Black Orchid Blues Read online

  For now, we were still in New York State. A lot could happen along the way. Cops were known to flag down black people, just as a matter of principle. And I knew that Queenie would shoot first and ask questions later. Then the chase would be on. The problem was that cops chasing after him were just as likely to shoot me. For a moment, I wasn’t sure who might pose the greater danger—my kidnapper or potential rescuers.

  The road, normally slow with heavy traffic, was empty that night, treacherous with ice. But I was thankful for it. Between the gun and the ice, I had enough fear to beat back exhaustion and stay focused.

  Next to me, Queenie lit himself a cigarette and patted his chest where he’d hidden the bearer bonds. They would make a nice nest egg for his envisioned new start. I had to give him credit: he’d put a lot of thought into this scheme.

  “Meeting me at that premiere, even that was part of the plan, right?”

  He chuckled. “Sure was.”

  “And the package in front of my door?”

  “Slim, you made the perfect little helper. You were a neighbor, and you had a job that scared Junior’s parents to death. They hated scandal. I knew you’d keep up the pressure. They’d want to pay up and get this whole nasty little episode behind them.”

  From the very beginning, he had made me his accomplice. The whole thing, including killing Charlie Spooner and the Harvard kid and the others at the Cinnamon Club, it had all been done, in part, to impress me. The wheels had gone into motion the minute I called Queenie and told him I’d be stopping by.

  “How could you be so sure that I wouldn’t take that box to the police?”

  “It was a gamble, but I figured you’d be a pretty safe bet. You’re a reporter and a bleeding heart. You’d want the story. Better still, you’d want to help. And I called it right, didn’t I? You fell right in like a good little soldier.”

  “But didn’t you realize that once I started asking questions, I wouldn’t give up—I’d want answers?”

  “The way I was planning it, by the time you found them, I’d be long gone.” He sounded so smug.

  “And killing all those people at the club, that was your plan too? Did you tell Olmo to do that?”

  “I told him to make it look real.”

  “And he did.”

  “Damn straight.”

  The knot in my gut tightened. Take it easy and think. You need to think and find answers.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked.

  “Oh, I was just thinking.”

  “About what?”

  “About how you know so much about hair and makeup and all.”

  “Oh, yes. I have a very fine feeling for all that.” For a moment, he looked truly happy. Then he put his hand to his forehead, leaned on the armrest. “But people think I’m just a man in drag. They don’t realize that I am a woman. I just suffered some bad luck is all. I wasn’t just born into such a body. I have to share that damn body with a man—and a man who doesn’t have a clue. He really doesn’t know his ass from his elbow.” He drew a deep breath. “Then again, that’s why I’m here. Because he needed me. I guess I should be grateful.” His eyes roved over me with minute appraisal, returned to my face. “You got a man?”

  I kept my eyes on the road and said nothing. I wasn’t about to talk about my relationship with Sam.

  “You ain’t got no man.” He sniffed me, actually leaned over and sniffed. His face was less than two inches from mine. “You know how I can tell?”

  I remained silent.

  He sneered. “Cause you ain’t got no man-smell on you. You know, you can tell when a person’s been getting it, regular-like. Their whole way changes, their movements, their looks, their aroma. You got the aroma of a dried-up carrot.”

  “Well, thanks.”

  “Anytime.” He chuckled and took another draw on his cigarette.

  We were quiet for a while, caught up in our own thoughts. Queenie stared out the window. There was nothing visible out there; darkness had swallowed up just about every detail. But he now seemed worried and scared. Scared killers make stupid decisions, the kind that can get both them and their hostages killed.

  He was clearly preoccupied; the gun was resting in his lap. I ran through my options: I could try running the car into something and hope for the best. Or I could keep on driving, hope to see a cop car, hope to get their attention. Or I could wait for him to fall asleep, then pull over and try to make a run for it. I dismissed all three options in quick succession. They each had the same problem, an unacceptable likelihood that we’d both be killed or seriously injured.

  For now, I’d drive and wait for the right opportunity. When it presented itself, I would know what to do. At least, I hoped I would. In the meantime, I would get him talking. Try to draw him out, learn more about what made the Black Orchid tick.

  CHAPTER 44

  What’s your earliest memory?” I asked.

  He turned to me and flashed his pearl-white teeth. “You sure did miss your calling. You should’ve been a doctor. I’m gonna call you Doc Lanie from now on.” He chuckled. “My first memory? That’s easy. It’s Daddy Bernard stuffing himself down my throat. It’s his hand on my head, telling me to take it in a little more, just a little bit more, and suck it harder, harder, HARDER!”

  He saw my expression and laughed. “Oh, you don’t like that memory? A little too-too for you? Well, let me see what else I can come up with.”

  I forced myself to take a deep breath. I was sickened but I can’t say I was surprised. I’d seen enough of human nature to know that adult killers had often been child victims. “How old were you?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Well, for me, I guess I was a newborn, wasn’t I? But as for this old body, it was the tender age of five. Maybe earlier. By the time I was five, six, at the latest, Daddy Bernard was busy teaching me the fine art of giving blowjobs.”

  Despite my anger toward Queenie, I also felt an incredible sadness. What he’d gone through—if he was telling me the truth, and I found that I believed him now—no child should suffer. He’d gained knowledge that no child should have. I thought about what Mrs. Cardigan had told me, that the child seemed “knowing” and had a smart mouth, that the Bernards sometimes even seemed afraid of their offspring. No wonder, I thought now. They were probably terrified that little “Janie” would give them away.

  “Oh yeah, I got another memory for you,” Queenie said. “Daddy Bernard … he celebrated my seventh birthday by giving me my first lesson in bum fucking. From then on, he took and I gave. Junior would lay in bed, just dreading the sound of his daddy’s footsteps. He’d count them, One, two, three. Knew exactly how many it took Daddy Bernard to get to his door. And by the time old Daddy turned that doorknob, Junior would be gone. It was me who took it. Never Junior. Just me.”

  I thought of Dr. Bernard’s mutilated remains, and the note: For all the years you made me suck … Then I thought of Phyllis Bernard, of her gouged-out eyes.

  “But you also blame your mother, don’t you? You also think you’re here because of her.”

  Queenie exploded. “Stop calling her that! I told you that bitch wasn’t my mother. I’m my own damn mother! And I don’t know why the fuck I’m here. Do you know why you’re here? Don’t nobody know, do they? We’re all just here, and there ain’t no turning back. Once you’re here, you’re here. You just keep on keeping on.”

  Maybe I should’ve stopped there, but I couldn’t. “What did she say when … you know, he was hurting you?”

  “Say? She didn’t say anything. She was deaf, dumb, and fucking blind. All that bitch ever did was tell me not to mess up my clothes. She dressed me up during the day and he undressed me at night.”

  “You mean she was there when he …”

  “Hell no! That would’ve damaged her delicate sensibilities. You know, the two of them hadn’t done it in years. He must’ve raped her to get Junior. All she cared about was pretty things and pretty people, and all she wanted was a pretty baby
girl. When she found out she didn’t get one, she made one.”

  “What do you mean? I thought you said …” I hesitated, cleared my throat, uncomfortable with the words. “I thought you said you have both, you know, parts.”

  “I do. They had a choice: raise a girl child or a boy child. A girl is what she wanted, so they went with it. Funny when you think about it. I was the one she really wanted, not Junior, but somehow I’m the outsider, the freak.”

  “Almost sounds like you were jealous of him.”

  He shot up in his seat. “Hell no! I wouldn’t have wanted them as parents. Nasty hypocrites, the both of them.” He paused, then added morosely, “But I got to give it to her. The bitch had taste.” His expression turned wistful. “Just my luck. By the time we turned thirteen, she’d lost interest in dressing us up. That was a damn shame.”

  “Why?”

  “Because by then I was really into it. I mean, shit, it was the only upside to the whole thing. But my voice was dropping; I was growing a little hairy in all the wrong places; and, well, it was just getting too damn complicated.”

  So, with puberty, Junior’s body had suddenly decided it was masculine after all. That would explain why the Bernards yanked the child from public view.

  “Did you and Junior always live with them?”

  “Yup. They thought about sending us away. But where and how in the world could they keep me quiet? Suppose I came out, talked to somebody? Better not take the chance. So, they kept us in the house. That damn house in Brooklyn. For five years they kept us locked in there. Told everybody they’d sent their little girl down South to live with relatives. People are so stupid; they believed them. We used to stand at the windows just wishing that for once someone would look up and see us.”

  “What about relatives? What happened when they came by?”

  “Hardly ever happened.” He shook his head. “Few times it did, Mrs. B told them I was out of town, visiting Daddy Bernard’s kin. When his kin came to town, they said I was visiting her kin. But hardly anybody ever came, and nobody asked twice.”

  “Okay, then, what about your studies? How’d you get your schooling?”

  “Phyllis taught us at home. Daddy Mojo, he only stopped by when he needed something. He’d come in the room practically holding it in his hand. Then Junior would disappear, and I’d take care of business.”

  I glanced at him, knowing I couldn’t begin to imagine what Queenie had gone through. And knowing that it was Queenie who’d taken over when the going got rough; he was the one who weathered the storms that had cracked Junior’s mind. I could see him as the child he’d once been—hurt, angry, and terrified—one who by age seven had endured more abuse than most face in a lifetime.

  “You think he bothered other children?” I asked.

  He gave a grunt. “He brought one of them home once. Some kid he’d found on skid row. The kid was starving, didn’t have a place. You could tell he didn’t want to be doing it. But he did.”

  I frowned. “How do you know?”

  “How do you think?” He looked at me incredulously. “First, Daddy Mojo watched while this kid did me. Then he did me too.”

  “Dear God,” I whispered.

  “God didn’t have nothing to do with it. I’d just about bust out laughing when the reverend came over. Man, I used to wonder what he would’ve said if he’d known who he was breaking bread with.”

  “And you never said anything?” I felt naïve the moment the words left my mouth.

  “How could we? I told you they kept us locked up. But even if they hadn’t—shit, you sound like you blame us.”

  “No, I—I’m just trying to understand.”

  “You—” He laughed bitterly. “All right. You want to know if we ever said something? Well, I did, once. Must’ve been seven or eight. I tried to talk to the Sunday school teacher. What do you think she did?”

  From his expression, the answer was obvious. “Nothing.”

  “Oh no, she did something, all right. Hushed me up. How dare I tell such nasty lies about my fine upstanding daddy! Said she’d wash my mouth out with soap if I did it again. The thing is, she knew I was telling the truth. I could see it in her eyes. But she had a thing for Daddy B.”

  “You could tell that? At your age, you could see that?”

  “Honey, at that age, I could tell that and a whole lot more. Later, when we got older, and I was much stronger, they made sure we weren’t heard, much less seen. They didn’t just keep us locked in that house. They kept us locked in our room. When visitors came, we didn’t dare leave it, not even to go to the bathroom. That woman used to bring in a chamber pot and carry our meals upstairs on a tray. As for the rest …” He took a deep breath. “You’d never understand, Slim. Nice, so-called normal people like you never do.”

  CHAPTER 45

  We lapsed back into silence. I recalled that last talk with Sheila, realizing how much about her marriage she had still kept hidden, and I mulled over what Queenie had just shared. An ugly story. Sordid. Painful. The Bernards had destroyed a child’s mind. They had created a monster, and he had destroyed them. I wondered about that child, about what he must have gone through, what he must have contemplated during those long years of torture and imprisonment.

  “Did you ever think about running away?”

  “Sure I did. Damn near every minute, day and night. For years. But when it came down to it, I was just too damn comfortable. And I was getting stronger while Junior was getting weaker—and so were the Bernards. I figured that all I’d have to do was wait. They’d kick the bucket and I’d get everything. But they sure showed me.”

  “What did they do?”

  “Something I wouldn’t have expected in a million years: they sent Junior off to college. That shocked the socks off of me. When I woke up in that dorm room, honey, I was fit to be tied.”

  I was stunned too, but not just because the Bernards had relented and given Junior his freedom. What puzzled me even more was Queenie’s surprise. Why hadn’t he known of Junior’s plans to go to college and the process he’d gone through to get there? There must’ve been discussions, maybe even arguments, definitely negotiations, promises made. Then there would have been the whole application process, the testing, the interviewing. Finally, the acceptance and the packing, followed by the actual trip and arrival. How could Junior have accomplished all of that without Queenie being aware of it? Maybe Junior was stronger than Queenie realized or wanted to admit.

  “But what really screwed things up,” he continued, “was when he met that Sheila bitch.”

  At the mention of Sheila, my nascent sympathy for Queenie vanished. “He loved her.”

  “He didn’t need to love her. He had me.”

  “So you were jealous.”

  “No—”

  “And you meant to kill her from the very beginning.”

  “Put it like this: I knew I had to get rid of the bitch. Junior’s stupid kidnapping plan gave me the chance.”

  I peered at him. “She loved you, you know. You destroyed the one person who was totally on your side.”

  “She loved him. She should’ve known better than to mess with me. I always knew what that whiny-ass husband of hers was up to. But he never knew a damn thing about me.”

  That was a lie. Queenie had just admitted that he didn’t know everything that Junior knew. He hadn’t known about the plan to go to college. And the bitterness in his voice. It was the voice of someone who felt neglected and ignored, who felt his work had gone unappreciated. So he reveled in his supremacy over Junior, but resented it too.

  “Just when did you step in with the kidnapping?”

  “I knew about it from the get-go, just as soon as it popped into his head. I let him play with it and I made my own plans. It was easy once Stax sent Olmo after me.”

  “A bad mistake, huh?”

  “Bad for him, good for me.”

  I was really beginning to understand now. It was Olmo who’d enabled Queenie to go
through with his plan. “Olmo made all the difference, didn’t he?”

  “Honey, I laid the kind of loving on him that a man don’t forget. He didn’t know what hit him. By the time I finished with him, he was in my hip pocket.”

  “But Sheila said Junior mentioned Olmo to her. How could he have known him, when it was you who—”

  “When it was me who met him?” He laughed. “I simply told Olmo what the deal was, told him how to approach Junior. At first, Junior didn’t know what Olmo was about. But Olmo played it right. Pretty soon Junior was spilling his guts, begging Olmo to help him.”

  Incredible. Queenie had actually used his lover to trick himself—his alternate, original personality—into a double-cross. Then he’d double-crossed the wife and the lover. And what had he said?

  “Junior’s gonna lay down and die. I’m gonna make sure of it.”

  So now he intended to double-cross himself too.

  CHAPTER 46

  For a while, Queenie was voluble, talking about his plans, his dreams. I soaked up every word. I formed phrases to use in the piece I would write, and tried not to worry about whether I’d live to write it.

  Queenie remained introspective. “Know who I’m thinking about?”

  It was a rhetorical question. “No.”

  “Olmo.”

  I glanced over and darned if I didn’t see a wetness gleaming in his eye.

  He felt me staring at him, raised a hand to his face, and turned it away. He cleared his throat. “You got a man?”

  That same question again: I had the same response.

  “You don’t have to answer. I know you do despite what I said before. Pretty woman like you … It’s your boss, ain’t it?”

  No comment.

  He continued: “What happened with that accident, it’s a shame. You want to be back there with him, don’t you?” When I didn’t answer, he said, “Stupid question,” then sighed. “Well, I don’t blame you, Slim. I don’t blame you at all. And when you get back, if you get back, do something for me.”