Blanche Cleans Up: A Blanche White Mystery (Blanche White Mystery Series Book 3)

by Barbara Neely

  Cousin Charlotte levered herself out of the cab, adjusted her hat, paid her fare, and harangued the driver into carrying her bags up the short stoop to the front door. Then she reminded him that Inez had already tipped him when they’d dropped her off. Cousin Charlotte smelled of trains and down home. She hugged Blanche and squeezed Shaquita half to death.

  Cousin Charlotte gave them both a long look. “What’s wrong?”

  Neither Shaquita nor Blanche spoke.

  “All right.” Cousin Charlotte sank heavily into an armchair. She took off her hat and fanned herself with it. “Just tell me and stop actin’ like you killed somebody.” She stared straight at Blanche.

  “It ain’t my story to tell,” Blanche said.

  Shaquita raised her head defiantly, but when she looked at her grandmother, her eyes and her head both lowered.

  Cousin Charlotte rose and walked slowly around Shaquita. She stopped in front of Shaquita and held the girl’s chin in her right hand. “Whose is it?” she asked.

  Shaquita began to cry.

  Blanche stayed until Cousin Charlotte was through screaming “Oh my sweet Jesus!” before she hurried out the door and down the stoop. She knew she wasn’t out of the discussion and the sweet Jesuses yet. Cousin Charlotte would likely call before Blanche got home, and would certainly be in her face tomorrow, but for the next three blocks she was free—until she got to Miz Inez’s house.

  Miz Inez looked as though she’d lost twenty pounds. There were new lines in her face, and she moved like a woman who wasn’t sure where she was going.

  “I’m real sorry about Ray-Ray, Miz Inez.”

  Inez was quiet for a long time, then heaved a huge, slow sigh that filled the room with shreds of the pain eating at her insides. “Everybody keep tellin’ me I’ll get over it in time. But I ain’t got much time left.” She tried to smile and almost managed. “Well, I ain’t the only one. Poor Miss Felicia. We got something in common now, something awful. I called her the other day. She told me.” Miz Inez cleared her throat and sat up a little straighter. “Course, that boy of hers always was unstable. Funny, you know.”

  Blanche watched Miz Inez building herself a dead son who wasn’t gay. It was like killing Ray-Ray a second time.

  They were both silent for a minute or two. Blanche had gone there wishing she could tell Miz Inez the truth about Ray-Ray’s and Miz Barker’s deaths. It would be so much better for Inez to hear it from her instead of the police. But if Miz Inez couldn’t accept that Ray-Ray was gay, there was no way Blanche could figure out to tell her about Donnie without telling her how Marc, her son’s other lover, had given Ray-Ray the combination to Allister’s safe so that Ray-Ray could steal the tape. Blanche really didn’t want any more people to know she’d even heard of the tape, let alone that she’d had it or had seen it. Allister Brindle was sure to catch hell over this, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t powerful enough to make her life a misery. Or end it. Her tongue felt thick and hot, swollen with what couldn’t be said.

  “They goin’ away, you know. Miss Felicia and Mr. Allister.”

  “Long enough for you to have to get another job?” Blanche asked her.

  “Wasn’t goin’ back there noway,” Inez said. “Nothin’ to keep me in this cold, prejudiced town. Goin’ back to Farleigh soon’s I can.”

  Blanche almost told her to go now, tonight, before the police showed up to break her heart beyond repair. She told Miz Inez good-bye and wondered whether her own life would now return to normal. She looked forward to her own day jobs. Most of the houses where she usually worked were empty when she cleaned them. In those that weren’t, she’d already established that she was not the shrink or the girlfriend and wasn’t interested in listening to secrets or giving advice.

  Blanche and both kids went to the community meeting that evening. Blanche wondered how many people filing into the room had any idea of what was coming. Most folks looked grim, as if they at least had a feeling that the news wasn’t good. Taifa wanted to go sit with some friends, but Blanche kept her by her side. She made sure their seats at the end of a row of folding chairs had a clear path to the door. She didn’t really expect trouble, but Samuelson wasn’t above playing rough, as she well knew. The same thing had obviously occurred to Aminata and the Community Reawakening Project. Ten men with orange armbands that said security stood around the room in clumps of two and three.

  Aminata knew what she was doing. It was dinnertime. She didn’t expect folks to pay attention on an empty stomach, so as usual, the back table was heaped with cold cuts and rolls, coffee and sodas, and milk.

  The room nearly vibrated from the premeeting hum. An older woman with serious hips fanned herself with a folded newspaper. A belly laugh from the back of the room rippled the air like heat. Taifa twisted and rubbernecked, waving to friends who’d already seen her and shouting to those who hadn’t until Blanche gave her The Eye. Malik was already up front with Aminata and Othello. They were joined by someone who appeared from the back to be a short, blue-suited white man with a briefcase, who turned out to be a very light-skinned black woman.

  Aminata raised her hands for silence.

  “First of all, I want to thank y’all for coming. I know this is a week night and folks have plenty to do at home, so I’m gonna try to make this meeting as short as possible.” She looked around the room again. “We’re going to get started in a couple minutes, but first, did everybody get something to eat? Coffee? You kids get yourselves a glass of milk,” she told two little boys sitting in front. “Don’t want anything to go to waste.”

  A few people got up and tiptoed to the food table. Aminata shuffled the papers she had in her hand, had a short conversation with the light-skinned sister, then gave the room another one of those silencing looks.

  “There’s only one thing on the agenda this evening. Community leadership.” Aminata paused and looked around the room as if to make sure everyone was paying attention. “Now, I want to introduce you to the young man who made all of this possible with his determination, hard work, and concern for his community. He’s going to tell you how this project got started.”

  Taifa was nearly bouncing in her seat, and Blanche had to keep her own grin under control. Malik, on the other hand, looked and sounded as though standing in front of a roomful of adults explaining why he wanted to do a paper on Roxbury and the environment was an everyday thing.

  “…and I learned how to do a lot of things working on this paper,” Malik went on. “Like getting information from the state and how to interview people to find out what happened to them or what they know. The biggest thing I learned was how good it feels knowing what I did is going to help Roxbury and maybe make some little kids safer. I know there are a lot of teens like me who would feel good about helping the community, too, if people would treat them like Aminata and the other people around this organization treated me. Thank you.” He looked startled by the loud applause.

  “Before I get to the point, for those of you who don’t know her, this sister”—Aminata held her arm out toward the suited woman standing near her—“is Marilyn Wharton, the lawyer for the Community Reawakening Project.” She paused, moved a step closer to the audience, and began speaking again. “You know,” she said, “it’s always hard criticizing our own. White America gives our leaders so much flack, we feel like we always got to be out in front with praise for them, and come to their defense, no matter what they do. Now, that would be just fine if our leaders weren’t human beings like the rest of us. Being human, they do what humans do: They sometimes make mistakes. But what about when they choose to do wrong? What are we supposed to do then?” Once again, she stopped talking and looked around the room, this time waiting for a response. “Well?” she demanded.

  “Fry their asses!” someone shouted. Not-quite-easy laughter washed across the room. “Give ’em hell!” someone else called out. “Chastise their butts!” a woman sa
id in a commanding voice.

  “That’s right!” Aminata said. “That’s right, chastise them. And that’s why we’re here this evening.” She held up the papers she had in her hand. “These documents make it clear that the Reverend Maurice Samuelson, of the Temple of Divine Enlightenment, has made a mistake. Not by accident, but on purpose. One child may have died because of it. Other children were certainly poisoned by lead because of the mistake Reverend Samuelson chose to make.”

  A rumble rose up from the room.

  “These papers prove that Reverend Samuelson is the owner of a boarded-up building on Register Street where there were once four apartments, apartments in which children were poisoned by lead. These papers show that Reverend Samuelson knew there was lead in this building. We talked to people who used to live there. They told us that someone who worked for the owner showed them certificates that proved the buildings had been deleaded. Those certificates were phony. And the good reverend hid his ownership of this building behind a corporation. His dead first wife is supposed to be the president, even though the corporation wasn’t established till after she died. We also believe he bribed a…”

  The door to the room crashed open. Samuelson and four of his boys stomped in. Security guards quickly formed a human fence around them, but allowed Samuelson to pass.

  “I’m glad you decided to come, Reverend Samuelson,” Aminata called out. “I was just planning to tell folks you’d been invited here tonight but had decided not to face the community. I’m glad you changed your mind. Please have a seat.”

  Samuelson hesitated. He’d obviously expected his entrance to stop Aminata in her tracks. He stood in the aisle, seeming uncertain about his next move. Aminata went on.

  “As I was saying, Reverend Samuelson, here, has made some bad mistakes. Y’all know what lead poisoning does to our children. And you know what it does to our kids when they get older, making them violent, making them hurt their friends, like my sweet son did. My boy…but I ain’t going to talk about that now.” She turned and gave Othello a big smile before she went on.

  Blanche thought she felt a shift in people’s attention. She looked around the room. Was everyone as uncomfortable as she was with Aminata’s wishful thinking about a connection between lead poisoning and violence? It was almost embarrassing to hear her talk about it.

  “…four youths from Roxbury waiting to go to trial for killing somebody,” Aminata said. “Three of those four boys had lead-paint poisoning when they were kids. The effects of mistakes like Reverend Samuelson’s don’t just make us sick. They can kill us and make us kill.”

  “Hold up, young lady. I’m a man of the cloth. I’m an upstanding member of this community. You better be careful about what you say. I could sue you and your ragtag organization for every nickel you got.”

  Aminata waved the papers in the air and spoke with even more vigor. “And furthermore, the Reverend’s phony corporation owns other buildings in this neighborhood, too. We need to be talking to people who live in them to see if—”

  “Woman! You don’t know who you messin’ with,” Samuelson huffed. “I got friends downtown. Friends who won’t take kindly to some crazy woman trying to make me look bad.” Samuelson looked at the people around him. He spread his hands, palms up. “You all know me. You know what I done for this community. You gonna sit here and listen to this—”

  “Man, just tell us what you gonna do ’bout this lead-poison mess you done made for our kids,” a man called out.

  “That’s right!” a number of people agreed.

  “I ain’t got to explain nothing to y’all bunch of…” Samuelson changed direction and eased toward the back of the room, where his boys were still surrounded by security men.

  “You need to pay attention to the message on your car, Rev,” a deep voice down front suggested.

  “His car? What’s his car got to do with it?” someone else wanted to know.

  “Somebody sent him a message,” a deep voice replied. “It said ‘God don’t like ugly’ in big orange letters, right on his hood.”

  The room rocked with laughter.

  “That’s what I call a serious monogram,” a woman called out to more hoots of laughter.

  Samuelson’s eyes darted from side to side. He looked like a bully losing his first fight.

  “You ain’t heard the last of this,” he shouted. “I got lawyers, too. And if any of you niggers is responsible for fucking up my car, I’ll…”

  Hoots and jeers cut him off.

  “And God bless you, too, Reverend,” someone called after him, which caused even more hilarity.

  “Traitor! Slumlord!” people hollered after Samuelson. He tried to bluff as he turned and strutted toward the door, but everyone had seen the shock on his face. He slammed out the door, his boys close behind him. The room broke out in applause.

  After the meeting, people milled around talking in excited voices and signing up for Aminata’s reparations committee that would work with the authorities to break Samuelson’s back. Blanche made her way over to Othello.

  “What happened?” she asked him.

  He looked puzzled.

  “I thought you were going to tell folks who killed Miz Barker and Ray-Ray.”

  He looked at her for a long time. “Sorry, sister, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  For a moment, Blanche was too shocked to protest. He was walking away when she found her voice. “Wait a minute, I want to know why—”

  He held up his hand to silence her. He gave her a look so intense, Blanche could feel it trying to touch her brain.

  “Remember what I told you when you first called me? A hundred and ten percent, remember? That’s how Ex-Cons for Community Safety deals with problems. One hundred and ten percent. Forget him. I already have.”

  Blanche would have liked to pretend she didn’t know what Othello meant, but she couldn’t. “But he’s got a wife and kids!”

  “He should have thought of that,” Othello told her. “So long, Blanche.”

  Blanche was as chilled as if she were outside in a snowstorm without a coat. She’d called on Othello because she never liked getting involved with the police, never trusted them to do the decent thing. She stared at Othello’s back moving away from her. Why had she expected him to have more faith in the system than she did—he, who’d already been through it? Yet she really thought he’d turn Donnie and the recording of his confession over to the police. She’d thought there would be a trial where she’d get the answers to her questions—like how exactly had Donnie killed Ray-Ray, who was so much stronger? Had Donnie and Ray-Ray had a real relationship besides the one Lucinda saw in the bar? Had Donnie tried to talk Ray-Ray into whitemailing Brindle, or had Donnie decided from jump to kill Ray-Ray for the tape? Now she would never have her questions answered, because Othello hadn’t turned Donnie over to the police. And never would. Never could now. But why did she care what Othello had done to Donnie when just last night she’d been ready to kill Donnie herself?

  But I didn’t, she thought, I didn’t kill him. She’d known without thinking that pulling that trigger would have changed her into a different person—a woman who had taken somebody’s life. Now she felt as responsible for and changed by Donnie’s death as if she’d gone and killed him herself. She could feel the weight of his death like a fifty-pound hump on her back.

  Taifa tugged at her sweater. “Let’s go, Moms.”

  Blanche turned and headed toward the door, but Malik was still talking to Aminata. Blanche ducked her head. She didn’t think she could talk to Aminata right now, not so soon after what she’d learned about Othello. She knew that men like General Schwarzkopf could send people’s children into war and still be nice to their wives, that the men who dropped the atomic bombs on Japan were all supposed to be decent, sane people, but she didn’t believe it for a minute. All she wanted to say t
o Aminata was “Run!”

  As soon as she could, Blanche beckoned to Taifa and Malik, and the three of them left.

  “We really nailed him, didn’t we, Moms!” Malik was as excited as Blanche had ever seen him.

  She threw an arm around his shoulders. “I’m really proud of you, Malik. I’m glad you dug your heels in about doing this project with Aminata.”

  Malik grinned at her.

  “And to think,” Taifa chimed in, “he couldn’t have done any of this if he hadn’t been lucky enough to be born my baby brother.”

  “Oh yeah?” Malik made a grab for her hair. Taifa shrieked and took off down the block with Malik right behind her. Blanche was surprised at how pleased she was to see them still doing their kid thing. Not yet, she thought, not yet.

  The phone was ringing as Blanche put her key in the front door. She ran to it, a grin on her face.

  “Hey, girl! How’d you know I needed to talk to you?”

  Ardell laughed. “It ain’t always about you, Blanche. I got some talking I need to do, too. Serious talk.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Ain’t nothin’ wrong. Ain’t nobody sick and I ain’t bringin’ no bad news.”

  “Well, what’s up?” Blanche settled into her favorite armchair, ready for a long listen. Then she sat up straight. “Wait a minute. Did you say ‘bringing’?”

  “Train gets into Boston at seven-twenty-five Saturday evening.”

  “Get off at Back Bay Station,” Blanche told her. “I’ll be waiting for you, you know that.” She had fifty questions, but she recognized Ardell’s I-ain’t-talking tone of voice. Blanche decided to wait to tell Ardell her news, too. It was the kind of story that could wait.