The Maxwell Street Blues

by Michael Raleigh

  While she was in the next room Whelan studied her tidy little apartment. He’d seen many such places, in many parts of the city, and he read them all the same way: a little oasis of order in the midst of poverty or filth or violence or chaos. At the far end of this miniature living room was a nook just large enough for a kitchen-size table. Just above this table, almost exactly at eye-level, were three photographs. From where he sat, they looked to be pictures of mountains. It took no effort of the imagination to see the woman sitting there, sipping at a cup of tea and staring at those pictures.

  The accent was gone and, when the woman emerged from her bedroom, Whelan saw that Violet Haley was gone as well. In her place stood an intelligent-looking woman in her fifties. She had changed into a dark blue dress with a bright print pattern that suggested Japanese paper houses. Her hair was pulled back and tied with a little elastic band, and from the ruddy glow of her skin, he suspected she’d thrown a little soap and water on her face. The greatest change, however, was in the eyes. Violet Haley’s heavy-lidded gaze was gone, the tinted glasses were gone, and the woman who faced him was clear-eyed, unafraid. And something else: they were large bright eyes, pretty eyes and she’d needed the tinted glasses to hide that.

  “Can I get you a cup of coffee? I think I’m going to have some. It’s just instant.”

  Caffeine at 10:30 P.M., he thought. I’ll be up till Tuesday.

  But he knew the way people need to busy themselves at such times, so he said, “Sure, I’d like some.”

  She came in with the coffee and the forced smile of someone making an effort to observe good manners.

  “Now you fit in with the room.” He sipped at his coffee.

  The remark seemed to catch her off guard. She paused with her cup at her lips and blinked. “What do you mean?”

  “Little things are falling into place for me. Each time I came here, you took a few moments before letting me in. I think you were using the time to become Violet Haley: putting on an old dress, messing up your hair, making sure it hung in your face. Putting on the tinted glasses to make yourself look a little older. The last time, you even had your dress buttoned wrong.”

  She looked down with an embarrassed smile and sipped her coffee.

  “But when I came here the first time, I caught a glimpse of your living room. It was—well, like this. It’s neat and tidy and, in every possible way, it’s a place Violet Haley wouldn’t have. I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it, but I remember noticing and wondering.”

  “Well, now I don’t have to be her anymore.” She looked down at her hands. “How did you find out? I know Sam didn’t tell anyone about us.”

  “No, he was throwing up his own smokescreen. I’ve spent most of the past week and a half juggling a lot of conflicting stories, but gradually it struck me that of all the people who knew Sam Burwell, you were the only one to describe this tall well-dressed black woman who visited him. Other people told me about a white woman named Mary. This flamboyant black woman you made up for my benefit. It was all pretty convincing. When I finally put it together I still had trouble reconciling the two images I had of you. Then I remembered you had been an actress.”

  The woman called Tess shrugged and looked away suddenly. In profile, her face showed her sadness.

  “I was no actress, Mr. Whelan. I was just a very stupid girl who eventually became a very stupid woman. I only thought I was an actress.”

  Whelan couldn’t think of any response. He sipped at the coffee and decided to change the direction of things.

  “By now, the police have Frank Rickert in a hole somewhere.”

  She faced him. “He’ll get out.”

  “No. He told me he killed Sam Burwell.”

  She nodded. “I knew it.”

  “I think they’ll be able to get him for two other murders, and I’ll press charges: he tried to kill me too.”

  She stared at him in horror. “Two other murders. Oh, my God. Three people dead because of…because of me.”

  “No. Because of him. He killed them, without any help from anyone else and over things that happened almost thirty years ago.”

  “You know?”

  “Not exactly. I think I’ve got the bare outlines; you have to give me the rest. I know you had a love affair with Sam Burwell back in the fifties. You were just a kid.”

  She shrugged. “I was twenty-two. It wasn’t like I was in high school.”

  “And you had some kind of relationship with Frank Rickert; before or after Sam, I’m not really sure.”

  “I knew Frank from another club where I waited tables. We went out a few times but there was nothing special to it, at least I didn’t think so, and we just let it go. Then I started seeing Sam. People didn’t like it.”

  “Because he was the wrong color.”

  She nodded once. “I don’t know who started spreading it around, although later I wondered if it might have been Frank. Anyhow, it got back to my family, so we had to cool it. But we never stopped seeing each other. We just took it—” She paused, looking for the word. “We took it underground. It was easy enough. Sam was a bit of a lady-killer anyway, always had girlfriends, and I had guys asking me out, so…” She made a little wave of her hand.

  “And one of them was Frank Rickert.”

  “Yes. That’s when I started to see it was more than just a good time to him. I was seeing several people but Frank was around more than anybody else. And getting demanding about it.”

  “And then you found out you were pregnant.”

  She blinked. “How do you know that?”

  “I was starting to put it together—you went away, and a little later Sam did—but Frank Rickert told me. Your family made his life unpleasant for a while.”

  “Yes. My father and my brother went looking for him, and then my father sent some men who worked for him. Frank left town. And a little later, so did I. I went out to California. I wanted to—” She gave Whelan a self-deprecating look. “Guess what I wanted to do. Like every other empty-headed young girl in the country, I wanted to get into movies.” She shrugged.

  “Whose idea was it to put out the story that you were dead?”

  “Mine. Just for the people that I knew there, the ones who didn’t like the idea of me and Sam together. And for Frank, although I didn’t think he’d be back for a while.

  “Anyhow, Sam put out the story about my being dead; then he came out west two months after I did.”

  “And a little while after that, you had a baby.”

  “Yes.” She nodded slowly. “I had a baby. And now that he was here, I realized I wasn’t going to be in the movies. And I couldn’t accept it. I had a baby and a husband—”

  “You were married?”

  She chanced a little smile. “Yes. I was Sam’s wife. So there we were, living in a little frame house in Los Angeles near a Mexican neighborhood. Sam couldn’t get started out there. He always worked, but he never really found anything he liked or made any money. He couldn’t make what he called ‘a connection.’ So he wasn’t happy. A lot of time, he was just doing odd jobs. And I was miserable. I wasn’t ready for a baby and marriage, I wasn’t any kind of a wife to him. And we were both drinking, real heavy.” She paused, sipped her coffee. “And then I just left. I left my husband and my baby and tried to force my way into the movies. What a joke! A twenty-three-year-old alcoholic trying to get people to take her seriously as an actress.”

  “Did you get any roles?”

  “Oh, sure, I got to be an extra. They used a lot more extras then,” she said with a smile. “You had to have somebody for the Romans to kill, or the giant crabs, or the flying saucers. And I got walk-on parts in some of those B-movies. The best thing about it was that it only took about a year for me to know I was finished. Some folks hung on out there in that candy factory for five, ten years.

  “So I left Hollywood and went to work waiting tables and working in department stores, and I drank my way from LA to Portland.”

&n
bsp; Where was Sam by then?”

  “He was in Texas, although I didn’t know it at the time. He went south and gave the baby to his sister because he knew he couldn’t raise him. Then he went out west again. He lived in Texas and Mexico for a while, and then eventually he came back here and started a decent life for himself.”

  “Why didn’t he take the child back?”

  She shrugged. “His sister moved to California about a year after he gave her the baby. She had no idea where Sam was, and by the time they got in touch with each other, he was in Chicago with a new wife and a baby of his own and she was all settled on the Coast. His sister convinced him it was better to leave the boy where he was. His wife was happy to go along with that; she had a baby of her own. He never meant to let the baby go, Mr. Whelan. He always thought he’d get him back but it didn’t work out that way. But he didn’t abandon the baby. Not like me. I think about that little boy all the time. I wonder how he turned out.”

  “So Sam’s sister raised your baby as her own.”

  “That’s right.” She lit a cigarette from a pack on a side table.

  “When did you come back?”

  “About two years ago. I got tired of life out there.” She waved her hand toward the west. “I was married for a while.” She gave him a little smile. “Nice man but a drunk, like me. We were both practicing drunks.”

  “And when you came back, you found Sam.”

  She nodded slowly. “Not right away, but yeah, I found Sam. And Frank. He always knew I was still alive. The other ones, they just accepted the story. Frank checked it out, he found out through my family or somebody, I don’t know. Then he came out west looking for me.”

  “Did he find you?”

  “No. I saw him once, though, on the street. This was maybe three years later. He was sitting in a cafeteria. I think he went all over the Coast looking for me.”

  “And back here?”

  “I saw him driving a cab. A couple months later, he spotted me. I was walking down Clark Street from a restaurant I worked at. I felt these eyes on me and I looked up and he was across the street in his cab, waiting for a light to change. I ducked into a tavern and left by the back door. Then I saw him again here on Broadway, but he didn’t see me.”

  “That’s why you looked so frightened the other day, when I approached you on the street. A couple of motorists started leaning on their horns and you looked scared. I thought you were just jumpy, but one of those cars was a cab. It was the presence of a cab that made you jumpy.”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you find Sam?”

  “In a little restaurant the other side of Lawrence. I was getting a cup of coffee and he was at the counter. We talked for a minute, stiff as two boards, and then I sat down next to him, and we started over. We started all over again.”

  “He moved in with you.”

  “No, we didn’t want to do that. He took the flat at the end of the hall, but yes, he stayed here.”

  “I could tell he didn’t live in the apartment.”

  “How?”

  “It didn’t look like a place that was lived in. There was a little of everything but not what you’d get if a person lived there. Not enough food, not enough mess. Not enough cigarette butts in the ashtrays. The bed looked like someone took a nap there, not like someone slept there every night. And there were none of the little things a man keeps around in the bathroom.”

  She gave him a rueful smile. “His kit was always in here.”

  “Until you snuck in and planted it there. It was there the second time I checked out the place but not the first.”

  She shrugged. “He only used the apartment to stretch out for a nap after work. Or when he drank. We had an agreement: if he was drinking, he couldn’t come in here. So a few times he took a bottle back there to his own place. I was trying to get him to quit.” She looked away. “If he had lived, he’d have been sober.”

  “Did Frank see you together?”

  “I don’t know. He must have. Sam saw him in the cab around here a couple times, and he said he saw Rickert down on Maxwell Street. I think Frank heard Sam was down there from a man they both used to know, a drummer.”

  “Buddy Lenz.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m pretty sure Frank Rickert was looking all over the West Side for Sam.”

  She nodded. “He said he heard a white man was looking for him, and it never made any sense to him till I told him how Frank had been looking for me.”

  For a moment she appeared to be deep in her own memories. When she looked up, she was smiling at him.

  “I know how I look to you, and how it must seem, a couple of down-on-their-luck people our age, but I swear to you, Mr. Whelan, to us it felt like we were a couple of kids again. Like we had a second chance. It sounds stupid, doesn’t it?”

  “Not to me. I’m envious.”

  She smiled again and offered him more coffee.

  “Sure, I can use another cup. It’s been a long day.”

  When she had poured him another cup of bad instant, they drank in silence for a moment, and then she frowned.

  “There was one thing I never figured out. Sam thought he was being followed a couple of times. He thought it was Frank, but one time he was followed on the street by a man in a car. He said he thought the man was black.”

  “That,” Whelan said, “is another story.”

  Eighteen

  Day 11, Monday

  Pilar’s eyes widened and Whelan made a placating gesture.

  “Sir, he told me not to let you—”

  “It’s all right. There won’t be any trouble. I even brought him some coffee.” He held up a white paper bag.

  The young woman sighed and it was clear this was the last complication she needed on a Monday morning. She was still shaking her head when the door to the inner office opened and David Hill emerged, studying a contract.

  “Pilar?” he began, still looking at the paper. His shirtsleeves were rolled up and his collar button was open, and Whelan thought he looked like the workingman’s lawyer. “I need you to run something off for me.” He held out the paper and then saw Whelan. He let his arm drop to his side and stared for a five-count.

  “Do you have five minutes?”

  “I don’t have any time for you, Whelan.”

  “We have to talk. Just hear me out. It won’t cost you a thing. I even brought you coffee.” He held up the bag.

  “I don’t need coffee.”

  “Come on, Hill. Give me five minutes and then I’ll get out. You can have Pilar toss me into the street.”

  “I can’t think of a single reason why I should—”

  “Because you owe me the courtesy.”

  “I don’t owe you a—”

  “You sent me out looking for someone you had already found. If I did that to you, I’d at least give you the courtesy of a hearing.”

  Hill began to shake his head, seemed to think better of it, and stopped. He frowned and looked from Whelan to Pilar, who was studiously pretending to proofread copy. “All right, Mr. Whelan,” he said, backing into his office. “Come in. Pilar, hold my calls for five minutes.”

  “Yes, Mr. Hill.” She gave Whelan a little smile as he went in.

  Hill shut the door behind Whelan, then crossed the room and sank tiredly into his chair.

  “Cream or sugar?” Whelan asked.

  “Black,” Hill said.

  “Me too.” Whelan made a show of sipping his coffee and shifting his body in the client chair while Hill fidgeted with a pen on his desk. With his stern facial expression and dark-rimmed glasses and prominent jaw, he still reminded Whelan of a young Malcolm X, all fire and force, not to be screwed around with. Except this was not Malcolm X. This man had lied to him, had come pretty close to setting him up. Time to clear the air.

  “Let’s deal with the basic issue first. You misrepresented the facts from the very beginning. You held back significant portions of the truth.”

  “E
xcuse me?” Hill leaned forward.

  “You’re insulted, right. You’re getting ready to challenge me to a sword fight. Come on, Hill, you lied to me. You had me out there chasing my tail when you had already found Sam Burwell.”

  The glasses came off. Hill’s forehead shone with perspiration. He massaged his eyes, then put both hands against the desk, as though to shove off from it.

  “Mr. Hill, we don’t have time for you to go through your repertoire of lawyerly gestures. Save them for an unsuspecting jury. I want to know why you hired me to find someone you had already located.”

  “I have already explained to you that I was representing a client who—”

  “There was no client,” Whelan said quietly. He took a sip of coffee and put the cup down on the desk. “There never was a client. The client was you. You found this man, and then you hired me to cover the same ground you’d already covered. I had a feeling from the beginning that there was more to this than you were letting me know. In our first meeting you let something slip that puzzled me. I was never able to forget it completely and now I understand it.”

  “What?”

  “You had nothing but old pictures of Burwell, and your client had supposedly not seen him in many years, but you told me he was going bald on top. That’s something only a person who’d seen him recently would know. Other things didn’t add up. You did that bit about being the New York lawyer coming here to hicksville, and I found out that you were indeed a lawyer in New York—but only for the last three years. On the other hand, that part you let slip about your client being a woman, that was a nice touch. It confused me, because I wound up spending so much of my time looking for a woman.”

  Hill studied Whelan for a moment. “What is it that you want from me?”

  “Nothing. Actually, I came here to tell you what I’ve learned and to see if you’d let this facade come down just for a few minutes.”

  “And what have you learned?”

  “I know who killed Sam Burwell and I know why. I know you found Burwell and I think you had been looking for him for some time. He was followed once by a black man in a car and I think that was you, in a rented white Ford. You followed me in the same car.” Whelan allowed himself a smile. “I assume it was rented: Fords aren’t your style.