Cape Fear Rising

by Philip Gerard

  The sergeant behind the booking desk said, “Eddie Bryant may be colored, but that don’t make him dumb enough to draw down on a streetcar driver.” He had a laugh full of phlegm that came up from an impressive belly. Sam had seen cops in Chicago use their bellies as a muscle, bouncing little criminals into brick walls. This fellow looked as if he’d bounced a punk or two.

  “I’ve got a report,” Sam said quietly. No use pushing this copper—Clawson had said the night man was drunk.

  “I got all kinds of reports,” the desk sergeant said. “Don’t mean they’re true.” He hawked an enormous wad of chaw into a brass cuspidor.

  “Got a point.” Sam leaned on the desk. He could be as laconic as anybody.

  The sergeant scratched under his tunic. “Now, there’s a boy I could show you. Made friends with a chicken that already had enough friends.”

  “I heard there was silverware,” Sam said. “I heard some neighbors caught up with him.”

  “Spoons. Pair of silver spoons.” The sergeant hollered to somebody in the back to watch the desk. Then he grabbed a ring of iron keys and led Sam down a corridor, through a steel door, and into the jail. The sergeant locked the steel door behind them. “But it was Red Shirts caught him.”

  The jail was quiet. Prisoners hunkered over their morning meal of grits and sausage. The sergeant opened a cell and Sam stared in at a skinny black boy sprawled unconscious on a cot against the far wall. His face was swathed in clean bandages, and his arm was tangled in a sling. There was blood on the pillow next to his mouth. “Sixteen years old,” the sergeant said. “Name’s David King. A good boy. Gammy leg. And a little slow.” He tapped his skull. “His mama’s a God-fearing woman, best cook in town. Domestic over on Fifth, near Princess. One of the better homes.”

  The boy was all beat up. No matter how many times Sam saw the victim of a beating, he couldn’t get over it. All those fists and boots, pummeling. “Why in the world do you think he was stealing chickens?”

  The sergeant looked him in the eye, as if to say, how stupid are you?

  Sam didn’t know what to make of this sergeant. He looked like every bully-copper he’d ever seen, but he was clearly upset about this boy, David King.

  “Shoot, that boy didn’t steal no chickens,” the sergeant said. “Spoons belonged to his mama. He was on his way to Tom Miller’s pawnshop.”

  “Why is he in jail, then?”

  “Don’t want nobody bothering the boy. Soon’s he wakes up, he can go.”

  The sergeant led him out. Sam turned and held out his hand. The big sergeant eyed it for a second, then shook it slowly, squeezing, watching Sam’s eyes for a hint of pain.

  “Sam Jenks.”

  “Lockamy,” the sergeant said, letting go the hand. “You get in trouble, and it looks like you will, you call for Alton Lockamy.”

  Sam was almost out the door before he remembered. He turned. “They say Alex Manly’s back in town.”

  Sergeant Lockamy sighed. “I don’t want to hear that,” he said. “How do these rumors get started?”

  Back at the office, Sam filed three takes on the David King story. The boy was not a thief, he reported. His mother was an upstanding woman in the community. The boy was a cripple. The Red Shirts got him and beat him.

  He handed it off to the copyboy, who ran it to Clawson. It was five till ten. He stood up and reached for his hat. He’d look for a new suit. After that, he could spend the morning tracking down Manly.

  Clawson was rapping on the window glass. He motioned Sam to come in, then slapped the pages of his story. “I sent you for a story about a housebreaker, outraged citizens defending their homes from riffraff—not a bleeding-heart editorial.” He shoved the pages back at Sam. “Give me something I can use.”

  Sam stared at him. Surely, he wasn’t saying to fabricate the story. Clawson stood with his back turned, hands jammed in his pockets.

  Sam went out. He walked straight to Solly Fishblate’s to pick out a new suit. Located next door to the Orton Hotel, Fishblate’s Men’s Furnishings was a long, narrow, low-ceilinged establishment with warped pinewood floors.

  “Any friend of Harry,” Solly Fishblate said. He was a short man with thinning black hair combed in a cloud of frizzy curls. Clean shaven, fastidiously dressed in a full linen suit with a gardenia at the lapel—mid-fifties, Sam guessed. Hard to believe he had ever been mayor. Didn’t have the force for it.

  But then, before Sam even told him why he had come, Fishblate looped a measuring tape around his waist. “Thirty-four,” he said. “Inseam, thirty-three. Very good. Very good.”

  He eased Sam’s arms up, and Sam held them there while Fishblate measured his chest. “Thirty-eight,” he pronounced, then stood rocking on his heels, eyeing Sam up and down, rubbing his smooth chin with his big, red hand. “You have a strong build.” He patted Sam’s back. “Your shoulders can carry a longer coat. This is your lucky day. You like silk? I got Chinese silk.”

  “I only need—”

  Fishblate wagged a finger. “A man needs a change of clothes. A man must present himself in a certain fashion.”

  “Well, I—”

  Fishblate waved off his objections. “Say no more. Look at the merchandise. Feel the quality.” He steered Sam into a thicket of clothing racks. “For Harry, I give you a price. One must recognize the gentlemen of the press, am I right? Tell me I’m wrong. For Harry.”

  Sam walked out of Fishblate’s having ordered two suits—one in cream and one in bone white—four shirts, two ties, and a pair of canvas shoes. He stepped onto the bright street wearing a snappy, new, yellow Panama, so light a man could forget he had anything on his head at all. Gray Ellen wouldn’t be pleased with his extravagance, but he couldn’t walk around in this heat in that heavy wool sack he’d dragged down from Chicago. A man had to look like he belonged in a place.

  Sam had a plan for tracking down Manly: David King’s mother. Sergeant Lockamy had said she was employed on Fifth, in one of the better homes. If he could get to her before she realized David was in no real trouble with the law, she might be scared enough to talk to him about Manly. If she knew where he was. If he was back. If.

  He strolled down Fifth under the canopy of elms, enjoying the shade. At Fifth and Princess, he spotted two likely houses, both frame Victorians with gleaming wraparound porches and lavish gardens. He inquired at the nearer one. A colored maid with her head wrapped in an orange scarf opened the door.

  “Mrs. King?” he asked politely.

  “Mrs. King?” she repeated suspiciously. “Bessie?”

  Sam nodded.

  “She just a housekeeper. She ain’t done nothing wrong?”

  “No, she’s not in any trouble. I just need to talk to her.”

  “Across the street, that the house you want.” She pointed with the handle of her broom. “Colonel Waddell’s place.”

  “Waddell?”

  “Yes, suh. He live there, him and his missus.”

  “Thank you.”

  He crossed the empty street. As he was about to climb the stairs onto the porch, a woman appeared from the side garden. “May I help you?”

  Sam introduced himself. She held out a hand covered by a soiled gardening glove, then, realizing, quickly withdrew her hand and peeled off the glove. She held out her hand again, and Sam took it lightly. It was pale and small.

  It would have been more proper for someone else to make the introductions, but she was learning to be less formal about many things. “Mrs. Gabrielle deRosset Waddell,” she said, and curtsied slightly. She pronounced it Dare-oh-zet, emphasizing the last syllable. In her gardening apron, she was rather shapeless looking, but when she moved, Sam could see the slim lines of her figure.

  “How do you do?” She can’t be any older than Gray Ellen, Sam thought. It was common for wealthy older men to marry younger women, but somehow, he hadn’t expected it in this case. He’d imagined the Colonel going home to a plump, matronly companion with a boxful of knitting and samplers. He
had a new respect for the man. Gabrielle was striking—thick auburn hair, fine cheekbones, lovely brown eyes.

  “May I offer you some refreshment? It’s such a hot day.”

  “Thank you, but no. Actually, I came to talk to your domestic.”

  “Bessie? She’s out in the kitchen. Is something wrong?”

  Odd, Sam reflected—why did any question at all immediately provoke the fear that something was wrong? “Oh, a minor matter. Her son, David. Had a little trouble, that’s all.”

  Gabrielle cocked her hip. “She didn’t mention it to me.” Her eyes were lively and intelligent. Sam had the sudden insight that this woman was many different women, depending on the situation, on whom she was with. He could imagine her, late at night, sitting alone by a single candle writing sentimental poetry, then weeping over it. But only in private.

  “If I could just speak to her—it won’t take a minute.”

  Gabrielle gazed at him. He watched her brown eyes. He hadn’t expected a white woman to be so protective of a servant, but then, he had never employed servants. Maybe they get that way, he thought. Maybe they feel responsible.

  She took his arm. “Come with me,” she said softly. She led him through the garden toward the back of the house, not looking at him.

  To make conversation, Sam said, “It’s so quiet back here. So peaceful.”

  Gabrielle glanced up, and he glimpsed sadness in her eyes. Only for an instant—then she looked away again. She said, “Not always.”

  In the kitchen, he met Mrs. Bessie King, a wiry widow who couldn’t stand still. “My David’s a good boy,” she said. “Wouldn’t steal no chickens. I tear the skin right off his hide, he steal chickens.”

  “I’ll be happy to put in a word for him.”

  “You a copper man?” She cocked her head and regarded Sam skeptically.

  “Newspaper reporter.”

  “It’s all right,” Gabrielle said. “You can talk to him.”

  He wondered how she could be so sure. “I want to interview Alex Manly. I was told you might know where he is.”

  “Who told you a thing like that? What Mr. Manly got to do with my boy?”

  “They’re separate issues, of course—”

  “My boy David got no truck with Manly.”

  “Bessie,” Gabrielle said.

  “What you going to do with Alex Manly when you catch him?”

  Sam smiled. “I’m not trying to catch him, Mrs. King. All I want to do is interview him. For an article.”

  “Uh-huh. Talk. What about when you done talking?”

  Gabrielle said, “It’s all right, Bessie.”

  Bessie King pursed her lips, then said, “Well, I don’t see what the big secret is. They even put up their sign.”

  “Sign?”

  “The Manly brothers. The Record. Over on Seventh, next to St. Luke’s.”

  “Is Alex Manly there?”

  “Shoot, who knows where that dandy boy is?” She leaned toward a narrow backstairs door, nudged it open with her foot, and called, “Saffron, honey! Come down here.” Then, when Sam looked puzzled, she explained, “My daughter, she help out over there.”

  A slim mulatto girl appeared in the doorway with a feather duster in her hand. She wore a plain cotton smock under an apron and had a white kerchief knotted around her temples. She came forward shyly. “Yes, Mama?”

  “Baby, take this gentleman over to Free Love Hall. He looking for the Manlys.”

  Saffron lifted her eyes cautiously toward Sam. She laid the duster aside and deftly slipped off the apron, which she hung on a nail behind the back door.

  “We walking or riding?” she asked in a voice as quiet as paper.

  “Walking,” Sam said.

  Saffron kicked up her legs one at a time and slipped off her sandals. “Summertime,” she said. “Like to feel the sand between my toes.”

  As they left the kitchen, Sam thanked Bessie and then Gabrielle. He glanced back once, half out the door, and caught that same sad look in Gabrielle’s brown eyes. She suddenly looked like a little girl who missed going barefoot—a young woman thrust into middle age.

  Had they been alone, he might have kissed her on the cheek and whispered something tender and encouraging—the sort of thing a stranger could get shot for down here, he figured.

  Instead, he walked out the door with an eighteen-year-old mulatto girl who moved as if she had no clothes on at all, gracefully unaware of her body. On the long, dusty walk to Free Love Hall, he watched her every chance he got.

  Alex Manly is a white man—that was his first impression. They caught him at his toilet in a small back room of Free Love Hall, his starched shirt unbuttoned, his sleeves rolled. His face glistened. He held up his wet hands and forearms and stared at them, only mildly surprised.

  “Alex Manly, I presume.” Sam rubbed his neck and hoped somebody would offer him a glass of water. Saffron left and reappeared with a tin ladle of well water so cold and metallic it made his teeth ache. But he drank it all. She took the empty ladle and padded away, her bare feet slap-slapping on the scrubbed wood floor.

  “You a Pinkerton agent?”

  “Pinkerton? What?” Sam was caught off-guard.

  A bigger man, more muscular and more recognizably Negro, had come in quietly. He said, “They been snooping around. Trying to find out are we plotting to overthrow the United States of America.”

  Sam studied his face—Frank Manly. Fit the description.

  Alex laughed and toweled off his hands and face. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

  “Chicago, last,” Sam said.

  “Lot of Pinkerton men up that way. You a traveling man?” Frank Manly said.

  “Some.”

  “Me, too—some. Let me see your badge.”

  “I told you, I don’t have a badge. I work for Clawson, the Messenger. We’ve been looking for your brother.”

  “Well, I haven’t been hiding out,” Alex Manly said.

  Sam pulled his notebook from his back pocket. “You’re the biggest news in this town. Will you talk to me?”

  Frank said, “This a bad idea, Alex.”

  “Come on upstairs with me,” Alex said, buttoning his shirt.

  As he led Sam up a bare pine staircase into the main office of the Record, Sam watched him—how he smiled at his own thoughts, how he moved, how he held his head—and thought of the words he would use to describe him in print: lithe, articulate, cultured, handsome, charming, inscrutable. He couldn’t help smiling. Those were the same words he might have chosen to describe Gabrielle deRosset Waddell.

  Alex Manly spread out back numbers of his newspaper on a broad table across from his printing press. “Go ahead, read,” he urged. Sam admired the bold flag across the top of the front page: The Daily Record—the latest news, price two cent, 25 cents per month.

  He glanced at the front page: “New York—Major Taylor, colored, today became the cycling wonder by beating Jimmie Michael and smashing all world’s records.”

  The stories were set in narrow, lined columns, just like the Messenger’s, with modest headlines. There was news about the Cuban war—a story about a colored regiment coming home to medals and ticker tape for its part in the charge up San Juan Hill. On page two, there were rhyming poems about friendship and nature, along with an advertisement for the Walker Taylor Insurance Agency: “Walker Taylor—He protects your interest in case of loss—Fire Insurance! Accident Insurance!”

  There were also testimonials for Biddle University, “the leading institution in the South for the Higher Education of the Colored Race, exclusively for males.”

  “See?” Alex Manly said quietly. “We’re just a hometown paper. A hometown within a hometown, you might say. I’m no Nat Turner.”

  Sam shifted from foot to foot. From across the room, where she stood sorting papers, Saffron watched him with amusement. She reached down and scratched an itch on her leg, raising the hem of her dress high. Sam admired her smooth brown leg, wondering
if she’d showed it off deliberately. He said, “The editorial.”

  Alex swore. “That’s all anybody knows about this paper. And what they know is taken out of context. Here.” He handed Sam a copy of the complete editorial. “May as well get it right.”

  “I’ve seen it. Mike Dowling has sworn to kill you.”

  “Mike which?” Frank Manly said. He’d followed them upstairs. Sam hadn’t heard him this time, either.

  “That Red Shirt fellow.”

  “Bocra,” Frank said.

  “What?”

  “White nigger,” Alex said coolly.

  Sam nodded—poor-bocker, Waddell’s word on the train. Add arrogant to the description of Alex Manly, he thought. “What do you plan to do?”

  Frank said, “What he got to be doing something for? Can’t he just be?”

  “It’s all the same to me,” Sam said. “I just came to hear your story.”

  “I’ll tell my own story, when it’s time,” Alex said.

  “Suit yourself. Meantime, I wouldn’t open my door to strangers.”

  Frank interposed himself between Alex and Sam. “I believe this interview is over.”

  Sam stuffed his notebook into his back pocket. He hadn’t written a line. “Tom Clawson would like a word with you, when you have time.”

  “I’m a busy man,” Alex said ruefully. “Tell the man I’ll pay him what I owe. Word of honor.”

  Sam was confused. “Pay him?”

  “Never mind,” Frank said. “Business.”

  Sam nodded. He turned to go. Apparently, Saffron was staying. She unfolded a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles and hooked them over her little ears. Behind the lenses, her dark eyes bloomed large and bright.

  Sam said over his shoulder, “Tell Mrs. King that David will be home for supper.”

  Saffron didn’t answer. He had hoped to hear her sweet, tremulous voice just once more.

  Alex escorted him to the front door.

  “What you’re doing here,” Sam said. “It takes gumption.”