Dead Man’s Blues

by Ray Celestin

  39

  Michael took the stairs to Linnemann’s office with a faint sense of trepidation; he was being called up to see the boss, and that only ever happened when something had gone seriously wrong.

  ‘Hello, Michael. Go right in,’ said Linnemann’s secretary, and there was something pitying in her voice, confirming Michael’s suspicion that he was about to hear some bad news. He knocked and stepped inside and saw Linnemann at his desk, sitting opposite a pair of elderly men, who turned to look at Michael as he walked in. Linnemann smiled and gestured at an empty chair and Michael sat, feeling hemmed in by them all.

  ‘I’d like to introduce you to Mr Jennings and Mr Edelhart, both of whom sit on the board of directors,’ said Linnemann.

  Michael nodded at the men. Both the directors were in their seventies, patrician-like, with unreadable expressions on their heavily lined faces.

  ‘I brought you in here to get an update on the Van Haren case,’ said Linnemann.

  ‘I see,’ replied Michael. ‘And what’s Mr Jennings’ and Mr Edelhart’s concern in this?’

  ‘As I said, they’re both on the company’s board of directors, and they’re also both friends with Mr Coulton, to whom you paid a visit recently. Mr Coulton was upset by your behavior, and he requested that we all sit down for a discussion.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Would you like to explain your actions?’

  ‘I thought Mr Coulton might have some useful information with regards to the disappearance of his future daughter-in-law, so I went by his offices to ask him some questions. He’s not a suspect and as it turned out, he didn’t have any useful information, but it was a lead worth pursuing. I don’t believe I acted in an improper manner. At least, not in a manner that would upset Mr Coulton, and his non-executive director friends.’

  Linnemann paused and gave Michael a look.

  ‘What suspects do you have?’ he asked.

  ‘None as yet. Certainly not Mr Coulton,’ Michael replied, and even as he said it he realized he was slapping on the fake politesse a little too thickly.

  ‘Well, we can’t have you harassing prominent members of Chicago society. You and Miss Davis will be put on probation while an investigation is conducted.’

  ‘Probation?’

  ‘During which the Van Haren case will be reassigned.’

  Michael’s heart jumped, and he thought for a moment about protesting, banging his fist on the desk and shouting at the man. But just as quickly as his indignation rose up, so did his sense of pragmatism, and he gritted his teeth and stayed in his seat.

  ‘Reassigned to whom?’

  ‘To whomever’s free. I believe Clancy and Becker have a light workload at the moment.’

  Michael nodded. Clancy and Becker had a light workload because they were all but incompetent. Mrs Van Haren was being railroaded, her case shunted off to two men who were incapable of finding her daughter. ‘Any further participation by either you or Miss Davis in this case will result in both your contracts being terminated. Immediately. Please let Miss Davis know of the decision. And send her my wishes for a fast recovery. I heard about the bombing.’

  ‘I’m sure you did,’ said Michael petulantly, and Linnemann gave him that look again.

  ‘Speak to Mankowski about getting yourselves some new cases. Thank you, Michael. You’re dismissed.’

  Michael nodded and rose, cast a look at the two directors, and returned to his own office in an angry daze. When he stepped inside, Ida looked up at him from the car-pool paperwork she had on her desk.

  ‘Well?’ she asked.

  Her eyes were still puffy, a scab mark marring the skin around her temple. When she’d arrived at work that morning she’d told him about the explosion, and said that she was fine. But to Michael’s eyes she’d looked sleepless and faintly traumatized, and the fact she didn’t want to talk about it worried him. And now he was about to add to her troubles.

  ‘We’re being put on probation and they’re taking us off the case.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘My visit to Coulton. Two of the directors were in there with Linnemann, friends of his.’

  He sat in the chair opposite her and they looked at each other across the desk, and up close, Michael could see just how weary she looked.

  ‘Did he say we aren’t to contact Mrs Van Haren again?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then how about we pay her a visit? To let her know we’re off the case. And we have every faith in Clancy and Becker’s ability to continue our good work?’

  She looked at him and smiled and he smiled back, wondering why he hadn’t thought of it first.

  40

  Louis parked up in the shade of 23rd Street, switched off the engine, and stared over the road at the Metropole Hotel. It was seven stories tall, with bay windows that bulged out of its walls and ran the height of the building, looking strangely like turrets half embedded in the brickwork, as if the place was midway through metamorphosing into a castle. He frowned and breathed deeply against the sense of dread creeping over him. Regardless of the fact that Al and Louis had been friends, a meeting with Al Capone was still a meeting with Al Capone.

  Louis sighed, got out of the car and walked over to the hotel’s canopied entrance, up the front steps and into the lobby. There were knucklemen all over the place – lounging about in armchairs and sofas – and they eyed Louis as he made his way to the concierge’s desk. The hotel had been overrun completely by Capone, who rented fifty rooms on the top floors and had even built a gym there for his men to train in. On Sundays politicians and judges waited in the hotel’s lobby to be granted an audience, like supplicants to a king.

  ‘I’m here to see Mr Capone,’ Louis said.

  ‘Mr Capone doesn’t live here,’ said one of the men.

  ‘Room four-oh-six. I’m expected.’

  The concierge stared at him a moment, considering.

  ‘Name?’ he said eventually.

  ‘Louis Armstrong.’

  He picked up the phone and dialed a number and as Louis waited he looked about the place, once more taking in the men in suits. They all looked tense, like an army waiting for the order to march, and Louis thought once more of castles, of fortresses under siege.

  The concierge put the phone down and nodded at the elevators a little further on. Louis walked over to them, and the elevator boy grinned and Louis stepped inside.

  ‘Here to see Mr Capone?’ the boy asked, and Louis nodded. The boy pulled a lever and turned a switch and they were whisked up to the fourth floor. The doors opened and Louis stepped out into a long, windowless hallway, red-carpeted and wainscoted, at the end of which were two great wooden doors decorated with elaborate carvings, flanked on either side by knucklemen in suits, each of them with the build and bearing of a military guard.

  ‘That way?’ Louis asked, pointing at the men. The elevator boy nodded.

  ‘Good luck,’ he said, as the elevator closed and began its clunking descent.

  Louis walked down the corridor, and with each step, his sense of trepidation increased. He reached the friskers and they patted him down and opened the doors and he stepped into Al’s office – a vast room in one of the corner turrets that was filled with high-ticket furniture. The floor was covered in a wall-to-wall carpet and the place was cold, blissfully chilled by an air-cooling system humming away somewhere unseen. At the far end was a mahogany desk where Al was sitting, chatting with a few men.

  Al looked up and saw Louis at the door and gestured him over and Louis crossed the room, the carpet so high-piled it felt like he was sinking with every step. He reached the desk, and took a moment to frown at the bullet-ridden wall behind it, on which had been pinned a giant American flag.

  Al motioned for Louis to sit, and he did, and as he waited for Al to finish his conversation he looked about the place – at the flag, and the bulletholes, and the giant turret windows; and the desktop littered with ashtrays, and whiskey tumblers, and newspapers, an
d documents, and a box of Cuban cigars, and a mound of cocaine and a rolled-up banknote resting on a silver tray; and, bizarrely, elephant sculptures, dozens of them, in all shapes and sizes on the desk, but also on the windowsills, on the coffee tables, on the carpet by the walls, standing on plinths either side of the doorways, elephants resting and walking, alone or in groups, most of them with upturned trunks.

  ‘Good-luck symbols,’ said a soft voice, and Louis turned to see that Al was staring at him, and the men had risen and were heading to other parts of the room. Louis nodded and grinned and studied his erstwhile boss. Although they were both the same age, Al looked like he was past forty. It was possibly the first time Louis had seen him outside of a nightclub and the harsh daylight streaming in from the windows was accentuating the makeup pasted to one side of the man’s face, making Louis struggle not to keep flicking his eyes to the ugly bumps of his scars.

  Al stared at him, took a puff on his cigar, and thought for a moment. ‘Cuban?’ he asked, gesturing to the cigar box on the desk.

  ‘Sure, boss. Thanks,’ said Louis. He leaned over and took a cigar, figuring if he was going to be whacked for what he’d done, he might as well go out smoking a Romeo y Julieta. He cut the end off the cigar with a gold cutter that was on Al’s desk, and lit it with a match.

  ‘You like it?’ asked Al, continuing to stare at him, a peculiar smile on his face, his features unsettlingly placid.

  ‘Sure. It’s real nice,’ said Louis, after taking a pull.

  ‘I guess you smoke a lot, that gravelly voice o’ yours.’

  ‘Funny story, boss. It weren’t the smokes that did it. I got a cold a while back, a sore throat. A few days later the cold left but the voice stayed. Been like this ever since. Had the clearest damn voice before that cold, too.’

  Louis took another puff on the cigar, which did indeed taste good, and he gave Al his biggest smile, pretending they were just two friends having a chat, that he wasn’t becoming increasingly anxious with all the aimless small talk.

  ‘Is that so?’ said Al, pretending to mull things over. In the quiet, Louis could hear the hum of Michigan Avenue floating in through the windows, the noise of the traffic, and the people milling about outside the showrooms that made up Automobile Row.

  Al leaned forward suddenly, and Louis wasn’t sure if it was the quickness of the action, or his own inflamed nerves, but the move almost made him flinch.

  ‘I hear you’ve been asking about the Sunset.’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, I have,’ said Louis, starting to panic. ‘On account of a go-between I been looking for.’

  ‘Randall Taylor? Why’re you looking for him?’

  ‘He owes a friend o’ mine money. Skipped out on him. My friend knows Taylor worked the Sunset and I did, too, so he asked me if I could ask about. I didn’t mean to put anyone out by it.’

  ‘You don’t remember Taylor from when you worked there?’

  ‘Can’t say I do.’

  Al eyed him a moment.

  ‘So, you find him yet?’ he asked.

  ‘Nah, boss. He’s still missing in action.’

  ‘And this friend o’ yours. He still looking for him?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, if either of you find him. I wanna know. Me and that go-between got unfinished business, and I don’t want him getting away on account of your friend. This Taylor’s bad news, Louis.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be looking for him if he weren’t.’

  ‘You tell your friend that it don’t pay to spend time with a man like that. Sleep with the dogs and you end up with fleas.’

  ‘Sure thing, boss,’ said Louis. ‘I’ll pass the message on.’

  He wondered what was behind it all, whether Al was after the go-between purely because the man had been running girls out of one of his establishments, or if there was another element to it, something much more serious. Whatever it was, Louis knew he was now in hock to Al, his name entered into the favors list in indelible ink.

  Al continued to eye him with that same eerie calmness, giving off a sense that he might explode at any minute, and Louis noticed how he was a little wilder around the eyes than he remembered. He’d heard rumors that Al was becoming increasingly unstable and he wondered if maybe it was true, or if it was just his inflamed imagination. If Al was losing it, Louis didn’t want to be around to witness the consequences. He’d seen it in New Orleans, years before, how one man’s madness could cast a shadow over a city, a darkness that spread like fire, taking hold of first one person’s mind and then another’s, filling them with fear, voodou-like. But the man in New Orleans had turned out to be a nobody. This man, on the other hand, was the king of Chicago.

  Louis thought again about how different he looked, how much older, and all their other differences and similarities ran through his mind. They were the same age; they had both been born in poverty; they had both faced racial prejudice; they had moved to Chicago within a few years of each other, seeking their fortunes, attempting to leave behind the slums they’d grown up in; they were both fathers to lone disabled sons; they had both achieved great success; they both lived under the shadow of New York; and their paths had finally crossed the previous year when Louis had taken the job at Al’s Sunset Café. But they also had fundamental differences too, in temperament, personality and outlook, and that was what worried Louis.

  Eventually Al leaned back in his seat and his face softened, and Louis got the sense that Al had had a change of heart about something, that his mood had swung. Louis relaxed a little, and as they both took puffs on their cigars, he hoped Al wouldn’t spot his hand shaking.

  ‘I heard the Paul Whiteman Band’s coming to town,’ said Al out of nowhere. ‘Playing a few nights in the Loop.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Louis, ‘so I hear.’

  ‘I heard,’ Al continued, a gleam in his eye, rolling the cigar through his fingers, ‘Whiteman’s got a cornet player there by the name of Beiderbecke. I heard people are saying he’s the greatest cornet player in the world.’

  Al paused a moment and grinned mischievously and Louis thought about how to take the bait.

  ‘Well, that’s only cuz I switched to the trumpet last year,’ Louis said, and there was a long moment as the two men stared at each other, and then they burst out laughing.

  ‘Maybe I’ll catch you at the concert, Mr Capone.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe you will. And if you and Whiteman decide to have any “jam sessions” late one night, let one of the boys know.’

  ‘Will do, boss,’ said Louis.

  ‘And if your friend finds Taylor, I wanna be the first to know.’

  Al took a bankroll out of his pocket, slid off two hundred-dollar bills and held them for Louis to take. But Louis, despite wanting to, knew he couldn’t accept the money, that taking it would only underline his position as someone in debt to Al Capone.

  ‘Nah, I’m cool, boss. I don’t need it.’

  Al shrugged.

  ‘I don’t need it either,’ he said.

  Then they looked at each other and burst out laughing once more.

  As Louis walked back to his car, a great sense of relief rushed through him. He wasn’t out of the woods just yet, but he was glad to be out of the meeting, out in the open. The feelings of anxiety and claustrophobia he’d felt in the room poured from him, evaporating, leaving room for some strength to return to his muscles.

  He passed a group of people turning the corner onto Michigan Avenue, walking down the middle of the road, holding up traffic. Cars driving by on the cross-street were honking their horns, and shouting and yelling, and after a moment Louis realized what it was – a repeal march. Men and women holding up banners – Beer for the Nation, Beer for Taxation – Prohibition’s Failed. Do Something About It.

  As Louis got closer, a woman stepped out of the crowd and handed him a leaflet. He took it, smiled and said thank you and went on his way. As he left the crowd behind, he heard them start up a chant of We Want Beer, We Want Beer, and he was re
minded of the rallies he had seen in New Orleans ten years earlier, where men and women had walked down streets, and chanted, and handed out fliers for the exact opposite law, for prohibition to be enacted.

  A decade later, the tide had swung the other way; public sentiment, moral outrage and crime statistics were all on the side of the wets, leaving Louis wondering what the point had been. All prohibition had done was put millions of businesses and everyday citizens in contact with the criminal element. Sleep with the dogs, indeed. Louis wondered how repeal would work out for Capone, if he’d turn himself into a legitimate booze dealer, or go back to exclusively running brothels and casinos. Then he wondered how the rest of the country’s gangsters would fare, too, if they weren’t already figuring out what their next moves would be.

  Louis folded up the flier, slipped it into his pocket and reached his car. He opened up the windows and doors and got back out, leaning against the side of the car while he waited for the inside to cool down, and the protest march to clear from the road ahead. He took a puff on the cigar and saw a poster a few yards down the street:

  GENE TUNNEY VS JACK DEMPSEY FOR THE HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP OF THE WORLD.

  HERE IN CHICAGO.

  SOLDIER FIELD.

  TICKETS ON SALE NOW.

  Louis ambled over and looked at the cutout photographs of the two boxers underneath the writing. Neither of them looked a patch on Jack Johnson or Harry Wills. He stared at the two white men a little longer and thought about the way Chicago thrived on setting people against each other: Tunney versus Dempsey, Al versus Moran, Louis versus Bix. The whole city ran on the energy of one human battling another, as if that was what made the world turn.

  Louis had caught his fair share of it in the past: trumpet players came from all over the country to battle him in onstage cutting contests, and Louis knocked them all out with ease, usually by playing the complicated trumpet pieces he had learned with Lil, or with Brahms’s student at Kimball Hall, or with Tate at the Vendome. So he knew how Al and Tunney felt, having to deal with so many challengers to the throne.