Number Nine: Chapter 15

KANSAS CITY BLUES


FADE IN:

EXT. HIGHWAY – STARLIT SKY VIEW – NIGHT

The stars float by overhead as Jake and Ruby drive the lonesome highway from Oklahoma to Kansas City on their way to St. Louis and a date with the Mississippi Queen. Ruby is heard singing.

Going to Kansas City, Kansas City here I come
I’m going to Kansas City, Kansas City here I come
They got a crazy way of lovin’ and I wanna get me some…

INT. PICKUP – JAKE – NIGHT

Close up of JAKE, eyes on Ruby singing, dumbfounded and amazed. Close up of RUBY, singing like the reincarnation of Billie Holliday.

I was standing on the corner, 12th street and Vine
I was standing on the corner, 12th street and Vine
I got a Kansas City man and a bottle of Kansas City wine…

INT. LIVING ROOM – MORNING

A disheveled man with long hair, a grubby beard and beady eyes in a tattered tee shirt and jeans sits rolling a joint. This is SANTINI. His eyes dart around the room. A revolver is on the coffee table.

Fade out KANSAS CITY. Fade in COME TOGETHER by Lennon and McCartney.

Here come old flattop, he come grooving up slowly
He got joo-joo eyeball, he one holy roller
He got hair down to his knee
Got to be a joker he just do what he please…

Fade COME TOGETHER. Fade scene.


A taste of the white orchid, the eternal Lady Day, a voice that sprang from the depths of eternal sorrow, but it was not the radio, not a remastered CD; it was the one and only Ruby Daulton. She had a style, a phrasing and tone distinctly her own but that sprang from that same well and Jake was dumbfounded.

Ruby was a singer’s singer. She had the talent, the looks and the flare to fill women with envy and make men fall to their knees. How she ended up running drugs and dancing in two-bit stripper bars was a mystery as deep as the seven seas, as illusive as a psychedelic dream.

She let the last note drift to the heavens and gave him a wink and a smile. To her it was as natural as breathing the air, as effortless as walking.

Jake spoke from the depth of his native soul: “You should go straight to New Orleans, Ruby. They’ll make you a legend and worship you. You’ll never have to hustle another day in your life.”

Ruby laughed and leaned out the window to breathe the night air and take in the stars. He wasn’t the first to tell her how talented she was and how easy it would for her in New York, Chicago or New Orleans. But it wasn’t easy. It was never easy. Nothing ever came to Ruby without blood and sweat.

“Don’t you know what they do to legends in New Orleans?”

Visions of Billie Holliday, eyes rolled back, a needle dangling from her arm, and Bessie Smith dying in the front seat of car, parked outside a white only hospital washed over him. What do you do when the jackhammer of truth comes down on you?

“Yeah,” he reflected. He knew what they did to legends.

They had a new plan: a quick stop in Kansas City and on to St. Louis. Catch a ride on the Mississippi Queen, a floating paddleboat casino, straight down to New Orleans and a new life. They would test the fates the old fashioned way: game of chance. Jake liked the idea. Fresh off a Royal Flush, it appealed to his sense of adventure. The only part that gave him second thoughts was the stop in Kansas City.

“In and out,” Ruby said of the Kansas City detour. She had some friends there and she felt a need for self-defense. She would score a concealable weapon and find out the latest news from Guido and the boys in Vegas.

Jake did not object to Ruby having a gun but he was less certain that she should trust anyone connected with her past. If she wanted a gun, she should have got one from White Wolf. Barring that he’d feel better scoring one in a dark alley than tapping her connections in Vegas or LA. It was a chance he wouldn’t have taken. He didn’t like the odds.

It was early morning when they crossed the state line, stumbled into Kansas City and navigated their way across town to Truman Avenue at 38th Street. The numbers were coming up wrong and Ruby was reading the signs. Jake was back in his sleeping mode; even when he was awake, he was asleep. She had a long conversation with his subconscious, in which he spoke in tongues, riddles and rhymes, eyes rolling and head swaying from side to side.

“Tell me about your mother,” Ruby said.

“The earth was shaken to her core,” replied the sleeping man. “The clouds were dark, shivering rain. The ocean is plasma, a magnetic swarm, flies so thick, the caretaker warned: the milk is poison.”

His eyes rolled and sweat covered his brow but when Ruby became concerned, he would break into poetry, rolling out a velvet tribute to the beauty of life.

Ruby was amused and amazed at the workings of Jake’s sleeping mind but now that they were nearing her Kansas City connection, she sensed danger and felt the need for his conscious presence.

She drove half a block past the apartment building and parked. They were friends of a friend, every bit as dubious as Jake feared, but it seemed reasonable until now. The same instincts that told her she needed a gun now warned to be wary. She needed Jake to take the ball, bounce it around, and figure out which way to move.

She shook him hard and pleaded with him to wake up. His eyes rolled behind closed lids before springing wide open, as if petrified: “Nanih waiyah!” he called out and then lapsed back into his world of dreams.

She pressed her body against him and teased him with a kiss. Again, his eyes rolled and popped open in fear. It was strange. She had never seen fear in him while he was awake but here it was in his dreams.

A stranger in a strange land, Jake heard Ruby’s voice and crawled out of the abyss, fluttering his eyes, adjusting to an unfamiliar world, until he saw her shining face.

“What is nonny wayuh?” she asked.

“Nanih waiyuh,” he muttered. “It’s Choctaw for the fox.”

“The fox and the weasel,” said Ruby. It was what Sister Woman called the couple in Kansas City, the connection she was about to meet.

The fox was a master of camouflage, a wearer of masks, renowned for cunning, while the weasel was known for stealth and an ability to see beyond disguise. They were a perfect match for all the wrong reasons. Ruby was having doubts.

“What were you afraid of?” Ruby asked.

“What is anyone afraid of?” Jake replied. “The unknown, the unfamiliar, the tunnel of darkness, the absence of light.”

“I’ve never seen you afraid before.”

“You’ve never brought me back from so far under.”

Ruby’s mind was racing in a thousand directions but everything would have to wait. She had to focus on the moment and she needed Jake to be there with her.

“We need a plan,” she said.

“We have a plan,” replied Jake. “We go in, keep our eyes open, you make the deal, we get out.”

“It’s not much of a plan,” said Ruby.

“I’ve got another plan,” said Jake. “We head on to St. Louis and take our chances.”

“No,” Ruby reflected. “We don’t back down. Once you start, you never stop.”

It was becoming an obsession but Jake wouldn’t fight it now. It was what made her Ruby Daulton. It was one reason he would go to the wall for her.

“Watch my back side,” she said as she stepped from the truck.

Jake followed, emptying his mind and proceeding in the quiet manner of the fox, ready for another appointment with destiny. Ruby was nervous, her palms sweating, her movements stuttered and quick.

“Relax,” said Jake as she pressed the buzzer on the floor level.

A man with long dark hair and beady eyes circled in darkness greeted them at the door. Jake smiled. He looked like a weasel. His weak chin shadowed by a thin beard gave the impression that his face converged at the end his prominent, pointy nose. He wore tattered blue jeans and a ragged Aerosmith tee shirt, wiping his eyes and scratching himself as his eyes darted back and forth.

“Santini?” Ruby inquired.

“Yeah,” he replied, motioning them in, closing and bolting the door behind them.

“Who’s this?” he muttered.

“A friend,” said Ruby.

The weasel squinted, as he looked Jake in the eyes.

“Coffee?” he asked on his way to the kitchen, overrun with dishes and discarded packaging from Chinese takeout and pizza delivery.

“Sure,” said Ruby.

Jake took it in. The man who drew all eyes at a motorcycle bar in Arizona was suddenly invisible, like the Indian in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The weasel could not see through him. He figured he was too dumb to talk.

Santini yelled “Cat!” as he poured the coffee and served them in the cluttered space of a small living room. “Get the hell up, your friends are here!”

Cat the fox came in with an open silk gown and a platter of cocaine with four lines drawn and a cut straw. She was a striking woman with short jet-black hair and long, thin lines. Jake deferred but Ruby and the weasel indulged. Cat snorted the extra.

On the face of it, Cat was far too attractive to be attached to the weasel without an angle. She was putting on airs of nicety, which was unnatural for a low stakes transaction in the morning hours. Jake sensed something was on and this was nothing more than a charade.

“I need a gun,” Ruby pressed.

“What’s your hurry?” purred the fox.

“Business before pleasure,” replied Ruby.

“A little late for that,” said Cat with a snort.

“Have you got the goods?”

“Sure,” said Cat. “Relax. Hey baby, show ‘em what you’ve got.”

The weasel cleared his nostrils and went to the bedroom, closing the door behind him. After a moment too long, Ruby looked at Jake and Jake looked at Ruby. The gig was up. The weasel emerged with a case displaying four handguns, ranging from a snub nose to a pearl-handled derringer.

Ruby grabbed the latter and asked, “How much do I owe you?”

“It’s clean,” said the weasel. “I’ll take three hundred.”

“Is it loaded?”

Santini drew another line, pulled a box of bullets from a desk drawer, and tossed them on the table. Ruby loaded the derringer and drew a bead on Cat’s forehead.

“What’s the news from Vegas, sweetheart?”

“Take it easy, Ruby. No one knows where you are.”

“They didn’t before I came here.”

Ruby tossed three hundred on the table and backed toward the door as the weasel angled for the gun stashed behind his back.

“You pull that thing,” said Jake, “you’d better be good.”

Jake had his knife in his hand and Santini froze. Weasels are good liars and cheats but they’re not good killers. They lack the instinct.

Back in the truck, Ruby took stock. She had a gun but the bad guys knew where they were. If they had any sense at all, they probably knew where they were headed.

“Damn baby, that was mistake.”

“We’re alive,” shrugged Jake. “Let’s roll.”

Jake was asleep by the time they hit the interstate, dreaming of Mississippi starlight on ink black waters, drowning souls in liquid tombs, forever wanting, yearning, reaching for the light. Liquid nightmares and sparkling fireflies, loves lost and prayers unanswered, betrayals, dark deals, a man with smiling eyes and lightning lies, illusions and deception. A million souls sacrificed to muddy graves beneath a blood red sky. The suffering innocent and desperate cries. There is light in shadow and darkness in light. There is right in wrong and wrong in right. It was a conundrum and a warning, a vision of foreboding.

“Wasichu!” said Jake from the depths of sleep. “The Killing Spirit!” he mumbled. “The Killing Spirit!”

Ruby let him sleep and wept as she drove. It was all wrong. She cursed herself for letting her ego better her common sense. Jake warned her and she threw it off like swatting a fly. A summer rain began to fall and it fell in gales of darkness.

“Damn baby, that was a mistake.”


INT. PICKUP – RUBY – DAY

Close up of RUBY crying as the rain comes pouring down. The sky darkens, as if the entire world has fallen under a cloud.

Fade in COME TOGETHER.

He bag production, he got walrus gumboot
He got Ono sideboard, he one spinal cracker
He got feet down below his knee
Hold you in his armchair you can feel his disease…

As Jake sleeps, Ruby wipes the tears from her face and sings.

Going to Kansas City, Kansas City here I come
I’m going to Kansas City, Kansas City here I come
They got a crazy way of lovin’ and I wanna get me some…

Fade to black.