Too Beautiful to Die

by Glenville Lovell

  “He stole her with lies. And then ran away.”

  “You don’t know why he left.”

  “He didn’t leave,” she taunted. “He ran. Just like you’re doing now.”

  “Give it a rest, will you?”

  “Your father deserted her and Mom still thinks of him as the love of her life. I told her she can have him declared dead since she hasn’t heard from him in twenty years. She refused.”

  “My father isn’t dead.”

  “How do you know? Have you heard from him?”

  “My father isn’t dead,” I repeated.

  “Why does she think he was so special?”

  “That’s her business.”

  “Well, let me let you in on a little secret. I don’t care what Mom thinks. He was nothing special. Neither are you.”

  “I didn’t ask for special treatment, Melanie.”

  “You didn’t have to ask. Mom made sure of that.”

  “If it’s any consolation to you, Melanie, the rest of the world doesn’t care what Mom thinks either. I didn’t ask to be a walking label for integration. I didn’t ask to be your brother, but that’s our lot.”

  “And you couldn’t help the way Mom treated you. If you don’t think that had an effect on Jason, you’re a fool.”

  “Look, Melanie, I came here to wish Jason a happy birthday, not to fight with you.”

  I walked over to her and hugged her. She stood stiff as a mule in harness. I held her for a while hoping she’d yield, hug me back. But she didn’t. She smelled clean, like fresh snow. I wanted to tell her how much I missed her and wished that we, in our youth, had not bowed to the vulgarity of history in trying to destroy each other’s self-esteem. There was no doubt that Melanie hated my father. Whether she would’ve felt the same way about him if he were white I’d never know. And because I still wanted to believe there was hope for Melanie and myself, I was too afraid of what the answer might be to ask.

  Mom returned with a brown bag. Inside was a plastic Tupperware bowl.

  “Don’t open it until you get home,” she said.

  “Suppose I get hungry on the way?”

  “Well, then you pull over and eat. I don’t want you getting into any accidents.”

  “I love you, Mom.”

  She reached out and patted my arm as if to say I know, then turned and walked back to the kitchen.

  11

  HEADING INTO NEW YORK through raggedy puke-colored smog, I found the Lincoln Tunnel backed up for miles. Killing time in traffic, I dialed Walter Lahore’s number again. It continued to ring without an answer. I popped out the Nina Simone tape I was listening to and flipped the radio to WINS, a news station. The weather was on. A fire in Montreal had dumped acres of smoke over New York State, producing the hazy conditions. Then the newsman told me why it was impossible to get through the tunnel.

  There’d been a shootout at the entrance of the Lincoln when Port Authority police investigating a minor traffic accident stumbled onto Gene Kurtz, an escaped convict who’d been serving a life sentence for bombing a church in Atlanta sometime back in the late sixties. I remember reading about the case in the eighties because it took the FBI some twenty years to bring him to justice. Gene Kurtz was a former Green Beret commando and a leader of a far-right militia who’d published a book calling for Aryan resurgence and the repatriation or voluntary homelands for minorities. The case had garnered lots of media attention because it was discovered that for years the FBI had had enough evidence to arrest Mr. Kurtz and had sat on it for reasons nobody could fathom until a reporter from The New Yorker began digging into the case and discovered that Kurtz was once an FBI informant. Kurtz had escaped from a federal jail in Missouri a few months ago. In the shootout at the tunnel, one police officer was killed; Kurtz escaped.

  Realizing it would take forever to get into the Lincoln, I got off the turnpike at the first exit and headed south to the Holland. At least there traffic was moving, though at a snail’s pace. It took me an hour and a half to get into the city. As soon as I exited the Holland Tunnel, I called Detective Tim Samuel, an old friend in the 77th. About a month after Detective Pagano was sentenced, it was rumored that he’d paid somebody to whack me. Tim got wind of it and alerted me, offering to be my bodyguard. The rumor turned out to be a dud, but it was good to know I still had friends in the department.

  Tim worked days and was finishing up paperwork when I called. He had a thing for Caribbean women, and we became tight after I hooked him up with a young postal worker from Jamaica.

  “Yo, Tim! It’s Blades. Whaddup!”

  “I can’t talk to you now, Blades.”

  “Give me a hearing, cuz.”

  “I’m busy, yo.”

  “Won’t take but a minute of your precious time.”

  “Sarcasm is really gonna get me to listen to you, Blades.”

  “One minute. You can’t spare a minute?”

  “I ain’t got a minute to spare.”

  “I need a favor, Timmy. Just a little one.”

  “You got some nerve calling me asking for a favor, Blades. Heard you and Big Ron were partying in Le Bar with some Trinidadian honeys the other night. You didn’t call me then? What’s up with that?”

  “Yo, you got the script flipped, cuz.”

  “Shit, I’ll tell you who’s flipped. Go ask Big Ron for a favor.”

  “Don’t believe a word Big Ron tells you, man. You know that guy’s a freak. He wants to keep all the women his way. I was just blocking for him. I swear.”

  “I know your ass is lying, man.”

  “Word up. Wasn’t my show, babe.”

  “Big Ron says you were handling the joints.”

  “Man, you know I’m married.”

  “Fuck, that woman is ready to divorce your ass. And you know it. She probably got herself some hotshot Hollywood producer because that’s the only way she’s gonna get into a movie. We know she can’t act her way out of a kitchen.”

  “You’re cracking me up, man.”

  “Yeah, you must be on crack. Thinking I’d do anything for you after you gave Big Ron all the suction.”

  “I really need your help, kid.”

  “It’s gonna cost you, man.”

  “You got it, babe. Anything. Anytime.”

  “Make it quick. I got me some Jamaican punany to stir up tonight, and I don’t want to be late.”

  “Whatever you do, don’t try to eat that pussy.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Jamaican women don’t like that stuff.” I was having trouble holding back my laughter.

  “I ain’t even trying to hear that.”

  “Word, man. Trust me. I’m married to a Jamaican woman.”

  “I’ve met your wife, remember? She ain’t got no Jamaican accent. She from down south. Besides, all women like that shit. Not that I would ever do it, but I seen that on Oprah. Women go crazy for that shit. All women. Jamaican or not.”

  “Not Jamaican women. They prefer to ride the dick all night, so you better pop a V-pill before you bounce.”

  “Man, what the hell you want?”

  “I want you to pull the jacket on Walter Lahore. I need his address.”

  He hesitated. “Why the hell you looking for that loser?”

  “Just do it, Tim.”

  “You don’t need no address for Walter. You need a . . . what do you call those people? A medium.”

  “A medium?”

  “Walter has taken up residence in the morgue.”

  “When’d that happen?”

  “He checked in this afternoon around six. Paid in full with a thirty-eight through his temple.”

  “Do you know who did it?”

  “Could be anybody. That piece of dog meat was always hustling somebody.”

  “Who’s working the case?”

  “Jerry Potts and Jack Forrest.”

  “Are they still there?”

  “Try Houlihan’s. I don’t think you’ll get far with those two, though. T
ell me something, why you looking for that guy?”

  “He left a message on my machine.”

  “Saying what?”

  “Nothing important. Thanks, Tim. Enjoy your Jamaican punany. And don’t say I didn’t warn you if you try to eat the pussy and get hurt.”

  “Fuck you, man.”

  I heard the click and released the cloud of laughter I’d been riding ever since I started messing with his head.

  LIKE EXTRAS IN a Wes Craven movie, the crackheads bebopped and shimmied outside the methadone clinic on Flatbush Avenue, which stayed open until midnight. The ghoulish silhouettes of their animated bodies prancing as if delighted by some rhythm far removed from the real world made me think of puppets in one of those Malaysian theatrical shows that play in New York from time to time. It also made me think of Jason.

  As I got close enough to make out some of their pain-locked faces under the pink glow of the streetlight, I felt a sudden desire to know their lives. What brought them here? Did they think they would ever escape the grip of addiction?

  I cruised past them thinking of the many times we shuttled my brother off to rehab, each time farther away from home. Until he was so far we had to take a plane to visit him, only to have him get high the moment he got close enough to sniff New York.

  And I thought of the drug dealers I’d chased and arrested, especially those who’d accepted the cuffs with disdainful glee, fully aware that in a day or so they’d be through the system and back on a corner in Harlem or Washington Heights in time to catch the next wave of bored, middle-class thrill seekers crossing the George Washington Bridge in their BMWs and Mercedeses.

  I thought also of the many times I’d had my gun cocked, finger trembling on the trigger, itching to blow some repeat offender away, one less person on the street to entice my brother to get high.

  Once I chased a dealer down 131st Street in Harlem. As I got close he dropped to the ground and reached into his waistband. In a split second I determined he was going for a gun and emptied my Glock. One bullet struck him in the neck, one in the chest. The others missed. He died. The suspect did not have a gun, but I was never sorry about shooting him until I, myself, lay in the hospital fighting for my life, the victim of an out-of-control cop’s bullet. I don’t remember ever feeling so alone and insignificant. My hospital room was crammed with flowers and cards, obstacles to feeling the real weight of my dying heart, but not enough to keep the face of the man I’d killed on that dark street in Harlem from appearing to me. Back then, in my arrogance, I didn’t even want to accept that I could’ve been wrong. But alone in the hospital bed, I remembered his eyes, wide as day, angry and scared. If only I’d waited a split second longer. If only.

  IGOT TO Houlihan’s at the corner of Flatbush and Park Place around ten. Several groups of men were already engaged in an orgy of booze, and their noisy carnival threatened to spill into the street. Their alcohol-flushed faces were bright as red tomatoes ready to be peeled, empty beer bottles were stacked in the centers of tables like medals.

  I found Jerry Potts hunched over a large whisky, which, from the glaze pulled tight across his pink face like Saran Wrap holding shredded leftover roast beef together, had been refreshed a number of times.

  “How you doing, Jerry?” I said.

  He turned and stared at me for a long time. I wasn’t sure if he was attempting to smile and the muscles of his face had ceased to respond, but his mouth was an abrupt line. His gray eyes had a stealthlike steadiness and an edge sharpened by too many drinks alone in darkened bars like Houlihan’s.

  “You got some nerve showing your face in here, Blaze,” he slurred.

  I started to correct his pronunciation but stopped myself. People mispronounced my name all the time. In his state I doubt if he would understand. The stool next to him was empty.

  “Mind if I sit down?”

  “Would I be able to stand the stench?” he sneered.

  I fought the urge to push him off his stool. As loaded as he was, it would’ve taken but a touch. The bartender, a large ruddy-faced man with a goatee, came over.

  “What you having, partner?”

  “Bourbon. On the rocks.” I sat down.

  The bartender swiped a wet spot on the bar top before he walked away.

  “Where’s your running mate?” I said.

  “Where’s your wife?” Potts replied, his eyes focused on the Yankee game on the large ceiling-mounted TV.

  For a while I sat in silence, trying to organize what tack I should take. I didn’t know Potts very well, and it was clear he was in a foul mood. Trying to be friendly wasn’t working. I looked around the bar, noticing a few familiar faces, watching men who strut the street with such command and arrogance now stagger about the shabby bar like toddlers.

  The bartender returned with my drink. I swirled it around slowly, watching the ice carousel smoothly in the wide glass.

  “I hear you’re working the Walter Lahore case,” I said.

  He turned to look at me with a lazy insolent eye.

  “Do you know who killed him?” I asked.

  He smiled. His teeth were like a rat’s, tiny and sharp, his lips thin as sliced American cheese. “Where you from, Blaze?”

  “Brooklyn.”

  “No, I mean your family. You Puerto Rican or Dominican?”

  “I’m American.”

  “You’re American?”

  “Yes.”

  “You look Puerto Rican. Or Dominican.”

  “I’m American.”

  He gulped his whisky, draining the glass. “You speak Spanish?”

  “Look, Potts. I just . . .”

  He cut me off. “You know Blaze, most of the men in here never even met you, but they don’t like you. If I were to tell them that you came in here bothering me, they’d fuck you up. I know a lot of cops who’d like to get a piece of you.”

  He stared at me for a long time, his face hard and impatient.

  “I ain’t scared, Potts.”

  “People like you should be more grateful.”

  “That’s supposed to be funny?”

  “There was a time when people like you couldn’t get on the force, you know.”

  “People like me?”

  “Yeah, people like you. You know what the fuck I’m getting at.”

  He signaled for another drink, resting his hand casually at his side.

  The bartender brought his drink quickly. Potts guzzled half in one swill, then looked at me with a bored, distracted smile, breathing with his mouth wide like a fish.

  “What you did was despicable,” he said. “The NYPD’s got the finest officers in the country. We don’t see race. We’re all brothers. For ten years I had a partner who was black. We ate together. Attended each other’s children’s high school graduations. What happened to you was an accident. Plain and simple. Accidents happen.”

  “It’s all over, Potts. Move on.”

  “You ruined a man’s life. Tell that to his kids.”

  “You weren’t there. He would’ve killed me. I wasn’t a cop. I was just another nigger to him.”

  “How much money those hotshot lawyers getting you?”

  “You know, Potts, if he’d come to me in the hospital and told me he was sorry it might’ve gone down different.”

  “You hit the Lotto, that what it’s all about. What do you think all that money’s gonna get you?”

  “Fuck you.” I took ten dollars from my wallet and placed it on the bar.

  He continued. “I gotta push another fifteen before I can retire. Who knows if I’m gonna make it. Some crackhead might finish me off with a lucky shot. You don’t think I’d like to hit the Lotto too? I buy twenty-five dollars in tickets every week. A hundred dollars a month. The stock market belongs to the rich, and the rest of us slobs play Lotto. You hit the Lotto, Blaze. I envy you.”

  I wanted to hit him. Instead I turned and began to walk away. He grabbed my arm. His eyes were hollow and pitiful.

  “Where you gon
na go with all that money? Back to Puerto Rico? No point staying in New York. It’s all fucked up here. I used to love New York. It used to be a great place to live. Until they started letting all the foreigners in. They’re destroying America, these foreigners. They’re destroying this city. New York ain’t what it used to be. New York ain’t New York no more. And it’s going to get worse. You know why? Because they hate us. Hate our way of life. Why the fuck they wanna come here if they hate us? I’ll tell you why. They wanna destroy us. They’re like locusts. Coming in waves. You know why? The rest of the world is going to hell. The Third World will soon be the Dead World. More disease and famine is going to hit Africa than you read about in the Bible. AIDS will destroy all those countries in the Third World. If I was a religious man, I’d say these were the last days. The only country that will be spared is America. It’s the only place that will be able to feed its people. That’s why they wanna destroy us. So where should I go when I retire, Blaze? Do you think I’ll be safe in Puerto Rico?”

  I left him at the bar choking on his own words.

  12

  THE LAST TIME I ran into Walter Lahore he told me he worked for Iron “Stubby” Clapp, a known pimp. That was six months ago. Walter had called to warn me about Stubby Clapp. Now he was dead. Stubby and I had a history. It was going to be a bad night for one of us.

  Stubby Clapp was a successful pimp largely because he was an ex-cop. His girls worked Linden Boulevard and the adjoining side streets. He also owned a greasy spoon on Hegeman as well as a number of run-down apartment buildings in East New York, where most of his girls lived. Cops looked the other way to Stubby’s criminal activities because whenever one of them got horny they knew they could pick up one of his girls for a blow job.

  Stubby Clapp had come to the NYPD by way of the Army. He’d been a drill sergeant for ten years before he resigned after being passed over for a promotion. When I was assigned to the Thirty-first Precinct in Harlem, he was the top undercover narcotics officer, bagging more collars than anyone else. We got on well. I was lucky to cut my narcotics teeth under him; it got me instant prestige.

  Once, in the middle of an undercover operation where we were about to score five kilos from a group of Dominicans on 145th Street, someone who I’d busted about a month before and who was supposed to be in jail walked into the room. Stubby saw that my cover was about to be blown and flew into action.