by David Fulmer
“Another hard case,” Nash said, and bent to his work.
Willie was just as glad he couldn’t see what was going on. He heard Joe grunt in revulsion, the sound of a knife insulting flesh and the suck and slurp of visceral fluids. Nash’s huffs of exertion weren’t a good sign; the man was working too hard. Presently, he felt someone’s gaze resting on his face as Joe, unable to watch anymore, turned away. After several more minutes of this butchery, the doctor let out a blunt curse.
“It’s too deep,” he muttered. “Can’t get at it without cutting him to pieces. He wouldn’t last the afternoon. Ain’t worth it.”
“So?” Joe said.
“So now I’ll patch him up. S’all I can do.” Nash dug out a needle and suture and went to sewing Jesse’s gut. Joe watched for a few seconds, then looked away again. He’d seen Christmas turkeys get better treatment. The sound of their voices brought Martha into the doorway. She crossed her thin arms, insulted by the messes men made.
“What’s going to happen now?” Willie said.
“He’ll either live with that bullet in him or he won’t,” Nash said. He finished in silence, taking minimum care in fashioning the bandage as Martha looked on with disapproval. As soon as he left, she’d do it right. The doctor tossed his implements back into his bag and snapped it closed.
Glancing between Joe and Willie, he said, “All right, then. Who’s paying?”
Joe wanted to say, paying for what? Instead, he said, “How much?”
“Three dollars.”
Joe went into his pocket, took three bills, and held them up. “You sure you can’t do anything else for him?”
Nash didn’t bother to answer. He snatched the money, grabbed his bag, and stalked out of the room as if he had another appointment, which if he did would be with a needle or pipe. Joe got up to catch him just as he reached the kitchen door. One gambler he knew slightly and another of Jesse’s whores were at the table drinking coffee laced with whiskey and studiously ignoring the two men.
Before Joe could say anything, Nash jerked his head toward the bedroom and said, “That boy’s bound to die. There’s infection setting in. It’s just a matter of time ’fore it kills him.”
“And you can’t stop it?”
“No, it’s too far gone,” Nash said. “Go ahead, carry him somewhere else if you want. I say he’s finished.”
“How long?”
“He might last a week. Not much more, though.”
Joe grabbed him by the arm. “Don’t tell anybody about this,” he said. “You understand? Nobody.”
“Who the hell am I gonna tell?” the doctor said. “Who the hell cares?” With a rude shrug, he walked out, closing the door behind him.
When Joe stepped back into the bedroom, he found that Willie now had his guitar in his lap and was strumming soft chords on the twelve strings. Jesse had dropped off again.
“You flush these days, Joe?” the blind man said.
Joe stopped, then shook his head, bemused. Willie had heard him fan his roll and could likely tell him how much was there. The blind man went back to his guitar. Joe sat down to listen, and after hearing a few bars, picked up a pattern that sounded sort of familiar. He thought Willie was about to play “The St. James Infirmary” or maybe “The Streets of Laredo,” tunes everyone knew.
It wasn’t either one. With a small smile, Willie half sang a line. “Little Jesse was a gambler, night and day . . .” Hearing the words, the man on the bed stirred and opened his eyes. Willie played the chords over another time and sang, “Yes, he used crooked cards and dice.”
Jesse’s pained face broke open as Willie went to humming a melody without lyrics. At the sound of the guitar, the couple who had been at the kitchen table got up and stepped into the doorway to listen. Willie had a sweet voice, especially when he sang a lament in a minor key, the kind of dirge played for the dead.
Over the next hour, Jesse went in and out of his stupor three times. The last time, he came up and gazed around blearily to see Willie in the corner with a woman and a man and some character he didn’t know. Joe slouched in the chair next to the head of the bed.
Jesse listened to Willie playing and singing little snatches of lyrics for a few moments, then looked down at the bandage that swathed his midsection. He tamped it gently with the fingers of his right hand. “Sonofabitch didn’t fix me, did he?”
Joe shook his head. “He said it would have killed you, Jesse.”
“Well, I’m going to die anyway, ain’t I?” His voice was bitter.
Willie was busy with his guitar, and the others in the room weren’t paying attention. Joe leaned close to Jesse’s sickly face.
“Why the hell did that copper shoot you?” he whispered. “What’d you do?”
“Didn’t do nothin’.” Jesse sounded sulky as he gazed past Joe to something on the wall. “I never had no business with him at all.”
“You didn’t get on his wife, did you?”
That brought a short, pained laugh. “If he got one . . . you know . . . she’d be a damn cow.”
“He ever roust you?”
Jesse said, “Not that I recall.” He heaved another breath. “I just seen him around . . . he’s a drunk . . . never harmed nobody . . . not that I know . . .”
“What happened, then?”
“I was . . . at the crap game,” Jesse stuttered, pulling a breath between every few words. “You know we got us . . . a regular game. Every Saturday night . . . over on Fort Street. Took my money . . . and left out.” He made himself smile. “Gonna go see a woman I know . . . in a house downtown. I was on Courtland . . . corner at Edgewood and he . . . he come up behind me.”
“Logue.”
“That’s right. Logue.” He stared, drifting off again.
Joe prompted him. “Jesse?”
Jesse blinked like a lizard. “Then he say, ‘Hey, nigger! Your name Jesse Williams?’ Then he said . . . somethin’ I didn’t catch . . . and he . . . he snapped his pistol.”
“That’s all?”
“He jes . . . walked away. Let me there to die.” His eyes found Joe’s. “And that’s just what I’m ’bout to do, ain’t it?” The question came off on a failing breath.
He was struggling with his answers, so Joe let him rest as he pondered. There was something wrong about it. Whether Jesse was lying or evading or suffering the effects of the wound, there were pieces missing from his story.
Before Joe could question him any further, Little Jesse raised his head an inch or so. “Listen to me,” he said, gritting his teeth. “I didn’t no way have this comin’. You understand?” He caught a hard breath. “You know . . . I done plenty wrong in my life. I likely should have been . . . been dead long time ago. But I . . . I for damn sure don’t want to go like this.” He raised up a little more, straining. “That fucker shot me . . . for nothin’.” His voice broke and he sank back on the pillow. His eyes got wet. A moment passed and he said, “You got to help me, Joe.”
Joe said, “Do what?”
“Don’t wan’ die . . . for nothin’.” The words went into a slur.
“Jesse?”
“You got to . . . to help me . . .”
Joe started to protest, then stopped. Jesse had gone out again. For a second, Joe wondered if he had just passed over. Then he heard him sigh, long and low. It wasn’t done yet.
Joe looked in Willie’s direction and saw the blind man tilting his head their way, listening to every word.
Rather than drive back to his house, the Captain asked Lieutenant Collins to drop him off at police headquarters. The lieutenant was dismayed, thinking Jackson was now going to order him to work through the Sunday afternoon. But when they pulled up to the building on the west end of Decatur Street, the Captain told him to take care of one piece of business before he went home. Once he had related the details, he got out of the car and, with a wave that was almost sprightly for that dour man, sent him on his way.
Collins watched the Captain amble across the
sidewalk, up the steps, and through the doors, thinking it was odd that he seemed so unconcerned about all the trouble over the theft of the jewelry from the Payne mansion. But of course, the man had a reputation for closing his cases, one way or another.
To please Jesse, Willie spent time toying with more words to the song he had begun. To the first couplet, he had added,
A sinful guy, black-hearted, he had no soul
Yes, his heart was hard and cold like ice
Jesse was delighted, even as his mind wandered away and back again. His spirits lifted some, and so Willie switched to playing songs at his request. The blind man was a walking music book, with what seemed an endless store of vaudeville tunes, hillbilly cants, blues laments, rags, spirituals, and popular songs of the day swimming around in his head. Not one of the people drifting in and out of the room could stump him. With his keening voice and the brassy sweep of the Stella’s twelve strings, he filled the next two hours, aided by the glass of whiskey that was topped for him regularly and the appreciative murmurs from those gathered at Jesse’s bedside.
At one point in the middle of the afternoon, Joe happened to overhear a couple of rounders whispering about a jewel heist but couldn’t catch any of the specifics over all the chatter, and then was distracted by Jesse muttering something he couldn’t understand any better.
Not too long after that, Robert Clark appeared in the bedroom doorway. He didn’t come inside once he saw the crowd that had gathered, instead lingering only to stare at Jesse with guilt-stricken eyes.
Joe was surprised to see him and when their gazes met, Robert looked startled and faded back. By the time Joe got up and worked his way through the crowd to the kitchen, he was gone. Joe stood on the landing, looking up and down a deserted alley.
Back inside, he puzzled over the hurried flight of the one other person who had been on the scene the night before. Willie said it was Robert who had found Little Jesse. Apparently, the man didn’t want to talk about it.
Jesse weakened as afternoon crept toward evening. Just after the sun went down, Martha walked in with a bowl of hot chicken broth and told them all it was time to leave. Joe and Willie remained behind.
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.
