But blood in your eyes is reflecting at me
Like pools from the Dead Emcee Sea.
Who says forgive and forget are synonymous?
I’m taking twelve steps to Life Anonymous.
“What’s that called?” I asked suddenly.
Chela studied the liner notes. “Just ‘Life Anonymous.’”
My brain tried to snatch a morsel of insight, even as tired as I was. The lines aboutblood in your eyes reflecting at me andthe Dead Emcee Sea definitely sounded like Serena was talking about Shareef’s murder. Dorothea Biggs said Jenk was the one who suggested that Serena call herself Afrodite, and Jenk had definitely known her secret. Was that song her way of telling Jenk good-bye?
“I called that lady, by the way,” Chela said suddenly. “That reporter?”
“April?” I said, surprised. Chela had waited fifteen minutes to bring it up. I glanced at her, but she was staring at Serena’s photo on the CD.
“Yeah, I told her I didn’t know where the hell you were, and she said I could hang out at the newspaper with her. She’s working late.”
“Is that where you were going in the cab?”
“Maybe. I dunno,” Chela shrugged. “Is she your girl?”
This time, she was looking at me expectantly. The ring in her voice was part curiosity, part territoriality. I would be a fool not to realize Chela might have a crush on me. The only men in her life were sexual partners.
“She could be something like that,” I said.If we’re still speaking. “I’m not sure.”
A small pout, and a pause. “And she doesn’t care about us hanging out?”
“She knows I want to help you. She does, too.”
“Don’t act like I’m some orphan charity case,” Chela said. “I have money.”
Chela talked about having twenty thousand dollars, but I hadn’t seen her spend a cent. She might not even have an ATM card. “Does Mother let you make withdrawals?”
“She gets me whatever I want. Gucci, Louis Vuitton, whatever.”
Nope. Chela didn’t have direct access to her own money. When I got the chance, I was going to have to talk to Mother about her business practices. Apparently, a lot of Mother’s rules were different for Chela.
M.C. Glazer’s voice suddenly growled from Chela’s purse, rapping “Ain’t This Where the Party At?” A ring tone from her cell phone.
“It’s that April lady,” Chela said, reading her phone’s Caller ID.
Chela handed me the phone, so I stared at April’s name while it rang. A few hours ago, I had leaped for my life from a window, and in some ways that hadn’t felt much scarier. “Hey, April, it’s Ten.”
“Oh,” April said. She didn’t sound happy. “I thought…”
“I made it back. Thanks for looking out for Chela.”
“I said I would. I keep my promises,” April snapped. I hadn’t made any promises to her I could break, not verbally—but in her mind, I must have.
“April…I’m sorry you’re not happy with me,” I said. “I’d like to start fixing that the first chance I get, if you’ll let me. This has been a bad day: Devon Biggs and I were just ambushed when we went to Serena’s old apartment to meet Tyra. Both of us could have been killed. We think Tyra set us up, but Glaze was probably behind it. You won’t have any trouble finding the police report to verify my story.”
“Oh, my—”
“I’ll tell you more about it when I’m not so brain-dead. But I just wanted to say…” I sighed. I’d forgotten in midsentence. “Look, if you need to hear me say again that I didn’t kill Serena or Detective Jenkins—I didn’t. If you don’t believe me, there’s nothing I can do. And if you think I’m a killer, I’d rather we didn’t talk anymore. You have to want to talk tome, not a source or a story. But if you are still talking to me…I’d like to ask you to be my escort tomorrow.”
Beside me, Chela rolled her eyes. During the long silence, the phone hissed loudly enough that I was afraid we’d been disconnected. Finally, April said, “You’re asking for a lot of trust, Tennyson.”
“I guess I am. But I promise not to give you a reason to regret it.”
More silence. Chela waved to me frantically when we passed Bamboo Cuisine on Ventura, and I scooted over a lane to make a U-turn.
“You want me to escort you where?”
“Serena’s funeral at West Angeles Church.”
“I have a press pass,” she said. “I don’t need an escort.”
“But I do,” I said softly. My voice shook. “I’d really…like you to be with me.” I couldn’t say what I was thinking:I’m tired, April, and I don’t think I can climb the church steps without you holding my hand… I wasn’t used to thoughts like that.
April exhaled, and I could almost see her cheeks dimple in a grin. “Okay, I’ll meet you,” she said. “But I’m writing about the funeral, so I’ll be working.”
“That’s okay. I’ll be working, too.”
This time I felt better, not worse, when I hung up with April. After I’d ordered the takeout—lemon scallops for me, and sweet and sour pork for Chela—I asked Chela to put on track three from Serena’s album while I drove the rest of the way home. The steady, soothing drumbeat started, and after the familiar trumpet peal, the Five Stairsteps promised that things were going to get easier. Things were going to get brighter.
“If a girl called Reenie could future-see…”Serena’s husky voice began, still full of breath and life.“…The sight of the height would have traumatized me…”
Tomorrow, it was time to bury Serena.
Alice used to say that celebrities are our society’s royals. Alice was so secretive about her illness that her death was hardly noticed—but Serena’s funeral was fit for a queen. Traffic was closed as two jet-black majestic stallions pulled an antique glass carriage down Crenshaw while onlookers lined the street with signs and placards proclaiming their love for Afrodite. Inside the carriage, Serena’s coffin gleamed in gold.
When the carriage pulled up in front of the West Angeles Church of God in Christ, five hundred people who couldn’t get a seat were waiting outside. The pallbearers pulled the casket from its carriage, and flashbulbs glittered throughout the waiting crowd as if Serena were arriving at a movie premiere.
Devon Biggs was a symbolic pallbearer, limping with a wooden crutch as he walked with his free hand balancing part of the front of Serena’s casket. His face was sweating from the effort already, but his teeth were gritted with determination. Devon glanced at me as he walked into the church with the casket. Yesterday’s trauma haunted his eyes, just as it probably haunted mine.
I almost didn’t recognize the picture of myself standing there in the church entryway: I had April on one side and Chela on the other. I was wearing a white linen suit; April nearly matched me in a cream-colored chiffon dress. Chela was a typical L.A. teenager in black leather jeans and anAFRODITE FOREVER T-shirt we bought from a vendor outside. Anyone would have thought we were a handsome family.
April held my hand and squeezed as the casket passed us.
Inside the church, a sea of spring hats turned to see the casket’s arrival. The chapel could seat about two thousand, and it was full. The organist pounded out “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” underneath the swell of the mass choir dressed all in white. That was my father’s favorite gospel song. After his heart attack, Dad casually told me from his hospital bed that he wanted it played at his funeral. At the time, all I could do was pretend I hadn’t heard him.
I hate funerals.
We walked along the left side of the church so we could find our seats in the first row beside Dorothea Biggs. All the while, I searched for Tyra. No burgundy weave in sight. To get to Devon’s mother, we had to excuse ourselves past Usher, Tyrese, Nicolas Cage, and Missy Elliott, who all nodded politely. There were so many celebrities crowding the front rows, I wondered if Dorothea Biggs was the closest family Serena had at her own funeral. Chela’s face glowed brighter with every famous face. When we sat
down, Chela nearly bounced in her seat while she snapped photos with her camera phone. I put a firm hand on her shoulder to remind her where she was, and why she was there.
When Dorothea Biggs saw me, she smiled through her black veil. “He has no business trying to carry that casket,” she whispered while I hugged her. “The doctor said to stay off his feet, but he won’t listen.”
“He’ll be all right, ma’am,” I said.
Even while I embraced Devon’s mother, my eyes were roaming the room for Tyra. It was hard to tell with all the hats, but I didn’t see her.
The funeral was part concert, part remembrances. Beyoncé and Usher sang “His Eye Is on the Sparrow” with the mass choir and brought everyone to their feet, including me. A line of speakers followed; a record company executive, an actor, a singer. Show business friends, not real friends. They talked about Serena’s humor, her determination, her drive. Devon Biggs didn’t speak on the program, instead squirming in discomfort beside his mother while he whispered to his assistants to make sure the service stayed on schedule.
The speaker who moved me most—a national civil rights leader—admitted he had never met Serena Johnston. But he said he had flown from New York to attend her funeral because her death so filled him with sadness.
“A culture that eats its young is a culture that cannot survive,” he said in a vibrato preacher’s voice. “What has happened to our young people? What has happened to our music? We’re so lucky nobody killed Paul Robeson and Billie Holiday. I praise God nobody gunned down Aretha, Diana, and Smokey. Stevie’s still with us. Amen. Prince wasn’t shot in a drive-by. We must, we must, wemust, stop this violence in our music.
“As Robert Kennedy said after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., only sixty days before another assassin’s bullet would take him, too: ‘No one, no matter where he lives or what he does, can be certain who next will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on…and on…and on…in this country of ours.Why?’”
His question hung in the hushed church as he took his seat. I heard Chela sob.
Like most funerals, it was beautiful but excruciating. All I could think about was Tyra and what she might know. I needed to understand why Serena was in that casket. Like the man said—Why?
After the service, April kissed my cheek and excused herself to conduct interviews. I hated to let her go, and I watched her slender form slide past the mourners. We hadn’t had a moment alone yet, so I knew I still owed her a conversation. Maybe I would invite her home with me for the night. Maybe I should have done that before.
Haltingly, a stocky white man in a gray pinstriped suit and an old-fashioned gold pocket watch made his way up to Devon Biggs. His graying red-brown hair was cut as short as a Marine’s, with a build to match; the expensive suit looked like an ill-fitted costume on him. The man watched at a respectful distance while Biggs relied on his mother and his crutch to bring him to his feet.
“Mr. Biggs?” the man said. “Sorry to disturb you…”
“We’re on the way to the cemetery,” Biggs said, hardly looking at him.
The man produced an envelope and held it out to Biggs. He pursed his lips, sheepish. “I’m sorry this will seem crass, but Serena and I had some business related to her Stan Greene lawsuit. I thought it would be better if I saw you in person…”
The man won Biggs’s undivided attention, and mine.
“What kind of business?” Biggs said.
The man lowered his voice, but I could still hear him over the church’s din. He had a pronounced New Jersey accent. “I’m Jim Marino, an attorney with Marino, McGruder, & Stein. Serena retained me…”
“Retained you for what?” Biggs said. “I was Serena’s lawyer.”
The man paused. “Yes,” he said. His voice seemed condescending. “But Serena and I conferred several times on the Greene case, and I’ve written you a letter to explain these expenses. She asked me not to bill Casanegra directly, but now…”
Biggs snatched the envelope from the man. “Get the fuck out of my sight,” Biggs said. I was ready to intervene if I had to, mentally charting a course in the narrow space past Dorothea Biggs to get to Marino.
“The nerve of you!” Dorothea Biggs told the stranger, wrapping her arm around her son as if he’d been threatened with physical harm. “This is afuneral.”
The man didn’t lose composure, smiling slightly as he lowered his eyes and gave a genteel half-bow before excusing himself. I watched him weave his way toward the rear exit, a pale neck in a mostly black crowd. I couldn’t let him get away.
“Chela, stay right here,” I told her. “I’ll be right back.”
Chela’s eyes were glued to Usher, who was having an impassioned conversation with Missy Elliott at the end of our row. “Yeah, okay,” Chela said, hardly hearing me.
After telling Dorothea Biggs that I was going to find a restroom, I took off after the lawyer. I finally caught him right outside the chapel doors, in the crowded lobby.
“Mr. Marino?” I called.
He turned, surprised to hear his name. “Oh.” He recognized me from the pew.
“Yeah, sorry about that back there,” I said, shaking his hand. “I’m Mr. Biggs’s financial director, Lenny Jackson. He asked me to catch you and apologize for that reception. This is a hard day for us. He’s not himself.”
“Say no more,” Jim Marino said. “I feel like a moron for doing it that way. I came to the funeral because I liked Serena, and I just thought…” He sighed. “Well, that’s the problem—I wasn’t thinking. There’s a time and a place…”
As his voice trailed off, I pulled the small notebook from my pocket. “Mr. Biggs won’t have time to read your letter before the interment, but he asked me to jot down a few details. Or if you have a copy, I’ll make sure it gets processed right away.”
Marino hesitated, eyeing me with the first glimmer of suspicion. “No…I just had the one copy. But there’s no rush.”
“Actually, Mr. Marino, you’d be doingus a favor. This Stan Greene case has been a real cross to bear. He’s been calling since Serena’s death, demanding money.” I remembered a call from Greene when I visited Biggs’s office.
“You’re fucking kidding me,” Marino said. If he was a lawyer, he hadn’t gotten his degree in the Ivy League. His face compressed in anger, Marino ran his fingers through his short-cropped hair as if he wanted to go beat the hell out of Greene.
“No, I’m not kidding. So you can see our dilemma. He’s very persistent. And with Serena gone, any information about additional expenses is very helpful to us. I hope you understand.”
“Listen, the numbers are in the letter, and that’s just business,” Marino said. He folded his arms, leaning closer to me, and I smelled a midmorning martini on his breath. “But on a personal note…I would appreciate it if you would tell Mr. Biggs that Serena came to our firm because she wanted to protect him. Greene is known for violent tactics, and our firm has more experience with his type. No offense to Biggs, but he was in over his head. I understand he and Serena were childhood friends…”
“Did Stan Greene have Serena killed?” I said.
I saw a hard glint in Marino’s dark eyes, but he shrugged. “Truthfully, I gotta tell you, if Stan Greene had ordered the hit, her body would never have been found. But who knows? If he did it, I wish I could prove it.” He tipped an imaginary hat. “Gotta run. Tell Biggs sorry again. When he’s ready to call me, my number’s in the letter.”
“We’ve been trying to reach Mr. Greene…” I said, just as he was turning away.
“Join the club,” Marino said. “Try Palm Springs.”
Before I could ask where in Palm Springs, the thickly built lawyer had slipped into the herd at the church doors. He didn’t look like a guy who tolerated harassment, so I didn’t follow him. I wrotePalm Springs in my notebook.
But I wouldn’t have to wait long to track down Stan Greene.
When I got back to my seat, the church had empti
ed out halfway. Biggs was talking to one female and two male assistants, and his mother was putting on her wrap to go to the cemetery. Chela was still waiting, even though Usher and Missy were gone.
I slipped into the huddle around Biggs to eavesdrop, but he grabbed my arm and motioned for the others to go. His assistants looked like they ranged in age from twelve to sixteen, almost literally. Biggs pulled me out of his mother’s earshot, closer to the pulpit, where we were nearly hidden behind a giant floral display.
“I got a lead on Tyra,” Biggs said.
“Where is she?”
“A promoter told me she’s shooting a video in Palm Springs with M.C. Glazer. And guess who’s directing it.”
“Stan Greene?”
“Can you believe that shit?” Biggs said. “The Axis of Evil for real. Her sister’s getting buried, and Tyra’s shaking her ass with Glaze.”
Tyra had nerve, all right. It wasn’t necessarily evidence of a guilty conscience, but it was far from sisterly. I showed Biggs my notebook. “That lawyer, Marino, just told me where Greene is.”
Biggs’s face changed again, from an almost exuberant rage to something harder to identify. The lawyer’s name wiped all expression away, deflating him. “Just another motherfucker with his hand out,” he said casually, but meeting that lawyer had not been casual for him. When Biggs leaned forward slightly, adjusting his crutch, I saw the letter in his inside jacket pocket. The envelope was ripped; Biggs had opened it.
“For what it’s worth, he said Serena wanted to protect you,” I said.
Biggs blinked, peering at me the same way he had when he saw me sitting in my car across from Serena’s apartment. Shocked incredulity. “Protect me fromwhat ?”
“Greene’s hard guys, is what Marino said. She didn’t want you to get hurt.”
Biggs forced himself to laugh, an effort that made him sway. “Don’t believe a word that guy says,” Biggs said, his voice hoarse. “He could sell shit to a toilet.”
“Let’s hope he was right about Palm Springs,” I said.
“Tell Nelson,” Biggs said. “Let him do some police work for a change. If he can’t nail their asses for Serena, he can nail them for yesterday.”
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