The Ragtime Fool

by Larry Karp

  Klein took a step toward the door, but Anderson, standing to his left, put everything he had into a sockdolager to the side of Klein’s jaw. Klein went down in a heap.

  Anderson shook his head. “I hate to see his kid get blown up, but what we gonna do, huh?”

  “I got another question,” said Cartwright. “What happens when he wakes up? Think we oughta shoot him?”

  “No,” Anderson said. “Let the cops find him here with a bullet in his head, and they’ll start askin’ questions we ain’t got answers for. I mean, what’s he gonna do, turn us all in? He screwed it up, he’ll have to live with it. It ain’t our fault he let that girl run around like the goddamn whore of Babylon. Least now, she ain’t gonna shame him by gettin’ herself pregnant.”

  ***

  The hall outside the auditorium was a circus. Brun stood with Chief Neighbors, another policeman, Ireland, and Luella, while just a few feet away, Bess Vinson pretended to chat amiably with Thurman as she tried to keep up with the conversation to their left. Brun leaned toward Neighbors as if the chief had spoken indistinctly. “You’re gonna hold me for what?”

  “Suspicion of murder. Flight to avoid prosecution. I’m acting on the request of Detective Robert Magnus in Los Angeles. He warned you to stay in the city, but you ignored that order. We’ll have to return you to him under guard.”

  Before Brun could reply, a smallish man with blazing eyes and a Van Dyke beard rushed up to Bess and Thurman. He paused just long enough to nod toward Ireland, then pointed a finger at Thurman, and announced, “Is Knopf using janitors now to pursue acquisitions?”

  Brun forgot what he was going to say. He and his companions turned, and became an audience for the little drama going on next to them. Clear from the look on Thurman’s face, he was checking exit routes. “I…I don’t know what you’re…who the hell are you, anyway, Mister?”

  “Yes,” Bess snapped. “Just who do you think you are, busting in like that? My friend and I are having a private conversation.”

  Blesh drew himself to full-height. “My name is Rudi Blesh, and not that long ago, I was having what was supposed to be a private conversation with Mr. Elliot Radcliffe, at Knopf. And your friend here was in the outer office, with the door open between us. Next thing I knew, the manuscript I had interest in was stolen from its owner, who’d promised it to me, and according to the owner, the thief was going to bring it here to give it to him.” Blesh directed a finger toward Brun.

  Neighbors scratched at an ear. “You do get around, Mr. Campbell.”

  “That woman’s been after me for damn near two weeks, now,” Brun shouted. “She said she was Scott Joplin’s daughter, the one who was supposed to have died in St. Lou in oh-two. She told me she had the journal, and wanted to sell it to me for five thousand dollars.”

  “Scott Joplin’s daughter? Hah!” Blesh was furious. “She’s no more Scott Joplin’s daughter than I am. I interviewed a man, Roscoe Spanner, who was a bartender in Tom Turpin’s saloon. He was a good friend of Joplin’s, and made all the funeral arrangements for the baby.” Blesh turned toward Bess. “Whoever you are, you’re not only unpleasant, you’re an unmitigated liar.”

  Brun walked the few steps to come face to face with Blesh. “You interviewed Roscoe Spanner?” Brun said. “In L. A.?”

  “Yes.” You could have cut Blesh’s sarcasm into slices and put it on bread. “Don’t you remember, he was in your barber shop when I came to interview you, so I talked to him as well. I didn’t put his information into the book, because frankly, it didn’t seem that important.” Blesh paused. Creases deepened across his forehead; his eyebrows drew together. “Actually, the interview was in the manuscript, but I took it out in the first galleys.” He glared at Thurman. “And those galleys are still in the book’s working folder, in Mr. Radcliffe’s office.”

  ‘He had his booze and his skirts.’ The comment from Roscoe’s neighbor echoed in Brun’s mind. He sidestepped, so as to push Bess against the wall. “Now, I get it,” he barked. “Your pal there went in the files and found out about Roscoe and the baby in St. Louie, and how him and me were friends. Was it your idea or his to shove the old man down the stairs so he couldn’t queer your con?” Brun paused just long enough to decide he’d maneuvered the game onto his own turf, and he ought to go on. “But the guy lives next door saw you. He told me a woman went in Roscoe’s house, then came out just a little later and ran off in one big hurry. I bet he can give the cops a pretty good description of you.”

  Any further argument was forestalled by Thurman, making a break for the door down the corridor. The policeman with Neighbors grabbed him, wrestled him to the wall, spun him around, cuffed him. “You told me not to worry, the old man wasn’t going to talk,” Thurman howled at Bess. “But you didn’t say why.” He looked at the chief. “I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

  By now, the two policemen who’d been at the entry doors to the auditorium had walked over to see what was going on. Neighbors nodded toward Bess. One of the officers put handcuffs on her; the other took possession of Thurman.

  Blesh looked like a man at a tennis match, eyes going back and forth between Brun and Bess. Neighbors turned to him. “What did you say your name was, sir?”

  “Rudi Blesh. I’m from New York.”

  Neighbors smiled. “So I gather. I’ll want a statement from you. Would you please stop by my office after the ceremony?”

  Brun said, “They already started. Is it okay if my friends and me go back inside too?”

  “Your friends can,” said Neighbors. “But I’ll have to talk to Detective Magnus before I can release you. Please go along with the officers.”

  Ireland touched the chief’s arm. “Ed, I’ll warrant Mr. Campbell won’t go off. I’d put up my house as bond, and everything in it. Scott Joplin was his piano teacher here, fifty years ago, and he came all the way out from California for the ceremony. It’d be a terrible shame for him to miss it.”

  Neighbors’ eyes softened. “You hear that, Mr. Campbell?”

  Brun nodded. “Yeah.”

  The chief sighed. “All right, Tom. You are, as of this moment, a special deputy in charge of Mr. Campbell. Take the prisoner back inside, and do not let him out of your sight, not for anything. If he goes to the bathroom, you go to the bathroom.”

  “Thank you.” Brun’s voice was barely audible.

  Neighbors and Ireland exchanged looks worth ten minutes of conversation. The chief smiled. “After I talk to Magnus, I’ll get back to you. Then—”

  ***

  The heel of one of Rowena Klein’s shoes caught a stone; she stumbled, almost fell. Tears streaked her cheeks. With every breath, fire flared in her chest. If she didn’t get to the high school in time, she’d go back home and wait for Otto just inside the door, lights out, biggest knife in the kitchen in her hand. She had to make it, had to. Only two more blocks. If only her damn skirt wasn’t slowing her down. She reached back, released the hook, and as she pulled at the zipper, she felt, more than heard, a blast, followed closely by a second detonation. She stood, paralyzed, watching a fireball rise into the night sky, then shrieked till her wind ran out, and crumpled to the pavement. She never did hear the third explosion.

  ***

  Slim was walking toward the St. Louis train when he heard it. The platform shivered. “Damn stupid morons,” the big man muttered. “Least I’m gettin’ outa here in one piece.” He hurried onto the train.

  ***

  Whatever Chief Neighbors intended to say to Ireland vaporized in the triple blast. The school building shook, then trembled. Glass panels in the entry doors down the hall shattered.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Neighbors’ eyes blazed behind his thick spectacles. He pointed at the officers holding Bess and Thurman. “Take them down to the station, then get right back here.” He pointed to the third cop. “Call in all available officers.”

  Blesh and Luella stood, transfixed. Ireland and Brun too
k a step toward the entry doors. Neighbors grabbed Ireland’s arm. “Tom, all of you. Back inside.”

  Ireland turned to Blesh. “Come sit with us. I’ll tell you what’s been going on with that journal during intermission.”

  Blesh managed a tentative smile. “I’d appreciate that.”

  The chief followed his charges into the auditorium. Up on the stage, the Mens’ Chorus stood silent. A hum of low-pitched chatter filled the room. Some of the audience had left their seats and were moving up the aisles toward exits.

  Neighbors raised both hands, and bellowed, “Everybody, please stay where you are. We don’t know yet what that noise was, but while we’re looking into it, you’ll be safer in here, and you’ll also be out of our way. Mr. Rosenthal, please go on with the program.”

  “Right, Ed.” Rosenthal turned back to the chorus. “‘The Green Cathedral.’” He bent toward Lillian Fox, at the piano. “From the top.”

  She nodded, set her jaw, and hit the opening chord. “I know a green cathedral,” the chorus sang. “A leafy forest shrine. Where leaves in love join hands above and arch your prayer and mine.”

  Sorry, Mr. Joplin, Brun thought. I wish I coulda done better for you.

  Alan watched Chief Neighbors charge out into the hall, then as he turned back, he caught sight of Alonzo Green in a last-row seat, looking for all the world like the Sphinx in the Egyptian desert.

  ***

  At intermission, Alan excused himself and started up the aisle, toward the hall. An usher glided past him and up to Eileen, then delivered a short message. The girl grabbed at Luella’s arm.

  “I’ll go with you, dear,” Luella said.

  When Alan returned, he was shaking his head. He scanned the little group. “Where’s Eileen? And Mrs. Rohrbaugh?”

  Ireland rolled his eyes. “One thing on top of the last. The police found Mrs. Klein on the sidewalk a couple of blocks away, and took her to the Bothwell Hospital. It sounds as if she just fainted, but Eileen was quite upset, so Mrs. Rohrbaugh thought she ought to go along. If all really is well, she should be back by the end of the program.”

  “I went to look for Mr. Green,” Alan said. “But he’s gone. I went all up and down the hall, and into the men’s room, but there was no sign of him.”

  Ireland shrugged. “If Lonzo doesn’t want anyone to find him right now, I’d say he’s doing something that needs doing. After the show, we’ll go back to my place and sort things out.”

  ***

  After the ceremony, three coloreds and four whites walked in a tight group up Osage, toward Ireland’s house. Ireland, Alan, and Green led the procession, with Brun and Luella behind them. Blesh and Isaac brought up the rear. Alan wanted to detour a block to go past the mob of police, firemen, and onlookers at the smoking remains of a little house on Moniteau, but Ireland and Green put a quick kibosh on the idea. “Maybe okay in New York,” Green said. “But here, when there’s trouble, a colored man best make himself invisible.”

  Alan looked over his shoulder at Luella. “Eileen and her mother really are okay?”

  Luella sighed. “Yes, they’re both fine. Mrs. Klein may not stop talking for days. She said when Mr. Klein found out Eileen was at the ceremony, he got very upset, told his wife the school was going to be blown up, and ran off. She was trying to get to the school in time to warn everyone, and when the blast went off, she thought she’d been too late, and fainted. No one can find Mr. Klein.”

  Alan glanced at Green, who raised his eyebrows, then started to whistle “Dixie.”

  Brun walked in silence. By rights, he ought to be standing back at the school, people crowding around him, asking did he really take piano lessons from Scott Joplin, and telling him a Scott Joplin Museum downtown would be just the thing to pump a little life into this burg. Shoot, Brun thought, I’m tired.

  Luella leaned toward him, whispered, “Are you all right?”

  He made a face. “Yeah.”

  She slid her hand into the crook of his arm, the way she’d done on those warm summer evenings so long ago, when she’d contrived to get him to take her walking through the city to buy ice-cream sodas.

  Rudi Blesh wished he could have just thanked Ireland for his invitation to come back for a cup of coffee, and gone to the bar in the hotel to drink himself silly. But Ireland had gone so far out of his way to help Blesh find people to interview for They All Played Ragtime that the author couldn’t find it in his heart to decline. Well, it probably wouldn’t be the worst impromptu soiree he’d been jockeyed into. He wouldn’t have to stay long.

  Alan glanced back at the smoldering ruins, then tapped Green’s arm. “I’ve got to ask you something.”

  “You do, huh?” Green smiled. “Way you been lookin’ at me all this while, I expect I knows what. Mr. Ireland was not about to tell me just what you done yesterday, but he did say you crossed yourself over a very important line, so I gonna let you in on some details.” Green lowered his voice to a conspiratorial level. “After we found that stuff in the basement, I sent you off so I could get rid of it without havin’ you bother me with a bunch of questions. But the janitor heard the door shut behind you, and snuck up on me with a tire iron. He wouldn’t listen to reason, so I had to get a little rough with him. While he was standin’ me up, I got to where I could hook his leg, duck around, and give him a straight-up shot so he gonna be singin’ soprano in the choir for a good long while. Then when he bended over, I put him to sleep with my sap an’ took the sticks outa the posts. But I didn’t unconnect the wires.”

  Green paused to chuckle as Alan’s eyes widened. “I ran up the stairs, out the back door, across the field, an’ planted the stuff underneath that shack. Then I humped it back even faster’n I went over there. I was just comin’ up the stairs to the school when it went off, so I hid in the bushes, an’ when there wasn’t no more cops runnin’ past me, I came on in and sat in the back row. Intermission, I went to the upstairs men’s, figured nobody was gonna see me there, an’ got myself cleaned up. Gonna be six less white sheets around Sedalia now.”

  “White sheets?”

  “Ku Klux, boy.”

  “Mr. Klein’s gang? They were in there?”

  “You got it.”

  So if I hadn’t brained Mr. Barton with the ax, Alan thought, he’d be just as dead now anyway. Which didn’t lighten the boy’s mind. “How did you know?”

  “Remember Sunday, when Barton left you off at Klein’s? Me and Slim were on you. Then later, I ditched Slim an’ sat in my car where I could watch the house. I saw Barton come back and go off with Klein, so I followed them. They went right to that old shanty yonder, and inside, so I snuck up and listened. They was plannin’ how they was gonna make something happen, an’ sit in the shack to watch it. Then, they went out to Barton’s and had a meeting in the basement with four other yahoos, but I couldn’t hear a thing there. I thought they was gonna burn a cross on the lawn like they usually does, but when you started in talkin’ about sawdust, I had to change my ideas.”

  Alan shook his head. “What about the janitor? Won’t he be able to identify you?”

  “Don’t think we gotta worry about that, dark as it was down there. An’ I had my back to him the whole time till I gave him that shot in the jewels. Prob’ly he can say it was a colored man, but not any more’n that. B’sides, it couldn’t have been me, could it? Didn’t you see me sittin’ there in the back row the whole time?” Green poked an elbow into Alan’s ribs, cackled.

  “Whew.” Alan stared at Green for a moment, then whispered, “You blew up fi…six men. Just like that.”

  Green’s face tightened. “Listen at me, boy. A colored man can’t spare his enemy, not ever. Don’t blow him up into tiny li’l pieces when you got the chance, next morning you gonna find you’self hangin’ in a tree. I do regret it, but that just be the way.”

  Tom Ireland wiped at his eyes. When he was much younger, he’d thought he might see the day when these accounts would be squa
red and settled for all time. “How long, oh, Lord?” he murmured.

  ***

  They sat on chairs and stools around the open wood stove in Ireland’s kitchen, sipping at cups of coffee. Luella broke a long silence. “We need to talk about Scott Joplin’s journal.”

  “Mr. Klein must have found it.” Alan’s voice was dull, colorless. “I guess that’s the last we’ll ever see of it.”

  Heads nodded. There were a few dispirited yeahs.

  “No,” Luella announced. “Mr. Klein did not find it.”

  She had everyone’s full attention.

  “Mr. Klein did not get it,” Luella repeated. She opened her handbag, pulled out a thick leather-covered book, held it up.

  Brun sprang from his chair and grabbed; she pushed him sharply. “Sit down.” She looked around the circle. “It so happens that Eileen found this object of shame and greed.” She lowered her head to fix a stare on Alan. “Exactly where you hid it.”

  The boy felt his cheeks flame.

  “She knew her father was interested in it, and after he tore apart the room you stayed in, his behavior made it clear he hadn’t found it. She thought about how long you’d stood where you did late Sunday night, and sure enough, there it was. She read it, and—”

  “Oh, dear God.” Ireland lowered his head into his hands.

  “Don’t be concerned, Mr. Ireland,” Luella said. “Eileen and I had a long talk about how the journal happened to be where she found it, and what her mother might think of that, and I can assure you, she will never speak to anyone about anything she read. In any case, when she saw her father leave the house and drive away late last night, she felt she needed to talk to someone.” Little smile. “I suppose she thought I was the best of a bad lot.”

  Blesh was on his feet. “Mrs. Rohrbaugh, I hope you appreciate the historical importance of what you’re holding. We need to be certain it is handled properly.”

  “I have every idea of this book’s importance,” Luella snapped. “And I intend that it will be handled properly.” She gave Brun a doozy of a hot eye. “Do you remember the details of our agreement, fifty-two years ago? That you were going to leave this city instantly, and not speak to another person?”