by Larry Karp
Once the women fell to washing and drying, Brun made a move toward his room, but Higdon caught him by the arm and motioned him out to the back porch, where he told the boy to take a seat. “It may be none of my concern,” he said. “But Luella is my niece, and I’m responsible for her well-being.”
Brun had suspected he was in deep water. “Yes, sir,” he said.
“The last couple of days, she’s been spending more time crying than doing anything else. You saw what happened a few minutes ago. Up until Saturday, if anyone mentioned your name, she just glowed, but now she becomes hysterical. She won’t talk about it, though, not a word. I hope you might be able to shed some light.”
He didn’t sound angry, only concerned, which heartened Brun. “Truth, Mr. Higdon,” he said, “I’m afraid I can. Though I want to assure you, I’ve made no improper advances.”
He smiled. “Perhaps at least not to Luella.”
“Not to any woman. But Friday night, after I was done playing at Boutell’s, I ran into Miss McAllister outside. She was waiting for Mr. Freitag. He’d gone inside for a drink, and left her standing out there like she was his horse. She asked me to please see her home, and when we got there, she invited me inside for some cake.”
Higdon commenced to laugh. “And considering you never came in Friday night, I imagine you got more than a piece of cake.”
“Two pieces of cake, actually,” Brun said, which, as he hoped, made Higdon laugh harder. “But yes, sir, you’re right. I didn’t leave until morning, and when I did, Luella was just then coming back from Tobrich’s with a basket of eggs, and she saw Miss McAllister give me a kiss. I was afraid she might not take it too well, but I didn’t know what to do about it.”
“Sometimes there’s nothing to be done.” Higdon’s face went solemn. “The girl’s sweet on you, she’s only thirteen, and she’s not had a happy childhood. I can’t expect she’d take that sort of disillusionment terribly well.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Higdon, truth, I am. If there was any way I could make it right—”
“I know, Brun. You’re a decent young man, and I’m sure you wouldn’t intentionally hurt Luella. What happened was an unfortunate accident, and I don’t hold you responsible in any way. Belle will talk to Luella, and she’ll eventually get over it. In the meanwhile, you just continue to show her the same consideration I’ve always seen from you.”
“I’ll do that, Mr. Higdon, and thank you.”
Brun started to get up, but Higdon wasn’t done. “Just one more thing.”
Brun held his breath.
“Young men will sow wild oats, but they need to be careful about the field they sow them in. I like Miss McAllister, I really do. She’s got spunk, looking after herself as she has, but she doesn’t seem particularly choosy about who she lets serenade her. If you do go hanging around her back door, I hope you’ll be careful.”
“I will, Mr. Higdon. I mean, I would. But I’m not going to be seeing her any more. At least not like that.”
“All right, Brun,” Mr. Higdon said. “Thank you. I appreciate your time.”
“Thank you for taking interest in me, sir.”
It didn’t take a minute for Brun to get into his room, close the door, and throw the lock. He beelined for the bed, pulled up the side of the mattress, reached all the way in—and felt nothing. He wiggled his hand in all directions. Still nothing.
He told himself it wasn’t for real, he’d just made a mistake. A heave, and the mattress was off the bedframe, its far end resting on the floor. Brun could see the entire frame, but not a single sheet of music.
He clamped a hand over his mouth to keep in the howl that tried to escape; then he sagged against the bedframe and slowly folded to the floor. How long he stayed there, he never could recall. Finally, he wrestled the mattress back onto the frame, plopped down on it and told himself to think.
It had to be Maisie. Had to. She came by to see whether she’d managed to convince him, then after Belle and Luella went off, she let herself into the house, found Brun’s room, and searched it. Probably didn’t have to search very long, either. Brun cussed himself in every direction for leaving the music where so many people hide valuables, and where any harebrained thief would look.
Then panic hit again. Joplin’s money-clip! Brun tore into the closet, reached up and into the cubby, and there it was, safe. But once burned, twice cautious, as his mother used to say, and he slipped the money-clip into his pants pocket, down under his handkerchief. But then he stopped. Maybe once burned, twice cautious, but did lightning strike twice in one place? The clip had stayed safe through the raid that lost him the music, hadn’t it? He blew out a slow mouthful of air, replaced the clip into the pigeonhole, then took off at a gallop for Maisie’s house.
Chapter Fifteen
Sedalia
Monday, July 31, 1899
Evening
Five minutes that felt like five hours, and Brun was at Maisie’s. Unfortunately, neighbors sat talking on their porches on both sides of his target. Brun cursed them far out of proportion to their sin, and kept running, to the corner and around. Then he cut between two houses, no one there to see him, and flew through three back yards into the scrabbly crabgrass behind Maisie’s house. He listened hard at the back door, then knocked. No answer. A quick look around to satisfy himself no one watched, then he opened the door and slipped into the kitchen. Not the likeliest room to hide a bunch of music manuscripts, but he checked the bread box, the icebox, the covered cake dish. He opened every cabinet, but no luck. Ditto for the dining room.
In the living room, he took a moment to stare at the couch and recollect what had gone on there a few nights earlier, then yanked the cushion away. He found a few coins, which he dropped into his pocket, but no music. Neither was there music in or under any piece of furniture. He rolled up the Oriental carpet, but got nothing other than dirty hands for his trouble.
That left the bathroom and the bedroom. The bathroom was a fast hunt, cupboards and cabinets too full of makeup and other female equipment to possibly hold manuscripts. On to the bedroom. It was growing dark. Brun checked that he had his lucifers.
He pulled back the mattress, nothing there. Then he dropped to the floor, crawled under the bed, struck a lucifer, but found only dust. He scrambled back out, brushed himself off, walked into the big closet and wasted a few lights to peer behind a row of dresses, check underneath shoes, and look up on a shelf. He felt everywhere for a cubby big enough to hold the music, but came away with only a couple of splinters. Which left the dresser drawers. If the music didn’t turn up in them, he’d probably need to get into the attic crawl space. There was no basement, so at least he wouldn’t have to fight off rats.
He walked out of the closet, took a step toward the dresser, then stopped in his tracks. Voices, Maisie’s and a man’s. Maisie said something; the man laughed. Inside the closet, Brun hadn’t heard them.
He scanned the room like a drowning man searching the water around him for a piece of wood to float on. Two windows, both open, but screened. He thought about going back into the closet, but the other night, Maisie had made him hang up every piece of clothing he took off her, so they wouldn’t get wrinkled. Now, Maisie’s voice broke off his thoughts. “Don’t you laugh… I am going to sing in vaudeville.” Then the man spoke. “Well, ’course you are. I ain’t laughin’ at you. All that music…biggest thing in all of vaudeville.”
They were right outside the bedroom door, no longer any choice. Brun launched himself at the nearer window, rolled up both fists, punched through the screen, and hit the ground balling the jack. He flew through Maisie’s crabgrass into a patch of string beans and tomatoes in the yard behind, but as he danced out of the vegetables, the crack of a gunshot sent him face down in the grass. He felt no pain, didn’t think he was hit, but resolved he’d never again laugh at any of those jokes about going through a bedroom window in a hurry. He heard shouting, raised his head, saw a skinny old coot i
n an undershirt and worn overalls racing toward him from the back porch of the house behind Maisie’s, waving a rifle in his right hand. “Don’t shoot,” Brun called. “Please. Don’t shoot.”
By then, the codger stood over him. “Dad blame you, boy, y’ain’t got the brains God gave you. Go runnin’ through a man’s yard like that when he’s shootin’ rats, you’re gonna get yourself killed.” He waved the rifle toward Seventh. “Go on now, get yourself the hell outa here, and stay out.”
More than enough encouragement for Brun, who got himself a good two blocks down Seventh before he slowed to a trot. He was home free, but without the music. Maisie had done a whole lot better job than he had of hiding it; he’d have to go back another time and really tear the place apart.
But wait a minute. Maisie was no dumbbell. If she really did get her hands on that music, she likely wouldn’t have hidden it for long, if at all. She’d have wanted to turn it into money and probably a deal to sing in Freitag’s shows. Maybe that’s why the two of them were in her bedroom now, so Maisie could get into her best bargaining position.
Brun ransacked his memory: where was it that Freitag had told High Henry to bring his music? “Across from Miss Nellie’s whorehouse, Commercial Hotel.” The boy started running again.
The Commercial was at other end of the scale from Kaiser’s, rooms two bits a night, sheets and towels changed once a week no matter how many different people had stayed in the room, and no extra charge for roaches and bedbugs. From the doorway, Brun did a quick survey of the lobby. No one there except for Jeb Johnson, the night clerk, perched on a high stool behind the counter, head down on the registration book. Brun could hear him snore all the way out in the street. You couldn’t call Jeb a birdbrain without insulting the birds, and more, he was usually at least half-plastered. Brun figured he’d have no trouble sneaking past him, but then what? He didn’t know Freitag’s room number, and the register was under Jeb’s face.
Still early in the evening, the boy thought, and Monday to boot. Ought to be quiet at Miss Nellie’s. An eye-blink later, he was across the street and in the parlor, and no, it wasn’t at all busy. The girls lounged on sofas and in chairs, bored and lazy, and when Brun came in, they proceeded to make much of him. Rita jumped onto his lap, ran fingers through his hair. “Froggy ain’t here yet,” she said. “Come on and play us a little ragtime.” She winked. “Get us both in the right mood.”
“If you sit there with me.”
There being only a stool, Rita pushed herself up to sit on top of the piano, then bent one knee and clasped her hands around her leg. As Brun swung into “Maple Leaf,” he looked up and saw the girl wore no underwear. “Rita,” he said quickly, before he decided to change his immediate plans. “I need some help from you.”
“My, my. We’re in a little bit of a hurry tonight.”
“Not that. Something else. I’ve got to get Jeb away from the front desk next door at the Commercial. I figure you can do it. I’ll pay the freight.”
The girl jumped down from the piano to deliver a solid whack to Brun’s arm. She was furious. “You want to pay me to jazz that moron?”
Brun tried to keep his voice down, but all the other girls were watching the show. Nothing to do but go ahead. “That’s about the size of it, but it’s really, really important. I need him away from that desk for maybe half an hour. Go in there, tell him business is slow, and you got an itch you need to get scratched. I’ll warrant he’ll be off his seat in nothing flat. Rita, please won’t you help me?”
Now he had her smiling. “You are a most deceitful young man. Here, and I thought you were a babe I could bring up to my own tastes.”
A couple of the girls sauntered over. Brun went back to playing piano like nothing was the matter. Rita jerked a thumb his way. “You hear what this little Brun-baby wants? He’s gonna pay me to go get Jeb Johnson away from the counter at the Commercial for half an hour.”
One of the girls, a young blonde, mean-looking to start with, made a face even meaner. “That maggoty retard? Christ, it makes me sick to even think about it. I wouldn’t touch him even if he took a bath in the perma’ganate.”
Another girl, a hefty piece named Marsha, near forty, Brun figured, just laughed. “Hey, Rita, tell you what. I’ll go with you. We’ll tell him we’re both gonna give him a good what-for. He’ll have us back in a room in nothing flat.” She leered at Brun. “Your boy can pay the both of us.”
Brun knew when he was beat. “All right. Deal.”
Marsha went off to check with Nellie, and was back in no time. “Miss Nellie says it’s the funniest thing she’s heard all year. Okay, Brun. You pay in advance for this one.”
Brun dug into his pocket, put money into one girl’s hand, then the other’s. “Something a little different’s kinda fun,” Marsha said. Rita looked like she was considering throwing up.
As the girls went into the Commercial, Brun waited outside, rolled a cigarette and lit it. He couldn’t hear what was being said, but saw Rita pinch Jeb’s cheek. Then Marsha leaned across the counter and commenced to rub her bosom against Jeb’s other cheek. Not two minutes, and the poor sap was on his feet, grabbing a key out of one of the boxes behind him and heading off top-speed with the two girls down the corridor to a first-story room. Brun felt just a bit sorry, conning him like that, but told himself Jeb’s situation hardly warranted sympathy, going off to spend a little time with a couple of Miss Nellie’s liveliest girls. At Brun’s expense.
He strolled into the lobby and up to the counter like he owned the place, bent over the register, and there it was. Elmo Freitag, Kansas City, Room 215. He put a hand on the counter and vaulted over it, snatched the key out of its pigeonhole, then went back over the counter, and took the stairs two at a time. Down the corridor to Freitag’s door, where he dropped the cigarette and ground it out on the dirty wood floor. He listened for a few seconds, heard nothing, knocked at the door. No answer. He turned the key in the lock, and went inside.
By the light from the hallway, he found his way to the coal-oil lamp and lit it. Then he closed the door, took up the lamp, and started walking around the room. The neatness surprised him. He’d figured Freitag for a real slob, but there was nothing out of place, no worn clothes or pajamas lying around, no stuff tossed onto the floor, no plates of half-eaten food. The light did send a bunch of cockroaches running for cover, but that was not something he could properly fault Freitag for.
The top of the desk was bare. One by one, Brun opened the drawers, found only a grimy dog-eared Bible. Next, he went through the scratched and gouged dresser, but nothing there besides Freitag’s underwear and shirts. To get down and look under the bed took a firm resolve, like jumping into the river to swim on the first day of spring. No luck, though, and nothing under the mattress. In the closet, the boy ran his hands over the suits and pants on hangers, checked all the pockets, came away empty all around. But behind the hanging clothes, he lit upon a suitcase, which he wrestled out of the closet and threw onto the bed, no trouble, light as cardboard is. The boy snapped the case open, then stood and stared like an oaf.
That suitcase was more than half-full of papers covered with musical notes. Brun tried to examine them by the light from the lantern, but got concerned he might set them afire. Better to run, and look later. He jammed the sheets back into the suitcase, snapped it shut, and started for the door.
Downstairs, the reception counter was still unattended. Brun slid the key back into the right pigeonhole, then ran out with the suitcase, down Main to Ohio, keeping close to the buildings. At the corner of Third he saw four men talking outside Boutell’s, a half-block down, and one of them, he swore, was Freitag. Fast worker, wham, bam, back for a drink. Brun turned and cut down Third to Osage, which was dark and quiet, then trotted along to Sixth and up to Higdon’s. He stashed the suitcase behind the wide hedge in front of the living room window, and went inside. Voices from out back. The Higdons were sitting on the screened porch.
Up to his room he went on tiptoes, then shut the door and settled on the bed to wait. A couple of hours passed before he heard the family saying good-nights and closing doors. He forced himself to sit another fifteen or twenty minutes, then tiptoed back downstairs and outside to the hedge, where he picked up the suitcase and silently retraced the path back to his room.
He locked the door, laid the suitcase on his bed. Fitzgerald said he’d carried Sallie Rudolph’s cheap cardboard suitcase into her room. Was this the very one? Brun checked around the handle, then on top, and on every panel, but no initials anywhere. That was as long as he could wait. He snapped the case open and started leafing through the music. On top of the pile was a piece titled “Sedalia Rag,” by someone called Pushface Willie Lucas. Brun thought it didn’t look very good. He found other tunes by other composers, some of whom he knew, some he didn’t. But not a one of the manuscripts looked to be worth publishing.
Then he found one that did have promise, a lot, in fact. The title was “Maple Leaf Rag,” but the composer was Otis Saunders. Brun hummed along as he read the music, and no doubt, it was Scott Joplin’s tune of the same name. There were two other pieces with Saunders’ name on them: “Peacherine Rag,” same as the partial that Brun had taken from the Maple Leaf Club, and “Easy Winners.”
Brun was taken so aback that it was some time before he realized he hadn’t seen anything from The Ragtime Dance. When that thought finally came to him, he went back and thumbed through all the music, page by page, but still no Ragtime Dance, damn! He must have overlooked it. Why hadn’t he taken the time to go through every possible hidey-hole in Freitag’s room?
And then a string of memories hit Brun, one triggering the next, a cascade of remembrance that left him open-mouthed and staring into space. He’d thought he had this thing figured, but now saw he didn’t, not altogether. He wiped his face on the bedsheet, gathered up the music and threw it back into the suitcase.
