Houdini staggered backward. The blood on the front of his shirt spread across his massive chest. Somehow, he pitched forward and grabbed the edge of the bar. His lips pulled back in pain, his eyes wide, and in a final furious stance, he stood erect, daring them to shoot him again.
The white man didn’t shoot him. He struck Houdini in the head with the butt of his weapon over and over and over.
The bartender groaned, a gut-wrenching sound of a man’s last breath, and then he fell to the floor, and silence filled the room.
Gin rolled in Honoree’s stomach.
Don’t scream. Don’t scream. Don’t scream. They’ll kill you, too, if you scream.
The man who bumped off Houdini turned in her direction, eyes narrow and searching. Had he heard her breathing? Could he see her?
The other man grabbed his arm. “We gotta go. We gotta go now.”
The man still holding the gun shook free of the other man and stepped toward the main dining hall and stood beneath the light shining down from the ceiling chandelier.
Every line, every inch of his face, from his beak nose, small cold eyes, and white man’s skin, Honoree would never forget. No matter how hard she tried.
He picked up the newspaper and, along with the other man, walked out of the Dreamland Cafe.
* * *
Shades of blue and orange brightened the horizon as dawn approached. Rain fell as clouds of smoke rose into the sky. But silence reigned in the alley behind the Dreamland Cafe, except for the sound of Honoree’s heart knocking a hole in her chest.
She raked her fingernails over her knuckles. Where were her gloves? Had she dropped them in the dance hall? Did she even have gloves? Did it matter?
She wanted to run. She needed to run—run the hell away from the Dreamland Cafe. Except she stood frozen on the landing outside the cafe’s back door. Unable to silence thebang, bang, banginside her head. Unable to unsee the face of the goon who had killed the barkeep. Unable to breathe, she was a witness—a witness to a killing. A man had been shot in front of her.
God. Why didn’t she wait a day? Why not deliver the envelope another day? She would’ve missed the whole damn thing.
Honoree closed her fingers around the wood railing. Thank God. A part of her body had moved.
She regarded the alley and her choices. Once she made it to the street, if she turned left, that was the way home. If she turned right, the police station was a few blocks away. She could go there, tell the coppers about Houdini—if she could trust them. She was a colored girl, and a chorus girl, and a witness to a Black man’s murder by a white man. Would the cops care about what she had to say?
Maybe the piano man in the balcony would go to the police—another witness to the barkeep’s murder. Or he was like Honoree—too afraid or too smart to let anyone in on what he’d seen.
Honoree placed a hand lightly on her rib cage. She was breathing so fast and hard, it hurt to the touch, but she took the pain as a warning. Don’t be a dumb Dora. It would be foolish to trust the coppers in this city. The piano man would be a fool to take such a risk.
She looped the scarf around her head, covering her mouth and her nose, and rushed down the steps into the alley, tripping toward State Street.
She reached the end of the alley, her gaze moving from the storefront tabernacles to the speakeasies to the whores lined up on either side of State Street. Preachers shouted hell and brimstone, and automobile horns put an ache in her eardrums.
State Street: always busy, always jumping, always something going on.
She turned down a less jammed block, her footsteps gaining speed. Soon, she was running, racing toward home, running faster than she had ever run in her life.
* * *
Breathing hard, legs weak, Honoree stumbled into her home. The one-room flat, a kitchenette with a cot. A small room with no bathroom. No hot water or heat. Only two ways to escape—a front door and a rear window that led to a porch and then the roof—her home since she and her family arrived in Chicago. It had kept her safe for most of her life. Could it keep her safe now? She bolted the door behind her.
Strips of light flashed in front of her eyes. She rested her forehead against the door’s raw wood and trembled. A man had been shot to death in front of her. Not the first man she had seen die; her father was the first, but the police called his death an accident. The end of Houdini’s life was an execution. She slowly lifted her head but kept her palms pressed flat on the door, fingers splayed.
Steady. Steady. Steady.
She didn’t trust her legs to keep her standing. Still. She was at home. Safe in her kitchenette.
Shaking, she dropped her shopping bag on the floor and placed her box purse on the kitchen table. Closing her fingers into a fist, she stared at the purse, wishing it could speak and tell her what to do next. But that was make-believe, and her life was not a dream.
The envelope was in her purse. A box of matches sat on the counter next to the sink. She should burn the envelope. Tell Trudy she’d handed it to Houdini. The man was dead and unable to contradict her. And if Trudy called her a liar, Honoree would call her a liar right back.
