Maybe a year or two,
I been waitin' on forgiveness
All because o' you
Can't love ya, li'l honey bee,
Can't love ya no mo ...
Time for Big Daddy
To step thru the door
I woke early that afternoon to the sound of Ricardo tapping on my door. I flung back the sheet and crawled out of bed. When I opened the door, Ricardo looked a little sheepish.
"You alone?" he asked.
"Come in, Ric, and yes, I'm alone."
As he stepped into my room, he whined, "Well, shit, you never know, you know."
As I began to get a clean shirt and some half-decent jeans on, I asked, "What's the latest?"
"The latest?" the little man echoed. "The latest is that we needs be bustin' up that corruption upstairs. That's the latest."
"Has the good doctor been up there yet?"
"I don't know, don't think so, but maybe she has ..."
A voice chimed in from the doorway, "No, she hasn't."
It was Dr Meadows. Her smile seemed to brighten the room.
"I've been waiting for some, uh, muscle to back me up," she added.
Ricardo couldn't resist the opportunity. "Oh, he has a muscle, all righty, and a big one at that."
Like the three musketeers, we climbed the stairs up to Room 308, where Blue Bottle Bill Beady was accommodated. Dr Meadows knocked vigorously on the door and shouted, "Mr Beady, Monroe County Social Services, please open the door."
There was no response. She knocked again, repeating her command to open the door.
Still, no response.
I began to become uneasy. I looked at Ricardo and asked, "Do you have your pass key?"
The midget was way ahead of me. He slid between Dr Meadows and the door, and slipped his pass key into the lock. Then he threw the door open.
The room was completely dark, the blackout curtains pulled tightly over the windows. At first, I couldn't see anything and wished that I'd brought a flashlight. Then as my eyes began to adjust to the darkness, I saw what I did not want to see.
Sprawled on the bed was the body of Blue Bottle Bill Beady covered with sprigs of lavender and a variety of what appeared to be herbs. The smell of death and the fragrance of the lavender caught in my throat. For a moment, I thought I was going to be sick. Then Dr Meadows broke the silence and snapped me back.
"My God," she groaned. "What in the world?"
Ricardo turned on a dime and bolted from the room, but not before proclaiming, "Voodoo, I told you, voodoo."
I approached the bed, somewhat cautiously, and looked down on the body. On the nightstand, I saw a blue bottle, like the kind apothecaries used years ago. I picked it up and noticed a trickle of liquid inside of it, then handed it to Dr Meadows, who was now beside me.
"It's poison," she said quietly. "I've seen this before, but it's rare in these parts. It is a form of voodoo, or more precisely Louisiana Vodoun. Still, it's murder, or put more kindly, euthanasia."
"The little girl?" I wondered. "The girl, Josephine?"
"You won't find her now," Dr Meadows said blankly. "She'll be long gone. She is what they call a Voodoo Queen, a kind of high priestess, with the power to give and take life. She was never here for sex, well, she might have been, but her primary role was to assist this poor man through the what they call the door of death."
"But why?" I murmured.
"Usually," Dr Meadows said softly, "the recipient of the death potion is already dying. My guess is that Mr Beady was terminally ill. I can't say he wanted to die, but I suspect he knew he was dying."
Two weeks later, Dr Anne Meadows returned to The Pink Flamingo Hotel and confirmed that Blue Bottle Bill Beady was certainly dying of terminal lung cancer, but had been murdered prematurely from the administration of a poison.
"The girl you knew as Josephine gave Mr Beady a mixture of neurotoxins, derived primarily from Caribbean fish and amphibians," she explained to me as we sat in the breezeway her first evening back. "My report has been forwarded to an FBI special task force, but the chances of ever finding the girl are extremely slim."
"It's sad," I added in a quiet voice, "he had an amazing talent."
"It is tragic," the doctor confirmed, "but there are sometimes demons in us all that we can't explain. Mr Beady must have known more than his fair share."
She stood up and turned to face me. Once again, that infectious smile seemed to brighten the moment.
"I'll be leaving in the morning," she said, "it has been quite an experience here and I have enjoyed your company."
"The pleasure has been all ours," I replied. "We'll all miss you, especially Ric."
She chuckled. "Yes, he's quite a man." Then, with that winsome look in her eyes, she asked, "Off to work?"
"Yes," I confirmed, "another night in the jaws of Hell."
"Goodnight then," she said with a note of regret. "Please take care of yourself."
"And you," I reciprocated, then watched her walk from the breezeway into the hotel.
That night, my shift in the Corner Pocket seemed especially long. By morning, a hollow feeling was gnawing at me. I skipped checking on Ricardo and went directly to my room, undressed and curled into bed. No sooner had I shut my eyes, when there was a faint rapping on my door.
"This better be good, Ric," I shouted as I rolled out of bed and wrapped a towel around me.
I went to the door and flung it open.
There in the morning light was Anne Meadows, dressed only in a hotel robe.
"Dr Meadows?" I exclaimed. "I thought you were leaving this morning."
"Yes," she smiled, "but I have some unfinished business to attend to."
And with that, she pushed me back into my room, spun the door closed with her foot, and stepped out of her robe.
John Lee Hooker & Bonnie Raitt ♫ In The Mood
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