The Dying Crapshooter's Blues (7 page)

Martha stepped up to the bed. “You best let him be,” she told them in a voice that was sweet and gentle for such a hard-looking woman. “Leave him to me.”

The two men put on their coats and walked out and down the stairs to amble up the alley and onto a Decatur Street that was quiet in the Sunday evening rain.

Joe raised a hand in farewell. Willie called him back. “You know I heard what he said up there.” Though he had been drinking the better part of the afternoon, his voice was deliberate.

Joe said, “What's that?”

“I said, I heard what Jesse said. About not wanting to die for nothing.”

Joe shrugged, not surprised that the blind man had caught a whisper from across a room or that he could recall it hours later.

“So what are you going to do about it?” Willie said.

“About what?”

Willie's dark brow stitched. “About finding out why some damned cracker cop walked up and shot my friend Jesse down.”

Joe laughed shortly. “What makes you think I can do anything about it?”

“You was a policeman,” Willie said. “And a detective. Ain't that right?”

“I was a cop for a year,” Joe said, sounding impatient. “And I worked as a Pinkerton for six months. That don't make me a police officer, Willie. Or a detective.”

“You're about as smart as anybody I know,” Willie said earnestly. Joe rolled his eyes at this flattery, but the blind man was serious. “There's somethin' wrong about it, Joe. You know it's true.”

“I asked him,” Joe said. “He won't say.”

“It don't make sense.”

Joe shifted on his feet. “Maybe it was just one of those things, Willie,” he said. “Some cop who don't care for black folk. Jesse said he was a drunk. Some people are like that. Could be Jesse just got in the man's way at the wrong time. Or maybe he fucked with him somehow. Sassed him or whatever. You know how he is.”

Willie had his head cocked in that peculiar way he did when he was listening to every nuance in a voice. Now he shook his head stubbornly. “Then why doesn't he say so?”

“Ask him,” Joe said.

Willie pursed his lips and huffed with petulance.

Joe said, “I don't need to get messed up in this, Willie. I've got my own troubles.”

“That boy's on his deathbed,” Willie said. “You know you can't deny him. So I'd say you
are
messed up in it.”

When Joe didn't respond, he adjusted his guitar across his back, turned around, and strolled away, following the path he held inside his head.

 

Joe walked up Courtland Street, passing the very spot where Jesse had fallen and thinking about what Willie had said. Though his short stints as a copper and a detective barely counted, he knew that if he didn't poke around, it was unlikely they'd ever know if a policeman named Logue really had shot Little Jesse Williams in the dead of night.

It was also true what he had told Willie: He had problems of his own, problems that got worse the moment he rounded the corner onto Houston Street and saw the APD sedan at the curb in front of the Hampton, the engine idling. He stifled the urge to turn around and go back the way he'd come, even though he knew it would make him look guilty of something.

It was too late, anyway; the car door had swung open and a man in a gray overcoat and black Bond Street hat put a foot onto the running board, then stepped to the sidewalk. The officer had seen him coming in the outside mirror, and now went into a pocket to produce a badge in a black leather wallet, which he held in clear view. Joe put on his best innocent face and approached at a stroll.

The cop was around Joe's age, of medium height and solid, with a common American face—the type who would be hard to pick out in a crowd. His eyes were a clear blue as he studied Joe up and down, taking his measure. He wasn't one of those angry sorts, just a fellow who enjoyed his work.

“Mr. Rose,” he said as Joe drew close. “Lieutenant Collins.” He put away the badge.

“Yes, Lieutenant,” Joe said.

“When did you get to town, sir?”

“Couple days ago.”

Collins was watching him with what seemed a vague interest. “I'm here to deliver a message from Captain Jackson,” he said. “He wants you in his office tomorrow morning. Ten o'clock. No later.” He gave Joe a look. “You be there, all right? Because I don't want to have to come find you.” He reached for the chrome handle and opened the door.

Joe wanted to ask how the Captain happened to know that he was in town, then thought better of it and said, “So what's this about?”

Collins's eyes lightened as if Joe had said something humorous. “Tomorrow morning at ten,” he repeated. He slid into the seat and slammed the door.

Joe watched the car pull away from the curb and chug down the hill toward Courtland Street, the taillights glowing red in the dark of the falling night. He cursed under his breath, then turned and pushed through the doors into the hotel.

Upstairs, he was relieved to find Adeline long gone, with only a faint strand of her perfume left around the bed. A smart girl, she knew better than to press a good thing. Joe had treated her right, taking her to the speak and buying her all the gin rickeys she could handle, then giving her pleasure in the bed when she woke up in the morning.

He had an eye for women who could have a good time and let it go at that. Though every now and then he slipped, and one of them got it in her foolish head that he was marrying material. It was preposterous; but some females flat lost their minds once they imagined themselves in love. Unable or unwilling to grasp the fact that all Joe wanted was some decent company and a good fuck, the woman went on a campaign that included hints of an
arrangement and plans to introduce him to the family. Soon the dizzy bride-to-be would go about fashioning an idyll, only to find that he could disappear like Houdini, and he hadn't wandered across the street for a packet of cigarettes, either.

It was a risk he took because he adored women and couldn't get enough of their mysterious, entrancing, enticing selves. So he loved them and left them, and sports from New York to Miami delighted in recounting tales of his escapes. The only one he couldn't shed was the most troublesome of the lot, and one of the few who never breathed the word
marry.

No matter; it wasn't any woman who had him thinking about pulling one of his evaporating tricks and catching a night train for Mobile, New Orleans, or another of his winter haunts. Captain Grayton Jackson was after him, and that was no joke.

The last thing anyone on the wrong side of the law in the city of Atlanta wanted was to tangle with the Captain. The man could make any rounder's life a misery. Just thinking about it sent him after his bottle. He poured himself a drink and carried it to the window to look down on Houston Street, trying to imagine what Jackson wanted with him.

He hadn't done anything so far, except to happen onto the shooting of Little Jesse Williams. That couldn't be it; the Captain wouldn't care if every black man in Atlanta was gunned down in the street. Even if it happened the way Jesse claimed, it wouldn't signify much. Policemen shot Negro criminals all the time.

 

The Captain was well into his cups by the middle of the evening, and he stalked around the living room and kitchen of the house on Plum Street, his mouth loose as he described the crime that had been committed the night before and threw out hints of how it was going to end up making him a hero.

His wife, May Ida, found herself intrigued, though not by her husband's role in the story, real or imagined. Rather, she was dazzled that some bandit had found his way into the Payne mansion, of all places, and during their Christmas gala, of all times, making off with a cache of jewelry. It was some brazen caper, and the Captain described a mayor and chief of police floundering about in helpless fits.

“And who do they call?” he inquired of no one in particular—certainly not her. He jabbed a thumb at his chest. “They call
me,
that's who.” He all but smacked his lips. “The same sons of bitches that were gonna put me on the street, walking a beat. Now look at what we got here!” He came up with a surly grin of triumph.

May Ida knew better than to comment. He gave not a whit what she thought about this subject or any other. So she let him rail on with his odd mutterings, no more interested in him than he was in her, and returned to her own thoughts with his drunken gripes playing like bad music in the background. It was a typical night at 446 Plum Street.

 

Skulking back to his rooming house in the evening darkness, Robert Clark had a powerful sense of dread, a swirl of hoodoo that had been hanging at his shoulder like a black cloud ever since he had run off into the darkness, leaving Little Jesse Williams bleeding on that cold corner. Now he couldn't shake the feeling that someone or something was creeping his bed and following in his path and that eyes were on him everywhere he went.

It was his own damned fault. Instead of buying a bottle, going home, and keeping his mouth shut after he'd left Jesse, he had wandered around to the crap game in the empty Raspberry Alley storefront. Even then, he could have enjoyed a last drink and left out. He didn't, though; and that was one dumb-assed mistake.

He didn't know that he had repeated what he'd seen until it was too late. He had finished his own pint, took a couple drinks from the bottle that was going around, and came abruptly out of a fog to realize that he had done just that.

As the blur cleared, he saw that the game had stopped and the boys were all staring back at him in the light of the fire they had built in a can on the concrete floor. When one of them asked for details, Robert mumbled something and made a clumsy exit—another mistake. He should have stayed and explained that what he was saying was actually secondhand, that it was some other fellow who had heard the cop and then the gunshot and had peeked around the corner of the building to see Little Jesse Williams fall. Though he could barely remember who had been in the game, he had no doubt that among their number was at least one rat who would hurry right out on the street to try to trade what he'd heard for something.

After that, Robert went to his room and fell into bed, wishing he could crawl under it. Unable to sleep the rest of that night and into the day, he hurried down to Schoen Alley to ask Jesse what he should do. Somewhere in this addled mind was the notion that he could erase what he had heard and seen, or maybe play it backward like one of the funny bits in the moving pictures, so they could forget the whole thing. But Jesse was in too sorry a state. He couldn't talk if he wanted to. There were at least a dozen people crowded about his rooms.

Then Robert saw Joe Rose, the white man or Indian or whatever he was, looking at him with those shining black eyes, like he could see inside his head. Right away, he was sure Rose knew, and back out the door he went, and down the stairs and around to Hilliard Street before Rose could catch and corner him.

Now he walked along, glancing over his shoulder every few steps. He figured the best he could do was leave it be. Keep his mouth shut and wait for things to calm down. Maybe those crapshooters would think him nothing but a drunken fool and would forget what he'd said. Or they might figure that he'd just been bragging on something someone else had seen. Maybe he'd be fortunate that way. Though he'd never been lucky before.

Little Jesse had spent tortured hours with his fever spiking and falling and his guts twisting like someone had parked broken glass in there. When the morphine ran out around midnight, he woke to moans and groans, then realized they were coming from his own throat. He thrashed about, his sweat soaking the sheets. Shapes moved in and out of his field of vision, and he felt a woman's hands on his face, soothing his burning brow. Other kind fingers changed the dressing on his wound. One of the women, trying to joke him out of his pain, slipped her hand under the sheets and between his legs, whispering that everything seemed quite all right down there. Jesse smiled, even though he couldn't feel a thing.

When he cried for more dope, someone said,
There ain't no more, Jesse,
and he yelled a curse, swearing some goddamn fuck of a low-down rounder had found it and stole it away. He kicked off the covers and had to be held down. He wept for mercy. There were more whispers and someone left in a hurry, slamming the door. An hour passed by, then another. A shade flitted through the doorway, and a few seconds later, the point of a needle glistened over his bare thigh.

The relief came on him like a warm dawn, a shot of amber
light that went down to his last toe. His eyes drooped, his flesh melted from his bones, and he sighed long and low. Through the dirty window, he saw the first red rays of sun coming over the buildings. The rain had gone and he would wake to the new day.

 

When he got to Atlanta, Joe liked to eat breakfast at Lulu's, the tiny diner diagonally across Houston Street from the Hampton. The weekday cook, an ex-convict named Sweet Spencer, had a way with a plate of sugared ham and eggs, and his cathead biscuits were the best in downtown. He'd learned his skills in the joint.

Joe considered other choices for his morning meal, then decided to make his visit to Lulu's and get it over with. The last thing he wanted was Sweet getting a notion that he was avoiding him, though it was exactly what he wanted to do. Sweet was one of those types who could rattle a man's bones with one look, and Joe didn't need him for an enemy.

Before he got around to that business, he decided to take a walk on Peachtree Street. It was his first Monday morning in the city in six months, and he wanted to amble around a bit. He had visited Central Avenue his first day in. Now he would survey the other side of Atlanta.

Bundling up for the cool morning, he went out the door. Joe's favored winter wear was a gray wool coat that had been taken off a pile of uniform items stripped from the German dead. After his discharge, he paid a Philadelphia tailor to remove the epaulets and then dye the coat a darker gray. It fit him well and was warm enough for any weather. He liked especially the four secret pockets: one under each arm, meant to hold a pistol but useful for stashing burglary tools and stolen goods like watches and jewelry, and two smaller pokes tucked along the seams in the lining, one on either side. He had been told that the Germans used these cavities to hide tiny weapons, razor blades and such,
and even poison capsules. All four pockets were difficult to detect, their edges cut to appear as seams. Joe had gone through more than one frisking holding gems that were never found.