Chapter 65
I PLAYED A MEDLEY of Keith Sweat, Bell Biv Devoe, Hammer, and Public Enemy pop songs on the piano. I stayed out on the porch entertaining Damon and Janelle until about eight that morning. It was Wednesday of the week Jezzie and I had gotten our little lurid surprise in Arlington.
Nana was in the kitchen reading a hot copy of the National Star, which I’d bought for her at Acme. I waited for her to call me inside.
When she didn’t, I got up from my pumping piano and went to face her music. I told Damon and Janelle to stay put. “Stay just the way you are. Don’t ever change.”
Just like on any other morning, Nana was sipping tea. The remains of her poached egg and toast were still in evidence. The tabloid was casually folded over on the kitchen table. Read? Unread? I couldn’t tell from her face, or the condition of the newspaper.
“You read the story?” I had to ask.
“Well, I read enough to get the gist of it. Saw your picture on the front page, too,” she said to me. “I believe that’s how people read that kind of paper. I always used to be surprised, people buying a paper like that on Sunday morning after church.”
I sat down across from her at the breakfast table. A wave of powerful old feelings and memories came rushing over me. I recalled so many talks like this one in our collective past.
Nana took up a little crust of toast. She dipped it in marmalade. If birds could eat like humans, they would eat like Nana Mama. She is quite a piece of work.
“She’s a beautiful and I’m sure a very interesting white woman. You’re a very handsome black man, sometimes with a good head on your shoulders. A lot of people don’t like that idea, that picture. You’re not too surprised, are you?”
“How about you, Nana? Do you like it?” I asked her.
Nana Mama sighed very softly. She put down her teacup with a clink. “Tell you what, now. I don’t know the clinical terms for these things, Alex, but you never seemed to get over losing your mother. I saw that when you were a little boy. I think I still see it sometimes.”
“It’s called post-traumatic stress syndrome,” I said to Nana. “If you’re interested in the name.”
Nana smiled at my retreat into jargon. She’d seen that act before. “I would never make any judgments about what happened to you, but it’s affected you since you arrived here in Washington. I also noticed that you didn’t always fit in with the crowd. Not the way some kids do. You played sports, and you shoplifted with your friend Sampson, and you were always tough. But you read books, and you were moderately sensitive.
You follow me? Maybe you got tough on the outside, but not on the inside.”
I didn’t always buy into Nana’s conclusions anymore, but her raw observations were still pretty good. I hadn’t exactly fit in as a boy in Southeast D.C., but I knew I’d gotten a lot better at it. I was accepted okay now. Detective/Doctor Cross.
“I didn’t want to hurt you, or disappoint you with this.” I returned to the subject of the tabloid story.
“I’m not disappointed in you,” my grandmother said to me. “You are my pride, Alex. You bring me tremendous happiness almost every day of my life. When I see you with the kids, and see the work you do here in this neighborhood, and know that you still care enough to humor an old woman—”
“That last one is a chore,” I told her. “About the so-called news story, though. It’s going to be impossible for a week or so. Then nobody will care very much.”
Nana shook her head. Her little white helmet of hair turned neatly in place. “No. People will care. Some people will remember this for the rest of your life. What’s that saying? ‘If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.’ ”
I asked her, “What was the crime?”
Nana used the back of her knife to clear away toast crumbs. “You’ll have to tell me that yourself. Why are you and Jezzie Flanagan sneaking around if everything is aboveboard? If you love her, you love her. Do you love her, Alex?”
I didn’t answer Nana right away. Of course I loved Jezzie. But how much? And where was it going? Did it have to be going somewhere?
“I don’t know for sure, at least not in the way I think you’re asking the question,” I finally said. “That’s what we’re trying to find out now. We both know the consequences of what we’re doing.”
“If you love her for sure, Alex,” my grandmother said to me, “then I love her. I love you, Alex. You just paint on a very large canvas. Sometimes you’re too bright for your own good. And you can be very peculiar—by the ways of the white world.”
“And that’s why you like me so much,” I said to her.
She said, “It’s just one of the reasons, sonny boy.”
My grandmother and I held each other for a long moment at the breakfast table that morning. I am big and strong; Nana is tiny, frail, but just as strong. It seemed like old times, in the sense that you never really grow up completely, not around your parents or grandparents. Not around Nana Mama, certainly.
“Thank you, old woman,” I said to her.
“And proud of it.” As usual, she had the last word.
I called Jezzie a few times that morning, but she wasn’t home, or she wasn’t answering her phone. Her answering machine wasn’t on, either. I thought about our night in Arlington. She’d been so wired. Even before the National Star had arrived on the scene.
I thought about driving over to her apartment, but I changed my mind. We didn’t need any more tabloid photographs or news stories while the trial was winding down.
Nobody said much to me at work that day. If I’d had any doubts before, that showed me how serious the damage was. I’d taken a hit, all right.
I went to my office and sat there all alone with a container of black coffee and stared at the four walls. They were covered with “clues” from the kidnapping. I was starting to feel guilty, and rebellious, and angry. I wanted to punch glass, which I’d actually done once or twice after Maria was shot.
I was at my government-issue, gunmetal desk, facing away from the door. I’d been staring at my work schedule for the week, but I wasn’t really seeing anything written on the sheet.
“You’re in this one all alone, motherf*cker,” I heard Sampson say at my back. “You’re all by your lonesome this time. You are meat cooked on a barbecue spit.”
“Don’t you think you’re understating things a little?’ I said without turning to him.
“I figured you’d talk when you wanted to talk about it,” Sampson said. “You knew that I knew about the two of you.”
A couple of coffee-cup rings on the work schedules held my eye. The Browning effect? What the hell was that? My memory and everything else were deserting me lately.
I finally turned around and faced him. He was decked out in leather pants, an old Kangol hat, a black nylon vest. His dark glasses were an effective mask. Actually, he was trying to be charming and softhearted.
“What do you figure is going on now?” I asked him. “What are they saying?”
“Nobody’s real happy about the way the holy-shit kidnapping case has gone down. Not enough ‘attaboys’ coming down from upstairs. I guess they’re lining up potential sacrificial lambs. You’re one of them for sure.”
“And Jezzie?” I asked. But I already knew the answer.
“She’s one, too. Associating with known Negroes,” Sampson said. “I take it you haven’t heard the news?”
“Heard what news?”
Sampson let out a short burst of breath, then he gave me the latest hot-breaking story.
“She took a leave of absence, or maybe she left the Service altogether. Happened about an hour ago, Alex. Nobody knows for sure if she jumped or was pushed.”
I called Jezzie’s office immediately. The secretary said that she was “gone for the day.” I called Jezzie’s apartment. No answer there.
I drove to her apartment, breaking a couple of speeding laws on the way. Derek McGinty was talking over WAMU radio. I like the sound of Derek’s voice even if I’m not listening to the words.
Nobody was home at Jezzie’s. At least no photographers were lurking around. I thought about driving down to her lake cottage. I called North Carolina from a pay phone down the street. The local operator told me the number had been disconnected.
“How recently was that?” I asked with surprise in my voice. “I called that number last night.”
“Just this morning,” the operator told me. “The local number was disconnected this very morning.”
Jezzie had disappeared.