Dead Man’s Blues

by Ray Celestin

  ‘You got kids, Walker?’

  ‘I got two.’

  ‘Then you’ll understand my position in not wanting to railroad a grief-stricken mother by shit-canning the investigation.’

  Walker peered at him, surprise chased across his face by a sad sort of acknowledgment. He nodded eventually and they looked out over the game once more, and Michael thought how he’d have to tell Ida and Annette that the circumstances had changed for the worse.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d take it,’ said Walker. ‘You’ve got the whole dogged routine down pat.’

  ‘Dogged?’

  ‘You’re the only man I’ve ever met who fits the word.’

  16

  The Illinois Women’s Athletic Club was one of the Magnificent Mile’s many new and ostentatious buildings, part of a decade-long building spree that had seen skyscrapers sprouting up on either side of the road, like so many bony fingers groping at the sky. A tall thin slice of bright redbrick, it rose seventeen stories into the air, and was dotted all over with tastefully chosen Gothic motifs – bay windows, arches, parapets, stone tracery, finials, and on each of its corners, castle towers topped with crucifixes. The uppermost eight floors were given over to the use of the Athletic Club and it was in the reception there that Ida waited that afternoon, staring through a window eastwards over Tower Court, across the rooftops to the shimmer of the lake beyond.

  ‘Miss?’ said a hesitant voice and Ida turned to see a receptionist flitting toward her.

  ‘Miss Marlena is in the solarium. If you’d like to follow me,’ she said, holding a hand up to the interior of the club.

  ‘The solarium?’ said Ida, as they went through a set of doors.

  ‘It’s a room that faces south, to catch the sun.’

  Ida nodded again, trying to brush off the condescension. They walked down a corridor with walls of fleur de rose marble and a floor of sparklingly bright maple parquetry. They passed by dressing rooms, dining rooms, exercise rooms, reception rooms, then past a library finely paneled in mahogany, up some stairs, and into the solarium. The receptionist opened the door and stood by as Ida entered, then she pointed out Miss Marlena Jansen seated in the far corner, and departed with a smile.

  The day before, when Mrs Van Haren was in their office, one of the details they’d taken from her was the name of Gwendolyn’s closest friend, Lena Jansen. They’d called her and arranged an appointment for the following afternoon. Then in the morning Gwen’s maid had mentioned that Lena was involved in the plot to spirit Gwendolyn away. So what was supposed to be an interview to get some background information had turned into something more. Ida had to find out what she knew: why Gwen had run away; how she’d spent her last day in the city; what the Negro she’d visited in Bronzeville had to do with it all; and most importantly, what Gwendolyn had seen that had scared her so.

  Ida crossed the long, rectangular room, passing by armchairs and sofas in which groups of women were chatting, some of them in sports clothes, others in city wear. On the room’s southern side, a huge bank of windows opened out onto the city and through them the afternoon sun cascaded in, rightly earning the room its name. The windows were open and on the impossibly high ceiling, large electric fans whirred away, doing their best to dispel the heat. Ida passed by some plants in great metal pots and stopped at a corner where two bamboo lounge chairs were arranged around a bamboo coffee table. In one of the chairs, with her back to Ida, sat a female figure reading a magazine and Ida noticed that despite the heat, the figure was wearing chamois gloves that went all the way up to her elbows.

  ‘Miss Jansen?’ said Ida, and the woman turned around, studied her a moment, and broke out in a sly grin.

  ‘You’re the detective?’ she said a little incredulously.

  Ida stepped forward and passed the woman her business card. The woman took it and stared at it a moment with a smile.

  ‘Please, take a seat,’ she said, waving to the chair opposite her. ‘And please call me Lena.’

  Ida sat and waited as Lena continued to scan the card with a smile on her face that suggested she found the idea of being interviewed by a female detective delightfully bohemian, and Ida could already feel herself becoming an anecdote. She looked about the room once more, taking in the dark green wallpaper of a peacock-tail design.

  ‘You’re very good-looking for a detective,’ the woman said finally, looking up from the card. ‘Would you like a drink? I’m having a lime-juice soda. It’s what they drink in India to cool down.’

  ‘I’ll have one too, then. Thank you.’

  The woman raised her hand, and in a moment a waitress was at her side and she was ordering the drink. As she did so Ida cast her eye over Marlena Jansen. She was in her early twenties and was finely made, with eyes the color of slate, and hair marceled into gleaming flaxen waves that rolled across her forehead and crashed down her neck.

  ‘You’re the same Ida Davis that solved the Brandt kidnapping?’ Lena asked when the waitress had left. Ida nodded.

  ‘Kudos. I followed the case in the papers. I’m no judge of these things but it seems it was quite the achievement. So, how can I help?’

  ‘Well, Miss Gwendolyn’s mother asked us to investigate her disappearance and she gave us your name as her closest friend. And your name also came up when we spoke to Miss Florence, Gwendolyn’s maid.’

  Ida kept her eyes on Lena’s face and noticed a twitch under her skin that momentarily disturbed the surface of her beauty.

  ‘No need to lie to you, then?’

  Ida shook her head. ‘Florence told us about the arrangements to get Gwendolyn to Canada. You haven’t heard anything from her yet?’

  ‘Unfortunately not.’

  ‘She also told us that on the day she disappeared, Gwendolyn was looking for her fiancé, to break off their engagement. She went to see a man in Bronzeville called Randall Taylor who she thought might know Charles Coulton’s whereabouts. Then, hours later, she turned up at the Van Haren house in a state of shock. Between being dropped off at Marshall Field’s and her return, her whereabouts are unaccounted for – that’s at least half the day and most of the evening. Do you know where she was in those hours?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know. Looking for Chuck, I guess – that’s Charles Coulton.’

  ‘Why did she lie about going to Marshall Field’s?’

  ‘I suppose she didn’t want her parents to know she was going to Bronzeville. Whatever happened to her in between, when Gwendolyn returned to the house she was hysterical. Her maid didn’t know what to do, so they called me up. Gwendolyn ranted down the phone at me, not making sense, saying she’d seen something awful and she had to get away. I spoke to Florence and we made the arrangements to get her on the train while her parents were out. She was supposed to call when she arrived, but she never did.’

  ‘She didn’t say what she’d seen?’

  Lena shook her head. ‘Something about bloodied hands, and a bloodied face. She used the word “slaughter”.’

  ‘You don’t know if she ever caught up with Charles Coulton?’

  Lena shook her head again.

  ‘And this man that she went to meet, Randall Taylor – do you know him?’

  ‘I know him very well. He’s a Negro go-between we employ sometimes, when we go slumming in Bronzeville.’

  Ida frowned, surprised that these people went slumming and that they used go-betweens: Negro fixers who organized nights out for rich whites in Bronzeville. The men arranged for booze and narcotics and entry to nightclubs and the best seats in the house and prostitutes in apartments – buffet flats – for after the nightclubs closed.

  ‘Gwendolyn went slumming too?’

  Lena nodded. ‘There’s more life in the Black Belt than in the rest of this city put together, Miss Davis, but I suppose you already know that,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘What does he look like?’

  ‘Good-looking. Pleasant. Fair-skinned for a Negro. But not as fair-skinned as you,’ she said,
with that smile again.

  ‘You know where I can get in contact with him?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. Chuck and Lloyd always dealt with him.’

  ‘Lloyd?’

  ‘Lloyd Severyn – a friend of Chuck’s.’

  At that moment the waitress returned with Ida’s drink. She placed it on the coffee table between them: a tall thin glass on a small dish of embellished metal.

  ‘Why Montreal?’

  ‘She’d been there often, she knew the place well. It’s out of the country, too – I suppose that was a factor. And I don’t think she had any relatives there, no one to tell her parents where she was hiding out.’

  ‘Why was it so important that her family didn’t find out?’

  ‘Because they would have forced her to stay in Chicago, to go through with the wedding.’

  Lena took off her gloves, revealing slender fingers topped off with a moon manicure, the base of the nail left unpainted. She reached into her handbag and took a cigarette case from it, a delicate box of Siberian jade. She took a cigarette from the case and lit it and offered the case to Ida. Ida smiled and took one of the cigarettes and when she put it into her mouth she realized it was cork-tipped – no need to worry about swallowing stray flakes.

  ‘What are they like?’ she asked, lighting the cigarette.

  ‘The Van Harens?’ asked Lena. ‘The usual kind of Gold Coast family, rich as the rain and just as sad. The mother is hysterical, the father distant. Gwendolyn had no brothers or sisters. It was just her and them. It’s no wonder she ended up confiding in that maid of hers.’

  Ida smiled and nodded. She picked up the glass and took a sip, and the citrus and soda fizzed in her mouth, sharp and cool with a metallic tang.

  ‘And the wedding to Charles Coulton? That was arranged?’

  ‘I’m not sure “arranged” is the right word. The Van Harens need Coulton’s money. They need it enough to overlook the fact that the engagement was something of an embarrassment to them.’

  ‘In what way?’

  Lena smiled ruefully, took a drag on her cigarette.

  ‘Coulton Senior’s an arriviste, and he’s got a murky past,’ she said. ‘There’s an upper crust to Chicago society, and stupid as it may seem, these people who’ve only been rich for a couple of generations look down on “new” money. They’re snobbish and entitled, and to them, Senior’s a joke. For his attempts at fitting in, for his accent, his manners. I’ve heard him described by them as all manner of things – “an ape in a suit”, “as hard as rigor mortis”, “rougher than a rent collector”. The Van Harens are part of that set, so you can imagine how everyone laughed when it emerged their children were engaged.’

  ‘So Gwendolyn wanted to call it off because she was being forced into it?’

  ‘Well, yes, but there was something else.’

  Here Lena trailed off, took a drag on her cigarette and stared at Ida as she pursed her lips and exhaled the smoke. ‘Chuck’s romantic tastes didn’t extend to people like Gwen. There were some incidents with Chuck when he was at college. The father brushed it all under the carpet. He forced Chuck to go into the family business, forced him to marry Gwen. I suppose he’d have gone along with it all for a quiet life, and met up with his boys on the side.’

  Ida nodded and thought back to the engagement photos, Gwendolyn’s expression.

  ‘When did Gwen find out about Chuck?’ she asked.

  ‘I think it just dawned on her. She came to me and we spoke about it, and she wasn’t sure what to do. A few months later she asked her mother to call off the wedding and her mother strong-armed her to go through with it. I think her mother was forced into a loveless marriage too and saw it as some kind of duty. I suppose that’s why she’s so grief-stricken at Gwen running off like that – feels guilty.’

  Just then there was a commotion behind them, the sound of a door bursting open, voices, a chorus of laughs. Ida turned around to see a group of four or five girls who had stumbled into the room by accident and were hastily trying to get back out. They were dripping wet, wearing bathing costumes and towels. Ida frowned, thinking she recognized one of the girls. But before she could be sure, they stepped out again and closed the door, and all that was left were the tuts in the air from some of the older women, and a few puddles of water on the floor, which one of the waitresses was already approaching with a towel in her hand and an annoyed expression on her face.

  Ida turned back to Lena, still frowning.

  ‘Was one of those girls Clara Bow?’ she asked.

  ‘I believe so,’ said Lena. ‘The town’s filling with celebrities for the boxing match in a couple of weeks. Some of the starlets have been here using the pool.’

  ‘There’s a swimming pool here?’

  Lena nodded. ‘Opulent, no? A tank of thousands of gallons of water all the way up here, while in the depths below, the city swelters.’ She grinned, as if she understood the decadence involved, and liked it all the more so for it.

  ‘If you’d like to go swimming I can arrange a pass for you,’ she continued. ‘I’m sure most of the women won’t notice your complexion. At least not the older ones, who are the ones you have to watch out for. There’s loungers on the roof too, for sunbathing. I think that’s where Miss Bow and her companions were heading when they took a wrong turn.’

  ‘Thank you for the offer,’ said Ida, returning the condescension with some of her own. ‘But . . .’

  ‘But you’d prefer getting back to business. What else is it you’d like to know?’

  ‘Tell me about Gwendolyn’s suicide attempt.’

  Lena raised her eyebrows. ‘You have done your detective work,’ she said. ‘Although it’s “attempts”, plural. Twice she tried it, though she’s had sinking spells ever since we were girls. She took a razor to her arms last Christmas and a few months after that she stole some of her mother’s sleeping pills.’

  Ida nodded, wondering how bad it had to get to seek the solace of razors and pills. In the silence she listened to the whirring of the fans above, to the glassy fizz of the soda and ice on the table.

  ‘And her parents?’

  ‘What could they do? Put her in an asylum? The family reputation couldn’t stretch to that. It was tarnished enough by them having to marry her into new money. I suggested they take her to a psychological doctor, but they dismissed that as far too Jewish. Then I suggested we take her away somewhere on holiday but they wanted her close by, in case she tried to do it again. The girl was their meal ticket to Coulton’s money. They ordered the staff at the house to keep an eye on her, after taking away anything that she could harm herself with.’

  Ida nodded. Then Lena leaned forward to stub out her cigarette and Ida saw on a chain around her neck a pendant in the shape of a tiny spoon, silver and shining. Ida had seen other young girls around town wearing them; they were used to snort cocaine, the drug of choice among flappers and high-society fashionistas. Ida guessed that beyond their practical use, the tiny spoons were some kind of statement, a membership card for a secret and mischievous fellowship.

  Lena finished extinguishing her cigarette and looked up to see Ida staring. She smiled, leaned back in her chair, lifted her hand into the air and ordered herself another drink.

  ‘Tell me about Chuck’s friend, Lloyd Severyn.’

  ‘Chuck met him during the war. They served in France together. He’s not the type that Chuck would have befriended under any other circumstances, but I suppose war binds people in ways we can’t imagine.’

  ‘And a physical description?’

  ‘Oh, tall and thin. Brown hair. Narrow eyes. Has scars on his neck and a burned-out voice. From the mustard gas in the war. It did something to his vocal cords and now he can only speak in, well, I guess you could call it a whisper, but not quite. Somewhere between a whisper and a growl. Like the inside of his throat is coated in rust. It’s quite unsettling.’

  ‘Seems like a strange man for Chuck to stay friends with.’

  ‘
They’re not just friends,’ said Lena, arching an eyebrow. ‘And you have to understand Chuck to understand why they’d maintain an acquaintance.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning Chuck’s weighed down by his father’s expectations. He’s been sent to all the best schools so he can fit into the upper crust. I suppose his father wanted him to come out of college as a horse-rider, a yachtsman, a strong-jawed captain of industry, someone to take over the family empire. Instead Chuck’s come out of it sensitive and soft and terrified of his father, sees him as some kind of ogre. The two of them can’t be in each other’s company. Then there’s the question mark over how his father came upon his money. I suppose Lloyd’s a bridge for Chuck, between the old man’s background and the expectations he has for his son.’

  Ida frowned, picking her way through Lena’s insinuations that Chuck’s father was a criminal, and maybe Chuck’s lover was too. Lena, seeing her confusion, waved her hand about in the air, implying it was of no consequence, a by-the-by fancy of hers.

  ‘Chuck went missing on the same day as Gwen – according to Gwen’s mother,’ said Ida, ‘but Florence said he’d disappeared before that. And no one’s filed a missing person’s report. I was wondering why that might be.’

  ‘I think Mrs Van Haren got that wrong. Chuck vanished some time before Gwen. That’s why she had to go searching for him. And as for a missing person’s report, I don’t suppose his father’s pride would stoop to looking for him.’

  ‘What about Chuck’s mother?’

  ‘She died giving birth to him. Another reason why the father is less than fatherly to him.’