by P. N. Elrod
“I guess so. What’s the deal?”
“My friend is a federal agent, but I would prefer not to have him or his cronies seen near the house. Being part of an official group, they might attract the attention of the papers and—”
“Don’t have to draw me a picture, I know what a reporter can do with this kind of story. Where do you want me to take ’em?”
He gave me an address and said to knock on the back alley exit door.
“I’ll meet you there shortly,” he added.
“Wait a minute, you’re supposed to take it easy. Hello? Hello?”
He’d cut the connection. Maybe I’d have to break my private rule about leaving friends alone when it came to hypnosis and give him a fish-eye whammy about taking a rest.
Gordy asked what was going on, and I told him, then he offered to help me shift the bodies.
“I can manage,” I said.
“My car’s already in the back. What were you gonna do, haul ’em out the front door so some old lady walkin’ her dog sees and goes into fits?”
Okay . . . I let him talk me into it.
But we didn’t get a chance to do anything about it right away. First Bobbi all but shoved him onto a kitchen chair and made him have some coffee, to keep her company, she said. I think it was more so she could keep an eye on me, get me to talk about other disasters than my own. The ones going on in the rest of the world made my troubles seem small, like the Ohio River flooding. It washed half a million people out of their homes, killed over two hundred, was turning Cairo into an island, the WPA and CCC were up to their asses laying down sandbags, and more rain and snow were on the way. I wondered if I needed to be worrying about my folks and the rest of the family in Cincinnati. The city was well downstream from things, but not all that far distant, and the water had to go somewhere sooner or later.
But even with this bleak stuff for a topic it was good to just sit and gas on about it with friends. It was something normal, and I really needed a big dose of normal, a moment of quiet before the rest of the night jumped on my back and started beating me up. Of course, it might not be that way, but recent events were to the point I was starting to always expect the worst.
Not a good way to live.
As for the wider world, Bobbi wondered what Escott thought about the way things were going in Europe. I didn’t have much of an answer since we’d not really had a chance to talk politics lately, and what was the problem, anyway? Turned out that the Germans weren’t giving the British a straight answer on making a lasting peace—when they even bothered to answer. The fracas seemed pretty far away until I thought about Coldfield’s radio bringing Hitler’s voice right into his living room.
“Think it’ll be war?” Bobbi asked.
I shrugged. “You know more’n I do about it.”
“They keep talking about peace all the time. The British.”
“Which means they’re scared shitless,” said Gordy. “Every fight I ever been in with the wiseguys in this town always happened right after the bosses arranged for an understanding. You think it’s gonna be the usual business, just start to breathe easy, and next thing you know bullets are flying.”
Which wasn’t exactly reassuring to me, what with my hopes of getting Angela to lay off and be nice. I stared at the scarred surface of the kitchen table, idly picking at some splinters around a hole that happened when Escott and I had to fight a crazy man wielding an ice pick. The place got quiet, and when I finally noticed, it was in time to see Bobbi and Gordy both looking at me like I’d sprouted a third ear.
“What?” I asked.
“Think about something else for a minute, why don’t you?” Bobbi suggested.
She never lets me get away with anything, especially when it’s not good for me. Well, if she wanted me to think about something else, we’d have to find a polite way of asking Gordy to leave us alone for a while. That wasn’t too likely, so I settled for gently bumping my knee against hers under the table until she smiled.
“I’m done,” Gordy abruptly announced, standing and putting his coffee cup in the sink. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
Bobbi washed things up while he backed the Caddie out, spinning the wheel this way and that until the car was close to the door. I kept my eyes open, but no neighbors got curious enough to take a look. Maybe they were all cozy by their radios listening to Lum and Abner, or whatever was on tonight. Too bad I couldn’t do the same.
I slung Deiter over my shoulder like a sack and carried him out to the car. My frame’s not as large as Gordy’s, but I’m a lot stronger, so it was no hardship. Besides, I enjoyed the look on his usually phlegmatic face as I shoved Deiter into the backseat like he was a two-year-old. Twice more and the Three Stooges were ready to roll. I made a quick trip to the basement safe to get that fifty out and shoved it in my pocket with Escott’s pipe, tobacco pouch, and Webley. Then I pulled on my long overcoat, third best hat, locked the house up—for all the good it seemed to do—and piled into the front seat of the Caddie. Bobbi sat in the middle and snuggled hard against me as Gordy drove to the address I’d been given.
It was near the edge of the Bronze Belt, an aging vaudeville house turned film theater, though the movie title up on the marquee was new to me. I thought I knew ’em all. Gordy passed it, made two turns, and rolled into the brick-lined alley behind the place. He cut the lights, but left the motor idling. I got out, found the back door, and rapped it a few times. On the other side I heard music and dialogue from the show that was running. It sounded like a drama.
The door opened and a flashlight beam caught me square in the kisser. I winced against it.
“Easy, brother,” I said, putting my hand up.
The light stayed put. “I ain’t your brother ’less you gone color-blind in a big way.” I could guess the voice belonged to a black man, and he didn’t sound too happy.
“Keep that in my eyes and I’ll go blind, period.”
That got me a single dry cough of a laugh and he aimed the light at the floor.
“My name’s Fleming, I was told to come here.”
“I know. I’m Mr. Delemare.”
I stuck my hand out, but he didn’t take it.
“Boss said you had a few bundles to store, but not for long.”
“That’s right. I’ll keep a watch on ’em until someone comes to take’em off my hands.”
“Okay, but you have to be quiet. The audience is here to see the movie, not hear you banging around.”
“No problem,” I promised. “Where do you want the bundles?”
“Ten miles southeast of Halifax, but since that ain’t gonna happen, you can put everything just inside the door. I’ll hold it so it don’t slam shut.”
“Thanks,” I said, and went out to the car and gave the news to Gordy. He nodded and cut the motor as I opened up the back. I did the hauling again, though he helped pull them out. Delemare watched, dark face made darker still by what seemed to be an expression of perpetual annoyance. It could have been for me specifically or for the whole world in general, no way to tell, yet. He didn’t seem to be in the least surprised that the bundles were three unconscious white men. Most of his concern was for maintaining complete silence, though I didn’t see how anyone could have heard us above the movie.
“I knew you’d come back, Johnny,” a woman with a silken voice whispered above us.
“But I can’t stay, doll. I’m in trouble—bad trouble,” a man, presumably Johnny, rumbled in reply.
“Oh, Johnny!”
The music soared dramatically. From it, I got the impression they were kissing. Couldn’t see anything of the screen, I caught only a few vertical slivers of light coming through a thick velvet curtain hanging behind it. Its purpose seemed to be to keep the screen before it from being backlighted and thus spoiling the film’s projected image.
I wanted to see more, but Delemare was in a hurry to lock up again because of the draft coming in. He said it was twenty degrees out, and I belie
ved him as I returned to the car to say good-bye to Bobbi. Gordy was pretty decent about giving us some time and strolled a few yards off to have a smoke in the cold. I slid into the front seat next to her.
“Can’t we wait around a little longer?” she asked.
“Too much of a risk for Gordy. He’s in enough hot water helping me this much. He can do without calling special attention to himself by having Escott’s fed see him. Don’t worry, after I deliver this bunch, I’m going to try to wind things up with Angela tonight.”
“If she’s at this Flora’s place.”
“I’m willing to bank on it.”
“Just don’t get killed.”
“That’s at the top of my list.”
“I mean it, Jack. When you were telling us about what happened last night I could tell how much you were leaving out so you wouldn’t scare me. Well, it didn’t work.”
“Next time I’ll have to try harder.”
But she didn’t think that was even remotely funny. “You wouldn’t say such things if you could see your eyes.”
I glanced at the rearview mirror, touched it. I made a fingerprint smudge, but raised no image. “Don’t think I want to, I probably wouldn’t like it much.”
“I sure as hell don’t. I want you to come back in one piece—inside and out. Don’t let this kill your soul, Jack. I’ve seen it happen to others.”
“What others?”
“Gordy for one. The things he does, the people he deals with, that’s what got to him.”
“But Gordy and I are different.”
“Then what about you and Charles?”
“Charles? You trying to tell me his soul is dead?”
“Or so buried it might as well be. Haven’t you figured that out by now? You told me how cold he can be at times. He wasn’t born that way, life did something to him and hollowed him out. All the stuff he does now is to cover that space up so people won’t see it or ever guess it’s there.”
“Bobbi, this is—”
“Not crazy talk.”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
“The hell you weren’t. You can think it’s crazy, but trust me, I know what I’m saying on this. I don’t want you ending up like Charles. He’s charming, he’s fun, and he’s smart, but think about what’s underneath all that. I don’t want the same thing happening to you, taking you away from yourself.”
“Nothing’s going to take me away.”
“Oh, sweetheart, don’t you know?”
“Know what?”
She touched the side of my face, looking as sad as a crucifixion angel. “It’s already started.”
3
GORDY and Bobbi were long gone; I sat in the darkness behind the theater screen feeling worried about myself at a time when I didn’t want to feel worried about myself. I had enough trouble on my hands not to be borrowing a fresh batch by looking into a mirror for something I couldn’t see in more ways than one.
Along with singing, one of Bobbi’s many other talents was for slicing through the fat to get straight to the bone; she was right about Gordy, and my instincts said she was right about Escott. As for being right about me, well, thinking about it gave me the creeps, so I tried not to and failed, of course, pacing around in the small space looking for a wall to climb if it got bad enough.
For distraction I checked on the Stooges, but they were all quiet, if probably cold and uncomfortable on the bare concrete floor, but too bad for them. I wondered when the hell Escott planned on coming; I wanted to be shed of this pit and away from my thoughts, to be doing something. Deiter had given out with a possibly hot lead that could take me straight to Angela, and it needed checking before tomorrow arrived.
The movie kept my impatience at bay for a time, but the voices were unfamiliar and I wondered who was in it; I thought I’d seen and knew’em all. Since my charges were tied up safe, I used a narrow passage that Delemare had taken earlier to go out front and followed it, eventually finding a peephole in the thin plywood wall that looked into the auditorium. What lay on the other side brought me up short.
I expected the audience to be black, but not the actors on the screen. I’d heard of such pictures, but never actually seen one with an all-black cast. Now and then you’d spot a performer doing a specialty number in a film, like Bill Robinson or the Nicholas Brothers, but not a whole movie like this. I was fascinated. Except for the Cotton Club in New York and the Shoe Box here in the city, there wasn’t a lot of mixing going on between the races, and people on both sides of the fence often actively discouraged it.
The plot was about a guy accused of murder who had to prove that a gang had done the dirty work. It was no worse than others I’d seen along the same lines and this one had, surprisingly, worked musical numbers into the story, only they looked like they belonged to a totally different movie. The thing wound itself up with a gunfight and a deathbed confession; the guilty man had done it to remove his rival and get the girl. As she and the hero had a final closing clinch, the music soared, faded, and was replaced by the authoritative tones of a newsreel. The news was all about white people. The audience began pulling on their coats and hats and filing out, except for a few staying on to see the show again.
When the film started up with the opening fanfare, Delemare came back and found me getting absorbed in the story.
“What the hell you doin’?” he demanded.
“Shh,” I said, whispering. “You want them to hear? I’m watching the show.”
“But that’s an all-colored movie.”
“I had noticed.”
“What is it? Some kind of curiosity for you like Believe It or Not?”
“Huh? I was just trying to see how they did the frame against Johnny.”
“What the hell for?”
Then someone in the audience told us to shut up. I shrugged and went back along the passage to the backstage area, Delemare right behind me.
“Why you watchin’ a colored movie?” he still wanted to know. I got a better look at him now, medium in height and build, balding, gray hair at the temples, age anywhere between forty and sixty. He had a set-in, grim expression that may have been the result of the hard times or just the natural bent of his personality.
“Why not? I like movies and that’s what’s running. I’m going nuts waiting back here in the dark. You got something against me watching the show? I’ll pay for it if you want.”
“I don’t need your money.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Just ain’t natural, I’m thinkin’.”
“What? For a white guy to watch a black movie?”
He grunted and it could have meant anything from contempt to an affirmative or maybe both.
“Well, it’s interesting to me. Where’d it come from?”
“Hollywood, where else?”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. This is what gets shot when the white crust is put away for the night.”
“And there’s no white people in any of ’em?”
“You see many black people in the white films?”
“Good point. No wonder we’re so pig ignorant about each other.”
“Oh, jeez, you’re not gonna start about how them actors are a credit to their race and all that crap, are you? If there’s one thing I can’t belly it’s some do-goodin’ social soldier—”
“Whoa there, I’m not—”
“—out to raise me above myself an’—”
“You’ve got the wrong—”
“You comin’ in here an’ staring bug-eyed—”
“Now just a frigging minute—”
“Makin’ judgments about what you don’t know—”
Then several people on the other side of the screen told us to shut the hell up or take it outside. Delemare and I glared at each other for a moment, then he made a shrugging, throwing-away gesture and walked off, though he didn’t get far. Someone knocked at the back exit. He beat me to it, brought up his flashlight, and opened the d
oor a crack. It was Escott. Delemare blinded him with the light, then grudgingly admitted him to the inner sanctum.
“Mr. Coldfield sends his regards,” he said to Delemare, who was unimpressed.
“You tell that snot-nosed kid he’s gettin’ too big for his britches, an’ I’m only doin’ this for his sister, for her being such a lady.”
“I’ll be sure to pass that along to him.”
“You do that. Now get this trash outta my theater.”
“Immediately, sir.”
Delemare shot him an annoyed look, but Escott was all sincere respect, then moved off down the passage again.
From what I could see in the faint and shifting illumination filtering through from the screen, Escott looked better than the night before. He wasn’t moving around as freely as normal, but he was moving, and his expression, though still bruised, was sharp with interest rather than dulled out with pain. Trudence Coldfield must have worked a small miracle on him.
“Interesting fellow,” he observed when Delemare was out of earshot.
“If you like rabid wolverines. You got here just before another Great War broke out.”
“Indeed? He must have liked you.”
“Liked me?”
“Oh, yes, Shoe mentioned that Mr. Delemare enjoys a good fight more than anything else, but only indulges in one if he likes a person.”
“Jeez, I stay here much longer and he’ll put me in his will.”
“Then we shall delay no more. I didn’t see your car outside, how did—”
“Gordy came by the house and helped load the goods, offered me a lift.”
“That was most kind of him.”
“I don’t think kindness was what he had in mind. He also offered to bury these guys in the next WPA project, but I told him you had first dibs.”
“Thank you, I think.”
“And there’s some more stuff: now that Kyler’s out of the way New York is sending in a heavyweight called Sullivan to take his place.”
That caught his attention. “Sean Sullivan?”
“According to sleeping beauty over there.” I motioned at Deiter.
“I’ve certainly heard of the man, a rotter by all accounts. What else have you learned?”