Black Orchid Blues (26 page)

Could I lock myself in a room? Send a signal to someone in the street? Find a telephone? Maybe even start a fire?

I felt a deepening sense of dread. If I did somehow survive, then I’d be climbing these steps in nightmares for months to come.

Queenie prodded me with the gun. “Get going.”

At the parlor level, I paused. “It’s so quiet in here.”

“Looking for Junior’s mommy and daddy? They’re upstairs, waiting for you to join them.”

I saw the blood when we reached the second-floor landing. Droplets marked a trail leading from front to back. Queenie nudged me down the hall toward the front bedroom. I made it as far as the door. Even the gun at my back couldn’t make me go further.

Alfred and Phyllis Bernard were in there all right. Each had been trussed to a dining room chair, their wrists bound behind them. Both were nude and drenched in blood, which also spattered the walls and the ceiling, dotting the floor leading to where I stood.

“Go on. Get inside. I want you to take a good look.”

Queenie gave me another shove. I came up short before Phyllis Bernard.

Overkill did not begin to describe it.

Her head was thrown back, her knees tied together. Her eye sockets were gaping blood-filled holes. Her eyeballs hung on her cheeks, barely attached by strands of tissue. He’d finished her off by slashing her throat.

He’d emasculated Dr. Bernard, stuffed the genitals into the doctor’s mouth. Bernard’s eyes were intact but grayed over. From the way they bulged, he appeared to have been garroted. There was a silk tie around his neck. It had been knotted into a bow tie and cinched so tight that it cut into his flesh.

“What do you think?” Queenie asked.

He stood at my side, surveying his handiwork. I didn’t answer.

A large gilded mirror hung on the wall above the fireplace. Scrawled on it was a message in red lipstick:
To Phyllis, you blind bitch. May your eyeballs RIP. To Daddy Mojo: For all the years you made me suck, now it’s your turn. Kick it, baby.

So much hatred. So much fury. Why?

The most chilling line came last:
Hi Lanie, I’ll be seeing you.

“I had planned to be long gone when you found this,” Queenie said, “but obviously my plans had to change.”

Trembling, I backed away. He grabbed hold of me, but I pulled loose.

“I’m going to be sick,” I gasped, and he stepped aside.

I hurried down the hall to the bathroom and came to a stop. Quick impressions of a bloody butcher knife in the sink, watery pink stains in the tub, pink splatters on the walls. I lurched toward the sink and snatched up the knife, but Queenie was right behind me. He grabbed my arm and bent it back, then wrenched the knife away. He studied it for a moment, faintly smiling, as though examining a favorite memento. Then he regarded me and without a word punched me in the gut. That was it. My stomach heaved. I dropped to my knees, leaned over the toilet, and let go.

Queenie stood in the doorway, watching with disdain. “Tough crime reporter, huh? I thought you would handle it better than this.”

I ignored him, gasping and puking my guts out. Two wretched minutes later, I leaned against the wall, feeling dizzy and gripping the chain to flush the toilet. Anger replaced sickness. “You gutted those people. You slaughtered them.”

“I gave them one last grand old time.” He hauled me to my feet.

I swatted his hand away. “Is that why you brought me here, to give me a grand old time too?”

“Mm-hmm. But not the way you think. We’re business partners. I told you: I’m gonna give you what I’ve given no other, a chance to write my story, to see inside my head. So you can drop the self-righteousness, Slim. You’re gonna earn fame and fortune off of me, and you know it. Now, come on upstairs. We’ve got to change.”

“The police must be on their way. They’ll be looking for us.”

“This is the last place they’d think to come. You didn’t even expect me to bring you here, and you’re a hell of a lot smarter than those Keystone Cops.” He turned on the faucet. “Rinse out your mouth. I can’t stand sour breath.”

C
HAPTER
42

H
e forced me up the stairs to the third floor. There were two bedrooms to the rear, roughly the same size. Queenie entered one that functioned as a walk-in closet. Racks of women’s clothes everywhere. Large women’s clothes—big enough to fit a man. And a closet with shelves of oversized women’s shoes and a drawer full of lacy man-sized undies. On the far wall was a vanity with a mirror and a spread of expensive makeup, hairbrushes, and wigs.

“This was my little hideaway,” Queenie said, completing the tour. “I’ve got some fine stuff here. Look at this.” He rifled through the racks.

The outfits appeared to come from the shops of some of the world’s finest designers. Dresses, furs, feather boas. Glittering, sequined, red, silver, and gold.

He pushed aside a glittering burgundy gown to reveal a smart chestnut tweed traveling suit. His eyes lit up and he smiled. “Perfect!” He glanced at me, at my dirty face, torn costume, and disheveled hair. “Go clean yourself up. Use the bathroom down the hall.” He saw an idea enter my eyes and it made him laugh. “You’re not that stupid, are you? But if you do try to make a break for it, you’ll be dead quicker than you can blink. Got me?”

I got it. I started down the hall.

“Hold on.” He went to the adjacent bedroom. He hummed to himself, happily, and returned with a second outfit, a well-cut charcoal wool suit. He held it up for me to see. “This was Sheila’s. Her size looks about right.”

“You don’t actually expect me to wear that.”

“Why not? She can’t use it anymore.”

“No.” I backed away.

He forced the suit against my chest and pressed the gun to my temple. “You don’t seem to understand. You can’t travel with me the way you’re dressed. People would notice, ask questions. So take the damn dress, or I’ll drop you here and now.”

I took it. His eyes felt like hot coals on my back as I headed down the hall. I thought of Sam lying in his hospital bed. I thought about getting back to him. About how I wanted that more than anything else in the world.

I thought about Sheila, about how she’d loved Junior and been so desperate to save him. Then I thought about how the last thing she saw was a gun pressed against her forehead—her husband’s face behind it.

Hunting Queenie or saving Junior?

At any given time, which was I doing? Was it possible to do both? At the moment, I was doing neither. I was simply trying to stay alive.

After I returned wearing Sheila’s clothes, I found that Queenie had also changed outfits. He’d donned a fresh wig and a big, floppy hat that hid most of his face. He looked sharp. He looked ready.

“You look like shit,” he said. He had me sit at the vanity, then retouched my makeup. As he bent over me, deftly applying eyeliner and mascara, he said, “You really do have beautiful eyes, you know. You should build them up more.”

I said nothing, just tried to make myself invisible. He hadn’t washed up and stank of sweat, dust, cordite, and a very generous douse of Chanel No. 5.

Minutes later, he was done. “Open your eyes, girl.”

He’d heavily applied kohl to my eyes. They appeared larger and darker and more mysterious. My lips were lush and ripe, like cherries. I felt like a stranger.

“You like it, don’t you?” he said. “This is how you should do your makeup every day.”

Was I really sitting in a house with a stone-cold killer, wearing his dead wife’s clothes, doing makeup and swapping beauty tips, with the slaughtered remains of his parents one floor below?

He fussed over my hair and outfit and made me try on various pairs of Sheila’s shoes. All the time I watched him, attempting to understand.

“Do you see yourself as a real woman?” I asked. My own question surprised me. From the look on Queenie’s face, it surprised him too, but apparently for different reasons. To him, the answer was obvious.

“Hell yeah! I’ve got the parts, sister.” At the look on my face, he smiled. “Didn’t expect that, did you? But yes, I’ve got it
all
.”

I was stunned. “You have what?”

“You heard me. When it comes to that
,
I have more riches than man or woman could dream of.”

“But how is that possible?”

“You want me to show you?” He took a step back, made to raise his skirt.

I shook my head, alarmed. “No—no!”

“Why not? It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I just … I’ve heard of it, but I never thought …”

“Never thought it could be real? Well, it is. I’m one in a million.”

“Is this why Mrs. Bernard dressed you up as a girl when you were little? Is this why she called you Janie?”

“Oh, so you heard about that.”

Things were beginning to make sense now. I had not been able to figure out why Mrs. Bernard dressed her boy up as a girl. But if he were indeed as much a she as a he, then …

But that still didn’t explain how Junior ended up with two distinct personalities, nor did it explain Queenie’s rabid hatred of the Bernards.

Obviously, something had gone very wrong.

“Hey, don’t feel sorry for me,” Queenie said, studying my face. “Cause I have had my fun and then some. Being double-sexed is not the problem.”

“Then what is?”

“It’s not the body, it’s who I have to share it with.
His
body.
His
parents.” He motioned toward the stairway. “Those sacks of shit downstairs? They weren’t my mama and daddy—they were
his
parents.”

Okay, but if he rejected the Bernards as his biological parents, then how did he rationalize his existence? Or did reason count for nothing with him?

He stopped brushing my hair and beamed down at me. “I’m so proud.”

“Of what?”

“Of the fact that you’re interested in my etiology.”

I gave him a look.

He laughed. “Did you hear that? I used a college-boy word. Etiology. You know what it means?”

“Means origins.” To be more specific, it means the origins of a disease or disorder. But I wasn’t about to tell Queenie that.

“Yeah, of course you’d know the meaning,” he said. “You’re a smart lady, real knowledgeable. Wonder how I knew to use it?”

“Being stuck in Junior’s head like that, I guess it has certain advantages.”

“Yeah, it does, don’t it? One of them being that I know what he’s thinking—”

“But he doesn’t know what you’re thinking.”

“Exactly.” He started brushing my hair again. “That dumbass thought he could trick me out with this kidnapping scheme. Thought he could pull it off without me. That all he had to do was show some gumption and I’d disappear.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”

“So you took over.”

“Mm-hmm.”

I didn’t believe him. I knew next to nothing about Queenie’s special brand of sickness, but I did know that he was a liar. I couldn’t trust anything he said, not about himself or his power over Junior, and certainly not about his plans to let me live.

Queenie set the brush aside and regarded my hairstyle with satisfaction. “Let’s just say I gave Junior’s plan some direction, and now I’m giving you yours.”

C
HAPTER
43

W
e slipped back out into the night, carrying food and water in a large carpetbag. It felt as though we’d been in the house for an eternity, but according to my watch, less than fifteen minutes had gone by.

I had kept hoping that Blackie and his men would arrive. But why should they? He would have expected Queenie to drive straight out of town, or to go underground in some out-of-the-way place. Queenie’s decision to head back to Strivers’ only seemed obvious to me now because that’s where I’d been taken.

My other hope had been that Mrs. Cardigan would see something suspicious and call the police. But Queenie had made sure we came in through the back way, and it was highly unlikely that Mrs. Cardigan or any other neighbor would’ve been looking out there at that time of night. Even if they had, what would they have seen? There were no lights in the alleyway, and Queenie had made me navigate without headlights. His decision to return to Strivers’ was arrogant and risky, but apparently it was smart too. He now instructed me to head uptown to 145th Street.

“You know who I’m thinking about?” he asked as I drove.

“No, who?”

“Luther Boddy.”

Well, that explained the hat. Boddy was a twenty-two-year-old boot-black and ex-con. He was a police favorite, of sorts. The coppers used to like to pick him up for “routine questioning.” They’d beat him with a lead pipe covered in a rubber hose. Beat him so bad, he’d have to stay in bed for days to recover.

One day in January of ’22, two detectives approached him for questioning. A patrolman had been shot a few days before. The detectives picked Boddy up at a school just a block from the West 135th Street station and across the street from the
Chronicle
. They started to walk him over and he panicked. Pulled a pistol from his sleeve and shot them both. As he’d later testify, he simply wasn’t going to let himself be beaten again.

The killings unleashed one of the largest, most sensational manhunts in New York City’s history. Within hours, hundreds of heavily armed cops hit the streets, scouring Harlem. Their orders were to bring him in. Many said they were ready to kill him on sight.

Boddy moved fast. He got out of Harlem. The next sighting was in Hell’s Kitchen. By the time the cops got word of it, he was gone. He found shelter for a day and a night at his mother’s house in New Jersey. His own brother ratted him out. But by then, Boddy was in the wind. He’d dressed himself in women’s clothes—large, floppy hat included—and set out for Pennsylvania.

Forty thousand cops were after him. Even so, he made it all the way to Philadelphia. He did it partly on foot and partly by commandeering a taxi cab. He didn’t do it in style, but he did it. Philly, however, was as far as he got.

“They caught him,” I said.

“Yes, they did,” Queenie said softly. For a moment, he was still. Then he added, “But they’re not getting me.”

Despite the renewed determination in his voice, Queenie’s reference to Luther Boddy was telling. Boddy had killed two cops. Queenie had killed at least one, probably more with those grenades. Then there were the club patrons and Olmo and Sheila. If the NYPD had sent hundreds, then thousands, of cops after Boddy, how many would they send after Queenie?