Sweet Liar (Montgomery/Taggert 18)

“Your show’s coming on,” he said, her little finger in his mouth.

“Huh?”

“Your show. Jubilee, remember?”

“Huh?” He was licking her palm.

“Maxie. Jubilee. Death. Destruction. Massacre. Remember?”

“Huh?”

Putting her now-clean hand on her lap, Mike turned her to face the TV, but it was some minutes before she could focus clearly enough to see the program about the life and career of the ancient musician. The camera showed Jubilee, who, for all his hundred and one years, looked energetic and spry, and his mind was obviously as good as it ever had been.

Mike pulled her back against him as they watched, as they saw the trashed-out building that had once been an elegant nightclub done in blue and silver in the Art Deco style. Jubilee talked some about the club, about the entertainers, about how the ladies had worn their furs and the men had brought their mistresses, but it had ended after the massacre, and he’d never had the money to rebuild the place.

At the end of the segment, Samantha put the mute on the TV and turned to Mike. “Is Harlem very far away?”

“In philosophy or miles?”

She grimaced. “Miles.”

“New York’s an island, remember? Nothing’s very far from anything else.”

“So if I told a cab driver that I wanted to go to Harlem, he’d know where to take me?”

Mike didn’t say anything for a moment, just looked at her. “Tell me you’re not thinking what I hope you aren’t.”

She got off the couch. “I’m going to visit Jubilee, if that’s what you mean. And I’m going to do it now, before anybody else realizes that the man is still alive.”

Standing in front of her, Mike put his hands on her shoulders. “You

mean the man who tried to kill you, don’t you?”

She pulled away from him, not wanting to think about that time. “Maybe Mr. Johnson knows something about that night, about why my grandmother had to leave her family, about what justified her causing so much unhappiness in our family. Maybe—”

“Is there anything in this world I can say to persuade you not to go?”

She shook her head. “No, Mike, there’s not. I would like it if you went with me, but if you don’t want to, I’ll go by myself.”

“To Harlem? Tiny blonde you to that area of the city by yourself?”

“Is it as bad as on TV?”

“Yes.”

She swallowed then took a deep breath. “Yes, I’ll go by myself if I have to.” Even as she said it, inside, she was begging Mike to go with her. There was a limit to a person’s bravery.

“Okay, get dressed. Wear something plain, not something with a label.”

Nodding, she turned away and went upstairs to change.

There was already a crowd outside Jubilee’s brownstone when she and Mike arrived, not in a taxi but in a car that Mike had hired that was to wait for them. The driver of the car was a very large man with skin the color of coal and a long pink scar that started on the back of his neck and disappeared into his shirt, and he seemed to be a friend of Mike’s. Nervously, Samantha just smiled at him a lot, which seemed to amuse him a great deal.

On the trip north to Harlem, Samantha did not look out the window, for it was much too frightening. Poverty on such a scale, poverty so close to such immense wealth as there was in midtown Manhattan, was not something that she could really understand.

When they at last arrived at Jubilee’s house, the only nice-looking house on the block, Samantha gave a sigh of frustration, for it looked as though a riot were about to begin. It seemed that most of New York watched Charles Kuralt’s television show, and they’d come to see Jubilee—or come to borrow money from him or sell him something or get him to look at the songs they’d written.

In the doorway stood a big, tall woman with iron gray hair and a look of fury on a face that had once been handsome. Holding aloft a broom as though it were a weapon, she was trying to discourage the watchers from climbing the front steps. Samantha saw two men get smacked in the face with the broom.