The Dying Crapshooter's Blues

by David Fulmer

  Lulu’s was closed, but Mr. Heeney told Pearl she could stay while he finished cleaning up. The manager was plainly puzzled by Sweet’s sister showing up after he’d locked the doors. At first he thought she had come by to plead for her brother’s job. She didn’t say anything until he asked, though, and then she told him he could expect Sweet back to work in another day, two at most. She was sure. Other than that, she just wanted a place to stop for a few minutes. He shrugged, too worn out to worry about it, and went back to work.

  Pearl stood by the window for ten minutes, watching the Hampton until she saw Joe come out and head off at a quick pace, dodging traffic as he cut diagonally across Ivy Street. She drew back when he turned his head her way, then realized he couldn’t see her. She fought an urge to rush outside and call his name, and instead let him go on. Once he had disappeared from sight, she buttoned her coat, pulled on her hat, thanked Mr. Heeney for his kindness, and went out into the night.

  Joe hurried around the corner from Spring Street onto Baltimore Place, a few minutes late for the appointment.

  From the long nights they’d spent drinking, playing cards, and telling lies, he remembered Al’s address as the left end of three shotgun houses connected under one roof. As he drew closer, he saw Al’s door standing halfway open, though not broken down like Pearl’s had been. Peering inside, he glimpsed only murky darkness.

  “Al?” he called as he stepped on the porch. “Al Nichols!” There was no response. He looked at the other houses that lined the narrow street. No one was about.

  “Al Nichols!” he called again, raising his voice.

  The silence spooked him, but there was nothing he could do except plunge in and hope he wouldn’t run into something. He drew a steadying breath and threw the front door back the rest of the way so that it hit the wall with a force that sent an echo through the house. He listened for a half second and heard nothing. Slipping a hand inside, he felt for a light switch, found it, and turned it around. There were no lights.

  He bit down on his panic, ducked inside, and crossed the dark front room. At the next doorway, he found the bedroom also empty. Beyond it was a short hallway with a closet on one side, the bathroom on the other, and the kitchen beyond.

  The back room was bathed in moonlight, and as soon as he stepped in, he saw the body slumped on the linoleum floor. With a groan, he stepped close and crouched down. The detective’s eyes were open and quite still as if they had settled on something far away.

  Joe, choking on the words, said, “Al . . . goddamn . . . Al . . .” He sank the rest of the way to his knees and felt a wetness seep into the cloth of his trousers. He noticed the black stain on Al’s shirt and, clenching his jaw, ripped it open on a gaping hole, two inches tall and a half inch wide. A second gash had pierced Al’s side below the ribs. Joe had seen wounds like these before, on a street in Philadelphia, done with a heavy knife and most often fatal. The pool on Al’s other side had spread all the way underneath the kitchen table.

  Joe drew back and didn’t move for a half minute, his brain in a spinning rage. It was his fault. He had done this. He had led his friend to this slaughter. It took another long minute before he could reach out and close Albert’s eyes.

  He was rising to his feet when he saw something gleam between the clenched fingers of the detective’s right hand. Bending down, he pulled the fist open to reveal a policeman’s silver badge. He plucked it free, stood up, and turned it into the pale light through the window. At that angle he could make out the engraved words ATLANTA POLICE DEPARTMENT above the city emblem, and LIEUTENANT below it.

  Joe burst onto the porch and ran over to the house with glowing lights, pounding on the door until the owner appeared. He told the startled gentleman to call the police and report the homicide of one of their officers just across the street.

  He stood on the sidewalk, unable to move any farther. Another victim was dead, another man he had called a friend. He felt something terrible rising from his gut into his throat, burning and blinding him. He stood there until he heard the faint wail of sirens. Then he moved.

  Pearl, watching from the shadows a half block down, saw Joe come out the door of the row house and half stagger across the street. She watched him step back down to the sidewalk and stand there, his body trembling. Then, suddenly, he turned and stalked away.

  She knew where he was going, and didn’t try to follow. Instead, she waited for another minute before beginning a slow walk back to town. She was on the corner of Peachtree Street when the first sedan crested the rise at Ellis Street with lights flashing and siren howling.

  Plum Street was eight blocks due west once Joe turned off Spring onto Pine, and he covered the distance in less than ten minutes. Though he had never been to the address, he knew the street was only three blocks long, and his choices would be few.

  When he got to the intersection, he saw a police sedan parked at the curb in front of a frame house halfway to Carroll Avenue. No one was behind the wheel. He shifted his gaze and saw a man slouching next to the front door of the house. There was no mistaking Corporal Baker’s thick body and block of a head.

  He waited a few seconds until he saw Baker look the other way, then crossed over in a quick sprint. Once he reached the other side of the street, he cut down the well-traveled alley that ran behind the house. Standing at the back gate in the cold and dark, he heard voices that he couldn’t make out, carrying from inside the house and across the yard. It sounded like two men and a woman engaged in some kind of an argument. Shadows moved across the kitchen windows, blown up to monstrous proportions.

  Joe stole a quick glance up and down the alleyway, then opened the gate and crept along a flagstone path until he was at the back door.

  Though the three voices were still muffled, he could now make out two of them, the Captain’s gruff snarl and his wife’s soft soprano. He was doing most of the talking. May Ida tried to cut in, along with the other voice, but apparently the Captain wasn’t having any of it. Another man’s voice jabbed in every few seconds.

  Joe heard the Captain say something about “lying” and “bitch” and the words “behind my back.” It sounded like he was describing May Ida’s little plot to betray him; or maybe Pearl was the subject. He figured he’d be hearing his own name next, and as if he had conjured it, the Captain’s voice went up as he snapped out “—fucking Rose and that goddamn whore!” To which May Ida made some indistinguishable plea. Then some object was slammed or a body was hurled against a wall.

  Joe ducked around the side to the narrow space between the Captain’s house and the one next door. He couldn’t hear much of anything now. He waited another few seconds, then slipped to the front of the house.

  He saw the police sedan at the curb with the driver’s-side door propped open a few inches and a large head silhouetted through one of the side windows. Lazy smoke drifted up and over the roof. Tired of standing around, Baker had gone to wait in the car.

  In a silent creep, Joe reached the sidewalk and stood next to the trunk of a bare apple tree. When nothing happened, he stepped into the street and saw one thick wrist holding a short cigar draped over the windowsill. He crept closer, making no sound until he got to the rear fender, when he said, “Hey, there!”

  Corporal Baker jerked and pulled the arm off the sill. His head came around, and when he saw Joe, he grimaced in surprise and started to say something. Before he could get it out, Joe grabbed the doorframe with both hands and threw it closed using all his weight, crushing Baker’s head against the bodywork. The corporal let out a sharp grunt, and his eyes rolled up as his derby popped up like in a stunt from a comedy routine. His arms waved about in a weak and clumsy effort to fight back. Joe was on him, though, driving his right fist first into the corporal’s snout and then into each of his eyes with quick jabs he remembered from his boxing days. His knuckles collided with Baker’s brow, and he felt a blade of pain shoot up his right arm.

  Baker grunted some more and tried to pull himself up.
Joe let him make a few inches of progress before slamming the door on him again, this time catching him full in the face. Baker’s nose blossomed with blood and he crumpled back, falling against the steering wheel and then slumping across the seats with his legs still hanging down over the running board. Joe made sure he was completely out before moving away.

  As he strode up the walk, he heard voices from inside, rising in jagged peaks, the two men’s and one woman’s. When he reached the front porch, he found the door unlocked. He opened it a foot and slipped inside.

  The voices were coming from the direction of the hallway that was on the opposite side of the front room. Joe slipped to the arched doorway and perked an ear. He could make out the Captain’s gruff growl and May Ida’s twittering soprano. The third person wasn’t speaking.

  He poked his head around the corner. Shadows played at the other end, cast in the bright kitchen light. Halfway along the hall was an open doorway to a bedroom. Under the cover of the blustering shouts, Joe crept the five paces to duck through the doorway and lurk in the darkness, listening.

  “You think I’m going to let this alone?” the Captain was demanding. “You understand what she done?”

  May Ida whimpered, “Grayton . . . stop . . . please.”

  “You need to let her go, Captain.” It was Collins, his voice steady, a man working for calm. Thinking of poor Al Nichols with the badge clutched in his hand, Joe wanted to rush him at that moment. He kept still, though; now wasn’t the time.

  “Why’s that?” Jackson barked. “You been fucking her, too? Along with everybody else in town?”

  “We need to stop this before it goes too far,” Collins said.

  “Already gone too damn far.”

  There was some movement and May Ida cried out.

  “You think I didn’t know?”

  May Ida whimpered again, and Collins said, “Captain—”

  “She’ll spread them fat legs of hers for any-goddamn-body! You think I don’t know? I know! I know everything!”

  Not quite, Joe thought as May Ida’s voice went up in a keening swoop.

  “You shut up!” the Captain growled. “Now, what’d you tell that fucking Rose?”

  There was a second of stunned silence. May Ida wailed, “What?”

  “What the hell did you tell him?” the Captain bellowed.

  “That’s enough!” Collins barked.

  “I’ll say when it’s enough,” Jackson grunted. “And you can drop that weapon right about now, too.”

  Joe peeked from the doorway, saw Collins’s silhouette cast against the white enamel of the icebox. A shadowed hand extended and a shadowed pistol dropped to the floor with a thump. Joe could just see the tip of the barrel, a few inches from the threshold.

  “All right, it’s gone,” the detective said. “Now why don’t you put the knife down?”

  “You giving orders now?”

  There was a thick pause. Joe thought he heard Collins whisper Don’t! and then a thin dark scream from May Ida. Collins’s shadow bolted suddenly and there was the sound of a wild scuffle, chairs rattling, glass breaking, the two men huffing and cursing, May Ida’s shriek going up and down like a siren.

  Joe covered the two steps to the doorway and snatched up the detective’s pistol. He yelled, “Stop!” before he could fix on the tableau in the kitchen and untangle body from body.

  The three of them froze, stunned by the intrusion. The Captain and Collins were locked in a grapple, their arms around each other’s necks in a violent dance, Collins’s hand grasping the Captain’s right wrist. Above the wrist, Jackson’s hand held a kitchen knife. May Ida had crumpled to their feet and was grabbing at one side of her throat, where blood seeped from a short slash.

  Joe understood. The Captain had been holding his wife and had taken the moment to try to cut her throat. It hadn’t gone deep enough to do fatal damage, though, and Collins was on him before he could finish the job.

  “You!” There was a mad glitter in the Captain’s green eyes, and his lips curled into a half smile as he realized that someone else wanted in his clutches was standing a few feet away.

  Joe saw it coming. Jackson took advantage of those seconds of surprise to throw Collins back against the sideboard with a low grunt. Then he reached down to snatch May Ida by her curls and wrench her head back at an angle. He was bringing the knife down, muttering the words, “Now, you fucking whore . . .” when Joe pulled the trigger.

  The Colt barked and flashed in that small space, and the Captain twisted around in a spasm that sent him backward into the corner. The knife tumbled to the linoleum. Jackson started to slide down, staring at Joe, his eyes spitting hate. He grabbed his chest where the wound was bleeding, his crazy eyes fixed on the man who had shot him. He managed to snarl, “I’m a police officer, goddamn you!” He slid down to the floor. “I’m a . . . a . . .” He sputtered, as if he had forgotten what he wanted to say.

  Joe was gazing in wonder at what he had done when, behind him, he heard Collins say, “No!”

  May Ida came spinning from her crouch on the floor, took two strides, snatched up the knife, and drove the blade into her husband’s solar plexus. He let out an animal groan as she leaned her weight against it.

  “There,” she said in an eerily calm voice. “There.” She straightened and let the Captain topple over on his side. She held the red-stained knife dangling idly at her side.

  In the stunned second that followed, Collins stepped up to lift his pistol from Joe’s hand. Joe jerked it away and drew back, leveling the weapon at the lieutenant.

  “You went to Al Nichols’s place,” he said. “You were there.”

  The lieutenant nodded carefully. “He told me to come talk to you. Someone got to him first. He was still alive when I came in. He couldn’t make it, though. Not with a wound like that.” He took a grim pause. “My guess is Baker did it. But I was with him when he went down.”

  Joe dropped a slow hand into the pocket of his jacket. “He grabbed this,” he said, holding up the badge.

  The lieutenant looked down and spotted the faint trace that Albert’s hand had left on his coat. He looked at Joe again. “May I have it?” he said. “And the weapon, please.”

  Joe glanced at him and saw a face that had gone cop blank, the mouth set in a line and the eyes cool and flat. He handed over the badge and the pistol. The lieutenant placed them on the sideboard. Before he did, though, he grasped the pistol firmly by the grip, erasing any trace of Joe’s handprint.

  May Ida turned around, again assuming the pose of the helpless girl that was her mask and shield. She held up the knife. “What shall I do with this?” she asked simply.

  “Just lay it on the table,” Collins said in a steady voice.

  May Ida did as she was told, then dropped her hands to her sides, standing a little stiffly, like a small child about to be dressed down over some mischief. She looked between the detective and Joe, her eyes wide and expectant.

  “Both of you stay where you are,” Collins said. “Don’t touch anything and don’t try to leave. Please.”

  He walked out of the room. May Ida gave Joe a sweet, absent smile, then cast a pensive gaze out the window. In the silence, they heard the lieutenant crank the telephone and then start speaking in a clipped voice.

  Momentarily, he came along the hall and stepped back into the room to address Joe. “Do you know what happened to Corporal Baker?”

  “I laid him out across the seat of the car,” Joe said. “He might come around in an hour or so.”

  A hint of a smile twitched at the corners of Collins’s mouth. He said, “In that case, you may leave, sir.”

  “Wait a minute,” Joe said. “What’s going to happen to him?”

  “To who?”

  “Baker.”

  “Oh. He’ll be prosecuted. I’ll see to it.”

  “He needs to be put to sleep.”

  “I’ll take care of it, Mr. Rose.”

  “What about Sweet Spencer?” />
  “I’ll have him released. Most likely tomorrow.”

  “Tonight, Lieutenant,” Joe said, softly insistent. “You know what kind of place that is.”

  Collins paused. “All right, sir. I’ll make the call.”

  Joe nodded, mollified. There was nothing more for him to do there. He looked over at the Captain, crumpled glassy-eyed on the floor. He shifted his gaze to May Ida and she smiled at him fondly, but with a vexed expression, as if all this bedlam had her puzzled.

  “Mr. Rose?” Collins said. Joe looked at him. “If you happen to see Miss Spencer, tell her it would be smart for her to return those items that were stolen. If she has them, I mean.”

  “If I see her, I will,” Joe said.

  “And then you’ll want to think about your own plans.”

  Joe understood; it was a warning to get out of town.

  He left them there, stepping into the hall, through the living room, and out the door, closing it behind him. When he got to the sidewalk, he saw that some of the neighbors had come out of their houses, alerted by the gunshot. Little huddles formed at certain doorsteps, arms crossed in the chilly evening as they whispered back and forth. A few of the men were moving cautiously toward the sedan, peering in at the body slumped across the seat.

  Joe made a quick escape around the corner of Pine Street and past the Luckie Street School, and turned south toward town. As he reached the edge of the city, two police sedans whizzed by. Though they were moving at a furious clip, neither employed a siren. Joe thought he saw the face of Chief Troutman in one of them, but they went by so fast that he couldn’t be sure.

  Willie opened the door without asking who was knocking, as if he knew who was calling. Joe was relieved to find him home and some of the tension he had been carrying blew away.