Ms. Etta's Fast House (22 page)
Read Ms. Etta's Fast House Online
Authors: Victor McGlothin
After Baltimore played his trump card, a briefcase filled with stacks of large bills rested on the passenger seat atop a large ring of M.K.'s blood. He'd never been more happy and sorry at the same time. That's what he told Etta while stuffing nearly eighty grand in the safe hidden in the floor beneath her office desk. “Don't be looking at me that way, Jo Etta, ain't nobody gonna come to get after this money,” he assured her. “I didn't steal it. Just traded it for something I did steal.”
“I didn't say nothing,” she replied, well aware that Baltimore's countenance didn't convey one inkling of remorse. After safely putting the money aside, Baltimore didn't care who might have come looking for him.
“Maybe you don't say nothing with your mouth but with that look that's burning a hole through me, you're saying more than enough.”
“When are you leaving?” she asked, after her apprehension waned. “You know how you do, make your mark and then move on. I thought you'd blow out today until you showed up with all that money. More money than is supposed to be lumped together at the same time.”
Baltimore didn't respond to Etta's comment about the vast fortune he recently amassed. “Don't worry, I'll say goodbye before I get in the wind. I was thinking on taking Penny with me.”
“Penny? Uh-uh, she can't go gallivanting all over tarnation with you. She ain't even full grown yet.”
“And I ain't stud'n on bedding her neither. Penny is a lamb and always will be, as far as I'm concerned, Etta. Look, I just want to show her some of the things she'll never get to see staying here in St. Louis. There's a lot of beauty out there, a lot to behold.” He hadn't once taken into account what Etta might like to behold and neither did she, until then.
“Well, why shouldn't the same go for me? I mean, I like beautiful things too. Besides, Gussy done went and keeled over, so I don't have a decent bartender and I'd just as soon not have to go out and hunt one up.” When Baltimore offered Etta a loving smile, her expression dripped with intensity and anticipation.
“Well, I'll be, I'm flabbergasted. âCouldn't guess you'd be willing to tramp around with me and leave the Fast House behind.”
“Pret' near as I can tell, there's over fifty thousand or more you just shoved in that hole. Now, I could be wrong, but that ain't nowhere close to trampin'. Don't hold me to it but I wouldn't might mind a change or two coming my way.”
Baltimore saw something in her he hadn't before. There was a fire behind her eyes, a blaze he'd witnessed coming from other women, one that cried out to be quenched by striking out toward new, bold and unknown territory. Etta was afraid to miss out on something she'd never had, a wide-opened trail and close friends to help her experience it.
“We'll have to sit down and discuss it then,” Baltimore agreed. “Right now, I've got two fellas itching to go fishing. M.K.'s body needs to be sent home to his folks and that girl carrying his baby is going to need some money when it gets here.” Baltimore didn't come right out and say he'd be the one paying to have his friend's remains flown back to the east coast or he'd make a substantial donation to help support the child, but Etta knew his heart was made of gold. “Tell Penny I'll be around later. Don't worry, everything will be fine,” he said persuasively. “Trust me.” Etta was pleasantly although nervously optimistic, and she had reason to be. Baltimore was still lightning in the jar. Unfortunately, the lid had already been removed.
23
W
HAT'S
G
OT
I
NTO
Y
OU
?
HAT'S
G
OT
I
NTO
Y
OU
?
W
hat should have been one of the happiest days of Henry's life turned on him like a woman whose love had grown cold. He awoke to breakfast in bed, a wonderfully prepared plate of pan-seared fish and grits. After his wife Roberta served the delicious platter, she climbed in the bed with him and then served up a good old-fashioned stack of hot loving to top it off. Henry didn't want to run the risk of throwing a wet blanket on the moment, but a troubling thought nagged at him while he relaxed beneath the sheets, running his fingers along the curvy contours of Roberta's ample hips.
hat should have been one of the happiest days of Henry's life turned on him like a woman whose love had grown cold. He awoke to breakfast in bed, a wonderfully prepared plate of pan-seared fish and grits. After his wife Roberta served the delicious platter, she climbed in the bed with him and then served up a good old-fashioned stack of hot loving to top it off. Henry didn't want to run the risk of throwing a wet blanket on the moment, but a troubling thought nagged at him while he relaxed beneath the sheets, running his fingers along the curvy contours of Roberta's ample hips.
“Ah, now that's the kind of stroll through the garden a man won't soon forget,” Henry cooed, as his wife rested her head on his thick dampened chest. “'Berta, I can't remember you taking hold of things like this before. Not that I'm complaining mind you but it is mighty peculiar. What's got into you?”
Roberta pulled the cotton bed sheet over her shoulder then she slid her leg out from underneath it. “Ooh, I just caught a chill. You got me running like a furnace on the blink, hot and cold all at once,” she said before answering his question. “Whew! I've been watching you, pacing about and bottled up over the past three months. It's been rough on me too. The more thought I lent to it, the harder it got with me not knowing if you'd get tired of those ornery white boys making it tougher than it has to be. I didn't want you to get hurt or throw in the towel either, so I kept it to myself. This morning I felt the time came to open up and let loose.”
“Uh-huh, you've been keeping it to yourself all right,” Henry teased, since discussing his fears didn't particularly appeal to him. “You need to know I never meant to bring you in on my sorrows. I reckon it has been hard on you too. Good thing that graduation ceremony fires up in a couple of hours. Me and the fellas deserve all the respect they'll be forced to give us then. The chief says there ain't no officer's badge any bigger or more important than the next and I believe him. You know, some of those boys carrying that tin got hearts full of hate. The department is rotten down to the core.”
Roberta raised her head. She glanced up at her man's face and blushed. “That's why we need more men like you to straighten it out.”
“I ain't ever been one for straightening. Done spent too much time knocking wrinkles in, mostly.”
“That was the old Henry,” she told him, as she nestled her cheek against his warm skin. “You're new and improved like the man on the radio says about the showroom Cadillac. I love your new bells and whistles.”
Henry beamed proudly, fighting off an awkward grin. “Come on now, Roberta, keep talking like that and I'll be asking you to blow on that ole whistle for me.”
“Huh, you must have me mistaken for some other woman. I don't wrap my lips around that kinda screecher.”
“Don't go frowning on it until you tried it,” Henry suggested lewdly.
“Have you ... tried it?” she smarted back.
“Heylll, naw, who do you think I am?”
“My point exactly,” Roberta argued convincingly. “There're some things I don't have to sample to know the taste won't suit.”
“All right, 'Berta, all right,” Henry said, giving up on what he thought was a good idea. “I'd better be getting around to putting on my dress blues and heading over to the courthouse.” Just then, the telephone rang. “Hold up, dear, lemme get that, it's probably one of the fellas checking to see if I'm up and running.”
Sitting up on the iron framed bed with a sheet covering her breasts, Roberta sneered at the thought of succumbing to Henry's sexual desires, then she smacked her lips and chuckled.
That'll be the day, when colored women stoop to serving a man's filthy whims like white girls do. Huh, ain't no telling where Henry's thing has been or who it's been in for that matter.
When she'd given it a second thought, Etta came to mind. She was really steaming then. “Henry!” she yelled, expecting to pick a fight about his ex-lover and what she'd likely done to his whistle when they were together. The ghostly expression he wore, standing naked in the doorway, caused her to shake loose from going against him. “What is it, Henry? Who was that on the line?” she asked, with short and snappy breaths.
That'll be the day, when colored women stoop to serving a man's filthy whims like white girls do. Huh, ain't no telling where Henry's thing has been or who it's been in for that matter.
When she'd given it a second thought, Etta came to mind. She was really steaming then. “Henry!” she yelled, expecting to pick a fight about his ex-lover and what she'd likely done to his whistle when they were together. The ghostly expression he wore, standing naked in the doorway, caused her to shake loose from going against him. “What is it, Henry? Who was that on the line?” she asked, with short and snappy breaths.
“Trace, Trace Wiggins,” he answered quietly, as if a myriad of other things zigzagged through his mind simultaneously. “He said they got Willie B. Bernard locked up for murder.”
“Murder?” she repeated, in as much disbelief as her husband. “Who? When?”
Henry's mouth was bone dry when he told her. “He killed Helen and some doctor friend of Baltimore's last night ... at Etta's place.” His knees were shaking because he'd initially assumed it was Baltimore at the wrong end of Willie B.'s gun barrel. Feeling somewhat relieved that it wasn't, he breathed heavily. “I didn't know the dead doctor, but I'm awful sorry for Helen though.”
“Poor girl,” Roberta groaned sorrowfully. “Helen didn't do anything but love that fool with all her heart. However it happened, I'd bet Baltimore had something to do with it, and don't let me get started on Jo Etta Adams.”
“Don't,” Henry huffed, in an insolent manner that caused Roberta to shrink back. “There's been innocent blood spilt any which way you look at it. This ain't the time to go pointing fingers and calling names.”
“I just thoughtâ”
“I'm running late,” Henry interrupted. “Gotta go.” Henry didn't share the information Trace had about the number of dead-on-arrival heroin victims turning up at the hospital during the night. Henry easily connected the dots back to Barker Sinclair and Tasman Gillespie's illegal enterprise. Immediately, he regretted the decision to let Barker ride off with his prisoner, keeping quiet about it, and his lack of fortitude when witnessing police brutality. He'd grown accustomed to being a second-class citizen but refused to be a second-class police officer who wouldn't take a stand any longer. Henry promised himself the next time he was faced with stepping up to the plate, he wouldn't be sitting on his hands again.
En route to the long awaited ceremony, Henry parked the car in front of Watkins Emporium. When he told Roberta he'd be right back, she merely grunted that she heard him, but offered no reply. The way he'd handled her when Etta's name came up still had her seething. Henry had to work his way back into Roberta's good graces before she was ready to say two decent words to him. A great deal more was required if he ever intended on taking another stroll through her garden, a great deal more.
“Well, looka yonder,” the store owner hailed, proudly. Mr. Watkins's face rounded out into a grandiose smile when he laid eyes on Henry's impressive uniform, dark blue from shoulder to shoe, a double-pocketed shirt, brass and leather belted accessories and a perfectly shaped black and navy colored cap to compliment it. “I declare, this is a big day for our people and the city of St. Louis,” he said, admiring the uniform as much as he did the man wearing it.
“Thank you, sir,” Henry said softly, not used to being ogled and appreciated by grown men, unless he was decked out in his baseball gear and knocking the hide off fast pitches. Henry was uncomfortable with this type of adoration, although he wasn't turning it down.
If only everyone felt the same as Mr. Watkins,
he thought, as a familiar face sauntered through the door with her shadow bringing up the rear.
If only everyone felt the same as Mr. Watkins,
he thought, as a familiar face sauntered through the door with her shadow bringing up the rear.
“Hi ya, Etta, hey, Penny,” the older man greeted them from the opposite side of the checkout counter. “I was just telling Henry here how dashing he looked in his parade duds.”
“Afternoon, Mr. Watkins,” Etta offered. She neglected to comment on Henry or his slave-catching clothes, as Baltimore called them. “I've got white detectives breathing down my neck about a double murder and that colored newspaper has been snooping high and low, too, so I give less than a damn about brass buttons or the trained baboons wearing them.” Mr. Watkins winced in embarrassment at Henry, unable to pretend Etta hadn't blasted him with a personal attack, which he assumed was the result of a jilted woman scorned.
“She always was a ball of fire,” he whispered to Henry, while handing him change for the cigars he'd stopped in to purchase. “But then you'd know that better than most, I guess.” Henry dumped the coins into his trouser pocket and winked at Mr. Watkins.
“Yeah, always was,” he agreed, as he turned to leave. “Miss,” Henry said to Penny in passing. Her eyes glimmered at the big man in the striking suit and she smiled at him the way the store owner had when he arrived. She watched Henry strut all the way out onto the sidewalk, but her smile vanished when Etta eased in to block her view.
“Come on, chile, you need some new scarves and hose,” she hissed disappointedly. “Wait 'til I get you home, we're gonna have a long talk about the way things is.”
“Ms. Etta, all's I did was wave at Mistah Henry,” she protested. “Is there a rule says I can't be nice just because y'all can't get along?”
“Hell, yes,” Etta informed her, “and that's what I'm aiming to tell you all about soon as we get along.”
“Is it gonna hurt?”
“I'm gonna do all I can to see that it does,” she answered, with a frown on her mouth and laughter dancing in her eyes. “Womenfolks and friends got to stick together against any form of foe, even if they got absolutely no other reason to other than because one of them says it ought to be so.”
“Seems kinda silly to me,” Penny said after pondering on it a while.
“Seemed silly to me too until I saw you swooning over Henry's broad shoulders wrapped in that getup. Then it made perfect sense that I needed you to be as spiteful as I'm willing to. That's what you call a true friend.”
Penny mulled over the issue some more before making her stand. “I don't like that rule, not even a little bit.”
“And nobody asked you,” Etta reprimanded her. “If I wanted your say, I'd have asked you for it.”
“Whew, it's a mite tougher being a friend than I thought. They's too many rules for one.”
“Now you're getting the picture. On second thought, setting you straight might not hurt so much after all.”
Penny furrowed her brow awkwardly. “Tell that to my aching head.”
At the steps of City Hall, the very place where the colored cadets were initially selected, Roberta was staring upside Henry's head the way she had since he glided out of the emporium on Cloud Nine. She imagined his smile was due to something Etta said instead of what Mr. Watkins put in his mind about her.
Seeing as how his wife didn't have words for him, Henry didn't speak up to tell her any different. “That ought to hold her,” he told Smiley Tennyson as the host of wives cordially introduced themselves near the front of the proceedings.
“That's something I haven't seen,” Smiley responded, looking over his right shoulder, “white and colored women shaking hands and grinning at each other. Too bad Willie B.'s wife Helen couldn't be one of them. Clay Barker said the prosecutor is aiming to send him up for life without parole if he can't guarantee a hanging. Etta's telling detectives a misunderstanding is what caused it. You think Baltimore put her up to saying that so's to save Willie B. from the hangman's noose?”
“Naw, Baltimo' never did cotton much to Willie B. and Etta wouldn't say it was so unless that's the way it was. This city is going to come apart at the threads.”
“At the seams too,” Smiley answered, with his gaze locked on the trail of cars parking at the curb. Henry's eye found it disheartening as well. On one side of the street, a contingent of sixty or so colored men gathered. The other side served as the rendezvous point for twenty off-duty officers who were actually selected to sit in attendance, in full regalia, as a sign of support. They openly defied orders when they appeared in faded jeans and other casual clothing, in silent protest against the induction of colored officers. The chief was so embarrassed he pulled a stunt to rival theirs.
“To commemorate this special occasion,” he said, after the band played a few numbers, “I would like to announce the unanimous choice for Best Cadet of the Metropolitan Police Department's Spring Class of 1947. On second thought, I'll let their training leader present this highly coveted award.”
The chief moved aside when Clay ascended the podium steps. He scanned the meager audience while humming on the inside with enthusiasm. “It is with the utmost respect that I salute this officer with the most sought after training award we have. This class has voted you, Henry Taylor, the unanimous winner for Best Cadet and would like you to receive this plaque on their behalf. Come on up, Henry, you deserve it.” To the wildly thunderous applause from the congregation of colored supporters, he stood from his chair, arched his back and went up to accept his award with his peers cheering him on.
Roberta cast a lengthy glance toward the row of off-duty protestors. Because the ceremony went off without a hitch, she found herself wondering what their alignment meant, down the road, if anything other than making time to shake people up by staring. Roberta didn't have long to wait before the good-ole-boy network validated her darkest suspicions.
Other books
Pursued by Kristin Vayden
Soul Mates Rise: Witching Call Part 4 by Sandra Ross
His Plus One by Gemissant, Winter
Little Fingers! by Tim Roux
Peterhead by Robert Jeffrey
Shadows of Time: Shadow Maiden by B.R. Nicholson
Under the Moon's Shadow by T. L. Haddix
Revengeful Deceptions by Dukes, Ursula
Treva's Children by David L. Burkhead
At the King's Pleasure (Secrets of the Tudor Court) by Emerson, Kate