Leavin' Trunk Blues (39 page)

“Thank you,” Jimmy said and closed his eyes.

“What can I bring?” he asked again.

Hours later, as the night closed around the old railcar and the fire smoldered, Jimmy stopped breathing. Nick tucked the old blanket around his friend, jumped out of the railcar, and followed the dirt road coated in ice.

The day’s walk melted into two days of frustration in Chicago when Nick found out Jordan had disappeared. He’d stalked him at his home off Drexel and waited for hours outside the old Diamond studios with no luck. After his bill came due at the Palmer House and Richard had arrived at Kate’s apartment unannounced, he decided it was time to complete his journey. He packed his tattered, green duffel bag, drove to Dwight Correctional one last time, and then boarded the City of New Orleans home as the worst snowstorm since 1967 pelted the city.

Ruby was on her way. That’s all he could ask, he told himself on the trip south.

--

Four months passed before Moses Jordan had to answer questions about the murder of Billy Lyons. He’d tried to fight it with lawyers, an extended vacation from Chicago, and mostly feigned cries of innocence. But the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office finally brought in Jordan that April. Nick was sitting on the roof of his warehouse grading papers on postwar blues when he got the call from Kate that Ruby was about to be released.

As the sun faded over the Mississippi River with a light breeze scattering papers across his beaten deck, he decided to see it through. Jordan was back, she said. He’d been trying to regain his place as a South Side leader after Kate’s articles and the investigation.

The next afternoon, Nick was in Chicago driving toward Diamond Studios. He hadn’t seen Jordan since the breakfast they’d shared at Lou Mitchell’s in December. On that day Jordan had said Jimmy Scott was senile and Stagger Lee was a phantom.

A crisp city rain beat the gray and brown buildings of the South Side as Nick headed north from O’Hare. He knew the man had denied that was his voice on the tape and having anything to do with calling the hit on Billy Lyons, Franky Dawkins, and Leroy Williams. He told newspaper reporters in a prepared statement that Williams’s son and Jimmy Scott were unfortunate casualties of a decaying world.

Shit, the old man would never see the inside of a jail unless he was connected to the recent murders. Kate said the statute of limitations on murder for hire was something like five years. Still, Doyle Brennan said the news of his involvement had hurt Jordan in a more personal way. Most of his charities had dissolved. His friends in city hall ignored his functions and all but a small group of his zealots still clung by his side.

As Nick pulled in front of the two-story brick storefront of Diamond Records, he saw a single light clicked on in the darkness. A sudden roll of thunder hammered through the streets setting off car alarms. Nick took a deep breath and ran for the old studio.

The front door was locked.

He knocked several times, rain soaking his face and jean jacket.

Jordan emerged from a back hallway and walked to the glass door. He had his hand on the lock before looking up into Nick’s eyes. His gaze broke for a moment and he shook his head. His face looked haggard and beaten. He wore a single gray jumpsuit splattered in paint.

Nick tried the door again. The long metal handle was bent and tarnished.

Jordan shook his head again and walked back into the cavern of the old studio.

As the rain drummed all around him, Nick walked around the building until he found a dented metal door by a loading dock. He hopped up onto the platform and tried the back door. It was open. He followed a darkened hallway and heard the sound of old Diamond blues playing and the sound of rough scraping.

Jordan stood on a creaking ladder in the hall working on caked paint along a door frame. A little cassette player sat at the base of the ladder. He looked down at Nick from his perch, slowly walked down the ladder, and shut off the blues.

He folded his arms over his chest and nodded his head. It was almost as if Nick was the one who had screwed up and Jordan was about to give the lecture. They stood there for a few moments looking at each other—the rain pinging away on the old roof above—until Jordan finally spoke.

“Heard they lettin’ Ruby out.”

Nick nodded.

“Then I guess you can leave us alone.”

Nick didn’t say a word. He just watched Jordan’s jowled face twitch in the dim light and left him to work his own explanations in the uncomfortable silence.

“You’ve made me into something I’m not,” Jordan said.

The water clicked and beaded off the front pane glass window. The halls smelled of hot vinyl and fresh paint.

“I didn’t make you anything,” Nick said. ‘You brought him into everyone’s world.”

Jordan looked away at the front window where decaying warehouses and vacant lots were being drenched in the afternoon shower. The streets rolled with the downpour.

“You’ve ruined everything I’ve tried to do to this neighborhood. Do you know how many failures you’re responsible for, son? Do you have any idea of the lives you’ve ruined?”

Nick let him talk.

“I’ve been working my whole life to help others. I’ve made some bad decisions. But you got to look at the whole picture. A single man’s life don’t mean that much.”

“I’ll let Ruby know.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with any of them being killed. You can’t control Stagger Lee.”

“I thought he was an urban legend.”

Jordan looked down at the paint splattered on his old walking shoes.

“I just have one question,” Nick said.

Jordan looked up. His droopy face hanging in the hall’s glow.

“Why did you want Billy dead? I understand the others were just to cover your ass. They lied for you in the depositions. But what was so damned important about Billy?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know you got control of all the recordings, King’s contract, and were able to make a sweet deal with the Diamond Brothers. But there had to be something else.”

Jordan walked to the front window. Trails of water droplets scattered over the clear panes in a million directions. Completely random paths catching in the gray light.

“You need to go now,” Jordan said softly.

“I want an answer.” Seemed strange sitting there with a legend of Chicago blues and calling him a liar. This man was one of his heroes.

Jordan stabbed his stubby finger into Nick’s chest. He looked like he wanted to get his words past his clenched teeth, but something was holding him back.

“Let me tell you one goddamned thing,” Jordan finally said after the fifth jab. “You think you know me? You study my songs, you write about my life and my travels. Makes you a bluesman, does it? You understand so much about us. You want to be us. But you know what? You can never be us. You ain’t shit. Now get the fuck off my property before I call the police.”

“I don’t give a shit, call them,” Nick said. “I want to know why you had Billy killed. Power? Did he have too much control?”

Jordan kept looking at the decay in the broad window before him. The Diamond Records logo was painted backward in the middle of the glass pane.

“Get out.”

“You know, I used to keep a picture of you in my office. Man, I thought you were brilliant. I can name every song you wrote and the date it hit vinyl. But now … I just see a warped old man.”

Jordan swung at Nick and popped him hard in the ear. Nick felt his ear tingle with the jab and the blood rush through the cartilage.

He smiled.

“Always knew you had it in you,” Nick said. “Knew you could do one thing yourself without having someone handle it. Now you’re on your own, you’ll have plenty of practice.”

Jordan pushed him hard with the flat of his palms. “Leave.”

Nick turned to walk away but at the end of the hallway, near the old loading bay where records were shipped, he turned back to Jordan. He could hear the hollow sounds his boots made in the concrete cavern.

“They never found Stagger Lee,” Nick said.

Jordan looked away, a tattered red rag in his hand.

“He’ll always own you,” Nick said. “That’s something you’ll always have in your life.”

Nick was sure the sound of his boots grew smaller and smaller until he closed the door behind him and walked out into a Chicago rain.

The bridges in Chicago are synchronized in a ballet of screaming steel and clanging gears to allow sailboats and cargo ships to flow from Lake Shore Drive to the Eisenhower Expressway. Something like fifty of them all around the city. Of course, a lot of people probably hated them because they clogged up traffic. But they reminded Nick of something out of Venice or Paris. Something romantic about the serenity of spanning the churning water below. He leaned over the Michigan Avenue bridge, by the Tribune Tower, and watched an architecture tour boat cruise underneath the steel grate. A cool spring breeze rustled his hair as he lit a cigarette.

He couldn’t stop thinking about the dream with Billy Lyons surrounded by the green glow. His mind flashing to thoughts of Elmore King and Jimmy Scott. King. The twisted knot of lies that clung so tightly for almost forty years. Billy Lyons sealed away in the hardened earth of Illinois, so far away from the Clarksdale sun.

Promised land.

He had spoken to Kate a few times since he left the day after Christmas. He’d figured there wasn’t much to talk about with Richard hanging out at her place. But she’d later told Nick he shouldn’t have worried. Richard left the day after he arrived. Nick smiled at the thought of that pompous asshole getting the high hat.

Kate walked quickly out of the
Tribune
, her jaw muscles clenched. “She’s gone,” Kate said. “Ruby got an early release and didn’t even tell us.”

“When?” Nick asked squinting into the wind and looking toward Lake Michigan.

“Last night,” she said sweeping the hair out of her eyes. “Somebody from a prisoner’s release program took her to the bus station. That’s all they know at Dwight. Or say they know. Didn’t even take anything from her cell. Get this, she wore the clothes she had on in nineteen fifty-nine.”

Kate crossed her arms across her chest. “Where could she go?”

“Have a good friend already on it.” Nick smiled.

“You want to share your information?”

“Let’s just say she’s not within driving distance.”

“I see … Still, I can’t believe she didn’t call to thank us or anything.”

“What did you expect, Kate? Flowing tears at her release? Cameras flashing?”

“Shit, my editor’s gonna be pissed.”

Nick tossed the cigarette on the bridge and ground it under his boot. “There’s always the Picayune.”

“Oh, no. Took me years to get here, Travers. I have my family here, my friends. What more could a girl want?”

He stared out at Lake Michigan and said, “Depends on what you’re looking for.”

“Would you quit spouting off bullshit and tell me what you mean, Travers. We’ve been playing this game for ten years.”

A group of men in identical blue suits wandered by, pushing Kate closer to Nick on the bridge. She grabbed his arm and looked up into his eyes. She raised her eyebrows in impatience.

“How about when I’m with you, I don’t want to be anywhere else in the world. I am completely happy.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

“That’s pretty good for a con artist.” Kate smiled as Nick tucked her brown hair behind her ear. “We’re still going to dinner? Rosa’s. Drinking. A possibility of dancing. Right?”

“I’m serious.” Nick pressed his index finger to her thick lips and traced his hand down to her chin. He slowly lifted up her head, leaned over, and kissed her. Steady, closed mouth. Deep. He could feel the spring wind rattling his blue jean jacket. She kept her eyes closed as he kissed her on the forehead.

It was one of those moments when you understand mortality with an unshakable clarity. You seem to understand the moment for its fleeting beauty, its arcane details, and gift of the one you love.

“Come back with me,” he said.

She made a motion with her lips like she was trying to say something, but he could tell no words would come.

The Mississippi Delta blurred across my vision as the tired old Greyhound rolled down Highway 61 and into Clarksdale. I felt like I was floatin’ in my high seat as I watched the sun-bleached two- lane, the tilled brown earth of the cotton fields, and abandoned brick buildings crawlin’ with kudzu. I just knew anytime a guard would shake me and tell me it had all been a dream. I’d have to dress and wait for the locks to pop down the row of prison cells in an invitation to relive my tired life.

But I could feel the warm spring sun on my brown arm as I leaned close to the glass and watched a landscape I could almost taste. When I closed my eyes I believed Chicago had been an illusion. I didn’t know the person who wanted to leave Mississippi. She lived somewhere on the opposite side of the earth.