The Man in 3B

by Weber, Carl

  Obviously the way I greeted them wasn’t what they usually experienced when they knocked on someone’s door. They gave each other a confused glance.

  “You’ve been expecting us? What are you, some kind of psychic?” Anderson asked.

  I laughed and told her, “The girls on the stoop told me you’d been questioning everyone. I figured it was just a matter of time before you made your way to me.” I gestured for them to sit on the couch, and they settled in. Their clothes would probably be reeking of smoke by the time they left. “Have you made any progress in finding Daryl’s killer?”

  “Some,” Detective Thomas said. “But we’re still in the beginning stages of our investigation. We’re trying to eliminate possible suspects from our list. This, unfortunately, brings us to you.”

  I might have been expecting them to show up, but I sure as heck hadn’t been expecting them to say that. “Am I a suspect?”

  “Right now everyone’s a suspect. Considering your close relationship with Mr. Graham, I hope you can understand why we’d like to speak to you and scratch you off our list as quickly as possible,” he said.

  I felt tears welling up in my eyes at the mention of our relationship. It had only been a day, but I missed Daryl so intensely that hearing his name set me on edge. I still couldn’t believe they considered me a suspect, but I was willing to do whatever it took to make sure they arrested someone for this hideous crime.

  “I’ll tell you everything I know. I just want you to find Daryl’s killer,” I told him as I slumped into the armchair before my knees gave out.

  Anderson jumped in, sounding much less sympathetic than her partner. “I’m glad to hear that because we talked to your stepdaughter, and—”

  “Oh, God. Here we go. I knew this was coming,” I said. “What has Krystal accused me of now? Murdering Daryl the same way I murdered her mother?” I had to laugh to keep from crying. This whole situation was so absurd. I never could have imagined my life would get to this point.

  Thomas, who was busy taking notes, didn’t say anything, but I saw him smirk like he thought the theory was as stupid as I did. Anderson was looking at me with raised eyebrows, though, and I realized she had taken Krystal’s accusations seriously. She was waiting for me to defend myself.

  I shook my head. “She must be driving you all crazy, pushing to have me arrested. I should have known that she’d bring up her mother’s death. She’s been trying to pin that woman’s death on me since the day of her funeral. She brings it up every chance she gets.”

  Anderson said, “Yes, she did bring it up. What concerns me is that you didn’t. Don’t you think you should have volunteered that information at the precinct last night?”

  I definitely didn’t like Anderson’s tone. This woman was one hard-ass cop, probably looking at this case as her chance to prove herself. Well, she was not about to use me to get ahead.

  “Excuse me,” I started with no intention of speaking respectfully. “My boyfriend had been burned up in a fire, and you had us sitting down at the precinct, waiting for two hours. Then you talked to me for five whole minutes, and you expected me to volunteer that BS? You have got to be kidding me.”

  “So, you’re saying that Krystal’s accusations are BS?” Anderson asked, stating the obvious.

  “Of course I am! Her mother died in a fire. My boyfriend died in a fire. I don’t see how that points a finger in my direction. Shit, people die in fires every day.”

  I had to get control of my emotions in a hurry, because I could see from Anderson’s expression that she was reading something into it.

  I turned to Detective Thomas, who seemed to be the more reasonable of the pair. “You guys aren’t taking that bitch Krystal serious, are you? She’s been talking this crazy stuff for years, and as you can see, no one’s ever charged me with anything. I didn’t kill that woman. She committed suicide.”

  “We’re trying to get to the bottom of this, Connie, and the only way we can eliminate you as a suspect is to ask you questions. We’re just doing our job—and that job is to find your boyfriend’s murderer.” His voice was calm and reassuring, and I felt my pulse relaxing.

  “I know,” I told him, “but I didn’t have anything to do with that fire. If you don’t believe me, call Sergeant Acosta of the Second Precinct in Nassau County. He’ll tell you. I was at work that day.”

  “We already have. He’s sending over the file. Hopefully that will clear some of this up.”

  I was kind of taken aback by that. These two were seriously pursuing this angle if they’d already contacted Nassau County about me. That damn Krystal had been a thorn in my side for so long. Why the hell couldn’t she have been the one in that fire yesterday?

  Anderson jumped back in to ask, “Why don’t you tell us why your stepdaughter is so adamant about you being her mother’s killer?”

  “I was having an affair with Krystal’s father. She’s always claimed that I murdered her mother to get her father, but she’s got the story all wrong.”

  “Really? Well, why don’t you tell us the right story, then?” Anderson said, still sounding like she had some kind of problem with me. This woman sure took her bad cop image seriously.

  I released a heavy sigh and then told them the same story I’d repeated to the Nassau County detectives all those years ago when Krystal first brought up this bullshit. “I didn’t need to get rid of anyone to get Avery. He’d already told his wife he was going to divorce her to marry me, but he had no idea the woman was so unstable. She couldn’t take losing him. She had some kind of breakdown and took an overdose of valium.”

  “Tell us about the fire,” Anderson said.

  I wanted to tell her to read it in the damn report when it came from Long Island, but there was no sense in antagonizing her. “She doused her comforter in WD-40 and placed a lit candle at the other end of her bed. She was already dead from the pills by the time the bed caught fire. All of this was in the report, but Krystal refuses to believe it. She can’t get it out of her head that I did it.”

  “I see,” Anderson said. “And what does her father say about all of this?”

  Damn, I was hoping they weren’t going to mention Avery. These two were in homicide so maybe they didn’t know about the robberies, but I sure as hell didn’t want them asking me questions about it. The last thing I needed with everything else going on was to be linked to Avery’s criminal activities as an accomplice or something. It was in my best interests to make it very clear that I’d distanced myself from him.

  “Her father… ha! Well, Krystal got her wish after all because we broke up a few months ago. Our divorce will be final in a couple of weeks.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” Thomas said, surprising me with his kindness. “I’ve been divorced. It’s not easy.”

  “No, it isn’t,” I said, feeling a little less like I was in the hot seat. “But I got lucky. I met Daryl. He was the best thing that ever happened to me.” This brought on a fresh wave of tears.

  Anderson still wasn’t ready to back off. “You make it sound like everything between you and Mr. Graham was great,” she said. “But I hear you two weren’t even on speaking terms the day before his death.”

  I nodded and shrugged, refusing to let her think she was intimidating me. “I wasn’t talking to him. He lied to me.”

  “Is that why he was on pussy punishment?”

  I stared at her without answering. In my head, I was cursing those nosy bitches on the stoop with their big mouths.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” she said with a smirk. “Is that why he called you a fat ass?”

  She thought she had caught me in a lie. I couldn’t help but smile. “No, that’s not why he called me a fat ass. He’s always calling me fat ass.”

  Thomas looked up from his notepad. “And you didn’t take offense?”

  Anderson seemed happy that her partner had finally chimed in on her side. She stressed his point by adding, “Someone called me a fat ass in private, let alone in pu
blic, I’d want to kill him.”

  I burst out laughing. “Take offense? Is that what all this is about? You think I killed Daryl because he called me a fat ass? First of all, I’d never hurt a hair on Daryl’s head, let alone kill him. And even though what we had wasn’t long-lived, I loved him.”

  “Loved him, huh?” Anderson said doubtfully. “Maybe the feeling wasn’t mutual if he was running around calling you a fat ass.”

  I shook my head. This woman just wouldn’t let up. “That was his pet name for me.”

  Anderson frowned at me like she thought I was feeding her a load of crap.

  I couldn’t wait to break this one down for her. “Yes, people called me fat all the time, but Daryl took the power from the word. When Daryl called me fat, it wasn’t F-A-T. It was P-H-A-T. Pretty, hot, and tempting, which I am.”

  “And you really want us to believe that?” Anderson asked.

  “You can believe it or not,” I replied. “It’s the truth.”

  Anderson folded her arms. She looked pissed off, like she was sick of trying to get me to tell the truth. Well, I guess it was time for me to give her what she wanted—the raw, uncensored truth.

  “Excuse me for a minute,” I told them. “I have something you should see.”

  I headed to my bedroom and returned a few moments later with proof in hand. I gave the DVD to Anderson. “Maybe this will convince you.”

  She looked down at the disc. “What’s this?”

  “It’s a private video Daryl and I made, buck wild and naked. Watch it. He refers to me as his phat ass at least thirty-five times. Oh, and you can have that one. I’ve got another copy.”

  Anderson looked at her partner, then threw the DVD onto the table. She finally looked ready to back off a little. The silence in the room was so awkward that I almost felt embarrassed for her. I decided it was a good time to help her out a little bit, steer her in another direction now that I’d shot down her flimsy theory about me.

  “Look, I promise you that you guys are barking up the wrong tree… with both Daryl and my husband’s former wife. Between you and me, you might want to look into my stepdaughter’s boyfriend.”

  Anderson and Thomas shared a pointed look. This was obviously not the first time they’d heard this.

  “And what reason would we have to do that?” Anderson asked, trying to play dumb. I was sure the stoop ladies had already been flapping their gums about everyone, including Slim.

  “You haven’t heard from the curb? Slim and Daryl couldn’t stand each other. Slim even threatened to kill him. I would have expected him to be your number one suspect.”

  It wasn’t long before we wrapped things up and the detectives were heading out my front door, leaving me with their last words: “We’ll be in touch.”

  Krystal

  40

  Have you ever had that uncomfortable feeling that you were about to walk into a place you really had no business being? Well, that’s how I felt as I walked up the steps of the J. Foster Phillips Funeral Home for Daryl’s wake. This was the last place I wanted to be—and the one place I had to be. I owed that much to Daryl. I’d never had the chance to apologize to him, so the least I could do was show my respects to his family now that he was gone.

  When Slim and I walked in, I stopped in my tracks, thinking we had accidentally stumbled into the wrong wake. The place was jam-packed with people from every walk of life: black folks, white folks, bougie folks, hood folks, and quite a few famous people. I took Slim’s hand and was about to walk out until I saw Nancy, Bertha, and the rest of the stoop crew huddled in a corner, whispering and pointing at some woman who looked a lot like Foxy Brown.

  An usher approached us and handed me a program. One look at the picture of Daryl printed on the front and my knees buckled. It took everything I had not to break down right on the spot. The usher gave me a sympathetic nod as he held out his hand in a gesture for us to be seated. Of course, there really weren’t many seats left with the place being so full.

  “Slim, I’m going to see if I can find us seats near the front,” I said.

  Slim kind of rolled his eyes and said, “Whatever.” He leaned against the wall in the back of the room. “I’m gonna stay right here.”

  I let him stay put and headed to search for a seat for myself. I could have used a little support during the wake, but I wasn’t about to argue with him. If things were reversed, I don’t know if I could have sat through one of his ex-girlfriend’s wakes. I gave him credit just for sticking around—even if he was only making an appearance to squash the rumors about him having something to do with Daryl’s death.

  I found an empty chair between two women, who were both staring straight ahead, dabbing away tears from their eyes. Looking in the direction they were staring, I saw the closed casket with a framed photo of Daryl on top, and I had to reach for a Kleenex of my own. I couldn’t believe that Daryl was really dead. I would never get the chance to make things right between us. All of a sudden, I was itching to take the blue box out of my purse and do a line to ease my pain.

  The funeral director asked everyone to get settled so they could start the memorial service, led by none other than Bishop T. K. Wilson, one of the most influential preachers in all of New York. Everyone in Queens knew who Bishop Wilson was, but what surprised me was that when the bishop spoke about Daryl, it sounded like he knew him personally. How did Daryl, a Hebrew Israelite, become a close personal friend of a Baptist preacher?

  As the memorial proceeded, I had to ask myself the same question over and over: How well had I really known Daryl? I reflected on the time we’d spent together and realized that he spent a lot of time listening to me but not much time talking about himself or his past. When his mom, brother, and sister got up to speak, it dawned on me that I’d never even met them. Daryl never talked about introducing me to them, so I just assumed they weren’t close. But now, hearing the way they talked about him, it seemed like he had a great relationship with his family.

  I was even more surprised when the infamous New York rapper Buck-Fifty read a poem he’d written in Daryl’s honor. He called it “The Thug You Could Take Home to Your Momma.” Again, I was left feeling like this famous rapper knew Daryl personally—and I had never really known him at all. Who was this man whose death had summoned a crowd as if Barack Obama himself were delivering the eulogy?

  By the end of the wake, I was more confused than ever. I made my way through the crowd to find Slim in the same spot where I’d left him.

  “Thank God this thing is over. Can we please get the hell outta here now?” he said as soon as he saw me.

  “Okay, babe. Let’s just go up there and pay our respects to the family and then we can leave.”

  “I’m not going up there.” He shook his head. “I don’t know those people, and I didn’t particularly like their son.”

  “Hush.” I slapped his arm and looked around to make sure no one else had heard him. “You know why we have to make an appearance. We talked about this earlier.”

  “No, you talked about it. I only agreed because you were giving me head at the time. Now, all we gotta do is sign that book up front to prove that we were here.”

  “But…” I stood my ground even though I couldn’t deny that Slim was right. We could have signed the guest book and headed out. Truth was, I wanted to meet Daryl’s family. I wanted to know if they’d ever heard of me. Had Daryl loved me enough to tell them about me, or was I some big secret?

  Somehow, I think Slim sensed what I was thinking. “If you wanna go up there for some other reason, that’s on you, but don’t be expecting me to be happy about it.” His tone was nasty, and I knew what he was threatening.

  Him not being happy meant no more blue boxes anytime soon, and it didn’t matter how well I sucked his dick. I wasn’t sure if I could deal with that, especially when I desperately needed something to dull my pain.

  Speaking of pain, my heart ached even more when I turned and saw Connie all hugged up with Daryl
’s mother and sister like she was part of the family. A flash of jealousy, accompanied by a whole lot of anger, raced through me, and I started trembling. That damn Connie had to be the biggest phony I’d ever seen. I swear she was determined to ruin my life.

  “Yeah, you’re right. Let’s get the fuck out of here,” I said to Slim.

  “Yo, look at Benny over there with his pops. Poor kid’s really broken up over this, huh?” Slim said in what almost sounded like a sympathetic tone. He was a hard-ass most of the time, but Slim did have a soft side that he let me see once in a while.

  I turned to see Benny, standing in line to walk by the casket, crying on his father’s shoulder. “Yeah, he looks like he lost his best friend,” I said.

  We stood there for a minute, watching the raw grief and emotion that Benny was displaying. I don’t know what Slim was thinking, but I was wishing there was some way to take away Benny’s pain. Hell, I wished someone would take my pain away. Of course, that’s when I thought of my best friend in the little blue box in my purse. I needed a hit badly.

  I turned to leave and almost ran right into Connie. She’d moved from the front of the room without me even seeing her, like some damn sorceress or something, and now she was in my way. She had the nerve to be smiling at me as she wiped tears from her raccoon eyes. I had to resist the urge to slap her.

  “What are you, the grieving widow?” I asked her curtly.

  She looked me dead in the eyes. “You know what, Krystal? You have absolutely no class. You are pathetic.”

  “I know you ain’t talking about class. Not you, the woman who was screwing Daryl and my father at the same time.” Her jaw tensed up, and I could tell she was trying to keep it together.