The Red Storm

by Grant Bywaters

  She laughed. “Do you mind if I ask you something?”

  “You might as well have asked,” I said.

  “Okay, I’ll ask it to you now. I know that my dad was rotten, but was there anything upright about him? Anything at all?”

  I scrutinized her face and saw that she very much wanted to hear something straight about her old man.

  “He was a bad egg, I ain’t gonna lie to you about that,” I said. “But I reckon I don’t have much room to talk as far as that goes. I ain’t exactly I saint neither. But I will say this, he treated me the same as he would a white man. I reckon that’s why I stuck it out with him as long as I did.”

  “That’s so strange you saying that,” Zella said.

  “Why’s that?”

  “See, a person being colored never mattered to me neither. It’s kinda how I got into singing. My ma would drag me to church, but I hated going. She’d get to droppin’ me off, but I’d ditch, and go out on the town. One day I’m going along Bourbon and I hit a few dives. I wandered my way to the back alley of one of the joints and found a band waiting to get let in. They were coloreds, and weren’t even allowed to go in through the front. It was awful. But I get to talking to them, and they invited me to come try singing for them. They’re still teachin’ me now.”

  “That’s good,” I said.

  “Fancy that,” she said. “I’ve talked myself dry. I’m goin’ to see about fixin’ me another drink. Why don’t you put some music on, eh?”

  She got up off me and went to siphon more booze into her. I went through her records, which were inside an oak radio cabinet and settled on Bessie Smith. I lit a cigarette as the 78 of “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” crackled over the speakers of the phonograph.

  “Don’t you just love her?” Zella said, stumbling back in. Her eyes were glossy and dilated.

  “You keep practicing and maybe you’ll sound like her someday,” I said.

  Her eyes expanded. “You really think so?”

  “No.”

  She laughed. “I suppose you think my voice is too deep. I get told that a lot. That I sound too much like a man. But what am I suppose to sound like, Betty Boop or something?”

  I laughed. “You couldn’t sound that girlish even if you sucked on a helium balloon.”

  Said Zella, “Oh, hush up and dance with me, you big ugly hyena.”

  I danced with her for a bit, spun her around a few times, and sent her running to the bathroom, where she spent the remainder of the evening bear-hugging the toilet and vomiting.

  CHAPTER 8

  A week later I stepped out of my shower to a ringing phone. “The New Orleans Hotel was bombed,” Brawley said. “Pineapples through the windows. Fire crew is hosing it down, but Ranalli and his men were able to escape the blast.”

  “Got any suspects?” I asked.

  “We got a good idea who’s behind it. Seems we might be havin’ a gang war on our hands.”

  “That’s good news for you. It’ll give you a solid opportunity to get your name misspelled in the papers again.”

  “You’ve been really pushin’ it, Fletcher,” he said, and slammed the phone down so hard it made my ears ring.

  I stayed in my flat most of the afternoon. Not wanting to leave the phone, I had my lunch, a reuben on rye sandwich and milk, delivered by the boy working at the nearby drugstore. My hunch was that I’d be hearing from Ranalli soon. It took into the evening for my hunch to materialize by the phone jingling.

  “You hear what that hick did to my place?” Ranalli yelled, referring to Valentino.

  “What’d you expect, wedgin’ yourself up in a room with all them windows? You were just asking for something like that to happen. Maybe it ain’t such a bad idea havin’ the cops keeping you on a leash, if anything for your own protection.”

  “I’d be watchin’ that mouth of yours,” he said. “Don’t you forget who you are!”

  “You’ve got bigger things to worry about than my mouth,” I said.

  “I ain’t worried. See, that fink thinks he’s got a pair of iron balls by coming here! But it ain’t balls, it’s lack of brains. Any fink dumb enough to do a straight shot at me is going to be put through the grinder.”

  “He’s here?” I said.

  “Him and his apes snuck in last night. Must’ve took off when I told him I wasn’t doing the job and not to bother askin’ for a return on his dough.”

  “Tough break for him.”

  “It don’t matter. Be out front in half an hour. I’m sending Jackson to get you.”

  “What for?” I asked.

  He hung up the phone, and left me to the task of figuring out what he wanted.

  Thirty minutes later a Cadillac V-16 Imperial Limousine pulled to the curb on St. Ann. Jackson, the chauffeur, stepped out and opened the door.

  Jackson at one time was an amateur wrestler. He was set to go to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, before he took a trip to a bar in Tijuana and tried to outwrestle a mob of bandits that claimed they were once led by Francisco Villa, aka Pancho Villa.

  Ranalli said they pulled Jackson into the back alley and took turns clobbering him across the back with two-by-fours and clubs. Jackson ended up with a broken back and was a close shave from being crippled. He joked that a person’s spinal column has thirty-three vertebrae, and they ended up shattering thirty-one of his.

  “How’s the back?” I asked

  “The back is fine. Some days it’s better than others. But I suppose that’s what I get for being young and dead between the ears.”

  “I don’t reckon I ever asked why you decided to pick a fight with them Mexicans,” I said.

  Jackson shrugged. “I figure you get told so much by your trainers and everyone you’re the best, and nobody can stop you, you start believing it. I look back now and I think I was just trying to prove something.”

  “You proved you can take a beating,” I said.

  “That ain’t proving nothin’,” he said. “The only reason why I’m still standing is because they put enough bolts and metal in my spine they could stretch it along the Mason-Dixon line.”

  “That’s a lot of hardware,” I said.

  He agreed and drove the Cadillac V-16 engine to the Canal Street ferry, which tugged us across the mighty Mississippi to the west bank.

  I did not know why Ranalli wanted me to meet up with him, but what I did know was that there was more going on than him not liking some cat named Valentino. I needed to find out if Zella still played a part in whatever Ranalli had going on.

  Jackson rode the machine out onto Peter Avenue. On the corner of Sequin Street, Ranalli’s Ford Model B “Deuce” V-8 sat parked. Ranalli had removed the hood, windshield, and fenders of the machine in an effort to lighten its weight.

  Jackson pulled up behind the flivver as Ranalli and a skeletal man with a sunken face got out.

  “One of Valentino’s boys rented out the shotgun house down the way,” Ranalli said. “We gonna go surprise him and see what ol’ Val’s up to.”

  “Who’s your friend?” I asked.

  “He ain’t nobody,” Ranalli said. “If you got to call him somethin’, you can just call him Tommy.”

  “Tommy, that’s grand,” I said. “Why’d you call me in on this?”

  “You’re in the lay of this when you asked me to back off that broad,” he said.

  “Bull. You did that because I got lucky over the outcome of a fight, but I don’t think that’s the real reason why you did.”

  “Suit yourself,” Ranalli said. “You can stand out here like a boob while we go or you can walk home. I’d be careful, though. Them coppers are known to drive around this time of night ready to go to bat with them knockers they carry.”

  “They’ve never tried that monkey business on me,” I said.

  “’Course they haven’t. But what’s it gonna be, you taggin’ along with us or you goin’ to be a sissy?”

  “It’s your ball game,” I said.


  “Got a rod?”

  “I didn’t know I was supposed to bring one.”

  Ranalli glanced over at Jackson. “Give him your canister. You’re just waitin’ in the car anyway.”

  Jackson pulled out a nickel-plated .32 and handed it over to me. I stuffed the piece inside my waistband. I didn’t like putting a gun there, not after I read up about a hood that stuffed a gat in the front of his pants only to have it go off. It came close to blowing his manhood out onto the front steps of the bank he was trying to rob.

  “Tommy been out here watchin’ this bird all day,” Ranalli said. “Says he went to bed an hour ago. It’s a cinch. You’re gonna take the front, and Tommy and me will surprise this dope from the back. Any luck, he won’t even be out of bed when we give him the jump.”

  “Then what?” I asked.

  “We gonna ask him a few questions is all, and let him go back to sawin’ his logs.”

  I didn’t believe him. But I played ball and followed them until they broke off down a small pathway between the cypress shotgun house and a neighboring villa.

  I went toward the front steps. Midway up to the deck, the front door went wide open and a heavyset man holding a Browning Hi-Power nine-millimeter came out.

  The man was six foot, two-forty, with a brown mop of hair, slender nose, cutaway mouth, and squinting close-set eyes.

  “Toss your iron, get on your knees, and lock your fingers behind your head!”

  I did as told as he stuck the muzzle about a fraction of an inch from my forehead. I watched as he was in the motion of working the trigger when the back of his head ruptured open. He was almost able to turn around to see what shot him before he went limp. I made a quick move to the right and dodged the falling body.

  Ranalli was just inside the doorway holding a .357 Magnum. I collected my tossed gun and came up the steps.

  “Quick, Tommy, get this bird inside before a car comes by and sees us,” Ranalli said.

  I didn’t think it would be possible for someone as skinny as Tommy to be able to move someone that large. Yet he managed to lift the stiff off the railing and into the house without any sign of strain. I followed behind him and Ranalli slammed the door shut.

  “We got to get out of here quick. The blast from this cannon will get someone to call it in,” Ranalli said.

  Tommy went through the dead man’s pockets and found nothing but a tin cigarette case, tobacco, and a few bills on his person.

  “This clown got nothing to show for himself,” Ranalli said.

  “He knew we were coming,” I said. “Did you tip him off?”

  “Why the hell would I do that? I don’t have to go through that much work if I just wanted to kill a nigger. And, if I recall, I just saved your ass. So lighten up and get to searchin’ this joint!”

  “Search for what?” I asked.

  “I dunno, maybe a map to where his boss is.”

  “Are you playin’ dense?”

  “Hey, just shut up and do as you’re told!”

  I didn’t bother arguing it out with him. I walked through the house, which had pine floors and a twelve-foot ceiling. The rooms were built behind each other in single file like a fire drill line-up. I went through all of them and found nothing. At the utility room, I came upon drippage that was seeping out of a crack that went into the attic. A single cord hung down. I tugged it and released the upper hatch. There was a tumble and the body of a man came plummeting to the floor. He was young, in his early twenties, with blond hair and an athletic build. He’d been shot in the side of the head with a small-caliber gun. It looked like the barrel had been pressed against his skin, leaving a burn impression of it behind. He was in a state of full rigor mortis, to the extent that you could probably balance him out on a chair.

  Ranalli had heard the noise and he came in with Tommy.

  “What the hell is this?” Ranalli asked.

  I didn’t say anything.

  Ranalli removed his handkerchief and went through the dead man’s pockets, taking out a wallet, rolling papers, tobacco, and a comb. He flipped the wallet open and whistled. “This guy been stuffin’ flatfoots in his attic. His ID says he’s with the PD.”

  Sarcastically, I said, “That’s perfect.”

  The sound of far-off sirens came.

  “We gotta get. Tommy, you and Jackson move the cars down behind us. Fletcher and I will tidy up and take the back out and cut through and meet you at Alix Street.”

  Tommy left, and Ranalli went through the motions of wiping all the doors and everything we touched down with his handkerchief. We went out the back and onto a side path and through people’s property until we got out onto Alix. The rumbling of emergency sirens got louder as we got up to the waiting automobiles.

  “Tommy, you ride back with Jackson,” Ranalli said, as he got behind the wheel of the Deuce. I took the passenger seat as he revved up its flathead engine and popped it into gear.

  “This bus got some power, right,” Ranalli said as he steered south on Elmira Avenue. “Had a mechanic do some cylinder boring to the engine and altered the stroke of the crankshaft. This heap can now do over a hundred easy.”

  He proved that by getting the machine up to near eighty. There was a prowl car waiting at the corner of Eliza Street. Ranalli punched it and passed the cop at close to ninety. Ranalli had cleared through three blocks by the time the radio car pulled out and hit its lights.

  “Them cops better start gettin’ better machines than them Model A’s,” Ranalli said, making a right on Homer and then a left on Verret.

  “This thing can’t outrun a radio,” I said. “Better hope he ain’t radioing in for a roadblock and we find ourselves getting boxed in.”

  “Stop sweatin’ it,” Ranalli said. “I been doin’ this song and dance with the law since Prohibition. I had to drive the big freights myself. Couldn’t trust them drivers not to drink the stuff and then go ridin’ their rigs up the side of a building. Only took losin’ one shipment for me to put an end to it, see. You ain’t gonna get good gamblin’ when the joint is dry.”

  He made two right turns, first on Kepler and then Amelia before he made a left onto First Street. We made the ferry before it cast off. Few commuters were on board, but more important, none of them were police. With the car in idle, we sat and smoked our tobacco in quiet at first.

  “Wish I didn’t have to drop that mug,” Ranalli said. “Was hopin’ to get to the bottom of this. See what Val was plannin’ by comin’ here.”

  “Was mighty convenient that you did drop him, since you can’t go about questioning a corpse,” I said.

  “What are you getting’ at?”

  “You tell me, looks to me you got it all figured out.”

  Ranalli grimaced. “Maybe what all them people say is right, you shines ain’t made for the smart work.”

  “People around here say the same about wops, so what does that tell you?”

  Ranalli grunted. “That’s only because they’re still blaming us Italians for that superintendent of police Hennessy getting killed. There ain’t no shortage of wiseasses that’s got to ask me ‘Who killed the chief?’”

  “Well, who did?”

  “How the hell am I supposed to know? I can tell you it wasn’t them nineteen Italians they arrested for it. They were framed up all the way, see, but that didn’t stop them White Leaguers from lynching them in their own jail cells.”

  “It happens to the best of us,” I said.

  Ranalli said nothing. When the ferry reached the landing, he took Jackson to St. Charles and let me off.

  “Be sure to reintroduce me to that harp pal of yours workin’ down at the station,” Ranalli said.

  I slammed the door on him, and watched as he peeled up the street. I took the St. Charles streetcar to where it dropped me off at Canal on the outskirts of the Quarter. By foot, I went the rest of the way. Ducking down a secluded side street, I emptied Jackson’s .32 of its bullets. I wiped it clean with my handkerchief and stuffed it into a tr
ash can before continuing on.

  An unsettling breeze passed through the night as I made my way to my flat, the kind of breeze locals say happens just before the hurricane hits.

  The courtyard to my apartment was empty except for a few tenants smoking on their front balconies. They paid no attention to me. I paid no attention to them. It took longer than normal to make it up the long white rickety steps to my flat. Opening the door was no easier, but I managed. Soon as I got in, I called Zella.

  “Where you been?” she demanded. “I’m paying good money for you to watch over me, and you ain’t even around.”

  “I haven’t even seen any of this good money you speak of, outside the little you gave for expenses,” I said.

  “Is that what this is all about?”

  “No. I got caught up in something.”

  “Better not be a dame.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “Good. I’d thrown you out on your ear if that was the reason.”

  “It’s not.”

  “What was it then?”

  “I’d rather not talk about it.”

  “Men!”

  She hung up.

  * * *

  I awoke early and headed to the Saint-Pierre Boxing Gym on Rampart Street.

  The gym was notorious for being owned by Travis Richmond, an aged veteran of the bare-knuckles days of fighting, who always took it upon himself to lecture up-and-comers on how they got it easy.

  “You kids fighting with your twelve-ounce gloves. All I see in the ring now is a couple of girls having themselves a pillow fight.”

  Richmond was too set in his way for it to occur to him that the use of gloves made the sport more dangerous because boxers now aimed at opponents’ heads, an area bare-knuckle fighters avoided to preserve their hands, opting more for cushioned body shots.

  I changed and headed straight for the leather speed bag hanging off a wooden platform that looked like a wagon wheel. I always found bag work the best way to clear my head and gather my thoughts.

  The speed bag was all about rhythm and listening to the sound it made. Not too hard but a nice relaxed speed. I alternated hands in a right-right-right-left-left-left rhythm and then used both hands.