Tough Bullet

by Peter McCurtin

  “You’re right,” I said. “That is interesting.”

  “Frank says the black’s father is still alive. Least he was the last time they brought the files up to date. Frank says the old dinge runs some kind of Voodoo church on St. Ann Street. That’s over by Congo Square and that’s where we’re going. Could be we’ll find the girl or the money. Or both.”

  I chewed on that for a while. Life in New Orleans sure was complicated, at least for me. I guess a man like Basso liked it that way. Now me, I can do without all that brainwork. A man tries to kill me, and I try to stop him. That’s complicated enough for me. I had to smile at the next thought I had. Next time I took some big money maybe I’d put it in a bank for safekeeping.

  Basso stood up. “Now we walk,” he said. Needling me again, he said, “Could be you’ll have a chance to show how fast you are with a gun. They got blacks down here make your Texas killers look like old ladies.”

  Off Rampart Street the streets got dark and narrow, and the stink would take twenty minutes to explain. The sewer system in New Orleans never was anything for the city fathers to brag about; down here in the colored section it didn’t exist at all. There were still some weeks to go before the real bad summer heat set in, but it was kind of hard to imagine how much worse this part of the city could smell when it did.

  “Walk in the middle of the street or you’ll get a bath,” Basso warned me. A mechanical piano was knocking its brains out trying to play a quick-step and sure enough, just like Basso said, a third floor window slammed up and a pisspot emptied into the street.

  Basso got spots on his boots; it didn’t bother him. “We call that black artillery,” he said. “The women are better shots than the men.”

  A cluster of colored men were throwing dice on the sidewalk. The only light came from a short candle in a broken bottle. They were making a lot of noise, but none of it made sense to me. One of them stood up when they heard us coming: a big yellow gent with gold earrings and a red rag tied around his head. He was the first man I’d seen in New Orleans who didn’t seem to be afraid of Basso.

  “How do, Xavier,” Basso said easily. “Nice night.”

  The yellow man was very polite in a French accent. It was funny to hear the polite voice coming out of such a mean looking bastard. The men crouched around the candle didn’t move. “Yes, a most pleasant night,” the rag-head said, “Perhaps rain later most probably.”

  “Well, goodnight,” Basso said.

  “Goodnight, captain,” Xavier answered.

  The dice started rattling again, and we turned into St. Ann Street. Basso was looking for No. 25. Even in the dim light it wasn’t hard to find. A low two-story house painted a bright blue, with pictures of men and animals, and devils, I guess, painted over the blue in other colors. Iron shutters covered the windows and the door was faced with heavy tin. The shutters were red, the door another kind of blue.

  People were singing or chanting inside and they stopped even before Basso rattled the door with his big fist. The house might have been closed up for fifty years—not a sound. Basso opened his coat and loosened the Smith & Wesson in the shoulder holster. “Watch it,” he said to me. “I wasn’t fooling back there.”

  I expected Basso to start kicking the door. He didn’t. “Doctor Jack,” he called, loud and tough but still respectful.

  “You got to humor these Voodoo blacks,” he explained, keeping his voice low.

  “Open up, Doctor Jack,” he said. “Chief of Detectives Basso. Don’t you be foolish now, Doctor Jack. I just want to talk with you.”

  “Go away,” a slow deep voice said through the door. “You disturbing the house of worship. They ain’t no gals whiskey neither in here. Go along or you be sorry. Doctor Jack have spoken.”

  Basso’s store of good humor was running out. It didn’t take much to turn him sour. The only noise came from his strong brown teeth grinding together. It was too dark to see the dark red in his face, but it was there. In another minute, if the Reverend Doctor didn’t open the door, Basso’s temper would explode like a busted boiler.

  I heard a small noise at the end of the street and when I looked I thought I saw the yellow man with the gold earrings. “You’d better open up, Doctor Jack,” Basso was saying. “There will be bad trouble if you don’t. Captain Basso have spoken.”

  I had to grin at that; the meanness in Basso always came out.

  “Black bastard,” he growled.

  “Watch it,” I said. “He’ll put a curse on you.”

  A heavy bolt rattled in its slot. Altogether, four dead-bolts were shot before the door opened. The man who opened it was black as a wet crow and the powerful shoulders looked too heavy for his runty legs to hold up. He looked like a big man who’d been shortened by about a foot. One thing he wasn’t, and that was scared. Basso didn’t tell him it was a nice night, so I guess here was one citizen of New Orleans he didn’t know.

  With the door half open I could see candles burning inside and a funny smell, thick and sweet, drifted out into my face. Basso stiff-armed the door, but the black had his shoulder behind it.

  “You got to show something proves police,” the doorkeeper demanded. “White folks come saying police, that don’t prove they is.”

  Basso flipped his coat open and showed the badge pinned to his vest. The Lord’s Prayer might have been engraved there; it took the black about that long to make out what the badge said.

  “Satisfied?” Basso wanted to know.

  “Anybody can own a badge,” the black started.

  Suddenly Basso’s voice got cold and dead. “Move out of the way, pal. Or I’ll move you.”

  After we got inside, I began to think we’d have done better to stay in the street. The room was long and low and full of blacks, maybe twenty-five or thirty, still on their knees in front of some kind of wooden altar, all the heads turned our way. The four bolts slammed home again and I haven’t had such a closed-in feeling since I fell down a dry well as a kid.

  Picking out Doctor Jack was easy even without the medicine man outfit he had draped around his shoulders. The Reverend was Sam Nails with twenty years added to his age, with all his hair gone, and no teeth. The difference was, the meanness in Sam Nails didn’t show much in his face; the old man looked vicious enough to bite himself. Sixty some years had slowed him up, but his eyes were as bright and quick as a snake’s. I couldn’t think of any work he was better suited for than putting curses on people.

  “Are you John Nails?” Basso asked him, taking no heed of the hostile black faces.

  Doctor Jack held up his hands and there was blood on them, on the sleeves of his robe, at the corners of his toothless mouth. Something flapped weakly on the wooden altar behind him—a dying chicken. Well now, I thought, the old boy’s been drinking chicken blood.

  “There is no John Nails here,” he informed Basso. “That is a slave name. My name is Doctor Jack. I tell you nothing.”

  Basso clenched his fists but kept them at his sides. The bulge at the back of his neck was turning red. “I haven’t asked you anything yet, your reverence. Now suppose we drop the bullshit. Just answer the questions and we’ll get along fine.”

  An angry sound ran through Doctor Jack’s congregation. The doorkeeper was behind me, and I figured he’d have to die before it was safe to start shooting at the others. I was ready to bet there wasn’t a man in the room who didn’t have a razor or a knife on him. No matter how fast we pulled the trigger, it wouldn’t make any difference.

  “Tell those boys to settle down,” Basso said to Doctor Jack. “The first man moves, you get sent to Voodoo heaven. I’m not going to tell you again.”

  “What do you want?” Doctor Jack asked. His eyes were trying hard to turn us into bullfrogs.

  Basso’s hands unclenched. He made a powerful effort to sound sympathetic, but that was one thing Basso couldn’t manage. “I came to tell you your son Samuel is dead. He was killed this morning. I knew him well, Doctor Jack,” Basso lied. “A hell of
a nice boy.”

  Doctor Jack’s snaky eyes stayed bright and cold. Like a snake, he didn’t blink, and even in the hot stinking room his black skin was dry and dead looking, with no shine to it. He looked at Basso, then at me. The old black face was like one of those devil masks the Mexican Indians make to scare themselves. The slow deep voice dragged itself up from his chest. He said, “My son was murdered by a white man—Carmody. My son was not a fine boy. He was a black pimp for the white folks. They use him as a pimp, then they kill him. You are not looking for Carmody. Not in this place.”

  “I’m looking for some money,” Basso said. “Eleven thousand dollars. The money and the woman who has it. Who stole it from your son after she killed him. Never mind about this Carmody. Carmody was nowhere near the whorehouse when your son was killed. I’m telling you the woman did it. She got your son mixed up in a murder, then she killed him, and blamed both murders on this Carmody. She wanted all the money for herself.”

  Doctor Jack stood there like a rock, the blood-stained hands folded against his chest. The congregation was as quiet and still as the reverend himself. Basso had left a space for Doctor Jack to chew on what he’d said. To say something himself, if he had a mind to. Doctor Jack didn’t move, didn’t speak.

  “What I’m telling you is the truth,” Basso lied. “If you don’t believe me, you can come down to headquarters and read the report for yourself.” Basso didn’t ask the reverend if he could read. “Your son lived long enough to make a full confession,” Basso went on with his yarn. “How this woman double-crossed him, shot him down like a dog.”

  Doctor Jack spoke. “Why would the woman come here?”

  “Because you were Samuel’s father. Because you might help her. Your son was jocking this woman, Doctor Jack. You knew he was dead— everybody in New Orleans knows it by now— but you couldn’t have known about the dying confession. We kept quiet about that, hoping the woman would think she was in the clear. Sure she ran but that’s because she lost her nerve. We hope she’ll get it back. The way I figure it, she came to you for help. Maybe offered you some money.”

  So far, Basso had been dodging around. Suddenly, he came to the point. “Where’s the woman, uncle? And where’s the money? Talk straight, and we’ll forget your part in this. The charge is murder and robbery. Start leading me in circles and I’ll help to hang you myself, you goddamned cannibal.”

  Basso had tried the easy way, and it didn’t work. Now it was a showdown, and I was part of it. Doctor Jack moved his right hand, and everybody got up off their knees. Basso didn’t grab for his gun. He took it out and held it by his side. I did the same.

  Basso raised the Smith & Wesson like a shooter aiming at a target. I moved away from the squat doorkeeper, and he didn’t follow me, Basso’s .45 was pointing straight at Doctor Jack’s heart. “I asked you a question,” he said. “And you got thirty seconds to answer it.”

  Doctor Jack didn’t move anything but his mouth. “Leave this place—or die,” he rumbled. “You will not kill me. The spirits protect me. Your arm will wither, your gun melt in your hand. I curse you. You are cursed.”

  The Smith & Wesson was a double-action, and Basso didn’t have to set back the hammer before he fired. The way the hammer clicked back sounded more important, I guess. “One last chance to go back to your chicken plucking,” Basso said.

  “Shoot,” Doctor Jack sneered, raising his bloodstained hands. “No bullet can reach me.”

  Doctor Jack spoke to his congregation in some kind of lingo. They didn’t move. I guess he was telling them to watch hard while he turned Basso’s .45 into candle wax.

  The heavy gun jerked in Basso’s hand and Doctor Jack lost the middle finger on his right hand. A doctor couldn’t have done a neater job. The bullet took the finger off right at the knuckle. Doctor Jack didn’t look any more surprised than Basso would have been if the Smith & Wesson had turned to wax. No pain showed in the old black’s face, just bewilderment. Kids look like that the first time they hear Santa Claus is a lie. I almost felt sorry for the old rat. It’s a hell of a note to have your magic powers fail when you need them most.

  I don’t know why those thirty other blacks didn’t come at us, razors open and slashing. Doctor Jack looked at his hand as if he’d never seen it before. The other blacks looked at him, too surprised to decide which way to jump.

  Basso bored in. The hammer of the .45 clicked back again. It was loud enough to get Doctor Jack’s attention away from his missing finger. A flicker of fear showed in his eyes for a second, then it was gone.

  “That first one was just a test,” Basso said. The muzzle of the .45 moved around and Doctor Jack’s eyes followed it, like one snake looking at another. The gun stopped moving. Basso said, “This one is the real thing.”

  I didn’t know what Basso was going to do—I guess kill the old boy—and see what happened. The way I figured it, the congregation wanted Basso to shoot. Every congregation has its disbelievers and doubting Thomases—and this was one way to find out for sure.

  Doctor Jack spoke up, and I was glad he did, I wanted the reverend to live to drink all the chicken blood his black heart desired: That way I had a good chance to stay alive. People who know about such things tell me being slashed with a razor doesn’t hurt much. You just bleed to death and hardly know you’re doing it. It was one of those stories I didn’t want to test myself.

  Doctor Jack was losing his hold on his flock, not because of anything that was said: you could feel it. The old boy said, “Wait” to Basso; to his followers he said, “You saw, my brothers. You saw the pistol aim for my heart and did not kill me. The spirits of the dead save Doctor Jack. They take a finger to let Doctor Jack know they can protect him or let him die. It is a sign, my brothers. See! I do not look for the lost finger. It will grow back. The spirits has spoken ...”

  Basso’s gun was still aimed at Doctor Jack’s head. Holding a .45 out at the end of his arm can tire a man out. “Can it, Doc,” Basso said.

  Have you ever seen a black snake smile? For me, this was the first time. He smiled right after somebody outside rapped three long and three short raps on the street door. “No woman, no money,” Doctor Jack said. “Never was here and now they gone. Sorry, captain. Look upstairs all you want.”

  For a second, I thought Basso was going to gut-shoot the old man. I swear I could hear the spring tensing in the Smith & Wesson as his thick finger began to squeeze. “Upstairs quick,” he yelled at me. Doctor Jack didn’t expect him to move so fast after the long palaver. The old bastard was trying to say something. The short-barreled .45 smashed him above the left eye, breaking the bone there, chopping through the eyebrow. Basso backhanded the .45 as he crashed past the old man and solid metal clunked against skull bone. Doctor Jack screamed, and the blows forced him down on his knees. The screaming woke up a crate of fat white chickens I hadn’t noticed before.

  “Cover them,” Basso roared, running toward a rickety stairs in the back of the room. I don’t know what he meant by cover them. How in hell do you cover twenty-five or thirty Voodoo blacks or any kind of blacks or whites—or any kind of people? I still couldn’t figure why I was still alive, the way things were; I didn’t give a good goddamn what happened to Basso. Both of us would have been dead and sliced to sandwich meat if the awful sight of Doctor Jack, battered and bloody, hadn’t kept the other blacks bug-eyed and not knowing what to do next. They would make up their lie-rattled minds when they got around to it. I thought it would be nice if Detective Basso got back downstairs before the verdict on us was in.

  I thought the rattletrap stairs would give under Basso’s weight. But no good looking at him: I held the .45 steady on Doctor Jack, moving it a bit to include his more enthusiastic supporters.

  The door at the head of the stairs was locked from the inside. It was as solid as the street door and Lord knows what went on up there when it was business as usual. I didn’t think even a mad bull like Basso could knock it down. The way he went at it, I began to think
the eleven thousand meant more to him than it did to me.

  The big .45 blasted three times, and the door didn’t give. I didn’t see—I heard Basso step back and mule kick the door. Even so, it took four or five kicks before the wood tore loose from the lock.

  Basso let loose two more shots before he shouldered the door off the hinges. Now Basso’s gun was empty and that wasn’t smart, but Basso was mad. He went in anyway with the empty .45 and I could hear furniture breaking and Basso cursing.

  Doctor Jack tried to get up off his knees. I told him to stay there. A window broke upstairs, and I knew Basso was good and mad. On his knees, the blood blinding his right eye, Doctor Jack was glaring at me with the other eye, I guess he hadn’t paid much heed to me while Basso was threatening his life. I didn’t like the way he looked at me. Maybe he had figured out who I was. The hard hat didn’t go with my sun baked face; I don’t know what it was.

  Basso came clumping down the stairs in his man-kicking shoes. The .45 was in his hand, and he was pushing fresh shells into the chamber. The stairs creaked under his weight. “Gone— the whore is gone out the back window,” he said, more to himself than to me. “I smelled her back at the hotel, I smell her now. But she’s gone out the window.”

  That explained the rapping on the door. I had a feeling the yellow man Xavier was in it.

  My thought was to get the hell out of there, to follow the girl, naturally—but mostly to get my carcass out of there. Basso, by God, was pressing his luck. He came over and yanked Doctor Jack to his feet and slapped him. When his hand stopped slapping the palm was smeared with blood.

  I wanted to get out of there. Later he could come back and strangle Doctor Jack with his own yellow guts, and it was all right by me. What I didn’t want was to let the girl get away with my eleven thousand while Basso wore out his crazy temper.