Harlem Redux (60 page)

Annie looked to Nevin.

He reflected, then reluctantly agreed. “I hate to say it, but David’s right. Still,” he sighed. “I wished you’d said something. You got any more secrets?”

“No,” David shook his head.

Annie pressed her lips together unhappily. She looked from one man to the other. “Well, what are we going to do? I hope you two ain’t planning to just sit back and let her get away with it.”

“No, I have a plan,” David said.

“Oh?” Nevin raised an eyebrow. “Exactly what did you have in mind?”

Annie leaned forward. “I want to hear this.”

In baring her embittered soul, Rachel had shared so much with him, so many ugly details. He’d spent hours going over her words, hearing her voice repeating them again and again. Finally, he’d found it, the one detail that he could hang her by.

Now, the time had come for him to share it –– and to share how to use it.

39. The New Mistress of the House

The next morning, Annie walked into her kitchen and found Rachel going through the cupboards. Annie halted in midstride. Her mouth sagged open. Rachel turned, saw Annie, and put her hands on her hips.

“This kitchen is a mess. It has to be redone.”

“‘Scuse me?”

“This kitchen,” repeated Rachel bitingly, “is a mess. I’ll show you how I want it—”

“But I’ve got my kitchen just the way it should be.”

“This is not your kitchen. It’s my house and my kitchen.”

Now, Annie put her hands on her hips, too. “Look here, I done run this kitchen for years. I cooked your meals here when you was just a young visitor. And I did it just fine—”

“Well, I’m not a visitor anymore. I’m the mistress of this house and I want changes.”

“But Miss Rachel, Mr. David don’t like it when someone else is in this kitchen—”

“Mr. David isn’t here. He’s gone and he’s not coming back. This is the beginning of a new day—my day—and you’ll do what I say.”

Annie crossed her arms across her chest. Her dark eyes swept over Rachel.

“All right, I’ll take my orders from you. But first, tell me one thing.”

Rachel waited.

“How could you say you loved him?”

Rachel’s eyes widened. Her hand flashed out to slap Annie, but Annie caught Rachel’s arm in midair. Her strong, callused hands closed around Rachel’s bony wrist and forced it down. Rachel tried to yank herself free, but Annie held tight.

“Miss
Rachel, I done watched over Mr. David since his mother died, so I got the right to ask a mother’s question. One mo’ time: How could you say you loved him?”

Annie’s eyes were hard. Rachel stared back at her, defiant, but she couldn’t hold out against the old woman’s strength. Rachel’s gaze faltered. Her angry pride buckled and a shadow of shame flitted across her face. She looked down, struck silent, and Annie, with a look of contempt and pity, released her. Rubbing her wrist, Rachel stumbled to the doorway. She halted on the threshold and turned. Her face was drawn and haunted; her voice hoarse.

“You ask a mother’s question; I’ll give you a mother’s answer. I used to love David. But that love is dead and gone. I left it buried with a baby in a D.C. graveyard.”

Annie put a hand to her chest, but after a moment took it away. Rachel had a right to her pain, but she’d been wrong to let her disappointment and grief embitter and twist her. She’d been wrong to do things that any sane person would have a hard time forgiving.

Rachel stalked out and Annie wondered if that would be the end of it—for now––but minutes later, she heard disquieting sounds overhead, sounds of drawers being opened and slammed shut.

“Lord, help us,” Annie whispered. “What’s she up to now?”

She went upstairs as fast as her rheumatoid legs could carry her and found Rachel in David’s bedroom. Rachel was hastily packing her few things. Annie stood just in the doorway, bewildered. What was going on? Was Rachel actually moving out? For a moment, Annie felt a glimmer of hope.

Then Rachel looked up. “You can stop thinking what you’re thinking, ‘cause I’m not going nowhere. I’m taking over the master bedroom.”

“But Mr. David don’t want nobody in there.”

Rachel slammed the lid of her second suitcase shut. “Old woman, you better learn to listen to me.” She pointed to her two bags. “Now, take this stuff for me.”

Annie took a step back. “No, ma’am. You wanna move in there, you gotta do it by yourself.”

Seething, Rachel grabbed her bags and dragged them out of the room. Annie followed her down the hall to Lilian’s old room. She watched Rachel from the threshold. “Mr. David—”

 
Rachel spun around. Fury contorted her pretty face. “Get out!” She shoved Annie out of the room and slammed the door. Standing in the corridor, Annie heard the sound of things smashing and thumping.

She took a deep breath and cracked open the door.

Rachel stood in the middle of the room, her narrow chest heaving. Her gaze fell on
 
Lilian’s beautiful collection on brushes on the dressing table. She crossed the room and raked them all into a trash can. In a fit, she went through the room, tearing down every sign of Lilian, every photo, perfume bottle, book—she tossed them all to the floor.

And when she was done, she stood in the middle of that empty, sanitized room, looking lost and alone. Then she sank to the floor and wept.

40.
 
A Way Must Be Found

David welcomed his new visitor with polite words that belied their antagonistic past. “I’m sure you never expected to find yourself here. Thank you for coming.”

Byron Canfield inclined his head. “I can’t imagine what you would have to say to me—not unless it’s to finally clear your conscience with a full confession.”

“Actually, that’s sort of what I had in mind. A telling of truths.”

Now Canfield was interested. “Well, then. Let’s hear it.”

And so David told him. Everything. From the who to the what, the why, and how of it, he told it all. From Gem’s duplicity to Rachel’s conspiracy and Sweet’s final fall.

To his credit, Canfield listened. He listened without interruption, but by the time David was done, Canfield’s face was dark with rage.

“You,” he sputtered. “I’ve never known such a liar! Jameson Sweet never would’ve—”

“He would and he did.”

“You have no proof, no real proof. It’s all circumstantial.”

“So was all the proof against me.”

Canfield’s nostrils flared. “You’re here because you’re guilty.”

“No, I’m here because I did something that our society fears more than murder. And we both know it.”

Canfield threw his arms up. “I’m not here to argue with you.”

“No, you’re here, because deep down, you sense that something’s wrong, too.”

Canfield set his jaw. He reflected, then shook his head. “This business about the druggist’s report, it means nothing. He could be mistaken. He was mistaken once. He could be mistaken again.”

David conceded the point, not because he thought it was valid, but because he felt that an important part of getting someone to yes entailed allowing them a limited no.

“There is more,” David said.

“There can’t be. There’s no such thing as evidence of something that didn’t happen.”

Under normal circumstances, Canfield had a brilliant legal and logical mind, but those circumstances weren’t normal. David knew he was listening to the stubborn denials of a man in paternal grief. So he ignored them. He had to. He had one chance and this was it.

So he waited for Canfield to quiet down, then he told him what to look for and where to find it.

Canfield flatly refused. He dismissed David’s words as those of a desperate liar. “You would do anything––
anything
––to smear Sweet’s memory! Have you no shame? None at all?”

“And have you no curiosity, no sense of justice?” David spoke with intensity. “Look, for me, Sweet was a monster, a man who viciously destroyed my sisters. To you, he was someone else entirely. Don’t you want to know the truth, the whole truth, no matter what it might be? Or deep down, are you so afraid that you’d rather not know it at all?”

“I won’t even dignify
that
with an answer.” Canfield got to his feet and drew himself up. He stalked out, cloaked in self-righteousness.

The rest of that afternoon went by, with no further word from Canfield . While David had anticipated Canfield’s proud knee-jerk response, he’d also hoped desperately that the elder attorney would reconsider when alone. But as the hours ticked by, David wondered if he’d played his last card and lost.

He knew that upon sentencing he would be transferred immediately to Sing Sing. and put on death row. He would be placed in the death house. A prison within the prison, the death house not only housed the electric chair, but its own kitchen,
hospital, visiting room, and exercise yard as well.
Like all death row inmates, he would be kept in isolation and under constant suicide watch. His physical existence would be reduced to the confines of a cell seven feet high, six and a half feet long and three feet wide. There, he would wait and hope, hope and pray, while Nevin launched a wearying court battle, one that could last months. If he lost, then Rachel would go free and the long days would begin to race by with accelerating speed, until one day the guards came for him and strapped him in and the executioner threw the switch.

He thought of Rachel and grew angry, then of Toby’s mother and felt himself grow calm. He’d never learned her name, he realized, and felt another tinge of regret. Then he closed his eyes. He could see her face, hear her voice. She cheered him.

So, what you gonna do?
She’d asked.
Men like you, they always got a plan.

Yes, he had. But was it working?

He counted the hours, the minutes, watched the sun go down and the sun go up and passed a sleepless night. Then, at twelve noon, on the second day, he heard the sounds of men approaching. Seconds later, two guards appeared.

They had come for him.

41. A Man of the Superior Sort

On the morning her husband was to be sentenced to die for a crime that she had committed, Rachel McKay quit her job at Harlem Hospital and went on a Fifth Avenue shopping spree. She spent more money in those three hours than she normally earned in a year. Later, that afternoon, as she stood before Lilian’s mirror, she congratulated herself on a plan well done. Now, she could enjoy the rewards of victory, a victory she felt she fully deserved.

At the moment, that reward included a new mink coat. As soon as she’d gotten home, she’d stripped herself down and slipped it on. Now, except for her jewelry, she was naked beneath it. She hugged the coat to her, loving how the smooth satin lining caressed her breasts, her belly, her hips, her thighs. She rolled up the coat’s collar and buried her nose in its rich brown fur. Ah, this was good, so very, very good.
Better
than sex even!