The Dying Crapshooter's Blues (15 page)

Late in the evening, through the night, and into dawn, trains pulled into Terminal Station, their cars disgorging an extra number of passengers in their fines carrying stringed instruments. Others, less well dressed, rode the blinds. The railroad bulls threw up their hands as men and even a few women scrambled
from beneath the freight cars and hightailed it across the yard, their guitars and banjos banging off their sides as they headed for the safety of Broad Street. More rode on jitneys that rolled in from remote country crossroads and in flivvers that rattled down from mountains to the north of the city.

However they had arrived, all headed for the Dixie, crowding the lobby with bodies, chatter, and music. It grew so chaotic that the desk clerk, a red-haired, pimple-faced young fellow named Sidney Petty, woke the hotel manager, Mr. Morgan, who got dressed and came down from his suite on the second floor to survey the rowdy scene. He made a quick decision to let the crowd stay. While the music was raucous to the ear, the players weren't causing any trouble; indeed, though excited, they were to a woman or man humble and polite, unlike some guests he could name. Not to mention that they were purchasing so many breakfasts that the Negro cook had to send a boy racing with his wagon to the market on Butler Street for more eggs and ham.

 

Lieutenant Collins had just settled down at his desk with his first cup of coffee when his telephone set jangled. He picked up the receiver, listened to the muttered message, then replaced it in the cradle.

“Sonofabitch,” he whispered, and then called out the news. The other cops gave him a brief, startled look that was followed by a flurry of motion and noise as they rose from their desks and hurried for their coats and hats.

Collins took Detective Sergeant Nichols aside. “I'm putting you in charge,” he said. Nichols looked momentarily surprised, then headed out with the others.

Collins crossed to stand by one of the tall back windows that looked down on the tracks of the Georgia Railroad Yard. Without knowing the details, he was not much surprised to learn that patrolman J. R. Logue had been found dead in an alley just a few blocks away.

It made a sad kind of sense. Logue had a problem with drink, to put it kindly, which was the reason he was still walking a beat while in his forties. It was a standing joke around headquarters that he had been busted down so many times he had stopped bouncing. Such a hopeless sot had no business wearing a uniform. Yet there he was, an Atlanta police officer. Or had been until last night.

Logue had been assigned to a beat in the rough colored streets that ran from the rail yards north to Ellis Street between Courtland and Fort. These blocks, still swathed in a morning gray that Collins could see from the window, contained dozens of Atlanta's meanest speakeasies, pool halls, and storefront gambling parlors. Part of a beat cop's job was to collect the weekly “business fee” from these low-down joints, then move on to the next one. Logue couldn't handle the duty because once he made a stop, he tended to stay and spend whatever he collected, lose it at cards or dice, or have it picked from his pocket.

Collins tried to remember if Logue was the one who had once gotten so drunk in one of these dives that he had been stripped of his uniform and his revolver and left snoring in his union suit on the sawdust floor. The story had gone around for years.

The lieutenant could not fathom how the man had managed to stay on the police force all this time, even one as incompetent and corrupt as Atlanta's. Logue was no good to anyone, a bumbling liability who could not be trusted with even the simplest graft. And yet no matter how many reprimands were tucked in his file or how many clownish scrapes entangled him, he had never been put out. Someone had been protecting him, and Collins assumed it was Captain Jackson. Even a drunken fool like Logue could serve as a loyal soldier for a man like the Captain, asking only to retire with a pension large enough for him to drink himself to death.

If that was the case, the lieutenant reflected, the plan hadn't worked out. J. R. Logue had retired, but there would be no pension. He wouldn't need it.

Collins was about to turn away from the window when he saw a police sedan pull in off the street and come to a stop directly below. The passenger door opened and the Captain unfolded from the street. Collins recognized the driver, a thick-bodied corporal named Baker, known as a physical brute, the kind that struck mortal fear in the hearts of suspects. He was an odd choice for a driver, but then the Captain would have his reasons.

The lieutenant grabbed his coat and left the detectives' section on his way to the Maddox Street scene of the homicide of patrolman J. R. Logue, using the back stairs in order to avoid his superior officer.

 

The two fellows from the record company had taken one room and one suite on the top floor of the hotel, the room for sleeping, the suite for auditions and recordings. They had hopes for a steady crowd; neither expected a mob, though it was a cheerful mob all the same. The only trouble came from some guests who were incensed at having their morning routines disrupted. Every few minutes, a sales agent would step to the desk and ask what all the damned hicks were doing there, and in a voice loud enough for anyone to hear, had anyone been listening. Sidney Petty would explain about the recording, and Mr. Morgan would chime in to suggest the fellow think of it as a circus passing through. Even more impressive, the Dixie Hotel was going on the map as the place where records that would be heard from coast to coast had been made. This bit of news seemed to placate most of them. The few who continued to complain were just the crabby sort.

Standing by the front desk, Mr. Morgan watched and listened for a little while longer. It was an orderly enough assembly and a
true boon in the slow days before Christmas. At least none of the country folk had shown up with a chicken or a pig in tow, though some of the clothes they wore made them look like they had come directly from a vaudeville show. He told Sidney to keep an eye out for trouble, then went back upstairs to his rooms.

As dawn broke into day, the news about what was going on at the hotel made its way to the offices of the city's two dailies, and an early arriving editor sent a reporter to see about the commotion. What the scribbler found was a milling, noisy crowd and much music. He made his way up to the fourth floor to speak to a distracted Mr. Purcell about the goings-on in the lobby, and then, miffed that the record man didn't drop what he was doing to answer his questions, returned to the newsroom to explain that there was nothing worth filing, just a swarm of hillbillies plucking banjos, all intent on their raw and boisterous music, and not a buffoon or funny drunkard among them.

Anyway, something more promising in the way of headlines was brewing in an alley off the colored end of Decatur Street, and the reporter was sent off to see about that.

Meanwhile, the hotel doors swung open as more musicians trickled in. A few of the later arrivals looked around and grumbled that more days should have been scheduled. Those were few and far between; most of them were pleased just to be there. A handful of performers of the music hall variety arrived with scores in hand, gaped at the unwashed assembly, and walked right back out.

The list of performers was tended by Jake Stein, who every fifteen minutes or so would escort the next half-dozen hopefuls up to the fourth floor. The candidates would wait in the hallway to be called into the suite and invited to perform two songs for Mr. Purcell and his assistant.

After the second song ended, a few terrible seconds would pass as the two men in the chairs consulted in whispers. Then Jake would either issue an invitation to come back in the afternoon or offer a polite dismissal in the form of a suggestion that they try again the next time the company was in town. He would also mention that he'd heard that the Victor people might be making a visit soon. . . .

Those who were asked to come back would descend to the lobby on a cloud, delighted at the prospect of cutting a record, though unaware that they were a small part of history. Meanwhile, those who had been rejected would skulk down the stairs and out the back door. A few might gather themselves and return in coming years, all the more determined. Most of them would never be heard from again, though over the years they would rhapsodize about that time they had auditioned for Mr. George Purcell.

The lobby stayed busy until nine o'clock, when the din settled a bit as the first wave of commotion broke and receded.

Some minutes went by, and a sudden
chang
like a passel of brash bells rang out over the roil of voices and instruments. There was a second of startled silence, and then heads turned, voices faded, and fingers went still. At the front desk, Sidney noticed the sharp change in the room and stood up on his tiptoes, but he was still too short to see what was going on.

A twelve-string guitar echoed, now sounding like fingers slamming down on the keys of a harpsichord. A clear and high tenor voice with just a bit of a smoky edge and a familiar gospel tinge pierced the air over the assembled heads.

 

Feel like a broke-down engine

Ain't got no drivin' wheel,

Feel like a broke-down engine

Ain't got no drivin' wheel,

Y'all been down and lonesome,

You know how a good man feel.

 

With the first boom of his Stella's strings, Willie sensed the pause, then the stares turning his way as the chatter ebbed. No
one yelled for him to stop, so he launched into the song and another wave of murmurs crossed the room.

Some of the bodies parted as people shuffled to get a closer look, and Sidney was finally able to see the young man in a three-piece suit playing the big guitar. A young blind man. A young
colored
blind man. The clerk stared for a second, then whispered to the bellboy to go fetch Mr. Morgan again.

Five minutes and two songs later, Mr. Morgan came down the stairs, frowning grumpily at being disturbed. He could hear the brassy voice and guitar as he skirted the edge of the crowd to the desk. He bent his head and Sidney told him about the Negro in the corner, how everyone else had gone quiet when he started playing. Mr. Morgan nodded, his eyes flicking. He knew that colored singers were allowed on the porches of hotels during tobacco season, but it was as far as they got, and it was down in the country, where it didn't matter.

He walked to the staircase and mounted a half-dozen steps so he could see over the crowd. A circle had opened around a young, well-dressed Negro with a big-boxed guitar. The manager, who knew more than a little about good music, perked an ear, momentarily entranced despite himself. This was no street-corner moaner; the man's voice had depth and timbre, and he picked his guitar with his fingers, so that it sounded like a piano. The song ended to applause and a swell of chatter. There were calls for more, and the Negro started another song, this one in a minor key.

 

Big star fallin', mama, faint long fore day

Big star fallin', mama, faint long fore day

 

Mr. Morgan stood there listening for another half minute. As good as the fellow sounded, he couldn't let this go on. He descended the steps and worked his way back to the front desk to whisper instructions to the clerk.

 

Someone came knocking early on Joe's door, a hard thump that brought him out of his sleep in a sharp jerk. Blinking, he imagined Adeline out there or, worse, Sweet with one of his big kitchen knives in hand.

He turned his head, saw only the impression of Pearl's body, and caught the scent she'd left on the sheets, a mixture of magnolia perfume and an earthier musk. A bleary glance around the room told him that she had dressed and gone, all without a sound.

“Who is it?” he called.

“Message!” a voice called out. A folded sheet of paper appeared under the door. Then quiet footsteps receded down the hall.

Joe sat up and swung his legs off the bed, gazing blankly at the paper as the night before came back to him.

Pearl, working her lush magic, had cadged her way into his room, then used her other charms to work her way into the bed. He knew he needed to ask her about the Payne mansion, but before he could speak the first word, she had dropped onto the mattress and stretched her long, sinewy, heavy-breasted body, stunning him as if he'd been poleaxed. He hadn't seen her in almost six months and, as always, it was like he was meeting her for the first time, being dazed by her beauty and overcome by her carnal heat all over again. So he surrendered all over again.

As he tumbled with her, he said, “Sweet's going to kill me.”

To which she replied, “Then I better make this worth it.”

Joe had laughed, because she could do it. Then he groaned a little. There was nothing funny about what her brother would do if he found out he'd let her in. He had as much as made a promise to stay away from her and the Inman Park burglary was all the more reason to keep it. He just couldn't do it.

Sitting on the bed, he revisited the blissful moments just before they settled down to sleep. He had been too drowsy and too
drunk on her to make his brain work enough to ask her about Saturday night. The one time he started to, she put her lips to his ear and said, “Don't worry, it's going to be all right,” as if she'd read his mind. That was the last thing he remembered before he drifted into the sweet cocoon of her body curling around him.

That tender memory went away, and his smile with it. He had told himself they'd talk about it in the morning, only to find she had slipped away before he could get to it. Frowning at the paper on the floor, he came back to the hard present, wondering if now might be a good time to pack his suitcase, go by Schoen Alley to offer a last farewell to Little Jesse, and catch the next thing smoking out of Union Depot.