Leavin' Trunk Blues (30 page)

“What was it?”

“Don’t remember.”

“What time did you leave?”

“Man, I don’t remember what I had for breakfast.”

“Pork and beans?” Kate asked.

“That’s right. Yeah, man, pork and beans.”

“Stay with me, Jimmy,” Nick said. He leaned close to the old harp player. He could feel the vibe of apprehension surrounding him. “I need to know it step by step. Billy Lyons was murdered at the studio.”

‘ “C’mon, man, she killed that man in her bed.”

“Jimmy?” Nick said.

“Man, what you want?”

“Jimmy, tell me what happened at the studio.”

“I told you all I know. I ain’t holdin’ back. C’mon, man, I don’t know who killed Billy. And fuckin’ up my favorite show ain’t gonna make me change my mind.”

“But you’re sure Jordan was there that night?” Nick asked.

“Sure, man.”

“Jordan said he wasn’t here,” Nick said. “There was no mention of him in the court records.”

“Jordan couldn’t find his ass with both hands and a flashlight,” Jimmy said.

Suddenly, Trebek’s voice disappeared. The lights overhead shut off and the buzzing sound of space heaters stopped. Their glowing red rods dissolving into blackness. Nick could hear his

own breath and feel Kate’s hand on his arm.

“Where’s a flashlight when you need one,” Jimmy said in the darkness.

Nick flicked open his lighter and followed Jimmy to the front desk. A few of the tenants had wandered from the rooms like zombies to gripe and complain. A fat black man opened his door, scratched his balls, yawned, and walked back into his room. An elderly woman screamed and then yelled several times for the woman at the front desk. But the Cheetos woman was nowhere to be found.

“Goddamned bitch forgot to the pay the bill,” Jimmy said, pulling out a flashlight from a desk drawer filled with loose change, bottle caps, and stray pieces of papers. “Least she got the sense to tell me where this at.”

Nick handed Kate the flashlight as they followed Jimmy up a creaking back staircase to his room. Mildewed Sheetrock rotted off the walls. Part of the green carpet had been torn away, exposing buckled plywood thick with twisted nails. The whole damned building groaned as residents shuffled in their discomfort.

Kate cut the beam through the filth all the way to the third floor.

The whole slow trip, Jimmy bitched about the service he got in the place that charged him fifty dollars a week. He said it stank, was nasty, and that even the rats were threatening to leave.

“You want to stay with me over Christmas?” Kate asked.

“Oh missy, that’s real cool. But I’m just fine.”

Jimmy unlocked his door and hobbled into his darkened room. The wind whistled through the cracks in his windows as another El train passed, rocking the room like an amusement park earthquake ride. Jimmy opened a sixties-style tan suitcase and pulled out a ski jacket and hat with a balled top. The hat made him look like an elderly rapper.

“Y’all sit down,” Jimmy said. “Come back on in a second.”

Nick took a seat on his unmade bed. Kate found a folding chair and shined the light between them. He felt like they were at camp.

“Guess you couldn’t find Williams?” Jimmy asked, his face bright in the flashlight’s glow.

“Why’s that?”

“Somebody kilt him and his dawg last night,” Jimmy said. “Some kind of Satan worship thang, I think. Why else you kill a dawg?”

“Jesus,” Nick said.

Jimmy kept shaking his head and his grin closed into a pucker. He stared into a dark corner and looked down at his ratty brogan shoes. The dark room fell silent. The wind howled outside and the floors above creaked with old age and pressure. Somewhere on the ledge outside, they could hear the thumps of heavy footsteps.

“What the fuck was that?” Kate asked, washing the flashlight over the windows.

“Pigeons,” Jimmy said, absently. “Hey, man, how ‘bout another smoke?”

“That’s one big-ass pigeon,” Kate said.

The old wooden floor creaked as Nick stood from the bed and grabbed the flashlight. He walked to the window and shined the light on about ten pigeons huddled together in the snow. On the ledge connecting to the El tracks, half of the birds had frozen to death staring into nothing with glazed pinpoint eyes.

Nick flashed the light back in the room at the same metal bed, folding table, and a hot plate. Jimmy’s suitcase sat open on the bed with clothes strewn on the floor. Nick patted his jacket for the cigarettes and pulled out another one for Jimmy. He sighed looking at his empty pack.

Suddenly, the window exploded behind him.

Kate yelled.

A force of twenty anvils broke behind his ear and he was knocked to the ground. In his dimming vision, he reached into his jacket for his Browning and tried to stand.

He closed and opened his eyes as if adjusting to darkness. His hand wavered before him as he watched the shadowed image of the largest black man he’d ever seen raise from the broken glass.

The man had a slick bald head with a long black leather trench coat flowing behind him. The man grinned as he looked down at Nick. The brightness of his teeth lit like a jack-o’-lantern in the dim light from a streetlamp outside.

Kate screamed again as the man pulled Nick from the floor by his jacket and slammed him against a far wall.

Nick headbutted the man a half a dozen times and hot, wet blood spread across his face.

The man’s grip tightened and he tossed Nick across the room.

Kate ran over to the man and attempted a deep punt in his groin, but he backhanded her across the jaw and wrapped his huge hand across her face.

Nick rushed him as the man sank a flash of metal into her side.

Nick yelled and reached again for his Browning before connecting his shoulder with the man’s chest. The man grabbed Nick by his hand and bent back his wrist.

The pain brought him to his knees.

Jimmy jumped on the man’s back, pummeling the man’s head with his fists.

Nick rammed his free hand like a rocket into the black man’s nuts.

The man let Nick’s hand go and he rolled to the floor, pulling out the Browning and aiming it at the man’s mammoth forehead. He could hear their breaths working in the cold room and feel the blood on his face. Nick kept both hands on the gun.

The huge man smiled at him.

Nick thumbed back the hammer.

“Don’t even fuckin’ blink,” Nick said. He couldn’t hear or feel anything. The image of the man’s face burned in his mind. Something stopped him from pulling the trigger, something stopped him from taking the man’s life. His mind flashed to a run-down train station, midnight in Greenwood. Blood. Explosion. Half a man’s head gone.

The huge man grunted and dove back through the broken window pane. Nick looked back at Kate and saw her holding her side in the darkness.

Jimmy held her hand.

Nick jumped through the ragged windowsill into the brittle cold and out onto the El tracks twisting into the South Side night.

He took a deep breath and followed the figure—the man’s black coat flapping behind him like a cape. Nick’s boots drummed on the wooden slats, his labored breath looping a ragged rhythm in his ears as he watched the huge man run toward a bend in the tracks.

The man suddenly stopped, turned, and stood watching Nick in the cold.

Nick could feel the man’s hate in the twenty yards and two tracks that separated them. A piercing wind whistled into his ears as he waited to make a move. He aimed the gun at the figure and thought he made out a smile. Nick spit away the blood caking over his teeth.

The man reached in his coat as Nick dropped to a knee, the Browning held tight in his hand. His hand quivered, his heart a rapid booming beat. As he was about to squeeze the trigger, an El blasted across the tracks between them, scattering snow and dirt into his eyes.

After the train passed, the huge man was gone.

By ten o’clock that night, the snow poured down onto the city like a dense fog, covering fire escapes, rooftops, and leaving a blanket on city streets. About an hour ago, they’d gotten back to Kate’s place after a Chinese doctor with a lisp had sewn up her wound in black thread and dished out a bottle of painkillers. Whatever the big man used to slash Kate didn’t gouge too deep, the doctor said. Only took him just a few minutes to close up the wound while Jimmy and Nick had waited in the lobby talking about Stagger Lee. Then they headed to her place.

Kate lived in an apartment off Dearborn in the Rush Street District. She had a one-bedroom with hardwood floors, a cast- iron tub with clawed feet, cabinets with glass panes, and an old rounded refrigerator. A framed movie poster of Paul Newman’s Harper hung above her couch. harper looks for trouble. see harper look. see harper.

Nick had ordered a pepperoni with mushrooms from Gino’s East and grabbed a six-pack of Budweiser from a White Hen across the street. He propped his snow-soaked boots up on her coffee table, a warm slice in his hand, as he fed Bud a few morsels. The scroungy Jack Russell’s tail buzzed like a hummingbird’s wings as he yelped for another piece.

“If he shits on the floor,” Kate said, grimacing and feeling her side as she twisted in her seat, “you’re cleaning it up.”

“Hey, I found this guy digging through trash cans on Napoleon. I’ve seen him eat molded bread, dirty socks, and cat shit. Deep dish isn’t hurting ‘ole iron stomach.’”

Kate rolled her eyes and let out a long sigh before twisting the cap off her beer. “Screw those painkillers,” she said and stared out at the early snow falling by her eighth-story window. She acted like the whole encounter hadn’t fazed her a bit. But he’d noticed her silence on the car ride home and the way her hands trembled on the wheel. But Kate would never admit fear. She would just bitch later that she should have kicked the man harder.

Behind him, Jimmy rattled around in her bathroom, taking a shower and singing a song Nick had never heard.

“Greasy slice?” Nick asked.

“Yep.”

Nick handed her a piece and scratched Bud on the ears. The dog licked him on the face and gave another loud bark. He tossed a pepperoni in the air and Bud made a flying leap for the catch.

“What about Elmore King?” Kate asked.

“Doyle said he’s set to play at his club tonight. Doesn’t advertise, just comes in and does his thing. Either that or stalk him down at the Checkerboard Lounge on Forty-third Street. Heard he likes to cool down there after a show.”

“What do you think?”

“His club might be worth a shot,” Nick said. “King could put this whole thing together. The murder happening in the studio and any threats from that idiot detective.”

Kate had a smallish, twisted Christmas tree the size of a branch on her kitchen table. A single strand of blue lights blinked with ornaments shaped like bones. Completely Charlie Brown.

“Never made any sense,” Kate said, still watching the snow flickering by the window, her eyes rimmed with fatigue. “Ruby kills Lyons at the studio, then takes him back to her bed? No one in the world could believe a skinny woman, who’s drunk, would take a dead man back to her bed. And then move him again. Florida’s statement alone about the cop’s threats would be enough to reopen the case … let alone finding that big-ass shithead who cut me.”

“And killed Williams.”

“You think?” her voice slightly trembling.

“I know.”

Jimmy walked in the room with a towel around his waist and a turban on his head. He had a toothbrush stuck halfway out of his mouth and a wide toothless smile spread on his face. His chest looked as light and brittle as a bird’s.

“Hey, man, you got some cologne?”

Kate said he could use her perfume. He disappeared back into the bathroom and reemerged wearing Kate’s flannel robe. He smelled like a French whore. Must’ve used the whole damned bottle.

“Wooh, that pizza smells good,” Jimmy said, rubbing his weathered hands together. “I got beans comin’ out my nose.”

Nick handed him a plate and a cold beer.

‘Your clothes should be out of the dryer in about thirty minutes,” Kate said.

“I appreciate it, ma’am.”

“Jimmy, don’t call me ma’am. Make yourself at home, I have plenty of food, beer, gin, and whiskey.”

“Travers, don’t be a fool. Hold on to this woman. Marry her. Tie her up. Shit, man, do somethin’.”

“I’m tryin’, Jimmy, I’m tryin.”

Kate gave a sly, easy grin and scratched Bud’s back. He watched her feet rubbing together. The bright red toenail polish and the one freckle on her right foot. She caught him staring and shot him a glance. She tucked her feet beneath her.

Nick stood, sipped on a beer, and watched the snowplows and city workers from her apartment window. Jimmy devoured the rest of his pizza and swallowed half of the beer in one gulp.

“Why’s he after you, Jimmy? Did he kill Billy? Dawkins and Williams?”

Jimmy looked up into Nick’s eyes with the sweet sadness of a man who had lost his last hand. He shook his head and said, “You can’t beat Stagger Lee. Nobody can beat Stagger Lee. Used to be a wrastler, I heard, come up from Memphis and took over all Billy’s territory. I seen him bend steel bars with his teeth. Probably can shit fire.”