by Evie Rhodes
“Hmmm. One of them is still tied and bound in spirit to her womb. When she dies, he will die; the umbilical cord will be CUT!”
With that, the darkness took on a new intensity, a new depth; it turned blue-black in the course of things.
“Yes,” came Me’s reply.
The searing flames released him. The blisters stopped their oozing and closed up. The ground opened under his feet and bounced him through the realms, back into the soil that was Harlem.
Legion had been merciful.
He had delivered him in a dark alleyway where there was no light, not even a streetlight, to beam on his head. Me smiled.
He peered through the darkness so he could read the sign on the street. He was just where he should be. Legion was, as always, orderly.
Although this was not where it would take place, it would be interesting to watch his sappy comrade in action. He was as inferior as they came, because he was of the flesh. He thought he was in charge. He thought he could withstand the test of Me. But Me knew better. Me knew that flesh had been born with lots of limitations.
However, Legion wasn’t the only one who could be merciful. Me could be merciful, too. As far as he was concerned, he had been. He had done his comrade a kindness. He would have a rare opportunity to tangle with Tracie Burlingame before the final outcome.
Me could have taken this from him, but he had chosen not to. Me had done him a favor. He had brought him out of darkness, to the light. He had shone the light on him so that Tracie Burlingame could see him.
Before Tracie Burlingame had fled her residence, Me had given her the evidence of what she was seeking. She didn’t know it was him. Me had his ways. It was easy enough to use the arrogance of one of her sons to reach her. He had put the evidence in her path, where she couldn’t ignore it or miss it.
He had also taken care of Whiskey for her.
Then he had built the yellow brick road leading Tracie straight to where she could find her tormentor and the killer of her sons.
He had thrown it right in her lap. Now she knew who had killed her sons. Me smiled as he recalled the stark shock and trembling that had occurred when she learned the identity of the killer. The information had been right there under her nose all the time, while in her mind she flitted back and forth in stark denial.
Being the bold lady she was, there was no doubt: she would be there with revenge and hatred in her heart. She now possessed all the pieces, save one. She now knew who had killed two of her sons.
What she didn’t know was who would kill the two who were left. What she didn’t know was the real truth of why, and that her own destruction was imminent.
Yes, there was a time for all things. His planning had been perfect. Once Tracie Burlingame played out her little street game tonight, it would be time for him to put things straight with his comrade.
It would then be time for his comrade to take his place. But Me had thrown him a bone that he’d better be grateful for. Me could not kill him, but he would have to move over. He couldn’t play with Tracie Burlingame after tonight.
She would be off limits to him.
It was time for Me to step to the plate and complete the culmination of all things.
46
Monica had thoroughly searched Tracie Burlingame’s entire residence. The evidence recovered was damning. The killer had decided to preen in his cleverness, and Monica had it all in live Technicolor view.
Had she not reviewed and recovered the evidence from Tracie’s brownstone herself, much of it would have been difficult to piece together, much less believe. However, there was no doubt.
Tracie Burlingame was no more than a beautiful shell, one who had become the unwitting pawn of an obsessed madman. The killings had nothing to do personally with her sons at all.
But they had to do with her, and with the professed love of her sons’ murderer.
It was one of the most senseless serial killings Monica had ever heard of. And she was smack dead in the middle of it.
She had sat at the white baby grand piano that Tracie loved so much, while pondering exactly how to handle what she had found. Given the circumstances, it would need to be handled as delicately as possible.
She also now knew about Raymond, a depravity that had started and stopped for some fifteen years, only to start all over again.
Monica was in private agony as she thought on the best way to approach this, an ingenious way to present it to Alexandra. She was already picturing Alexandra’s reaction. First there would be disbelief, then hysterics, then panic, and last there would be a horrible resolve leading to a final cold calculation of facts.
Alexandra would have no choice in this. One hadn’t been left for her.
There was more at stake here than just Tracie’s sons.
It was too bad she hadn’t moved faster. Too bad the levels of shock and disbelief that held her had slowed the recesses of her mind. It was too bad because by the time she did move and put the process into effect, it was already, once again, too late.
The police were still a day late and a dollar short.
47
The vision insinuated itself in front of Tracie. It wouldn’t budge. There was no avoiding it. She saw herself when she was younger, leaning over a man’s broken body, one year after the birth of her last son, Randi Burlingame.
Her eyes roamed the man’s body. They stopped when they reached his feet. There were no shoes. A scream erupted from her throat as she walked down the distant corridor of the past.
There she had stood in the school corridor with her friends when a boy had approached her. “Tracie, will you go to the dance with me?” he said.
Tracie arrogantly looked him up and down. “I don’t think so, Pee Wee. Please, I wouldn’t be caught dead.”
Shouts of laughter, teasing, and hooting had come from her friends as they laughed Pee Wee to scorn. Tracie tilted her head, smiled, and started to walk away. Then she turned to look at her friends.
“Does he have a name outside of Pee Wee?”
One of Tracie’s girlfriends had keeled over in laughter. “Who the hell knows,” she said.
“They call him that cuz his thing is little and he can’t get it up. Little Pee Wee. Get it?”
They all howled in laughter.
Tracie walked away. He followed her. He shouldn’t have. She turned to mock him. “No, thank you, Pee Wee. I want superior babies one day. You know, the stuff legends are made out of. Doesn’t sound to me like you’ll be shooting off any legends with that little thing in your pants.”
There was more laughter. Pee Wee’s humiliation settled over him like a dark cloud. It had taken everything he had to ask Tracie out to the dance. He had been building up to this moment for two years. Now he was the laughingstock of the school, as well as the butt of her jokes.
Tracie looked into his eyes. Pee Wee’s despair was cloying. She felt nothing. She was reigning queen, and everybody knew it. She didn’t care. She could have any boy she wanted. Pee Wee wasn’t it.
“You’ll be sorry, Tracie!” Pee Wee shouted, pure anguish lacing his voice.
Tracie tossed her mane of hair.
“One day I’ll make you sorry,” he said in a much softer tone.
Tracie’s eyes flashed once, twice: hazel, cocoa brown, and then a third sledgehammer flash to midnight black. Then she was gone, leaving Pee Wee standing alone.
“No!” Tracie sobbed as she zoomed back to the present.
The past was her haunting. And now she had paid the price for her callous conceit. She had paid for it with her own blood.
There was no denying it, because if it weren’t so, she wouldn’t be at the Lenox Terrace apartments, where Randi had met his brutal death.
She wouldn’t be watching this saddening, sickening tape on this VCR that depicted all the revenge he had inflicted on her. He hadn’t wanted her to miss a thing. It was all there, in every murderous, sadistic detail.
Tracie was watching the stalking and brutal murde
rs of her own sons as though their lives and deaths were some movie of the week. Except they weren’t. This was her flesh and blood.
Someone had left her the live tape, so she could witness every detail. Along with it an address had been furnished, though once she had watched the tape, finding the address would have been mediocre—child’s play, really.
Tracie couldn’t bear any more. She needed to finish this so she could pick up Dre and Michael. She had stashed them away after fleeing the brownstone, so that she could exact her own brand of revenge.
When she finished with this monster, there wouldn’t be any pieces left for them to autopsy.
She would cut him to shreds.
It never occurred to her that she might not get out alive.
She clicked off the VCR, ejected the tape, and leaned back as dark shadows cast themselves across the room. Tracie lounged in the shadows, welcoming the darkness and anonymity of them.
She didn’t know how long she had been sitting there, but after a time there was a loud click in the total silence of the apartment.
Lonzo walked in. He slammed the door behind him.
His fingers reached for the light switch, but before they could find it, a voice penetrated the darkness. The voice was magnified, coming from an amplifier in the room.
“You’ve been taking things that don’t belong to you, Pee Wee Morgan,” Tracie said.
The room flooded with eerie spotlights from overhead. Tracie had to close her eyes momentarily against the horrors and stench of blood coming from the room. She must have been sitting there in a zombielike state, because it was as if she had only just noticed that she was sitting in the middle of hell.
Lonzo jumped, looking startled. He automatically pulled his revolver.
He saw Tracie lounging on the sofa, the microphone lying beside her. She was a vision, sitting in the flesh before the many blown-up photographs and posters of her covering the walls, spanning her life.
It was quite a homage he had paid her.
Some of them had been splattered with blood, but her image was strong, beautiful, sensual, and sure. There was an entire history, dating to back in the day when they were in school. Lonzo had made it his life’s mission to follow the trails and scents of her life.
He holstered the revolver. A mixture of emotions crossed his face, from disbelief to pure adoration. He couldn’t believe it. Here she was in the flesh. She was so close, he could touch her. He could feel her. He could smell her. He shifted nervously in her presence.
Me enjoyed a grand view from his darkened corner of the balcony. He didn’t move a muscle. The spirits knew to be quiet and still. He observed the scene unfolding in front of him, just as he had known it would. He had laid the ultimate groundwork.
Tracie watched Lonzo steadily. Hatred flashed in her eyes, which were changing colors at a rapid pace. The golden-green hazel of her eyes twinkled at him. There was a flash of cocoa brown, and then they finally settled on midnight black.
“You can run, but you can’t hide. Right, Lonzo?”
Tracie shifted, crossing one leg over the other. She looked at Lonzo seductively.
“Come on over and I’ll sing you ‘Rock-a-bye, Baby.’ ”
Lonzo stared at her as anger crept into his voice. “Don’t play games that you can’t win, Li’l Caramel.” He walked closer to Tracie. His eyes glazed over, becoming somewhat adrift.
“Who says I can’t win?”
Lonzo focused. “I do. I’m writing the rules.” He stared down Tracie’s blouse. Perspiration appeared on his forehead. His breathing escalated. “It’s my game, slut.”
Tracie shifted. She popped open a button on her blouse. “Is it? You’re on my court. Those were my sons that you murdered.”
Lonzo walked to the closet. He opened the door. Hanging by their strings were one of each, a boot and a sneaker, belonging to Tracie’s murdered sons: one Karl Kani, Randi Burlingame; and one Air Jordan, Rashod Burlingame.
Tracie’s face froze in a sort of ethereal beauty, like a statue frozen in time. She looked at the boot and sneaker of her sons. Lonzo stared at her for a beat. He left the closet door open, then headed for the front door.
He stopped to look back over his shoulder. He stared for a fraction of a second at Tracie’s frozen features.
He felt nothing except pure animal lust. A cold satisfaction had begun to crawl through his body. How dare this whore have called him inferior?
How dare she laugh at him with her friends?
He didn’t see her friends now. And she didn’t seem to be able to find anything to laugh about.
He could recall the words as though they were yesterday. Well, that was yesterday and this was today. And today he was reigning king.
“Checkmate, Li’l Caramel,” Lonzo told Tracie.
Tracie dipped into the waist of her skirt.
Lonzo hit the light switch, plunging the room into darkness. She rose in the shadows and fired off a shot. It landed in the door over Lonzo’s head.
“Checkmate? Oh, hell, no. Not yet, Pee Wee. Not yet!”
Lonzo burst into insane laughter. The front door banged shut in the darkness. Tracie stood silhouetted in the dark shadows. She dropped to her knees. She wept.
The phone rang. Tracie followed the sound of it, crawling on her hand and knees. She located it and put it to her ear.
Lonzo stood down in the dark alleyway outside, with the phone to his mouth. A streak of light from the streetlight illuminated him.
“Tracie. Tracie. I’m sorry. I love you, baby. All I want to do is to dance with you.”
“I’m a slut, Lonzo. How could you love a slut? What makes you wanna dance with a slut?”
“I have a taste for sluts. I have a taste for you.” His breathing was loud and harsh.
“My mother was a slut. Just like you, Tracie. I—think she was,” he said in confusion.
Pictures flashed before his eyes; pain reached out and held him in her grasp. “I think it was my mother. Maybe it was my daddy.”
The past had crippled Lonzo for life. It had splintered him in fractions, leaving him a bewildered, open vessel and doorway. There were blank black spaces throughout his life, where he couldn’t remember a thing . . . with the exception of Tracie Burlingame.
He started to cry dry, racking sobs. He leaned his head against the building. He looked up at a brilliantly clear moon hanging suspended like a yellow globe in the sky.
In a flash he was cold and calculating again. The dry, racking sobs had stopped. “Tracie, you and me, we can make new babies. Superior babies. The stuff that legends are made of, just like you wanted.”
That was it. He had knocked Tracie over the edge with that simple statement. She hovered just on the edge of reality and insanity. “Your seed is inferior, Pee Wee. You’d be shooting off blanks.”
Rage, pure rage, carved itself across Lonzo’s features. He closed his eyes and distanced himself. “Meet me, Tracie. Meet me on the roof. I have a surprise for you. Let’s dance.”
“I’ll be there. Count on it.”
Tracie had never hated anyone so deeply in her life. She slammed down the phone and headed for the roof.
On the roof of the Lenox Terrace apartments, Tracie clicked the door closed softly behind her. What she saw in her immediate line of vision made her gasp. “Oh, no.”
She couldn’t believe her eyes. It wasn’t possible, but there they were. Tracie had stashed Michael and Dre away while she dealt with Lonzo, but somehow he had found them. She stared at them, tied and bound. She trembled.
“Surprise, Tracie.” Lonzo laughed at the incredulous look on her face.
“Do you think you can build legends out of an inferior seed, Tracie? Miss High and Mighty? Raymond was the one who had an inferior seed. Here’s the remaining evidence of his inferiority sitting right here.”
“He was a punk, too. You should have heard him squealing like a pig. Oh, that was just before I jammed the seeds of his inferiority down his throat.”
>
Lonzo held up a journal before Tracie’s startled eyes. Gently he caressed it. “Dreams and secrets, Li’l Caramel.” He worked his mouth in a strange and twisting motion.
“So soft and chewy.”
Me stood in a dark corner of the roof, observing the continuing drama between Lonzo and Tracie. His comrade was more obsessed with this girl than he had originally thought. He had thought he just wanted to play with her, but his need and desire went much further than that.
He might have to intervene. Lonzo had thrown him a curveball. He had the other two boys. Me had since learned it was not written that he should kill them. Me could not allow that. For the time being he decided to wait and see.
Tracie’s voice sailed through the air, breaking into Me’s thoughts and hitting Lonzo with precise little darts that found their target. “You don’t have a seed. You didn’t come from a seed.” She laughed. “You’re seedless. Manless. You’re demon spawn.”
Lonzo threw his bag of sunflower seeds at her. He lost control and roared at her, “I’m your savior, Tracie! A savior is much more than a man!”
He snorted.
Then he whispered menacingly, “A savior is a god. I’m your god, Tracie. Because I HOLD the power of life and death.”
Pure insanity stared at her. “You ready to die, Tracie Burlingame?”
Me inched closer. Lonzo was stepping out of bounds.
Tracie answered Lonzo calmly and serenely. “God doesn’t play games, does he, Pee Wee? He sent his son into the world to die for their sins. So they could be redeemed.
“He didn’t go around executing people.” With that simple statement Tracie Burlingame came into her own. The truth of what she’d spoken washed over her, cleansing her soul and her spirit.
Lonzo flinched.
His eyes glittered dangerously. He cut a nick in Dre’s throat, drawing blood while never taking his eyes from hers.
Michael glanced over at Dre to see if he was okay. He waited for his neck to be nicked next. But Lonzo left him alone for the time being. Michael was glad that Tracie was focusing.
Although she hadn’t said his name, he knew she was focusing on Jesus. He was glad because he knew this was the man who could help them. He had already helped him once.