Dead Man’s Blues

by Ray Celestin

  ‘Il cavaliere!’ shouted a voice through the din, and Dante looked up to see a man in an off-white suit and a red carnation in his lapel approaching through the hordes. Dante grinned when he saw him, and the two shook hands warmly.

  Inigo Vaughn was in his fifties, dark-haired and suave, an immigrant from Cardiff who for over twenty years had been the house detective at the Ritz.

  ‘I didn’t believe it when I heard you were back in town,’ Inigo said in his sing-song Welsh accent. ‘We all thought you were dead.’

  ‘Yeah, I keep hearing that.’

  Inigo looked down at Dante’s feet, at the dog curled up at the bottom of the stool.

  ‘Well, if you’re Dante, who’s that?’ he said, pointing at the dog. ‘Virgil?’

  He flashed a smile and Dante smiled back and shrugged, and tossed a couple of cashews into his mouth.

  ‘How’ve you been?’ Dante asked.

  ‘Getting older and no richer.’

  Inigo ordered a drink from the bar, and sat on the stool next to Dante. ‘I suppose you want to hear about this little poison party we hosted?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Dante, and Inigo gave him his take on the same story Ralph Capone had told him in the funeral parlor the previous day. Inigo filled in a few more of the details, describing how he’d got safe doctors with stomach pumps there in double time, how he’d got the worst cases into a private hospital, managing to wheel them through the hotel without anyone asking any questions. He’d dealt with the Coroner’s physicians and the doctors at the hospital by coming up with cover stories and promising everyone involved Ritz-sized kickbacks. Dante listened to it all and at the end he nodded and expressed his respect for what Inigo had done: thirteen members of Chicago’s political elite had almost been killed on his watch, and Inigo ran interference so well not a whisper of it had gotten into a single newspaper or police report.

  ‘Any idea who was responsible?’ asked Dante.

  Inigo shrugged.

  ‘You’ve got thirteen of the most powerful, most hated men in Chicago, all in one room. Half the city wants them dead. It could be anyone. Even your boy Capone.’

  ‘That doesn’t seem likely since he asked me to investigate.’

  Inigo frowned at him. ‘Finish up your drink and we’ll get started,’ he said, before peering down at the dog. ‘No mutts in the kitchen though. Leave him with the coat-check girl, she’s crazy for the things.’

  Five minutes later they were walking through a kitchen the size of a football field, with dozens of chefs and kitchen porters and waiters running about the space, the air filled with a roar of gas jets and the smell of fine French food. They reached a corner where there was a staircase descending into the cellar and a rickety-looking wooden door. Inigo knocked and they stepped into a cramped little office, low-ceilinged and windowless.

  A man was sitting at a desk there, and Inigo introduced him as Patrick Harris, the kitchen manager. Harris stood and shook Dante’s hand. There were no chairs for Dante and Inigo to sit on, so they perched on the edge of a sideboard running down one side of the office.

  Dante inspected Harris a moment. He was chubby, red-faced and scared, with an expression Dante recognized from the restaurateurs who came to his boat off Long Island – the look of a man who, thanks to prohibition, had no choice but to deal with the criminal element. Harris had been told a man would be visiting from Capone’s organization to investigate the poisoning, so the kitchen manager was wary, pegging Dante as the type of ruthless gangster the Outfit had a reputation for employing.

  ‘Let’s start by me apologizing to you on behalf of Mr Capone,’ said Dante, trying to put the man at ease. ‘We take pride in providing only the best goods to our customers and when something like this happens, we can only say that it upsets us as much as it does you.’

  Harris frowned, surprised, then he relaxed a little, realizing that Dante was not the psychopath he had been expecting.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me what happened on the day the booze was delivered?’

  ‘It was a few weeks back,’ said Harris. ‘Our delivery comes once a week. Wednesday afternoon. Two men in a Model T truck. They drop the crates off, I sign the manifest and they leave.’

  ‘Was it the same two guys that normally deliver the stuff?’

  Harris nodded.

  ‘All right, so after the crates arrive, they go to the storeroom, right?’

  ‘The cellar, yeah.’

  ‘Who’s got access to the cellar?’

  ‘Managers and head waiters.’

  ‘All right, let’s go to the night the poisoning happened. How comes it was that party that got the poison booze? Was it just bad luck?’

  Harris shook his head. ‘We ordered in the booze specially. They have that party every three months or so, it’s a kinda club meeting or something. Whenever they book the room, we order in the champagne and put it aside. It was only ever gonna go to them.’

  ‘And who on your staff knew about the arrangement with the champagne?’

  ‘Everyone. It weren’t no secret.’

  ‘When’d you take the booking for the party?’

  ‘I dunno, a couple of months ago.’

  ‘All right. So how does the serving work? Talk me through it.’

  ‘The cases get opened up by the kitchen porters in the afternoon and the bottles are put on ice in the cellar, then the waiters take them up to the function room so they’re ready for the guests when they arrive.’

  ‘All right,’ said Dante. ‘I’d like you to get me a list of everyone who was working the function that night – names and addresses. Can you do that?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Harris, and the worried look returned. ‘Look, you don’t think we were involved? The hotel, I mean?’

  ‘At the moment, I don’t think so,’ Dante said, trying to make it sound convincing, ‘but it pays to be sure. One last question – any staff leave the hotel since the poisoning? Anyone not turn up for work? Disappear? Take a sudden holiday?’

  ‘No. No one . . .’ said Harris, before trailing off, as if something had just occurred to him. ‘Except for Julius. Julius Clay. He went on holiday after the poisoning.’

  Dante turned to Inigo, and Inigo gave him a look – this was news to him too.

  ‘Who’s Julius?’

  ‘One of our head waiters.’

  ‘Was he working the night of the poisoning?’

  Harris nodded.

  ‘You didn’t think to say anything?’ said Inigo, glaring at Harris.

  ‘He had it booked off months back,’ said Harris. ‘He takes three weeks off every summer to go down to Michigan City. That’s where he’s from. It’s just . . .’

  ‘Just what?’

  ‘He was supposed to come back to work yesterday. And he never showed up.’

  ‘Jesus Christ—’ said Inigo. Dante saw he was about to lay into Harris, so he put a hand on his arm to calm him, realizing that the two of them had inadvertently stumbled into a good-cop-bad-cop routine.

  ‘It’s probably just a coincidence,’ said Dante. ‘A lot of people go to Michigan City this time of year.’

  ‘He’s been a waiter here two decades,’ said Harris. ‘I wouldn’t think he’d be involved in anything like this.’

  ‘I’m sure he’s not,’ said Dante, smiling, trying to make out that Julius Clay was not suspect number one.

  ‘You normally let your employees take three weeks off?’

  ‘It’s shift work. They take weeks off whenever they like.’

  ‘Okay. Inigo told me you’ve still got some of the bottles here,’ said Dante. ‘You mind showing them to me?’

  Harris nodded and they headed out of the office and down some stairs toward the cellar. As Harris pushed the door open they heard footsteps behind them and they turned to see a bellboy peering down at them through the gloom.

  ‘Mr Vaughn, sir?’ said the bellboy. ‘There’s a man in the bar to see you, sir.’

  ‘I’m busy.’

  �
�He, uh, he seems kinda . . . irate, sir. Says he works for Governor Small.’

  Inigo paused a moment, then looked at Dante. ‘You mind?’

  Dante shook his head and Inigo disappeared up the steps. Then Harris unlocked the door and they stepped inside. Harris switched on a light, and bulbs high up in the ceiling came to life, illuminating a few patches of what Dante could see was an extensive space, brick-walled and filled with shelves and crates of liquor. Harris grabbed a crowbar that was lying underneath the light switch and they walked over to a stack of crates in a corner.

  Harris reached behind the stack and dragged out a crate. It had been nailed shut and someone had written DO NOT OPEN across each of its sides in black paint. Harris slipped the crowbar under the plank and with much straining, prized it off. He lifted the lid, pulled out a bottle of champagne from an open case and passed it to Dante. When Dante saw it, the world began to spin and he had to grab hold of one of the shelves to stop himself from falling: the bottle was the same as the ones that had killed his wife and family six years earlier.

  ‘You all right, sir? . . . Sir?’

  Harris’s voice sounded distant, far off, as if it was underwater, engulfed by the million thoughts running through Dante’s mind. He focused on the paving slabs that made up the floor of the cellar, the rigid lines between them, then he took a deep breath and nodded in response to Harris’s question.

  He took a moment, regaining his composure, then he lifted the bottle high into the air, waited a second, and let it drop to the floor. It smashed in a pop of glass and fizzing liquid and Harris took a step back. Dante watched as the alcohol spread across the paving stones, more and more of it becoming exposed to the air. He crouched over the puddle and waited, the tangy smell of the champagne filling his nose. Then, after half a minute or so, a different smell emerged, caustic and sharp, the telltale sign that the alcohol had been chemically altered, the same fragrance that had filled Dante’s kitchen six years earlier.

  20

  Dante strode out of the cellar and up the stairs and through the chaos of the kitchen, the whole time thinking it couldn’t be a coincidence, there had to be some order behind it. He returned to the bar, sat on a stool, fumbled a cigarette from his pack and lit it. He called the barman over and ordered a double whiskey, downed it, and ordered another. He rubbed his temples and waited for his heart to slow, for the whirl of images to stop carouseling through his mind – the bottle, his wife, the cellar floor, the bottle, his wife, the cellar floor – each beat of his heart a stab of guilt and remorse. He’d had these mental attacks countless times before; he knew it was just a matter of time till they passed, and he knew that the alcohol and nicotine didn’t help, but when the barman returned with his second whiskey, Dante took it off him and stayed hunched over the bar, drinking and smoking.

  When he reached the end of the cigarette, the spinning in his head slowly eased, his heart stopped thumping so strongly against his ribs, and he became aware of his surroundings once more. He looked up, and was surprised to see the world carrying on just fine without him – people were ordering drinks, chatting at tables, coming and going. No one was paying any attention to the pale-looking man at the bar with his head in his hands.

  Dante’s eyes wandered about the place, looking for something to rest on, to take his mind off his thoughts, something to watch that wasn’t a dread-inducing memory, and on the other side of the glass partition that ran through the middle of the bar, he found it – Inigo. He was arguing with a hulk of a man in a blue serge suit whom Dante recognized from the old days as an enforcer named Corrado Abbate. A man who had more muscle than he could ever use, so rented out the leftovers piecemeal to whoever was in need of them. Abbate seemed to be blasting Inigo with anger and indignation, jabbing his finger into the air between them. Dante remembered the bellboy who’d grabbed Inigo from the cellar saying the angry man worked for Governor Small, one of the men who had been hospitalized after the poison party.

  Dante watched the scene, slowly regaining his calm. Inigo, ever capable, seemed to be holding his own against the much bigger Abbate. At some point a woman approached Abbate and spoke to him quickly. She was tall, with a statuesque figure, dressed like night in a black dress, black chiffon hose, and a long-brimmed black hat with a veil draped down across her face.

  The woman asked Abbate a question, and Abbate, annoyed, gestured in the direction of the bar, barely breaking off his haranguing. The woman took a moment, then walked around the glass partition and all the men in the bar sized her up as she entered. She looked about for somewhere to sit, and her gaze alighted on Dante. She paused, then headed in his direction, setting off an avalanche of broken hearts.

  When she got up close, Dante could see her face through the veil and he finally recognized her – Loretta Valenti, Olivia’s best friend, part of the group of friends Dante had grown up with. She stared at him for a level minute, not quite believing what she was seeing, then she flashed him a fireworks smile and Dante smiled back, a host of memories swirling into his mind, and the thumping heart and the carousel of images started spinning once more – Olivia as a teen, Loretta as a teen, a long-lost Chicago careening into the past.

  ‘Dante? I can’t hardly believe it.’

  He stood and they hugged, then disengaged and studied each other. Through the shadow of the veil, he could see that one of her eyes was bruised, purple and yellow and puffy, the makeup and the veil not quite enough to conceal it. She picked up that Dante had noticed and she reddened, stiffening for a moment.

  ‘I guess I’m not fooling anyone with this,’ she said, lifting up the veil, pinning it back to the brim of her hat.

  ‘I didn’t notice till you got up close,’ said Dante, and Loretta smiled.

  ‘You want a drink?’ he asked, offering her his stool.

  She smiled and sat, and Dante signaled the barman over and she ordered a Martini, and when the barman had gone she turned to look at Dante, and without the veil he could see how beautiful she still was, eyes perfectly green and wide as a lake, hair tucked up underneath her hat except for a single strand, a spiral of red, tumbling down in front of one cheek.

  ‘I thought you were dead, Dante. We all did.’

  ‘So I’ve been hearing.’

  ‘I walked in and thought I’d seen a ghost. It would have been good to hear from you, you know. A postcard or something. Where were you?’

  ‘I traveled around a bit, then pitched up in New York.’

  ‘When’d you get back to Chicago?’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘Well, welcome back, I suppose.’

  ‘Thanks. You’re the first person that’s actually said that to me.’

  ‘Where are you staying?’ she asked.

  ‘The Lindbergh suite at the Drake.’

  ‘Fancy.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Pilsen.’

  He nodded. ‘So what’ve you been doing the last six years?’ he asked. ‘Aside from moving to Pilsen.’

  ‘Not growing up. What about you?’

  ‘Same.’

  They both smiled, and for some reason Dante sensed a feeling of mutual guilt.

  ‘Who died?’ he asked, nodding at her outfit.

  ‘No one. I dressed to match my eye. The veil was the only thing I had to hide it, so I put that on and the rest of it kinda followed. I think there’s a life lesson in there somewhere.’

  He looked at her black eye once more, then gestured toward the glass partition, beyond which Inigo and Abbate were still involved in their heated discussion.

  ‘You and Abbate?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Loretta, and Dante noticed an undercurrent of disappointment in her voice.

  She looked across the bar to watch them too. After a moment, Inigo left, making his way toward the reception, and Abbate turned about, looking for Loretta. He paused when he spotted her and saw she was with Dante. Then he headed toward them.

  ‘Dante,’ said Abbate when he arrived.
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  ‘How’s it going, Corrie?’

  ‘Peachy.’

  ‘Dante and I were just getting reacquainted,’ said Loretta.

  Abbate gave her a caustic look, and Dante studied the man. He had a boxer’s face, lopsided and thick, with a red plum of a nose pummeled across its center.

  ‘I heard you were back,’ Abbate said to Dante.

  ‘Good news travels fast. Drink?’

  ‘No. We’re going,’ Abbate said, grabbing Loretta by the arm.

  Loretta yanked her elbow out of his grasp, then she glared at Abbate, and finally she turned to look at Dante and smiled.

  ‘It was real good to see you again,’ she said.

  ‘Short but sweet.’

  Dante watched as the two figures traversed the buzz of the lobby, and just as they disappeared through the revolving doors, the barman arrived with Loretta’s Martini. He looked around for her and then frowned at Dante, and Dante motioned with a finger for him to put the drink on the bar. He paid for it and the barman disappeared and Dante tried to process what had just happened. The booze that killed his wife had reappeared, and ten minutes later, his wife’s best friend. He wondered if there was some sense to what had happened, then he thought better of it. This was what he’d signed up to when he’d agreed to make the trip back home: painful memories and ghosts from the past.

  He sipped the Martini, lit another cigarette, and was most of the way through them both when a bellboy appeared calling his name. Dante gestured to the boy who crossed to the bar and handed him one of the champagne bottles, placed in a case and wrapped in brown paper, and an envelope containing the list of names from Harris. Dante tipped the boy, downed the Martini and exited the bar.