“Two, three days a week.”
“You know, I see a lot of books for sale on the street these days. New books. You’ve got a fabulous selection of stuff here at less than half the price of the bookstore. I was just wondering, how can you sell them so cheap? I mean, where do you get them from—a wholesaler?”
His only answer was one little smile.
“What about some coffee? A little lunch?” he said.
“Some other time. I have another nosy question for you.” I stopped him from speaking by holding up my hand. “Not about your business,” I assured him. “It’s about the older woman who sells the dolls. You know who I mean?”
“Yeah. What about her?”
“Have you seen her lately?”
He thought about it for a moment. “No. We’ve had different schedules the last couple of weeks.”
“I was hoping to buy a couple of her dolls for my nieces. You have any idea where she lives?”
Again, the mysterious smile.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I was just wondering,” he said in a remarkable imitation of my voice, subtly distorted with coyness, “where do you get that fabulous selection of bullshit?” He fluttered his bony hands girlishly in front of his face.
I am a sucker for long fingers on a man. Have I mentioned that?
I joined in his mocking laughter; I couldn’t help it. “Okay,” I said, “you got me. How’d you know it was bullshit?”
“Malik,” he said, indicating the incense man. “He said the police were asking questions about Ida—because she had been killed. He told them he didn’t know anything. I wasn’t here when they came around.”
“Does he know anything?”
“I don’t think so.”
“And you—do you know anything? Specifically, where she lived.”
“Why are you really asking?”
“Because.” Boy, my witty repartee was awesome. “Because I’m trying to do right by her.”
“Little late for that. She’s dead.”
“Let me worry about that. Trust me, I’m not just messing around. I’ve got a good reason for wanting to know … What? Now what are you looking at?”
“What should I call you?”
“Nan.”
“When can I call you?”
“Oh, pish.”
“You’re gorgeous, Nan. But I guess you get that a lot.”
What was that sudden banging in my ears? Ah, just the old heartbeat.
“Well, do you?” I insisted.
“Do I what, Shorty?”
“Know where she lived.”
He then nodded ever so slightly at a dented taupe-colored station wagon parked at the meter across the way. “Ida had her sewing machine fixed once. I picked it up from the shop and brought it to her place.”
“Where was that?”
“Up on Amsterdam.”
“Remember the exact address?”
“If I think real hard, I might.”
That grin of his was making me feel like Little Red Riding Hood.
His dirty double entendre was my cue, but I wasn’t ready with my line. I needed to come back with something enticing but not filthy enough to get me jumped right there on the street. Damn, my brain wasn’t working right. Come on, nitwit. What would Aubrey say now? I didn’t know! But then, Aubrey would never be questioning a man about a murdered woman’s address.
I did the best I could: “Hmmm … What can we do to get you thinking hard? I’m sure if we put our heads together, we’ll come up with something.”
He gave up the address.
“Are you sure you’re telling me the truth? That’s really where she lived? Because there is no Ida Williams at that address in the phone book.”
“I swear,” he said, “that’s it.”
I took my ballpoint out of my shirt pocket.
“Now,” he added, “if we can play a little poker here, I’ll tell you why you didn’t see Ida Williams in the phone book at that address.”
“Poker?”
“Yeah. You know, raise the stakes.”
“To what?” I asked, my voice steely.
“Dinner. Instead of lunch.”
“Done. Tell me why she’s not in the book.”
“When I delivered the sewing machine, the name on the bell wasn’t Williams. It was Rose. Alice Rose. I figured Ida lived with a friend or maybe she was a sublet.”
“Excellent,” I said, writing the name and street address down.
“You like spicy food?”
“Not at all,” I said. “I’ll call you.” I handed him the pen and paper so that he could write down his name and number.
He handed them back. “Howard? You do not look like a Howard.”
“I owe you big time, J.”
“That’s okay, Smash-up. There’s nothing I like better than calling in favors. And this gumball owes me big time, too.”
Justin and I stood just outside a cavernous no-name bar on Amsterdam. Foreign territory to me. I knew Manhattan below 34th Street like the back of my hand. I knew parts of Harlem—fellow musicians’ apartments, the Studio Museum, a couple of bars, and of course the faded glory of Sugar Hill, where Aubrey had once lived in a glamorous sublet. I even had some familiarity with a few neighborhoods in Brooklyn. But the Upper West Side—north of Lincoln Center and south of Harlem—was not my beat.
J and I were waiting for Lefty. Not that that was the gumball’s name. I didn’t know the gumball’s name yet. Only that he was one of many less than upright characters from Justin’s world—and Aubrey’s world, if one is to be honest about it. Low-level wise guys and coke dealers, strip club employees, fixers, bartenders who also acted in porn movies or ripped off warehouses in their spare time. Lefty was from that world.
He drove a damn pretty car, though. Pulled up in it a few minutes after we arrived.
“You’re sure this guy knows what it is you want him to do?” I asked as we watched the driver approach.
“Oh yeah.”
“That favor he owes you must be a motherfucker.”
“A little matter of an alibi. Let’s just say it made about twenty-five years’ worth of difference in his life, and leave it at that.”
“I’m leaving it even as we speak.”
“You can pay me back too, Smash-up. And you don’t have to break no laws to do it.”
“Anything.”
“My boyfriend Kenny wants to take us to lunch—a crab cakes and champagne blowout.”
“That’s all I have to do?”
“That’s all. Favor repaid.”
“I’m there, buddy.”
Once he got up close, Lefty wasn’t such a bad-looking white guy—not a gorilla at all. The ponytail was a mistake, but not, as it was with some men, a capital offense. He was on the short side; Justin and I both towered over him.
Lefty wasn’t very polite to Justin. His jaw tight, he nodded perfunctorily at him and refused to meet his eyes while Justin was reciting Ida’s address.
“Got it,” he muttered. “Let’s go.”
“Just a minute, you rude thing!” Justin ribbed him. “There’s a lady present. This is my friend Thelma. Thelma, this is, uh, Mark.”
“Mark” may or may not have been Lefty’s real name. But Thelma as an alias for me? Puh-leeeze. Thanks a lot, Justin. Why not Shaneequa?
Mark barely looked at me, obviously eager to be somewhere else. But then, when he finally turned his eyes in my direction he did a double take.
I could see him seeing me without my blouse, writhing up there on that stage under all the blue and orange light-bulbs.
“Nice to meet you, Thelma. You work at Caesar’s?”
“No,” I said, “but I’m thinking about auditioning. I’ve got an act with a live chicken.”
“Really? Great … great.” Lost in a reverie, he was. Fixated on my chest. There is something about short guys and tits.
“So you think I’ve got a shot at being hired, Ma
rk?” I asked.
“Great … great …”
I think he might have been content to stand there staring at them all afternoon, that private movie going on in his head.
“Okay, children. Enough foreplay,” Justin announced. “Let’s do it.”
J and I left first. We quickly located Ida’s building, a good-looking white stone affair with a pillared entrance, and went into the lobby.
No Johnny Cash drag for me that day. I wore a brown wool mini and a crocheted top under a sweater coat, a cashmere beret, a nice pair of heels, and carefully applied makeup. Method acting. Who was I? Assistant to an ad agency honcho. Partner in a successful independent film distribution company. Girlfriend of a prominent European art dealer. Any of those would fly if I found myself face-to-face with a building super or a curious neighbor. I’d explain that I was so desperate to find an apartment that I was going house to house.
I checked out the buzzer setup. My friend from Union Square had given me righteous information. No Ida Williams in the building, but in apartment 6C, Alice Rose.
Our little breast man bustled into the lobby a few minutes later. I saw him reach into his back pocket and withdraw a shiny, thin instrument. He had us through the inner door in no time.
J and I took the elevator to the sixth floor and scoped out 6C. Lefty came up the stairs then, noiseless as a shadow, and Justin signaled him from down the hall.
I was dispatched to play lookout near the elevator. And it was not until I heard the thing whirring inside its cage, lowering itself to the lobby, that it occurred to me to be petrified.
Some of the old folks in my family used to call me the Bulldog. That was because once I got an idea in my head, I was unstoppable: demonstrating to my parents why I had to have an expensive fountain pen, convincing them to let me go to Europe—whatever. So it was with digging deeper into Ida’s murder. I was helping two men break into an apartment. Of course we weren’t going to rob the place, but we were breaking and entering. A crime any way you sliced it.
I began to sweat profusely, imagining that the super had watched us enter on a security monitor of some sort and was at that moment on his way up with the police.
I heard a dull pop from the area where Lefty was working and my heart popped along with it. The elevator was on the way back up now. Where would it stop? Where it stops, nobody knows. What was that from—spin the bottle? Or Wheel of Fortune?
It stopped at the fifth floor. Just below me. I heard voices down there—a man and a woman talking amiably about their respective Thanksgiving Day plans—and then they trailed off.
A hand suddenly around my waist, and a gruffly whispered “Okay, Thelma.”
I almost jumped out of my $98 Ecco pumps.
“Just let me know if they give you any trouble at Caesar’s,” Lefty said. “Maybe you and me’ll have a drink next time I’m by there.”
He didn’t wait for my answer. By the time I recovered my voice, he was halfway down the stairs.
Ida’s apartment was something of a surprise. I guess I had expected a small place with secondhand furniture, littered with remnants of the cheap fabrics she used to make the dolls. A few shelves groaning with dusty knickknacks and a family Bible—or possibly a witches’ handbook. Some humble canned goods in the kitchen. Maybe a mangy half-starved cat.
Not at all. The large living room was airy, clean, and uncluttered. An armoire in one corner of the room held twenty or thirty of her dolls. There was a nice-sized kitchen, spotless, with all the amenities, including a postmodern refrigerator of gleaming stainless steel.
The walk-in closet in her sparse bedroom was neatly organized and, besides the predictable assortment of sweaters, raincoat, pants, skirts, and so on, held no fewer than three gorgeous frocks every bit as tasteful as the one she was wearing the night she died. Her sewing machine was in there, too, on a roll-away table. At the foot of the queen-size bed was a plaid mohair throw to die for.
I had only one question: When could I move in?
“Not too shabby,” I commented to Justin, who was sitting contentedly on the Shaker-style bench in front of the largest of the front room windows.
“Girl, you said it.”
“We’d better get a move on, J. Let’s start searching this place.”
He threw his head back and shook out imaginary tresses. “Just imagine it! I’m on a dangerous mission to find ze formula before ze Germans get it. God, I feel like Hedy Lamarr!”
“The guys on Rikers Island are going to say the same thing if we get caught up in here, fool. Let’s start with those boxes in the bedroom closet.”
Those proved to contain nothing more than her summer clothes carefully packed in cedar chips. Being as quiet as possible, we opened the bureau drawers, felt around in the folds of the sofa and chairs, checked out the shelves of the linen closet, pulled the things out of the bathroom cabinet. It was a catch-as-catch-can search, because we didn’t really know what we were looking for. Then, in a hatbox in the hall closet, I found something—a wad of money. About eight hundred bucks.
“What do you think? Not just pin money?” Justin said.
“Not just pin money,” I repeated. “It’s a lot of cash to have in the house, but not enough to mean anything in particular. Maybe this is everything she earned the last few months. Maybe she didn’t like banks. A lot of older people don’t.”
We continued to poke into things here and there.
“So who do you think this Alice Rose person is?” he asked.
“That’s what I’m wondering. Not a roommate, obviously. This is a one-person household. Ida must have been subletting, like that guy from the farmers market said. Probably an illegal sublet.”
“May be,” he answered. “But even if it is, how could she afford it? This is kind of a fabulous building.”
“Hmmm. I agree. Still—Alice Rose might be rent controlled. Maybe she’s one of those lucky people who’s been living here forever and is still paying two hundred a month or something.”
I noticed that he had stopped rifling through the bedside table and was now staring at a photograph in a gold frame.
“What are you looking at?”
“I found this way up high on the bookshelf,” he said. “Look at my girl Ida. She’s a real glamour puss in this picture.”
I went over to the bookcase. “Let’s see.”
Ida was twenty-five or thirty years younger in the photograph, which seemed to be a professionally done portrait. She was wearing a white gown with a beaded bodice. “Holy mackerel. Glamour puss is right. I’ve got an old Sarah Vaughan album where she’s dressed just like this.”
“Look at her makeup, child. Whitney Houston must’ve seen this picture somewhere.”
“Weird, isn’t it?” I said. “Now I’m wondering how she went from this to peddling voodoo dolls on the street. Keep looking, J.”
We never found a secret formula, or a bankbook showing half a million dollars, or even a rent receipt with Alice Rose’s name on it. But, just as we were about to give up and leave the place, I went over to slide the closet door closed. I had seen the huge wicker basket in there containing her sewing things. On a hunch, I went back to it and dug my hand deep inside.
I felt something at the bottom of the basket. When I brought it out, I could see it was an old manila folder. I plunged my hand in again and came up with an object much larger and more solid—more like a scrapbook.
I opened the folder first. “Look, Justin. Another glam photo of Ida when she was young.”
“Great dress!” he exclaimed. “Oooh, girl. She looks like Della Reese before the lard took over. If those earrings are still in this house, I’m sorry but they are mine.”
He grabbed the folder to get a closer look, and a patch of yellowing newspaper fell out. Pictured were Ida and a dashing black man in tails, their straightened hair gleaming like a model’s mouth in a tooth whitener ad. Justin and I began to laugh hysterically, until I remembered where we were and quieted him down.
<
br /> “Miller (left) and Priest,” the caption read. I checked the top of the page, which was torn. All that remained was the word “Cleveland.”
“This says her last name is Priest, right?” J asked. “I thought it was Williams.”
I shrugged.
The only other photo in there was a two-head shot of the same duo, taken, probably, ten years after the Miller and Priest shot.
I passed the photo over to Justin. “They’re something, aren’t they?” I said. “What do you think the story is? Why were they in the newspaper? Did they win the Irish Sweepstakes or something? Doesn’t look like a wedding announcement. Looks more like they were in show business—as if that newspaper thing was an ad. Like this guy and Ida had an act—partners. Something like that. What do you think they did—tap dance?”
Justin shook his head. “Well, at least we know she wasn’t hooked up with Sammy Davis.”
“We’d better get out of here,” I said. “Let’s just see what’s in this book I—”
“What? What is it, Smash-up?”
It took a minute for me to answer because I was still trying, as my friends in therapy say, to process it.
“It’s a yearbook,” I finally said, softly. “A high school yearbook.”
“What—from 1920?”
“No. Later than that. Ninety-six.”
Justin took it from my hands. “Stephens Academy, 1996,” he read. And then he shrugged. “I don’t get it.”
“Neither do I,” I said. “That’s my father’s school. He’s the principal.”
CHAPTER 7
Fine Brown Frame
I looked out at the trees, as I had been doing for the last twenty minutes, the yearbook pressed tightly against me.
The majestic view of Central Park from Aubrey’s windows had always been my favorite thing about her apartment, and now I was drinking that view in, lost in thought, lost in the trees.
Aubrey came out of the bathroom wearing a towel. Around her head, that is. That was all she wore.
She sat down on the mile-long sectional—did people who live in high-rises ever buy any other kind of couch—and began to lacquer her toenails.
She had phoned me earlier in the day to tell me that Leman Sweet, whose sweet tooth for her was no secret, had taken the bait. He’d called Aubrey, said he wanted to meet with me and knew I was staying at her place most every night. It would be convenient, he said, to drop by there tonight on his way home.
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