Hanging on a String Read online

  “Thea went back to the apartment to take care of Reese,” my dad told me. “Care to join me, pumpkin?”

  No matter how old I got, no matter that I now had grey hairs, and I had lived alone and paid my own taxes for longer than I cared to acknowledge, I was still a pumpkin to my father. I walked over and sat next to him, planting a kiss on his cheek.

  “Can’t join you, Dad. I’ve got some things that need tending to first thing this morning.”

  He looked at me and nodded his head as if he understood exactly what I was referring to. We have always had a bond, my father and I, which some find unnatural. We often finish each other’s sentences, and we can communicate with each other without speaking. Sometimes, when I have a problem, a problem that is presenting me with too much difficulty to either solve or face, I’ll get a phone call from my father, with the solution to the problem.

  “I’m sorry about Lamarr,” said my father. “He was a fine man. A very fine man.”

  I felt the tears sting my eyes again, but I was determined not to cry. I wasn’t going to give in to grief again. Not this morning. There was time enough to grieve about Lamarr. I would have an eternity for that. Right now I needed to find out what happened to my friend. That was where my energies had to lie.

  “Here,” said my father, handing me his steaming cup of tea. “Drink this. It’s ginger tea. Nothing like ginger tea to fortify the soul.”

  I took a sip of my father’s ginger tea, and I don’t know if it was the tea or my father’s reassuring arm, which was draped around my shoulder, but I felt better by the time I got off the couch. We didn’t talk long. I had a lot to do. But those few minutes I spent with my father helped strengthen me for what I knew was a difficult day ahead.

  By the time I left my apartment, dressed in my dark blue suit with matching pumps and a cream silk blouse, my spirits had not lifted. There was no way that I would feel better so soon after Lamarr’s death. But I felt renewed, and I was determined to face Raymond and whomever else I had to face to get answers.

  Raymond was not a man who was inclined to give anyone answers on demand.

  “What exactly do you want to know, Jasmine?” he asked in a tone that let me know he did not suffer fools gladly.

  Raymond had greeted me with concern when I walked into his office at nine fifteen that morning. He knew how close Lamarr and I had been. I saw the sadness I felt reflected in Raymond’s eyes as he talked about Lamarr. Lamarr’s death had hit him hard. Not only had he liked Lamarr, but Lamarr had been one of the few people working for him whom Raymond respected. But Raymond’s sadness and sympathy quickly gave way to anger once my questions started.

  “I want to know what is going on in this firm that would cause two employees of B&J to end up dead,” I said.

  “Just what are you insinuating, Jasmine?” asked Raymond evenly, his eyes never leaving mine.

  “I’m not insinuating anything,” I said, refusing to back down. “I’m asking you, what’s going on around here? Both Lamarr and Chester are dead. They worked at your firm. That’s a strange coincidence, Raymond.”

  “Jasmine, Chester was murdered,” replied Raymond. “There’s no evidence Lamarr was murdered. He died of a drug overdose. As much as I liked Lamarr, it’s not unheard of for an addict to slip up and start taking that stuff again.”

  I got up from my seat and walked over to Raymond’s desk and stood in front of him. He looked up at me as if I had suddenly taken leave of all of my senses. Leaning forward across the desk so our faces were only inches apart, I said, “Raymond, you are lying.”

  “Back off, Jasmine.”

  Where moments before I had seen anger in Raymond’s eyes, what I clearly saw now was fear. One of the reasons that I am known as a good litigator is I know how to read people’s emotions, and I know how to use those emotions to get the information that I need. I decided right there that the only way I was going to get any information out of Raymond was to capitalize on that fear. Looking back, I wonder if I knew then what the consequences of my actions would be. But, I suspect, it wouldn’t have mattered. I was past the point of caring about anything else except finding out who had murdered Lamarr. For as sure I was standing in Raymond’s office, I knew someone had taken my friend’s life.

  “I’m going to the police,” I said.

  I watched as the fear I saw in Raymond’s eyes grew.

  “Jasmine, please.”

  I would have backed down, but the thought of Lamarr kept me going. Whatever problem Raymond was facing, he could get help. Lamarr was past the point of getting help from anyone. The only thing left was to set things right so his legacy would not be one of a heroin addict who gave in to a song of death. I didn’t want my friend to be remembered that way. I wanted the truth to come out, and I knew no one else was going to fight for the reputation of an ex-junkie. I didn’t fool myself that I was fighting for justice. Eight years practicing law had taught me justice was an ever-changing and elusive thing. But I knew what reputation had meant to Lamarr. I knew what respect had meant to him. I knew how hard he had fought to stay clean. I couldn’t give Lamarr back his life, but I could damn well try to give him back his reputation.

  “Raymond, I can’t let this go.” I tried to reason with him. “Whatever this thing is, it cost Lamarr his life. You’re asking me to do the impossible.”

  “Jasmine, if you keep digging, the dirt you find might be the dirt that brings this firm down.”

  The firm. Always the firm. I understood Raymond’s obsession with his firm. Raymond had no life other than B&J. But I also understood for the first time that I had begun to buy into this obsession. The fear of losing a job, especially a well-paying job, had been my driving force. I had bought into the “without this job, I am nothing” syndrome. Hook. Line. And you know the rest. Lamarr’s death had a profound effect on me, an effect I was not sure I realized at that point, but I did know for the first time in eight years, there was something more important in my life than the almighty quest to win cases, make money, and attain partnership.

  “I’m sorry, Raymond,” I said. “But right now the firm has to take second priority. Are you going to talk to me, or am I going to have to go to the police? I think Lamarr was murdered.”

  “You have no proof.”

  “No,” I replied, “but you and I both know I’ll find the proof.”

  Raymond sank back in his seat. Capitulation. Usually, this was a time of triumph for me. I had faced my opponent, and I had won. Yet victory wasn’t sweet for me this morning. It was a necessary meal, but it didn’t taste good. I went back to my seat and sat down.

  Raymond was silent for a few minutes. He sat staring at his hands. I waited. I knew he would talk, but he had to wrestle with some demons first. I just hoped the wrestling wouldn’t take too long.

  “Lamarr knew some things about Chester,” said Raymond. “Knew some things that might have gotten him killed.”

  “What did he know?”

  “He knew Chester was collecting information on people.”

  I could see I was going to have to drag this out of Raymond. He was going to give me the information, but I was going to have to work for it.

  “What sort of information?”

  “Any dirt Chester could find on someone. Chester had a file on a whole bunch of folk. Clients. Lawyers in this firm. Even judges. He was keeping score.”

  I knew it was bad to curse the dead, but just when I thought there was no lower point to which Chester could have gone, he would surprise me and go just a little bit lower.

  “Lamarr knew about it,” said Raymond. “He came to me about two weeks ago to warn me. Chester had some information about me that would ... ultimately destroy this firm if it came to light.”

  The questions came fast and furious in my head. I had to fight to keep it together. There was so much I wanted an explanation for. I took a deep breath and started with my first question.

  “What dirt did Chester have on you?”

  Raymo
nd looked at his hands again and said, “Are you sure you want to know this?”

  I nodded my head. “Quite sure.”

  “He knew I killed a man.”

  Once again, I felt the air slowly leave the room. My heart was beating fast and in irregular beats, and my palms started to sweat. I was about to get bad news, and even as I tried to prepare myself for what Raymond was going to say, I knew, without any doubt in my mind, that whatever Raymond said would forever change our relationship.

  Raymond took a deep breath and released it through his nose. Then he took another breath. Released it. Then he said, “I went to prison, Jasmine. A long time ago. I killed a man.”

  I did not understand the words. I heard him, but I did not understand the words. I thought to myself, Did Raymond just tell me he is an ex-con who served time in prison for killing a man?

  “Chester’s secretary told Lamarr about it. Apparently, she had been spending extracurricular time with Chester, and at some point he dumped her. Well, you can guess the rest. Hell hath no fury like the secretary who gave up her life for you on the promise that one day she would be Mrs. Chester Jackson, but you up and marry someone else, and I guess the moral of the story is don’t cross a woman.”

  “Raymond,” I said when I finally found my voice again, “you were in jail?”

  He shook his head. “Prison, Jasmine. Four years. For manslaughter. I killed a man. A bad man, but that didn’t matter to the judge. I was sentenced to ten years, but I got out in four. Good behavior. It was another lifetime, Jasmine. I was another person.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me, Raymond?”

  “Because I didn’t want you to look at me the way you’re looking at me now.”

  “What happened?”

  “A long time ago,” replied Raymond, “there was a boy who grew up hard in a town in Florida—Ocala. This boy, he was raised by his mother. His father had been in prison for armed robbery and God knows what else by the time he was born. His mother went from man to man and job to job until her luck finally ran out in the form of a mean son of a bitch. This mean son of a bitch beat the boy’s mother almost daily. Broke her nose. Her ribs. Her jaw. Her left hand. Took her money. Did everything a man could do to hurt a woman. Kept women and didn’t even try to hide these women. The boy’s mother would kick him out, but he would always come back, and she would always take him in. One day, when the boy became a man, or at least big enough to do what he had been praying to do, which was to protect his mother, the boy took a gun and shot this man. Kept on shooting him until he was sure that the son of a bitch would never hurt his mother again.

  “They sent me to prison,” said Raymond. “I got my GED. Got a college degree. Learned about the law. Decided to be a lawyer. After I got out, I reinvented myself, and I never looked back. Never. I changed my name. Got a whole new identity. Worked my way through college and law school. And the rest is history, as they say.

  “I knew people who specialized in giving folks another chance. For a price. I paid the price and became Raymond Bustamante. I thought the name Raymond sounded respectable. Good name for a lawyer. And I met this Cuban guy whose last name was Bustamante. It was unusual. I liked the sound of it. Things worked out. Raymond Bustamante has had a good life. A life he never could have imagined, let alone dreamed about, when he was growing up in Ocala, Florida.”

  “What’s your real name?” I asked.

  “You mean the name I was born with?” He laughed, but it was clear the laughter did not reach his eyes. “Rufus White. My name is Rufus White.”

  I sat there trying to make sense of something that made no sense. The man whom I was staring at, the man on whom I had built my professional dreams, had just told me that he had never existed.

  “Chester found out about my past life, and he was planning to use that information to secure more compensation, shall we say,” said Raymond. “He hadn’t approached me, but his secretary knew all about his plans, and she told Lamarr, who told me. Chester had me right where he wanted me. There is no Raymond Bustamante. There’s only Rufus White, the ex-con.”

  “Raymond, other attorneys have gone to prison and managed to salvage their careers.”

  “Do you think any of our clients would still come to us if they knew the truth, Jasmine?” Raymond asked bitterly. “Come on, sweetheart. This is Wall Street.”

  He was right.

  Raymond continued talking. “I would have paid any price that Chester wanted me to pay. This firm is my life. I wasn’t about to let Chester take it away from me.”

  “Raymond,” I asked, “do you think Lamarr paid the price for Chester’s dirty dealings?”

  Raymond didn’t bother to lie. “Probably. I’m sure Lamarr’s death had something to do with all the stuff Chester was doing. Lamarr knew too much.”

  “Who else knows about this?” I asked.

  “Only Irmalee and me, as far as I know,” Raymond responded.

  “What about Nina?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so,” replied Raymond. “Apparently, Chester wanted her to think he was a good, upstanding citizen, apart from the adultery. But Chester’s secretary knows. According to Lamarr, Irmalee knows a whole lot. She even helped him do his dirty work.”

  We both looked at each other at that moment. I could tell we were thinking the same thing. The secretary. She was the key to this whole mess. At the very least, she would be able to provide us with some information.

  Raymond buzzed his secretary. “I need to see Irmalee Littlejohn immediately,” he ordered.

  “She’s not here,” replied his secretary over the intercom. “She called in sick yesterday.”

  “Call her at home!” Raymond barked. I could tell he was feeling the same sense of alarm I was feeling.

  A few minutes later, Raymond’s secretary buzzed him. There was no one answering at Irmalee’s home. She gave Raymond the address. Irmalee lived in Harlem, not far from where I live. Ten minutes later we were headed uptown in the backseat of a taxicab.

  We were silent on the ride uptown. Wrapped up in thoughts neither of us felt the necessity to share. I couldn’t presume to guess what was on Raymond’s mind, but if I were a betting woman (and I’m not), I would wager Raymond was wondering what I was going to do with his secret.

  I stared across the East River to the borough of Brooklyn and thought of Lamarr. I longed for his calm counsel right about now. From the time I learned of Chester’s death, it was as if I were on a roller-coaster ride, where the sudden and dramatic dips and turns were becoming more frequent. Lamarr was dead, and Raymond was an imposter. A well-pedigreed imposter. Everybody deserved a second chance. Whatever he had done, he had paid his debt to society. What I couldn’t get past were the lies. Raymond had lied to me.

  The taxi veered off the FDR and eased its way onto the 125th Street exit.

  “Take 125th Street to Lenox Avenue; then take a right,” I ordered. Although taxi drivers in New York have maps for all of the five boroughs, when it came to navigating through Harlem, some taxi drivers acted as if they had suddenly come to a foreign land. This was not surprising, because most yellow cabs never came uptown further than 110th Street when they were on the Upper East Side unless they were headed somewhere else.

  The taxi driver obeyed my directions without comment. He had not been pleased when Raymond announced our destination was 137th and Lenox Avenue. But we had already been seated in the cab when he inquired “where to?” so he had no other choice but to comply with our request that he take us uptown.

  The taxi drove slowly along 125th Street, Main Street, Harlem, USA. Although it was just past eleven thirty in the morning, traffic was heavy, and our rate of progress could be described in two words, slow and stop. One of my favorite places in the world was 125th Street. It’s a street filled with history, from the Apollo Theater, where African American musical legends sang regularly, to the Harlem State Office Building, where Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., spoke, to the various nightclubs, coffee shops, clothes store
s, and restaurants. When I was a little girl, my father and I would walk down 125th Street and buy fresh vegetables from a grocery stand my father swore had the freshest produce in all of New York. As we walked down 125th Street, I would imagine I heard the voices of those who had walked these streets before me. Street hustlers, musicians, cornerside preachers, folks taken in by the lure of fast money, and fast-living folks who still dreamed of Harlem. These voices would tell me, “Walk tall, little sister.” And I did.

  Even now when I go to 125th Street in search of some particular balm for an uneasy soul, whether it be incense oil from the African brother on 125th and Amsterdam, or some curry goat with rice and peas from the Jamaican restaurant just past Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard, or my cheap lipstick, which can only be found in a little store on the corner of the 125th Street and Morningside, or the works of the talented, famous, and not so famous black artists that hang on the wall of the Studio Museum in Harlem, I can still hear those voices, but now I just have to listen a lot harder.

  “Turn right on Lenox,” I ordered, my voice sounding calm and in control, in direct contrast to what I was feeling. “Then go to 137th and hang a right.” The taxi driver obeyed, once again without comment.

  Although I had never been to Irmalee’s apartment building before, I was certain the three police cars with flashing lights and the crowd of people surrounding a building in the middle of the block were somehow connected to Irmalee. I looked over at Raymond, and the look on his face told me we were on the same wavelength.

  “This doesn’t look too good,” I said, expressing the obvious.

  “No,” replied Raymond, speaking to me for the first time during our trip. “It doesn’t look good at all.”

  The taxi driver stopped as close to the building as he could. A crowd of about forty people was standing in the street, and the police cars blocked off the rest of the block. Raymond paid the taxi driver and told him, “Wait here for us.”

  “The meter will be running,” stated the driver, whose facial expression had now gone from displeasure to something close to fear. I could tell he wasn’t comfortable with being in an environment where there were not a lot of people who looked like him. Still, I had to give him credit. His need for the almighty dollar apparently overrode whatever fear or dislike he carried in his soul. He obviously could smell a good fare and an even better tip.