“It means,” he said, “that you and me ain’t looking into two different crimes anymore, Cube—two different cases. It means we’re on the same case. God help me.”
“Yeah,” I said, “God help us. What now?”
“I gotta find Felice Sanders. Now. And you gotta help me.”
CHAPTER 11
It Shouldn’t Happen to a Dream
And so it appeared that voodoo, like the blues, would always be with us.
Try as I might, I couldn’t seem to get away from Mama Lou and Dilsey and this whole world of mad synchronicity.
Everywhere I turned, Event A segued into Event B. Individual X, as unlikely as it seemed, was somehow connected to Individual Y.
And the further away I was pulled from the Ida Williams case, the closer I was to it. It was all a strange circle.
“I want to meet the Bensons,” I had told Leman as we sat in Aubrey’s living room with the telltale video still in the machine. “I mean, I don’t want to, but I think I need to. Can I?”
“Why? You think they know where Felice Sanders is?”
“No, it’s not that,” I said, fidgeting. I opened the glass cigarette box on the coffee table and helped myself to one of Aubrey’s vile menthols.
“Then what do you want to see them for? I told you, girl. The Sanders kid is now top priority for us. Even more than the Black Hat thing. We have to find her.”
He and I exchanged a quick, nervous look. “You think something bad’s happening to her, don’t you, Leman?”
“Damn straight I do.”
“Yeah, so do I.”
Sweet probably couldn’t articulate just how he knew that Felice was in danger. But then, he didn’t need to. It simply made sense that she would be. The appearance—the synchronicity—of those dolls spoke volumes. Poor little Black Hat is murdered, supposedly caught in the crossfire of a drive-by shooting—a hit. Poor old Ida Williams is murdered, supposedly caught in the crossfire of a shooting in a posh Manhattan eatery. The dolls, which looked for all the world like Ida’s handiwork, turn up at the home of Black Hat’s parents. And now Black Hat’s would-be widow, Felice Sanders, is missing.
Voodoo or not, it was too much synchronicity to be ignored.
“I want to check out those dolls on the mantelpiece, make sure they’re still there, for one, and maybe try to identify them positively as Ida’s work. Besides that, the Bensons may not know where Felice is, but maybe they’ve heard from her more recently than her mother or Dan Hinton. I mean, she did make some weird threats against them, didn’t she? Maybe she’s trying to carry them out.”
He thought about it for a few seconds. “Okay. It may not be such a bad idea. I’ll tell them to expect you and I’ll give you their phone and address. Yeah—you probably do know how to talk to people like the Bensons.”
“Sure I do,” I snapped. “They’re my kind of Negroes. Rich and educated know-it-alls. We’ll have a tea party.”
Damn him. I had thought for a few minutes that Sweet was admitting he and I were on the same side. He had said “we” had to find Felice. It seemed, just for a few minutes, that he was acknowledging some kind of kinship between us—maybe even flattering me with the implication that I could be of real help in this investigation—that I could put two and two together, like him.
“Okay, Cue, don’t get up on that high horse a-yours. You can see the Bensons. Check out the ‘authenticity’ of those goddamn dolls. Which you know damn well are Ida’s. But don’t think I don’t know what you’re really up to. You still got your mind on the Williams murder. Trying to prove you were right about it. You still think you gonna be the one to break a case the police can’t solve.”
I began to protest, but he cut me off: “Just get in and out of there with any information that could help us out with the Felice thing. We don’t have no more time to waste.”
“All right, all right, all right.”
But there it was again—what’s going to help “us” out; “we” don’t have time to waste. Man, did this guy run hot and cold.
“What are you going to do next, Sweet?”
“Talk to Missing Persons again. Then get over to Felice’s mother’s place. I got things to check out, too.”
“I bet,” I said snottily. “Like whether Felice collected voodoo dolls. We were pretty stupid not to think of it before.”
He looked at me and I could almost see something like a smile. “You ain’t too dumb, girl. I’ll give you that.”
“You go ahead. I’ll lock up here.”
I called the Benson home first thing the next morning. The housekeeper told me that Dr. Benson had already left for the hospital and the lady of the house was out for the day.
I reached Jacob Benson at the hospital where he was chief pediatric surgeon. It was not until I heard his cultured, even-toned voice that I realized how delicately I would have to broach the reason for my call. He was, after all, a parent still in mourning for his child.
“Good morning, Dr. Benson. My name is Nanette Hayes.”
“Yes, Ms. Hayes. Detective Sweet left a message telling me to expect your call. What can I do for you?”
I decided it was best to get right to the point. “It’s about your son’s fiancé, Dr. Benson. Felice Sanders. She hasn’t been seen for some time now. I’m helping Sergeant Sweet in his inquiries.”
I heard his deep intake of breath. “I don’t understand,” he said at last. “What happened to Felice?”
“She has officially been reported as a missing person, Dr. Benson. I wondered if you might have seen her since your son’s—uh—lately.”
“No.” His voice dropped low then. “I—Well, I hardly know what to say.”
“Dr. Benson, I’m sorry to be reminding you of these painful things, but it would help a lot if you could see me for a few minutes today.”
Again he hesitated before speaking. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to make any time to see you today. I’m scheduled to—”
“Yes, sir. I know how busy you must be. Actually, it would be best if I could drop in at your home this evening. Would that be convenient?”
“Oh. I suppose that’s all right. But I don’t know how it will help. We didn’t maintain a friendship with Felice once Kevin was gone.”
“I understand. Believe me, this shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes of your time.”
“Very well. Do you have the address?”
“East Seventy-second, between York and the river. Twenty-first floor.”
“Yes. All right. Some time after seven would be best.”
“Thank you. I’ll be there.”
I don’t know why the brief conversation left me feeling scummy. But it did. As if I’d kicked a puppy or something. Dr. Benson and his wife had gone through a horrific tragedy and understandably just wanted their privacy. I was going to their home to snoop and was feeling guilty about it. That was the long and short of it.
The faltering old radiators in the apartment were doing right by me as of late. But it was pushing my luck to sit around in my night things and no wrapper. I changed into pants and an old sweatshirt and hunted down some thick socks; put on Monk’s Straight, No Chaser and then made espresso and scalded some milk.
I sat with my coffee listening to Charlie Rouse’s impeccable work on “Japanese Folk Song.” I’ll get up and change the CD, I told myself, before that hymn plays—“Blessed Assurance” (although the CD lists the title as “This Is My Story, This Is My Song”).
Did I have some kind of problem with hymns? No. Oh no. Andre and I used to listen compulsively to that beautiful tune in the little apartment we had on the rue Christine. Sometimes we would hold hands and sing the words as though we were in church together. There was a bunch of music that we’d listened to over and over—or played together—that I just had no heart for anymore.
But I didn’t do it. I didn’t change the CD. I forced myself to sit there and take it. If I was going to follow through with the Ida Williams case and help Leman
Sweet find that missing girl, I had to stop being so fucking cowardly. Doing those things was going to require a lot more balls than listening to “This Is My Story”—or “I’ll Be Seeing You” or “We’ll Be Together Again” or any number of other tunes Andre and I had listened to, danced to, made love to.
I let the album play out and then put on more Monk—this time strictly solo. I turned the volume down a bit, though, because I had to make a couple of other phone calls.
First I was going to leave a message for Leman that it was on for tonight with me and the Bensons.
Then I was going to call Dan Hinton. I wanted to (1) catch him before he left for work, while (I hoped) there was still a hint of sleep in his magnificent voice, and (2) make another date with him so that I could (3) get good and laid.
“Must get awfully cold here with the wind coming off the river,” I remarked to the doorman.
“That it does,” he said. “But I don’t mind that much. Kind of like the cold.”
I guess his shift was just beginning, or perhaps he was just returning from his dinner break. He had just changed from street clothes into his uniform jacket, apparently. I caught sight of the very top of his white undershirt as he finished buttoning up.
I’ve got about a million New York doorman stories. They run the gamut from unspeakably snotty mother-fuckers to favorite one-night stands.
I could compile a list as long as your arm of the mean white guys who treated me like dirt when I showed up at the fancy buildings where they stood guard. Young ones, old ones, Irish ones, Italian ones, Jewish ones. Racist doormen are a kind of equal opportunity plague.
A lot of black doormen do not like colored folks making social calls in their buildings either. Something about the fact of another Negro on the premises who isn’t there as a baby-sitter or a repairman just makes them boil. I have a particularly vivid memory of one lawn jockey in red livery, the gatekeeper in a ’luxe building on Fifth Avenue and 9th Street, where I was going to a party. It had taken every bit of my breeding not to use my sax to pop him in his shiny fucking teeth.
And don’t let me commence about Puerto Rican supers in prosperous white neighborhoods. One bastard actually got physical with me. He simply would not accept that I was acquainted with the man in 14A and refused to announce me.
Anyway, unfriendliness was definitely not a problem with this door guy—“Mike,” his name tag read. He was about the same age as Dan Hinton and he had the kind of blue eyes that were dreamy rather than scarifying.
“You look like you’d be nice and warm,” Mike commented with a nonprofessional smile.
“Excuse me?”
“You look nice and warm in that coat you’re wearing. That’s what I meant.”
“Of course you did.”
Another good-looking man coming on to me.
Ho hum. Some of us be born with sex appeal, and it be thrust upon some others of us.
I couldn’t take this hit too personally, though. In a weird reversal of the black doorman syndrome, some white ethnics in service jobs often treat blacks better than one would expect. It has to do, I’m sure, with their automatic assumption that we do work for the same people they work for.
“The Bensons are expecting me,” I said serenely.
He checked the long sheet of paper on the desk. “Miss Hayes, right?”
“Yes.”
“It is Miss Hayes, not Mrs.? Or am I out of luck tonight?”
I didn’t answer.
He was still smiling when he walked me to the elevator and pushed the call button. We waited for the car to arrive without speaking. The doors opened. I walked in and then turned to face him again. He was still there when they closed.
You fine cheeky bastard, I thought. Bet you don’t earn your tips walking poodles.
The housekeeper, or the maid, whoever it was I’d spoken to in the morning, had apparently gone home. It was Dr. Jacob Benson himself who admitted me.
Once we were out of the shadows of the doorway, I could take him in fully. He was right out of a 1920s daguerreotype—caffe latte complexion, James Joyce spectacles, wavy white hair and pencil mustache, ramrod posture in his pinstripe English-cut suit. I made a quick calculation in my head: Black Hat was only a kid nineteen or twenty years old—so his folks ought to be younger than mine. But the tall, beautiful man before me looked close to seventy.
Did I say my father was a stick? Dr. Benson made him look like Dennis Rodman.
On one wall of the long corridor was a Benny Andrews painting that I remembered admiring in a catalogue. There were nine-foot-high bookcases with medical texts and journals lined up neatly. I saw a phone and answering machine setup on a gorgeous cherry wood secretary. And, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a flash of yellow-and-red fabric in a wooden display case. I willed myself not to stop and stare.
A second later, though, I got the chance to check it out up close. The hall phone rang as we were passing through, and Dr. Benson stopped and switched on the desk lamp. While he was giving instructions, apparently to someone from the hospital, I was able to confirm that the bright fabric was part of the costume worn by a ferocious looking doll. Standing about two feet tall, she was the Mama Lou to end all Mama Lous.
Benson finished his call and joined me, but then he turned back into the hallway. “Forgive me. This will only take a moment,” he said, and went back to the phone. A few seconds later I heard him ask for Nurse Peters and then hand down additional instructions.
He was helping me off with my coat when the phone rang again. I’d assumed that at his age he would be functioning mostly in an advisory capacity at the hospital, but he seemed to be as much in demand as any young medical hotshot.
“I’m very sorry about all these interruptions,” the doctor said in his courtly manner.
“No, please. Go right ahead.”
This time he didn’t bother to pick up the receiver. He merely punched one of the many little buttons on the machine. “There,” he said wearily. “Now we shouldn’t be interrupted. At least not for a while.”
I was shown into the huge living room with the panoramic view of the East River Drive and the water. He let me take it in for a minute and then asked, “May I give you a cocktail?” But then he retracted the offer immediately: “No, of course you won’t drink. You must still be on duty.”
“Duty?”
“Yes. I forgot for a moment that you’re with the same Homicide detail as Detective Sweet.”
I blinked moronically. Surely Leman had not represented—or misrepresented—me as a policewoman. Benson must not have listened to that message very carefully. But his mistaken assumption was an understandable one.
What to do now? Nothing, I decided.
But, Lord, don’t let him ask for my I.D.
“That’s quite all right, Dr. Benson,” I said mildly.
“You’re very young,” he noted. “You must have distinguished yourself in the department very quickly.”
A modest shrug was my answer.
I pulled out my fifty-nine-cent note pad then. Not as good a prop as a badge, but I was improvising. “As I told you earlier, sir, Felice Sanders is missing. I understood you to say you spoke to her at least once after your son’s funeral. Can you tell me when and where that conversation took place?”
It took him a few moments to answer me, and when he did his voice was lifeless. “Felice phoned me a week or two after the funeral. She said she wanted to apologize for—for some things she said at the service. Things said in anger.”
“She made some sort of threat, didn’t she?”
“Yes. She was going on about our being to blame for what happened, berating Mrs. Benson and myself for not having had any faith in Kevin. For disrespecting him.”
“That must have made you pretty upset.”
He cleared his throat, looked at me mournfully.
“Didn’t she say something about getting back at you?”
“Yes. She said she was going to pay us back and show u
s up as fools who didn’t understand his music.”
Perhaps I was imagining it, but I thought I saw his eyes travel rather desperately around the room after he pronounced the word “music,” his searching glance coming to rest on one of two magnificent black Bose speakers. A man I had once lived with, Walter Moore, was forever talking about the day when he would be able to afford them.
The story was that Black Hat had asked his father for money to bankroll his career as a rap musician. Jacob Benson had roundly refused him. I had no trouble seeing that. One look at the man told me he was no fan of hip-hop culture. He probably loathed the very idea of rap, found it degrading filth. I could hear them—father and son—arguing about it now. I could just hear the venerable Dr. Benson mocking his son for his aspirations and for the thuggish clothes he wore, railing against him for wasting his education and the opportunities his parents had worked so hard to afford him. As for the ridiculous name he had taken on—Black Hat—what the hell was wrong with his own name—Kevin Benson?
Yes, he’d probably said things like that, and more.
And God, what he wouldn’t give now to relent and give Black Hat every cent he had in the world for whatever kind of music he liked. Let the boy call himself the Naked Ape, if that’s what he wanted. Anything to have his child back.
“Did that threat have any meaning for you, Dr. Benson?”
“No. The girl was distraught. Of course we were upset at the scene she made, but she was—ah—grieving.” He swallowed hard before going on. “Grieving, as we were. She asked for our forgiveness. And I gave it.”
“Did Felice happen to say where she was calling from at the time?”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“Did she say she was staying with a friend? Calling from out of town? Anything like that?”
“No. I assumed she was at home.”
“Do you know any of her friends? Someone she might be staying with?”
“No.”
“And there has been no contact since the phone call?”
“None. As I told you earlier, we weren’t close with her.” He shook his head. “Don’t misunderstand, Detective. It isn’t that we have anything against the girl. It’s just that she wasn’t the girl we envisioned Kevin marrying. And who is to say that the marriage really would ever have—Well, what does all that matter now? I’m very sorry about her disappearance. Kevin … Kevin had feelings for her. I’m sorry out of respect for his memory.”
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