Chicago Boogie Woogie

by Gregory C. Randall

  CHICAGO

  BOOGIE WOOGIE

  GREGORY C. RANDALL

  WINDSOR HILL PUBLISHING

  Copyright © 2021 WINDSOR HILL PUBLISHING

  Windsor Hill Publishing, Inc.

  Walnut Creek, California 94596

  ISBN: 978-0-9987083-9-3

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious.

  Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead,

  is purely coincidental.

  This story is dedicated to my grandmothers, Eva Struble and Beatrice Smith.

  CHAPTER 1

  By early September 1933, over 14.5 million visitors from around the world had passed through the gates of Chicago’s Century of Progress World’s Fair. They came to see the wonders of the future, for the wholesome entertainment, to celebrate the ending of Prohibition, to gape at moving pictures with sound, and most especially witness the almost magical advances in the automobile, aviation, and the newfangled world of technology. Notwithstanding this bright future along the shore of Lake Michigan, the most popular and provocative draw on the fair’s midway was the fan dancer, Sally Rand. While the public images promoted were ones of proper science, technology, and culture, the underlying lure—

  especially on warm summer evenings—consisted of the peep shows, topless dancers, and a bawdy edginess the police and the politicians tolerated for one simple reason: money. Money that spilled out of the fairgrounds and into the city’s coffers. The fact that businessmen of a less reputable ilk also filled their pockets was merely winked at. Between Prohibition’s still illegal liquor and the mob’s prostitution and gambling halls, the dark underbelly of Chicago literally made money hand over fist.

  Chicago was really many cities: the Irish in Bridgeport, the Italians along Taylor Street and in Little Italy, and the Jews on Maxwell Street all lived in what could be generously called “neighborhoods.” Mostly they were blocks of marginal housing and dense squalor. Two miles almost due south of the fairgrounds, between West 27th Street and Garfield Boulevard, was the Negro community. Here in the black South Side of Chicago, dozens of bars, clubs, and speaks straddled the city’s most important north–south traffic spine, State Street. At one end, sixteen blocks north of the Chicago River and the Loop, State Street served the plush neighborhoods where Jimmy Dorsey played and the likes of Bing Crosby sang. But in 1933, in amongst the overcrowded tenements of the South Side Black Belt, the real voices and sounds of Chicago filled the streets and alleys. Itinerant musicians, in from New York and up from New Orleans, played at the Royal Gardens, the Vendome, the Deluxe Café, the Pekin Theater, and dozens of other joints and honky-tonks. These blowers, ivory ticklers, and strummers from the real Black Belt of Louisiana, Mississippi, and the Deep South rolled into town at the Illinois Central Railroad station at 12th Street and State. Self-taught musicians and Depression refugees, they came for work, for money, and to play their kind of music. Singers and musicians like Bessie Smith, Jelly Roll Morton, and Tony Jackson. Erskine Tate’s orchestra featured Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller on the organ; King Oliver played at the Royal Gardens; and Glover Compton and Earl “Fatha” Hines lit up the street. Nightly, State Street was congested with the sweet, syncopated melodies squeezed from the lives of these jazz, ragtime, and boogie-woogie-playing musicians. On warm nights especially, the sidewalks were crowded with well-dressed black folks taking the “stroll” down State Street.

  At the half-empty lot at the corner 46th and State, Tony Alfano parked his titanic black Packard in the spot the young man pointed to. He handed the boy a five-dollar bill. “Watch it careful, Lionel. I want it here when I come back,” he said.

  “Detective Alfano, sir, it sure as hell will be here. Ain’t it always?” the gangly black kid said, his soft, rolling New Orleans accent sharpened by the harder and sharper-edged Chicago banter.

  “Just reminding you, that’s all. Who’s where tonight?”

  “Couple of the Hines gang are playing the fair tonight, but they will be back at one o’clock—I’s think at the Grand. The Savoy’s got that sax player . . .”

  “Lester Young.”

  “Right, and there’s a rumor about someone im-po-tant at the Vendome.”

  “Too big. I want a small place, tight, sweet sounds.”

  “So’s you in the mood?” The kid snapped his fingers and tapped out a cadence on the sidewalk. “Got it. You remember old Deacon Smith?”

  “Sure, D-Smith, sax man, played with Armstrong; he’s not that old.”

  Lionel snapped his fingers again. “In my book, he’s one of the old ones. The Deacon’s got a new place, intimate, tight like you like. A few blocks that way. And next door, I hear there’s an upstairs where’s you can get warm and cozy.”

  “You’re too young for that, Lionel.”

  Lionel snapped his fingers yet again and grinned at Tony. “Maybe yes, maybe not. The Deacon’s got a new piano player and a hot-looking singer from Jackson, Mississippi. I’d go there, Mr. Alfano; I’s hear they good, damn good.”

  “What’s Deacon’s place called?” Alfano asked.

  “D’s Café Delite. He’s likewise got a cook he brought up from New Orleans. Finally, some good grits on this street, and when the shrimps is fresh, hot damn.”

  Detective Anthony Alfano tugged at the hem of his crisply pressed dark grey suit jacket, snugged up his red silk tie, and adjusted the Colt in his shoulder holster. He was tall, snappishly thin. The pinstripes in his suit added the illusion of an inch or two to his height. His face was narrow, with a hard, long jaw, thin mouth, and a fashionably crisp William Powell mustache. The mustache enhanced a sharp, slightly hooked nose (with a perceptible kink on its ridge due to being broken a few times) that anchored his face like a spike driven between his dark grey eyes. Hidden under his grey fedora was a thick head of black hair that was evolving to grey at the temples. If grey were a meal, Tony Alfano was a serious grey serving. After setting the brim of his hat, he lit a cigarette and strolled north up the west side of State Street. This night the sidewalks were full; the weather, for a Friday night in mid-September, was warm and dry.

  The tradition of the “stroll” had been brought up from New Orleans. And it was a Negro thing. The tenements and apartments were hot, and now late in the evening, people would do anything to get out of their sweltering apartments. It was a time to socialize, to see and to be seen—and who didn’t like to show off? But midsummer, when tenements became like ovens, the sidewalks were the escape.

  At 43rd and State, Alfano dropped a dollar in the case set out by a kid plucking a guitar.

  “Thanks, mister,” was the reply.

  Deacon Smith was a tenor sax player and had been a fixture on State Street for more than twenty years. He was a straitlaced Bible man, his wife sang in the Baptist church, and he could still tease the reed of his saxophone so as to pull your heart out of your chest and put tears on your cheeks. The deacon was a good man in a profession that had ruined musicians before they were forty; Deacon was nearing fifty. With late-night hours, too much time on your hands, too much liquor and drugs, and the offered enticements of the flesh, it was hard to grow old in the entertainment profession. Alfano knew it was the same for cops: too much of too much. Chicago could and would offer temptations to both the body and the soul.

  “I’ll be damned,” Deacon said when Alfano walked into the café. “Anthony Alfano.”

  “Lionel said you just opened,” Alfano said, looking around. “Nice, very nice. This used to be a ladies’ shop, didn’t it, Deacon?”

  “Indeed, Tony. Good memory,” Smith said.

  “And I’ve seen that bar,” Alfano said as he studied the crowded length of bright mahogany with polished nickel inlays.

  �
��Salvaged it from the Acme Club. It sat there gathering dust all these past twenty years of Prohibition. I’ve wanted it someday for my place. It was the right price, free to just haul it away.”

  Eight men and their dates sat at the long bar; almost in unison, they turned and looked at Alfano. Two of the men the detective knew right away, petty stuff, but still possible trouble. He returned the impassive stares as the men sized him up and then slowly turned back to the bar. They watched Alfano in the back-bar mirror as he crossed the narrow room to the small table near the stage that Deacon pointed to.

  “Don’t pay them no mind. What do you want to drink? Wait, I know. Still drinking Canadian?” Deacon asked.

  “You remembered,” Alfano answered as he sat.

  “I’ll see what I can find.” Smith winked and walked back behind the bar.

  Alfano was the only white customer in the bar. He’d been hanging around the Chicago jazz scene since he was twenty years old, when he saw his first black review with Jelly Roll Morton at the Pekin Theatre. During the Great War, the Chicago scene, as it was called, had changed. The musical exodus from New Orleans to the North could be blamed on the navy. As the gaudier and more prurient places were shut down, one by one, by the navy, all to protect American soldiers, the entertainers moved north. Chicago was more than willing to provide venues for these black performers. These southern migrants were more than saxophone and trumpet players; they brought a culture new and fresh to a staid old city.

  Prohibition was to formally end in four months, on December 31, 1933. Alfano recognized that it was the greatest political and moral failure that had ever seized America’s collective conscience. Institutional crime took control of every vice, innocents died in the subsequent shootouts and bombings, bribed politicians grew rich, and the criminals richer. Alfano couldn’t count the number of times he’d been approached to look the other way; he never did. He was both loved and hated, especially when he had to arrest one of his own.

  The whiskey arrived, an unopened bottle of Canadian Club, and Alfano began to methodically, sip by sip, empty the bottle.

  A small stage was built into the back corner of the room; two spotlights lit the area just large enough for an upright piano, a drum kit, and maybe three or four musicians. This evening, as the lights came up, two people sat at the piano. A striking black woman sat on the end of the piano’s bench seat so that she faced a microphone; next to her sat a black piano player—neither could be eighteen. The piano player began to play a variation of “St. Louis Blues” that Alfano had never heard. It was full boogie-woogie, a beat that bounced and echoed, a new sound to jazz. As the boy played, the girl tapped his right thigh to the beat. When the player turned to the audience, Alfano saw the dark glasses and the look of ecstasy on the boy’s face—he was blind.

  When the song finished, Deacon took the stage. “Ladies and gents, these two youngins just arrived from Jackson, Mississippi. Give a Chicago welcome to Lucius and Desdemona Black.” A smattering of applause followed the announcement. Deacon walked off the stage as Desdemona began a sexy version of Don Redman’s “Two Time Man.” Her rendition of the song made the patrons at the bar turn and listen.

  For the next thirty minutes, the duo progressively pulled the patrons to their side, each song teased and titillated. Forty blocks north, they would have been arrested for the lyrics. The bar crowd, now salted with even a few more white faces, listened appreciatively. A few couples got up and danced.

  At the end of the set, Deacon led the musicians to Tony’s table.

  “I want to introduce you to a good friend,” Deacon said.

  “The chair’s in front of you, Lucius,” Desdemona said as she pulled it out. “And who be that, D?” She sat.

  “Detective Tony Alfano. He’s with the Chicago police.”

  Desdemona immediately stood. She took Lucius’s hand and tried to pull him up.

  “Desi, when a man comes into your house, you should be civil,” Lucius said, resisting her tug. “A pleasure to meet you, Detective.” Lucius reached out across the table. Alfano met his hand halfway.

  “The pleasure’s mine, Lucius. I’ve heard Jelly Roll, Grover Compton, and I even saw Tony Jackson at the Pekin. I think you were in that band, Deacon.”

  “Yes, I was. You always got a good memory.”

  “Son, you are as good as them—I especially liked your interpretation of ‘Midnight Special.’ A ballad with a broken heart, a lot different than the old cowboy song. When did you come up?” Alfano said, looking at Desdemona.

  “About three weeks ago—saved every penny, took the Illinois Central north. Our parents is dead. Nothing left there in that town these days; all dry as dust,” Desdemona said as she settled back into her chair. “So, Detective, you like Negra jazz?”

  “Ever since jazz rolled into Chicago. A cop’s got to have something to break the boredom. Besides, I was getting tired of Italian opera.”

  Lucius chuckled when he heard the remark. “In this town, from what I hear, I doubt any cop is bored.”

  It was Alfano’s turn to laugh.

  “I lost my sight when I was twelve_measles,” Lucius told him. “Momma taught me to play, and she’d drag every piano player coming through Jackson into the house to teach me for a meal. Same for Desi. We learned from the best. I got good even back then. Being blind made me focus.”

  “Love your voice, Desdemona,” Alfano said. “Bessie Smith, right?”

  “Yes, sir. I love that woman.” She crossed the first two fingers of her right hand. “Gospel and jazz are like this,” she added, smiling at Alfano. “I listen to her records.”

  “She does put her own sweet spin to it,” Lucius said.

  “Can’t do better. She broke my heart when I heard her,” Alfano said.

  “You’ve seen her?”

  “One time. She was in town, at the Vendome.”

  “I’d kill to see her,” Lucius said with a big smile.

  “That isn’t funny,” Desdemona said.

  “You should see my side of it,” he answered.

  The yelling started at the far end of the mahogany bar, near the entrance. Two men were in a shoving match. The din made it impossible to make out what they were saying. The ladies sitting with them, as if knowing where this was going, got up and maneuvered through the crowd and out the door. Alfano grabbed Desdemona and pulled her to the floor as the man on the left reached under his suit coat and pulled out a silver-plated Colt.

  “Stay down!” Alfano yelled. He pulled Lucius down next to his sister.

  The silver pistol flashed beneath the overhead lights. Alfano first thought: Big gun, little man. The other man was quicker. A blade glinted; the man with the knife struck like a snake. Everyone heard the pistol crack, then dove to the floor. The two men, in a death dance, stumbled together. The man, still holding the knife and a now .45 slug in his chest, stepped back and fell, pulling the man with the gun and the blade embedded in his chest to the floor with him. Yelling mingled with the noise of overturning tables as customers shoved back their chairs and ran out of the bar. In moments there remained only the two bartenders, the Blacks from Jackson, Deacon Smith, Tony Alfano, and two bodies sprawled on the linoleum floor.

  ✥✥✥

  For the next two hours, Alfano answered questions from the police and his fellow detectives from the 19th District. Not one patron, customer, or girlfriend remained in D’s Café Delite. The obvious evidence and the story were easy; yet no one knew the reason for the winless argument. Alfano recognized one of the men, Tiny T. Darnell, a two-bit marijuana and dope dealer from the neighborhood. Darnell was the man with the six-inch, black-handled stiletto stuck in his heart. Alfano didn’t know the other guy, the man with a Colt .45 slug in the same general area. Both were unknown to Deacon and the bartenders.

  The two detectives from the 19th talked to Alfano. This was their case, he told them. He was just curious about the men. Go ahead, said the detectives.

  Alfano went through the dead men’
s pockets. In Darnell’s pockets he found a roll of money, maybe a grand in twenties and fifties, an extra magazine for his pistol, and two tickets to the fair for that day. No other identification. In the unknown’s pockets, he found two hundred in twenties, another knife, a torn movie ticket stub, and a punched train ticket. The ticket was from New Orleans two days earlier. Whatever it was that set all this off might have started in Louisiana and come north. The guys from the 19th would follow it up.

  “Well, damn,” Deacon said, looking at the dark pool on the floor. “That’s why I put down a tile floor. But shit, Tony, I thought it would be at least a month before my place was baptized.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Monday morning, Alfano walked into the Racine Street station. His head throbbed from the rest of the bottle of Canadian, and the backup Deacon had given him. The twin Canadians had helped him through the rest of his quiet weekend. Sergeant McDunnah sat at the front desk.

  “Good morning, Detective,” McDunnah said. “Cavanagh said you were at the double homicide on State Street Friday night.”

  Cavanagh was the weekend desk sergeant.

  “More like Saturday morning. Word does get around,” Alfano answered, as he looked at the notes that McDunnah handed him. “Somebody already bitching about jurisdiction?”

  “Surprisingly, no. They found out who the dead men were.”

  “I knew one: Tiny T. Darnell, dope dealer. T.T. to his few friends.”

  “The other was a known contract killer from New Orleans, one Tobias Delaplaine,” McDunnah said, looking at his notes. “New Orleans PD said the word on the street was that Darnell had backed out of a deal in the Big Easy. Delaplaine was sent here to set the deal right.”

  “I’d say it didn’t work out for either of them. Maybe us and New Orleans are now two ahead in the game. Anything else?”