He had been assigned to the Moira Heaton investigation. By
Esquire
, as I recall. Of course, neither Wit nor his editor gave a flying fuck about Moira. It was the wealthy and handsome State Senator Steven Brightman who had their eye. Until Moira Heaton went missing, Brightman had been the up-and-comer, the next Jack Kennedy. Talk about a curse. Somehow they all begin as the next Jack and end up as the next Teddy. But during the investigation, Wit found something to grab onto, something to stop his slide into an early grave and snickering obits. I think maybe he remembered his grief and forgot about his rage.
“Not only is it of consequence,” I said, “there might even be a book in it for you.”
“Enlightened self-interest is what makes the world go ’round, my friend. Maybe you should begin speaking now.”
“Anyone ever tell you you were more fun when you drank?” I teased.
“I tell it to myself every day when I gaze into the mirror. Then I’m reminded that I would not be here at all had I continued my lifelong quest for the perfect gallon of bourbon. Or maybe, sir, you are looking for me to thank you once again for saving my life.”
“You know better than that, Wit.”
“Yes, I do. How are the lovely Sarah and Katy? Well, I hope.”
I didn’t answer. “Go get your morning paper. I’ll wait.”
He put the phone down. I listened to the retreating slaps of Wit’s slippers against his hardwood floor. A minute later, the sound of his slippers returned.
“Oh, I am so sorry, Moe. I rather liked Larry, though I wouldn’t have trusted him as far as I could drop-kick a polo pony.”
“I know a lot of people who might say the same thing about you.”
“And they’d be right. But you and I needn’t worry about that. I owe you more than I can say.”
“Save it for my eulogy.”
“Let us not discuss such things,” he chided. “Is this call about the late Chief McDonald?”
“Yes and no. Yes, in that he’s part of it. No, in that he’s not nearly all of it.”
“We’re being rather cryptic, are we not?”
I could only laugh.
“Do I have a career in stand-up, do you think?” he asked.
“Maybe, but it’s just that I said the same thing about being cryptic to Larry the last two times I saw him.”
There was an uncomfortable silence on the line. Then, “You know, Moe, I don’t think I can recall the last thing I said to my grand-son.”
“Probably, I love you.”
“Yes, probably.”
“I think I told Larry to go fuck himself.”
“Well, I don’t mean to be insensitive, but he seems to have taken your advice quite literally.”
I hadn’t really thought of it that way, but I wasn’t exactly consumed with guilt.
“I think that’s what I’m getting at, Wit. I’m not sure he did the fucking himself, if you get my point. And there’s too many of your
mishpocha
around for me to—”
“Say no more. I’ll handle it. Give me a day or two.”
“Thanks.”
“None required, my friend. I’ll get back to you.”
He was off the line.
As soon as I placed the phone down, it rang. It rang until I left the house. First, it was Aaron calling, then Klaus, then Robert Gloria, the detective who originally caught the Moira Heaton case, then Pete Parson, then . . . They were all calling to say they were sorry and all wanted to know what had happened. Popular question, that. I took
the phone off the hook and went about finding the answer, ass backwards of course.
NO ONE ON Surf Avenue had hung black bunting out their windows or off the railings of their terraces for the late chief of detectives. I made sure not to crane my neck as I passed West Eighth Street to see if the old precinct had so honored him. My soul, at least, was at half staff. Grief is a harder hurdle when it’s for someone you’re unsure of.
How much of it was I supposed to feel? How much would he have felt for me? For how long? Why?
There were those easy questions again, the ones with the complex answers.
The block was once right in the heart of what we used to call the Soul Patch, but the drugs of choice back then—pot, ludes, black beauties, acid, mesc, a little heroin and even less coke—seem almost innocent by today’s standard. Crack—coke’s ugly little brother—and junkies sharing needles in the time of AIDS had ravaged much of the area. The row houses all looked on the verge of collapse. But all was not lost. On some of the surrounding streets, signs of rebirth were taking root and, if the sea breeze blew just right, you could detect the chemical scents of vinyl siding and construction adhesive.
I pressed the three bells at the row house that Malik Jabbar had listed as his last worldly address. None of them worked.
Such was the nature of poor neighborhoods—lots of bells, none of ’em work. So I pounded the door. Black faces stared suspiciously out dirty windows and through frayed curtains. I could feel their eyes branding the word COP on the back of my neck. Hell, I was white and pounding on a door like I owned the place. Old habits die hard. So much of what you do as a cop is a matter of training and practice. I stopped pounding.
I heard light footsteps coming down the hallway toward the door.
“Who is it?” a muffled and unexpectedly polite woman’s voice wanted to know.
“I came to talk about Malik.”
A lock clicked open, but the door didn’t immediately pull back. I heard the telltale scraping of a wedge pole being removed from its place. To most folks outside big cities or high crime areas, the thought of gating your own windows in steel and keeping a metal rod wedged
between your hallway floor and the back of your front door must seem barbaric. Those folks don’t have a crack den two doors down.
Finally, the door opened. A slender black woman of sixty dressed in a tidy flowered house frock and incongruous white socks stood before me. She was all of five feet tall and wore half-rim spectacles tied earpiece to earpiece around her neck with a cheap silver chain.
“My name is Moe Prager.”
“Are you from the police?” she asked, her eyes wary.
“No, ma’am. I retired years ago.”
“Then I don’t understand.”
“I’m not sure I do either, Mrs. . . .”
“Mable Louise Broadbent. I am—I was Melvin’s mother.” That shook her some. “I don’t know how to say that yet. How is a mother supposed to talk about her own dead child? He is alive to me. I have gotten used to a lot of hateful things in my lifetime, but this . . .”
“May I come in, Mable? I only want to talk.”
She didn’t answer. She stood aside and made a weak gesture pointing down her hallway to the parlor. The apartment was a reflection of the woman who lived within its walls: tidy, small, incongruous. The furniture had survived more presidents than I had, but it was clean, the upholstery worn shiny in spots, the wood polished, and the air ripe with the tang of artificial lemon. The wall art was of sailboats and Caribbean fishermen. The rug, however, was a Day-Glo orange shag that matched very little I’d seen in my lifetime, other than a hunter’s vest. Mable noticed me taking stock.
“This is my apartment. We let the basement apartment sometimes. Melvin lived upstairs with that whor—with his girl.” She soured with that last word. “Can I offer you something to drink, Mr. Prager?”
“No, thanks. You call him Melvin, but he changed his name to Malik Jabbar.”
“I’ll never get used to—” She caught herself. “For his sake, I called him Malik, but now . . . He’s my Melvin. Melvin got involved with some ungodly people who put bad ideas into my child’s head. He was weak that way.”
“He was easily swayed?”
“Like a blade of grass.”
“But you continued living with him.”
“Where was I supposed to go? This is my home. I own it. I let Melvin stay, even with that sassy whore he calls—called a girlfriend. When I’m done mourning, she’ll be on the street where she belongs. Girl’s got no more morals than an alley cat.”
I pointed up. “What’s her name?”
“Kalisha.”
“Is she home?”
“No, thank the lord. She’s out doing who knows what with God knows who. Good riddance!”
“Melvin had trouble with the law.”
“Son, every young black man on these streets has trouble with the law. Some of it deserving. Some not.”
“Okay, Mable, you got a point. But Melvin had a lot of drug arrests and petty thievery and all.”
“Like I say, Mr. Prager, he was easily swayed. He hungered to be accepted, so he did stupid things.”
“Did you know he was arrested a few weeks back for half a kilo of cocaine?”
“When was this?” She screwed up her face and twisted her head to one side as if trying to avoid a punch and failing.
“I’m not sure exactly. Two, three weeks ago, maybe.”
“He never said word one about it, but it does explain some things.”
“Like what, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“That other police.”
“No offense, Mable, but when a family member is murdered, the cops have to come ask about—”
“Not those police!” she cut me off. “I know they had to come. I’m talking about that pretty chiquita.”
“Detective Melendez?”
Mable twisted her head to one side again. This time to stare at me, cold and hard, to see if she had been right to trust me.
“I thought you said you weren’t from the police.”
“I’m not. I swear.”
“Then how would you know about this woman, this Detective Melendez?”
“We’ve met. Was she with a skinny, older, white guy?”
“She came alone. Why? Who is she?” Mable’s voice trembled slightly.
“She was the detective who arrested Mal—Melvin for the cocaine.”
“I keep telling you, he didn’t say anything about such an arrest to me. And besides, where would Melvin get the kind of money it would take to buy a half kilogram of cocaine? I may be just an frumpy old church lady, but I am not a naive nor ignorant soul, Mr. Prager. I know that drugs cost lots of money and I know money was something that my son never had much of.”
She had a point. “Did Melvin know a man named Dexter Mayweather? He used to be called D Rex around this area.”
“There’s not a person over the age of twenty-one who lived on these streets who didn’t know of Dexter Mayweather. To hear the fools talk about him, you’d think he was Robin Hood.”
“Yes, but did Melvin know him, not just
of
him?”
“I doubt it.”
“Why’s that? I know there would have been a big age difference, but your son would have been thirteen or fourteen years old when D Rex was killed in the spring of ’72.”
“Because after he got into his first serious trouble as a boy of eleven, when he got out of Spofford, we sent him down to Georgia to live with his aunt, my sister, Fiona. He didn’t come back home till the fall of 1972 to go back to school.”
“You’re sure?”
“A mother remembers when her child comes back to her.”
“I suppose it’s still possible they knew each other, but I guess you’re right.”
“Of course, I’m right.”
“Do you have any idea who would have wanted to kill Melvin?”
“I’m no policeman, Mr. Prager, sir, but I would think maybe I would start with the people who had the money for half a kilo of cocaine.”
“Could be.”
“And like I say, Melvin knew some ungodly people.”
“As you say.”
She stood to signal her time and patience had run out. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have to get back to my house chores.”
“Not at all, Mable. Thank you for your time. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Do you have children, Mr. Prager?”
“A little girl. She’s eleven.”
“Same age as Melvin when . . . You hold on tight to that little girl.”
“I promise.”
“No parent should outlive her child.”
I agreed. “Just one last thing before I go. Do you have a ballpark figure of when Kalisha will get back home?”
“When the alley cats are finished screeching in heat is usually when she crawls back in.”
“Thanks again.”
There
was a grieving woman, but a woman with dignity. You needed a lot of that in order to survive in such a hard place, with a son in trouble with the law. In a way, she reminded me of my old friend Israel Roth. Mr. Roth was a camp survivor who had made a meaningful life for himself, a man who had literally breathed in the ashes of his dead family and come out the other side mostly intact. I’d met him in the Catskills in 1981 when I was working an old arson case. He had pretty much adopted my family as his own and had tried, with some success, to have me meet God halfway. I’d have to call him. I pulled away from the house and decided that I’d come back and talk to Malik’s girl, Kalisha. Maybe not tonight, maybe not tomorrow, but sooner rather than later. In the meanwhile, I decided to kill some time at the local park. I knew there’d be some games to watch and information to be had. There’s always information floating around the park—you just have to know how to listen.
THE COURTS IN the shadows of the big housing project built at the west end of Coney Island were the best kept outdoor courts I’d ever seen anywhere. We’re talking glass backboards, padded support poles, unblemished court lines, and not a piece of litter on the playing surface and surrounding area that wasn’t windblown. There were two full-court runs in progress, but it was a little quieter than I expected. Only a few guys waiting “winners,” spying their likely competition and contemplating who they could pick up from the losers to give them the best shot at staying on. Some of the guys on the sidelines were no
older than Sarah, some were older than me. Mine was the only white face inside the Cyclone fencing that lined the perimeter of the park.
My appearance caused about as much commotion as a passing cloud. Mostly, the players just shook their heads. My guess was their assessment of me fell into one of three categories: