The Ragtime Fool (14 page)

Ireland raised a finger. “Just remember, ‘Do not play this piece fast. It is never right to play ragtime fast.’ If I heard him say that once, I heard it a hundred times.”

“I’ll remember. And I guess I’ll see you at the ceremony Tuesday.”

“Oh, yes. You can be sure of that.”

The Negroes watched the white boy trot down the path, turn onto Osage, and march off in the direction of downtown. Then they walked back into the house. Ireland reloaded the coffee pot, put it onto the stovetop, and reached into the belly to stir up the fire.

Finally, Isaac said, “A man ain’t never safe in this world, is he?”

Ireland shook his head sadly. “I never knew…was that really what happened?”

“Every word. We all swore never to talk about it to anybody. Poor Scott musta been bad-sick in his head that he’d even think about writin’ down that stuff. But the business with Brun and the girl is news to me. No wonder he got himself outa town in such a hurry.”

Ireland’s brow wrinkled. “That girl still lives here. And Brun’s coming to town for the ceremony? Oh, my.”

“Tom, what on earth we gonna do?”

“I don’t know. When the boy went out to the privy, I thought about ripping out those pages, but then he’d have known, and we’d be even worse off. We’ve got to get the journal away from him, the sooner, the better. Let him show that stuff around Sedalia, and they’ll have those bodies dug up in nothing flat. And then what?”

“’Fraid I can imagine. Only thing worse’d be if Rudi Blesh got it, and put it in a book for the whole world to see.”

Ireland poured coffee. He and Isaac sat across the kitchen table from each other, sipping, thinking.

They were on their second cups when Isaac said, “Best thing I can come up with, we keep a good eye on the boy, and just as soon as ever we can, we grab the book.”

Ireland frowned. “Couple of problems there. For one thing, I’m eighty-five, and you’re over a hundred. We’re not going to outrun a teen-age boy. And for another thing, now that he knows us, it’d be tough to sneak up on him.”

“Well, of course.” Isaac was indignant. “You didn’t let me finish up. How about we get Alonzo Green? All the stuff he used to do on the Q.T. all them years for the cops in Kans’ City, he oughta be able to snatch a li’l book off a green kid. And I don’t expect he’d mind makin’ a few dollars for himself.”

Ireland set down his cup, deliberated a moment. “I can’t think of anything better.” He pulled his watch from his pocket. “Six-thirty, Lonzo’ll be home by now. Let’s go have a word with him.”

Chapter Fourteen

Saturday, April 14
Evening

This kind of job was why Alonzo Green gave up working for the police in Kay Cee. If an operation was a pebble in a cop’s shoe or likely to turn messy, all he had to do to keep his nose clean and his ass warm was slip the colored guy a few bills under the table. Alonzo had wiggled himself into a gang setting up to knock off a bank. He’d stood out-of-doors for hours in twenty-degree weather, watching for some stud who’d been too handy with a knife. Corraled a girl who’d run off from a farm to have a little fun in the big city. Tailed a newspaperman who was working on a story of police corruption, took pictures of the bozo in a cathouse. No wonder he got to deciding he’d do better to run a little farm, raise a few chickens, grow vegetables. But there were no better men on earth than Tom Ireland and Isaac Stark, and if they said it was important to get their hands on a journal some white kid was carrying around, then Alonzo would find them that journal. He’d made off with a whole lot more in his time than some dead musician’s diary.

The kid was brand-new in town, so likely he was either laying low, waiting for that old guy to come in from The Coast, or walking around, trying to find some other people connected with the ceremony. Green figured to start with the streets. A man with coal-black skin and hair like steel wool couldn’t exactly walk through white hotel lobbies and ask clerks if they had a white boy staying there, name of Alan Chandler, he was carrying a dark blue book bag you couldn’t get off him with pliers.

Green strolled up Ohio, looking both ways, seeing no one who fit the kid’s description. At Fifth, he turned right, walked the half-block to the Liberty Theatre, went inside and scanned the square-dance crowd. No luck. Back out to Ohio, across the street, and into the doorway of Beverly’s Snack Shop. He shaded his eyes. Fair bunch of kids in the booths, but no one he hadn’t seen before. A pretty young waitress came up to him, little white hat perched to the right side of her head. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “We aren’t allowed to serve colored here.”

Green bit on his tongue, nodded, turned away. Outside, he took a moment to cool down and get his mind back onto his work. Saturday nights, a lot of kids went to the Wheel Inn, over on Broadway, to dance to the jukebox. The detective walked back through the thinning crowds along Ohio to the corner of Main, where he got into his ‘thirty-six Ford, drove to Broadway and into the Wheel Inn lot.

The instant he was out of the car, music enveloped him. Glenn Miller, “In the Mood.” Vanilla ice cream crap. He strolled up to the round building, topped by an oversized wagon wheel, then peered through the plate glass. All the tables were filled; kids covered every inch of the dance floor. Green saw the Klein girl, jitterbugging with the Gardiner boy, big-shot high-school football player. The dark man shook his head. When a man’s wife cheats on him, or his daughter goes whoring around, he’s the last person to ever find out. God’s mercy, Green thought. If Otto Klein ever found out what his daughter did nights, he’d beat her to jelly.

But there was no sign of the person he’d come for. Green checked his watch, near eleven. Time to pack it in. Get some sleep, start fresh in the morning.

***

After Alan left Tom Ireland’s house, he walked back across the railroad tracks into downtown. Coming up on Main Street, he got a heavy whiff of good cooking, so he followed his nose to the red-brick Pacific Café, went inside, sat at an empty table. He slid his book bag across the table top, then looked around. Every wall was covered with framed photographs of major-league baseball players. Some, Alan had no trouble recognizing from his seat, Joe DiMaggio, Babe Ruth, Pee Wee Reese. Stan Musial, bat cocked, seemed to have a place of honor, occupying an entire wall panel at eye level. Well, sure, this was St. Louis territory.

The waitress, a thin, gray-haired woman in a flowered apron, flashed him a motherly smile as she handed him the menu. “You from out of town, young man?”

Alan nodded. “Yes, ma’am, I just got in from New Jersey.” The boy’s gut punctuated his sentence with a gurgle.

The woman laughed. “Sounds like you could use some of our chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes. We make our own white gravy from scratch, and it’s the best in Missoura. Tastes even better than it smells.”

When Alan finished the heap of food, the waitress told him he wouldn’t be sorry if he topped off his meal with a piece of their own apple pie, a la mode, the only way to have it, and no, he wasn’t sorry. As he paid the bill, he asked the cashier if there was a good hotel nearby, nothing fancy, just clean. “Sure is,” she told him. “The Milner’ll do you. Outside the door, you go left, cross Ohio, then go another block to Lamine, and you’re right there.”

Alan thanked her, followed her directions, and was up in his room a quarter-hour before Alonzo Green began to look for him. He considered going back down to the lobby to watch the western movie they had on the TV, but once in the room, all the excitement of the past two days hit him. The boy took off his clothes, stood under a warm shower, then hit the bed and didn’t see the world again until almost nine o’clock next morning.

***

As the boy left his room to hunt up breakfast, it occurred to him to stash his book bag in the dresser drawer, but he shook his head, no. He’d heard about maids going through peoples’ stuff in hotel rooms.

The Pacific Café’s pancakes and eggs sounded really good, but so did the biscuits and gravy; he resolved the dilemma by ordering the first with a side of the second. Smart choice. They sure did know how to cook in Sedalia, and they weren’t skimpy with their servings. He paid his bill, then walked out. and up West Main, past the entrance to the Main Street Cigar Store, where a dark man in a bashed tan fedora idly thumbed through magazines in a wire rack.

Now what? The streets and sidewalks were deserted, and from every direction came the sound of church bells. Alan wished he had at least some idea of when Mr. Campbell was due in. Maybe there’d be a reception for him, a bunch of people at the railroad station, rolling out a long red carpet and cheering as he stepped off the train.

The boy retraced his steps along Main, then turned the corner. The colored man at the magazine rack stepped out of the doorway and smiled as he watched Alan cross the street and go into the MoPac Station.

Inside the station, the boy walked up to the ticket window. Different clerk from yesterday, good. “What time does the train from Los Angeles come in?”

The clerk smiled. “Expecting somebody, sonny?”

“My grandpa.”

“Didn’t he tell you what train he’d be on?”

Alan shook his head. “He just said he’d be here today.”

The clerk’s face went sour. “I swan, people today! Well, from Los Angeles, your grandpa’s gonna have to change in Kans’ City, and there’ll be more’n one train come in there from L. A. So I really don’t know what to tell you. Sorry.”

“That’s okay,” Alan said. “Thanks anyway.”

He walked out into what was developing into a sunny day. pulled his jacket tighter around himself, zipped it. He wanted to do something, felt as if he had to do
something
.

His eyes fell on a sign at the street corner: Liberty Park, with an arrow below the words. On Sundays back home, sometimes he’d go up to Eastside Park, play some tennis, go to the carousel with the big organ, have some ice cream or popcorn. Some Sundays, there were concerts on the bandstand. He hurried back inside. “How do I get to Liberty Park, please?” he asked the ticket clerk.

The man eyed him. “Bit of a walk.”

“I don’t mind.”

The clerk pointed outside. “Go down to Third, then turn right and keep on walking. Liberty Park starts at the corner of Third and Park. You miss it, you need to get yourself some glasses.”

Alan thanked him, and went out. All the way down Third, the boy and the dark man moved in tandem, two blocks between them.

***

Liberty Park was pretty, but not much was happening, just a couple of families enjoying picnics on the grass. Maybe after church was out, it’d get livelier. Alan walked toward the lake, where ducks and geese fed at water’s edge, found a comfortable spot under a maple tree just coming into leaf. He sat against the tree, opened the book bag and took out the journal. Might as well have another read, see if he’d missed anything important.

Alonzo Green hunkered down behind a giant maple next to the bandstand. Damn, if those picnickers were just a little farther away, he could amble over and make like a snake, grab the book out of the kid’s hands, and take off. But if the kid gave him any trouble, or started yelling, the picnickers could decide to have themselves a little Sunday coon-chase. Alonzo told himself to cool off. He’d been on stakeouts a lot longer than this one.

An hour and a half later, the kid closed the book, slipped it into the bag. Green started to stand, but then the kid put the bag under his head and stretched out on the grass. Green couldn’t see whether his eyes were open or shut. Didn’t matter. He had to wait this one out.

***

While Alan lay under Green’s surveillance, daydreaming about how grateful Brun Campbell was going to be and how he might show that gratitude, a mountain of a Negro man, neatly dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, Navy-blue tie, and black derby got off the train from St. Louis. He wasn’t about to admit it to anybody, but it did make him nervous, coming out to this little burg in the middle of Noplace, Missouri to scratch around and find a white boy with five thousand dollars. No question, people were going to notice him, and he wondered whether he should’ve dressed down a bit. Nah, probably not. Any way he dressed, the Reubens weren’t going to miss a six-foot, six-inch, three hundred-pound colored man who shows up out of nowhere. If he was lucky, he’d get his business done in a hurry, and if he was really lucky, the kid would still have the money on him. But if he’d already bought the book from this Mrs. Joplin, wherever the hell she lived, he’d take the little bastard there by the ear, and get back the dough.

Slim followed the crowd out of the terminal. He felt one small step away from starving. That stuff on trains they call food looks and smells like somebody already ate it and it came outa one end or the other. First move, he’d get a good meal inside of him, and then he’d find a place to stay. He scanned the crowd, saw a young colored man in a slick yellow suit, derby to match. Slim hustled up, tugged at his arm. The dude spun, hand inside his suit jacket in nothing flat. Man’s got a problem, Slim thought. Best it don’t get to be mine. He smiled. “Sorry, didn’t mean to make you nervous. You know where a man can get some decent food here on a Sunday?”

The young man relaxed. His pencil-thin mustache spread even thinner. “If’n you was white, I could tell you a lotta places. But since you ain’t, I’ll take you by Davis’ Café, over on East Main, I gotta go that way anyhow. Maybe it ain’t the Ritz, but ‘least you won’t get poisoned.”

Slim tipped his hat. “Much obliged.”

***

The big man leaned back in his chair and burped louder than he’d intended. The pork chops and gravy had gone down real easy, and the custard pie hadn’t been any trouble, either. He waved at the waitress, a chubby young woman with ebony hair halfway down her back. Girl must spend half her tips on Mrs. C. W. Walker’s hair straightener.

She smiled at Slim. “Bring you something more?”

He shook his head. “Just the tab. And if you can tell me which hotel I oughta be goin’ to, I’d be obliged.”

The waitress gave him a long, hard look. “You ain’t from ‘round here, are you?”

“No, I’m just in from N’ Jersey. Why you askin’?”

“’Cause if you was from these parts, you’d know you ain’t gonna be stayin’ at no hotel.”

“That’s how it is here? I thought I was comin’ to Missoura, not Miss’ippi.”

The waitress jutted a hip. “Listen, Mister, I been to Miss’ippi, and it ain’t nothin’ here like it is there. Colored and white gets along pretty good in Sedalia, we don’t have no trouble. Long as you knows your place and stays there, you be fine. But a wise-mouth nigger’s gonna go back to Jersey without the teeth he came here with. Now…” She pointed toward the street. “You just take you’self down Main to Kentucky, ‘bout three blocks. Right past the feed store, you go up the li’l stairway, and that be Olive Simmons’ place. She gonna give you a good, clean room, seventy-five cents a night. An’ that be ninety cents for your dinner.”

Slim pulled a small roll of bills from his pocket, put one in the woman’s hand, then replaced the bills and brought out a handful of change. “Keep the dime, and here’s another quarter for your kindness.”

The waitress’ face brightened. “Wish we had more like you here, Mister.”

“Ain’t no more like me any place.” The big man threw back his head and laughed.

***

He trudged along Main Street, glancing right and left. Sad-lookin’ burg, no wonder that girl got so happy over a quarter. A man could live here a whole lot cheaper’n in New Jersey, that is if you could call it livin’. Slim’s legs felt weighted, his suitcase heavy. After that long damn train ride, and with a belly-full of food, he had himself a good case of the Sunday afternoon drowsies. Before he did anything else, he’d go get that room at Miz Simmons’ and grab a nap.

He crossed Ohio, not a moving car in sight, and walked slowly along West Main. But at the corner of Osage, his fatigue suddenly vanished. Halfway down the block, coming right at him, there was that boy. Alan. Carrying some kind of blue knapsack…hold on. He’s setting down the sack. Tying his shoelace.

Slim’s eyes bulged. His nostrils flared, then he dropped his suitcase, took off across Osage, and as he approached the boy, went into overdrive. Alan looked up, saw the huge man bearing down on him, grabbed his book bag and started to run, but Slim caught him from behind, spun him around, then steadied him on his feet and turned on a grin the size of Texas. “Well, now, Mr. Alan Chandler, what a surprise we got here. Fancy us just chancin’ to meet like this in Sedalia, Missouri.”

Alan tried to wrench away, but Slim had a firm hold on both his arms. If that lad was white before, the big man thought, now he be bleached. Slim shoved him against the wall next to the window of the Main Street Cigar Store. “Boy, you just hold you’self real still now, or you gonna be sorry you ever was born.” Slim pulled back the lapel of his jacket, just enough to show a pistol in a holster. “Make one bad move, and it be the last move you ever make. Now. I do b’lieve you got something in that bag there for me.”