The hospital room was dark. Ella Jackson lifted the sheet and checked her watch one more time. The watch’s face glowed if you pressed a button on the side. It was almost two in the morning. Surely she could get out of here soon. She had all of her clothes on, except her shoes. She’d done that a little at a time, putting on her underwear, then ducking back under the covers, then pulling on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt she kept at the restaurant for dirty jobs. She’d insisted when two of her staff had come to visit that they go back and get those clothes, a pair of sneakers, and her purse, and bring them to the hospital. They’d tried to talk her out of it, said they’d bring them on Sunday, said she wasn’t going anyplace until sometime next week, said they’d bring her a nice vintage outfit to leave the hospital in. She told them that if they knew what was good for them they’d go get the jeans and sweatshirt. They went.
Ella was in no condition to escape. The side of her face looked like raw hamburger and glistened with an anti bacterial gel. She had a crack in her skull, and the doctor had made her queasy with a description of how her brain was traumatized and swollen, pushing against the skull plate. Her hair had been shaved around the wound; the rest of her hair was matted and tangled. She would shave her whole head as soon as she could, go for the ethnic, hip-hop look.
Ella’s vision was still fuzzy around the edges. There was some talk that a retina had been knocked loose. And the headache, the headache was throbbing throughout her body. Maybe it was a toothache; she could feel the sharp edges of a broken molar.
None of this had the least effect on Ella’s decision to leave the hospital. She was determined.
Suddenly, a nurse stuck her head in the door. Ella moaned lightly and turned over on her side. The nurse tiptoed over to the bed and took Ella’s pulse. Luckily, Ella had still been holding her watch in her hand. She had the covers up around her neck with her hand sticking out. She’d been able to pull up the sweatshirt sleeve when she’d turned over. She couldn’t do anything about her racing pulse, though. The nurse didn’t seem to be alarmed and left the room as quietly as she had come in. Ella stayed as still as she could, listening to the drumbeat of pain going through her body. She fell asleep for a short while and woke up with a start, feeling around in the bed for her watch. She grabbed it and pressed the button. Two-forty.
She slipped her feet over the side of the bed and padded over to the closet. The sneakers were there. She sat in the one chair in her room and put them on, having real difficulty with the tying part. Then she slipped her purse out of the bedside drawer and looked around the room once more. “I better get while the getting is good,” she whispered, and peeked out the door. Luckily she was at the end of the hall, just across from a stairway Exit sign. In a minute, she was gone.
Duck and Sausage Gumbo
2 ducks
1 onion, quartered with skins
2 carrots
1 bunch parsley
celery, the leafy tops and the bottom
2 bay leaves
a few sprigs fresh herbs, oregano, thyme, savory
1 lb. smoked sausage, andouille if available, or Polish
½ lb. tasso or other spicy ham
½ cup medium dark roux
½ cup each diced onion, celery, green pepper
6—8 cloves garlic, minced
1 lb. okra sliced or 2 T. file gumbo powder
6 tomatoes, diced, or 1 28 oz. can whole tomatoes
Tabasco or other Louisiana hot sauce
1 T. soy sauce
½ tsp. cayenne
kosher salt and ground black pepper
Other Options: 1 lb. large shelled shrimp, oysters, rabbit, chicken
Making gumbo is a creative process with just a few rules to guide you. Rule #1. The Holy Trinity: onions, celery, and green pepper are the mirepoix of Cajun cooking, one of the basics. Rule #2. You need either file, which is ground sassafras roots, or okra to thicken your gumbo, not both. If you can’t handle okra, use the file powder that is available at most good food stores. If you use okra, put it in the gumbo pot early, as the stringiness stops after cooking for a while and is the ingredient in okra that helps thicken the gumbo. Rule #3. You must use roux, but I’m passing on the easy oven method of making roux that comes from John Martin Taylor. No standing and stirring for hours with this one.
Stock
Make the stock for your gumbo with the ducks, onion, celery, carrots, bay leaves, and herbs in your largest stockpot full of cold water. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook until the meat is falling off the duck bones. Strain the meat and aromatics out of the stock. Cool the duck meat and separate from the bones and coarsely chop. As the stock cools, the duck fat will rise to the top and you can skim it off. You can do this step a day or two ahead of when you make your gumbo. Any extra stock can be frozen.
Roux
Mix equal parts melted fat and flour—the fat can be vegetable oil, lard, or duck fat. In other words, 1, 2, or 3 cups each of flour and fat, depending on how much roux you want to make. Spread the fat/flour mixture on a baking sheet with a rim. Bake at 350 degrees until the desired color is reached, in the case of the duck gumbo we want a color between caramel and mahogany. Stir every 15 minutes. Freeze in ½cup quantities in plastic bags.
Gumbo
In your heaviest pot, sauté the trinity in the roux. When the onions are soft, add the garlic and the diced ham, then in 5 minutes or so, add the okra or file powder, the tomatoes, then about a gallon of duck stock. Simmer 30 minutes or so. Add the sausage, the duck meat, and more stock as needed, as well as the seasonings. Simmer another 30 minutes while you make long-grained white rice to serve your gumbo on.
Thirteen
How dare you!” Bob Daultman yelled. “You make a decision that affects the whole team, you cost us big bucks, you better have a damn good explanation.”
“I only know what I read in the newspaper. Someone called Heaven Lee, told her to search at the grave of Charlie Parker, she found the sax, the city is saved from total humiliation, case closed.” Jim Dittmar was unmoved by the filmmaker’s hysteria. After he made up his mind the day before he’d never looked back.
Louis Armstrong Vangirov was eating Rice Krispies from room service in Bob Daultman’s suite at the Ritz, a vast improvement over the Motel 6 that he and his father had been relegated to. Next job, he would insist on better accommodations. After all, he was an important part of the team. He glanced down at the front-page photo of Heaven walking into the police station with the sax. “Nice picture of Heaven. She got a nasty bump on her head.”
“Who will pay us?” Mr. Vangirov whimpered. “And what about the customer in Japan? He prepaid, didn’t he?”
“Four million bucks!” Bob Daultman screeched. “What in the fuck are we going to do about that, Mr. Dittmar?”
“You’re the treasurer. Give it back,” Jim said as he walked over to the round postal mailer he had brought with him and left propped by the door. He pulled out a rolled-up canvas and flung it out on the floor.
Bob Daultman perked right up.
Louis looked up from his breakfast cereal. “A nice Jasper Johns.”
“Very nice indeed. Early sixties, one of the flag series. Well, well, well,” Bob said as he walked around the painting.
Jim started rolling up the canvas “I called a few galleries before I liberated this baby. These are selling in the 5-10 million-dollar range now, depending on how many flags. Even if we have to dump it we can get 2 or 3 million. I don’t want a penny, unless you get full price. That should pay all the overhead for this fiasco, give you three some change. I’m assuming you can return the sax money, that you didn’t spend the client’s millions before we delivered the goods.”
In his mind Bob was already holding an auction for the painting. “Of course not,” he snapped. “I learned my lesson about pre-spending from that unfortunate diamond-and-sapphire affair in Venice. How were we to know the old bird had sold the real diamonds years ago and was wearing paste?” He
turned the edge of the canvas over and inspected the back. “Johns is still alive, but he’s been out of this period for thirty years. There’ll never be more of the flags. I think there’s a collector in Brazil who would just love this.”
“Don’t forget the old clothes designer in Paris,” Louis added, his face behind the Sunday funny papers.
Bob pointed at him as if he were the star pupil. “Good idea. Louis, you and your father can take this back with you tonight. You brought the suitcase with the fake bottom, didn’t you?”
“Of course,” Mr. Vangirov said.
Jim grabbed a piece of toast off the room service cart, smeared it with jam, and ate. “And, just to show you I’m sorry I reneged on this deal, I won’t retire this year. I’ll do Cannes,” he said with his mouth full.
Bob Daultman and Mr. Vangirov smiled at each other, dollar signs flashing in their eyes.
Louis looked up from reading Snoopy. “How about Prague, too? The old broad and the emeralds? We’ve already spent time on her, getting to be her favorite piano players.”
Jim shrugged. “Okay, I’ll do the emeralds, too. Bob, look for a gig in Cannes in August, when all the rich folk from Paris throw their jewels around. Then we’ll go to Prague. But I’m staying in Kansas City with my son until then.”
Bob Daultman patted Jim on the back. “Our little family, back together again.”
Louis beamed and turned the pages to find Doonesbury.
Heaven sat in the dark in the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. They were previewing the Black Baseball History film for all the volunteers. Tears were running down Heaven’s cheeks. Of course, she was a notorious softie, but the fifteen-minute piece was very effective, showing how the separate but unequal worked in sports. Heaven wondered what it would be like to travel around the country and not be able to find a place to eat or spend the night, to have people be afraid to drink from the same water fountain you drank from.
The film ended and applause filled the room. The lights went up. She looked at Mona, who sat beside her. “Well, if that wasn’t something.”
Mona wiped an errant tear from Heaven’s face. “You better run into the bathroom and splash your face. You’re the star of the day, so you can’t be a crybaby.”
Heaven tried a smile. “You know how easily I cry on a good day. I don’t know if I can make it, Mona. I still have a headache and a lump. I stood on my feet for sixteen hours yesterday, then spent most of the night sitting at the police station, answering stupid questions.”
“Well, you don’t expect anyone to believe that story about the mystery man and the call and someone just leaving the sax on the grave, do you?” Mona asked as kindly as she could.
“That is the story, Mona. I promise. Not even Sal or Murray will get me to change it. It’s a miracle, so why not just leave it at that.” Heaven got up and they walked out into the sunshine.
“You should have done yourself a favor and insisted they call Bonnie and wake her up. You could have been home by two if you’d done that,” Mona fussed.
“Bonnie—and you, too, I might add—was up all the night before at the emergency room with me. She needed her rest.”
“So did you. What time did you have to get down here to meet the Cajun cookers?”
“I was home at three-thirty, and down here at nine-thirty. But from four to eight-thirty, I was dead to the world. Iris called and I didn’t even hear the phone ring. And Hank, he called, too. I’ve got to call them back this evening, when this whole thing is finally over.”
“If Hank were here, you’d be grounded, young lady, for not taking care of yourself,” Mona asserted.
“What was I going to say when I got this mystery phone call? No, I can’t come pick up the dumb sax because my head hurts?”
“Well, you could have told Murray where you were going. You don’t need me to lecture you about that. I know Murray called you this morning as soon as he saw the paper and gave you hell. It was dangerous, young lady.”
“I’m only six or seven years younger than you, you can’t call me young lady,” Heaven said.
“But you did make the front page of the paper two days in a row, a record even for you.”
“Yes, and that was such an attractive shot of me going into the police station at one in the morning, zonked out on painkillers and champagne, with a knot and a big purple bruise on my head, and the plastic sax in tow. There’s never been a newspaper photographer just hanging out in front of the police station before. I guess this curse of Eighteenth and Vine has changed that.”
“You had on cute high heels,” Mona said.
“Thank God.”
It was almost time for Lefty Stuart to speak. Then a huge gospel choir was scheduled to perform. The choir included Ray Charles, the Mighty Clouds of Joy, and most of the Staple Singers.
Secretly, the gospel was Heaven’s favorite program of music of the whole weekend. She loved the jazz songbirds and that’s what she played in her restaurant. The instrumental jazz bands that played on Saturday appealed to her mind. But the gospel music made the hairs stand up on her arms; it was goose pimple music, pure emotion.
Maybe it was so appealing because Heaven had been raised as a Presbyterian, belonging to a group not known for its rousing hymns. Maybe it was because she didn’t have the kind of strong faith that gospel music celebrated. On this Sunday, Heaven was hoping for a little healing from the music. She was beat up physically, and even though she was thrilled about recovering the sax, the uneasy feeling that had been with her since Evelyn died hadn’t gone away.
“How’s the food?” Mona asked. Heaven was staring blankly at all the different choir robes and singers onstage, like a baby in a crib stares at a colorful mobile.
“Just great,” Heaven said, and focused back on her friend. She’d have to watch herself today; she had just spaced out completely. “They’ve got the turkeys in the oil. It’s time to light the grills for the oysters,” she said, heading toward the grills, which for today had been rolled out in full view on Eighteenth Street. No one wanted to be hidden out of sight, even in broad daylight.
Today’s dedication was an invitation only affair, but with the baseball officials, the city fathers, and the corporate sponsors who were paying for the whole weekend, at least five hundred people would be eating lunch. At the last minute, the Cajuns had decided they should cook some crawfish, too, just in case. So there were three huge stockpots frying turkeys, two chock-full of crayfish and corn on the cob and new potatoes, big pans of jambalaya, soup tureens full of gumbo and etouffeé, and thousands of oysters to throw on the grill. It was a feast. Beer and wine and sparkling water were being poured at two drink stations, along with the drinks of the weekend, ice tea and lemonade.
The mayor called everyone to attention and introduced Nolan Wilkins, explaining how Nolan was the one who had pushed for the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. Nolan got to introduce Lefty Stuart, noting that he was the fourth player from the Negro Leagues to go to the majors; one of eleven from the Negro Leagues to be inducted into Cooperstown, in the Baseball Hall of Fame; the first black coach in the majors. Mona was watching her friend, Sam Scott, and saw how much love and pride shone in her eyes as she looked at her husband.
“Bullet Joe Rogan, Smokey Joe Williams, Turkey Stearnes, Mule Suttles, Biz Mackey, Willie Wells,” Lefty began his speech. “These are just a few of the players who should have a place in the Hall of Fame. These are players who made the Negro Leagues so popular that our annual all-star game at Comiskey Park often out drew the white all-star game, with fifty thousand folks in attendance.
“But these good men aren’t in Cooperstown, so it’s with special thanks, that I come to Kansas City to dedicate this museum to honor the history of the Negro Leagues. Because of you, these fine players will have a place for their story to be told. Thank you for giving us our place in history,” Lefty said to a great round of applause.
“You in Kansas City can be proud of the man who owned your Kansas City Monarchs,
J. L. Wilkerson,” he continued. “Wilkie invented night baseball by rigging tall decks of lights five years before the white majors had night baseball, and he never got any credit for it when the white leagues adopted his technology. This is just one of the many stories you will hear when you go through the museum. It is full of the tales of professional men, going back to 1884, when Moses Fleetwood Walker played in the big leagues, before they decided they didn’t want black players. You’ll learn about Andrew “Rube” Foster, who established the Negro National League in 1920 and paid the price for his hard work, dying in a mental hospital in 1930.” The sadness in his voice was real.
“I could go on and on, telling you about these good men. When Jackie Robinson was asked to join the white major leagues, their stories faded. Now, here in Kansas City, they will be honored. They will be remembered.” Lefty bowed to the audience, signaling the end of his speech. There couldn’t have been many dry eyes at that moment. Heaven noticed one of the most hardhearted bankers in town wiping a tear as he cheered. The applause was deafening.
The choir went right into an up-tempo gospel song, and for just a minute, Heaven understood why people went to church. She let the beat carry her for a minute, her eyes closed. When Bonnie Weber came up and goosed her, she jumped.
“Congratulations on your amazing discovery. You made my buddies over in the burglary department very happy—very puzzled, but happy. Are you going to tell me what really happened?”
“No,” Heaven said with a grin. “But I do have to tell you something about Evelyn and Ella.”
“And I have to tell you something about Ella first. She walked out of Saint Luke’s Hospital during the night. I don’t have the foggiest idea where she is. I’ve checked her hotel room and the cafe. I’m out of ideas.”
Heaven looked down, not wanting to make eye contact with her friend while she confessed another infraction. “I went up to Evelyn’s office—after you’d been there, of course—and someone had already trashed the place looking for something. I think it was Ella.”
The Cornbread Killer Page 20