by Tim Willocks
Frechette said, “I believe otherwise, but only you can know it.”
Under Frechette’s steady gaze, and the lash of his own shame, Grimes’s resolve suddenly collapsed. If Lenna was basically decent—and he believed she was—and if Jefferson had wanted her to know the score—which it seemed he did from his letter to her—then who was Grimes to stand in their way? He reached into his jacket for the letter Jefferson had sent him. His hand dipped into his pocket and stopped there.
The letter had gone.
His fingers felt the thin oblong card of the airline ticket; but no envelope.
Conscious of Frechette, Grimes suppressed his inclination to scrabble through his other pockets. He knew the letter had been there and now it wasn’t. Only his father had known it existed. The man who had called him a sneaking bastard to his face had shortly thereafter stolen the letter from his jacket while he pissed: George Grimes, with his Pacific War sidearms, and his work of noble note.
Cicero Grimes cursed his paternity, cursed God and cursed his day.
Then an image blipped across his mind, of the blue tip of a cutting torch flame licking his father’s eyeballs while faceless men laughed. Grimes felt a fear so intense he wanted to vomit. His mind cleared. He saw Frechette looking at him curiously. Grimes pulled his empty hand from his pocket.
“I have to go,” said Grimes.
Frechette blinked. He had failed.
Grimes didn’t see the use of explaining. He walked down to his car and turned the engine. There was no point wasting time to see if George was still home eating milk and cookies. Grimes had to find the girl before George did. The girl, Ella. She’s nineteen years old. Jesus Christ. Ella. That was all he could recall. He ground savagely through the gears. He scowled all the way down the drive from Arcadia and into the vale of live oaks growing. Her last name. Her address. Her last name. Her address. Grimes kept scowling until the wrought-iron gates in the high red-brick wall were humming closed on his dust. He couldn’t remember.
Grimes stamped on the gas and the Olds 88 screamed through the night between ghostly fields of marsh grass, swirling in a Dionysiac celebration of the freshening wind. He would remember. By the time he reached the City, he’d remember. He had to. Then maybe he would kill his goddamn father himself.
SIX
THE RHYTHM FACTORY was driving its clientele to work full capacity on drinking, sweating, and letting the good times roll. As her face dipped in and out of the full glare of the lights Ella caught glimpses of their faces grooving on the sounds, funky and hot. It was her dancing they liked, she knew, more than her voice. For her it was the other way around; it was the voice that counted most. It was the voice that carried her ambitions and dreams. But if the audience dug her snaky limbs and the way she shook that thing, that was all right by her, at least for the time being. She could dance the way she did without effort—it would have been an effort not to—so she could spend all her concentration on her phrasing, on opening up the power channels to her diaphragm and the resonating spaces in the hollows of her skull, and on not ripping her throat apart. The voice would take years, she knew, and she was wise enough to be patient. She had the time: she was nineteen years old. Dancing gave her a platform from which to perform that maybe other, better, singers deserved; but in time the voice would come, and when it did she’d be prepared. She’d already be a veteran, a semi-pro. She’d be cool. Shit, girl, you’re already cool. They love you. She closed her eyes and arched her head back in the hot blue dazzle of the lights and let her arms twist and float up on a surging wave of down and dirty funk—mmm, who’s playing thatfatback ?—and they whistled and cheered and she knew they loved her. The band at her back caught the energy and moved up—always like magic to her—another invisible gear. Her fingertips, glossy red, came together high above her head and she swayed like a flame, held it longer than she had any right to, and the band, teetering, held it with her, then she fell, flaring her eyes and nostrils, lunging her head and shoulders and tits at the mike as she hit the final chorus and soared.
The band stopped abruptly, perfectly, and she stared down on the raucous applause without smiling. She never smiled onstage. Maybe later, when she was who she intended to be, she’d smile, but for now they could look up into her face and check her lips and think, Man, who the fuck is she) She was too young to smile and still stay sexy. A sexy smile came with age, Charlie said. Smile now and you’ll look like a little girl looking for approval; but give them a fuck-you sneer, you’ll make their dicks go hard and when they go home after the show to fuck their girlfriends, they’ll be thinking of you when they come. Next week they’ll be back for more. That had been Charlie’s theory. She’d found it hard to believe, maybe even a little creepy, but it worked. Every Friday night at the Rhythm Factory they came and clapped and licked their lips at the gold ring through her navel and the way her nipples showed through whatever it was she was wearing. The Factory was small and no one much outside the neighborhood came here, but it was her neighborhood. She shared an apartment with two college friends three blocks down the street. She turned her back on the whoops and cheers and winked at Sammy, on bass. Sammy grinned and went to the mike stand.
“Ella MacDaniels,” he growled. “Ella MacDaniels! Let’s hear it, people.”
Ella turned back to the audience. The club was in a dingy basement, with air-conditioning that hadn’t worked right since 1979. At the back of the crowd along the far wall was a wide bar with shelves of bottles winking beneath blue bulbs. Standing, not leaning, by the bar was a man in a dark suit and tie. Ella had glimpsed him a couple of times during the set. He stood out not because of his clothes, though the suit wasn’t sharp, but because he was old and white. Old brothers showed up often enough, to keep an ear on the scene and recall how much hotter it had been in their day, but white men never. And the old guy seemed to be looking straight at her. Then, so were eighty or ninety other people. Ella opened her arms wide and bowed low. Long cords of tightly braided hair fell to either side of her face. She threw them back over her shoulders as she straightened up and stood there, long and lean.
“That’s all from us tonight,” said Sammy, “but you got any sense at all in them heads of yours you’ll hang in and sizzle some more with our friends from old Habana by way of Miami: Ernesto Ruiz y Los Hal-cones de la Medianoche! Ernesto Ruiz and The Nighthawks! Okay, let’s hear it one more time for Ella MacDaniels!”
The band laid down an outro and Ella bowed once more and walked off backstage. She went straight to the tiny private bathroom by the manager’s office and threw the bolt. After a show she liked a moment to herself, to enjoy the excitement, the glow of having been enjoyed. It was another thing Charlie had taught her: always take something for yourself, inside. Make it yours. Hold on to it for the times when things are bad and you can’t remember what it’s all about; for those times will come. Charlie had a way of saying things so that you didn’t forget them. She missed him. He hadn’t been there tonight, again. For the first year she’d played here he’d hardly missed a date, standing at the bar where the old man had stood tonight, in wraparound shades and slicked-back hair. Sometimes one of the more dubious customers had given him a strange look and Charlie had spoken to him, smiling and soft, and whoever it was would never show up again. She’d never been told why and on instinct she’d never asked. Now Charlie didn’t show up either, hadn’t in months, and she no longer expected him. The same instinct had warned her many times—ever since she was a child—that one day Charlie might just disappear from her life. Now that he had, she missed him. In fact she missed him bad. For no good reason in the world she felt less safe without him around.
Ella ran the cold water tap and splashed her face. The café-au-lait skin of her body, most of which was visible through the slashes in her outfit, was beaded with sweat. She cranked a yard of rough paper from the towel dispenser and wiped her face and arms. She didn’t wear makeup; didn’t need it. Just the ragged red dress, the ring through her navel and the
diamond stud in her nose. Her features were fine-boned, delicate but strong, except for her nose, which was broad; in her heart of hearts broader than she would’ve liked. Reading magazines, she’d occasionally had forbidden fantasies of getting a job on it, raise and narrow the bridge just a little. But that was bullshit. She’d gotten the piercing instead and that she did like. She heard a clunking against the door. She crammed the damp paper into an overflowing trash can and stepped out into the corridor.
Ernesto and his Halcones were crowding and chattering their way between the narrow black walls of the corridor toward the stage, their arms loaded with instruments. She felt Sammy squeeze her shoulders from behind.
“You were smokin’ tonight.”
She smiled and he kissed her on the cheek. Sammy had four kids and ran a tow-truck service, but in his time had played with Mac Rebennack and been a session man for Allen Toussaint. He sneaked past her into the bathroom for his Friday-night line, his one reminder of more carefree days. Apart from a little spliff, Ella didn’t do drugs. There’d been a doorman here one time with the hots for her, had pestered her repeatedly to try some coke as part of his pick-up jive. She’d told Charlie about him. Next time she’d seen the guy his arm was in a cast and he’d crossed the street to avoid her. She made her way toward the dressing room. There she’d smoke a Camel Light, drink a liter of Evian and get changed before heading back to the floor to catch Ernesto and, if he was as good as she expected, maybe dance some more. As she reached the dressing-room door she looked above the bobbing heads of the Latinos and saw the old man from the bar.
He looked flushed and bewildered, the muscles in his withered neck stretched with tension. This wasn’t his scene, she could tell, and her heart went out to him a little. The old man caught her eyes. He called out to her over the chaos.
“Miss MacDaniels?”
Ella blinked. He was a total stranger to her and he didn’t belong here, yet there was no threat in him that she could identify. She found herself nodding.
The old guy struggled along the wall, holding his buttoned jacket together as he scraped by. She waited for him. He stopped before her and unconsciously straightened his tie. That touched her too. His eyes were gray and honest beneath thick brows a darker gray than his hair. He smiled uncertainly.
“I’m George Grimes. Could I speak with you a moment?”
Ella couldn’t work out what he was doing here. Was he from another club? He looked too out of place. An agent? No. He wasn’t smooth enough.
“What’s it about?” she said.
George Grimes lowered his voice a tone. “Charlie sent me.”
Ella’s gut clenched. She’d never met any of Charlie’s friends; for her his life had been a closed book.
She said: “I need to change. Will you wait?”
“Sure,” said George. “Right here?”
“If you can stand it.”
“Oh, I reckon I’ve survived worse.”
He smiled again, more easily, and this time Ella smiled back.
“Five minutes,” she said, and pushed open the door to the dressing room.
The room was dingy and cramped and heaped with a dozen other people’s junk. From amid it she pulled out a blue nylon backpack and dumped it on the table in front of a mirror smudged with phone numbers written in lipstick. From inside the bag she pulled out a pair of black lace-up work boots with Doc Martens soles, a black Lycra halter-neck top that ended just below her rib cage and some matching leggings. Her jacket was in there too, but it was too hot in here to wear it. She peeled her dress off over her head, rolled it into a cylinder and shoved it into the bag. She put one hand on the table for balance and, with relief, tugged off her heels and bagged them. As she dressed she wondered what Charlie wanted and why he’d sent George Grimes instead of coming himself. Was Charlie okay? She raced the lacing of her boots, straightened up. She opened the door.
The corridor was quieter now. George, standing almost to attention, turned toward her. Behind him Sammy emerged from the bathroom. Sammy sniffed and tugged at his nose. He saw George and frowned.
“Ever’thin’ okay, baby?” said Sammy.
George turned his head. Ella smiled and nodded.
“Everything’s fine, Sam. I’ll see you on the floor.”
Sammy shrugged and ambled off. She jerked her head at George to invite him in.
“It’s a dump but it’s quiet.”
George came in and she closed the door. There was one broken ex-swivel chair at the dressing table.
“Sit down,” she said.
“Obliged.”
George nodded and tested the chair with his hand before sitting. Ella pulled her bottle of water from her bag and broke the seal on the cap. She held the bottle toward George.
“It’s warm but—do you want some?”
“No, thank you, Miss,” said George. “You go ahead.”
He waited while Ella swallowed a good half-pint. She suddenly wondered if it was unladylike and lowered the botde. Funny, being ladylike wasn’t something she often worried about. It’s his age, she told herself, and he’s a gendeman. He was even being careful not to look at her body, though she could tell he was inclined to.
“You know Charlie, then?” she said.
George shook his head. “Not personally,” he said.
He paused and seemed to search for a way of saying what he had to say.
“This is what you might call a weird situation, Miss MacDaniels. I don’t know how else but to come straight out with it.”
Ella felt her insides roll over again. “Go ahead.”
“Well, it seems like the man you know as Charlie is dead.”
For a moment she didn’t feel anything, then suddenly George was up and helping her to sit in the chair.
“Take some more water, Miss. Make you feel better.”
Ella took another drink. She put the botde down on the table and found her cigarettes in her bag. She lit one. Her mind was racing with thoughts too fast to hang on to. One of them blurted out.
“Are you a cop?” she said.
George shook his head. “No, Miss, not me, but Charlie was. His real name was Clarence Jefferson.”
The name meant nothing to her. She suddenly understood better why Charlie had never spoken about himself. Her chest started shuddering and she knew she was about to cry.
“I’m sorry, Miss,” said George.
Ella tried to stop the tears falling down her face but couldn’t. She couldn’t think either. It was as if she didn’t know where the tears were coming from or why.
“Here.”
George handed her a clean white handkerchief and she took it and wiped her face.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled.
“I’m sorry too,” he said.
She looked at him and in his lined face saw genuine sorrow for her pain. In herself she was shocked. She hadn’t known that Charlie meant this much to her.
“I know you need time to deal with this,” said George, “but I don’t know that we got it right now.”
The tears dried up as the anxiety in his voice overshadowed his concern. She lowered the handkerchief.
“What do you mean?”
George looked away from her for a moment, then back.
“I don’t mean to scare you, and I hope I’m wrong, but you may be in some danger.”
Ella couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Jefferson, that is Charlie, said to ask you to take me to the Old Place.”
“The Old Place,” she said.
For some reason, and amid everything else, she felt stupid for the way she said it.
“Yes. That mean anything to you?”
She nodded. Since she was twelve years old Charlie had taken her to the Old Place half a dozen times for vacations. The last time he’d asked her to go, she hadn’t gone because she’d been dating Terrence, and for some reason Charlie hadn’t wanted him to come along. Charlie had given her some cash and she and Terrence had gone to
Jamaica instead. Charlie and her had only ever been to the Old Place alone. It was far away.
“It’s in Georgia,” she said.
Confusion descended on her like a blanket. She didn’t know this old guy from Adam and here he was asking her to take him to Georgia. She needed to talk to someone. Sammy maybe, or one of the girls at the apartment. They’d just say the same thing she’d say to them: get rid of the old guy and call the cops. The old guy read the fear on her face.
“I know this must seem totally crazy, and scary too,” he said. “It is scary. There’s nothing I can tell you or show you to make you trust me. I could be anyone and I have no legal authority. But you’re in something you haven’t got much choice about. Charlie told us not to trust the cops or anyone else.”
“How did he tell you all this?” she said.
“He sent a letter.”
“Can I read it?”
“We ought to get moving.”
She couldn’t believe this guy. Her street head started to wake up.
“Moving where?” she said.
“The Old Place.”
“Are you kidding? It must be nearly midnight.”
By his sides, George Grimes clenched and unclenched his fists. It wasn’t an aggressive gesture, more a nervous one. The old man looked frightened too.
“I’m not trying to scare you,” he said, “but if we wait till morning I don’t know we’ll still have the option.”
Ella stood up. “I need to talk to Sammy,” she said.
“Don’t, please.” The urgency in his voice was reflected in his eyes. “The more people we pull into this thing the worse our chances. Theirs too.”
“What thing? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Ella could feel the tears coming back and she fought them. She’d come off the stage feeling strong, on top of everything she knew. She’d felt all woman with, if not the world at her feet, then at least a little piece of it. Now she felt scared, and a girl. Treat it like stage fright, she thought. To deal with that she always told herself: The worst thing they can do is kill you: to which she would answer: Not true. They can boo you off the stage; then: In that case they can just go fuck themselves. She took some deep breaths, something else she did before going on. She wrested back some control.