“Not much.”
“Guy your age, I bet you’re more of a swing man. Let’s see. Miller, Goodman, James, the Dorseys. All the big bands. Am I right?” Tommy had a playful voice, but Horn thought he could detect something underneath the play.
“I suppose.”
“You got a light?” Tommy reached into an inside jacket pocket, extracted a cigarette case, and flipped open the lid. “Want a smoke?”
“Sure.” Horn went over to him, fumbling for his matches. His senses were on full alert. Watch the right hand, he recalled Sykes saying. But the right hand held only the cigarette case, and the left was reassuringly empty. He reached for a cigarette, careful not to stand too close.
A small sound behind him. Horn twisted to one side, throwing up an arm, but he was almost too late. The blow, although glancing, struck his right temple with a terrible weight behind it. Horn staggered to one side, stumbled and fell to one knee on the cracked pavement. In the brief second he was allowed, he cursed his failure to remember the other man, who had quietly approached as Tommy distracted him.
The man was quickly upon him. With something in his fist, he drew back his right arm and swung it as he would swing a hammer. Horn tried to block the blow with his left arm. It landed at the point where the deltoid muscle met the upper arm, with an explosive pain, and he felt the arm go limp. It dropped uselessly, and he knelt there, waiting.
Seeing the results, the other man paused, a fleeting look of satisfaction on his face. Tommy stepped forward. “Let me use that,” he said casually. “You just do what you do.”
The man grunted and tossed Tommy the object he’d been holding. In the dim light, Horn could make out the outline of a sap. He guessed that the stitched leather covered a couple of pounds of lead, and he knew he was in for a bad time. You could break bones with a sap. If it was your intention and you knew what you were doing, you could kill a man.
Left arm hanging limp, he struggled to his feet, fishing in his jacket pocket for the roll of chips he’d brought along. As he wrapped his fist around the cylinder, it seemed pitiably light. It was all he had.
The mustached man removed his suit coat and tossed it over the lid of a trash can. Then, clenching gloved fists, he assumed a practiced stance and moved in on Horn. He didn’t bother to bob and feint but began throwing serious jabs and hooks. Crouching, Horn took most of them on his numb shoulder, waiting for a chance to use his right. He also tried to keep his opponent between himself and Tommy. Whenever he failed, Tommy swung the sap, sometimes landing painful blows on Horn’s back or shoulder. But Tommy was apparently not an experienced street fighter. He seemed largely content to watch the one-sided fight unfolding in front of him.
Out of the corner of his eye, Horn saw that some people had gathered at the mouth of the alley. Once he heard an indignant voice cry out, “You leave that man alone.” But no one moved to stop it.
Horn felt a warm, sticky trickle course down his right temple, wetting his neck and shirt collar. His left arm ached, and the man’s punches were finding his ribs and face. Once he saw an opening and, throwing all his weight behind it, launched a right cross that landed with a satisfying thud on the man’s neck and jaw, sending him to the concrete. But the man seemed to have barely touched the ground when, with a graceful backward roll, he was up and advancing once again, fists high.
Horn was tiring. He thought he had one more good punch in him. Evading an awkward swing by Tommy, he waited a split second and then caught the boxer squarely in the sternum. It was a roundhouse punch. But, amazingly, the man once again hit the ground with a roll and was up again. What the hell?
The distraction had lasted an instant too long. The sap caught him in the back, at the junction of neck and shoulder, and he went down to his knees once again. This time, he could not get up. He knelt there, breathing raggedly, bloody spit running from his mouth to pool between his hands.
“I’ve had enough fun, haven’t you?” he heard Tommy say. “Hold him.”
The other man caught him in a headlock from behind, then got a grip in his hair and forced his head back.
Horn saw Tommy approach, the streetlight now glinting off the mother-of-pearl finish on the small knife in his hand. “Somebody ought to get the police,” said a voice from the street without too much concern.
Delicately, Tommy unfolded the blade, then leaned forward. “Looking for somebody?” he whispered. “Maybe they don’t want to be found.”
The blade rested lightly on Horn’s cheekbone, just below the left eye. Involuntarily, he shut his eyes tight. But he had already focused on his target. Jerking his imprisoned head slightly to the right to evade the blade, he collapsed his weight onto his deadened left arm, freeing up the other arm. At the same instant, he grabbed for Tommy’s testicles with his right hand, finding them and twisting with whatever strength he had left. The scream told him it was enough.
The mustached man flung him to the ground. Horn pulled himself into a ball as the man began aiming kicks at him.
Then, over Tommy’s hoarse screams, he heard a squeal of brakes as someone shouted from the street. “Po-lice comin’,” the voice said. “Po-lice comin’.” A car door slammed.
“Fuck,” the man looming over him said quietly. “It’s the cops.” His only answer was a moan. “Come on,” Horn heard him say, following by scuffling sounds.
Horn lay there, breathing raggedly. He didn’t know how much time passed until he heard the next voice. “Sir?” it said. “Can you get up?”
A moment later he was leaning against an unmarked patrol car, head still ringing, amid a crowd of onlookers. The policeman who had helped him up—a plainclothes cop whose partner stood nearby—swiveled the car’s searchlight around and flicked it on, bathing Horn and the sidewalk in glaring light. As Horn leaned against the car, head down, the cop casually patted him down, then asked him for ID.
“You know you take a chance coming down here,” the detective said, holding out a hand for Horn’s wallet. He was somewhere in his mid-forties, and his necktie stopped short of covering his expansive middle. His expression and manner said he’d seen everything. “You get rolled?”
“Not exactly.”
“Two white men,” said one in the crowd. “They going to cut him, then you showed up.”
“White men? Is that right?”
“Yeah,” Horn said. “They were crazy.”
“Well, you ought to be careful,” the cop said. “You’re going to need a doctor to look at you.” He flipped open the wallet, studied the inside, and his polite demeanor dissolved. “Well, son of a gun. Hey, Chick, you know who we got? John Ray Horn. Remember this guy? Used to be in the movies. He beat up some guy half his size, did time for it. I knew the arresting officer, he told me all about it. Yes sir, this fellow is mean and bad. Aren’t you, cowboy?”
“Not particularly.”
“Well, you sure weren’t tonight.”
The other cop came around the car. He was maybe ten years younger. He studied Horn’s face. “These guys rob you or anything?”
Horn’s breath was coming back, and he straightened up. “No, they just jumped me,” he said. “Something about music. I told them I liked swing, and I said bebop sounded like a couple of cats fighting. They went crazy. I guess they really take their jazz seriously.”
The young cop’s face showed nothing. “I guess so.”
Horn pulled out his handkerchief and blotted at the blood on his temple. His head had stopped ringing and was beginning to ache.
“Sounds like bullshit to me,” the older cop said. But he didn’t seem sure.
“Well, that’s what happened,” Horn said.
The older cop plucked a flashlight out of the car and walked into the alley, playing the light around.
“Your partner want to run me in?” Horn said to the younger cop.
> “Titus? Oh, he might,” the detective said. “But I think I can talk him out of it. The thing is, when we bump into a felon all covered with blood, we get suspicious. Me, I don’t care about your record. If you didn’t do a crime tonight, you got nothing to worry about.”
“I appreciate that,” Horn said. “What’s your name?”
“Loder. Why you ask?”
“I haven’t run into many cops who played straight with me, that’s all.”
The stocky detective came out of the alley carrying Horn’s roll of poker chips. “These yours?”
“I might have dropped them in there.”
“Must’ve been a high-stakes game, huh?” He broke the seal on the end with his thumbnail and extracted a chip, held it up to the light. “Mad Crow Casino,” he read. “You work there?”
“Sometimes.”
“I’ll keep a couple of these for a souvenir,” he said, handing Horn the rest. “Maybe they’ll be good for a drink.”
“Here he is, ma’am,” someone said urgently. Horn turned to find Addie and Eugene, the waiter.
“Oh, no.” Addie grabbed at his arm. “Oh, no. What happened?”
“I’ll tell you all about it,” he said, shooting her a look intended to mean, Not here.
Eugene handed him his hat, which he’d left inside. “I saw what was going on,” Eugene said. “Went looking for you and saw it. Ran out to Central. They’s a po-lice car out there this time of night, usually. I yelled to ‘em.”
“Thanks.”
The beefy cop stared at Addie. “We don’t like to see white women down here, Miss. It’s not safe.”
“I’m not worried,” she said. “I have an escort.”
“He wasn’t much good at protecting himself tonight.”
She turned to Horn. “Why don’t we just go?”
“That’s a good idea,” he said. Then, to the policemen: “You arresting anybody?”
The older cop was about to answer when a colored man in a white jacket stepped up and spoke to him in a low voice. Horn recognized the bartender from the Dixie Belle. The cop listened, then turned to Horn. “You need to come with me,” he said.
A minute later they were inside the club, standing in the corridor beyond the bar, and the detective was knocking on the door marked Private. Hearing a response, he opened it and went in. A minute later he came out and gestured Horn inside.
“Thank you, Titus,” said the man behind the desk as the detective stepped back into the corridor and closed the door. To Horn he said, “You like to sit down?”
The office was small, windowless, and ill-furnished, with a scarred desk and a few chairs. Since the bandstand was only about thirty feet away, beyond the wall to Horn’s left, the floor throbbed with the vibrations of bass and drum. Smells of liquor seeped in from the bar, and someone had smoked a lot of cigars in the tiny space. Horn felt nauseous.
“I’m in a little bit of a hurry,” he said, studying the individual Eugene had called the Creole. The man’s face was an ethnic map of the bayou country, with sharp cheekbones and skin that looked almost golden in the overhead light. His wavy hair was slick with pomade. The original shape of his nose was hard to read, since its topography had been changed over the years by contact with fists or something harder.
“Well, I won’t take much of your time,” the man said, his right hand fiddling with a half-dollar. “Just want to apologize for what happen outside. They told me you got jumped in the alley. I don’t like that. Make people think they can’t come down here. Bad for Central, you know? Bad for business. Can I offer you a drink?” In contrast to the face, his voice was soft, almost silken. He was one of those men who didn’t have to raise their voices, Horn thought. Sometimes it was just a trick, speaking softly to get people to listen harder. But sometimes it was for real.
Horn shook his head. “Where’s Addie?”
“The young lady? She fine. One of my boys sitting with her close to the bandstand. She be just fine.”
“I need to—” He suddenly felt dizzy and reached out for the edge of the desk.
“Whoa, man.” The Creole got up and helped him into a chair. “You wait right here.” In a few minutes he was back with a steaming cup, which he placed on the desk. “You drink this.”
“What is it?”
“It’s tea, with orange peel and chicory and lots of other stuff.” He smiled briefly, showing a glint of what might be gold in one of his front teeth. “My mama used to give me that when I was sick. I make it behind the bar for me and a few friends. I don’t drink hard stuff any more.” He patted his stomach. “Ulcer.”
Horn took a sip, then another. “Thanks.”
“So, you get a look at the boys who jump you?”
“Sure,” Horn said, wrapping both hands around the cup. “They’re friends of yours. Or maybe I should say business associates.”
“Hmm?”
“Saw you talking to them earlier tonight, over at your table.”
The Creole’s face went flat. He didn’t know, Horn thought. “Didn’t the cop tell you?”
“He say couple of white men. That’s all he say.”
“He wasn’t there. They were the same two you were having a drink with, just a few minutes ago. I guess they left in a hurry, huh?” Horn wondered if he’d just made an enemy of this man, and he knew he didn’t want him for an enemy. In the next few seconds, he knew he had to decide whether to be cagey with the Creole or to be honest with him.
What the hell, he was too tired and sore to be cagey. And besides, the tea tasted good.
“Here’s the way it is,” he said, leaning forward in his chair. “I came down here looking for my daughter. I’ve got nothing to do with the police, and I’m not interested in whatever business you have going with anybody. If I was police, that fat cop you’re on such good terms with, he’d have shown me a little more respect.”
The Creole smiled at that, and this time Horn was sure he saw gold.
“She’s missing. This guy Tommy Dell, or whatever the hell his name is—I think she’s with him. She’s just sixteen, and he’s got no right to be with her.” He pulled Clea’s picture from his pocket and slid it across the desk. The Creole glanced down at it. If he recognized her, he gave no sign.
“Tommy and his friend, they knew I was looking for them, and they set me up in the alley. Now they’re gone. I could use some help finding them.”
“And if you ask the police, they wouldn’t help,” the Creole said lazily, yawning and stretching his arms over his head. “Because you got a record.”
“He told you that too, huh? What else did he tell you?”
“Oh, that you used to act in the movies, before you get in trouble. I think I seen one or two of them. Me, I like Bob Steele. He’s a scrappy little man, ain’t he? Nobody punch like him. Anyway, now you fetch and carry for Joe Mad Crow over at his gambling place.” He fiddled some more with the coin, then tossed it onto the desktop. It wasn’t a half-dollar, it was one of the casino chips the cop had taken.
“Joseph,” Horn said. “He likes Joseph.”
“Man like to use his formal name, that’s fine with me.” The Creole slid the photo back across the desk. “Nice looking young lady,” he said. “Well, I ain’t the one to help you. Ain’t none of my business.”
“What is your business? Tommy got anything to do with it?”
The other man leaned back in his chair and half-closed his eyes, as if to show Horn he had no concerns. “My business legal, mostly, just like your friend Mad Crow’s place, what I hear. And this Tommy, you call him, he’s legal too, mostly. If you think you got something on us, you wrong.”
“I’ll come back,” Horn said. “Until I find him.”
“Not in my club you won’t.” There was no threat in the voice, just fact. “You not walk
ing inside. My boys escort you right back out. And if they don’t—”
“Your friend Titus will.”
“Maybe. Don’t want to make it sound like he work for me, though. He just a police detective stationed down here, and he got friends all up and down this street. Sometimes he help out a friend, you know how it is.”
“What about his partner? Is he your friend too?”
The Creole shrugged. “Him I don’t know about.”
Horn pocketed the photo and rose unsteadily. “Thanks for the tea.”
“You better wash that shirt fast,” the Creole said without much interest. “Blood’s bad for clothes. But be sure you use cold water. My mama teach me that too.”
At the door, Horn turned. “This is more than just a missing girl,” he said wearily. “Friend of mine is dead too. And there’s something else going on. I’ve learned about a bunch of men who take advantage of little girls. Have sex with them. Girls so little, you don’t want to know. All this is connected, but I just don’t know how.”
“What are you talking about?” The Creole was staring at him, his head cocked to one side.
“I don’t know how to prove—”
“About the little girls.” Something flickered in the Creole’s eyes. Was it interest?
“I’ve got pictures they took,” Horn said, leaning against the door. “The girls are all different ages.”
“What this got to do with your friend?”
“He had the pictures. I think he was killed because of them.”
The Creole said nothing. For a moment he had seemed interested, but now Horn felt him slipping away.
“My daughter was in one of the pictures.”
The Creole stared at his desktop for a moment, as if making up his mind. But when he looked up, there was nothing in his eyes. “Sorry you had a bad time here,” he said. “You drive careful going home.”
* * *
“You said I could help.” Addie was sulking as she drove, but it was a half-hearted sulk, and she was clearly still high from the drinks and the excitement. Horn had been happy to learn she could drive. As they headed back, he leaned against the doorpost on the passenger’s side, head throbbing, the bloody handkerchief crumpled in his hand. The bleeding had stopped as he talked to the Creole.
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