Love and Death in Brooklyn Read online

  The love of my life was not expected back before next week. I had asked River Paris, the woman who managed Voodoo, to stay with my eight-year-old daughter, Chesney, while I was out.

  I’d met River six months earlier at my club on Lawrence Street. She was lusty-looking and full at the hip with a sharp tongue. Just the kind of person my partner and I were looking for. She’d come to us to drop off a demo tape, hoping to book a dance-hall artist she was managing into the club. In a black silk mock-turtleneck shirt and with her python-thick thighs threatening to bust out of their black leather cages, she looked like she’d just stepped out of an Essence fashion show. My partner in the club, Negus Andrews, was smitten right away. I was prepared to be more cautious. The three of us spent the night together at the club, drinking and swapping childhood stories.

  She’d recently arrived in New York from Miami, where she’d managed a club not unlike ours. We couldn’t believe our luck. Later as we stood outside her car parked on Jay Street, we offered her the job. She accepted on the spot.

  River was sitting in my living room watching a movie with the lights dimmed when I walked in. It was minutes past two in the morning. I had called her from the restaurant to let her know I would be home later than planned, but I did not tell her why.

  She got up from the sofa and came toward me. “Jesus, you look like you just saw your best friend gassed.”

  I screwed up my face and said nothing. She didn’t know how close she had come to the truth. She held a glass in her hand and offered it to me. “Scotch.”

  I took the glass and drained it.

  “Damn!” She leaned forward searching my face in the soft light, a stony smile of concern fixed on her face.

  “Get me the bottle,” I mumbled.

  She turned away, taking the glass with her. I stood for a moment lost in my own house, remembering the first time I’d entered this house a year ago to speak to the congresswoman about her daughter, who’d been killed in my apartment. It was a beautiful house and I fell in love with it then. When it went on the market a few months later I jumped on it.

  River returned with the bottle of Black Label and two glasses. I snatched the bottle from her hand and sank the spout into my mouth. She leaned against the balustrade watching me intently as I gulped half the Scotch in the bottle.

  “Can I have some now?” she said gently. Like a thirsty woman scouring the desert for water, her eyes swept across my face searching for an explanation to my odd behavior.

  “Sorry.” I wiped the spout and handed her the bottle.

  “What happened?” She put one glass on the end table, then poured two fingers into her glass and passed the bottle back to me.

  Shock had finally conquered my mind and I stared at her silently. My brain felt like it was exploding in my head; my body so stiff I thought it was encased in brass. I heard her question, but my brain was having a hard time comprehending simple words. Everything in this room, including her, was part of a cyclorama of colorless images. The cushion of experience I often used to suppress my inner feelings had been stripped away. I was on the cusp of tears.

  She held my gaze in her spotless brown eyes and after a moment she said, “Chesney wanted to stay up for you.”

  “I’m glad she didn’t.”

  “You don’t want to talk about it, huh?”

  I shook my head.

  There was a long pause, like a wasted promise. “Well, I’m leaving.” She hesitated. “Unless you want me to stay.”

  I shook my head again.

  She turned and picked up her bag from over the arm of the sofa and then sauntered to the closet to get her coat. I watched as she covered herself in black leather. She turned to face me, her dark face tight.

  “Thanks for staying with Chez.”

  She meandered to the door and stopped. “Let me stay with you. We don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. I’ve never seen you look like this.”

  “I need to sleep.”

  She unlocked the door and went upright into the night.

  UPSTAIRS, I walked down the hall and into my daughter’s bedroom. She was curled up under the Mickey Mouse comforter, her favorite toy—a fluffy white teddy bear—nestled against her face. As I kissed her softly on the cheek Donna’s pain-scalded face flashed before me. My stomach knotted instantly. For a long time I stood looking at my daughter, observing the tiny twitching of her body as it danced in sleep. Then, not knowing why, I curled up on top of the comforter next to her.

  CHESNEY’S ARRIVAL in my life was, to put it mildly, a shock. I’d met her mother, Juliet, nine years ago while vacationing in Barbados. My love affair with the island of Barbados began long before that visit, even before my first visit at the age of ten with my father. My paternal grandmother was born there and after living in Panama for a number of years she moved to New York in 1922. My early years growing up in Brooklyn revolved around the elaborate family dinners she created in her Crown Heights home on Sundays, where I was introduced to calypso music, curried chicken, sorrel, conkies, spicy baked pork, and a variety of crimpy old men and women who instilled in me a love for stories with their incredulous tales of myth and magic, all told with a casualness that only certified my awe.

  After I got out of the Marines I went down to Barbados to decompress and to relax before deciding on my next move. I loved walking along its tiny roads at daybreak as the sun burned off the night’s dew. My days were spent splashing about in the mystical blue sea or eyeing clusters of silver fish swimming in unison like children holding hands. At night I drank beer, ate grilled fish, and watched the locals interact with each other with leisure and comfort, as if they were all from one family. Sometimes as I lay in bed listening to the sea pound its chest against rocks under my window, I’d remember the stories of heroic fishermen told to me when I was young by my grandmother and her cohorts.

  Now I visit the island every chance I get. Recently my father relocated there to escape ghosts from his past. Since then he has unearthed legions of relatives, which has made visiting the island even more delightful.

  On one of my visits I stayed at a hotel on the South Coast, where I took a few scuba diving lessons. The instructor was a striking woman with a compact athletic body and a laugh that bubbled and crested like lava flowing from a mountain. Juliet Rouse was her name. We began an affair after my third lesson, capped off by an underwater lovemaking session in scuba gear the night before I left.

  I promised to call as soon as I got back to New York. I don’t remember why, but I never did call or write to Juliet. In fact, there was no contact between us after that affair. The next time I visited Barbados was on my honeymoon. I had no idea that Juliet had had my daughter until nine months ago when I got a call from Chesney’s uncle, Gregory.

  Juliet had gotten into an accident while on a shopping trip to Venezuela. The car she was traveling in flipped a number of times on a highway and Juliet was killed. Though Juliet had never contacted me, she’d put my name on Chesney’s birth certificate—apparently you can do that in Barbados without the father’s permission. Finding me was easy, Gregory said. My phone number was served up by the Internet white pages. I agreed to meet him at a restaurant in the city.

  Of course I asked why Juliet had not gotten in touch with me. Gregory, stiff-faced, with a snobbish turn of his upper lip, laughed and said, “You obviously didn’t know my sister.” Juliet, he said, took her idea of independence to the brink of obsession. That, along with a ripe vindictive streak, not only propelled his sister to success in business, it also allowed her to get satisfaction by keeping Chesney’s birth a secret from me as punishment for not calling her when I returned to New York.

  Still skeptical, I asked him if he had a picture.

  “I can do better than that,” he replied. “Chesney is here in New York.”

  Anais had been away doing a play in Houston and was due back in New York the next night before heading out to Los Angeles to test for a John Singleton movie. That night I picked up the ph
one to call her and changed my mind about three times before deciding to wait until she came home.

  Anais’s flight parked at the gate shortly after midnight. The reasons why I fell in love and married Anais are many, but when I saw her walking toward me in the damp arrivals hall I was never happier to see her or more proud that she had chosen me to be her husband. She was simply a remarkably beautiful woman. Always rain clear, her black eyes never lost that elusive hint of a smile, and her long strides, loaded with confidence and sensuality, made me think of a loafing show horse. Even before we embraced Anais’s uncanny ability to sense disorder in my mind had sniffed out that something was amiss.

  “What’s the matter?” she said, after kissing me.

  I picked up her bags. “Let’s get to the car. It’s a long walk to the lot.”

  She gripped my elbow. “There’s something bothering you. Let’s have it.”

  “We’ll talk about it when we get home.”

  It was summer in New York. The air was thick and the night bled the odor of smoke as we left La Guardia. The sky off to our right was carroty-streaked, and black smoke spiraled above the low buildings. The old Volvo whined like a starving puppy when I tried to coax more speed out of it on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway.

  “Why didn’t you drive my car?” Anais said.

  For her birthday I’d bought Anais a brand-new BMW X5, but I’d owned the Volvo for eight years. It was still the best car I ever drove, the soft leather and incredible sound system of her SUV notwithstanding.

  I flicked the wipers on as raindrops splattered on the windshield like chunks of overripe grapes.

  Anais unbuckled her seat belt and turned to face me. “What’s bothering you? I can’t wait until we get home.”

  “Get your seat belt back on,” I said, without taking my eyes off the road.

  “Talk to me, Blades.”

  “Just put your seat belt back on, okay? Jesus! Why do you always have to be so damn dramatic about everything?”

  “Because you’re always so damn mysterious about everything.”

  “I think I might have a daughter,” I blurted.

  “What?”

  “She’s coming to the house tomorrow.”

  “Hold up. Back up a minute. Did I hear you say you think you might have a daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you think you might have a daughter? Isn’t that something you either have or you don’t have?”

  “Her name’s Chesney. She’s eight years old. And it’s possible she could be my daughter. I had a relationship with her mother in Barbados. Before you and I met.”

  For a second I took my eyes off the road to look at Anais, who just stared at me, her mouth quivering, and I knew she was trying to keep her temper under control. I knew it was a battle she would lose, which was why I had wanted to wait until we got home before I hammered her with this news.

  Moments later I felt her purse slam against my head, the sudden blow causing me to swerve dangerously close to the median. Anais screamed for me to stop the car, but I kept driving. She struck me again and grabbed the steering wheel. The car swerved into the next lane. I slammed on the brakes and the car screeched to a stop on the shoulder.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t know about this,” Anais screamed.

  “I swear.”

  “She’s not coming to my house.”

  “Excuse me. Our house.”

  “No goddamn way, Blades.”

  “She could be my daughter.”

  “Oh, and you can’t wait to see her.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “It’s in your voice, Blades. You want her to be your daughter. And here I was thinking all this time that you didn’t want children.”

  I looked away, my eyes trailing the low ghostlike buildings of Queens.

  “We could’ve had our own child by now, Blades.”

  “Come on, Anais. You don’t have time for children. You’re always away. You’re always busy. You made it clear. Acting was more important to you.”

  She threw her purse at the windshield and fell back against the seat with a whalelike bark, and I thought she would start crying but after that she was quiet.

  We fought all the way home. She threatened to leave me but I was determined to see Chesney no matter what. Finally, Anais agreed to end our feud if I agreed to have a blood test done as soon as possible. To me, it was a small price to pay for peace.

  CHESNEY CAME into my life on an unseasonably cool July day, the temperature never rising above sixty-five degrees. Arriving with her uncle early in the morning as the sun climbed high in a washed-out blue sky, she wore jeans and a thin black vinyl jacket, her thick black hair caught under a red baseball cap. The corner of her mouth was smudged from the chocolate muffin she was eating.

  I took one look at her and knew a paternity test was unnecessary. From her dark placid eyes, to the layered lips and the high slope of her cheekbones, there was no doubt that Chesney was my child.

  Two weeks later, after I’d convinced Anais that it was the best thing for my daughter, I contacted my lawyer to begin paperwork for citizenship, and Chesney moved in with us after her uncle returned to Barbados.

  THREE

  t he morning after Noah’s son was murdered I looked out my window and the sky was soaked indigo. At some point the previous night I must’ve left Chesney’s room and come into my own; I didn’t remember it happening. Beads of moisture collected on my face and chest as the sun steamed past the blinds. Were we in for another seventy-degree winter day?

  It was only March, but Spring had been playing cat and mouse with Winter all season. Whether it was due to global warming, as some environmentalists and scientists claimed, or a sign that the end of humanity was near, as some religious people had declared, there was no doubt that the seasons were all fucked up. Most of February and March the temperature had been about fifteen degrees above average. Was it spring? Was it winter? Whatever the season, nothing much changed in Brooklyn.

  By the time I brushed my teeth, threw on a pair of jeans and a thin blue cotton sweater before looking in on Chesney, it was after eight. She was not in her room, which surprised me. Chez was on vacation from school. The girl never came out of her room before midday on non-schooldays, after watching her favorite cartoons on her in-room television, and then only came downstairs when she became hungry.

  I went back to my bedroom and called Noah’s house. Nobody answered. The phone rang and rang as though they’d turned off the machine. I tried his cell phone. No answer there either.

  I found Chesney in the kitchen sitting at the island eating Eggo waffles and drinking chocolate milk.

  “Morning, Daddy,” she chirped.

  “Morning, baby.” I kissed her cheek softly. “You’re up early.”

  “Of course. Don’t you remember?”

  “Remember what, sweetie?”

  “You’re taking me to Grandma’s this morning.”

  “Oh, my goodness. I forgot about that.”

  I half-filled the water tank and put some Blue Mountain beans in the burr grinder of the Capresso coffeemaker Anais had bought a few months ago and pressed the brew button. This thing was so high-tech everything was supposed to happen at the push of a button. But the damn thing had so many buttons I still got confused with which button to push.

  Chesney giggled behind me. “You can’t forget. You promised. Grandma said she bought me a present from Paris.”

  “I’m sorry, Chez. Something happened last night. It just took my mind away from everything else.”

  “You still gonna take me, ent you?”

  “Of course. In fact, I have a better idea. How would you like to stay over?”

  “For how long?”

  “I’ll pick you up tomorrow night.”

  “What’s the matter, Daddy? Why you look so sad?”

  “Nothing’s the matter. It’s just that I . . .”

  Chesney had stopped eating.

  I s
at down next to her on the stool. “A friend of mine was killed last night,” I said, putting my arms around her.

  “How did he die?”

  “Someone shot him. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.”

  “When people die you think about them all the time.” She leaned her head into my chest. “I think about my mommy all the time.”

  “I know you do, honey.”

  Sunlight stormed through the round-arched windows Anais had wanted to replace with bay windows, but the architect told us we couldn’t alter the outer design without written approval from the Midwood Landmark Preservation Committee. Such approval, the architect informed us, would be difficult to secure since all of the houses in this community were designated landmark treasures. Anais wasn’t pleased but there was nothing we could do.

  “When is Auntie Anais coming home?” Chesney said.

  “In a few days.”

  “Sometimes I think she don’t like to talk to me.”

  “Doesn’t,” I corrected.

  “See, you agree with me.”

  “No, I was correcting you. It’s doesn’t, not don’t. And I think perhaps it might be time for you to stop calling her Auntie.”

  “What should I call her?”

  “Mommy. She’s your mommy now.”

  “But she ain’t my mommy.”

  I didn’t want to argue. “Okay, we’ll talk about this some other time.”

  “Are you going to send me back to Barbados if I don’t call her Mommy?”

  “No, dear. I’m not going to send you anywhere.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise. She loves you too, you know.”

  “Did you love my mommy?”

  “Your mother was very special.”

  “She was in love with you.”

  “Did she tell you that?”

  “She had pictures of you and her. She showed them to me. She said you were handsome.” She giggled and milk trickled down her chin.

  Chesney lifted the blue ceramic bowl to her lips, draining the milk from the bowl before dancing over to the sink. The bowl with its white painted giraffes rattled around in the sink after she dropped it, and she turned to me with an apologetic smile on her face because she knew I frowned on her throwing things into the sink. I didn’t have the heart or the strength to reprimand her today.