She removed the envelope and held it in her hands, but her fingers kept tugging at the corners, picking at the edges of the seal. She lowered herself into the chair, holding the envelope with the grip of a curious child. Breathless, she peeled away the edges of the seal and poured the contents on the table.
Honoree had seen policy betting slips before. Everyone played the numbers, and every other person in Bronzeville ran the numbers. Even Miss Hattie’s would soon be a policy betting parlor, according to Archie and Ezekiel’s new job.
On the kitchen table, she stacked a small pile of betting slips: green paper; simple, ordinary pieces of paper. Honoree counted them.
Eighty-seven. And on each slip, the same three digits.
Had Trudy been running numbers, too? Taking bets for the white boys on the North Side? That would surprise Honoree. Trudy liked to keep her worlds separate. Those boys didn’t have to travel to Bronzeville to gamble. Policy gambling parlors were in white neighborhoods, too. They came to the Black Belt for the jazz clubs, the black-and-tans, and the whorehouses, and the Plantation Cafe, a nightclub owned by Al Capone himself, or so Honoree had heard.
The shriekingaooghaof a car horn blared, and Honoree nearly leaped out of her chair. She hugged her shoulders and sat very still, listening and praying that no footsteps would stomp up the stairs or travel across the wood planks and reach her front door.
Panic set fire to her insides. She stuffed the pieces of paper back into the envelope and marched over to the sink. She shouldn’t have anything in her possession that connected her to a murdered man, especially when a white man had killed that colored man. Only Trudy knew about the envelope. No one else would unless Honoree told them.
Burn it.Set it on fire. Watch it turn into ash.
She picked up a match and struck it on the edge of the counter.
The smell of sulfur filled her lungs as the flame flickered red and blue. What if the smartest thing she thought of would be the worst possible thing to do?
She dropped the match in the sink. She would make a decision about the envelope after she got some sleep and cleared her mind.
She returned the envelope to her box purse, slipped off her coat, and stepped out of her shift. Wearing only her cotton chemise, she lay on the cot and closed her eyes, but she couldn’t rest. The murder played in her mind like a motion picture at the cinema. Except in her movie, she could hear Houdini speak, and his words rang in her ears:I swear I don’t have it.
What did he mean; what was he talking about? What didn’t he have?What if. What if. What if.
Her throat closed, and her stomach churned. She was going to puke.
What if the white men had come to the Dreamland for the envelope?
No. That couldn’t be what Houdini meant. No man would kill another man for eighty-seven betting slips.
Honoree hugged her arms around her shoulders, gently massaging the fear cramping her muscles. What if Houdini had been killed because of the envelope? What if his death was her fault? Oh God.
No. No. This was Trudy’s doing. Honoree had no reason to feel guilty. No reason. Except. Oh God. If she had only given Houdini the envelope an hour earlier, he might still be alive, and if he still ended up dead, it would be none of her concern.
Stop. Stop. Stop.She needed to sleep and stop worrying. First, she had to hide the envelope. There was a stack of baskets next to the Singer sewing machine. She rose from the cot, took the envelope from her purse, and stuffed it into a heart-shaped basket. Then she went to the cabinet beneath the sink and removed a jug of hooch. Laura Lee, Honoree’s next-door neighbor, the mother of five of the loudest children in the tenement, gave her a jug of bathtub gin as payment for mending her children’s raggedy clothes.
Honoree uncorked the jar and poured herself a cupful, swallowed, and tried not to gag. Then she poured another and another. By the third cup, her vision blurred. She struggled to stay on her feet.
She put the jug away and wrapped herself in her mother’s quilt. The good Lord willing, she’d close her eyes and fall into a blissful sleep. A dreamless sleep. No gunfire. No blood. No dead barkeep to haunt her.
CHAPTER 13
HONOREE
Saturday, October 24, 1925
(Around ten o’clock in the morning)
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Honoree jerked upright in the cot, and her fingers clawed at the neckline of her cotton chemise. What was that noise? Where was it coming from? Her gaze swept the kitchenette, seeking the origin of the sound banging inside her head.
“Open up, Honoree!”
No. Not in her head but knocking on her door, yelling—and the voice knew her name.
She swung her feet from beneath the quilt. The raw wood planks sent a shiver up the back of her calves.
