Yeah. Once again I was making the mistake of not paying attention to another old black female figure in my life. Her name is Ernestine and—being my stern if quixotic conscience—she can be a real pain in the butt. Ernestine doesn’t seem to like it very much when I’m riding high. I’m sure she was trying to warn me, but that night I just wasn’t listening.
They fed us at the restaurant; that was part of the deal. And the food wasn’t bad. Certainly it was better than the pay. But in any case I was too keyed up to eat.
Both Aubrey and Justin were working that night and couldn’t make the set, but they had promised to come see me later in the week.
I’d miss them, sure, but the one I found myself so looking forward to seeing was Ida Williams, the doll lady. It was almost like having your eccentric grandmother out there cheering for you on opening night.
I had gotten into the habit of dropping off containers of hot tea at her table every time I was in the vicinity of the farmers market. Sometimes Ida looked like the tough old bird and master salesperson I had first encountered, and sometimes she seemed frail as parchment, distracted and rueful. Complicated, in other words. I was hoping that someday soon I could talk my mom into coming into the city so that the three of us could go out to lunch.
I had been told that Omega did well. No lie, apparently: the ordinarily supercool maître d’ was overwhelmed. People were pouring in. Drinks flowing. A good buzz in the room. Omega was a far cry from some smoky basement club where Monk and Charlie Rouse or Art Tatum or Max Roach was about to make history and (your favorite junkie horn player’s name here) was out back scoring a nickel bag. But what the hell? This was still fun. I was still riding high.
The first set started at nine. Hank had a pretty arrangement of “Stella by Starlight” that was to open the set. The three of us stood schmoozing on the slightly raised platform near the front window of the restaurant.
In the midst of the throng of customers I spotted Ida talking to the coat check lady, who was helping her with her wrap.
Go on, Ida! Wow, what a dress. Classic chic-lady-out-cabareting threads. I wondered if she had found it in one of the expensive antique clothing stores in town, or if it was a number she’d been keeping in mothballs since the fifties. Understated nubby wool, clinging in all the right places, too. As Justin would say, not a sequin in sight. Plus, she had done her hair up in a fabulous finger wave.
I broke into a grin and waved hello, but she was too far away. She didn’t see me. The small table near the bandstand was all arranged for her, and I was just about to step down to thank her for coming and find out what she wanted to drink. But that never happened.
The room suddenly exploded.
Gunfire and shrieks of terror.
Customers and staff alike went diving for the floor. I felt Hank’s fingers around my wrist. He snatched me under the piano seat and my saxophone went bumping off the bandstand.
It was all over in a few seconds. There was confused disbelief on every face in the room: no, the sky wasn’t falling; no, we weren’t being robbed of our jewels by a band of masked brigands; no, the lunatic terrorists were not herding us into the back room. None of that.
Then what the fuck had just happened?
Roamer and Hank were on their feet again, brushing off their suits and exchanging confounded looks.
I remembered then. Ida!
I hoped she hadn’t been trampled in all the confusion.
I ran to the maître d’s station, where a knot of people were staring down at the floor in horror, all the women in the group with their hands at their mouths.
Ida.
One perfect hole in the middle of her face. A pool of bloody goo under her head.
I dropped to the floor and began a frantic check for any signs of life. Useless. I let out a dreadful deep moan that soon shot up into the high register. After that, I must’ve spaced out completely—gone somewhere deep in my own head. I went into some sort of trance and I didn’t come out of it until I felt Roamer and Hank leading me to a chair.
“Oh no,” I wailed, over and over. “Not again.”
CHAPTER 4
Black Coffee
The cops detained us for an eternity at Omega while they dusted and photographed, yammered on their walkie-talkies, conducted their interviews, took witness statements, such as they were, and oversaw the removal of Ida’s body.
Of course I came in for a particular grilling, because I was the only one on the premises who knew the murder victim—however vaguely. A uniformed officer plopped me down at a table for four near the kitchen, separating me from Roamer and Hank.
Ida had thirty bucks or so in her small handbag, a lipstick, mirror, comb, cigarettes, coin purse. But no wallet—no identification. The detective in charge, Loveless, for some reason found it difficult to believe I had no idea what Ida’s address was, whether she had family in the area, children, how old she was, and so on. After all, he pointed out, Ida was there at my invitation.
I told him I knew her only as a neighborhood street vendor who had been nice to me and from whom I’d purchased a “rag doll.” Because she had been so pleasant, I explained, I had on the spur of the moment invited her to hear me play. I was damned if I’d tell that overweight, phony macho NYPD Blue wannabe about Ida’s dizzy superstitions, not to mention my own.
The futile questions went on and on, as did the promises that it would only be another few minutes. And the minutes ticked by and turned into hours. For a while there, I really thought I was going to lose it. Even the gruff Lieutenant Loveless could see that I was ready to pull my hair out by the roots.
I’m sure he thought I was just another in the long line of women with the vapors, freaking out about what had happened. He was wrong.
True, poor Ida lying in that bloody mess was a horror. The thing was, it wasn’t the first time I’d seen something like that. Before I left Paris the previous spring, I’d seen my aunt Vivian—my own flesh and blood—in spookily similar condition, lying dead through the worst kind of violence.
To see the same kind of horror played out all over again was just too much. It was almost unbelievable. And maybe that’s why I had no tears left for sweet Ida Williams.
The Bad Lieutenant as much as told me he figured Ida just “caught a tough break”—that some idiot had stormed into the restaurant not intending to kill anybody but only to scare the hell out of this roomful of fat cats, but unluckily for Ida, his aim wasn’t so good.
“You should know,” he said. “You were standing up there. You saw what happened.”
“I certainly did not,” I informed him, for the hundredth time. “Maybe some of the witnesses say they think they saw the policeman’s favorite citizen. But I never did.”
“What does that mean—the policeman’s favorite citizen—what is that supposed to mean?”
“That ubiquitous black man who does everything when nobody’s looking. He kidnaps little children, he hijacks vegetable trucks, he fucks up the Internet—just causes no end of trouble for law-abiding people.”
His face was a mask. Not a jot of appreciation for my wit. “Okay. So you didn’t see anything. As soon as you took the first step down from the bandstand, all hell broke loose. But you did hear the shots. Three of them. Two went wild and the other one killed the victim.”
The victim. The victim. God, I wished he’d stopped using that cold, anonymous phrase. Her name was Ida Williams. But then, whenever I looked over at the figure in the black plastic bag, victim seemed an all too apt description.
“Sure, it’s possible,” Loveless admitted a few minutes later. “Could be the shooter did come in with murder on his mind.”
But if so, he pointed out impatiently, “it wasn’t that woman he meant to take out. Maybe he didn’t expect to find such a huge crowd and he got spooked or something. Maybe somebody jostled him and made his shots go wild. Maybe he didn’t realize how dark it would be in here. He just missed his man, or woman, as the case may be. If somebody did this o
n purpose, it wasn’t that old lady who was supposed to get it. It was a mistake.”
Why? I wanted to ask. Wasn’t Ida Williams important enough to be killed for herself?
Loveless must have been reading my mind, or at least reading my sour expression. He asked me dutifully, “Did she have any enemies?… Well?”
Of course I had no answer for him. But that didn’t stop me. No, Motormouth Nan couldn’t let it go. “We’ve all got enemies,” I said tartly. “What about you, Lieutenant? Does the whole world love you?”
His incinerating look shut me up momentarily. I knew I was mouthing off when I should’ve been playing it cool—just taking things in, observing. Besides, common sense made me concede that Loveless was probably right. Ida was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“Look, missy,” he finally said with a sigh. “You seem to be telling me two opposite things here. One, you’re telling me the vic was a nice old lady who sold toys on the street, like something out of a fairy tale. You can’t imagine she would hurt a fly. But then you turn around and insinuate that I’m not taking her seriously as a candidate for a paid hit. You can see my problem with your attitude here, right?”
I didn’t say anything. He had me there.
That didn’t mean his view of Ida’s death as a kind of freak occurrence—a peddler who didn’t belong in a classy place like Omega anyway—was not full of maddening condescension.
But he did have me.
“You been working here long?” Loveless asked then, softening a bit.
I shook my head. “No. This was my first and maybe last night. I was filling in for a musician who’s sick.”
“Guess you caught a nasty break, too,” he said. I waited while he tapped a Bic ballpoint on his notepad. “You know the owner of this place?” he asked mildly.
“Not really. I’ve seen him a few times.”
“Nice guy?”
“I guess. Nice enough to me. He likes music.”
“Well, that’s just peachy,” Loveless said. “Listen, Miss Hayes, if anybody was going to get whacked here tonight, the manager’s a much likelier target than your friend.”
That’s when I turned off the motor mouth.
“Yeah, Mister Nice Guy has got a history of borrowing money for his business ventures. Some people, you borrow money from them and don’t pay it back on time, it makes them kinda upset. You get what I mean?”
I nodded my complete understanding.
“And some of the other employees around here, Miss Hayes,” he continued, “the bouncer, for example. You think a big ugly guy like that is a stranger to the Department? Why don’t you ask him sometime about the accommodations at some of our finer state institutions?”
I cast a surreptitious look over at the bulk of Nate, to whom I had never paid a minute’s notice before. “Gotcha,” I said.
“So understand, Miss Hayes. We’re not making any accusations here. I still think the person who shot up this place was some kind of a nut. But what I don’t think is that an old lady who sells dolls in Union Square Park is at the top of anybody’s hit list.”
He paused there, and when he spoke again, he said, “You know, I think I could see somebody wanting to whack you. What with all those enemies of yours. We could start looking into your life. How’d you like that?”
That tore it.
“Thanks very much,” I said. “I think I’ll pass on that.”
The Bad Lieutenant lit a cigarette then. “We’ll be in touch.”
It was muddy dawn before I got home. I had not slept at all. Now, in the morning light, I looked down into the heavily weeded courtyard and saw the super’s scruffy old dog nosing into a Kentucky Fried Chicken bag.
My coffee was ready—the second pot. I poured myself some, spiking it liberally with bourbon. I wrapped up in a blanket, then took to the couch. Grim and alone. Again.
Ida Williams had been so busy pushing those goddamn dolls to everybody else that she forgot to keep one for herself.
And as for my luck—well, that didn’t last long, did it? After being all messed up behind everything that had happened in Paris, after being miserable and drunk for months, it looked like my luck had finally turned. I’d stopped boozing. Rejoined the human race. I’d got back on track with Aubrey. I’d got into a nice groove on the street, making nice money. I’d even got a job I could stand. Yet, here I was again.
Sure enough, the old karma was still working, still kicking my butt.
I groaned. The newspapers would be out now. Some of the late editions might very well carry the story of what had happened at Omega last night. It was quite possible that Jeff, who had gotten the gig for me, might be reading about it in a couple of hours’ time—or Justin might see the story, or, God help me, my mother. What if the papers mentioned my name, listing me as a friend of the victim? I groaned a second time.
As I had given the police what scant information they had on Ida, there was a very good chance I’d be mentioned. I could just imagine Mom browsing through the Daily News over her morning Taster’s Choice and spotting my name.
Piss off! I wanted to shout at Ernestine. I know I have to call her and tell her everything. I know! Just to contemplate it made me pull the blanket over my head.
About thirty minutes later, the blanket still over my head, the phone rang. Once maman calmed down sufficiently to hear me out, I confessed.
So now she knows how I spend my nights. Actually it was a relief—I was happy not to be deceiving her about it anymore.
But as for the other huge lie I was living with, namely that I taught French part-time at NYU, I think if that venerable institution ever burned down, I’d rather assume a new identity—let her think my charred remains were buried in the rubble—than cop to the truth.
I pulled out the telephone cord after Mom’s call. I’d leave messages for Jeff and Aubrey later in the day. Right then, all I wanted to do was sleep.
Easier said than done. I gave up after an hour and pulled myself out of bed. I bathed and dressed and then went out in search of breakfast.
It took a long, long time for the coffeehouse explosion to hit my nabe. But once it did, it hit with a vengeance. A couple of years ago we had only the old-fashioned Greek diners or the pricey full-service restaurants. Low end, high end. Almost nothing in the middle. I guess the Starbucks craze kicked the new trend into gear. Thank you, Seattle. There are now half a dozen civilized cafés, each with its own personality, where you can get a real espresso or latte. In a couple of them, they even let you have a cigarette.
I grabbed both Newsday and the Daily News from the outdoor rack at the magazine store on Third Avenue and turned into the first café I came to.
My name wasn’t exactly in 20-point type. I saw “Nanette Hayes of Manhattan” buried somewhere in paragraph 3 of the News reportage, and no mention at all of me in the other paper. I pushed my cinnamon roll aside and went back to the beginning of the story.
True, as reported, an unknown assailant at a crowded, fashionable Upper East Side restaurant had murdered a sixty-ish black woman who made a living as a craftsperson/street vendor … “selling hand puppets.” Well, they were slightly off on that part.
“Restaurant patrons interrogated at the scene were unable to give investigators a description of the gunman. Differing accounts of the incident have left police with no clear picture of who might have been responsible for the shooting.
“Lieutenant Frank Loveless said that no motive for the killing had surfaced. For the moment police are working under the assumption that the murder was a tragic accident and that Ida Williams was an innocent bystander,” the story concluded.
Right again. Though the lieutenant had not used such delicate language with me. I had no memory of his using the word tragic, or innocent.
I ordered another coffee. I was giving my poor body all kinds of mixed signals. Tired and wired at the same time. But I no longer wanted to sleep; whenever I closed my eyes now I saw that nasty hole in Ida’s forehead.<
br />
Two shots went wild, the Bad Lieutenant had said, and the third killed the victim. Talk about rotten luck. Two bullets wind up in the wall—wild, indeed—but the final one hits Ida so squarely in the face it’s as if someone decided to see what she’d look like with a third eye.
Well, I was making an unwarranted assumption there, wasn’t I? Who was to say that it was the third and final shot that killed Ida? Maybe it was the first.
Maybe that wily bastard Loveless was correct. Maybe Ed Brubeck, who owned Omega, was in with some dangerous people and they decided to get even with him for welching on a debt. But those people don’t send out guys who can’t shoot straight. If Ed was the target, why didn’t the killer walk into his office and waste him? Or get him as he stepped out of his car?
Brubeck was nowhere in sight when the mayhem began.
Nowhere in sight. How did I know that?
Because when I waved to Ida, I did have a couple of seconds to see who was standing nearby. Several customers. The coat check lady. Ida herself. But not Ed Brubeck. He was in his office, at the back of the restaurant and down a flight of stairs. Nate the bouncer was nowhere near either.
And yet—Oh shit, I thought, I don’t know. Lieutenant Loveless had all the reason on his side. His wrong place, wrong time theory was supremely rational.
So why couldn’t I accept it?
I had the unhappy answer to that one—rather, Ernestine did: I couldn’t accept it because if it had not been for me, Ida would never have been in that place at that time.
It wasn’t my fault she was dead. Yeah. I know. I had nothing to do with the murder. But I felt partly responsible. Why? Because I couldn’t just leave well enough—or bad enough—alone. I couldn’t keep my nose out of Aunt Vivian’s business and I couldn’t just buy the stupid doll from Ida and walk away. I had to befriend her, impress her. I was riding too goddamn high. And now she was dead. Just like Vivian.
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