The party was at a big house up on the hill that overlooked the Negro quarter. This was where the black folks who had made some money went to show off to their people. Charlie and his hangers on and the band and the girls piled themselves into cars and I managed to squeeze in as well, beside a fragrant, warm lady who introduced herself to me as Elvira and smiled at me to let me know that she wasn’t at all unwilling to get to know me better. Each car bursting with flesh and throbbing with voices, we shuddered and juddered our way up the hill. The party was in full swing by the time we got there. There were a lot of people already there, a lot of noise, and a lot of liquor had already been drunk.
We spilled out of the cars into the street in front of the house, raucous and merry. Charlie’s hostility had vanished – I figured he’d taken a hit of something in the car. He grabbed my arm and dragged me across the lawn. The girl he had been with earlier was still with him, trotting alone side and giggling at nothing in particular as we left the grass and found gravel
under our feet again.
“See, Jack, this is a party, like you never seen before in your part of town,” Charlie said, his words slurring slightly into each other. His eyes were bright, too bright for his enthusiasm to be natural, and for his camaraderie to be genuine. Give it time, I thought, and we’ll see his other side.
We went through the front door, into a hall way which was crowded with people smoking, drinking and laughing. At the far end were stairs curving up out of sight. I glanced into the rooms opening off the central hall. They were all full of people busy enjoying themselves. Music, erratic and improvised, squirted from one room. A trumpet, played clumsily, and a
piano, trying to find each other but missing. Voices were raised in amusement at the trumpet’s blundering attempt to catch up with the piano, which went off at a gallop. The house was hot, and full of smoke.
I looked around and realized that while I had been peering into rooms where I had no business peering, I had lost Charlie in the throng. I wasn’t too worried. Nothing about his demeanour suggested he was trying to give me the slip, or if he was it was only to be alone with the girl. He would be somewhere and I didn’t think Charlie was the sort of guy to leave a party early. I relaxed a bit.
All around me, people moved and talked and drank and made merry. I felt like the ghost at the feast. I got the feeling of people’s eyes sliding off me, without seeing me. No-one knew me. No-one would talk to me without knowing me. But I was comfortable with that. I went into the room where the music was coming from. It was full of happy people. I moved on, through the other rooms of the house, absorbing the atmosphere of the party without ever being a part of it. People were too wrapped up in what they were doing, mostly, to notice me. Handsome young black men talked to beautiful young black girls. Small groups huddled together and talked. I walked out the back door into a small garden where a few people were enjoying the night air, which was a lot less smoky and unpleasant than the air indoors. Mostly couples, I figured, talking intimately and ignoring everything else around them.
I went back into the house. I worked my way back through the rooms to the front of the house. I’d been there maybe an hour, and I wanted to check on Charlie. He wasn’t anywhere downstairs and I started to get the feeling maybe he had given me the slip after all. I was wondering if I could risk going up stairs, or if that would be pushing my luck when a big, strong shoulder thumped into my back and sent me staggering forward. I sprawled into a few of the people in the corridor, and got jostled a bit. I wasn’t too worried about them, I was intent on turning around to see who had done the pushing, because I had a feeling he might do a bit more of it.
He was big, alright, and built broad and deep as well. His face was a mask of belligerence and phony anger. “Whatcha doin’ here?” he snarled at me, twisting up his face more to eke out a bit more outrage. I put my hands up and tried to say something soothing, but he came barreling towards me, one hand shooting out like a piston towards my chest. I stepped back but I was too slow – the blow caught me. I might have avoided the worst of it, but there was enough there to send me staggering back further down the corridor. People were yelling all about me, and trying to get out of the way of me and the big guy coming after me. I got my balance back just before he lunged for me again with big, grasping hands, and I skipped back, more nimble than I had been since I was ten. I didn’t want his hands getting hold of me, or anywhere near me.
“Surely we …” I managed to say, before he swung a fist as big as a brick at me.
I ducked under it, but I was running out of space. The door was only a couple of paces behind me. Keeping my eyes on Goliath, I fumbled for the handle. He realized what I was up to, and lunged for me, just as my hand found the cool brass. He got a hold of me, and we went sprawling out onto the verandah together, scattering party goers outwards onto the lawn.
We crashed to the ground separately, and this probably saved me life, for I didn’t fancy my chances of getting out from underneath him. He lumbered to his feet and we circled each other a bit, with him spitting curses and saying bad things about my parents. I didn’t mind that, I’d heard much worse from a pint sized white girl. I took advantage of the lull to catch my breathe, and let him waste his. I sized him up. He was big, and didn’t have an ounce of fat on him, by the look of it. His cheap suit barely covered all of his straining muscle, and it looked like he would burst out of it if he flexed them all at once.
He came at me again, but out on the open I had time to dodge away. There was a ring forming around us, of cheering, laughing men enjoying the sight. The next time he lunged at me, I sidestepped and hit him twice in the stomach. My hand bounced of solid slabs of muscle. It didn’t seem to worry him at all. My first plan had been to run like a rabbit, but I couldn’t guarantee getting through the crowd. My second plan had been to tire him and hope he went to sleep. I was starting to think that one wasn’t going to work either.
“Stop running, white boy,” he growled, his voice thick and angry.
“Stop hitting me and I might,” I retorted. He laughed at that, a short ugly laugh.
“I’m gonna pound you into the bay, you keep running you only make me madder.” I tried to duck in under his guard while he was talking, and hit him in the chest again, but the result was the same. He chuckled, a nasty sound like a drain.
We continued like this for a few minutes. The crowd was getting restive. I tried to entertain them with some more attempts to break my fist on his chest. My hand was hurting, but I noticed he’d laid off with the wisecracks. Then a foot stuck out from the crowd sent me staggering and his massive paws came down on my shoulders and I found only my tip-toes touching the ground. I punched him again, but nothing changed. I kicked him hard, bringing a knee up into his groin, and he dropped me. I punched him again, but he still seemed to like that.
He came at me again, he breathe starting to come in short gasps. I wasn’t feeling too fresh myself, but I was in better shape than him now. I wasn’t all muscle like he was, but I was still pretty solid and plenty heavy, and I was tired of fighting like a girl. I swung under his flailing right and shot a jab at his chin while he was still coming towards me. His head snapped back and he stopped dead to shake his head, so I hit him again. He went down on one knee, and then pushed himself up again. I hit him again on the chin, and he went down again. He made a third attempt to get up but couldn’t quite make it. I turned away.
“Hey, faggot,” he snarled. I turned around. He had made it to his feet somehow, and had gotten a gun from somewhere. He waved it at me menacingly, and I felt menaced alright. I measured up the distance for a kick, trying to work out the best way to drop if his finger twitched, but then suddenly a huge figure stepped out of the circle and a massive hand crushed his wrist, yanking it upwards. The gun went off, harmlessly blasting the shell into the night.
“’Sall right, folks,” said Remus. “Fun’s over.” He squeezed the wrist he’d captured until the big man – who didn’t look big any more – howled and let the gun go. Remus kicked it towards me. I stooped down and picked it up.
“You okay there, Jack?” he asked.
I nodded, getting my breath back. Remus took hold of the other man’s collar and lifted him up off his feet. “Listen up. Mr. Callaghan is a friend of mine. You make trouble for him and you make trouble for me. You understand that, boy?”
The other nodded. “Now,” said Remus, “You get back home to your mamma and get your self cleaned up.” He let the other go, dropping him onto the lawn. I unloaded his gun and tossed it back to him. Remus and I watched as he shambled off, head hung low and clutching his wrist.
“Glad you had the night off,” I said.
Remus smiled. “I was watching. You had him licked, only it was a low trick to pull a gun like that, so I figured I should step in and even the sides up a bit.”
I laughed. The crowd had dispersed now the show was over. We looked back up to the house. The noise hadn’t abated any, if anything the party was getting louder.
“Why you here, Jack?” Remus asked.
“I’m here with Charlie Mitre and his crew,” I answered. Remus nodded.
“I heard what happened to Martha, Jack, I was sure sorry to hear it.” He put a hand on my shoulder.
“Thank you,” I said.
A woman screamed in the house. I thought at first it was just some girl getting carried away, but then she screamed again, and again, and the tone wasn’t one of a girl having too much fun. It was full of panic and fear.
We both started to run for the door, but there was a whole scrimmage of people trying to get through. Remus shoved his way through, and I followed. The woman was still screaming, louder, from upstairs. There were other voices now as well, loud angry voices yelling. Remus lead the way upstairs. We got to the top. There were people pushing and shoving to look through a door into one of the rooms off the landing. Remus dragged a couple of people out of the doorway and we got in.
It was a small bedroom, and Charlie Mitre lay dead on the bed. He was naked, and lay sprawled sideways across the bed, which had been shoved half away from the wall. There were three other men in the room. Remus stepped back to block the door to stop any more shoving in.
At first I thought the bed sheets were black. The only light in the room was the light that spilled in from the hallway, and the faint moonlight that floated through the gap in the curtains. At first, like I said, it looked like Charlie was lying, naked, on black bed sheets. Then I looked more closely and saw that where the sheets were tucked under the bed, they were white. And a white oblong at the top showed where a pillow had been lifted away, after Charlie had spilled his life’s blood on the crisp, clean white bed sheets.
One of the other men was murmuring something under his breath, a prayer or an expression of horror. The other two were standing there, too shocked to move. Out on the corridor, the woman who had been screaming gave one long last wail and then lapsed into sobbing.
I took a step towards the bed. Closer, I could see the wounds on Charlie’s torso – half a dozen deep stabs in the stomach and chest, thick gouts of blood congealing. He had died with his hands clutching his stomach, trying to staunch the flow of blood. I looked around the room. It was a wreck. The three other men stood in a line, a pace from the wall. Behind them, the moonlight picked out a long, bloody smear printed on the wall paper. In my head, I measured Charlie against it. It was about the right size.
The duvet was shoved into the gap between the bed and the wall. I reached over and pulled it partially out. One side was soaked in blood. I found the holes where the knife had bee thrust through it. Sadistic, brutal, but professional. Except for the last part, where Charlie had perhaps managed to escape from the duvet, the killer wouldn’t have gotten any blood on him.
A deadly game of blind-man’s bluff. Charlie Mitre had been wrapped up in the duvet like a parcel, before being stabbed.
“What happen, Jack?” asked Remus.
“I think he was lying on his back on the bed. I think someone smashed him in the face – his nose is busted – and stabbed him through the sheets, several times. I reckon there must have been two of them, one to pin him down and another to doing the killing.”
I pulled the sheets a little out over the bed, so the others could see the cuts of the knife. Then I saw there was something else down there, between the bed and the wall. Another naked body. The girl.
“Remus, help me move the bed.” We shifted it enough to get in to have a look at her. When the bed moved, she flopped onto the floor in a boneless way that told us she was dead better than any doctor could have. There was some blood on her, but no wound. The blood was on one flank, treacley lines of it running downwards across her torso. She had been killed first, I surmised, and her body had ended up between the bed and the wall while Charlie was butchered. Her neck was broken.
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