Joplin's Ghost (14 page)

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 through 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.

Los Angeles

T
hree 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 panel 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.

There was a rapper in the booth. Phoenix hadn’t noticed him at first, but she heard rapid-fire words from a coarse voice that sounded midway between a playground and a battleground. The boy had a crisp, stutter-step delivery.

The boy in the booth spat the final words into the microphone, and he suddenly backed away from it, throwing his baseball cap against the glass, his flurry of bravado finished.

“Oh,
shit
!” D’Real said, whipping his wiry arm around to find Ronn’s in a tight clasp. D’Real was only five-foot-four, and he was Ronn’s age, but he had a face that would always look like a teenager’s, almost hairless. D’Real lived in his off-center white Howard University baseball cap and white Pony jogging suits. Strangers who saw D’Real would never guess he was the mastermind behind a string of multiplatinum hits, but Phoenix had learned in the studio that D’Real was as intractable as he was unassuming. All she remembered about recording her CD was arguing with D’Real. And Ronn always taking his side.

“They on notice!” D’Real told Ronn, nearly breathless. “ I
told
you all them mush-mouthed, no-rapping niggas out there is on notice.” Phoenix envied the boy in the booth. He might have found a real advocate in D’Real, which was more than she could say.

The boy in the booth was slender and almost pretty, a stark contrast to his husky voice, and he looked barely old enough to shave. He reminded Phoenix of Chingy. His smooth face betrayed nothing of what he must be feeling, save for a small tugging at one corner of his pink-tinged lips. Trying to pretend he wasn’t excited.
When will these young brothers feel safe to show their true hearts to the world?

“T’s our battle champ up in Oak-Town,” said one of the strangers in black, who looked like a schoolteacher behind wire-frame glasses. “Can’t nobody touch him.”

“T, your flow is
sick,
” Ronn said with a curt nod, grabbing the boy’s hand. Ronn’s face, too, was as unyielding as iron, with no hint of a smile. “I can work with that.”

“Hell,
yeah,
we can work with that,” D’Real said. “It’s new-school West Coast.”

“And so photogenic,” Katrice murmured, half to herself, imagining his cover shot.

The boy couldn’t hide the luster in his eyes. Phoenix knew that look, because that was how she’d felt when Ronn first anointed her: He couldn’t wait to call his mother.

Ronn suddenly seemed to feel Phoenix’s presence. He turned over his shoulder to meet her eyes.
Phee,
he said, surprised, only mouthing her name. The iron melted from his jaw.

P
hoenix had researched Ronn Jenkins before she ever visited Three Strikes Records. Knowledge is your best weapon, Sarge always said, and she’d arrived with a full arsenal.

Ronn had been thirty-two when they met, so now he was thirty-three. He’d been raised in subsidized housing in St. Louis, until his family left Lou’s and moved to L.A. when he was fourteen. He was the second of three children, the youngest of two brothers. Ronn refused to talk about his older brother, Darnell, who’d been killed in an unarmed police shooting, although there was plenty about it on internet tabloid sites. Ronn’s mother was a postal clerk, still working, and his father had been a phantom from the time he was five. (“I cut off a piece of my soul and buried it when that nigga split,” he’d told Touré from
Rolling Stone
in a reflective mood.) He’d been selling weed when he was fourteen, crack by sixteen.

And he was a genius. He had such a quick business mind that within three years, by nineteen, he’d been running his own crews and earned enough money to buy houses in cash for both himself
and
his sister. He was popped in a sting at twenty, but released on a technicality. Then he’d begun rapping with his best friend D’Real, and scored a record deal by fooling a record exec into believing they already had a following when all they had was a suitcase full of demos and attitude to spare. (“Music was an easier hustle than slingin’,” he’d told
Vibe
.)