Joplin's Ghost

by Tananarive Due

  By ten o’clock, the hallway outside of Phoenix’s suite was so jammed with people that it looked like a concert after-party. Even in Phoenix’s shaken state, a half dozen police officers seemed excessive. They must have me confused with Beyoncé.

  Security officers had come in matching numbers, dressed like parking valets in crimson jackets with the hotel emblem sewn in golden thread across their breasts. Arturo hung protectively near the elevators, his eyes watching anyone coming or going. The other dancers—Milli and Vanilli, as Phoenix had started calling the dreadlock-wearing teens—sat cross-legged on the hallway’s carpet, eating snacks as if they were watching a movie. Sarge went from person to person, overseeing as usual. Gloria had not left Phoenix’s side, holding her hand.

  The police hadn’t found the intruder yet. Two officers were still in the suite, and Phoenix had overheard a discussion about a K-9 unit to back them up—which wouldn’t be a good thing if Gloria still had the dime bag she’d scored in Houston—but so far the search had failed. The room had windows, but who would be crazy enough to try to escape from ten stories up?

  This was not what she needed the night before a concert. Phoenix tried to block out the commotion so adrenaline wouldn’t keep her awake and blow her gig.

  Gloria’s voice suddenly caught her ear: “His name was Kendrick Allen Hart, from Brooklyn, New York.” She was talking to a wiry, crew-cut officer taking notes.

  At first, Phoenix thought she must be hearing wrong. But Sarge had overheard Gloria, too, because he stood behind Phoenix like a towering oak. “Who’s Kendrick Allen Hart?”

  Gloria gave Phoenix an apologetic look over her shoulder, then she went on, “He’s a fan who stalked her last night. I’m sorry, Phoenix, but it’s true. He found the room last night and kept knocking on our door. Someone from the hotel told him she was here. He wouldn’t leave.”

  “Why the hell didn’t I hear about this before?” Sarge said.

  Phoenix pulled her hand from Gloria’s grasp, irritated by the heat of her cousin’s palm. “That’s my private business. The man in my closet was much shorter. It wasn’t Kendrick.”

  “You saw his face?” Sarge said.

  “No. But I know it wasn’t Kendrick. He wouldn’t do that. Gloria’s exaggerating.”

  “How the hell do you know what a stranger would or wouldn’t do? A fan?” Sarge said it like it was a dirty word. He’d put a few overzealous fans in the hospital, or jail, over the years.

  “He’s right, Phoenix,” Gloria said.

  Gloria had been the one trying to push her into bed with that boy, warning her to keep it quiet, and now she’d made it public record! Phoenix couldn’t wait to get her cousin alone. Angry tears smarted in Phoenix’s eyes. She forced herself to gaze directly at her father’s face, where anger glittered from his molasses-colored irises. She recognized bright fear there, too, and she had never seen Sarge afraid of anything.

  “He spent the night with me,” Phoenix said softly, but not softly enough. Phoenix glanced toward Arturo down the hall, who had lowered his chin to give her a say-WHAT? look. The anger in Sarge’s eyes melted into disbelief, then snapped to anger again. He didn’t speak, but his eyes spoke volumes, The Ray times six.

  “For the sake of argument,” the officer said, “just tell me what you know about this Kendrick Allen Hart. He won’t get in trouble if he didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Phoenix felt her face burning, and she prayed she wasn’t blushing, one more reason she wished she had more of her father’s melanin in her skin. “I know it wasn’t him.”

  “He’s a student at NYU,” Gloria said. “He said he came to see her on a bus.”

  Phoenix had to physically restrain herself from slapping Gloria’s face. What was wrong with this girl? This wasn’t an episode of Law & Order, this was her personal business!

  As if on cue, Phoenix’s phone vibrated. The phone suddenly felt like a rescue boat, and Phoenix snapped it open, turning away from both her father and the police officer. “It’s probably my mother,” Phoenix said, before anyone could object.

  But it wasn’t Mom. “Are you all right, baby girl?” Ronn’s voice said. He sounded hyped up, like he could pounce through the phone.

  Phoenix couldn’t repress her tears. She felt moisture roll down each side of her face, racing toward her chin. “Yeah,” was all she could manage.

  “You don’t sound like it.”

  I’m about to kill my cousin, that’s all. “Just a little stressed.”

  “You want me to fly down there on the next red-eye?”

  “No, don’t do that. Really, it’s fine. They’ve got half the force up in here.” Phoenix glanced up at the officer, whose attention had turned back to Gloria while she gave him a physical description of Kendrick. Her cousin sounded as if she were a police officer herself, full of meticulous detail. Phoenix’s anger and embarrassment cinched her stomach.

  “I’m just worried ’bout you,” Ronn said.

  “Don’t be worried. He didn’t touch me. It’s probably a joke or something.”

  “Naw, fuck that,” Ronn said. “I don’t like this shit, Phee. Not with this DJ Train drama. You know what I’m sayin? There’s mad beef against Three Strikes these days.”

  “I know.”

  “Well, it’s like I just told Sarge—this ain’t no game. I was gonna pull you out, but if you wanna finish your business, I’m hooking you up with a new room at the Ritz. You go on and do that show tomorrow night if you want, but my cousins from Kansas City are on the way, and they’ll be in front of your door until the sun comes up. Then I want you to fly to L.A. first chance you get. I wanna hold you and make sure my baby girl’s safe. A’ight?”

  Phoenix nodded, momentarily forgetting he couldn’t see her. She wondered if Ronn’s cousins would be armed. Her life was becoming a foreign landscape. “All right.”

  “Miss Smalls?” the officer said, irritated. “I need your attention. I’m filling out a report.” You spoiled-ass diva, he was probably thinking.

  “I gotta go, Ronn,” Phoenix said, almost a whisper.

  “A’ight, baby girl. Call me from the Ritz. I love you, Phee.”

  Ronn had never said that before. Kendrick never would have gotten through the door if Phoenix had suspected the words I love you were anywhere in Ronn’s mind.

  After she hung up, Phoenix told the officer no, she didn’t have anything to add to her cousin’s statement—Except that Gloria can kiss my ass, she thought—and could she please be excused? The officer gazed at her skeptically, then closed his notebook and fanned it, dismissing her, as if he figured she’d brought whatever had happened on herself.

  Gloria squeezed Phoenix’s shoulder, whispering in her ear. “I’m sorry, Phee. If it turned out he was the one, and something happened to you, I’d never forgive myself, cuz.”

  “Don’t even talk to me right now,” Phoenix said in a frozen voice, and Gloria let her go.

  The two officers investigating the suite came out with relaxed shoulders, shrugging. “Well, whoever was in there is gone now,” the heavier officer said. “It’s all clear.”

  Phoenix brushed past Gloria to go back inside, hoping for peace, but she heard a din of voices behind her as others followed. In her bedroom, the bureau drawers were wide-open, and her clothes and underwear had been scattered on the floor, in trails. The linens were thrown from her bed, exposing a slightly stained mattress cover underneath. She recognized the black tank top that was part of her concert costume crumpled on the floor inside her closet, inside a tangle of dry-cleaning bags. Sonsofbitches.

  “These damn cops are crazy. This is bullshit,” she said.

  She hadn’t realized anyone was standing behind her until she heard a man’s voice. “It was like this when we got here, miss.” A black hotel employee stood in the doorway.

  Phoenix’s skin fluttered as if she were inside a swarm of insects. If the mess had been there already, then even after the intruder knew he’d been busted, he’d gone thro
ugh her room to mess with her in little ways, taking his time. Phoenix suddenly felt violated, and the adrenaline she’d tried to keep at bay coursed through her. Who the hell…?

  “They searched the room? The whole room?” she said, to be sure.

  The man behind her was wearing a tag identifying him as the hotel night manager. He reminded her of her half brother, Malcolm, in another life, with the same big, intelligent eyes. “Up and down. There is nobody in this room who isn’t supposed to be,” the man said. “Miss Smalls, let me apologize again on behalf of the hotel. If it’s true someone on this staff revealed your room number, we will take immediate action.”

  “This wasn’t him,” Phoenix said. “It was someone else.”

  “Either way, it’s a serious breach.” He walked to her closet and peeked inside again, just to see it was empty with his own eyes.

  Scared to death of a lawsuit, I’m sure. Scared your hotel will be all over BET News.

  Kendrick’s cousin would be fired, and Kendrick might get arrested. Gloria’s wreckage was multiplying. Phoenix sighed, amazed at how silly a grown woman could be.

  Phoenix felt a new pair of eyes on her from the doorway, and she whipped her head around, startled. She expected to find the strange man behind her, the taking-his-time man who had ravaged her room, watching her as cool as an autumn breeze.

  Instead, she found Sarge leaning against the doorjamb with his arms crossed, gazing at his daughter as if he was amazed at how silly a grown woman could be. “You let a fan spend the night with you? Some strange-ass man?” he said.

  Phoenix’s manager had gone to bed. The man in the doorway was her father.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Los Angeles

  Three Strikes Records was headquartered in the Leimert Park section of South Central L.A., an understated clay-colored, two-story building across the street from Tavis Smiley’s new complex on Crenshaw. The label’s only identification was a brass plate beside the door engraved with the script letters TSR. Phoenix liked the funky little neighborhood around it, which was emerging as a community power center. TSR was flanked by a black-owned restaurant and coffeehouse, the Lucy Florence Cafe, and a smattering of other small businesses taking a chance on redevelopment, including galleries, a village theater and a dance co-op. The area hummed with promise, and to Phoenix it felt like a launching pad.

  The glass door to TSR was black, impossible to see beyond, and motion-activated video cameras tracked the movements of anyone who approached. The first time Phoenix had stood before this door, she’d shivered to her toenails. The multiplatinum rapper, actor and master entrepreneur G-Ronn wanted to meet with her about a possible record deal! That day, Sarge had driven her in the ancient Corolla she used in L.A., counting on friends to drive her.

  Today, she and Sarge were chauffeured in Ronn’s custom-armored black Lexus LX 470 by Ronn’s personal driver and sometime-bodyguard, a man named Kai who looked like a Sumo wrestler, the son of an American soldier and a Japanese barmaid. As she climbed out of the SUV, Phoenix’s eardrums were ringing from the vehicle’s sound system. Kai was pumping out Public Enemy’s “Welcome to the Terrordome” like the car was leading a street parade, but she didn’t mind. At nine, when she’d been exposed, wide-eyed, to the explosive colors, music and messages in Do the Right Thing, Phoenix had fallen for both Spike and P.E. for life. She, Ronn and Kai had once sat discussing that film for two hours while they worked late one night. Ronn said Do the Right Thing inspired him to be a rapper and make his own movies.

  “You be good, baby girl,” the big man said, winking as he deposited her.

  Phoenix leaned through his driver’s window to wrap her arms around his neck. “You too, Krispy Kreme,” she said, and he chuckled. Kai almost always had a box of Krispy Kremes on the passenger seat beside whatever book he was reading, ready for both guests and personal consumption. Even Kai’s breath was sugary. Kai’s the sweetest nigger you never want to fuck with, Ronn said of his childhood friend. Kai was the principal suspect in the DJ Train incident in Brooklyn, and that alone told Phoenix the charge was bullshit through and through.

  “Safe journey, young blood,” Sarge told Kai with a clenched-fist Panther salute.

  “You know it, dawg.”

  Wordlessly, Sarge strode ahead of Phoenix to TSR’s door. There were a series of unfinished arguments still suspended between her and her father, so she stood beside Sarge in silence, returning the blank stare of the dark door as they waited to be buzzed in. She slouched under the weight of the dread she had felt since their plane landed that morning.

  Felicha’s girlish eyes twinkled above her round, dark cheeks as she met them at the door, practically squealing. “I can’t believe baby girl’s finally come to call on little ol’ us!” Felicha said, clamping her arms around her in a spirited hug. She was another of Ronn’s cousins; almost everyone who worked for him was either family or a longtime friend. “Girl, it’s so good to see you! You too, Sarge. But I know you can give me a better smile than that.”

  “Afternoon, sweetness,” Sarge said, leaning to kiss Felicha’s forehead beneath the spill of her glistening curls, although his smile didn’t improve. Sarge’s face had been like a plaster cast since St. Louis, his thick jowls frozen in place. Sarge said her behavior might have jeopardized their working relationship with Ronn, and she thought his Panthers-era paranoia was in overdrive. But now that she was at Three Strikes, she wasn’t so sure.

  “Ronn’s beside himself, he’s so excited you’re coming,” Felicha told Phoenix with a deep, private gaze. “He’s tryin’ to front for his boys, but he has missed you, Phee.”

  “I’ve missed him, too,” Phoenix said, her mouth dry. She didn’t glance toward Sarge.

  As Felicha led them down the hallway, full of chatter about Ronn’s new film ventures, the row of gold and platinum records garnered by G-Ronn and his Three Strikes protégés gleamed on the walls like portals to the sun, moon and stars, Phoenix thought. Her nose picked up the sharp scent of marijuana, which always lingered in the hallway, however faint, like a favorite incense. The day she’d met Ronn, there had been a mound of lush marijuana on a silver serving tray in his office, as if it were cookies and tea. Only Sarge’s presence had kept Ronn from offering her any, she figured. Phoenix couldn’t wait to call Gloria and tell her about it.

  But Phoenix was not going to think about Gloria today, if she could help it.

  “…took me to dinner at this joint Spago last night with a cat from Universal Studios, right? Phee, this man was a trip. I never saw nobody kiss Ronn’s ass like that in my life. I was fixin’ to ask him if he wanted to get down under the table,” Felicha said. She was the only one who laughed at her joke.

  “That’s nice Ronn took you with him,” Phoenix said absently, after a pause.

  “Hey, girl, when you’re out of town, I get to be Ronn’s date everywhere. I had my picture with Ronn in Vibe and US Weekly last week! I ain’t mad you’re back, though.”

  The red light was on outside of the studio door, signaling a recording session in progress. Even with the soundproofing, Phoenix could hear the tenacious thump of the bass through the door. Her heartbeat vaulted to match the music’s pounding, and her palms tickled with perspiration. Phoenix didn’t know if it was premonition, Sarge’s fears, or only guilt amping up her nerves. All three, probably. I hope I don’t have to go in here and kiss Ronn’s ass like that movie exec at Spago.

  Felicha held her finger up to her lips as she grabbed the studio doorknob to let them in.

  There were three other studios at TSR, but this was Ronn’s main recording studio, nicknamed The Mothership, large and lavish, decorated like a junior-high schoolboy’s fantasy—arcade-quality videogames, Mortal Kombat and Galaga, sat on either side of the door as she walked in, and the walls were a riot of concert posters and centerfolds of women in various states of undress. The studio itself was a showroom of state-of-the-art sound equipment—knobs, boards and monitors that might as well be the control pa
nel of the space shuttle. Phoenix could deal with the MIDI controllers and synthesizers fine—anything that helped her play what she heard in her head—but she didn’t have enough gadget appreciation for the rest of Ronn’s toys.

  The first day she came, Ronn had toured her through The Mothership like a science geek dissecting his annual project. This is the true shit, our Sony DMX-R100 “Baby Oxford” Digital Production Console—check it. We got an E-Mu XL-7 Command Station goin’ on, and a Kurzweil K-25000 RS sampler/sound module—of COURSE—and we run all that shit through this Manley Massive Passive Parametric EQ.

  Ronn’s love for his studio had been touching, but a band spoke to Phoenix. Her band in Miami—the late, great Phoenix & the New Fire—had Phoenix on keyboards; Jabari channeling Jaco and Bootsy like a madman on bass; La’Keitha tearing up her electric guitar; and Andres playing those drums and congas like he was sending urgent warnings across the whole of Mother Africa. Phoenix had occasionally picked up her electric violin to add shades of Cairo, Dublin, Nashville or Vienna. The Mothership had its own music, but Phoenix didn’t know all its dialects. And even after hours in this studio with Ronn and D’Real—first recording, then mixing (with the magic of gadgets replacing the sounds of her band)—she was hardly more fluent than the day Ronn unveiled it to her. Much of it was still a mystery, jabbering in blinking lights.

  Phoenix saw the back of Ronn’s head in his characteristic white Kangol cap in a slant across his closely shaved scalp. D’Real was here, and so were label employees Manny, Lil’ Mo and Katrice—as well as two men in all-black L.A. Chic Phoenix didn’t recognize. None of them had seen Phoenix and Sarge walk in because they were mesmerized by the recording booth. Ronn bounced on the balls of his feet, nodding to the rhythm of a muted dance-hall-style beat that was trademark D’Real, schizoid and unruly. A lightning storm rocked The Mothership, and all of its crew had been called to the deck to witness it.