By the time I left Miss Adele, the rain that had been falling had stopped and a late-afternoon sun was edging out of the scattering clouds to bathe Seventh Avenue in a pale coral glow. The wind was cool and smelled faintly of fresh wet leaves. I cut over to Lenox Avenue, where folks with TGIF tattooed on their foreheads emerged from the subway at 145th Street, rushing home in order to rush back out.
Friday-evening party energy was in the air and I needed to catch up with Gladys before she left her office. I dialed her number and one of the brokers answered. “Miss Winston is with a client,” she said when I gave her my name. “Mali Anderson? Wait, just a minute.”
Gladys came on. “Mali. How’re you doing?” Her tone was edged with impatience.
“Sorry to bother you,” I said. “I wanted to know when we’re going back to Thea’s.”
“Probably next week. I haven’t had time. I’ll call you.”
She hung up abruptly and I felt relieved. She’d probably been too busy to go back to the apartment.
I walked down Lenox to 143rd Street, where two large oil-drum shaped barbecue stoves near the curb broadcast a smoking, sharp hickory fragrance into the air. The stoves belonged to Old Man Charleston, and the waiting buyers stepped back as he ambled out of the tiny take-out restaurant draped in a chef’s toque and glistening white apron.
He cut through the crowd like an ocean liner and opened the stoves to coat the meat with a spread of Charleston’s secret sauce. I watched and wondered, as I often did, where the secret came from, since Charleston had been born right down the avenue in Harlem Hospital.
After serving a stretch for burglary in the sixties, he’d come out and flipped burgers in a 42nd-Street greasy spoon until his parole was up, then started his street barbecue with a charcoal stove and an umbrella stand. In a year he’d made enough to lease a sliver of store so narrow that CHARLESTON had to be printed vertically on the window.
He cooked ribs and chicken outdoors summer and winter, and paid his fines promptly when he was ticketed. The take-out line grew longer by the season and often included some of the same cops who ticketed him.
“Fifteen more minutes,” he announced and wiped his dark face with the plaid towel suspended from his back pocket. “Good things come to those who wait,” he reminded the few grumblers before he disappeared back into the store.
I followed him inside and he smiled when he saw me. “Mali, Baby. Long time no see. Whassup?”
“Nothing and plenty.” I laughed. “I need an order of ribs and a favor.”
“The ribs you got. Name the favor.”
“I need your picks.”
“Locked out again?”
“Again,” I said. He reached under the counter and pulled a palm-size case from the shelf.
“Mali, I can see in your face you ain’t locked out this time, but don’t tell me what you want ’em for. I don’t want to know. Just have ’em back here tomorrow A.M.”
“What’re you doing? Renting them out?”
He raised his hands and stepped back. “Mali, I’m shocked. Shocked that you—”
“Come on, Charleston. Are you?”
“Hell no. I may look like a fool but that’s as far as it go. Suppose I rent some dude these picks, he lends ’em to a crackhead, and I go home and find my own crib cleaned. Do that make sense? Only reason I want ’em back here is so I’ll know where they are.”
I folded my elbows on the narrow counter. “I’ve been meaning to ask you why you keep them.”
“Girl, sometimes you ask the damnedest questions.” He opened a stack of plastic containers and inspected them for flaws.
“Listen, I keep ’em to look at every now and then. Specially when things git a little tight, what with the rent and all the other bills, you know what I’m sayin’? I pull this box out and gaze long and hard at my used-to-be life. Everybody has somethin’ they don’t never want to go back to. Me, I’ll take the cradle—die—before I see the slammer again. I keep this box to remind me how I got there and to let me know that no matter how bad things are, they ain’t never gonna git as tough as it was in the joint.”
As he talked, he filled a take-out carton with coleslaw, red rice, and yams, and left enough space for the ribs. He moved quickly and I marveled how someone so large was able to maneuver in such a small space: like the night I wanted a rib sandwich and walked in on the two stickup men who had him pressed to the wall.
I had been on the job then, and when I’d yelled “Freeze! Police!” Charleston slid out of sight so fast behind the counter I thought the wall he’d been leaning against had been oiled.
I had drawn my weapon and called for backup when one perp broke for the door. Charleston sprang up with a short-handled chopping knife—the kind you see being flipped in those Benihana restaurants—except that Charleston’s had something extra. Speed. The knife flew past me in a triple arc before landing in the perp’s shoulder blade. A witness later said the momentum pushed the guy down Lenox and right on through the revolving door of Harlem Hospital.
I would stop in on Charleston from time to time after that, but it wasn’t until I’d left the department that we became good friends. I had come home from a party one night and found I had lost my keys. Dad was playing a wedding upstate and Alvin was sleeping over at a friend’s.
Ruffin was smart, but not smart enough to unlock the door. Plus, when he heard my voice, he’d set up a howl so loud I thought someone had died. So I went to Charleston’s to sit over coffee and a doughnut until Dad got home.
The coffee was so bad it talked back. I told Charleston so and he leaned on the counter.
“I see your mind went the way of your keys, but don’t come jumpin’ in my face. I didn’t make you lose ’em. Anyway,” he’d said, reaching under the counter, “take these and try ’em. See what happens. Bring ’em back first thing in the A.M.”
He’d opened the set and showed me how to use them. When I returned them the next day, I said, “You didn’t have to do this for me, especially after I talked wrong about your coffee.”
“Well, that’s why I had to git you outta here,” he’d said. “My coffee’s bad, but it’s the best in the neighborhood. You was makin’ me look shaky.” He winked and laughed and we’d been friends ever since.
Now he slid the case across the counter. “A.M., okay?”
“No problem, Charleston. A.M.”
My nerves got the better of me, and before I reached 116th Street I donated my dinner to a street person. It wouldn’t do to have Charleston’s secret sauce lingering in Thea’s elegant apartment, even though she was no longer there.
At Graham Court the wrought-iron gates were locked, but I hung around long enough to walk through with several people returning home. Some had stepped off the bus with large packages and others were pushing shopping carts. An older woman paused at the entrance of Thea’s building and I helped lift her cart and carry it inside.
I smiled and chatted until she rolled the cart off on the third floor. On the eighth floor, I stepped off. I looked around the empty hallway and it was so quiet I could hear my breath rushing in and out. My chest was tight and I wanted to move fast. Get in and get out again.
I rang the bell first, just in case, then selected the first pick in the box. It went in easily and I pressed my ear to the lock, listening, as Charleston had said, for the tumblers to fall in place. I inserted a second pick below the first one and eased it back and forth until I heard the click, then pushed against the door and it opened.
I made my way down the foyer and through the living room without turning on the lights, even though the daylight had faded. I went straight to the bedroom and felt for the zipper behind the headboard.
Don’t sit on the bed. Don’t leave any telltale impression. My fingers were damp as I opened the zipper and slipped the bankbook and photo back inside. The sweat was running down my arm. I also needed to go to the bathroom, but in the dark my nervousness was getting in my way.
Don’t go to the bathroom. Just get the hell on out. Even if you have to pee on yourself in the elevator. Get out.
I paused near the foot of the bed, trying to remember if the door had a slam lock or if I had to fumble with the picks again. Charleston hadn’t mentioned that part. I was about to step into the living room when I heard a sound and saw a sliver of light. Someone had opened the door and was coming down the hall.
I backed into the bedroom, quietly sank to my knees, and slid on my stomach under the bed. The sound of the footsteps lessened but a light crunching still told me the person was walking silently across the thick carpet in the living room. The crunch came nearer and stopped at the foot of the bed. A click sounded and a small white circle swept along the floor, then arced up and disappeared.
I lay still as the mattress above me made a soft groan. The zipper sounded almost rusty as it opened and closed. And I held my breath as the flashlight fell to the floor and the circle of light shone directly into my face. Before the flashlight could roll under the bed, a hand scooped it up, clicked it off, and the person left the room.
I heard the front door close but waited several minutes before I rolled out from under the bed and tiptoed to the bathroom.
I was debating whether to flush the toilet when I heard the sound again.
It can’t be! Another key? Is someone else coming in? The place had more damn traffic than Penn Station. Why can’t they let the dead rest in peace?
The door closed quietly and the same footsteps—I was sure it was the same person—were now moving quickly toward the bathroom. I jumped away from the door and stepped into the tub behind the heavy shower curtain.
It was a man who flipped the lid and muttered under his breath at the unflushed toilet.
I held my breath and crouched low like a runner, feeling the cold porcelain against one knee and the palms of my hands.
… If he opens this curtain.
… If he opens the curtain, girl, don’t let him catch you praying. Do what you gotta do! The whisper was strong, yet calm. It faded then whispered again: Use what’s at hand.
I didn’t smile but now I was ready to spring up like a cat, knowing that my weight and his surprise would be enough to knock him off his feet. I didn’t need to go a Tyson ten, just one fast fist to his face would be all I needed to get me in the wind. I crouched lower and felt the sweat curl down my arms.
Steady, Mali. Steady …
The footsteps walked slowly past the tub, the light went off, and the bathroom door closed.
I remained still for several minutes, until my knee started to complain. Finally, I eased up and was about to step out of the tub when one curtain was suddenly snatched back. In the dark, I grabbed the other curtain—they were heavy damask designer numbers—and vaulted out against the man, heaving the curtain over his head and arms.
“My God! What the hell—? Who the hell—?”
I managed to knock the breath out of him as we fell to the floor and he hit his head on the tile. By the time I’d sprinted to the door, he was groaning, trying to stagger to his feet.
Outside in the hallway, I ran for the stairs and was through the courtyard and out in the street in the time it took to dial 911. If indeed he dialed 911. Whoever it was probably did not belong there any more than I did. That’s why the lights were out.
I walked fast down 116th Street without looking back and lost myself in the crowd of Lenox Avenue.
Dad came up from his study when I walked in. “Alvin called just five minutes ago. Still having a good time and doesn’t want to come home. But I told him he has to be home by the last week in August. Boy needs time to wind down before thinking about school.” He paused. “You look kinda out of it. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing that a dry martini wouldn’t fix.”
He went to the bar, fixed two drinks, and handed me one. I tried not to show my nervousness. “I’ll be glad when he comes home,” I said, not sounding too convincing. The time will fly by and Kendrick will probably still be in jail. I had no idea, no plan about what to do next. Suddenly I felt too tired to enjoy my drink. I put the glass down and was about to retreat to my room, when Dad said, “So, how’s Adele?”
I picked up the glass again and settled in on the sofa. “She’s fine,” I said. “Talked a bit about Thea, but mostly about Dessie. I didn’t know Dessie was Thea’s grandmother. Or that she’d once danced at the Cotton Club.”
He lifted his glass and took a swallow before he answered, “Yep.”
“Did you know Dessie?”
“Slightly.”
“How come you never mentioned it.”
“ ’Cause you never asked.”
“Come on, Dad. What’s up?”
Another minute passed before he made up his mind. Finally he said, “Story is Dessie was an original Cotton Club Cutie whose bills had been paid by her downtown daddy, and when he closed his eyes without mentioning her in his will, she’d had to sell her silver Cadillac and get a real job. Finally ended up on the other side of that knife-scarred counter of the Half-Moon serving two-for-one shots of watered vodka for the next forty-three years. But I never mentioned her.”
“Why not?”
He moved to the bar and mixed another drink and then leaned over to refill my glass. When he spoke again, his voice was low and his speech deliberate.
“Did you know that your mother’s mother had wanted to be a dancer too? When she came to New York as a young girl, her head was filled with all the tales about Harlem and all the fabulous places. She’d heard about Connie’s Inn, the Club Sudan, Smalls’ Paradise, but most of all she wanted to dance at the Cotton Club. Dance was going to be her life. Here was a young girl who could out-strut anything on two legs. And she was beautiful.
“One day she walked into that club, and not understanding the stares and snickers, asked for a job. The gangsters didn’t even let her try out. They looked at one another, and at her skin, and then offered her a job cleaning the ladies’ room. One told her she might even be too dark for that.
“She walked out and never danced again. Not even at the Savoy. She eventually finished school and became a teacher. But the Cotton Club? That name was never mentioned in her house. When your mother was growing up, she had to promise to complete her education first before she got serious about a dance career.
“Dessie was a good dancer, so I heard. That’s all I can say because that’s all I know. As far as I’m concerned, the less said about the old Cotton Club, the better.”
I finished my drink in silence, understanding that this talk would not happen again. I hadn’t seen my father so sad and angry in a long time.
When he left, I changed into fresh jeans and a T-shirt and went around to Charleston’s to return the picks.
“You finished fast,” he said when I walked in. “And look like you peeped in somebody’s grave.”
“Not quite,” I said. I leaned against the counter, wanting to fold my arms and rest my head.
“I need two orders of ribs with extra everything and extra sauce,” I finally said.
He took two large containers from the overhead shelf, glanced at me again, and then pointed to the sign next to the one that read:
CREDIT DIED YESTERDAY SO DON’T ASK FOR HIM.
A smaller sign read:
THERE’S NOTHING LIKE TRUE LOVE
BUT MY RIBS WILL HOLD YOU TILL YOU FIND IT.
He tapped the smaller sign. “Mali, three orders in one day ain’t good, Honey. Even if it is my food. What’s goin’ on with you?”
“Nothing I can’t handle. Besides, one of these is for my hairdresser.”
Now he really stared at me—and at my afro, which had probably shrunk from the sweat of my earlier encounter and was now plastered against my scalp like tight little pea pods.
“Your hairdresser. Mm-hmm. When was the last time you was there?”
“Please, Charleston, you wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
“Not tonight. I’m too tired.”
He packed the orders and I paid him and walked over to Eighth Avenue. It was nearly ten o’clock but the lights were still on and Bertha was working on a customer. Before she said hello, she said, “You brought me something from Charleston.”
She moved away from the woman in the chair and came over to inspect the bag. “Damn, this smells good. You know how he got his name? Years ago, he was on the lam for six months and got tagged in Charleston for walkin’ against the light. Ain’t that somethin’. Gettin’ tripped over a little thing like that.”
Bert turned to the woman and put the last curls in place, misted her hair with spray sheen, and handed her a mirror. The woman gazed without comment, paid her bill, and left.
Bert counted the money and sighed.
“Not even a nickel tip. I was just about to close when she stepped in claimin’ she had a hot date. I shoulda flipped the sign in her face.”
She flipped the CLOSED sign now and opened the package.
“Ain’t seen you in a few days, Mali.”
“No. I’ve been trying to figure out what to do now that Flyin’ Home is dead. He was the one who could’ve helped Kendrick.”
“Maybe,” Bert said, spreading her napkin in her lap, “you oughtta go back and look at Thea again.”
“Last time I looked, she was dead also,” I said.
“I mean, look again at her life.”
“Or look around it. I had a short meeting with Teddi Lovette yesterday.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing. Early on, she had wanted to find out stuff about Thea also. Then yesterday she calls me downtown to the theater to ask me to forget the whole deal. I think the woman has some mental problems and so does her mama.”
Bert did not answer and we ate in silence. Then she shook her head.
“I think,” she said, eyeing her forkful of collards as if she expected to find a worm sautéed among the green, “I think Kendrick finally told her.”
“Told her what?”
“That he wasn’t interested in her. That’s probably why she wants you to back off now.”