Standing at the Scratch Line (77 page)

“Let me loose and I’ll tell you where the baby is! I’m the only one who knows where it is. If you kill me, you’ll never find it!”

“The baby is alive?” A cold fear lanced Serena’s heart, but it was replaced immediately by anger. Mamie had raised her head again.

“Yes! Yes, I didn’t hurt it. I put it in a colored orphanage in south Texas near Port Arthur, not too far from the Louisiana border!”

“You’re sure that no one else knows where it is?” she asked.

“I’m sure! Just release me and I’ll take you right to the—” His words were interrupted by the bullets that Serena fired into his body. She kept shooting her pistol until the slide locked in the open position. The silencer on the gun had caused it to make minimal noise, but the recoil of each discharge and the smell of cordite brought home the fact that she had a killing weapon in her hand. She was trembling. She had given everything to rescue King. She alone had earned the right to bear his children and she would never allow another woman’s child to intrude. Serena smiled. With LeGrande’s death Mamie’s presence was eradicated forever. Old photographs would be all that King would ever have to remind him of her.

Thomas began to hum “Nearer My God to Thee.” Serena stared at him and all the anger and resentment and humiliation came rushing back, flooding her consciousness with the desire for more revenge. LeGrande’s death was not enough. His death alone could not pay for the violations done to her family and friends. She turned and called to Sampson.

Sampson entered the room puffing on the cigar. At her direction, he lit the fuse. As the fuse began to spark and sizzle, Thomas began to hum louder. Sampson pulled out his pistol and aimed it at Willis, but Serena shook her head and pushed his arm down.

“He’s done what we told him. He’s cooperated. Let him live. If he talks, he’ll jeopardize his own life because they won’t believe him.” She turned and walked out of the room. She and King would go on as before, as if the baby had never been. As time passed, it would become a dimly remembered casualty of war.

Following Serena down the hall, Willis babbled his thanks and gratitude, but Sampson cut him short with a gesture and all three of them hurried down the corridor to the stairs leading up to the kitchen.

“You better get out of here, Minnie,” Serena warned as she and Sampson crossed to the door. “We’re going to blow the building apart.”

“Damn, girl! You ain’t even been here a week yet and you done destroyed the whole damn place! I’m leaving with you!”

Serena nodded and Minnie gathered up her belongings and followed her out the door.

Willis was left standing in the kitchen by himself. It didn’t seem real. He was alive. So many times within the last hour and a half it looked like his life would be cut short and yet here he was. He started for the door, then had a second thought. After the explosion, no one would know what was what. His hunger had reawakened within him and compelled him to go into the pantry. He might as well help himself to a few items. When the explosion shook the building, Willis was loaded down with a couple of hams and a container of butter. He still might have escaped if he hadn’t stopped to take a brisket of beef. He never saw the beam that fell and crushed him beneath it.

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“Get the hell out of my way, Boyer!” Corlis shouted as he sat on the side of his bed, waiting for his clothes to be brought by Sergeant Pointdexter. “I’ll have you arrested for obstruction of justice. See if I don’t!”

Dr. Boyer, a small chubby man with round, wire-rimmed glasses, was not intimidated. “I would not be serving you well if I did not attempt to prevent you from leaving this hospital prematurely, Corlis. You need to listen to me. You are not completely out of danger yet. It’s true that the infection is under control, but the sutures are not completely set yet and your moving around may put stress on them. You don’t want the sutures to be pulled open because then you will be subject to new infections.”

“I’ve listened to you too much already, you little butcher! If I had left here last week I could have prevented what happened at the Lafayette last night! Now I’m telling you get out! I don’t want to see your face unless I call you!” Corlis’s voice had dropped to a gutteral snarl. The set and determined expression on his face, combined with his tone, made the doctor bow out of the room without another word.

Pointdexter reentered the room with Corlis’s clothes. He gave Corlis a toothy, apologetic smile. “The doctor cut the right leg off your pants. He say the amputa—”

“Don’t say that goddamned word!” Corlis ordered. “And don’t mention that doctor to me again! Just go get one of the orderlies to help me get dressed!” Corlis looked over at the crutches he had been practicing with awkwardly for the last week and rage filled him. Everywhere he went he would now need help. He couldn’t even take a shit by himself.

During the car ride over to the Lafayette Social Club every bump and rut in the road caused Corlis to grimace, but no exclamation of pain escaped his mouth.

“Tell me again what happened last night, Anthony,” Corlis said, pulling out a cigar and fumbling for a match. Pointdexter, in an effort to assist him, pulled some matches from his coat pocket and almost missed a turn in the road. “Keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road!” Corlis ordered, holding on as the vehicle swerved back on the road. “Tell me what happened last night,” he said once again.

“We don’t know exactly how it happened yet, but the Lafayette was blowed up last night,” Pointdexter explained. “We was all in the main dining hall, the one with the chandeliers, and we was listening to that long-winded Councilman Hill’s speech about how he done helped us clean up the bootleggin’ in New Orleans Parish and—”

“Damn it, man! Tell me if you found out the cause of the explosion!” Corlis interrupted impatiently. “What type of investigation did you conduct?”

“Well, er, I was waitin’ for Captain LeGrande to take charge, but he never showed up,” Pointdexter said with an apologetic cough. “We don’t know where he is. I went by his house this mornin’ befo’ I came to get you.”

“You mean to tell me you didn’t conduct any investigation?”

Pointdexter swallowed uncomfortably. “There wasn’t much to see last night. The electricity got blown out with the explosion and the fire burned for quite a while and caused a lot of smoke. All we did was try to put the fire out and search for survivors. That’s still goin’ on this mo’nin’. It looks like a bomb done went off somewheres near the front of the building. Least ways that’s what Dietrich say. He saw a lot of bombin’ in the Big War.”

“What about my prisoners?”

Pointdexter smiled for the first time. “I checked that immediately, knowin’ how impo’tant they was to you. They didn’t get away, that’s for sure! Everybody that was down at that end of the buildin’ was killed for sho’!”

“How do you know?” Corlis was getting a bad feeling. Could it be that Negroes were getting so bold that they would attack an honored and distinguished establishment like the Lafayette Social Club, even when it was filled with police?

“I sent some mens down there with flashlights to dig out whoever was down there, but they didn’t find nobody alive. They couldn’t even find a whole corpse.”

“Then how do you know the niggers didn’t escape?”

“Cause they found pieces of them still shackled to the wall. I went down myself once the way was cleared. We found the head and arm of one body still chained to the wall. The other body was found across the room with a chunk of the wall chained to its arm.”

Corlis smacked the side of the car with his fist. This was the final frustration. He had been turned into a cripple by a nigger who had escaped to his reward without ever having to pay the full price for his act. “Any other bodies?” he asked grimly.

“Lots of ’em! The flo’ collapsed and everybody who was in the kitchen was burned to a crisp.”

“Did you at least question the colored help?”

“Uh, no. It was just hell and confusion last night. We was just tryin’ to save white folks. The staircase to the second flo’ collapsed and a supportin’ pillar fell into the dining room. Then we had to fight the fire too! We was lucky to escape with only twenty-seven dead, not countin’ them guards in the basement, of course. But I’ll round up all the colored help and bring ’em in for questioning.”

“Damn it, Pointdexter, it’s too late now! Hell, they probably stole the place blind before they left! I can see it now. After the explosion they probably disappeared with everything they could carry! Niggers are like that!”

“That sounds like it’s true for white folks too, sir,” Pointdexter observed.

“I’m not talking about whites, I’m talking about niggers!” Corlis snapped irritatedly. “What about the porters working at the front gate? Did you check to see if anybody strange came through the gate before the explosion? Or left immediately after it?”

“I talked to them. An old colored man by the name of Jacob is in charge of the gate porters and he said the only people who came through last night was white people. He said he didn’t know most of them, but he was told by the maître d’ John Weston to let them in if they had an invitation. He said some white men came through in a big car who had funny northern accents. He let them in because they had an invitation. Jacob said they were among the first ones to leave after the explosion. He saw them leave as he was headin’ for the main buildin’ to help the rescue effort.”

The wrought-iron fence of the Lafayette Social Club came into view. As they pulled up to the gate, Corlis was happy to see men in parish police uniforms guarding the entrance. They snapped to attention when they saw who was in the car and saluted. Corlis gave them a weary salute in return and the car drove on toward the damaged and still smoldering main building. He was surprised at the amount of destruction the building had experienced. The whole front half had collapsed and a good section of the lower two stories were gutted by fire. Men, both colored and white, were heaving on ropes with block and tackle to lift heavy pieces of construction out of the way. At one corner of the building someone had set up a table and was taking statements from a line of colored workers dressed in bedraggled and dirty uniforms. Corlis could see that someone had taken responsibility for organizing the rescue and salvage effort.

The car pulled to a stop near the front of the building and Pointdexter got out and ran around the front bumper to assist Corlis out of the vehicle. “Get back, goddamn it!” Corlis snarled as he fumbled for his crutches. He got them under his arms and, using the car door, pulled himself erect with an effort. “I’m not an invalid yet! Now, who’s in charge around here?”

“Uh, Sergeant Dietrich, I think, sir,” Pointdexter looked around, unsure of the correct answer. “I think he’s sittin’ at yon table, sir.”

“I’m going over to the table to talk with Dietrich. In the meantime, I want you to get on top of those damned utility companies and get electricity and phone systems working out here! Don’t let them give you any excuse! Tell them they will answer to me if we don’t have power and telephones by this evening!” Corlis made his way awkwardly to the table.

Sergeant Felix Dietrich stood up as soon as he saw the sheriff approaching. He pushed his dark hair out of his pale blue eyes and straightened his uniform. “Good morning, sir,” he said smartly as Corlis lurched alongside the table. He beckoned for one of his men to bring a chair for Corlis.

“What’s going on here, Sergeant?” Corlis asked, looking around at the men sifting through the rubble near the front of the building.

“We’ve just given up looking for survivors, sir,” Dietrich explained in clipped tones. “There may be more, but we can’t get at them until we get some big construction equipment in here. I’ve assigned a work crew to search through the debris, to find out the type of bomb it was. There’s no doubt in my mind that it was very sophisticated. It reminds me of when I was in Europe.”

The chair was delivered and Corlis sat down heavily. “Do you have any idea as to who might have set it? It couldn’t be, for example, a couple of niggers with a few sticks of dynamite?”