Chapter 18
ASHA
I
woke up this morning feeling blissful until I remembered what day it was. Halloween. My baby had been dead six years. Saundra phoned as if on cue.
“Are you all right?”
“Fine.”
“I'll be there in about an hour. Think of something fun to do.”
She hung up before I could say “don't bother” like I did every year.
Aaargh! Am I going to be depressed every fucking Halloween for the rest of my goddamned stupid-ass miserable life?
Think of something fun to do.
Yes. It was Saturday so I didn't have to go to work and Saundra had no classes, but SHIT there would be kids in costumes running up and down every street. Little human beings laughing gaily while dressed up as SpongeBob SquarePants, Dora the Explorer, and the Power Puff Girls.
It would be unbearable!
The only reasonable thing to do was spend the day indoors. Shopping. I was an authorized user of Nick's MasterCard. We would hire a limousine and I would lie down in the backseat as it cruised through the streets so I couldn't see the kids in their finery. When the limo stopped in front of a fashionable clothing boutique or shoe store, Saundra could open the door, make sure that there were no tots in sight and we'd run in.
Much to my surprise, Saundra agreed to the plan.
Chloe. I chose a white, waist-length military jacket with navy stripes, oversized buttons and exposed stitching. Saundra just watched.
Hermes. A sepia patch-pocket skirt. Sandra nearly fainted at the five hundred dollar price tag.
Burberry. A silver trench coat. Saundra closed her eyes when I tried to show her the tag.
Saundra wouldn't get anything and that was getting to be a drag so I told her to go home. Refusing to let me mope around the apartment, she agreed to buy some things but only if I used my own credit card and only if it was a regular department store.
She ended up with a new backpack for her school books, a burgundy striped tie for Yero and a royal blue sweatshirt for Phil.
Whatever.
Back at the apartment, she fell asleep. I drank a pint of rum and joined her.
Chapter 19
SAUNDRA
Y
ero and I were going to look at tuxedos. I had decided on lilac and silver as my wedding colors and he was unhappy at the thought of wearing a lilac cummerbund around his waist. So, we would have to meet somewhere in the middleâfind some sort of compromise. I've always heard that wedding preparations can tear a couple apart and I refuse to lose my life partner over something as silly as a piece of fabric.
I had met Yero Brown at a sweet sixteen party for Pastor Hoffman's granddaughter, Sharon. Pastor Hoffman had raised Sharon since she was eight years old when both her parents died in a plane crash. They lived across the street and Sharon was the first neighborhood girl to offer me some help in adjusting to my new school.
Yero was the cutest guy at the party and I wondered why I hadn't seen him in the halls at school.
Evelyn hadn't come into my life yet so I was still pretty wild. At parties, I used to get a guy's attention by walking straight up to him, grabbing his arm and dragging him onto the dance floor. There, he'd be blown away by my impressive dance moves. Yero was not impressed.
He allowed me to lead him onto the floor, moved to the beat while I shimmied and twirled, then took me back to Sharon without asking for my phone number.
I was leaning against a wall fuming about this to Sharon when Yero sauntered up to us.
“How you doin', Sharon?”
“Fine, Yero. Are you here to babysit Khari?”
Yero?
He laughed. “Something like that.”
I turned to walk away.
“Wait a minute, Soul Train. Where you goin'?”
That was funny so I turned around and smiled. “To get some punch.”
Sharon pulled my hand. “Yero Brown, this is Saundra Patterson,” she said. “Saundra just moved in across the street from me.”
“What happened to the cop?”
“I'm his daughter.”
“Oh,” said Yero. “I guess I'd better hide my stash.”
I knew he was only teasing but the remark also let me know why the other teens seemed to be avoiding me at school and around the block.
“Where are you moving from?” he asked.
“Manhattan.”
“Well,” he said, “welcome to Queens.” He grinned at both of us and strolled back into the crowd.
Sharon told me that Yero was two years out of high school and waiting for the post office to call him. He was at the party with his brother Khari who was an eleventh-grader like me because Khari had a bad temper and would fight at the slightest provocation and Yero would keep things calm. The good news: Yero had been an excellent student, was quiet, well-mannered and had always kept at least a part-time job since he was fourteen years old, the age when New Yorkers are eligible for working papers. He was a gentleman and, although he had been seen with girls, they were always from outside the neighborhood. There was no gossip or scandal connected with Yero and his reputation was spotless.
He didn't approach me again and when the party ended, I went back across the street feeling very let down. It would have been nice to have a new boyfriend to go along with my new home and my new status as the only female in my daddy's house.
The next day I walked out of the school and turned left toward home, wondering what to do with the rest of my afternoon. I was thinking about how much I already missed Asha when a car rolled up behind me and a male voice called out.
“Saundra!”
I turned around. It was Yero, leaning out of the driver's side window. “
“Hi, Soul Train,” he said, grinning. “Come take a ride with me!”
I jumped in and we drove all over Queens, not wanting to leave each other after the conversation started flowing. We rode, stopped for burgers and fries, rode some more and talked about a whole lot of stuff: his mom, who struggled to raise five children after his father ran off with a white nurses' aide; my dad, who was overjoyed that we were finally going to live under the same roof; how he aced the postal exam; my dream of studying fashion design; and how we both used to smoke weed but now thought that drug dealers should all be arrested and charged with attempted murder.
Four hours later, he finally pulled up in front of my house and turned off the ignition. “Saundra, I know this is going to sound crazy but you're the girl I've been looking for. Will you have me?”
Have him? Well, I hadn't had sex since Mama died and I did like Yero Brown an awful lot.
“Yes, but not at my place. If Daddy caught us, he would shoot you and probably throw me in jail till my eighteenth birthday. Is there a hotel nearby?”
“No,” said Yero, laughing heartily. “I didn't mean sex. I want to be your boyfriend.”
Embarrassed at the fact that I'd been willing to give it up so quickly, I tried to recapture some shred of dignity. With my nose in the air, I rattled off my phone number. “Call me and we'll see,” was my answer.
Now, six years later, Sharon Hoffman was a senior at a college in Arizona and Yero and I were headed for the tuxedo shop to look for a cummerbund that Yero would feel comfortable in at our wedding.
Chapter 20
PHIL
I
watched as Hugo, my short and stocky partner of more than ten years, paced in front of my desk. His skin seemed even whiter than usual and he kept ruffling his thinning mop of jet black hair. There was no point in telling him to calm down. Hugo worked out the tension that was part of our job in his own way. We both jumped when the phone rang.
“Detective Patterson,” I said.
It wasn't the call we'd been waiting for.
“Phil, I need a favor.”
“Spit it out, James. I don't have much time.”
David James was a fellow detective who had a serious gambling problem. He was always coming up short on cash and I had a bad habit of helping him out.
“Can you let me hold a hundred dollars till next Tuesday?”
“Yeah. Fine.”
“You sound pissed off, man. Look, this is the last time.”
“I'm under a lot of pressure right now, James. Gotta go.”
“Can I pick up the money right now?”
“Yeah, man.”
I hung up before he could thank me. Hugo and I were waiting for a call from one of our snitches. We'd been waiting a long timeâshe was supposed to check in more than an hour ago. If she came through, we might take down one of the busiest crack dealers in the area. If she chickened out, we had lost a whole lot of man hours and a few hundred dollars that belonged to the NYPD. The boss wasn't going to be happy.
The next call was from the boss. He barked out some orders.
I gave Hugo the thumbs down sign and he groaned.
“We'll be there in a flash, sir.”
“You have five minutes.”
The captain hung up without another word. I grabbed my jacket and Hugo raced toward his desk to retrieve his own.
“Where we goin'?” asked Hugo.
I didn't answer him until we were out of the precinct and on the road. “We got a body in Laurelton. Woman says she came in and found it . . . doesn't know whodunit.”
Hugo groaned. “Why did I become a cop?”
I had to laugh. When shit got too thick, Hugo and I had this routine that we did.
“Same reason I did. To protect the good people from the bad people.”
“Who are the bad people?”
“Rapists, burglars, murderers and drug dealers.”
“How do you tell the difference?”
“We can't. So fuck it. Let's lock everybody up and figure it out later.”
Sometimes the cops are the bad guys. That is an unfortunate reality. But Hugo and I were both clean. It's really sad that the bad cops get so much ink in the newspapers because they are the minority. We've never even taken a free cup of coffee or a donut. We're old-fashioned, honest cops and proud of it. So we rode through the busy streets of Queens in our black unmarked vehicle hoping that the woman who called about a dead body would just confess to the goddamn crime and save us a whole lot of trouble.
“Did you buy a Lotto ticket this week?”
“Nah,” answered Hugo. “You?”
“Hell, yeah. Something told me that the bitch was going to flake out on us. I'm going to need that Lotto money after unemployment runs out.”
“We should find her and kick that ass.”
Hugo was always talking about kicking ass but he never really did it. In fact, neither of us has ever used excessive force on a snitch or a suspect. We're proud of that, too.
I turned right onto what was normally a quiet block. It was crowded with crying people, nosy people and stunned people. Uniformed police officers kept them all behind the yellow crime scene tape. We showed our identification and entered the house.
The woman who had made the call, a Miss Jane Hunter, was a slim, attractive black woman in her late twenties. She wore a typical ghetto hairdoâtwirled and gelled into a towering structure about eight inches from her scalp. Her makeup was streaked with tears. We questioned her for about ten minutes about the covered body of a black teenage male in the kitchen. Everything that came out of her mouth was a lie.
We finally gave her the right to remain silent spiel, slammed the cuffs on and hauled her ass back to the precinct.
There was a coded message waiting for me. It meant that our snitch had called with the information we needed. Our jobs weren't on the line after all.
Chapter 21
EVELYN
I
had just finished twisting a gorgeous swath of turquoise fabric into a turban around my head when Hugo called. I knew right away what that meant. Phil had decided to pull a double shift and his partner had agreed to take me out instead.
“Hi, Evelyn. How would you like to keep a short Puerto Rican man company this evening?”
Hugo and I had been friends since our days at the police academy. . . long before he introduced me to Phil. “So he is doing a midnight to eight, huh?”
“Yeah,
chica.
Our boy has some heavy-duty expenses coming up.
Comprende
?”
It was true. Saundra's wedding. Saundra's boutique. Our wedding. And Phil knew that I was making my career change right after we tied the knot. The retreat for women would satisfy my soul but my paycheck would be a lot smaller. How could I get mad?
“I'd love to have dinner with you, Hugo. It will give us a chance to catch up.”
“Good!” He sounded genuinely pleased. “I'll take you anywhere you want to go, but I have three conditions.”
“What are they?”
“The food must be cooked . . . nothing raw, like sushi. They must serve meat even though you aren't going to eat any of it.”
“What is the third?” I already knew but he really wanted to say it.
“They have to have a real bar. No spritzers. No wine coolers. I want Jack Daniel's both straight up and on the rocks.”
“So, I have to watch you keel over with a massive heart attack? That's not my idea of fun, Hugo.”
“What if I promise not to collapse until you're back home? My living room is huge. Plenty of room for me to lie facedown until the medics arrive.”
I had to laugh. “Suit yourself.”
“Good! See you in a few minutes.”
I hung up, poured myself a glass of organic apple juice and stared out my bedroom window. It was duskâa crisp autumn evening with a slight wind that was blowing the red and gold leaves around on our lawn. I wondered if my first husband, Jerry Turner, still lived in New York City. We had promised each other all the usual things: remain friends, stay in touch, blah, blah, blah; but after all the drama died down, there really wasn't anything more to say. We were just kids when we got married, and after it was over, I couldn't afford to keep the apartment. Not on a McDonald's cashier's salary. Besides, we'd had so many hopes and dreams there. I just didn't want to look at the space where we had placed the crib or inside the drawers that held stacks of baby clothing from the shower that Mama and Josephine had thrown for me. So, when Mama suggested I move back home and take a bunch of tests to land a city job, I figured she was right.
That's one thing about Mama: she keeps moving forward and never looks back. Dad was a sanitation worker and one night he had an asthma attack and died. I was a ten-year-oldâaway at summer camp. When the counselor told me, I was stunnedâtoo lost to even cry until many years later. He had been a wonderful father and I adored him. Maybe I didn't cry because mama didn't dwell on it. She used the life insurance money to pay off the mortgage on our house and kept on working at the nursing home where she'd been the resident dietician for years. She still works there part time, even though she retired many years ago.
I took every test that the City of New York had to offer that year and the New York Police Department was the only organization that showed interest. So, I jumped at the chance to earn a good salary and benefits. The notion of good vs. evil never even entered my thoughts. These days, you can't get on the force without a college degree but back then all you needed was a high school diploma.
Hugo and I were the only minorities in the academy that year and he helped me through the grueling physical challenges. What a nice guy! I wish he would find a nice woman, settle down and have kids. I've been to several of his family parties and he really has a kind and gentle way of dealing with children. But Hugo says he doesn't ever want to get married. He has his little bachelor pad in Manhattan and a very simple life that seems to make him happy.
Boy, when Hugo and I first joined the force, we had some grand old times. We'd go out after our shift was over and drink ourselves silly. In fact, I used to be able to out-drink Hugo. The hard stuff. Rye. Scotch. Whiskey. It didn't matter. We would go someplace with loud, live music and get totally wasted to shut out the eight hours of human misery that we had just shoveled our way through. Our friendship didn't change until I met this guy named Miles Galloway. He was a high school math teacher. A deep man who lived a holistic lifestyle that I didn't understand at first. But the more I fell in love with him, the more I was eager to learn. He introduced me to yoga, meditation, veganisim and various eastern philosophies. The relationship lasted two years and ended when he asked me to quit the force. At the time, I was too afraid to leave. Where else was I going to make such good money with only a twelfth grade education? Miles said that if I still cared about money, then I hadn't totally thrown off my shackles. He wouldn't have minded my working if the job didn't involve guns, violence, and some laws that are just plain unfair. I understood where he was coming from but what if we didn't work out? I visualized myself back at the McDonald's counter and let Miles Galloway depart in peace.
Meanwhile, Hugo had won kudos for risking his life in the line of duty. He had also become a savvy political animal and was now Detective Hugo Montana while I was still pounding the pavement in a blue uniform. That's fine.
We all have our place in the universe.