Reach the Shining River (2 page)

3.

On Saturday night, Eddie hadn’t shown for work. Arlene was in the Sunset Club dressing room, if you could call it that, putting on her make-up. Piney Brown came in without knocking.

“Where is he?”

“What’s a lady got to do to get some privacy around here, Piney?”

She sat on a beer barrel peering into a shard of broken mirror. Her hand shook, making it tough to get her lipstick straight. Behind Piney was the buzz of a full house.

“I can’t wait no longer.”

“Then get Otis to play,” she said. “He knows the tunes.”

“Otis all gowed-up.”

“So what? The man plays better when he’s high.”

She drew in her lips to seal the color and carefully wiped the corners of her mouth. She did not want to think about Eddie right now. It was all she could do to get ready for the show. Busiest night of the week. He wanted to get all personal about this, well, that was his problem. Otis might lose the rhythm once or twice, but nobody would notice.

Piney fretted. “I don’t know, Arlene.”

She stood up, smoothed the sequins of her gown, adjusted the camellia in her hair. “Get Otis to warm ’em up,” she said.

“What you opening with?”

“‘Lady Be Good’. In G.”

*

A full house was tough on the nerves but easier to gather and please. If you knew what you were doing, and Arlene did. Had known from the beginning when, eleven years old, she sang “Go Tell It on the Mountain” in the Mount Zion church choir. Hitting the notes, yes. But plenty of singers could carry a tune. You had to get the audience involved. Start a conversation with them. You had to have soul.

Otis was at the piano, warming the crowd with a little boogie-woogie. Piney gave him the high sign and he segued into the first song.

The audience stirred, and faces turned stage left. Draymen, day laborers, housecleaners, cooks, domestics: these folks worked with their hands but knew their chord progressions. “Lady Be Good” was Arlene’s calling card – not the white-bread Fred Astaire arrangement but Bill Basie’s Kansas City version, up-tempo, swinging, with Lester Young soloing on tenor like he was making love to the long-legged gal serving drinks.

Arlene stepped into the light, singing just a shade behind the beat, her hands moving down along the sequins of her dress, from breasts to hips to thighs. It wasn’t the words that carried the soul but the ghost of Young’s saxophone, its sexy lines floating in her mind. Voices called out from the semi-darkness, filled with lust and admiration and surprise. Glasses clinked. The air was blue with cigarette smoke. Ecstasy and longing and gospel shouts. But this wasn’t church.

Listen
to
my
tale
of
woe

It’s
terribly
sad
but
true

All
dressed
up
,
no
place
to
go

Each
evening
I’m
awfully
blue
.

The audience went with her from the start. Otis was just good enough. She followed with “All of Me”, “If You Were Mine” and “It’s Too Hot for Words”. Then another of her torch songs, “Body and Soul”.

My
heart
is
sad
and
lonely

For
you
I
sigh
,
for
you
dear
only

Why
haven’t
you
seen
it

I’m
all
for
you
,
body
and
soul
.

Out of the lyrics he appeared. Unexpected. Looming in her mind, cool and easy, pork-pie hat pulled low over his brow and cigarette glowing between his lips. From between the lines of a song, like Young’s tenor sax.

Her heart lurched. She struggled to continue.

Eddie. My man is gone. Her piano player for three years, her loverman for two. To her bed he had come, once, twice a week. To comfort her with long-fingered hands and marijuana-scented breath. To hum the blues as he stroked her hair.

It was too much. Onstage, she faltered. Dropped a line, missed a beat. Otis glanced at her. The audience allowed the lapse, willed her to get back in the groove. But they knew she was lost.

Something bad had happened, she knew that as clearly as if the police had shown up at her door. The song told her. Eddie would never have abandoned her to someone like Otis. Especially not over a silly argument.

She moved to the side of the stage, out of the lights, overcome with tears. Otis let the ballad die out and shifted to a brisk blues. But her throat was frozen. Piney paced the floorboards in a panic as the audience grew restless.

Big Joe Turner rescued her. Standing behind the bar, a glass in each hand, he belted out:

Goin’
to
Chicago
,
sorry
that
I
can’t
take
you

Goin’
to
Chicago
,
sorry
that
I
can’t
take
you

There
ain’t
nothin’
in
Chicago

For
a
monkey
woman
like
you
to
do
.

The audience revived. Arlene slinked off to the dressing room, slowly closing the door behind her.

4.

Fay’s ambitions were simple but expensive: a house on Ward Parkway, a wardrobe from Bancroft’s, a European tour, and a social life that snagged regular mention in Henrietta Kincaid’s
Tattler
column. Emmett’s role was even simpler: serve his time with the county and move to Perkins & Graves. Lloyd Perkins had no sons. Emmett would have to be as thick as Dickie Brewster not to slide in as partner when Lloyd retired. And Emmett was not thick. He had finished second in his law school class. And though he’d dreamed since graduation of becoming district attorney and some day (some day!) running for Congress, time with the city’s best law firm would do no harm, whatever his aim.

Mission Hills was part of the package. Membership meant you were among the elect; more business got done on its greens than in all the boardrooms in Kansas City put together. Mind you, you could count the number of Catholic members on one hand, but a word from Lloyd, and the stain of Emmett’s original sin would fade away. The man had that kind of pull.

Emmett made sure he was on time. He left his car with the valet and passed though the porticoed entrance into the grand vestibule. It was plush and subdued. Staff glided silently beneath slowly rotating ceiling fans. The trophy cases gleamed and the walls were full of photographs of bright young Protestants lifting golf and tennis trophies. From distant rooms came the low rumble of male laughter and the clink of silver on good china.

“Emmett.”

Lloyd tripped across the vestibule flags, ruddy and relaxed after eighteen holes and a solid lunch.

“Let’s go to the cigar room.”

Lloyd’s pals were in the far corner, grouped around a cold fireplace. Bob Perkins sat heavy in a leather armchair, his egghead sparkling with sweat. Perched at his ear was a small man with inflamed cheeks and shifty eyes and a notebook at the ready. Beside the fireplace, two men in dark suits stood smoking stogies and holding snifters of brandy at their belts. They looked sated and content but alert to possibility. Lloyd’s friends never slept.

“You know Robert, of course.”

“Wonderful wedding yesterday, Mr. Perkins.”

The big man nodded, did not rise.

“Will Hutchins and Charles Hayes. My son-in-law, Emmett Whelan.”

They all shook hands. Bob’s assistant clearly didn’t merit an introduction.

“You the county prosecutor?” Hutchins said. He had a Mark Twain mustache, crinkly eyes, and a mouth that grimaced as it asked a question.

“Assistant,” Emmett said.

“You know… what’s his name, Charlie? The Hudson kid?”

“Roddy.”

“Hell of a name.”

“I do know Roddy Hudson,” Emmett said. He was a year ahead of me at law school. Heads the Criminal Division now.”

“Frank’s boy,” Lloyd said.

“Francis Jeremiah Hudson. Commanded the American First at Verdun.”

“On the board at National Commerce.”

The older men went silent, contemplating a time when the glories of war added luster to a man’s standing and stock values rose like the summer sun.

“I wouldn’t have much contact with Roddy,” Emmett said. “He works out of Jefferson City.”

A waiter appeared, a familiar-looking kid with ginger hair and a scrubbed face. Emmett probably knew his family.

“What are you drinking?” Lloyd said.

Emmett ordered soda water.

Charlie pointed at him with his cigar. “Your office in the new courthouse?”

“Yes sir.”

“They tell me it cost four million. A million for the site alone.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me.”

“No?” Charlie looked at Hutchins. “Middle of a depression, they come up with that kind of money. What does that tell you?”

“It tells me Harry Truman knew what card to play.”

Charlie harrumphed, brushed ash from his lapels. He wore rimless glasses, and the imprint left by his hat circled his thin-haired head like a water line. “Goddamn right.”

Emmett had never met Hutchins and Hayes, but he knew who they were – prominent Kansas City businessmen, insurance executives, and officers, along with Bob Perkins, of the Missouri Actuarial Committee.

There was a lot of money in insurance, and no-one knew that better than Lloyd. For several years Perkins & Graves had been representing the committee in pursuit of fire insurance premiums impounded by the federal government. The insurance industry was charging its customers big increases. The Democrats in the Missouri legislature wanted to keep the rates down. So while the industry and the politicians argued, the Feds were taking the increases and putting the money into escrow. The case had been dragging on for four years, and the impounded money was huge – nine million bucks at last reckoning. Guys like Hutchins and Hayes were counting on Lloyd getting that money back. And if his firm could swing a settlement in favor of the committee, he stood to make a lot of dough himself.

But others wanted that money too. And the big question was: who in the legislature did Boss Pendergast have in his pocket?

And more to the point: what did these guys think
Emmett
could do about it?

Hayes flicked cigar ash into the grate. “Pendergast got his thumb on the scales down in county?”

“We keep our distance from the city boys,” Emmett said.

“And just how do you manage that?” Bob said, coming to life in the chair with sudden heat. The man with the acned cheeks jotted in his notebook.

Emmett took measure of the big man: the set of his shoulders, the stomach mounded beneath the expensive suitcoat, the broad hands splayed on the scuffed leather of the chair arms. “Well, the Attorney General’s office has a record of going after – ”

Bob cut him short with a nasty laugh. “Tom Pendergast has the governor on a short leash, and you’re trying to tell me those shitheads on Oak Street are free of influence?”

“I’m one of those shitheads.”

Bob shrugged. Emmett saw a smile pass between Hutchins and Hayes.

“Emmett’s his own man,” Lloyd said. “I can vouch for that.”

Bob took a handkerchief from his breast pocket and patted the huge curve of his brow, as round and smooth as a honeydew. He had been battling the Pendergast family and the Democratic political machine since the turn of the century. Getting rid of Tom Pendergast had become a personal obsession.

“I’m sure there are some fine men in Jackson County government,” Bob said without conviction. “But how much can one man do inside a political structure that’s rotten to the core?”

“Boss Pendergast manages to do a hell of a lot,” Hutchins cackled, nearly spilling brandy on his suitcoat.

Lloyd hitched his shoulders. “His day of reckoning is coming, mark my words. You don’t consort with thugs and gangsters and get away with it. Look what happened to Johnny Lazia.”

Flushed and agitated, Bob struggled up from the chair.

“Goddamn it, Lloyd, he doesn’t consort with gangsters. He
is
a gangster. He let Lazia steal and pimp and murder at will, and now he’s letting Carrollo do the same. Under our noses. And this is the man who’s
running
our
city
!” He gestured impatiently at his assistant. “Newt, get me a drink.”

Newt was the right name. He slithered to the bar.

Standing up had loosened Bob’s tongue. “The bastard’s even got the Feds duped. Everybody said the New Deal would end the patronage system. Take the handouts out of local hands. Well,
now
look: Pendergast controls that racket too. CWA. WPA. The whole goddamn federal relief program under his direction. Now he can hand out jobs and he doesn’t even have to pay for them.”

A grandfather clock chimed and they all looked at it, as if the tones were visible. Bob’s assistant handed him a drink.

“We can all do something to bring about change,” Hutchins announced. “We can all do our part.”

He looked at Bob, but the big man continued staring at the clock.

“Business, state government, law enforcement.” Hutchins lifted his glass in Emmett’s direction. “We can all help clean up.”

“You don’t have to go far to find the rot,” Hayes said. “Look at the North End. Filled with guineas with no money in the bank and a bundle in their wallets. Diamond cufflinks and bad skin.”

“That right, son?” Hutchins asked.

Emmett sipped his soda. “It’s an Italian neighborhood, isn’t it?”

Bob was watching him closely, his mouth twisted, eyes bulbous.

Offhandedly, Hutchins said, “Another murder this week.”

“You don’t say?” Charlie said. “Didn’t catch that.”

“Colored fellow.”

“Well.”

Bob set his drink on the mantelpiece. Newt wrote in his notebook.

“Not what you think,” Hutchins said. “Respectable man. Professional musician. Played organ at church. I’m sure our young prosecutor here could tell us more about it.”

The smoky air caught at Emmett’s throat, and he coughed. “Not much more than what you just told us, Mr. Hutchins. It’s a city case.”

“I believe there’s some vagueness about the crime scene. Some say by the river, some say in the hills.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Shot is what I heard. Gangland style.”

Emmett squared his shoulders.

“Come now, Mr. Whelan,” Hayes said. “You’re among gentlemen.”

“A neighborhood spat, I suppose.

“Since when are niggers using hit men to settle disputes?”

“I really couldn’t say.”

Hutchins threw his cigar butt in the fireplace. “Doesn’t take a whole lot of brains to figure out the score here, it seems to me. When the North End boys stray from their neighborhood, they’re on a mission. And we all know who they serve. Smart young man like you should be able to make the connections. There are no coincidences in this town.”

These men knew what they wanted. And if Emmett played it smart, he’d reap the benefits. That’s how it worked in this city.

But were they asking him to do what he thought they were?

“I’m not sure I get your meaning.”

Bob gestured impatiently. “Look, Whelan, everyone knows Carrollo’s gang killed this man. And everyone knows that Pendergast and Carrollo are hand in glove.”

“Like I said, this is a city case, and when the police are finished with their investigation – ”

“Pendergast
owns
the police!” Bob said fiercely.

“What about the FBI?”

“They’re after Pretty Boy Floyd, not Tom Pendergast.”

“Pretty Boy Floyd is dead.”

“You know what I mean.”

Emmett spoke carefully. “A connection between the city’s Democratic organization and the murder of some poor Negro is a great deal to assume.”

“Nobody’s asking you to assume anything.”

“Then what are you asking?”

Bob cleared his throat, licked his lips. “That poor Negro was a citizen of this state and this county. And if you county boys keep your distance from the city boys like you say… well, the guy that can prove what we all know is true – and
make
it
stick
– he’d be doing the whole state a big, big favor.” He pointed at Emmett’s chest. “And himself an even bigger one.”

The longest silence so far.

“Talk to Roddy Hudson,” Hutchins said at last. “He’ll help you out.”

Emmett nodded. What was there to say? All the loose chat of the last half hour fell into place like tic-tac-toe.

Lloyd gestured towards the door.

While they waited for Emmett’s car, Lloyd said, “These men come on strong. That’s their style, especially when they’re looking for justice.” He leaned close and spoke softly. “You must act as you see fit, of course. Investigate. Assess. Proceed with prudence.” He set his jaw and narrowed his gaze, looking as if he were about to storm San Juan Hill all over again. “But remember one thing: the gentlemen guiding you are the backbone of this town. Of this country. Impress them and you will do no wrong.”

The valet pulled up in Emmett’s worn Packard.

Lloyd frowned. “We’re going to have to get you a new vehicle, son.”