Memphis Noir

by Laureen Cantwell

  “Ended right here on this train,” the bartender reminded the assembled gallery.

  “Last night.”

  “Last night,” Mort repeated, and the corner of his mouth ticked up in the semblance of a knowing smile. Not so that anyone noticed, yet he played it off as thirst and looked toward the bartender. He needn’t have. That old man was moving around the bar like the minute hand on a clock face.

  The pianist nodded. “Killed.”

  “Who did it?”

  He shrugged, deep. “Don’t know. Could be somebody on this train. Could be somebody in this room.”

  There was a beat, two beats—click-clack, click-clack—before everybody laughed. Some easier than others.

  “How?”

  “Knife, so it was close,” the newspaperman reported. “Happened as this here train pulled into Union Station, deep underground like it does. It was dark, hot, and it gets loud when brakes start to squealing and the porters start slinging that luggage before she even comes to a halt. Happened in that dark time and poor old Jackson LeDuc bled out, running deep like the Chicago River.”

  “They didn’t even take him off the train,” the porter chimed in, lighting the cigarette he’d held behind his ear. “Brought a doctor in, declared him dead as St. Paul, and brought in a coffin too. Only difference seems to be there’s an empty seat in coach and a full one in luggage.”

  All bowed their heads. Mort watched them. They shook their heads from side to side, swaying with the travel in a moment of silence for their old, dead friend. Mort let them have it for three beats, four. Then: “And Toussaint?”

  Their heads snapped up, thankful for the reprieve.

  “Gone,” Lil whispered, and everyone’s swaying went to nodding.

  “Gone?”

  “Like the wind, baby.”

  “She escaped?”

  “Shit. Weren’t no escape to it. Jael Jean-Baptiste Toussaint done been gone. She lit out months ago. That’s why LeDuc was on this train.”

  “Where’d she go? Why?”

  The younger pianist shrugged, so the older kept on: “She wanted out.”

  “Of the quintet?”

  “Of the contract. Too much involved, too much expected. She was singing all night then hustling off to the Italian’s room then back to Jackson. Too much. But she couldn’t just break that contract, could she? She couldn’t just buy it out, ain’t enough money on Beale for that. So what’d she do?” Lil looked around the car for the answer. Men always have the answers, don’t they? She faced blank stares through the smoke and gulped her liquor. “She told Jackson LeDuc to kill that dago.”

  This brought mumbling and murmurs of assent to the surface. Men may not have the answers, but they cotton to violence like a dog to a bone.

  Lil continued, “Jael left the club that night, summoned by Venotucci, and then back to Jackson. She oozed the old Italian and tasted him on her tongue, and it made her sick the way it always did, the way it had since she was little. She’d had enough and had thought about crushing his skull with his own cane that very night. But she was tired. She was tired from a hard life of hustling and lying and drinking and fucking. That night, as Jackson held her in his arms, ignoring her scent and the stale sweat on her neck, she sang to him. It was soft and it was sweet and it ended the way it never had before. Kill him, she breathed.

  “She promised her undying love to Jackson if he would free her. She promised to sing only for him. Without a thought, without a plan or a weapon, he went to Beale and up to the office of Aldo Venotucci on the third floor of the Hotel Men’s Improvement Club and told him, It stops now!”

  “What’d he say? The dago?” The younger pianist was on the edge of his seat now.

  “What you think he said, baby? Told that ugly old Frenchman to get the hell out of his office.”

  “And then?”

  “And then Jackson LeDuc, he picked up a typewriter off that big oak desk, one of them heavy Remingtons, you know? Old one. And he beat that old man to death with it. They say teeth scattered across the room like a child’s set of jacks. They say blood was on the ceiling, and you know the ceiling’s ten feet high in that place. They say—”

  “Who say?”

  “Never you goddamn mind who say! But they say that old typewriter ain’t never gonna work again . . . LeDuc fled the scene. People reported back to the Hotel Men’s Improvement Club that they saw the Trumpeting Troll—that’s what they called Jackson LeDuc—up to his elbows with blood and running his way past Third and Second, up onto Main, and back south, still running between them trolley tracks, all the way back to Pantaze.

  “When he got there, though, the room was empty. Jael Jean-Baptiste Toussaint was gone. There wasn’t a stitch of clothes, wasn’t a stitch of song in the air. It was as if she had been an angel, and she’d gone back up to heaven.”

  “Or down to hell,” the bartender offered. But he didn’t offer a drink. He was putting bottles away, death has a way of killing a party.

  “Jackson stood in the doorway and listened to all that silence, the creases of his fingers stained by blood and matter. He wanted to scream. Opened his mouth to do so, but all that shattered that quiet was a train whistle as it pulled out of Central Station and across that trestle.”

  “So close he could almost touch it,” the newspaperman said.

  “Been riding these rails ever since,” Lil said. “He rode them down to New Orleans, asking after her at every stop along the way. He rode them clear up to Chicago and back twice. Some say they seen him through Texas, up across Dakota, forget which one, and back down California. Some say it’s love, heartbreak. Some say he’s running.”

  “From the law?” Mort ventured.

  “Shit. Law the least of that boy’s worries. Got no worries now, I suppose, rest his soul. Aldo Venotucci had a man, a stone-cold killer, a ghost some called him because ain’t nobody ever seen him. They say he moves in the shadows; they say he hails from up north someplace. They say he don’t use nothing but a knife. Know how to use it too. Mean, hateful, loathsome, they say.”

  “Who say?”

  “Never mind who say! Aldo’s people, they put a hit out, and that man, whoever the hell he is, is the finger of death. And that’s who LeDuc was running from, if he was running at all.”

  “What do you think he was doing?” Mort asked, thumbing his Zippo in the hopes she’d need another light. “Running from or running to?”

  “You got a lot of questions, ain’t you? You a curious sort.” She did it then. She pulled another cigarette from the studded case and put it to those full, plum-painted lips. Nobody’s to say, but she may have done it just for her new friend Mort, just to see his flame jump up in his hand. “Love. That’s what LeDuc was after. He’d had it, and once you’ve had it, there ain’t nothing take its place. Not drink, not music, nothing.”

  * * *

  The party, such as it was, was still going when Mort took his leave. He shook their hands in turn, and Lil obliged him a kiss on the cheek. He took his hat and thanked them for the drinks, for the company, and for the story.

  Walking down the passageway, feeling the car as it swayed slowly like the tide coming in, he reflected on what he’d learned. Mort had killed many, and never asked for their stories either before or after, but this one fascinated him. He was intrigued to learn that Beale was a street. Always figured Beale was a man, he thought. “Beale needs this, Beale needs that,” they’d tell me.

  Cold as he may be—and Lil was right: “stone cold,” as many perceived him to be—Mort was surprised to find that he appreciated the story of love and loss. He’d never realized he had the capacity for anything close to reverence.

  He found his way to the luggage car and sat on a suitcase, took off his hat, and placed it on the long pine box in front of him. He lit a cigar, the clink of the Zippo’s lid breaking the silence, and watched the smoke drift over the coffin. He held the lighter up in front of his face and watched the way it caught the light that flickered t
hrough the windows like a film projector; life blinking past at thirty frames per second.

  “Hell, I ain’t never been in the navy, Jackson. Navy don’t know nothin’ about me. Shoot, I never left Chicago before today. Didn’t plan to leave at all, but once the train started moving, once you was dead, figured I might as well stay on. Might as well see what’s out there.”

  There was no sound as he placed the lighter next to the drink and knife already on the pine box like a still life. “Figured the GI I killed last week didn’t need this no more.” He blew a tired stream of smoke over the coffin. It looked like incense at Mass. “She out there, Jackson?”

  He’d decided, somewhere between the drinking and the storytelling, to find Jael Jean-Baptiste Toussaint himself and see what it was in a woman that would make a man kill and roam the country. She had sounded like a dream, and he aimed to find out on his own if she was one. He was paid to kill her, but this one would live, he’d decided. He just wanted to know her.

  He’d get off the train in Memphis, tag along at the back of that long and winding funeral procession from the station, past Pantaze, to Elmwood Cemetery, if only to hear the sad blues played beneath a canopy of oaks. Then he’d board this train again for New Orleans and those cemeteries where it was said that Jael Toussaint was known to hide.

  Green-Eyed Blues

  by DWIGHT FRYER

  Annesdale

  On a hot Saturday night in 1948, Aaron Washington sat at the Club Hippodrome bar. He looked in the mirror at his fine blue suit and down on his shiny tan and white Stacy Adams. He touched his military mustache and cleft chin.

  The bartender said, “Officer, more black coffee?”

  Aaron nodded.

  “Who’d a thought Memphis’d have Negro police?”

  Aaron shrugged and said, “I got to get out of here; you seen Mae?”

  “She left with Sol, but said she’d be back.”

  “Damn,” Aaron said, “I told her to leave Sol alone.”

  “Can’t nobody tell Mae nothing.”

  Cab Calloway was introducing his next song. “I think I’m in Harlem and not Memphis. What a good-looking crowd!”

  The audience, filled with brick layers, carpenters, garbage men, and maids, applauded and cheered. These folks were out for a night on the town and dressed to the nines. The liquor flowed.

  Cab said, “Everyone, do something for me. Sing after me the hi-dee-hi-dee-hi and the ho-dee-ho-dee-ho.” His band played, and Cab twisted around the stage. Then he arrived at the microphone to croon the opening words: “Hello, folks, here’s the story about Minnie the Moocher . . .”

  “Hi-dee-hi-dee-hi-dee-hi, ho-dee-ho-dee-ho-dee-ho,” the crowd sang along. Some stood, danced, and swayed. Here they mattered. Officer Aaron was smiling wide, laughing aloud, and clapping too.

  When the bartender answered the ringing phone, he handed it to Aaron.

  Aaron said, “Washington.” He frowned. “Tell the sergeant I’ll be right there.” He hung up the phone. “Duty calls.”

  “What is it?” the bartender asked.

  “They found a Negro woman dead on the Riverside cobblestones between Beale and Union. Tell Mae she needs to get another way home. Gotta go!”

  Aaron weaved his way through the crowd and out the rear entrance of the Hippodrome to his Hudson Commodore 8. He drove west down bustling Beale Street, and he passed the cotton bales lining Front, until he arrived at Riverside, near the banks of the Mississippi.

  * * *

  Aaron parked on the cobblestones leading down to the river. Then he recognized a familiar face. “Withers, they called you on this too?”

  The man said, “Yeah, for traffic and crowd control. That’s all Jim Crow thinks we can do, but I brought my camera.” Ernest Withers offered a big smile and gripped Aaron’s hand.

  “How long you been taking pictures?”

  “I got the photography bug in the Pacific.”

  “I served in Africa and Europe.”

  “Glad you made it back,” Ernest said, gripping his camera with both hands.

  “A miracle anyone could live through that.”

  “I’m not used to operating in hostile territory without a gun. You think they’ll let us carry soon?”

  Aaron shrugged, patted his pockets to discover his pistol was missing.

  They reached the onlookers and policemen at the bottom of the cobblestones. Waves lapped at the rocks and mixed with the crowd noise. A tugboat growled, and its floodlight flashed.

  Aaron and Ernest glimpsed the body through the crowd. She wore a red dress. Aaron edged forward; Ernest followed.

  “Where you boys going?” a white officer asked.

  Ernest showed his badge and said, “We’re police.”

  The white cop said, “Forgot you boys joined the force.” He handed Aaron a pink compact. “Give this to Sergeant Smith; he’s right up there. Might have something to do with the case.”

  Ernest trailed Aaron through the crowd to where the body lay facedown.

  Aaron whispered, “Lawd God have mercy. It’s Mae.”

  Ernest moved beside Aaron. “What did you say?”

  “Mae.”

  “Mae who?”

  “Mae Clark, my neighbor from Euclid Avenue. She works for the Carters and sings at the Hippodrome.”

  “When’d you see her last?”

  “This evening at the club.”

  Ernest put his hand on Aaron’s arm and whispered, “Sergeant Smith got eyes on every porch, in all the kitchens and back alleys.” He squeezed Aaron’s arm. “Be truthful when he asks.”

  Sergeant Smith squatted next to Mae’s body. “Withers, get over here and snap some pictures.”

  Ernest moved forward. Aaron put the compact in his coat pocket and followed too, while reflecting on how his evening started.

  * * *

  As the Hudson turned west toward Beale, Aaron gazed into his rearview mirror at his backseat passenger, then out the window at the Hunt-Phelan Home; the redbrick mansion glowed in the dark.

  Mae Clark giggled from the backseat. “Aaron,” she purred, “I ain’t ready. Park over there.”

  He downshifted from third to second gear, and the engine purred too.

  “Grandpap said his daddy shined boots for Grant out back of that house while the general planned the attack on Vicksburg.”

  “Officer, you shining any shoes tonight?” Mae tossed her powder-blue maid’s uniform aside and pulled a red satin dress over her head. She sprayed perfume on her bosom, neck, and arms. The flowery smell filled the automobile.

  Aaron shook his head and flashed a smile. He enjoyed watching and listening.

  “Them white dogwoods and azaleas make that place look spooky.” Mae pulled the nylon stocking above her right knee and attached it to her waiting garters.

  Aaron laughed, one eye on Beale traffic and the other on the twenty-year-old Mae.

  “What happened to that sweet gal from Euclid who wrote me all those letters during the war?”

  Mae put her left leg onto the middle of the front seat, adjusted the stocking.

  “She grew up, waiting on you to come back from the war. What it feel like to be one of Memphis’s finest?”

  He adjusted the mirror. “It was time for somebody Negro ’round this town to be a policeman. My number just came up.”

  “Huh, just like in ’42.” She extended her leg, almost touching the Hudson’s ceiling. Then she rolled the stocking from calf to knee and beyond.

  “Girl, you putting on quite a show back there.”

  Mae giggled again and wiggled across the backseat. She put on her shoes, opened her pink compact, and pouted into its mirror. She clipped on dangling white earbobs. And she put on a pretty smile.

  “Officer, you wasn’t the only person drafted during the war. You struggled ’gainst white folks over there; my problems come from the big house in Annesdale.”

  “Now, we can’t talk like that about the fine Carters.”

  Laughter eru
pted from Mae’s lips. She patted powder onto her chin, cheeks, and forehead. “Officer, don’t make me mess up my makeup.” She pressed the ruby lipstick to her mouth. This last touch completed her transformation.

  Aaron said, “You sure know how to go from housemaid to singer.”

  “What you expect from Queen Mae, opening act at the Club Hippodrome on Beale Street?”

  “We gone get our money’s worth tonight.”

  “You bet y’all will.”

  Aaron shifted the car’s gears and drove. He pulled into an alley toward the rear of the club. Mae reached out and touched his shoulder. Her thumb stroked his cheek.

  “Aaron, stop the car.”

  Chauffeur and new Memphis policeman Aaron Washington complied, like always for dignitaries.

  “You gone drive me home when I’m through?” she asked.

  He turned toward her. Her hand slid to the side of his face. She ran her fingers over his close-cropped hair.

  “Mae, you burning yo’ candle on both ends and the middle too . . . ain’t you?”

  Mae looked a little sad. “One of these days,” she said and her smile returned, “I’m gon’ be free, like them white folks y’all liberated.”

  “What’s Sol gonna say about me driving you home?”

  “He ain’t got nothin’ to say. Besides, I’m leaving town soon.”

  “Sol thinks he’s got a say about everything regarding you. Where you heading, and where’ll you get money to go?”

  “I got to get out of this hateful place, the whole South. I, I’ll get my money same place you got this Hudson.”

  “This car was Stephen Carter’s idea, not mine. He doesn’t like what he doesn’t think of.”

  Mae nodded, looked into his eyes. “Till I leave, officer, I jus’ need you to drive me home some nights. Ain’t that the real reason yo’ sponsor, Mr. Stephen Carter, Esquire, sold you this fine car?”

  Headlights appeared behind them. Aaron turned forward, shifted gears, weaved his way around the building corner and through the tight parking lot to the back entrance.

  “Mae, my mama told me my name means ‘light bringer from God.’” He turned to look at her. “I’ll be right glad to radiate you tonight.”