The Ragtime Kid (28 page)

“I thought of that,” said Brun. “I own, it does seem queer. But when I saw the sun shine off it, it was just for a second, then it was gone. I almost went on walking, but figured maybe somebody had dropped a gold piece in the grass, so I went to see. I was surprised when I saw what it was.”

“But you thought right off about the murdered woman.”

“No, sir, not exactly right off. What I first thought was just that some lady had lost it, and then I wondered what she would have been doing in the grass by the side of the road.”

Stark smiled. Isaac chuckled. The women took care to look in another direction.

“Then I remembered that was where Mr. Higdon said they’d found the woman. The weeds were knocked every which way to Sunday, so maybe the cops tromped the locket down underneath, and I just happened to see it from where I was standing right then.”

Stark studied the photo. “Hmmm. Could the woman have been Freitag’s wife?”

“Mr. Fitzgerald said she told him her name was Sallie Rudolph. Not Freitag.”

Now, Mrs. Stark spoke up. “He wouldn’t be the only man, married or not, to have a lady friend, now, would he? And a man like him? Perhaps the poor thing showed up in town at an awkward moment. Or with a troublesome demand.”

“Mother, you have a wicked mind.”

Nell was teasing, and Mrs. Stark knew it. “We’ll wait until you’ve been on this earth as long as I,” she said. “Then, you can make judgments as to the wickedness of my mind.”

“Wicked your mind may be, my dear,” said Mr. Stark. “But I’ve never known it to be unfair, unkind, or off the mark.” Stark got to his feet with such suddenness that Brun jumped. “I think I’ll have a talk with Bob Higdon, and see whether there was a chain on the woman’s body, one that the locket could have been torn away from. I’d guess he ought to be home from church by now.” He bent to kiss his wife. “I’ll be back for dinner, my dear. Brun will be staying.”

“Well, of course he will,” said Mrs. Stark. “I invited him when he was here last Sunday. Or have you forgotten?”

***

Not half an hour later, John Stark marched through the living room and onto the porch. Conversation stopped as if cut off by a sharp knife. Stark chuckled. “Bob thought something was up, what with my coming over before dinner on a Sunday, and he was curious, to say the least, as to why I was asking such a question about a locket chain. But he said yes, the police did find a small torn chain at the roadside, near the woman’s body.” Stark sat, surveyed his audience. “Now, suppose we take this locket to the police. They’ll call in Freitag, who’ll swear up and down he knows nothing about the dead woman. He’ll ask what evidence there is to suggest the locket was in fact hers. And would you doubt that Miss McAllister, close as she’s become to Freitag, might swear that the locket, with Freitag’s picture, belonged to her, and she just happened to notice last night that she had lost it somewhere? It leaves us in a difficult position.”

“I’ve got an idea, Mr. Stark.”

Everyone looked at Brun.

“I heard Mr. Joplin say Freitag used to work for Carl Hoffman in Kansas City, and he was here last month with a man named Daniels, trying to get Mr. Joplin to let them publish his
Ragtime Dance
…”

Brun stopped talking as he saw the look that passed between Stark and Isaac. “That’s Charles Daniels,” Stark said. “A little bit of a hot shot, but a capable young man, and I think decent enough. The two of them also came to our store that day. Well, all right, Brun. Just what are you considering?”

Brun’s stomach felt like a half-f jug on the deck of a boat during a heavy storm. He licked his lips. “I was thinking I could take the early train to Kansas City tomorrow morning, go to Carl Hoffman’s, talk to Daniels and see what I can find out about Freitag. I’d work the line around to how a woman named Sallie Rudolph found herself a whole mess of trouble in Sedalia. I could probably do that and get back to work on time, but in case I don’t, I wouldn’t want you thinking I was dogging it. That’s why I’m telling you now.”

Smiles came over all the faces in the company, the women’s warm, the men’s tight. Stark said, “I believe we can manage to get along without you in the store for at least part of a day. Let’s talk more over dinner. I for one have worked up a hearty appetite.”

***

Six o’clock before Brun left Stark’s. He had a double sawbuck in his pocket, and a paper with Carl Hoffman’s address, both courtesy of John Stark. The boy had eaten considerably more of Mrs. Stark’s roasted chicken and cherry pie with rich vanilla ice cream than his mother would have considered polite, and now he felt logy. At the corner of Sixth and Ohio, he decided he wasn’t in the right frame of mind to deal with the Higdons, whether over the locket or his behavior with Maisie, so he changed direction and wandered out to Liberty Park, found a comfortable spot under a huge old maple, stretched himself on the grass and stared at the sky. A flock of wild geese passed overhead, partly blotting out the sun. Their honking call set off the same lonesome tug below the boy’s ribs that he’d felt during his long ride to Sedalia, when he heard the train’s whistle long and low in the night. He closed his eyes.

Next he knew, it was full darkness. He blinked, then pulled himself to his feet, stretched, brushed at his trousers, and started hoofing back to town. At Third, corner of Osage, he thought he heard a sound coming out of a patch of brier bushes, so he walked up, carefully spread branches, and peered through. Now, he definitely heard a moan. “He’p me.”

The stickers pulled at his pants and shirt, and he had to cover his face with his arms to get down and look at the body in the middle of the brier patch. When he reached to touch the person, there came a scream of such pain and fear as to cover the boy’s body with goosebumps. “I won’t hurt you,” Brun said. “What happened?”

“They beat me turrible.” The voice was familiar; Brun bent for a closer look. A colored man, head curled tightly to his chest, upper body rocking back and forth, long legs lying stretched and motionless. “Henry?” Brun asked. “High Henry?”

The moaning and screaming stopped. “Who you be?”

“Brun Campbell. Scott Joplin’s young piano man. What happened to you?”

“They beat me,” Henry said again. “He’p me, please. My head hurts somethin’ awful, an’ I don’t feel nothin’ in my legs at all. I think I gonna die.”

No way for Brun to get the Negro out of those briers by himself. “Henry, listen up. I’m going for Doc Overstreet—”

“Do he treat colored?”

“Mr. Stark sent Isaac there when he got hurt by the Alteneders—”

“Them’s who did it to me.”

“The Alteneders?”

“The very same. I was goin’ along to Lincolnville, mindin’ my own business, an’ I hear somebody say, ‘That him.’ Then Mist’ Alteneder an’ his boy, they grab me, pull me out back of Adams’ blacksmith shop, an’ say where is that music I tol’ Mr. Freitag I’d give him. I say I ain’t got it on me, gotta go home an’ get it, but then they start hittin’ me with clubs an’ kickin’ me an’ sayin’ this what happens to a lyin’ nigger who tell Mr. Freitag he gonna give him some music, then never do. The boy punch my face an’ say I done missed my chance ’cause Mist’ Freitag gonna get all the music he want later tonight outa the Maple Leaf Club.”

That seemed to exhaust Henry; he closed his eyes and his head lolled. Brun bent over him. “Just hang on, Henry, okay? Be right back with the doc.”

When Overstreet opened the door to Brun’s pounding, the boy quickly apologized for making such a racket late on a Sunday evening. “But there’s a man down the street, needs your help in a hurry. He got beat up and thrown in the briers, and he’s hurt real bad. Please, will you come?”

The doctor’s Adam’s apple bobbed; his shoulders slumped. “I’ll get my bag,” he said, through a cloud of recycled whiskey.

No sound as Brun and Overstreet approached the briers. The doctor put down his bag, then he and Brun broke their way in to Henry, who now lay still. “He’s not…dead, is he, Doc?” Brun asked.

Dr. Overstreet had already reached his hand along the side of Henry’s neck. “No, just unconscious. Let’s get him out of here, where I can get a better look at him. Take his feet, I’ll carry his head and neck.”

They lifted Henry slowly, carefully. As the long body unfurled, Overstreet whistled low. “God blast me—it’s High Henry Ramberg. What happened to him?”

“He said Fritz and Emil Alteneder gave him what-for ’cause he wouldn’t sell his music to Mr. Freitag.”

“Christ Almighty!” Overstreet turned his head and spat. He opened his bag, poked the Negro here and there, tapped him with a little hammer, listened at his chest. After a couple of minutes, the doctor stood, his face grim. “Can you help me get him back to my office?”

For answer, Brun bent, but before he could lift Henry’s feet, Overstreet tapped his shoulder. “You’ve got to be careful. We both do. His back’s broken, and we don’t want to make it worse. Handle him as if he were a bag of dynamite.”

As Brun and the doctor came up to Overstreet’s office, two men and their wives approached from the opposite direction. The small group rubbernecked, then Brun heard one of the men say, “Doc Overstreet and some kid, carrying a nigger.” Whereupon one of the women said, loud enough to be sure of being heard, “Hmph! He’d do better to go to Sunday vespers than go scratching around town looking for drunk niggers to treat.”

Overstreet called out, “Jack, Ernie, one of you please be so good as to open the door.”

The men looked at each other, then one moved forward, opened the door, and held it long enough for Brun and the doctor to carry Henry through. “Thank you, Ernie,” Overstreet called back over his shoulder.

They laid Henry gently on the table in the examining room, then peeled off his shirt and trousers. The sight moved Brun to near-sickness. Bruises covered Henry’s body, cuts everywhere, scratches from the briers. That beautiful chocolate face was a mass of lumps and patches of dark discoloration; one eye was swollen shut. His legs lay at strange angles to each other. Overstreet shucked off his vest and tossed it on the back of a chair, then rolled up his sleeves and went to work on Henry, who showed no sign of life beyond breathing and letting out an occasional, “Oooooooo.” Brun wanted to tell the doctor about the plan Henry had overheard, but didn’t dare interrupt him. The little clock on the wall next to the examination table chimed ten-thirty. Brun fidgeted. “Is he going to live?”

Overstreet grunted. “If I have anything to say about it. But even if he does, he’s never going to dance again.”

“I’m going to
kill
them.” Brun’s rage tore out of his mouth without ever passing through his mind.

Overstreet half-turned, raised a finger to the boy and snapped, “You stay away from them.”

“But what they did—”

“You heard me. Don’t you go near those thugs, not for anything.”

Without another word, Brun whirled and ran out of the room. A couple of seconds later, Overstreet heard the office door slam. He sighed, then turned back to his work.

Outside, Brun ran a few steps in the direction of Stark’s, but then pulled up. Nearly eleven, and he had no idea, did he, just when the Alteneders and Freitag would be going in at the Maple Leaf Club. And once they’d made off with Joplin’s music, he’d never get it back. Freitag would publish it all, probably with a phony name as composer, and what court could Joplin go to for help? Brun had no time to wake Mr. Stark, even less to try to convince the cops what was about to happen. Like Dr. Overstreet was doing his best to save Henry’s life, it was up to Brun to do the same to try and save Joplin’s music.

He took off on the run along Ohio, down to Main, up to the Maple Leaf Club. Any other night of the week, the street would be alive, all the customary activities of the sporting district in full swing. But this was the Lord’s Day, or at least His Night. The sports had gone to church, enjoyed a good dinner, then hit the rack early to enjoy dreams about the week past and the week before them. Only an occasional reprobate went weaving along the side of the road, and Brun took care none of them saw him slip up to the door of the club and inside.

Dead quiet. Brun went up the stairs on tiptoes, stopping to listen every time he made a stairboard creak. Once in the club, he went directly to the piano, scooped all the music off the rack, set it on the bench. By the light of a lucifer, he spotted several more papers on the top of the piano, others on the floor to the left of the bench; he added them to the pile. Then back downstairs, a quick glance both ways at the door to be sure the Alteneders weren’t on their way in, and down Lamine he flew, taking caution not to lose a single page of music to the wind.

Dark at Higdon’s. Brun muttered a quiet thanks, then ran in through the living room, and up the stairs. But as he scurried along the corridor toward his room, he noticed something odd. All the other bedroom doors were open, Higdon’s, Belle’s, Luella’s. He reversed course, went back downstairs, turned on a lamp in the living room, and looked around. Nothing unusual. But in the kitchen, he found a note on the little pine table across from the stove. “Dear Brun,” it said. “Our mother was taken ill this morning, and we are going out to the farm to see her. It’s coming on four in the afternoon, and I doubt we’ll be back tonight. There is cold chicken in the icebox, and some salad and fruit, and half a berry pie on the window sill. Just help yourself.” The note was signed “Belle.”

He set the music next to the note, and took a moment to catch his breath. He felt dizzy, and, suddenly, hungry, so he set up at the kitchen table, and while he made short work of the cold chicken, salad, fruit, and a hefty slice of berry pie, he thumbed through the sheets of music.

What a treasure of ragtime in a small pile of paper. Best Brun could tell, he had the entire score of
The Ragtime Dance
, and full copies of “Maple Leaf Rag,” “Swipesey Cake Walk,” and “Sunflower Slow Drag.” Beyond that were partials on pieces called “Peacherine Rag” and “Easy Winners.” He recognized an untitled partial as “The Entertainer.” Several unnamed fragments, he’d never seen before. He wiped his hands on his pants, then took the music, all of it, to the piano, and commenced to play.