One shot harry, p.15
One-Shot Harry, page 15
Ingram replied, “Don’t you think we ought to conduct our business inside? Or are you two looking to attract attention? Like from a passing police car?”
The two exchanged a look and Ali took out a set of keys. He unlocked the security gate, pulling it aside in its track, then got the front door open.
“Who is this letter supposed to be from?” William 2X asked him, finally taking off his sunglasses to reveal pale gray eyes.
“The lawyer is representing the estate of Fordis Royal.”
The other man stared hard at him.
The three went inside and the lights were flicked on. Ingram was patted down. The letter was taken out of his jacket along with his wallet from his back pocket. Harold Ali took out Ingram’s driver’s license and wrote down his address.
“In case this is some kind of trap,” he said.
William 2X was reading the letter.
“I’ve done what I was asked to do.” Ingram picked up his wallet and put his license back.
“Is it on the up and up, William?” Ali asked.
“Yeah, I think so,” he said dryly, a faraway look on his face.
“Gentlemen,” Ingram said, starting for the door.
Ali said to Ingram, “I guess you was jivin’ about that article, huh?”
“Guess we was testing each other, brother.”
In his car heading home, the driver’s window partially down and night air blowing on him, his headache had finally abated. Ingram made a decision. He had enough money from delivering the letter and covering the picket that he didn’t have to chase work to make the rent and keep the lights on. It wasn’t going to last but it might be long enough for him to do the one thing he’d set out to do, find out who had killed his foxhole buddy Ben Kinslow.
CHAPTER EIGHT
In the morning, after calling Doris Letrec to tell her the letter had been delivered, Ingram drove back to the mystic woman’s house in Watts. He figured to brace her and Clovis, do whatever the hell it was they wanted him to do if need be, and get the information about Hoyt from them in exchange. When he’d come here with Edwards, he’d made a note of the street the house was on. It wasn’t hard spotting it in the day given the ankh and cross staked in the lawn, the old pickup still in the driveway. After parking he went up the front steps, knocking lightly on the latched screen door. There was no answer. He leaned in closer and knocked again, this time with more force. Still no response.
He walked off the end of the porch onto the driveway and went down the side of the house, peering under drawn shades but seeing no one inside. There was a window in the back door, and he looked in on the kitchen where the woman had been cooking the time before. The room was tidy, no dishes piled in the sink, no occupants. The swing door was open. He detected no movement in the dining room. He started back up the driveway and found a white man in slacks and a loose bowling-style shirt in front of him.
“You friends with that gal calls herself Hanisha?” He was taller and broader than Ingram.
He knew this man, or rather knew his face. “Who’s that?”
“Who’s that, he says.”
When he turned his head to the side Ingram recognized him—one of the two in the Dodge Polaris keeping watch at Kinslow’s sendoff. The other one stepped into view. He had an open buck knife in his hand and Ingram was sure he’d been fooling with the latched screen door to get it open. The larger man was in his face.
“Whatchu doing around here?”
“I should be asking you that. This is a colored neighborhood and you two ain’t hardly cops.”
“You hear this sumabitch?”
“Got a mouth on him, that’s for sure.” The man stepped closer, tapping the tip of the knife against Ingram’s breastbone. “Wicks asked you plain, boy, you don’t seem to have no wax in your ears. What the hell you got to do with Hanisha?”
“She’s my cousin is all. Came by to see her.”
The larger man, Wicks, frowned. “That sound right to you?”
“All these darkies related some kind of way or another,” the other one said derisively. “Their daddies planting their seed in whichever easy dame open her legs for the pipe.”
Wicks was staring at Ingram. “I don’t know,” he drawled, “can’t place him but I got the feeling I’ve seen this chump before.”
“Shining your shoes, probably.” Knife man swung his jaw toward the detached garage in back. “Let’s whisper in his ear about it.”
“Yeah, good idea.”
Wicks made to grab Ingram and got punched in his face for the effort.
“Fucker,” he growled.
Ingram tried to run but Wicks recovered faster than he’d hoped and latched onto his shoulders from behind, jerking him backward and upsetting his balance. Knife man joined in and hit him in the stomach, doubling him over. Together, holding him on either side, striking him several times, they dragged the struggling photographer into the garage, its double barn doors unlocked. They tossed him onto the floor. Ingram had gotten his wind back and as he tried to rise, got kicked in the side of the head by Wicks. He groaned and rolled onto his back, a fresh open wound on his temple. He lay there gazing up into the rafters, dust motes cascading on him like heaven’s confetti.
Roughly one half of the garage had open floor space to allow for a vehicle. There were a couple of batteries and an old-fashioned toolbox on a shelf at the back of this section. The other half contained old furniture, grease-stained cardboard boxes and the like stacked about. Ingram was deposited on an upturned wooden milk crate. He attempted to rise again, anticipating hands on him and figuring to counterpunch.
“No, no,” Wicks said, having produced a gun, waving it about lazily. “Sit your ass down. You ain’t got no appointments to keep.”
Ingram did as ordered. Wicks was gesturing with a Browning semi-automatic. At this range it could have been a .25, a pocketbook pistol, and he still would have complied.
“Where the fuck can we find Hanisha?” the knife man asked.
“Man, I haven’t seen her or Clovis in a long time. Like I said, I had the day off and dropped by to say hi.” He hoped using Clovis’s name would make him sound more legitimate.
“Bullshit.”
“It’s the truth.” Ingram gauged how best to counterattack these assholes.
Knife man regarded his companion. “What do you think?”
Wicks’s expression was one of a bricklayer wondering why the wall he was building tilted to one side. “There’s something about this gee I can’t place.” He grinned unpleasantly. “Ask him again, Morty.”
“Sure thing,” he said blandly. Morty plunged the knife into the bridge of Ingram’s foot, shoe and all. The knife easily penetrating, he twisted the blade gleefully.
“Motherfuck,” Ingram wailed, reflexively shooting up from the crate. But Wicks got behind him, putting an arm against his throat and using his other to tighten his grip. Ingram couldn’t get a breath.
“Told you to sit down, didn’t I?”
Morty twisted the blade again. “You better listen.”
Blood seeped from the wound onto the garage floor, a series of warped and weathered boards. Ingram rocked and shook but couldn’t get loose, couldn’t alleviate the pain.
“Now about Hanisha,” Wicks whispered in his ear.
“Okay, there is a place,” he wheezed out. “Clovis, he might be there later.”
“What, a whorehouse?” Morty cracked. He withdrew the knife, wiping it against Ingram’s pant leg.
“Not exactly,” he managed between labored breaths. “It’s an after-hours joint, a blind pig called the Stockyard, craps, booze, cool chicks, you know.” Wicks let go and Ingram bent over, coughing and hacking up bile onto the floor.
“That sounds like that self-righteous Clovis,” Morty opined. He examined his knife.
Wicks asked. “Where is this place?”
Ingram cleared his throat. “Upstairs from a plumbing supply outfit on Hoover, not too far north of the Coliseum.”
“What’s the name on the outside?” Wicks asked.
“Fuck I know,” Ingram said. “You can’t miss it. The neon sign has this pipe getting screwed into another one then unscrewed.”
“Subtle,” Wicks said.
“What about laughing boy here?” Morty asked.
Wicks looked at Ingram with clinical distance. “What about him? We got what we wanted.”
Ingram tensed.
Morty seemed inclined to argue but hunched a shoulder and folded his knife. The two departed.
Ingram sat on the ground, grimacing as he removed his ruined shoe. On a battered three-legged end table was a stack of old newspapers. They were not so aged as to crumble at his touch. He used several tripled-over crinkly sheets to stanch the flow of blood from his wound. He tore his sock into a strip and tied his tourniquet around his newsprint gauze. Ingram then limped out of the garage, one shoe on and the other in his hand, and headed toward his car. An older woman tugging a small cart of grocery bags watched him apprehensively as he got to his Plymouth.
“Christ,” he said, his wounded foot pulsing as he pushed down the accelerator pedal. He was glad this car was an automatic and not a clutch like his last one. Gritting his teeth, he got the car going. Three blocks later, his wound bleeding from his exertions, he spotted a phone booth in the middle of a block and pulled over. He was going to need more than Mercurochrome for this boo-boo. Sitting inside the booth was a woman in a hat talking enthusiastically into the instrument. But she glanced through the glass to see this individual trickling blood on the sidewalk looking in at her. His appearance didn’t upset her. She opened the accordion door.
“Mister, you need a ride to the hospital?”
“If I could make a call, I’ll be fine.”
“I’ll call you back, Eunice,” the woman said into the handset. “Man here looks like he needs some assistance.” She hung up and rose from the built-in seat. “Here you go, sir.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s the Christian thing to do.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He didn’t add he was calling the biggest sinner he knew. He deposited his dime and dialed a number. The phone rang four times on the other end of the line before it was answered. “Strummer,” he said into the handset, “there’s a couple of rough ofays gonna show up tonight at your club.”
“Who are they?”
“Pretty sure they work for Hoyt. They just gave me a going over. Sorry, but I had to give them something and well, you were the only one I could think of who wouldn’t get rattled by these strokes.”
“Gimme a description, will ya? You’d be surprised at how many white folks find their way into my establishment.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be there tonight. When you see me pistol whipping this smug smiling square-headed Oakie, that’ll be your clue.”
Edwards laughed. “Damn, soldier boy.”
“Goddamn right.” Ingram hung up, his foot throbbing worse as his adrenaline wore off. Ingram looked down at his red-soaked wrappings, realizing he wasn’t going to stop his foot from bleeding. He needed stitches. As if he were auditioning for a chance to play the Mummy in a Creature Feature, Ingram got back to his car, trailing his leg and leaving smears of blood on the sidewalk. Along the way he’d picked up a discarded Sports section left on a bus bench. Stabbed foot propped on the car’s bench seat, he redid his wrapping. He managed to not have an accident as he drove to the St. Vincent de Paul clinic on Avalon. He’d been there three years ago doing a photo shoot.
“Oh my,” said a woman in slacks and a buttoned-up shirt when Ingram hobbled inside. She had a clipboard in her hand and stood in front of the receptionist’s desk. There were other women in the waiting area, Black and Mexican American with their young children and an older colored man with his arm in a sling. The kids played with broken toys plucked from a wooden chest. There was an assortment of dog-eared magazines splayed on an end table, and worn comic books like the adventures of The Black Cobra, a do-gooder in a ’50s style business suit, fedora and domino mask. There was also a comic book he’d seen before called The Red Iceberg. The cover of the anti-communist effort showed a grim Uncle Sam sitting on a boat as it approached a literal red iceberg with a hammer and sickle carved into it. Behind the iceberg were grave markers for the likes of North Korea and East Berlin.
The woman helped him to a seat. “A safe fall on it?” She was white, a few years older than Ingram, dark haired and dark eyed. She regarded him with genuine concern but not recognition. She wore a small gold cross on a light chain. He remembered her from before. He’d mostly been unnoticed with the camera and she’d been busy with patients that day. She’d worn traditional clothes then as well. He recalled the priest who’d showed them around, schooling them on the difference between a sister who engaged with the outer world and a nun who was cloistered. He didn’t recall her name.
“No, Sister, two men jumped me and stuck a knife in my foot.” He figured the closer to the truth the better. Anyway, there was no other way to explain the wound. He wasn’t Catholic, but lying to a nun seemed like it might bring bad luck. His foot could get infected and have to be cut off.
“Oh my,” she repeated. “Hold on.” She went to her desk and came back with a pair of surgical scissors. Acknowledging the wary looks on several faces, she bent down and helped him back to his feet. “We better get you inside.”
She wasn’t a stout woman, but plenty strong, Ingram noted, an arm around her for support as she guided him into an exam room. She sat him back down on a chair and proceeded to remove his bloody wrappings.
“Don’t worry,” she said as he flinched, “I’m a nurse and saw a lot worse in a MASH unit in Korea.”
“I did too over there.”
She briefly smiled up at him, then returned her attention to what she was doing. She cleaned his foot with an alcohol-soaked cloth and did a professional job of wrapping the wound in gauze and padding.
“That’s going to need stitches. But first you’ll need to get a couple of X-rays done and we don’t have that here. I can send you over to California Hospital to get them.”
“You can stitch me up, Sister—”
“Violet, Violet O’Shay. Anyway, stitches have to be authorized by the intern and he’s not scheduled to be here until later today. You’ll have to come back.”
“What about those folks out there? They waiting on the doc too?”
“That’s runny noses, and Mr. Iverson is just a check on how his bones are knitting after his fall. That sort of care I’m allowed to administer without direct supervision.”
“Does it make a difference if I can donate to the church?”
“You trying to bribe me?”
“Yes, I am.”
She was leaning against the wall, taking a pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of her slacks. She shook one lose, angling the pack toward him.
“Cigars are my vice,” he said.
Head back against the wall she lit up and blew a stream. She looked more like a torch singer between sets than a holy woman. “Why did the two men rough you up?”
He told her enough and added, “I was here before. Must have been three years ago, for an article about the clinic serving the poor folk around here. It was for Ebony magazine. I was the photographer.” Crossman had written the article.
“You looking to get back at these men?”
“If I was a policeman, would you ask that?”
“You’re not. But knowing how they act around here, yes, I would.”
He believed her. “I intend to find out how they’re involved. But I’m not crazy, Sister Violet, I go around assaulting white men, they’d bury me under the jailhouse.”
She smoked, weighing what to do next.
“How about you call the intern and tell him, well, tell him what you think he’ll want to hear then see if he gives his okay.”
“I won’t lie.”
“I think we both know you have a ton more experience than some wide-eyed kid the church has assigned here, and you have to deal with his impatience with us natives. Looking to bug out for greener pastures when he can.”
She let smoke drift up across her face. This didn’t obscure the activity behind her eyes. “You ever see the movie The Left Hand of God? It’s from a few years ago.”
He shrugged. “Can’t say as I have.”
Sister Violet nodded. “Hold on.” She left the room and soon returned with a cloth-covered dice cup, rattling the dice in it. She also had a deck of cards. “High hand or roll of the dice?”
“Wait, is that okay for you to do?” Ingram said. “Gamble, I mean. I don’t want no lightning bolts zapping through the roof. And you just happen to have those laying around here?”
“A regular Redd Foxx you are.”
It didn’t surprise him she knew about the blue comedian.
“Besides,” she continued, “the Bible says the love of money is the road to ruin, but as interpreted by many, it’s vague on the subject of gambling. There is a reason the church puts on a weekly bingo game and conducts lotteries to raise money from time to time.” She jingled the dice in the cup. “This is from our backgammon game, and cards are just cards, Mr. Ingram, even those used for spades. Best three out of five. What’ll it be?”
Ingram wasn’t a good poker player so not inclined to favor the cards. Dice he hardly played but what about beginner’s luck? “The dice.”
“You’re on.”
Using the compact countertop of the built-in, she rolled, a die falling into the sink but not down the drain.
“I’m okay if you want to count that,” Ingram said. The total was nine.
“Brave man,” she said.
He rolled a three. Ingram won the next two rounds and she the fourth toss.
