Cahokia jazz, p.27
Cahokia Jazz, page 27
The top envelope contained a printed flyer from a bookie. The one underneath, however, was handwritten in looping, clumsy letters, and directed to ‘Detective Drummand (the Hopper Case)’. It was postmarked Syracuse, which rang a distant bell: the city, Barrow recalled, which he and Drummond had sent Fred Hopper’s widow skedaddling off to, on long-ago Monday. If it was from her, she must have sent it more or less instantly she arrived. He slit the envelope and read:
Dear Detective Drummand your red-man stooge tole me to get in touch if I thougt of anything that would help with Freds case but I did not take to him atall I do not know how you can work with a big brute like that everyday it would make me shiver so I take the liberty of writing to you insted to say that when we was clearing out to ketch the train I found this with Freds clothes I dont know if it will be any help but I send it anyway with all respecful greeting
L Hopper (Mrs)
‘You just hold your horses,’ Barrow said to whatever it was that Pishu was trying to pour in his ear. ‘This’ was a torn-off bottom part of a page, something typewritten and formal. It read, in blue typing, ‘—easement of boundary to achieve fix to Abbeyville main drainage therefore as indicated in attached plan—’. But underneath, in fountain pen, someone had added Rooftop of Trust, eleven pm March 19th. Your co-operation greatly valued and appreciated.
‘Well, shit,’ said Barrow, who remembered which of the dossiers Hopper had worked on at the Land Trust involved a boundary issue in Abbeyville. He stood up.
‘Okay, now—’ began Pishu again.
‘I’m gonna need to talk to Doyle,’ Barrow cut across him. ‘And don’t worry, he’s gonna want to talk to me. I got … something.’
Miss Chokfi had added gloves and hat to her coat, but she had lingered by her cubby, shifting from foot to foot. She looked young and small and tired and anxious. Even as a woman of dignity and terror, she looked like somebody running out of impetus.
‘Hey,’ said Barrow, smiling at her. She smiled back, uncertainly. Coaxing the alarm off her face seemed like a good thing to do in itself; also, like a good small thing to hold on to, in the face of the betrayal he was about to commit. ‘Could you call the miko at home for me, please?’
She sat back down. ‘I’ll try,’ she said, taking off hat, putting on headset, ‘but I don’t know if … you know, he was really – ah, hello, Mrs Doyle? This is Amanda Chokfi at the precinct. I’m sorry to disturb you. Could the captain please come to the phone? I know he’s just got in. Oh, he’s actually in bed? Oh dear. Yes, a very long day. All the same—’
She looked at Barrow, who nodded firmly.
‘All the same, could you get him? Detective Barrow says he has something on the Land Trust case.’
Sounds of tiny protest leaking from the headset, then silence. Pishu was hovering. Barrow shooed him away. Then bass rather than treble protests out of the headset.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Chokfi. ‘He insisted.’
She peeled off the headset and passed it up. The wire wasn’t quite long enough and Barrow had to bend. The apparatus calipered his head like a too-small hat. But there was Doyle, irate, in his ear.
‘Yeah, what?’ growled the miko.
‘I talked to the Man of the Sun. He’s certain that the Land Trust killing is a takata political move, and that Arthur Vanderberg of Union Cartridge is behind it.’
‘Opinion, not evidence.’
‘Yeah, but he took me to the Union Club—’
‘—I could care less about your cocktail habits—’
‘—and Vanderberg was there, and he didn’t deny it.’
‘He didn’t?’
‘Well, he said the words, but like he knew exactly what the Man was talking about. He wasn’t shocked. He smirked.’
‘He always smirks. Not admissible evidence.’
‘But we do have evidence, documentary evidence, that it was a message from Union Cartridge that got Hopper up on the Trust’s roof to be murdered.’ Barrow described the letter from Mrs Hopper in Syracuse.
Silence at the other end of the line, a thinking silence.
‘Huh,’ said Doyle after a minute. ‘That is something. Not enough, yet; we still got nothing on the actual mechanism of the murder itself. The hands that Vanderberg hired. But, as it happens, it kind of fits with what I got from the museum when I got tired of your heavyweight-primadonna act and sent Bunce over instead. Circumstantial, nothin’ to lean on too hard, but: turns out that actual obsidian, which is what the lab said the black stuff was, was never a thing round here, here being a valley full of mud. In the old time, the sharp stones for cutting round here were all flint, from over in Ohio. Obsidian was strictly California and down Mexico way. Round here, you’d only find it in collections of pre-Columbus antiques. The museum’s got one. And it was donated by … Arthur Vanderberg.’
‘He likes Injun things when the Injuns are good and dead. So, he could roust up some crumbs of it and give ’em to the killer,’ said Barrow.
‘He could.’
‘And he’d know the details about the Aztec pyramids and shit, that Mickey Casqui said were in this particular Spanish book.’
‘He would. All circumstantial, nothing we can make an arrest on in time to throw any kind of serious spanner in the works of tomorrow’s mischief. So maybe we’re too late. But we’re getting somewhere. Okay, boyo, you can consider yourself provisionally back on the payroll—’
‘Wait,’ said Barrow. ‘There’s something else. Drummond is on Vanderberg’s payroll.’
‘What?’
‘He’s paying him off. Enough that he can get his California daydream. Enough that he doesn’t care about getting suspended, or getting fired either. Enough that he thinks he can flip the world the finger.’
There was a silence of a different quality.
‘Mother of God,’ said Doyle. ‘You’re telling me … that the prime suspect for the procuring of this murder … has owned the investigation into this murder?’
‘He doesn’t own me,’ said Barrow.
‘Debatable, if he owns Drummond, and you’re Drummond’s good little dog. How long have you known about this?’
‘Since yesterday morning.’
‘Mother of God. And you didn’t say a word. And there was me thinking my problem with you was that you’re the palace’s patsy. So. So. What has Vanderberg had Drummond doing, if you’d care to tell me that?’
‘Miko, I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me, and I can’t fathom it. He was keen on us going after the Warriors, then frustrated when it didn’t work out – frustrated enough he would have framed ’em if he could – but it was also like he didn’t really care? He didn’t really care who we got so long as we got somebody.’
‘Somebody takouma.’
‘I suppose, yeah.’
‘Meaning at the very least the instruction from Vanderberg was to keep the pot on the boil, make sure that short-term the story was still about the red savages. Tell me, did he get in your way? I did receive the impression you were actually giving the detective work a try, on this one.’
‘He tried to … stop me taking it seriously. But he’s like that anyway. And he promised me that he wouldn’t stop me following up the evidence. It was a deal we did, yesterday.’
‘A bit of misdirection, putting a slant on things? Doesn’t sound like the kind of favour you’d pay the big money for.’
‘… No.’
‘No. Well, all these mysteries shall be swiftly resolved. We’ll get the little weasel brought in, in short order, and sweat the truth outta him.’
‘Captain, that could be … difficult. I’ve been trying to find him today, before I talked to you, because – because—’
‘Because he’s your partner and you wanted to get his side of things first. Yeah, yeah. But?’
‘But the address the department has for him doesn’t exist, and I don’t know how else to find him.’
‘It doesn’t exist,’ said Doyle flatly. ‘What do you mean?’
‘There’s no building there. “308 Dearborn” it says on his card, and Dearborn ends at 307.’
‘Let me get this straight. He lied to the department. About where he lives. And you don’t know either? His own partner?’
‘… No.’
‘Good grief. And Miss Chokfi doesn’t have a number for him?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Nothing helpful in his desk?’
‘No sir. I’ve looked.’
‘Where’d you meet him then, when you were off duty?’
‘We’d go drinking. Mostly in bars I can’t get at tonight, ’cause they’re over the other side of Division.’
‘Hmm. Well, give Pishu a list of the other ones. He might as well try ’em. But a fictitious address? That’s preparation. That’s someone planning to vanish, when the moment is right. Makes you wonder … well. Okay, put Pishu on.’
‘But what should I do, miko?’
‘Unless you got some brilliant idea you’re not sharing with me, doesn’t sound like there’s a lot you can do.’
‘But he needs finding tonight! Before the Klan march tomorrow!’
‘Ideally, yes. But being on the verge of doomsday doesn’t make impossible things suddenly turn possible. It’s a big city out there, it’s full of frightened people, and we don’t have access to a third of it. The odds aren’t good if your man Drummond doesn’t want to be found. So go home, eat, sleep, and get back in for six tomorrow morning. When you and I are going to put our heads together on the subject of: what do we know about Phineas Drummond? There’ll be something to find him by. There’s always something. And your Phineas is not a careful feller.’
‘And what if it’s doomsday?’
‘If it’s doomsday, we’ll still be police. Or I will. What you are … remains to be seen. Listen, Detective. I appreciate that you told me – but, assuming we’re spared, there will be consequences. This is not a confessional, you hear me? I don’t pat your head, give you a penance and send you off absolved.’
‘You’re the second person to tell me that today. I’m starting to think I should go and find a real confessional.’
‘Perhaps you should at that. But that’s between you and the Almighty. Go home and rack your brains and I’ll see you at 6 a.m. Now put Pishu on.’
Barrow eased the band of metal and Bakelite off his head, and passed it to the hovering lieutenant, who took it, but also fixed a hand on Barrow’s shoulder. A couple of the other night boys were hanging around outside the cubby.
‘I’ll be leaving now,’ said Barrow, looking at the hand.
‘You wait right there,’ commanded Pishu; and it occurred to Barrow that, if Doyle’s inscrutable calculation about the fraction of trust he was still willing to show him had come out different, he might well be spending the night in a cell himself, just to make sure he was present and willing to talk in the morning.
Pishu listened to Doyle for a minute, and then did remove the hand. Barrow anticipated the next request, and scratched out a list of four drinking-holes east of Division on a notebook page, and handed it over. Pishu nodded at him, eyes suspicious. Barrow tipped his hat to Miss Chokfi.
‘See you tomorrow,’ he said.
‘Wait, Mr Barrow,’ she said. ‘– Joe. Would you walk me home? It seems like it’s gone a little crazy out there.’
‘It surely has. Okay. I’ll see you out front.’
He went down the stairs with a feeling of escape, and went and stood outside by the station-house steps. He lit a cigarette, comforted by the rasp of the flint in the lighter, the rasp in his lungs of the first rich draw of smoke. The fog had completely cleared, leaving only a watery brightness to the stars out overhead, as if an uncertain lens was magnifying them. It would be a fine day tomorrow, just when the city could have done with a nice disheartening drench of rain. Miss Chokfi’s neat black heels came clicking and clocking down the steps, and turning to meet her Barrow discovered that, over the precinct’s stone doorway, there was – of course! – another Latin inscription. He must have gazed at it a million times without reading it. This one came with translations in Anopa and English. SALUS POPULI, SUPREMA LEX. Chokma Hattak, Aba Hina. The Good of the People is the Highest Law.
Well, that’s dandy, thought Barrow. But what good, and which people?
7
It was surprisingly comfortable walking along with Chokfi. She put her hand on his arm and took one and a half steps for each of his, turning her face in the cloche hat up to look at him when she spoke, like some short-stemmed flower being tugged his way by a persistent breeze. And when she lifted her face, there was a concern on it for Barrow which he couldn’t think he really deserved.
‘I’m sorry you’re in trouble,’ she said.
‘I’m not in as much trouble as Phin is.’
She waved her free hand dismissively. Putting the staple in Drummond seemed to have reduced him effectually from bogeyman to dung-beetle, as far as she was concerned.
‘He deserves it,’ she said. ‘But you’re … between, aren’t you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You got the department rules on one side, and the thing you’re doing for the Man on the other, haven’t you? And you’re in the middle. The miko’s a good man, but there’s things he doesn’t understand.’
‘Oh now,’ said Barrow, troubled by this high-minded picture, which he had helped to paint in her mind earlier, he supposed, by invoking the mysteries of her role in the Four Winds. It was a picture missing all the slow, clumsy, waiting-till-hit-round-the-head realisations of the last few days, and all the weak passivity of the compromises he’d made. He’d let himself be tumbled along, it felt like, taking the easy choice in every situation till he was sitting wrong with absolutely everybody, and every thing. Phineas. The department. The Man. The tamaha. Music. ‘Don’t say that. That’s too kind.’
‘Why shouldn’t people be kind to you?’
‘’Cause it’s a mess I’m in of my own makin’, mostly. Not some … noble dilemma. I’m no hero.’
‘Uh-huh?’ she said neutrally.
‘I’m just trying not to make a bad job worse,’ he said.
‘It’ll be all right,’ she said, and squeezed his arm.
By now the distant noises of the city in trouble were almost routine. Chokfi turned out to live in the nearest one of the Quarters, the north-west one. There was no-one around on Union Avenue. The individual drips from the elevated tracks were audible. But, to Barrow’s total lack of surprise, one of the Four Winds was stationed just inside the entry to the Quarters she led him in by, and shone a flashlight on their faces before stepping aside and letting them pass. With Chokfi guiding him, the alleyways were neither a mystifying warren nor the place of inscrutable threat they had been when the masks surrounded the Noukouwa house. They were just the way home, the landmarks obvious, the doors the ways into a thousand families’ lives, the little shrines familiar, the passers-by the known faces of her neighbourhood. The smell of a thousand suppers rose around them, and Barrow’s stomach rumbled.
‘Was that you?’ she said, grinning.
‘No, it was artillery in the distance. Yeah, that was me. Lunch was a piece of pie and it was a long time ago.’
‘You can eat with us if you like.’
She chirped a greeting to three or four others homeward-bound that they met along the way, and when they ran into the choir of little boys and the young priest again, still shaking a collecting-tin, she steered the conversation firmly into English so Barrow wasn’t excluded.
‘And will you be coming to the grand Mass on Saturday?’ the priest asked her, once Barrow had deposited his dime. It struck him as a funny thing to be making plans for, when the takouma world might be overturned tomorrow.
‘Deo volens, Father,’ she said, smiling.
‘God willing, indeed,’ the priest agreed; and Barrow understood that it was a willed optimism he had all around him, not an oblivious one. Willed hope in the accountants standing-to with their golf clubs; willed hope in the policemen holding the Bridge; willed hope in the pickets on watch by their brazier. Willed hope in the cooking dinners. Willed hope when Chokfi told him comfortably that everything would be all right.
She tucked her arm back in his and was holding on to him when they stopped outside a door no different from the others, except that this door was her door. The woman who opened it was a middle-aged edition of Chokfi. No taller; streaks of white in the dark hair; a more sardonic mouth. Past her came the sounds of children shouting, a man adjudicating, and dance music pouring out (judging by the crackles) from a radio set. Also a positive gust of herby meatiness.
‘Oh!’ said the woman on the step. ‘This must be the one you keep talking about.’
‘Mother!’ said Chokfi.
‘There’s as much of him as you said there was! Well, come on in. Dinner’s going on the table any minute.’
‘I was just walking your daughter home,’ said Barrow. ‘I don’t mean to be any bother.’
‘Nonsense! We got lamb stew and cornbread, and lots of it, which is probably a good thing, now I lay eyes on you.’
‘Well, if you’re sure …’ said Barrow. ‘That certainly smells real good.’
‘Of course we’re sure. Come in, you’re very welcome.’
And Barrow was taking off his coat and hat in the tiny hall, looking forward to stepping through into the courtyard beyond, where there was warm yellow light and food and children, and thinking how different this was from the derelict misery at the Noukouwas’ – when the music on the radio was abruptly cut off, and everything changed. A voice in Anopa took over, talking solemnly and urgently. Chokfi’s still-invisible father hushed the children. Then her mother gasped and raised her hands to her mouth.
‘What is it, what is it?’ Barrow asked Chokfi. Her eyes had gone big and shocked.
‘They are saying that … Francis Hashi is dead. That he was killed an hour ago at his house in the Hollywood Hills … by a stranger … with a gun. This is very bad,’ she added unnecessarily.
