The person Iris Jackson owed her life to would never get it, either. For Gladys Nagel, there would never be an even break.
Driving home, Lennox suddenly wanted to be alone, to lie in her room at the top of the boardinghouse, not talk to a soul. Drink a little gin, play a little music, and forget.
When she rounded the corner onto Charlotte and saw the large group in the middle of the street, her heart lurched. An accident, Jenny or Luther, hit by a car, passed out from hunger. But no—people were laughing, cheering. There were the two bachelors from the second floor, legendary grumps now grinning. Mrs. Ferazzi in her flowered apron, even Tony, hollering and throwing up a fist.
After parking the car, she approached the crowd slowly, wishing she could slip by but knowing it wouldn’t happen. Energy filled the street, a strange and jubilant feeling. As she got closer, she saw Betty Kimble and Harvey Talbot each with one of Luther’s arms, pulling him toward the center of the circle. Luther’s face had darkened and he shook his head violently, digging his heels into the cobblestones.
In the center of the circle sat Mrs. Ferazzi’s piano. Joe Czmanski struggled to push a wedge under one leg to keep it steady on the cobblestones. Winkie Lambert and a new beau in a streetcar hack’s uniform egged Luther on, calling for him to play. Across the crowd, Poppy and Frankie stood mutely, worry clouding Poppy’s motherly brow.
Harvey and Betty had pushed Luther up to the piano, but he grabbed onto the back side of it and refused to budge. Betty put her hands on her hips and started a harangue in the vein of “all we’ve done for you.” Harvey smiled at the man, tried a man-to-man approach. Neither attack worked, and Luther’s refusal to play sent up jeers from the bystanders. They had all helped carry the damn piano into the street, it seemed, and were expecting some payment in music.
A large Plymouth came down the street behind them; the driver laid on his horn. Winkie’s beau stepped back to give the man directions to turn around. Harvey saw Lennox and waved her over. “He said he’d do it if we brought the piano out,” he said. “Talk to him.”
Luther had broken out in a cold sweat. He held his head in his hands, elbows on the back of the upright, and looked like he might cry. Lennox didn’t know what to say to him. Whose idea was this? She looked back at Talbot and frowned. He urged her on.
“Luther?” she said softly. “Remember when we planned that picnic by the river?” He moved his hands, eyes fixed on her face now. “I didn’t tell you, but I’m afraid of the river, of the snakes and fishes and water. I didn’t want to go there.”
“You dint?”
“Nope. The river scares me.”
His eyes darted around the street, lighting on faces, on hands, on windows bright with the rosy flares of last light. Then back at his own hands, graceful and brown.
“So I was happy when we didn’t have that picnic,” Lennox went on, her voice low. “I felt like that man in the book I gave you, that I’d gotten free of something, gotten away. But I was wrong.”
Luther rubbed his fingers into his eyes, wiped sweat dripping off his eyebrows, stared back at her.
“The fear stays inside you until you let it out, let it go free. I had to do that with the river.”
“Whacha do?”
“Jumped right in. I was scared, but I did it anyway. After the first splash, it was fine.” It was a sham. But for Luther, she would do anything, even tell lies.
She saw him looking at the ivories. She leaned close. “You have the most beautiful hands, Luther.”
He dipped his chin, a tiny smile on his lips. He stretched out his fingers on the top of the upright and the talking in the crowd hushed. He lifted his head up and rounded the instrument. Joe Czmanski pushed the apple crate forward, centering it in front of the keyboard. Luther grabbed it, held it close for a second, then straddled it, extending his arms from one end of the ivories to the other.
In a bar or two, Norma and Nell were bobbing their heads, Betty and Joe jitter bugging. Mrs. Ferazzi rocked on the balls of her feet in time to the music. The piano was woefully out of tune. No one seemed to care. The ragtime music sounded tinny and dated, but he played it so neatly, his fingers tripping over the keys, light as air. For a moment, time stopped and they were back in New Orleans, St. Louis, Charleston, in a speakeasy, nothing but music and moonshine and smiling.
Frankie’s braids bobbed in time. Poppy’s worry still clung, but she was smiling now. As one song ended and the clapping subsided, Luther started up again, a Jelly Roll Morton song, “Kansas City Stomp.” When he hit the high trills, Lennox could see her father and mother dancing close in the apartment over the drugstore, and she felt a shiver run up her back.
Harvey appeared at her shoulder, leaned down to whisper in her ear, but gave her a small kiss instead.
“Hey, Dorie!” Frankie touched her arm. “I wrote my paper about that book, and I think I figured out what it means.”
Harvey moved around the piano. He looked back at Lennox and winked, then leaned an elbow on top of the upright.
Lennox turned to Frankie and smiled. “I’m glad.”
“You wanna hear what I said?”
With the limp daisy in her fist, Dorie closed her eyes before answering. The vibrations of the piano thumped through her. The bridge—there was Verna walking away into the twilight. And Tillie. Singing. Something sweet and high and pure. The evening light, lavender and misty, began to pale. The river disappeared, and Verna took Tillie’s tiny hand in hers.
Dorie’s eyelids began to burn. She let the image go and opened her eyes. She looked at the people, her friends, with their happy, rapt faces, and knew she would never be one of them. But maybe this was enough. Joe’s ravaged face, the bachelors who barely spoke, the old woman lost in a dream of salvation, the twin sisters with their caring hearts, the single girls searching for adventure. Harvey Talbot, who … was Harvey. Poppy, who finally told the story of a broken man. And then Amos and his lost love. The future looked full of war, suffering, losses. But what choice was there? The past was full of ghosts.
She took Frankie’s arm in hers. Luther pounded on the keys and grinned up at them.
“Yeah, Frankie, sure,” she said. “I want to hear it. But can you tell me later? I love this music.”
• • •
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Read the sequel now — Sweet and Lowdown
SWEET
AND
LOWDOWN
•
Lise McClendon
~
Thalia Press
ALSO BY LISE McCLENDON
Blackbird Fly
The Girl in the Empty Dress
Give Him the Ooh-la-la
PLAN X
Jump Cut
One O’clock Jump
The Bluejay Shaman
Painted Truth
Nordic Nights
Blue Wolf
Copyright © 2002 by Lise McClendon.
First published by St. Martin’s Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
To Betty and John, and Barbara and Dean, sources of much comfort, love, and inspiration
AUTHOR’S NOTE
BY 1940, EUROPE WAS EMBROILED in a war that Americans wanted badly to stay out of. In June of that year, General Phillipe Pétain, France’s hero of World War I, had fallen quickly to Nazi military advances and surrendered the nation. By autumn, the Blitzkrieg by German bombers on the island of Great Britain had left that nation stunned but resolute.
But America wasn’t at a standstill. She had to elect a new president, or break a longstanding rule and reelect Franklin D. Roosevelt. A peacetime draft was in the works. Fascist sympathizers in the United States still had the First Amendment on their side, but not for long. One Hitler supporter was William Dudley Pelley, who had designs on
the presidency himself as the founder of the Silver Legion, or Silver Shirts. Groups like Peace Now and America First were infiltrated by Nazi spies and used to promote isolationism.
People went on with their lives, worried and distracted by world events. Authors wrote books; in 1940 a pulp writer named Raymond Chandler published a book called The Big Sleep. Big bands played new songs, as well as those from years before like George Gershwin’s “Sweet and Lowdown.”
My thanks to Dr. Oliver H. Duggins, who hunted for Nazi spies as an FBI agent during World War II, for sharing his memories. And to the Parmly Billings Library, my local source of every Life magazine from the period. I sure wish I had some of those Willkie buttons.
Chapter ONE
1940
“WHO ARE YOU?”
“Your new parole officer, Wilma Vunnell. Please take a seat.”
“What happened to Lloyd?”
“Reassigned. Take a seat, Miss Lennox. Y’all are staying, aren’t you?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Mr. Francis didn’t make very many notes. Did you talk to him?”
“What else is there to do in here? Where did he go?”
“That’s not the business of this meeting, Miss Lennox. We’re here to discuss your staying out of trouble and having employment.”
“Done both. Can I go?”
“Sit down. We have a half hour. I don’t know how Mr. Francis worked, but I fill my sessions. We talk about how things are going, the job, the family, problems you might be having.”
“I’m not having any problems. Who told you that?”
“I see you’re a private detective. And you’ve been ordered not to have any weapon or instrument that could be used as a weapon on your person. Is that a problem for you?”
“Look, Miss— “
“Mrs. Vunnell. I’m a widow.”
“Okay. Mrs. Vunnell. It is a problem. I could get hurt on the job. Jumped, dry-gulched— it’s happened. There are mean and careless gees out there.”
” ‘Gees’?”
“Fellas, toughs too slippery for your boys in blue. And they’re using things more hurtful than my switchblade, you can bet on that.”
“Are you saying you have gotten yourself a gun?”
“I’m on parole, remember?”
“Have you used a gun in the last five months?”
“No.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“I’d know, wouldn’t I? I could tell you anything, Mrs. Vunnell the Widow, and you got no choice but to believe it. So why don’t you just let me go on my merry way and you can go get another piece of pecan pie?”
“Does this questioning make you angry?”
“Hell yes! It’s a waste of time.”
“Wasting time is a bad thing.”
“Oh, sure, you work for the government. Light bulb, Mrs. Vunnell, the clock is ticking. You won’t be around forever.”
“Neither will you, Miss Lennox.” The widow took a long moment to brush imaginary dust from her desk pad. “What do you plan to do with your life?”
“I plan to live it, outside of these four walls. I plan to— “
“What is it?”
“Nothing— my eye. You know, Mrs. Vunnell, I’m not afraid to die. I’ve seen people die, and it’s not so bad. All their troubles are gone, they don’t have to worry about their families anymore, where next month’s rent is coming from, or dying in some stink-hole in France. It’s peaceful. Don’t look at me like that. I’m not going to do the Dutch act. I’ve seen that, too, and it’s not for me.”
“You’ve seen a lot.”
“It’s my job. That’s why I need my blade, to protect myself.”
“All this dying, was it all on the job?”
“Some family, like everybody. Were you there when Mr. Vunnell died?”
“No. He was far away, in the war.”
“Same with me. They died and I wasn’t there.”
“You didn’t get to say goodbye.”
Lennox stared at the woman’s face, still as pasty and blocklike as at the beginning of the session. Eyes sunken deep in her flesh, cold and unwavering, probing and examining like icy needles. Dorie looked away, over Vunnell’s shoulder. Didn’t get to say goodbye. She jumped to her feet, face hot, and turned her back to the parole officer.
“Is the time up? I have to be somewhere.”
“Sit down, please. We’ve got fifteen minutes, and I want to hear about the assault and battery charge that brought you here. Mr. Francis doesn’t mention it.”
“He knew better.”
“Was he afraid of you?”
“He had the shakes. Was it me who gave ‘em to him? I don’t know. I liked him better than you, though.”
“I’ll like you better if you’ll tell me what happened that day.”
“And I should care about your opinion.”
“You might, if you want to stay out of jail.”
~~
Dorie Lennox stood still in the smoky haze of the nightclub. The air was warm, curling around the ankles. There it was, just for a second. A calm pause in the relentless clicking of the clock: a feeling of tenuous perfection, that everything was just where it was supposed to be.
She shivered and it was gone. Untrustworthy feeling, cockeyed, in the way only your imagination can trick you.
Back in Atchison, in the speaks, she’d felt that way. But that was another life. This one was dented and bruised and it wasn’t so tender anymore. And that was good, she told herself. She was so tough. Another necessary lie. Life was full of them.
She lighted a Lucky and leaned against the wall by the ladies’ lounge. She’d seen the inside of too many nightclubs. In the dark, where anything can happen, and usually did. Closed away, secret, the daytime world forgotten, with its rules and laws and shaking fingers. Easy to pretend to get lost. To forget who you were and what you wanted. Easy to get sidetracked.
The band crashed to a finale. The discordant notes of an unrecognizable tune collapsed into the smoky stillness.
You belong here. The thought crept up like a poisonous snake. That was the feeling. That these dark places belonged to her, and she to them. Was that just a lie to make this life seem normal, or was it such an outrageous lie that it had become true?
The girl stood up suddenly with a peal of laughter, twirled for the gents at her table, and bent to peck the cheek of one. Then she sashayed toward Dorie in her scarlet shift, tossing her hair back. She looked up, her eyes a curious brown, but cold and accusing. Lennox moved aside to let her through the doorway, then sat down at the table across from Amos Haddam. She shouldn’t have ordered the whiskey. She pushed it away. Amos fingered his glass unconsciously, turning the untouched gin round and round.
“She’s behaving herself tonight. As much as she can.”
Amos looked up as the girl maneuvered between the empty tables, back to her gents. He regarded her coldly, from a distance, like the job she was, not as the wayward woman-child she appeared to other men.
“They want me to register for this draft,” he said.
“You?”
He straightened his bony shoulders and faked a smile full of teeth but no mirth. His face was as gray as the air in here.
“You a U.S. citizen?” she asked.
“Jolly right. Had to swear on the big black Bible back in my revenuer days. Pinching moonshiners was patriotic work.”
As if to demonstrate, he picked up his glass and put it to his lips. He paused, something shifting in his eyes. He lowered the glass, still full, to the tabletop.
“Well, don’t worry. You won’t pass the physical.” Her words were harsher than she meant. “Besides, one war is enough.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Aye.”
He took a sip, then anger at the war or the liquor hardened his eyes. He shot the rest back in one gulp. She waited for him to keel over. Instead, he stood up.
“Gotta clear the lungs of this bloody smoke.”
She watched him go, then splashed the whiskey against her lips. The taste was sweet on her tongue. The girl— Thalia— was dancing now with the skinny gee. He was grinning at her, all his bad teeth showing. Thalia Hines had the worst taste in men. Dorie had watched this week as she was pawed by the greasy-gummed, flop-eared, gap-toothed, and pigeon-toed, the chubby, bony, bald, and smelly. Thalia’d been seen, dancing and drinking and singing, with dozens of men. And, worse yet, she appeared to enjoy their attentions.
A man approached Lennox’s table, dressed decent, but with a dirty neck and one misbehaving eye. He asked her to dance. She smiled politely. “Waiting for a friend,” she said. She had to keep an eye on the girl. Thalia had proved mostly easy, since she was aware they were tailing her for the Commander. But that could turn in the blink of an eyelash.
The man gave her a harsh look. Dorie gave him one back. The music changed, Thalia was being persuaded to sing by the skinny gee. She shook her head as if she was shy; her chin dipped. Then she leaned against the piano, whispered to the band, and began to sing.
A cheery party song. What was it? From a play, a nondescript musical she barely remembered. She’d gone with Talbot; she remembered that. Harvey Talbot, randy reporter, last seen months ago. Not that she missed him. It had just been … well, a dry summer.
Thalia’s voice was throaty and tuneless, like Marlene Dietrich’s in the movies; her creamy skin and yellow hair glowed in the spotlight. Amos appeared at the top of the stairs, looking flushed. His hair stood up with wax, freshly combed. He flagged down a waitress and asked for water and a gin. When it came, he drank all the water. The telephone rang behind the bar and the bartender answered it. Dorie looked at her watch. Only eleven o’clock.
“Why don’t you go home? I can follow her,” she said. His eyes were clear enough, only slightly bloodshot.
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