“You talked with him about it,” I said.
“More like shouted at him,” she said. “He said he didn’t ask her. He said he didn’t want to see her, but I didn’t believe him. Then when he run off, I figured it was to prove to me that he didn’t want anything to do with Darcy. I kept expecting him back in a year or two, and I was going to show him.”
“That’s when you met Felix.”
“I already knew Felix,” she said. “Felix took care of me. Someone had to.”
Then the color left her cheeks. She had been more honest with me than she had intended to be.
“Felix managed you, didn’t he?” I asked gently.
Her gaze was wary. “That’s a nice word. Managed.”
I waited.
She sighed and shook her head. “He took care of me. Someone told Big Jim that I was passing not two weeks after Zeke left. Big Jim threw me out of Colosimo’s and told most of them on the Levee that I was a colored girl. I lost my place to live, I lost my man, I lost everything, and to make it worse, I was pregnant. So Felix, he offered to help me out…”
She frowned, closed her eyes as if she couldn’t believe what she was saying, and opened them very slowly.
“My children don’t know this,” she whispered.
“I’m not going to tell anyone,” I said.
“I haven’t said anything about this in forty years.” She put a hand to her forehead. “It must’ve been Zeke. You mentioning Zeke.”
I nodded, but didn’t add to it. She was still in a confessional mood. I was going to let her talk.
Then she tilted her head. “You saw the letter.”
She finally realized what my comments meant. “Yeah,” I said.
“It was in the wallet too?”
I nodded.
“Son of a bitch,” she said, then put her hand over her lips. “And a fin? Did it have a fin?”
“A fin?”
“A five-dollar Treasury note. The large size, you know? Old money. Zeke always kept a fin, said you never knew when you’d need a bit of grease.”
“He bribed people?”
She rolled her eyes. “He lived on the Levee. Of course he bribed people.”
“And he visited you in your rooms, even though no one knew you were black?” I asked.
“I visited him,” she said. “No one other than employees could come into Colosimo’s.”
“You lived there?”
“Near there. There was a network of buildings we all used.” She leaned toward me. “You didn’t tell me. Did you find a fin?”
“Yes,” I said.
“God.” She stood up and walked to the small window that overlooked the hedge between her house and the neighbors’. “All these years I thought he took a flyer.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I think he was with Junius Pruitt and maybe someone named Lawrence.”
“Lawrence Talgart, the fucking bastard,” she said. “Yeah, it would make sense those three were together.”
Then she turned, and she looked perplexed.
“But you said you found them on the South Side. Not in the Levee?”
“No,” I said. “Closer to Hyde Park.”
“That makes no sense.” She sat back down. “Zeke wouldn’t go through Bridgeport for nothing, not after the riots.”
“Maybe he and Lawrence walked Junius home?” I asked.
“Walked.” She snorted. “They always drove Junius home, dropped him half a block away so that wife of his wouldn’t know what he was doing.”
“What was he doing?” I asked.
“Anything that paid him,” she said.
“Minnie Pruitt said he was a piano player.”
“And he was, for about two hours a night.”
“What did he do for the rest of the night?” I asked.
She took a deep breath. “He enforced.”
“He was — what? A bouncer? A muscle man for Colosimo?”
She smiled and adjusted her sleeves over surprisingly thin arms. “We didn’t call them bouncers then, but that’s sort of what the job was. He made sure the girls didn’t get hurt, and no one trashed up the club. He wasn’t muscle. Colosimo used Italians for muscle. He was scary brawn.”
“I thought he wasn’t very big.”
“He was big enough,” she said. “And he was black. Black-black, the kind white folks find terrifying.”
“Why didn’t he tell his wife what he did?”
“Protecting white ladies of ill repute?” Vivienne said that with just a touch of a fake English accent. “Minnie couldn’t handle the fact that he played piano for a white man doing ‘race music.’ Imagine how she’d’ve reacted when her husband’s real job was keeping an eye on ladies of loose morals and even looser clothes.”
That sense I’d had the day before, a sense of history still living for these women, came back strongly. And I felt like I was digging into a pool of anger and misunderstandings that was so deep there was no real way to get to the bottom of it all.
“Do you think he enforced against the wrong person?”
“And got my Zeke killed?” She shook her head. “Big Jim made sure you knew right up front which customer could beat a girl to death if he wanted to. In fact, Big Jim had a room off to the side just for those men. So no one could hear the screaming.”
She shivered. I clenched my fists, pushing back anger at something that happened decades ago, something that was so long past many people didn’t even know who Big Jim Colosimo was.
“If you say those three were together,” she said, “then something happened after work. They didn’t work near each other.”
“So Zeke didn’t work for Colosimo,” I said, remembering a remark she’d made earlier about only employees going into the building.
“Zeke worked for Zeke,” she said.
“And who did Lawrence Talgart work for?”
“Whoever’d hire him.” She shivered again.
“Why didn’t you like him?”
Her entire body seemed to collapse in on itself. “He knew.”
She paused. I waited, and when it became clear she wasn’t going to say any more, I said, “He knew you were passing?”
“And that I loved Zeke. He knew, and he told me I could buy his silence, and I did. Once a week.” She shivered a third time.
He was dead, I reminded myself. And if he wasn’t dead, he was so old that it no longer mattered.
“Did Zeke know about this?”
“You think he’d let Lawrence drive him around the city if he knew?”
I didn’t know. But she didn’t think so, and that was all that mattered.
“What did they do together?”
“Found people to con.”
“Do you know what the con was?” I asked.
“Usually something simple. Renting a ride in Lawrence’s Model T — which was still pretty rare, especially for a black man to have — or making change. They loved that one. Asked some sucker for change, then passed bills and coins around so fast that person never knew they got shorted till a lot later.”
Variations of that scam survived even now. I’d seen a lot of drug addicts use it in Memphis.
“But they ran a floating card game, usually set up by Lawrence, with Zeke in it as the dealer. He was good at pocketing money and chips and at getting folks to win more than they should so that they’d bet more than they should, and then some ringer’d take them for all they were worth. They made a lot doing that.”
“Could they have scammed the wrong guy?”
“They were always scamming the wrong guy,” she said. “The question is did that guy figure it out?”
It was a good question, and one that might be difficult to discover the answer to after fifty years. So I tried another tack.
“Did Zeke know anyone named Baird?”
“He didn’t,” she said. “I did. Name was Gavin. A little white mama’s boy, determined to spend every dime of the family fortune. He’d run through most of i
t by the end of the war.”
My fists relaxed. Finally, a connection, even though it was a tentative one. “He visited you?”
“Till that summer. Heard he ran out of money, might even have to get a job.”
“Did he?”
She shrugged. “I know that Felix asked me later if I’d consider a few nights with Gavin Baird, because he’d been asking about me. I said I’d rather walk the street.”
“Was he mean to you?”
She shook her head. “He had mean friends, though. And without Junius or someone like him, I just didn’t feel safe. Specially if Gavin wanted to share.”
No wonder she hadn’t told her children any of this. I was a little amazed she was telling me.
“Did he share before he ran out of money?” I asked.
“Not with me,” she said. “Some of the other girls. They hated it. They hated him. He watched. They said it was like he was storing up secrets.”
He’d stored up quite a few, but not the kind she was thinking of.
“Was one of his friends Mortimer Hanley?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I’d remember that name. No.”
“Any other names come to mind?” I asked.
“No.” She answered a little too fast. A few names clearly did come to mind, but she wasn’t willing to share them.
“These were all white men?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said softly.
“Men it was worth holding secrets about?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah,” she said.
“Some of them still around?”
She looked at me. “I said I don’t remember. I mean I don’t remember. You understand?”
I did. They were around, and she was afraid of them.
“Do you think any of them could have hurt Zeke?” I asked.
“They didn’t even know Zeke,” she said.
“But say they did. Say Zeke interrupted them with one of the girls or cheated them in a card game. Would they have hurt him?”
“They’d’ve hired someone else to hurt him.”
“Do you know who that someone else might’ve been?”
She gave me a half smile. “You know, it doesn’t matter. They’re all gone. Lost in the gang wars. The life of one of those white boys who went with Big Jim, and later Johnny Torrio or The Greek, was pretty damn short.”
“You think they’re all dead?” I asked.
“The ones that worked the Levee?” she said. “I know they’re all dead. The ones that worked later, mostly for Capone, there’s still some of them. But Zeke disappeared before anyone heard of Capone or any of those bums.”
“What about Lawrence? Would any of them hurt him?”
“Hell if I know,” she said. “I tried not to pay attention to him.”
“Is there anyone who did pay attention to him? Anyone I can talk with about him?”
She stared at me for a long minute, as if she suddenly realized she was talking to a crazy man. “You trying to solve this thing?”
“If I find out what happened to them, it might help on another case I’m working on,” I said.
“You think their deaths are tied to something now?” she asked. “I thought you wasn’t even sure you had the right people.”
I pulled the plastic evidence bag back toward me. “Do you think I have the right people?”
She looked at it, ran her finger over the words again. “Somebody could’ve stole his wallet,” she said without conviction. “Everybody knew he carried cash.”
“The cash was still in it,” I said.
“They didn’t get a chance to spend it.”
“So that somebody, he’d end up dead with a guy who had Junius Pruitt’s name sewn into his clothes and a letter addressed to Lawrence?”
She looked chagrinned. It was becoming clear how easily, and how often, she had lied about those years.
“Can I…see him?” she asked quietly.
“I’m afraid there’s not much to see,” I said.
“Oh,” she said, as if she hadn’t realized that entirely, and looked down.
“You can do one thing for me, though,” I said.
“What’s that?”
I pushed the evidence bag toward her again. “That logo on the napkin, it’s a phone number, right?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Do you know what for?”
To my surprise, she smiled. “The Everleigh Club, the gold standard.”
“I thought that was closed in 1919,” I said.
“It closed in 1911,” she said. “I missed the good years. I was too young.”
She sounded regretful, although her expression was carefully neutral.
“Where’d you get the napkin then?” I asked.
She laughed. “Zeke lived in the Everleigh Club.”
“Before it closed?” I asked.
“After. It was his boarding house, and even all run down, it was something. The Everleigh sisters, they just left a lot of the stuff. Some of the things in here —” she swept her hand toward the living room “—came from there. That gold ashtray, and a few of the antimacassars, some of the vases.”
“And the napkins,” I said.
“They were in a drawer in the hallway. We used them for notes between us. People saw them and thought they came from before.” She touched the bag one final time, as if she were touching Zeke himself. “I’d forgotten all about those.”
The words hung between us for a moment. Then I pulled the bag back.
“Do you know anyone I can talk to who might’ve known Larry Talgart?” I asked.
“I know a lot of people,” she said.
“People who might have an idea what happened to him? People who knew him well?”
She wrapped her arms around her waist, as if just thinking of Talgart made her nervous. Then she shrugged.
“Guess the only person who fits that description is his brother, Irving.”
“Do you know where I can find him?” I asked.
“Nope,” she said. “But the police probably do.”
“Why?” I asked. “What’d he do?”
She gave me a sly smile. “He didn’t do nothing, Mr. Grimshaw. He just went to work every single day like a good citizen.”
“Irving Talgart was a cop?” I asked.
“One of Chicago’s finest,” she said.
FORTY-ONE
The meeting with Vivienne Bontemps was a lot more profitable than I had imagined it would be. Not only did she give me Lawrence’s full name, but she also gave me another lead to follow.
But she also confused matters, in such a way that I was beginning to despair of ever figuring out what happened in the Queen Anne.
I hadn’t expected the tie to Gavin Baird. I had somehow expected Mortimer Hanley to have some kind of link to the house, even back then. That staircase leading to the attic room still confused me.
Had Hanley found it and reveled in it? Or was there some other explanation, one I hadn’t found yet?
I drove away from her house, checking the time before I checked my mirrors. I would be glad when the World Series was over. I didn’t like cutting my afternoon short, even though I was enjoying the time spent with Jimmy.
I had one more stop before I went back to pick up LeDoux: the post office where Carter Doyle worked. I hoped I would be able to catch him as he ended his shift.
This postal branch was a large stone building like so many other official Chicago buildings. But unlike the ones downtown, this one didn’t look like it had been built by the Founding Fathers. It was a mixture of stone and brick and looked worn from the weather and time.
I parked around back, where the postal delivery trucks parked. Someone tried to wave me away, but I ignored him. I was close to quitting time for the mailmen — nearly a dozen trucks were parked there, some with mailmen still carrying mail bags from the trucks to the post office itself.
As I got out of my van, I ignored two of the white carriers who were staring at me. I w
alked to the nearest black carrier.
“I’m looking for Carter Doyle,” I said.
The carrier pointed to a man dumping contents of postal tubs into a large canvas bin. I thanked the carrier and walked toward Doyle like I visited the back of the post office every single day.
“Carter Doyle?” I asked, as I climbed the stairs to the bin area. A sign hanging beside a post warned me that only official postal personnel were permitted beyond that point.
Doyle raised his head. He was younger than I was, and tall. His shoulders were broad, and his arms corded with muscle. He looked like an aging football player, one who hadn’t gone to fat.
“I’m Bill Grimshaw,” I said. “I’m investigating the death of Mortimer Hanley.”
“Yeah?” Doyle set down the tub he’d been holding and pointedly crossed his arms. “What’s that got to do with me?”
“I understand you found him.”
“Huh?”
“The body. I was told you were the person who found his body.”
He blinked and his arms fell to his sides. “I don’t know who told you that, but they got it all wrong.”
I started in surprise. Laura had told me that. “You didn’t find him?”
“Nope.” Doyle frowned at me, no longer as hostile as he was at the beginning. “Why’re you asking?”
“Because there were some discrepancies,” I said. “I was told you saw him through the window of his living room and then called for an ambulance. But it was clear that he died in his bed, which isn’t visible from the living-room window. So I was going to ask you what really happened.”
Doyle lifted his cap and scratched his head. Then he kicked aside one of the tubs, and walked toward me. “You a cop?”
“No,” I said.
“Some kind of private detective?”
“Some kind,” I said.
“You work for Hanley’s family?”
“I don’t believe he has any,” I said, “at least that I can find. I’m working for the owner of the building.”
Doyle tilted his head slightly, as if I had surprised him. “I thought Hanley owned the building, the way he acted.”
“No,” I said. “He just managed the place for more than twenty years.”
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