On either side of the doorway stood a pair of ivory ceramic Rottweilers like sentinels. Potted plants generously dotted the living space, barely allowing me room to sit down upon a brocaded sofa sheathed in plastic. It was positioned between two end tables that supported lamps bearing shades of heavily braided fringe that must have smoldered every time the light was switched on.
The walls were teal; the lamps were gold. I committed the room to memory, to be described later in my story.
“Do you take sugar?” the woman asked haltingly.
I shook my head.
The man sat down beside me, and the woman took a seat across the room at a dining room set of heroic proportion. It spoke of some other time — a time in which there were castles and feudal systems — with elaborate inlaid carvings, mounted on claw feet. An unframed oil painting of a Caribbean landscape hung above it.
“The Bel-Air Mountains, yes,” the man nodded approvingly as I studied the painting. “That was once the view from my own window. See there?” He rose to his feet and approached the image, pointing. “Those mules, those pigs foraging in the garbage pits? Those palms, those coconuts? Is all Haiti. Is my home.”
He turned to face me, scrutinizing me.
“I am Mr. Stuckey,” he said finally. “And this is Mrs. Stuckey.”
I nodded and waited for him to continue. He did not.
“You say your son was murdered,” I ventured.
Mr. Stuckey nodded, satisfied with my inquiry. “In that room, there.” He pointed down a darkened hallway.
Now it was my turn to give him the eye. What’s going on here?
Noting my skepticism, the man rose to his feet. “Follow me.”
Midway down the hall, he paused and flicked on a light switch. A door stood open adjacent to it, though the other doors on either side of the room were closed. Warily, I peered into what appeared to be a child’s bedroom or, rather, the room of an adolescent boy. It was painted a dense, cornflower blue, and decorated with outdated pop culture posters. A large, weathered Table of Periodic Elements hung on one wall, attached with brittle and yellowed tape.
“That once was mine,” Mr. Stuckey noted proudly, indicating the poster. “When I was a boy, it hung in the classroom of my secondary school, the Petion National Lycée.” His back stiffened with pride at the mention of the name. “It was given to me by the headmaster, a gift. I was to be a great scientist, then.” He paused. “As was Edwin too.”
The room was small. Shoved under a window that opened onto brick was an unmade twin bed, and not two steps from it stood a modest desk, bowed by a stack of books whose titles were turned away from me. A boom box also sat perched atop the desk, and there — How had I not seen that! — rested an overturned chair and a noose hanging limply from a light fixture above it.
“Jesus!” I stepped backward and clutched the doorframe in reflex.
“Yes,” Mr. Stuckey nodded solemnly. “My son was murdered right here. He was twenty-two years old.”
“Same age as me,” I whispered.
Mr. Stuckey turned off the light and we returned to the front of the house in silence. I took my seat back on the couch. My tea had grown cold.
“You will help us?” Mrs. Stuckey piped up.
“What time did the police arrive tonight?” I asked, pen poised to record the details in my notepad.
“The police,” she clucked dismissively with a wave of her hand.
“The police do not come here anymore,” Mr. Stuckey added.
Anymore? “Were you home then, when the intruder broke in?”
“The intruder was already here,” Mr. Stuckey corrected.
“So there are suspects?”
“Oh,” he nodded enthusiastically, “there are suspects.”
‘”Nice,” I added, in spite of myself. “If you could give me a list of the names you gave to the police...”
“The last time the police were here, they took no names. No. Nothing from us,” Mrs. Stuckey fumed.
The last time? “The last time this evening, the last time...?”
“The last time one month ago,” Mr. Stuckey said stoically.
“A month ago?” I closed my notepad. “Sir, listen. I’m not sure what exactly is going on here, or what it is you want me to—” I fell silent as I shifted my position on the sofa, making sure that I had all of my belongings. The Stuckeys looked at me helplessly, and I was beginning to feel spooked.
At that, a girl stepped into the room from the hallway.
“I’ll talk to him, Papa,” she said. “I’ll tell him what he needs to know.” The girl was brazen. She stood with her hand on one hip, and she blinked her eyelashes once she was done taking me in. She wore denim cutoffs and a T-shirt that was knotted tightly in the center of her back. Her speech was not the patois of her West Indian parents, who only nodded as she signaled me with a beckoning finger to the door.
Once we stepped off the porch, she immediately lit a cigarette. “I heard everything,” she said, exhaling.
“I’m a reporter for the—”
“I said everything.” She rolled her eyes. “Walk with me.”
The girl pirouetted gracefully as a ballerina and took off down the block. She was short, like her mother, barely over five feet, and though I was nearly six feet, I had to jog to keep up with her.
“So, you from around here?” I asked, falling back on my usual opening line. Dumb! Some reporter I was, but I didn’t know where to begin with this girl. I was ecstatic just to be walking with her. In an instant, my street cred had risen to the umpteenth degree, and the few brothers hanging out seemed to be getting a kick out of watching a dude like me, in my skippies and Polo, pursuing a sister like her, whose mane of naturally red ringlets blew behind her like a superhero’s cape.
She didn’t respond to my lame attempts at flirting, and we walked along Jamaica Avenue in silence, passing the gated entrances of fast-food restaurants, 99-cent stores, and discount clothing outlets with names like Foxy Lady and Tic Tock. The sky above us had a chunky, textured look about it; mounds of cloud clung stubbornly to the midnight blue, as often happened after a storm. It had been an uncharacteristically stormy summer. A crushed can of Colt 45, however, still balanced precariously on the fence post of King’s Manor.
“I don’t know why people drink that swill!” I knocked the can over in an attempt at irreverence, accidentally splashing my sneakers with stale beer. Shit.
The girl led me a little further to a Salvadoran café with Christmas bulbs and plastic flowers in its window.
“I’m Janette,” she said, as we slid into an upholstered booth.
“Dougie,” I grinned.
“Dougie, huh? That’s cute.” She drummed her fingernails on the table between us. “I hate that you can’t smoke anywhere anymore.”
“Been smoking long?”
“Since I was thirteen.”
“Nasty habit.”
She raised an eyebrow and pursed her lips. I ordered beer for both of us. Music and words incomprehensible to me floated from a juke box somewhere in the place.
“My brother committed suicide,” Janette said suddenly. My beer caught in my throat and a bit of it dribbled down my chin. “You’re conducting an investigation here, right?”
“Yeah, but—”
“So, here.” Janette reached into her back pocket and shot a scrap of paper across the table at me. “That’s the name of the detective.”
“Detective?”
She shook her head at me in disbelief. “What the fuck? Are you a reporter or what?” She rolled her eyes. “The detective working my brother’s case, you moron.”