Jack of Diamonds (85 page)

‘Oh, oh!’ I gasped softly. This was something I’d imagined happening with her a hundred times. Sex is one thing, sex with the object of your desire, lust, love, is quite another; making love with the person you absolutely crave and secretly love is a completely overpowering physical and emotional experience. Moreover, Bridgett was no amateur. While I’d been in Las Vegas I’d developed into a competent lover; as Johnny Diamond had remarked, it wasn’t difficult to find a chorus girl or some other gorgeous creature happy to oblige without complications afterwards. But I had always been in control. As Juicy Fruit had once advised me, ‘Be generous and patient, Jack, and women will reward you.’

However, now I was completely helpless and felt myself starting on the certain road to the disgrace of a premature ejaculation. I’d desired Bridgett too often to control myself now. The truck had turned into a more than usually rutted road, and we were swaying and squeaking on old springs. This didn’t help one little bit as Bridgett’s mouth and generous lips worked the length of my raging erection. My febrile mind screamed,
No, no, Jack, don’t! Stop it! Get control!
‘Darling, inside . . . take me inside you,’ I gasped in desperation.

Bridgett had her hand around the base of my erection, continuing to hold it as she raised her torso, and I heard the creak as her head brushed against the lid of the laundry basket. Then she moved forward and I felt her buttocks rise and her hand inserting me, then the slide into glorious smoothness as she engulfed me to the hilt. There wasn’t much I could do to help, as I was on my back. But that wonderful derriere I’d so often admired turned out to be not simply for show and I clung onto her wrist with my right hand for the ride as her breathing became more rapid until, finally, she was panting violently. Then, letting out a moan, she cried, ‘Oh, oh . . . I’m coming . . . I’m coming! Jack, oh, fuck me, Jack, darling . . . oooooh!’

Her urgent thrusting made the laundry basket shake and creak as I lost it at the same moment. With a moan of my own I ejaculated deeply within her, my hips lifting and holding her torso in the air until I finally allowed it to sink back onto my thighs. ‘Thank you, thank you, darling,’ I said, at last.

‘Oh, Jack, I have waited so long for this,’ she whispered.

Still panting, I hoped that the dull roar of the engine and the squeaky springs of the van had covered our mutual ecstasy. But suddenly Chef Napoleon Nelson called out, ‘You folk be okay? Westside road here got itself lotsa bumps, eh? We be there soon. Maybe five minutes.’

‘Thanks, yes,’ I gasped, my breathlessness obvious.

There was a moment’s silence, then Chef Napoleon Nelson said, ‘Maybe it take ten minutes before we gone arrive, Jack.’

I have absolutely no idea how Bridgett managed to get my tracksuit pants back on, and do whatever else was necessary to restore some kind of normalcy for when the laundry basket was opened at our destination.

‘Okay, peoples, we be here,’ Chef Napoleon Nelson called loudly several minutes later. The van had slowed and turned, then come to a stop. ‘Just wait a minute and I get us everything organised.’ We heard the doors open and his footsteps moving away.

The van settled on its springs as he jumped back in a minute or two later. ‘Okay, Jack, Miss Bridgett, all clear. We can go in the house from here and no one see. Nobody up this time anyhow.’

Napoleon and the guys from the hospital helped us out of the basket. We were in a lane behind a row of identical single-storey houses. Chef Napoleon Nelson spoke briefly to Luke, the driver, and the laundry van moved off before I could offer my thanks; then he ushered us through a gate in the paling fence and across a small tidy backyard onto the back porch of the house.

We were greeted by an old balding Negro in dark trousers and an open-neck white shirt, whom I recognised as Pastor Jake Moses of the Southern Baptist Church.

‘Mr Spayd, welcome to Westside,’ he said in a grave, courteous voice.

‘It’s Jack, please, Pastor Moses, and this is Mrs Fuller,’ I said, introducing Bridgett.

‘Please call me Bridgett, Pastor Moses.’

‘Miz Bridgett, I am dee-lighted!’ Pastor Moses chuckled. ‘On the Westside, there are folk who consider you a saint. I feel I’ve known you many, many years. Come, come,’ he urged us forward, leading us down a hallway into the parlour at the front of the house.

‘Sit down in here, please. My wife is in the kitchen, making Java. She be here soon.’

‘I’m very grateful to you for helping me, Pastor, and I realise this could be dangerous for you and your friends,’ I said.

He drew his head back and said, ‘For Chef Napoleon Nelson, there ain’t nothing we won’t do. But there be other, many other reason, Jack. Hector Brownwell, he be my cousin and but for your help with settlin’ him and his family in Canada, he be a dead man now. Maybe even beautiful Sue, also. Not just him but lots of the folk who work in the casino kitchens, they be helped by your advising of Miz Bridgett here when that prince o’ darkness, Mr Sammy, come to torment. To be a small help, be my pleasure. My wife Martha, her brother, be the local head of the union for the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and already you know Booker T. Once we get you on the train, you be safe,’ he said. ‘Snug as a bug in a rug! Chef Napoleon Nelson, he gone organising a second transport for you right to the railway car in one o’ them Pullman Company linen baskets, jes like you been tonight. No white man gonna see you, not Mafia, not anyone. Same the other end.’ His rich voice with its rolling cadences, perhaps not as pronounced as those of Chef Napoleon Nelson, carried over as if from the pulpit and seemed to be the natural mode of expression of this kind elderly man.

‘I’m very grateful, Pastor.’

‘The boot on the other foot, Jack. Coloured folk paying back some. I heard you plenty of times playing wid The Resurrection Brothers. You a mighty fine piano player, sir; maybe someday you come back and play for folk in my church, eh?’

I held up my bandaged hand. ‘I think those days are over for me, Pastor Moses.’

‘We gonna do a whole heap o’ prayin’, Jack. The Lord will look after you. Have faith, my brother, His healing power is beyond anything; the heavenly surgeon, he gonna take care of you, son.’

At this point, his wife Martha appeared, carrying a tray. ‘Coffee ain’t right this time o’ night, so I made up some hot lemon tea.’ We introduced ourselves and she said, ‘Nice to meet you folk at last. I bin hearing good about you both a long, long time. It’s a pleasure, to be sure.’

I sipped at the hot lemon drink and suddenly felt completely exhausted. Everything was catching up with me. ‘I think you should get some sleep now, Mr Jack,’ Martha said. ‘I’ve made up a bed for you across the corridor.’

‘When does Jack leave; I mean, what time?’ Bridgett asked.

I was shocked by the question. ‘Bridgett, don’t you be anywhere near that railway station!’

‘No, Jack, of course not, I just want to be thinking of you,’ she said softly and gave me such a loving look I knew immediately I would carry it with me for the rest of my life. So near and yet so far, so little and yet so much; I knew, with absolute certainty, that whatever happened to me, I had, if only once, consummated the love of my life.

Pastor Moses then said, ‘My brother-in-law sent a railway telegraph, sayin’ we gonna put Jack on the through train to Chicago, most probably on Thursday afternoon. Dat three days from now. Booker T., he rostered for that trip, and my brother-in-law, he says he’ll make sure some other people he can trust are on dat train as well.’

‘Jack, you be perfectly safe,’ Chef Napoleon Nelson added.

The pastor spoke again. ‘You want him to get to Albany, New York State?’

‘Yes, sir, the Albany General Hospital.’

‘He’s to be under the care of a Dr Koroush Haghighi, the senior surgeon,’ Bridgett added. She’d heard the surgeon’s name only once but already she had it down pat.

‘Fine, Miz Bridgett. Better write that down, how you say it by way of pronouncing, because we’ll use the railway telegraph to set everything up.’

‘Is that safe?’ Bridgett asked.

‘What colour you think all the telegraph operators they are, ma’am?’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think it through,’ Bridgett said.

‘Ha! Ain’t nobody do, Miz Bridgett, that’s why it safe. We’ll get a most discreet message to Doctor Hag . . . whose name and pronouncement you gonna write down.’

Martha appeared with a pencil and paper and then left the room as Bridgett wrote ‘Haghighi’ then, phonetically in capitals, HAG-HIG-HEE, and handed it to the pastor.

Martha returned almost immediately. ‘Lizabeth come to take Miz Bridgett to the taxi,’ she announced.

‘Do you think we could have five minutes privately?’ I asked, suddenly stricken. The time had come and I began to fear that I might never see Bridgett again. ‘Some personal instructions,’ I said lamely.

Martha showed us through to the bedroom I was to use and shut the door behind us. ‘Oh, Jack,’ Bridgett cried, ‘whatever shall I do? I can’t come to Albany in case I lead them to you!’

I clasped my right arm around her and we kissed deeply, and then I held her head against my chest while she sobbed. ‘Bridgett, we’ll find a way. I love you more than I can possibly say.’

‘Jack, I want you! I want to look after you,’ she cried, ‘I’ve loved you for so long.’

‘Bridgett, you must stay away from me. I’m bad news now.’

‘No, no, don’t say that, Jack!’

‘Let me get through Albany and then I’ll have to lie low for a bit. I’ll send Dr Light my mother’s address in Toronto.’

Bridgett nodded her head against my chest, then stepped away from my grasp and knuckled the tears from her eyes. I could see her pulling herself together and, moments later, Mrs Fuller appeared. ‘Jack, I love you.’ She smiled. ‘How am I ever going to be able to tell anyone that I found the love of my life in the back of a van at the bottom of a hospital laundry basket?’

I was choked up but managed to say, ‘Oh, Bridgett, darling, we’ll . . . we’ll find a way of getting together, somehow, somewhere, I promise.’

Bridgett nodded. There wasn’t any more to say. She knew she had to stay away, have no contact with me in Albany in case she inadvertently led the Mob to me. ‘Write out a simple power of attorney and have the pastor witness it, that way I can sell your apartment and send your things on, clothes and anything else you want to keep, via Booker T. Will that be safe, do you think?’ I knew she meant my music but was being tactful. ‘Jack, we’ll use Pastor Moses as our post box. I’m sure he won’t mind.’

‘Better not go to my apartment yourself, Bridgett. They’re bound to be keeping watch. Don’t worry about my clothes and stuff, give them to Pastor Moses for the poor in his congregation; just fix the bank, my apartment and . . .’ I hesitated, ‘send my music.’

Bridgett nodded. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll send one of Chef Napoleon Nelson’s invisible kitchen clan. Being black in America does have some advantages, if only a very few. It had never occurred to me before that the perfect way to hide is by being entirely invisible.’ She came over and kissed me deeply. ‘Let me go first, Jack. Stay here for five minutes so I can leave with Lizabeth.’

A single tear ran down her cheek, and I felt my own eyes prickling. She turned and opened the door. ‘Jack, oh, Jack,’ she whispered.

‘Bridgett!’ I cried. But she’d gone.

I was forced to use three of the syrettes over the next three days while I waited to board the train. I could manage the pain during the day, but needed the morphine to sleep. On the morning of my departure on the afternoon train to Chicago, a letter arrived from Bridgett via Mr Joel, who informed me he was now referred to as Chef Samson Joel, having taken over from Chef Napoleon Nelson, who was now performing at the GAWP Bar.

Darling Jack,

As you will have guessed it is chaos here, with the place crawling with police and the FBI. Predictably, Manny ‘Asshole’ has taken over Lenny’s side of the casino and is demanding justice from the police and the FBI. (Oh, my, what a joke!) Somehow I’ve managed to keep the GAWP Bar going and Chef Napoleon Nelson is doing a splendid job, though your place is going to take a lot of filling. I don’t think it wise for him to see you on your departure and have told him so.

As I’m sure you’ve been told, your abduction is also in the news. At this stage Lenny’s assassin is unknown, but the two men who visited you earlier are the prime suspects and the FBI has issued a nationwide description of them based on Sister Barry’s description. Please don’t worry about me. I am completely safe (paperwork) and my two points are intact even if Chicago lose their casino licence, which seems highly unlikely.

Manny ‘Asshole’ is said to be spreading money around like confetti at a wedding! Darling, it is unsafe to go near your apartment (police watching) and I suggest after a month or so your mother sends me her bank details so I can transfer the money and your bank balance to Toronto. Tell Booker T. if this is okay. I have your power of attorney, thanks to our invisible friends.

Please, darling, you have simply got to disappear. Chicago are most definitely after you! Also, it will be necessary to change your name. I have phoned your surgeon to admit you in the name of Jack McCrae and to note your hand injury as ‘auto accident’. Hope that’s okay. Dr You Know Who will destroy all paperwork here regarding your transfer.