Too Beautiful to Die

by Glenville Lovell

  I tested 411. They had no listing for Lusca Morris. Undaunted, I made a right turn onto Buffalo. Flatlands was about twenty minutes away.

  WITH ITS CRISP lawns and flower gardens, the block of charming, brightly painted two-family homes looked to be well maintained. Lusca had lived in a half-brick house, painted pastel green on the lower level and yellow on the upper level, in the middle of the block.

  I rang the buzzer for the basement. No one answered. The owners of the house lived on the first floor. I rang that bell. A dour-looking woman with dark rings under her eyes opened the door and peered through the grill of the iron guard gate.

  “Hello, Mrs. Bradshaw.” I greeted her with a smile.

  She squinted as if trying to make out my face in the sun.

  “My name is Blades Overstreet. You have a tenant, Lusca Morris, who used to work for me a while back.”

  Her face lit up at the mention of Lusca’s name. “Oh, of course. Lusca. You said your name was Blades?”

  “Yes. Lusca used to work for me. The police officer from Queens. You may’ve seen me bring her home.”

  “Oh, yes, Blades, I remember you. The police gentleman with the pretty wife.”

  Her face quietly turned blank. I could almost hear the chaotic wheels of her brain racing as she tried to recall where she’d seen or heard my name recently.

  “Does Lusca still live here?”

  “I sorry, but I cooking right now. I can’t talk to you,” she said in her thick Bajan accent.

  “Mrs. Bradshaw, it’s very important that I speak to her.”

  “She ain’t here. She gone.”

  “She doesn’t live here, is that what you’re saying?”

  “Look, Mister Blades, I don’t know nothing ’bout where she is. I don’t want to get involve in nothing.”

  “I know you’ve seen my face on the news. I didn’t do any of those things. That’s why I’m here. I need to speak to Lusca. She might be able to help me prove I didn’t kill those people.”

  She looked at me, her eyes narrowing with doubt.

  I tried to hold her gaze and spoke with a steady, pleading voice. “A few years ago her daughter disappeared for a few days. Do you remember that?”

  She stared at me, expressionless. But at least she hadn’t moved. She was still listening.

  I continued. “Lusca had asked me to find her, but I got shot and was in the hospital. There may be a connection between Serena’s disappearance back then and the murders. I need to find Serena. I need to talk to her.”

  “They left.”

  “When? Where did they go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Please, Mrs. Bradshaw. My life may depend on it. Did she say anything at all about where she might be going?”

  “You not a policeman no more?”

  “I resigned a few years ago.”

  “Why they say you kill those people if you didn’t do it?”

  “I swear I didn’t do it.”

  “I remember you used to bring Lusca home. You seemed like a nice gentleman.”

  “I’m not a murderer.”

  “After her daughter came back, she say to me that she got to leave. She ain’t give me no reasoning. She just say she got to find another place to live. She didn’t leave her address or nothing, but she owed me some money and a few months later she send me a letter with a money order. I think I still have the letter. Wait. Let me see if I can find it.”

  She turned away from the door. Apprehension gripped me. There was no way of knowing if she would call the police while I waited. I tried to listen for her voice on the telephone, but the hiss of vehicles behind me created too much background noise.

  Five minutes passed. I began to panic. Lines of sweat blistered my brow. The urge to turn and run began to season.

  The door opened again. The short dark woman unlocked the gate and squeezed her way out onto the steps with the help of a canary-colored cane.

  “Sorry I take so long,” she apologized. She looked up at me from a stoop, her shoulders hunched as if she was in pain.

  I said, “Are you alright?”

  She smiled and handed me a piece of paper. “Yes, I fine. I had a knee operation months ago, but it don’t look like it want to get better. Every day it still stiff stiff. Thanks for asking. Here’s the address that was on the envelope.”

  I took the paper and thanked her. She watched me walk off and did not return to her house until I had reached my car.

  27

  LUSCA’S ADDRESS ON Butler Street was in my backyard, so to speak, a mere six blocks from President. How we’d never run into each other, I don’t know. It was even possible that we shopped at the same supermarket. As I drove along Utica Avenue, I had to smile to myself at the irony.

  The Gowanus Houses were a high-rise block of gray buildings near the Gowanus Canal, stretching from Wycoff to Douglas. As with most housing projects in the city, it had been preyed on by drug dealers when crack ruled, attracting the kind of lower animals, too gutless to slit their own throats and end their miserable lives, who instead turned other people’s misery into gold, weak people into lost souls.

  I parked two blocks away on Bergen. Approaching the Gowanus Houses on foot was a descent into chaos. The odor of ferment and decay swayed on the dusty air. Bins had long been overrun by trash, which hadn’t been collected in days; streets and sidewalks had become overwhelmed by dirt and garbage. The parade of men and women into the liquor store on Hoyt Street was as steady as a January snowstorm. I glimpsed a bundle of shriveled bodies huddled outside around a bottle of gin, their hearts in their throats, waiting patiently for their chance to kiss the bottle’s mouth and release the genie inside.

  On the other side of the street youngsters who may’ve once respected those now feeding their dreams to the colorless genie in the square bottle bantered with youthful vigor. Men in Versace shirts and Hilfiger jeans wedge themselves between shiny new SUVs, an unceasing anger bubbling just below the surface of the bragging and posturing.

  In the tiny park at the edge of the complex, distracted parents howled wearily, unable to trap their darling little elves who chased each other into the street, darting in front of cars with mischievous glee.

  As I crossed the park I spotted Lusca sitting alone on a bench, a brown paper bag in her lap.

  She looked in my direction and seemed to recognize me, rising from her seat with excitement, then, just as quickly, as if she might have mistaken me for someone else, sat down again, elbows planted on her thighs, eyes swallowing me as I walked toward her.

  I reached her and paused a few feet away, our eyes measuring, reacquainting. She wore a burgundy velour jogging suit several sizes too big, her slight frame swallowed up in the mass of cloth. She’d lost a lot of weight. I remembered a more robust figure, not large but lively, with a laughter as unpredictable as the fragrance of wild flowers.

  She smiled with difficulty and embarrassment, her haggard face telling stories of struggle and loss, of dreams unlived.

  “How’re you, Lusca?”

  “Just fine, Mr. Overstreet.” She always called me Mr. Overstreet. “Just fine. Sitting here enjoying the sunshine.”

  A lump rose in my throat. It was dusty in the park. Her face was dirty and smudged like it hadn’t been washed in days.

  I said, “You know, I live just down the street from here.”

  “Oh, that is good. That is good. We almost neighbors, then.”

  “Yes. Imagine that. How long you been living here?”

  She leaned back to appraise me, her face suddenly becoming agitated. “Why you come here bothering me?” she said.

  Caught off guard, I fumbled for words. She was drunk. Her cavernous eyes devoured my face like she was trying to put a spell on me. Her eyelashes were clumped together as if pasted with glue.

  I sat next to her. She stood up, calling out to a little boy playing in the sand with a group of other kids.

  “Malcolm, don’t let me have to come and get yo
u.”

  The kid turned, his face remote with surprise, then, when Lusca sat down again, he returned to his sport, hitting one of the other children with a tiny plastic bucket.

  “That’s Serena’s boy.” She looked at me as though I should’ve known that piece of information.

  “Where’s Serena?”

  Her face became obscure again, lost in a thought that seemed to have taken her a thousand miles away.

  “I would like to talk to her,” I said.

  “You can’t,” she said.

  “It’s important.”

  She turned to me, staring wildly. “Can you talk to the dead?”

  A few feet away a couple stopped their conversation and turned to eye us suspiciously.

  “Are you telling me Serena is dead?”

  She looked at me with a disoriented expression. She was jacked way up, but I wasn’t sure if it was alcohol alone or drugs as well.

  “How old is Serena’s boy?” I said.

  She smiled and her eyes sparkled briefly. It lit a small fire in her face, and the corners of her mouth relaxed. “He’s almost three.” Her voice hopped cheerfully, and for the first time she laughed. “He can spell his name already. And he can count backward from ten. He’s going to be a genius.”

  Head first, the little boy was now surfing the coiled slides, hotly pursued by his friends.

  “Is Serena dead, Lusca?”

  Her face turned to stone; the spark vanished from her eyes. She leaned back, drawing the paper bag to her lips. Half her face disappeared into the bag, and when it appeared again a dark glaze had descended on her face like the final curtain on a play, her lips pasted white with froth.

  “I miss my baby,” she said, sighing deeply.

  A tear broke loose, hanging in the web of her eyelash for a second, then dissolved.

  “What happened to her?”

  Her body was still, her face blank as night. Then, with a backhand swipe, she cleaned the froth from her mouth and began to speak.

  “She didn’t want to have him, but I don’t believe in killing, so I told her no. It happened when Malcolm was only months old. I had gone to the Pathmark on Smith Street. Only a block away. The two of them were on the bed sleeping. So peaceful. I was gone for about half an hour. When I walk through the door I heard Malcolm crying. I called out to Serena. When she didn’t answer I put the bags down and went into the bedroom. I don’t know what got into her mind. I didn’t think she would ever do anything this crazy.”

  She paused and looked out across the playground for Malcolm. He was back to playing in the sand with his bucket.

  Lusca continued. “She had climbed up on a chair and tied an electric wire around the ceiling fan in the bedroom. When she jumped off the chair the whole thing came down. The fan was heavy. They said it hit her in the temple. There was blood all over the floor. I called the ambulance, but they couldn’t save her.”

  “Was she depressed?”

  “After what happened to her, what do you think?”

  “You mean having the baby?”

  “She was raped.”

  I watched as she fought valiantly against the rising flood of emotions threatening to break loose. She bit her bottom lip, her face set hard against the dark wash of memory. As though something was lodged in her craw, she gulped repeatedly, then she coughed and spat a wad of phlegm on the ground.

  “I’m sorry, Lusca. When was she raped?”

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know.”

  I looked at her, stunned.

  She continued before I could speak. “She told me she went to Atlantic City. It was only after she found out she was pregnant that she told me the truth.”

  “Who did it?”

  She looked at me and shrugged. “Your friends.”

  “My friends?”

  “Your police friends. She was blocks away from home when a car stopped in front of her. Two men got out. One was a police. The other was Immigration. They told her she had to go with them, that I had been arrested. They put her in the car and drove off. But instead of taking her to the station, they took her to a house and told her that if she didn’t do what they say I would be deported. They took pictures and made her have sex with different men.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “I didn’t want nothing more to do with no police. That included you. How did they know I didn’t have my papers? The only person who knew that was you.”

  “You think I had something to do with this?”

  “Tell me how did they know then? I kept to myself. Nobody don’t know my business. You were the only person I told.”

  “Was she sure they were cops?”

  “They had badges and guns.”

  “I had nothing to do with this, Lusca. You gotta believe me.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “Because I would never do anything to hurt you.”

  “She was only thirteen. Why they had to do that to her?”

  “Did you ever go back to CAIR?”

  “CAIR?”

  “Did you ever go back to them? I went to see them after you came to me. They didn’t have any of the forms you said you filled out.”

  “That’s crazy. Me and Serena sat there for half an hour filling out forms for the green-card lottery.”

  “Did Serena stop there that evening after school?”

  “I don’t remember.” She began to sob. “She was only thirteen.”

  I took her bony hand in mine. “I’m really sorry, Lusca. I’m going to find the people who did this. I promise you.”

  I had $200 left in my pocket. I knew she was a proud woman and might refuse charity, but I offered it to her anyway. To my surprise she accepted without protest. She thanked me and squeezed my hand hard. When I got up to leave, she rose too.

  My every step across the litter-strewn courtyard was filled with guilt and anger. I’d failed her. She came to me for help and I’d let her down.

  But I wasn’t about to fail again. And I wouldn’t fail Precious, either. I was determined to get her killer.

  28

  ISHOULD’VE GOTTEN into the 4x4 and driven off. Instead I sat in the car feeling sorry for myself living on the run like a criminal. No more than ten blocks away from my home and I couldn’t go there. What would I give to be sitting in my own living room or kitchen or bedroom, listening to Mingus or Nina Simone. To be able to open my fridge, get a whiff of the aged blue cheese I kept in a blue plastic container. To be able to sip beer in my underwear or watch a baseball game, or even jerk off fantasizing about making love to Anais in the shower. Crazy shit like that.

  Daydreaming left me vulnerable to the surprise attack from Bressler and Slate, who’d crept up to the car without my noticing. The front passenger door flew open and I was staring down the barrel of a nine-millimeter Smith & Wesson.

  “Don’t even breathe,” Slate hissed.

  I checked the rearview mirror. Bressler had taken up a firing position behind the car, feet braced, gun cocked and aimed at the back of my head.

  “Nice and slow. Hands on your head,” Slate said.

  I hesitated, still trying to calculate a way to escape.

  “Don’t even think what you’re thinking,” Slate snapped.

  I raised my hands slowly and clasped them on top of my head.

  “Good boy.”

  I wanted to kick his teeth in for that.

  “Now get out. No sudden moves. Keep your hands where they are.”

  “How the hell am I supposed to do that?”

  “Now, Oreo-face!”

  I swiveled around and slid across the seat. When I felt my feet touch the running board I leaned my body out of the truck.

  Bressler holstered his gun and came to assist his partner. He pushed me facedown onto the hood. Locking his knee between my legs from behind to force them apart, he frisked me. A few feet away, Slate watched with gun cocked as his partner lifted the snub-nose from my ankle. He ejected the clip, pu
tting it into his pocket before tossing the empty semiautomatic to Slate. Then he wrung my hands behind my back and clamped stainless-steel bracelets to my wrists. The cold metal pinched into my flesh. Bressler straightened me up and swung me around to face them.

  “They’re too tight,” I said.

  “Too bad, asshole,” Slate said, his face red and swollen from the heat.

  Neither of them wore a jacket; both wore short sleeves. The underarm of Slate’s gray shirt was oily with sweat.

  A small group of onlookers had gathered at the corner. Bressler waved his FBI badge and told them to move on, but in New York it took more than a badge to scare a crowd.

  “You’re making a mistake,” I said.

  “And what would that be? Not cutting out your nuts and feeding those stray dogs the other day?” Slate said.

  I looked at Bressler. “Is he jealous?”

  Slate grabbed my throat, slamming my head hard against the side of the 4x4, and began to squeeze, his wild boar eyes constricted to slits. My knees slackened as my muscles started to melt. Firecrackers were going off in my chest. Noticing the crowd edging closer, Bressler tapped Slate’s arm and he released me. I bent over, gasping for air.

  They led me to their car parked two lengths behind the Jeep. Bressler pushed me to lean onto the side of the Buick while he opened the back door.

  I turned my face to stare into his gray eyes. “You’ve got the wrong man.”

  Bressler squinted and smiled slyly. “Where have I heard that before?”

  They shook their heads and looked at each other with perverse smirks.

  “I didn’t kill him!”

  “Save the crying for your mama,” Slate growled. “Get in the car.”

  “Somebody’s gone to a lot of trouble to set me up,” I said.

  Slate stepped forward and grabbed me by the shoulder and head, attempting to force me into the car. I planted my feet, refusing to bend my back, making it impossible for him to move me.

  “Help me here, goddamn it,” Slate screamed at his partner.

  Bressler took hold of my legs, and together they thrust me inside like a piece of furniture, banging my head on the door casing. Slate got next to me; Bressler eased behind the wheel and slammed his door, cursing.