Fortunately, the girl didn’t know where the gears were. Dorie had no trouble following her through the winding streets, over to the Country Club Plaza, and north to the Knights of Columbus Hall on Sixteenth Street. Light hung in the sky, the last fringe of the day. An unexpected warmth lingered, too, radiating off cobblestones and the tall columns that fronted the hall. Thalia parked the new roadster badly across the street and stalked up the steps. Dorie found a spot in a gravel lot down the street, then followed the girl inside.
Despite the classical facade of their building, the Knights of Columbus weren’t known for lavish interiors. The Episcopalians had built a modern church on Ward Parkway two years before, abandoning this one. Unfortunately, they’d taken all the pews with them. Folding chairs covered the large wooden floor. A choir loft with fancy carvings and a bit of gilt was the only trace of Episcopalians. Most of the windows had been boarded up to save on the heating bill.
She settled onto a hard chair halfway up. The rest of the choir hadn’t arrived. Barnaby Wake looked through sheets of music as Thalia dug through her purse on the edge of the stage. They whispered to each other. Then turned their backs. Thalia climbed the stairs to the stage, took a sheet of music from Wake. He put his arm around her shoulders as they pointed at the music. Wake went to the piano and picked out a set of notes. Thalia sang them, sounding rather off-key. He played again; she sang again.
After ten or fifteen minutes of this, Thalia threw down her music and cried, “I can’t do this. She’s watching me!” Dorie was jostled from her reverie. She lighted a Lucky and smiled at the girl.
“I hate her! How am I supposed to learn this with her sitting there staring? She is like my mother, her eyes, always judging me. I feel this— this tide of spite, of jealousy. She watches me and wants everything I have! Well, she can’t have it. It’s my life and she should stay the hell out of it!”
Wake put his arm around Thalia again, whispering in her ear. Thalia’s face was red; she shook her head angrily. “No. No!” Then she burst into tears.
Dorie took a deep drag on the cigarette and blew smoke toward the high ceiling. A drama in her honor. How special. It would have been more enjoyable if Thalia wasn’t half right.
Wake stomped down the aisle. Dorie stood up, took a last smoke, and smashed the butt under her shoe.
“Miss Lennox, this is intolerable. I don’t know what you’ve done to that poor girl, but—”
“Done?”
“To make her so upset. You must have said something to her. She’s never like this.”
“I haven’t spoken a word to her all day.”
Wake scowled. “I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
The choir director seemed a little haggard now, less confident of his charms than at the coffee shop. He was dressed to the nines in a well-cut gray pinstriped suit, flaming red tie, and cream-colored shirt starched within an inch of its life. But his tan had faded, leaving his close-shaven cheeks gray and his dark eyebrows hooding low over his blue eyes. He seemed to ooze a sort of musk some men had. Left over from the cavemen days. Dorie suppressed an urge to grunt.
“That’s the nicest request to scram I’ve had all week, Mr. Wake.”
“Barnaby. Please.” He gave her the eye-contact treatment.
“Barnaby.” She sat down again and shook out another Lucky. The hall was littered with butts. She reached over a few chairs and grabbed a sandbag ashtray. “Somebody’s going to burn down this place.”
“Miss Lennox. I asked you politely, but I can ask you again if you want.”
“Ask away. I’m always curious to hear the way men from the East Coast phrase things.”
She lighted another cigarette and dropped the match in the ashtray. Wake looked back at Thalia, who was sitting on the stage, blinking wet eyelashes. He reached down and pulled Dorie up by the arm, his hand tight. The heat off him was palpable as he spat his words.
“I’m warning you. This is not a public place. This is my rehearsal, my choir, and you are trespassing. Get your sorry pinko derriere out of here before I call the police.”
“The police know I’m to follow Thalia, to protect her, to be her mother’s eyes and ears. Go ahead and call them.” She smiled. Derriere?
He pushed her away, disgust on his face. His jaw clenched, then his fists. It was a race between words and action. She raised her eyebrows and took another drag. Wake’s face turned crimson, nearly matching his tie. Suddenly, Thalia appeared at his side.
“Come on, Barnaby. She’s not worth it.” Thalia pulled his arm, breaking the fever. He blinked at her, coming back. “Come on, baby,” she whispered.
The door opened at the front of the hall, bringing in a gust of wind and dry leaves. Two women wearing fur stoles and delicate hats squealed as they held on to their hair. They walked toward the front, a jump in their step as they spied Wake.
“Barnaby darling! Everyone is so excited about the Willkie rally, I can’t tell you! It’s got quite a stir going all over town.” The younger woman, slender and bright in a green dress and matching gloves, threw herself at the choir director, smothering him in a hug.
“Thank you, Agnes. Good news.” He patted the fur across her shoulders, stroking it as Thalia stood by stiffly. Extricating himself, he smoothed his suit and cleared his throat. “Oh, look, Mrs. Wintraub.”
Dorie sat back and watched the parade. Mostly women, dressed as if this rehearsal were a meeting with the King George, in their elegant furs and long gloves, scarves and silks, they impressed her as a very social lot. Chattering, stroking one another’s clothing, squealing, hugging, smiling with all their teeth— it was quite a drama, almost as good as Thalia’s. Some men arrived, serious types, some with wives, some solo, their girths suggesting rich food and deep voices.
One by one, they eventually lined up on the stage and began to sing a rousing American anthem Dorie had learned in fourth grade. She had never understood about the grapes of wrath back then. Now, thanks to Steinbeck, the grapes were everywhere, angry and forlorn. The voices echoed around the hall, thin and high, as if the air weren’t rich enough to carry them. Wake waved his arms energetically. They reached the end of the first verse. The accompanist started in on the music for the second, when Wake beat his skinny stick on the podium.
“People, people! Let me hear you say hallelujah!”
In unison, the choir said in a weak voice, “Hallelujah.”
“With spirit! With the love of God and country in your soul!”
They tried again, louder.
“Deep in your heart— what lies there? Is it not the love of all things American, for the red, white, and blue, for the rights and freedoms we hold so dear? Do you love America?” He paused but only a giggle came from the choir. The women looked around nervously. “Do you love America?”
“Yes! I love America!” The squeaky voice of Agnes piped up. Others chimed in. “Yes! Yes! Hallelujah!”
Finally, things reached a feverish pitch, hearts opened, love of country aroused. The song continued. And, Dorie had to admit, it sounded better. A big old amen to better music. What would democracy do without it? Oh, the terrible swift sword.
She lit another cigarette. It was almost over.
They all went home alone. That was perplexing. Dorie figured Thalia and the choir man would take off for some clubbing, or a rendezvous at his place. But she marched to her roadster alone. A gray sedan came for Wake, driven by a chauffeur, with a man in the back. Thalia’s expression was icy but reserved as she watched him pull away. They hadn’t had a chance for more whispers after the rest of the choir arrived. Dorie would have bet her pinkie finger that they had more to say.
Dorie followed the girl home as she wrestled with the transmission again. Watched as she went into the house and turned out the porch light. A deliberate kiss-off, too deliberate. But her charge was safe at home, wasn’t she? It was not quite ten o’clock. She drove to the corner and parked in the shadow of an oak, waiting for Thalia to leave. An hour later, s
he hadn’t. Dorie threw out the last cigarette butt and drove home to the boardinghouse.
Autumn chill had arrived. Time for gloves and wool jackets and scarves. She didn’t have a fox stole. Didn’t have to wear it to church. That was something. This was the first night in weeks that she’d beat eleven o’clock and didn’t need her key at the boardinghouse. An entire blissful night of sleep awaited her.
At the steps, her name was hissed in the darkness.
“Who is it?” She looked up and down the sidewalk, barren in both directions. An automobile passed by quickly. She looked up at the peeling gray mass of a house, windows yellow through filthy glass. She spun around. The shadows across the street were still.
“Miss Dorie.” The voice again, an old, creaky one.
She walked to the corner of the house and peered into the dark alley of dirt between the boardinghouse and the Ballard house next door. Someone was playing a piano in the Ballard’s parlor. The notes spilled thinly into the shadows.
“Who’s there?”
“Down here, miss.”
At the far front corner of the Ballard house, beyond the patched siding and withered chrysanthemums, the bent figure of Old Jenny tilted against a fence post. Her hair was wild and tangled, as usual; a tattered green shawl dangled from one shoulder. Her quilts and signboard lay in a heap. Dorie walked toward her until she could see the old woman’s face. Her wrinkled expression had a crazed, frantic quality that Dorie had seen before.
“It’s cold tonight, Jenny.”
Jenny jerked a nod, her eyes darting over her left shoulder into the shadows.
“What is it?”
Jenny took a ragged breath. “Come closer. Somethin’ you gotta see.”
She stopped within an arm’s length. “What is it, Jenny?”
The old woman’s face began to dissolve, as if she had been frozen. Dorie could see now the blue cast to her complexion, the bloodless sockets, the dry lips, the tremors in her hands. Jenny’s head lurched on her neck. Dorie put out a hand to hold her up. She weighed less than a bird.
“Are you sick?” The old woman had a powerful odor to her always, but now, in the sharp air, there was a smell of death.
Jenny collapsed in Dorie’s arms, her legs giving out, her mouth falling open as her head fell. She lowered the old woman to her quilts, arranging her head. She pulled the shawl and the quilt around her. Jenny had lost her mind in the heartaches of the Depression. And now, as she had so long predicted, the end was near. Should she haul the old lady to the hospital? Or did she want to die where she had lived, here on the dirty sidewalk?
The powerful arm that hauled Dorie to her feet spun her backward against the lamppost. Her head bounced off the metal pole, the clang surprising her as, stunned, she fell forward before catching herself.
The man stood in the shadows, but close enough. He wore the same hat as the man in the car the night before— a brown fedora with a silk ribbon. Otherwise, she didn’t recognize him— squat and muscular, wearing a dark suit, with a face out of a boxing magazine. She did recognize the piece in his right hand.
“Let’s go, girlie,” he growled.
“Jenny needs medical help. We can’t just—”
“Sure we can. And we is. Move.”
She held on to the lamppost at her back. She looked up at the quiet boardinghouse, a picture of evening solace, down at green awnings of Steiner’s grocery, across at Joe’s Garage. Why did things like this happen in her neighborhood? She really was going to have to move.
“Nobody’s coming for ya, girlie. Let’s go.”
“You sure? You all alone?” She gauged his itch. He waved the gun back and forth, an extension of his arm. What would he do if she hollered? What did she have to lose?
“Hey. Help! Somebody help me!”
He swung at her then, catching the back of her head with the side of the pistol, throwing her against the lamppost again. She slid to her knees, stars blinking on the pavement in front of her eyes. “I told you to shut it. Get up.” He pulled her upright then and pushed her toward the corner. “Move your feets.”
A light came on in Joe’s Garage. His door opened, then shut. Dorie took a step in the monkey’s direction to keep him from lobbing another on her. So much for help from her friends.
Old Jenny lay with her eyes shut, mouth still hanging open. A huff of vapor came from her. She was still alive.
“Faster now.” The man poked the gun in her back. “See that boiler on the corner? That’s where we’re going. And shut up, or you get it between the shoulder blades.”
Not that there was much choice. She felt her empty pocket again. Her head was booming with pain. And then there was the piece in his hand. She’d never been a fan of bullet holes.
The midnight blue sedan loomed shiny and ominous. She stopped. A prickling sweat rose on her back. Once inside, it would be over. She’d learned that much in this business. Her head was clearing, and she glanced back at the goon. He wasn’t so big. And careless with the pistol, swinging it. Could I kick it out of his hand? she wondered. And then what?
He was opening the door. She stepped back, cold fear running down her spine and into her feet. She couldn’t get in. No. She took another step back.
He pointed the gun at her, wagging it toward the open door. “This way, girlie. We’re going for a ride.”
A whoosh of air behind her was the only clue. The figure sprang in front of her, from nowhere, shoving her back toward Steiner’s, into an empty fruit box.
“She’s not going anywhere with you, bud.”
A woman. Her voice was raspy but rich. She wore a man’s suit, or trousers and a smart blazer, and a low-brimmed hat over her twisted black hair. In her hand, her dark-skinned hand, was a small pistol. She pointed it at the goon. He stumbled in surprise, falling off the curb and catching himself with the car door. Before he could get his breath, the woman hit his elbow with her knee. The gun spun out of his hand. It clattered to the gutter, where she scooped it up.
“That’s right. Get into your beater and get on your way. Your business is done here.” The woman stepped close to him, her tall, trim figure overpowering him where he crouched in the open car door. “And tell your boss to stay off Charlotte Street. This here’s sacred ground. You got that?” She poked her gun in his face for good measure. “You got it?”
The woman stood on the curb, pistol pointed, as he scrambled into the car and drove away. He took the corner at full speed, tires squealing. The woman laughed, watching him. Then she spun on her heel and cocked her head at Dorie.
“You can’t let men march you around like that. They’ll be marching you down the aisle before you can blink, then making you wear an apron all day, fetch their slippers like a dog.”
Dorie stepped out from under the awning, pulling her jacket square again. She rubbed a lump forming on the back of her head. The Negro woman put her pistol into her handbag. She swung the man’s gun around her fingers, examining it before sticking it in her jacket pocket. She had striking features, a straight nose, full red lips, beautiful dark eyes, and cocoa skin. The whites of her eyes seemed to glow.
The woman pursed her lips. “I read in the Star you got pinched for using that blade of yours. Your knife and your temper never did mix well.”
“Well, he deserved it. He’ll be all right.”
“As soon as his liver heals.” The woman grinned, her teeth setting off sparks.
Dorie leaned in. “Do I know you?”
“You need some help watching your back. You can count on me.” She tapped Dorie lightly on the shoulder. “Try to stay away from trouble, honey.”
The woman walked around the corner. She moved like a dancer, almost at a run, but too graceful, too smooth. Dorie watched, numb. She shook her head, feeling the sore spots and cursing. Then it hit her.
“Hey, hold up!” Dorie ran to the corner. The street was empty. The woman had vanished into the shadows and the night. She stood gasping, heart pounding faster than it had when the
man put a pistol to her back. She pulled air into her lungs and felt a strange burn in her chest. She blinked into the dark.
“Arlette?”
Joe hunched over the prostrate figure on the sidewalk. He had covered Jenny with a blanket from the garage, an oil-stained scrap of quilted cloth. Dorie crouched down beside them, touching the old woman on the cheek.
“She’s still breathing,” Joe said.
“Barely.” Her chest rose slightly on short, choppy breaths. “Let’s carry her inside.” Dorie ran up the boardinghouse steps and opened the front door. She propped open the screen with a broken flowerpot and went back to Joe and Jenny.
“She don’t look hurt. Do you think she’s dying?”
“I don’t know, Joe. Help me. Take her feet.”
She jostled Jenny’s head and shoulders into her arms, the woman still cradled in quilts. She weighed almost nothing, skin and bones and a bit of cloth. They carried her up the stairs and into the boardinghouse, coming through the door as Mrs. Ferazzi came out of her rooms under the stairs.
“Here, here. What’s this?” Mrs. F. clucked, tying her robe tightly around her middle.
“She collapsed outside,” Joe said.
“She can’t come in here; she’s probably got fleas and lice and who knows what. Dorie, please, turn right around and take her back outside.”
Dorie continued toward the parlor. Mrs. F. followed, chattering on, her voice increasingly high-pitched as they ignored her. Her hands flapped around.
“Not on the sofa, for God’s sake. Not that pillow. Mother of God, what are you doing? She’s filthy! She smells like the sewer.”
Dorie spread the quilts over Jenny, tucking in her arms. “Do you have an extra blanket, Mrs. F.?”
“I certainly do not. Not for street urchins and crazy old biddies.”
She turned to stare at the landlady. “Could you please call an ambulance, then?”
Mrs. Ferazzi was dumbstruck. She held her sides tightly and didn’t move.
Swing Town Mysteries Dorie Lennox Box Set Page 37