After a deep sigh, he opened the door. Before uttering a single word, Dixie Sinclair sauntered in showing off her sleeveless red and crème sundress. Wasting no time getting at the reason she showed up out of the blue, she purred and tossed both arms around Baltimore’s neck. Uncomfortable as could be, he peered down at Dixie while she pressed her face against the opening in his unbuttoned long sleeve shirt. “Whoa now, Dix, I’ve got company,” he said, trying to pry himself away from her exuberant clutches.
“Ohhh!” Dixie squealed. Backing away from Baltimore as if he were a leper, she shot a barrage of fiery looks in Dinah’s direction. “Sorry, I had no idea you were entertaining. But now that I’m here, she can run along.” Dixie’s elitist outlook gave her the inclination that Baltimore would arbitrarily choose her to stay, assuming he favored white meat if he could get it.
“Don’t go getting any ideas deary,” Dinah asserted broodingly. “I don’t like getting pushed around unless I ask for it and you’re hardly my type.”
“Baltimore, if you wouldn’t mind seeing her out,” the white lady suggested with a dismissive stare flung at her colored competition. “Three’s a crowd and Barker’s in a fit of rage about a missing police car or something having to do with it. In either case I don’t have all day.” Baltimore was in no hurry to force the issue of someone having to be sent home so he held his cards close to the vest and his mouth buttoned tight.
“So this is Mrs. Barker Sinclair?” Dinah said coolly, as she looked the intruder over carefully. “I thought you’d be old, mean, and fat. Boy, did I get a false report.” Of course Dinah was merely going off what Barker had said about his wife when he was with her.
“Excuse me, have we met?” Dixie asked.
“No, but I’ve had a long running ... understanding with Barker.” The corners of Dinah’s lips curled into a sheepish grin. It was all she could do not to laugh at the white lady’s stupid expression.
“You and Barker, really?” Dixie said defensively, insinuating that was too ridiculous for words.
Finally Baltimore came across an invitation into their conversation that suited him. “Well, ain’t this cozy? Barker’s woman and his whore brought together by chance.”
“I’ll say, Baltimore. It’s just peachy,” Dinah contended. “Him and you’s in the same fix.” Her astute observation flattened Baltimore’s smugly self-righteous smirk. “Come to think of it, y’all belong together. I’ll take my hat and handbag and leave you two alone. Yes, it has begun to feel a bit crowded for my taste as well. And Baltimore, this could not happen to a more deserving person. I have no doubt you’ll get everything you got coming to you.” Dinah collected her personal items and strolled out of the door.
“Dinah, hold up!” Baltimore hollered down the hall. “I wasn’t thinking on asking you to leave. Dinah!”
“You can go straight to hell!” she hollered back.
When Baltimore stepped inside the room, his dander kicked up something terrible. So put off by the order of events, he could barely stand the sight of Dixie, especially after she had run off the lady he had intended on staying with. “Are you happy now? Huh?” he shouted. “I sho’ hope so ’cause there’s no sense in both of us trapped in a rut.”
“Settle down, lover. The very thought of you with that woman gives me the shakes.”
“How you think that niggah-hating husband of yours might hold up imagining the tricks you do with me?”
“If I didn’t know better, a woman might get the wrong idea and get her feelings hurt. That colored girl’s gone now. You don’t have to pretend any longer that you’d rather I go.”
Baltimore drew in a measured breath and frowned wearily. “Pretend? Is that what you think, I was pretending? Oomph, if that ain’t the damnedest thing I done heard all day,” he barked curtly. “You had no business coming here, Dixie, and that’s just for starters.”
“Wait a minute!” she said, her voice rising. “I’d hate to be unreasonable, but unless all of that good loving of yours knocked one of my screws loose, you needed my help to rob Barker’s heroin shipment.” When Baltimore’s eyes exhibited his surprise, Dixie made it plain she had paid her dues and wasn’t in any disposition to be shortchanged. “Oh, boy, don’t tell me you thought I was in this for the pillow talk alone. I wasn’t expecting to split the take down the middle, but I certainly didn’t look for the old heave-ho on the back end.” While she had Baltimore wrapped up in his loss for words, Dixie sashayed up to him and nuzzled his hairy chest again. “Now don’t you go getting all quiet on me,” she cooed softly. “What do you say we settle after getting down to the nuts and bolts of our arrangement? Hope you don’t mind, I’d planned on rewarding myself first.” She ran her palm down his pants, easing her thin fingers inside of his zipper.
Baltimore was taken aback by the woman who had a lot to gain, but he hadn’t counted on cutting her in. Additionally, it was especially annoying when discovering he hadn’t masterminded the takedown of Baker’s shady enterprise alone and that caused him to react in a hurtful way. “If business is what you came here for then you shouldn’t have chased off my company. Dinah was all pleasure and then some. You can get a second opinion from Barker.”
Dixie’s face tightened. She couldn’t believe her ears. “You really weren’t playing around? That girl, you do want her more than me?” She gasped, pulling her hand from inside his boxer drawers. “You-you ungrateful animal!” she ranted, clawing at his face. “I’m nobody’s fool. I’ll show you who you’re messing with.”
“Cut it out, Dixie, it’s over,” Baltimore argued, diligently blocking her frenzied blows. “Stop it, now!”
She tore at his clothing, ripping the pricey shirt he’d moments before slipped on. “I’ll get you, you black bastard!”
“You need to quit ... this ... foolishness before somebody gets hurt,” he said, growing tired of defending himself. He snarled and grabbed Dixie by the arms, then dragged her toward the door. Fueled by spite, she wasn’t willing to go quietly. Baltimore needed her to leave and in a hurry before his prediction became an unfortunate reality. Digging in her heels, Dixie tussled mightily. She struggled to remain inside of the room.
Her husband’s Ford, which she’d parked in the alley, was being hitched to the tow truck, after Etta reported it blocking her back door. The white truck driver heard what he figured to be a couple working out the kinks in their relationship, but he couldn’t tell which room it was coming from, nor did he care, for he assumed both the man and woman were colored.
Refusing to be thrown out like yesterday’s trash, Dixie snatched herself away from Baltimore’s grasp and sprinted toward the other side of the room. When he caught up to her, he locked his wrists around her waist. She gritted her teeth and held firm to the window frame just as the truck driver peered up. “Goddammit!” she yelped loudly. “Let me go! Let me go!”
The white man was familiar with the neighborhood. He knew the adjacent building to be colored only. After seeing Baltimore tear Dixie’s fingers from the window, he became a lot more interested. He rambled to the end of the alley howling “Police!” to the high heavens.
Baltimore didn’t believe in men putting their hands on women. However, for the first time in his life, he wished he did, as sweat poured from his face with trails of blood marking Dixie’s claws. Her blouse tore as they wrestled violently. “Hell, girl, you’s trying my patience, now. Don’t make me get rough.”
“You can’t treat me like this,” she ranted wildly, slapping at his face to work herself free. “Let me go!”
“Uh-uh,” Baltimore grunted. “It ain’t no use. You might as well give up.” He was adamant. There was nothing left to argue when he heard the hammer of a pistol cock mere inches from his head. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.
“You heard her, nigger,” spat the police officer, with the rancid smell of stale chewing tobacco on his breath. That was the last thing Baltimore remembered before feeling a sharp pain shooting through the back of his
head and the cold hard floor slamming against his face.
25
BETTER OFF DEAD
Baltimore’s life had been strung together from a long list of fast times and jagged edges. Etta fully understood how a man was made from the things he’d done or had done to him. The minute she heard about a colored man having been beaten and dragged away in chains from the Ambrose Arms apartments, her heart sank. “Penny, call over to Madame Clarisse’s,” she ordered, praying that her intuition had lied to her.
“What do you want me to say when I get her on the line?” she inquired innocently.
“Ask her if the man who the police beat ... if the one they took was Baltimore.” Etta stared into space with a blanket of uneasiness shrouding her face. It was difficult to think of anything else until she knew for sure.
Penny’s mouth popped opened when she played Etta’s words back in her head. “But, Ms. Etta,” Penny said worriedly.
“Call her, chile,” Etta demanded in a subtle manner. “Go ’head and get the pilot on.” Penny nodded slowly as she reached for the telephone sitting on the office desk. Etta would have made the call herself but her hands wouldn’t stop trembling.
“Yes, ma’am, get me Bedford one-seventy-three, please. Yes, ma’am, the beauty parlor,” she affirmed for the phone operator. Penny pressed her lips together when Clarisse answered on the other end. “Uh, Madame Clarisse, this is Penny ... Huh, that’s why Miss Etta had me to call you ... Naw, ma’am ... we’s just relaxing mostly ... Naw, ma’am. Uh-uh ... Yes, ma’am, I’ll tell her. ’Bye.” The way Penny’s gaze drifted downward after hanging up caused Etta to place a hand over her mouth, afraid she might release the scream she held in the pit of her stomach.
“Well, Penny, what exactly did she say?”
“Said she’d be right over.”
It startled Etta when Clarisse barged into the building. “Girl, don’t be busting in here like that,” she said, placing her left hand over her chest. “You’re liable to fool around and stop my heart.”
“Sorry, Etta but I have to hurry,” she apologized, in abbreviated breaths. “The whole parlor is buzzing more than usual today.” In the five minutes Clarisse spent situating her customers with other stylists and then traveling from her salon seven blocks away, Penny had almost put two and two together from the snippets of information she’d overheard in the storeroom between the soda pop and ice house delivery men. For Baltimore’s sake, she crossed her fingers on both hands and hoped she’d heard wrong.
Clarisse paced around the table where Etta and Penny had planted themselves by the office. Her face was plagued with hesitancy as she watched the two of them staring back at her. “What?” she asked, as if they hadn’t been dying to get the news.
“Don’t play that game, Clarisse. I know you didn’t fly down the street like a Kansas cyclone to stand there holding it in,” Etta hooted, although she wasn’t nearly prepared to deal with potential life-altering information head on. “You may as well take a load off and get to it.”
“Okay, but it won’t be easy. I assumed y’all already heard from the grapevine, seeing as how things was between you and Baltimore,” she said, more in Etta’s general direction.
“Was, what you mean by was?” Etta inquired suspiciously. “You sound like somebody done died ...” she spat before catching herself. There was an old wives’ tale that warned of speaking things into being, so Etta closed her mouth abruptly.
“Madame Clarisse, I know how Miss Etta feels about Baltimore and I’d ’preciate it if you just jump right into what you know about the police beating.”
After the woman lowered her head momentarily, to summon the appropriate words, her eyes floated up to rest on Etta and then on Penny. “From what I hear, everybody in town is talking about Baltimore and the policeman’s wife.” She was surprised to see that Penny appeared unmoved in a time when colored men typically went out of their way to avoid being in the same room with white women.
“Yeah, like I was saying, a man was sent to move a car from an alley not too far from here. The white man operating the wrecker truck heard a woman yelling that somebody had mugged her and was still at it, so the fella went for help. He found two cops down at the corner and told them what he heard. It wasn’t until the truck driver mentioned the woman was white that they paid him any mind.” Etta was afraid to make a sound while Clarisse divulged the rest. “The story goes all over the place from there depending on who you want to believe. Some say Baltimore dragged her up to his place, slapped her around some and was smack dab in the middle of forcing himself on her when those white boys broke the door in.” Etta pleaded with her eyes for information she dared not ask with words. “No, they didn’t kill him,” was Clarisse’s response to her friend’s unspoken concerns. “But they leaned on him so bad, he probably wished they had.”
For Clarisse to go spouting off something like that, she couldn’t have possibly ever known a man like Baltimore, Etta thought. With her lips tightly pursed, Etta released a bittersweet chuckle on the inside of her mouth. That chuckle eventually erupted into full blown unbridled laughter. Penny was confused until she caught on to what Etta found amusing, then she joined in and shared in the merriment.
“Is both of y’all drunk?” Clarisse queried, with painstaking honesty.
“You tell her, Penny,” Etta laughed, “It feels too good to waste.”
“Tell me what?” Clarisse prodded.
“See, the worst thing that could happen to Baltimore is being mistaken for something he ain’t, like a man who forces things on women or even like being dead. As long as he ain’t dead, he can take care of the other.” Penny glanced at Etta to see how the explanation measured up to expectations. “Good, Penny, I couldn’t have said it better myself. Whew! Thank God he’s still alive.” Etta sighed evenly. “Is anybody saying where they got him now?”
Clarisse wasn’t quite sure of anything anymore. Penny had shown more rational intuition than a woman twice her age and Etta was behaving like a giggling idiot, as far as she was concerned. She presumed that the news would have demolished the ladies’ love for Baltimore beyond repair, even if the story were only partially correct. Having invited a white woman up to his room alone should have sufficiently accomplished that. “Uh, I suppose I could do some checking about Baltimore,” Clarisse offered, still oddly puzzled by their unyielding devotion to a man neither of them shared a bed with. “Give me a half hour at the parlor,” she added, feeling suddenly more confident herself. “You can bet somebody there knows something about where they got him.”
Penny wanted to share how she’d seen Baltimore with a white woman on several occasions through his window, but she wasn’t sure if that would do more harm than good, for him and her, so she tucked it away in the same place it originated, in her heart. “Thank you, Madame Clarisse,” she said finally. “We’s going up to see about him as soon as you nose around and get word to us.” The hairstylist couldn’t do a thing but admire her adoration of Baltimore and agree to do some mighty powerful nosing around, all in the name of fidelity.
Clarisse passed Delbert on his way in through the door. She smiled politely as he held it open for her. Just as he approached the table where Etta and Penny chatted, Etta explained they’d be closed for business until further notice. “That’s fine with me, Miss Etta. Hi ya, Penny,” Delbert said, hunching his shoulders. “I worked all night and didn’t have the chance to thank Baltimore personally and on behalf of the medical staff for putting up the money to send M.K.’s body home to his folks. It ain’t every day a colored man’s remains ride on a sky taxi.”
Penny’s forehead wrinkled when she didn’t understand a single thing he just said. “What’s a sky taxi, Dr. Delbert? And why do they let dead men ride in it?”
“That’s just what they call an airplane, Penny. Some states have laws about non-breathing colored cargo. Missouri is one of them, but Baltimore fixed it with a white fella at the air strip. I’d bet the only color he saw was green when a wad o
f bills was flashed in his face.”
“Yeah, that sounds like Baltimore alright,” Etta reasoned.
“So is he around or should I leave word with y’all?” Delbert asked, after he didn’t get an actual answer to his question the first time. “What he did, meant a lot to a whole bunch of folks, myself included. M.K. was an ace as friends go.”
“Delbert, maybe I should pour you a settling drink to sip on,” Etta said, sorrowfully. “There’s something I need you to do.” She explained what the skinny on the street was and how nothing shy of a miracle aided Baltimore in surviving his arrest. To secure his safety behind bars, serious decisions had to be made and a plan of action instituted. Most importantly, time was of the essence. “So you understand why I couldn’t possibly make this happen by myself?” she asked him afterwards.
Penny cleared her throat. “Uh-huh, we can’t do it without your help, Dr. Delbert.”
“Well, that’s a serious proposition,” he said apprehensively. The look on his face showed how scared he was to involve himself in it. “I’m just a country doctor trying to find my own way.”
Etta’s eyes softened as signs of distress revealed themselves but Penny’s expression hardened. “Look here, doc, they’s some things a man is forced to do because it’s right,” she said, holding his gaze with hers. “Baltimore is that kind of man. I’d like to think you is, too.” Before Delbert had the opportunity to mull over Penny’s challenging declaration, someone kicked the front door open. The loud crash sent chills through Delbert and Penny. Etta squinted spitefully when she saw him, the one who’d put his foot against her door and had shaken her down more times than she cared to remember.
“Jo Etta Adams,” Barker announced soberly, trouncing in with two uniformed officers she hadn’t seen before. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I? Because I sure would hate that.”
Ms. Etta's Fast House Page 21