by Evie Rhodes
He rubbed his hand across the boy’s head and then stepped into the elevator.
“See ya at the game Rebound,” the boy called. “I hope you win,” he added. “But you know the Globetrotters are good, too.”
“That they are, little man. Enjoy the game.”
The elevator door creaked closed. Michael waved good-bye. On his way down in the elevator, he wondered if meeting the little boy could have been a sign. The boy was young. Considering what had happened to him, maybe that meant he could get a fresh start.
The usual anxiety and anguish he walked around with inside had started to fade. That was a good start. Understanding what had happened to him would have to be next. He knew that, for the life of him, he truly didn’t understand. He just knew that somehow things were different.
Michael stepped off the elevator. He looked at his watch. Shoot, he was already late for school. Stepping outside, he decided he would ditch for the day. Sometimes being a star athlete had its advantages.
He attended Stuyvesant High School over on Chambers Street. His team was called the Running Rebels, and he was proud of their record. They had finished in the league, largely due to his performances, at twelve and two. Last year they had earned the Manhattan Division III-B crown. The first-place finish had given them a bye in the first round of the playoffs.
They played to a packed house in Stuyvesant’s gym when they played their archrivals from the north, Hunter High. With a crowd of support from the community of Harlem, they had gone on to beat Hunter 72–60. They had now advanced to the quarterfinals, where they would meet Central Park East High School next.
The scouts were already looking at him, and his coach was pleased as punch. He had a good chance at a full scholarship, and he knew it. He would be recruited, no doubt. In fact, an agent had already approached him off the record. So his little foray for the day wouldn’t be a big deal.
He decided he would visit Rashod. He flagged a taxi. Rashod lived in a residential hotel over on 111th Street. He had a small studio in the hotel. Michael was taking a huge leap of faith in hoping to find him there instead of at St. Nick’s.
At St. Nick’s he would have to pay a runner to go up and get Rashod for him. Anyway, he decided to try him at home, since lately his faith seemed to be a bit more restored. He had a spare set of keys, so if push came to shove he could let himself in and chill for a while.
The gypsy cab stopped, and Michael got in. Not ten minutes later he was knocking on Rashod’s door. To his great surprise, Rashod answered it.
“Rebound. Hey, man, whatcha doing here?” Rashod clapped him on the back. He opened the door wider to let him in.
“I was in the neighborhood. I decided to check you out,” Michael told him.
“Yeah, right. And I was at NASA last night, and I decided to shuttle on up to the moon to check things out.” Rashod laughed. “Want some OJ?”
“Yeah. I could use a glass of vitamin C.”
Rashod went to the small refrigerator, took out the orange juice, and poured Michael a healthy glass. Michael took a seat on the worn, squeaky sofa and watched Rashod closely.
It took him a minute to digest the fact that Rashod wasn’t high, for a change. He wondered what had brought that on. Usually by this time of day he already had his groove on.
Rashod saw him observing him. “So,” he said, “Mommy’s gonna kick your butt from here to Brooklyn when she finds out you skipped school.”
Michael tried not to show his utter amazement at Rashod calling Tracie “Mommy,” but he wasn’t that good at hiding it.
Rashod didn’t miss a twitch, so he said, “Well, she is my mother, too, you know.”
“Yeah, I know, but you’re the one who usually doesn’t acknowledge that, big brother.”
Rashod shrugged. “Sometimes things change.”
Michael took a long swallow from the glass, enjoying the cold liquid. “So, tell me. What changed?”
Something flickered across Rashod’s face. For a moment he was silent. But he and Michael were tight. Michael knew and tried to understand how he felt, unlike Dre. And Michael always looked out for him. Often he brought him money and food. Even if he wasn’t there, Michael would leave it for him.
Rashod was unemployed, so sometimes he ran low when he didn’t sell enough of his sketches on the street. The rent wasn’t a problem, because Tracie paid that even though she was always threatening to cut him off. So far she hadn’t.
Rashod picked up his charcoal and pad. He started sketching. Michael was silent. Finally Rashod said, “Tracie came to see me and blew a perfectly good high.”
“Why?” Michael asked in a cold tone that indicated he was surprised at Tracie’s visiting Rashod. Rashod looked at him. Michael really hadn’t meant that to sound so cold and distant.
But given their history, he was somewhat surprised. He knew that generally Tracie just mailed Rashod a check and was done with it.
Rashod decided to shake up Michael’s complacent little world, so straight up he said, “She came because she thinks that I killed Randi.”
Michael choked on his juice. He sputtered, and juice went sloshing all over his clothes and the sofa. “What!”
“You heard me. She wanted to know if I offed Randi.”
Rashod got up and handed Michael a rag so he could clean up the mess. Michael used the time to get his thoughts together.
Then he decided to do what he did to his opponents on the basketball court. He twisted them up in knots, leaped into the air, and then swished the ball into the basket from the other end of the court.
“Did you?” he asked.
Now it was Rashod’s turn to be shaken. Rashod gave him a queer look. “You’re kidding. Right?”
“Yeah,” Michael said. “So what’s this really about?”
“Seriously. Tracie somehow got it into her mind that I might be responsible for Randi’s death. Don’t ask me how, but she did. She came to St. Nick’s. She had no trouble, of course, penetrating security, and the next thing I know, she’s in my face. Anyway, things got a little ugly. She slapped me.” He decided to leave out the part about pushing her, because he knew Michael would get mad and couldn’t handle that. The next thing he knew, the conversation with Rebound would be over. So he skipped that part.
“Next thing I know, she’s got her gun in my face, demanding to know if I killed Randi. End of story.”
Michael was puzzled. Tracie hadn’t mentioned thinking that Randi’s death had been anything other than an accident. At the morgue she had staunchly stood by that point. Suddenly he remembered the night when she kept saying something about how she should have protected him, though.
Come to think of it, she had been acting a little strangely, but he had thought it was grief. She was real jumpy these days. When did she begin to ponder the idea that somebody had killed Randi? The police had indicated it, but she had never given any sign that she believed them. He knew his mother, and now he knew she was hiding something.
“You called Tracie ‘Mommy,’ so that can’t be the end of the story. What happened?”
“Nothing,” Rashod said. “She believed me, and then she invited me to come back home. I said no.”
“Why?”
Rashod decided the moment of reckoning was here. He got up from the sofa, laying aside his sketch pad, and went to a stack of sketches leaning up against the wall. He flipped through the heavy stack for a bit, finally coming up with the ones he wanted.
Rashod took a seat across from Michael, thinking about the weird drawing he had done that looked like him, but he decided to skip it. He didn’t know why he had drawn the sketch; it was as if a hand other than his had drawn it.
He also didn’t understand what it meant. He decided it didn’t matter. He’d known his brother was into kinky, sadomasochistic sex for some time. He’d seen the videos as well as the black clothing and chains Michael hid in his room.
But he was also aware that Michael thought it was his best-kept secret, so it w
as best to let it ride. He didn’t want to invade his privacy or shatter his illusions.
Rashod looked at Michael and said, “I know we didn’t grow up religious, man, but sometimes I wonder if there’s something else out there. Do you believe in dreams? Or in seeing things before or after they’ve happened? Even if you weren’t there?”
Before Michael could answer, Rashod said, “Actually this is probably a question for Souljah Boy, because weird and different is right up his alley. Maybe I should have Dre hit him up.”
“I don’t know. I never thought about it,” Michael lied, because recently he had. “Anyway, what does that have to do with why you told Tracie you couldn’t come home?”
Rashod handed the first sketch to Michael. In the sketch a man was on the ground with his neck twisted. His body looked broken. It appeared as if he had fallen from a great height. “What’s this?”
“That’s the reason I told Tracie I couldn’t come home. Her door has the shadow of death on it. That man in the sketch is dead. Tracie knows him and was somehow involved in his death.”
“Oh, come off it, Rashod.”
Michael looked at his brother. He noticed a strange aura surrounding him. It almost looked as though the light was absorbing him. He was sort of disappearing into it.
Michael blinked away the imagery, but when he looked again, the aura was still there, misty and shadowy.
Michael struggled to hang on to his sanity. What the hell was going on? He had never noticed anything like this on Rashod before.
Lately he seemed to be seeing a lot of things he had never seen before. Maybe it was like a residual flashback from his strange experience. He decided it was best to ignore it.
“It’s true. Death somehow surrounds her, Michael. That’s probably why Randi is dead. It’s not what it looks like, Rebound.” Rashod resorted to the affectionate name Michael’s basketball skills had earned him, in order to show love and respect.
Michael was quiet. He didn’t say a word. Rashod handed him the next sketch.
This one was startling in its clarity and vision. It showed a man throwing a boy off a roof. Some kind of substance spewed from the boy’s mouth. The man stood watching the boy fall. The boy didn’t have any shoes on his feet.
And more than that, something was waiting for him to fall. Something or someone was waiting for the falling boy below. The image looked vaguely human, but there was something else there. Even through the charcoal sketch there was a spirit of demonic force, although Michael couldn’t make out what he was feeling.
He was absolutely stunned. “Is this what you think happened to Randi?”
“No,” Rashod said in a much more subdued tone than before.
“That’s me. I ain’t got long. It is what it is, Rebound. The picture depicts my upcoming death. I’m Tracie’s first seed. That seed has the shadow of death on it,” Rashod finished with hot conviction.
Michael could not find words.
There was no comeback he could think of for his brother’s weird revelation. He sat back in his seat, staring at both sketches as they trembled in his shaking hands.
Rashod felt sorry for him. But Rashod had come to grips with this thing. He didn’t know how he knew, but he did. He would be the next one to die.
Over in the Abraham Lincoln apartments, Souljah Boy awoke from a dead sleep after having a dream in which he’d seen the very same sketch Rashod had shown Michael Burlingame.
Very distinctly a voice had uttered, “Rashod Burlingame is the next one to die.”
Souljah Boy sat stock-still, sweat pouring from his brow. He reached for the phone, then thought better of it. What was he going to say, “Rashod, you’re going to die”?
Visions of Randi Burlingame’s broken body lying on the street flashed through his mind. Something deadly was going on with the Burlingame family, and all he had were instincts and dreams, which wouldn’t stop it.
His right eye twitched rapidly.
He knew better than anyone that even if you were given or shown something in spirit, it didn’t always mean you’d be able to halt the circumstances—in many cases all you could do was watch it play itself out.
He couldn’t fathom why he’d been given the dream, but he knew there was a reason.
All his life he’d yearned for extraordinary sight, sight that was beyond normal human comprehension. He possessed instincts that were out of the ordinary, and an uncanny ability to feel things that others could not, but sometimes it was a hard burden to bear. It wasn’t easy seeing what others couldn’t.
Maybe it was paranoia that made him have the dream, because of Randi’s death. He feverishly hoped this was the right answer, because if it wasn’t, they were in big trouble. His spiritual insight was sensing trouble of a major magnitude.
So Souljah Boy did what he knew how to do. He bowed his head in prayer.
Rashod Burlingame stared at the sketch of his death. Michael Burlingame didn’t believe, so he blew his conversation with Rashod off like so much dust.
It would come back to haunt him very, very soon.
28
Lonzo and Monica arrived at the funeral home where the preparation for the interment of Randi’s body had been done. They stood just inside the doors.
There were three chapels attached to the building. It was extremely well kept. They stood on plush beige carpeting in which their feet were sinking amid scores of pieces of antique furniture.
“Looks like a profitable business,” Lonzo remarked.
“It sure does,” Monica readily agreed.
Just then the very stylish Lawrence Washington, the city’s oldest funeral director, joined them. He walked with a cane, but the man had a certain vitality that permeated his presence. He smiled at them. “Now, how can I help you two young people today?”
Monica flashed her badge. “I’m Monica Rhodes, Harlem Homicide Division.” She pointed to Lonzo. “This is my partner, Alonzo Morgan.”
He nodded at her official tone. “Lawrence Washington. What can I help you with?”
Monica took the lead. “Did you direct the services for Randi Burlingame?”
“I did.”
“We need to see the guest list,” Monica said.
The funeral director waved his hand at her. “ ’Fraid not. Only the family can see it.”
“I can secure a court order. It’s your call.”
Lawrence Washington hesitated. He shook his head sadly. “Such a shame. Closed casket on a sixteen-year-old boy. Those boys are Tracie’s world. The girl dreams, lives, and breathes for their success. Now one of ’em’s dead.”
Lonzo stepped in. “Did you know the family personally?”
“For some time now,” Lawrence told him. “Tracie owns a hair salon called Tracie’s Place. She’s also got a slew of braiding salons. She does most of the hair for my clients here. Beautiful work her people produce with lots of pride.”
He smiled at his memory and rambled on as though to himself. Monica and Lonzo didn’t interrupt. They watched him closely.
“Long time ago, when she was just starting out, she used to bring her sons here with her while she worked. She started out with what little money her mama left her. Tracie was raised in the projects.
“I used to have to chase that Rashod all the time for spilling sunflower seeds all over my rugs and coffins. Sometimes he’d climb into the new coffins thinking they was a great place to hide, getting those darn seeds all over the velvet and velour cushions. Lord help me,” Lawrence Washington reminisced.
Lonzo and Monica exchanged swift glances. They couldn’t believe their ears. Lonzo had been intent on finding out why Andre Burlingame had been photographing the funeral services; instead, Lawrence Washington had just handed them a vital link.
Lonzo had been fishing. However, Lawrence Washington had just handed them real bait, bait that was leading straight to Randi Burlingame’s murderer.
Lonzo was having a hard time containing his excitement, but he knew from experience that
it was better to let the old man continue talking. He risked another glance at Monica. That glance told him she was just as excited, only more contained.
Lawrence continued, “That’s ’bout all he did. Outside of sketch and play with that silver locket Tracie bought him. The other three boys were fine. Dre with his camera, and—”
“What?” Monica brutally cut him off. She no longer cared about Andre Burlingame and his camera, just as she knew Lonzo didn’t. This man had just identified two key aspects of their case in the space of a few sentences.
She knew in her gut that they’d just hit pay dirt with Lawrence Washington’s recollection of the sunflower seeds and the silver locket.
Composing herself before she spoke again after having so abruptly cut him off, she said more softly, “What silver locket? Can you describe it?”
“Course I can. It was designed in the shape of a heart. Boy had more than anybody I know. Ever’ time one broke, Tracie would replace it with another one for him.”
Monica fumbled in her pocket and extracted the plastic bag with the locket.
“That’s it. I’d know it anywhere. Ain’t too many people in Harlem walking around with none like it. Rashod’s had one or another since he was a kid. He loves that thing just because his mama gave it to him.
“When he was little, he told me it was just like carrying his mama’s heart around on a string.” For the first time he smiled in thinking about Rashod.
Then Lawrence Washington cleared his throat, thinking maybe he should clarify how he knew so much about the Burlingame family. “I been sort a like a father to Tracie over the years, you know.”
Oh, yeah, Lonzo thought he knew, all right.
That was hood-speak for “he used to be laying down with Tracie’s mama, so that was how he stepped into the surrogate-daddy role.” Lonzo and Monica traded looks. Wonders never ceased.