The Meq (9 page)

“Wait, Carolina,” I interrupted, “you’re way ahead of me. Tell me the rest . . . from the beginning.”

She went on. “Mrs. Bennings got worse and worse. Corsair was with her all the time, and for a while, I guess he was good for her. At least he paid attention to her, but in time he sort of took control of her; told her what to do, what to wear, who to see, and who not to see. Georgia and I were in school most of the time and it was during the day, during that time, that I think Mrs. Bennings was finally worn down and let him have complete control of her and this place. Within a year, he had turned it into a house of prostitution and Mrs. Bennings into a madam. A madam with good manners. That was the only thing she insisted on, that all the girls have good manners.

“Corsair is from an old Creole family that lost its money decades ago, but he still has connections and a whole slew of ‘cousins’ in New Orleans. For years, all the girls came from New Orleans. Now, almost all the girls are from here in St. Louis, trained by me.”

I stopped her right there. “You mean, you and Georgia . . . work here?”

“Of course not,” she said. “We run it.”

I looked in her eyes. She stared back at me. I didn’t know what to say, but I knew there, in her eyes, she hadn’t changed.

“I am not ashamed of what I do, Z. It is a good business and I learned . . . we learned,” she said, nodding at Georgia, “how to do it well. We are not deprived or made to do anything we don’t want to do. We take good care of our girls and we take good care of our ‘visitors,’ as Mrs. Bennings likes to call them. I like everything about it except for Corsair. He’s got out of hand, Z. Two months ago, he finally talked Mrs. Bennings into marrying him and now he wants control of everything. He’s dangerous. I know he hates me and my influence and lately he’s been slapping Mrs. Bennings for no reason at all.”

“Is that what Georgia was trying to say?”

“Yes.” Carolina stopped talking and gave me a strange look. She pointed her finger at me and made a circling motion. “Z,” she said, “why did you come back now?”

I looked down at the floor, then up at her and Georgia. “I had a dream,” I said. “The rest is a little complicated.”

We sat in silence. I stared in wonder at these two young women, these Giza, sitting on the floor talking like this with a Meq, a child.

“Have you found Sailor?” Carolina asked.

“No,” I said. She turned to Georgia and shook her head, saying no, as if they had talked of this before. “Why did you say Corsair had hired someone?” I asked.

“I said I
think
he has hired someone. I can’t prove it.”

“To do what?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “but I’m afraid for Mrs. Bennings.”

I thought about my dream again. I was much more afraid for Carolina. I knew that Corsair Bogy was the source of my fear. Everywhere around me I felt an invisible, prickly net descending. It was a heightened sense of danger; an awareness of it that I was learning, as Geaxi said I would. But it felt like waking up. “Don’t tell Mrs. Bennings I’m back,” I said. “I have a plan.”

It was a simple plan. Corsair Bogy had to be watched; all the time, everywhere he went, inside the house or on the town. But Mrs. Bennings couldn’t be told. Carolina agreed—if I wasn’t here, he wouldn’t see me. We could not alert him. Corsair Bogy was a snake, but he wasn’t stupid; whatever he had in mind for Mrs. Bennings or Carolina, he would not do it himself.

I stood up to leave. I wanted to be gone before anyone in the house saw me. Carolina handed me Mama’s glove. “Don’t forget this,” she said.

“I never have.” They both walked me back through the house to the kitchen door. “Be careful and watch him like a hawk,” I said. “I won’t be far away.”

It was a cold morning, but spring was in the air and I walked into it, glancing back once at the two women I had known so long ago as girls. They were holding hands.

I got a room in the Italian neighborhood known as “the hill,” just off Hampton Avenue. It was a place where I could easily blend in and live cheaply. No one noticed another dark-haired boy on “the hill.”

Every day, I followed Corsair Bogy wherever he went. Most of his time was spent in the saloons or at Sportsman’s Park. The baseball season had started and Bogy had box seats, three rows up on the first base side. I hadn’t seen a baseball game in years, except for a few crude games in the Caribbean, and it was exciting to smell the smells, hear the sounds, and watch the players. Sneaking in was no problem; under Captain Woodget, I had learned to sneak into any place. The Browns were terrible. They had a great slugger at first base, though. His name was Roger Conner and he held the record for most home runs until Babe Ruth broke it. I thought about being a bat boy again, at least for a game or two, but that would make me too visible. Instead, I hung back in the shadows and watched Bogy.

At night, I stayed outside the boardinghouse and spied on those who came and went. I had seen whorehouses before, almost everywhere around two oceans, but never one like Mrs. Bennings’s House. There was no red light over the door or girls leaning out of the windows. From the outside, it looked the same as it always had.

Carriages pulled up and left, dropping off gentlemen in fine dress and top hats. I suppose that not all were gentlemen, but they looked the part. Every once in a while I thought I heard Georgia playing the piano. She was good. I could tell that Carolina and Georgia ran a genteel business, and except for the traffic, it could still have been a boardinghouse.

Each night I met Carolina somewhere outside and asked her if she had seen anything or anyone unusual around Bogy. For three weeks, she didn’t. Then, on May 1, she told me something that sent a chill through me. I was on the corner and she ran to meet me.

“I just heard him talking to someone,” she said, out of breath. “It was out back, just beyond the kitchen door. I don’t know who it was, it was too dark to see, but whoever it was said that Bogy had to come up with more money. Bogy said, ‘A deal is a deal,’ and the other voice said, ‘Not if there is more than one body to do.’ Those were his exact words—’more than one body to do.’ And, Z, here’s what scared me. When he turned to leave, I got a glimpse of him. He was a boy, Z, a boy like you, only with green eyes.”

One name flashed in my mind and one name only—Ray Ytuarte. It didn’t make sense, but he was the only one of us I knew who might think like that. He had made his living from violence, I knew that too, but an assassin? It just didn’t make sense. I felt that prickly net descending again; the danger. If it was Ray, what could I do about it? Ray had shown me to the Stones and told me about them, but would they have any effect on him? On us? On the Meq? I looked at Carolina and knew it made no difference. Whatever I had to do, I would.

“Who is he?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But Corsair will have to see him again, about the money. Then I’ll know. You stay with Georgia. Go to Mrs. Bennings’s room. Lock the door if you have to. Just stay together.”

“Where will you be?”

“I’ll be here, close, unless Bogy leaves.”

“All night?”

“Yes.”

She was still upset and anxious. I could see the band of freckles across her face standing out in the faint light. She turned and started back, then stopped.

“Do you still get scared, Z? Or is it different for you?”

“I turn twelve again this week,” I said. “What’s so scary about that?”

The night passed and Corsair Bogy never left the boardinghouse. I saw nothing unusual and the sun rose in a cloudless blue sky. All over south St. Louis the dogwoods and redbuds were in full bloom. I was tired, but edgy and alert, and for some reason the image of Captain Woodget came to mind. I could see him holding on to the weather rigging in his yellow oilskins and long leather sea boots, watching aloft and hanging on until the last minute. I had to keep that same resolve. I had to find the will of Geaxi and the silent strength of Unai and Usoa. I had to bury fear and wait . . . something I knew the Meq could do very well.

Corsair Bogy appeared around noon and headed straight for the saloons adjacent to Sportsman’s Park. Before I left to follow him, I saw Carolina standing in the window of Mrs. Bennings’s room. She put two fingers to her lips and pressed them against the glass. I nodded once and went off after Bogy.

He visited three saloons, the first two for only minutes and the third for over an hour. He played cards with his cronies and I only lost sight of him once, for a few minutes, while he was in the men’s room. After that, he and two men walked the short distance to Sportsman’s Park to watch the Browns play Cincinnati. The sky was still blue, but the temperature was dropping.

I stayed close to him in the park, closer than I had before, so I could hear him talk. Mostly, he drank beer and yelled at the manager of the Browns, Harry Diddlebock. He was loud and the drunker he got the more he yelled and bragged to his cronies about women and money; but that was Corsair Bogy all over and such behavior was nothing unusual.

About the seventh inning, a low bank of clouds appeared to the southwest. Gusts of wind blew loose paper and debris around the stands. I felt something else—a presence. I glanced around quickly through the crowd and thought I caught a glimpse of something or someone familiar. I wasn’t sure.

I made my way to one of the exits, where I could scan the whole crowd, and turned in a slow, full circle. Nothing.

Suddenly I heard Carolina’s voice. “Z!” I heard her scream. She came running toward me, through the crowd. “He’s here,” she said. “He came to the house, the one with green eyes, and he wanted to know where you were.”

“Did he hurt you?” I asked and looked her up and down.

“No, no. It was strange. He just wanted to know where you were. I didn’t say a word and he took off running—fast.”

It was Ray all right. That proved it. “Why did you come here?” I said. “You should stay with Georgia and Mrs. Bennings.”

“I had to do something. I had to warn you.”

Then a thought struck me. If Ray was hired by Corsair and Corsair didn’t know I was around, why would Ray ask about me and show himself at the same time? It didn’t make sense.

The wind was blowing harder and fat drops of rain began to fall. I could hear Corsair’s voice yelling over the crowd at an umpire. Then I heard something else—a haunting, bitter laugh I hadn’t heard in years. I turned and saw him, standing with his legs spread in baggy black trousers, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a black bowler hat, staring at me.

“You’re lookin’ the same, Z,” he said and laughed again. “Ain’t that odd?”

I stared back at him. If he was running one of his games on me, I couldn’t tell. “How are you, Ray?”

“About the same. How ’bout you?”

He took a step toward me, holding on to his bowler hat. The wind was blowing much harder and hail was starting to fall. Carolina came closer, never taking her eyes off Ray.

“Why are you here, Ray?”

“I was in Cincinnati and I had one of my ’forecasts’ come to me. I thought about you, Z, so I thought I’d come and save your ass, if you were still around. I hitched a ride with the ball club and I been lookin’ for you ever since.”

“When did you get here?” I asked and glanced at Carolina.

“This morning,” he said. “Look, Z, I don’t know how much time we got.” He put both his hands over his eyes and looked at the sky. “You mean, you weren’t here last night?”

“No. Hey, Z, let’s get out of here. Now.”

I was confused. If it wasn’t Ray, then who . . .

“Now, Z, now!” Ray yelled.

“What? Why?” I looked at him dumbfounded. He pointed to the sky.

“A tornado’s comin’. A big one. I saw it three days ago.”

I looked at Carolina. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. She didn’t know Ray, she didn’t know the “Weatherman,” but I did. She probably thought he was crazy, but I knew he was never wrong about the weather, and he was no assassin. I kept looking at her and her face seemed to change. I was in my dream again and her head was floating, only it wasn’t her head and her face . . . it was Georgia’s.

“Let’s get to the house!” I shouted.

We turned and headed out of the exit, but everyone else was doing the same. The storm came in so fast that the umpires had no time to call off the game. All the players and four thousand fans were trying to leave at once. It was chaos. We squeezed, pushed, and ran through the crowd, finally making it to Grand Avenue, where we ran straight into Corsair Bogy. He looked at me. He looked at Ray. Something about us stunned and shocked him, then he saw Carolina.

“You bitch, you’re supposed to be at the house!” he screamed.

“Come on!” I yelled and we took off, leaving Bogy in the driving rain and hail.

The streets were filled with people running for shelter. Streetcars with bells clanging were racing to make it back to their stations. Some fences were already falling down and the blooms of the dogwoods and redbuds were being blown through the air like snowflakes in a blizzard.

A block from Mrs. Bennings’s House, Carolina stopped in her tracks from a dead run. She was gasping for air and so was I. Ray wasn’t even out of breath. She put her hands over her ears and her eyes seemed to be staring into some unknown hell. “Georgia!” she screamed and tears poured down her cheeks.