A Dead Man Speaks

by Lisa Jones Johnson

  As I pressed my body into hers, I felt the love rushing out from me to her and back to me, trying to eat away at the fear, but not quite. It was still there. I kissed her and held her and ran my fingers over her face, trying to memorize every curve because I knew that the fear was winning. And then I slept, with the cold bench and her warm body against me.

  When I woke up, it was snowing that thick, mushy snow when it’s really too warm to snow but for some reason it does anyway.Laurel was twirling around in the street, laughing like a little girl. “Clive, look. It’s snowing in June!”

  I sat up on my elbows, looking around at the thin blanket of white that had covered everything. Laurel looked like the snow queen, dancing around to the music in her head. “C’mon get up. It’s beautiful.”

  “You are outta your mind!”

  “I know, but isn’t it wonderful!”

  I don’t know why, but I laughed. Maybe it was catching, whatever it was. This spark Laurel had. ’cause for some reason this woman could make me go through the weirdest mood shifts from sadness to fear to love to this feeling that everything was cool. Cooler than it’d ever been and cooler than it would ever be. I ran out to her, picked her up and held her up in the air like Daddy used to do to me. We both laughed as the snow licked our faces and clung to our clothes like crystals from God. I was out of breath from laughing and twirling her around in the air. When I finally sank down on the bench exhausted with her in my arms, I asked the question that had been burning into me since last night.

  “So what about us? I’m going to New York. I’ve got a job. I don’t know what your plans are, but…”

  She pressed her fingers against my lips. “Shhhh, don’t worry. You do what you need to do. Right now it’s not the right time.” She paused. “For either of us. But it will be, and then…well then we’ll just have to find each other again. I’m not worried.”

  She kissed me and the last thing I remember her saying was, “It’s good luck, snow in June. It’s good luck for us.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  New York 1974

  “Hey, buddy, whatcha thinkin’ about?” Red nudged me, and suddenly I was on the bus again, speeding past the New England scenery headed for the Big Apple.

  “Nothin’ jus thinkin’…”

  “Shit, man, you can’t fool me. You’re thinking about her aren’t you?”

  I had to smile. Red did know me. Hell, we were like brothers. We’d roomed together since freshman year, and when you live with somebody that long you get to know their thoughts and their moods without them saying a thing.

  The truth is, I was thinking about Laurel. I hadn’t stopped thinking about her since we said goodbye. She’d gone with me to the bus station. And she’d smiled that old smile of hers, the confident, I’m-in-control smile. Only behind the smile, I knew she was just as scared as me. Scared of the feelings we had that seemed to lead us to places where we’d never been and that nobody else could touch. She didn’t have an address to give me because she said she was just moving around for a while, and I didn’t know where I’d be in New York. So in the end, we just sorta held each other until the bus driver started closing the door. I scrambled on, barely making it. I pressed my face against the greasy window and watched her smile blending into the trees and the telephone poles and the grey sky to a speck no bigger than the birds to nothing.

  I’d meant to ask her other things, but somehow there just wasn’t time. We both knew without having to say it that this wasn’t it for us. That in a way it was more like a beginning. ’cause there was this connection between us. No matter what happened, we’d always be together. Even when it seemed like we weren’t we would be. That’s what I was thinking as my eyes roamed past the white New England houses and the brown green trees.

  Red nudged me again. “She was a cutie.” His blue eyes sparkled. “Did you get some?”

  I started to tell the truth, I started to say that what I got from her I couldn’t ever get from anybody else. That it was more than a lay. That it was a part of my soul. “Naw, man, we just talked.”

  A big shit eating I-don’t-believe-you-for-a-minute grin spread across his face “Sure.” He settled back in his seat with a chuckle.

  * * *

  “NEW YORK CITY PORT AUTHORITY LAST STOP!”

  I bolted awake.

  “We’re heeeeere!” Red jumped up excitedly, grabbing his bag from the rack.

  Truth is, I was still a little dazed. I think the last thing I remember was passing by Boston, and I’d been knocked out since then.

  Everybody else on the bus was jostling and pushing as if there were some prize for being the first off the bus or something.

  “C’mon, man, let’s go!” I followed Red off the bus, down the steps, through the madness of the station. Then I stopped on the sidewalk. I’d never seen anything like it. The buildings rose up from the sidewalk like giant steeples. Tall, taller than anything I’d ever seen. People were everywhere: on the sidewalks, in the streets, laughing, talking, selling shit, a sea of movement.

  My face broke out in this huge grin. I knew I was where I belonged. All those small towns in the backwaters of life were jails that I’d escaped from. I’d been doing time all my life. Finally, I was free.

  * * *

  I don’t know how the hell we ended up at the Pier at Coney Island. Must be a white boy thing. Red had insisted that we go out there in the middle of the night. We’d been hanging out in bars for most of the evening, when all of a sudden he turned to me and said let’s go to the pier. I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, and I don’t think he did either, really. But his friend, the one who’d told him to come to New York to begin with, had told him some shit about having to come to the Pier at Coney Island. I wasn’t that hyped about going, but I didn’t want to hear him tell me I was chicken shit, so I went.

  I must admit, it was pretty wild. It was a ghost town, especially at that time of night. Most of the old amusement park had closed down in bits and pieces and now all that was left was a rickety Ferris wheel, a rusted merry-go-round, and empty vendors booths. And the pier. A huge, rickety wooden pier, jutting out into the black waters.

  Red waived his arms out wide and ran to the end of the pier, shouting like the drunken fool he was. “This shit’s fantastic! Whooooaaa.” He whooped like an Indian, doing some lame dance at the end of the pier.

  “Man, chill out. It’s just a pier.”

  “Fuck you, Clive. C’mon out. What’s wrong, you scared?’“

  “Hell no, I ain’t scared.”

  “Well c’mon then.” I heard a huge splash as Red jumped feet first into the dark green waters. “The water’s great!” He’d kicked his tennis shoes off first, but other than that, he was splashing around in all his clothes.

  “Red…what the…Are you outta your fuckin’ mind?!” All I could see was the churning black waters. Red had completely disappeared under the foam. And now my stomach had started to turn over. I didn’t want to think the worst, and I sure as hell didn’t want to have to go in there after him. Swimming was definitely not my thing.

  “Red!”

  “Chicken shit, chicken shit!” Red had bobbed up to the surface, his face pink and wet. He dog paddled around the moss-covered pilings. He gulped water and laughed as he taunted me from the water. “Man, Clive, you are chicken shit. You’re scared to jump in. C’mon, it’s not cold!”

  He somersaulted back under the waves, his water-logged arms flailing around. “I love it. This is better than the Charles in winter.”

  I shook my head, watching him zooming under the water, laughing. “Man you are one crazy white boy!”

  He paddled over to the piling closest to me, his eyes bloodshot and red from the water, or the gallons of beer he’d drunk, I didn’t know which. He splashed a handful of water in my direction, grinning. “Yeah and you are a scared ass n—”

  “Man, fuck you!” And don’t ask me why, but at that moment I saw all the challenges I’d ever faced in my
life lining up before me. I knew that I had to do it. Not for Red and his crazy assed self, but for me. In a way, it was 1962 again, and I was in front of their playground with the WHITES ONLY sign. Only this time it was 1974, and I was going in.

  I closed my eyes whispering, “Oh shit!”

  The icy waters stung my face, drenching my clothes to the skin, crawling inside of me. I gasped. Trash and dirty seaweed wrapped itself around my arms. The only thing I could think was I gotta get air.

  As hard as I tried, I couldn’t get to the surface. Everything was black around me. I was swallowing water and feeling myself tunneling down. I didn’t know where. My lungs ached for air. But there was only water, and murkiness. I knew that I couldn’t give up. I couldn’t let the water get me. I started pumping my arms, willing myself to the surface. Propelling myself up, up, until I thrust my head into the dark night. I remember seeing stars. And then, I laughed, because I was floating, bobbing on the water next to Red. “I did it! I fuckin’ did it!!!”

  I got this incredible rush better than anything I’d ever gotten getting high. I could conquer anything. For the first time in my life I knew I was something and I didn’t give a damn what anybody else thought. “I am the shit!!!!!”

  I dove under the water, my heart still racing. I wanted that feeling again. That feeling of winning, of fighting something and beating it. When I came back up, I lay on my back, floating on the surface of the water, looking at the pinpoints of light piercing the darkness above. I felt a peace that I don’t think I’d ever felt before, covering every part of me with calm.

  I don’t know how long we stayed there, but when we finally pulled ourselves up, light had started to eat away at the edges of the night.

  Red shook himself like a wet dog, slapping his thick hands against his stomach. “Now was that the shit or what, man?”

  I grinned. I had to give it him, sometimes crazy white boy mess was okay. “It was…”

  He gave me high five. “Now we’re officially New Yorkers. We’ve been baptized.”

  I shook the water out of my hair, threw back my head and shouted as loud as I could. “Now let’s make some moooooooooonnneeey!” It was my turn to dance, singing the Ojay tune “Money, money, money!”

  Red didn’t know the song, but he followed along anyway, rumbling off key as we headed for the train. “Money, money, moneeee!”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Detective Bob—New York 1987

  “What can you say about Clive January?”

  The room was deathly silent. The huge white casket in the front of the church, shiny and still.

  “He was a man like no other: a good man, a family man, a man loved by all…”

  I think I noticed people shuffling in their seats. But the speaker went on. I took out my pad, scratching down notes of what he was saying.

  “Especially by me. Clive and I were like brothers: our wives were friends, our children played together and together we built one of the most formidable boutique powerhouse investment banking firms that Wall Street had ever seen. They said we couldn’t do it. But we did. Because that’s the kind of man that Clive January was: my friend, my partner, my brother.”

  Someone started crying, a woman in the back. A small, slight black woman. She was so covered in black veils and scarves that you see couldn’t much else.

  Her cry seemed to come from somewhere deep in her soul. It reminded me of when my uncle died. His mistress, the woman everybody in the family hated, sobbed like that at the funeral. This woman whoever she was had that same kind of cry. Clive’s wife was quiet, stone-faced and dry-eyed.

  I remember that day at my uncle’s funeral. I was about seven. I remember ’cause it was the first time I think I knew that there was something different about me. Something most people wouldn’t or didn’t want to understand. Something it took me years before I understood. For a minute I blinked and I could almost see my dad’s face in front of me, wide and angry—the way it looked as long as I could remember…

  “Dad, who’s that lady crying?” My dad’s red cheeks were redder than ever, and the little bits of thin, blonde hair on his head were plastered down with sweat. I poked him again and whispered louder, thinking maybe he didn’t hear me. “Dad, who’s that?

  “Bobby, please!” It was my mother. She hadn’t said anything since we got to my uncle’s funeral. She’d just had her lips pursed real hard. My uncle was my dad’s only brother. Maybe that’s why he was looking so funny. It must be hard to lose your brother. I wouldn’t know. I didn’t have brothers or sisters.

  Now that woman in the back had started crying even louder, people were turning around and giving her the kind of look I get when I’ve done somethin’ bad.

  “Why’s everybody lookin’ at her, Dad?”

  “Bobby, your mother told you to be quiet. Now shut your trap!!!!!”

  I kicked my feet against the bench. Mad. Why do I always have to shut up? I looked back at that lady again. Wondering why nobody seemed to like her. She seemed nice and kinda pretty, too. I looked back at her again and tried to pretend I could get inside her head and figure out what she’s thinkin’ and what was makin’ her cry. It’s a game I played by myself sometimes. I was Houdini or one of those fortunetellers on the pier who could read your mind and tell the future. I played this game a lot ’cause most of the time I was by myself. Mama wouldn’t let me play much with the other kids in the neighborhood. She said they weren’t our kind. I didn’t know exactly who that was, our kind that is. All I knew is that it meant that I played by myself most of the time.

  I scrunched my eyes real tight, trying to see inside that lady’s head again. All of a sudden, I felt sick to my stomach. I’m gonna throw up. My head was hurting. I reached over and grabbed Mama’s hand. I closed my eyes tighter, but couldn’t stop the pictures from coming into my head. Cramming out all the other thoughts. I couldn’t control the pictures. They rushed into my head so fast, I couldn’t really make out what they were. My head felt hot, and I was breathin’ so hard and fast folks would have thought I’d run around the block ten times without stopping. Then the pictures started to make shapes. I could see my uncle clear like he was still alive. He was waiting for someone. He kept lookin’ at his watch. Then I saw her. That lady. The one who was crying. Only she wasn’t crying. She was running across the street, smiling at my uncle. My uncle came up to her, and then…he…yuck. He kissed her! And not on the cheek. This was a movie star kiss, all big and slobbery.

  I popped open my eyes, trying to make the pictures go away. Mama put her arm around me. I was shaking and my hands were sweating. I wanted to cry. I somehow knew something that I wasn’t supposed to, and it had made me dirty. I was afraid to close my eyes, afraid the pictures would come back again. So I just stared ahead and held Mama’s hand even tighter.

  The woman choked, bringing me back to Clive’s funeral abruptly. Shaking off the past, I turned back toward the woman and caught her out of the corner of my eye as she gathered her coat and ran out of the church. Heads turned, eyes lowered, and significant glances were cast. I wondered again who she was. I made a note in my pad. Find the woman in black.

  The man at the podium looked rich. Everything about him said money: the suit, the finely manicured look. Everyone in the church had the same look. Money. But black money. Before this case, I didn’t even know these kind existed. Hell, growing up in Brooklyn, the only blacks I ever saw were as poor as we were. Playing stickball in the street just like we did, no fancy playgrounds like the kids in Manhattan, just the streets and the sun curling up the pavement in August.

  “Bobby!!!!”

  I turned around and saw my dad behind the wheel of the city bus he drove. He looked mad. But then my dad always looked mad. I think he was mad at life and everybody in it, especially himself.

  “Bobby, get over here, now!!!!”

  Turning to Howie, I whispered desperately, “Don’t go away. I’ll be right back.” My stomach was tight and my legs were cramping up. I could t
ell I was in for a whipping. Dad’s face was bright red, and his big fat fingers were thumping the steering wheel of the bus. I started to climb the steps of the bus. Before I could get to the top, he grabbed me by the collar and yanked me up so I could barely breathe.

  “How many times I gotta tell ya to stop playing with them blacks? You go find some white kids to hang around. I won’t have no son of mine tarred by that brush. ’Fore you know it, you’ll end up just like’em, good for nothin’ sons of—”

  “But, Dad, Howie’s different!”

  He turned me around and practically spit the words, “They’re all alike. You remember that. There’s none of ’em different!” Dad threw me on the ground. I could feel the blood filling my mouth where I scraped my lip against the pavement. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Howie, running away.

  Dad leaned over to me, his eyes red and moist looking. “I don’t wanna see you with no more blacks, you hear me?”

  The sound of the organ rolled over the church, knocking me back to now. I wondered what my dad would think. Probably’d roll over in his grave. Me sitting in a church full of blacks—the only people he hated more than himself. My job—to get inside their lives and figure out what had happened to some rich SOB that could probably buy and sell me with his lunch money. Somebody I couldn’t give a damn about and who probably deserved the bullet in the back that he got. Dad and me didn’t agree on much, but I had to give ’em that. He was right, they were all alike. I used to think that you couldn’t lump people in all together, but after the way they’d sold me out, I’d seen the light. The irony of it all was that with this case I needed to prove that I still had it. That I was still Detective Bob, still the shit.

  I didn’t have time to piss away, thinkin’ about ironies or other such bullshit. Right now I needed to close this case out, find out who did it, and in the process, somehow figure out what happened to Detective Bob, the guy I used to be and how to get him back. Looking around here though, I could tell that these people were from a different world, a world I’d never seen. Yet a world that I knew that I’d come to know real good. Whether I wanted to or not.