Ms. Etta's Fast House Read online

  “Uh-huh, you’ve been keeping it to yourself all right,” Henry teased, since discussing his fears didn’t particularly appeal to him. “You need to know I never meant to bring you in on my sorrows. I reckon it has been hard on you too. Good thing that graduation ceremony fires up in a couple of hours. Me and the fellas deserve all the respect they’ll be forced to give us then. The chief says there ain’t no officer’s badge any bigger or more important than the next and I believe him. You know, some of those boys carrying that tin got hearts full of hate. The department is rotten down to the core.”

  Roberta raised her head. She glanced up at her man’s face and blushed. “That’s why we need more men like you to straighten it out.”

  “I ain’t ever been one for straightening. Done spent too much time knocking wrinkles in, mostly.”

  “That was the old Henry,” she told him, as she nestled her cheek against his warm skin. “You’re new and improved like the man on the radio says about the showroom Cadillac. I love your new bells and whistles.”

  Henry beamed proudly, fighting off an awkward grin. “Come on now, Roberta, keep talking like that and I’ll be asking you to blow on that ole whistle for me.”

  “Huh, you must have me mistaken for some other woman. I don’t wrap my lips around that kinda screecher.”

  “Don’t go frowning on it until you tried it,” Henry suggested lewdly.

  “Have you ... tried it?” she smarted back.

  “Heylll, naw, who do you think I am?”

  “My point exactly,” Roberta argued convincingly. “There’re some things I don’t have to sample to know the taste won’t suit.”

  “All right, ’Berta, all right,” Henry said, giving up on what he thought was a good idea. “I’d better be getting around to putting on my dress blues and heading over to the courthouse.” Just then, the telephone rang. “Hold up, dear, lemme get that, it’s probably one of the fellas checking to see if I’m up and running.”

  Sitting up on the iron framed bed with a sheet covering her breasts, Roberta sneered at the thought of succumbing to Henry’s sexual desires, then she smacked her lips and chuckled. That’ll be the day, when colored women stoop to serving a man’s filthy whims like white girls do. Huh, ain’t no telling where Henry’s thing has been or who it’s been in for that matter. When she’d given it a second thought, Etta came to mind. She was really steaming then. “Henry!” she yelled, expecting to pick a fight about his ex-lover and what she’d likely done to his whistle when they were together. The ghostly expression he wore, standing naked in the doorway, caused her to shake loose from going against him. “What is it, Henry? Who was that on the line?” she asked, with short and snappy breaths.

  “Trace, Trace Wiggins,” he answered quietly, as if a myriad of other things zigzagged through his mind simultaneously. “He said they got Willie B. Bernard locked up for murder.”

  “Murder?” she repeated, in as much disbelief as her husband. “Who? When?”

  Henry’s mouth was bone dry when he told her. “He killed Helen and some doctor friend of Baltimore’s last night ... at Etta’s place.” His knees were shaking because he’d initially assumed it was Baltimore at the wrong end of Willie B.’s gun barrel. Feeling somewhat relieved that it wasn’t, he breathed heavily. “I didn’t know the dead doctor, but I’m awful sorry for Helen though.”

  “Poor girl,” Roberta groaned sorrowfully. “Helen didn’t do anything but love that fool with all her heart. However it happened, I’d bet Baltimore had something to do with it, and don’t let me get started on Jo Etta Adams.”

  “Don’t,” Henry huffed, in an insolent manner that caused Roberta to shrink back. “There’s been innocent blood spilt any which way you look at it. This ain’t the time to go pointing fingers and calling names.”

  “I just thought—”

  “I’m running late,” Henry interrupted. “Gotta go.” Henry didn’t share the information Trace had about the number of dead-on-arrival heroin victims turning up at the hospital during the night. Henry easily connected the dots back to Barker Sinclair and Tasman Gillespie’s illegal enterprise. Immediately, he regretted the decision to let Barker ride off with his prisoner, keeping quiet about it, and his lack of fortitude when witnessing police brutality. He’d grown accustomed to being a second-class citizen but refused to be a second-class police officer who wouldn’t take a stand any longer. Henry promised himself the next time he was faced with stepping up to the plate, he wouldn’t be sitting on his hands again.

  En route to the long awaited ceremony, Henry parked the car in front of Watkins Emporium. When he told Roberta he’d be right back, she merely grunted that she heard him, but offered no reply. The way he’d handled her when Etta’s name came up still had her seething. Henry had to work his way back into Roberta’s good graces before she was ready to say two decent words to him. A great deal more was required if he ever intended on taking another stroll through her garden, a great deal more.

  “Well, looka yonder,” the store owner hailed, proudly. Mr. Watkins’s face rounded out into a grandiose smile when he laid eyes on Henry’s impressive uniform, dark blue from shoulder to shoe, a double-pocketed shirt, brass and leather belted accessories and a perfectly shaped black and navy colored cap to compliment it. “I declare, this is a big day for our people and the city of St. Louis,” he said, admiring the uniform as much as he did the man wearing it.

  “Thank you, sir,” Henry said softly, not used to being ogled and appreciated by grown men, unless he was decked out in his baseball gear and knocking the hide off fast pitches. Henry was uncomfortable with this type of adoration, although he wasn’t turning it down. If only everyone felt the same as Mr. Watkins, he thought, as a familiar face sauntered through the door with her shadow bringing up the rear.

  “Hi ya, Etta, hey, Penny,” the older man greeted them from the opposite side of the checkout counter. “I was just telling Henry here how dashing he looked in his parade duds.”

  “Afternoon, Mr. Watkins,” Etta offered. She neglected to comment on Henry or his slave-catching clothes, as Baltimore called them. “I’ve got white detectives breathing down my neck about a double murder and that colored newspaper has been snooping high and low, too, so I give less than a damn about brass buttons or the trained baboons wearing them.” Mr. Watkins winced in embarrassment at Henry, unable to pretend Etta hadn’t blasted him with a personal attack, which he assumed was the result of a jilted woman scorned.

  “She always was a ball of fire,” he whispered to Henry, while handing him change for the cigars he’d stopped in to purchase. “But then you’d know that better than most, I guess.” Henry dumped the coins into his trouser pocket and winked at Mr. Watkins.

  “Yeah, always was,” he agreed, as he turned to leave. “Miss,” Henry said to Penny in passing. Her eyes glimmered at the big man in the striking suit and she smiled at him the way the store owner had when he arrived. She watched Henry strut all the way out onto the sidewalk, but her smile vanished when Etta eased in to block her view.

  “Come on, chile, you need some new scarves and hose,” she hissed disappointedly. “Wait ’til I get you home, we’re gonna have a long talk about the way things is.”

  “Ms. Etta, all’s I did was wave at Mistah Henry,” she protested. “Is there a rule says I can’t be nice just because y’all can’t get along?”

  “Hell, yes,” Etta informed her, “and that’s what I’m aiming to tell you all about soon as we get along.”

  “Is it gonna hurt?”

  “I’m gonna do all I can to see that it does,” she answered, with a frown on her mouth and laughter dancing in her eyes. “Womenfolks and friends got to stick together against any form of foe, even if they got absolutely no other reason to other than because one of them says it ought to be so.”

  “Seems kinda silly to me,” Penny said after pondering on it a while.

  “Seemed silly to me too until I saw you swooning over Henry’s broad shoulders wrapped in
that getup. Then it made perfect sense that I needed you to be as spiteful as I’m willing to. That’s what you call a true friend.”

  Penny mulled over the issue some more before making her stand. “I don’t like that rule, not even a little bit.”

  “And nobody asked you,” Etta reprimanded her. “If I wanted your say, I’d have asked you for it.”

  “Whew, it’s a mite tougher being a friend than I thought. They’s too many rules for one.”

  “Now you’re getting the picture. On second thought, setting you straight might not hurt so much after all.”

  Penny furrowed her brow awkwardly. “Tell that to my aching head.”

  At the steps of City Hall, the very place where the colored cadets were initially selected, Roberta was staring upside Henry’s head the way she had since he glided out of the emporium on Cloud Nine. She imagined his smile was due to something Etta said instead of what Mr. Watkins put in his mind about her.

  Seeing as how his wife didn’t have words for him, Henry didn’t speak up to tell her any different. “That ought to hold her,” he told Smiley Tennyson as the host of wives cordially introduced themselves near the front of the proceedings.

  “That’s something I haven’t seen,” Smiley responded, looking over his right shoulder, “white and colored women shaking hands and grinning at each other. Too bad Willie B.’s wife Helen couldn’t be one of them. Clay Barker said the prosecutor is aiming to send him up for life without parole if he can’t guarantee a hanging. Etta’s telling detectives a misunderstanding is what caused it. You think Baltimore put her up to saying that so’s to save Willie B. from the hangman’s noose?”

  “Naw, Baltimo’ never did cotton much to Willie B. and Etta wouldn’t say it was so unless that’s the way it was. This city is going to come apart at the threads.”

  “At the seams too,” Smiley answered, with his gaze locked on the trail of cars parking at the curb. Henry’s eye found it disheartening as well. On one side of the street, a contingent of sixty or so colored men gathered. The other side served as the rendezvous point for twenty off-duty officers who were actually selected to sit in attendance, in full regalia, as a sign of support. They openly defied orders when they appeared in faded jeans and other casual clothing, in silent protest against the induction of colored officers. The chief was so embarrassed he pulled a stunt to rival theirs.

  “To commemorate this special occasion,” he said, after the band played a few numbers, “I would like to announce the unanimous choice for Best Cadet of the Metropolitan Police Department’s Spring Class of 1947. On second thought, I’ll let their training leader present this highly coveted award.”

  The chief moved aside when Clay ascended the podium steps. He scanned the meager audience while humming on the inside with enthusiasm. “It is with the utmost respect that I salute this officer with the most sought after training award we have. This class has voted you, Henry Taylor, the unanimous winner for Best Cadet and would like you to receive this plaque on their behalf. Come on up, Henry, you deserve it.” To the wildly thunderous applause from the congregation of colored supporters, he stood from his chair, arched his back and went up to accept his award with his peers cheering him on.

  Roberta cast a lengthy glance toward the row of off-duty protestors. Because the ceremony went off without a hitch, she found herself wondering what their alignment meant, down the road, if anything other than making time to shake people up by staring. Roberta didn’t have long to wait before the good-ole-boy network validated her darkest suspicions.

  24

  HIGH HEELS AND BIG DEALS

  Friday night at the Fast House, Etta marveled at how many customers and curious patrons appeared to take in the excitement which spilled over after Willie B. shot up the place. It became the story of the day once word had traveled through the black community. A would-be police officer supposedly catching his wife with a colored doctor and blasting them both was too much of an event to disregard.

  Penny and Etta hustled drinks from opening time to the wee hours of the morning. Madame Clarisse helped out behind the bar for kicks, although Etta insisted she take fifty dollars for being a friend in a time of need. Clarisse didn’t mind the close proximity to Baltimore throughout the night and would have gladly done it for nothing. Unfortunately for her, when the Fast House shut down, he slipped out the back door with someone else while her back was turned. Penny giggled under her breath as the hairstylist ranted about her need to be made love to by a handsome man like Baltimore. “There’s nothing like having a fine man rubbing up against my skin,” she said, from the other end of a lit cigarette. “Hell, the way I feel right now, I’d even take an ugly man with smooth hands, a strong back and a big ole—”

  “Uh-uh,” Etta interrupted. “Don’t you dare dive into all that in front of Penny. Let’s get this place locked up and maybe you can make a call or two and see who’s in the mood and still available.”

  Clarisse blew a dense stream of smoke into the air as she leaned back against the bar. “If I can get one on the line, I can put him in the mood. You can take that to the bank and cash it.”

  Etta laughed as she puffed on a Chesterfield herself. “You know, all this talk about menfolk got me missing something I ain’t had in a while,” she said in retrospect.

  “What’s that, Ms. Etta?” asked Penny, with wide wondering eyes.

  “Huh? Oh, uh, headache powder,” she lied quickly. “Never you mind that. I was thinking out loud when I should have kept it to myself.”

  “Maybe that’s the problem,” Penny said, cutting her eyes at Etta like a sly fox. “Maybe you’ve been keeping it to yourself for too long.”

  “Penny?” Etta said, caught off guard by her innuendo. “What do you know about grown folk’s affairs?”

  “What don’t I know?” she answered, twirling a damp dishrag like a child’s toy. “There ain’t a night goes by that I don’t see some fella try’na get it or some woman try’na to give it away. Even seen one or two of them cathouse girls offering to make a profit selling it. Seems to me that pleasing is what makes the world go around. If it ain’t, I sho’ don’t know what beats it out.” She tossed the same foxy leer at Etta and Clarisse she’d pitched at them moments before. “Headache powder, that’s a new one. Heard it called everything but that. I’m awful hungry, y’all. Who wants to settle down to a red eye hot plate at the Smokey Joe’s Café? I’m buying.”

  “Etta, don’t look now, but you’ve got a woman on your hands,” Clarissa said, marveling at Penny’s sudden maturity. “Better still, a woman who’s treating us to breakfast.”

  “I’ll say,” was all that Etta could say, without drilling her protégée on exactly what else she might have learned under her very nose. Etta was even more astonished than Clarisse. It took everything she had to keep her mouth shut, afraid of getting more than she’d bargained for.

  Penny had already shared a lot of what she picked up from hustling tables, but she was not prepared or willing to make known the number of steamy sex scenes she observed through Baltimore’s rented room window. Penny figured on keeping that to herself. It was also clear she had matured in many ways since taking up with Etta, including learning a valuable lesson: to keep quiet when something was better left unsaid. Running off at the mouth could have brought pain to so many.

  The following afternoon, in Baltimore’s room, Dinah was casually dressed in an oatmeal-hued pleated shirt and argyle sweater, while she lounged on the small loveseat with her arms crossed. She’d listened to Baltimore’s plans to leave town by sundown while he neglected to tell her where he was headed and for how long. “That’s not gonna cut it this time,” she objected, staring at his back as he placed folded clothes into a new set of expensive suitcases. “I know you’ve been up to something so don’t stand there and lie to my face.” When accused of being untruthful, Baltimore turned toward Dinah in a slow deliberate manner that caused her to cower away from him.

  “You know I ain’t got no ca
use to lie to you or no other woman and I ain’t gave you any cause to put that label on me,” he panted. “I done told you all you need to know, for now. If that won’t do, there’s the door.”

  She didn’t know what to think then. Baltimore had been honest, she was mindful of that before challenging him further. “So tell me then, why are you in such a rush to storm away from me? If I didn’t know better I’d think you was giving me the sack.”

  “It’d be more like me to give you the latch,” he joked. “But we’ve had good times, Dinah. Good times are all I can offer going forward. You could come with me, you know.”

  “And do what, Baltimore?” she asked, while standing up from the loveseat. “Come with you and be your whore? I didn’t hear nothing about you loving me coming out your mouth, now or ever. I have a home here, a job that keeps money in my pocket and all of my friends to keep me company. That’s a good life. Unless you’re stud’n on trumping what I already got, we might as well fold them right here and walk away from the table.” Confidant he wouldn’t call her bluff, Dinah rolled her eyes at him to appear more geared up to let him go than she actually was.

  Before he answered her, someone knocked at the door. Baltimore furrowed his brow and raised his hand to shush Dinah. Not expecting any visitors, he grabbed the revolver from atop the bureau. “Yeah, who is it?” he asked, with an insistent tone.

  “Open up and I’ll show you,” a woman’s voice answered.

  Baltimore recognized it immediately. Dressed in a pair of casual trousers, he glanced at Dinah to note her reaction, then he reached for a suitable shirt to make himself presentable. “Hold on a minute, I’m throwing something on,” he answered through the door.

  “You shouldn’t bother on my account,” the woman responded in a sensuous tone. “I like you best in nothing at all.”

  Listening to the woman carrying on outside the door, Dinah was ready to blow a gasket. There was no skirting around this one. It couldn’t help but get ugly. She was chomping at the bit to see who Baltimore had been splitting her time with. “What you waiting on?” she whispered, while watching Baltimore stall. “Unlatch it!” she demanded, louder than before.