“I did.” Chauncey’s voice sounded like a snake’s hiss.
Elliot snatched the 1911 from Frank’s large hand. He exited the driver’s side, opened the rear door and snatched Chauncey out onto the ground. He kicked him hard in the back.
“Get up.”
Chauncey rose. Elliot grabbed him by the back of his collar. When he jammed the barrel of the gun in the back of Chauncey’s neck, it sounded as if a vertebra snapped.
“Walk.”
Stunned, on wobbly legs, Chauncey complied. As they walked forward toward the house, Frank got out of the car.
“Boss, wait!”
“Stay in the car, Frank.”
“Caprice, please. Just…”
Elliot continued Chauncey’s death march forward.
“All I wanted was the satchel,” Chauncey said. “Alistair didn’t hide it well enough. She found it. Started using the aitch.”
Elliot kicked Chauncey’s legs from underneath him. He tumbled down a short embankment.
“She got to talking about you in that drugged slur. Elliot Caprice this. Elliot Caprice that. Same as Margaret. I just wanted the goddamned satchel!”
Elliot raised the .45 and took true aim.
“Those manifests were the only thing keeping us alive! She just kept…laughing…as if she got one over on me. I held her mouth closed. Just to get her to shut the fuck up, about you. Must’ve squeezed too hard.”
Elliot and Frank watched Chauncey take on a sly grin. His eyes seemed cold.
“You put her in my barn.”
“I needed to cause you some trouble. You had gotten too close.”
“How did you find out where I live?”
“I followed you.” Chauncey rolled over. “Hell, there were times when you stared right through me.”
“Bullshit.”
“That old man at the road house your kin?”
Elliot kneed Chauncey in the center of his forehead. He fell back, laughing, onto the gravel.
“No one expects the dark-skinned handyman to be smart. To have a plan. I’m invisible. You light-skinned ones are easy to handle. Always so much to prove. Always so disappointed. Me, I’m just supposed to be content to exist. Yassuh, Master McAlpin. No, ma’am, Missus McAlpin. Even the maid fell for it.”
He was right. Elliot perceived Alistair to be some diabolical white dandy. He took Chauncey—dark-skinned, servile—as inconsequential. The white man’s nigger. His own prejudice blinded him.
“Though, I can tell you hate them, same as me, no matter how much of them you have in you.” Chauncey rose to his feet. “You were in the war, Caprice. The first time you killed a German or an Italian, you didn’t realize you could have been killing whites all along?”
On the way to the bowling alley, Elliot listed out his reasons for his anger at the white folks in his life. Chauncey in front of him, he could only ponder the good fortune. His mother could have tossed him into Lake Michigan. That gave him Doc Shapiro, eventually leading him to the small firm headed by Mike Robin, where he had come to what arguably could be the best work of his life. Men like Chauncey were twisted by living in a world that had no place for them but needed them all the same. Perhaps such men learn to sneak and cheat, connive and murder, when their lives are bereft of grace, the one element Elliot’s life possessed, in abundance.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Chauncey. I don’t hate them.” Elliot lowered the 1911. “I just wish they’d try harder. Frank.”
“Yeah, boss?”
“This one is goin’ back in the trunk.”
Frank reached for Chauncey, but he scooted back from the Big Fella. He raised his hands. He walked to the car on his own, looking straight ahead, chin up. Elliot held the gun on him for good measure, but he knew he wouldn’t need it. When Frank opened the trunk, Chauncey climbed in. He silently stared at them both until the hood was closed over his face.
“Damnedest thang,” Frank said, legs weak from relief.
“Not really,” Elliot said, his voice trailing off.
“Choices,” Frank said.
Elliot headed toward the boathouse. Frank followed.
“I shol’ thought you’d kill ’im, boss.”
“That guy’s dead already.”
They found the front door of the boathouse unlocked. When they walked inside, the smell reminded them of the Meat Locker. It was an acrid stench—rotting food, human waste, kerosene. Quaint furnishings reeked of mildew. They moved slowly through the living room.
“You get the satchel?” came a voice from the next floor. Elliot silently motioned to Frank to follow him up the rotting stairs.
“Well, c’mon, didju?” went the voice again in a South London accent. At the top of the stairs, Elliot and Frank ventured down a long hallway. Old, decaying photos in dusty frames lined the walls. The floor was tilted to one side giving the place a surreal quality that befitted the entire sordid affair.
“Chauncey, you fuckin’ tosser,” came the voice again. “What do I have to do…”
At the end of the hall, the pale ghastly face of Alistair Williams popped out of a doorway. Once he saw his pursuers, he stepped backward in a panic and tripped over his own feet, falling hard to the floor.
“Alistair Williams,” Elliot said. The door slammed.
“You don’t look like Nickelson’s men. The McAlpins send you to kill me?”
“No. Margaret sent me to find you.”
“Margaret? That tart! She’s the same as the rest.”
Elliot pushed against the heavy door, but it wouldn’t budge.
“You one o’ her boyfriends? A new playfing?”
“Open the door, Alistair. It’s all over.”
Frank took off toward the door, throwing his shoulder into it, but it didn’t budge.
“Piss off! That’s solid oak!”
Elliot jammed the barrel of the 1911 in the keyhole and pulled the trigger. It shattered the rotting wood around the doorknob allowing him to kick the door open. It figured Williams would be holed up in the master bedroom, camped out on the canopy bed, sleeping atop stained bed linens. The end table was where Alistair cooked his high. There was an adjoining toilet past a door. The room smelled worse than the swamp outside.
“Don’t kill me!”
He was gaunt. His eyes were jaundiced. A man of average height, he now weighed all of ninety pounds. He stank to high heaven. Here, in the rotted bedroom of his betters, Alistair Williams wasted away hoping on a turn of fortune. For such an elegant dandy, he had descended into a self-condemned hell.
Elliot walked toward him. Alistair panicked, fell to the floor, and scurried under the bed.
“Goddamn it, haven’t you had enough of smellin’ your own shit?” Elliot said. Frank covered his nose.
“Margaret sent you?” asked Alistair.
“Yeah. Margaret, and Jon Costas.”
“Where’s Chauncey?”
“You have your own problems, Alistair.”
“You’re the private copper, yeah? Elliot somefing or other. Here to do her dirty work, are you?”
“Getcha ass from up under the bed, man.”
“I’m not goin’ anywhere. Where’s Chauncey?”
“In the trunk of the car,” Frank said. “C’mon, stinky. Let’s go.”
“What’s she payin’ you? Because I can get you more. I have an arrangement with Bill Nickelson. You heard of ’im? He’s an important man.”
Elliot had enough. He seized Alistair by the ankle, pulling him hard across the floor. His bones rattled on the hard wood.
“What are you gonna offer me, junkie? What can you give me to make up for the lives lost from your stupid con?”
“Get your hands off me, you fucking shitskin!”
Once Elliot beheld Alistair’s face in the light, he noticed something familiar. He knelt to get a good look at him. There it was, plain as day. Frank could see it as well.
“You gotta be kiddin’.” Frank managed an age’s education, all in one night.
“Your mother or your father?” Elliot asked.
“The fuck are you on about?”
“Which one of your parents is colored?”
Alistair was visibly shocked, as if a doctor told him he had six months to live.
“I bet it’s his mama. C’man. It’s your mama, isn’t it?” Elliot smirked. Alistair looked away in shame.
“Me mum.”
“You didn’t know your pap, did you? That’s why you were stuck on McAlpin. Why you bought his bullshit.”
“He said I had potential.”
“To be his fall guy,” Elliot said. “What you figure? You and Margaret would get married in McAlpin’s big ol’ yard? A royal wedding? Then you and her make some quadroon babies? Within a generation, you’d get all the nigger out of your bloodline?”
Elliot looked over at Frank.
“Folks wonder why I don’t try to pass.”
“Mmm hmm,” Frank said.
“McAlpin knew, didn’t he?”
Alistair looked away.
“I figured. All this talk of him takin’ a shine to you. Givin’ you a leg up. A rich, guilty white fella ain’t gonna do that for another ofay. Naw, they reserve that for special nig’ras.”
“You obviously never had the chance to pull yourself up the ladder.”
“This, from the junky who couldn’t see that rich old man’s con. He set you up for a fall. All you could do was dope yourself up.”
“I had a plan.”
“That’s the problem, Alistair. You think you’re so clever, but you won’t get your hands dirty.”
“Fuck you!”
“You couldn’t even stand up to him for taking your woman.”
“I killed the bastard!” Alistair sat up. “I found him in that bathtub, scrubbin’ up all proper to take the maid out on the town. The two of them, gaming me all along. I grabbed the old tosser by the back of the neck.”
The gravity of Alistair’s admission filled his body.
“I held his head under the water. He didn’t even struggle. It was as if he wanted to die.”
Alistair looked up at Elliot, perhaps hoping to trade on mulatto commonality.
“And no one else cared. The man of the house goes tits-up in the bathtub, no one could give a toss. Especially not Margaret. She just went through the paces. I wasn’t even questioned. The police never came. The family lawyers handled everything. Even let me keep my job. Shadowy characters, that lot.”
“How’d you skate?”
“Chauncey helped me clean it up. That night, we both went to see Nickelson to make him the deal.”
“That went wrong, too.”
“Nickelson was looking for a way to get rid of us both from the start. I had attest authority, but he could forge that if he had to. Chauncey was of no use.”
“Tell that to Esme McAlpin,” Elliot said.
“Chauncey told Nickelson I did Master McAlpin in. He held it over my head. Threatened to drop a dime. How do you take on a bloke like that when you’re li’l ol’ me. I snatched manifests for leverage.”
“Plus some aitch for your pleasure.”
“We got by on selling it.” Alistair traced the needle tracks on his pockmarked arms with his index finger. “Then I got bored.”
“So you killed your surrogate father,” Elliot said. “All for some con artist broad’s hustle.”
Somewhere inside Alistair was a bundle of rage. It rose from his belly until it exited out his throat.
“He told me it didn’t matter!” Alistair was so angry his heels pattered on the hard wood floor. “That being a British nigger—”
“Is better than a nigger from here?” Frank said. “Never mind, boss. Shoot this one, too.”
Elliot could do no such thing. Empathy prevented him. His disgust toward Alistair dissipated. Versions of the same spiel were used on him by Izzy, Creamer, and even Bill Drury. Circumstances that led to their fated meeting would have never happened had he not been just as gullible.
“Got you to think that bein’ half-white is better than all black, huh? Sounds good, until they get tired of you. After that, once they do you dirty, it’s on to the next fair-skinned, high-minded, self-important nigger.”
“That’s the hustle,” Frank said.
“C’man. You and your potential have a meeting to get to.”
Elliot grabbed him by the collar. Alistair rose on his wobbly legs.
“Who am I meeting?”
“Jon McAlpin the second, aka Jon Costas.”
“Costas is a McAlpin?”
“Unlucky for you, yeah.”
“You don’t know what you’re dealing with, do you?”
“McAlpin’s attorney has the satchel, Alistair. The jig is up.”
“I don’t care what you found in that satchel, it won’t do a bit of good.”
“That why Chauncey killed Willow for it?”
Alistair froze in horror.
“Chauncey killed Willow? No. He was just supposed to get the satchel back.”
“She gave me the satchel. That’s why your buddy choked the life out of her.”
Alistair collapsed into a pool of heroin-laced tears.
“They told me it didn’t matter,” whispered Alistair, perhaps telling himself or God or no one at all. Elliot knelt and touched Alistair’s shoulder.
“It always matters,” Elliot said. “When they say it doesn’t, you know it matters plenty.”
CHAPTER 20
The sun rose over Lake Michigan. Their exhaustion was bathed in a sticky haze of unseasonable humidity. Elliot found a payphone, called Mike Robin collect, gave him Jon Costas’ address, a list of documents to bring, and a suggestion to depart immediately. It took a few more dimes to reach the Kenilworth Police Department. The mention of McAlpin and murder in the same sentence reached the top brass. Finally, he called Margaret to say he located Alistair, but she’d have to meet him at Costas’ brownstone to see him. Playin’ all sides to the middle.
Alistair joined Chauncey in the trunk. No way that filthy junky was stinking up Lucille’s back seat. They drove to The White Palace Grill at Canal and Roosevelt, a stone’s throw from Jon Costas’ brownstone, to wait until Mike arrived. Most rail workers from the nearby yards were already on duty so the place was empty. Elliot walked over to the waitress seated at the long white lunch counter. He ordered two basic Chicago breakfasts consisting of eggs, potatoes, sausage, and coffee. She spun around on the red leather stool, saw two Negroes, and eyed them as if they were crazy. Elliot tipped her a sawbuck, raised his finger to his lips, and led Frank to a short booth, far in the back, near a side door. By the time the cook, an older colored man wearing a paper hat, brought out their plates on trays, Elliot had nodded off in his seat. Frank was half asleep. They didn’t speak as they made short work of their meal. Elliot was finishing his coffee and enjoying a hand-rolled when the manager, an old Polish fella, walked over. Perhaps he had something to say to the two brazen Negroes, but their hardscrabble appearance and droll, exhausted expressions likely warded him off. Elliot’s shirt sleeves were rolled up. Frank could see where bruising set in on his forearm from the wrench blow back at the bowling alley.
“That’s gotta hurt.”
“It just looks bad on account of me bein’ so light,” Elliot said. “I always seemed tougher than I actually was growin’ up as the bruises showed so well.”
“Maybe that fool broke it. You might need a doctor.”
“Only doctor I have is back home. It’ll have to wait.”
“Is it nice?”
“Where? Southville?” Frank nodded. Elliot thought to himself for a moment, wondering how to answer. “No. Nuthin’ nice about it. It’s crooked. Yet honest. There, a man knows where he stands.”
Frank stared down his plate.
“What is it, Frank?”
“You think I could do this work you do? Witcha, I mean.”
Elliot took a sip of coffee.
“We been doin’ it, haven’t we?�
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“Well…I ain’t ’specially smart.”
“You’re not?”
“I mean, I’ont know a lot of facts ’n figures ’n words ’n such.”
Elliot put down his coffee cup. This time, instead of emulating Doc Shapiro or Izzy Rabinowitz, he was a bit shocked to hear himself sound just like Uncle Buster.
“Why would I hire you if you’re stupid? What good are you?”
“Well, not stupid. Just…I dunno…not so smart.”
“You found the clue that put us on Chauncey’s trail.”
“I just dug it out miss lady’s laundry.”
“You had the plan to go in through the back.”
“I see the way you think ’n act ’n all. How you walk ’n talk it.” Frank stared downward, through his plate, into the depth of his self-doubt. “I just wish I was mo’ smart.”
Elliot rapped his knuckles on the table. Frank looked up.
“Those uppity bastards we kidnapped? The two of them think they’re geniuses. You and I, together, might make up half an idiot.”
Elliot waved his cigarette between his fingers as he spoke.
“That’s what you get when you think you’re smarter than everyone else. Locked in the trunk of a lesser man’s car.” Elliot put out his cigarette on his plate.
“Don’t ever put yourself down to me. I don’t want to hear that mess, yeah? Find out what you’re made of before you go runnin’ your mouth about what you ain’t.”
The big fella nodded. Once again, Elliot Caprice put Frank Fuquay in his place. This time, it made him feel good.
“Are they all this hard?” asked Frank.
“What?”
“Cases you work on.”
Elliot shrugged. “First one.”
“You kiddin’?”
“Nope.”
Frank put his face in his hands.
“Probably my onliest one.” Elliot laughed.
“So, I might could do it.”
“It’s ugly work, Frank.”
“Mo’ ugly than a chain gang?”
Elliot remembered how slim chances to do right are in this life. How difficult it is to avoid wrong. How it takes effort—the kind you put into a young screw-up needing inspiration to keep himself straight. Doc did it for him. Now he was doing it for Frank. Carrying forth.
A Negro and an Ofay (The Tales of Elliot Caprice Book 1) Page 20
