Standing at the Scratch Line (31 page)

“How about that nigger on the horse? You got the info on who this wild-assed nigger is?” Lester DuMont asked.

Cody Petway bobbed his head on his long neck up and down several times. “Yes, suh, we found out where he’s stayin’ and everythin’. His name is Tremain. He call hisself King Tremain, but his family knows him as LeRoi.”

“Where the hell did this one come from?” demanded Lester. “I thought we had taken care of those Tremains a couple of years ago. Do I have to go out there and wipe out all of them?”

Old Damon Shackleford pulled the tip of his lush white mustache. “It seems to me that was the name of the boy who run off to the army after killin’ them deputies in the bayou three, four years ago.” Old Man Shackleford was a local historian. He knew most of the colored families of any consequence in and around New Orleans. “As I reckon it, the Tremains been due for a reincarnation of some of their bad blood. You know every thirty, forty years they have a child that terrorizes the Territory. If they got one now, he’s the one.” There were gasps from men around the table. These were not men who feared other ordinary men, but they were well acquainted with the concept of bad blood and they feared meeting a man who had it running in his veins.

“What you talkin’ about, old man?” Lester asked, letting impatience seep into his tone. “I keep you’s around to advise me, not to scare my mens with stories of haints and such!”

“I was just tellin’ about what everybody knows,” the old man said in his quiet voice. “Names like Bordeaux, St. Clare, and Black Jacques is part of local legend and they’s all Tremains. I’m thinkin’ this boy is—”

“I ain’t got time for no fairy tales, Shackleford!” Lester interrupted. He looked around the table at the five men seated there. Other than Shackleford, the rest of the men were young. A couple of them were craving for an opportunity to show what they could do. Lester directed his gaze to Cody. He had always intuitively disliked Cody and his long neck. He reminded Lester of an ostrich that he had seen in a traveling carnival. “Cody, why don’t you tell us again why you didn’t just shoot this fool down when he first butt in our business?”

“Uh, Mr. DuMont, uh, I said I didn’t have no gun. I ain’t no kind of shot no way. I just only brought my knife ’cause we was just chasin’ a girl. I wasn’t ready to deal with no gunslinger.”

“How come you didn’t give him the bull rush the same time as Davis did? You could’ve probably taken him! Where the hell is that Davis anyway?”

A lean, muscular man sitting next to Old Man Shackleford snickered. “He’s still outside sittin’ in the rain like you told him and it look like he gon’ sit there all night.”

“Thanks, Oren,” Lester acknowledged with a humorless laugh. “This here Tremain feller has already done made the gall rise up in my throat and I ain’t even seen the man. He knocks one of my best mens senseless as a turkey in a hailstorm and then helps my money get to the bank in somebody else’s account. I think I’m gon’ send a couple you boys to visit him and make him see that ain’t the way we do things around here.”

“What you gon’ do about Davis?” Shackleford asked. “I think he needs to see a doctor.”

“I don’t give a damn what happens to him! If he ain’t got the sense to come in out of the rain, he ain’t no good to me and I ain’t payin’ no doctor bills for him! Leave him out there or drive him off, I don’t give a shit! He’s goddamned useless! Two men against one should always come out on top!

“Cody, I want you and Ralph to take care of this Tremain and don’t come back without his heart!”

Lester DuMont ran a small organization based primarily on extortion and crooked gambling. He had risen to recent prominence after the DuMont family won an extended gangland war with a rival organization. In the series of shoot-outs between the two gangs both his older brothers were killed, which was devastating to everyone but Lester, for the two oldest brothers had served as the real brains of the organization. Although Lester did not lack in courage, he did not have the vision necessary for his organization to grow and compete with larger and stronger families. Nor was he a leader who instilled loyalty in his men. It was sheer good fortune that Lester’s last spontaneous assault had caught the entire leadership of his enemies in one building, which he subsequently put to flame. Lester and his men sniped their rivals from cover as they ran from the burning building. It was a duck shoot and, as Lester would say, “Nary a duck got off the ground.”

As Lester stepped out into the rain to go to one of his women’s residences, he had no idea that King was hunting him. All he noticed was that Davis was no longer sitting on the steps. He nodded his approval as he got into the car. He liked to see that his orders were followed. He stared through the window at the passing rain-soaked streets and dreamed that one day all that he drove through would be his. Lester put a cigar in his mouth and Oren, his driver, leaned over to light it. There was no doubt in Lester’s mind that he was becoming a big man. His business was generating enough money that he now had to pay off the sheriff—small-time hoods didn’t have to make payoffs.

High above the street, on a roof overlooking the building from which Lester had exited, lay King. The rain dripped off his oil slicker. He picked up his rifle, which he had wrapped in an oil-treated cloth, and descended the stairs. In another week, he would be ready to make his move. He had spent three days scouting the DuMonts’ various businesses and following Lester on his rounds. King had a pretty good assessment of the DuMont family holdings and of Lester’s activities in particular. According to the news on the street, the DuMonts had recently won a territorial war with a rival family and had expanded into new areas.

As King climbed over the edge of the building’s parapet and dropped down to the roof of an adjacent building, he would have smiled at the progress he had made in his reconnaissance, if it were not for the image of the man sitting on the steps in the rain. King had watched him sitting there for more than two hours without benefit of a coat or hat. It was a thing that made King despise Lester all the more. King had heard all about the man he had hit with the butt of his pistol and how the man had appeared to have lost his senses. Even though King was the person who had caused the man’s incapacitation and was the person who would have killed him without hesitation, he still thought the man was being treated unconscionably. To King, the man was a soldier and as such deserved to be taken care of when injured in battle. Anyone who would abandon a man who had fought on his behalf was a man without honor and someone who could not under any circumstances be trusted.

King opened a door and entered a darkened hallway. Halfway down the hall, King stopped at a door and unlocked it. He had rented a small apartment in a grimy tenement to provide himself a nearby staging area for both reconnaissance and armed sorties against the DuMonts. He quickly doffed his wet army-surplus fatigues and military slicker and put on civies and a fashionable great coat. After carefully locking away his rifle in a metal cabinet, which he had bolted to the floor beneath the bed, King left the apartment and descended the stairs to his car. The rain was still falling as he drove away.

S
 U N D A Y,  
J
 U N E   2 7,   1 9 2 0
   

“How long you think you can stay in business without payin’ me, huh?” Lester DuMont demanded. He was leaning against the counter that separated the kitchen from the dining area in the Fleur-de-Lys. He pushed away from the counter and sauntered across the floor to where the four women stood. “Hell, if I was a vengeful man, I’d burn this place down with y’all in it! Hell, if I was greedy, I’d take a hundred percent of yo’ profits! But I ain’t greedy. I’m willin’ to take a measely fifty-five percent, ’specially if I can get payment some kind of other way.”

Mary could no longer help herself, as the tears started to run down her face. Everything she and her husband had worked for over the years was on the brink of destruction. She looked down at the floor and saw a feeble movement from Ajax as he struggled back to consciousness. He had been hit with a cudgel and kicked until he lost his senses. She was at once thankful that he was waking and yet she wanted him to remain unconscious a bit longer. She knew he would not agree to any concessions to the DuMonts, especially a percentage of the business. His pride was a big thing to him and it was always the source of problems in any negotiation. If there was any possibility of finding a compromise short of losing the business, she wanted to find it quickly. “I’m listening, Mr. DuMont.”

Journer, Sarah, and Willa were silent. Mary could hear her heart pounding again in her breast like voodoo drums before the sacrifice. She looked at each of the three men with Lester DuMont, hoping to find a face with compassion, but all she saw were smiles of anticipation.

“Well, I knows you ain’t got no money around now, ’cause I had Oren and Luke check the place out, but I knows by the end of the week you gon’ have some money and I wants fifty-five percent of it. I don’t care about no bills you got to pay or nothin’. I wants inconvenience money.” Lester smiled, revealing several golden teeth. He patted his heavily greased hair back into place. “Then after you pays that, we’ll talk about yo’ bills and such. There’s one thing. Since you ain’t been exactly straightforward with me, I’m gon’ take me a hostage to make sure you do what we agreed. Of course, I’m gon’ expect this hostage to respect me and do what I say. If the hostage cooperates real good, the fifty-five percent rate stays. If she don’t cooperate, the rate goes up. You got it?”

The implication was quite clear to Mary. The price of staying in business was one of her daughters for a week. She pretended like she didn’t understand. “I’ll get my things. I’ll be ready to go with you in a minute.”

Her words were received with a chorus of derisive laughter from the men around the room. “Ain’t nobody want to take you anywhere, you fat old bat!” Lester sneered and pointed at Journer. “I wants me that dark brown girl with the big smile.”

Mary swallowed hard. The price was high, but it was worth it, if it would buy sufficient time for the family to devise an alternate plan. She nodded, assenting to Lester’s proposal.

Journer was staring at her mother with a look of disbelief. “Whatchoo sayin’, Mama? You gon’ give me up to him to save the restaurant? Ain’t no way I’m goin’ with him without a fight! This ain’t the way Papa would do it. He wouldn’t sell me for this place!”

“If it’s a fight you want, it’s a fight you’ll get. I likes to oblige,” Lester said with a nasty smile. “Of course, I might have to pass you around to my boys if they gots to fight you. If you come along peaceable like, I’ll keep you to myself.”

“You low-down dog! I’ll die first!” Journer shouted.

“Please, Mr. DuMont,” Mary begged. “Let me talk to her alone for a minute?”

Lester nodded, but Journer stared at her mother with anger. “Whatchoo got to say to me? I don’t care what it is, I don’t want to hear it!”

Mary grabbed her daughter’s arm and dragged her toward an unoccupied corner of the restaurant. “Listen here, you little fool; that’s yo’ father lying bleeding on the floor and these mens is set to kill the rest of us. All you got to do is go with him and they’ll leave us alive!”

“What about me, Mama. Ain’t I worth nothin’? You just gon’ give me away like you do a sack lunch? I guess this restaurant is worth more to you than me, huh? All my dreams about a nice wedding is done, huh?”

“This ain’t the end of the world. You ain’t doin’ nothin’ other women ain’t done. You can still get married after this.”

“Who gon’ want me after all of them done finished with me?”

“If you give it up without fighting, you’ll come out without a scar. Ain’t no reason for nobody else to know.”

“I’m gon’ know, Mama. I’m gon’ know from the inside out!”

“Yo’ family is near to gettin’ killed! Whatchoo savin’ it for? Don’t try to tell me that you still a virgin, ’cause I knows you got familiar with that boy who was shot by the Klan. You done already give it up, so what difference do four more men make, ’specially if it buys the life of yo’ family?”