The Dying Crapshooter's Blues

by David Fulmer

  “He ain’t that tough,” Willie said. He hitched his guitar, offered Joe his hand, and continued along the sidewalk, swerving nimbly around the pedestrian traffic as if guided by perfect eyesight.

  Six

  The Buick sedan passed through the little community called Buckhead, heading due south. The car moved slowly, bouncing through the ruts in the hard red clay as the rear end, laden with the several hundred pounds of recording gear that was crammed in the trunk, scraped over exposed rocks.

  The driver of the sedan, Jacob Stein—Jake to his friends—was relieved to see the signs announcing it was only another three miles to Atlanta. It had been a long drive, a good part of it on rural southern roads. The newly minted graduate of Fordham had heard the stories, knew the territory below the Pennsylvania state line could be hostile for some types, and he wondered if the city they were approaching, by far the largest in the South, would prove any less so. It was, after all, the locale of the infamous Leo Frank case, which had transpired only eight years before. He had read in the New York papers how that tragedy had drawn Jewish communities together at the same time it enhanced the power of the Ku Klux Klan. As if to punctuate this recollection, a half mile farther on, he peered to his right to see a building marked with a proud banner identifying the headquarters of that same organization.

  Jake glanced over at the man who was snoozing in the passenger seat. “Mr. Purcell?”

  George Purcell, twenty-five years Jake’s senior, opened his eyes from his drowse, blinking in the late morning sun.

  Jake said, “We’re almost to Atlanta.”

  Purcell sat up, stretched his thin arms forward, and yawned. He looked around at the landscape passing the windows. They were now on an unevenly paved, two-lane road that ran by little clusters of homes, the occasional store, patches of farm fields, and small stands of trees that had recently been woods. Purcell noted the street sign at the next intersection.

  “So this is the famous Peachtree Road.” He treated the younger man to a quiet smile. “Have you seen any peach trees?”

  “No, sir,” Jake said, then realized he wouldn’t recognize one if he had.

  “That’s because the name of the street doesn’t have anything to do with peaches,” the older man said.

  “No?”

  “No. Before there was any Atlanta, there was just a little crossroads next to a huge pitch tree.”

  “Pitch tree?”

  “A pine tree. Somehow it got turned into a peach tree.”

  Jake raised his eyebrows with appropriate interest.

  “That’s one story. Another one says the Cherokee did name it for a peach tree.”

  George Purcell was a font of such arcane knowledge. He had kept Jake entertained with all sorts of trivia over the week it had taken them to drive down from New York. Where and when he had collected all the curious lore was a mystery, since the man worked day and night either making sound recordings or arranging to do so. When he wasn’t out on the road, he was ensconced in a studio or office somewhere. Jake sometimes wondered if Mr. Purcell fabricated his stories just to pass the time. What would Jake, a New Yorker all his life, know from peach or pitch trees?

  It was no less a puzzle how this learned man came to be traveling the lost back roads of the South seeking out only what common folk sang and played, which in this part of the world meant either hillbilly music or blues. Jake admired him for giving up a comfortable home and academic career to travel these dusty and sometimes dangerous byways in search of what his peers viewed as marginal music. And he was glad for the opportunity to share the adventure, though the driving was brutal and some of the locales they visited gave him nightmares.

  None of it seemed to worry his employer. Indeed, Mr. Purcell never failed to proclaim himself a New Yorker, and had no fear of charging into the places he clearly wasn’t welcome in order to collect more music. He wanted to be first, and so he took the risks. No matter where they went, the musicians warmed to his passion.

  Despite the doubters, Purcell was proving that there was a market for unschooled music. When common folk came home from work, they didn’t want to hear the good music that the Carnegies and Rockefellers and Fricks with their grand opera houses and symphony halls wanted to shove down their throats. They wanted to hear the ballads and dance to tunes their families had been nursing for generations, songs that rang with a fervor that echoed the joys and agonies of their hard lives. Purcell had discovered that even a poor man or woman would spend a precious quarter for a record to play over and over and hear an echo of the ages. And there were millions of people like that with millions of quarters in their pockets.

  Jake, who had stumbled into the job right out of college, first thought it a lark, then became a believer, taking pride in the knowledge that they were doing important work. He hoped the word had gotten out in advance and that Atlanta would be a boon for recording and a safe place to land for a little while.

  Looking ahead, he saw houses spotting the sides of the road, mostly frame structures, along with some sturdy brick homes on little plots of land.

  “Where are we going first?” he asked.

  “This will carry us right downtown,” Mr. Purcell said. He went into his pocket for a piece of paper and read over it. “We’re looking for the Dixie Hotel. Keep on until we get to Walton Street, then take a right turn.”

  Jake was wondering what kind of city Atlanta could be. He could see the shapes of tall buildings, now within walking distance, even as they drove past plots of thickly wooded land and rolling fields where cows grazed. At the next intersection, he saw chickens pecking on the ground while a pig dozed in a patch of dirt.

  Another half mile and they came upon the train station at Brookwood, beyond which was a vast web of rails, roundhouses, and thousands of freight and passenger cars, sitting still or moving in slow motion. Mr. Purcell had described Atlanta as a colossal railroad hub and here was the proof. It stretched as far as Jake could see, acre upon acre, all the way to downtown. The smoke from the trains, along with what belched from the factory stacks that poked up like ghostly fingers in the distance, had shrouded the panorama in a tepid brown cloud for which the weak winter sun was no match, so that the most distant corners of the yards looked like they were submerged in dank water.

  The city arrived abruptly. At the next corner was a Gothic mansion, then a cluster of two- and three-story office buildings, followed by a stretch of large mansions. The cityscape increased steadily from this point, and within ten minutes they were driving into the heart of the downtown area, with towers that reached as high as ten and twelve floors and the usual palette of stores and eateries. The streets were jammed with automobiles, trucks, horse-drawn hacks, and the occasional carriage, so that they crept rather than motored along. Jake rolled down the window and took a whiff of the air. It certainly smelled like a city.

  As they made their way down Peachtree Street, he let out a deep sigh of relief. The hotel couldn’t be far. It had been a long grind, and he ached right down to his bones.

  That relief would have to wait; Mr. Purcell wasn’t quite ready to stop. “Let’s drive around a bit,” he suggested, pointing to their left. With a grunt of frustration, Jake Stein turned the car east on Auburn Avenue. When they came to a stop three blocks down, a blind Negro crossed before them, dressed in a natty gray suit with a twelve-string guitar strapped across his back.

  “I’d say we’ve come to the right place,” Mr. Purcell said.

  Grayton Jackson stood gazing out his office window at the downtown streets and mulling the jagged and treacherous path that had brought him there.

  Over the past decade, corruption had flooded the city like a dirty tide, and few fingers had been lifted to halt it. Atlanta had been a wide-open town, the kind of place where crooks, yeggs, and confidence men could practice their illicit trades with only token interference from the law. The well-oiled machine created by a boss named Floyd Woodward had run most of the criminal enterprise, with bootlegging, nar
cotics, counterfeiting, scams, gambling, and prostitution fueling the engine. Even after Woodward fled the city to escape a trumped-up murder charge, the business was too robust and lined too many pockets to fold.

  Once large chunks of the police department had been bought off, the graft and various other abuses became facts of life and hard habits to break. Critics brave enough to speak up pointed out that many of those who had sworn to protect and serve had come to protect criminals in order to serve their own greed.

  As he rose through the ranks, Sergeant, then Lieutenant, then Captain Jackson had taken his share from the illicit trough, though never allowing it to get in the way of his prosecution of felonies. Capital crimes were viciously enforced when the victim was white. Petty thieves and swindlers were dispatched with a brisk and brutal efficiency. Beyond that, the water got muddy, because the Captain believed that most human vices did little harm and were, in fact, an asset to law enforcement, if properly controlled. A man with a brain full of opium smoke or veins swimming with morphine was not apt to commit an act of violence. A drink and the affections of a female to calm a bully’s rough urges made the city a safer place for everyone. Whose business was it if some fool wanted to risk an addiction or a venereal disease? And who could deny that when such trade was outlawed, the crooks fed off it?

  So it had happened in Atlanta as the police department and Woodward’s crime machine joined hands. The marriage might have gone on for a long time, except for some hogs who couldn’t get enough, bringing an outraged citizenry down on their heads.

  When the Captain saw how strongly mayoral candidate John Sampson’s promise to clean up the department was resonating, he imagined his career going up in smoke. As one of former chief Pell’s men, and in fact his most able enforcer, his head would be on the block.

  The brass couldn’t believe the party was over. The Captain, reading the signs, knew better, and in the months leading up to the election, deftly stepped away from the carnage, so neither Chief Walters nor Chief of Detectives Pell collected him on their way down.

  As it turned out, his bad disposition was his good fortune. While it had always galled him that he was never allowed near the top of the pyramid of graft, he realized that the disdain of those who dangled gold braid could be his salvation. All he had to do was to keep his head down and avoid being tarred with the new mayor’s brush of reform.

  When the dust settled and he found himself still standing, his imagination got the better of him. He even allowed himself to dream about the chief’s job; or, if not that, chief of detectives’. There was a certain sense to it. Who better to step into one of those fourth-floor offices than a man who had a long record of results?

  Rather than leave it to chance, he went about showing himself in the best light. He made sure he was on the scene of major arrests, and personally chopped a whiskey still to pieces for the benefit of a newspaper photographer. He planted a rumor that he was a candidate for one of the open posts, and in the overheated weeks leading up to the election, the rumor grew into a forecast, then an accepted fact. The only question seemed to be which office Grayton Jackson would assume.

  While he was plotting, Mayor Sampson was acting, disbanding the corrupt police commission for his own police board and moving control of the department off Decatur Street and into his City Hall office. Ignoring the courting by Jackson and other pretenders, he installed as chief a man named Clifton Troutman, a nothing who had gone through the ranks from patrolman to a desk job. So in one quick stroke, a glorified clerk became chief of police for the city of Atlanta. The chief of detectives post was left open, with an announcement that the search for a candidate would continue. In that one stroke, Grayton Jackson’s glorious hopes tumbled as if shot from the sky and he fell into a black and furious pit.

  The day the word came down from above about the new chief of police, the Captain heard a ruckus in the hall and stepped outside to see Troutman surrounded by a bevy of backslapping well-wishers, their faces pink with feigned admiration.

  Then one of their number saw Captain Jackson looking their way with a glare that traveled over the fifty feet of air like an electric arc. One by one, the heads came around and the gay chatter died. Eyes shifted and throats were cleared. The Captain kept his face stony, showing nothing in his terrible moment of humiliation. He let it stretch to a torturous length, then swiveled on his heel and disappeared back into the detectives’ section, leaving an echoing silence. Not a word was spoken until he was gone, and then the voices were muted.

  The Captain stalked past the desks and into his office with his jaw clenched so tightly his teeth were ground together and his temples ached. He closed the door behind him so no one heard the dark growl that rose from his gut.

  In his sick fury, it dawned on him how ably he had been used. After all he’d done, the mayor and his men thought him nothing but a thug. They held him in such low regard that even though he knew where bodies were buried he rated not even a nod of recognition. Indeed, over the next few days, hints were passed his way that he was damned lucky to have a job at all.

  If the mayor and his new chief were expecting him to resign in defeat and skulk away, they were mistaken. With a mammoth effort of will, he swallowed his bile and went back to work as if nothing had happened. He kept his face blank as thoughts of revenge raged. At the same time, he knew Sampson and Troutman wanted to force him out the door and overheard whispers that the first day of the New Year would be his last day as an Atlanta police officer.

  Then a burglar invaded the Payne mansion, and in a matter of hours, everything was turned around. The mayor and the chief were suddenly in a terrible spot and didn’t know what to do. All their talk of law and order, and they couldn’t manage to guard the richest people in Atlanta against a common thief. With no chief of detectives upon whom to foist the mess, they called on the Captain, who did know what to do. Once again, Grayton Jackson’s head was filled with rosy scenarios of the mayor anointing him to the head spot in the detective squad; or better yet, to relieve the incompetent dunce Troutman and make him chief.

  Whichever it was, he wasn’t about to leave it to chance. This time, it would be his game to win or lose. He understood that it was all hanging by a thread from the Inman Park burglary, and he was doing everything he could to make sure it came out his way.

  There was still plenty of risk, with enemies like Troutman on one side and the likes of Pearl Spencer and Joe Rose on the other. So he could still fail miserably, and in his darkest moments, the idea of putting a bullet from his police revolver in his own temple did not seem out of the question.

  As he gazed down from his window, his mind circling in a slow ellipse, it took a few moments for him to realize that the figure crossing the scope of his vision was none other than that same son of a bitch Joe Rose. Seeing which way that Indian thief was headed, the Captain muttered a small curse. Thoughts of Rose’s insolent face brought along an image of Pearl Spencer’s, and he turned from the window in order to escape them both.

  Joe showed up at Jesse’s at five o’clock, just as daylight was failing and high streaks of cloud were moving through the gray sky on gusty winds that dropped the temperature on the streets. There was no black wreath on the door in Schoen Alley, nor any of the amulets of the kind that traced back to Africa, which told Joe that Jesse was still hanging on. He climbed the creaking wooden stairs and stepped inside to find a different set of callers in attendance, including a couple of rounders he knew vaguely and two women he didn’t recognize at all.

  Willie was there, drowsing with his cheek resting on an arm that was draped over the big body of his guitar. Jesse was asleep, his face even more gaunt and ghostly. His cheekbones were jutting and his eye sockets had deepened. He was already beginning to look like a corpse.

  When Joe sat down, Willie raised his head and stretched.

  “How’s he doing?” Joe said in a muted voice.

  “He’s out a good bit,” Willie said. “When he’s awake he eats some soup and
drinks a little water, that’s all.”

  “How’s he fixed for medicine?”

  “He got enough to hold him through the day, but he’s gonna need some more. I believe it’s the only thing keepin’ him alive.” He tilted his head toward Joe. “You think you can help out with that?”

  “One of those fellows in the kitchen can,” Joe said. “I’ll talk to them.”

  They sat in silence for a few moments before Willie flexed his hands and began lightly strumming the strings of his guitar. At the sound of the first few trembling bars, Little Jesse opened his eyes and stared at Willie as if he couldn’t quite place him, then looked over at Joe with the same blank expression. He licked his dry lips and Joe picked up the glass of water from the night table to give him a drink.

  Jesse closed his eyes in thanks, then cleared his throat and said, “How’s that comin’, Willie?”

  “I’m workin’ it,” Willie said.

  Little Jesse rolled his head in Joe’s direction. His gaze was milky, and Joe wondered if Jesse recognized him. “Willie’s writin’ a song for me,” he said.

  “I heard,” Joe said.

  “He needs to get his black ass movin’ on it,” Jesse said tartly.

  Willie smiled, shook his head, and strummed some more chords. Clearing his throat lightly, he started to sing.

  Little Jesse was a gambler, day and night,

  Well, he used crooked cards and dice.

  A sinful guy, black-hearted, he had no soul

  Yes, his heart was hard and cold like ice

  Jesse was a wild reckless gambler, he won a gang of change

  Many gambler’s heart he let in pain

  He stopped.

  “Well?” Jesse waited, then said, “That ain’t all, is it?”