Steve Cash - The Meq

“Corsair is from an old Creole family that lost its money decades ago, but he still has connections and a whole slew of ‘cousins’ in New Orleans. For years, all the girls came from New Orleans. Now, almost all the girls are from here in St. Louis, trained by me.”

I stopped her right there. “You mean, you and Georgia. work here?”

“Of course not,” she said. “We run it.”

I looked in her eyes. She stared back at me. I didn’t know what to say, but I knew there, in her eyes, she hadn’t changed.

“I am not ashamed of what I do, Z. It is a good business and I learned. we learned,” she said, nodding at Georgia, “how to do it well. We are not deprived or made to do anything we don’t want to do. We take good care of our girls and we take good care of our ‘visitors,’ as Mrs. Bennings likes to call them. I like everything about it except for Corsair. He’s got out of hand, Z. Two months ago, he finally talked Mrs. Bennings into marrying him and now he wants control of everything. He’s dangerous. I know he hates me and my influence and lately he’s been slapping Mrs. Bennings for no reason at all.”

“Is that what Georgia was trying to say?”

“Yes.” Carolina stopped talking and gave me a strange look. She pointed her finger at me and made a circling motion. “Z,” she said, “why did you come back now?”

I looked down at the floor, then up at her and Georgia. “I had a dream,” I said. “The rest is a little complicated.”

We sat in silence. I stared in wonder at these two young women, these Giza, sitting on the floor talking like this with a Meq, a child.

“Have you found Sailor?” Carolina asked.

“No,” I said. She turned to Georgia and shook her head, saying no, as if they had talked of this before. “Why did you say Corsair had hired someone?” I asked.

“I said I think he has hired someone. I can’t prove it.”

“To do what?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “but I’m afraid for Mrs. Bennings.”

I thought about my dream again. I was much more afraid for Carolina. I knew that Corsair Bogy was the source of my fear. Everywhere around me I felt an invisible, prickly net descending. It was a heightened sense of danger; an awareness of it that I was learning, as Geaxi said I would. But it felt like waking up. “Don’t tell Mrs. Bennings I’m back,” I said. “I have a plan.”

It was a simple plan. Corsair Bogy had to be watched; all the time, everywhere he went, inside the house or on the town. But Mrs. Bennings couldn’t be told. Carolina agreed — if I wasn’t here, he wouldn’t see me. We could not alert him. Corsair Bogy was a snake, but he wasn’t stupid; whatever he had in mind for Mrs. Bennings or Carolina, he would not do it himself.

I stood up to leave. I wanted to be gone before anyone in the house saw me. Carolina handed me Mama’s glove. “Don’t forget this,” she said.

“I never have.” They both walked me back through the house to the kitchen door. “Be careful and watch him like a hawk,” I said. “I won’t be far away.”

It was a cold morning, but spring was in the air and I walked into it, glancing back once at the two women I had known so long ago as girls. They were holding hands.

I got a room in the Italian neighborhood known as “the hill,” just off Hampton Avenue. It was a place where I could easily blend in and live cheaply. No one noticed another dark-haired boy on “the hill.”

Every day, I followed Corsair Bogy wherever he went. Most of his time was spent in the saloons or at Sportsman’s Park. The baseball season had started and Bogy had box seats, three rows up on the first base side. I hadn’t seen a baseball game in years, except for a few crude games in the Caribbean, and it was exciting to smell the smells, hear the sounds, and watch the players. Sneaking in was no problem; under Captain Woodget, I had learned to sneak into any place. The Browns were terrible. They had a great slugger at first base, though. His name was Roger Conner and he held the record for most home runs until Babe Ruth broke it. I thought about being a bat boy again, at least for a game or two, but that would make me too visible. Instead, I hung back in the shadows and watched Bogy.

At night, I stayed outside the boardinghouse and spied on those who came and went. I had seen whorehouses before, almost everywhere around two oceans, but never one like Mrs. Bennings’s House. There was no red light over the door or girls leaning out of the windows. From the outside, it looked the same as it always had.

Carriages pulled up and left, dropping off gentlemen in fine dress and top hats. I suppose that not all were gentlemen, but they looked the part. Every once in a while I thought I heard Georgia playing the piano. She was good. I could tell that Carolina and Georgia ran a genteel business, and except for the traffic, it could still have been a boardinghouse.

Each night I met Carolina somewhere outside and asked her if she had seen anything or anyone unusual around Bogy. For three weeks, she didn’t. Then, on May 1, she told me something that sent a chill through me. I was on the corner and she ran to meet me.

“I just heard him talking to someone,” she said, out of breath. “It was out back, just beyond the kitchen door. I don’t know who it was, it was too dark to see, but whoever it was said that Bogy had to come up with more money. Bogy said, ‘A deal is a deal,’ and the other voice said, ‘Not if there is more than one body to do.’ Those were his exact words—’more than one body to do.’ And, Z, here’s what scared me. When he turned to leave, I got a glimpse of him. He was a boy, Z, a boy like you, only with green eyes.”

One name flashed in my mind and one name only — Ray Ytuarte. It didn’t make sense, but he was the only one of us I knew who might think like that. He had made his living from violence, I knew that too, but an assassin? It just didn’t make sense. I felt that prickly net descending again; the danger. If it was Ray, what could I do about it? Ray had shown me to the Stones and told me about them, but would they have any effect on him? On us? On the Meq? I looked at Carolina and knew it made no difference. Whatever I had to do, I would.

“Who is he?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But Corsair will have to see him again, about the money. Then I’ll know. You stay with Georgia. Go to Mrs. Bennings’s room. Lock the door if you have to. Just stay together.”

“Where will you be?”

“I’ll be here, close, unless Bogy leaves.”

“All night?”

“Yes.”

She was still upset and anxious. I could see the band of freckles across her face standing out in the faint light. She turned and started back, then stopped.

“Do you still get scared, Z? Or is it different for you?”

“I turn twelve again this week,” I said. “What’s so scary about that?”

The night passed and Corsair Bogy never left the boardinghouse. I saw nothing unusual and the sun rose in a cloudless blue sky. All over south St. Louis the dogwoods and redbuds were in full bloom. I was tired, but edgy and alert, and for some reason the image of Captain Woodget came to mind. I could see him holding on to the weather rigging in his yellow oilskins and long leather sea boots, watching aloft and hanging on until the last minute. I had to keep that same resolve. I had to find the will of Geaxi and the silent strength of Unai and Usoa. I had to bury fear and wait. something I knew the Meq could do very well.

Corsair Bogy appeared around noon and headed straight for the saloons adjacent to Sportsman’s Park. Before I left to follow him, I saw Carolina standing in the window of Mrs. Bennings’s room. She put two fingers to her lips and pressed them against the glass. I nodded once and went off after Bogy.