Too Beautiful to Die

by Glenville Lovell

  “You kidding me, right?”

  “I wouldn’t kid about something like this, cuz.”

  “I can’t help you, Blades.”

  “I don’t want to find my brother dead, Timmy.”

  “You need to have that boy committed.”

  “You’re talking about my brother, Tim.”

  “If he were black would you be cleaning up after him like this?”

  “Go to hell, Tim. I’ll find my brother my damn self.”

  ISPENT THE next few hours walking around the Marcy Houses, located in the Downtown Brooklyn area, searching for Cherry and my brother. Many of the residents I spoke to—women and men in their sixties and seventies sitting out on benches in the tidy park next to the block of gray high-rise buildings—had lived there all their lives, had seen its rapid decline when crack became the hot business opportunity of the eighties, stirring the entrepreneurial spirit of everyone from grandmothers to kids not even old enough to have a wet dream. Some of them had witnessed murders, muggings; the sale of drugs in their hallways; seen addicts peeing in the stairwell; still they refused to leave. This was their home.

  Their perseverance seemed to have paid off. Crime in the projects was down. Crack profits had dried up. The park was safe again for them to sit outside on a muggy day.

  No one remembered seeing a man answering my brother’s description with a fat black woman. And no one knew Cherry.

  I left the Marcy Houses around four and dipped into a Caribbean restaurant on Fulton Street for a roti. I called my mother from there to see if Jason had come home. My mother was in tears. I tried to calm her down. She wanted to come to New York, but I convinced her it was best to stay home.

  I called Precious. She was out. I left a message that I was going to Prospect Park and would be home by seven. It felt strange leaving a message about what time I would get home for someone other than Anais. At the same time, I was eager to get back to Precious.

  16

  AGREAT DEAL of creative energy had gone into an attempt to turn the Picnic House into a tropical retreat. It had failed. The big bright lilies and potted palm trees might’ve been enough to simulate the warm atmosphere of the Caribbean were it not for the pall on the faces of everybody in the room. They all looked like they would rather be someplace else.

  This was to be a celebrity event hosted by Congresswoman Richardson to kick off the upcoming Labor Day festivities. Except most of the celebrities hadn’t shown up. Still, it was an assembly of the most influential Caribbean people in New York. The congresswoman sat at the center table, flanked by her good friends Mary Bath, the Chairperson of the Caribbean-American Chamber of Commerce, and Ignatious Ralph, one of the people responsible for making the annual Caribbean-American Labor Day Parade a major political event.

  I waited until Congresswoman Richardson had finished her welcoming speech, apologizing for the absence of the Mayor and other celebrities, and sat down. Away in the corner a steel band began to play. Jack Rosen, Brooklyn Borough President, was making his way to the podium. Through the maze of bodies, fruit-laden tables and palm trees in large green pots squeezed tightly together, I made my way toward the congresswoman’s table.

  About fifteen feet away the congresswoman’s security, seated at a table to her left, intercepted me. But I wasn’t about to be detained.

  In a voice loud enough to draw everyone’s attention, I demanded my release from the four officers who’d grabbed my arms and shoulders. The band stopped playing. Jack Rosen stood at the podium looking as if he’d just suffered whiplash in a traffic accident. The chaotic shuffle of chairs replaced the music.

  “Vondelle,” I yelled. “I need to talk to you.”

  The congresswoman stood up. She was a tall woman of very dark complexion and wore her hair pulled severely back into a tight bun. In a stunningly beautiful gold-and-black African-print dress that seemed to hug her body too snugly, she appeared ill at ease: as if the outfit had been selected by someone who didn’t understand her taste. She picked her way through the network of seats and came up to me. Her eyes were animated, her heavily matted eyelids flickering madly like butterflies’ wings.

  “You’d better have a good explanation,” she said through clenched teeth.

  I started to speak.

  She gave me the stop sign. “Outside,” she snorted.

  Her boys released me and I followed her outside. Behind me I could hear the shuffle of backsides reclaiming seats as Jack Rosen urged the guests to settle down.

  Congresswoman Richardson walked a few feet down the paved path and stopped near the road, lighting a cigarette.

  “What do you want?” she said. Her voice was choppy, icy cold.

  “Do you know who I am?” I said.

  She glared at me. “You’re wasting my time, Mr. Overstreet.”

  “Your niece went to meet a man the other night and found a dead FBI agent.”

  She sucked ravenously at the Winston. “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “She went hoping to find her father.”

  She turned around. “Good-bye.”

  “She seems to think you know who her father is.”

  “Are you done?” She filled her mouth with smoke, then let it out slowly. Her hand trembled. She flicked the cigarette onto the ground and mashed it out.

  “Why’re you trembling?” I asked.

  She pursed her lips with deliberateness. “You have no manners and I’m very angry.”

  Gabriel Aquia strutted from the Picnic House, ever Mister GQ in a fashionable gray suit, blue shirt and blue tie. You had to admire anyone who could dress like that in this heat. Standing a few feet away, he adjusted his glasses and cleared his throat.

  “The guests are getting impatient, Vonnie,” he said.

  “I’ll be right there, Gabe.”

  Gabriel stuffed his large hands into his pockets and waited.

  “How you doing, Gabe?” I said.

  Gabriel Aquia flinched. His face was pinched like he was trying to keep a fart from escaping. Then he turned and walked back into the Picnic House.

  “If you know who her father is, why wouldn’t you tell her?” I said.

  Her brown eyes swept the ground. “Let’s walk,” she said.

  Arms crossed over her bosom, she stepped onto the road, heading in the direction of the library. I walked beside her as skaters, joggers and cyclists floated by. To our right in Long Meadow Field, barbecue pits were going full blast. Picnic baskets were being emptied. Sun worshipers were getting burned. Volleyball and soccer players worked up a sweat. The air was dense with the green smell of freshly cut grass.

  “You have some Caribbean roots, don’t you?” she said.

  “My grandmother was from Barbados.”

  “Ah, Barbados. Lovely place. You ever been there?”

  “A number of times.”

  She reached out and touched my arm, squeezing gently. A smile swept across her face. “You should join us in the Picnic House. We have many Caribbean delicacies. We even have flying fish.”

  I laughed. “It’s tempting, but I have somebody home cooking a meal for me.”

  “How very fortunate for her. Is it my niece?”

  Her question caught me off guard, and I fumbled for a reply.

  She laughed before I could respond. “How long have you known Precious?”

  “Long enough to know she would give anything to find her father.”

  “Precious is a very complicated woman. Take my advice. Drop this matter. It will benefit no one. Whatever she’s paying you, I’ll double it.”

  “That wouldn’t be ethical. Besides, I like her. If she wants to know who her father is, I think she deserves to know, don’t you?”

  She came to a halt. The park was bathed in an amber glow. A bright glaze masked the sky, and the tips of the trees glowed as if they were on fire.

  “I have to get back,” she said calmly.

  “One last question.”

  “I have nothing more to say.
”

  She turned and started to walk away.

  “Can you get the Mayor to settle my case?”

  She laughed. “I’ll wash your back if you wash mine.”

  I watched her enter the shadows under the trees. I stepped off the road onto the grass and made my way to my car.

  17

  AN AMBULANCE AND two fire trucks blocked my street, so I parked a block away on Union. The cops had cordoned off about ten feet of sidewalk opposite my building. A man with his head wrapped, working on the fire escape on the adjacent building, leaned over the metal railing waving to workers below. Curiosity seekers sat sipping water in the gardens across the street.

  I tried to tell a rookie securing the perimeter that I lived in the building, but the youngster puffed up his chest and pointed me to his superior, who was smoking a cigarette halfway down the block. Then I spotted a uniformed cop I worked with briefly in the Seven-One. His name was Paquito Torres, a rangy Dominican brother with a long face and an appetite for pork chops to match. He turned around when I touched his shoulder.

  “Blades, what’s up with you, brother?” He grinned cheerily, flashing fresh white teeth, and clasped my hand tightly in small sweaty palms.

  “Doing okay, Paco. What’s going on?”

  “Still trying to represent, brother.”

  “When’re they gonna let you out of those bibs?”

  He laughed. “Any day, now.”

  “You said that last time I saw you. When was that?”

  “A year ago. Central Park. I was doing the Sting concert.”

  “Yeah,” I said. ” Think of the money you’ll save.”

  “I’m ready, man. Can’t stand this fucking uniform.”

  “What’s going down?”

  “You live here?”

  “A year now.”

  “I thought you lived in Queens.”

  “My wife went west in search of a gold statuette. I ended up with more space than I needed.”

  “It ain’t criminal to be alone, man.”

  “Feels that way sometimes, though. So why the artillery?” I said.

  “Homicide.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just a perimeter junkie.”

  “Can I go in?”

  “Sure, follow me.”

  As we entered the building, my neighbor from across the hall, Mrs. Galloway, an old woman in a green dress and slippers whose hair color ranged from beehive gray to purple on any given day in the week, was being helped through the door by two officers, I presumed to the ambulance waiting outside.

  “Mrs. Galloway? Are you okay?” I said.

  Her deeply wrinkled face was blank and ashen. She looked at me as if staring into a dark deep well.

  “Shock,” one of the officers said. “She found the body.”

  “Where?”

  “Four-B.”

  My lungs became instantly sealed with lead. I couldn’t breathe. I thought my heart was about to explode.

  Two at a time, I bounded up the stairs, the thud of my shoes on the wooden steps shattering the hush in the narrow stairwell.

  The door to my apartment was open. I rushed in. A female detective knelt in the kitchen beside a body. Another detective, a slender black man, stood inches away.

  They heard my wheezing and looked around. I moved forward. The black detective tried to block my progress, but I threw him aside like a piece of used tissue and rushed to the body on the floor. The kneeling detective stood up and stared at me with sharp, focused eyes. She was a big woman, a head shorter than me, with the girth of a football lineman.

  She stepped aside and I knelt beside the body.

  Precious lay on her side in a bed of dried blood, which had caked the color of mud. My robe was wrapped grotesquely around her. She’d been shot in the head. Her twisted face was blotchy and puffy as though she’d been beaten with a crowbar.

  “You recognize him?” the black detective said behind me, speaking to his partner.

  “The famous Blades Overstreet,” the female detective scoffed.

  I got up from the body and dropped into a black straight-back chair. The female detective loomed above me like a spreading oak.

  “I’m Sergeant Romano. He’s Detective James,” she said.

  “What’s her name?” James said.

  “Precious,” I said. “Who did this?”

  The two detectives looked at each other and shared a private chuckle. I was too shocked to care that it might’ve been at my expense. Why would anybody kill Precious? She was too beautiful to die this way.

  “Precious what?” James asked.

  “Just Precious,” I said.

  “What kinda name is Just Precious? Was she a prostitute?”

  I glared at him. He held my threatening gaze without flinching.

  “Don’t you watch TV?” Romano said to him. “She’s on the soaps.”

  “Who’s got time for that shit? Were you fucking her?” He persisted, staring at me with cold, egg-colored eyes.

  “That’s none of your goddamn business,” I blurted out.

  “There was a murder in your kitchen, pus-brain. Whatever you did with the bitch is now our business,” he said.

  I lunged at him. Romano stepped between us and grabbed me in a half nelson, sending me face first into the fridge door. Her thick arm, bulging against the seams of her blue shirt, felt like a chunk of wood against my neck.

  “Relax,” she said.

  She held me until my breathing calmed, then released me, standing close to see if I would resume my attack on her partner.

  “Sit down, Blades,” said Romano.

  I stared past her at James standing next to Precious’ body. He had a tight face, scrupulously clean-shaven with bushy eyebrows and the tensed feral look of a fox. I saw the muscle mass in his bony jaws contract and relax as he breathed heavily.

  I still wanted to hit him, to get him away from Precious’ body.

  My menacing stare was beginning to antagonize him. He took a step toward me, beckoning with outstretched arms. “Come on, bitch! You wanna piece of me?”

  Romano held me securely by the neck before I could move, pushing me roughly toward a chair. I refused to sit down, and for a while we tugged each other around the room like tired tango dancers. Exasperated, she released me.

  “Are you going to calm down?” Her puffy eyes were red.

  “I’m calm. Just keep that animal away from me before I rip his tongue out,” I said.

  Romano turned to her partner. “Relax, Bernie.”

  “He ain’t a cop no more. We don’t have to coddle him,” James screamed. “He knows the deal. Let’s take his ass to the precinct.”

  “For what?” I said.

  “Anything. Suspicion. Who gives a shit!”

  “You take me from here, you better have a reason, otherwise I’m gonna have my lawyers so far up your ass you’re gonna be begging for Ex-Lax,” I said.

  James rushed at me. Romano tackled him and held him in her beefy arms.

  “Let me go,” James screamed.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you?” Romano said.

  “He’s mad because he can’t get off the plantation,” I said.

  “Fuck you, you traitor,” James shouted.

  Romano released him, and he sulked off to the window that looked out onto the backyard, chewing on a hangnail on his thumb. Romano came up to me.

  “What was she doing in your apartment?” Romano asked.

  She was so close to me I could smell her cigarette breath. Her spicy deodorant stung my nose.

  “She was a friend. I left her here to go take care of some business.”

  “When was that?”

  “Around twelve.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Around. Manhattan mostly.”

  “Anyone saw you leave?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was she alive when you left?”

  I looked at her sharply. “Very much so
.”

  “When did she get here?”

  “Last night.”

  “So she spent the night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who else knew she was here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “There was no sign of forced entry.”

  “What’re you trying to say?”

  “I don’t have to spell it out.”

  “I didn’t kill her.”

  “Right now you’re a suspect. The only suspect.”

  She questioned me for another fifteen minutes before the coroner arrived to take the body. The two detectives left, taking Precious’ belongings wrapped in plastic bags. I was alone with the dried blood and the chalk outline of her body on the tiled floor. That’s when I broke down and cried like a child.

  18

  TWO HOURS LATER I still hadn’t cleaned up the blood. I drank beer after beer until I felt myself slipping into a reverie that I hoped would lead to sleep.

  The apartment had been ransacked. But I was too shocked to pay much attention to it, much less look to see if anything was missing.

  There were three messages on my machine, all from my mother. I was too weak to call her back. All I could think of was finding a way to forget. A way out of this nightmare. My head and stomach began to ache. Then I started to feel the coarsening of anger. Someone had walked into my house and committed murder. Destroyed the tranquility I’d tried to create for myself in this chaotic city. My home had been desecrated, and somebody was going to pay.

  I called the Great Wall Chinese restaurant on Court Street and ordered shrimp in black bean sauce. They said it would take fifteen minutes.

  Longing for the illusion of cleanliness, I took a shower and changed into khaki shorts and a yellow tee, just in time to hear the doorbell. Slipping on my sandals, I stumbled downstairs. I realized I was drunk or close to it. The Hispanic delivery boy was waiting in the vestibule, a red baseball cap dangling, peak backward, on his head. The meal was ten dollars; I gave him fifteen.

  His bike was tied against the rail ten yards away; a rusted lump of iron that could’ve been mistaken for discarded junk. I held the bag in one hand as I stared at it as if hypnotized.