Dead Man’s Blues

by Ray Celestin

  Louis sensed they all shared the same longing – the tantalizing feeling that there was always something greater just out of sight, waiting to be realized. But it was the way they sought to alleviate that longing that was their biggest difference; Louis didn’t share the others’ ruthless individualism, even though it was Louis who was teaching the world how to solo. Things didn’t have to move forward via the clash and jostle of opposites; progress also occurred through texture. It was the decade of the self, of building your own melodic line to cut through the noise, and it was Louis who was teaching the world how to do it, but even he knew that solos were nothing without chorus.

  41

  An hour after their chat in the Pinkerton office, Michael and Ida were seated across from Mrs Van Haren in a conservatory at the back of her mansion. Michael could tell she had been heavily sedated at some point in the last twenty-four hours. The jitteriness she’d exhibited when they had met her in their office had dimmed to a fearful sort of listlessness. As they told her the details of their investigation, she listened to them slumped back in her chair, taking long drags on her cigarette, staring fixedly at the potted shrubs and flowers dotted about the place.

  They told her that Gwendolyn had attempted to run away to Montreal, but had been abducted on her way to the station. They didn’t say that Coulton or Severyn were probably the ones who had abducted her, or that Gwendolyn had witnessed some kind of blood-soaked crime. They did tell her, however, that people were trying to stop their investigation – Coulton Senior for one – and that judging by the speed at which Michael had been offered the job at the State’s Attorney’s, someone was probably spying on Mrs Van Haren.

  On hearing the last she finally came to life.

  ‘Oh God,’ she muttered. She rubbed her temples, then took another long drag on her cigarette before finally looking up at them, frightened.

  ‘My husband’s been trying to talk me out of it the whole time. Said the Pinkertons couldn’t be trusted. He was furious when he found out I’d gone behind his back and hired you.’

  Michael frowned and turned to look at Ida, who looked back at him with an equally perplexed expression.

  ‘You’re saying it’s your husband?’ Ida asked. ‘He’s trying to obstruct the investigation?’

  But Mrs Van Haren had seemingly not heard the question, had returned to her fear-soaked daze, to whatever mental hell it was she had built for herself.

  ‘Mrs Van Haren?’ Ida pressed.

  But the woman carried on staring at some invisible terror in the middle distance, near the terracotta pots by the French doors.

  ‘Mrs Van Haren? Why would your husband obstruct our investigation?’

  Then she finally turned to look at them and frowned. ‘Because he’s in it with Coulton, of course,’ she said, as if she was baffled that Ida had to ask the question. She looked at them for a moment, then resignation suffused her voice. ‘I just need her back. I need to tell her I’m sorry,’ she said.

  And with that she started to cry, and oddly Michael felt relieved at the display, by the fact that the woman’s emotions hadn’t been completely burned out of her by sodium thiopental.

  ‘I’ve had dreams,’ she continued through her tears. ‘Of Gwendolyn, dead. In a white shroud. I pray they aren’t true. I pray this city hasn’t killed her. It’s sharp and dangerous and she’s lost out there and I need to tell her I’m sorry.’

  She raised her handkerchief to her face and sobbed into it, and Michael and Ida shared a look.

  ‘Mrs Van Haren,’ said Ida soothingly. ‘What is it your husband and Coulton are in together?’

  ‘You need to find her.’

  ‘Mrs Van Haren. We’ve been taken off the case,’ said Ida. ‘That’s what we came here to tell you.’

  And somehow the words got through and she looked up at them, suddenly alert.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Mr Coulton complained about my behavior when I interviewed him,’ said Michael. ‘That’s the official reason. Our replacements, however, were chosen in the expectation that they wouldn’t make progress with the case.’

  ‘No,’ she said, her voice surprisingly firm. ‘You have to continue. Can you work it in your spare time? I’ll pay you more if needs be. I have to find Gwendolyn. I have to make it up to her.’

  ‘Where’s your husband, Mrs Van Haren?’ Michael asked.

  ‘He’s here in Chicago. He’ll probably be home any minute,’ she said, shaken by yet another tumult of fear. ‘You’ll have to leave. I can’t face another argument with him. Not just yet.’

  She leaned forward suddenly, grasping Michael’s hand.

  ‘But please,’ she said. ‘I’m pleading with you, carry on looking for Gwendolyn. Don’t leave it with these other men. There’s so much I need to tell her. I’ll give you all the reward money. Don’t worry about my husband. The money is my own. In my own personal account. It’s all yours if I can just know where she is.’

  Michael nodded at her, making a conscious effort not to shrink back from her touch: despite the sweltering heat, her fingers were icy cold, and it was then that Michael noticed something else strange about Mrs Van Haren. She wasn’t sweating. Sunlight was pouring in through the conservatory’s glass ceiling, causing both Michael and Ida to roast in the heat. But Mrs Van Haren, sitting in her wicker chair, in a white cotton dress, had not a single bead of sweat on her.

  Five minutes later Ida and Michael were sitting in their car on the road a few yards down from the mansion, staring at the quiet elm-lined street ahead of them.

  ‘When I saw those Pentothal pills on her bedside table the other time,’ said Michael, ‘I just assumed someone was drugging her to keep her out of the way.’

  ‘They covered up the daughter’s mental issues,’ said Ida. ‘Looks like they’re doing the same with her mother.’

  Michael took his cigarette case from his pocket and they shared out a couple of smokes.

  ‘The thing that gets me is she knows something,’ said Ida. ‘And she’s too scared to tell us. She knows her husband is involved, and Coulton, but she won’t say why.’

  Michael nodded, took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow. The sun was beating down relentlessly and he was feeling it in a torrent of sweat. He thought of the woman sitting in the heat of the conservatory, cold and clammy to the touch, her head filled with the demons of dread and guilt and sodium thiopental and God knew what other torments.

  He returned the handkerchief to his pocket, and as he did so he spotted a Duesenberg limousine turn onto the street in the distance, warping in and out of the haze rising up from the asphalt. It slowed when it reached the Van Haren house, and turned up the drive.

  Ida opened up the glovebox and took out the viewing glasses they had there, passed a pair to Michael and raised another to her own eyes. Michael took them and looked through them and caught focus on the Duesenberg as it stopped outside the front steps. A man in a black suit and fedora got out of the back. Adolphus Van Haren was of medium build and would have been tall once, but now his posture had been broken by age and he was so stooped over, Michael was surprised he was managing to walk without a cane. He must have been in his mid-seventies at least, and it made Michael wonder on the age difference between the man and his much younger wife.

  When Van Haren got to the front doors they opened and the butler stepped out and the two of them conferred about something there on the porch and Van Haren became irate, throwing his arms about, his face reddening.

  ‘I guess he just found out we paid a visit,’ said Ida.

  ‘I guess he did.’

  The two men stepped inside the house, and Ida and Michael lowered the glasses from their eyes.

  ‘So, what do we do?’ asked Michael, turning to look at Ida. He already knew where his path lay, but he didn’t want to jeopardize his protégée’s career on it, too.

  ‘We carry on looking for Gwendolyn,’ said Ida, not missing a beat. ‘Whether or not the father’s involved. Whether or
not the mother knows more than she’s telling us – grief’s gotten the better of the woman.’

  ‘We get caught, that’s it,’ said Michael.

  ‘I’m willing to run the risk.’

  ‘For the money she offered? The more the woman talks about it, the more I reckon that money’s never gonna materialize.’

  ‘Even if she doesn’t pay us, I want to help the woman,’ Ida said. ‘And I want to know what those men have done to Gwendolyn. And I want to get back at whoever it is that’s trying to ruin us. Plus, we’re almost there.’ She turned to look at him, all earnestness and gritty determination. ‘We’ve almost got the go-between. He’s the key to all this and we’ve almost got him. Let’s go and see what he’s got to say.’

  ‘We do that and there’s no going back,’ said Michael. ‘It’s all or nothing.’

  ‘I’m in,’ said Ida. ‘But I don’t have a wife and kids.’

  ‘She already gave me the go-ahead,’ said Michael.

  They looked at each other a moment and smiled ruefully. Then he started up the car and they headed for LaSalle Street, downtown, the sweltering heart of the city.

  42

  Dante stood at the bar of the Drake drinking a Martini, waiting for Loretta to come down from the suite. When he’d gotten back from Michigan that afternoon he’d been surprised to find her still in his rooms, lying on the sofa, reading a book, the dog nestled under her arm.

  ‘If I’m going to be cooped up,’ she’d said, ‘it might as well be in a luxury suite.’

  Dante couldn’t fault the logic. He didn’t have time to prepare for a trip to Millersville that night – he wanted to make a few calls first, visit some people and make some discreet inquiries, see if anyone in Chicago knew anything about the roadhouse. So he decided to spend the evening with Loretta, having dinner, pretending to be a normal, civilized person, hoping that the pretense might actually make him so.

  He took a shower and dressed and left her in the suite to get ready alone, arranging to meet her in the bar whenever she was done. He’d ordered the drinks and stood around looking at the crowd – the moneyed elite and the people that trailed in their wake.

  As he was taking a sip of his drink there was a commotion in the lobby and he turned to look through the great arch that connected the bar to the hotel’s reception to see what was going on. He saw a troop of people entering from the street – a debonair man in a sharp black suit at the front of the group, accompanied by a slight, pretty girl, then some clerks, then a gaggle of bellboys and porters rolling their luggage in on overloaded trolleys. Dante recognized the man, but couldn’t place him.

  ‘Charlie Chaplin,’ said a voice next to him, and Dante turned to see a short man on a barstool to his side, dressed in a pinstripe suit, with a Cosmopolitan in one hand and a cigarette holder in the other. The man smiled at Dante, revealing unnaturally white teeth made to seem more so by an unnaturally brown tan.

  ‘The whole town’s filling with celebrities,’ he continued, ‘for the boxing match, you know. Yesterday morning Al Jolson checked in, and I was in the gift shop this afternoon and saw Douglas Fairbanks browsing the paperweights.’

  Dante nodded and smiled, and they watched Chaplin a moment as his entourage headed to the reception desk to check in. He was even shorter than Dante had imagined, but much better-looking than his films portrayed. The man on the stool next to Dante took a sip on his drink and a puff on his smoke, and the way he held the cigarette holder so horizontal, and took a puff by somehow pecking at it, made Dante think of a bird at a feeder.

  ‘You know, I came to Chicago from Hollywood thinking I’d get away from all the stars, and I’m bumping into more of them here than I do back home.’ The man grinned, stuffed the cigarette holder into his mouth and held out a hand.

  ‘Sam Halpert,’ he said.

  ‘Dante Sanfelippo,’ Dante said as they shook hands. ‘So what brings you to Chicago, Mr Halpert?’

  ‘Sam, please. Business. I’m a movie producer.’

  ‘You’re shooting a film here?’

  ‘No. There’s a young writer in town I’ve come here to meet. He’s writing a book about Capone and we’re thinking of purchasing the rights to turn it into a film. I had to meet the boy, read the draft, decide whether we should make an offer.’

  ‘A film about Capone sounds like a dangerous enterprise.’

  ‘Oh, we’ll change the names,’ said the man with a shrug, taking another peck at the cigarette holder.

  ‘I see.’

  In the lobby, Chaplin and the girl were being led away from the reception desk toward the elevators.

  ‘I didn’t realize people made films about gangsters,’ said Dante.

  ‘It’s a new trend,’ said Halpert, sighing. ‘We’ll see how long it lasts. I’m also here looking for actors, or rather, gangsters that want to turn their hand to acting.’

  Dante gave him a look.

  ‘People want authenticity, the real deal. You know Al Jennings? The train robber? He’s got a job working in the pictures. And Spike O’Donnell’s been approached by a British studio to star in a series they’ve got coming up.’

  ‘O’Donnell the bootlegger?’ Dante asked, bemused, and Halpert nodded. O’Donnell owned breweries in Chicago and Wisconsin, had been implicated in bombings and election-day beatings, had killed people in the Second Beer War, and he’d still be doing time in Joliet for armed robbery if it wasn’t for Governor Small’s cash-for-pardons operation.

  ‘O’Donnell in the movies . . .’ muttered Dante.

  ‘Maybe he got sick and tired of being shot at,’ said Halpert.

  ‘I suppose,’ said Dante. ‘Must be strange, though, going from being a real gangster to a fake one.’

  ‘Oh, he won’t be a fake gangster, he’ll be the real Spike,’ said Halpert, taking another sip from his drink and another peck from his cigarette. He peered at Dante, intrigued that he seemed to know something of Spike O’Donnell.

  ‘So what do you do?’ he asked, his eyes trained on Dante as if he was appraising a starlet.

  ‘I work in restaurants in New York.’

  ‘And what brings you out west?’

  ‘I grew up here. I’m just in town catching up with old friends.’

  ‘You know, you look familiar. Have you ever done any acting?’

  ‘No, Mr Halpert. At least not any that wound up on the silver screen.’

  Dante smiled and the man smiled back, then Dante spotted Loretta stepping into the bar through the great arch, passing by the cigar stand, looking for him. She was wearing a pale green dress he’d never seen before and he wondered where the hell she’d got it from if she’d been in the hotel all day. He raised a hand and she saw him and headed toward them.

  ‘Your date?’ Halpert asked.

  ‘A friend.’

  ‘She’s a fine-looking friend. I’ll leave you to it Mr . . . Why, I’ve forgotten your name already.’

  ‘Sanfelippo. Dante Sanfelippo.’

  The man frowned again, then nodded and hopped off the stool and wandered off into the crowd.

  ‘Who was that?’ asked Loretta when she arrived.

  ‘A film producer from Hollywood. And you just missed Charlie Chaplin, too.’

  The hotel’s dining room looked like something out of a fairy tale, with chandeliers like blooms of glass, and great pillars stretching to a ceiling as ornately painted as a Russian church. They ate coquilles St Jacques and mushroom bisque, and grilled langoustines with lemon butter, and they spoke of Olivia, and Loretta’s sister, and people from their neighborhood, and New York and Chicago, and what they were planning on doing with their lives, as if either of them knew. They spoke of nothing much at all and got steadily drunk on white wine.

  ‘Why did you change your name?’ Loretta asked when they were halfway through their entrees, and the candlelight and wine fuzz were starting to make them feel like they were in their own little world, intimate and warm.

  ‘How did you know I changed my name?�
� he asked.

  ‘That first night I called the hotel, they didn’t know who you were till I mentioned you were staying in the Lindbergh suite.’

  Dante shrugged. ‘I felt like a fresh start.’

  ‘Why Sanfelippo?’

  ‘It’s the name of the church in the Bronx where the priest saved me from hypothermia – St Phillip’s. You don’t like it?’

  ‘It doesn’t suit you,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I preferred your old one.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll change it back someday.’

  ‘Good. Names are important. You know you’re the only person that doesn’t shorten my name to Lorrie?’

  ‘Really?’

  She nodded. ‘I always liked that about you.’

  When they’d finished he asked the waiters to put the bill on his tab and Loretta went to use the restroom and Dante waited for her by the doors to the lobby. He watched the couples heading into the ballroom and he poked his head in to have a look around. The people on the parquet floor were dancing to watered-down jazz, the staid kind played in high-end hotels like this one, white jazz, near-beer jazz, a pale imitation of the pieces they’d stolen from the black musicians in Bronzeville.

  When Dante and Loretta stepped through the lobby and out onto the hotel entrance they breathed in the fresh air, and the freshness made the alcohol they’d drunk hit them with even greater force, and their heads spun and they both knew they weren’t going anywhere that night.

  ‘We could wait it out back in the suite?’ he said.

  Five minutes later they were on the bed, kissing and undressing. Loretta tugged at Dante’s shirt and he took it off, not thinking, and she ran her hands over his arms, and stopped, and frowned, and Dante realized she was staring at the needle marks, at the self-hate stenciled all over his arms.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, upset, disappointed, and there was nothing he could say to stop himself feeling wretched. She ran her fingers down the roll of scars tenderly, looked up at him, kissed him, and they carried on again, slower this time, different.