Reach the Shining River (21 page)

35.

The next morning Emmett told Mrs. Johnson to hold his calls. He locked his office door and sifted through his law books until he found the Missouri Divorce Statutes. For an hour, he drank coffee and read about authorized motions, petitions for dissolution, disposition of property and debts. It was like being back in law school, except that stray phrases stuck like a bone in the throat. Mental cruelty. Alienation of affections. Injured party. Every statute tinged by the language of violence.

After a while the words lost their meaning, but their sounds lingered like a bad dream. He had not slept the night before, sitting in the car until after three, finishing the whiskey, tossing and turning the rest of the night in his stale bed. Losing focus, he sat at his desk, rubbing his eyes. His head ached. His shoulder was sore from the recoil of the Colt. He sniffed his fingers for traces of powder.

At noon he called the house.

“She done gone,” Ophelia said.

“So she was home when you arrived.”

“At home?”

“Yes. She was in the house when you got there.”

Silence.

“Ophelia – was she there when you came to work this morning?”

“Course she was, Mr. Whelan. Where else she be?”

“Did she say where she was going?”

“No, sir. She never do.”

Half an hour later he was huddled in a doorway across the street from the Schumann Hotel, a borrowed hat pulled low over his eyes. His teeth chattered. His shirt was soaked at the armpits. Yet he felt on the edge of a breakthrough. The street wheeled with activity, but he had a clear view of the hotel’s front door. People came and went. Businessmen. Delivery boys. A couple or two. But no Fay. An hour he stood there. An hour and a half.

At two o’clock he went to the Muehlebach Hotel for lunch.

He drank two stiff bourbons while he waited for his steak. By the time it arrived he’d lost his appetite. Another drink. The restaurant glittered and tilted and popped with random squeaks of sound. As he picked at his food, Lloyd Perkins arrived with a group of grey-haired men in dark suits. They seated themselves at a round table by the bay window, unfurled their napkins, and ordered cocktails.

Lloyd saw him and crossed the room. “Waiting for someone?” he said.

“No, sir, I am not.”

The words slipped and slurred. His voice was like a disobedient dog.

Lloyd pulled at his chin and pointed at an empty chair. “You mind?”

“Be my guest.”

Lloyd’s boys were yucking it up with a young waitress. At the edge of the group was the red-faced guy from the first meeting. Bob Perkins’s step-and-fetch-it.

“Who’s that guy?”

“Which one?”

“With the blue tie. And the bad skin.”

Lloyd frowned. “That’s Les Newton. Robert’s assistant. You’ve met him.”

“Where’s his notepad?”

Lloyd sat at the edge of his chair, elbows on his knees. “How much have you had to drink, Emmett?”

“Oh, not that much, Lloyd. No more than I need.”

“Why don’t you finish what you’re eating there and get back to the office. Or home if that would be better.”

“And why would home be better?”

Lloyd sniffed. Shoulders pointed. Hair bristling. Mouth like a coin slot. “Does this have anything to do with Fay?”

“What do you think, Lloyd?”

“It’s none of my business.”

“So why are you asking?”

Lloyd’s neck turned red and he checked the nearby tables.

“I’m on the case, Lloyd. Got what you’re looking for.”

“Keep your voice down.”

“Enough to break this town wide open. Give me a couple of days. Signed, sealed, delivered.”

As he spoke, Emmett thought of the gun in the car: its cool heft and oily smell and machined-tooled lines.

Lloyd leaned close. “If you have something on the case,” he hissed, “go to Roddy.” He stood, buttoned his jacket, and returned to his pals, who were laughing and lighting cigars. “And goddamn it, Emmett, pull yourself together.”

*

Emmett sent Mrs. Johnson home early and napped in the office. He woke with drymouth and a headache. It was after five.

After a beer at the Terrace Club he walked down Twentieth Street and into the Negro district. Business was brisk. The clubs were flourishing. The photographs and drawings of the riot dead were still in the shop windows, and the air of menace was as thick as ever. But with the .45 in his pocket and alcohol in his blood, Emmett was right at home.

Charles Bibb had said that the Friendship Brotherhood met on Tuesday nights at this time, but when Emmett reached the offices its windows were dark and the door was locked. He knocked hard for several minutes, peered inside, and circled round the back. A plank fence bordered the back yard, and he stood on a broken chair so he could see over. The yard was cluttered with half-built coffins, rusty nails, and raw lumber. As he was about to climb down, he saw Bibb exit the back door carrying a strongbox.

“Hello there,” Bibb said.

“Are you hard of hearing?”

“What’s that?”

“Unlock the goddamn gate.”

Emmett followed him into the funeral parlor. Bibb tried to squirrel the strongbox under his desk.

“Wait a minute,” Emmett said. “Let’s have a look inside.”

“You ain’t interested in this old thing.”

“Open it.”

Inside was a thick bundle of cash, a book of blank city work dockets, and a spool of badly printed tickets, the type used in the numbers rackets in the district. Emmett took the cash and dumped the paper on the desktop. Bibb was breathing unsteadily, and supporting himself with a hand against the wall. “I reckon I best sit down,” he said.

“You do that.”

He slumped into a straightback chair. “This ain’t what you think.”

“So what is it?”

“That ain’t my money.”

“Good. In that case I guess I can take it for safe-keeping.”

Bibb’s face glistened. His eyes were watery and watchful, his skin slick with sweat. “You do that, mister, and you may as well just put a gun to my head and pull the trigger.”

Bibb’s face was slack with despair. The office’s wood floor was mottled with tobacco stains. Pile of trash had been roughly swept into the corners, and a Panama Canal Railway Company calendar hung crookedly on the wall, two months out of date.

“If it isn’t yours,” Emmett said, “whose is it?”

“I’s just a bagman.”

Emmett waved the wad of cash. “Same as Eddie Sloan? And Virgil Barnes?”

Bibb reached for his drawer.

“Wait a minute,” Emmett said.

“Only gettin’ my snuff.”

Emmett slid open the drawer and handed him the canister. He took a pinch and tucked it under his lip.

“I asked you a question.”

“What if I don’t answer?”

“Then I take the cash. And you have a date at the Jackson County Courthouse.”

Bibb started rocking back and forth in the chair, puckering his lips against the strength of the snuff. He gestured dismissively at the strongbox. “These here tickets, they go to the pool halls and clubs and such. Them that be sellin’. We collects and pays out every Monday. Eddie, yeah, he done the same.”

“What about the dockets?”

“One gets filled out for each job. That ways we get paid.”

“By who?”

“By the man.”

“C’mon, Charles. You can do better than that.”

“Be a different individual every time.”

“Was it ever Richie Timmons?”

Bibb was deadpan. No doubt.

“How do you like working with the devil?” Emmett asked.

“Better’n bein’ dirt po’.”

Emmett snapped the rubber band off the wad and peeled off two hundred bucks in twenties, which he stuffed into his pocket. “Why’d he kill Eddie, Charles?”

Bibb’s face was all stretched and rubbery, and he looked as if he’d lost his breath.

“Well?”

Bibb shook his head. He was breathing through his mouth.

“Where’s Virgil Barnes?” Emmett said.

“You axin’ a mess of questions of a old man.”

“When you tell me where Virgil is, I’ll give you back what’s left of your dough.”

Bibb wiped his nose with the sleeve of his shirt and Emmett turned to leave.

“Hold on, now.”

“Yeah.”

“His sister. Could be she knows.”

“Keep talking.”

“Ida Barnes. Live out Richmond way. Ray County.”

Emmett nodded, but Bibb was looking at the money, his tongue resting on his lower lip.

“I’ll be back,” Emmett said. “You think a little harder about who it is you’re working for and what they’re doing to the district.”

He threw the rest of the cash across the room. The bills fluttered to the floor like dead leaves.

*

As he left the funeral parlor, Emmett saw an old Ford parked across the street that had not been there when he went in. He looked in the front seat. It was empty. Feeling watched, he walked down Sixteenth Street as far as Indiana. The very poor lived along this stretch, in sagging, splintered shacks with packed-dirt yards and scrap-wood fencing. The few people he passed looked at the ground. He felt his pistol against his ribs, snug in a new holster he had bought that morning at Syke’s. He trotted quickly, keen to be back downtown.

By the time he reached Brooklyn Avenue, he knew he was being followed: an occasional flash of a straw hat, a man peering in a shop window, footfalls that stopped when he did. He walked down to Twelfth and crossed the street just ahead of a streetcar. Shielded by its clatter and sway, he ducked into an alley and drew his pistol. A thudding in his ears drowned out all sound, but his vision was sharp, and when the hat appeared, Emmett jumped the guy, dragged him into the alley, and struck him with the butt of the Colt. The man fell to the ground, screaming.

“Don’t shoot, pal, I ain’t carrying.”

“Keep your hands on the ground. Turn over.”

It was one of the country boys from the crime scene. Not the guy with the shotgun, but one of the others. Emmett nudged his feet apart and patted him down. He was unarmed. He took the guy’s wallet from the back pocket of his overalls. Inside were seven dollar bills, a driver’s license, and a Kansas City Police Department ID. The names matched: William H. Mason, with an address in Lees Summit.

“What’s your name?” Emmett said.

“Billy Mason.”

“Tell me this, Billy: what’s a hick from Lees Summit doing working for KCPD?”

“I’m at the academy.”

“Who are you working for?”

“Nobody.”

Emmett kicked him hard in the ribs, and the man howled and curled up.

“You killed him, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t kill nobody,” he gasped.

Emmett was amazed at how easy it was to stick the muzzle behind the man’s ear. “You’re a goddamn murderer, Billy.”

“I had nothing to do with it. I swear to Jesus.”

“Nothing to do with what?”

“The killing.”

“What killing?”

The man whimpered. He rammed the muzzle harder. “
What
killing
?”

“The musician.”

Emmett withdrew the pistol and prodded him with his foot so that he rolled over. Several small pebbles stuck to the man’s forehead and his chin was streaked with dirt.

“Why are you following me?”

“I do what I’m told.”

“Who told you?”

Mason hesitated, and Emmett stuck the gun in his ear. “A detective,” he said quickly. “Red-haired guy in a suit. I don’t even know his name.”

“Same guy sent you after me down by the river?”

“No. We was just passing that night. We reported the car tag and I got assigned to you.”

Emmett was shaking, and he had a sharp pain in his shoulder.

“You were following me.”

“No law against that.”

“There’s a law against murder.”

“I told you, I didn’t have nothing to do with it.”

“So who murdered Eddie Sloan?”

“I don’t know.”

He stomped on Mason’s chest two, three, four times, grunting furiously. He could hear the leather creak of his new holster and the sound of his own breathing. A woman stopped at the alley entrance, and he screamed at her to move along.

Spitting the words, he leaned over and said, “Tell me who killed Eddie Sloan or I’ll kill you.”

The man was coughing. “I don’t know.”

“Who did it?”

“You want me to say any goddamn name just to save my ass?”

Mason clutched his chest and spat blood on the ground. His overalls were covered with dirt and his boots were worn and filthy. Not the clothes of the man who’d stepped through river mud in leather shoes.