Drumsticks

by Charlotte Carter

  He did try to stop blubbering. He was snuffling and wheezing, trying to calm his breath. He wiped at his eyes with his free hand. But, when he pulled himself together, it wasn’t in order to lower the gun and surrender.

  Fuck! He was aiming at my heart.

  This wasn’t right. No, no, no. This was all wrong. I was supposed to live to age ninety and have a blowout weeping-and-wailing Negro kind of funeral like the one in that soapy flick my mom and I watched on the late show—Imitation of Life.

  That, or I was going to buy it when I missed the hairpin turn in my fabulous convertible on the spindly road high above Saint Tropez because I’d had too much to drink at le festival du jazz.

  No, no, he was getting ready to squeeze the trigger on that fucking thing.

  I exploded in crazed movement. Ducking. Weaving. Running.

  His first shot went into my thigh. It felt as if I’d been hit by a train on fire.

  Hadn’t I once heard a dreadful poet who made some ludicrous comparison between a train and Col-trane? I wanted to laugh, but I was too busy moaning.

  He walked toward me, stumbling, sobbing.

  I knew I’d never make it, but I fumbled for the Beretta anyway. I didn’t have any kind of a chance to beat him, my limbs about as useful as one of Ida’s dolls’. But I was damned if I’d go out quiet.

  Who would’ve thought I’d be the idiot who assassinated one of the bright lights of African-American achievement? Well, I was sure as shit going to, if only I could get off a shot!

  Three quick blistering reports settled the matter.

  They didn’t come from my gun. That was still in my bag.

  Benson lay dead, looking awfully surprised.

  When I stopped screaming, I heard retreating footsteps. Running.

  The figure in the dark windbreaker was booking north alongside the access road. I watched him race across the footbridge over the highway at 74th and disappear onto the joggers’ path beyond.

  I knew him. At least I thought I knew him. From somewhere.

  Who was that guy?

  CHAPTER 20

  Blood Count

  They give you a cheerful multicolored gown in the hospital these days. I guess they mean well. But I didn’t appreciate it. I’ve always liked plain white against black skin.

  I forgave them though. Fashion mistakes aside, the drugs they handed out were raging. I’d never been that mellow in my life.

  It took a few days for the goof to wear off and make room for the depression that set in.

  In the meantime, practically the whole parade of my significant others passed through my semiprivate room. Mom cried the most. Predictably stoical, Pop brought me the most books and magazines. Aubrey brought me the best food, along with a new pair of wildly expensive slippers and a makeup kit full of Mac cosmetics. Dan Hinton’s flowers won the prize. He dropped in bearing a load of leopard-skin calla lilies that must have represented a couple of weeks’ salary for him. My music mentor, Jeff, dropped off some of his wife’s fabled peanut butter cookies and a rare Dexter Gordon album that he had run down for me.

  One or two other acquaintances passed through. I greeted them all with the same spaced-out smile and stuffed my face with useless calories while they murmured kind words I wasn’t really listening to.

  Even Detective Loveless came by. But of course that was no courtesy call. He’d grilled me for two hours, never once admitting that I’d been right about Ida’s murder from the very beginning.

  My people were limited to visiting hours. But Leman Sweet, my single most constant companion, was another story. Leman, being a police officer, was free to come and go as he liked, within reason that is. That suited him just fine, because he had no wish to encounter the rest of my friends and family.

  This was one for the books—I was voluntarily spending most of my hanging out time with Leman Sweet. And, even more amazing, he was about the only person whose conversation held any interest for me. But then, Brother Sweet and I had a lot to go over.

  “You ever take a bullet, Sweet?” I asked one afternoon. My meds had not yet kicked in.

  He looked away and shrugged but wouldn’t answer me. Must be some kind of story behind that. I was intrigued, but I didn’t pursue it.

  “You found Felice, didn’t you?” I said. “That’s what you were about to tell me when Benson showed up.”

  Leman nodded. “We found her.”

  “What happened? Where did he—”

  “You sure you wanna know that?”

  A ripple went up my back. It must be worse—even worse—than I feared.

  “Let’s just say we found some of her,” he said.

  “He actually cut her up?”

  “Yep.”

  Make that two ripples.

  “Jesus. I can hardly believe it. It figures, though,” I said. “He got her out of the Greenwich Street place in one piece. But then he had to cart her off somewhere and try to obliterate her—as though it didn’t happen. Ida was a different story. He wanted that to be public. Wanted Miller to know he’d killed Ida and take it as a sign he was coming to get him, too. But killing Felice was a mistake. He didn’t realize until it was too late that she wasn’t in on the scamming of his wife. He had already crossed the line then. He was unstoppable.”

  “Have you done any thinking about how he connected Felice to Miller?”

  I ran down the caller ID story for him, taking him back to the day I had interviewed Jacob Benson. “Benson didn’t congratulate me on my deduction, but he didn’t deny it. I’m pretty sure that’s how he found Felice—scrolling back through the numbers on the machine.”

  “Not bad, not bad,” he mused. He couldn’t swear to it, but thought there was such a device on the telephone he saw when the cops searched the Benson home. It would be easy enough to check now.

  I sat up in bed and picked through the candy selection until I spotted a bittersweet. “The good doctor said that Lenore Benson had a history of mental troubles. Sounded as if she had another really bad breakdown fifteen or twenty years ago.”

  “Yeah,” Leman said, “she did. I got the records from the hospital and then the rest home she was in. After Black Hat was killed, she was holding it together on tranqs and other stuff her psychiatrist prescribed. The pharmacy records show enough scrips to cool out half the junkies in the five boroughs. Plus, come to find out those herbal teas and shit they were giving her in the van had some mild psychedelics in them.”

  It was easy to believe. Any woman would be distraught after losing her kid, but she’d have to be profoundly unstable to get caught up in the kind of scam Miller and Ida were running. Mrs. Benson had managed to stave off a second breakdown for a long time, but the death of Black Hat and then the Ida betrayal had been a fatal one-two punch.

  “Those tapes that Miller bought off the record promoter,” I said. “They had hours and hours of Kevin Benson’s voice—talking, singing, and so on. Miller did your basic cut-and-paste job on them. Doctored them. Used them to convince Lenore Benson that her dead son was communicating with her from beyond the grave. Maybe he and Ida were working that channeling stuff people are into.

  “I was stupid enough to think Ida’s airy-fairy act was charming. But Lenore Benson took it dead serious. Maybe she even thought that Ida could bring Kevin back to her—if she paid them enough. Pathetic. I guess they kept jacking up the charge with every session.”

  “That’s right. Money was flying out of the Bensons’ checking account,” Leman told me. “He probably tried to get his wife to tell him what she was spending all that dough on, but she wouldn’t talk. So he started looking into it and found out what Miller and Ida were up to.”

  I thought about the force of Benson’s rage, his blind obsession with vengeance, and it terrified me all over again.

  “The man was like a cobra, Leman. His hate was toxic—poison. But you know what the weird thing is? I mean, even though he almost killed me? The weird thing is, I understand it. I think I do, anyway. Benson was
a real Negro American, wasn’t he? He worked like a dog, became a top surgeon in the face of ridiculous odds. He married the right kind of woman and had the right kind of son. Why shouldn’t things work out for him? Why shouldn’t life go his way? He’d earned it. He put in the time, paid the dues and then some. And he was still left with shit. He called his life a dead-end street.”

  Leman’s jaw grew tight. “His time would have been better spent going after the people who shot his son,” he said. “Fuck him and his rage. He should have gone to the police when he found out Miller and Ida was stealing his money. He should have been tending to his wife instead of going around like a ninja warrior. And what about Felice’s mother? Bet she got some rage, too, somebody shooting her daughter and mutilating her over something she didn’t even do.”

  I could see that, too. That was the trouble. I could see all the sides now. What if Benson had killed me? Would my father then be justified in blowing him away? I’d be damned pissed if he didn’t.

  “Well,” I said, “rage or whatever—justified or not—obviously Lenore Benson wasn’t the only disturbed member of that family. Benson went so far over the edge that he was insane, too. When I was running off at the mouth, trying to stall him, I told him he’d die in prison. But he would never have served any time. After the thing he did to that child, they’d have put him in a straitjacket somewhere. No judge would have sent him to jail.”

  “Don’t be so sure of that,” he said acidly.

  Come to think of it, I wasn’t.

  “Anyway, you got both lucky and unlucky,” Leman said. He was helping himself to the Jell-O on my lunch tray. “He went up to the clinic to see his wife, saw that idiot doll, and asked who brought it. They told him you had just left. He was probably hustling up and down York with that doll in one hand and that piece up his sleeve. Looking in doorways. Just your luck, you didn’t catch a cab home and call me from there.”

  “I know. I think maybe you had some luck that night, too, Sweet.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I mean, since he thought I was a cop, if he hadn’t found me in that joint he might have come looking for me at your office. He could have shot up that place on Twelfth Street pretty bad before somebody canceled his ticket.”

  “Could be. But, man, what kind-a angel was looking out for you? A motherfucker shows up out of nowhere and caps Benson before he can cancel your ticket. And we don’t have no idea in hell who he coulda been.”

  “No,” I said. “No idea. Maybe Mama Lou sent him.”

  “You don’t believe there’s any way it could have been that book seller, do you?”

  “Howard? God, no.”

  “No, I don’t think so either. We still got him in custody, but not for much longer. We’ve got no real charges against him.”

  “Howie just might be bringing charges against me. I was a pretty lousy date. Threatening to castrate him and all.”

  “He ain’t gonna bring nothing,” Leman said. “Time I get through with him, he’ll be selling hot books in Idaho.”

  “Idaho,” I mused. “I wonder if that’s where that sleazy ass recording guy who ripped Felice off might be.”

  Sweet said nothing.

  “You know what else?” I said. “I wish Benson had lived long enough to tell me whether he ever caught up with Miller. Did Miller get clean away, like Lyle, or are you gonna start finding parts of him one day?”

  “Lyle Corwin’s not in Idaho,” he announced.

  I waited for him to continue, but I could only wait a second. “Tell me!”

  “He was found dead this morning. Under some pilings off the Morton Street Pier down in the Village. Been in the water a couple of days.”

  “Ho-ly. Who did it? Miller?”

  “I don’t see how. Miller was found, too. Both shot in the back of the head.”

  I actually gasped. “Shut up!”

  My mind began to race.

  When had Lyle and Miller last been seen in each other’s company? After they whipped Justin. He saw them as they were making their getaway.

  Where were their bodies found? The pier. The downtown pier where the burgundy van was parked. One or both of them was going to use it to blow town.

  They must’ve left the office building and headed down there. With Benson on their trail. He caught them before they could get into the vehicle. Bang, bang, splash, splash. It meant they were already in the water when Howard and I were dancing around there like Slim and Slam.

  So Dr. Benson did get ’em all. Just like he told me.

  He also got an innocent party, Felice Sanders, and—almost—a big-legged girl sax player.

  But Benson had told me something else. Something I didn’t really take in at the time.

  It was when I accused him of tracking down and killing Ida. I was deprived of that pleasure, he’d said.

  What he was saying was that he had not killed Ida.

  I believed him. Now, I believed him.

  “I suppose the police lab has tested Jacob Benson’s gun against the wounds in Miller and Lyle Corwin. And Felice,” I said.

  “Yeah. We got a match on every one of them.”

  “But not Ida, right? You don’t have the weapon that was used on her, do you?”

  He shook his head, didn’t speak.

  “Leman, have you guys ripped apart that loft on Greenwich Street? And the van, too?”

  He chortled. “We don’t rip. We inventory. Why?”

  “It’s pretty easy to buy a gun if you want one, isn’t it?”

  “You managed to get one,” he said dourly. “Which I hope you don’t have the nerve to think I’m gonna give back to you. But anyway, yeah, it’s no big deal to buy a gun. So what?”

  “Miller was a genius at hiding in plain sight. I think he had a piece and stashed it somewhere. Somewhere in the MacLachlins’ apartment or somewhere in the van. Maybe there’s a box with a false bottom—or it could be hidden in the corn flakes—or something.”

  “It’s possible. But what difference does it make?”

  “When you find it, you’d better run a test on it, too.”

  “What test?”

  “To see if it was used on Ida. I believe Miller killed her.”

  I sat there ruminating while he used my phone to call the 12th Street station.

  “Why?” he asked me after the call was finished. “What makes you think Benson killed everybody else except Ida?”

  It did not escape me that he went ahead and made the call before questioning me about my reasoning. I appreciated that.

  “Because Ida was crooked,” I said, “but decent.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I can’t see her deliberately setting up Lenore Benson as a mark to bleed her and then leave her to her madness. I think she was genuinely sympathetic with Mrs. Benson—a wealthy customer who was nice to her, who bought her stuff. She was in pain about the troubles she was having with her kid and her marriage. And then her kid was murdered. Ida and Miller swooped down like birds of prey. They left Lenore Benson a basket case. I think Ida realized things had gone too far and her conscience was bothering her. Her heart wasn’t that rotten. I just know it.”

  He smirked. “It was Miller who was making her do it. And she was gonna give Miller up … confess. That what you saying?”

  “I believe it’s possible she was at least thinking about it. Possible that Miller felt he had something to fear from her. Say he decides to eliminate her. There’s no more money to be had anyway—Lenore Benson has been hospitalized. So he kills Ida and either ditches the gun or stashes it somewhere safe.”

  Sweet considered all that I had said. “Well, you could be both wrong and right. Maybe it was Miller who did her in—but not necessarily because he was the bad one and she was the good one. Could be that Ida was rotten and more. Maybe she was holding out on Miller. Or she wanted more of a share than he was giving her and she pushed him too hard. It could have gone down like that, too.”

  “It�
�s possible,” I said. But I didn’t believe him.

  “Time will tell,” he said. “And Ballistics.”

  After that, he fell silent for a moment, until he asked, “So what’s the story with you and that other dude?”

  “What dude?”

  “The pretty-boy teacher who can’t keep it in his pants. I saw him leaving out-a here yesterday. I guess he’s toast, far as your daddy’s concerned.”

  “Oh, trust me, he is toast burned on both sides as far as my daddy is concerned.”

  I felt a pang for Dan Hinton. Who had held my hand very tenderly during his visit. Mom, upon meeting him, already had him fathering my children—no matter how bad he had messed up on the job. They need teachers; he can get another job, she assured me.

  “Y’all don’t have anything going on, do you?” Sweet asked.

  Now it was my turn to shrug and say nothing.

  “I had a drink with Aubrey the other night,” he announced.

  “Well, jump back.”

  He ducked his head. “Damn, that Aubrey is a beautiful chick.”

  “That she is.”

  “But we’re just friends. I decided it was better that way.”

  “Oh, is that so?”

  It was all I could do not to laugh. I couldn’t wait to hear her version of this.

  It went that way with Sweet’s visits to me during my stay. Piecing the two cases together. Speculating. It was a shame that, after everything that had happened, he was no further ahead on the rap murders than the day I had interrupted his lunch.

  There was one other person who provided stimulation—and laughter—for me while I was laid up: Justin.

  We talked on the phone every day—he from his hospital bed, I from mine. A thoroughly preposterous state of affairs. I kept him abreast of all my conversations with Sweet. And poor Aubrey spent her days bringing us our mail, takeout cheeseburgers, and, in Justin’s case, gay porn magazines. Ordinarily that last duty might have fallen to Kenny, but he had been offered a three-week job in Toronto, and Justin had insisted that he take it.

  On the last day of my stay, before Mom and Aubrey arrived to take me home, I made a final call to J.