I checked my watch. It was almost noon. I stopped at a Staples store and bought a new tape recorder, some pens and paper. These were the tools I brought along when conducting interviews, when talking to sources.
I hadn't used them much recently because this investi gation had been more personal than professional. I thought everything revolved around my father's arrest.
Only now could I see how wrong I'd been.
28
I kissed Amanda goodbye, made sure I was presentable and headed uptown to meet Clarence Willingham.
I rode the 2 train to 116th and Lenox Avenue. It was a hot day outside, the breeze that had felt so cool on our balcony gone.
Morningside Park was actually part of a cliff that sep arated Manhattan from Morningside Heights. It was also the location of a massive protest in 1968, when students of Columbia University staged a sit-in in and around the proposed construction of a gymnasium on the park grounds. With separate east and west entrances, many assumed this was to segregate the gym between black and white. University spokesmen denied the claims, but abandoned the plans after students barri caded themselves inside numerous university buildings.
After a group of students opposed to the protests blockaded the occupied buildings, police came in to end the struggle. Over one hundred and fifty students were injured during the forced removal, and over seven hundred were arrested. Because of the terrible public re lations, specifically stemming from the student-on student violence, Columbia scrapped its plans and built an underground gym instead. Ironically the blueprints for the gym were then sold to Princeton University, which appropriated them for their own use.
The address Clarence gave me was for a five-story brownstone within walking distance of the park. A pretty nice neighborhood. The Columbia campus stood directly on the opposite side of Morningside Park, and though Clarence did live far from student housing, the university owned such huge swaths of real estate in upper Manhattan that the neighboring streets were clean and graffiti free, devoid of clutter and garbage. It must have looked great in a brochure.
Before turning onto Clarence's block, I called
Amanda's cell phone. She picked up, answering with a hard-to-distinguish, "Heh-wo?"
"Amanda?" I said. "Everything okay?"
"Eating," she said, removing whatever had been in her mouth. "Chocolate-covered strawberry. I swear, we need to move in here."
"Where did you buy that?"
"I didn't buy it. They were in a small tin by the tele vision. I think they're complimentary."
"Amanda," I said, shaking my head, "nothing in hotels is complimentary. Check the box."
"Hold on." I heard her ruffling with something, then whisper oh hell under her breath.
"What happened?"
"Um…you know that bonus I got for Christmas?"
"Yeah?"
"Well, it's going to have to go toward paying off these strawberries."
"It's okay," I said. "Just enjoy them. Watch some thing crappy on television, I'll be back later."
"Okay, fine, I'll finish them. Be careful, babe. See you soon. Love you."
"I love you, too."
When I arrived at Clarence's building I rang the buzzer. I expected him to simply unlock the door, but within a minute I saw a man coming down the stairs toward me. He was wearing a bathrobe, loosely tied, with white briefs and blue slippers. A paunchy stomach hung over the elastic band of the briefs. It was a comical look, and it was safe to say he was coming to greet me rather than go for a stroll.
He opened the door, and I extended my hand.
"Henry Parker, nice to meet you, Clar…"
Clarence was ignoring me. My hand sat there unshook, a lonely hitchhiker. Clarence wasn't even looking at me, he was too busy looking down the street, both sides, behind me, as though expecting a boogey man or a ninja to jump out and kill him. His eyes flick ered back and forth, widening and then closing. He squeezed them shut hard, then opened them again.
Perhaps this allowed him to see better, or give him some extrasensory perception.
When he seemed content that nobody was waiting to jump out at him, he said, "You come alone?"
"Of course I did."
"You sure about that?"
"Um…yeah. Pretty sure."
"You a cop?"
I snorted out a laugh. "Are you serious? I said I was a reporter."
"Cops lie. I don't believe that BS about cops having to declare themselves. If someone's recording this, I'm calling entrapment on your ass."
I turned out all my pockets. Showed him I was carrying nothing.
His brow furrowed. "That's not an answer."
"No. I'm not a cop, I'm a reporter." I showed him my business card.
"What'choo got in there?" he said, pointing to my bag.
"Tape recorder, notepad."
"You can't bring that to my place."
"What do you mean?"
"Nobody records or writes down what I say. You can't deal with that, you can leave."
I didn't have much choice, so I said, "What do you want me to do with my stuff then?"
"Bernita down the hall will watch it."
"Bernita?"
"You can trust her. She got a plasma TV. Anytime you have something you need stored safely, Bernita's your woman."
I wasn't quite sure how that was supposed to convince me to leave my equipment with her. I guess I didn't have much of a choice but to trust Clarence's sterling recommendation of Bernita's safe-deposit skills.
"Okay, whatever you say."
"All right. Come on."
Clarence led me into the hallway, past a row of rusty mailboxes and up the first flight of stairs. The building smelled of mold, and the paint was chipping on the staircase railing. Clarence took a left and knocked on the first door. A scraggly woman wearing a pink bathrobe and smoking an unfiltered cigarette opened it.
I wondered if this was actually some sort of spa.
"Bernita," he said. "This is Henry. He's gonna be leaving his bag with you for a while."
Bernita's apartment beyond her looked rather massive, with a hallway splintering off to several dif ferent rooms. The floors were scrubbed clean, and a single dining table sat in the middle, uncluttered with the exception of a pair of crystal candlesticks. It seemed like quite a lot of space. Bernita wasn't wearing a wedding ring. The fact that she had at least three or four rooms for what looked like herself made me all the more conscious of my own dwelling.
"How long?" she said.
Clarence looked at me. "How long you need?"
"Hour. Two, tops."
Clarence said, "Forty-five minutes."
"Whatever," she replied. Then she looked at me, her upper lip curled back. "Henry. Ain't never met a young boy named Henry."
Bernita closed the door before I could reply.
With my belongings safely-hopefully-squared away, Clarence led me to the fourth floor. He lived in apartment 4J. When we got to the door, Clarence stuck his hand into his bathrobe pocket, pulling out a key ring with at least thirty keys on it. I marveled at the man's security methods. Then he went to work unlock ing the half a dozen dead bolts on his front door.
Once Fort Knox was fully unlocked, he opened the door and beckoned me inside.
For the life of me I couldn't figure out why he went to such ridiculous lengths, because Clarence's apart ment was an absolute pigsty.
Garbage littered the floor like he was trying to save room in the city landfills. Empty Chinese food and pizza boxes were stacked in one corner. Beer cans were strewn about, creating an aluminum carpet. I could identify at least a half-dozen different brands, as well as a few bottles of various liquors: Jose Cuervo, Cour voiser, Hennessy. Clearly, Clarence Willingham was not picky when it came to his booze.
"Take a seat," he said, gesturing to a beanbag chair crisscrossed by duct tape like a low-budget surgical patient. I sat down, immediately feeling the beans shifting under me. The last beanbag chair I'd sat in was during college, and I'm pretty sure a box of wine was involved. "Can I get you a drink? Beer? Soda?