Kitchen Cast & Crew

“Henry. Grab the knife.”

“Really?! And get my fingerprints on the thing? No way, baby. Nothing doing.” 

It had not been eight hours before someone decided they had had enough of their host Blanco Bo-Day. There he was on the kitchen floor prone with a knife protruding from his back, his husky from damp and paler than usual. He was dead. The frozen horror on his face and his awkward stillness were proof enough of that fact.

“You might as well do it,” continued Kat, her sand-colored fingers fidgeting at the seam of her dress. “We’re all in trouble anyway. Pull the damn thing out. It looks . . . . . . wrong.”

“Don’t do it.” Brook finally chimed in. “Let's not disturb the murder scene any more than we already have. And don’t worry, Henry. Most of our prints are already on the knife. What? Nobody recognized the knife we used earlier to carve our pumpkins?”

“Damn! He’s right!” Henry said as he rubbed his bald head. The implication of the scenario sent fear streaking through the six guests like lightning. It was bad enough that they were celebrities at a famous man’s house, eyewitnesses seeing every one of them as they pulled up to the Hollywood home. The situation was worse than that. They were six Black individuals standing over the corpse of a wealthy White man with a well-known name. Brook could imagine the tabloids spinning this into some kind of Black radical slaying thing. It didn’t matter that not a single one of them was officially affiliated with any liberation organizations. White fear only saw what it wanted to see, and unfortunately, that was all it took to ruin the lives of many. The shadows that made them jump didn’t have to be real for the nation to react with blind malice. The Black Panther Party had existed for six years now and they were still being persecuted in mass. The guests all had different backgrounds. From poor to middle class, from Harlem street to North Carolina country. Yet, they all knew too well the danger of White fear. A moment of silence limped along while wild thoughts danced malevolently in imaginative minds.

“I’m out.”

“Me too. Nothing good can come from this.”

“Hey! Don’t leave me!”

“Stop!” Brook bellowed, freezing everyone in time. “Nobody is going anywhere until we, us six, figure this mess out.”

“Why is that, Brook? Tell us! Why?!” spat a well-dressed woman in black named Cheyanne. Her 6’1” model’s frame stepped within inches of Brook, the woman’s afro adding enough to her height to tower over him. Brook wasn’t a tall man. Nor was he the fittest. The only thing he had that could intimidate confronters were his coal-like eyes and the petrifying stare they could exude. 

“Because, Ms. Ebony's cover of ‘67, every White face on this hill up and down that windy road can identify every last one of us. We’re not the help coming by to pick up garbage or clean floors. We’re Black movie stars in goddamn Hollywood.”

“Kat Gold; world-famous singer who toured with Aretha Franklin, The Supremes, and Eartha Kitt before co-starring in a film with Syndey Poitier.” Brook declared as he pointed with his thumb. “Henry Carrington; ex-quarterback for the Chiefs and current action star. Roxie Flowers; television star and world-class dancer. Mattie McHattie; one of the first Black academy award winners. Brook; actor.”

A beat of silence ebbed through the kitchen, its rich tan walls seeming more claustrophobic than normal. The man’s point was coming across as loud and clear. His solid dead tone didn’t have to be booming for his words to be deafening.

“And Cheyanne Lola,” Brook continued, his eyes piercing into the woman. “Supermodel and actress who is known from here to Timbuktu. Can you dig that, ‘67? It doesn’t matter where you run. Cops are going to come knocking sooner or later, and you better believe they won’t hesitate to blow a hole through any of our naturals. That is unless . . . unless we figure out who did the deed here and now. Got it? Was that why enough for you, Cheyanne?”

The sinewy woman held her ground for a moment before shrugging and backing off. Brook exchanged looks with all of his fellow guests, making sure to catch their eyes from every angle of the fancy condo’s kitchen. They were all acquaintances he had met through productions. Nothing more. If it had not been for Blanco then Brook wouldn’t have even been in California today. That was the same story for everyone else standing before him. All six were forced to make an appearance at the Hollywood home this morning.

“Now,” Brook continued, scratching the dry scalp beneath his afro. “Which one of us had a motive?”

“Really?” Mattie McHattie scoffed, her hands resting on her full hips.

“Right. Which one of us had the most motive then?” Brook replied.

“Motive, Brook?” Mattie said. “You know playing a detective in two movies doesn’t make you the real thing, right? It just makes you sound like a regular dick.”

“Maybe.” Brook shrugged.

She was right. Brook was just an actor, but that didn’t make his point any less true. Blanco Bo-Day was a degenerate parasite that every guest there had a reason to hate. His actions were always malicious and exploitative. Self-serving and greedy. Even his pumpkin carving party was just a farce used to flex his dominance.

“Let’s run it down,” Brook said, leaning against the kitchen wall. “This irredeemable bastard black-mails all of us by holding our contracts hostage. Pushing us to do stupid shit like showing up to a pumpkin carving if we want to keep getting film roles.”

“Parading us around like lawn jockeys!” Henry spat.

“Right. Except for today, he called us here to rub the fact that he was pushing our films back in our faces.”

Blanco happily announced the bad news this morning with a massive grin spread across his face. He had postponed their films in favor of a couple of films with majority White casts. It was news that could have been easily relayed through a simple phone call but he liked to see them squirm, his grip on their careers a firm reminder of who was in charge. Judging by the scene at hand, Brook thought that perhaps the big Hollywood producer tried to squeeze more than he could handle. 

“Technically, he called us over to reassert his dominance,” Roxie said, finally getting a word into the conversation. Her young slender dancer’s body was sitting on a crescendo of little stairs that led to the dining room. She was the youngest and newest member to be beguiled into Blanco’s cinematic stables of Black talent. 

“All the Black films were making him nervous,” Roxie continued. “Remember when he had that fit about Uptown Saturday Night?”

The explosion of successful Black films that opened the new decade had their part to undermine Blanco Bo-day’s exploitative tactics. They were proving that African Americans could win against the uneven tide of Hollywood big business. Insecurities flaring, Blanco doubled down on the vice grip he used to hold the contracts of his Black performers. Groundbreaking roles were limited and all of them were pushed into playing recycled caricatures over and over again. They wanted out but the legal storm that would summon would be too much for any of them to afford. It didn’t matter how wrong and dishonest the contracts were because they were still binding. Breaking them would end in deadly lawsuits.

“Let’s knock the big question,” Brook started. “Which one of you killed him?”

Silence.

“Well, can’t blame me for asking. How about we sift through it? I’ll start with myself so nobody feels persecuted.”

Brook strolled to a stool sitting at the kitchen’s marble island. He adjusted his cream turtleneck and corduroy pants before leisurely easing into the wooden seat. Through his infamous reputation, Brook turned heads wherever he went. He often played on the silver screen as bruisers, thugs, and the occasional private eye. Once he played a father who confronted drug dealers in Harlem. These were boisterous loud talking characters who were cursed to talk “movie jive”, apparitions that could not be further from the real man’s personality and demeanor. In actuality, he was a quiet man with an air of darkness about him. He socialized so little that Sheila Frazier nicknamed him Brook while they shot a film in New York. The nom de guerre was meant to be an ironic joke but it stuck, and soon he was forever credited in cinema as Brook. Not a single person in the kitchen even knew his real name. Not a single person within a hundred miles did either. He never corrected anybody unless it had to do with mail or signing checks. The one thing that everyone knew about him that stuck with them was the superfluous mix of stoic and steely-eye that his glare could summon. If he had not taken charge of the scene then most of the other guests would have assumed he committed the murder. Some still did assume.

“Blanco Bo-Day kept me from getting more diverse roles. He pigeon-holed my career, the same he did with all of you. I would say the best reason I would have had to kill him would his irritating habit of working only in California. As a Harlem man, the travel is murder on my family.”

“Brook?!” Kat scoffed. “A man is dead and you’re making jokes? That’s in poor taste.”

“You’re not wrong. But, Kat, I don’t care about this asshole on the kitchen floor or his crappy business. After our next film, my contract was up. I was already free of this foolishness.”

“Good for you,” Henry mumbled sarcastically as he crossed his arms. Henry had been a bid time football star before getting into the movies. A solid man from off of Kansas City's own Vine Street. 

“That’s right,” Brook said as he turned towards the ex-Chief. “You had a damn good reason to do the deed. Your contract was longer than most of ours put together.”

“What?!” Cheyanne spat.

“Un-huh,” Brook continued. “This fool signed the paperwork without ever looking over a single word. Blanco practically owned him for the next ten years.”

“Hey!” Henry yelled, his fist slamming against the wall. “I didn’t kill anybody! Don’t try and lay that at my feet. I got an alibi. I was rapping with Mattie in the study. Right?”

Everyone turned to Mattie for confirmation. Henry let out a deep breath as the woman nodded.

“See, Brook. I got a witness that . . .”

“Well,” Mattie interrupted, everyone’s eyes returning to the veteran actress. “We were in the study talking for a minute. But then you did leave to go for a smoke, remember? You never came back.”

“Man, Henry,” Cheyanne said. “I know you played villains all the time but I didn’t think you would kill somebody.”

“I didn’t!” Henry replied.

“What? Mattie just said you went missing. Come on, man own up to it. Be a man.”

“It wasn’t him.” Brook weighed in. “The knife would be higher in Blanco’s back to compensate for Henry’s height. Besides, Henry doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who would stick a person in the back. He would probably come at you head-on, make sure they knew it was him you know.”

“Uh . . . thanks. I guess.” Henry replied.

“Then it was Mattie!” Kat fired with a pointing finger.

“Bitch!” Mattie fumed. “You better watch who you point that boney finger at. I didn’t commit any murder but you about catch an ass whooping if you keep carrying on! Believe that!”

Mattie was 5’2” and on the heavier side but that didn’t mean she couldn’t deliver a hard right hook if the situation called for it. Brook thought about her journey in the cinema. She had lived a life full of performances from Vaudeville to the stage. From radio to film. Of the talent standing in the kitchen, she was the only one with an academy award to her name. 

“Nope. Not Mattie.” Brook called over the arguing. “Ms. McDaniel was singing in the study. I could hear her when I was sitting in the foyer. Odetta’s version of Looky Yonder, right?”

Mattie smiled and nodded to the man’s question. The few times Brook had met Mattie before had always been pleasant experiences. She was a legend in her own time. Countless people felt compelled to attack the legend about her past film roles. It wasn’t personal for them. The past decade had been such a push, such a movement, for the Black community that old images of the minstrel and the mammie weren’t just painful and harmful. They were fightable. Brook understood where the people were coming from, but he also respected what Mattie had to endure for actors like him to get starring roles now. There was no way such a woman could be the kind of person that would stab a person in the back. Too much self-respect.

“Alright,” Brook started, leaving his stool. “It wasn’t Henry, Mattie, or myself.”

Brook circled the kitchen, counting off names with his fingers. He thought about the group. His mind ran through all of their idiosyncrasies. Their quirks and their attitudes. Being the quiet man he was, Brook had mastered a single skill that allowed him to move through the world a step ahead of most people. He could read people. While the world that took him at face value saw nothing but an unflinching gaze, those that paid attention recognized that he surveyed everything. 

“Or Kat. She’s too persnickety.” Brook continued.

“Hey!” Kat replied.

“Shut up, fool! He just said you ain’t the killer.” Mattie defended.

Brook strolled around the kitchen as his fellow guests watched and waited. His eyes darted to a clock that sat on the kitchen counter then back to the crowd. Eventually, he found himself standing in front of Cheyanne. The model stood akimbo, not faltering as she stared into the man’s harsh glance. A quiet battle played between the two. Minutes ticked away as the model and actor took statuesque positions only a few inches apart. 

“So, why did you do it?” Brook said as he rolled his look to the side. “Roxie?”

 All eyes were on the young dancer as she continued to sit on the stairs.

“How did you know it was me?” Roxie asked, tilting her head into her hands.

“Simple. You’ve been sitting there since we found Blanco. Nobody noticed with the commotion of the discovery.”

“Nobody but you.”

“Nobody but me. Go ahead and stand up.”

Roxie sighed as tears started to fall from her face. Tremors shook her body before the strength to move balanced her out. As she stood, Brook took notice of an oddity. Roxie was wearing a grape-colored skirt with boots, but both her boots and skirt told a story. Her right boot had dark auburn speckles on its side while her skirt was torn at the lower seams.

“Well? Let’s grab her and call the police!” Kat ordered.

“No. We’re not going to do that.” Brook said as he looked over the space.

“And why not, Brook?”

“Because it was self-defense. Look at her skirt. Judging by where the blood got on her, I would say Roxie managed to slip out of his hands just quick enough to grab a weapon and strike back. That right?”

Roxie quietly nodded and sat back down, more tears streaming from her visage. There had been rumors around town. Rumors that had followed numerous bigwig producers. Blanco Bo-Day would fit the type. He was scum. A degenerate and an asshole. Brook gave the body one more glance and shook his head.

“Did he . . .”

“No!” Roxie yelled, shooting back up like a rocket. “No, Brook. He tried but I stopped him before it could happen.”

“Good for you.” Brook nodded.

“That’s all cool and all,” Cheyanne interjected. “For real, good job Roxie. You stuck that pig, and from the shit, I’ve heard that was a long time coming. But what now? What do we do?”

“What do we do? We turn her in. What else?” Kat replied.

A silence carried over the kitchen. Looks were exchanged while time ticked away. Then, finally, Brook walked over and ripped the knife from Blanco’s back.

“No,” he said, placing the weapon on the counter. “I’ll take care of this. You, all of you, need to leave. That includes Roxie.”

“But!”

“No buts, Kat! This little girl just freed you from doing those stupid concerts in Hoboken that you hate so much. Same for the rest of y’all. No more stereotyped or flat characters, or underwhelming movie roles that are just recycled niggahs in bright costumes! Our contracts are void as of today. And you expect me to pay that back by sending this talented dancer upstate? Not happening. Go get your stuff and get out. Cheyanne, could you give Roxie a ride since she took a cab.”

“No problem, Brook. I’m on it.” the model happily replied. Guests cleared out of the kitchen. They spent a few minutes gathering all their belongings before making a move for the exit. Brook instructed them to leave calm and cool like nothing was wrong. They did as they were told. All except for Roxie, who paused and gave him a powerful hug. He returned the hug with a smile, letting her know things would be okay.

----------------------------------------------------------------

In the middle of the night, the blaze danced and burned brighter than any light on the Hollywood hills. Ambulances and fire engines sped up the windy path leading to the fancy condos. The inferno was a fierce spectacle that all eyes were watching for miles. Not a single person noticed the brown Deuce and a Quarter or its cream turtlenecked occupant as he rolled through the street, his calm gaze taking in the night’s city.