Black Orchids & Blood

By Ed Silvera

Black Orchids & Blood is a tale of mystery and suspense that centers on the exploits of a struggling father and son detective agency run by Marcus Garvey Sampson and his son, Shaheed. Their new case leads them on the trail of a killer that is murdering young men that visit Atlanta’s many hip hop clubs and night spots. However, this case takes on a life of its own, cascading and morphing into something that defies their street sense. As the murders intensify and evidence mounts, a game of cat and mouse pulls the duo toward the killer while unraveling dark and dangerous family secrets. It is this tangled web of violence and deceit that leads to a dramatic turn of events and shocking conclusion that threatens the lives of both men.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ed Silvera
• Release date: Aug 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301973484

Ed Silvera

I am an Atlanta based photographer, filmmaker, singer, actor and of course, writer. I view my writing as an extension of my creative drive. If labels are at all necessary I can sum up the above as this: Ed Silvera is a storyteller. It doesn't matter what form of media I work in, the main objective is to tell a meaningful, engaging and mind-nurturing story. My two books, Black Orchids and Blood and Daddy's Home are examples of this. You may want to see the film Redemption Of The Commons in which I have a staring role. (Also on Amazon) Visit Www.EdSilvera.com to see the full range of my artistic pursuits.

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BLACK ORCHIDS & BLOOD

~A Novel~

By Ed Silvera

©2008 Ed Silvera

All rights reserved.

A Smashwords E-book

License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This book is a work of fiction. All characters and locations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or real locations, unless of a historical or geographic nature is purely coincidental.

DEDICATION

A special thanks to Michele for being the first set of eyes to help me. Thanks also goes out to Val for being another set of eyes to help me. Then, in stepped Pat. I would also like to thank all of the much needed and much appreciated support of my family and friends.

CHAPTER ONE

As he left the Raw Dawg, 2 Strong didn’t know that it was his final performance. He didn’t know when he broke, stepping into Atlanta’s chilly night air, the club disappearing in the wake of his footsteps, that he had sampled his last beats, spit his last lyrics. When a sucker-punch to the gut landed him on his knees, and another chopping blow to the nape of the neck sent him face first to the ground into a pool of his own vomit, he didn’t know that twenty-three years was all that was his due. Death was laying in the cut, waiting to collect on the debt.

Now his mind was on rewind, his childhood, growing up around Ashby Street, two blocks north of MLK on a narrow street called Neptune. He saw the shotgun house where he was raised. You could walk in the front door and keep steppin’ until you smelled the dog shit his mutt, Little Biggie, laid in the backyard.

As a rope tied his feet together, he thought about when his mother used to tuck him into bed. She would secure his covers so tight that his feet would fuse together in a toasty, cotton cocoon, her voice rushing across his face, a delicious breeze. Sleep tight young man. Then he would feel a gentle kiss on his forehead.

Even as he felt his legs hoisted into the air and his body turned upside down, spinning dizzily, he thought of his big brother, Omar, who always had a way of popping out of nowhere to protect him. 2 Strong wished that his brother were there now.

He opened his eyes to see. Yo, Omar, you here man? But Omar and Mama were not there. All he saw were blurry smears of white light cutting through darkness. He was being held captive, locked in the either/or world of his existence and his demise. He was on the fading horizon of this life and the cusp of the next; he was the thin tissue separating the two.

As he felt his assailant grab him around the shoulders to stop the spinning, he heard loud wood-on-wood whacks of a judge’s mallet and the words, five years echoed through his frazzled mind. Then, with the icy impression of cold steel against his throat, he saw himself in jail, fighting to defend his manhood against an inmate twice his size.

A stinging sensation began at one jugular vein and traveled silently under his Adams Apple, slicing the jugular on the other side. Then, suddenly, he felt blood cascading over his chin, around his mouth, into his nostrils and across his eyelids—a warm, fresh blood that felt smooth and velvety. He thought about his last rhyme, the one he had just thrown down at The Dawg.

I’m like thunder.

The 8th wonder.

No shame,

Dealin’ pain.

Master of my game.

You know my name.

I’m 2 Strong…

2’s feet grew cold and numb, and that same empty feeling ran down his legs in a slow progression that consumed his torso. He managed to squeeze one final thought out of his crippled memory. It was about the pretty girl he met at The Raw Dog three months ago. She was the one that was eyeing him from the stage, the one he cornered in a far side of the club after the performance. She was the one that made him feel that I’m gonna tap’dat booty chemistry. Her smile exploded in his mind and raced past the back of his eyelids. She was a pretty, flower petal delicate, yet, bewitchingly sexy thing…and she was his for little more than a month. Maybe two.

She encased herself in a perfect, opaque bubble, its skin he could never pierce, nor was he allowed to peer inside. They were lovers, but he never really got to know her. She was a jigsaw puzzle with pieces that wouldn’t fit together.

As his mind groped for more comforting thoughts about the brief relationship, he couldn’t even remember her name. He could no longer see anything, hear anything, and every limb of his body felt anesthetized.

Just before his eternal dirt nap, he heard his mother say, Sleep tight young man. Then he was gone.

This is the way the police found him the next day; upside down, an ashy bluish-brown and drained bloodless.

And there was one other thing; a single black orchid lay beneath him, encrusted in a coagulated swath of his blood.

CHAPTER TWO

Fats Waller recorded a little ditty in 1937, The Joint Is Jumpin’.

Here it is three quarters of a century later, and the joint is still jumpin’. Black folks still setting the standard and breaking the rules, only this time it wasn’t pure honky-tonk jazz, but it was still pure. Evolution had taken the music to a hip-hop context, basic and stripped down to essential elements, beats, rhythms and rhymes. Open mike night at the Raw Dawg was a blossoming of the unique experience of the streets. The music and the energy captured and dominated the room. It was the place to be for the Atlanta nouveau-noir, ur-ban man and wo-man.

The Raw Dawg was where Shaheed came to flex his muscles and set the world on fire with his words, tempered, honed and buffed to a shiny hip-hop finish. It was where all the rappers and wannabe rappers, genuine ‘hos and wannabe ‘hos gathered—children of the movement. The latter, those not genuine, were mostly white boys; sliding into the hood for instructions and sliding back to the burbs to practice what they learned and run it with their friends, carefully hiding it from Mommy and Daddy.

For the sisters, the brothers and a few enlightened others of lighter complexion, it was life’s heartbeat. The bass. It all boiled down to the bass, or when you went freestyle and spit your rhymes acappella, it was the rhythm, slow and languid or fast and furious; you peel off your skin and let the world know what’s burning and churning inside of you.

Now, if your claim to the game was the dance, then it was the physical movement; the syncopated, polyrhythmic motion of various body parts, internal and external, a sexual healing, ancient and visceral. These things validated your life. Life outside of these parameters made less sense.

Shaheed Sampson was stepping off the stage to a thunderous ovation. He was one of the city’s ill-est wordsmiths. He could spit freestyle, with or against anyone, strong, confident, controlling and calm. Shaheed could also go into flip mode, soothing or scorching your ears with rap’s ambitious older brother, spoken word.

Spoken word: Precise and to the point. Darts aimed straight at your mind. The melody is in the words, the passion is in the words, the words are, each of them, mountains the poet stands upon, peering down, analyzing, demystifying and testifying.

A treasure trove of deep thoughts always circled Shaheed’s mind. He was a thinker. Shaheed thought it natural to search and analyze, a trait he inherited from his old man.

He dropped out of college, so he wasn’t formally educated in fine art, but he dug it. He dug paintings, poetry, novels, photography, music and various forms of hip-hop. Words came easy to him and he could string his kernels of wisdom together like popcorn on a thread of consciousness. He did what came naturally and could, no doubt, do it better than most.

As he strolled off the stage, his six-foot-one sturdy frame weaved through the crowd. The ladies were watching with compounded interest. Yes, he was talented, but his curly hair, dimpled cheeks and honey-brown complexion hosted a perfectly proportioned body. His eyes were a light shade of brown, something he inherited from his momz. His smile was boyish and unassumingly affectionate. He was the kind of man that sisters fell in love with.

The Raw Dawg was just that…raw. Located on Northside Drive, it was a warehouse transformed into a club. A stage, some lights, tables, a few booths and a bar gave it the essentials. Other than an earthquake sound system, The Dawg didn’t need anything more than live entertainment, and gyrating bodies dancing until dawn, to make it a popular hangout.

At the bar, Shaheed ordered an apple juice. The club’s owner and occasional bartender was in his mid- forties, fifteen years older than Shaheed, just young enough to blend in with the crowd. He had an emerging potbelly and shaved head. Even his eyebrows looked shaved; something that he inherited as well. He was short and bootblack with strong, broad shoulders and fireplug legs. His name was Louis Satchmo Dubois. Everyone called him Satch.

Damn, Youngblood, you’re hot tonight.

I’m hot every night, Satch.

Yeah, well you’re right about that. Satch was a true friend, not a mere acquaintance. Your pops called.

What he want?

Man, you know I don’t like asking your old man no questions. The less I know the better off I am.

I heard that.

They watched a fight break out in the middle of the dance floor. It was snuffed out with a quickness by two of Satch’s more than able bouncers.

I hear ya’ Satch, I hear ya’. Sometimes no news is good news, know what I’m sayin’. I’ll be glad when he retires.

Satch laughed. Man, your dad ain’t never gonna retire. Private detectives don’t retire; they fade away. Besides, he’s got your young ass to help him.

"Naw, brother, you’re wrong about that. I ain’t trying to play PI no more. I told him. That last shit almost cost me my life. I ain’t tryin’ to spend two days in the trunk of somebody’s car again, not in this life. All I do now is answer the phone and run errands. I’m working on my word skills. That’s what I do. Zero all them cloak and dagger escapades. Anyways, Pops said he wasn’t doing that kinda’ shit no more."

Yeah, replied Satch as he walked away to serve another customer, I’ve heard all a’dat before.

I’m serious man, I’m an artist, know what I’m sayin’.

Yeah, yeah, yeah…he said to call him tonight. Then Satch laughed and approached two cuties at the other end of the bar.

Shaheed eyed his drink, reconfirming that he was serious. He wasn’t trying to follow in his father’s footsteps. He had seen him flirt with death too many times to consider it an option. He was trying to establish a career on stage. At least this is what he told himself.

He remembered that he left his cell phone in the car. Then he looked across the room at the payphone and wondered if he had two case-quarters in his pocket. He rummaged around and found a phone number this babe gave him in the grocery store. He searched his other pocket and found a piece of gum and fifty cents. He looked back at the payphone and stared at it for a long time, seesawing back and forth, wondering if indeed, no news was good news. DAMN!

Hey Pops, what’s up? Shaheed had to yell.

Did you remember that tomorrow is your mother’s birthday?

Shaheed breathed a sigh of relief. Yeah, yeah. Let’s do something special.

Good idea. We can take her to Paschal’s, she likes that place, then maybe some jazz at Churchill Grounds.

I was thinking of bringing her here, to the Raw Dawg.

Churchill Grounds.

Raw Dawg.

Don’t make me come through the phone, son.

Shaheed was only slightly joking. He wished that his parents could see him in action, not the shoot’em up kind, but the lyrical kind, the kind of action he liked; that shaped his life.

He also dug when he had these joking conversations with his pops. They could talk about anything. He loved his momz the same way. He knew that he was fortunate to have both. Awright, Pascal’s and Churchill Grounds it is. I ain’t got no problem with good soul food or good jazz.

Wouldn’t be no Raw Dawg if it wasn’t for jazz. You remember that next time you’re on stage.

I know Pops, I know.

Shaheed hung up the receiver and turned around. From his vantage point, he could see the entire club—the lights, the smoky haze, the smiling faces, the bobbing heads motivated by pulsating music. He saw it all in slow motion. Every smile, every raised glass and every shaking body that swayed and drifted back and forth in front of his eyes. And the scene grew bitter, causing the apple juice in his stomach to consider fighting its way back up his throat. He had to get out of there. He needed a greater peace than he could find at The Dawg.

His attention was drawn to the back of the club where he saw a pretty, beige babe, long jet-black hair, all dressed in black. She had this Mata Hari-esque vibe, as though she was only there to observe from a safe, unemotional distance. Her moves were calculated and her observations inquisitive. The dude she was with was an ornament.

Shaheed may have seen her before, but he wasn’t sure. She was just another pretty face in The Dawg, so he shrugged his shoulders and headed for the door. He slapped Satch five while simultaneously pulling a twenty-dollar bill out of his hand; Shaheed’s share of the tip jar. Then he strolled toward the exit giving a few regulars some customary dap.

As he was about to exit, he looked back to see if the beige babe had changed her monotone expression.

She was gone, and so was the man that was with her.

Shaheed again felt that foreboding spasm in his stomach. This feeling had visited him before, and he didn’t take it lightly, for he was his father’s son, no doubt.

CHAPTER THREE

Between The Lines was a coffee house, slash, performance space in East Atlanta. This section of the city was a part of the gentrification of in-town Atlanta by white folks who had fled and now wanted back in. The Line, nestled in the commercial district, was flanked on one side by an old movie theater remodeled to house a dance company and on the other side a store that sold vintage clothing from the 40’s and 50’s. The facades of all the modest shops and restaurants were the same as when they were built some one hundred years ago. A walk through East Atlanta was a walk through antiquity. It was a real hip spot to drink a cup of joe and pass intellectual conversation.

At night, The Line informally hosted poets and acoustic acts. The interior was dim and curious. As you walked through the door, its serene, unassuming ambiance enveloped you—welcoming chairs and couches placed thoughtfully about. Dark woods and earth tones bathed discreetly in subtle lighting. It was small and cozy to five people or fifty-five. Once upon a time, it was home to The East Atlanta Hat Company.

Shaheed would come here when he wanted to escape the noise and commotion that was the Raw Dawg. Shaheed had a way of keeping things at a distance, especially things that encroached on his well-being, his peace of mind. It all happened by instinct. He taught himself to move that way and practiced the technique every day of his life. Right now, he needed The Line. It provided a meditative zone, an analgesic for the nerves in his stomach, the ones that twitched after he talked to his old man.

No one was on the small eight-by-sixteen stage, so a group called Elements was on the PA presenting Billie Holiday’s voice wailing from the distant past over newly laid tracks that sounded electronic, but hip; a new generation’s attempt to put jazz into a context they could understand. Shaheed felt the music and fell right into the rhythm, slowly bobbing his head as he joined his boy from back in the day. He hadn’t seen Horace Plimpton in five years. He seemingly disappeared from the streets.

Horace, man, where the hell you been?

Horace was a short brother, almost five-foot-six, thin and pint-sized, yet, he walked around with an attitude twice his size. What Horace lacked in height, he compensated for tenfold with a raw New York attitude. He grew up in Brooklyn and migrated to Atlanta to escape the city. He found Atlanta to be slower, but fast enough to stay energized. Perhaps Horace was a little too energized, because his answer to Shaheed’s question was, The joint!

Shaheed was shocked. Was this the same Horace I hung out with? Was this the same brother with me back in the day when we discovered rap? Was this the Horace I would chill with all night long for no real reason at all—just fuckin’round?

Yeah, I got caught up in some shit…same old shit really. I came home and caught Gina. You remember my wife, Gina?

Shaheed lifted his jaw and acknowledged that he knew her. She was short too, but a big girl. People called her Big Gee behind Horace’s back, and she talked as much smack as her husband, maybe more.

Shaheed knew that Horace was a firecracker, always ready to explode, but he was never quite sure the petite fella’ could back up his wolf tickets. So, when he explained what happened, Shaheed was quite surprised.

Horace came home from work early and found ol’girl in bed with this mountainous country boy from Valdosta, Georgia. His dimensions are relevant, because despite the size sixteens that supported his solid six foot-three, two hundred and eighty pound body, Big Country got his ass kicked…substantially.

I didn’t mean to go off, but I was hot, said Horace with a thin air of apology. I mean when I saw that oversized nigga humpin’ my baby like an overgrown black bull, what else was I supposed to do?

Now Horace’s eyes narrowed to slits. "I beat that nigga across the back as hard as I could with my Hank Aaron autographed baseball bat; broke the mutha’ fucka’. And then I threw his big country ass out the window, went downstairs and kicked him in the head ‘til the white meat showed. It all happened so fast he must have thought that a train ran through the room and carried him down the tracks right along with it.

Then I went up stairs and began to bury my foot into Gina’s ample, and I might add, pretty ass.

Shaheed found himself enjoying Horace’s story. He was dramatically hopping around the table, acting out all that had happened, playing all the parts. Shaheed wanted to laugh, because Horace resembled a midget wrestler, a cracked-out pygmy, the energizer bunny on steroids.

"Man it took about fifteen cops to pull me offa’her. I was pulling this way, and they were pulling that way. I snuck two of’em too. Quick. Pop, pop!"

So you had to do some time, said Shaheed stating a fact more than asking a question.

"Yeah…It coulda’ been more serious. That cornflake, punk-ass bitch lived, but I still had to do time for two counts of malicious battery with intent and assaulting two police officers who I made bleed. Caught a nickel.

I mean, what else was I supposed to do, Shaheed? I had to defend my honor, my manhood…know what I’m sayin’?

Shaheed fully agreed. Yeah, they had your back against the wall, you had to go off.

I had to.

So I guess you and Gina ain’t together. This was a bit of sarcasm on Shaheed’s part. He closed his eyes and chuckled, but when he reopened them Horace was looking at him with the face of a guilty child. Then Horace lowered his head into his cup of coffee.

"We together man. She stuck with me the whole time I was in the joint. Gina’s a good woman. I gave her all the reasons in the world to go astray. It was my fault she cheated. I had a hard time manin’ up to that, but I figured it out. You got a lot of time to figure shit out in the joint, Bee."

Shaheed wanted to agree, but he had never been to the joint. He didn’t know what it was like to be forcibly separated from family, but he could tell by the shiver in Horace’s voice that it was hard. He had bruises.

Shaheed always had Momz and Pops at his disposal to laugh with or argue with, it didn’t matter; they were always there. Then, the way Horace disappeared, suddenly and without a trace. Shaheed thought about how time promises nothing and how quickly people can disappear from your life. For some reason Horace never let him know about the joint, and Shaheed didn’t try very hard to find out where he was. Life simply marched forward.

Sister Cleopatra took the stage. The PA slowly softened into nothing and Ernie G, already on stage, began to leisurely stroke his upright bass as though it were a lover.

Moody vibrations resonated throughout the room, the lights dimmed; it was a perfect introduction to Cleopatra’s poems. Everyone dug her lyrics. She was strong, sure and as steady as the syrupy upright caressing her voice. She had a sizeable brown Afro, beautifully rounded features, and she wore an African robe making her…queenly.

Shaheed and Horace sank into their seats and soaked it all in.

Horace was a down brother. Shaheed was glad that they were going to be boys again. He could tell that Horace was glad too. He was smiling.

Sister Cleopatra began to recite liquid syllables that flowed effortlessly.

When I’m sad

he makes me smile

and turns blue emotions

into golden notions

and he turns

rainy days to sunshine rays

my friend is my lover

my lover is my friend

my nik-ka, my nik-ka

‘til death do us part…

…impossible.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘Til death do us part…

…impossible.

‘Til death do us part…

…impossible.

These verses stuck in Shaheed’s mind from the time he woke up. They rattled around in his brain, but he didn’t know where they wanted to go. What made these simple verses stick?

* * *

Shaheed was pulling into the back of his father’s office.

Sampson Investigations sat above a dry cleaner on Auburn Avenue in the downtown section of the city. The street represented the sweet life of Atlanta’s Black community as far back as the early nineteen hundreds, hence the name Sweet Auburn. Forbes Magazine once dubbed it the richest Negro street in the world. Back in the day, it was also an elegant, hip party street where the likes of Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, The Count, The Duke, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, The Four Tops, Ray Charles, James Brown, Sam Cook, Jackie Wilson, Little Richard, Aretha Franklin, The Supremes, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Ike and Tina, and Atlanta’s own Gladys Knight performed at the Royal Peacock.

The Peacock was like its northern counterpart in Harlem, The Apollo. You headlined there if, and only if, you had superb chops. This is what the audience demanded on Sweet Auburn. It was not a place to woodshed—you performed only when your game was ripe and tight.

It was also a street where hundreds of Black businesses where born, where the first Black radio station, W-E-R-D originated, where the first Black insurance company in Atlanta originated, where the SCLC was headquartered, where Daddy King lead his church, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was raised and buried for a time.

Now a mixture of old and new school, Auburn Avenue has always been a reflection of the Black community’s multiplicity, its strengths and its faults, its power and its weakness.

In Shaheed’s mind, he saw the rhyme and the reason for his father’s dingy two-room office in a historic building on this historic street that today has succumbed to urban renewal—a monster that when left untamed devours history.

His father, Marcus Garvey Sampson, was the embodiment of Sweet Auburn’s noble history. He was enduring, yet struggling for survival, ever transforming.

The long hallway on the second level archetypically gave way to a walnut stained door with opaquely frosted glass set in the upper half. The writing across the glass said, in serious gold leaf letters, SAMPSON INVESTIGATIONS. Then in smaller letters underneath it read, Neat & Discrete.

The first face to welcome you was that of Margaret Hamilton. She had been Marcus’ secretary since he started the business. A rock-hard Jamaican woman; widowed, in her mid-fifties, naturally attractive, plump with salt and pepper dreads that