Harlem sunset, p.7
Harlem Sunset, page 7
“How did you hear it?”
“You girls get loud.” His smile turned to something more lascivious.
Louise pulled her chair back a little bit. “Is there anything else? Anything that could be of use?”
Schoonmaker nodded. “Yes. In fact, Nora is—was—the Eye in the Sky.”
“The what?”
Schoonmaker raised an eyebrow. “You’ve never heard of her? She’s running a pretty lucrative numbers game. She and I have done some things sometimes.”
Louise didn’t ask what those things were.
“She’s discreet,” Schoonmaker said.
“You never told me that,” Rafael said.
“I only thought about it now.”
“The Eye in the Sky?” Louise asked.
“Because she sees all.” Schoonmaker’s eyes widened. “She was good at what she did.”
“Right . . .”
Schoonmaker’s casual, friendly persona dropped and he became serious. Louise was right: when he stopped smiling, he looked older. She was still unsure of who he was and who he was pretending to be. But his voice was intense when he spoke.
“If you look into this, be careful. I’ve heard that the only thing Nora was better at than making money was making enemies.”
“She was one woman. How much damage could she do?” Louise asked.
In response, Schoonmaker smiled that smile again.
12
THE EYE IN the Sky. How had Louise not heard about Nora’s work? According to Schoonmaker, who had overstayed his welcome after Rafael left, she had risen to prominence in the past couple of years. She was known for being strict and ruthless.
She had a small team. And all Louise had to do was meet this team.
Which was how she ended up sitting in a Harlem park, Schoonmaker next to her, waiting.
“Are you sure about this?” Louise asked, and not for the first time. Louise sat still and straight but it felt like ants were crawling over her body. Nervous energy raced through her.
“Of course, Lovie.”
Schoonmaker had, unfortunately, picked up Rafael’s habit of using her middle name, and that only. She should have nipped it in the bud; it was a move that was too familiar, too friendly for someone she wasn’t on equal footing with, but it was sort of charming. Also, she was forty-nine percent sure that he was doing it to annoy her and she was not about to give him the satisfaction of getting to her. She recognized his type: he was much like Rafael in the way everything to him seemed relaxed.
He leaned back on the bench, a sigh escaping his lips.
Louise was unsure of why she had accepted his help. It came with too many strings, and it did mean that she was sitting next to this man she barely knew in the middle of the day. He had already made it clear that personal questions were off the table.
Roughly three minutes into waiting, Louise had asked, “So, where are you from?”
He had winked and said, “All around, Lovie.” That had brought that line of questioning to a close.
And now they were twenty minutes into waiting and she was becoming more and more sure he had played a trick on her. But he never changed his demeanor. So Louise didn’t change hers.
She had never been good at waiting. She always wanted things to happen immediately. It was one of her worst traits and she knew that. She was working on it.
“Drugged alcohol, huh? You think we’ll get the Dove back?” This was the way Schoonmaker tried to make conversation.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Mad, huh?” Schoonmaker turned to face her. “I get it. I’d be mad too. I think you have a lot more reasons to be mad than I do.”
She sure did.
She didn’t respond to that, mostly because she didn’t know how and because she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of being right. She didn’t want to know what that would do to his ego. But she was more scared than angry. How had she let this happen to her? She should have known better.
“Look.” Schoonmaker pointed his chin in a general direction.
Louise looked to where he had gestured. “What?”
“There.”
The man was dressed cleanly and casually. He was Black. His hair was cropped close and he adjusted his pair of sunglasses as he strode toward the bench. He sat next to Louise. She was in between two men, one of whom she didn’t know and the other of whom annoyed her.
“Louise Lloyd?” The man’s voice was low and deep.
“Yes?”
“Lawrence Wright.”
“Who are you?”
He leaned back on the bench. “I’m Nora Davies’ right-hand man.”
“Told you, Lovie.”
Smugness wafted from Schoonmaker. She didn’t have to look at him to know that. She could feel it radiating from him in waves.
“Right,” Louise said. “So, you were at the Dove the night she died?”
Lawrence took a moment. “You know I’m not doing this for nothing.”
“Larry.” Maybe Schoonmaker’s whole thing was inappropriate nicknames. “We’ve talked about this. You’re helping the lady out.”
“I didn’t realize you were dragging me in with Louise Lloyd.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Louise asked.
Lawrence looked at her. “I mean, you cause trouble everywhere you go.” A popular opinion.
“Lawrence.” Schoonmaker reached across Louise, his hand again full of cash. She wondered what it was like to be able to throw money at any problem. “Come on, we talked about this.”
Lawrence’s eyes didn’t leave Louise’s face. “Nah. I’m not getting into bed with a bitch like her.”
Before Louise could react, Schoonmaker punched the other man as hard as he could across the face. Then without flinching, he grabbed Louise by the hand and took off at a pace slightly faster than a leisurely walk.
“Don’t look back.”
Schoonmaker didn’t even seem out of breath. Louise’s heart was racing. Once they were away from the scene of the crime, he let go of her hand.
“Why did you do that?”
“Bastard had it coming.”
“That bastard was one of the only people who could help me and you.”
“He wasn’t going to help you.” Schoonmaker leaned against the wall, his long body folded in half as he exhaled. He smiled at her. “Nothing better to make you feel alive, huh?”
Louise wanted to yell at him. She realized that her first impulse wasn’t very good, so she steadied herself and turned away from the man.
“Listen. I’m sorry. But there has to be a better plan.”
“There isn’t a better plan,” Louise said. “I have no idea what I’m doing or how to do it.”
Schoonmaker looked her right in the eye. He didn’t say anything. Just looked right in her eye. His face was blank, totally unreadable.
Louise kept eye contact. She knew that she could never try to understand what he was thinking.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I was rash.” Schoonmaker lit a cigarette. “We’ll find a different way.”
“You’re not part of this,” Louise said. She was surprised that she’d gotten an apology from him.
“Yes, I am.”
“No, you’re not.”
“We’ll see, Lovie.”
* * *
• • •
THE NOTE MARJORIE had given her was an address. And it wasn’t of an apartment. It was a small office in a small building in South Harlem. The doors were locked, but Louise had never met a lock she couldn’t pick. Her mind was still occupied with Lawrence Wright.
A few months ago, she had at least been able to bank on the goodwill of others.
And she had been working with the police.
Louise should have been aware that now she was working against the police. She had the stink of scandal on her.
And she wished Schoonmaker hadn’t overreacted. She also wished, oddly, she had brought him with her. There was something daunting about entering a place and not knowing what she would find. She wished she had thought to slip Rafael’s birthday present into her purse. She hadn’t been spending as much time at the gun range, and her shot might be off, but she would have been safer with it.
The lights were off in the office, but enough sunlight streamed in for Louise to keep them that way. She closed the door behind her. The window was open and a stiff breeze blew in.
The office was tiny. One desk, two chairs, and a coatrack. The entire width of the room was Louise’s wingspan, the ceiling just out of her reach. It was small enough to be absolutely claustrophobic.
Her first move was to the desk. She sat down in the chair, moving as fast as she could, although she wasn’t sure who would come in.
The desk was old and wooden. She rifled through the papers on top. There was nothing of great importance: a couple of letters addressed to a woman named Pauline, a couple of scrap pieces with numbers, all written in gorgeous slanted handwriting. She folded them and put them in her purse, just in case. She wondered why Nora chose to rent this place. She opened the one drawer, to her left. It was empty.
Louise wasn’t surprised. Gently, she pried the drawer from its hinges, and knocked on the base. Of course there was a false bottom in the drawer. She couldn’t get it to open.
The wind whistled by the window and Louise looked up. Cool sweat ran down her skin. She looked up at the door. It was still closed.
It was very odd, though, because she felt there was someone in the office with her.
She rationally knew it wasn’t possible. She was alone. She heard the busy midafternoon noise on the street; the office was on the first floor. She moved to the window and peeked out. No one was there. She looked back at the desk.
Her heart raced, skittering wildly while she tried to collect herself. This wasn’t real and she had to focus. She pressed a hand to her chest, trying to get herself to calm down.
Once it seemed like the threat had passed, although she wasn’t entirely sure what the threat was, she kneeled down by the drawer, feeling for the latch that would release the false bottom. She had to give Nora points for style. She loved a false bottom in a drawer. She loved hidden anything, like the hidden staircase in the Dove that led to the office above the dance space.
The latch released with a strained, strangled squeak, the bottom flipping up.
Louise didn’t know what she had expected to find. What she did find was bundles of cash, all neatly lined up like little soldiers marching to war. There were also three very large bags of what looked like cocaine.
Louise stared at the drawer for a moment. She had a sinking feeling that Nora had been knee-deep in things Louise had no idea how to handle.
13
IT TURNED OUT that after nearly a decade of constant working, Louise wasn’t too good at sitting around and doing nothing. Now that she had no real job and nothing to do but stare at her ceiling and try to remember, she didn’t like being idle.
She sat crossed-legged on the bed while Rosa Maria got ready in the morning. They’d have a small breakfast together and Louise would walk Rosa Maria to the subway.
They didn’t talk about the case and investigation. In fact, they were both aggressively avoiding it, pretending that if they didn’t talk about it, it didn’t exist.
Then at night, Louise would read and Rosa Maria would write and they’d go to bed together.
It was the sort of quasi-domestic bliss Louise had longed for as a child. As they crawled into bed, Rosa Maria turned and leaned into her. “What if I did it?”
“You didn’t do it,” Louise said. “I know that for a fact.”
She had never once doubted Rosa Maria’s innocence. They were going to bed earlier than they would have with the Dove open, but still late in normal society. The time was ticking past one as Rosa Maria took off her glasses and turned off the lamp. They lay there in each other’s arms, clutching each other as tightly as they could. Something Louise didn’t miss from the boardinghouse was having to wait until everyone was asleep, then sneaking from room to room.
Now they had the freedom to just be.
“I keep having these nightmares.”
Rosa Maria wasn’t sleeping well. Louise knew it; the bed wasn’t very big and every shift and change echoed through it. She also looked strained. Her hair was greasy; bags were under her eyes. She just seemed exhausted.
“Try to sleep, love.”
“Tell me how it’s going.”
Rosa Maria closed her eyes. Louise began to braid her hair; it was too fine to hold a curl but the motion was soothing.
What could she tell her? “Nora was running a numbers game.”
“Really?”
“She was called the Eye in the Sky.”
Even saying Nora’s title was weird to her. Louise wondered what else Nora had been hiding. She told Rosa Maria about the meeting in the park, Schoonmaker’s rash actions, and breaking into Nora’s office.
“Schoonmaker is strange, right?”
It was always funny to Louise when Rosa Maria couldn’t find a meaner word to call someone.
“Definitely a very specific sort of man,” Louise said.
“I can’t believe he punched someone.” Rosa Maria pulled her dress on over her head.
Louise leaned over and lit a cigarette. Almost immediately, Rosa Maria took it from her. “I can.”
Rosa Maria puffed on the cigarette. She could blow smoke rings. It was maybe the first thing that had drawn Louise to her. Even in the dark, it was overwhelmingly attractive.
“What about you, Louise?” Rosa Maria’s voice creaked with cigarette smoke.
“I don’t know.”
They were living in some sort of purgatory, waiting for something to happen.
“Your sister is coming over tomorrow, right?”
“Yeah.”
There were so many things Louise pointedly wasn’t mentioning. The fact that she was giving Harriet her life story. That she had met up with the reporter over the past couple of days. That Harriet was funny and interesting and they ended up trading stories in the café near the hotel Harriet was living in. Every moment she spent with Harriet felt like an insult to Rosa Maria.
Louise took her cigarette back, placing it in between her lips. She shut her eyes, allowing herself to relax just a little bit. She wasn’t ready to face Josie. At least Minna wouldn’t be there to judge them both.
“Martin brought me in for questioning yesterday,” Rosa Maria said lightly and casually. “He wanted to go over everything again. I suppose he’ll be calling you in again soon too.”
Louise closed her eyes. Sometimes she wished she’d wake up and be twenty-one again. She’d spend the whole winter indoors and her life would be forever different.
“Of course he will.” Louise swallowed a pang of guilt.
That was all she felt these days: guilty.
14
IN THE FEW months since Louise had seen Josie, she had grown from being a sixteen-year-old kid to being an almost adult. She’d gone through a growth spurt, her hair was shorter, and her lips were redder. She wore a rather edgy outfit. She looked as if she hadn’t slept all night.
“Josie,” Louise said. She had been expecting her sister at the door, not this person who was a very good imitation of her sister.
“What?” Josie’s voice was a raspy bark, one Louise knew all too well. She was hungover.
“Come in.” Louise pulled the door open. Maybe she had underestimated what Minna had said.
Josie slumped into a kitchen seat.
“Josie!” Louise said. “Is that any way to greet your sister?”
Josie looked up at her. Her eyes were hard and cold. This was a far, far cry from the Josie she had known. “Can I have a glass of water or something?”
“Manners, Josephine.” Louise regretted saying it the moment she did. She sounded too much like her father and that wasn’t the point of this. “Come on.”
They sat together on the couch, facing the door. They didn’t say anything for several minutes. Louise used this time to ponder what she should say to her sister.
“Josie, I know this is hard on you. It’s hard on me and Minna and everyone.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Minna’s having a new baby. You live here. Everyone is pretending Celia never even existed. It’s not hard on anyone. It’s hard on me.”
Despite Josie’s protests, Louise pulled her close, laying her sister down so her head was in Louise’s lap.
“It’s hard on all of us, Sunshine.” Louise could feel Josie start to relax. “But you have to try. She would want you to try.”
“I don’t want this anymore.”
Josie sounded exactly like she had when she was a child, angry and overtired. Her voice was soft and strained, as if she was trying to hold back tears. She moved so she was lying on her back over Louise’s knees. Louise was aware that this wasn’t her best angle.
“I don’t want this at all.”
“Why don’t we think about something we can do together?”
“Like what?”
Louise paused. “I don’t know. But you have to make me a promise, Sunshine. It’s time for you to return to the world.”
Josie pulled herself up. Even with her hangover, she seemed like the little girl Louise had left behind. Louise could see the fear and worry in her little sister’s eyes.
“What if I can’t?”
There were so many things Louise could have said. She hated the fact that she never knew what the right words were.
