Half-Blood Blues (12 page)

I was moving slow now. I swung clumsily and missed. Got slammed in the gut once, then again. But I got a good knuckle up under the jaw and that damn Boot fell to a knee. Hell. But now the first bastard was back up and I hit him hard as I could in his face, feeling something crack wetly under my fist.

When I turned round I seen Fritz lurching after two of them, as they gone running back down into darkness. There was two Boots just writhing on the cobblestones, whimpering horribly. I just wasn’t able to catch my breath, and kept bending low, gasping, spitting up some of what I et earlier. Wheezing and wheezing.

There was a low scuffling in the doorway to our building and when I lift up my head I seen the glint of it first. That broken bottle. Held to the kid’s throat. ‘I know this Jewfucker,’ the Boot yelled. ‘You’re the fuck who fronts that jazz band, that fucking nigger music. I’m going to gut you. I’m going to gut you.’

But he was looking at Chip, weaving unsteadily in front of him. There was blood all down the back of Chip’s shirt, like a sticky black apron. Then old Jones was crouching, like to find his balance. I blinked, wiped blood from my eyes. Then the kid was crawling away, and Chip and that Boot was punching each other against the walls of the doorway, and then all a sudden Chip was standing over the Boot and the Boot was lying across the stoop, his head lolling in the gutter.

Something black seeped from the Boot’s chest, a long wet stain on the stones.

‘Chip,’ I hissed. ‘We got to go.’

Chip ain’t moved.

Fritz was holding Paul under one arm, pulling the kid to his feet with the other. He give me a sharp look. ‘Sid,’ he called out. ‘Let’s
go
.’

‘I know.
Chip
,’ I said quietly. I gone over to him. ‘We got to go
now
.’

He was still holding the neck of that bottle in his fist. I watched the blood ooze out from under the Boot’s body, glowing blacker than pitch, like some terrible dark maw been opened in the pavement, a portal going down.

‘
Chip
,’ I said again.

He finally turned. We run.

2

‘They goin be comin for us,’ said Chip. Wincing, he twisted around, glowering up at Fritz. ‘Hell, brother, you diggin to China or what?’

Frowning, Big Fritz leaned back from Chip’s scalp, a shard of black glass in one palm. His huge fingers poised delicately on the tweezers.

‘So what you sayin, buck?’ I said.

Paul was holding a wet cloth to his cheekbone, where a violent red welt was rising. ‘He’s saying we have to stay here,’ he muttered through the rag. ‘He’s saying he hopes you sleep alright on the floor.’

The kid sat picking at his hands, saying nothing.

I shifted on my seat, trying to breathe better. My ribs was damn sore. The Hound felt dark, utterly silent round us. We ain’t known where else to go.

We sat in darkness at the edge of the dance floor, the stage in shadow behind us, the sole light shining down from Ernst’s office over the alcove where the bar was. His door stood open up there, the light spilling out in a tan shaft over the stairs. Ernst sat smoking in silence at the table beside ours.

There was a quiet click as Fritz dropped the shard into a dish.

‘They goin use this as a excuse,’ said Chip.

‘Excuse for what?’

‘For anythin. Beatin up folk. Arrestin gates. Who knows.’

Fritz frowned. ‘It might not be so bad as all that. There are still laws. They don’t just break them, not any more.’

I shook my head. ‘What country you been livin in? That exactly what they do.’

Chip sucked his teeth. ‘
Hell
, Fritz. Go
gentle
.’

Fritz grunted.

There was another click of broken glass.

Ernst sat at a angle in his chair, one knee folded over the other, a cig flaring and dying out in his pale fingers. When he finally spoke, it was softly, with measure. ‘Chip’s right. We should stay here until we can figure something out.’

‘Guess we ain’t stickin round Berlin after all,’ I said to Fritz. ‘Better pack you spare undershorts. How you say,
Mr Armstrong, you got mighty handsome calves
in French?’

‘You find this amusing, Sid?’ said Fritz.

‘I ain’t laughin, buck,’ I said. ‘It hurt too damn much to laugh.’

‘Hiero?’ Paul said then. He leaned across, dipped his chin to get a look at the kid. ‘You alright?

The kid was trembling light and fast. He glanced at Paul, glanced away.

‘Aw, he fine. Just dreamin of Paris.’

‘Course he fine,’ said Chip. ‘Kid ain’t got a mark on him. Jesus
hell
, Fritz. I ain’t a slab of wurst.’

Fritz gestured with his free hand, then set his huge palm on Chip’s scalp, angling it into the light. ‘None of you find it peculiar, this woman showing up with her ridiculous offer the very night we get attacked? How long have we been living here? And how many incidents have we had?’

‘You reachin now, brother.’

Ernst shifted in his chair. ‘What do you know that we don’t, Fritz?’

Fritz pressed his lips tight together.

‘Fritz?’

‘Nothing. But I know a bad feeling when it comes.’

‘Alright, that’s enough,’ yelled Chip, banging a raw hand on the table. A glass clattered. ‘Ain’t no one sayin nothin more to Fritz until he done workin on my damn head. Alright?’

‘I don’t know about Paris,’ said Ernst. ‘But we can’t stay in Berlin. Not now.’

Fritz looked across at Ernst. ‘This will pass. It will.’

Ernst stood, frowning. ‘Well. For now, you’ll stay here at the Hound. At least until we find out how serious this is. Maybe the boy didn’t die. Maybe no one recognized you.’

‘They recognized us,’ I said.

‘You don’t know that,’ said Fritz. ‘Not for sure.’

‘There ain’t three jacks in the whole damn city you size, Fritz. Never mind takin a stroll at midnight with a couple a black gents. They known us. For sure.’

That night we slept rumpled and sore in our clothes. With the club’s long, narrow shape, its one strangely angled wall, felt like we was in the hold of a ship. Or maybe it was just that old sofa I was stretched out on, its cushions slanting badly. Room was lined with old chairs, a long mirror across the far wall, a mash of chipped tables set end to end. A huge copper sink like a old kettle drum stood in one corner, catching the tracelights reflected by the mirror. A high, barred window been covered with a gold curtain, but street-light still spilled whitely through its seams.

I was roused by a steady tapping on my foot. Slowly opening my eyes, I thought, Hell. Delilah Brown was standing over me, nudging me with the toe of her high heel. Decked out in a white skirt and a white blouse and with a white headwrap twisted like gauze round her head. She held a paper sack in the elbow of one arm.

‘You look awful,’ she said.

‘Morning,’ I muttered, closing my eyes again. Breathing
hurt
, brother.

Paul lift up his head from under the far table, his oiled yellow hair flying at weird angles. ‘Mmm. I know that voice.’

Hiero was still snoring away in the big armchair beside the mirror.

‘Sid, where’s Ernst?’ Delilah ask more softly, like not to wake no one else. She crouched down in that tight skirt, her knees pressed hard together.

I wasn’t thinking clear.

‘Ernst,’ she said again. ‘Where is he?’

‘He ain’t here?’ I blinked, glancing sleepily at Paul. In German I said, ‘Brother, where Ernst get to last night?’

Paul’s voice sounded thick. ‘Maybe he went back to his flat. I think he said it was safer. It’d look too damn strange, him not going home.’ He ran a scarred hand through his hair, and sat up spastically, like a marionette. He stretched his stiff neck. The bruise on his cheek just made him look more rugged, more chiselled, like a debonair Bogart. The bastard ain’t even able to get beat up without looking good.

I grimaced, rubbed my sore ribs. ‘So
he
get to sleep in a bed? Hell.’

There was a clatter in the doorway, and Chip come in. He got a big white bandage wrapped round his head. ‘Ernst in his office,’ he grunted in German. He looked at Delilah. ‘You lookin for Ernst, girl?’

She looked at me. ‘What did he say?’

But his face was so swollen, so cut up, I started grinning and didn’t translate. He look like a plate of mashed black beans, trying to talk.

‘What you smilin at,’ said Chip. ‘You seen you own face, buck?’

‘Sid wasn’t hit in the face,’ Paul mumbled.

‘You sure?’ Chip paused, looking Delilah up and down. He switch over to English. ‘What, the whole damn circus in town?’

‘It seems so,’ she said, looking
him
up and down. ‘Mr Jones, I suppose?’

He started to smile then stopped, grimacing in pain. ‘Charles C. The gents call me Chip. But you can call me anytime, day or night.’

‘Charming.’

‘Aw, you got to excuse him,’ I said. ‘He got hit on the head awful hard.’

‘She ain’t goin be worried bout
that
part my anatomy,’ he said in German, smiling.

Paul snorted. He gestured at Delilah’s white headwrap, at Chip’s bandaged scalp. ‘All you two need is a camel.’

Delilah ain’t understood the German, but she got the gist of it. ‘You can tell Mr Jones I have some extra skirts too, if he’d like,’ she said curtly.

‘Oh, he be interested. Chip look real cute in a skirt.’

Chip come all the way into the room then, kicking the kid’s armchair so that he like to fall out of it. ‘Rise and shine, brother,’ he hollered. ‘It a new day.’

‘Let him sleep, buck,’ I said.

But the kid was already opening his frightened eyes, staring at Delilah where she crouched beside me. She give him a wink. Flustered, he looked quickly away. Seeing his discomfort, the brutality of last night come back in a rush. I sat up, rubbed my face.

‘So you the
famous
Delilah Brown,’ said Chip. He sat on the far sofa, propped his feet up one at a time on the stained coffee table, crossing his ankles. ‘All the talk since yesterday been bout the
famous
Delilah Brown. Famous Delilah Brown the singer.’

A faint frown flickered across her face.

‘Chip,’ I said uneasily.

‘Anytime you’re done,’ she said, ‘you just let me know.’

‘Aw, I just gettin started, girl,’ Chip grinned. ‘When I done, you be seein the back of my head.’

‘Hope it’s better than the front.’

I laughed.

I felt Chip’s rocklike eyes on me, his sudden irritation so intense felt like webs on my skin. My heart tripped in my chest. I glanced at Delilah but she wasn’t looking at neither of us no more. She was watching Hiero.

Chip gestured at the rolled paper bag she was still holding. ‘What you got there, Famous Delilah Brown? You got some fuel for our old engines?’

She ain’t said nothing for a long moment, just studied Chip with her hard green eyes. Then she smiled. I could see her crooked little teeth. ‘You and me, Charles,’ she said, ‘we’re going to get along just fine. I can see it already.’

Old Chip wasn’t sure just how to respond to that.

She opened up the brown bag, pulled out a folded morning paper, six marzipan croissants.

‘Now you on the trolley,’ said Chip, smiling. ‘How’d you know we was—’

‘Your saxophonist. Fritz. I met him coming out of the club this morning. He told me about last night. He said maybe you might want something to eat other than salted peanuts.’ She was staring across at the kid. He stood at the sink, turning on the old spigot and waiting for the brown water to run through. He start to washing his face, his arms, the water shining like beaten silver on his dark skin. ‘Is he alright?’

‘Hiero?’ said Chip. ‘He fine. The damn Boots beat him with
feathers
.’

Delilah looked unconvinced. My old ribs started aching all over again.

‘Wait – you said you run into Fritz?’ I said. ‘Where was he goin?’

But maybe she ain’t heard me.

Chip was already tearing apart one croissant with his fingers, stuffing the flaking pastry into his mouth. Paul grinned at me, gleefully showing off his bread-filled teeth. He reached for the morning paper and begun pulling it to pieces, scouring it for some word.

‘I always hungrier when I ain’t slept,’ said Chip. ‘Is that strange?’

‘No,’ said Paul.

‘Why ain’t you slept?’ I said. ‘What you doin awake so early?’

‘What you jacks doin
asleep
be the question. Ain’t that damn cat kept none of you up?’

Hiero was drying hisself with his own shirt. He turned shyly. ‘Cat?’

‘Did I stutter, buck?’

‘Did he say cat?’ Paul said to me. ‘Cat?’

‘Cat,’ I nodded.

Chip stared from one to the other like we was all off our nuts. ‘Cat. C-A-T, Cat. That damn squawlin in the damn walls from that damn feline bastard all the damn night. It ain’t kept you up?’

I started to laugh. ‘How hard you get hit in the head?’

‘Jesus, brother. It ain’t shut its damn yap all night. Felt like I was sleepin in a music hall, all that wailin.’

‘Keep drinkin that czech, brother.’

‘I heard it,’ Hiero said quietly.

Paul raised an eyebrow over the top edge of his newspaper.

‘Every damn jack in a six-block radius like to have heard it,’ said Chip.

Paul smiled. ‘I guess Armstrong’s girl’s not the only singer around here.’

‘Come to think of it,’ Chip said with a grin, ‘it sound a bit like her. She say where she slept last night?’

‘Dame Delilah the Second,’ Hiero murmured. ‘She just keepin us company.’

‘Dame Delilah the Second, is right,’ laughed Chip. ‘Ain’t no one like to get no sleep at all round here now.’

Delilah cleared her throat, turning at each mention of her name. ‘I’m standing right here,’ she said, frowning. She folded one braceleted wrist at her hip.

‘Aw, we ain’t makin fun,’ I said in English.

‘It complimentary,’ Chip grinned.

‘Mm. I’m sure it is. Ernst is in his office?’ But she was watching the kid as he picked up his horn, fiddled nervously with the plugs. I could see he was trying to look anywhere but at her. Hell.