The Penalty Is Death
It rained that night so hard the garbage in the street floated in streams nearly ankle deep. It didn't rain like that too often and it coupled with losing Etta took me that much closer to despair. It had been raining a lot the last past weeks and mingled with the heat of August lightning flashed against the night sky occasionally. Most of the streetlights were burned out so the night hung like those thick curtains on the stage in the small downtown theater beside the barber shop. There were a few lights from the high-rise buildings in the distance and a few stores causing glare against the wet streets and on the limbs of trees. The night was tinged with illumination but darkness loomed like a bill collector outside your apartment. The city hadn't changed much in forty years even though the mills still produced ore. The metal industries produced that ore but the region's economy floundered. A lot of unpopular crap was happening in Alabama. Not one new building had been built since probably the twenties when I was just a nappy headed little boy. Even in that downpour the whispers could be heard mistaken at times for the settling of aged buildings, the whispers told of the decline and pending troubles. Already fire hoses had been used to spray Negroes across lawns and streets. The hatred white held towards Negroes was simply economics, there were only so many jobs available and Northern whites practically owned everything. That was another story and it was going to be played out soon enough I thought. I couldn't get his face out of my mind; his pitiful face in need of a shave. He was a wreck missing a lot of sleep and food but something was eating him up inside and he needed resolution. He rolled into my office dropping his fat body in the chair directly across from my desk. His wife, a sweet young thing out of Mobile, was having an affair. He didn't know with whom. Her loving at night had been sub par the recent weeks and she had always been a wildcat never able to get enough. Someone else was filling her whole and satisfying her appetite. Fair enough a husband should know of his wife's sexual appetite but what convinced me to take the case were the crisp twenty-dollar bills he placed on the table directly in front of me. I didn't think a black man could amass such wealth to just give away twenties. My rent was due and I had a white landlord who didn't shine kindly on black folk especially black folks that owed him money. Strange the way he stared at me across my shabby desk it was difficult for him to look me in the eyes. He was hiding something and that wouldn't be the last time I got the feeling that everything being said wasn't being said concerning his wife. He asked me if I ever had a woman pull my heart out? I thought of Etta but didn't acknowledge him directly. He told me his wife had been hanging out at Ryan's nightclub it was a place I knew too well. Mafia influence was woven throughout the club like the presence of Christ in the communion meal. Ryan was a boxer the mafia paid off with the nightclub for taking a dive but it came with a lot of strings attached. It attracted the worst sorts but they all knew their places in Ryan's. Once some young soldier from Los Angeles got drunk and disrespectable turning over a few tables and breaking some of Ryan's liquor bottles. When Ryan, a large man blacker than coal, tried to subdue the soldier he was cut on the hand. The police found the soldier a couple days later stuffed in the trunk of his firebird. The soldier being a Negro wasn't worth the money and times to launch an investigation. But we all got the message. I went to Ryan's whenever I was lonely and wanted to find some company to have a good time with typical thing a unmarried man would do most the women in Ryan's were working girls or women on the prowl. I knew Ryan from way back and he let me drink for free because I did detective work for him every once and a while. I tried not to make it too often because of his connections, uncovering something the mob didn't want you to could mean the difference between living and dying. I figured I would ask around the nightclub if anyone ever seen my client's wife hanging out with no one particular; the bedrock questions to sound detective work. It was routine but you never knew what the right question could uncover. My client's wife sounded like a knockout, hourglass figure beneath coffee skin with lips so full they could suck a man inside. She liked expensive things such as furs and jewelry so placing here among the patrons wouldn't be that difficult. According to my client she was half white with all of the features of a white woman. He spoke of her auburn hair that reached the top of her wonderfully high behind. There were many of those types, the high yellow women with the good hair sometimes it was difficult to tell if they were white or Negro. They could stop a black man in his tracks and twist his head around like he was possessed by a demon. That was what Etta had done to me the first time I ever saw her sitting in the corner booth. She was a real looker and her green eyes never stopped sparkling. I had to take a double look to be sure she wasn't white. What the hell! Good things never last besides I had a wad of crisp twenties and the rent paid. When I arrived at the nightclub Ryan was working behind the bar. The place was dim nearly dark and thick with cigarette smoke. A local jazz group tuned the tools of their trade rapping out a smooth rift that chilled the soul. The nightclub was packed as usual with a bunch of assorted characters. The mob poured a lot of money into Ryan's. It was the best place in town for blacks to gather and have a good time and of course there was a lot of illegal stuff going on too. I worked my way up to Ryan and dropped him a series of questions knowing he wouldn't mind me detecting in his place of business. He was uncomfortable I could see it in the black brow of his forehead. He had a policy never to give out information concerning customers but I was his friend. The woman sounded vaguely familiar he told me but he wasn't sure if he ever saw her with a man. She drank mostly alone in a booth close to the telephone. I turned to the booth Ryan spoke of hoping to see Etta even though I knew after the other night things between us were pretty much over. To my own horror the booth was occupied by Blade Johnson the local tough guy and a couple of his working girls. I didn't like Johnson much. I didn't like any man that pimped women. But Johnson held the low down on everything in the black portion of the city. He had his hands into everything and if anyone had anything on my client's wife it was he. He lifted a glass my direction and motion with his head. I debated briefly if I should talk to him but I knew he wasn't a man to get upset. Blade liked to cut people with his two large Bowie knifes he wore in a shoulder hostler under his long black leather coat. He also carried a silver switchblade he picked up off a dead John a few years past that I believed he killed. Blade had more gold in his mouth than teeth and his breath always smelled of garlic. I walked over to the booth because it was better to hear what he had to say than to have my ears cut off. He offered to buy me a drink and than hinted to a job that included finding some of his property. It was a woman whom skipped town and he wanted to know where she went. I presumed so he could beat the hell out of her or cut her throat as an example to his other women? I didn't say no because I wanted to know if he knew anything concerning my client's wife. He listened intently and when I had finished he told me he wish he knew of a woman so fine. He could make money off her. His really dark clients, the blue-black brother he joked, would give up two weeks pay to have her. How could he treat women like merchandise and call himself a human being? My face tensed and he read my dislike for him but only grinned harder. One of the girls with Blade, a brand new girl perhaps seventeen I figured from up north because of her accent, did remember my client's wife from maybe a week ago. The girl was a pretty thing even with the cigarette to her lips and make-up caked on her face. They weren't into young girls back then so having her look older was vital. She gave Blade a strange stare but he didn't acknowledge it instead finished his drink but he was listening to what she told me. I had a feeling he wanted her to tell me something but not too more of something. The working girl said my client's wife met some man outside the nightclub and both of them got in a cab maybe a week past. I asked if the man was fat and she said that he was my size, you know average. I knew it wasn't my client she had gotten into the cab with that fat bastard wouldn't have fit. Blade wanted to know how my memory was he asked jokingly. I was becoming the clown around town because of my drinking and the blackouts. There were times when I lost days. I was disorientated all the time. He then asked me when I was going to give him back his switchblade? He gave it to me two days past. I had no recollection but didn't want that monkey cutting me so I told him tomorrow and declined Blade's job offer hurrying away before he took it personally and produce those knifes or wanted his blade back right then. I never carried a weapon because guns scared the hell out of me but I had a little reputation of being capable with a knife. I knew what a knife in the hands of person who could use it would do to a body. What was beginning to bother me was that I had never seen the woman and I was a regular customer. How elusive could a beautiful woman be in a place where men looked for beautiful women? She was being discreet and that spoke of an affair. I might have seen her but when I left Ryan's place I normally was usually smashed. I had a little drinking problem. I knew the only cab service that catered to black folks belonged to Doc Hastings. He was a retired medic from the big war who used his retirement money to purchase a yellow cab that he drove. He was Italian man out of New York City who just refused to see the color of people's skin. He was good folk keeping to him self and making a decent living but like most people he kept his options open when it came to making money. He even gave me a few free cab rides when I was broke and out on my feet in the past. Doc sat outside the nightclub waiting for fares. He was there when I walked outside. He was a rail of a man with gray hair and a thick gray mustache. He wore a cabby's cap and smelled of cigar smoke. He let me inside the cab and I asked Doc a series of questions concerning the coffee skin woman and he confirmed that the lady had taken his cab once he remembered how attractive she was but he couldn't recall the man she was with. They were both making it pretty good back in the seat. Doc chuckled a little embarrassed he even watched. He said both of them got out near 112th Street locked in each other arms. 112th Street bordered the city's park it was a place people went so they could sink away from eyes. I had taken a few tumbles there myself in the past. Doc was sure it wasn't my client she was with after I described him. He never forgot a face. Doc said he picked the woman up on the corner of 112th and Vine maybe two hours later by herself and drove her to Bedford Heights dropping her off in front of a large mansion. Bedford Heights was the white area in town. No Negro lived in that portion of rich socialites. Doc was mistaken he had to be but he insisted he dropped her off in Bedford. The wealthiest white man in the county owned much of Bedford Heights. He named the area after himself. People said he was tied up with the Mafia but the police couldn't prove it. Mister Bedford made a point to hire Negroes said it was good for business. He liked to have a few of us close just in case he needed things done. He was out of Boston and probably disliked Southern whites as much as blacks. I met him once by accident working a job for Ryan. Some Negro made a bet with the mob and didn't pay up. The mob needed a Negro who could move in and out the predominately black sectors of town instead of a group of Italian enforcers. I uncovered that Mister Bedford liked black women in very discreet places. The thing I learned from that encounter was that no one messed with Mister Bedford he could get things, unpleasant things, done. I told my client the news when I spoke with him the next morning. He didn't really show how he felt concerning any of the news. I asked my client did he know that a cab driver dropped his wife off in front of some mansion in Bedford? I tired to be coy with my insinuation. But I knew Mister Bedford like black women and he was rich enough to get anyone he wanted. The fat black man chuckled and told me his wife worked there as a maid. That should have quenched the uneasiness inside me because many Negroes worked in rich white folks houses but something didn't seemed right. Why would she go to work in the same clothes she went out on the town in? For a moment I considered maybe my client was loaning his attractive wife out? I thought that maybe Mister Bedford was having another taste for chocolate? How could a black man drop twenties like he had been dropping unless he had some angle in the works? He could tell my mind was working maybe getting to close to what was going on. Husbands pimping their wives were as old as Abram and Sarah. But why would he be concerned if his wife was having an affair? Maybe it was as simple as something being business and something being personal? My client told me he followed his wife once to a motel just off of Bradley Street where the high-rises sat. He knew she went there to meet her lover all the signs pointed to it. I figured why not just hired me to snap the photograph in the first place? Before I could ask him anything he slipped me five more twenties and asked if I would do him one more job it involved taking pictures? The money erased any other thoughts spinning inside my head and I agreed. Outside of good love, having money was the only thing that mattered. I was a drunk with a bad liver. I let the love of my life walk out so the only thing left was stuffing my pockets. I could careless if my client pimped his wife to a rich white man�more power to him. I would never be a Blade Johnson but a man had to make a living some way I suppose. Mine was taking pictures. So here I am standing in a pouring rain. I can see the faint outline of a mill just beyond the railroad tracks. I never understood the animalistic tendencies of humanity. The motel was a dump, a bastion for germs but she was probably up there with her lover. Like dogs I thought making my way across the street pulling the collar of my coat to my ears. A drink sure what have hit the spot. I couldn't take my mind off of Blade Johnson's working girl and the look in her eyes. She knew something but Blade would have gutted her if she said it. I had stayed alive listening to my instincts and something wasn't right. My client wanted some pictures of his wife in the act. I told him picture because I was only going to get one chance and asking them to poise was out of the question. That put a grin in his black face as if he knew something I didn't. It was difficult to get divorces unless someone had proof of unfaithfulness. The picture would give him all the evidence he needed. I guess it was okay for her to sleep with a rich white guy but not with a Negro, not a poor Negro anyhow? Staring at the motel gave me a strange sense of d�j� vu. I had gone with Etta once to a motel where I made love to that sweet thing during a downpour just like now. I remember lightning flashing across the night sky. I thought it had been the perfect moment. I checked with the motel manager, some skinny Negro with a heroin addiction. You could always tell a hype by the forlorn stare of pending death in their eyes. He told me my client's wife had checked into one of the room under her own name. That seemed strange but I gave the manager ten bills and thanked him. It was funny what your mind wandered over at different times. I was thinking of Etta and how beautiful she was that night during the rain. I wanted to marry her but she said she couldn't�it could never happen between us. She wanted more than I could ever provide I was a drunk and would amount to nothing. It was cruel how some women could be when they wanted to. So was life I suppose. From the motel manager's hovel I could see the room. I walked to the room my client' wife had purchased for the night. All of the lights were off inside and when I tried the door it opened. I readied the camera as I stepped inside. The room was quite like a tomb and I could see that a figure was beneath the covers of the bed my eyes aided by the weak red motel light outside. My mind screamed again something wasn't right concerning the scene. If the two were meeting each other for sex it being so early in the evening sleep wouldn't be the thing happening in the room? I should have had to kick in the door and snap a photograph with them in the very act. I held the camera a few inches from my face ready to snap a photograph. Outside the rain pinged against the closed window and the distant sounds of sirens wailed. Some kind of sticky substance was on the floor it nearly pulled the loafer from my left foot. There was an outline of a stain on the blanket and the closer I got the more the stain on the blanket became visible. It was black because of the limited light. I saw a female hand out from under the blanket. That stopped me in my tracks. I knew whatever was beneath that blanket was something I didn't want to find. Turn around and get the hell out of there, Robby, I told myself but I didn't listen instead I reached out and grabbed hold of the corner of the blanket. My heart was in my throat. I slowly pulled at the blanket watching it lower and reveal the top of a woman's head. My heart frozen and I couldn't breath. Questions mingled with sheer fear numbed my mind. The woman beneath the blanket was Etta. I could tell by her arched lips and jade eyes. Someone had opened a slash from one ear to the other across her once lovely throat. But why for what damn reason would someone want to kill my Etta? The sight caused me to jumped back and I slipped on the substance falling to the floor. That was when I discovered the substance on the floor was blood and it was all over me. The sirens were just outside the motel and I could hear car doors opening and closing. In the corner near the portable television I could see the outline of a switchblade and knew it belonged to Blade Johnson. He said I asked him could I borrow it. I managed to get to my feet and there sat the outline of a photograph sitting on the table beside the bed. I picked up the photograph it was me in the act with Etta. It hadn't been lightning across the sky but the flash of a camera that night. The police broke in pointing their guns at me. I was trying to tell them I just arrived myself and had nothing to do with her murder. They knocked me to the floor and handcuffed me. One of the officers recognized Etta and I would remember his words for the rest of my short life. "Nigger, you going to get the electric chair for killing Mister Bedford's wife!" Black women don't have green eyes I told myself. I didn't remember things well because of the drinking. Now it was coming back to me. I met Mrs. Bedford that time I was working for Ryan in the foyer of the Bedford mansion. Funny, I thought it was at Ryan's with her sitting in the booth when we met. She was waiting for me in that booth. That was where she always waited for me and we would go to the park and tumble she said I made her feeling like a woman. I would hold her those nights in the motel rooms as she cried torn between her being Mrs. Bedford and being with me but not knowing why she cried. The police tossed me in the back of one of the cars. It seemed like an hour before one of the policemen, a fat white redneck, said that the manager told him it was me that reserved the room. What? What did I expect from a heroin addict? It was easy to buy lies from someone tied to the needle. That was when I saw my client standing in the crowd of on lookers staring directly at me. His fat figure pressed against the very night. Mister Bedford liked to hire Negroes I thought. Etta was wearing Blade's trademark across her throat. The fat black man was smiling and then I knew. Bedford hired him to set me up and I had no way to prove any of it. Doc Hastings would remember it was me that got in his cab with Etta that night when she and I decided to take a tumble in the city park. Blade called me over yesterday in Ryan's so his woman could tell me what she saw what Blade wanted her to tell me she saw. She saw Etta and me that night together outside of Ryan's nightclub the man was my size because I was the man. Everything fit as tight as a hand in a glove. Down in the South a black man didn't kill white women. The white jury would want blood, revenge and could careless about evidence remember the Negro soldier stuffed in his firebird? When the sorted mess of our affair came out in the trial the outcome wouldn't be in doubt. It was the perfect crime, her husband had her killed and set it up so I would take the fall. I might have seen it coming but I had a drinking problem and blackouts, stuff out of my control. There was one rule in the South, you sleep with a white woman and the plenty was death!
Copyright © 2003 E Rocco Caldwell |