Do or Die

by Grace F. Edwards

  “Listen,” he said as he flipped through the worn pages. Some entries were blurred and grease-stained, but he knew the names and who he was searching for. “Once I give up this info, you on your own, understand? I don’t know shit if it blows back at you.”

  “Charleston, you know me better than that.”

  He wrote three names, addresses, and phone numbers on a torn sheet of paper and handed it across the counter. I scooped it up before he could change his mind and I was out the door so fast, one would have thought I had stolen a choice rack of ribs. I waved to Jo Jo and kept walking.

  I hurried over to St. Nicholas Park and found a seat on a bench in the shade between the mothers and toddlers and baby strollers and old chess players. I took out my notebook and thought about my next move. Charleston had given me only three names: Monday-Amanda Johnson; Tuesday-Jeanette Beavers; Thursday-Myrtle Thomas. Wednesday-Starr Hendrix was dead.

  What happened to Friday and Saturday? Miss Viv said there was no Sunday. I wondered if the girls were allowed to rest that day, or were all the johns in church busily experiencing the cleansing wonders of the Holy Ghost?

  I jotted down a few more notes, vague descriptions that Charleston had given me, next to their names and then left the bench. At Seventh Avenue, I walked downtown again passing Wells Restaurant, where one day soon Viv and I would have serious business with the chicken and waffles.

  At 125th Street near the Apollo Theatre, I entered the lobby of a small building leading upstairs to the law office of Elizabeth Jackson, my friend and attorney. Elizabeth tries hard—but often fails—to keep me on the straight and narrow.

  Her door was closed and I could hear the murmur of voices inside. She was interviewing a client so I waited in the anteroom and took the time to review my plans again. An hour later, her door opened and she escorted a tall, rather good-looking man to the stairs.

  I heard his voice, low but strong: “Thanks again, Miss Jackson. The sooner the better.”

  And her voice, measured and reassuring: “Mr. Morgan, you can rely on me.”

  I knew it was him. Knew that long-legged, pigeon-toed walk. But his shoulders. Usually so straight he could’ve been the poster boy for the “The Few. The Proud. The Marines.” His shoulders now seemed to fold against his chest like the wings of an injured bird. Why was he here? Did he feel that the police suspected him? Had they questioned him yet?

  When Elizabeth walked back into the office, I was out of my seat before she could say hello. “That’s Travis Morgan,” I said. “What’s he doing here?”

  She said nothing and I followed behind her so closely I nearly tripped up when she stopped short. She turned to face me.

  “Mali, what would’ve happened if you had dropped in an hour later or two hours earlier?”

  “Nothing,” I said, knowing exactly what she was getting at.

  “Nothing is right,” she said, “so we’ll leave it right there.”

  Of course I couldn’t leave it and tried to rearrange my question but Elizabeth was the attorney and skilled herself at rearranging such things as questions, especially after an objection has been raised.

  “You know as well as I that I can’t discuss any of my clients’ business,” she sighed. She took the band from her head and shook her cascade of auburn-tinted locks loose, ready to change the subject, ready to relax.

  “I’m sorry, Elizabeth. Won’t happen again.”

  She smiled because we both knew it wasn’t true.

  “Okay, so tell me about the trip. And the great time you had with your honey. I’m all ears and envy. Sure wish I could’ve been there.”

  “Don’t complain. I know some attorneys who might have to apply at Mickey Dee’s if they don’t get something soon.”

  She moved from her desk to put some files away. “I’m not really complaining. This is what I want to do. This is what my dad did. Anyway, let’s hear about the trip. Who was on board? Who was at Newport?”

  I went over each detail but omitted the Chrissie Morgan stuff since her husband had just left the office. God knows what that was about, but I didn’t want to complicate things any further. So I told her about Ruth Brown, Slide Hampton, Cassandra Wilson, Aretha, Lou Rawls, Sir Roland Hannah, Dave Brubeck, Branford Marsalis, James Moody. And, of course, my dad.

  “That sounds like a cruise to heaven,” she said. “Maybe next year …” Her voice trailed off and I decided to change the subject. I knew she hadn’t taken a vacation for two years and needed some relief.

  “I dropped by because I need some forms,” I said.

  “What kind?”

  “Last will and testament.”

  “Oh?” She leaned forward and folded her arms on the desk. “Last will? Planning on leaving us?”

  “Not just yet,” I said.

  “Why do you need them? I thought you and your dad had completed all of that a few years ago.”

  Now it was my turn to get cagey. “We did.”

  The statement hung in the air and another minute passed before she said, “Okay, how many do you need?”

  “Three, if you have them,” I said. The bell outside the office rang and she glanced at her watch. “My two o’clock appointment,” she said. She extended the forms and I rose from the chair. “Thanks. I’ll call tomorrow. We can play catch-up.”

  9

  The Monday woman, Amanda Johnson, lived in a five-story red-brick walk-up on West 140th Street between Seventh and Lenox avenues a few doors away from the old P.S. 139, the Frederick Douglass Jr. High School, where the poet Countee Cullen once taught. The building now houses a seniors’ center. The small park on the corner of Lenox Avenue was crowded with serious chess players hunkered down over their boards, oblivious to the rumble and blare of passing traffic. Not far from them, under a circle of trees, women exchanged news, and a few feet away two teenagers tended baby strollers.

  I glanced at the girls and caught snatches of conversation: precocious, fresh, and funny. I watched them handle the strollers and hoped that at least one of them was the baby-sitter, older sister, or any relative other than mother.

  The stoop of Monday’s house was nearly as crowded as the corner park, and a thin woman in a faded housedress looked up when I said “Pardon me.” She said nothing but shaded her eyes against the sun and let a second pass before she decided to move an inch to the left. This created a narrow path that allowed me to edge up the steps, putting one foot directly in front of the other. None of the sixteen or so “doormen” moved either and I felt like a tightrope walker as I manuevered my way through them and walked up to the third floor. Despite the stoop group, the hallways were clean and well lit and the gray-painted walls were graffiti-free.

  At the end of the corridor I rang the bell and waited, then pressed the buzzer again. I was turning to leave when the door opened slowly.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m looking for Amanda Johnson,” I said.

  The girl nodded. She was either the daughter of the woman I was looking for or Short Change should’ve been thrown under the jail for statutory rape.

  “I’m Amanda,” she said. She spoke slowly, as if she had just woken up. She could not have been more than sixteen, about five feet three and perhaps one hundred ten pounds and quite pretty. Her brown skin was fair enough to reveal a splash of freckles across her nose, and her medium-length hair was actually in braids. Pigtails. Plaited the way I remembered my mother used to braid mine. I looked at this girl and remembered how I once held the jar of hair oil and sat on the floor between my mother’s knees.

  At that moment I was glad that Short Change had been taken out. And I hoped it hadn’t been a sudden ambush, but drawn out long enough for him to beg for, and reflect on, his worthless life.

  “Can I help you?”

  Her accent let me know that she hadn’t too long ago stepped off the Greyhound from some small Midwestern place. Short Change must have picked her up before she had had a chance to rest her suitcase on New York pavement.

 
“Ah, yes, Miss Johnson? My name is Miss Anderson and I’m from the Community Life Insurance Company. I’m here about Starr Hendrix. May I come in?”

  Her face clouded and I saw a trace of suspicion but she opened the door wider.

  “Come on in. I suppose it’s okay.”

  She stepped back from the door and led me into a small, two-room apartment. I was surprised at the layout. The building had been renovated and looked new on the outside but I hadn’t known that the old five- and six-room apartments inside had been sliced and diced to accommodate more people in less space. No wonder the stoop was crowded. There was nowhere to turn around inside.

  I followed her into the larger of the two rooms, which seemed to double as a bedroom-living room. The sofa on which I sat was piled with clothes at one end, as was the floor. A mound of shoes and plastic boots, badly in need of repair, lay in the corner near the wall and I saw a tiny table nearby that held several wigs and jars of makeup. A small television set rested on a folding chair near the table. On the wall above the table was the familiar pictorial quartet of Malcolm, Martin, John, and Bobby—framed in brass and arranged in a step fashion with Malcolm at the top.

  She settled herself in a chair opposite me and folded her hands in her lap, waiting.

  “This is a nice apartment, very cozy,” I said, looking around.

  “Thanks. I need to clean some things out, but I’ve been so busy. Now I suppose …” She glanced at me. “You said something about insurance?”

  “Yes. Starr Hendrix listed you as one of her contingent beneficiaries and I need some information.”

  “What’s contingent?”

  “It means that you’re the second name on the policy. If the first person dies, then the second one, the contingent person, becomes the beneficiary.”

  “Really? Starr did that for me?”

  “Yes. But if the first person dies less than a year after the policy was taken out, then the policy is void. Also, if the first person commits suicide within that year, it’s void.”

  I was talking fast and she closed her eyes, confused. Shit, I was confused myself. I had planned to use the old last will and testament hustle, counting on good old-fashioned greed to extract the information I needed, but discarded that tactic when I looked at the scene. Now I felt terrible winging it like this. I had expected an older woman, a less innocent one with whom I could come right to the point if the will and testament bait didn’t work. I would have said to the sister straight up: Look, Starr was murdered. Mack Daddy was iced. I’m Starr’s cousin/sister/mama/friend/aunt on her mama’s brother’s side. Pick one. And I’m trying to find out whodunit. Or something like that.

  “What kind of beneficiary?” Monday asked again.

  I was afraid that she was going to reach for a pencil and write it down this time, but she didn’t, and I repeated the confusing statement about first and second beneficiaries and suicide in the first year and so forth without tripping myself up.

  “So,” I said, reaching for my notebook before she could digest this concoction any further. “I just need you to answer a few questions. How long had you known Starr Hendrix?”

  “Let’s see. I got in the city … let’s see. I met her two years ago. When I first came here. And, you know, like when I met her, she was who I wanted to be, you know?”

  “I can understand that,” I said, pretending to scribble something important. “Starr was going to be a star. That’s what her daddy said.”

  Monday’s face lost some of its softness and the frown got deeper. “But nobody heard nuthin’. Don’t know when the funeral is or nuthin’ and I want to go.”

  She traced the narrow line between her braids with her finger, then wound the tip of the braid around her thumb.

  “I wanted to go into show business. Henry said when I first met him that he could set me up, help me meet the right people, get me on stage at the Apollo, but that would be only the first step. He knew a lot of people in show business, he said. But first—”

  “But what?”

  “But first, I needed some really nice clothes, and a new hairdo, and backup money.”

  “What’s backup money?”

  “You know. Money for clubs, cabs, and restaurants where you could be seen by the right people. Stuff like that. He was saving my money so I could go to acting school. He was gonna be my manager, he said. He said soon as I made enough for actin’ school, he could work on gettin’ me seen by the right people. He knew a lot of people.”

  I glanced at the pile of shoes and boots in the corner and looked down at my notebook again. Short Change must have repeated this until it took on the resonance of a mantra. “When last did you see Starr or Henry Stovall?” I said.

  Again she closed her eyes and the braid twisting slowed. “I saw Starr one night about two weeks ago. She was with a tall, kinda nice-lookin’ brother who had that walk, you know. Kinda pigeon-toed step that said groovin’ with him wouldn’a been no problem at all.

  “Starr told him to walk on a little ways and she stopped and spoke to me. Told me to get out of what I was doin’, that Henry was gaming me. Well, Henry drove by while she was talkin’—you should see the wheels he pushin’. Beautiful car. He keeps himself in the latest Cadillac.”

  She spoke as if Henry “Short Change” Stovall were still among the living and was expected to knock on the door any minute and invite her out. I wanted to ask how often she rode in that car and she seemed to read my mind.

  “Every night when he drop me off? I felt so good, I wanted to stay in that fine leather seat forever. But he said what I was doin’ was for the both of us and soon as he made the right contacts, I would stop.”

  She looked down at the floor and I didn’t press her.

  “Okay, just to confirm his last known address, I need—”

  “Well, he had a small place near the park. Marcus Garvey Park. Said he was gonna move to somethin’ bigger soon as he could, but now …”

  “Did anything happen the night Starr spoke to you? Did Henry do anything?”

  “Not to her, no, ma’am. One thing about Starr, she didn’t take no mess from nobody.”

  “Really?”

  “Uhm-hmm. She had her own plans, she said. Let him and everybody else know that she wasn’t gonna be out on the … uh …”

  “So Henry didn’t say anything? Didn’t do anything?” I asked softly.

  A minute passed before Monday’s tears came, and then they were like a cloudburst, loud and uncontrollable. I searched frantically in my bag for a fistful of tissues and leaned over to extend them to her.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I know this is painful.”

  “No, it ain’t. The pain happened that night, when I got off work. He picked me up, I handed him the money, nearly a thousand dollars, and he said, ‘You did good, baby,’ and he kissed me. And then when we got here, he beat me. Beat me ’til I couldn’t move, I was so sore.”

  “Why?”

  “ ’Cause he had warned me to stay away from Starr. Said she was bad for me and for his business. Said he was gonna fix her.”

  “How?”

  “I never found out. Maybe he planned to git her back on the drugs again or something. Teach her a lesson, he said.”

  “What are you going to do now?” I asked, dreading the answer. Some women on the stroll, especially if they worked alone, made so much money some nights that eventually it became hard to quit and deal with the ordinary flow of dollars.

  I watched Monday shrug and close her eyes again, as if she wanted to block out the future.

  “How old are you?” I asked, still jotting in my notebook.

  “Twenty-one.”

  “What’s your date of birth?” I asked quickly.

  “Uh …”

  I waited patiently as she struggled to add the number of years to her actual date in order to come up with an approximation.

  “Oh shit,” she sighed. “I never was good at numbers. I’m seventeen.”

  Seventeen. That me
ant that Short Change had picked her up when she was fifteen.

  “You ever thought of going back home?”

  “Naw. Maybe for a visit. But not yet. I haven’t done what I set out to do. For me, it’s do or die.”

  I said nothing. Do or die. It’d probably been that way also for Starr, the Wednesday woman.

  “Listen,” I said, handing her one of Elizabeth Jackson’s cards. “I want you to call this number today. Not tomorrow but today. She’s real nice and can put you in touch with some people, some agencies, who can help you. I mean really help you.”

  “What about the insurance thing?”

  “I don’t know. Starr’s policy is less than a year old,” I said, wondering how far I could stretch this lie. “You’re the contingent—the second beneficiary. We have to prove that the first beneficiary—Henry Stovall—didn’t commit suicide or do something to cause his own death. And after all that, we have to sort through all of his relatives who might pop out of the woodwork to contest the policy. This might take some time.”

  This seemed to satisfy her, but before I closed the notebook, I said, “Can you put me in touch with Henry’s other … friends?”

  “You mean his girls? Are their names on the policy?”

  “No. But I need to speak to them anyway. Any information about the way he died will be helpful.”

  She moved from the small chair and walked into the other room. I couldn’t see directly into the room but it sounded as if she was pulling a small box from a shelf of some kind. She brought the box, made of heavy corrugated cardboard and large enough to hold several pairs of shoes, into the room and placed it on the floor between us.

  “See,” she said, taking the cover off. “Starr taught me this. Always pay yourself first. God, I’m gonna miss her.”

  I stared open-mouthed at the stacks of bills: hundreds, fifties, twenties, old and new, large and small portraits of Franklins, Grants, Jacksons, tied in neat rubber-banded bundles. This had been a very busy little girl, who was not in such bad shape after all. I glanced up to catch her smiling at my surprise and I wondered if she planned to call Elizabeth.