Aces & Eights

by Dale Lucas

  “Care to dance?” Dub asked.

  Fralene didn’t answer. She just offered her hand.

  XX

  The brandy loosened her and the coffee gave her a kick in the seat, and Miss Fralene Farnes proved that, when she wasn’t trying to solve the world’s many ills, she could cut quite a rug for herself. She spun and smiled and swayed, and more than once she pulled loose of Dub’s arms and turned and sidled before him and he watched her hips curve back and forth and her well-formed buttocks move beneath her skirt, and though Dub Corveaux knew that Miss Fralene Farnes’s heart was too pure and good and hopeful to be consort to a dark, divided heart like his own, still he found that he wanted her, and even loved her a little.

  But, finally, it was close to midnight, so they left the little rhumba room and started their walk back to her home. Harlem’s ills weren’t brought up again. Fralene admitted that she’d actually known a little about Dub before meeting him: she’d read some of the poems and essays he’d published in The Messenger literary journal, and been taken with each and every one of them. She’d long intended to go seek him out at his office on 136th Street, but not until her brother showed himself at the breakfast table one morning with all his mysterious cuts and scrapes did she manage to do so.

  “Now I feel taken,” Dub said. “Mere prey for your keen hunter’s eye.”

  “Predatory,” Fralene said. “That’s me. All the way.”

  They laughed easily, and suddenly, they were back at her stoop and the night was done. They stood looking at each other for a long time.

  “It’s been a fine evening, Miss Fralene Farnes,” Dub said.

  “Dr. Corveaux, you’ve been excellent company.”

  “I want to see you again.”

  She smiled, but made no move or indication that she wanted to be kissed. “You know where to find me,” she said, then turned and climbed the stoop and disappeared into the house. Dub stood watching as she disappeared beyond the foyer and the porch light went out, then turned and marched for home, hands in his pockets.

  He cut down toward 136th Street by way of a series of narrow alleys that snaked and intersected behind various buildings. Upon reaching the intersection of two such alleys just a block shy of home, Dub found a wizened old Negro in a slouch hat, smoking a corn-cob pipe and smelling of stale old tobacco.

  The old man sat on a lidded trashcan, cross-legged, like a boney, ebony Buddha on a cheap pedestal. Dub had half-expected to find the old man here at the secret crossroads behind his building. That was why he took this particular route.

  “She’s a sweet girl,” the old man, whose name was Legba, said. The old man smiled a little, black eyes catching the light of a single, bare light bulb shining above the back entrance of a nearby tenement.

  “Why weren’t you here last night?” Dub asked. “When I called you?”

  “I don’t come when called,” the old man said. “I come when required.”

  “And you don’t think you were required last night?” Dub persisted. “What good was that mess last night? A few more hoods off the street. A little fear in the air. Fine. But a child died. An innocent child.”

  “Innocents die,” the old man said, puffing smoke from his pipe. “It can’t be helped, and you know it well.”

  “But I thought it could be helped,” Dub countered. “That’s what I thought I was doing here.”

  “As you say,” the old man agreed. “It can be helped. Sometimes. Not always. You’re just one man. There’s a difference to be made, but you ain’t gonna change the world... or save everyone that needs saving.”

  Dub felt his anger rising. “Then what’s the point?”

  “You do what you can, when you can. But you can’t do it all.”

  Dub snorted. “I never pegged the doorman at the crossroads for a pessimist.”

  “Well, I did peg you for a crusader, Dub Corveaux... but I’ll try not to hold that against you.”

  Dub didn’t like having his own words thrown back at him. Especially when they made him feel such a fool. “Do you have work for me tonight?”

  “There’s always work to be done.”

  Dub threw a glance up at the looming shadow of his brownstone above them. He thought of his attic sanctum... his other face... his guns.

  XX

  Owney’d had too much to drink, and he knew it. But he wasn’t gonna let Deirdra guilt him; not this time. His number’d come up; he had swell new vines and a tight knot in his pocket to show for it; they’d burned up Jungle Alley, and now he was walking his Deedee back to her place, where he hoped to get some fair action in recompense for a fair—hell, a lavish—evening’s expense.

  The lights of the Lafayette Theater were behind them. In the dark, they were strolling nearer to the Good Luck chestnut tree on 131st Street. Owney threw himself at the big tree, arms around it in a shameless embrace. “That’s my girl,” he said happily. “Finally brought my numbers in!”

  “You’re drunk,” Deirdre said.

  “You ain’t?” Owney asked.

  Deirdre held her severe look for a good two or three breaths, then burst out laughing. He could see the clouds in her eyes now; the soft, easy manner of her smile. He’d done well; she was drunk as a skunk, just like him.

  Tonight. Finally. Those silk stockings on her long, slender legs came off tonight.

  They laughed together, then Deirdre had his hand and pulled him across Seventh Avenue, toward 130th Street. There was a lot of activity on the corner of 7th and 131st, as there always was—largely their fellow Harlemites out to stock ‘the Corner’ and watch the swell ‘fays as they were dropped off at Connie’s Inn. In moments, they were across the street, stumbling and laughing all the way, and Owney saw a big, yawning darkness ahead and drew up short, wary. Deirdre yanked on him.

  “Come on,” she said.

  He pointed toward 130th Street. “That way,” he said.

  She pointed toward the alley in front of them. “This way. Shorter.” Then she drew up, pressing herself against him and whispering in his ear. He smelled the cheap liquor on her breath and it got him hot. “Gotta get back to my place fast, Owney. You got my fuze burnin’ and I don’t wanna blow on the way.”

  He took her hand and drew her into the alley. It was his lucky night. He’d have to buy that good luck chestnut a park to go around it. He supposed that the six hundred bucks he hauled on bolito wouldn’t exactly buy a park—but it was fine to dream, wasn’t it?

  “Lookit this,” someone said, and Owney turned, trying to find the source of the voice in the dark, deep alleyway between the buildings that fronted 131st and 130th streets. Some distance behind him, he saw the lights of 7th Avenue, but already they seemed far away—as distant as the stars above bracketed by the dark, rising monoliths of tenements and store fronts on either side.

  Then a trio of shadows came swaggering out of a darker side alleyway, surrounding he and Deirdre like sharks, circling, smiling, their teeth too bright and their faces too dark in the shadows. “Owney Potts,” one of them said. “Fella who hit the numbers this afternoon.”

  Deirdre took a swing at the nearest one with her pocketbook.

  “You dumb niggers best back off, ‘fore my Owney gives you what for!” she snarled. Owney wanted to support the sentiment, but truth be told, he felt too scared—and too sober, all of the sudden—to give anybody much of anything.

  One of them took a swipe at Deirdre, snatching the gold chain and locket that Owney had bought her just that afternoon and tearing it off her neck. It broke without resistance and she gave a little scream. “Nice!” the fellow hissed. “Sparkly, shiny!”

  Owney felt rough hands on him, shaking him, diving into his coat pockets. “Where’s it at?” the shadow with the ivory grin snarled. “Where’s your knot, Owney?”

  Owney started to lay hands on the fellow; started to put on a show of resisting, but secretly hoped that one of them would just knock him out, take what they wanted, and go, so he wouldn’t have to try and be brave
for too long. But then a new shadow melted down out of the high darkness in the alleyway, and he found himself more terrified than he’d ever been in his life.

  The apparition came plummeting down from a high ledge above, landed with both feet on a jutting awning above the back door to some shop fronting on 130th Street, bounced, and landed light-as-a-cat on the pavement. Owney’s three assailants all turned and stared. Deirdre gave a rough, strangled little scream and backed into the shadows, looking for a wall to huddle against.

  The apparition tossed something; a pair of little round spheres about the size of grapefruit. The grapefruit hit the pavement at the feet of the two muggers on the wings of the trio. Owney heard the spheres break open, shattering like clay.

  Flames engulfed the two outer hoods, but they were flames like Owney had never seen before. One firestorm was fire engine red and engulfed the hood foot-to-crown like a nest of roiling, slithering, fiery serpents. The flames on the other hood glowed blue and white, and seemed to wail and moan in mourning voices as they surrounded him. Both hoods collapsed, the flames licking at their bodies but seeming to do no damage.

  At least none that Owney could see.

  But they both screamed. Oh, how they screamed!

  Owney’s eyes shot back to the stranger himself. He didn’t know the gent, but he felt a fear of hell itself as he stared at him: the white skull-face under the black top hat; the flowing tendrils of a bright red scarf and long black overcoat that seemed to sway and undulate by themselves, as if on a phantom wind; the faint, vengeful smile that seemed to paint the stranger’s thick lips under his skull-face.

  “Aw shit,” the last hood muttered. Then he drew a switch-blade, popped it in the dark, and closed on the newcomer. “Nice white-face, Mister Charlie, but I ain’t afraid of all that southern-fried hoodoo bullshit!”

  The skull-faced stranger straightened as the hood stepped up. His broad shoulders squared. “Drop the knife and beat it,” the stranger said, and Owney thought that voice was the most terrible thing he’d ever heard; rusty iron scraping rusty iron; the old gates of a graveyard, yawning open to set the spirits of the dead free.

  The two on the pavement still bucked and flopped like dying fish, screaming, begging mercy, all tied up in the red and blue flames from the clay grenades the hoodoo man had tossed.

  The last hood came on. The knife flashed in a wide arc. The stranger caught the hood’s knife-hand mid-swipe, drew something heavy from under his black coat, and slammed the hood hard right in the flank. The hood choked and bent double. The stranger’s hand—he was holding a cold blue .45 automatic—brought the butt of the pistol-grip down on the hood’s shoulder and the guy hit the pavement, knocked cold.

  Deirdre screamed again. Owney looked to the skull-faced man with the drawn gun. The avenger stared back, gaze burning beneath the brim of his black top hat. “When your number comes up,” he snarled, “stick to lighted streets.”

  Owney only nodded. The black coated apparition turned with a flourish and marched away, seeming to melt back into the shadows, then disappearing entirely into a side alley twenty yards distant. Then, suddenly, it seemed as if some dim light bled back into the world; as if the fellow’s very presence had deepened the darkness. Owney heard Deirdre screaming, even as he fled toward the lights of 130th Street.

  XX

  Mookie and Trix were delighted. They knew they’d find good scratch in the southern-style houses on Astor Row, but they hadn’t expected the haul they now drew out of a hidden drawer in a big, handmade armoire. Where the occupants of the house currently were—attending some church of Africa-for-the-Africans meeting, getting sauced in Jungle Alley, enjoying a jitterbug review at the Lafayette or the Lincoln—they didn’t know and didn’t care. All they knew was that something about this particular house had drawn them, and looky-looky here what they’d found in an upper bedroom: a little ivory-inlaid cedar box in this secret drawer, full of pearl strings, gold rings topped with fat stones, silver earrings and bangles, even some old gold and silver coins from around the world, fat and heavy enough to suggest value.

  In the near-darkness, the only light coming from the nearby bedroom window, Mookie’s eyes went wide. “Trix, lookit this!” he breathed, and held out the box.

  Trix’s thick fingers dove into the cache of precious metal, stone and coin. “Shee-yit! That’s it! That’s what we’s after!”

  Mookie started pocketing the stuff in his coat. He half-considered taking the whole box—certainly fine, lacquered cedar inlaid with ivory would get him something from the fence? But then he thought better of it. Too big and bulky. Close to impossible to conceal. The box stayed. Its contents would leave with he and Trix.

  When both of them had filled their pockets, Trix moved for the window. “I’m thinkin’ it’s a good haul for one night,” he said. They’d already hit two other houses on the row. The prize discovery they’d just made tripled their expected earnings for the night. “You wanna go hit Cyrus, then the Alley?”

  Trix only ever had one thing on his mind: drinking, gambling, and whoring along Jungle Alley, on 133rd Street between Lenox and 7th Avenue. Mookie dug a good night out too, and if Cyrus could front them some cash, they’d have fat pockets and no reason not to hit the Alley. Hell, it was still early!

  But Mookie also knew the fence business. Even if Cyrus was still puttering around his pawn shop fixing bicycles or music boxes—he probably wouldn’t give them prime on the merchandise. It was a general pattern Mookie had noticed: hit a fence late at night, when your haul was still hot, and they’d be likely to filch you because they knew you were eager. Wait ‘til first thing in the morning, catch them fresh after some eggs and coffee, and they’d be more likely to work with you and give you fair trade.

  So Mookie turned toward the window to tell Trix that they should wait—they’d get more money that way—and he saw Trix, half-in and half-out of the window, one foot on the ledge, one hand braced on the underside of the double-hung pane, getting ready to duck through.

  “It’s too late,” Mookie started to say, then a shadow fell across the window-pane, and strong hands grabbed Trix and yanked him through the little portal and tossed him out into the air and Trix was plunging down, end over end, his fall coming so fast, and so unexpectedly, that he didn’t even cry out. He just gave a strangled, “Hey!” before gravity took him and he disappeared from Mookie’s view.

  Mookie rushed to the window. Trix lay on the floor of the alley below, crumpled like a rag doll, a spreading pool of blood below him glinting in the moonlight.

  Then Mookie caught a whiff of stale cigar smoke and felt a heavy, cold shadow falling over him. He craned his head round to look upward.

  The houses on Astor Row were fine and well-designed—the cornice- and brick-work was what made climbing to the second floor so easy—but Mookie didn’t remember the buildings sporting gargoyles. Now he looked up into the face of one; a nasty creature seemingly cut from stone and shadow, wearing a long, black overcoat and top hat, crouching on the ledge above like something out of a preacher’s vision of hell and damnation.

  And was the gargoyle smoking a cigar? Did he see the little cherry of the cigar’s fire glowing in the dark, reflected in the gargoyle’s shadowed eyes? Clouds of smoke puffed out of the nasty, looming creature’s pursed lips.

  Then the gargoyle lunged down toward him, and Mookie almost knocked himself unconscious yanking his head back in the window. He stumbled back, well-clear of the window, vaguely aware that some of the jewels in his pockets fell loose and littered the floor. A moment later, the gargoyle dropped down onto the ledge outside the window, and he saw in the dim moonlight that the figure in black had a face painted white, like a grinning skull; and he thought of the stories his Trinidadi grandmother used to tell about the vodou barons and their grave-lord, Samedi.

  The keeper of cemeteries. The lord of the dead.

  Mookie Deuce was on his feet, pounding out of the strange bedroom, careening out through the empty corrido
rs, thumping down the stairs, plunging headlong for the front door. It was locked, and he beat and scratched at its locks, cursing, hands shaking, but suddenly he had it open, and the cool night air greeted him, and he went stumbling out of the Astor Row house, through the little front yard, and into the street. At this point, he didn’t care who saw him. He didn’t care if the whole goddamn neighborhood were out on their front porches, enjoying the crisp October evening. He wanted out of the house; away from the gargoyle with Baron Samedi’s skull face.

  He was halfway down the street when he saw a dark form leap from the roof of a nearby row house, glide gracefully through the air, and arc down to land heavily in the street before him. The Baron had caught up; Mookie skidded to a halt, landing on his ass at the grave-lord’s feet. The cigar-chomping avenger loomed over him, and in the moonlight Mookie saw the gravelord’s serpentine red scarf move of its own accord. Its limp ends rose up on the Cemetery Man’s shoulders like two lazy snakes, then reared and struck.

  The serpentine ends of the angry red scarf coiled in an instant round Mookie’s throat and hauled him to his feet. Choking, vision going snowy, Mookie stared into the Cemetery Man’s burning black eyes.

  XX

  Wash was well aware that they were too big to hide easily, no matter how late it was, how dark it was, how deserted their destination was. But Papa gave orders, and Wash and Timmons obeyed. The big man didn’t play, and though their trek to the darker corners of the Lower East Side and that terrifying, close-aired tenement where the witch lady holed up still put the zap on their brains, their exhaustion was nothing beside the fear and respect they bore their employer.

  So they rolled up to West 139th Street, just east of Lenox, to make a late-night visit to the Queen Bee’s new club, Aces & Eights. They bore with them a special bundle, about the size of a fat plowman’s lunch, wrapped in dirty old oil cloth and smelling of old incense and ill will.