded actions.

  “No, Mama. I haven’t been told anything about that. And I didn’t want to get in trouble. I didn’t do anything wrong. Our husband is old. He can’t do his job in bed anymore. It’s only natural I should find a man who can. I’m too young to be buried alive in a country with many fine men.” The girl’s eyes lit up at the thought.

  So? Kofi wasn’t acting the male goat with his new wife? That was of some mild interest to Miriam, she supposed, and made her feel perhaps more content. Maybe they could look on this foolish girl they had in their home as a daughter.

  “Do you know the woman who stabbed the man and killed him?”

  “Yes, I know her. I know where she lives across the square,” said Nana, much to Miriam’s surprise. “I watched him go in with her one day.”

  Telling Kofi the dinner would be delayed, though he might go ahead and eat alone, Miriam put on her coat and ushered Nana out so they could locate and confront the woman who had killed the downstairs man.

  “But, Mama, why can’t we leave well enough alone?” asked Nana plaintively.

  “The police are very smart. They will find out quickly what happened there and come and arrest you.”

  “Arrest me,” squeaked Nana in indignation.

  “Yes. They are smart but not entirely smart. They are men and have their own way of seeing the world. I will handle this—don’t worry.” She didn’t know quite how she would deal with this yet, but something was sure to come to her on the way. “Now don’t say a word. Let me do the talking. You just listen.”

  But as they crossed over to 124th Street and walked toward Madison, Miriam couldn’t think of a single thing she might say to the woman who had killed the man. And she wasn’t entirely certain that leaving “well enough alone” wouldn’t be the very best approach, after all.

  “This is the place.” Nana pointed out an old building with steps up to the first floor. How would they know which apartment the woman lived in though? Miriam hesitated, but Nana led her down a few steps toward the door below the street. “She lives in the basement.” Now Nana was the one to falter. She licked her lips. “Maybe we could…”

  But Miriam had an insistent habit of following situations to their logical conclusion, so she grabbed Nana’s hand and urged her all the way to the lower level. Once at the door, Miriam rang the bell. Her heart thudded, and she wasn’t able to plan how to manage the discussion.

  The eyes of the woman who came to the door were as red-rimmed as Nana’s had been earlier. Yes, she had quite obviously been crying.

  Seeing Nana and Miriam, she nodded in acknowledgement and motioned them in. “Come and sit in the living room,” she whispered. At first Miriam thought her voice was hoarse from a day of loud sobbing, but when they went into the room ahead, Miriam saw a small boy sleeping on the sofa and understood the quiet tones. The woman indicated her visitors should sit and sat herself, turning a weary face to them.

  At the sight of the child, Miriam’s heart slowed to a flutter as if the blood her organ pushed through was a warm flow of honey. Her unformed intentions suddenly formed; she knew where she wanted to go with this.

  Russo and Sheldon had just about decided to hang it up for the night when the desk sergeant told them that three women were here for them in the Adam James’ case. “Three women?” Russo repeated. He was puzzled.

  He recognized two of the woman who came upstairs—the mother and daughter—but he didn’t know the third. He turned to see Sheldon’s reaction and noticed his partner’s eyes were popping out of his head like a cartoon character’s. Okay, Russo supposed the daughter was something else—well built, you might say.

  The detectives’ space at night was pretty quiet, so they got the ladies seated beside their desks. Then, instinctively, all of them looked at the older black woman, though Russo wondered why he, too, waited for her to take charge of the meeting.

  “This woman!” The older woman pointed at the pretty black female Russo hadn’t seen before. “She saved my daughter from being murdered. That terrible man downstairs took my innocent daughter into his house. She screamed and screamed.”

  The woman spoke emphatically as if imprinting the story on all their minds. And could this be true? Both of the younger women nodded for emphasis. Russo felt his head begin to whirl. One of the two, or both, had killed their vic—and for a reason unknown, but probably a good one.

  The older woman looked at him expectantly and Russo nodded. In the meantime, the innocent daughter had her brights on high and was beaming them at Sheldon who seemed to be sucking up the attention as if it were a milkshake.

  “He raped her!” the older woman exclaimed in horrified outrage. “And this woman came in and saved my daughter. He would surely have killed her after raping her, don’t you think?”

  Russo could feel the force of the woman’s personality willing him to accept what she was handing out, hook, line, and sinker. And he knew his easy acceptance of the story was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. One of the young women had killed Adam James, w
ho maybe had raped the girl—who knew… and then the three, for some reason that suited them each, had concocted this ridiculous story. He had heard better, lots better, many times. But he’d heard it from hardened criminals he wanted to see trapped in tiny cells in Sing Sing for the rest of their lives.

  “ Yes, he might have killed her. You never know!” Russo answered gamely. He glanced once again at Sheldon, who was looking all concerned over the savaging of the innocent daughter. Or was Russo too cynical? Maybe that was exactly what had happened, but who would find out without intensively grilling the three for several hours? Russo instinctively looked at his watch. “That’s terrible,” he added.

  “You’re so brave.” Sheldon seemed to be talking to the innocent daughter, though the other woman was the one who—allegedly—had wielded the knife.

  The daughter smiled and Russo recalled that she didn’t speak English. But she must have a loud and very convincing scream.

  The older woman was looking at Russo, her eyes searching his, weighing, weighing, weighing his reaction. He pulled out his notebook and a pen. “Let me get your names and addresses,” he said. “Then we’ll record a statement from each of you.”

  The women were gone and Russo all at once had a nightmare, galloping migraine. He never got headaches. “Well?” he finally asked Sheldon. “What do you think?”

  Sheldon looked up at the ceiling as if to heaven. “We closed a case?” he asked. “We’ll turn it over to the D.A. with a recommendation to let it alone? A good day’s work?” He shrugged.

  Russo twisted his mouth in a way that showed exactly what he thought of the answer. “Murder,” he mused. “Murder is not a good thing.”

  “Right,” agreed Sheldon. “And neither is the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for three clueless black women.”

  “Not much we can actually prove,” Russo suggested.

  “Could turn one of them,” said Sheldon. “The American one—Francine.”

  “Yeah, and she’s the one who stabbed the guy…supposedly.”

  Tonight Russo felt like a lousy cop, but he was beat and he badly wanted to go home. He wasn’t sure anyway that what they were doing was altogether wrong. The older woman seemed convinced that this was the proper approach to the situation, and she had a special way about her.

  Over and over again, driving across the 59th Street Bridge, Russo asked himself: But just what can we prove?

  “So that’s it,” Nana said happily as Miriam and she neared their own building, having dropped Francine off at hers. “That ended up pretty well, thanks to you, Mama.”

  “Except for the man who was stabbed to death last night. Yes, well.”

  Nana turned to address Miriam, causing both of them to halt in front of their stoop. “He shouldn’t have cheated on her,” Nana said in all seriousness. She shook her head gravely. “That was wrong.”

  “Not wrong enough to warrant being killed,” Miriam answered. “And one more thing...”

  “Yes, Mama, yes.” The girl seemed eager to make amends for whatever she’d done, though Miriam could see she didn’t feel she’d done anything that wasn’t quite justifiable.

  “You left the man on the floor to die. Just like that.” That was the part Miriam found inexcusable in a woman she shared her home—and husband—with.

  “Oh, Mama, he was dead almost immediately. That knife made a terrible mess of him. His eyes went blank only a second later.” The girl bowed her head as if in repentance.

  “And if he hadn’t been dead right away?” Miriam asked.

  “I would have come upstairs to find you, Mama. You would have known just what to do. I’m a know-nothing girl, but you can fix everything. Just like you fixed it all tonight.”

  The girl was trying to flatter Miriam, and Miriam knew it, or maybe the child was sincere. But what difference did either possibility make? One must not take compliments to heart lest one become a bigger fool than the person doing the praising.

  They went inside. Miriam wondered whether Kofi had eaten his dinner. She herself was surprisingly hungry.