Aces & Eights

by Dale Lucas

  That last bit always got a laugh from whomever had asked about the picture—patient, creditor, vendor, or deliveryman.

  Then there were the other little snatches of info that Cecile had derived from her employer, less solidified: he’d gone to school at Harvard stateside and earned his medical doctorate overseas, at the University of Munich. He copped to intimate knowledge of white women, particularly in France, but Cecile tried not to hold that against him—what a young man did when he was away at war was his business, and he could hardly be blamed for it. Most mysteriously, he seemed to speak of broad travels in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, but Cecile was loath to press for more details, and he never seemed to offer them. Thus, her knowledge of her young employer’s broad meanderings remained incomplete, but tantalizing in its haziness.

  Still, these were all speculations. For the most part, Cecile kept her knowledge of her employer’s comings and goings, his leisure activities, and the company he kept, beyond her own reach. She was nosy by nature and would have loved to know more about him—given her employer’s easy nature, no doubt he would have answered any question she asked—but nonetheless, she never allowed herself to ask, because somehow, she knew it was none of her business.

  Still, it puzzled her a little when he arrived one late October morning, fresh from his breakfast, wearing no smile and looking more than a little tired and preoccupied. She almost hated to tell him that he had an unexpected, early morning appointment. He figured that out soon enough, however, upon sweeping into the office and finding a pretty young woman and her teenage brother in the waiting room. When he looked to Cecile, she was quick to assure him that these were walk-ins, not a forgotten appointment.

  “Miss Fralene Farnes,” Cecile said, suggesting the pretty thing in the fine coat and well-worn hat. And next to her, a young man with his sister’s fine features, but none of her quiet assurance. “That’s her younger brother, Buchanan.”

  “But everybody calls me Beau,” Buchanan Farnes said.

  Cecile puzzled over young Dr. Corveaux’s aspect—the knit in his brow, the neutral set of that heavy mouth of his, usually smiling at this time of the morning. He studied the woman and her younger brother for only a moment, then a grin rose like the sun on his face, and his distraction seemed to burn off like an early-morning fog. Cecile even thought she caught a strange, ironic bend in the doctor’s grin as he held out his hand to shake the hand of young Buchanan.

  “Dr. Corveaux,” he said, shaking Beau’s hand first, then Fralene’s. Cecile wasn’t just imagining that she saw the light of sexual interest in the doctor’s study of the young woman. And who could blame him? He was well-to-do and unattached—why not study a pretty young thing like her and make his interest known with a twinkle in his eyes?

  But then his gaze was back on Beau Farnes, taking in the storm of fine slashes and lacerations on his face and neck. “Looks like you had a tumble in something sharp and fine,” Dr. Corveaux said, by way of a welcome.

  “He says he got rolled up near Sugar Hill last night. A fight over cards,” Miss Farnes said indignantly. “But don’t you believe it, doctor. Ask me, I think something untoward happened to my brother, and I’d like to know what.”

  Then Cecile saw the pleading dew in the young man’s eyes, and Dr. Corveaux recognized it too. Yeah, I lied to my sister, that look said, but it ain’t her business, doc. Just patch me up and help me out.

  Cecile had seen that same pleading look given more than once in the waiting room, though it was usually a mother and son, or a husband and wife. Beau—who couldn’t be more than seventeen if he was a day—must be the ward of his big sister, and her motherly instincts were clearly at odds with his young man’s coltishness.

  “Well, give me two shakes to shed my coat and hat,” Dr. Corveaux said with a smile, “and I’ll take a look at that mess on your face, Beau.”

  Beau rose and so did Fralene. The doctor looked to Fralene Farnes and suggested that she sit again. “I’ll see your brother alone, Miss Farnes—no need of you to trouble yourself. I’m sure Cecile’d be happy to make you a cup of coffee if you like.”

  “Just percolated,” Cecile said earnestly, trying to help her employer save young Beau Farnes’s dignity.

  “But he’s my responsibility—” young Miss Farnes began.

  The doctor was hanging his coat just inside the office nook where Cecile held sway and tossed his brown fedora onto a hook beside it. “Oh, it’s just the size of the examination room, that’s all,” the doctor said easily. “No need to crowd us all in. Beau, come on back.”

  And with that, Beau was up out of his chair, disappearing with the young doctor into the examination room, and Cecile was left alone with a rather indignant-looking Miss Fralene Farnes, whose natural, milky-skinned beauty now looked flushed with insult and indignation.

  Cecile stifled a giggle. The young doctor may have felt the first sting of Cupid’s arrow at the sight of the lovely young colored woman, but he’d have a hard time getting dinner or a sundae out of her now that he’d ruffled her feathers.

  XX

  Beau Farnes winced as Dr. Corveaux dabbed iodine on the storm of cuts that stippled his face like splatters of paint. The doctor smiled a little. Though Corveaux knew otherwise, young Beau Farnes was sticking to his story, even separated from his sister.

  “Those fellas up in Sugar Hill are rough,” Farnes said, trying to talk away the sting of the iodine. “Grabbed me on the street, dragged me into an alley, rolled me in a trash heap. There musta been broken bottles or somethin’ in there, maybe an old windowpane. I didn’t even know I was cut up so bad ‘til I got home and looked in a mirror.”

  “Well, you’re lucky it wasn’t worse,” Corveaux said knowingly, and made a point to look the young man in the eye. “A lot worse.”

  Farnes nodded. The doctor’s view of the young man was well in line with his estimation last night: untried, but not stupid... and certainly not lost for good.

  Yet.

  “I ain’t goin’ up that way anymore,” Beau said, smiling. “Cross my heart.”

  “What was it drew you up that way?” the doctor asked. “Ladies, liquor, or games of chance?”

  The young man’s smile broadened. “Heck, sir... all three.”

  Corveaux smiled in spite of himself. He liked the kid. That’s why he’d let him go the night before. He knew from the first that he wasn’t a lost cause; that he hadn’t pulled the trigger on anyone, stuck the knife in, or bloodied his hands. Sure, he was working an apprenticeship with the numbers-runners, but the way the doctor saw it, that was no crime in and of itself. There were worse sorts in the world.

  The sorts employed by Papa House. The sorts he’d had to make short work of with his pistols...

  But, back to the business at hand. The doctor held his smile, to make sure that Beau knew the advice to follow was offered out of friendly concern, not elderly reproach. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with a toot or a roll of the dice. And believe me, Beau, I appreciate the company of ladies, myself... but use your head. Some of that stuff, if you wade in too deep, turns out to be a slippery slope with an undertow. You hear me?”

  Beau was serious again. “Yessir, I hear you.”

  “And I take it your sister doesn’t approve?”

  Beau’s eyes went wide, almost in fear. “No sir. You ain’t gonna tell her any more—”

  “Sounds like you told her what you wanted her to hear. You may not be a man, legal and all, but you’re a big boy, and it seems you aren’t a fool. So just use your head. What you tell your sister is between you and her.”

  He finished the last iodine swab. The boy had only needed a few stitches on a particularly nasty pair of cuts. The rest were largely superficial and would disappear soon enough. The stitched cuts would scar, but they’d be small—barely noticeable in time. The doctor began clean up of the implements of his trade. Beau slumped, perched on the examination table.

  “She seems a might concerned about your pastimes,
” the doctor said.

  “Fralene?” Beau said. “A might’s a might short. She’s like a mangy old hound keepin’ this rooster in the chicken coop.”

  Dr. Corveaux turned to show Beau the smile that was on his face. “Forgive me for saying so, son, but of all the descriptions I could summon for your big sister, ‘mangy old hound’ isn’t one of them.”

  Beau looked confused, as if the suggestion that his sister were anything but a nuisance was the strangest thing he’d ever heard. “Whatever you say, doc.”

  “She got somebody?” the doctor asked, hoping that he wasn’t giving the young man too much grist on him, asking about his sister in such a way.

  “Nobody’d want her,” Beau said.

  Now the doctor was confused. “Really? How’s that?”

  “Talk to her. You’ll see.”

  He and Beau had barely cleared the examination room when Fralene Farnes shot to her feet. “Beau, go on to school, now. Don’t be late. If you’re late, I’ll know.”

  Beau threw a glance back at the doctor—see what I mean?—and cleared out the door with only a muttered thanks, leaving the young doctor and his secretary alone with Miss Fralene Farnes.

  She stepped up to meet Dr. Corveaux’s advance. “He’s going to be fine, Miss Farnes,” he said assuringly. “I think he just had a rough night in a rough neighborhood.”

  “Well, doctor, that’s my concern,” Fralene Farnes said. “And I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t undermine my authority as my brother’s keeper by closing me out of future examinations... assuming I bring him back here.”

  “Expecting more rolls in a trash-heap rife with broken glass?” the doctor asked.

  “He gets into trouble more and more of late,” Miss Farnes said. “I expect it might only get worse if I can’t get him graduated and get him into school somewhere.”

  “That’s his aim, then?” the doctor asked. “College?”

  “That’s my aim,” Fralene answered. “And he’s in my charge, so he’ll do as I say.”

  The young doctor shot a glance at his secretary, saw Cecile resigned to stay out of the whole mess, then decided to try a different plan of attack. “Well, he sure is a lucky young man to have such a dedicated lady on his side.”

  Fralene Farnes eyed him suspiciously, as if she sensed the increased charm exuding from him and grew wary of it. She was smart, he gave her that; she had a subtle sensitivity to unspoken signals and motivation that most people only possessed on an unconscious level. Still, he got what he was after: the first little upturn at the corner of her slender, well-formed lips, suggesting an embryonic smile.

  “Don’t give me the high hat, doctor,” she said smoothly. “You ran interference to save my brother’s young pride—some brotherhood-of-men foolishness that somehow trumped what should have been your desire to please the person who was your patient’s keeper—and, I might add, the one that’ll pay his bills.”

  “Iodine and a few stitches,” the young doctor replied, shrugging. “We’ll call it fair and square. No charge this time.”

  “That won’t do. We don’t need charity and I pay fair for services rendered. What do I owe you?”

  “Do you like curry?” the doctor asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  He shrugged. “Do you like curry? The sort you might get at a carib kitchen. Maybe some jerk chicken? Peas and rice?”

  “Doctor, what are you talking about?”

  “Call me Dub,” he said, and knew Cecile was grinning now.

  “What kind of a name is Dub for a doctor?”

  “The sort I go by when I’m not called doctor. Dub’s my name, yours is Fralene, and I, Dub, would like to take you, Fralene, out for curry and peas and rice and talk to you about any number of things that have nothing to do with your brother or my title. So how about it?”

  She stared at him for a moment as though he were speaking a foreign language, then she, too smiled—albeit in a most puzzled and perplexed fashion—and he saw a blush in her cheeks and ears. “Well, that’s forward.”

  “And to sweeten the deal,” Dr. Dub Corveaux added, “the stitches and iodine are still free of charge, even if you say no.”

  “Well, how about I say that’d be fine, because I love peas and rice,” Fralene answered, then dug a few dollars from her pocketbook and offered it, “but I’d still like to pay for the stitches and iodine—just to make sure that whatever services might be rendered, one way or the other, are fairly compensated and clearly distinguished.”

  Dub stared at the money, smiling in spite of himself. He’d gotten what he wanted. “Fair trade is never to be derided,” he said. “Cecile, draw up a receipt for Miss Farnes.”

  Cecile went to work. Dub and Fralene stared at one another for a time, sharing something, puzzled and drawn by one another, eager and reticent all at once.

  “Tonight?” he asked.

  “Six o’clock,” she said.

  Chapter 4

  Wash parked the car in a narrow, untrod alleyway, as far back from the street as possible, and turned to address his boss over the seat. “You’re sure about this, Papa?”

  Solomon House studied Wash, then Timmons beside him, with cold, appraising eyes. “You scared of a few poor scrubs off the boat, boys?”

  Wash and Timmons exchanged nervous glances. Papa almost laughed, because they looked ridiculous: big, strapping black bulldogs, heart-sick and troubled by the thought of a stroll among the dirty snowflakes on the Lower East Side. Timmons shrugged. “We got your back, Papa,” he said. “It’s just... this ain’t our turf. We don’t belong here.”

  “What was your first clue?” House asked. His body-

  guards looked duly chastised. House drew out a cigarette, lit up, and took a long drag. “Just keep your eyes peeled and your nerves frosty.”

  Wash and Timmons exchanged worried glances again, then stepped out of the car. Timmons opened the door for House and he stepped out, buttoning up his camel hair coat as he did so. If he wasn’t crazy, it was actually colder down here on the Lower East Side than up in Harlem. Maybe it was the closeness of all the old tenements; the narrow, sunless spaces in between. Truth be told, he felt bad hoodoo in the air, too, even as he smelled refuse and human waste in the open back-alley gutters and the sludgy banks of the East River a few blocks distant.

  But he couldn’t let the boys see fear. Whether there was something worth being afraid of hereabouts or not, showing fear to them was as good as asking one of them to bump him off and snatch his rackets. He was the king—he was Papa—he had to stay strong in their eyes.

  So he led them out of the sunless alley onto the street. They were a few blocks shy of slum center. Up and down the avenue, House saw the remnants of industry: empty crates piled and left to molder; collapsed scaffolding leaning against ancient buildings; an old flatbed horse cart blocking the mouth of an alley, looking like it’d been abandoned since House himself was still a boy back in Trinidad. Above and around them, armies of spectral shirts and long johns flapped in the breeze on drying lines stretched between the block towers, choking the October sunlight and adding that special tang of human sweat and lye soap to the sour air.

  “They’s hoodoo ladies up in Harlem, boss,” Wash offered. “Why we gotta come all the way down here?”

  House was tired of explaining himself. He needed reliable security, not a couple of frightened, superstitious island monkeys in fine suits. “Ain’t no telling which mambos uptown do business with the Queen Bee. ‘Sides that, the Queen Bee’s from the islands, too. So if we’re gonna get someone to work some juju on our dime, we need juju that ain’t in the Queen Bee’s ken, get me? The kind of hoodoo that a mambo up in Harlem can’t undo once we’ve done it. Now, both of you, keep your eyes open, grow some stones, and stay on me.”

  House marched off down the street. Wash and Timmons flanked him and followed.

  He felt eyes on him immediately, and though not surprised —one big, dark skinned carib and his bigger bodyguards couldn’t
be too common down this way, especially when House and his boys wore finer suits than most of these poor saps had ever even seen in a store window—it still gave him the heebies. Street urchin kids with faces so dirty they were almost black; whiskered old rummies from any number of shitty, Eastern European dukedoms; East River longshoremen knocking off for the day and looking to get sauced or buy a poke before stumbling back to their nasty hole-in-the-wall homes, their dirty, lice-ridden wives and rheumatic children; strange old Jews with hoary beards, black coats, and hats, like the members of some ancient, religious cosa nostra—all of them studied House and his boys with the predatory gazes of vultures awaiting a kill.

  House did his best to keep his gaze level and unswerving, his shoulders square, his gait steady. He knew, more or less, where he was going. Best to find the place and the old woman he’d heard tell of, buy the curse he’d come to buy, and get the hell out of there.

  They rounded corners, took a few false trips down narrow side streets, and finally came to a tall, narrow brick building that looked so darkened and filthied by time that it could have been a thousand years old. The skeletal tenement squatted between two larger, newer buildings—themselves not terribly welcoming or pleasant to behold—and was set far back from the street. Sooty streamers fluttered in the yawning frames and sashes where no windowpanes remained. All in all, it gave the impression of being the wizened, invalid elder of a degenerating family, hidden in the shadows, its quick expiration and collapse prayed for by its devolving kin.