The doorbell rang.
“Ah, that must be your escorts,” Gabriel said. “Would you let our friends in, babe?”
Face pinched as if she was experiencing a toothache, Congresswoman Richardson drew her robe around her hunched shoulders. Her body language suggested a mind in turmoil. She hesitated.
“Go open the door,” Gabriel ordered. “I’m tired of looking at this fake-ass nigger.”
I took a step toward her. “How can you live with yourself?”
She stared at me, her eyes shrunken. She lifted her hand to cover her mouth as if to prevent it from acting on its own accord and saying something she would regret.
“Did you go see her in the morgue?” I said, stepping closer. “Did you see what they did to her face? This is the man responsible.”
“Shut up!” Gabriel snapped.
“Perhaps you didn’t know it before. Perhaps you knew it but couldn’t bring yourself to believe it. But you can’t ignore it now. He killed your daughter. He doesn’t even bother denying it. Does being a congresswoman mean that much to you? To sleep with the man who killed your daughter. If you’ve never done anything for Precious in your life, take back her soul from under his feet. She deserves that, at least.”
I didn’t see the blow. The suddenness of it sent me reeling. At first I felt no pain, just a strange desire to vomit. Then Gabriel struck me again with what felt like the butt of the gun, just behind my ear. I blinked and fell to the floor. Then I felt the pain, like a drill excavating my eardrum. I prayed for blackness to come, and it did.
37
WHEN I OPENED my eyes again I was struck with awe. I was alive. My head was spinning wildly as if I’d just stepped off a Ferris wheel. I had no sense of my body for a while; when I did it felt as if my inner organs had been tumbled together in a washing machine. I mustered enough strength to control the urge to puke. It took me awhile to focus; the room was dark but weirdly familiar. I was lying on the floor on my right side. My head whirled so terribly I thought I would black out again. I smelled blood. Probably my own. The urge to vomit returned, and this time I couldn’t control it. I twisted my head to one side and released the water from the washer. My hands were cuffed in front of me. I bent over and wiped my mouth on my wrist.
Then it came to me. I was in the room where this nightmare had started for me. Back in the room where I discovered Agent Edwards’ body. I felt myself trembling, and try as I might, I couldn’t stop the shaking. It was fear. The room still had the reek of death. I was beginning to imagine my own. I thought of my wife. Of my mother. And of a song my grandmother used to sing. An old West Indian folk song. I tried to remember the words, but I couldn’t.
The door opened outside. Then I heard voices. People had entered the apartment. I rolled onto my back and felt something hard under me. They hadn’t searched me before bringing me here. My gun was still stuck in the back of my waist.
Balling myself up into a tight cocoon, I managed to get both my feet through the loop of my arms, so that my handcuffed arms were now behind my back. I grasped the gun with both hands and slid it free.
The sound of boots was getting closer. I struggled to get my hands in front of me again. I was having difficulty with the gun in my hand so I laid it on the floor. I got my feet through and picked up the gun. Just as I got to my knees, the light was turned on, stunning my eyes. I sank back to the ground on my side, curled in a fetal position, the gun wedged between my legs.
I noticed Tim Samuel first. He stood in the doorway holding a gun to my brother’s head, a perverse fire in his eyes. Jason looked dazed, out of it. Then Stubby came into view. He stood behind Tim in red cowboy boots, grinning like a freak.
“See, Blades,” Tim sneered. “You asked me to find your brother, and I didn’t disappoint you. Why did you disappoint me?”
“Jason, are you okay?” I said.
Jason opened his mouth but no words came. His head lolled from side to side. His clothes were dirty, his face pale, his eyes dull.
“What have I ever done to you, Tim?” I said. “All this because I didn’t take you to Le Bar with Big Ron?”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Blades. This ain’t personal. At least not with me. Now, my man Stubby here, he’s got a different story.”
“I thought we were friends.”
Tim snickered. “Take your dick outta your mouth, Blades. The world doesn’t revolve around you. You’re just a piece of asphalt under my feet as I struggle to get out from under the system. As Malcolm said: by any means necessary.”
“Even if it means destroying the lives of innocent children?”
He laughed with scorn. “I know. I’m immoral. Call the welfare board.”
“I’m gonna kill you myself.”
He stuck out his chest. “How? By shooting me full of guilt?”
“I know Stubby doesn’t have a soul any longer, but you . . .”
“Soul? Do you have any idea how much money it takes to keep my father in a fucking home? His police pension ain’t even enough to cover the cost of his bedpans. I offered the nursing home some soul, but they replied that that currency dried up when Marvin Gaye died. They’re only taking Benjamins these days. Lots of them.”
“Nothing you say can justify what you’re doing.”
He took a few steps toward me, pushing my brother ahead of him. “You’re right. I don’t need to justify shit to you. I’m the one with the gun.”
“You two are nothing but lackeys for Gabriel Aquia. He’s the one with the real Benjamins.”
Stubby puffed himself up to occupy the space in the doorway. “That’s why we gonna fuck your shit up.”
“I knew Tim stole my guns and popped Edwards. Which one of you killed Precious?”
“That would be me, with Jimmy’s help,” Tim said. “I also killed your friend’s dog. Now it’s your turn.”
“Where’s Jimmy now?”
“Drinking PCBs somewhere in the Hudson. He sold you out for a lousy five grand.”
“Jimmy always backed losers, so I’m not surprised he hooked up with you,” I said. “But why did you pick me?”
Tim said, “We had to get rid of that agent, but knew the FBI would never give up hunting his killer. We needed a sucker. Somebody so arrogant and self-absorbed that he’d refuse to surrender to the police. The police hated you and you hated them. It was a perfect plan. I tried to give you your fifteen minutes of fame, Blades. Imagine the headlines: Former Cop Dies in Shoot-Out with FBI. But you blew it. You disappointed me.”
“What do you want with my brother? He’s nothing to you.”
“But he’s something to you. You’re gonna die, Blades. The question is, do you want to watch your brother die first?”
“Let him go, Timmy. Look at him. He doesn’t even know where he is.”
“I’ve decided to do your mother a favor,” said Tim. “I’m sure she must be cursing the stork that delivered you two crazy muthafuckers on her door. Which one of you is closer to the edge? You or him?”
“What’s your angle, Timmy?”
“You wanna save your brother’s life, Blades?”
“I’ll do whatever you want.”
He glanced at Stubby and they both smirked self-confidently.
“Are you ready to write your suicide confession?” Timmy said.
“After I see my brother walk out that door.”
“That ain’t the way it’s gonna go down, Blades.”
“That’s my play.”
He pushed my brother toward me, his arm around Jason’s neck. “Do you recognize this piece, Blades? It’s your Glock. You wanna see your brother die with a bullet in his brain from your gun?”
I blew him a kiss. “Let’s stop playing this game, sweetie.”
“Who the fuck you calling sweetie?”
“Stop fronting. You know you love me. You’re doing this because you can’t have me. You don’t have to pretend in front of Stubby. He’s been in the joint. He knows what it’s like to love a man. Do
n’t you, Stubby?”
Tim released Jason and came and stood over me. I looked up at his dark face. At his bright healthy-looking skin. The whiteness of his eyes. The knot of muscle in his jaw. The slope of his cheeks. His eyes glowed with anger.
He aimed the gun at my head. “Your fucking jukebox is out of songs, Blades.”
There was a thunderous crash at the door outside, like someone was trying to break it down.
“Open up! FBI!” Bressler’s voice boomed from the hall.
Tim swung his head to look at Stubby. Enough time for me to uncoil myself, exposing the gun which I held in both hands. By the time Tim swiveled his head back to me my gun was cocked. I pulled the trigger.
A bullet ripped open his neck. Another one slammed into his chest, lifting him off his feet. He fell back to the ground, taking my brother with him.
Stubby had drawn his gun. He got off a round at me as Bressler and his team broke the door down. The bullet ripped up the floor next to my head. My shot was on the mark, however. I shot him twice in the chest. He stumbled backward and then pitched forward on his face.
Bressler and Slate rushed into the room, followed by officers of the Emergency Unit of the NYPD.
“Drop it!” Bressler ordered.
I was so tensed my fingers were locked around the trigger. I wanted to let the gun fall from my hands, but my finger wouldn’t uncurl.
“I’m not gonna say it again,” Bressler said.
I grimaced. “I can’t.”
“Do it!”
I breathed deeply and thought of making love to Anais. Slowly the gun slipped from my hands. I smiled.
My brother was puking all over the floor.
38
THERE IS A dull emptiness about New York just before daybreak. A deep buzzing of nothing, when drunks awake and only the hopeless romantic can see beauty in the filth left by last night’s revelers. Intoxicated young men peeing on themselves as they search for their last quarter to call their girlfriends, young girls with sore tits from being mauled all night in some dive by out-of-touch perverts, prostitutes crawling into bed with sores between their legs.
But there’s also the joy and hope in the eyes of men and women going home from the lobster shift at some hospital where they’ve just saved the life of a kid who’d overdosed in a club. And the fireman, turning over his watch to the day shift with a deep smile of satisfaction, having put out two potentially deadly fires before the sun came up. Or the cop who’s just taken the gun from some alcoholic’s hand, preventing him from shooting his wife and himself over something as benign as a misplaced photograph.
After two hours of questioning by the FBI and the police, here I was lumbering through the humming of daybreak up the steps to my apartment, with my brother, who was too stoned to recognize me. And with all that had happened, I was happy. Jason was alive. And somewhere en route from California was my wife who was finally coming home.
NO ONE SEEMED to notice that Congresswoman Richardson did not show up for the parade. It was late in the afternoon. The rain had been falling all day, but the downpour couldn’t stop the celebration. I was one among the tens of thousands who stood in the rain, loving its warm bite, as music pulsated around me. Jason stood with me, subdued, eating curried goat. I’d decided that it would be good for his spirit as well as mine to get out in the rain. We wore bright-colored tee-shirts and straw hats purchased from one of the street vendors.
On the sidelines we danced to the music and gazed at the colorfully costumed dancers as they came by in waves: half-dressed teenage girls, their midriffs exposed, tender breasts barely covered, wearing headbands of red and gold feathers and sequins; old women in colored tights, their faces painted with stripes and bars; young men strapped to huge multicolored dragons and snakes on wheels for easy manipulation and women in shorts, large breasts flopping out of skimpy tops, rubbery hips spinning circles, jumping, waving flags. And when Milo reached us with his band, we left our perch on the sidewalk to join him and his group behind a truck festooned with red and black cloth.
Milo handed me a Trinidadian flag.
“What do you think, Blades,” he said as we chip-chipped to the music.
“It’s great. Better than Mardi Gras.”
“Mardi Gras! That ain’t Carnival. This is Carnival.”
I laughed. “Whatever, Milo.”
“Now watch in the newspaper tomorrow what they gonna write. They gonna write about the sexual frenzy of the dancing and shit like that. They do it every year. They don’t get it. You gotta jump once to get it. It ain’t about sex. It’s about the spirit. You get it now, don’t you?”
I nodded. I did feel an unburdening that was rare for me. There was such a sense of awe at being in the center of all this color and sound and smiling energy that I felt light. I felt like singing.
39
LATER THAT NIGHT the phone rang as I was getting out of the shower. Jason answered it in the living room and brought it to me in the bathroom. I wrapped a towel around myself and took the phone from Jason’s hand.
I heard the sound of heavy breathing but nothing more and was about to hang up. Then the person on the other end spoke.
“Blades?” The voice was weak, but I’d know that raspy croak anywhere.
Anger bubbled immediately, so much of it that I couldn’t speak.
“Blades?” the creaky voice groaned again
“How’re the PCPs this year?” I said.
“Not worth the investment.”
There was a long pause. I had so many things to say to Jimmy. I never thought I’d get to say them, and now that the chance was here I couldn’t get anything out.
“I’m really sorry, Blades.”
“Think nothing of it, Jimmy. I let my friends fuck me in the ass with hot stakes all the time.”
“I didn’t know what they were planning. I was broke. I have a five-hundred-dollar-a-day habit. I wasn’t thinking.”
“You still aren’t. You should’ve remained dead, Jimmy. Because now I’m gonna have to find you and kill you myself.”
“It would be the best thing you could do for me, Blades. I wish I’d died when they shot me and threw me into the Hudson. I wished I’d died. But I’m like you, I guess. Blessed with nine lives. The bullet went right through me without damaging any vital organs. When I hit the water I came to. It was night. It was dark. They didn’t even realize I was still alive. Just wasn’t my time, I guess.”
“You’ve lived your last life, Jimmy.”
“Come and take it, Blades. Come on. I’m not going anywhere. You know where to find me in Buffalo. I gave you your life back, now I’ll give you mine.”
He hung up. I stood there with the phone in my hand. My hands were shaking. I felt like crying.
THE PHONE RANG again a few seconds later. I let it ring for a while, debating whether to answer. I couldn’t listen to Jimmy’s voice again. In fact I didn’t want to talk to anybody but Anais. But it was Noah. I told him I couldn’t speak to him, using my having to drive Jason home to New Jersey as an excuse. But Noah was persistent.
“What’s the matter, Blades? Why don’t you want to talk to me?”
“It ain’t you, Noah. I don’t wanna talk to anybody right now.”
“Did I scare you last night?”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Nothing. You took care of your business. That’s good.”
“I gotta go, Noah.”
“Don’t run from me, Blades.”
“I ain’t running. I gotta go.”
“Fine. Go on. Hey Blades, can I ask you something?”
“What?”
“I’ve wanted to ask you this for a while. I travel in some circles that would surprise you, understand what I’m saying. Word gets around. The way you took care of that business last night made me think of a rumor that’s been around.”
“I don’t have time to dance with you, big man.”
“I heard you buried an ex-Panther in Miami.”
“You know where your father is, don’t you?”
“I gotta go, Noah.”
“Next time you see him, tell him I send my regards.”
“Can I go now?”
“I want you to tell him something else.”
“What?”
“Tell him I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?”
“Yes, tell him I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“I was his go-between with the FBI. I was the one he gave the information to that put those two Black Panther leaders in jail. I was the Iago whispering in his ear. I took advantage of our friendship. Not that it was hard. It’s because of me he’s been running for his life ever since.”
I paused for a long time. The phone felt like a block of iron in my hand.
Noah’s voice was persuasive. “They killed a cop. A friend of mine. I was gonna get them any way I could.”
“Why’re you telling me this now, Noah?”
“I don’t know. Just felt like I had to. Set things straight.”
“I hope you sleep better tonight, big man.”
“It was the times, Blades.”
“It’s always the times, Noah. Especially for people like my father who get left in the time machine.”
“Was it easy to kill those men, Blades?”
“I didn’t think about it then and I don’t want to think about it now.”
“Why? You afraid you might discover you enjoyed it?”
“I don’t like injustice, Noah. I used to think I became a cop to save my brother from drugs. But that really wasn’t it. I grew up listening to my parents talk about civil rights and marching against injustice. I guess that stuck in my mind somewhere.”
“I’ll always love you like a son, Blades.”
THE DRIVE TO New Jersey was quiet until we reached the Turnpike. Jason slept his way through the tunnel crossing, waking up on the other side of the river with a strange expression on his face, as if he’d had a bad dream.
Too Beautiful to Die Page 24
