Dead Man’s Blues

by Ray Celestin

  ‘Why did they need somewhere private?’ she asked, but Randall didn’t answer, stared instead at the teapot on the table, at its inky pattern of blue mountains and clouds and seas.

  ‘We’ve heard rumors about the two of them,’ said Ida. ‘About what they got up to in those buffet flats you arranged for them. That people went missing. Is that true?’

  ‘True as rent day,’ he said, smiling again, that same mechanical turn of a screw. The casual way he’d said it, and the expression on his face, sent an icicle of a shiver down Ida’s spine.

  ‘Is that what they were using this flat for?’ she asked.

  ‘How much d’you know about Chuck and Lloyd?’

  ‘Why don’t you enlighten us?’

  Randall paused before speaking again. ‘There’s something dark about those boys. You know how they met, right? In the war. Lloyd saved Chuck’s life. Then Lloyd got caught by the mustard gas and it destroyed his throat, and that’s how he ended up with those scars on his neck and that voice of his. Anyway, I don’t know what it was they saw out there, or maybe it wasn’t even out there, maybe they always had it in them, but those two . . . They’d goad each other on till they started looking for things to do that weren’t right. If you go through life collecting experiences, and you’ve already collected all the ones that’re normal – where d’you go from there? When the only experiences left to collect are the dark ones? I saw it. They’d bring back boys and girls to that apartment and do stuff just for the hell of it. Cuz they were bored with life and they had the money to cover it up. I grew up around hustlers and killers, people that’d slit your throat for a dime, but they didn’t have nothing on those boys. If something bad’s happened to Gwen, those two’re behind it.’

  He looked at them, from one to the other, and the glint in his eye said to her that he ‘d been warped by hedonism just as much as Severyn and Coulton, that on those nights of debauchery, Randall was more than just a bystander, that whatever it was they got up to, he was involved in it all as well.

  Ida felt a chill of revulsion and turned to look at Michael and saw he’d had the same reaction to what Randall had said. Then the waitress arrived with Randall’s food. She put down a bowl of greens, and a plate of sticky steamed rice and barbecued pork, and Randall listlessly picked up his fork, his appetite seemingly gone.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Ida said. ‘You must have known Chuck and Lloyd would be mad as hell at you for giving Gwen that address, but you still gave it to her?’

  ‘I know,’ said Randall. ‘But I liked the girl. I mean, really liked her. And she liked me. And I couldn’t see her upset like that. And there’s something else. The last few months, Chuck and Lloyd told me they were working on something, something big, and they didn’t have time for playing around no more. I didn’t see them much, and then one day, just like that, they gave me the gate.’ Randall lifted up a hand and snapped his fingers. ‘They told me I was fired. They didn’t want to see me no more. And that was the last I ever heard from them.’

  ‘So you gave Gwen the address to get back at them?’

  ‘I figured she’d go round there, see what they were up to and then she’d come running back to me. They’d be put out, and I’d get the girl. Two birds with one stone. I didn’t know they’d abduct her.’

  He shrugged and Ida stared at him, saddened by the fact that this man, too, had used Gwendolyn for his own ends.

  ‘When did they fire you?’ she asked.

  ‘A couple of months ago. And I ain’t seen either of them since.’

  ‘And what about Esther Jones?’

  At the mention of the name, Randall twitched – surprised, then annoyed. ‘Who?’ he asked, pretending he’d never heard of the girl.

  ‘She was a dancer at the Sunset Café. She turned up dead in the Sanitary and Sewage Canal a while back. You were pimping her out to a Capone stooge named Benny Roebuck. He ended up dead as well, in an alleyway off State Street. The same night Gwendolyn disappeared.’

  ‘That shit was all on account of Lloyd and Chuck, too,’ he said eventually, after he’d realized there was no point in lying about it. ‘They came to see me three or four months back, saying they needed to set someone up for some long game they were working on. Knew this white man that liked it dark. Wanted me to find a girl to fake being with him for a few months while they set up whatever this hustle they had planned was. I knew Esther from when I worked out of the Sunset. I told her there was good money if she faked a meet with this Roebuck character and pretended to be sweet on him, and she did it.’

  ‘They tell you why they wanted her to do it?’ Ida asked.

  He shook his head. ‘Nah. But I know it was linked to this big thing they were working on.’

  ‘Tell us more about that.’

  ‘Ain’t nothing to tell, they kept real quiet about it. All except one morning, after we’d been up a few days and they were both drunk and high, and they were bragging, talking about doing something that was gonna change the city, that was gonna set the place on fire. That’s what they said. It was after that they sacked me. I figured it was all related. Whatever it is they got planned, they didn’t want me knowing about it. Now Esther’s dead, and this Roebuck character’s dead, and Gwen’s missing. Seems to me like they’re tying up loose ends, and what the hell else am I if I ain’t a loose end? So I’m staying on the low till all this fades away.’

  Ida nodded, taking it in. She looked at Randall, then past him to the paintings on the wall, just visible in the gloom, the dragons curling about in the mist.

  ‘You know where we can find Chuck and Lloyd?’ she asked.

  ‘No. But I figure if you’re looking for clues there’ll be plenty at that apartment in Back o’ Yards.’

  ‘Give us the address, Randall.’

  He shook his head. ‘Not till my brother’s released. I hear from him that he’s safe, and I’ll send you the address. Let him go today, and you’ll have the address tomorrow morning.’

  Ida turned to look at Michael. He shrugged.

  ‘All right,’ Michael said. ‘We’ll tell the agents to let your brother go, but if we don’t get that address tomorrow, we’ll rearrest him, and charge him, and we’ll get warrants out for you, too. Understand?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Randall, before downing another cup of beer.

  ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘you got something wrong. Benny Roebuck. He wasn’t a Capone stooge. He was working for Moran.’

  Ida frowned, eyed Randall closely, trying to see if he was lying.

  ‘You sure about that?’ she asked. ‘We heard different.’

  ‘You bet I’m sure. Whatever it is they’re up to, it didn’t have to do with no Capone stooge. The man worked for Moran, that’s why they targeted him. Now, thanks for the food. I’ll be waiting to hear from my brother.’

  And with that he wiped his mouth, and left the restaurant.

  ‘What do you think?’ Ida asked Michael when they were back outside.

  Michael shrugged and took his Virginia Slims from his pocket and lit one. ‘He’s quite the storyteller,’ he said, passing the cigarette case to Ida.

  ‘You buy the thing about Roebuck working for Moran and not Capone?’

  ‘Sure. He was muscle for hire. He lived in the Northside. Who told us he worked for Capone?’

  ‘Jacob. The photographer from the Tribune,’ she said, lighting up and passing him back the case.

  ‘And where’d he hear it from?’

  ‘I dunno. Maybe someone at the station?’

  ‘Maybe you should ask him,’ Michael suggested as they headed back to the car. ‘You did well in there,’ he said, when they were walking along the sidewalk. ‘Conducted the whole interview on your own.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘Sure. I didn’t say a word. Difficult interview too. Hostile witness. I thought you’d lost him for a moment at the start but you reeled him back. You did good, kid.’ He said the last in a mock-patronizing tone of voice and they both smiled.


  ‘You think he’ll come through with the address?’ Ida asked.

  ‘That I ain’t so sure about. But even if he doesn’t we can trawl through the housing records in the Back o’ Yards, see if we can dig something up.’

  They reached the car and as Ida waited for Michael to unlock it, she looked up into the sky and for the first time in weeks she saw clouds gathering overhead, wispy and bedraggled.

  ‘It’s fixing to rain,’ said Michael, who’d followed her gaze. Ida nodded and Randall’s words about a plan to set the city on fire came into her head.

  Michael got into the car and let her in, and as they settled themselves inside, they saw, further up the block, a sedan pull out from the curb in front and head off downtown. They turned to look at each other.

  ‘Was that the same one?’ asked Ida.

  ‘I’m not sure. I couldn’t see the license plate.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  They both sat in silence a moment. Then Michael started the engine, and pulled out into the road, and they drove and smoked wordlessly for a few minutes, watching the city as it prepared to launch itself into another evening.

  ‘What I don’t get in all of this is Chuck,’ said Ida after she’d been mulling things over. ‘I mean, Lloyd Severyn I get. He’s from the wrong side of the tracks. He goes to the war and meets Chuck, who’s some rich boy he’d never meet anywhere else, and the two of them get along and Severyn thinks he’s found his meal ticket and the two of them come back to Chicago and the good times roll. But Chuck . . . everyone we speak to’s got a different character description. Randall’s making out he’s some kind of rich-kid sadist, his father makes out he’s a clueless drunk, Lena made out he was a soft, pampered college kid, and then there’s what Gwen said, that she saw him doing something so awful she had to leave town. I mean, who the hell is he?’

  Michael shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe all of the above. But I figure we find out who he is, and where he is, and we find out what happened to Gwen.’

  They carried on driving and at some point Michael turned to look at her. ‘What are you doing now?’ he asked. ‘You want me to drop you home?’

  ‘No, I’m meeting a friend.’

  45

  Ida met Jacob at a restaurant in Little Italy. They ordered tagliatelle in tomato sauce, which arrived in huge portions, accompanied by a bowl of parmesan, and a green salad, and black olives, and white bread, and a bottle of dago red. They were awkward with each other at first, but as they ate and drank, the doubts that normally swirled about Ida melted away, and the two of them found a match in their misfit personalities; both of them sensitive people with brutal jobs, working amongst the horrors of the city, the gruesome reality that underpinned everyday living.

  They finished the bottle of wine, but not the mound of tagliatelle, and they stumbled out of the restaurant and looked up at the sky and saw the storm nestled in the clouds. Then they went back to Jacob’s, passing by the bombed-out speak. Its front had been boarded up, and a sign said it would be open again soon.

  They sat on Jacob’s sofa and drank moonshine once more, and an hour or so after nightfall the rainstorm started, torrential and electrical, clattering against the buildings and the sidewalks.

  They got up to close the windows, but instead heard the noises from outside and stepped out onto the fire escape. The whole neighborhood was alive with rain, lit up by lightning flashes, and everything was cool and refreshing for the first time in weeks – as if someone had turned on a giant air-cooler in the sky.

  They let the rain splash against them and basked in the coolness of the storm and watched as the streets below filled with children, splashing each other and playing beneath the bruised undersides of the clouds. When Ida and Jacob were thoroughly drenched they went into Jacob’s bedroom, peeled off their clothes and slept with each other once more, this time without the shadow of the bombing hanging over them, and so it was different, more familiar, more certain.

  Afterwards they lay in bed and listened to the tumult of the storm, the occasional boom of thunder and watched the rain run down the windows, daubing the city lights outside into a glistening blue wash.

  ‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep,’ he said.

  ‘Me neither,’ she replied. ‘Wanna go out?’

  When they stepped into the auditorium of the Savoy they were hit by a roar of horns and drums, as hot as the blast of a furnace. Louis was on stage with a white man, and the first thing Ida thought was how odd: a black man and a white man sharing a stage. She recognized a few of the players in the band as friends of Louis, but then there were white men up there, too, sitting in, two bands merged together. Jacob had stopped, too, and was also staring at the stage. She turned to him and smiled, and they pushed through the crowd to the bar, where the people waiting were in rows five deep. She listened to the music and recognized the tune, Noël Coward’s ‘Poor Little Rich Girl’, a favorite with both Louis and Chicago’s jazz crowds. Even with her back to the stage she could tell it was Louis freewheeling over the top of its chorus – no one else on earth could hit that many high Cs in a row.

  They eventually got their drinks and turned to watch the band. Louis was in the midst of his solo, and the crowd were either dancing crazily or standing spellbound, listening in awe as each note came along, perfect in its clarity, its tone, its timing, its relation to the notes around it. And as she listened to the solo flitting across the rhythm like a skimming stone, Ida noticed the phrases were getting faster and more complex, each one leaping further than the one before, until they reached a crescendo that exploded with the power of a storm.

  The crowd roared and pulsed with energy, and Louis grinned and bowed and took a step back, and the white man stepped forward, raised a cornet to his lips, and Ida felt sorry for him – how the hell did you follow one of Louis’ solos?

  ‘Who’s that up there?’ she asked a boy standing next to her, his eyes fixed on the stage.

  ‘That’s Bix,’ he said, ‘Bix Beiderbecke.’ And he smiled at her, and she smiled back and turned to look at the stage and finally recognized the white band – the Paul Whiteman Orchestra. Then Beiderbecke began his solo, starting out slow, coasting against the rhythm, then moving back into it, and as Ida listened she realized he wasn’t trying to outdo Louis, he was simply finding his own way, and as he got into it, the crowd did, too, and the notes came faster, bounding out of the cornet, punchy and clear, rolling on to a finale in an unflappable cascade of precision.

  The audience roared once more and the horns clambered over each other and crashed into a chorus, and the song came to an end in a sheet of sound. A great energy coursed around the place, and Ida thought of something that Louis had told her once, that jazz was born in the hurricanes of New Orleans, and that groups of ragged Southerners had brought those hurricanes north, concealed in the valves of trumpets and the hollows of double basses, and when they played, they let those storms loose into the world once more, releasing all that energy with just the touch of lips on a mouthpiece, the brush of fingers on keys, the pluck of a string.

  And maybe that was why Louis ran the risk of playing with these musicians; they were teaching each other the techniques – the pedal tones, hand stops, lip trills – that summoned up the energy she could see rushing about the place, in people’s smiles and the movement of their bodies, and that energy was more important to them than social norms, than race, than divisions, than getting arrested.

  On stage Louis and Bix took their bows, and Bix went to get a drink and Louis lit a reefer and passed it around his band-mates. Then Whiteman conferred with Earl at the piano, and they nodded at each other and launched into a rendition of ‘Basin Street Blues’, a slow, rumbling New Orleans blues. It was only in these after-hours shows that bands played Southern style, rough-edged and slow enough for them to make their instruments moan and growl, to slide and bump in melismatic slurs.

  The crowd started dancing once more, slower now, couples hugging, torsos locked and
getting lower to the ground. Louis stepped to the front of the stage and sang the lyrics, and as he did so, he spotted Ida and a grin broke out on his face.

  We’ll take a trip to the land of dreams

  Blowing down the river, down to New Orleans

  The mass of bodies parted for an instant, and Ida caught a glimpse of the tables by the dance floor, the prime seats, where a group of men she recognized were sitting – Al Capone, Frank Nitti, ‘Machine Gun’ Jack McGurn, and a dozen other hangers-on and skimpily dressed girlfriends and mistresses, all at a table strewn with liquor bottles and ashtrays erupting with cigar ends. They were watching the stage and cracking jokes with each other, arms slung over chairs, ties askew. And among them was a man with a bushy mustache – the man who’d followed her and Michael that afternoon in the grey sedan.

  The band is there to meet us

  Old friends to greet us

  Ida stared at him, shocked, hoping she was seeing things wrong.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Jacob, noticing she’d become distracted by something.

  ‘That man at the table with Capone,’ she said. ‘He was the one that was following us this afternoon.’

  ‘Which man?’

  She pointed him out to Jacob, and he turned to look at the man.

  ‘I know him. His name’s Sacco. I was in the Second District station a few months back when he was getting hauled through it, kicking up a fuss.’

  ‘What do you know about him?’

  ‘Not much. Just that he’s in charge of one of the Outfit’s liquor runs.’