Dead Man’s Blues

by Ray Celestin

  They ran through the turnstiles and into an enclosure that funneled people into the stands, and the cop led Michael off to where the captain was, somewhere in the bowels, and Ida nodded best of luck to him and she followed the arrows for the stands, down a corridor, at the end of which, through a square opening, she could see the field, and in it, the boxing ring, elevated, the black shapes of the fighters distorted and floating on an ocean of white light.

  She rushed out into it, the stadium proper, and when she looked up and about her, it was as if the world had swung about to accommodate her view. On all sides of the arena the stands towered into the sky, packed full of people, disappearing into a blur, and above them all were the colonnades rising even further, topped with spotlights beaming at the ring, sharp as razors.

  She looked at the people stretching up into the heavens and imagined the stands exploding, the indescribable carnage. Glimpses of the bombed-out speak-easy flashed into her mind, the charred bodies, the ripped-off limbs. She looked again at the people about her, men in shirt-sleeves, kids in flat caps, women in their summer dresses. She imagined all of them crushed under an avalanche of cement and twisted girders when the stands came tumbling down.

  She ran up the nearest set of steps, got to a decent height, and tried to scan the ringside seats for Capone. But there was too much glare from the spotlights bouncing off the canvas. She saw a kid a few seats away with a pair of viewing glasses and shouted to him over the roar. ‘Hey, kid! Kid! I’ll give you a buck if you let me look through your glasses.’

  The kid looked her up and down. ‘Money first,’ he shouted back.

  Ida fumbled through her purse and gave him a dollar bill and the kid passed her the glasses in return. When she peered through them the figures on the canvas came into view, and in the burning beams she saw one fighter punch another, and as the man’s head was flung back, a curve of blood unfurled into the air, and the curve divided, fanned out in an arc, and individual beads of red moisture flashed for a moment in the lights, rotated, then sprayed onto the canvas.

  The crowd roared and Ida moved the glasses about, looked around the ringside seats, and found Capone. He was sitting close enough to the ring to make an attack from the top of his own stand possible. If the underneath of the stand wasn’t rigged, that’s where an assassin would be, up above. She couldn’t search the whole stadium, so she had to take a gamble on Severyn being there too, close to the target.

  She returned the glasses to the kid, ran back down to ground level, and sprinted around the passage that encircled the stadium. She marked off the stands in her head as she went, and when she’d made a half-lap, she passed two cops standing either side of another walkway, and figured they must be there on account of it being the entrance to where Capone was sitting. She ran past them and they shouted at her, spun round and followed.

  She dashed back into the stadium proper. She ran up the stand three steps at a time, darted into a row of seats, pushed her way to another set of steps just as the cops appeared around the corner of the walkway. She turned and looked about the stand, along the stairs, at the gantries, praying she’d see something, that she’d see Severyn. The cops were hustling through the seats now, and her heart was beating faster, and she spun about, looking, praying that something would happen.

  And then it did.

  And it was on account of the cops.

  At the very top of the stand something moved, a blur Ida caught out of the corner of her eye, a person, moving, hurrying away.

  Severyn.

  He’d seen the policemen heading up the stand and assumed they were after him.

  Ida burst into a run, watched as Severyn jumped over the barrier between Capone’s stand and the one adjacent. She reached the top row of seats after what felt like an eternity and vaulted over the barrier into the next stand too. She looked about and saw him jump onto the colonnade at the top of the stand, watched as he disappeared into the shadows between two columns.

  She ran after him and hopped onto the colonnade, pressed her back against the nearest column, and pulled the .38 Michael had given her from her handbag. Then she turned to look about the space. Stretching in front of her were the two long lines of columns, the space between them all darkness and shadows, as eerie as an abandoned Roman temple. On the columns’ other side, far below, she could see the dark mass of the lake. She stayed still, quiet, listening, waiting.

  In the arena, the crowd roared. She heard footsteps against metal. She ran down the colonnade, her black dress as inky as the shadows she was passing through, and at the far end she saw some scaffolding rising all the way up one of the columns, to reach the lights on the roof. She found a ladder attached to the scaffolding and climbed it, knowing she was a sitting duck as she did so; that all Severyn had to do was shoot at her from the top and she’d fall, be smashed against the surface of the asphalt all those feet below.

  She scrambled onto the top of the colonnade, on top of all Soldier Field. Along the inner side of the roof were the spotlights, each as tall as a man, buzzing loudly and burning so strongly she could feel their heat from yards away, feel it burning the humidity out of the night, leaving the air dry and charged. She lifted a hand to her eyes, took her .38 from her bag once more and stalked along the roof, guessing Severyn would be in between the spotlights somewhere, looking down on the crowd.

  She moved to the edge of the closest one and looked down. Below her she could see the edge of the stand, and what she saw made her heart sink. The two cops who had been chasing her were sprinting across the asphalt below, heading to the next stand along. They’d missed the ladder. They were going the wrong way. She was on her own.

  She thought about attracting their attention, screaming at them that the man they were after was up above them. But she doubted they would hear her over the noise of the crowd, and if she did make herself heard, she’d give away her location, just as she had in the Stockyards.

  She wondered if she should go back down, call for help. Her blood was heavy with fear, her muscles tense, her heart pumping. She wasn’t even sure she could hold the gun straight. But she thought of Jacob and knew she couldn’t live with herself if she let Severyn escape. She already felt guilty enough as it was. He was just on the other side of the spotlights. She had to risk it. She flexed the muscles in her fingers, making sure they were ready to shoot, then she spun around the corner.

  But he wasn’t there.

  In front of the spotlights, overhanging the stands, was a metal gangway. She jumped onto it and was immediately blinded by the light beams. Then a shot rang out and something grabbed her and Severyn threw her onto the giant bulbs and she screamed as the heat seared the skin on her back and shoulders, melting the fabric of her dress onto it. She lurched forward and felt her skin rip, peeling away where it remained glued to the glass, smelled the scent of burned meat waft into the air.

  She doubled over, heart pounding, pain knocking the breath out of her. In the dazzling snowstorm of light, she could just about discern a grey shape somewhere in front of her, almost indistinguishable in the blaze. He was coming back; she’d be thrown onto the bulbs once more, then tossed over the edge of the gangway and smashed onto the stand below.

  She raised her .38 into the air, pointed at him, and pulled the trigger. His grey shape spun through the glare, and something clanged onto the gangway and she prayed it was his gun.

  ‘You don’t have it in you,’ he shouted, in his disintegrated voice.

  She wanted to scream at him, some wail of revenge, but she knew she had to holster her emotions.

  ‘Stay back,’ she managed to say, tensing her arm, aiming her gun upwards, toward where she guessed his head was.

  ‘You don’t have it in you,’ he repeated, taking a step closer.

  She knew what he was doing, distracting her with words while he inched closer, close enough to snatch her gun.

  ‘Why all this?’ she said. ‘For money?’

  In the stands far below, the crowd roared, a
nd Ida noticed her eyes were streaming, the tears turning the glare liquid, coating the world in a fluid of light.

  ‘Money is life,’ the man said.

  She shook her head, ripping the burned skin on her back, the pain causing her hand to drop for a second. And in that second the shape loomed in front of her, and she was thrown onto the bulb itself. And the pain was everything, obliterating all reality.

  She collapsed onto the gangway, and he was on top of her, trying to roll her over, to get at her gun. She turned and tossed it away from her, and through the fog she saw him stumble away to get it.

  She lay on the floor and her muscles woke up and she breathed in finally, gulping at the air, knowing it was just a matter of time before he killed her. Then, through the pain, she realized something was pressing into her hip, something in the pocket of her dress, the edge of the sunglasses Jacob’s brother had given her.

  She fumbled them onto her face and opened her eyes, and she could actually see through the glare, the dark discs dimming the light to something bearable. Now she had the advantage. She could make out Severyn in front of her, blinded by the light, on all fours, looking for her gun. She turned around and suddenly saw Severyn’s gun where he had dropped it when she’d shot him.

  She tried to get up and the flayed skin on her shoulder rippled in pain, making her wince and collapse once more onto the floor. She looked up – Severyn was just inches from her gun. She forced herself up, stumbled along the gangway till she reached it. A pearl-handled revolver. She picked it up and turned and they both fired together.

  Ida’s bullet clanged off the gangway next to Severyn. He fired again and the shoulder of her dress burst open in a puff of cotton, and then she felt the pain and stumbled backwards, and Severyn ran at her, one more bullet to finish her off. She raised her weakened hand and fired and caught him in the gut.

  He stumbled and fell, and Ida collapsed against the handrail. She took a moment to gather her strength, then she lifted up the gun and pointed it shakily at him. He craned his neck left and right, trying to guess where she was, completely blinded now by the lights.

  Ida was so battered and exhausted that she could barely manage to breathe.

  It was all she could do to keep her arm up, her hand shaking from the pain of the bullet wound and the agony of the burns rippling down her body.

  He raised his gun again and fanned it about. Then he must have heard her rasping breaths somehow, because despite his blindness, his gun swayed in her direction. Just before it reached her, she fired.

  Until the chamber was empty, and Severyn was finally still.

  57

  La Salle Street was dead, the office-workers gone, the cleaners not yet arrived, anyone else who might have been abroad drawn to the commotion at Soldier Field. Dante drove down empty streets, slowly past the front of the building, saw the parked cars opposite, then the figures hunched down low in them. He carried on driving, around the block, checked the service entrance at the back of the building, checked the side streets, and parked up around the corner. He looped around so he walked back onto the street from the opposite direction, making the men in the cars think he’d parked at the other end of the block.

  He stepped through the building’s revolving doors and into the lobby. It was huge and high-ceilinged, and decorated in ancient Egyptian motifs, so much so that it felt like some abandoned movie set, the stage for The Ten Commandments or The King of Kings.

  There were no guards, no doormen, no one manning the reception desk, and therefore no one to remember him ever being there. He saw one of the elevators had its doors open, so he walked over to it, and as he did so, he stared at the mural above, and the eye of Horus stared back at him.

  He got into the elevator, and there being no boy to operate it for him, he pulled the door shut, and pressed the only button inside it – the one for the twenty-fourth floor – and it jolted into action.

  The doors opened onto a dimly lit, eerie corridor in which three men were waiting for him. The first was Sacco, whom Dante recognized from the golf course. He had his brown suit and bowler hat on, and a Smith & Wesson .45 in his hand. The second man looked like hired muscle, big and surly. And the third man looked like an accountant, dressed in a smart suit, with one of his eyes moving slightly off, glassy, glinting a little too much in the gloom.

  Sacco nodded at Dante to raise his hands, and he did so, and the muscle came over and frisked him, and Dante’s heart went haywire and he panicked they’d find his gun, even though he knew nobody ever searched people’s hats.

  After a few seconds, the muscle gave Sacco the all-clear and Dante relaxed a touch and Sacco flicked the .45 sideways a couple of times, and Dante walked down the corridor in the direction indicated, and the three men followed him wordlessly.

  Up ahead, Dante could see light coming through a glass door, spilling a rectangle of lemon yellow onto the corridor’s murky carpet. Then he could hear a voice emanating faintly from the room on the other side of the door, a radio, the boxing match, the commentator’s words cutting through the silence on a wave of static.

  ‘In,’ said Sacco from behind him.

  Dante opened the door and stepped into an office. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked south over Chicago, with the lake on one side, and the city lights gleaming on the other. Directly in front of the window was a mahogany desk, and behind it sat Coulton, a cigar clenched in his teeth, listening to the radio which had been placed between a pair of Ming vases on a sideboard.

  And next to the sideboard, sitting on a sofa, was Loretta, still dressed in her funeral clothes, looking disconsolate but unharmed. Dante threw her a questioning glance, and she nodded in response that she was okay.

  Opposite the desk were a couple of empty chairs. Coulton held a hand out to them and Dante sat. Then Coulton nodded at Sacco and the other men.

  ‘Wait outside,’ he said, and Dante turned to see a grimace creep onto Sacco’s face. Coulton wanted the men out of the way in case Dante revealed who the New York connection was during their chat. Dante wondered if this meant Sacco hadn’t told Coulton about his offer. If Sacco really was going to double-cross his boss.

  After a moment, Sacco nodded and did as he was commanded, and the three of them left the office.

  Dante took his hat off, carefully, turned it so its lining was facing upwards, the Beretta just there, snug in the strips of cloth he’d hastily sewn into the crown to keep it in place. Could he kill Coulton with his first shot? Unlikely. Two bullets for Coulton, maybe? Saving the other four for the men outside? Even more unlikely. And after that, could he find the service elevator and get Loretta out of there before the men parked up in front of the building realized?

  He ran his fingers around the brim of his hat.

  ‘Just in case you thought you might get the opportunity . . .’ said Coulton, and he lifted a Colt 1911 off the desktop, raised his eyebrows, then rested it back down, the business end pointed at Dante.

  ‘You said to Sacco on the phone you had a deal to make?’ he said. ‘That you know certain things . . .’

  Dante nodded and told Coulton what he knew. He laid it on thick with how clever he thought Coulton’s plan was, and Coulton lapped it up, listening eagerly, taking long puffs on his cigar.

  ‘It was a nice plan,’ said Dante, wrapping things up, ‘but you got something wrong.’

  ‘Oh? What was that?’ said Coulton, leaning forward.

  ‘You didn’t offer me a job.’

  Coulton laughed, but Dante kept his eyes on him and carried on talking.

  ‘I’m the best fixer this city ever had,’ he said. ‘You let me and the girl walk out of here and I’ll take care of the New York side for you. Make sure Lansky and Luciano don’t short-change you.’

  At the mention of the names Coulton flinched, and Dante had his proof.

  ‘They’re friends of mine,’ continued Dante. ‘I can keep them in check, and you know I’ll do a better job of it than anyone else you could hire. And I won’t sa
y a word to your men outside. Both of us know if Sacco found out who the connection is, he’d cut you out of the action in a heartbeat. And I’ll keep Capone off your back until you make your next attempt to take him out.’

  Dante looked at Coulton, wondering if he’d buy it. But there wasn’t the slightest hint of emotion on the old man’s face. He leaned back in his chair and took a puff on his cigar before speaking again.

  ‘You don’t share Capone’s objection to the dope trade?’ he asked.

  Dante shook his head. ‘Capone’s a dinosaur,’ he said. ‘You think I want to be working for a man like that? I’m paying off a debt. Prohibition’s coming to an end. In a year or two, it’ll have been repealed, and then what’ll happen to bootleggers like Capone? No hotel chains or restaurants will want to deal with gangsters anymore. Only a fool like Capone can’t see the end coming, the need to switch into something new. We take those distribution channels the bootleggers set up and use them for narcotics. That’s the future. And I wanna be a part of it. I wanna be in business with you.’

  Coulton stared at him, mulling over Dante’s offer, sifting through the angles. In the stillness, the only movement was the flow of cigar smoke, the flicker of the city lights outside, the boats along the dark surface of the lake; the only sound was the buzz of the radio. In a ring in another part of the city, some elegant act of violence occurred, one man got the better of another, and the country roared.

  ‘I went to Capone with the idea months ago and he turned me down,’ said Coulton. ‘Explain that to me – a man who snorts cocaine and drinks like a fish and sleeps with half the girls in his brothels – a man like that turning his nose up at heroin.’

  Coulton shrugged, indicating that he still found Capone’s decision perplexing.

  ‘You’re right,’ he continued. ‘Narcotics are the future. Easier to smuggle than booze, easier to transport, a million times more addictive and profitable. The government gave us a gift with prohibition, but by banning narcotics, they’re ushering in a golden age. Unfortunately, Dante, that golden age doesn’t include you. If you’d have come to me a few weeks ago, we could have worked something out. But now . . .’ He shook his head.