by Dale Lucas
“Well, here I am, Hoodoo Man,” House said, still puffing on his cigar, determined to show this son of a bitch no fear. “What’ve you got to say?”
The stranger lowered his guns a little, his whole stance seeming to relax. “First question: you the one planted the curse engine at the Queen Bee’s?”
House felt his face flush. How the hell... ?
“What if I was?” House said. “What business is it of yours? You on her dime?”
“Ain’t on anybody’s dime,” the stranger said. “People here-abouts need somebody to look out for their interests. That’s me.”
“Queen Bee don’t need another gun watching out for her interests,” House said. He was closer now. The stranger smelled like stale cigars, burnt rum, and coalfires. He got an idea and reached for the inner pocket of his coat.
The Cemetery Man’s right hand drifted up with lightning speed. There was a click as he thumbed back the hammer on his Colt and leveled the deep, dark barrel right between House’s eyes.
“Care for a cigar, Baron?” House offered, opening his coat and showing the stranger the case. “Maybe a swig of rum?”
“Ain’t here for offerings,” the stranger said. “I’m here for a short, sweet parlay.”
“Well, then, parlay. And get the fuck outta my roost.”
The Cemetery Man smiled under his fright face. “Queen Bee’s trying to put a lot of people to work and put some money in colored pockets; legit money, more or less. Your little tiff with her does the people on her payroll no service—”
“They could just as easily be on my payroll and make out,” House said.
“Well, that barely matters now, because whatever seed you sowed in the basement thereabouts is spreading. It’ll blight the whole neighborhood soon.”
House smiled, satisfied. “The people up that way flock to her, they’re her hands and my enemies, see? So if my dealings with her trickle down... fuck ‘em. They had a choice. They made the wrong one.”
“That ain’t the answer I’m after,” the Cemetery Man said.
“Fuck what you’re after,” House snarled. “You gonna dig a canoe in my dome, Hoodoo Man, or are you gonna stand there in the draft stinkin’ up my parlor all night?”
“One more time,” the Cemetery Man said, looking as though he wanted to pull the trigger but couldn’t. “You gonna call off that hex on the supper club? Leave the Queen Bee’s operation be?”
“One more time,” House said. “The Queen Bee and all her little drones get just what they deserve if they stand in my way. Now, blow, spook. And don’t come back, else I’ll see you planted in the cemetery ‘stead of guarding it.”
He saw fury under the white painted face; saw the gloved finger tensing on the trigger; saw the frustration in the vigilante’s eyes.
Why can’t he just shoot me? House wondered. He wants to. Why don’t he?
“Next time you see me’s the end,” the stranger said, lowering his pistol. “This is all the warning I was required to give you.”
With that, he turned, mounted the window sill, and launched himself into the night. House hurried forward to get a good look at the Cemetery Man’s escape. Four stories below, the baron landed lightly on the peaked roof of a little two-floor tenement, then slid down the slope of the roof and leapt again, disappearing into a deep, dark alleyway.
House heard Timmons and Wash. They were on their feet again, still shaking, looking beaten though there wasn’t a mark on them. “Boss?” they both said, like sleep-eyed children.
“Quit gapin’,” he snarled. “Clean this mess up.” He turned and marched toward the door, stopping before he got there. “Timmons, what time is it?”
Timmons, gape-mouthed, pulled out his pocket watch. “Going on eleven-thirty, boss.”
“Enough of this,” House muttered, and drew a long, soothing drag on his cigar. He blew the smoke out slowly, and it wreathed round his head like a diaphanous crown. “Get Chuck and Willie on the phone. They should be over at the Eight Ball.”
“Boss?”
“Do it,” House roared, and Timmons did.
XX
Willie and Chuck were at the Eight Ball Billiard Bar, eyes on the back room card games. When House reached Willie, he gave orders: grab a dozen good trigger- and fuse-men, split the party in two, and hit the Queen Bee’s smaller policy banks—
the ones on 134th and 146th Streets. They were fronted by a laundry and a hardware store, respectively, and they would be easy targets. The Queen’d never expect hits that deep in her territory this late at night. The key was to move fast and hit hard; lead spray if there were bankers present; firebombs if the places looked dead. House wasn’t after money now: he was out to hurt her. He didn’t give a flying fuck if every dollar stored in those joints went up in smoke; he just wanted the flames to cook the Queen Bee’s striped tail and make her think twice about crossing him.
And the Hoodoo Man—well, if he didn’t work for her, he’d certainly assured that she’d bear the brunt of Solomon House’s fury. See if he came to Madame Marie’s rescue. That would flush him out and show what side he was on, right quick.
So Willie and Chuck swept up their gangs, improvised hasty Molotov Cocktails and dug up a couple of old potato-masher style grenades from the Great War, and off they went into the night.
Somewhere around one in the morning, sleepy Harlemites in the quiet tenements around the uptown bolito banks awoke to a storm of gunshots, the music of shattering glass, and the big crescendos of grenades popping and gasoline cocktails fueling hungry fires. The fire brigade was called out and the fires were doused come early morning, but already the word was out. Everyone knew what the laundry and the hardware store had fronted for. Everyone knew that the cash therein had probably gone to ash. But most importantly, everyone knew who owned the fronts and the policy they banked.
And now they knew she had an enemy that was not to be trifled with.
Chapter 12
Dr. Dub Corveaux was already well into a full slate of patients when Miss Fralene Farnes appeared mid-morning and begged Cecile for just a few minutes of the doctor’s time. Dub was happy to see her. He was sweet on her, he feared. But that sweetness went a little sour when he invited her into the examination room and she obliged, looking more dutiful than eager.
She started in on him almost immediately, not even offering a hello, or a how-are-you. “You’ve heard the news, I suppose?” Fralene asked.
He imagined he knew what she meant but he wanted to be certain. “That news being?”
“A laundry and a family hardware store firebombed in the night? Talk of an all-out gang war? No one was hurt this time, thank God, but that might have just been dumb luck!”
Dub tried to play it light. He grinned. “You in a gang you didn’t tell me about, Miss Farnes?”
“This isn’t funny, Dr. Corveaux,” Fralene answered, clearly not amused. “This could escalate quickly. This is bad news, and you know it.”
Dub nodded soberly. Clearly, she wasn’t in the mood for levity. “Bad news for bolito bosses like the Queen Bee and Papa House.”
“Bad news for everyone!” Fralene persisted. “If gangsters like that Merriwether woman and Solomon House start a war, then you know damn well innocent people will suffer! They’re the ones who get caught in the crossfire! They’re the ones whose children get recruited as soldiers! They’re the ones whose businesses get firebombed and whose incomes get taxed for protection from these, these, these—”
She couldn’t find the right word. Dub considered offering one, but he figured that would just make her more angry. She was in quite the twist this morning. He tried to calm her a little with cold, hard facts. “Somebody’s business gets firebombed in the course of a gang war, ten to one, they fronted for a policy bank, and you know that.”
“And why did they front?” Fralene said, holding her ground. “Probably because someone strong-armed them into giving up part of their precious store space and soiling their good reputation in
order to have a squeaky-clean façade—”
Dub couldn’t listen to any more. “That’s naïve, Fralene, and you know it. I can’t speak for Solomon House, but from all I’ve heard, Maybelle Meriwether doesn’t strong-arm anyone into fronting her policy banks. She’s usually invited in. Or she owns the business outright. The ‘innocent people’ whose stores get firebombed or who end up strong-armed for protection money are willing participants, not victims.”
He wanted to drive that point home, so he said it again, perhaps a little too harshly. “Get that through your head, Miss Anne. There are no victims.”
“I told you not to call me that,” she said through gritted teeth.
He sighed. This was going nowhere. “What did you come here for, Fralene? I’ve got patients—”
“My uncle’s hosting a dinner tonight for some community leaders. Councilmen; teachers and clergy; some of Harlem’s most powerful businessmen—”
“If they’re not in with the Queen Bee or Papa House, they’re not too powerful,” Dub muttered.
“I’d like you to be there,” Fralene said.
Dub knew that was impossible. He was already eager for sundown; sure that tonight would be the reckoning. He’d begged the lwa for some sort of full-bore juju to put to use against the curse engine. No doubt he’d have little time to spare. Tonight was the Queen Bee’s Grand Opening, and with all that psychic energy loose, the thing in the drain would be active, firing on all cylinders.
“Impossible,” he said.
“Why is that?” she asked.
“I’ve got plans tonight,” Dub answered, then suddenly realized that he hadn’t constructed a solid alibi. What could he tell her? I’ve got to play body-host to a lesser African deity and do battle with the infernal powers loosed by Papa House in the Queen Bee’s new supper club. Could be a long night. Don’t wait up for me.
“What sort of plans?” she demanded.
“None of your business,” Dub snapped, and regretted it almost immediately, because he could see it hurt her. He carried on, trying to rationalize his way out of it. “Look, Fralene, I admire your concern, I do... but someone like you isn’t going to do a damn thing to change the fact that there are people like Maybelle Meriwether and Solomon House running the show in this world. So long as people want booze, games, and whores, they’ll be there. So long as people want to throw nickels and dimes at a daily lottery in the hopes of winning a week’s worth of groceries or enough scratch for a new car, they’ll be there. And as long as white cops and white crooks and white politicians control bigger rackets with bigger money and bigger ambitions, then our folk are gonna be stuck looking to the Queen Bees and the Papa Houses of the world for their own sort of protection and fair-dealing. It ain’t right, but it’s the way of things. All your do-gooding isn’t gonna chase their sort out of Harlem.”
She stared at him, and he had the terrible feeling that he’d never see her again. Perhaps that would be for the best. Perhaps, with his own slate of nocturnal activities, he didn’t need to be getting involved with anyone so... so... pure. So sure of herself and her place and purpose in the world. That wasn’t him—all evidence to the contrary.
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing.”
He shrugged. “I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
“All the words I’ve read penned by your hand, published under your name... everything you’ve just said flies in the face of those words.”
He shrugged again. “I’ve written a lot, and no doubt I’ll write more. I write when the muse is on me, and I write about whatever’s troubling me at a given time. That doesn’t mean I’m living my poem or my essay, Fralene. It just means I had a thought and wanted to share it.”
“You’re just like one of them,” she said, and he knew by the venom in the statement that she meant white; bourgeois; self-absorbed and unconcerned. “You’re just here to leech off this community, make your fortune, and retire to some neat little clapboard community out on the island, or into the lazy practice of some country doctor—”
“Last I checked,” Dub said, feeling his ire rising, “healers aren’t leeches, Miss Farnes.”
She turned and opened the door. “Just because you do no harm doesn’t mean you do any good. Afternoon, doctor.”
Before he could say something, she’d slammed the door, and he could hear her heavy heels clicking on the floor of the hallway, shrinking, carrying her right to the front door.
Hell.
XX
The Queen Bee sat in her favorite seat, on the dais, facing the stage. The club was a hive of activity around her, but there was a muted, nervous silence that belied the activity; a sense of dread that turned what should have been eager mirth and light work into dirge and drudgery. She smoked a cigarette and stared at a stage crowded with band podiums and lit for a night’s entertainment. The band would probably show up around noon to start warming up, but she guessed that the pall on the place would make their “Muskrat Ramble” sound like “A March to the Scaffold.”
Gideon approached, mounted the dais, padded near like a caged panther. He took a seat adjacent to her, pulled out a cigarette of his own, lit up, and puffed placidly.
“Well? What’s it gonna be?” he asked.
“What else can it be?” she countered.
“We could postpone.”
“Like hell,” she said. “We’ve got a full slate of local lights and downtown high-rollers. We’re set. They’re coming. We can’t back out now. We postpone, those doors never open. It’ll only get worse.”
“The booze turned up.”
She smirked. “Did Officer Heaney and company get their commission?”
“They did.”
“One of these days,” the Queen Bee said, “I’d like you to deliver his fat head to me. I think it’d make a fine foot stool.”
Gideon smiled a little. “That it might.”
“Hell,” the Queen Bee said, and stabbed out her only half-smoked cigarette in a nearby ash tray.
“Maybe nothing’ll go wrong,” Gideon said.
The Queen Bee turned slowly and studied him. “It will,” she said. “You know it will.”
He nodded. “I know it will.”
“We’ve just got to be ready,” she said.
“For what?” he asked.
She shrugged now. “Anything.”
“What do we do about the banks?”
“We’ve got more,” she said, and lit another cigarette, as though she’d already forgotten her last.
“Those hits were a challenge,” Gideon pressed. “We’ve gotta answer them.”
“This is our answer,” the Queen Bee said, suggesting the club around them. “Aces & Eights opens. Papa House can’t stop us.”
“Maybe he can,” Gideon said after a long pause. “Either way, though, we can’t just ignore those bank-hits. We lost too much money to just pretend—”
“If we buck up guards on the banks this evening, or send more to hit House, we’ll be light hereabouts. We need all hands on deck this evening, in case things get hairy here.”
“We could get help,” Gideon countered. “Contract some hands outta St. John’s? Some of those strivers from over Sugar Hill way?”
“Can’t trust ‘em,” the Queen Bee said. “Besides, those Sugar Hill boys are nothin’ but swells and queers. We need muscle tonight, not hustlers.”
Gideon lost his patience, and she couldn’t blame him. She was being childish and sulky—and she knew it. “We’ve gotta trust somebody!” Gideon snarled. “We’ve gotta start making friends and consolidating territory before House makes bigger and more brazen moves. You know it’s comin’. If you do nothin’ to get ready for it, you’re failin’ everybody! These people! This place! The boys! And me!”
That shook her out of her reverie. She turned and stared at Gideon. He leaned forward now, elbows on his knees, hands clasped as if in prayer, but his face was not one of supplication; it was one of challenge.
“Don’t fade on me,
Queen Bee. I need you, and all these people need you. It’s gonna get worse before it gets better. So what? You ain’t a quitter, you’re a fighter. So fight, woman, and don’t waste my time sulking like the little princess I know you are not.”
She studied the room; the warm bodies drifting through it, laying table-cloths and place settings, placing fresh-clipped flowers in table vases and dusting the deep red runners round the stage and on the proscenium. She drew a long, deep drag on her cigarette.
“You think that’s what it’ll come to? Tying ourselves to those street punks in St. John’s? Bank-rolling those pinstriped peacocks up by Sugar Hill?”
“If we don’t, House will. Numbers count.”
“Go get ‘em then,” the Queen Bee said. “And when you come back to me with more hands, bring a plan with you.”
He smiled crookedly. “I’ve got a few already.”
The Queen Bee smiled at her majordomo. “Why does that not surprise me?”
XX
Papa House studied the fat brown kid in the dim light of the warehouse, doing his best to melt the edges of his chocolate-colored skin with his eyes. “You straight on this, Calvin?”
The kid nodded emphatically, and Papa half-feared the instructions would come tumbling out through his gaping mouth. “Show up at the back door with the crate,” Calvin blathered, “tell ‘em it’s an emergency delivery; put it wherever they tell me; hightail it out within five minutes or I’m toast.”
“Fair enough,” Papa said, nodding.
They were in the Foree Imports and Exports Warehouse; the one closest to the Queen Bee’s turf, fronting the river; the one where House kept Napoleon the Alligator in his muddy crib.
Calvin seemed to be thinking something over. “Awful small bomb, sir.”
Papa frowned. The kid’s dim brain made ticking noises nearly as loud as that on the explosive timer. Where did he get off making such judgments? “You tellin’ me my business, boy?”
