The Dying Crapshooter's Blues (8 page)

He crossed over Ivy Street and reached Peachtree to find that the Atlanta beehive was buzzing ever more frantically every time he came back. Even at this early hour, the sidewalks were getting jammed as workers rushed along to the downtown offices, huffing little clouds, and the main and crossing streets were packed with automobiles, trucks, bicycles, a few motorcycles, and fewer horse-drawn hacks.

Joe noticed right away that two new electric stoplights had been installed on the main thoroughfare, so there were now a half dozen of the signals in as many blocks. One by one, the crow's nests were being replaced. Not that the lights eased the congestion.

The city was dirtier, too. The pall of soot that had hung in the air since he first passed through seven years before seemed to grow thicker every time he returned, advanced by the unending string of coal- and wood-burning locomotives passing through the railroad yards not five blocks away, the belching from the stacks of the factories and the chimneys of the homes clustered around the downtown blocks, and the growing multitude of automobiles and trucks. Indeed, with all that, it was nigh onto impossible for anyone who lived or worked there to stay clean. A white sheet hung out to dry in the morning would be gray by afternoon. Just about every other person passing on the street exhibited at least a mild cough.

Then there was the smell, a fetid combination of engine exhaust, horse manure, rusting pipes, woodsmoke, and damp rot, along with contributions from the nearby Atlanta Livestock Center, famed for its stench. He never quite understood how the citizens tolerated the stifling heat of summer, and always made a point to be elsewhere during the hot months.

When he reached Harris Street, he crossed over and came
back down the other side, where the sidewalks were even busier. Atlanta just kept growing, out and up, and it had been going on that way for a long time.

As he ambled among the heat and close odors of human crowding, he remembered being cornered in a speakeasy one winter evening some years back and treated to a lecture on the history of the city by a drunken professor. The scholar, deep in his cups and provoked by one of those innocuous barroom questions that don't require an answer, lurched to his feet and into a spiel that began with a claim that Atlanta was founded as a backwoods depot called Terminus, which was still marked by the zero milepost that stood on Alabama Street.

Later, the name of this way station was changed to Marthasville, after the then-governor's daughter. When it was selected for a north–south rail line because of the gentle slope of the surrounding land, Miss Martha lost her place in history in favor of
Atlanta,
a name some engineer threw out on a whim. More rail lines followed, so that by the onset of the Civil War, the town had gained strategic value. Indeed, the drunken professor avowed, Jefferson Davis had sealed the fate of the Confederacy when, facing an advancing Union army, he stupidly refused to order the destruction of the rail lines over some petty squabble with local politicians.

At this point, another sot rose to dispute the notion that Jeff Davis
ever
did anything stupid, and demanded the lecturer step outside to answer for so dishonoring the Confederacy. Joe settled this by treating the rebel diehard to a few hard slaps that put him in his place. The professor was entertaining, and he wanted to hear the rest of the story.

The rest of the story was that the Confederate officers and brave troops who tried to save the city were no match for Sherman's overwhelming force, and Atlanta was pounded almost into oblivion by shelling and burned into ashes by set fires. The general recognized that his victory would have been more arduous
save for those rail lines, and left them intact to use for his march to the sea.

After swigging from his glass, the professor launched into act two, relating how the hearty citizens rebuilt their city, literally from the ground up. The rail lines multiplied once more, and soon a thousand freight and passenger cars were rolling in and out of Atlanta's yards every day. The population grew at an astounding pace. By the turn of the century, the city held almost one hundred thousand citizens. Ten years later, it was half again that number. When the 1920 census appeared, the scholar opined, it would show that the population would pass two hundred thousand with no slowing in sight. This, less than sixty years after being a city of ashes. Shortly after delivering this last proclamation, he wound down to a string of disjointed mumbles and then dropped his head onto his folded arms and into a peaceful doze.

Joe wasn't surprised at the business about how the city had flourished, more so in the last five years. The boll weevil had devastated cotton crops across Georgia, and farm families by the thousands had packed up and left the land. Atlanta offered work, in the rail yards and the mills and in private homes. From what Joe could tell, at least half of the new arrivals were black. They laid track and ran looms and dug ditches and raised the children of white families. Musicians like Willie McTell followed this wave of migration, their guitars strapped to their backs.

It was no easy ride for the migrants who huddled in sections like Cabbagetown for the whites and Mechanicsville for the colored. Poor and dirty and dangerous, they were also the sort of neighborhoods Joe sought out. He was comfortable among working people and the floating population of working folks, gamblers, petty thieves, confidence men, and whores. Meanwhile, he stayed in cheap downtown hotels like the Hampton and the Atlanta just up the street, places where everyone minded
their business and a fellow could stay out of sight and out of trouble.

Not this time, though; his second night in town, he had stumbled upon a shooting followed by something even more ominous, an invitation—that was a joke, it was an
order
—to visit the Captain.

First, though, came breakfast. Joe arrived back on Houston Street and stepped inside Lulu's door. Once he had called out his order to the fellow behind the counter, he took a corner table. While he waited, he perked an ear for any snippets of gossip about crimes around the city, always a subject of interest. Two office clerks in white shirts and ties were talking at the next table over, and Joe caught the words
jewels
and
mansion.
Under the guise of picking up the newspaper that someone had left on the next table, he shifted around to a chair that was closer to the pair.

Over the next few minutes, he gleaned pieces that assembled into a story, and was stunned to learn what he had missed the day before, that someone had gotten into the Payne mansion on Elizabeth Street during a Christmas charity event and made off with a catch of jewelry. The clerks snickered giddily over the crime and batted it around some more without adding any details.

Joe shared in the frivolity right up until the moment it dawned on him that this was the reason for the summons to police headquarters. The Captain wanted to grill him about the burglary, and might even suspect that Joe had a hand in it. His gut sank at the thought of what he was facing, though not enough to ruin his appetite, and when his breakfast arrived, he plowed in.

As he ate, he looked over the front page of the newspaper. There were articles about trouble in Germany, rioting in the streets as part of a rebellion against the leaders who had lost the last war. Meanwhile, civil war was brewing in Cuba. Another
item described a shipment of thirty thousand bottles of Scotch that had been intercepted in Maine, with an estimated value of four million dollars. Joe grinned over that, then laughed when he read in a local story about a still that had been found in the basement of a house just a few blocks north of where he sat. He recognized the character who had been arrested as a loudmouth who was known to sample too much of his own product. This time the fight was with a police officer, and as a result the fool's source of income had been smashed to pieces.

He flipped through some more pages, dawdling. He wasn't looking forward to his visit with Captain Jackson. Though if he didn't show up, Collins or some other cop would come looking for him, and the slight would put the Captain in an even worse humor. With a reluctant glance at the clock on the wall, he put the paper aside and left his twenty-five cents, with a nickel tip for the girl.

Stepping onto the sidewalk, he strolled around the side of the building and in through the kitchen door. The Negro cook, dark and burly, with a round shaved head and shoulders like a steer, peered from his station at the stove. His broad face sported a half-dozen scars, souvenirs of battles in the hellhole where he had spent three of his years.

“Mr. Joe,” Sweet Spencer said. “I heard you was in town.”

“Came in Friday,” Joe said.

“What's the word on Williams?” Sweet's voice was cool.

“You heard about that?”

The Negro shoveled scrambled eggs and a thick slice of ham onto a plate and put it in the window. “Yeah, I heard 'bout that sonofabitch,” he grunted. “He got shot. Now, there's a damn surprise.” Sweet had no time for slicks like Jesse.

“Any talk going around?”

“No,” Sweet said. “And if they is, I don't want to hear it.” He made up another plate and set it in the window for the waitress. His eyes slid to Joe. “What do you care?”

“He's a friend. I've known him a while.”

“I guess that's your problem, then,” the cook said. Though he radiated danger from every pore, he wouldn't dare use such a caustic tone with another white man. Joe was different that way.

Sweet's eyes flicked. “I also heard some jewels got stole out in Inman Park Saturday night.” He kept his eyes on the stove. “That what the Captain be wantin' to talk to you about?” he inquired casually.

Joe was not surprised that Sweet knew about it; that kind of word would travel. “That's right,” he said glumly. “I'm going down to see him now.” He nodded a good-bye and the Negro turned back to his work.

Joe had just reached the door when Sweet said, “She was out there.”

Joe stopped, puzzled. “Who was out where?”

“Pearl was at that house. The Payne place. Where them things got snatched. She was there.”

Joe took a startled step back. “Jesus Christ, Sweet!” He lowered his voice. “It was
her
?”

Sweet shook his head. “No, it wasn't her. She got hired on as a maid for that Christmas party they was havin'. She does that kind of work sometimes. You know that.”

Joe let the jibe go by. “She was . . .” He stopped, baffled by this news. “Well, that ain't good.”

“No,” Sweet said shortly. “It ain't.”

Joe looked at him. “Is there something else?”

“That ain't enough?”

Joe could see from Sweet's deadpan expression that he wasn't going to get any more out of him. “I better get on,” he said.

“Mr. Joe?” The Negro's eyes were like pieces of flint. “That, there, is all the more reason you want to stay away from her,” he said in a rumble of a voice. “Even if she comes knockin'. That would be my advice. You hear what I'm saying?”

“I hear you, Sweet.”

Sweet came up with a dim smile. “Stop by any time,” he said.

Joe took the prison glint that had rested in the dark gaze out the door with him. It gave him something else to think about on his way to Decatur Street.

 

As usual on a Monday, the weekend's gossip made the rounds as the first order of business. The whispered word about the theft at the Payne mansion spent Sunday traveling from one maid to the next, and from that maid to the lady of the house, and then along church pews from Druid Hills to Buttermilk Bottom. By the time evening rolled around, it had spread to every corner of the city.

Still, the news needed a busy workday to soak in. With the arrival of the morning's first rush of clerks, secretaries, and shopkeepers, the talk set offices and shops along Peachtree Street to humming. The chatter was rife with amazement that such a grand address could be so easily breached. Privately, there were snickers aplenty at the humiliation of the proud, tightfisted Paynes. In all but the most patrician quarters, whoever had pulled the daring job was a hero.

City Hall was buzzing, too. Mayor Sampson's first call that morning had been to Chief Troutman at police headquarters, and the chief had in turn summoned Captain Jackson. Within minutes, the chief, the Captain, and Lieutenant Collins were in a car and on their way to City Hall.

Once they had been ushered into the mayor's office, Captain Jackson went about putting on a performance. He was careful not to belittle the new chief, allowing the mayor to draw his own conclusions about the man's competence. Instead, he snapped through his strategy to find the guilty party and reclaim the missing jewels, one that had in fact already begun with his visit to the Payne mansion the day before. He would accomplish this by working with informants, one of whom would give him information he could use to effect an arrest.

It was a strange and stilted delivery, punctuated by smiles that would have been coy on a more relaxed man. Jackson reminded the mayor of nothing so much as a ventriloquist's dummy, the thick body stiff and glazed eyes hardly blinking as he snapped answers out of a rigid face. At the same time, his delivery was so squarely to the point that by the time Chief Troutman realized he'd been upstaged, it was too late.

The Captain finished with a flourish. Mayor Sampson gave a quick nod and turned to his chief of police.

“Make sure Captain Jackson has everything he needs to get this matter settled,” he said.

Chief Troutman, blanching, opened his mouth. Jackson got there first. “I've got everything I need, Mr. Mayor,” he said.

Lieutenant Collins would later recall that the silence in the car during the ride back to Decatur Street was so thick he almost choked on it.

 

The newspapers had done their civic duty by keeping a lid on the story, only to find themselves running after it. Having missed the opportunity for articles in the morning papers, editors at both of the dailies came rushing out of their offices yelling for their ace reporters to get moving.