Roderick stood aside as Mercedez introduced herself and then followed the older woman inside. Roderick continued to stare hatefully at D as he passed him by. Inside were two electric keyboards, a drummer behind a kit, and bass and guitar players.
For decades the site had been a barbershop that served as social center, haven, and gossip central for three generations of black Queens residents. It had gone out of business in the eighties and the site had subsequently been purchased by Derek Harper, a St. Albans native son; scion of the owner of Harper’s, the area’s largest black funeral home; and, briefly, an R&B star with his one hit, “Black Sex.” Derek had never enjoyed a follow-up success, so after beating his head against the record-biz wall (and his father’s death), he’d transformed the barbershop into a cozy little rehearsal space/demo studio that also served as a nonprofit community music school. It all looked inexpensive and cozy, some state-of-the-art equipment mixed in with old fixtures and echoes of its barbershop origins. In the corner was an old jukebox filled with ancient 45s, artifacts of a bygone musical era that made D happy. “Can this still play?” he asked Rowena.
“Oh, yes,” the lanky, bearded man behind a Roland 808 answered. “Every now and then we plug it in and jam like it’s 1979.”
“You’re Derek Harper, aren’t you?” D asked. When Harper confirmed this, the security guard continued, saying, “I loved your hit, man. It’s a classic. My man Night sang the melody on a mixtape and then recorded it on his first CD ’cause I stayed on him about it.”
“Well, then,” Harper replied, “thanks for helping me get that ASCAP check. So what do you do, D? You a producer, a songwriter, or a manager?”
“No sir,” D said humbly, “I’m a bodyguard.”
The roar of a motorcycle taking off sounded from outside. D and Mercedez exchanged looks. Rowena opened the front door and watched her son blast off into traffic. Her dreads shook sadly and she came back inside.
“Damn, Rowena,” Harper said, “guess we won’t be rehearsing with him anymore tonight.”
“Whatever,” Rowena said, and walked over to the electric piano and sat down. “Why don’t you wait a minute, D, and let us finish this piece. We’re supposed to be playing a wedding next week and the groom is a Slave fan.”
“No problem,” D responded and sat down on the floor against a wall near Rowena. Mercedez joined him.
“This has been an intense day, D,” Mercedez said.
“Oh,” D nodded toward Rowena, “it’s not even close to being over.”
* * *
D savored the iced tea in his mouth. Sweet as a sixteen-year-old on her first date and tart as a mouthful of lemons; D let the liquid roll around the sides of his teeth before it slid down his tongue toward his throat. Rowena sat at the head of her table with a Parliament cigarette burning in her left hand. Mercedez nibbled on a large piece of corn bread, trying hard to keep her hands off the candied yams sitting succulently on her plate. D put down his glass and began again: “There’s been a lot of tragedy in my family, and my mother always went back to ‘Green Lights’ whenever she was troubled. It was kinda like a hymn to her.”
“Like a hymn, huh,” Rowena said.
“For real. She’d play it over and over to give her comfort.”
“Do you like the song yourself?”
“Do I like ‘Green Lights’?” D stared into space and, with a frown, replied, “Well, it’s hard to say if I like it or not. It’s not about passing judgment on that song. It’s way past that. I know for you it’s just one of the songs your husband recorded, but to me it’s connected to my life in a real deep way . . .” D’s voice trailed off. He felt silly being this emotional around an employee, but he was sitting with Adrian Dukes’s widow, which put his inner life up on the surface.
“No, D, it’s funny about ‘Green Lights.’ It wasn’t just a another song for Adrian either.” She puffed on her Parliament and laid it in a plaster ashtray promoting an Atlantic City casino. “His father was a minister and his most popular sermon was about how embracing Jesus Christ was like driving a brand-new Cadillac to heaven, having green lights all the way. The way he preached it, people would all fall out and shout Amen.
“So one evening after a late Sunday service Adrian wrote that song. He told me, The good Reverend Dukes ain’t ever gonna make a dime off it, so I better help him out. His father wasn’t too keen on it. ‘Green Lights’ wasn’t a praise song, so it bothered him, you know. It wasn’t like today when there isn’t one bit of difference between church music and what someone in the street listens to. What Adrian made of that phrase was kinda dark and bluesy. But when those royalty checks came in, you better believe the good Reverend Dukes definitely took his share.”
She picked up her cigarette, used a puff for a pause, and then resumed the narrative: “I guess what I’m saying is that ‘Green Lights’ isn’t your typical song, Dervin. It’s got some history to it. It moved from a father to a son, like a family legacy. That song comes from a deep place. I suspect that’s why your mother felt it so. When Adrian sang from that particular place nobody was better than him. Not Otis. Not David Ruffin. And sure damn not Elvis.” As D and Mercedez laughed, she took a last drag and then squashed the life out of her cigarette. “My husband wished he could have sung through life instead of having to talk. Talk always got him in trouble. Me too.” Her smile was wan and melancholy, and Mercedez didn’t know if she should laugh or not.
D nodded and said, “I hear you.”
Rowena got up and went over to a closet in the hallway. Inside were various outmoded pieces of technology—eight-tracks and a reel-to-reel tape player along with a dusty cardboard Carnation milk box stuffed with tapes. With D’s assistance she placed the reel-to-reel player on the dining room table. “I’m gonna play you something you should enjoy.”
Rowena spooled a tape onto the player and clicked on the ancient machine. She picked up some dishes and left the room as the sounds of a crowd murmuring and the tinkling of glasses filled the room. Mournfully pitched horns, sad like a late-night drink, sounded first, followed by the piano, bass, drums, and a steely guitar riff that counterpointed the horns. Finally Adrian Dukes stepped up to the mic at some smoky club and started singing the words D knew by heart, yet interpreted here in a way he’d never heard them. More twists. Trickier inflections. A lower, huskier range.
“This,” D told Mercedez, “is Adrian Dukes.”
“What a sexy voice,” she said.
Sexy, sure, D thought. It was also a dead man’s voice. Then he caught himself and realized it was really a voice from the dead. He listened with his eyes closed. And then, before the third verse, a single tear dropped from his right eye. And then another and then another and then many more from both eyes in an involuntary spasm. Mercedez looked across the table and asked him if he was all right, but D had no words. He just sobbed quietly and lay his head on the table. It wasn’t until the live version of “Green Lights” was over and D had pulled himself back together that he noticed Rowena standing in the kitchen doorway, smoking and looking at him.
She turned off the tape player and sat down next to him. “I see you weren’t lying to me about how you feel about this song. You really feel it.”
“I do.”
“I like that. I like you, D. But you come in here and tell me you work for Irv Greenfield and then you want me to believe that my son’s a kidnapper. Well, Irv’s a thief and a nasty old bastard. He probably set this whole thing up to force me to release these tapes.”
“These tapes have never been released before?”
“No one’s heard them but Adrian, Ivy, the man who engineered the live taping, and me.”
“Well,” Mercedez said, “I hate to say this, Rowena, but that only makes it seem more likely it was your son. Why else would he play ‘Green Lights’ to torture Night? Why else would he have kidnapped Ivy’s new R&B star?”
“That’s not enough,” D cut in, surprising both Mercedez and Rowena with his answer. “I don�
��t believe he started all this to punish Ivy over some old songs.”
“Well, there’s the money,” Mercedez said.
“Listen,” Rowena began, “I’ve heard you talk about all this stuff my son is supposed to be involved in and it does worry me. He used to be serious about being a performer but something has changed. I do know that.”
“It probably started when he hooked up with Areea, didn’t it?” D said.
“You know her?”
“I’ve spoken to her once and encountered her a couple of times too many. My impression is that she’s the kind of woman who changes men.”
“Hmm,” Rowena said wistfully. “People used to say that about me.”
“Maybe that’s why your son is drawn to her. She’s a weak imitation of you,” Mercedez said.
“But she’s younger,” Rowena said, and looked over at Mercedez. “All men like ’em young.”
“But it doesn’t mean they’re right,” Mercedez replied.
“You sure right about that. So you think my son was behind that kidnapping?”
Mercedez tried to be diplomatic. “Well, as D said, we really have to get at his motives for doing it. He did seem bitter about Ivy when we talked.”
“Just think about it,” D said. “I haven’t told the police any of this yet but I will eventually have to. Now I have one more important question.”
“Okay.”
“Mind if I take home some of these biscuits?”
Chapter Nineteen
Zena Hunter rolled over in her bed and looked at her fiancé, who slept with half his face buried in the puffs of pillows. After confirming that the ringing phone hadn’t awakened her future second husband, Zena turned back over and clicked a button on the mobile phone cradled in her right hand.
“Boy,” she said in a harsh whisper, “do you know what time it is? It’s one in the morning. You know we have to get up for work at 6:30.”
“Ma,” her son replied with reverence and exasperation, “I have no idea what time he goes to work, but I know when you do and I’m sorry. I just wanted to hear your voice.”
Zena, registering the strange tone in her son’s voice, rose out of bed, put her feet into her warm, fluffy, powder-blue slippers, and shuffled into her bathroom. After she shut the door, she sat on the edge of the tub and asked, “Okay, did you have that dream again?”
“No. Not tonight. I just missed you.”
Zena wanted to smile. It was nice to hear that from him, but she knew Dervin hadn’t called to woo her at this hour.
“So I heard you were on TV today walking arm in arm with the little white girl.”
“Yeah. I think I ended up in a couple of shots. There was a commotion. Nothing serious. I handled it.”
“You always do, D. You’ve always been good about that,” she said, and then failed to stifle a yawn.
Zena pushed the door open a little wider to gaze at her bedmate’s walnut-colored back in the dim light.
“I met Adrian Dukes’s wife tonight, Ma.”
“Is that right? She must be older than me.”
This observation made D laugh, and for the first time in the conversation, Zena noticed the faint sound of drums and bass in the background. She didn’t ask where he was. Ever since college he’d been around music—a club, a concert hall, a studio, that crypt he called an apartment. She didn’t blame her baby boy for being a little weird. Nor did she blame herself. When life intervenes all that other stuff (plans, parenting, philosophy) don’t mean shit.
“D, I love you, but I can’t have this conversation right now. Okay?”
“If you can’t, you can’t.” He didn’t try to hide his disappointment. “It’s late. We can talk about all this when you’re awake.”
“That’s right, D.” She stood up and stepped into the bedroom. “Call me this afternoon. Love you, son.” Then Zena clicked off the phone and returned to bed, fitting her body against her fiancé’s back, his warmth removing her chill.
D flipped his cell phone closed and gazed out through the glass that separated the control room from the studio where Night sat talking excitedly to a drummer, bassist, and keyboardist. D picked up his can of Coke, sipped a bit, and belched. Got to give this shit up, he thought. He didn’t drink coffee, cappuccino, or any other caffeine-based beverage, but he’d always had a fondness for carbonation and artificial flavoring. Lately, however, his stomach had been getting acidy. He knew he really shouldn’t have been guzzling that sugar water. It was bad for him. But damn, he thought, I’ve denied myself so much else I need to get a little sweetness from something. So he tried to blame the Coke for his stomach problems. Life had gotten fizzy all on its own. He crushed the can in his huge brown hands, digging his fingers into the soft metal and then squashing the top and bottom into each other.
“Yo, dog, you look tense as a motherfucker!” Night entered the control room with a fat Phillie blunt in his right hand. “Normally I wouldn’t share this fine, expertly wrapped, smooth-burning package of illegal medication with someone so tightly wound. I’ve just never seen anybody who needed a hit more than you.”
Night thrust the blunt into D’s hand and flopped onto the leather sofa next to his friend.
D said, “You know bodyguards are not supposed to get high on the job.”
“When you’re with me, you’re just D, my friend, and my friends get lifted when I do.”
D acquiesced, letting the smoke flow down into his lungs and rise high into his brain. He thought of the night he had met Night. They were hanging at the bar at Cheetah with Bovine Winslow, who’d introduced them. Both had taken shots at these two bodacious mahogany sisters from Newark. D had gone down in flames with the sour older sister (within three minutes), while Night had established a beachhead with the nicer, younger one. Turns out the sour sister pissed off some very nasty young Nubians on her way out. They followed Night and the sisters from Newark to their car. Words got exchanged and things got hectic. The gigolo was in the process of catching a critical beat-down when D interceded, leaving the nasty Nubians bloody and carting Night to the St. Vincent’s emergency room. Now D pulled on the joint and marveled at how Night had truly turned his life around.
“Play that back for me, Dan,” Night said to his engineer. The sound of raunchy, old-school funk burst out of the speakers, with Night riding the groove as if he were Sugarfoot of the Ohio Players. “I’m bringing it back to the root,” he crowed, and began singing along with himself.
D just nodded to the beat, took another hit, and luxuriated in the moment.
“Yo, D,” Night said, “I’ma overdub this thing to death like Michael Jackson on ‘Rock with You.’”
Again D nodded and was in the process of filling his lungs when Bridgette Haze, Jen, and Rodney Hampton entered the studio. Bridgette and Jen were chatting about a color of MAC foundation, but when Bridgette heard the music, she began bopping her little head and gyrating her lithe body. “Oh, we getting funky in here,” she said, and then, without hesitation or forewarning, plucked the blunt from D’s hand and dropped her butt into his lap. “My hero,” she said, and hugged him.
Night watched this and decided to withhold comment. Jen and Rodney had taken up positions next to the control board, seemingly wanting to say something but laying back to see what developed. If either one had anything to ask D (and both did), Bridgette’s embrace of the bodyguard had silenced them for now.
“You like this?” Night asked about his track.
“Oh yeah. Sounds like the Neptunes,” she said.
“Fuck the Neptunes.”
“Whoa, let me finish,” she said. “But it’s more organic, more real than what they’d do.”
As the two singers discussed music, D sat with Bridgette in his lap. What a surreal day, he thought, and put his head back with his eyes closed. What else could happen?
* * *
The SubMercer was a tiny pocket club buried in the subbasement of SoHo’s Mercer Hotel, just two blocks from D’s office. There was a
short bar, a minuscule DJ booth, and a couple of dark corners where one could drink inconspicuously in the shadows. It was in one of those corners that Bridgette, Jen, and D sat sipping champagne from the bottles in the bucket before them. Rodney stood a few feet away, discouraging any curiosity seekers, silently pissed that he was having to do security for a security guard. A track from Portishead’s Dummy was creating an atmosphere of intrigue in the club. It felt like a time for confidences and confessions.
“So,” Jen said after a sip, “you walked into a volatile situation. When Ivy brought you in we had no idea you would be so passionate about the job. Honestly, I just thought he’d hired you to spy on Bridgette and me.”
Bridgette piped in, “Unlike my sister, I knew you were a good guy from the start.”
“Anyway,” Jen continued, “we are seriously considering signing a management deal with Rodney, who’s been great in advising us on repositioning my sister.”
“But I’m not sure,” Bridgette said, glancing over at the publicist to make sure he couldn’t hear her. “It’s a big change. Then Night got kidnapped and it threw us. We’re not sure where that fits in.”
D sipped the champagne and wondered who he should sell out first—Ivy or Rodney. There was plenty of evidence to suggest Ivy knew everything about the kidnapping and was hiding that fact from his most important client. Yet if you followed the money it seemed clear that Rodney, an ambitious and smart man, could have set Ivy up. If he knew about the links between Ivy and Adrian Dukes’s wife and son (as he obviously did), why not break it to Bridgette himself? That info, coming from a bodyguard hired by Ivy, would surely result in Ivy’s exit and Rodney’s ascension.
“Listen,” D began, “Ivy’s a legend and a very well-connected man. He’s done a great job for you. Is he getting old? Does he have too many skeletons in the closet? No doubt. As for Rodney, he seems like a nice guy but I really don’t know him, other than it’s clear he’s got game.”
The Accidental Hunter Page 15