by Ray Celestin
Not that it made much difference to people like Louis. To circumvent the laws, jazz bands of different colors met up after hours, when the clubs were supposed to have closed; the bouncers locked the doors and the musicians got on stage together and jammed till dawn to an audience in the know. If Louis and Whiteman’s cornetist, Bix Beiderbecke, really were the two greatest horn players in the world, and they were both going to be in Chicago that summer, it only made sense, race line or not, for the two of them to jam.
Louis finished his drink and stepped outside, nodded goodbye to the doormen and walked back down Calumet toward the Savoy, passing by the revelers and the couples on tiptoes at the curb, trying to hail down cabs. Above it all shone a gibbous moon, looking swollen and greasy in a night sky that was larded with heat.
On the corner, Louis passed a pair of cops and Cab’s words about police raids buzzed inside his head. New laws enacted the previous year, so-called ‘hip-flask’ laws, made it easier for federal agents to raid anywhere they suspected people were drinking alcohol, and they’d used the laws to clamp down zealously on jazz venues, as if jazz music was somehow the cause of all Chicago’s problems.
And maybe it was, for the people in authority. Chicago ran on segregation, on the friction of it, and what was jazz but an oasis from that, balm for a wounded city, the ointment that dissolved the boundaries. It was only natural that it would be seen as a threat to those in charge, those who profited from how Chicago was sliced up.
So it made sense that the city was trying to clean its hands of them, the jazz musicians who for ten years had helped make it the most vibrant place in the country. The recent events were prompting many to wonder if the great era of Chicago jazz was coming to an end.
There was a saying among jazz musicians that jazz was born in New Orleans, and grew up in Chicago. Now Louis was wondering if it was going to go to New York to be middle-aged. A place where the jazz clubs were steeped in racism. In Harlem nightspots like the Cotton Club, the only black people allowed to enter were the ones who worked there. It was like taking a trip back to the slavery era. Even the name had echoes of it.
And up on Broadway things were no better. They’d all heard from the players returning from stints in musicals like Shuffle Along about how the musicians in the orchestras had to memorize all their parts and not use sheet music, so the white people in the audience could have their prejudice confirmed that blacks were unable to read music, that their musicianship was primitive and unrefined, and not the product of years of discipline and cultivation.
Louis knew his view of it all was prejudiced by the bad time he’d had in New York with Fletcher Henderson. The band leader and his men had looked down on Louis, considered him a country boy, not sophisticated enough for the Big Apple, despite the fact that Louis’ music was more modern and avant-garde than theirs. Louis had had to endure them laughing at his clothes and his manners, his dark skin, even though it was his band-mates who arrived to gigs late or drunk, who dressed and played sloppily, who tailored their sound for mass appeal.
When Louis stepped up to perform his first-ever solo at the Roseland on Broadway, he had played so loud crowds gathered on the street outside, and the whole auditorium stopped dancing and just stared at him, uncomprehending. Louis was trying out new ways to build a solo, new ways to construct phrases, taking the sounds that normally only appeared in breaks and stringing them together into complete passages. But people didn’t understand what they were hearing – it was too revolutionary for them. The same sound that was lauded in Chicago as groundbreaking went over people’s heads in New York. Over the months things had spiraled downwards, with Henderson trying to limit his solos and tone his performances down, and Louis feeling more and more humiliated, until in the end he handed in his resignation and headed back to Chicago.
Looking back on it three years later, with every trumpet player in the country copying his style, Louis knew he’d been right. The months he spent in New York hadn’t been a total bust; he’d made some friends, made some money, had gotten to record some sides he was proud of, as a backing musician for Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey. But the final humiliation was left for the end – at his farewell party he had gotten so drunk he had caused a scene and before passing out, had vomited on Henderson’s shoes.
Better to stay in Chicago, where the clubs were free, and the attitude was modern and despite the limits to it, there was actually some intermingling. He prayed that the authorities, in their rush to run the gangsters out of town, didn’t accidentally destroy this beautiful thing the city had created. Especially when Louis had a personal stake in it. He felt he was on the cusp of something important, some crystallization of all the innovations and strides into the future he had made over the last few years. He prayed things didn’t tumble away underneath him before he managed to reach the peak he sensed was somewhere in the mist above him.
34
Jacob went to Trib Tower to drop off a set of photos and pay a visit to Lowenthal in the basement, where he found the old man working at the blackboard.
‘How’s the investigation?’ he asked when he saw Jacob enter.
The two of them sat and Jacob told Lowenthal about his meeting at the Pinkertons, and how earlier that morning, Lynott had called him to say the Automobile Division had Charles Coulton Junior on record as the owner of a black Cadillac sports sedan, Series 314, registered the previous year. At the mention of Coulton’s name, Lowenthal frowned, and after Jacob had finished talking, Lowenthal paused to think about it all.
‘I met the boy’s lawyers once,’ he said eventually. ‘Six, maybe seven years ago, when I was still an editor, working the graveyard shift. The police had busted a fruit bar out in Hyde Park, arrested a few dozen men, some of them dressed as women. They dragged them back to processing where one of our photographers snapped them all on their way in. Later that morning some lawyers turned up with an order from a judge commanding us to turn over all the photos our man had taken. We handed them over, secretly kept some copies, and tried to work out what was going on, figuring someone with pull was involved to be getting a judge out of bed at that time in the morning.’
‘And?’ Jacob asked.
‘Eventually someone recognized the Coulton boy in the photos, and we guessed it was all on account of him. I saw the photos. The boy and his friend with the scars on his neck. I remember thinking what an odd couple they made. And a third boy, much younger. Mexican-looking and dressed up like a female gypsy. Just out of curiosity we checked the police reports on the incident a few days later. All mention of Coulton had been erased from the records, along with the name of his friend. It stuck in my mind, how swiftly they moved, how powerfully. That and the teenage boy dressed up like a chorus girl out of Carmen.’
Lowenthal grinned and Jacob grinned back, and after a moment, a solemn look descended onto the old man’s face.
‘These people have pull, Jacob. They can mobilize judges and whole police departments if they have to. You tread carefully.’
An hour later, as Jacob was walking up the stairs to his apartment, he heard his phone ringing. He hobbled up the last few steps, and managed to grab the receiver before it rang off.
‘Hello?’
‘Jacob? This is Ida Davis over at the Pinkertons. We met the other day.’
‘Yes, I remember. How are you, Miss Davis?’
The image of the girl came back into his mind. Beautiful and intense and overly formal.
‘I’m well. I was calling because something came up. A friend of mine happened upon some information. The dead man’s girlfriend, Esther Jones, turns out she was a prostitute working for the go-between that features in my missing person’s case, the go-between that Gwendolyn Van Haren was with just before she disappeared. We got an address for a cathouse in Bronzeville where some of the go-between’s girls work. I was planning to go down there and, as per the terms of our agreement, I thought I’d let you know.’
‘When were you planning on going?’
&n
bsp; ‘Today. Now. Is that a bother for you?’
She had a silky voice made soft and warm by her Louisianan accent, and there was a certain primness in the way she expressed herself, in her choice of antiquated words.
‘Not at all. What did you have in mind?’
‘Apparently in the basement there’s a still where the go-between’s brother cooks alky. I figured I’d chat to the brother, ask him to put us in contact with the go-between. The go-between’s the key to all this. Once we get ahold of him, I think both our investigations’ll pretty much wrap up. What do you think?’
‘The brother’s on the run,’ said Jacob. ‘How are you going to get him to talk?’
‘Come along and find out.’
Jacob caught an electric down to Bronzeville and waited where they’d agreed, and then he saw her come round the corner looking a little flustered, dressed in a blue business suit and a matching beret. She smiled when she saw him, and he smiled back, and they walked the last few blocks to the address together.
‘Where’s your boss?’ Jacob asked.
‘Canvassing around the station where Gwendolyn disappeared. We still haven’t found anyone that witnessed her abduction.’
Jacob nodded.
‘By the way, I got that list from the Automobile Division this morning,’ said Jacob. ‘Coulton Junior owns a black Cadillac that matches the one the tramp at the canal saw on the bridge. I also heard an interesting story about Coulton Junior from a few years ago.’
Jacob told her Lowenthal’s anecdote about the boy and the fruit bar and the order from the judge. Ida nodded, and looked like she was going to make some comment on the story, but before she could they came upon a car parked up on the sidewalk, in which two men in rumpled suits sat, smoking cigarettes, looking overheated and grumpy.
Ida approached the car and nodded at the men in it, and the men nodded back.
‘Gentlemen,’ she said.
The two men got out of the car and Ida turned to Jacob and introduced them. ‘These are Agents Eriksson and Dressner of the Prohibition Bureau. They owe me a favor. Agents, this is Jacob Russo, he’s attached to the Detective Division.’
‘Attached?’ said Eriksson.
‘He’s a crime-scene photographer,’ Ida explained, and the two prohibition agents looked at each other a moment.
‘All right,’ said Eriksson, leaning against the car and putting his hands in his pockets. ‘We had a look about the place. There’s girls on all the upper stories. Round the back there’s an alleyway running parallel to the railroad. There’s a trapdoor there gives onto the basement and a smell of alky coming out of it.’
‘Okay,’ said Ida, ‘Jacob and I’ll go round the front. You two stay in the alley.’
The two men nodded and they all walked the last block to the address.
Ida and Jacob stopped when they reached the front steps, and waited for Eriksson and Dressner to get into position on the other side of the house.
‘Did you bring a gun?’ she asked.
‘No. Did you?’
‘Yeah, I brought two.’
She opened her handbag and passed him a .38 Derringer.
‘You know how to shoot?’ she asked.
‘I was in the war,’ said Jacob, slipping the gun into his belt.
She nodded at him and they walked up the front steps, and Jacob rang the bell.
After a few seconds a colored girl in a negligee opened up, bare-footed, hair tied back into a bun, a puffiness to her eyes.
‘Hello,’ said Ida. ‘I’m sorry to bother you. We’re here to talk to Stanley Taylor.’
‘Ain’t no one called that lives here,’ said the girl.
‘Yes, there is. He cooks liquor in the basement. Some men are after him and his brother Randall. The police are, too. In fact, they’re probably already on their way. I’m here to offer you all some protection.’
‘And who the hell are you?’
‘Ida Davis. I work for the Pinkertons.’
Jacob watched as Ida took out a card and tried to hand it over.
‘Then you ain’t the police?’ asked the girl, making no move to take the card.
‘No.’
‘Then I ain’t gotta talk to you. High-yella bitch.’
And with that the girl slammed the door in Ida’s face.
Ida waited a moment, her hand holding the card still hovering in the air.
‘I guess the girl’s thinking about things,’ she said, returning the card to her purse. ‘I give it a few seconds before she runs into the basement to tell Stan Taylor there’s detectives at the door, and maybe police on the way.’
‘And then Taylor’ll make a dash for the alleyway?’
‘Most likely.’
They made their way to the rear of the building, where they found agents Eriksson and Dressner standing in front of the open trapdoor. At their feet, sitting on the ground, was a third man, drenched in sweat, with his hands cuffed behind his back. Stanley Taylor was an obese Negro in his early twenties, with close-cropped hair and a screw-faced expression. He’d managed to throw a jacket on over a string vest and a pair of trousers before attempting to flee, giving him the air of a hobo. He looked up when Ida and Jacob approached and the screw of muscles in his forehead tightened.
‘The fuck are you?’ he asked.
‘I’m Ida Davis, from the Pinkertons. This is Jacob Russo – he’s attached to the Detective Division.’
‘Attached?’ Taylor asked, but Ida ignored the question and kneeled down in front of him, and Jacob stayed back, intrigued to see how the girl would handle the man.
‘We’re not after you, Stanley,’ she said. ‘May I call you Stanley?’
‘You may,’ he said sarcastically, mocking Ida’s Southern manner of speech.
‘We’re after your brother Randall. We need to talk to him about a friend of his that’s gone missing.’
‘Randall? I don’t know where in the hell Randall is. I ain’t seen him for weeks.’
‘Sure. We know he’s gone to ground and we need to speak to him. Before Capone does, and the police do, and maybe whoever else is after him. You’re cooking out of his basement, so chances are you know how to get hold of him. Are you going to help us?’
‘What do you think?’ the man replied sarcastically.
‘All right, then,’ she said. ‘Let me explain your choices. One, you tell us what we want to know and we’ll let you go, free to get straight back into the basement and carry on your cook. Two, you refuse to cooperate and the agents here arrest you and take you into federal custody. They charge you with running the still and running all the girls working out of the upstairs rooms. That’s a felony offense.’
‘I don’t have nothing to do with those girls,’ Stanley protested.
‘And then after you’re booked, the agents might put you in a holding cell together with an inmate who works for Capone – cuz we all know there ain’t a holding cell in Chicago that doesn’t have at least someone from the Outfit locked up in it – and as the agents are talking they might get careless and let slip your name and whose brother you are. Meanwhile, the federal agents here will have to return to your basement and seize all your cooking equipment as evidence, and what they don’t seize, they’ll have to destroy. So all things considered, I’d say it’s in everyone’s interests for you to talk to us. Especially yours. What do you say?’
He glared at her a moment, trying to play it hard-boiled, but Jacob could see his resolution already flickering like a dying bulb.
‘Have a think on it while we go look round your basement,’ Ida said.
She rose and turned to look at Jacob, and Jacob, impressed, nodded at her. They walked through the trapdoor, which was still flung open, and into a basement that was thick with the caustic scent of alcohol. Guns raised, they scanned the space, but there was no one in there, just the tubes and drips and other paraphernalia of a home distillery.
Alcohol vapor was seeping out of the pipes, thick enough for the click of a cigar
ette lighter or the bullet from a gun to blow the whole basement sky high.
‘Still’s got a leak,’ said Jacob.
He slipped his gun back into his belt and looked about the apparatus; found the boiler and the gas jets underneath it and switched them off.
They checked the other rooms in the basement, but found no sign of the missing go-between. Then they climbed the stairs to the first floor, where they saw the girl who’d answered the front door standing in the hallway, glaring at them.
‘Stanley’s under arrest out back,’ said Ida. ‘Show us the parlor or you’ll be, too.’
The girl thought about it a moment, then slunk off down the hallway and they followed her into a living room which was occupied by four girls, young and Negro, half undressed and scared-looking. Red sheets had been hung in front of the windows, bathing everything in a warm, rose-pink tint, and rolls of taffeta had likewise been hung from the walls, softening the angles, the effect of it all making Jacob think of marshmallows and cotton candy.
‘Keep an eye on them,’ said Ida. ‘I’ll check the rest of the rooms.’
She left and Jacob lit a cigarette while he waited, looking over the girls. They all had the sunken eyes and skeletal physiques of heroin addicts, and they stared at him, frightened and wary. Jacob, not wanting to look at them too long, stared instead about the room, noticing how the red light coming in from the windows helped conceal the shabbiness of the furniture and the layer of dirt which covered the walls and floor.
Eventually Ida returned and looked at him and shook her head – the go-between wasn’t hiding out in the building.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ she said. ‘Feels like we’re standing in a womb.’