Dead Man’s Blues

by Ray Celestin

  He knocked a couple of times and the door opened to reveal a sour-looking elderly woman in a grey business suit, makeup pasted onto her face with the consistency and pinkness of cake decorations. Jacob could see she wore her seven decades well, with a certain arrogant dignity. She eyeballed him and the sorry-looking flowers and figured she had his number.

  ‘The girls don’t see visitors,’ she said, tone sharp, taking a puff on the cork-tipped cigarette in her hand. ‘But if you leave your flowers I’ll gladly pass them on.’

  ‘They’re for Esther.’

  ‘Oh . . .’ At his mention of the name the woman stopped short. ‘Esther hasn’t been in the last few nights,’ she said in a different tone, quieter, hesitant.

  ‘Where’s she been?’

  ‘None of us know.’

  Jacob thought a moment and decided to change tack. He took his press pass out and showed it to the woman. ‘Esther’s boyfriend was killed a few nights ago and I’m looking into it. I’m worried Esther might be in trouble. Can I talk to you about her?’

  The woman stared at him warily, making no move.

  ‘Please,’ said Jacob. The word came out of his mouth with more exasperation than he’d expected it to, and he hoped he hadn’t made the woman even more suspicious.

  ‘I didn’t really know the girl,’ she said after a pause. She took another drag on her cigarette, thought some more; then beneath the layer of makeup, her expression softened.

  ‘You’re better off speaking to Geneva,’ she said. ‘Come in. I’ll see if she wants to talk.’

  The woman swung the door open and led Jacob into the backstage area. They walked down a narrow, wood-paneled passageway made narrower by pieces of scenery and stage equipment propped up against the walls. They turned a corner and the old woman opened a door onto a cramped and dazzlingly lit changing room.

  ‘Wait here,’ she said, and stepped inside.

  Half a minute later the door opened again and the old woman nodded at him to enter.

  ‘No touching the merchandise,’ she said, before turning and hobbling off the way she had come.

  Jacob stepped into the room to be greeted by the eight Lollipops in various states of undress, a row of mirrors, hundred-watt light bulbs, cigarette smoke, rails of flimsy clothing and bare brick walls. At the end of the room, next to a Chinese paper screen, a statuesque girl in a silk dressing robe made eye contact with Jacob and raised her hand. He walked over, skirting around the other girls seated in front of the mirrors.

  ‘Geneva? I’m Jacob.’

  ‘Take a seat.’

  She motioned to a flimsy-looking wicker chair in the corner behind her. Jacob sat and she studied him a moment, and then she noticed the flowers.

  ‘There’s a garbage can over there,’ she said, turning back to the mirror. Jacob dumped the bouquet, and looked at her reflection. She was generously curved, with dancer’s legs in peach-colored stockings. On either side of her face were streaks of glitter which she was removing with a cotton ball.

  ‘You know what’s happened to Esther?’ she asked, catching Jacob’s eye in the mirror.

  ‘No. All I know is her boyfriend got killed a few days ago. About the time she disappeared, I’m guessing.’

  ‘Benny’s dead? What happened?’

  ‘Someone strangled him. You knew him?’

  She paused a minute, taking in the news, then she shook her head.

  ‘No. Just what Esther told me.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘That he was no good. All she ever did was complain about him, but that’s what she’s like, complaining there’s air to breathe.’

  She spoke with practiced terseness, wiping the makeup off her face with quick, strong swipes.

  ‘You mind if I smoke?’ asked Jacob.

  ‘Not if you’re sharing.’

  Jacob took out his Luckies, passed one to Geneva, and leaned over to light it for her. As he did so she met his eye and smiled, and Jacob caught a glimpse of a mouth crowded with too many teeth. He sat back, lit his own cigarette, and Geneva started removing the festoon of pins and barrettes holding her hair in place.

  ‘You think Esther’s in trouble?’ she asked.

  ‘Maybe. I’d like to find out but I don’t know much about her. Can you fill me in on the details?’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Her second name, her address, what she looks like . . .’

  Geneva took a puff on her cigarette, then laid it in the ashtray on the counter, rummaged around in a drawer and pulled out a piece of paper which she passed to Jacob.

  ‘That’s her a couple of years ago,’ she said. ‘She used to work at the Sunset.’

  Jacob looked at the menu she’d handed him, on the reverse of which was a photograph of two dancers. The Sunset Café was a Bronzeville Black and Tan, run, indirectly, by Capone’s Outfit. Like many of the Black and Tans it had a set regime for its entertainments: professional dancers would get on stage and perform a new dance step, and then the floor was thrown open to the customers, who would try to copy it. To assist, the dance steps and photographs of dancers performing them were printed on the menus.

  The photo on this one showed Esther doing the Heebie-Jeebie, the dance popularized by the Louis Armstrong song of the same name a couple of years previously. In the photo Esther was dressed up like a jungle bunny in a straw skirt with fur bands around her ankles and wrists. Her male companion was holding a spear. She was a slight girl, pretty, light-skinned and well-proportioned, a fiery stare under long lashes.

  ‘You got a second name? An address?’ Jacob asked.

  ‘Esther Jones,’ said Geneva. ‘She lives out near Federal Street. Not sure where. Ask the venue manager – that’s the woman who brought you in here. Esther would have filled out her address on the employment form.’

  ‘Age?’

  ‘Twenty-five, twenty-six.’

  ‘Anywhere else you know of I could ask after her?’

  Geneva thought a moment. ‘There’s a school out in Hyde Park. A charity kind o’ place run by a bunch of rich, old Gold Coasters. I don’t know the name. But Esther used to help out with dance classes over there. Give it a try if you want.’

  As he jotted down all the details in his notebook, Geneva stood, whisked off the dressing gown and threw it over one of the clothes rails and Jacob caught a glimpse of her statuesque body, a flash of calves that had been well walked in. She slipped into a black evening dress fringed with gold and zipped herself up. Then she turned to look at Jacob and smiled, her eyes sparkling, reflecting the flames of a fire that wasn’t in the room, making Jacob think how a ton of mascara and a quart of Spanish blood couldn’t have made her look more sultry.

  She was about to say something when the door opened and a girl poked her head in and shouted across the room.

  ‘Skip the gutter, Geneva!’

  Geneva nodded at the girl, then turned back to Jacob.

  ‘That’s my ride,’ she said. ‘When you track down Esther, tell her to call me. We’re all real worried.’

  ‘Will do,’ said Jacob with a smile, and Geneva smiled back. She grabbed a cloche hat from the counter, wrapped her hair under it, picked up a purse and headed toward the door in a stride as long as her legs. Jacob pocketed his notebook and headed past the other girls, following Geneva’s path to the exit. He walked down the corridor till he found the venue manager, who was standing outside a storeroom discussing something with one of the men from the Scottish minstrel brigade, who was still wearing his kilt and hadn’t removed the black shoe polish from his face. She broke off the conversation when she saw Jacob approaching and looked at him expectantly.

  ‘I was hoping to get Esther’s address. Geneva said you’d have it.’

  The woman eyed him a moment, deciding whether to give it to him or not.

  ‘I just want to talk to her,’ he said. ‘If I find out she’s all right, I’ll call to let you know.’

  The woman thought some more and eventually looked at the minstrel.<
br />
  ‘Wait here,’ she said, and she took Jacob into a cramped, messy office and got Esther’s employment card from a filing cabinet. She looked at it and puzzlement scraped along the creases of her face.

  ‘Well, I’ll be. She’s left her address blank.’

  The woman passed the card over to Jacob and he looked at it. The name was there, and the date of birth, but nothing else. Jacob passed back the card.

  ‘Much obliged anyway,’ he said, and the old woman nodded, still looking perplexed.

  When he got back outside, he headed straight to the grocery from which he’d bought the flowers, where he’d seen a pay phone. He checked the time and called Lynott at the station. While he waited to be connected, he took the menu out of his pocket and stared at the photo of Esther once more, wondering why a girl like that would be going out with a man like Roebuck – a middle-aged, low-level thug whose horses were always coming in fourth.

  Lynott’s voice came down the phone line. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Lynott? It’s Jacob. I just found out that Roebuck’s girlfriend went missing about the same time he got killed. His Negro girlfriend. I think she might be in trouble too.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘It’s starting to look like Anton Hodiak again. Can you call the Bureau for a search?’

  ‘Sure, let me get a pen . . . okay . . .’

  ‘Esther Jones, date of birth January thirteenth, 1904. Negro, about five eight, I guess, dancer’s build. We need to move quick on this, Frank. God knows who else he might have abducted.’

  15

  Babe Ruth swung his bat through the air and it connected with the ball in a thunderous, piercing crack and then the ball was on the other side of the ballpark, people rushing toward it, a swirl of bodies in the stands, a whirlpool. The scene was watched from the opposite side of the stadium by two figures with the resigned expressions of men who had watched their team get trounced plenty of times in the past, and would probably see them get trounced plenty of times more, at least whilst Ruth, Gehrig and Combs were playing for the opposition.

  ‘This is embarrassing,’ said Walker, Michael’s friend in the State’s Attorney’s, who’d telegrammed the previous night to ask him to drop the Van Haren case.

  ‘That it is,’ said Michael. ‘That it is.’

  He cracked a peanut between his thumb and forefinger, let the fibrous scraps of shell fall to the floor and threw the peanuts into his mouth. He hadn’t had a chance to eat yet. After the trip to the taxicab company he’d headed downtown to meet Walker, while Ida had gone to meet Gwendolyn’s friend who was somehow involved in the plot to steal the girl away to Montreal.

  ‘You remember McCue?’ Walker asked, and Michael nodded, conjuring up the image of a lean, wise-cracking Dubliner, an investigator at the SA’s.

  ‘He got a job with the Yankees,’ said Walker, nodding down at the fat man waddling through the dust far below them. ‘Babysitting Babe Ruth. They got seven detectives there working shifts, following him around, making sure he doesn’t get into trouble. The way McCue tells it, there’s a whole wake of chaos following Ruth around – honeypots, whores, pimps, swindlers, blackmailers, con men, gamblers – all of ’em making a beeline for him as soon as the Yankees arrive in town. And Ruth’s too stupid to see the trouble coming on his own.’

  Michael nodded and looked out over the field, to the distant, chubby figure heading toward the dugout, looking as much of an athlete as the overweight vendor who’d sold them the peanuts.

  ‘Sounds like quite the gig for McCue,’ Michael said. Walker was stalling him with the story about Ruth and his brigade of detectives. He’d been stalling since they’d met outside the game and bought their tickets, and it being Michael’s opinion that people only ever stalled when they had bad news, he wanted Walker to get on with it.

  ‘You didn’t ask me here to talk about the Yankees,’ he said, maybe a little too tersely, and Walker turned and gave him a peculiar sort of half-shrug.

  ‘I’ve been asked to offer you a job,’ said Walker. ‘What are you making over at the Pinkertons? Four grand a year?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘We’ll pay you six.’

  ‘Six grand a year for an investigator?’

  ‘Chief investigator. You’ll have your own team,’ said Walker, ‘and you’ll be doing something useful – actually helping convict criminals. What are you doing over at Pinks? Peeping in keyholes? Busting strikes? You’re better than that, Michael. It’ll be like working for the police again. You’ll have some authority.’

  ‘And what are the strings?’

  ‘The strings are you have to drop the Van Haren case.’

  ‘Just like that? Why?’

  ‘They didn’t tell me.’

  ‘And how exactly would I have to do it?’

  ‘Stall her. The mother, I mean. Tell her you’re looking into it and let it grow cold. You know how it works, you used to be on the force.’

  Michael nodded. If he told Mrs Van Haren he was refusing the case, she’d just go to someone else, and then Walker would be having this chat with another private investigator. They didn’t just want him to drop the case, they wanted him to lie to her.

  ‘And if I refuse?’ asked Michael.

  ‘Things’ll happen I won’t be in a position to stop. No matter how much I like you as a friend.’

  Walker turned to look at him and gave him that half-shrug again.

  ‘We’ve known each other years, Walker – tell me what’s going on.’

  ‘I said I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, tell me what you do know.’

  ‘Nothing. Jesus. Yesterday afternoon I was in the office and Senator Deneen came in to see Schmidt.’

  Michael nodded. Schmidt was Walker’s boss, the head of the Criminal Prosecutions Bureau, and was allied to the Deneen faction of the Republican Party.

  ‘Schmidt closed his office blinds and they had a big, long powwow and a half-hour later, Deneen strides out of the office and Schmidt’s secretary says he wants to talk to me. I go in there and he starts asking me about you, making sure the two of us are still friends, and then he tells me I should make you a job offer in return for dropping a case. Said make the offer and if that doesn’t work, scare him.’

  Michael paused to think. Yesterday afternoon, just a few hours after Mrs Van Haren had visited them. Whoever was informing on her was making speedy work of it. And now she was passed out in the middle of the day, a bottle of sleeping pills on her bedside table.

  ‘What’s the link between the senator and Van Haren?’

  ‘No idea. Van Haren’s a financier, ain’t he? Probably helped swell the senator’s campaign coffers,’ said Walker. Then he turned to look at Michael, and when he spoke again, his tone was different, softer. ‘I don’t like being the messenger here, not by a damned sight, but what can I do?’

  ‘Doesn’t look like either of us is in a position to do much at all,’ said Michael, his eyes on the game.

  ‘You’re in a position to drop the case and take the job.’

  Michael stayed silent and cracked a peanut between his fingers and tossed it into his mouth. ‘And what happens to Ida? She get to be in my team?’

  ‘You know we can’t have someone like that in the State’s Attorney’s. She can stay on with the Pinks. A girl like that’ll do well wherever she is.’

  Walker shrugged. There were plenty of females working in the justice system, deputy SAs, lawyers, reporters, doctors, pathologists, but none of them were Ida’s race.

  He thought about his protegee, about how a couple of hours earlier she had been handling the manager of the cab company, how she hadn’t reacted to his jibes, how deftly she had forced him to bring them the driver, without asking for Michael to take over, or even raising her voice.

  ‘You know much about a man named Charles Coulton?’ Michael asked.

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘There’s more than one?’

  ‘There’s Charles Coulton Senior
, the banker, and then there’s Charles Coulton Junior, the wastrel. Why these rich guys are always giving their sons the same name I’ll never know.’

  ‘Beats me,’ said Michael. ‘One of them’s engaged to the missing girl. I’m guessing the son. He’s disappeared, too, by the way. You know anything about him?’

  ‘The son? Nothing much,’ said Walker. ‘A rich boy about town, drinks a lot, socializes a lot, wakes up late a lot.’

  ‘And the father?’

  ‘That he’s wealthy and he’s shady. A self-made social climber.’

  ‘Where’s he from?’

  ‘From the dark side of the far side of the wrong side of the tracks.’

  Michael frowned at him and Walker smiled before explaining. ‘Washington DC,’ he said. ‘I heard he was involved in one of those cons down in Florida – you know, selling swampland to people like someone was going to build a hotel on it. Then he got involved in the oil-reserve scandal with all those Harding secretaries.’

  Michael nodded. President Harding’s administration earlier in the decade had gone down as the most corrupt in American history. The president had appointed only personal friends to the cabinet and in the administration’s twenty-nine-month life, they’d managed to embezzle or squander over two billion dollars, either because the president was in on it, or because he was too stupid to notice. The largest of all the corruption scandals centered on the fraudulent awarding of naval oil-reserve leases. Eventually some of the politicians and oilmen who had colluded in the frauds had been put on trial, but mostly they escaped scot-free, with the money still in their pockets and the taxpayer left to pick up the bill.

  ‘Seems like on one side, Michael, you got a world o’ trouble,’ said Walker. ‘And on the other side you got a better job paying a helluva lot more money. Why’d you wanna go up against a senator and a millionaire and the State’s Attorney’s and whoever the hell else is involved?’

  Michael thought about the two paths in front of him, imagined walking down them both. He and Ida had filed the reports of their initial meeting with Mrs Van Haren. And they’d made no mention of her offer of a reward, or a bribe, or hush money, or whatever it was, meaning they’d get sacked if anyone found out. And now it turned out a senator was mixed up in it, and a financier with connections in Washington, and Michael was getting the feeling they’d put their jobs on the line for something they didn’t have a hope of seeing through. But despite all that, or maybe because of it, Michael’s resolution hardened like a bruise.