Symphony of Secrets, page 35
Bern
Dear Members of the Board and Executive Director of the Delaney Foundation,
Please be advised that as of 9:00 a.m. on Monday, March 4, 2024, the following shall occur:
To Kurt Delaney:
Documents (see Attachments A–F) detailing a money-laundering scheme between Biolumens, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Delaney Foundation, and various other entities and affiliated corporations shall be forwarded to the offices of the U.S. Attorney General, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the Economist. The documents shall also be posted in their entirety on www.fredericdelaneyisafraud.com (“the Website”).
The documentation makes clear that you are the sole shareholder of many of these entities, but further penetration of the corporate veil will no doubt determine the level of involvement from other board members and/or shareholders.
In addition, we have obtained photographs and text messages (see Attachments G–O) belonging to you and several young men from rent.men. We will be forwarding these materials to Mrs. Delaney for her edification. We shall also post these materials on the Website. (Please note that images of genitalia will be redacted for your privacy.)
To Thomas Alexander:
Your personal and business tax returns for the years 2016–2021 failed to report approximately $3,247,998 of income derived from various non-U.S. sources (see Attachments P–Y). We shall alert the Internal Revenue Service of this deficit and post all records of such income, including the all-cash payments delineated in Attachments I and J, on the Website. (Please be assured that, in order to protect your privacy, all sensitive Social Security and Employment Identification numbers will be redacted.)
We note also that, since 2007, you have hired a series of undocumented illegal workers (see Attachments Z–FF). We have alerted the undocumented workers, who were, until this week, in your employment, so no doubt you have already noticed their absence. Be advised that we are collaborating with local charities to find the workers lawful employment and a path to citizenship. In the meantime, however, we shall utilize the Homeland Security Investigations Tip Form on ice.gov, which helpfully includes “Employment/Exploitation of Unlawful Workers” in its list of optional violations (see ICE Tip Form Section II, “Suspected Violation”). Please prepare to be contacted by Homeland Security, the Internal Revenue Service, and several other governmental entities regarding this matter. In addition, we are including all relevant information, including photographs of your three homes (the Hamptons “cottage” should fetch top dollar if you decide to declare bankruptcy) and the living conditions of the undocumented workers in your employment. All this shall, as you can imagine, be included on the Website.
Further, for all other board members and employees of the Delaney Foundation, we have created 20+ websites whose contents shall be identical to that of the Website (see Attachments GG–YY). Note that the Website contains the following information:
• A full and as complete as possible portrayal of the collaboration and/or appropriation of materials written by Josephine Reed and subsequently appropriated by Frederick Delaney.
• A discussion of the five trunks of coded music, and our subsequent belief that Josephine wrote all of Delaney’s music. After Reed disappeared or left Delaney, Delaney spent the next ten years trying to write Reed’s music himself, and failed.
• A full and accurate list of all intimidation tactics employed by the Delaney Foundation to silence Ms. Washington and Dr. Hendricks, including photographs of the abuse Dr. Hendricks suffered at the Foundation’s behest by the New York Police Department. Full records and detailed payments by the Foundation to the NYPD officers listed in the Attachments are also included (see Attachments ZZ–JJJ).
This information shall be released at the aforementioned time on March 4. These 20+ websites, which may be as many as 50, shall go live, and URLs shall be sent to all major media outlets (television, newspaper, radio, and internet sources) with accompanying posts and/or URLs on all major social media platforms. Instructions for screen capturing and data storage shall be provided.
In the alternative, we suggest that all board members shall, with their legal representatives, appear at The Pierre Hotel, Ballroom #3, at 12:00 p.m. on Friday, March 1. Ms. Washington, Dr. Hendricks, and respective attorneys shall be in attendance and shall provide clear instructions on working out a full and final settlement of this matter. Any further efforts by the Foundation at intimidation or coercion will be met with a swift and fully public release of all the above materials.
Finally, please be advised that Ms. Washington and Dr. Hendricks are checking in every few hours with third parties who have clear instructions to publish all this information if they fail to receive ongoing communication regularly at the appointed time(s), so we suggest the Foundation refrain from further attempts at intimidation until the meeting.
Very sincerely and seriously yours,
Eboni Michelle Washington & K. Bernard Hendricks, PhD
47
Save a Dog from the Street
Josephine
The music of her last night in New York bloomed around Josephine as she waited for him to come. She’d intended to be gone by now. The train to North Carolina had left three hours ago, and she imagined herself on it: the click of the wheels, the bass thrum of momentum as they barreled southward.
She’d originally booked a sleeper car. Second class because she was colored, but that train did have a few second-class sleepers available. The train she’d had to rebook for today had none. She’d have to sit on a bench the whole ride down. It would take almost an entire day to arrive in Oxford.
It would be worth it. She was done with Fred Delaney. She was done with New York City. The music that she wanted to hear would be whatever she, Josephine Reed, wanted to hear. No one else.
The old apartment building on Sixty-Third Street breathed and creaked and she pictured herself, a tiny speck of warmth alone in the cool empty darkness. She felt unmoored without the comforting weight of the Compendium nearby: untethered, floating above the city. From far down the street blew the sound of laughter and—she was almost sure of it—the tender hook of a saxophone—E-flat—a running G-major chord suddenly cut short. The music probably from Jessie’s, the colored speakeasy a block away.
She should have gone out tonight, she should have revisited her favorite haunts, she should have walked with the sound of her footsteps tapping out “Goodbye” to Harlem, to the Village, over to Tin Pan Alley and up Madison to where the new department stores stretched vast. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.
But she’d been unable to leave her room. She wanted to get it over with: for him to rifle through the Compendium she’d left for him on the piano, to nod at her, to go. What if he asked to see the score for RED?
RED. That reminded her. She groped in her leather handbag for the tiny brass jeweler’s screwdriver she’d used to pry open the place where she kept RED from his grasp—he had hunted through the bag, tossed it across the room, but none of the contents had fallen out. Now the brass smiled up at her, the crosshatched handle fitting comfortably in her palm.
Then she’d cleaned up the damage he’d done so her room looked as it had before. Without the lamp and end table. She’d put those in Freddy’s room, where the Compendium had rested until earlier today.
The breezes would be quieter in North Carolina. The cicadas would be humming in the sunshine; and every night, as the shadows flowered, the crickets would spiral out their F-sharp to B-minor rhythmic progression. A train would roar its weight from the top of the hill, and below, before dawn, the roosters would call to each other. The finches would sing by the creek, where nasturtiums would still be nodding their pale heads. The mornings would smell of honeysuckle, fresh eggs, and ham sizzling in the pan. She was so close.
Tomorrow she would collect RED, she would go to the station right after she signed the papers from Miles Turpin. The train wouldn’t leave until early afternoon, but she would wait in the echoing vastness of Pennsylvania Station, the steamer trunks of the Compendium spread around her like trunk-size bean pods: she thought of trunk, as in tree trunk, as something vast and living, a conduit carrying musical sap up and out into the world. She had painted her name in white on all five trunks, plus the one she still had in her bedroom, white paint proclaiming that the Compendium belonged to Josephine Reed, Regina Street, Oxford, NC, with the cicadas and the roosters and the finches.
Evening passed slowly. Just after midnight, the front door boomed and his footsteps tapped through the landing far below. The click, whir of the elevator. And then the familiar footsteps beat their familiar tattoo to her door and that knock, that so-familiar knock, D major, three beats, and the door opened.
He didn’t look at her. Which was good, because she didn’t look at him, either. She listened as his feet found their way to the piano, as paper rustled, as he thumbed through the pages. She heard them being folded, the sound of cloth rustling. She supposed he’d inserted them into his jacket pocket.
She waited for his footsteps to start up again, to beat their way back across the room, for the door to open and to close behind him, for the footsteps to pad their way down the hall and out of her life.
Instead: the creak of the piano bench, E minor. He sat. The room yawned between them. She felt him looking at her.
“Why?” he said. Just the one word. When she didn’t answer, he repeated, a little louder, “Why, Josie?”
Her name was Josephine, but that didn’t matter anymore. If she answered his question, he would stay longer. She longed for him to go.
“Why would you do this to me?” he said. The piano bench creaked again, the E minor squealing out into F-sharp; he was standing, striding four strides over to her, towering above her as she stared down into her hands.
“All I’ve done since the day I met you was try to help,” he told her. “I took you in. I fed you. I gave you experiences people like you only dream of. Why, Josie?”
If you rescue a dog from the street.
She said, “I don’t—”
He was leaning over her. She could feel him coiled above her, his lips inches from her ear. “The next thing out of your mouth had better be a good reason for why you stole from me.”
She tried to struggle to her feet but he shoved her shoulder back into the armchair. “I never stole anything from you,” she said.
“Liar!” He slapped her across the face. “I know you tried to sell my songs to Miles Turpin.”
She fell back, reflexively looking up at him, her eyes swimming.
He knew about Miles Turpin.
He no longer was the shining young man who had rescued her. His cheeks were distorted, eyes bloodshot, lips wrinkled back in a snarl. This was how he would look in another fifty years, she thought.
“You stole my music,” he said. “You’re trying to ruin me. After all I’ve given you.”
“It’s mine,” she said. “It’s always been mine. You’re the one who stole from me. I tried to help—”
He pulled her up, hands under her armpits, lifting her so they were face-to-face. He smelled of wine and shame, and something else—something smokier, burnt. What was it? The scent was familiar but unusual.
“Your music?” he was saying. “Your music was nothing until I made it work.”
“That’s not true,” she said. “It was mine. It worked just fine.”
“Why would you go to Miles? Why would you take my music and try selling it to him? After all I’ve done for you?”
“It’s my music,” she said. “I wrote it. I heard it first.” What was that smell? He was inches from her, but she would not look at him. “I can do with it what I like.”
“Well, Miles won’t be buying any of it,” he said with a short laugh. “He won’t be buying anything anymore.”
“What do you mean?” she asked. She had never understood other people, how their words and the timbre of their voices never quite matched.
“Your pal Miles won’t be buying anything ever again,” he said, and he reached in his pocket and slid out a tiny revolver, barely the size of his hand, and he slid it back into his pocket again, and she realized what that smell was: gunpowder. Her father had smelled like that, and Howard, when they’d returned from a day hunting.
Now she looked up at him, looming over her, too close. “Did you do something to Miles? Did you kill him?”
“Stop your stupid talk! Just stop it!” he said, his face creasing up, and she looked away, down at her hands. And then he was screaming, howling. “Why did you make me do it? I don’t want to do any of this, Josie, but you keep making me!”
“Miles is dead?” she said again, not quite understanding.
“You can’t sell the music to other people,” he said. “It’s mine. You have to promise me that you won’t ever do it again. You just can’t go to other people with it. I’ll take care of you forever, I promise. But you just can’t betray me.”
And there it was: his promise.
“It’s not yours,” she said.
“It is too! Can’t you see that? We just have to have things the way they were, okay? Just promise me, okay? We’re a team. We can do this. Just don’t ever try selling it to anyone else ever again.”
“It’s not yours,” she repeated. “It’s mine. What did you do to Miles?”
“It was your fault,” Fred told her, holding her by the shoulders, shaking her. “You betrayed me. You need to understand that the music is mine, you hear me? It’s mine. I took you out of the gutter, I gave you a roof over your head, the music is—”
How did he know about Miles? She could feel her plans disintegrating, falling from her like broken autumn leaves.
“Stop it,” she said. “Just stop. You’re the one who’s taken everything from me. My music is all I have. You promised me things would be the way they were. You lied again and again. It’s gone.” She pushed herself back, trying to shake free, but his hands tightened around her shoulders. “Let go,” she said. “You’re hurting me.”
“The clothes, Josie. The trips. The money. I gave you everything.”
“Liar,” she said, breathing in the smell of him, charred and rank, almost welcoming it. “You have more money than me. You put the music on the paper and that gave you the money. And you have more. You said we would be partners and split everything. We’d both get the same, you promised. It all came from my music. You need me. Without me, you’re nothing.”
He stared at her, and she stared back, defiant.
“You piece of garbage,” he whispered. “You are nothing. You’re just a crazy scrap-bag lady. You were on the street living like a dog before I took you in.”
“I was happy before I met you,” she said, trying to wriggle away.
And then oddly, impossibly, holding her tight, he began to cry. “I’m sorry,” he said, sniffling. “Josie, I’m so sorry. I failed you.”
She froze.
“I thought I could make you understand what this was for,” he said. “Why I worked so hard for you. I only wanted to make you happy, because you made me happy. Why you would do this to me, I just don’t understand. Why you’d you want to sell the songs to Miles—”
His grip loosened on her and he shuddered, great heaving gasps blowing over her as if belched from a train. In that brief instant, she felt sorry for him. He seemed genuinely grief-stricken for ignoring her, for striking her.
But not for stealing her music.
He hugged her tightly to him. She could feel the choice lying before her: she could forgive or she could speak her truth.
Why did she think she had a choice? She had no choice.
“It’s my music,” she told him. “It’s always been mine.”
He shook her so hard that she became dizzy. He put both hands on her face and squeezed.
“It’s mine,” he said. “I’m the one who made it great. Why can’t you understand that?”
She struggled to free herself. His fingers dug into her cheeks, forcing her eyes up to meet his. He said, “You did this. You did all of this. It didn’t have to be this way, but you made it like this.”
His hands went from her face to her neck. She gasped for air.
“You won’t take it away from me,” he said. “It’s mine. I worked too hard to let you or anyone else destroy what I’ve worked so hard for.”
He was still weeping: his face so close to hers, tears oozing, a splash onto her jaw and onto her ear as he pressed his thumbs deeper into her windpipe. “Oh, Josie,” he kept repeating, over and over. “Josie, we have to make music together. It’s together, Josie. We’re a team, remember? We’re a team, Josie. You and me.”
Squeezing, hands around her throat.
She couldn’t breathe.
She tried to pry loose his grip, but her fingers could find no purchase.
She looked up at him, his silver-black hair flopping in his face, his lips contorted and trembling, his blue eyes leaking tears, and then she wouldn’t look at him anymore, and refused to hear her name on his lips.
“It was mine,” she told him in her mind. Mine.
And then, somehow, it didn’t matter anymore whose it was.
She closed her eyes and listened: listened so very intently, with every molecule in her body and every drop of blood that moved sluggishly in her veins.
Listened: for the distant echo of a saxophone: for the upward lilt of a piano: for the ragged slide of a trombone lifting up across a city block, or a mountaintop, or an eternity, far away.
48
Ormolu & Lawyers
Bern
They filed in, all fifteen board members, plus Mallory and the Foundation’s other officers; and each had at least one, if not two, lawyers in tow. All told, thirty-eight people, all in business suits and many with briefcases, sat on narrow hotel chairs arranged loosely in the ballroom in three rows, balancing legal pads and laptops on their knees. They also carried loose-leaf notebooks that Bern and Eboni had prepared and had left at the back of the ballroom: dark blue three-ring binders with tabbed pages, photocopied documents, and about two hundred densely typed pages of pure legalese, courtesy of the firm they’d hired to make sure everything was buttoned up properly.
