The Dying Crapshooter's Blues

by David Fulmer

  The lieutenant grabbed his coat and left the detectives’ section on his way to the Maddox Street scene of the homicide of patrolman J. R. Logue, using the back stairs in order to avoid his superior officer.

  The two fellows from the record company had taken one room and one suite on the top floor of the hotel, the room for sleeping, the suite for auditions and recordings. They had hopes for a steady crowd; neither expected a mob, though it was a cheerful mob all the same. The only trouble came from some guests who were incensed at having their morning routines disrupted. Every few minutes, a sales agent would step to the desk and ask what all the damned hicks were doing there, and in a voice loud enough for anyone to hear, had anyone been listening. Sidney Petty would explain about the recording, and Mr. Morgan would chime in to suggest the fellow think of it as a circus passing through. Even more impressive, the Dixie Hotel was going on the map as the place where records that would be heard from coast to coast had been made. This bit of news seemed to placate most of them. The few who continued to complain were just the crabby sort.

  Standing by the front desk, Mr. Morgan watched and listened for a little while longer. It was an orderly enough assembly and a true boon in the slow days before Christmas. At least none of the country folk had shown up with a chicken or a pig in tow, though some of the clothes they wore made them look like they had come directly from a vaudeville show. He told Sidney to keep an eye out for trouble, then went back upstairs to his rooms.

  As dawn broke into day, the news about what was going on at the hotel made its way to the offices of the city’s two dailies, and an early arriving editor sent a reporter to see about the commotion. What the scribbler found was a milling, noisy crowd and much music. He made his way up to the fourth floor to speak to a distracted Mr. Purcell about the goings-on in the lobby, and then, miffed that the record man didn’t drop what he was doing to answer his questions, returned to the newsroom to explain that there was nothing worth filing, just a swarm of hillbillies plucking banjos, all intent on their raw and boisterous music, and not a buffoon or funny drunkard among them.

  Anyway, something more promising in the way of headlines was brewing in an alley off the colored end of Decatur Street, and the reporter was sent off to see about that.

  Meanwhile, the hotel doors swung open as more musicians trickled in. A few of the later arrivals looked around and grumbled that more days should have been scheduled. Those were few and far between; most of them were pleased just to be there. A handful of performers of the music hall variety arrived with scores in hand, gaped at the unwashed assembly, and walked right back out.

  The list of performers was tended by Jake Stein, who every fifteen minutes or so would escort the next half-dozen hopefuls up to the fourth floor. The candidates would wait in the hallway to be called into the suite and invited to perform two songs for Mr. Purcell and his assistant.

  After the second song ended, a few terrible seconds would pass as the two men in the chairs consulted in whispers. Then Jake would either issue an invitation to come back in the afternoon or offer a polite dismissal in the form of a suggestion that they try again the next time the company was in town. He would also mention that he’d heard that the Victor people might be making a visit soon. . . .

  Those who were asked to come back would descend to the lobby on a cloud, delighted at the prospect of cutting a record, though unaware that they were a small part of history. Meanwhile, those who had been rejected would skulk down the stairs and out the back door. A few might gather themselves and return in coming years, all the more determined. Most of them would never be heard from again, though over the years they would rhapsodize about that time they had auditioned for Mr. George Purcell.

  The lobby stayed busy until nine o’clock, when the din settled a bit as the first wave of commotion broke and receded.

  Some minutes went by, and a sudden chang like a passel of brash bells rang out over the roil of voices and instruments. There was a second of startled silence, and then heads turned, voices faded, and fingers went still. At the front desk, Sidney noticed the sharp change in the room and stood up on his tiptoes, but he was still too short to see what was going on.

  A twelve-string guitar echoed, now sounding like fingers slamming down on the keys of a harpsichord. A clear and high tenor voice with just a bit of a smoky edge and a familiar gospel tinge pierced the air over the assembled heads.

  Feel like a broke-down engine

  Ain’t got no drivin’ wheel,

  Feel like a broke-down engine

  Ain’t got no drivin’ wheel,

  Y’all been down and lonesome,

  You know how a good man feel.

  With the first boom of his Stella’s strings, Willie sensed the pause, then the stares turning his way as the chatter ebbed. No one yelled for him to stop, so he launched into the song and another wave of murmurs crossed the room.

  Some of the bodies parted as people shuffled to get a closer look, and Sidney was finally able to see the young man in a three-piece suit playing the big guitar. A young blind man. A young colored blind man. The clerk stared for a second, then whispered to the bellboy to go fetch Mr. Morgan again.

  Five minutes and two songs later, Mr. Morgan came down the stairs, frowning grumpily at being disturbed. He could hear the brassy voice and guitar as he skirted the edge of the crowd to the desk. He bent his head and Sidney told him about the Negro in the corner, how everyone else had gone quiet when he started playing. Mr. Morgan nodded, his eyes flicking. He knew that colored singers were allowed on the porches of hotels during tobacco season, but it was as far as they got, and it was down in the country, where it didn’t matter.

  He walked to the staircase and mounted a half-dozen steps so he could see over the crowd. A circle had opened around a young, well-dressed Negro with a big-boxed guitar. The manager, who knew more than a little about good music, perked an ear, momentarily entranced despite himself. This was no street-corner moaner; the man’s voice had depth and timbre, and he picked his guitar with his fingers, so that it sounded like a piano. The song ended to applause and a swell of chatter. There were calls for more, and the Negro started another song, this one in a minor key.

  Big star fallin’, mama, faint long fore day

  Big star fallin’, mama, faint long fore day

  Mr. Morgan stood there listening for another half minute. As good as the fellow sounded, he couldn’t let this go on. He descended the steps and worked his way back to the front desk to whisper instructions to the clerk.

  Someone came knocking early on Joe’s door, a hard thump that brought him out of his sleep in a sharp jerk. Blinking, he imagined Adeline out there or, worse, Sweet with one of his big kitchen knives in hand.

  He turned his head, saw only the impression of Pearl’s body, and caught the scent she’d left on the sheets, a mixture of magnolia perfume and an earthier musk. A bleary glance around the room told him that she had dressed and gone, all without a sound.

  “Who is it?” he called.

  “Message!” a voice called out. A folded sheet of paper appeared under the door. Then quiet footsteps receded down the hall.

  Joe sat up and swung his legs off the bed, gazing blankly at the paper as the night before came back to him.

  Pearl, working her lush magic, had cadged her way into his room, then used her other charms to work her way into the bed. He knew he needed to ask her about the Payne mansion, but before he could speak the first word, she had dropped onto the mattress and stretched her long, sinewy, heavy-breasted body, stunning him as if he’d been poleaxed. He hadn’t seen her in almost six months and, as always, it was like he was meeting her for the first time, being dazed by her beauty and overcome by her carnal heat all over again. So he surrendered all over again.

  As he tumbled with her, he said, “Sweet’s going to kill me.”

  To which she replied, “Then I better make this worth it.”

  Joe had laughed, because she could do it. Then he groaned
a little. There was nothing funny about what her brother would do if he found out he’d let her in. He had as much as made a promise to stay away from her and the Inman Park burglary was all the more reason to keep it. He just couldn’t do it.

  Sitting on the bed, he revisited the blissful moments just before they settled down to sleep. He had been too drowsy and too drunk on her to make his brain work enough to ask her about Saturday night. The one time he started to, she put her lips to his ear and said, “Don’t worry, it’s going to be all right,” as if she’d read his mind. That was the last thing he remembered before he drifted into the sweet cocoon of her body curling around him.

  That tender memory went away, and his smile with it. He had told himself they’d talk about it in the morning, only to find she had slipped away before he could get to it. Frowning at the paper on the floor, he came back to the hard present, wondering if now might be a good time to pack his suitcase, go by Schoen Alley to offer a last farewell to Little Jesse, and catch the next thing smoking out of Union Depot.

  That wouldn’t work and he knew it. One taste of Pearl was never enough, and the thought of being without her again made his chest ache. And she wasn’t the only thing holding him; he was obliged to Jesse, too.

  For the hundredth time, he wished he’d kept his mouth shut about his brief stint as a Philadelphia police officer and his shorter career working for the Pinkertons in Baltimore. He didn’t remember when he had first announced these facts, though he assumed he had done it to impress some woman. He just had to show off that one time (or was it more?) and found himself with a reputation. So instead of looking forward to a day seeing friends, scouting income sources, and then getting back to Pearl, he had work to do.

  At the washbasin, he splashed some water on his face to wake up and clear his head. He turned around and bent to pick up the slip of paper from the floor and unfold it. On a sheet of hotel stationery, someone had scrawled the words:

  Maddox Street, off Pratt

  He studied the message for a few seconds, then tossed the paper on the bed, among the mussed sheets.

  Sweet had been up drinking coffee as he got ready to head off to work when he heard the key rattle in the lock. He stood in the kitchen doorway, his thick arms crossed, as Pearl stepped inside, looking sleepy and happy. She stopped, then rolled her eyes when she saw the reproach in her brother’s gaze.

  Sweet opened his mouth, closed it. There was nothing to say and they both knew it. She had run to Joe Rose and Joe had let her stay, in spite of Sweet’s hard warnings. What could he do with them?

  Pearl started for her bedroom, leaving him fuming in the doorway. Halfway down the short hall, she turned and came back, stood before him, and stretched on her toes to kiss his dark, rough cheek. She could feel him wilt a little as he let out a sigh from deep in his chest. He raised a hand to hold her chin in his palm.

  “Little sister . . .” He started but couldn’t finish.

  Pearl gave him a sad smile of her own and backed away.

  While she was changing clothes, she heard the front door open and close as he went out into the cold darkness.

  She had misjudged the time, hoping to creep back in while he was still asleep. It was later than she thought, though, and he had been waiting for her. She could tell by the look on his face what kind of look she was wearing on hers, and how much it vexed him. He knew where she had been, who she had been with, and what she had been doing. Though it saddened her to hurt him so, she was relieved to see nothing more in his angry stare over chasing after Joe Rose.

  For all their quarrels, Pearl loved her brother desperately. He had been her protector in their dead father’s place. He had done his best to keep her on the straight and narrow, and had gone to prison for killing a man who had tried to get rough with her. Now he believed she was betraying him by dallying with a rounder like Joe.

  She knew Sweet blamed himself for starting her down the wrong path with his own evil ways. The difference was that he had changed. Prison had taught him a number of hard lessons, the most important being that he didn’t ever want to go back. He had left his criminal days behind for the straight life, taking a regular job and steering clear of his old cronies. Then he dragged home a series of hardworking, churchgoing Negro men, hoping one would catch her fancy. None of them took; she was too far gone on the likes of Joe Rose. Sweet fumed, sure that part of the reason she took to Joe was to confound him and the decent people around the Fourth Ward neighborhood.

  Dropping her clothes into the wicker laundry basket, she pulled on a white cotton shift that was worn soft by use and crawled under the blanket. If she had known she was going to get caught like that, she’d have stayed at the hotel. She lay there longing for Joe, feeling the heat tingle down to her last nerve.

  She dozed, swirling down into darkness, then came awake, pitched out of a nightmare that featured Captain Jackson standing before her like an evil god, his green eyes glittering as he got ready to devour her, one way or another. Even in the chilly bedroom, the sheets and pillow were damp with her sweat.

  She got up and stumbled to the bathroom, then padded out to the kitchen to make coffee and fix something to eat. All the while, the Captain’s grim, cold, accusing sneer hovered before her eyes and didn’t disappear until she managed to conjure Joe’s face again.

  Joe came out onto the sidewalk, glanced over Lulu’s facade, and walked on. Sweet Spencer was the last man on earth he wanted to see this morning.

  Sweet didn’t understand about Pearl and him at all. The thought of them together got his blood up, because Joe was a criminal and a bad influence, because mixing was dangerous even if he was an Indian, and because he had a reputation for doing women wrong. While Joe didn’t mistreat Pearl, he didn’t court her, either, and Sweet took that as some sort of an affront to the family pride.

  Though Joe wasn’t a coward, Sweet scared him the same way fathers and brothers had made him quail when he was chasing skirts as a kid up north. In those days, if a young villain laid with the daughter or sister of an immigrant family, the men would demand their own justice. The choices were marry, run, or die. It was primitive, tribal, and mired in blood, and no one argued the point.

  Joe with Pearl wasn’t quite the same, of course; she was a grown woman. And Sweet couldn’t afford to commit violence on Joe or any other man or he’d risk going back to prison. Still, Joe knew better than to push him. He couldn’t just show up at the café as if nothing had happened, either. If Sweet didn’t already know about Pearl’s visit, one look at Joe’s face would fix that. It was a small relief that he didn’t have the time to stop for breakfast. Or so he told himself.

  Instead, he bought a biscuit with ham and a carton of coffee from the wagon that was parked at the corner of Broad Street. Leaning next to the window of the Oppenheim Cigar store, he watched the pedestrian traffic while he ate his breakfast. It was a sweet idle; the young women looked pretty bundled in their winter coats, though too many of them were too thin. It was the style of the day, and he didn’t care much for it.

  He finished his biscuit and coffee, dropped the trash into a can, then headed south on Peachtree Street. A half block on, he dug in his pocket for the note and stared at the four words. He couldn’t tell if the hand that had scrawled them was masculine or feminine, done in poor penmanship or by someone in a rush. He had stopped to ask at the front desk, only to find that the clerk wasn’t the one who delivered it. Joe knew that anyone familiar with the Hampton could enter undetected.

  Walking along in the brisk morning, he passed a number of men hurrying by with stringed instruments in hand, and he remembered what Willie had said about some people from the Columbia record company setting up at the Dixie.

  When he got to the corner of Decatur Street, he noticed the unusual flurry of activity farther down the block, with cops in blue uniforms, milling from police headquarters to the east end of the avenue. He corralled a Negro newspaper boy to ask about the fuss.

  The kid was excited. “Th
ey found a cop down Maddox Street!” he crowed. “He been shot. I mean dead!”

  Maddox Street, off Pratt. Joe muttered a short curse under his breath, thanked the kid, and started off again, taking a roundabout path to the corner of Moore and Decatur. He lingered there, watching the cops who were grouped around the mouth of the alley on the opposite side of the street. An ambulance from Grady Hospital had been parked at an angle to the curb, and a crowd of pedestrians, mostly colored, a number of them familiar, stood apart in little circles, pointing and whispering.

  Joe spotted Albert Nichols and ambled across the street, just another curious spectator. After a minute, the detective noticed and walked over just as casually to greet him.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked in a low voice.

  “I got your note,” Joe said.

  Albert frowned. “My what?”

  “It wasn’t from you?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Never mind,” Joe said. “Is it Logue?”

  Albert nodded.

  “What happened?”

  “Shot twice,” Albert said. “Once in the chest, once in the forehead. A small-caliber pistol at close range. He was robbed, but I think that came after. Somebody found him like that.” He grimaced. “Fucking animals.”