by Tim Bryant
The girl pulled out a cigarette, and her boy lit it before I could get to my lighter. She exhaled smoke and pushed her hair back.
“We’ve been sleeping in a dead man’s bed, Ray.”
"Ray," I said. "You got another name to go with that, or is it just Ray?"
Ray said it was just Ray, but his girl begged to differ.
"It's Naylor," she said. "He doesn't mean any harm."
I wasn't feeling much threat of harm coming from the kid. Still, Ray didn't seem overly perturbed by the thought of fucking his chick in the bed of a dead man.
“So they don’t even move his things out,” I said. “Change the name on the door and everything’s hunky dory.”
“Listen, fella,” said Ray, “we didn’t know anything about your friend. There’s a bed and a table and a couch would fall apart if the wall wasn’t holding it up.
You’re welcome to have that, if you can get it down the stairs. It might take a few trips.”
They had maneuvered themselves into the doorway of the apartment. She was leaning against the door and blowing smoke out across the balcony, and he was behind her. It was obvious that I wasn’t being invited in for drinks.
“Okay,” I said. “Can you tell me if there were any clothes left behind? Anything at all. Maybe a hat.”
“You’d have to ask my uncle,” Ray said. “If there were, he probably dropped them off at the Salvation Army.”
Uncle Wiggily lived in Dallas and rarely came to town. It was unlikely that he knew anything about Patrick, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to go to the trouble to hunt him down. Besides, I knew where the Salvation Army was. It was easy enough to check that out.
Ray disappeared into the dark of the little apartment and his girl followed suit, but not before looking back and returning my smile. I handed her my lighter.
“A woman should be able to light her own smokes.”
I descended the staircase, back into the street, and looked up the block for the kids. They were all hidden in the night, hopefully in warm homes. Kids growing up in Hell's Half Acre. Running and playing and going to school and getting girlfriends. Things changed. Even the Acre did. But people, most of the time, were the same. Didn't matter if they were from the Acre or Battercake, Weatherford or even Manchester, England. People were more alike than the places they came from.
10
“You’re not gonna believe what I found.”
Melvin Chambers was standing in the middle of the main storage room at the old Fort Worth Press building, surrounded by boxes. The Star-Telegram had converted their archives to microfilm, but the Press was still doing things the hard way. No matter, Chambers was waving a single manila envelope like he was trying to put out a fire.
“Pay dirt?”
“No dirt here, Mr. Curridge,” he said. “This is pure gold. We’ve got a story the Startle-gram would kill for.”
I was about to swim into the sea of files, but Melvin stopped me.
“We need to talk somewhere else.”
I couldn’t imagine anyone causing any bother in the old file room there. The old building was also used by a janitorial service that cleaned the Press buildings, along with a few other buildings on the block, and occasionally, some old man would come in and grab some supplies and head out again, but that was about it.
“Where you want to go?”
He came wading out of the middle of the room, holding the envelope to his chest like he was bringing heirlooms out a burning house.
“Let’s go for a ride.”
Sounded safe enough.
“Where you got in mind?”
“Battercake.”
“Battercake Flats?”
If the old Press building wasn’t safe ground, I couldn’t imagine finding refuge in Battercake. All the same, I was intrigued. It seemed the place had become the town center.
“There’s someone I want you to meet,” he said.
On the way out of the building, we ran into an old black man I’d seen in the pool halls down on Ninth Street. Fact is, I almost didn’t recognize him, both of us being all bright eyed, bushy tailed and sober. He tipped his hat and spoke.
“Mr. Chambers.”
“Arthur, you mind cleaning up the boxes in the file room? I’m off on business with Mr. Curridge,” Melvin said.
In the truck, I switched off the radio out of hospitality and pulled out into the street. Things seemed too quiet, like we were waiting for a show to start.
“So that old man actually has a job,” I said.
“Arthur Washington? He owns the whole damn cleaning service and two barbershops to boot,” Melvin said. “Probably one of the richest niggers in Tarrant County.”
I had lost a fair amount of money to Mr. Washington over the years but, taking him to be just another one of the down-and-out types that hung out on the rotten end of Ninth, I always felt like I was contributing to a decent cause. I could tell he was a good guy. He talked about his family and how much he missed his kids, and I'd always pictured them living far off, at the end of a train line somewhere.
"He can sure play nine ball," I said.
I felt hoodooed.
I would have turned on the radio, but I was afraid of what I might hear. I was missing Ruthie something awful. It happened time to time, like a buzzard’s shadow falling across me. This time, though, it wasn't a mystery why. My Fort Worth Press partner had been downgraded to Melvin Chambers, and it was making me feel pretty downgraded as well.
“Battercake,” I said. “You sure about that?”
Melvin Chambers nodded. A block or two later, he cleared his throat.
“Ever heard of a woman named Dulcie Boon?”
"Who hasn't?" I said.
I turned onto Houston headed toward Franklin and hit the accelerator. The truck belched, and I think Melvin thought he’d been shot. I smiled and tried to remember how "Battercake Blues" went. I could sing a thousand different songs, but the one I had made up was nothing but a memory.
11
Melvin motioned for me to pull over.
“We may have to knock on a few doors,” he said. “I know Dulcie lives on Franklin, but I've never actually been to her place.”
I reached in my pocket for a cigarette.
“Let me have a look, I can probably tell you which one is her's.”
He laughed.
“I’m a detective,” I said.
I wanted him to tell me what the hell he’d brought me back down to Battercake for, and I wanted him to do it before he hauled me in front of Miss Boon. I didn't like surprises. In return, I suggested, I would put my detecting powers to work and point us at the right house.
Melvin pulled a few folded up pieces of paper out of the manila envelope, which he was still carrying in the pocket of his coat. I could tell one page was from an old yellowing newspaper clipping, but the rest looked like telegrams.
“Fair enough,” he said. “Your friend Cavanaugh has quite a story. How long you known him?”
I counted backwards. Twelve months, a little over a year.
“I'm beginning to think I never did.”
Chambers fanned the papers out and then reordered them.
“He showed up here last year, summer time, straight from a place called Oak Park, Illinois."
He pointed his finger at a spot on one of the pages, like he was pointing to a place on a map.
"Little area right outside Chicago," he said. "You ever been to Chicago?”
Closest I’d ever gotten was Arkansas, and that had just been one trip to see my wife’s family, back when she was my blushing bride and I was willing to do things like drive to Arkansas.
“Seems he got here and changed his name from Anthony to Patrick. It wasn’t too hard to run a record or two and find him though.”
“Where does Dulcie Boon work into this?” I said. Of course, I wasn’t telling Chambers everything I knew. Why would I? I wasn’t partnering up with him. I was just taking an afternoon drive.
“She can tell you he
r own self,” he said. “But there is one thing I might ought to tell you about Dulcie Boon.”
He sat there like he was waiting for me to say something, but I was busy smoking a cig.
“Okay,” he said, “Dulcie Boon is working for Wiley King.”
The lack of shock on my face seemed to disappoint him.
“Why?”
He shuffled his papers like a nervous poker player.
“Well, King had enough on her to put her away for a good while. But he ain’t too dumb to see when he’s holding a good hand. He made a deal.”
“So he needed a helping hand in the Flats or he needed one around the office?” I said.
Melvin wasn't too dumb to get it.
"You know how he works.”
We walked up to Dulcie's house with the little front porch and the two crazy dogs, but this time there was only one dog, and it was sleeping. I motioned for Melvin to go ahead. He shook his head and knocked. Really quiet like.
“I can’t even hear that,” I said.
He knocked again, a little louder. A few seconds later, the sound of shuffling inside the house, and then the door cracked open. Dulcie Boon.
“Mr. Chambers,” Dulcie said and stepped back. Melvin shook his head and disappeared into the opening , and I followed suit.
Dulcie may or may not have recognized me, but she didn’t blow my cover. True enough, she had never stopped long enough to gaze long on my features. I was just another old white man intruding into her life in the Flats. I still thought she was as nice looking as any lady I’d ever seen, maybe even Ruthie. I couldn't see how a lady like her could end up in her line of business. She could have danced at a few of the clubs on Jacksboro— the ones that allowed ladies of color— and made out like a bandit.
Chambers pulled his papers out, puzzled them together again and started over the same story, this time looking to Dulcie to fill in blanks.
“Mr. Cavanaugh showed up looking for a room, it was just the summer of last year, maybe August," she said.
That seemed about right to me, because he'd shown up at Peechie's not long after that and got a job based partly on his word that he'd done a little bartending up north and mostly on one night behind the bar, where he mixed the drinks stronger and stronger until everyone there demanded that he be put on salary.
“Mr. Cavanaugh told me he was retired, but he'd done work bartending," Dulcie said. "Daddy thought he was law. He said there was something about him he didn't trust. He told him he had one month, and that was it.”
“So your old man kicked him out of the house?” I said.
“No sir,” Dulcie said. “Daddy just told him he had one month. I think he stayed three or four. He left a little while after he got a job downtown. Nobody had to throw nobody anywhere."
"I think daddy had other reasons for wanting to kick him out," Melvin said.
Dulcie laughed.
"I couldn’t see any harm in him at all," she said. "I liked the way he talked.”
Damn how women love a man with an accent. Any kind of accent that ain’t their own. I wondered if I'd be as popular as Slant Face if I moved to Manchester.
“That’s why daddy wanted to kick him out,” Melvin said. Satisfied that he'd made his point, he poured himself a drink from Dulcie's cabinet and was busy pouring another. She already had one in her hand, so I wasn’t sure if it was for me or what.
“Patrick Cavanaugh was even older than y'all are. But it just didn’t look right to daddy, having no white man staying in here.”
I tried not to take the insult personal. When Melvin turned and handed the second drink to Dulcie, well, I took that a little harder.
“You want something to drink?” Dulcie said.
Of course, I did.
“So do you know why anybody would want to kill him?”
Dulcie handed me a glass of scotch. Not my drink, normally, but I was happy to get it.
“No,” she said.
"Tell him the story," Melvin said.
“After he left here, I didn't see him again for a while. I ran into him a few months ago, and he asked if he could pay me for an hour or two of my time. He wanted to meet me at the Avalon Motel, but I told him I wasn't going up Jacksboro. He said would the Worth do, and I said yes, it would do fine. ”
“Should I ask what he wanted?” I said.
When you have sexual relations for money, I guess it just becomes another job. I was treading lightly, but Dulcie was having none of it.
"I thought he was just like any other man," she said. "I told him what the rates were. He stopped me right away. No, no, I just want to talk with you. I told him I didn't know what to charge for such a thing. He gave me a ten and said, when it was used up, just let him know, and he'd come up with more."
"Big Money Sonny," I said. "Tips must be better than I thought."
"It gets better," Melvin said.
"He said he had to leave town, and he asked me to come with him."
"Why did he have to leave town?"
"He said someone was coming after him," she said.
This wasn't going the way I had planned. I felt like an imposter. Schooled by a two-bit news reporter and a prostitute. All of a sudden, I was back in Weatherford, laying on the ground and looking up at the night sky. There were a lot more stars in the Weatherford night sky than in Fort Worth. I was ten, maybe eleven— I know it was after Lizabeth died— and daddy had gone and mama's father had come to stay with us. Me and mama and the old man were all sleeping outside because it was cooler out there, and the old man grew more talkative as I grew sleepy. I don't recall what he was talking about, but he said to me, "Alvis, never be afraid to stand up for what you believe in, but never be slow to say you're wrong when it turns out that you're wrong."
It's a piece of advice I'd tried to wear well over the years, and I was trying it on for size there in Dulcie's living room.
I looked at Melvin, who was pretending to scratch down notes in the margin of one of his papers.
“Is that all the story then?” I said.
“It’s pretty plain to see, your friend was running from something,” he said.
I needed a refill. Thankfully, Dulcie saw it and came to my aid. It wasn’t that I was having trouble swallowing the thought of Patrick running. Hell, most of my friends had been on the run from one thing or another, me included. I had only known Patrick from the other side of the bar at Peechie’s. I guess we only see things from our side of the bar. People walk up, they hang around a while, and then they walk away.
12
Melvin sat Indian-style in the middle of Dulcie's front room and presented his case. If it sounded like he was reading a story he’d written for the Press, it was because he was. The paper would run most of what he said, word for word, in the following Sunday edition.
“Patrick Joseph Cavanaugh, who was the victim of an as-yet unsolved murder in Hell’s Half acre just a week ago, arrived here in our friendly city in August of 1953. It appears now that family issues back in hometown Chicago, Illinois may have followed him south and caught up with him somewhere between his apartment on Sixth Street and his workplace on Jones.
Cavanaugh's brother Anthony Cavanaugh had been indicted on charges of operating the Chicago Medical Institute For Men without proper licensing or any particular medical background. The Institute specialized in the treatment of “private diseases of men” and had a long list of faithful patients from all over the country. The fact that the elder Anthony Cavanaugh had squeezed a small fortune out of those clients didn’t seem to deter several from proclaiming their treatments a rousing success. However, law officials, as well as the medical licensing board of Illinois, thought otherwise. Cavanaugh was arraigned on multiple charges, brought to trial, and prosecuted. He was ordered to pay a fine of over $200,000 and serve a jail sentence of four to six years. He disappeared before he could be brought in to start his sentence.”
Melvin stopped to take a breath and check for our responses. I thought his wri
ting was respectable enough. The story itself took Dulcie and me both by surprise.
"Patrick Cavanaugh told people that he had moved to the Fort Worth area to start over, but he never talked about his family or the trouble he left behind. Cavanaugh was a member of the Fifth Marine Regiment under the First Infantry Division of the U.S. Army, seeing action in France during World War I and then again in Nicaragua from 1927 to 1929."
“His brother seems like a piece of work,” I said.
"You made that sound real nice, the part about him serving in the war," Dulcie said.
Melvin sat and stirred his drink with his finger.
“What kind of hospital was his brother running?” I said.
“A men’s hospital,” Melvin said.
“They have male nurses?”
“Hell if I know,” he said. “It didn’t say.”
“We talking about a mental hospital, right?” Dulcie said.
“Private diseases of men,” I said.
“That means wanking off and wet dreams and such,” Melvin said. “Unnatural thoughts.”
I didn’t see anything unnatural about jacking off, and neither did Dulcie.
"Everybody wanks off," she said. "What they don't like is anybody making money off of sex. It don't matter who you are or where you are or who you know."
"Well, sometimes it helps, who you know," I said.
Dulcie Boon knew what she was talking about though. I wanted to ask her how she got into her line of work. Had it started as a hobby and progressed? Was it her first career choice? Did it pay better than detective work?
“So Patrick came to Texas to get away from family,” I said.
I could relate.
“Nobody's seen hide not hair of Anthony since his sentencing,” Melvin said. "I don't think it's Anthony he's trying to get away from. More than likely, he was trying to get away from people hassling him. The law."
"Newspaper people," I said.
I could relate to that too.
Outside, there was the sound of two drunks squaring off in a fight. One of them was yelling in Spanish, which made me wonder if it was Loretta Pickett's friend. The other was so drunk, his English sounded kind of Spanish, but that was all in a day’s activity on Franklin Street. Dulcie didn’t seem to pay it any mind. I began to understand why she wasn’t overly excited to let me in on my last visit.