I'm Glad I Did (12 page)

Bernie swallowed hard. He took a slug of his fresh drink. “Justice, baby, did she know I was your uncle?”

“I didn't have a chance to tell her. I was going to tell her that night …”

“Bernie,” Marla whispered, “people do what they have to do. Dulcie did what she had to do, and so did you.”

Bernie downed the next drink just as quickly and held up his glass for a refill. I decided to excuse myself. I didn't want to watch my uncle drink himself into oblivion. And I knew Marla could handle him better without an audience. I promised to get in touch soon. Besides, I wanted to play the demo for Luke. He deserved to hear it. He deserved to hear the miracle Dulcie had performed with his lyrics as soon as he could.

Of course, my face gave me away as soon as I stepped in Nick's “office.” He looked at me intently as he closed the elevator door. “Everything okay, kiddo?” he asked gently.

I spilled everything once more. To my surprise, when I described how Detective McGrath had pulled the tarp away to reveal Dulcie's face, Nick's eyes welled up. “I knew Dulcie,” he murmured.

“You did?”

“Yeah, she asked me some questions when she first began working in the building. I knew her big hit record. I was a
real fan of hers. And I knew she was trying to clean up her act. In fact, sometimes when I worked double shifts, I'd drive her home. It was on the way to the Bronx. She used to ask me to come up so she could give me some money for the gas I used getting her home. Can you believe that? I said no, though, 'cause I'm a gentleman. I was afraid people in her building might talk, you know?”

I choked back my tears. Dulcie had no idea how many people adored and respected her.

Nick turned the crank. “Anyway, I'm sorry, kiddo. Where to? Eight?”

I shook my head, patting the demo in my purse. “Seven, please.”

I COULDN'T DECIDE WHETHER
to tell Luke what had happened before or after I played the demo for him. I half hoped he wouldn't be there so I could drop it through the mail slot and not have to deal with explanations.

I knocked softly. If he didn't answer I'd leave it and scoot. I never thought I'd be less than happy to hear his voice. But my heart dropped when he answered, “Come in.”

He didn't sound as if he were in the greatest place either.

I opened the door tentatively.

Luke was sitting on a packed carton hunched over what appeared to be a stack of legal papers. His white shirt was grubby and rolled up at the sleeves.

“Hey,” he said, making an effort to look welcoming and not succeeding. He stood and his brow furrowed. “JJ, are you all right?”

“Not really,” I admitted. I pulled the demo out of my bag. “Listen to this first. I'll explain everything when the song is over.”

He took the record, slipped it carefully out of its sleeve and retreated to the record player at the back of the room.

“Actually before you play it, I want to say something—”

“It's okay if you screwed it up,” he interrupted over his shoulder. “We'll just do it again together.”

“It's not about the demo,” I told him. “Before you play it, I just wanted to thank you for the words. I thought I was okay at lyrics until Bobby told me I wasn't. Then when I read yours, I knew what he meant. I grew up loving folk music and musical theater, so that's where my lyrics tend to go. They're either too ‘Kumbaya' or too ‘Bad Larry Hart.' So I want you to know how grateful I am to you for sharing those words with me.”

Luke turned to face me. I think he actually blushed a bit. “I'm sure you're better than you or Bobby thinks you are. I just wrote what I felt. I know that if you did that, if you wrote from your heart, you'd be fine.”

“You may have a more Top-Forty-type heart,” I cracked.

“I'll take that as a compliment,” he answered dryly. “Can I play this now?”

“You can. I'm dying to know what you think of it.”

He clicked on the power and dropped the needle on the vinyl. For the next two minutes and forty seconds, we stood there listening. I could tell by the look on his face that he was listening not only with his ears but with his entire being, his soul.

When the last note faded, he asked if he could play it
again. This time, I could see a more detached look on his face, though he couldn't keep his head from swaying in time. He was a music mogul's son, after all; I could tell that now he was sussing out the demo as a sales tool, now that he knew how amazing it truly was.

“Why that face, JJ?” he asked once the song was over. “You did a great job.”

I shook my head. If I opened my mouth, I knew I'd start crying again.

“I hated not being there, but the truth is I didn't need to be,” he went on. “There's nothing I would have done differently. Dulcie's performance … there are no words for it. Everything fits: the song, the track, the singer—it's perfect. It's one of the best demos I've ever heard. And believe me, I know. My dad used to bring home plenty of them. So what's wrong?”

“I don't know how to tell you this, so I'll just say it,” I blurted out. “The night after the demo, I went to have dinner with Dulcie at her place. When I got there, she was lying dead on the street. They say she threw herself out her own window …”

“My God,” he whispered, sitting down on a packed carton.

For a moment, we were both quiet.

“I'm so sorry, JJ,” he whispered. “That must have been terrible for you. I don't understand. Was she back on drugs?”

“I don't believe she was,” I answered, collapsing onto a carton across from him. “She wasn't high on anything but music when we worked on the demo. I had all these
fantasies that I could get her a record deal from this performance, and she might be able to make a comeback. She was excited about it and happy.”

Luke chewed a nail. “I can't even imagine what you must be going through right now. Is that the whole story?”

I nodded. “It doesn't make sense, does it?”

“No, it doesn't,” he said firmly. He looked at me. “You say she was happy the night before. Happy people tend to keep on living if they can. Did she say anything that could have hinted at something bad in her life?”

“I don't know,” I said. I sniffed and wiped my eyes. “I've been too upset to think about this clearly. There was this woman, a neighbor, who said she heard Dulcie fighting with someone before she jumped. But the woman won't go to the police because she's an illegal. And Dulcie said some things that made it sound like she had some secrets. I figured it was just stuff from her past. You know how drugs can mess up family relationships. She had a daughter things weren't right with. A brother … I don't know.”

We both sat there staring into space, thinking. Then Luke's eyes flashed to a stack of ledgers on his desk. “I have to ask you something,” he said. “What do you know about your Uncle Bernie? Are you two close?”

I shrugged. “Not until now. I've only really gotten to know him this summer. I know he's got a rotten reputation, but he's been really good to me. My mom hates him. They're so different sometimes I can't even believe they're related.”

Again, he almost smiled. “It's funny you said related. Remember how you said, we're kind of related?”

“Yeah, but the key words are ‘kind of,' ” I said quickly. “I only said it 'cause your dad and my uncle were partners. It was a bad joke, really, that's all it was. It's not like we're actually related.”
I'm the bad joke
, I thought.
I'm babbling like an idiot
.

“I know, I know,” Luke soothed. “I meant that we have a connection through our families, the music business, and now through this song. I guess what I mean is … I hardly know you, but you took my lyrics and turned them into something I never could have imagined. You saw something in those words I didn't see myself. And now …” He stood and began pacing around the messy office. “JJ, there's something I have to share with someone, and you're the only person it makes sense to share it with.”

I swallowed nervously. My mind was darting all over the place. He was going to tell me that he felt something for me. I knew I couldn't be the only one in this equation.

“What is it?” I asked. My voice trembled.

“I've been going through royalty statements and payment schedules that go back a long time, all the way to the forties.”

I blinked. Confessions about feelings don't begin with a sentence like that.

“And from the way I read them,” Luke continued, “my dad and your uncle had a habit of not paying their artists their rightful share. It looks to me like they put their names as writers on songs they had no part in writing. And there were two sets of books.”

My mouth was suddenly dry. “What are you saying?”

“That they ripped off a whole lot of people, including Dulcie Brown.”

“Are you sure?” I whispered.

“I'm not an accountant, but a lot of what I've found is self-explanatory,” Luke said, his voice strained. “I'm going to have someone check everything out, but I have to tell you, from what I see, all their writers and recording artists have a lot of money coming to them.” He looked down. “I feel lousy for everyone, including me. If this is true, a lot of the money my dad left me really belongs to other people. I can't live with that.”

For the first time I noticed the dark circles that ringed those bright eyes. His chinos were rumpled. He looked as if he'd slept in his clothes—if he'd slept at all.

“My dad was all I had,” he went on. “I never knew my mother. She died right after I was born. I looked up to him. He was my idol, and now I see that he may have made a mess of his own life and the lives of everyone around him.”

I couldn't stop myself. I reached out and took his hand. “I'm so sorry,” I said. “I know what it feels like to care about someone who isn't who you'd like them to be. It may not stop you from loving them, but it sure has a way of screwing up your head.”

I let his hand go even though I didn't want to.

He looked at me. His eyes had softened to jade. “You get it,” he said. He smiled a little half-hearted smile.

My heart soared for an instant. “I do,” I told him. I checked my watch. My lunch break had ended, but the rest of our conversation was unfinished. “Luke, why would
someone invite a friend for dinner if she was planning to kill herself?”

“The answer is, she wouldn't,” he said softly.

“I've been thinking the same thing,” I told him, and with that I was out the door.

The next morning dawned with breakfast as usual at the Green apartment. Everyone was seated in their usual seats. They were going through their usual breakfast routine, and it struck me that their world hadn't changed at all, while mine had been shaken to its core. My parents had no idea of my pain and loss, and there was no possible way to tell them.

Janny had finished the main section of
The New York Times
. She was treating herself to the Fashion and Style section in an appropriate outfit: an Oleg Cassini doublebreasted pale lemon A-line dress. Jeff's nose was embedded in the local news. He wore his usual short-sleeved shirt and boring tie. My father, dapper in a summer seersucker suit, was flipping through the main section Janny had passed to him. They all looked so perfect, so comfortable.

Jules peered over a headline that read
PRESIDENT HAILED BY OVER A MILLION IN VISIT TO BERLIN
. “I'm just reading back here on page forty-four about some singer who killed
herself in Harlem,” he mused. “You'll be thrilled to know, Janny, that Bernie was mentioned in the article.”

I swallowed my orange juice with a gulp. “What does it say about him?”

“Just that he used to manage her.” His tone was matter-of-fact. “Justice, have you ever heard of someone called Sweet Dulcie Brown?”

Before I could stop myself, I jumped up and ran around to see the paper.

Jeff chimed in as usual. “You must have heard of her, Irving. You know every singer who ever sang a note.”

I skimmed the article over my father's shoulder. There was a publicity picture of Dulcie at the height of her fame. She was wearing a sequined dress and a choker with a red rose at her throat. She was so slender and young, glancing back over one bare shoulder seductively. She had the magic; you could see it in her eyes.

“I vaguely remember her,” Janny remarked. “One more example of what the music business does to people. Another poor druggie gone. So sad. Pass the jam, please.”

I wanted to scream, “That's not who she was!” But what good would it do? What difference would it make to Janny, who had already slipped Dulcie into her category of lowlife people who didn't matter?

“Yeah, I knew who she was,” I said to my brother, my voice flat. And I did. And if I was honest with myself, the woman I knew would not have killed herself. She was upbeat, she was drug free, and she never took off her necklace. Unless …