Unrivaled (2 page)

“Charlie Clarke!” I could hear the jail guard banging his billy club against the bars of cell doors as he walked down the long hall. His footsteps echoed as they struck the floor.

I fisted my hand around a bar. “Here. I’m right here.” Least I was last time I checked: sitting in a cell on the South Side of Chicago. I wished I could say it wasn’t a familiar place.

The footsteps came to a halt as the guard peered through the bars at me. He fished a key from his pocket and fumbled with the lock. “You’re wanted.”

I already knew that. It’s why I’d been arrested. I’d been wanted for Micky Callahan’s murder, which is something I had taken no part in. But the cops didn’t care. I belonged to the same athletic club as Manny White, who
had
taken part in it, who had planned it even, and that was good enough for them. I knew they wouldn’t be able to prove I’d done it and eventually Manny would get me out. I just hadn’t figured it would be this soon.

I pulled my suspenders up over my shoulders and put my derby on. Taking up my coat, I pulled my rubber collar from the pocket and buttoned it into place.

The cop swung the door open and beat against it with his club. “You coming? Or would you rather stay?”

“I’m coming.” Manny was particular as to grooming. It wouldn’t do to show up with my collar undone. My shoes could use a shine, but hopefully he’d understand. After all, I’d done him a favor. I’d let myself get caught so he could escape.

I whistled “Bill Bailey” as I followed the cop. But my good cheer withered the moment the guard opened the door at the end of the hall. That’s when I saw Honest Andy.

His enormous frame was folded into one of those wobbly jailhouse chairs, and he was staring across the long, scarred wooden table at me. He sent a glance beyond me to the guard. “I’ll take care of him now, Gordy.”

The guard nodded and left. I had half a mind to chase him down and beg him to put me back in the cell, but I was twenty-two and long past the age for begging. A flash of my dimpled smile usually got me what I wanted. That, or a well-placed fist.

Honest Andy gestured toward the chair that sat empty across the table from him.

“I’ll stand.”

“Suit yourself.”

He was twenty years older than I was, but he was a good ten inches taller too. And he was built like a prizefighter. Which was what he’d been before he’d found religion. Now he talked softly and carried a big billy stick around with him as he walked the streets. Honest Andy was the one cop that Manny White couldn’t buy.

He looked at me with eyes that seemed to peer down into my soul. “Care to tell me what happened?”

“No.” Manny had gone with some of the boys to Micky Callahan’s. They’d taken him out into an alley and beat on him, and then Manny jumped on him with his spiked boots. That’s when I’d come upon them. I’d been making my rounds, minding my own business, putting up advertisement posters for a prizefight when I’d cut through that alley. There was nothing I wanted to tell Honest Andy about a man who had died so terribly. It made me sick to even think about it. Sicker still to think I’d grown up with Micky.

Andy chewed on his mustache as he looked me over. Then he folded his hands atop the table. “You’re a fine boy, Charlie—”

“I’m not a boy anymore, Andy.”

“You’re better than this.”

“I am what I am.” I’d only joined the club because I had to. In order to do business on the South Side, you did whatever it took. If that meant paying a commission to Manny for the poster orders I took, then I figured it was just the cost of doing business. At least it guaranteed that what had happened to Micky wouldn’t happen to me.

“Your past is not as important as your future. Did you know that? Can’t change anything about what you’ve been, but you can change who you’ll become.”

I’d heard him say that before. Many times. Too many times. So many times that it set my teeth on edge to hear it.

“Did you know that God—”

“I can’t imagine God would want much to do with somebody like me.”

“Ah!” A gleam came into his eyes as he leaned forward. “But that’s where you’d be wrong. Even with all the things you’ve done, you’re just as worthy of His love as—”

“If all you came here for was to preach me a sermon, I’d rather go back and sit in that cell.”

He sighed. “Fine. But I need to tell you that your mother’s worried about you.”

He had to bring her up, hadn’t he? “I do fine by her. I’ve never heard her complain.”

“It’s not that she doesn’t appreciate what you’ve provided.”

“I’ve kept a roof over her head, haven’t I?” That’s all I’d ever wanted to do. And I’d done it for all of us: my sisters, my mother, and me.

“I think it’s more the how of it that pains her.”

“Do you just want to rub my nose in it, Andy? Is that why you came?”

“I came because I’m tired of all of this. You don’t belong here. So . . . I’ve signed for you. They’ve made me your ward.”

What! “I’m long past the age of needing a ward.” And I hardly needed
him
to vouch for me.

“Consider me a sort of interested party in your whereabouts, then.”

“They’re releasing me to you?”

“They are.”

“Don’t I have any say in it?” I couldn’t imagine anything worse than being indebted to Andy.

“Sure. You can stay right here and break your mother’s heart. Is that what you’d rather do?”

“No.” My mother’s heart had already been broken. Over and over again. Trust him to find my soft spot and then beat on it.

“Then if you’ll agree to my conditions, I’ll get you out.”

“What conditions?”

He smiled. Then he clapped his cap on his head and stood. “The ones I’m going to tell you about after they release you. If we hurry, we can make it home to your place and join your mother for dinner. We’ll talk about them there.”

I couldn’t say that home wasn’t better than jail. But I could complain about the company. We’d been doing just fine, my mother and I, until Andy had set his cap for her. It might not have been so bad if she hadn’t shared his feelings. She’d been tired and faded until Andy had happened along, and then she’d bloomed like a flower to his sun.

I had nothing against the man . . . except his habit of being in places where he didn’t belong. And his other habit of making a note of things he shouldn’t have.

“It’s like this.” He took my mother’s hand in his as we sat together at the table.

She sent a glance his way as a blush colored her cheeks.

“I’ve become rather fond of your mother, son.”

Son. I didn’t like the sound of that. I’d gotten used to not having a father around, and I didn’t see the point in getting one now. But it seemed my mother had become rather fond of Andy as well. In the interest of keeping peace—and staying out of jail—I put on my best smile. “I suppose I don’t have to worry about your intentions.”

“I’ll tell you nothing but the truth: They’re the most honorable kind.”

I would have expected nothing less from him. He was one of Chicago’s finest and most bothersome cops. Always ready to inquire about your business and never failing to interrupt anything he found that wasn’t part of his.

“But there’s something we want to talk to you about.”

We?

Mother was nibbling at her lip.

The policeman cleared his throat.

I hoped he wasn’t going to say what I thought he was. I can’t say I hadn’t been expecting him to propose marriage,
but I wasn’t very happy about it. And that fact only made me more unhappy. But if my mother’s happiness depended upon my blessing, then I would do everything I could to seem pleased. I smiled again, putting my dimples into it. “If you’re asking can you marry her, you’ll hear no objections from me.” No one’s idea of happy would have included us living on the slippery edge of poverty in a house that threatened to fall in on our heads. I’d had bigger plans—and dreams enough for all of us. Especially for me. But it took money to make something of yourself in the world, and money was the one thing we’d never had.

Mother blushed fiercely, but then she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “God bless you, Charlie. I hope he does. But that’s not what we wanted to talk about.”

Honest Andy cleared his throat again. “You know that I’m a policeman, son.”

“Yes.” Everyone knew he was a policeman, and I was tormented about it unmercifully every blessed day.

“I’m thinking that might make things a bit complicated.”

I stopped smiling. “Complicated for you. Is that what you mean?”

“And for you as well.”

I looked from my mother toward him as I considered his reply. I hadn’t thought about it from that direction before, but I supposed it could. Andy couldn’t be bought. And if he couldn’t be bought, he might eventually suffer the consequences. If I were ever placed in a situation where I was asked to betray him . . . I looked over at my mother.

She looked me straight in the eye, something she usually avoided whenever I, or anyone else, brought up my membership in the club. “I’m grateful for all you’ve done for me, Charlie. I can’t tell you I haven’t appreciated the money you bring home,
the way you looked after your sisters, or the way you’ve kept this house in repair. But I think it’s time now to consider . . .”

“Let’s be honest, son. You need to find some different friends.”

As a condition of my club membership, Manny had asked me to do a little business for him on the side. I was supposed to keep his old friends happy and help him make new ones. I was good at making friends. I was also good at collecting and delivering money. And spending a night or two in jail in order to keep the others out of it. No matter what most people thought, I had nothing to do with guns or breaking kneecaps. Manny had other people for that. “So . . . what are you asking me to do?” I wasn’t in the habit of kidding myself. I knew I only had two talents: my easy manner and my winning smile. I didn’t have any other skills. Besides poker. I also had an ear for ragtime, and I wasn’t too shabby on the dance floor either. Which helped me make friends, which in turn helped with advertisement sales and with Manny’s money collection and delivery.

“We’re asking you to consider a different kind of work.” Mother clutched Andy’s hand. “I want you to make something of yourself, Charlie.”

“Something respectable.” Honest Andy leveled a look at me that let me know he’d seen more than I thought he had. “That’s one of my conditions.”

“You want me to . . . do what? Be . . . an office clerk?” I secretly envied all those honest men I regularly mocked. Those who sat in a chair for nine hours and then went home to supper with a clear conscience. I’d never found a way to be proud of Manny’s methods of doing business. Personal opinion and public confession were two different things, though. I didn’t thank either my mother or Andy for making me feel like some two-penny thug.

“I’ve taken the liberty of writing to your father, and it seems he has a position for you.”

“You—wait—what?” My father? My father, who left us all when I was seven? My father, who walked away from his wife and all of his children? Who’d not only abandoned my mother but then let her suffer the shame of divorcing him as well?

He was a man who had dragged us from city to city, determined to make a success of whatever fool thing he happened to be selling at the time. We may not have had any bread or any milk when I was a boy, but we’d had shoelaces and watch fobs and bottles of hair tonic by the dozens.

I’d wanted to drop school, but Mother wouldn’t hear of it. She made sure I stayed . . . and I made sure that I left the school yard after class let out just as quickly as I could. I sold newspapers for a few years as a newsie, then I became a delivery boy for a printer. I had worked my way up to taking orders for advertising and pasting posters across the South Side for the customers.

My mother’s lips hardened. “Your father’s offered you a position.”

“Doing what? Selling pen wipes?”

“He’s done well for himself. He owns a company now. A whole factory.”

A company? He owned a whole company while we were still holding on to every penny we could find? “Good for him.”

Andy squeezed her hand. “And we want you to take him up on his offer. That’s the other of my conditions.”

“Where is it? Here?”

“It’s in St. Louis.” The blush had faded from Mother’s cheeks, and her blue eyes looked worn and sad again.

Andy leaned back in his chair. “It’s an opportunity I think you should take.”

Of course he’d think that. Then he could have my mother to himself. “Is it . . . in his factory?”

My mother shrugged. “It’s a position. A respectable one . . . and you were always your father’s son.”

I’d spent my life hating my father, but I couldn’t deny that my brown eyes and dark hair had nothing to do with her soft, blond beauty.

“You have a gift, Charlie. A rare and special gift. You move people; they respond to you. You can talk them into anything. But you should be using your gift to help others, not to harm them.”

“I’ve never hurt anyone.” Some of the others had done things that would make me ashamed to set foot in a church, but I never had. Not that I had time to waste sitting around in church pews.