“I told them Sam thought somebody was followin’ him, and I told them about you. That’s about all.”
“Okay, now give me something you didn’t give them. Like the name of the white man Sam thought was following him.”
“He didn’t tell me no name.”
“But he probably knew.”
“Don’t mean I did.”
“But you could probably guess.”
Brown sat back in the guest chair and gave Whelan a sardonic look.
“Only white men I knew were saloonkeepers and a couple musicians. They all long gone. Don’t know any white men now, Mr. Whelan. I live on the West Side. I know the white priest at Saint Anna’s and the white man that fixes my teeth. And now I know you.” He smiled. “Look here, Whelan, how many black men you know?”
Whelan shrugged. There were blacks in Uptown, a lot of them, poor like most of the people in Uptown, but they tended to live in little pockets of the neighborhood. There was Sonny Riles, the fight trainer, and a little man named Cherry, one of the street people. And J.B., the security guard at the Salvation Army, and a neighbor across the street whom he had never spoken to, and the mail carrier. This was Chicago: just under half the population was black, but white people lived with whites, blacks with blacks. There were exceptions, in the upscale neighborhoods where young singles and people with a little coin mingled better, but those places remained oddities.
“Not many, Mr. Brown.”
“Y’see what I’m saying here?”
“I guess so, but let’s look at it from another angle. A friend of yours is killed, and the police have a couple kids in custody who have been preying on Maxwell Street. They never actually killed anyone before, but there’s a first time for everything. This time they crossed the line and now they’re a different kind of criminal. It’s not such a long stretch, Mr. Brown. I’d hate to be the PD assigned to defend these kids.”
Brown gave him a skeptical look. “All I know is, a white man come lookin’ around for Sam. Little bit later, Sam say a black man been looking for him. Then this lawyer hires you, says some relative looking for him, some relative Sam never had. All these people be looking for the man, and then he’s dead. Don’t sound like nothing to do with no little bad-ass boys and robbery to me. No, sir.”
“A lot of people would tell you it’s just all coincidence.”
“I don’t believe in coincidence.”
Whelan smiled, remembering the many times Detective Albert Bauman of Chicago’s Finest had said that. “I know another hardcase always tells me the same thing.”
“I’m not a hardcase.”
“Oh, I think you are. Anyway, I was in your position once. A friend of mine was killed and the police wanted to make it a simple robbery, and I couldn’t see it. It seemed to me there were other more likely possibilities. So maybe you’re right, and maybe I have just a tiny prejudice in your favor. I still don’t see what I can do about it. It’s an open case, and I can’t get involved in it.”
O.C. Brown tilted his gray head to one side and squinted slightly. For a moment, Whelan thought Brown had some private knowledge of him, that he could see right through the professional excuses. That he knew better.
“Seem to me like you can get involved in anything you want, Whelan.”
“Not if I want to continue to live in all this splendor.”
Brown made a little shrug. “What if I hire you to look into this relative? What about that? And this lawyer.”
“You can’t. I can have more than one client, but I can’t have a client hiring me to investigate another client.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m required, ethically, to preserve a certain amount of client privacy.”
“You never had a client you thought smelled a little funny?”
“Sure. Those ones, you turn over to the police. And the police already know about the lawyer.”
The old man ground out his cigarette and sat for a moment with his palms on his thighs. Old men showing their manners. Young ones never sat this way anymore. They sank back in their chairs and crossed their legs and stared belligerently around. Whelan felt sorry for him.
“I wish I could do something. And…who knows? Maybe I’ll be in a position to help a little bit later. Let’s just wait and see what the police do.”
“The police. You sure that’s what it is?”
“What do you mean, Mr. Brown?”
“Maybe you just can’t see a young fella like yourself workin’ for some…old man from the West Side.”
Whelan knew he meant working for an old black man. “I’d do something for you if I could, Mr. Brown.”
Brown nodded and got to his feet. He held out his dark brown hand with its busted nails and knuckles and Whelan shook it.
“Give you a ride home?”
“Got here by myself, I can get home by myself.”
“It’ll give me an excuse to get out of here.”
Brown smiled. “I told you you weren’t an office man.”
“Thank God for that.”
Six
Day 4, Monday
It was nearly 80 degrees, and Whelan put on some jazz and drove with the windows down.
“You like jazz, Mr. Brown?”
O.C. Brown looked at him as though he’d said something wonderfully funny. “Whatcha say, do I like jazz?” He laughed. “Man wants to know do I like jazz. Yeah, Mr. Whelan, I like jazz. I used to play a bit.”
“What did you play?”
“A little cornet. Some trumpet.”
“Any good?”
“Pretty fair.”
Brown fell silent and Whelan decided to leave him alone. Whelan saw him straighten slightly and look around.
“Where you taking me, Mr. Whelan?”
“Home.”
“Lake Shore Drive is faster.”
“Yeah, but I like to drive through neighborhoods. If you can’t look at the neighborhoods, you might as well not be in Chicago. You in a hurry?”
“No, that’s fine. It’s your time.”
As they cruised up Ashland, Whelan went over what Brown had told him and had to admit there was a lot of room for doubt here. Maybe Sam Burwell had been killed by a couple of teenagers looking for pocket money, but other people, several of them, had gone to a great deal of trouble to find the old peddler, and someone had already threatened Whelan.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“What?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“You’re gonna look into this?”
“I guess I am.”
“This gonna make trouble for you, Whelan?”
“Wouldn’t be surprised.” He smiled at Brown. “Trouble is my business.”
The old man laughed at that. “I can pay you.”
“It’s not a case yet. I just said I’d look into it.”
“What the hell’s the difference?”
“I’m not sure, but I’ll let you know if and when we need to talk about money. So tell me this: Why did you look me up if I was one of the people trying to find your friend?”
Brown looked out the window at the Mexican restaurants clustered around Division and Ashland. “Nobody seen Sam in two weeks. The police wouldn’t say much, but they said he’d been dead awhile. I think my boy been dead at least since last Saturday or Sunday. He was supposed to come by, have a drink with me. We were gonna fish one day last week. Gonna go down to Lincoln Park, we had this spot at the lagoon there. He never showed, he never called me. Not that he always called folks or kept his appointments. But I think he’d have called me sometime during the week, to tell me what happened. So…” He shrugged with one shoulder. “I think he was already dead, and you didn’t know it when you come lookin’ for him.”
“I think that’s why the police haven’t seriously considered me, too.”
“And like I said, I could tell some things about you when you come into my place. I can tell a little bit about damn near everybody comes into my place.”
> “Sounds like folklore to me.”
“Call it what you want, young man, but a saloonkeeper can tell a lot from the way a man carries himself in a tavern. Also, you got your own little way of talking to folks, the way you ask questions. I figure you’re an honest man, Mr. Whelan. You gonna give me an argument?”
“Not about that.”
Brown nodded. He looked out the window and began drumming with one hand on the doorframe. After a moment he stopped and looked at the radio.
“Hear that boy right there? That boy on the alto sax?”
“Sure.”
“That’s Lester Pettis. I played with him. He could play, Lester. Played with Bird, Coltrane, Dizzy, Ornette Coleman, Miles Davis, all of ’em. Was a time you couldn’t cut a record without Lester Pettis sitting in. Used to drink in my tavern when he was in town. Dead now. Most all my friends are dead, Mr. Whelan. The ones that aren’t, at least the ones from the old days…Fella I used to tend bar with on Forty-seventh Street, he’s in a home. Can’t walk, can’t nobody take care of him. Got a friend I go see about once a month, out in the VA hospital. Emphysema. Always says he feels better, but I know he ain’t never coming out. Another fella, white fella we knew, he was a drummer. Now he’s living on the street down there on Maxwell, callin’ himself a ‘picker.’ Sam told me he sees this fella diggin’ through the dumpsters down there for his supper.” He looked out the window again and shook his head.
“I’ll look into it,” Whelan repeated.
“Good.”
Whelan waited a couple of beats, then started. “So tell me about Sam Burwell.” He spoke casually, looking straight ahead. “You knew him a long time?”
He could see Brown studying him. “Thirty-eight years. More than that.”
“You didn’t grow up together, then.”
“No. Neither of us come from Chicago. I come up from Mississippi, Sam was from Georgia. Both of us come up during the war.”
Whelan smiled. The war. To this man’s generation, there was only one, no matter how many times the community of nations decided to square off.
“I stood up at his wedding.”
“What happened to his wife?”
“Erma passed. She passed a long time ago. Wasn’t but forty-two, forty-three years old.”
“And the son you told me about? You know where I can find his son?”
Brown seemed to hesitate for a moment. He frowned. “I suppose you can find Sam’s boy. He live on the West Side, I don’t know where exactly. Wouldn’t be much help. Him and Sam…you know how that is, Whelan.”
Whelan was about to pursue the question, but a note in Brown’s voice told him this was a stupid idea, a dead end, at least for the moment. He tried another angle. “Seems to me you got involved in this pretty quickly. Most people would’ve waited awhile, maybe a few weeks, to see what the police investigation turned up.”
“Maybe. Maybe the police can prove those little boys did it. If they can’t, maybe the one that killed Sam will be gone by the time they start lookin’ into it again.”
“Gone where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did Sam tell when it started? When he first felt he was being watched?”
“Yes, sir. First couple times were about a year ago.”
“Around when the white man came asking questions, the one who talked to Mr. Ellis.”
“That’s right.”
“And that was the beginning?”
“Yeah, that’s when it started.”
“And then?”
“Again in the spring. Back up there, Whelan, where you live.”
“And the man in the car?”
“Summer. July, August. ’Bout then.”
“So, last fall and then during the spring and summer. Was there anything unusual happening in his life then? Was he involved in anything—”
“Involved in what? He was down on his luck, Whelan, he wasn’t no crook.”
“That’s not what I meant. The first thing you have to look at is whether he gave anybody a reason to be looking for him. And I don’t know anything about this man yet. You don’t give up much, Mr. Brown.”
“Got nothin’ to give up. I’m the one asking you to look into this, Mr. Whelan. What kinda sense does it make for me to hold things back?”
“I didn’t say you were doing it intentionally. People tend to be protective of their memories of the dead. I’m just trying to see if anything stands out as an obvious motive.”
“If there is, I can’t see it.”
“If there isn’t, the police are probably right. Those are your choices, Mr. Brown. Either his killing was random, related to robbery, or it was planned, by someone who knew him and had some grudge.” Whelan watched the traffic, but he could feel Brown’s gaze on him. “I know Sam left town for a time when he was younger. What can you tell me about that?”
There was a pause, and then Brown spoke slowly. “How you know that?”
“The lawyer told me.”
“How he know about that?”
“I gather the client told him.”
“He say where Sam went when he left town?”
“No. He didn’t seem to know that.”
Brown nodded. “Well, all right. If he knew that—well, that would be something, ’cause Sam didn’t talk about it. I still think there’s somethin’ real funny about this ‘client,’ Whelan. And about this lawyer, too.”
“You won’t think he’s funny when you meet him. Anyhow, what about those times? Why did he leave town?”
Brown gave his head a little tilt and looked straight ahead. “Wanted to make himself a dollar, I guess. Everybody wanted to make a dollar. Wasn’t no different then than it is now.”
Whelan took his eyes off the road to glance at his passenger. The old man sat stiffly, still staring straight ahead, fighting any eye contact. “And maybe he was in trouble, Mr. Brown.”
Brown shot him a quick look, direct and resentful. “Yeah, he got himself in some trouble. Mostly, he let other folks get him in trouble.” Brown looked away and made it clear that this avenue of approach was closed.
“You don’t want me to know about it because you’re afraid it will color my impressions of your friend.” He sighed. A driver cut in ahead of him and Whelan took a whack at the horn with the heel of his hand. “And even if it does, it won’t make me look any the less hard. This is what I do, Mr. Brown. You either have confidence in me or hire somebody out of the Yellow Pages. There’s a real hotshot outfit on River Road, they’ll show you machines and gadgets you thought only James Bond had.”
“Listen here, nobody insulted you. Calm down, young man.”
Whelan stopped for a red light and took his hands off the wheel. “Okay. I’m calm. I’m doing deep breathing. Talk to me.”
“He got himself into some trouble, like I said. But it was thirty years ago and it wasn’t with the law. Got nothing to do with now. Somebody killed him now, Mr. Whelan. That’s what we got to look at.”
“You’re right.” The light changed, and the guy in the car behind them leaned on his horn. Whelan waited a beat, looked at the other driver in his rearview mirror, and then pulled slowly into the intersection.
Brown took a quick look at the driver behind them. “That boy look about sixteen. You messing with his mind there?”
“Just trying to teach him Zen. So when did Sam come back to Chicago?”
“ ’Bout nineteen sixty.”
“But he didn’t like to talk about it.”
“That’s right. It just didn’t work out for him. Told me he made some money pretty fast—Texas, this was—and lost it just as fast. Didn’t say how. I just don’t think he did himself any good.” Brown turned an unlit cigarette over and over in his fingers. “I know it didn’t do him no good.”
“What do you mean?”
Brown gave a little shrug. “When he came back, he was thirty-three, thirty-four years old and he looked fifty.” He looked at Whelan and raised his eyebrows. “That drin
k. That’s what it was, that drink. He always liked his drink. Couldn’t nobody drink like Sam, couldn’t nobody keep up with him. Never seemed to give him any trouble. You know how it is with some folk. But when he come back, he wasn’t the same.”
“He was an alcoholic.”
“I don’t know. That’s a doctor’s word, Mr. Whelan. I don’t know what they mean by it. All I know is he had himself a real problem with the drink. He hit it real hard. Drank a lot, you could smell it on him. Had that cigarettes-and-whiskey smell. But that might’ve been because he was broke. Things just didn’t work out for him, and when he come back he didn’t have anything. And you could see it in his eyes; he didn’t think things were gonna change much.”
“You must have some idea where he’d been. Something must have come out in casual conversation.”
“He went all over. Went up to Detroit for a while, went out west, got as far as Phoenix. Down to Texas, like I said. Just moving wherever he thought there was work, wherever it looked like a black man might be able to make hisself a dollar. Which wasn’t every place.”
“I know. It was the fifties.”
“That’s right. He even went down to Mexico for a time. That’s what he told me, anyhow. Mexico.” The way Brown said Mexico, he might have been talking about Sumatra.
Whelan drove past Douglas Park and took a quick glance at Brown.
“You going home or to the bar?”
“The bar. If I leave the hired help in charge long enough, I won’t have no bar.”
A moment later Whelan pulled up in front of the Blue Note and parked. He turned off the engine but left the radio going. He lit a cigarette and looked at Brown.
“I still feel like I’m just looking at pieces. I need the whole picture.”
“What do you need?”
“I’d like to know why this man left town.”
“They’s lots of folk leave town, Whelan. Happens all the time.”
“And if I was trying to find out why one of them was killed, I’d want to know why he left his hometown to bum around for four or five years. Doesn’t sound to me like a man who left willingly.”
“How do you know that? Maybe he—”
“Because he came back. He came back home, O.C.”
The Maxwell Street Blues Page 9