Dead Man’s Blues

by Ray Celestin

  A waitress in a blue serge outfit flitted onto the balcony and placed a long metal cup on Dante’s table, a paper napkin glued to the condensation on the outside.

  ‘Courtesy of Miss Loretta,’ said the waitress with a coquettish smile.

  Dante frowned at the drink suspiciously. A milky-looking froth was coagulating at the top of the cup, dripping over the rim.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, his voice still croaky from the previous night’s whiskey and cigarettes.

  ‘A black cow. Root beer and vanilla ice cream,’ said the girl, before adding in a whisper, ‘It’s great for hangovers.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, unconvinced, and as the girl headed back inside he pushed the cup away and took another drag on his cigarette.

  He looked across the beach, and noticed how at some point far to the south, in a clearly marked boundary past the line of 29th Street, the red bodies turned brown. Chicago’s beaches had become segregated over time, not by any official law, but due to some social consensus, making Dante wonder on people’s propensity to segregate themselves in the absence of any laws to do it for them.

  ‘Hey, mister, you after a pair o’ sunglasses?’ asked a voice.

  Dante turned to see a hawker standing on the sand in front of him, holding a board lined with tinted glasses.

  ‘Everyone in Hollywood’s wearing ’em. Here, I think these’ll suit you just grand.’

  The man pulled a pair from the board and passed them up to Dante, who leaned down and took them through a gap in the balcony railing. They were round-rimmed, with tortoiseshell frames, and a dark cellulose film glued over the lenses. Dante put them on and was plunged into a world of green. He looked around, up and down, and the blaze of the sun was magically banished. He could feel the muscles in his face and neck relax, and his headache seemed to lessen.

  ‘First time wearing ’em?’ asked the man. ‘Quite something, ain’t they? Here.’

  He slid a pocket mirror from one of the straps on the board and passed it up and Dante checked himself out. With the glasses and the straw boater on his head, he looked ridiculous, but he bought the glasses anyway and leaned back in his chair to look at the world anew.

  A minute or two later Loretta stepped onto the balcony and he turned to her and she frowned at him.

  ‘What happened?’ she said. ‘You go blind while you were waiting?’

  ‘They’re for my hangover.’

  He grinned at her and she slumped down into the seat next to him, took a cigarette from his pack on the table and lit it.

  ‘So what did your boss say?’

  ‘He said he understood my predicament and then he fired me for being unreliable.’

  ‘You want me to go in there and talk to him?’ Dante asked, and she cut him down with a sideways glance.

  ‘He give you your pay at least?’ he asked and Loretta nodded. She made a grab for the ice-cream float and took a long suck from the straw.

  ‘You haven’t had any,’ she said, and Dante grimaced.

  ‘It’s good for hangovers,’ she said, passing him the cup. Dante took it and peered at the drink once more – the froth on the top of it was starting to collapse, the clotted ice cream sinking into the root beer, forming oil-slick swirls on the surface. The thought of all that dairy and sugar made his stomach turn and he passed it back to her.

  ‘How the hell is that good for a hangover?’ he asked.

  ‘Because half of it’s vodka,’ she said, grabbing the cup back and taking another drink of it. They both went quiet and stared out at the view.

  ‘It always so busy on weekdays?’ Dante asked.

  ‘Nah. It’s the hot spell,’ she said. ‘People are dying from heat prostration in the city, so they’re coming here to get away from it. Except the beach is getting so full now people are drowning from the overcrowding. C’est la vie.’

  She picked up the float once more and slurped down a mouthful of vodka and ice cream, and she looked further out, to the waters of Lake Michigan and the pleasure boats packed with revelers plowing about along the horizon.

  ‘Must be nice to spend your summer on boats,’ she said, and Dante thought of his own boat in the illegal, floating night market, and he guessed a wistful look must have crossed his face because her expression softened.

  ‘You thinking of New York?’ she asked, and Dante nodded, and they both fell silent a moment and Loretta took a drag on her cigarette.

  ‘Is it dangerous?’ she asked.

  ‘The Rendezvous?’

  ‘All of it.’

  Dante shook his head.

  ‘Not as dangerous as working for Al,’ he said. ‘You can see people coming a mile off. And the law doesn’t bother us. Frankie Yale’s paid off the authorities, and even if he hadn’t, the coastguard’s got thirty-five thousand miles of coastline to look after, and only fifty-five boats. Plus if it does go down to a chase, we got a speedboat we strapped an aircraft engine to.’

  He turned to look at her and saw she wasn’t really paying attention.

  ‘Corrie always said he would take me out on one of those pleasure boats,’ she said, nodding at the lake.

  She finished her cigarette and took another slurp on the vodka float.

  ‘I guess we better head over to my sister’s.’

  They drove to Little Italy with Loretta in the passenger seat and the dog on her lap, its head sticking out of the window, its eyes following the rhythm of skyscrapers marching their way down the street, dizzying every perspective.

  ‘You need to think of a name for him,’ she said.

  ‘The dog? Why? He ain’t mine.’

  ‘Yes, he is.’

  ‘Inigo at the Ritz called him Virgil,’ he said. ‘Virgil was the other character in the Inferno.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ she said.

  ‘You’ve read it?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I saw it in the bookstore and thought you’d written it, so I picked up a copy.’

  She gave him a look and they smiled. Then she turned her gaze back at the dog once more.

  ‘He definitely ain’t a Virgil,’ she said.

  Fifteen minutes later they pulled up outside a modest wooden house on a quiet street off Racine Avenue, just a few blocks from where the two of them had grown up. Dante switched off the engine and turned to look at her.

  ‘Thanks for the lift,’ she said, ‘and for everything else.’

  Dante shrugged.

  ‘You sure you don’t know what Corrie was working on?’ he asked. ‘Nothing’s come to mind since last night?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘All right. You got a number here I can reach you at?’

  ‘Sure.’

  She opened her handbag and scribbled down a number on the back of a receipt. He slipped it into his wallet and then she seemed to blanch.

  ‘He’s not coming back, is he?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You’re lying.’

  And Dante didn’t know what to say, so they sat there in an awkward silence.

  ‘How do you live with it?’ she asked, and Dante knew she was talking about Olivia, but he pretended he didn’t.

  ‘Live with what?’

  ‘With someone being there one moment and gone the next.’

  ‘If I figure it out, I’ll let you know.’

  She stared at him briefly, then leaned over and kissed him, a peck on the cheek.

  ‘You’re a good man, Dante. Hating yourself’s not helping anyone.’

  ‘I don’t hate myself.’

  ‘Sure you don’t. All this . . . it’s not you. You need to accept who you are and what you’ve done and stop feeling guilty for being alive.’

  She got out of the car and Dante watched her all the way inside. Then he lit a cigarette and tried to think, and he caught the gaze of the dog in the rearview and the two of them stared at each other. He thought of what Loretta had said, and he thought of Olivia, lying in a cemetery somewhere whose location he didn
’t know, and he thought of how they’d planned to have a family together, plans that now glinted with the sharp and jagged beauty of broken glass. What did you do with shattered dreams? Sweep them up, fix them into something new, or leave them broken on the floor and bloody your feet by walking over them?

  And then he faced the fact he couldn’t hide from – that he was just a few blocks from where he’d grown up, from where they’d all died, from where what remained of his family lived. He could go there now, get it over and done with. See them all and beg forgiveness. He thought about doing it and tears formed in his eyes. Then he made himself a promise – if he got through the investigation alive, he’d go and see them. No point in turning up there now only for him to wind up in the obituary columns a few days later.

  He started the Blackhawk and headed back downtown, stopping at a cafeteria on the way to take a hit in the restrooms.

  23

  In the long and illustrious list of corrupt Illinois politicians, Governor Len Small was without doubt at the top. As State Treasurer, he embezzled over six hundred thousand dollars of state funds, funneling the money into a bank prosecutors later discovered didn’t actually exist.

  As governor he ran a cash-for-pardons scheme. In the eight years he had been in the position, he’d sold hundreds of gubernatorial pardons and paroles, even to the city’s most hardened felons – Harry Guzik, Fur Sammons, Spike O’Donnell, Bugs Moran had all bought their way out of prison, along with countless other gangsters, killers and rapists.

  At his trial for embezzlement he had his lawyers argue that as governor he was above the law, that he could invoke the Divine Right of Kings. When that tactic didn’t work, he paid off the jury. He was acquitted, and within a year government jobs were awarded to eight of the jurors. Despite the Tribune declaring him to be the worst governor the state ever had, he was re-elected for a second term, with support from Capone, and the Ku Klux Klan, who endorsed all his election campaigns.

  Although his official residence was the Illinois Executive Mansion in Springfield, the governor spent as much of his time as he could in Chicago, where the trade in finance, corruption and wealth occurred. So it only took three phone calls for Dante to track him down; he was in the Loop, eating lunch at the St Hubert English Chop House on the top floor of the Majestic Hotel.

  Dante headed over there and entered the place to find it was a dim affair; the ceilings were low and the furniture and wainscoting made of somberly dark wood. He had to squint through the gloom to find the table where Small was sitting, in one of the private alcoves at the back. He had positioned himself gangster style, with his back to a wall, a view over the whole of the restaurant, and easy access to the rear exit.

  Dante approached across the black-and-white tiled floor and saw Small sitting with a bodyguard who had the physique of a bag of cement. When Dante neared them the two men looked up from their meal and Small gave him the once-over.

  ‘Dante the Gent, I presume?’ he said.

  Dante nodded and Small gestured with a fork for him to sit. As Dante did so Small gave the bodyguard a look and the man rose and took up a position at the back of the alcove, hands crossed in front of his belly.

  ‘You eaten?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Dante looking at the serving dishes arrayed across the linen: porterhouse steaks, broiled cod, wheat cakes, devilled eggs, macaroni cheese, a basket of French bread, an untouched garden salad.

  ‘You’re skinny, boy. You should eat. A man needs heft.’

  The governor picked up one of the steaks with a fork and slid it onto a plate and passed it over to Dante.

  ‘Thanks.’

  The governor grinned at him, then turned back down to his food, loading up a fork with a piece of steak, a piece of fish and some wheat cake. Then he used his knife to smear it all with macaroni cheese like it was a sealing paste and he popped the whole lot into his mouth.

  Dante watched him as he chewed. Small was in his sixties, overweight, bald and mustachioed, and dressed in a well-fitting suit of bureaucrat grey. The man had a great double chin which sagged down over his collar. As he ate, the chin moved up and down, and with each swing, it hid, then revealed the bright red knot of his tie. An effect so bizarre that it momentarily threw Dante off.

  ‘What did you want to see me about?’ the governor asked.

  ‘You had your bodyguard, Corrado Abbate, investigate the poisoning a few weeks back at the Ritz?’

  ‘You’re damned right I did. I nearly died that night. Had to have my stomach pumped. You ever had your stomach pumped, boy?’ the governor asked, shoveling another forkful of food into his mouth. ‘It is not a pleasant experience.’

  The man started chewing again and Dante watched as the red knot of his tie disappeared and reappeared in flashes behind his chin.

  ‘Last night someone took Corrie for a ride,’ Dante said.

  Small stopped eating and looked up at him, his great jaw hanging open, a mush of food visible on his tongue.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I got a call last night from Corrie’s squeeze. She’s an old friend of my wife. She said she’d got home late and found the apartment broken into and a pool of blood on the floor. I went round there and cleaned up for her. I know Corrie was looking into the poisoning for you – I saw him strong-arming Vaughn at the Ritz a few days ago. I figured you’d want the heads-up on what happened to him, and since we’re both looking into the same thing, maybe we could talk.’

  ‘You’re looking into it too?’ Small asked. ‘For Capone?’

  Dante nodded and Small took a moment to think, and Dante could see the alarm on his face. The man had been the victim of a poisoning a few weeks ago and now his main bodyguard had been sent down the river. Dante could guess at how embattled the man must feel. On top of recent events, the governor had lost out to Senator Deneen’s candidate in the Pineapple Primary that spring and would be out of office within the year. The most corrupt governor in Illinois history would be politically redundant by January, and someone was taking potshots at him.

  ‘You got any idea who did it?’ Small asked.

  ‘I came here to ask you the same question.’

  Small stared at him levelly for a good few seconds, then he refilled his wine glass.

  ‘I’m guessing by your coming here, you’re not aware of recent events,’ said Small.

  ‘Enlighten me.’

  ‘Capone and I no longer see eye to eye. You coming here as his employee means you’re either not well-informed, or you’ve got some balls.’

  ‘Or maybe both,’ said Dante.

  Small looked at him a moment, then burst out laughing.

  ‘I like that,’ said Small. ‘I like that indeed.’

  ‘What happened between the two of you?’ Dante asked.

  ‘You mean aside from me getting poisoned by his booze? Lots of things. Let’s just say while you’ve been away, the tide has turned against your boss.’

  ‘Even so,’ said Dante, ‘we’re both after the same thing – finding out whoever was behind the poison party. We might as well share our information.’ Dante shrugged, leaned back in his seat and took his cigarettes out of his pocket.

  ‘Don’t smoke while I’m eating, boy,’ said Small. ‘And I don’t appreciate you calling it a poison party. I nearly died.’

  Dante nodded, trying to look sufficiently chastened.

  ‘I tell you what Corrie found out and then what?’ asked Small.

  ‘I go and find the poisoner.’

  ‘And then you deliver him to Capone,’ said Small, picking up his fork once more. ‘But where does that leave me? And more pertinent to you, where does that leave Dante the Gent?’

  Dante frowned. ‘I don’t follow.’

  Small stared at him and Dante gathered that Small knew something important that he wasn’t letting on, some great secret he wasn’t sure he should reveal to Dante.

  ‘At first I thought it was someone from Illinois,’ Small said. ‘I’ve been getting death t
hreats for years now on account of the pardons.’

  Dante nodded. He could see the logic in Small’s thinking: some vigilante who’d suffered at the hands of one of the men Small had released as part of his cash-for-pardons scheme had decided to take revenge on the governor.

  ‘You think the poisoning was aimed at you?’ asked Dante.

  Small nodded. ‘I did. Bill Thompson thought it was aimed at him. Capone thought it was aimed at him. I guess that speaks to our vanity. That’s why I asked Corrie to look into it.’

  ‘And what did Corrie find?’

  ‘What Corrie found out might upset you, boy,’ said Small, a knowing look on his face.

  ‘Go on,’ said Dante, dread beginning to make his heart race.

  ‘Two days after the poisoning, a trigger turned up in Chicago from out of town, booked into a hotel. Corrie figured out this trigger had been hired by whoever it was that arranged the attack. The poisoning had gone wrong and now these people hired the trigger to come in and clean up loose ends. Last time I saw Corrie he was going to stake out the hotel, try to find this trigger.’

  ‘Why would that upset me?’ asked Dante.

  ‘Corrie figured the trigger was from New York. He figured this whole poisoning wasn’t aimed at me or the mayor or anyone else. It was an attempt to destabilize Capone. Now ask yourself who in New York would want to do that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Your old pal, Frankie Yale.’

  Dante frowned. He worked closely with Yale back in New York. If Capone and Yale did go to war, Dante would be caught right between the two.

  ‘Why would Yale go to war with Capone?’ Dante asked.

  ‘About a year and a half ago, Capone visited New York,’ said Small. ‘He went there so that retard kid of his could have an operation on his head. But he also went there to sign an agreement with Yale.’

  Dante nodded. He knew about the agreement the two bootleggers had signed. Al had enough breweries in Chicago to provide him with beer, and there were enough alky cooks in the city to produce the gut-rot he sold for cheap in his brothels and gambling houses. There was the liquor that came in from Minneapolis and Milwaukee, too, and at night, the mosquito boats that carried whiskey from Canada to the US across the Detroit River, a narrow stretch of water only a mile wide. But the high-end liquor – the Scotch and Irish whiskey, the British gin, the Caribbean rum – that Capone sold to restaurants and hotels had to be imported, and that meant bringing it in from New York.