Aces & Eights

by Dale Lucas

  “Madame Marie,” Gideon corrected.

  “Or Queen Bee,” she added. “That’s what I am to all my friends.”

  Dub grinned. “Well, I count myself lucky to be part of that very select social circle. Good day, Queen Bee.”

  “Good day, doctor.”

  As Dub moved for the door, he turned to Beau. “Keep those wounds clean, Beau,” he said, suggesting the scratches on his face. “Come ‘round next Tuesday and I’ll take out those last stitches.”

  Beau nodded absently, and Dub left him to his shady company.

  XX

  All the way home, and through his afternoon appointments, Dub mulled over the peculiar feeling he’d had in Aces & Eights. Something was wrong in the place, and that wrongness boded none too well for the Queen Bee, her employees, or Harlem in general. Mixed with Dub’s natural concern for a major employer and the people who counted on her, there was his more specified concern for Beau and his big sister.

  So when the last of his neighborhood patients had left, and Cecile had begged off for the evening, and the office doors were locked and Lady Night came on with her purple mantle and parasol, Dub climbed the stairs to his apartments above the offices on the ground floor. There, he took a shower—the ritual,

  cleansing sort, because he had work ahead for the evening...

  Shower through, he slipped into a button-up shirt, black trousers, and suspenders and climbed another stairway—a secret spiral stairway at the southeast corner of his building—up to the fourth floor of his brownstone. There, in the attic, his special sanctum awaited.

  In Haiti, such spaces were called hounfors, sometimes peristyles. They tended to be low buildings in untamed, out of the way places with dirt floors and few neighbors. Here, in the heart of Harlem, he’d had to improvise, adapt, and overcome to meet all the requirements.

  The two toughest requirements were the earthen floor—through which sound and the energies of sacrifices were trans-mitted to the lwa—and the central pillar, the Poteau Mitan, by which the earth gave energies to the worshipers and the worshipers fed their energies to the earth. The latter had presented itself by accident—or perhaps by design: when Dub had toured the building, with an eye toward buying it, he’d noticed that the same, uninterrupted piece of iron piping led from the roof all the way down into the foundations. The real estate agent suggested that maybe it was some forgotten piece of conduit or plumbing. On most floors, it ended up being shut into a closet or lost behind a wall. But here, in the attic, it was right out in the open: almost in the very center of the room once a wall had been added to partition the aft third of the fourth floor. Thus, Dub had his umbilical connecting the fourth floor to the earth.

  As for the former, the earthen floor: he’d overcome that with simple hard work, carting up bag after bag of soil and spreading it like a carpet throughout the peristyle, until it was finally more than an inch deep. It absorbed libations nicely, and it also dampened the sound of his horsed dancing.

  Requirements of contact with terra firma and earthen foundations met, Dub had proceeded to decorate his hounfor like many of the others he’d seen in his youth—with a few added touches of his own, to personalize it. It was a solitary worship space, after all, not a public one.

  The attic windows were covered with heavy crimson curtains to keep curious eyes from finding him and wondering just what he was up to. On the east wall, Dub had painted rough images of the Rada lwa, complete with their veves, or holy seals. He was no artist, but he reckoned he’d done all right. Beneath that mural stood an altar crowded with the accoutrement of Rada worship: an image of St. Jerome in honor of Legba; St. Joseph in honor of Loko beside a picture of Dub’s own father; a faded St. Anne in honor of Ayizan; and an image of the Virgin to honor Erzulie Freda. Between the Virgin and St. Anne stood a picture of Dub’s mother, Lenore, and at the center of the clutter, a statue of St. Michael slaying the Dragon, to honor Dub’s met tet, or patron, Ogou. And candles—many candles—all surrounding offerings of loose tobacco, rum, cigars, dates, flowers and perfume. Rounding out the cramped little altar were Dub’s weapons of choice: his twin Colt 1911 .45 automatics, and a long, serpentine scarf, the angry red of a fresh wound—a gift from Ogou himself.

  Adjacent to the Rada altar was a shrine for the Ghede—the unnamed dead—and on the opposite wall were the signs and altar of the Petro lwa—the fiery, infernal spirits that Dub sometimes employed for more risky or ferocious pursuits. Tonight, though, only the Rada would be called.

  For light, he had strung lengths of small, colored electrical bulbs—the sort used at Christmas time—all around the baseboards and the eaves. Aside from these, the peristyle was lit only by candles—hundreds of them—tapers, votives, and the large, slow-burning sort of many colors in glass chimneys. Most nights, like tonight, it took him a while to light them all. But as he took his time and summoned the light, he began a low hymn to the lwa, crooning evenly and melodically throughout, the sound of his own voice and the circular phrasing of the chant focusing his mind and spirit.

  Afonga Alafia Ashé Ashé...

  Afonga Alafia Ashé Ashé...

  Ashé Ashé...

  Ashé Ashé...

  Afonga Alafia Ashé Ashé...

  Soon the attic peristyle—with its heavy crimson curtains drawn, and all its doors and windows shut tight and locked—was ablaze with a soft golden light. At last, the real work could begin.

  He put on a Victrola record that he had had specially recorded in Port-au-Prince, and the tri-partite beat of the wango drums and the cool, Creole tremolo of a vodou mambo filled the room. Dub poured offerings of his good family rum, lit cigars for Ogou and Legba and set them upright in an old trepanned skull, then burned dried sage and set some cones of frankincense smoldering. As the drums thumped and the mambo crooned, Dub let his body sway, and his feet stomped the earthen floor to keep time. He circled round his poteau mitan and little by little, he felt the doors between the worlds bulging; the locks and bars thrown back; the barriers ready to recede.

  In his hands he held his asson—his sacred rattle, filled with gris-gris from the lands that had borne him and adorned with colorful glass beads and snake bones. He let the rattle hover above a trio of sand-painted veves he’d prepared on the earth floor—the symbols of his lwa patrons, drawn for the purpose of gathering them in. With his footwork and the chatter of his rattle and the song from the Victrola record, he called the lwa. In short order, he knew they’d answer if he invited them in.

  Thus, he fell to his knees, kissed the earth, and knocked upon it three times. That opened the door. The lwa stepped through.

  He smelled old Legba’s corn-cob pipesmoke first; then Erzulie’s Florida water perfume; finally, the bitter, brimstone tang of Ogou’s hot iron mingled with the sting of gunpowder and stale tobacco smoke in his nostrils.

  Dub knelt in their presence, in the place where answers could be divined and requests made. He considered offering a briefing, to bring them up to speed, then realized they already knew why they’d been called. Thus, while he spoke he moved to his Ghede altar to prepare himself for a long night’s work.

  “There’s something wrong about that place,” he said aloud, painting for them a picture of Aces & Eights in his mind’s eye. “I need to know what it is.” As he did so, he slipped a cord round his throat, from which hung a trio of pewter pendants: veves, the seals of Legba, Erzulie, and Ogou, to protect him on his foray. Next, he slipped on a pair of dead man’s socks swiped from an undertaker and a pair of indefinitely-borrowed grave-digger’s boots that waited beneath the altar.

  Somebody else’s magic, Legba answered. Somebody else’s problem.

  “Wrong,” Dub countered, now buttoning up a purple-and-black striped waistcoat gifted him by an houngan in Haiti. “Harlem’s problem. My problem.”

  He heard ruffled pride in Legba’s voice. Who you think you’re talkin’ to, boy?

  “My sponsor,” Dub said, “not my master.”

  Such a good bo
y, Erzulie purred.

  You did good the other night, Ogou snarled around his cigar. I had my doubts when I horsed you in Haiti, but for a saw-bones, you make a fine soldier.

  “Many thanks, Papa Ogou,” Dub answered, though having to speak so deferentially—even to one as potentially dangerous as the orisha of steel and warfare—rankled him. He was in his long, coal-black trenchcoat now. Next he swiped a handful of bootblack and darkened the hollows of his jaw, his eyes, and his lips.

  There’s lots of doors already been opened, Legba interjected, and it’s been so long now, I don’t know as I can say who opened ‘em.

  “Just find me a trail and put me on it,” Dub said. He planted a knotted, natty wig of dreadlocks on his head—dreads cut from the head of a hanged black prophet in Jamaica—then crowned it with his undertaker’s top hat. Almost ready now: only the Baron’s face remained.

  Lots of doors still opening, Ogou added. Bad doors. Locked doors. The sort with dark spirits and nasty juju on the other side.

  “Then I guess I better be ready to close ‘em again,” Dub answered. He drew on his black minister’s gloves; loaded his guns and holstered them under his coat. “Or lay low whatever crawls out.”

  Ogou chuckled. He spoke to Erzulie, but Dub heard him clearly and knew Ogou meant to be heard. Yeah, he’s a good boy alright, he said. Good with the healer’s wand or the smoking gun.

  “Can my questions be answered?” Dub asked, feeling the moment nearly upon him; knowing that tonight, there would be no rest—Ogou had work for him. He pocketed some govi grenades.

  They were small, sealed clay jars about the size of fat oranges, holding inside the detritus of unquiet spirits the good doctor had discovered while wandering Harlem. Some were hot, like the Petro lwa. When they were loosed on a target, they worked his shame and his guilt, the venom in his veins, and the target thought they were burning in hellfire—though not a mark was left on them. The cool sort, akin to the Rada lwa, worked on the target’s fear. They chilled them to the bone and left them in a terrified, fetal crimp—non-lethal, but clearing delivering a message.

  I’ll do what I can, Legba said, though Dub noted that he made no promises. Thankee for the cigars, boy.

  Dub nodded. He dipped one gloved hand into the powdery mess that would give him the gravelord’s countenance. Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes and shoveled a handful of the bone powder against his face. He didn’t have to look in a mirror. He knew that the magic would always mask him properly.

  You ready? Ogou asked, voice now right in his ear; the sound of iron scraping iron.

  Dub prepared himself. “Let’s get horsed,” he answered.

  The lwa fell upon him.

  The Dread Baron opened his black eyes.

  XX

  It was a Wednesday, so Angie’s was slow, but the money and the booze flowed freely. Wednesday was the night for downtowners—white downtowners—the sort who wore tailored suits and monogrammed shirts to their workaday jobs, but came uptown to Angie’s for a taste of vice and dark meat. Angie Ford, the handsome, high brown madame of the whorehouse on 129th Street, between Madison and Park, was happy to host the ofays from down midtown way; they were like little boys with too much time and money who came to Harlem for kicks and cooze but still found politeness almost habitual. They threw money around like confetti, kept the drinks flowing, and for all their brash talk and sneaky forays into kink, largely treated the girls with kid gloves and something like respect. Probably spooked that dark dames, being half-wild, would cut their throats in their post-coital dozes if treated too brashly.

  So traffic in the sporting house was slow in terms of warm bodies on the floor, but rich in terms of dollars spent. That was Angie’s favorite sort of business to do: high-density, low-volume. That was why her best girls—the chorus dolls and well-spoken secretaries looking to make an extra buck, not the wild, country sort that worked the weekends—worked Wednesdays. The ‘fays wanted dark-meat, but they still wanted it well-seasoned and prepared with some panache. If they wanted something cheap—something dirty—they went to one of Papa House’s flesh pots below 125th Street. Here, the Queen Bee ran a respectable, high-class pussy den, and Angie was her right hand, cool enough to keep the tricks and the customers happy, hard enough to keep the whole machine chuffing along and well-oiled.

  It was getting on midnight when she did her walk-through. She started at the front apartment on the second floor and made a big horseshoe-shaped loop, down the length of the east wing, across the rooms on the aft end, back up the length of the west wing. The second floor was collectively referred to as ‘the parlor’. There were a lot of rooms, but they were all wide open, separated only by lush purple or crimson curtains, well-furnished and decorated, atmospherically lit with candelabras and Turkish lamps. The second floor was where all the meeting, greeting, drinking, gaming, and courting went down. Girls gave the johns public dances, sat on their laps and listened to their boring stories, led sing-alongs or played cards or dice—the sort of stuff that men sometimes did in the company of strange women, as though there were some real and legitimate courtship unfolding between them.

  The third floor—that was where the magic happened. After oiling the john up all night with booze and charming company, the twists would put the hook in: Want some privacy, baby? Wanna go somewhere where we can be alone? You’re so tense, baby-doll; mama needs to give you a massage. I got a room right upstairs...

  Angie would finish her walk-through of the parlor rooms, then she’d hit the third floor. She wasn’t into kink, so it wasn’t like strolling the halls and hearing the huffs and grunts and groans behind all those closed doors gave her any pleasure. She just wanted to keep her ears open for strangeness—a scream of real fear instead of feigned pleasure; a John’s angry tirade; anything that just seemed wrong or out of place. These girls and their professional reps were an investment. The Queen Bee had placed her trust in Angie, and Angie wouldn’t betray that. She wanted to keep the girls safe, and clean, and in circulation. That’s what lined everyone’s pockets, and that, at the end of the day, was all that mattered.

  So here she was, doing her walk-through, smiling contentedly as she saw the same ‘fay faces beaming the same smarmy grins at the same tarted-up tricks while the same smells of incense and tobacco and sweat and bathtub gin clogged the same close air in the same, decadently-appointed chambers and halls that Angie kept in working order, day after day after day. Getting on midnight meant some of the neighborhood beat patrolmen might be dropping in soon on their ‘lunch hours.’ They’d want quickies, suds, and maybe some sandwiches or coffee. Angie wanted to finish her walkabout before they arrived, so she could work them personally. It was good to keep the boys in blue happy, after all; they were community servants, bulwarks of order in a chaotic world; they deserved a little pampering.

  That’s when she heard the first scream, followed by gunshots.

  Angie froze in the parlor room she was passing through. There were three johns and four tricks nearby—a pair of city councilmen and a Union steward—and their drunken revelry evaporated with the screams and punctuating gunshots from the rear of the building. Angie looked to the tricks: the girls were wide-eyed and gape-mouthed, stone cold sober; the muddle-headed johns sweated out their bugjuice and stared.

  “What was that?” the Union steward asked.

  Angie felt a sickening knot in her belly. There were really only two options: a raid by cops, or a raid by crooks. Neither made her feel safe, especially when shots had been fired so quickly.

  “Up, move,” she said, snapping her fingers. The white customers apparently didn’t mind taking orders from a black woman in this case. All three were down to their undershirts and trousers, shoes, socks, shirts, and coats nearby. They snatched them up in hasty bundles as the girls shot past, and all seven of them fled the room, heading back toward the front of the house. Angie didn’t like the thought of taking customers out the front doors, but if someone had stormed the back, what oth
er choice did they have?

  But that way was blocked too. As they reached the front room of the east parlor and stumbled out into the hallway in search of the stairs, they heard more voices, more screams, and the slap-bang of two more pistol shots. As a flock of tricks and johns crowded toward the stairway in the second floor hallway, Angie at their head, a group of men in long coats, low-dipped hats, and kerchief masks came thundering up the stairs. Angie saw flashes of olive-colored skin at their wrists and above their collars—guineas, more than likely, maybe ballsy Abes, cruising uptown for a little snatch-and-grab. The front two held pump shotguns with their barrels and stocks sawed off for close-quarters work. The men behind all stocked pistols. As the shotgunners drove the crowd in the hallway back, the third in line, a tall bandito with a long-barreled Webley revolver, stepped up between them and pointed his heater at Angie.

  “You,” he said.

  She dared a glance over her shoulder. The hallway was corked at the other end too; more men with guns, men with masks, herding the clients and the hired hands into the center of the hallway like a sweaty human dam in a river. Angie turned back to the hood and tried her best not to show fear.

  “Where’s the safe?” he asked.

  “What safe?” she asked in answer.

  He swatted her backhand and cocked his pistol, shoving the barrel in just inches from her gaping mouth. Angie felt fury mixed with her fear. It was an innocent question: they had three safes in the house.

  “These swingin’ dicks don’t get their rocks off on credit, and I’m guessin’ you don’t take checks. One more time, lady: where’s the safe?”

  She tasted blood on her tongue. She heard sounds through the whole house: more gunmen on the third and lower floors, most likely, holding everyone in place while the boss man here had located her to get them to what they were after. How many were there, then? A dozen? More?