Black Orchid Blues (22 page)

I watched the windows of the building, hoping to see a movement that would indicate which apartment they’d entered. I watched the clock too. Six long minutes went by. Nothing.

My gaze drifted back down to the front door. No one was going in or out. It was the middle of a cold February day. Anybody who had a job would be there. Anyone who didn’t would be staying warm inside. Nobody was doing any running around that they didn’t have to, not in that weather. And I thought of Sheila once more, lying on that stone-cold ground.

The front door opened and one of Stax’s men emerged. He approached the car and opened the passenger door.

“Mr. Murphy says for you to come upstairs.”

The building was as impressive on the inside as it was on the out. But it stank, and it did so in a very particular way. It was a smell that recalled my days of covering crime for the
Harlem Age.

Stax’s henchman led me up a finely carpeted staircase. As with most Harlem town houses, this one was originally designed for a single affluent family, but it now served as a rooming house. Each door had a number, and each was firmly closed.

As we climbed the steps, the air thickened, the stench grew richer. By the second floor, my lungs were starving for air. I realized that I was holding my breath. I closed my eyes and forced myself to inhale. The stink was incredible, but breathing normally was the only way to get past it. After a while the body adjusts.

We hit the third-floor landing and approached a door at the back of the hallway. Stax’s man opened it. I stepped inside and the full power of the smell nearly knocked me off my feet. Stax stood gazing out the window, smoking a cigarette. He didn’t turn around at the sound of my entrance.

The room was filthy with empty food containers and old newspapers. It stank of Chinese food and dried pizza and that certain something else. There was a dirty white sofa, two battered wooden chairs, and a small kitchen table to the left. There was a mattress on the floor to the right. It had a torn, gray sheet, and a man lay on it. He was dark-haired and darkly dressed: black pants, black shirt, and black jacket.

He was also dead.

“Come in,” Stax said.

I felt the henchman’s hand against my back. I tentatively walked in toward the dead man, heard the door close behind me.

He was on his side, back to the wall, facing the room. He was gagged, his wrists and ankles bound behind his back. His eyes were open and clouded over, his skin gray. A wide stain of dried blood darkened the mattress under his head and neck. His throat had been slit. A grimy makeshift bandage covered his left hand. His face showed bite marks; rodents had been at him.

Even so, I recognized him. “Olmo.”

Stax nodded. “Been dead for days.” He threw down the cigarette, ground it out. “Days,” he repeated in disgust.

My thoughts raced. Olmo must’ve died right after the kidnapping. Who killed him? If he was dead, then who sent the notes, made the phone calls? Some third partner? And where was Queenie?

But then I knew. With chilling certainty, the answer came and I knew.

Stax turned to face me. “Well, come on, Miss Price. I didn’t bring you here to just stand around. I want to hear what you have to say, to know what you’re going to write.”

“Olmo’s hand. I need to see it.”

“His hand?”

I nodded.

Puzzled and suspicious, Stax looked from me to the body. He made a gesture and the henchman went to work.

The bandage was nothing more than a long strip torn from the bed-sheet, but it was stiff with dried blood. The henchman had to pry it off. When he was done, we could all see that the ring finger of Olmo’s left hand was missing: it had been cut off at the base.

“But who did this?” Stax gaped. “And why?”

He didn’t know about the cigar box. Now I told him. He was furious.

“Whoever did this, I’ll kill them.” He squatted down next to his nephew’s body, touched the injured hand with surprising gentleness. “Why?” he asked the dead man. “Why did you do it? And what conniving bastard did you listen to?”

C
HAPTER
34

T
he answer was right before his eyes, but he didn’t know enough to recognize it. Sam and I had wondered whether Olmo had brought in someone to help him, someone to drive the getaway car, for example. But that hadn’t been the case at all. Olmo hadn’t needed extra help. He’d had all he needed in his main partner, his “victim.” And that partner had betrayed him—had cut off his finger, shoved that yellow ring on it, and put it in a cigar box.

We’d all been played for suckers—and Queenie had done the playing.

I hesitated to tell Stax the truth about the kidnapping. It worried me how he’d react, but seeing his grief, his bewilderment, I decided he had a right to know. The look in his eyes turned murderous.

“Why, that conniving son of a bitch!”

“Don’t go after him.”

“Why not?”

“You kill him and the cops will be convinced you were behind the kidnapping. As far as they’re concerned, Queenie’s still the victim. They know he thought up the kidnapping, but they think it was Olmo who did the double cross and made it real. They don’t know it’s still fake and that Queenie’s pulling the strings.”

He spoke with contempt. “You think I care about the cops? I don’t give a damn about them! I’m going to find that son of a bitch and—”

“No, don’t! Or at least …” I thought fast. “Give me a day. Just twenty-four hours. That’s all I ask.”

“Why should I? What the hell do you think you can do in a day?”

I worried my lower lip. I didn’t have an answer, so I stalled. “Just give it to me and you’ll see.”

Downstairs, we climbed into the car and sat in preoccupied silence as Stax’s men drove us back to 135th Street. I thought about Queenie, about what he wanted. He’d put that cigar box in front of my door. He’d wanted me on this case, had wanted me to know about him and his family. But he’d wanted something else too—the money. It meant as much to him as the revelation about his true identity. Sooner or later, he’d come back looking for it, and I was betting on sooner rather than later. We would have to be ready for him. That’s all: we’d have to be good and ready.

It was after five when we pulled up in front of the newspaper building. I was about to climb out when Stax laid a hand on my forearm.

“Remember,” he said, “a day and that’s all.”

It felt like a heavy hand had gripped my heart, squeezed it. I got out and closed the door.

Stax leaned out of his car. “I don’t understand,” he said. “About Queenie, really, what do you care?”

In the face of his cold anger, I couldn’t answer. He smiled grimly and tipped his hat as though I’d just proved his point, then he signaled his man, rolled up his window, and drove away.

I stood there for a moment, blind to my surroundings and sick with dread.
Why indeed?

I didn’t see how Queenie was going to come out of this alive. Did it really matter whether he died with cement shoes in the East River, in a hail of coppers’ bullets, or in the electric chair up at Sing Sing?

He’d be dead no matter what.

But the manner of his death, yes, it did matter.

I started toward the newspaper building. Queenie had a right to tell his side of the story and instinct said there was more to that story than just greed. Why was it so important to him that I know about his ties to the Bernards? And why had he chosen this oblique way of telling me? He could’ve just said something when we were sitting in the Cinnamon Club. Why hadn’t he? Was it because the place was too loud, too chaotic?

I paused at the building’s entrance. How was I going to present all this to Sam? By now, Blackie must have told him about Dr. Bernard accusing me of being in cahoots with the kidnppers. Then I’d gone and probably made the situation worse by disappearing. Some people might’ve thought I was running away. For all I knew, someone might’ve even seen me get into Stax’s car.

Now I was back with a wild story about the main kidnapper being dead and Queenie being the one who killed him—full of details about him having slit the man’s throat not in self-defense, but as part of some cold-blooded plan that I still didn’t fully understand.

I could just hear Sam now.
You know I’m in your corner, but do you realize how this looks? I want to work with you, baby, but where’s the body? Where’s the proof?
I had no proof, only suspicions. And there would be no body. I was fairly certain that Stax’s men had started removing Olmo’s remains the moment we left the building. They would make sure it was gone, for good.

A car honked in the distance. I glanced up at the sound of it and saw Sam. He’d already left work; he was down the block, standing there at the corner.

The light changed and he stepped off the curb.

I hurried after him, calling out his name. “Sam!”

He didn’t hear me.

“Sam! Wait!” I ran down the street after him.

He was three-quarters of the way across, really only a few steps from his front door, when the laundry truck came out of nowhere. One minute the wide vista of 135th was clear. The next, there was this black truck with the words
Tic-Tac-Toe Laundry
painted in bright orange letters on its side. It came barreling down the street, jerking right and left as though the driver had lost control.

And there was Sam, directly in its path.

He walked with his head bent, his hands stuffed into his pants pockets, his shoulders hunched against the cold. He was deep in thought, but some instinct must have made him look up. Perhaps it was a slight shift in the shadows, or the merest vibrations under his feet. It could’ve even been my voice; although it seemed to me that it had frozen in my throat.

Whatever alarm went off, he did peer up. For the rest of my life, I will remember his expression. He had maybe half a second to react, just enough time to register that he might be about to die. He could’ve taken a step forward, toward the sidewalk, in an attempt to save his life. In all probability, it would’ve been futile, but he could’ve tried. Instead, he turned back—to look at me.

Our eyes met. In that moment, I saw his love for me and recognized my misgivings for what they truly were: the simple fear of loving him and losing him the way I’d lost Hamp.

For a moment, my heart stopped beating.

In that same instant, the truck struck him down.

C
HAPTER
35

T
he doors to Harlem Hospital’s emergency room banged open. A doctor and two nurses ran alongside Sam and shoved the gurney carrying him into an examining room.

They let me hover on the periphery while a team worked on Sam. Then a nurse drew me aside to get his information. When I looked back, I saw them rushing him out of the room. I tried to follow after them, but the nurse held me back.

“Where are they taking him?” I pleaded.

“To surgery.”

“But—”

“The best thing you can do to help is to tell us what you know about him. His medical history.”

I fell silent. It hit me once again just how little I knew about Sam. They’d evidently mistaken me for his wife. I was being given a chance to help him in a way I couldn’t help my husband—but I was at a loss. The irony of it all struck me.

The next three hours were a nightmare.

The impact had thrown Sam into the air and over the truck. He landed on the sidewalk, inches from the jutting points of an iron fence. If he’d struck that, he would’ve been impaled and surely died. Instead, he hit the ground hard, on his right side.

I reached him within seconds. He was conscious but dazed, his face covered in blood. “Sam! Oh God, Sam!”

He was barely responsive. His breathing was shallow, his body contorted.

“Sam, please … please, hold on.”

I could feel him slipping away. I looked up, screamed, “Somebody, please! Get help! Please!” I grabbed his hand. “Sam, stay with me. It’s Lanie. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.” I caressed his face and leaned down to whisper in his ear. “I love you. I love you so very much. Don’t leave me.
Please!
”

Don Hollyer, the owner and driver of the truck, would later tell police that he’d been distracted because he had been wrestling with his German shepherd, King, over the remains of a ham sandwich. Hollyer was trying to shove the dog away from the sandwich when he struck Sam.

“It was really a very good sandwich,” Hollyer would say, “made of Black Forest ham.” He told police that he thought he’d hit a large dog until he saw me running toward the twisted body.

The nurse urged me to use the bathroom to clean up. Standing over the sink, I held my trembling hands under the running faucet and watched Sam’s blood swirl down the drain. My reflection in the mirror revealed blood smears on my cheeks, and I felt sick with fear and guilt.

I returned to the waiting room, stomach knotted, mind churning.
You distracted him when he was crossing the street. If you hadn’t called out to him, if—

“Lanie!”

I looked up to see Blackie hurrying toward me; George Ramsey was right behind him. I stood up to receive them.

“I came as soon as I heard.”

“I don’t believe this. Are you all right?”

I assured them that I was. Then Selena Troy and George Greene showed up too, as did other staffers from the newsroom. All had heard different versions of what happened. I told them what I’d seen.

“I distracted him,” I said, “calling out to him when he was crossing the street.”

“My God, Lanie, you don’t think this is your fault?” Blackie shook his head. “Don’t do that to yourself.”

Ramsey weighed in, his voice gruff: “Where’s Sam? What’s going on with him?”

“That’s just it. I don’t know. I’ve been waiting and nobody’s come out to say anything.”

A moment later, the door behind us opened and an exhausted-looking doctor walked in. He made straight for me.

“Are you here about Sam Delaney?”

“Yes, how is he? Please tell us something.”

He introduced himself as Dr. Maynard. He was in his mid-thirties, had soft brown eyes and a five o’clock shadow.

“He was very lucky,” the doctor explained. “He must’ve turned slightly at the last moment. If he hadn’t, we would’ve lost him.”