Too Beautiful to Die

by Glenville Lovell

  He and his wife bought a brownstone and were waiting for the refurbishment to finish before moving in.

  I came out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around my waist.

  “I guess you need to borrow some clothes,” Noah said.

  Noah was shorter than me, but not by much. He had a dark, serious face and intense eyes the size of golf balls. I often joked that he reminded me of James Baldwin, which was ironic because he once ran a playwriting workshop under that name. He claimed he maintained his athletic body from thrice-a-week sex.

  “A pair of jeans and a tee-shirt would be good,” I said.

  “I’m still waiting for my parka you borrowed last fall,” he said.

  “The dog ate it,” I joked.

  “Yeah, well, you train that dog to see my shit and leave it.”

  “He left with Anais.”

  “Sensible dog,” he said and disappeared into the bedroom. He returned with a pair of jeans and a white shirt.

  “I’m sorry, but you’re gonna have to go without shorts. My boxers wouldn’t fit you in the front,” he joked.

  “Yeah, I hear when you pass sixty your balls begin to swell and shit.”

  “Your ass better be thankful I’m not sending you out in the rain naked.”

  “You love me too much to do that,” I said.

  “Not if you keep cracking on my age. I’m fifty-five years old, muthafucker. You want some coffee?”

  “You bet.”

  “Black, right?”

  Without waiting for my reply, he left. I got dressed quickly and went into the kitchen, where Noah was pouring coffee into two mugs. His kitchen had been recently redesigned with a new floor and a black granite-top breakfast table. I sat at the table.

  “What the fuck you doing here, anyway?” Noah said.

  “Did you check your messages?”

  “The shit’s broken. We were out late last night visiting Donna’s relatives. Actually she was picking up stuff to take to Dominica. I just got back from the airport. You know how it is with these West Indians. They can’t go home without taking half of New York back with them. And they could be here a hundred years, they’re still calling the place they were born home. Donna’s been here for forty fucking years. All her family is here. The only thing they got back there is a shack. But every year she gotta go back to make sure the shack’s still there cause that’s where she was born. I stopped going after I hit fifty. I told her I can’t take shitting in an outhouse at my age.”

  I sipped the coffee. Noah was in one of those moods when he’d start riffing in that poetic cadence of his about anything that came to his mind. It could be his wife, his friends at the university, the state of black America. Anything. And he was always funny. I hated to break his rhythm.

  “I’m here for my guns, Noah.”

  He broke off what he was about to say, the smile frozen for a moment on his face, then it melted like ice cream on the side of a building.

  I quickly brought him up to speed on the events that were preventing me from living the happy, quiet life for which I yearned.

  After I finished, he got up, focusing his deep, intelligent eyes on my face, his mouth twitching nervously. I could sense a flame igniting beneath his dark leathery skin as I watched him struggle to keep calm. He drew a deep breath and walked to the stove.

  “You hungry?” he said. “After the shit you just told me, I’m liable to go a little crazy. I hate being angry on an empty stomach. And I’m starving.”

  “Am I taking a big chance here?” I laughed.

  “Man, that ain’t even funny. You know I’m a gourmet cook. You don’t wanna fuck with me right now.”

  He scrambled some eggs and made fresh coffee. I manned the toaster.

  “How you like your toast?” I said, dropping two slices of wheat bread into the toaster.

  “Brown.”

  We ate in silence. I was anxious to see if my guns were still here, but I didn’t want to rush Noah. If my guns were missing, I’m sure he’d have a good explanation.

  Halfway through the meal he got up and left the room, returning a short time later with a black shoe box. He set the box down on the table and lifted the lid. The expression on his face changed immediately. Eyes downcast, he pushed the box across the table to rest in front of me. It was empty.

  “What the fuck’s going on, Blades?”

  “You tell me, Noah.”

  He looked at me, his lanternlike eyes hazed over. “What’re you thinking?”

  How could I suspect Noah? I might as well suspect my father. I trusted this man with my life.

  “Nothing,” I said, averting his gaze.

  “Look at me, muthafucker.”

  I looked at him again.

  “I want to know what you’re thinking,” he said.

  “I ain’t thinking nothing, Noah. I just wanna know where my guns are.”

  He got up. “Well, you can see they aren’t here.”

  “Yeah, I can see that.”

  “So what do you think? You think I gave them away?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What the fuck you mean you don’t know? I want to know what you’re thinking.”

  “Somebody used my guns to commit murder, Noah. And now the NYPD is looking to use me for target practice. Somebody else is going to feel my pain.”

  “And that somebody else is going to be me, is that what you’re saying?”

  “I don’t believe you’d do anything to hurt me, Noah.”

  He stared at me expressionless. A taut vein pulsed in his neck. “I’m sorry, Blades. I don’t understand how this could’ve happened. I’ve got a state-of-the-art alarm system.”

  “Perhaps you should invest in a good guard dog.”

  He tried to smile. “That company’s gonna feel my pain too.”

  “Did you tell anyone my guns were here?”

  “Not a soul.”

  “When’s the last time you saw Stubby Clapp?”

  “That ass-wipe? Not since you redid his furniture.”

  I took a sip of coffee. It was cold.

  “Whatever you’re cooking up, I’m in,” Noah said.

  “No, you’re not. If anything happened to you I’d have to shoot myself before I faced Donna.”

  “It ain’t up for debate.”

  “You bet, because your creaky ass is staying right here where Donna left you.”

  “I told you not to crack on my age.”

  “I need a gun and a car. Can you swing that?” I said.

  He paused, thinking.

  “And a phone,” I continued.

  He left the room. We had eaten only half our meal. I tested the coffee. It was lukewarm. I got up and started clearing the dishes from the table. Noah returned with a blue-face plated phone. He had changed into what looked like traveling gear: jeans, baseball cap and shoes.

  “Where’re you going?” I asked.

  “Taking you to get a piece.”

  THE RAIN, COMING down hard in thick white sheets, made visibility low. The slick roads had a surreal sheen from the focused headlights of slow-moving traffic.

  We were sitting in Noah’s 4x4, waiting for construction vehicles that blocked the street to move. Water trickling along gutters sounded like thousands of rats scurrying around. Yellow neon signs ahead in the middle of street warned motorists to reduce speed. Around us the wet black buildings fit snugly together like old women shuffling through the storm.

  I felt exhausted, and in a part of my mind I was hoping we wouldn’t have to move for a long time. Noah sat at the wheel whistling a tune.

  “So how’s your father doing?” Noah said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where’s he now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know or you don’t want to tell me?”

  “I told you . . .”

  “ . . . You don’t know.” He looked at me and smiled.

  “That’s it.”

  He resumed t
he whistling. He tapped the steering wheel as he whistled. Then he stopped. “Do you miss being a cop?” he said.

  The construction vehicles began to move, and Noah let the Jeep roll gently down the street.

  “Sometimes,” I said.

  “I was a cop for fifteen years, and to this day I still don’t know how I managed.”

  “That’s just it. You manage. You have to.”

  “You had it easy compared to me.”

  I looked at him. “It’s still tough in there for us.”

  “Was like getting fucked in the ass for me.”

  I laughed. “I don’t know what that’s like.”

  “Sure you do. It’s what’s the City tried to do to you and your family after you got shot. But you made it out. With all your faculties.”

  “Almost didn’t, though.”

  “Why’d you do it? You had a choice. You had college. Why?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “You’re a strange bird, Blades. I wouldn’t have done it if I’d had your choices. I had a baby. I needed a job. It was either be a Panther or a cop. Your father went the other way.”

  “Now he’s forever on the run.”

  “Funny thing is, I made that decision for my son. And he grew up to despise me. Don’t even talk to me now. Ain’t that something? He’s a big shot these days. Always in the news. But he doesn’t call me. He calls his mother at her school to avoid talking to me. But you know what? I don’t regret it. Being a cop. It helped me control my anger. I was an angry young man back then. There was some serious shit going on. We had Malcolm getting killed. Martin. Medgar. Black people were being targeted by every kind of yahoo racist who was blowing up black churches, kidnapping children. The Panthers were recruiting. You couldn’t trust anybody. Not even your best friend. Being a street cop forced me to think about consequences. If I hadn’t been a cop, I would’ve been a killer. I would’ve killed somebody. I swear.”

  I said, “Do you write plays about that life?”

  “I write plays about people I grew up with. Normal people.”

  “When’s the last time you did one?” I said. “A play.”

  “Producers don’t want to do my work. I don’t write about pimps and whores and addicts. I write what I know. Black people striving to live normal, decent lives. America doesn’t believe that kind of black person exists. Nobody’s going to be pulling a gun and muthafucking throughout my play just so white America can have an orgasm. You ever heard of the African gray parrot?”

  “What’s to hear?”

  “There’re no leaders among them. They’re all equals. True democracy. The problem with people is that they can’t be happy unless they know there’s somebody somewhere worse off than them. They gotta think they’re better than somebody to be happy. Everybody wants to be a top dog. The poorest, worst-educated piece of white trash can still feel good about himself because when he turns on his TV and sees the way black people are depicted, he can say: ‘At least I ain’t like them niggers.’ ”

  We had driven about half a mile. Noah pulled up outside a bodega on Webster Avenue, parking close to the curb and next to a hydrant. He opened his door and I did likewise.

  “This one’s private,” he said. “Benito don’t like strangers.”

  He left the engine running and hopped through the rain into the bodega. I fiddled wearily with the radio dial, passing up rock and hip-hop for sports talk. I quickly got bored with that and started scanning the stations again, settling his time for news.

  Noah came back shortly with the Daily News protecting his head from the rain. He got into the Jeep, cursing.

  “Fucking rain.”

  “That was quick,” I said.

  He flapped the newspaper on the floor in front of him to shake off the water. “Too many people in the store right now. He told me to come back in ten minutes. What’s this shit you listening to?”

  “News.”

  He flipped the station to an easy-listening music station. “You want news, read the newspaper. The radio in my truck is for music.”

  “Well, since you got the newspaper, tell me what the fuck is going on.”

  He looked at me and smiled, an honest, friendly smile, showing all his teeth. Then he opened the newspaper. “Let’s see. The police found that fucker who bombed that black church in Atlanta. The one who escaped from jail.”

  “Gene Kurtz?”

  “Yeah, that Nazi. Found him dead in Prospect Park with his eyes blown out. Guess the next swastika he’ll be kissing is the one on Hitler’s ass in Hell. A new poll says that Congresswoman Richardson will win reelection with ease. And in another poll, most people think we should rebuild the Twin Towers. What about you?”

  “I agree. What about you?”

  “I don’t care.”

  We fell into silence. Noah flipped the pages of the newspaper quietly, his lips pursed, his head bowed. Ten minutes later he got out and ran into the bodega once more.

  I leaned forward to flip the dial to WINS but stopped myself. A group of cornrowed youngsters came skidding toward the Jeep, playfully kicking up waves in the river that ran through the street as they passed a bottle in a paper bag back and forth. The gloss of rain was so thick I couldn’t make out their faces, but they seemed to be having fun. They passed the Jeep and out of my thoughts when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a shape moving to my left.

  Someone was trying to jimmy the door on the driver’s side. I slithered over behind the wheel and slipped the vehicle into gear. The group ran off.

  Noah returned five minutes later. I was still sitting behind the wheel. He got in the passenger side and laid a snub-nosed .38, a box of shells and an ankle holster with Velcro straps in my lap.

  I hefted the loaded gray pistol. It felt heavy, foreign.

  “Whatever you do, bring my truck back in one piece.” He winked.

  “What’s the number?” I said.

  “The number?”

  “The cell you gave me.”

  “Oh. It’s taped to the back of the phone.”

  22

  IDROPPED NOAH off and managed to pinch my way through traffic over the bridge to Manhattan. I tried Jimmy’s number. Still disconnected. Beginning to get the feeling I wasn’t going to hear from Jimmy again. Tim was next on my list. He wasn’t around either. Then I called my mother.

  “Carmen,” she cried. “Where’re you? The police were here this morning. And the FBI. It was like an invasion. What is going on?”

  “What did they tell you?”

  “That I should tell you to give yourself up. I can’t deal with this, Carmen. Jason’s disappeared, and now you’re in trouble. I am going crazy.”

  “I have to go now, Mom. I’ll call you later.”

  I hung up without waiting for her to say good-bye. I couldn’t stand to hear her break down.

  Creeping down the waterlogged FDR I tried to fit what pieces I had of the puzzle together. Why would Stubby put a hit on a Fed? He should know that you’d stand a better chance stealing the crown jewels than getting away with the murder of an FBI agent. Those guys hunt you to your grave. But there was one sure way, of course. Have someone else take the fall. And there I was, right on cue, stumbling head first into their noose. But why was Edwards killed? And why was he in trouble with the Bureau? Bressler had said it was bigger than a murder. What did he mean? And was Precious just an innocent victim in all this? None of it made sense, and I could feel myself getting more and more frustrated.

  I called Trevor. After about five chimes he answered, sounding groggy and tensed.

  “Whaddup, cuz,” I hailed.

  “Yo, Blades, are you in jail? The cops answered your phone. Gave me the fucking third degree.”

  “Any day now you might see me on ‘America’s Most Wanted.’ ”

  “Dang! This shit’s whack. We gotta talk, yo. Somebody slammed my condo.”

  “I’ll meet you at the Bridge in half.”

  THE BRIDGE DINER sat on the wing of the Broo
klyn Bridge across from a park. I arrived ten minutes before Trevor and sat by the window. The rain was bringing a white wind on its tail, which whipped against the window in heavy swirls.

  Trevor arrived in black baggy jeans and a red waterproof windbreaker, tugging nervously at the gold ring hanging from his left earlobe.

  “Whaddup, babe?” I greeted.

  We pounded and he sat down, after looking around anxiously. He tried to smile, but it soon faded into a grin that was somehow earnest and suspicious at the same time. He shed the windbreaker and slung it over the back of his chair. Underneath he wore a gray oversized Yankee baseball shirt.

  I smiled in an attempt to relax him. “How’s that queen of yours?”

  “Safe, for now.”

  Our waitress came, a painfully thin young woman who walked in a stiff, upright manner. I ordered coffee. Trevor asked for a buttered croissant with ham and cheese. She batted metallic eyelids at Trevor and left.

  “You sounded like you just got up,” I said.

  “Fuck the small talk, yo. What’s bubbling?”

  “The police think I killed a couple of people.”

  “You kidding, right?”

  I shook my head.

  “Man, what the hell you got me into?” he said.

  “I’m sorry, man.”

  “They shot my wife’s dog, man! Muthafuckers destroyed all my shit and shot Jordan. Is that all you got to say? ‘I’m sorry’?”

  “What else can I say?”

  “You realize how close Pat and I came to being iced, cuz?”

  “Trevor, look, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize this shit was going to become hotter than a hooker’s ass. I didn’t mean to put you and your wife in danger.”

  “What about her fucking dog? Her dog’s dead.”

  “I’ll get her another dog.”

  “She don’t want another dog. She loved Jordan.”

  “We’ll get a dog named Kobe. She likes Kobe, doesn’t she?”

  “You think this is a joke? If my wife didn’t insist on playing one of her games last night, we’d both be dancing with the Devil about now.”

  “What kinda game?”

  “Every once in a while she likes to pretend she’s a hooker.”

  “You know what, on second thought, forget I asked.”