«Private — on a confidential lay. And I know a man who can keep one that way when I see one.»
He looked me over, closed his eyes again. I kept spinning the quarter. He couldn’t resist looking at it.
«Who done it?» he asked softly. «Who fixed Sam?»
«A tough guy out of the jailhouse got sore because it wasn’t a white joint. It used to be. Remember?»
He didn’t say anything. The coin fell over with a light whirr and lay still.
«Call your play,» I said. «I’ll read you a chapter of the Bible or buy you a drink. Either one.»
«Brother,» he said sonorously, «I kinda like to read my Bible in the seclusion of my family.» Then he added swiftly, in his business voice, «Come around to this side of the desk.»
I went around there and pulled a pint of bonded bourbon off my hip and handed it to him in the shelter of the desk. He poured two small glasses, quickly, sniffed his with a smooth, expert manner, and tucked it away.
«What you want to know?» he asked. «Ain’t a crack in the sidewalk I don’t know. Mebbe I ain’t tellin’ though. This liquor’s been in the right company.»
«Who ran Shamey’s before it was a colored place?»
He stared at me, surprised. «The name of that pore sinner was Shamey, brother.»
I groaned. «What have I been using for brains?»
«He’s daid, brother, gathered to the Lawd. Died in nineteen and twenty-nine. A wood alcohol case, brother. And him in the business.» He raised his voice to the sonorous level. «The same year the rich folks lost their goods and chattels, brother.» The voice went down again. «I didn’t lose me a nickel.»
«I’ll bet you didn’t. Pour some more. He leave any folks — anybody that’s still around?»
He poured another small drink, corked the bottle firmly. «Two is all — before lunch,» he said. «I thank you, brother. Yo’ method of approach is soothin’ to a man’s dignity.» He cleared his throat. «Had a wife,» he said. «Try the phone book.»
He wouldn’t take the bottle. I put it back on my hip. He shook hands with me, folded his on the desk once more and closed his eyes.
The incident, for him, was over.
There was only one Shamey in the phone book. Violet Lu Shamey, 1644 West Fifty-fourth Place. I spent a nickel in a booth.
After a long time a dopey voice said, «Uh-huh. Wh-what is it?»
«Are you the Mrs. Shamey whose husband once ran a place on Central Avenue — a place of entertainment?»
«Wha — what? My goodness sakes alive! My husband’s been gone these seven years. Who did you say you was?»
«Detective Carmady. I’ll be right out. It’s important.»
«Wh-who did you say —»
It was a thick, heavy, clogged voice.
It was a dirty brown house with a dirty brown lawn in front of it. There was a large bare patch around a tough-looking palm tree, On the porch stood one lonely rocker.
The afternoon breeze made the unpruned shoots of last year’s poinsettias tap-tap against the front wall. A line of stiff, yellowish, half-washed clothes jittered on a rusty wire in the side yard.
I drove on a little way and parked my roadster across the street, and walked back.
The bell didn’t work, so I knocked. A woman opened the door blowing her nose. A long yellow face with weedy hair growing down the sides of it. Her body was shapeless in a flannel bathrobe long past all color and design. It was just something around her. Her toes were large and obvious in a pair of broken man’s slippers.
I said, «Mrs. Shamey?»
«You the — ?»
«Yeah. I just called you.»
She gestured me in wearily. «I ain’t had time to get cleaned up yet,» she whined.
We sat down in a couple of dingy mission rockers and looked at each other across a living room in which everything was junk except a small new radio droning away behind its dimly lighted panel.
«All the company I got,» she said. Then she tittered. «Bert ain’t done nothing, has he? I don’t get cops calling on me much.»
«Bert?»
«Bert Shamey, mister. My husband.»
She tittered again and flopped her feet up and down. In her titter was a loose alcoholic overtone. It seemed I was not to get away from it that day.
«A joke, mister,» she said. «He’s dead. I hope to Christ there’s enough cheap blondes where he is. He never got enough of them here.»
«I was thinking more about a redhead,» I said.
«I guess he’d use one of those too.» Her eyes, it seemed to me, were not so loose now. «I don’t call to mind. Any special one?»
«Yeah. A girl named Beulah. I don’t know her last name. She worked at the Club on Central. I’m trying to trace her for her folks. It’s a colored place now and, of course, the people there never heard of her.»
«I never went there,» the woman yelled, with unexpected violence. «I wouldn’t know.»
«An entertainer,» I said. «A singer. No chance you’d know her, eh?»
She blew her nose again, on one of the dirtiest handkerchiefs I ever saw. «I got a cold.»
«You know what’s good for it,» I said.
She gave me a swift, raking glance. «I’m fresh out of that.»
«I’m not.»
«Gawd,» she said. «You’re no cop. No cop ever bought a drink.»
I brought out my pint of bourbon and balanced it on my knee. It was almost full still. The clerk at the Hotel Sans Souci was no reservoir. The woman’s seaweed-colored eyes jumped at the bottle. Her tongue coiled around her lips.
«Man, that’s liquor,» she sighed. «I don’t care who you are. Hold it careful, mister.»
She heaved up and waddled out of the room and came back with two thick, smeared glasses.
«No fixin’s,» she said. «Just what you brought.» She held the glasses out.
I poured her a slug that would have made me float over a wall. A smaller one for me. She put hers down like an aspirin tablet and looked at the bottle. I poured her another. She took that over to her chair. Her eyes had turned two shades browner.
«This stuff dies painless with me,» she said. «It never knows what hit it. What was we talkin’ about?»
«A red-haired girl named Beulah. Used to work at the joint. Remember better now?»
«Yeah.» She used her second drink. I went over and stood the bottle on the table beside her. She used some out of that.
«Hold on to your chair and don’t step on no snakes,» she said. «I got me a idea.»
She got up out of the chair, sneezed, almost lost her bathrobe, slapped it back against her stomach and stared at me coldly.
«No peekin’,» she said, and wagged a finger at me and went out of the room again, hitting the side of the door casement on her way.
From the back of the house presently there were various types of crashes. A chair seemed to be kicked over. A bureau drawer was pulled out too far and smashed to the floor. There was fumbling and thudding and loud language. After a while, then, there was the slow click of a lock and what seemed to be the screech of a trunk top going up. More fumbling and banging things around. A tray landed on the floor, I thought. Then a chortle of satisfaction.
She came back into the room holding a package tied with faded pink tape. She threw it in my lap.
«Look’ em over, Lou. Photos. Newspaper stills. Not that them tramps ever got in no newspapers except by way of the police blotter. They’re people from the joint. By God, they’re all the — left me. Them and his old clothes.»
She sat down and reached for the whisky again.
I untied the tape and looked through a bunch of shiny photos of people in professional poses. Not all of them were women. The men had foxy faces and racetrack clothes or make-up. Hoofers and comics from the filling-station circuits. Not many of them ever got west of Main Street. The women had good legs and displayed them more than Will Hays would have liked. But their faces were as threadbare as a bookkeeper’s coat. All but one.