Ms. Etta's Fast House Page 16

  “I know, Penny King, I know,” he confessed. “I’s just funning with you. And truth be told, if I didn’t have Chozelle, you’d make a fine steady, I’d bet. You’ve grown into a right nice young lady. Everybody says what good Ms. Etta’s doing for you.” Penny blushed and tossed her big brown eyes up at Jinx. She wanted to kiss him back and not on the forehead either, but she feared making a fool of herself because she didn’t know how.

  “Well, if Chozelle don’t know what she’s got, she stands a chance of losing it,” she said, with a playful shoulder wag to emphasize her point. “Seems that a lady ought to know a good catch when she has one. I sho’ do.”

  “Come on and walk with me, Penny. ’Spite of all these people around, I feel kinda lonesome. Don’t seem possible really.”

  “Yes it do, Jinxy,” she countered. “I get that same feeling sometimes, like I’m the only one who knows I’m alive.” Penny placed her hand in his as they strolled down the carnival aisles, sharing cotton candy and feeling alone, together.

  When they discovered a tent where a man was asking twenty-five cents for three baseball throws to win stuffed animals, Jinx’s smile stretched out like a limousine. “Mistah, I’ll take a dollar worth of tries,” he said, with four quarters in his palm. Penny stepped aside and watched as his entire countenance altered. “Without one of these in my hand, Penny, I feel like a fish out of water. A fish drowning on dry land,” he confided. “Mistah, get ready to snatch down and give this woman what ever she wants ’cause I’m about to dive in the water and breathe.” One, two, three, he fired the baseballs, knocking down all of the wooden milk bottles as easy as breathing. In less than a minute, the tent minder was scowling at Jinx and snatching down two of the biggest stuffed animals he had on display. Penny was partial to both the lion and unicorn. She brimmed with excitement when Jinx told her she deserved a lot more than those and in due time, she’d have her choice of men as well as carnival prizes.

  The crowd observing the twin competition had doubled in size when Penny made her way back to the platform to show off her gifts to Etta, Baltimore and that stuck-up date of his who everyone thought was so beautiful. Penny tugged on Jinx’s arm when he stalled a few feet away from the Watkins’s booth. “What’s the matter?” she asked before seeing her answer written up and down Dinah’s face. Etta was shaking her head while watching Dinah go off on Chozelle, making a spectacle of it.

  “If I told you once, I told you a thousand times, little girl,” Dinah spat. “Keep your greedy eyes off my man and I’ll try to keep my fist off of your face.” Baltimore tried to ease the tension by ushering her away but she dug in her heels. “Uh-uh, I’m not gonna let her think she’s getting away with this. The brat probably wouldn’t know what to do with one man at a time, much as she’s chasing ’em by the dozens.” After Dinah had run her mouth a little more, Baltimore tipped his hat to nosy bystanders and wrestled her to the far corner of the fair to settle her down. Unfortunately, it was too late to spare Jinx’s feelings and to make matters abundantly worse Etta spoke out of turn. She had no idea Jinx was standing on the other side of Penny’s overgrown unicorn.

  “Dinah had to learn sooner or later,” she said to Penny, in retrospect. “You can’t take that man out in public and not expect women to be fighting over him. That’s just the way it is, chile. Chozelle done went from curious to crazy.”

  “Sorry, Jinxy,” Penny whispered softly. “Miss Dinah didn’t know about you and Chozelle.” She was extremely saddened by the turn of events. Jinx saw it on her face and now he finally recognized how love had blinded him.

  “That’s okay, Penny, people tried to tell me about how things was but I had too many rocks in my head to listen. Chozelle’s willful and wayward. I don’t have what it takes to alter that. Guess that’s a joke on me. I’m a head on home. Thanks for showing me a good time, while it lasted. See you around.” Having his heart stomped on twice in one afternoon was too much. Finally it was so clear, the way Chozelle led him around by the nose and toyed with his emotions as she saw fit. Jinx had seen it for what it was at last, and it hurt twice as much for others to have recognized it beforehand. Chozelle was just incapable of loving anyone as much as she loved herself.

  Penny saw Henry before Etta did as he made his way up the main aisle with Roberta and their small boy. She nudged Etta to get her looking that way. “Everybody’s at the fair, I reckon.”

  “Yeah, everybody and his mama,” Etta hissed, after she saw him too, “though you’d hardly know him with his clothes on.”

  “Ooh, Ms. Etta,” Penny giggled.

  “What? Oh, I don’t mean that,” she argued. “I’m talking about those darned newspaper photos.”

  Penny looked at her cockeyed. “That ain’t the way I heard it,” she said playfully. “Mistah Baltimore told me y’all used to be crawling on each other like a tub of crabs.”

  “Shut yo’ mouth,” she chuckled. “That’s ancient history and I’m a have a talk with Mistah Baltimore, you wait and see.”

  “Uh-uh, Ms. Etta,” Penny pleaded. “If you say I told, he might not tell me nothing more about your old belly rubbing days with Mistah Henry.”

  “Penny, I’m a get you!” Etta hollered as her protégée dashed away dragging both of her animals behind. “You’re wrong for that, Penny!”

  In so many ways Etta wanted to forget how much she loved Henry, less than a year ago. The wound was healing rapidly but it had a strange manner of reopening whenever she saw him with his new family. Since it was easier to look the other way, she did then too, although suddenly the county fair didn’t hold nearly as much allure as it had moments before. Besides, it was high time to be getting back to the Fast House, Etta had decided conveniently. That’s where she belonged.

  At nine o’clock that evening M.K. whistled as he handed off his closing report to the nurse he requested to assist him weeks ago, because of her knowledge and skills. Nurse Helen Bernard enjoyed working along side the popular doctor as well. He wasn’t like a lot of the physicians she encountered. Sure, he was a skirt hound like most of them, but he often made her feel more like a person instead of merely a part of the medical machine known as Homer G. Phillips. M.K. shared pertinent information about the patients and explained why he did certain things to treat their infirmities. Helen admired him for taking the time to include her. All of the extra hours she logged were paying off. She was being considered for advancement in the nursing ranks.

  “Nurse Bernard, here are the remaining charts for the night,” M.K. sang gleefully. “One of the attending doctors will be here by the time I’m showered and ready to hit the town. I’ve got a hot date, two of them,” he boasted. “Maybe they’ll let me take turns.”

  “Goodbye Dr. Phipps,” the slim, dark brown-skinned nurse replied cordially. “You’d better watch yourself, though. Been having a rash of disease lately, the nighttime variety,” she submitted for clarity sake.

  “I ain’t worrying, these are clean churchgoing girls. Twins.”

  “Not that it’s any of my business, but churchgoing girls got to keep busy doing something when they ain’t in church.”

  M.K. thought about it for a split second then frowned at the nurse. “You’re right, it ain’t your business. Good night, Nurse Bernard.”

  “Good night, Dr. Phipps,” she answered, after he’d disappeared down the hall.

  “Paging Dr. Phipps,” a voice called out from the hospital intercom. “Dr. Phipps, please contact the emergency room nurse, right away.”

  Nurse Bernard chuckled when she heard M.K. yelling at the top of his lungs. That’s good for him. It’s probably a stab wound that needs stitching but at least it’ll help him keep his pants on.

  Neither of them had any idea that two men arrived after a nasty knife fight, both requiring complicated surgeries. Because M. K. was still listed as emergency room duty doctor when they were signed in, he was responsible to assist in their operations. Cursing profusely throughout, he stabilized their conditions and passed th
em on to his replacement. After showering and dressing on the fly, M.K. caught a cab to the Remington Hotel and sprinted up the side steps to suite number four-seventy-three, the room he had gone in on with Ollie.

  Huffing and out of breath, he knocked on the door. “Come on, Ollie, open up,” he said under his breath. “I need this, don’t let me down.” M.K. grew increasingly excited when he saw the doorknob being twisted from the other side. “Oh, yeah, that’s it. Come on, man.”

  “Hi, ya, M.K.,” Ollie mouthed in a tired tone, with a bed sheet tied around his waist. “What took you so long?”

  “Damned that, where’s Dora and Cora?” he asked, craning his neck to look inside the dimly lit room.

  “We waited a couple of hours for you. Drinking, slow dancing and such,” Ollie informed him, with sleep in his eyes. “They’re still back there in the bed.”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s good!” he howled, before being shushed.

  “M.K., you’re gonna have to keep it down. After all that tap dancing and then all that stuff we did together, they’re plum tuckered out.”

  In disbelief that his luck was that bad, M.K. wanted to cry real tears. “Ollie, you telling me you had them both?”

  “When you didn’t show, I stepped in. I had Dora first and then Cora, I think that’s how it went.” Ollie appeared just as exhausted as the girls.

  “Nahhh, you weren’t with both of those beautiful girls at the exact same time?” M.K. whined, fearing he missed out on that kind of action.

  “Hell, I had to, Cora got tired of watching. Man, I never knew such a petite little thing could be so greedy.”

  “Shoot me now, Ollie,” he wailed. “Please hit me over the head with something heavy and put me out of my misery.” Ollie stood there grinning, while M.K. kicked himself for being outfoxed by circumstance. He was just about to turn and walk away when he heard something in the back bedroom. M.K. pushed Ollie aside and then wandered a few paces past him. “What was that?”

  “Sounds like the shower running to me,” Ollie answered, with a raised brow. “It could be the beginning of round two.”

  “Ooh-wee, paging Dr. Phipps!” M.K. moaned hungrily. “I’ll be right there. Do wait up. Hey, Ollie, send out for some sandwiches and soda pop. It’s gonna be a long night. The doctor is in, and he’s making house calls. Which of ’em did you say was the greedy one?”

  19

  A TWISTER’S COMING

  Baltimore learned that Dinah worked the late shift at the hospital on Wednesdays, and he also knew it was Barker Sinclair’s poker night, both providing him the perfect opportunity to work the crooked cop’s wife into his busy schedule. Going on three weeks, he’d met her at his apartment and each time she grew more attached to his charming ways and sexual prowess. Baltimore was a tiger in the bedroom and Dixie had a bad case of jungle fever, a very bad case.

  Over the past two days, Baltimore was haunted by the eerie feeling that someone was following him. As long as he didn’t have to pump hot lead in Barker before he’d made some good money, he could deal with casting a long shadow even if it landed on someone else. When Baltimore stepped out of his apartment building, that someone emerged from his shadow and into the street light. An early model Dusenberg limousine rested along the curb with the motor running. Baltimore pretended to ignore it until the chauffeur leaned on the horn as he glided past. Before he opened his mouth to voice objections to being tooted at, the same square-shouldered brute from the Jewish mobster’s mansion climbed out onto the city sidewalk and thumped a lit cigarette into the gutter.

  “What?” Baltimore barked rudely. He contemplated going after the hired muscle but wasn’t much in the mood for getting his clothes dirty. Besides, it would have been more trouble than it was worth to make a point, so Baltimore decided not to make a fuss.

  “You’re that Floyd guy, right?” the large thug asked. Considering how the two of them came extremely close to blows once before, Baltimore almost knocked him on his square behind for insinuating that all colored men looked alike.

  “Maybe next time I’ll leave you with something to help you remember me better,” Baltimore answered instead.

  “No disrespect, the light ain’t so good,” he lied. While Baltimore studied his expression for signs of insincerity, the back passenger side window of the expensive automobile lowered and a stubby white hand poked out to summon him over.

  “I was starting to think you’d forgotten our agreement, Mr. Floyd,” Schmitty Rosenberg grumbled, once Baltimore was seated inside. “It’s been quite some time since you barged into my home claiming to organize a hefty fortune for me.”

  “For us,” Baltimore said curtly. He appraised the rich man’s fancy tuxedo and top hat resting on the seat before remembering how bothered he was by the surprised visit. “And I don’t appreciate you coming around here laying for me. I told you what was going to happen and none of that’s changed. I put my time in and it’s about to pay off. By this time Friday, I’ll deliver as promised.” The brooding white man wanted to know Baltimore’s strategy specifically, but that was not going to happen, since he’d just put the finishing pieces together courtesy of pillow talk with Dixie Sinclair. It didn’t matter that she was sharing intricate details of her husband’s business dealings. That woman would have gabbed all night long if Baltimore hadn’t convinced her to get on home before Barker was finished with what he’d been up to.

  “So far, Mr. Floyd, you’ve been all bark and no bite,” Rosenberg complained. “I rather looked forward to having a ravenous wolf in my midst so don’t disappoint me. By the way, I have secured that sizable item that you requested. It’s parked at the landing near the waterfront, next to the drydock warehouse. You know the place?” When Baltimore nodded that he did, Mr. Rosenberg pulled out two black satin gloves to wrestle on his thick hands. “Good, then you have two days, or I’ll send someone by to get your attention, and Mr. Floyd, you don’t want that.”

  “Let me tell you what you don’t want, Mr. Rosenberg, that’s for me to get my dander up due to white folk hanging around my place. You’ll get what’s coming to you, I’ll see to that.”

  “You, as well, will get what’s coming to you,” the mobster replied calmly. “I will see to that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have tickets to the opera and I won’t be late.”

  Baltimore found himself standing on the sidewalk, watching the European antique slip off into the night. If he hadn’t already put in a call to a couple of associates he could count on, the situation might have gotten dicey. As luck would have it, two very capable operators were headed toward St. Louis on the northbound redeye, two men Baltimore trusted with his life.

  The following morning, Baltimore was up at the crack of dawn. He pounded the decorative ceramic tile inside of Union Station until the schedule marquee changed. A company man dressed in a black and white uniform came around and changed the sign reading “On Time” to “Arrived” for the train from Kansas City. Right on schedule, Baltimore thought, as he marched out onto the platform to greet his partners in crime.

  With a host of others, he stood patiently while passengers stepped down off the Midwest Express. Baltimore smiled big and wide when reliving the gambling room caper he pulled with a group of fellas he’d put together almost a year ago. The situation intensified when a hotheaded fool deviated from his plan and got himself shot after getting cocky. Subsequently, he was recognized by an off-duty Kansas City cop moonlighting as a security guard. Baltimore’s smile evaporated when the thought of something like that happening again crossed his mind. He’d gotten away by the skin of his teeth and wasn’t planning on going back to jail, not for anybody.

  Pudge Gillis exited the train first. Seeing him dressed in a tailored suit caused Baltimore to swell up with laughter because Pudge, shorter than average height, had always worn his clothes a size too big like he expected to grow into them. The natty pale blue suit was a good look, he was a grown man wearing expensive clothes that actually fit him. Baltimore extended his hand to
the nut-colored man with almond-shaped hazel eyes and gushed with joy. “Pudge, you’re sharp as a tack and a sight for sore eyes.”

  “Hi ya, Baltimore. You don’t look so bad yourself,” said Pudge, carrying a small suitcase.

  “Where’s Dank?” Baltimore asked when the other man didn’t appear immediately.

  “Oh, he’ll be off directly,” Pudge answered, speaking of his traveling companion. “We dealt gin rummy most of the way, so he’s probably on board try’na scrub off that whooping I put on him.”

  “Yeah, I’m still licking my wounds,” admitted a tall, deep ebony-hued man with an athletic build. “Move outta the way, Pudge, so’s I can shake my friend’s hand.”

  “Dank Battle,” Baltimore howled as the ex-boxer shook with him. “You look like a million dollars with a ham sandwich on the side.”

  Dank beamed at the compliment, then he ran his thumbs down the lapels of a brown colored wool-blend five button suit. “Yeah, but I lost my last three dollars to Pudge on the way up.”

  “Come on, fellas, I’m sure y’all could stand some grub and black coffee to pep you up,” Baltimore assumed.

  Pudge patted his full belly and sucked on his front teeth. “Naw, we caught a meal on that iron sled we just hopped off of. But I could use a bed big enough to swim in. It took some considerable effort to shake Dank’s folding money from those giant mitts of his.”

  “Don’t fret, I’ve worked all of that out,” Baltimore assured them. “Let’s head to the car and catch up before getting down to brass tacks. Boys, it sure is good to see y’all. I know Kansas City won’t be the same while you’re gone.”

  Dank chuckled, in step behind Pudge. “Huh, Kay Cee ain’t been the same since you left,” he offered with a wink. True, Baltimore had spent some time in their city and stole a few hearts while putting his hands on some very important men’s money. He fled town leaving behind a lot of scorching memories and lovesick women. Unfortunately, he could never return without risking a murder rap for gunning down a pair of colored policemen in order to rescue Henry from their clutches. Both Dank and Pudge had difficulty believing it when Baltimore informed them how his ex-best friend was now very close to becoming a lawman himself. They viewed it as a ridiculous career move. After all, Henry had skirted the other side of the law too many times to go changing his ways, even for a woman as demanding as Roberta.