Soul Siren

by Aisha Duquesne

  The one thing she said that stuck with me was that we had time. Months to go. I would have to be patient, very, very patient. Jill Chandler was still snooping around, and it didn’t look like she was going anywhere soon. Luther’s death would have to look like an accident, nothing suspicious about it at all. Steven could be written off as gang violence or a lover’s revenge, and Morgan could be a break-in, but for Luther to go would stretch plausibility to an angry snap. Too soon right now. I had to think. I had to do careful planning. And as I sat turning it over in my mind, it occurred to me I didn’t really wish Luther dead. He wasn’t guilty of hurting her as the others were. You don’t need Luther dead.

  That was the answer. You don’t need Luther dead, you simply need him out of the way. My solution, I thought, would have a natural tidiness to it, an elegance. I wish I had planned more carefully, but now I had to fit the pieces together that I’d been left with. I went and fetched my handbag, digging around for the business card in my wallet from Holland, the police detective. Don’t hesitate to call in case you think of anything else, and I had. Jill had called the guy an asshole. Well, assholes had their uses, too.

  We were having drinks, ironically enough, at a club opened by Steven seven months earlier, still going reasonably strong after his death. It was called Slow Fade, and he had told his designers to unapologetically rip off the design from Toronto’s legendary RPM. He must have been inspired by Erica’s hand-me-down stories from our parents. Back in its heyday, a mini-bus would pick clubbers up at a certain stop on Front Street, I think, and whisk them over to the double-decker warehouse of a nightspot. You walked into the foyer of RPM, and there was a full-size biplane suspended from wires. The showpiece for the club floor was a suspended Cadillac at a down angle over your head with mannequins re-creating the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The lucky ones got to see the Rolling Stones do unannounced gigs there several times when they were in town—this was, of course, before they got truly mummified.

  Slow Fade had all that, plus Steven threw in a modest working re-creation of the Trevi Fountain with a Marcello Mastroianni figure posed with a blond mannequin who was supposed to be Anita Ekberg. Didn’t matter that most of the twenty-somethings who paid the exorbitant cover never got the pop culture reference. He knew they’d get the vintage Richard Roundtree figure in the tan coat giving the finger to the front end of a yellow cab. And not far away was a Tussaud-like representation of Steven himself, grinning and posed like an action figure from the video of one of his biggest hits, all fresh-faced blond boy-wonder. God, it was tasteless. Since those dummies never quite look like the real person, Erica, Luther and I could just tolerate it, though Erica had strong words for the manager. His reply was hard to argue with. He was right. Steven would have loved it.

  They were playing his music at the moment. The mixes he’d been working on the night he died, all warmed-over and served up just as Erica predicted in a Final Sessions album. I heard something familiar. The snippet of bass line from “It Was a Pleasure to Burn” then the peculiar sound…

  “What is that anyway?” Erica asked Luther. “An animal call?”

  “Don’t have a fucking clue,” he answered. “Steven always did treat a mixing board like a blender.”

  “It’s pretty distinctive,” offered Jill. “Is it supposed to be a girl coming or something?”

  “Would be just his style,” said Erica.

  I sipped my white wine spritzer and said, “I bet you anything it turns out to be something simple. I think it sounds like a baby or a kid.”

  “Doesn’t sound like any kid I know,” laughed Erica. “Unless you hang with some scary-ass Exorcist babies!”

  I didn’t press the point. Some geek on the Net would eventually post the breakdown of the mix, and I’d win a bet two months down the road. Behind me the Steven Swann tune blended into P. Diddy into a cut from Pariah into Justin Timberlake.

  Strobe lights flashing away and bodies packing the floor for the remix of a Deborah Cox hit: You’ve been cheatin’ and tellin’ me lies—

  Jill coaxing a half-hearted Luther to dance while Erica and I hung back. And none of us saw the brawny stolid types in suits doing a Red Sea parting of the crowd.

  You’ve been creepin’ while I’m sleepin’ at night…

  Until we noticed the two uniforms behind them, one still with his radio loudly squawking every code from dispatch.

  I didn’t let on how I recognised Detective Holland. Jill knew, but I wasn’t her problem at the moment. We could barely hear the voice lost in the music announcing Luther Banks, you’re under arrest for the murder of Morgan Draper—

  I think the bastards did it here for the sake of embarrassment. It would have been easy enough to track Luther down. I think they cherry-picked their moment. I think they got their rocks off arresting a successful brother and a high-profile one at that, and I think I would have sincerely lost my temper along with the others.

  If I hadn’t set him up.

  “What are you doing? This is bogus!”

  Jill telling us all to calm down, it would get sorted out. Luther’s eyes on Erica as the cuffs were snapped shut on his wrists. His astonished denial was almost pitiful. Erica calling his name as he was led out the door.

  I had called that afternoon to say, “Detective, I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, but you asking me all those questions and the whole ordeal…It got me thinking.”

  No, of course my name wouldn’t be mentioned if he were brought in for questioning. What kind of argument did he have with your friend Morgan? Well, how heated did it get? Me, doing the loyal protests: Look, Luther is one of the good guys. He even trained both Erica and me how to shoot a gun because he was worried about our safety! Interesting, muttered the detective.

  “No, you don’t understand,” I insisted. “Luther wanted to help Morgan. He signed off as producer on the higher fee for Morgan’s arrangements. He didn’t care at all that Erica had a thing with him.”

  With every word, I blew away a few more grains of earth that Luther was standing on, a very, very precarious foundation. I wished now that I had planted a piece of circumstantial evidence on him. But knowing the cops, they would go digging around and connect what scraps they could to fit their theory.

  And Jill didn’t know it, but she had helped me put him in their sights.

  I had called her out to come see the movie that evening. A few sound effects in the background, and she believed I was downtown. I corroborated her alibi, and she corroborated mine. But she had ended her date with Luther to come hang out with me, and that left him alone. Without an alibi.

  “Luther, we’ll follow you down,” Erica assured him. “I’ll call my lawyers and get you out of there.”

  I thought, No, you won’t, honey. And when he was gone, it would be all right again. All of this talk of hitching herself to Luther’s star would end because his light in the sky would go out. No doubt, she’d visit him for quite a while. She might even get more militant in her politics because of his case. But whatever they had would wither for lack of contact or hope. In grief, she’d probably compose her most moving songs ever, chart toppers every one of them. There would be men, lots of men. Carelessly, frantically loved and lusted after, easily discarded, but through all of that, I would be available. I would be needed again.

  Jail was where they put him, and jail was where he’d stay. Rikers Island. Luther insisted Erica not come to visit him in person, but he could have phone calls. He urged her not to cancel any show dates in the city, though we talked a lot about delaying the mini-tour that was coming up in five weeks. I argued in front of her and the label brass that it wouldn’t do a thing to help Luther, and, in fact, we’d get hit hard financially over cancellations. Secretly, I wanted Erica to lose herself in her work. I needed her to stop believing she could effect any change, to accept that things would happen to Luther, and there would be nothing she could do to stop them.

  We flew up to do a couple of shows in Montreal and
Toronto. No talking to the press at all.

  I waited on a daily basis for Jill to come rattle my nerves, informing me that she was doing another “favour” for Erica—this time not investigating a death but trying to clear our friend. But she didn’t knock on my door. She didn’t sound me out in the wings of the stadium while Erica performed. I found it almost peculiar.

  I couldn’t resist testing the waters, suggesting to her, “Look, you always say you’ve got pull with the cops. Can’t they tell you what’s going on? How their case is developing? This is Luther we’re talking about, Jill. He couldn’t have done it!”

  “I know,” she said in a defeated voice. “But this time, I can’t stick my nose in. They know I’ve slept with the guy. Don’t ask me how, they just do. So they’re not going to listen to me. Besides, Mish—” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Can you really be absolutely, positively sure he didn’t do it? The cops think he was pissed off that Erica got it on sometimes with Morgan, and, you know, Luther’s been hung up on her for ages. Ages.”

  “It’s Luther,” I said again.

  “We can never know what people are capable of, Mish.”

  She’s given up. If she’s given up, the road is clear ahead, I thought. At last. No one in my way anymore.

  Endings

  A show at the Garden. The echoing whistles and claps as Erica’s piano played the opening bars of “Late Night Promises” and then the tidal wave of grateful applause. It was all before us now, not just Grammys but all kinds of honours and challenges. I had managed to get her to re-think the movie roles. I had told her hey, why don’t we pack up and hit a nice hot beach after the European tour? Give ourselves a rest, God knows you deserve it after this year. I was showing her brochures only minutes before the floor director said everything was ready. She seemed distant tonight, subdued. “Knock them dead,” I’d told her. She nodded at me as if I were sending her off to a gallows. I told myself I had to make allowances. She had been remarkably strong with all that had happened, and as the spotlight hit her, you could see the familiar joy, all the required energy and more. Maybe on a subconscious level, I knew something was going to happen because I relished watching her that night. I watched her like a fan.

  As she finished up and left the cheering and clapping behind, I walked with her into her dressing room. There’d often be too many people in here that I would have to shoo out: hairstylists, makeup artists, wardrobe people, production workers. But none of them was there, only a few catering staff for the buffet and snack tables. The star’s dressing room was impressively huge when half-empty. And I knew something was wrong when I saw Jill. She wasn’t alone.

  “Luther!” I said, stunned. “You’re out…?”

  His voice was solemn, curt. “Hello, Michelle.”

  Then I realised that Erica wasn’t surprised like I was. She didn’t rush over and wrap her arms around him, which meant that any tearful reunion scene had been played out beforehand while I wasn’t around. She never told me he’s back. And Luther could only be back because the cops didn’t believe he was a suspect anymore.

  “How did you…? I mean, when did you…?” I spouted questions but he didn’t answer. No one was offering answers.

  “It has to be done now, I guess,” said Erica. I didn’t know who she was talking to or what she meant.

  It was Jill who answered. “Yeah. We waited until after the show.”

  Erica nodded, her face grim as it expressed thanks for this small courtesy. I felt the earthquake coming, but I couldn’t bring myself to run. Jill sat next to a small boom-box, and now she hit the play button. We instantly heard Steven Swann’s last track, the very track he played in the studio just before I shot him.

  “You know this one, don’t you, Mish?”

  “What’s going on?” I demanded softly. But I didn’t think my meek mouse routine was going to work this time.

  Pressing me again: “You know it, right?”

  “It’s Steven. What is all this?”

  The song came to the bizarre vocal sound effect, and Jill said, “There,” stabbing out a finger to shut the music off.

  “I remember us talking about this sound when we were in the club,” she reminded me. “The night they came to arrest Luther. Erica said maybe it was an animal, and I said it must be a girl having an orgasm, and no one was sure. Except you. You guessed it was a child.”

  I didn’t like where this was going. In a scornful voice, I said, “Well, is it a kid or not? Don’t leave me in suspense! You guys still haven’t told me what’s going on here. Erica, what’s—”

  Jill’s voice rolled over mine. “Funny how you knew what that sound is and no one else did. I don’t think anybody in a million years could have placed that.”

  “So what?” I said.

  “Well, how did you?” she asked. “It’s been cleaned up, and it’s been recorded backwards. You got an amazing pair of ears on you to place that.”

  They were all staring at me—Erica, Jill, Luther, the anonymous types holding food platters and clipboards. We could hear the shouts and cheers for a third encore, making my friend’s name a chant in three syllables: Er—i—ca, Er—i—ca… Clap, clap, clap with each part of the chant.

  “Steven must have mentioned he was using an effect like that, and I forgot about it,” I ventured.

  “Oh, yeah? Well, he recorded that sound on the day he died. He was making a charity appearance at a day care centre, and witnesses saw him fooling around with his little tape recorder. If I remember correctly, you said you never saw Steven that day.”

  “I didn’t,” I replied, my eyes appealing to Erica. I looked straight at her as I said again with emphasis, “I didn’t. You know how Steven talked about his ideas. He must have mentioned it to me before.”

  “Yeah, that’s convenient,” sneered Jill. “He must have played that tape, and when you shot him, you left the recorder right where he dropped it. The cops gave me access to all the stuff in his studio, and I played that thing a million times. I ran it backward and forward, backwards and forward, and you know why?”

  I shook my head mutely, not understanding where she was going with this.

  Jill laughed with no mirth in it. “Because I thought: this is fresh. No one’s ever heard this before. Except the killer.”

  “All I did was guess a sound,” I protested.

  “That’s right,” said Jill. “That’s absolutely right. It proves nothing. But it sure is strange how you can possibly know that sound, and no one else can. I can’t prove you killed Steven Swann, Michelle, but I know you did. They all know you did now.”

  “Oh, my God,” whispered Erica, starting to shiver. Up until this moment, she hadn’t wanted to believe it.

  “Erica,” I said, my voice breaking, knowing I had lost her but still making my appeal, choosing my words carefully. “I’ve protected you. I’ve always protected you!”

  “You can tell yourself that about Steven Swann,” said Jill. “And who knows what he would have done? He was a callous little shit according to everything I’ve heard. But you killed Morgan for nothing.”

  “I didn’t kill him,” I insisted. “And what are you talking about?”

  Er—I—ca, Er—i—ca…

  The floor director rushed in, oblivious, not picking up a clue about the voices backstage raised in anger and shock. “They’re tearing the joint up out there. You sure you don’t want to do the Neneh Cherry cover or somethi—”

  “Fred, not NOW!” roared Luther.

  The guy cowered from the indignant rage, looking at each one of us in turn as if we would give him sympathy. He got none. He backed up a couple of steps, turned and then fled to the wings.

  Erica was struggling to get to her feet, in shock all over again about the murders. My murders. She wouldn’t look at me anymore. She said to Jill, “You tell her. I think…I think I’m going to go throw up.”

  I watched my best friend leave me, Luther sheltering her with one arm and taking one last look at me in
disgust. And I still didn’t have a clue how this great revelation of Jill’s should rob me of my purpose. She couldn’t possibly have any evidence. I watched Erica go while Jill kept up her lecture.

  “You’re nuts, Michelle. You killed Steven Swann out of jealousy, and you killed Morgan over what? A bunch of pop tunes?”

  His claims over the songs. So she had found that out. Still nothing to connect me to his death.

  “It’s Erica’s talent that makes her stuff rise above all the crap on MTV,” Jill went on. “She’ll be played for ages.”

  “And Morgan was going to rob her of all that!” I insisted. “He was going to—”

  “Morgan was going to do no such thing,” said Jill. “He couldn’t. Sure, he did a couple of bar gigs where he got drunk and started spouting off, and there are witnesses to that. But did you ever once see a public interview with him complaining? Did you ever see him take her on over the issue? No. Why? Because he never had a case, and Erica knew it. He bitched about it to you because he saw Erica drifting away from him, needing him less and less, and that hurt his pocketbook more than his feelings. He thought his threat would scare you, but with your usual discretion, you wouldn’t bring it up with her. You’d just hire him somewhere or buy him off the way you got rid of the dancers she casually fucked or the hangers-on who wanted to go spill their guts to the Enquirer.”

  “How can you be so sure?” I demanded. “You’re guessing what he thought! You’re guessing what Morgan did! How could you know he didn’t have a case? How could anyone know? How could Erica?”

  “Oh, but she knew, Michelle. That’s just it. Because Morgan never wrote those songs. He was blowing hot air. Erica’s father did.”

  Oh, no. No, no, no, my mind screamed.

  “Didn’t Erica tell you herself that her father used to compose? That he gave her a few bits of melody to use as she pleased? Never wanted any credit. She was his daughter after all. She could have them and change them, do with them what she liked. He wrote those original melodies.”