Brant shook his head. “With my friends. Not worth killin’. Nossir. Joey Brant takes care of hisself.” He drained the shot, finished the beer chaser, and laid his head on the bar.
The bartender came and removed the glasses, watched me finish my beer. When I did, he made no move to serve another.
“He was in here all night; fifty guys saw him. We went to the reservation and sweated. Me and ten other guys and Brant.”
“Sure,” I said.
I felt their eyes all the way out. They didn’t like him, even despised him, but they would all defend him, lie for him.
The band burst into sound. Dancers packed into a mass on the floor. A thick mass of bodies that moved as one, the colors and shapes of the mural on the wall, a single beast with a hundred legs and arms. Shrill tenor sax, electronic guitar, keyboard, and trumpet blaring. Drums.
“Or did Brant find you?” I said.
The Duke scowled at the dancers on the floor. “Heard he was lookin’ to talk to the Duke, so I goes to the Cherry Valley. He all shit and bad booze. He never know me, ’n’ I never knows him. I tells him I hear he talkin’ ’bout me ’n’ from now on all I wants to hear is sweet nothin’.”
“You’re a tough man,” I said. “I’ll bet you scared him.”
He licked his lips. I watched the sweat on his brow, the violent swinging of his booted foot. He was hiding something.
“I tell him I never even heard o’ his broad. What I know about no Injun’s broad? I tell him iffen she goes out on the tricks, it got to be he put her out. Happens all the time. Some ol’ man he needs the scratch, so he puts the ol’ woman out on the hustle.” The swinging foot in its black boot seemed to grow more agitated. His eyes searched restlessly around the packed room, the crowded dance floor. “I seen it all times, all ways. They comes out on the streets, nice chicks should oughta be home watchin’ the kids, puttin’ the groceries on the table. I seen ’em, scared ’n’ no way knows what they s’posed to do. All ’cause some dude he ain’t got what it takes.”
Restless, he sweated. The silver cross reflected the tavern light where it lay on his thick chest hair above the black shirt. Talked. But what was he telling me?
“Is that when he jumped you? Pulled a knife?”
The Duke sneered. “Not him. He too drunk. All of ’em, they ganged me. He pull his blade, sure, but he ain’t sober ’nuff he can cut cheese. It was them others ganged me. I got some of ’em, got out o’ there.”
“Did you see him out on the street that night, Duke? Is that what you really told him? Why they ganged on you?”
He jerked back as if snakebitten. “I ain’t seen no one that there night! I ain’t on the street that there night. I—”
He stared toward the door. As if he saw a demon.
Joey Brant stood inside the tavern entrance blinking at the noise and crowd. Walter Ellis stood beside Brant. Which one was the Duke’s demon?
It was a big house by Syracuse-ghetto standards. A two-story, three-bedroom, cinder-block box painted yellow and green, with a spiked wrought-iron fence, a swimming pool that took up most of the postage-stamp side yard. Concrete paths wound among birdbaths and fountains and the American flag on a pole and naked plaster copies of the Venus de Milo and Michelangelo’s David.
Walter Ellis met me on his front steps. “The cops send you to me. Fortune?”
He was a tall, slim man with snow-white hair and a young face. He looked dangerous. Quick eyes that smiled now. Simple gray flannel slacks, a white shirt open at the throat, and a red cashmere sweater that gave a vigorous tint to his face. Only the rings on both pinkies and both index fingers, diamonds and rubies and gold, showed his money and his power.
“They said you knew Alma Jean Brant,” I said.
“Her and her mother. Come on in. Drink?”
“Beer if you have it.”
He laughed. “Now you know I got beer. What kind of rackets boss wouldn’t have a extra refrigerator full of beer? Beck’s? Stroh’s? Bud?”
“Beck’s, thanks.”
“Sure. A New York loner.”
We were in a small, cluttered, overstuffed living room all lace and velvet and cushions. Ellis pressed a button somewhere. A tall, handsome black man in full suit and tie materialized, not the hint of a bulge anywhere under the suit, was told to bring two Beck’s.
“Not that I’m much of a racket boss like in the movies, eh? A small-town gambler. Maybe a little border stuff if the price is right.” He laughed again, sat down in what had to be his private easy chair, worn and comfortable with a footstool, waved me to an overstuffed couch. I sank into it. He lit a cigar, eyed me over it. “But you didn’t come about my business, right? Sada sent you up to find out what happened to Alma Jean.”
“What did happen to her?”
“I wish I knew.”
The immaculate black returned with two Beck’s and two glasses on an ornate silver tray. A silver bowl of bar peanuts. Ellis raised his glass. We drank. He ate peanuts and smoked.
“You liked her?” I said. “Alma Jean?”
He savored the cigar. “I liked her. She was married. That’s all. Not my age or anything else. She didn’t cheat on her husband. A wife supports her husband.”
“But she went on the streets.”
“Prostitution isn’t cheating, Fortune. Not in the ghetto, not down here where it hurts. It’s the only way a woman has of making money when she got no education or skills. It’s what our women do to help in a crisis.”
“And the men accept that?”
He smoked, drank, fingered peanuts. “Some do, some don’t.”
“Which are you?”
“I never cottoned to white slaving.”
“You were out that night. In your car. On the streets down near Irish Johnny’s.”
He drank, licked foam from his lips. “Who says?”
“Professor Fred Margon saw you. I think Duke Wiltkowski did too. He’s scared, sweating, and hiding something.”
His eyes were steady over the glass, the peanuts he ate one by one. “I like a drive, a nice walk in the snow. I saw the Duke and Margon. I didn’t see no one else. But a couple of times I saw that wife of Margon’s tailing Alma Jean.”
“Was it snowing when you got home?”
He smiled.
I watched Walter Ellis steer Joey Brant to a table on the far side of the dance floor. Brant was already drunk, but his startled eyes were wary, almost alert. This wasn’t one of his taverns. The Duke watched Walter Ellis.
I said, “It’s okay; we know he was out that night. He saw you, knows you saw him, and it’s okay. Who else did you see?”
The Duke licked his lips, looked at Fred Margon.
“You writes, yeh, professor?”
He looked back across the dance floor to Ellis and Joey Brant.
“I means,” the Duke said, “like stories ’n’ books ’n’ all that there?”
“God, does he write!” Dorothy Margon said. “Writes, studies, teaches. All day, every day. Tell the Duke about your art, Fred. Tell the Duke what you do. All day, every damn day.”
“Like,” the Duke said, “poetry stuff?” He watched only Fred Margon now. “Words they got the same sound ’n’ all?”
“I write poetry,” Fred said. “Sometimes it rhymes.”
“You likes poetry, yeh?”
“Yes, I like poetry. I read it.”
“Oh, but it’s so hard!” Dorothy said. “Tell the Duke how hard poetry is, Fred. Tell him how hard all real writing is. Tell him how you can learn most careers in a few years but it takes a lifetime to learn to write well.”
“We better go,” Fred said.
I watched the people packed body to body on the dance floor, flushed and excited, desperate for Saturday night. On the far side Walter Ellis ordered drinks. Joey Brant saw us: the Duke, me, Fred and Dorothy Margon. I watched him turn on Ellis. The racket boss only smiled, shook his head.