by Maxwell Cynn
.45 Caliber Jitterbug
Maxwell Cynn
underground press publishing
.45 Caliber Jitterbug
This novel is a work of speculative fiction. All names, characters, organizations, and events spring from the active imagination of the author, or are used fictitiously within the confines of the story. Any inadvertent resemblance to actual or virtual persons, living or dead, businesses, or patented technology is purely unintentional and coincidental.
Cover image - The Charlotte Observer Archives
Cover design Maxwell Cynn
Copyright 2011
Maxwell Cynn
ISBN 978-0-9834372-5-3
underground press publishing
All rights reserved
Piracy is against the law. Respect all copyrights.
* * *
.45 Caliber Jitterbug .45 Caliber Jitterbug
Sept. 14, 1928
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Sept. 14, 1928
Charlotte, North Carolina
Jack Spaulding stood in the middle of West Trade Street and looked down at the lifeless body of his best friend. The young man was face-down, his black pinstripe suit blended into the asphalt of the dark street, and blood flowed from the remains of his exploded skull. His fedora, with the card that said "Press" tucked in the silk band, sat upended in the blood like a boat sailing on a crimson tide. Jack's stomach wrenched.
He'd worked with Daniel Taylor for two years, known him for several years prior to that. They were fellow writers, reporters for the local evening paper. But writers don't die face-down in their own blood, they write about other people who do. How the hell had they gone from meeting in college, frat parties, graduations, local elections, store openings, mill closings, and a thousand stories of day-to-day life in a peaceful southern city, to an early tragic death.
Daniel was twenty-five, only a couple of years out of school, far too young to die. Jack looked up at the dark sky, his eyes clouded with tears, his brain screamed a thousand questions and denials. Not like this, not now, not him. He fell to his knees, all the strength gone from his legs. They were so young, so arrogant, so sure of their path. There was corruption in the city and they would uncover it, write about it, expose it to the world.
Jack should have known better. He was older, more experienced at twenty-eight. Daniel had looked up to him, trusted him--his college mentor, his best friend. How had they so miscalculated? How had they believed themselves so indestructible? They were journalists, not G-men. But they had glibly pranced through the speakeasies, without fear of cops or mobsters, warriors of the free press.
Jack dropped to his hands and spewed his steak dinner on the pavement. He didn't notice the lights and sirens of the police cars as they approached. He barely acknowledged the officer who lifted him to his feet and led him away. He was numb, blank. He couldn't let himself feel, or think, not yet. He had to pull it together, give the cops a statement, get the hell away from the scene.
Jack staggered into his room as the first light of morning brought warmth to the September sky. He opened a bottle of bootleg gin and drank it half down before he puked again. He washed the taste from his mouth with more gin and held it down that time, enough to numb his brain, enough to cover the burning hole in his heart. He drank until the numbness covered him and the world collapsed into darkness. When he awoke, he wrote, and drank some more. He passed out and woke-up again.
Jack turned in the feature story to his editor, a tribute to a fellow writer. The whole city mourned, Daniel was well loved, and the tribute Jack wrote gave voice to the sadness, but Jack was too broken to notice. He took leave from the paper and started a new novel based on Daniel's life and death. He vowed to finish what they had started, to expose the truth and publish the story.
Chapter One
Oct. 3, 1928
Jack stabbed the typewriter keys in short violent bursts like death spewing from the barrel of a Thompson sub-machine gun. They say words are more powerful than weapons, they're definitely more subtle. The right words can turn a sinner into a saint, or darken the heart of the purest virgin. When written down, put into print, they can take on a life of their own.
He sat at his small writing desk in a circle of light cast from a single bulb set in a round metal shade that hung above him. He looked like a suspect in a police interrogation room. He'd been interrogated a few times, but he never told them much. They could read it in his newspaper articles or his latest novel. Jack knew a lot--names, dates, times--but a man had to be careful what he said, and what he wrote. Lives could be changed, even destroyed, by careless words, or well aimed ones.
He snubbed out his cigarette in the overfilled ashtray and finished the sip of gin left in a small jelly jar nearby, then covered the typewriter. An unfinished page still sat in the carriage. Jack rinsed the jar in the bathroom sink and put it in the medicine cabinet next to his shaving cup and brush. He put the half-pint of gin on the shelf beside the mouthwash and straightened his tie in the mirror. He picked up his hat and overcoat from the bed and walked out of his small room.
Jack lived in a boarding house on West Morehead Street, a couple of blocks off Tryon Street. There were five bedrooms on the second floor and two on the first, with a large common sitting room, a kitchen and a dining room. Mrs. Catherine Duke, his landlady, lived in one of the first floor rooms. The other was vacant. Catherine was loosely related to the wealthy Duke family, but not closely enough to be wealthy herself. Catherine's husband died in the war leaving her the house and little else.
Three other men lived in the upstairs rooms. Tom Braswell was a salesman, middle-aged, and kept to himself. Jeff Carby was younger, and more outgoing. He worked as an automobile mechanic at the College Street Garage. Jerry Truelane was an artist who worked odd jobs and tried to sell his paintings, with little success. Jack had one of his paintings hanging above the dresser in his room. It was a pair of girls dancing the Charleston. The room adjacent to Jack's, and sharing his bathroom, was currently vacant.
That room was once occupied by Jack's friend, and fellow reporter, Daniel Taylor. It had been several weeks since the shooting, but no one had been arrested. Daniel was young, and arrogant, and full of life. But the arrogance was well deserved, he was one of the best reporters Jack had ever met. He could ferret out a led, charm a statement, and smooth talk a source better than anyone. Men liked him, women adored him, and anyone with something to hide rightfully feared him.
Jack walked down the stairs and into the parlor.
“Good morning, Jack,” Catherine said.
The smell of bacon and fresh biscuits from an earlier breakfast still lingered in the air. Catherine sat in a high-back rocking chair, her spectacles perched on the end of her delicate nose, needle and thread in-hand, patching a pair of Jeff Carby's work pants.
Catherine was a young widow, only in her mid forties, and quite attractive with long blond hair, ice-blue eyes, and the body of a woman half her age. Jack had often wondered why she had never remarried and didn't seem interested. She rarely went out, other than necessary errands, and in the years Jack had lived in her house he'd never known a man to call on her. As for
the men in her house, which caused a fair amount of gossip around town, to them she was a mother hen--cooking their meals, darning their socks, and even cleaning their rooms. Jack couldn't think of a better place to live.
“Morning, Catherine.” Jack walked toward the front door. “Jeff tear his pants again?”
She smiled sweetly, took off her glasses and pushed a stray curl of hair from her face.
“Will you be home for supper? I'm making your favorite: fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and gravy. I even have some fresh okra and squash I'm going to fry. It'll be the last of the season.”
“I wouldn't miss it.” He smiled, then walked out the door and put on his hat.
It was a beautiful autumn morning. The air was filled with the scent of new fallen leaves and the sound of finches arguing in the trees. He didn't need the overcoat so he left it draped over his left arm. He lit a cigarette and walked across the wide porch and down the steps. Squirrels scurried away into the large oak tree in the front yard, chattering and chasing each other around the massive trunk. Jack made his way out to the sidewalk and turned right toward Tryon Street to catch the trolley into town.
A shiny black Model T rumbled down Morehead Street toward him, driven by an older gentleman in his fifties. The car slowed down when it neared Jack.
“Hey, Jack,” The man yelled out the open window. “Great tribute you wrote for Daniel. We're gonna miss him.”
“Thanks, Mr. Johnson,” Jack yelled back, and waved his hand. The car drove on.
Jack's latest novel was based on Daniel's life, and death. He'd changed the names, set it in Fayetteville, North Carolina instead of Charlotte, but Jack had an idea who killed Daniel and why. If he'd put it in the paper they'd have killed him too, but there were other ways to get justice. The police wouldn't be any help, the men involved were untouchable. Prohibition had brought powerful, ruthless men into town, stirring up the sleepy genteel city.
They had started the story together, an exposé on crime and corruption in the Queen City. They'd planned to write it together as a series of articles that would detail bribes, payoffs, and the flow of liquor through the South. Daniel had been on to something, something big, that's why they'd rubbed him out, but Jack would find it.
Charlotte had always been a progressive city. Money flowed like the Catawba river through Mecklenburg County, and Charlotte was her heart. From the Gold Rush of the 1800s, to industrialization, textiles, and then liquor, Charlotte had always positioned herself at the center of the cash flow. The same handful of rich families who earned their wealth and power in decades past through textiles and industry were filling their pockets with black market cash from the liquor trade. No one would ever guess it, however, from the outward appearance of the quiet southern city, or from reading her two daily newspapers.
Charlotte, and the South in general, professed complete support for Prohibition and the growing puritan ethics of the nation. North Carolina was the first state in the Union to go dry, long before the idea caught on with the rest of the country. Charlotte was, after all, the buckle of the Bible Belt, with a church on every corner. She was a stalwart southern city built on strong moral conviction.
As Will Rogers rightly said, "The South is dry and will vote dry. That is, everybody sober enough to stagger to the polls."
The Twenties might have been Roaring in New York and Chicago, but in the South the roar was hidden safely behind closed doors.
Jack stepped up onto a trolley car and rode, standing-up, down Tryon Street to the Square. He hopped off near Fourth Street and walked the half-block towards College Street. He stepped into Thad Tate's barber shop. It had a slick storefront, with a row of bright chrome barber chairs set into a gleaming black and white tile floor. A long mirror covered the back wall reflecting the long glass window out front. He scooped a paper from the rack and sat down in one of the half-dozen chairs. A tall gentleman with skin as dark as black coffee and wearing a clean white uniform stepped up gingerly behind him.
“Good mornin' Missa Spaulding”
“Morning Jerry. Just a shave today.”
“Sho' thing, Missa Spaulding.”
The colored gentleman whipped a white cloth cover over Jack expertly and tied it around his neck. Jack heard the quiet clink of a brush in a jar as Jerry mixed up a fresh warm lather. A small colored boy appeared at Jack's feet.
“Shine, Missa Spaulding?”
“Sure thing, kid.” Jack smiled. His shoes were already bright and spotless.
Jack shook open the morning paper and Jerry dabbed the warm lather on his face. The young boy happily brushed at his shoes and whistled a catchy tune. The morning paper was filled with all the usual stories, nothing that really grabbed his attention. There was a lot going on in the Queen City, but very little of it ever reached print. The two local papers, which shared the same building and were even printed on the same presses, enjoyed a friendly competition, but their editors were very conservative on what they considered newsworthy.
Jack worked for The Charlotte News, which published in the evenings. He held The Charlotte Observer in his hands, which published overnight. The morning paper tended to be more abrupt, but often ran stories first, where the evening paper was more in depth, with longer articles and features. Jack's deadline was ten in the morning, so he often stayed up all night writing. The reporters at the Observer put their work to bed at five-thirty in the evening, capturing the day's news.
Timing didn't matter on most stories, an article might sit on the editor's desk for a week before it was printed, but it was hard to scoop the Observer staff on a news story. Most things happened during the day and then appeared in the morning paper before the editor at the News ever saw a first draft. Even when a big story came late in the evening, the Observer often ran a special midday edition to scoop it.
Jack folded the paper and tossed it to the floor. Jerry flipped open a pearl handled straight razor. The colored man slid it across his face with quick, practiced strokes. The blade flipped up his neck leaving behind only clean smooth skin. All the men at Thad's were excellent barbers, but Jerry was his favorite. Jack could shave in his room, and often did, but the morning news at Thad's was usually more up to date than the Observer, and he often heard rumors that would never reach print.
Steve Scarborough walked into the barber shop and hung his leather jacket and helmet on the coat rack next to Jack's hat and overcoat. Steve was an old friend and an officer on the City Police force. His thirty-eight caliber service revolver scraped against the side of the chair when he slid into the one next to Jack.
“Nice article you wrote for Daniel,” Steve said.
One of the other colored barbers covered him in a white cloth.
“Thanks.”
“Editors wouldn't let you tell the whole story?”
“No.”
“Probably better. They'd come after you next.”
“They probably will anyway.”
“True. You back at work yet?”
“I'm working.”
The two sat quietly while Jerry cleaned Jack up and the other barber, Terrence, lathered Steve's face. Jack stood. He handed Jerry a quarter dollar and flipped the young shoe-shine boy a nickel. There was an uncomfortable tension between the two old friends. Jack knew Steve was just a beat cop, the corruption that got Daniel killed went way over his head. They'd kept Steve out of it for good reason, not because they didn't trust him, but because he had a wife and a six-month-old daughter. Getting him involved could have cost him his job, or worse. Daniel was dead.
“He was my friend too, Jack,” Steve said. Emotion clouded his voice. Was it anger, sadness, both?
“I know, Steve.”
Jack picked up his coat and hat without looking back. He opened the door and the noise from the busy morning street rushed in with the smell of car exhaust and coal smoke. He paused for a second, then stepped out onto the sidewalk. Steve's police motorcycle was parked at the curb. Jack looked down the street toward the courthouse.
No justice there. Not for Daniel Taylor.
* * *
The seven o'clock train pulled in the station at six-forty-five, billowing smoke and steam up into the rafters of the Tryon Street Station. It had made good time from Greensboro. A short layover to take on water and passengers and it would be off again to points further south. A half-dozen weary travelers disembarked onto the wooden platform: four men and two women. Helen Jameson stood alone by the luggage car. The other female traveler had been escorted by a tall, handsome man whom Helen had learned was a representative to the State House. The woman was his secretary, though Helen doubted the Representative's wife knew the full extent of their relationship. A lean and ruggedly good looking colored man, around her own age, approached and tipped his steward's cap.
“Can I get your bags for you, miss?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Helen handed the man her luggage tickets and smiled. She had brought two rather large trunks filled with clothes and personal items. The remainder of her belongings were being kept in storage until she found a place to live. She had arranged a position as a legal secretary for a well known local attorney, and registered for the classes she needed at Queens College, but she had yet to secure a proper residence.
“Can I get you a cab?” The colored gentleman asked.
“Yes. I will be staying at the Dunhill Hotel, Downtown.”
Helen walked through the lobby of the train station taking in every sight and smell. It had been almost four years since she had been to Charlotte, and then only for a few days. She had stayed with a dear friend whose brother's wedding she had come to attend. She wondered how things had worked out. Did they have kids now? A nice little house near the trolley tracks? Her friend had also gotten married since, but that was in Fayetteville to a military man.
Helen had vowed those few short years ago that she would return to Charlotte, once she finished college in Greensboro, and look for a life in the city where she was born. Her parents had moved to Raleigh only a short time after she herself had left for college. They, of course, wanted her to move there.