I arrived back home feeling as low as ever, notwithstanding the buzz I had on from all that coffee. My eye fell immediately on the two dolls, my new friends. My luck. They were going to turn my life around, remember? They seemed to be laughing at me now. Well, it served me right for buying into that superstitious bull.
I pulled out my sax and farted around with a couple of the numbers I had rehearsed with Hank and Roamer.
But what was the good of that? We would not be playing tonight. And not for some nights to come, if I was guessing right. The cops had sealed Omega as a crime scene.
At least I did one good deed—only one. I avoided the thing that would probably have finished me off. I did not start drinking.
What I did do, I grabbed Mama Lou and Dilsey by their necks and threw them into the trash basket beneath the desk.
Something was wrong. Something was just so wrong. And voodoo had nothing to do with it.
CHAPTER 5
Filthy McNasty
“Aw … aw naw! What the fuck do you want?”
The expression on his face—terror meets contempt—was priceless. And the white paper napkin tucked into his shirt collar didn’t hurt the picture.
I gave him a thousand-watt smile. “I just called to say I love you, Leman.”
He did not laugh.
But then, as I remembered all too well, Leman Sweet was a man with very little laughter in him. He was a massive presence with close-shorn hair. In the time since we’d last met he had eighty-sixed the dumb Fu Manchu mustache he wore then and traded it for a bristle brush one too diminutive for his thick lips and massive jaw.
“Don’t be calling me Leman, Cueball.”
He wagged a finger at me. His hand was the size of an Easter ham.
I winced at hearing his favorite name for me—Cueball—a reference to the days when I wore a shaved head.
“As far as you’re concerned, Cueball,” he said, “Sergeant is my first name and Sweet is my last name.”
“Whatever,” I said mildly. “May I join you?”
“Can I stop you?”
Tough call. I didn’t know the law. Was it a crime to pull up a chair at a person’s table in a family-style barbecue joint?
“I guess you expect me to ask you to lunch, too,” he grumbled, wiping at the sauce on his chin. “You got more nerve than a little, if I remember right.”
Leman Sweet, not the most gracious black man I knew, was running true to form. He was busting my chops thoroughly.
And in fact that is how our strange relationship, shall I call it, began. Detective Sweet of the NYPD had been one of the first officers to arrive on the scene very late one night when a singularly unpleasant thing occurred in my apartment: another cop—undercover, posing as a down-and-out musician—was murdered on my kitchen floor.
What’s more, the dead cop had been Sweet’s partner. I didn’t kill him, needless to say. I had been used in a brutal way by some pretty brutal people, and nearly wound up dead myself. But Sweet, who had taken an instant dislike to me, needed to blame somebody for his partner’s death, and he had elected me.
That had happened long ago. At least it seemed like ancient history to me. I never expected to see Detective Sweet again as long as I lived—let alone that I’d be tracking him down, interrupting his mega-calorie lunch, and about to ask him for advice and a favor.
“I’m not hungry, thanks,” I told him. “I was just wondering if you could spare a few minutes.”
He grunted. “How did you know I was here, anyway?” he asked.
“I called your old precinct. They told me you had been transferred to a special unit on Twelfth Street. When I went up there, the desk sergeant said you were at lunch and he thought you usually ate someplace on Eighth Street. The smell of pork eliminated most of the other prospects around here. That, and the number of black folks I could see chowing down when I looked in through the window.”
He gnawed greedily at a blackened bone. “Well, ain’t you the slick detective?”
“I can also deduce by the pile on your plate that you must’ve ordered the $8.95 combination platter.”
He pushed his plate away then and fixed me with a direct look. “Okay, Cueball. You showed off your smarts. Now, like I said before, what do you want with me?”
“First of all, I need you to listen to something. Just listen. And then tell me what you think. Here, let me get you another Coke.”
I began with the gift of the Mama Lou doll and took the narrative all the way through my interrogation at Omega—even admitting in the process that I had fallen for Ida’s promises of good luck and riches if I believed in Mama Lou’s and Dilsey’s powers. It took some effort to spill that last part; I was pretty embarrassed by my foolishness.
When I looked up, Sweet was regarding me not so much with hostility as with scornful pity.
“So?” I said humbly.
“So?”
“So can you help me out? Help me find out if somebody murdered Ida. And even if they didn’t, even if it was an accident, help me find out who she was and if she had any family. They ought to be notified. I don’t want her to end up in Potter’s Field like some kind of tramp.”
“What the hell do you think the police are for, girl? They’re going to find all that out.”
“Yes, I assume they will. But that cop Loveless has already made up his mind about the case. Loveless is not going to investigate with any—I don’t know—enthusiasm. He’s too busy trying to look like that TV cop with the mustache and the tight suits. And whatever he finds, he’s not hardly going to keep me in the loop. Ida means nothing to him. And neither do I.”
“Loveless does his job. Better than most of them. And don’t you say nothing about that show or Dennis Franz.”
“You mean you know him? I don’t mean Dennis Whosis, I mean Loveless.”
“I met him. He’s a solid cop. And you lucky he didn’t pop you upside your head for being such a smartass with him.”
“Yes, I can see now how lucky I was,” I said, unable to push my irritation down any longer. “I’m familiar with your charming investigative techniques, Sergeant. I remember how you extract confessions from your suspects. And how you banged me around when we first met.”
“Don’t press it, Cueball.”
I took a deep breath and backed down, shaking off the powerful sense memory of his sweat as he shoved me down onto my sofa and loomed over me like the dark alter ego of Barney, that fuzzy purple icon of the preschool set.
Better listen to him, I told myself, don’t press it. You need his cooperation, bad.
“Okay, so you kind of know Loveless, right? That’s a good thing, right? He might tell you what they’ve found out. Will you call him? Tell him there’s something fishy about the way Ida was shot?”
“But he told you, there ain’t nothing fishy about it. Who says there is—Mama Lou?”
“Ha fuckin’ ha. Maybe she did, Leman—I mean, Sergeant. But even if I’m crazy to take the doll stuff seriously, that doesn’t mean the story doesn’t smell. It was just too convenient, the way she was shot. I can feel it. Will you call Loveless—please?”
He didn’t answer right away. In fact he didn’t answer at all. “Why you always gotta think you know better than the pros?” is what he said.
“I don’t. Believe me, I don’t. I’m just trying to do what’s right. Suppose—just suppose someone did kill that old woman. Do you want them to get away with it? You think it’s right to just sweep another black body under the carpet?”
“Don’t talk that shit to me, girl. I know more about black people dying in this town than you ever dreamed of. You don’t know shit.”
“All right,” I said, calm again. “All right, I know you do. But I have to find some way to put this to rest, man. I’m just feeling so guilty.”
“About that woman? Don’t be stupid. It wasn’t your fault.”
My God, what was this? Compassion from Leman Sweet? A tiny ray of ordinary human kindness—for me? I
t left me speechless.
“Look,” Sweet said, cleaning his fingers with the Wash’n Dry he took out of its little foil wrapper, “maybe something smells, and maybe it doesn’t. But either way, I don’t have no business sticking my nose in Loveless’s case—and more to the point, no time. Right now I’m swamped with another case where the powers that be are sweeping a black carcass under the rug. A lot more than one carcass, matter of fact.”
“What are you talking about? Serial killings?”
“You could put it that way. I’m working on the most recent one—the Black Hat killing.”
I drew a blank. A complete blank. “What’s the Black Hat—a club?”
“Black Hat was a who, not a what. A kid who was murdered a few months ago.”
“Oh. And how many other carcasses were there?”
“Six others.”
I had more or less been living in a cave the last months, deep into the booze-soaked depression. But even so, I didn’t understand how I could have missed hearing about the mass murder of seven black children. “Jesus Christ! Seven kids were murdered? What happened?”
“They didn’t all get killed at the same time,” he said. “And they weren’t all children. It’s the so-called rap wars.”
Blank. Again.
“Rap, fool,” said Sweet. “R-A-P.”
The light suddenly went on. “As in ‘music,’ you mean? That kind of rap?”
“You ain’t too dumb, are you?”
A dim memory of a news bulletin: a well-known rapper shot to death as he rode in the back of a limo on Grand Central Parkway. But that seemed like at least a year ago. I asked Sweet if that was the kid he had just named—Black Hat.
“No. That was Phat Neck,” he supplied, “the fourth one to buy it in two years. He was one of the biggest names around.”
“I see.”
I guess I saw. Since I loathed rap music, the name of one of its big stars meant nothing to me. Rap had been around long enough to begin influencing every other kind of music. It had seeped into virtually every aspect of life in the States. They sold cars and diet cola with it. They used it to teach kids how to read on educational TV. You never saw a movie anymore that didn’t feature it. And now it had gone global. Yet it was no huge effort for me to tune it out. I managed to do so because I disliked and resented it, maybe even feared it, because to my ears it was so rude and simplistic, and so very pleased with itself.
“And who were the others killed? I mean, other than this young boy Black Hat?”
“First there was Rawhide. Busta Jelly was next. Then Daddy Homo. Then Phat Neck, like I said. Black Hat happened to be with Droop Rooster and Boom Dadee the night they were hit. He was nothing but a boy hanging on the scene, trying to get a career started. All the others were big names in the industry. They were probably using him as an errand boy or some kind of bodyguard. But he couldn’t even guard himself.”
The industry, eh? Leman was getting all Hollywood hincty. It sounded as if he might actually have been a fan of one or all of the murdered stars. But you’re a grown man, I wanted to shout. Don’t you already know the kind of simplistic stuff they say in those songs?
“One after the other,” Sweet said. “They all been hit one after the other. Riding in cars or walking out of after-hours clubs or hotels. It looks like the same kind of turf war that killed Tupac in Vegas. A ‘rap war,’ like the papers call it. The Department couldn’t care less as long as no ‘civilians’—nobody white—get hurt. Let the niggers kill each other over some stupid record label design … or copyrights … or women … or crack … or whatever the fuck the argument is.
“But a group of black officers started a stink about it. We don’t care what these guys say about the police in their songs. Shit, they got just as much right as anybody else to criticize the police. Just as much right to live. And just as much right after they’re dead to have the killer caught and punished.
“I guess the brass got tired of us squawking about the whole thing. They put me on this special unit that works out of that substation on Twelfth Street. It’s been six months now and we’re getting nowhere, still looking up our own asses. Black people in this city have had it up to here with these killings and now a lot of groups are demanding action. That’s too bad about your friend, but I gotta go along with Loveless on it. She was just unlucky—the way Black Hat was just unlucky. Maybe you oughta sue that stupid doll.”
Leman Sweet, fighter for justice. I sat back, thinking it over. My goodness, life did still hold a few surprises. The situation held echoes of my encounter with Frank Loveless, the Bad Lieutenant. In both cases there was a cop who thought a lot of himself, a cop I didn’t like or trust, but neither of them was anybody’s fool. And I was damned if I could find any holes in their more than reasoned arguments.
Little Nan was not happy.
A nasty ploy presented itself to me then. Underhanded. Gender-based bullshit. Bad feminist Nan.
The notorious mantrap Aubrey Davis, my best friend, had helped take a little heat off of me back when Sweet’s partner was killed and Sweet was making my life a misery. Leman had a pitiable jones for her and had in general made an idiot of himself. Not entirely his fault. Aubrey had that effect on guys and knew how to work it to full advantage.
“All right,” I said with a sigh. “What you say makes sense. But if you find you have a minute to give to the Ida Williams thing, would you give me a call?”
I hastily scribbled a phone number on an edge of the paper tablecloth and tore it off. “I’ll be spending a lot of time at my friend Aubrey’s apartment. You might recall meeting her—tall? kind of nice looking? See, Aubrey’s a real collector of these dolls. She must’ve bought eight or nine of them from Ida in the past and she’s so upset over what happened that she doesn’t like to be alone at night.”
“This,” he said slowly, looking down at the paper, “is Aubrey’s number?”
“Um hum.”
Oh yeah. I’m going to feminist hell.
CHAPTER 6
Let Me Off Uptown
I looked down balefully at Dilsey and Mama Lou lying among the discarded Kleenex and junk mail in the wicker trash basket. I shook my head. Should I throw them away now, once and for all?
I reached for them, but then withdrew my hand. Might as well wait until the basket was full. Then I’d just toss everything, including those traitors, into a garbage bag and consign it to the big can downstairs.
I dressed in the gender-neutral downtown uniform: black jeans, black shirt, black ankle boots, long leather jacket. I was going for hyper low profile. I met my father for lunch once dressed like this and he had asked me in all earnestness what had happened in my life to make me want to look like Johnny Cash. I gave a minute’s thought to wearing a tie, but then decided against it; it would probably just call more attention to those natural resources on my chest.
Sure, I wanted to make a few dollars, but that wasn’t the chief reason for hitting the street that day. I planned to set up shop at 15th and Broadway, Ida’s old corner—just hang over there and talk to some of the other street vendors. I figured one of them must have at least known where she lived. It also occurred to me that if her fellow buskers were as out of touch with the news as I tend to be, they might not even be aware that she was dead.
It was a market day, so there were hundreds of people about. Before opening my case, I wandered from one vendor’s table to the other, looking lazily over their wares and chatting with any of them who felt like it. Even the Nigerian fellow with the musk.
I played a couple of numbers, starting with “Blue Gardenia,” which was one of my solos with Hank and Roamer. A few customers leaving the nearby electronics store stopped to listen and dropped a couple of dollars into my case. I did “Gone With the Wind” and “Street of Dreams,” then knocked off for a few minutes to drink a cup of hot cider I purchased in the market.
There was an older white guy who sold sunglasses, decent-looking but flimsy knockoffs of the designer
brands.
An Asian guy who was displaying silver bracelets and rings.
An attractive black woman in her forties with a stack of hand-knitted wool hats.
I talked to them all during the morning and afternoon. None of them had had more than a nodding acquaintance with Ida.
The day wore on and I continued to play periodically. “What’s New,” “Just Friends,” “Prelude to a Kiss,” and a few requests, including one from a white lady with infant twins in a double stroller, who asked for “On the Street Where You Live” and then didn’t give me penny one.
Around four o’clock, however, there was a kind of shift change and a new group of vendors replaced most of the earlier ones.
Two college-age boys hawking the paperbound screenplays for old and new movies.
A gregarious old Irishman with ropes of fake pearls, three for five dollars—I indulged in a trio of those.
A tall, well-built brother about thirty-five, who sold coffee table art books at wildly discounted prices. Upon arrival, he pulled out a boom box and began loading it with a Clifford Brown tape. I’d seen the guy before, I realized, plying his trade a little further uptown. It was summertime, if I remember right, and I’d looked his way twice owing to that torso of his, in a white fishnet undershirt.
It was not until I tipped an imaginary hat to him that he noticed I was standing there, set up to provide live entertainment. He smiled and punched the machine off. I played “Imagination” while he waited on a couple of people, and after I did “Out of this World” he applauded.
“You’re not bad,” he said, walking up close. From his slow appraisal of me, boots to eyebrows, I gathered he was referring both to the sounds and the girl making them.
I gave him that appreciative look right back.
“You come around here a lot?”
“No,” I said. “What about you?”
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