Soul Siren (25 page)

But it would damage her.

She is bigger than this. No one has to know. No one will ever know.

I stripped each envelope of the charts, notes and little cassettes and sifted the contents carefully. It would look ridiculous if his files were completely empty, and I would have to leave some behind.
I was very careful.
All this time I worked in the latex gloves, and though they were beginning to feel uncomfortable, I kept my discipline and left them on. It wouldn’t matter if my fingerprints were on the freight elevator or a couple of items of furniture—Erica and I were both regular visitors. But I had to be sure his desk wouldn’t betray me.

I couldn’t know Morgan’s music, but I knew practically every nuance of Erica’s, and it didn’t take me long to divide what was hers and what was his. I went over to Morgan’s gas stove, lit up a burner and pushed the chart for one of her minor tunes on the
Drum
album into the blue flame. As the page blackened and curled, and a tiny orange fire started, I realised my mistake. It was too late for this one, and I left the ashes in the little gutter around the element, but the others…The others I would save. I would save all the other charts.

She
would need proof if she ever worried and was sleepless that it would come out. People will always tell a star what she wants to hear, but I could show her. And I could say
I did this for you
.

Michelle is loyal. She had told people this plenty of times herself: Michelle’s always loyal.

I would need her loyalty in return.

I couldn’t burn the envelopes with their shallow bubble padding. Too messy, the plastic wouldn’t burn properly, and all that would take too long. I shoved them with the charts into my handbag, and though the contents gave it an improbable bulge, I forced the clasp to shut.

That only left the tapes. By themselves, the demos didn’t prove anything.
Drum
had already gone double platinum, and for all anyone would know or care, Morgan could have recorded the songs as covers to get singing gigs. I shoved a couple of the cassettes into my pockets and considered the rest. Then I impulsively began to tug loops of tape out of the spools and shred them.

I checked my watch. I had time. I carried the vandalised tangles, noisy like a pile of crackling cellophane, over to the fireplace and lit a match. The flame sputtered and died. I shoved in a section of
The Times,
but newspaper never burns as well as you expect, and I had to throw in a couple of pieces of kindling from Morgan’s antique coal bucket.

The fire warmed me a little, but it wouldn’t reach Morgan’s body, cooling by the minute, its presence on the floor starting to tug at my nerves.

I could leave the fire. It had destroyed enough of the tape spools that they were beyond saving, and with the odds and ends I had tossed in, it would look like a regular small fire. Time to go. As I got into the freight elevator, I carefully peeled off the latex gloves and shoved them into my pocket. I had watched enough cop shows from
CSI
to the one Morgan had tried to write for,
Easy Death in Queens,
to be paranoid about the chance of fingerprints on the inside of gloves.

The freight elevator might as well have been a freight train for all the noise its steady
grennnrrrrr
made on the way down. If somebody had arrived even then I would have been sunk. Paranoia was making me shudder and itch. I was perspiring too much. I had been a cool customer with Steven, running on hate and adrenaline, but I had had to think too much about killing Morgan, especially when I was forced to do it so soon after the last murder. And now I was standing just inside the front door to his place, watching the street anxiously through the glass so that no one,
no one,
would see Michelle Brown or even Young Black Girl exiting victim’s place.

Long exhalation of breath as I turned the corner.

By the time I reached the subway station, I thought I was safe. I even felt secure enough to stand on the platform, and though you know all these places are getting CCTV’d nowadays, I was curious about the cassette tapes I had preserved from Morgan’s desk. I wasn’t too worried about cameras, because, hell, I was entitled like anybody else to be at that subway station. If I happened to check a tape in my pocket, so what, but that’s what fear and guilt does, it makes you hesitate over every banal thing you do, thinking it implicates you. When I reached down into my pocket, however, that wasn’t what made me shudder, the idea of being watched. It was because I felt the glove.

There was only one.

One glove. My fingers checked again patiently, feeling two tapes, feeling the texture of the latex and counting the fingers, digging around.

There was only one glove.

I looked around me. It hadn’t dropped anywhere on the platform with my rummaging. It wasn’t over by the steps coming down.
Shit.

It could have fallen anywhere from the doorstep to the entrance of the subway, but the horrifying notion was what if I had left it in his place? Which meant I had to go back. And I could be late for Jill. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

And so I trudged back, almost in tears for being such a fool. Again I checked the street for precious minutes on end, praying not to be seen. God, how I waited in agony. And when I couldn’t take it anymore, I jogged for the door and then remembered that he had
buzzed me in
. Panic was switching my reason off. How was I going to get back inside? Please, please, please.
Think.
Then I smartened up and remembered that I had brought along the spare set of Erica’s keys, which included the key to his place, and with a great sigh of relief, I unlocked the door and rushed inside.

The freight elevator was another slow torture.

And when it came to a stop and I slid back the wooden guard with the same old squeak and rattle, there was a silence to the place that was almost unbearable. Finality of death, cutting off sound as much as life. He was still there, of course, just as I had left him. I couldn’t stand this, and I tore my eyes away. I had come here with a purpose, and—

There. Thank God. In the dimness of the room close to where the floor dropped off into the elevator shaft. The glove had fallen in the darkness when I had left the first time. I picked it up in ecstatic relief. It might as well have been a diamond ring saved before it rolled into a gutter. One glove that made the difference between scandal averted and finishing my life in prison. This time I shoved it well down into my pocket and held the pocket closed. I took one last look around, telling myself this better be it, you damn fool.

I went through the same drills of watching the street. And then it was the subway and down to Midtown and Jill. When I showed up at the theatre, she was late. We still had time before the show, so we went for a quick one in an Irish pub across the street. To distract her from any questions about where I’d been earlier, I chose this moment to be the attentive new friend. Who was this new man who sounded so familiar in the background? Teasing her until she gave it up.

“You okay us talking about this?” She took my hand under the table and gave it an affectionate squeeze. “I know we haven’t got together, but I’d still like to sometime, and if you’re open-minded, there’s no reason why we can’t. Tonight was just a date.”

“Jill, we’re fine, honestly,” I said. “How was it? What was he like? Who is the guy?”

“Okay, okay, it’s Luther,” she laughed. “Happy now?”

“What’s going on?” I asked in a gossipy voice. “I thought he was finished with you.”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t with him,” she said, taking a swig of her bottled beer. Arching her eyebrows, she told me, “The man knows how to scratch an itch.” Then she quickly patted my arm. “So do you, sweetie, I just felt in the mood for him—”

I waved away any affront to my vanity. “I’m not offended. God, we’re an incestuous bunch, aren’t we?”

“You were right: he gets in his moods,” she complained, barely hearing me. “I think in his head, he’s actually cheating on her even if she won’t give him the time of day! I know girls who wouldn’t believe a guy could have that kind of devotion. He’s great company, a fantastic lover, got loads of talent, and then he beats himself up over his relationship with her. I told him, ‘Babe, you’re a lot of fun until you get like this.’ ”

“He’s in love with her,” I said with a shrug.

“Yeah, Mish, I know, but after a while, the boy’s got to take a hint. There are thousands of things you can’t have in this world, and thousands of people you can’t have. Get over it. Move on.”

“Jill, we’re in the pop music business!” I laughed. “If we listened to you, everybody would be mentally healthy, and all we’d have is songs from
The Lion King
.”

“I’m not saying I don’t ‘get’ passion or love,” she countered. “But I don’t believe in extremes.”

“Aw, you got no poetry in your soul, girl.”

“Some people have too much.”

We talked about Luther for a few minutes more and never did get around to what I had been up to in the day. We walked into the theatre, got our seats and made fun of the previews for the latest Ben Stiller comedy, a cop feature with Denzel Washington and a picture with a bunch of anonymous French actors in a Nazi-occupied town. The only thing you learned about that one was
The Times
called it “A Triumph!” By the time Hugh Grant was doing his stammering charm bit, I knew I had nothing to worry about. It was over. I was safe. Erica was safe.

I
t took until four the next afternoon before word of Morgan’s death reached me. The manager of Stanford’s Jazz Emporium had stopped by his loft to return a borrowed book, an old friend who had his own key and who spontaneously admitted he wanted to help himself to another volume if his pal was out. He was the one who called the cops. The news would take a while to circulate to Morgan’s friends, and I was ready for it. I had rescheduled the more important appointments but left a couple of chores I hated to be cancelled on the spot when Erica made the call. And she would make the call. I could be certain of it.

I had finished my business with Morgan by ten o’clock that morning. In my office at Brown Skin Beats, I had opened a drawer in my desk and pulled out a FedEx pack. I shoved in Morgan’s charts, now stacked and organised in my own sealed manila envelope. There was only one place to keep these goods safe. “Dear Karen,” I wrote, “I’ve sent this to you because you’re the one person I can trust. Nothing terribly interesting, just legal documents, but I don’t have much privacy at the apartment. Just stash these away for me, will you? I love you. M.”

I knew Karen wouldn’t open the pack. Like many people who guard their privacy, Karen wouldn’t dream of invading the privacy of others, even an old flame. And I could collect the package if and when I needed it.

FedEx came by, I signed on the proper line on the delivery guy’s clipboard, and I stored the pink customer receipt in my desk so I could call the next afternoon to ensure it arrived okay. Simple as that. It was done. No more Morgan, and now no more Morgan’s threat. I got on with my day. And by 4:17, I was sitting at my desk in my office with my feet up and let the phone ring three times before answering.

“Mish…” Pitiful sobs.

“Erica? Jesus, Erica, what’s wrong? Tell me…”

Confession

M
organ made a reference
once to how he had grandchildren. It turned out he had an estranged mixed-race daughter in her thirties who lived in Queens, married to a Systems Analyst, with two little girls of her own. She graciously accepted Erica’s help to pay for and arrange the funeral. She was pleasant to us all, but you could tell she felt alienated. At the reception, she listened politely to stories we told about Morgan in the studio or jazz clubs or simply jamming in the apartment. She volunteered none of her own.

“God, it’s kind of like looking through a cracked mirror,” Erica whispered to me in the reception hall. I didn’t understand what she meant until she added, “I phoned my Dad this morning to let him know. He gave me a list of songs we ought to play. Morgan’s favourites.”

It sunk in about the cracked mirror. Erica had been watching our friend’s daughter, how the woman’s mouth betrayed no smile, no quiver for tears about to come, her eyes full of regrets and bittersweet emotions about what Morgan’s life was all about and if he had left any legacy at all. Memories perhaps of when Daddy couldn’t help with rent, when Daddy was away on tour with a band or was out that night playing. When it was so much easier to leave during an argument with Mom because smoky clubs were becoming branches of a second home. I could see from Luther’s expression that the bell was tolling for him, too, thinking of his little boy. He said he visited Trey as often as possible.

Only a few minutes later, I made another circuit around the huddles of mourners and found Erica to see how she was holding up. And she said the strangest thing.

Staring at a wall, she remarked, “He could be a major prick. Morgan. He could lie to you shamelessly and tell you not to come over because he had people, and you’d drive past his place and know he’d be up there alone. He could be so selfish. He played piano like a god, and we got solid arrangements out of him on
Drum
. I loved that whiskey laugh of his. And when he made love to you, he took his sweet time…What do you do with a man like that? What are you supposed to think of him after he’s done?”

I couldn’t think of anything to say.

She turned and poured the last of her drink into a potted plant. “Maybe if he got out of that apartment once in a while, this wouldn’t have happened. He was one selfish son-of-a-bitch up there with his books and his Scotch.”

“Erica…”

“I’m okay, Mish. I just wish I knew what to think of him when I add it all up.”

Erica sang “Late Night Promises” at the funeral. She said it was one of Morgan’s favourites. I was the only one there who felt a disturbing irony, remembering how Morgan claimed to me once he had written this, too, but “let Erica have it.” With
Drum,
he’d said, he had to put his foot down.

I
t should have been my time now. I hadn’t killed Morgan to be closer to her, but I would have thought it just compensation if it happened. Luther disillusioned and distanced, Steven a memory, and her circle of friends available for condolences but not affection. Not love. I lived with her, worked for her. I was available practically around the clock, only a phone call away.
Turn to me now.
I confess part of me was selflessly moved by her pain, wanted to caress her away from this misery for her sake. It tore her up inside far worse than Steven’s murder. I grieved, too. I walked around the apartment in a stupor of self-pitying shock, like a conscripted soldier who has killed his first man. In mourning, Erica didn’t play jazz or the
Drum
album, reminders of her loss, she put a lot of Brahms and Chopin on the stereo. For the first time in ages, she talked about booking a flight to go home and visit her family. I told myself I had to give her space. Wait for this heaviness to pass.

Then Luther ruined everything.
Damn it.

I
say he ruined everything, but she started it really. She provoked him, looking to get a reaction even if she wasn’t aware of what she was consciously doing. She skipped appointments to come into the studio to lay down vocal tracks. She had me call Brown Skin Beats and pull her out of doing guest vocals on an album for one of his visiting British protégés, a chore she was happy to do before and was actually looking forward to. The management at BSB dropped hints like cartoon anvils on my head that Erica must be taking diva lessons. They were losing patience with her.

The days of Brahms and Chopin were over, and she was spending long hours lying on her bed in the apartment, listening to nothing. I was getting worried. I wanted her to turn to me, but she retreated into a dark place inside. She wasn’t eating enough. I said maybe it was time she considered seeing her doctor and getting a short-term prescription for anti-depressants.

Sitting on the edge of her bed, I said gently, “Look, you loved Morgan, and now he’s gone. I miss him, too…”

“Self-righteous prick,” she muttered. “Hated A-B rhyme schemes. Probably laughing his fool head off at me right now as he burns. God, I do miss him, but…Mish, honey, this isn’t about him. Okay, it is, but it isn’t.”

“Explain it to me.”

“I can’t. I just need you to leave me in the dark for a little while. I got to find my own way out.”

I felt helpless. I had never felt helpless with Erica before. When she finally got out of bed at eleven on a Thursday evening, I asked if she was ready to go see the doctor tomorrow. Not at all, she replied. Tomorrow she would be fine. She was going out now “to return something.” I learned later that she had headed over to Luther’s. In the pounding rainstorm that sent sheets of water down on the New York streets, she demanded that Luther buzz her up to his place just to spend ten seconds outside his door.

“You can have this back now,” she said, and she slapped the gift of his grandmother’s gold watch into his palm, storming off towards the elevator.

A bewildered Luther stared at the watch, and then he ran down the hall to catch up to her. The elevator doors were closing on his protests. “Erica? Erica! What the hell are you doing this for all of a sudden?
Erica?
”

She must have thought I was asleep in my bedroom when she came home. I crept into the hallway and watched her quietly sobbing. She threw her jacket off, tossed her handbag in a corner and made herself a drink. Dark rum, a generous pour from the bottle. I would have gone out to comfort her if the buzzer hadn’t made a shrill ring. Luther, of course. He had followed her home.

She didn’t have to buzz him in. She could have told him to go away, leave her alone. Her choice to let him up. Neither one of them offered a greeting at the door, they just got straight into it.

“What is this supposed to mean?” he demanded, holding out the watch.

“Whatever you want it to,” she answered. “I don’t think it’s right that I keep it. Not anymore.”

“And why the hell not?”

She sat on an ottoman, tugging on one of her fingers nervously, staring at her baby grand. “You know I haven’t worn the damn thing in quite a while, never did check whether it tells time properly. I’ll bet if I open it up, there are no gizmos in there. I bet it’s empty. Just like you.”

“Erica, I think you better come out and say it. I don’t know if I have all night to crack your code.”

I hung back like a child hiding on a staircase, listening to Mom and Dad fight.

“I’m saying why haven’t you called, huh? Morgan dies, and you go MIA when I ring you up. You’re never around. What do I need your gift for? A reminder that I don’t see you?”

“I gave that to you in friendship and—”

“We’re not friends! And we sure as hell aren’t lovers. I don’t know what we are to each other these days—”

They’re going to sense I’m here,
I thought. Yet I had to keep watching. I advanced on tiptoe past the front lounge and crept down the hallway to what we called the sun room, what used to be a little office area but had been converted into the storage space for all the surveillance cameras and home-protection gear. I sat down and punched up on the control panel to put the living room on the main viewer.

“—Us to be lovers?” Luther, caught in mid-sentence as I brought up the volume. The sound from the webcams was a bit tinny, an afterthought. It was clear enough for me. He was laughing joylessly at her irrational whim. “I want you ages ago, and you say no, so now we play this game again, and what’s going to happen this time, Erica? What am I supposed to—”

“
No!
No, you could have had me!” She jumped up from her seat, one hand on her hip, pointing a finger at him in accusation. “You could have me now! But I know better after all this shit! You always got to ask for more! It’s like you want my fucking soul or something, Luther—”

“That’s an excuse because you’re scared—”

“Why you need this big commitment even before we get out of the starting gate and—”

“I’m in love with you, goddammit!”
he thundered. “Erica, when are you going to grow up and take a risk? Have a real relationship? That ‘playing house’ you did with Steven was just bullshit, and you know it! Good ol’ Steven, the pretty boy security blanket and combo insurance policy! And Morgan? You giving him his weekly rolls in the hay or however frequently you two got it on? What did you even get involved with him for?”

Erica looked ashamed for a brief moment. I watched her open her mouth to say something, to offer an explanation, and I thought
yes, do it
. Because her feelings over Morgan were so complicated, I couldn’t make sense of them, and maybe we’d learn something now. Why she had felt she had to give herself to her mentor, sexy in his own way, I suppose, but Morgan had been her Dad’s age—

“I don’t have to explain myself to you!” she said at last.

“No, you
can’t
explain! I’ll bet you don’t even know why you do what you do. Big political singer, major talent throwing yourself into it when you perform! And then you play it safe. You do it with Steven, with Morgan, with me—”

“Don’t you bring up Morgan! Not now!”

All of a sudden, Luther marched forward and angrily spun her around, his large hand seeming to vice her wrist and pin it behind her back, muttering something I couldn’t quite hear like, “Don’t you pretend with us…” He was kissing her neck, wrapping his other arm around her waist. Erica gave a short whimper of pain but didn’t protest, grinding her ass into his crotch, and that was all the encouragement he needed. His left hand mauled the front of her blouse, tearing it away in a savage fury, ripping at the bra cups, and Erica’s large tits bounced free, soon to be cupped and massaged and fondled by those strong fingers. I loved looking at Erica’s breasts. I loved the way Luther played with them just as I would, tracing circles around their areolae, kneading them like dough, her nipples so thick and erect. Still pinning her arm, as if the jolt of mild pain was counterpoint to pleasure. He frantically took his hand away and unzipped his fly, and the fingers of her free hand were urgently helping, tugging at him impatiently—

She gave another cry of pain from the stabbing needles demanding attention in her trapped arm, and he showed her mercy at last, letting her go. I saw Erica’s mouth open wide in shock as her knees slightly buckled, the two of them clumsily staggering near the piano, and her hand shot out to rest her weight on its corner. He had her trousers only halfway down her thighs before his fingers played with her mound, and he tentatively drove the head of his cock between her pussy lips. “Oh, God…”

Erica sighing, Erica making a sound through gritted teeth of
“Kkkkkehhhh”
as I saw the huge head of that cock linger with achingly light pressure and then dive between her vaginal lips. Warm wet beautiful folds of flesh I had dreamed about. I watched the map of veins and angry blood vessels on Luther’s enormous cock disappear into her and emerge again, polished and gleaming with her juice, thickening and swelling even more.

Then, with a burst of tears and an extraordinary strength of will, she moved away from him, slapping away his hands as he reached in confusion for her. “No,” sobbed Erica. “No…You want too much. And I can’t trust you.”

“What do you mean you can’t trust me?” he asked in a hurt voice. He adjusted himself and zipped up his fly, letting out a long breath.

“You closed yourself off from me after you came back from London,” she said quietly.

She looked at the tatters of her blouse and her sagging trousers, and I would have thought she’d duck into her bedroom to change. Leave him behind. Instead, she pulled her ripped top away and let it flutter to the rug, stepped out of her trousers and panties. She didn’t care if she was naked in front of him, and in some personal instances, I think fearless, uninhibited Erica treated her nudity as her personal armour. Her voluptuous body could either beckon or insist a man keep his distance—the way she demanded he stay back now. Like Luther said, she could wear her political heart on her gown in front of thirty thousand fans, but to say what she was thinking to a man…She needed sex for that. She needed to be nude for that. To distract him? Embarrass or captivate him while she was vulnerable? Maybe all of those. She picked up her drink and downed the last of it.