Chapter 31

After I left St. Patrick’s-by-the-Gashouse I went to a corner saloon and telephoned the F.B.I. I asked for Harcourt but was told that he was out to lunch, which reminded me that I was hungry. A private treaty with the bartender brought me a steak sandwich, and no questions asked. Apple pie and coffee followed, and were not too horrible. I smoked a cigarette, drank a second cup of coffee, and called the F.B.I. again.

This time Harcourt had returned from lunch and he talked as though he had swallowed the Revised Statutes of the United States but that they gave him indigestion.

“See here, Andy,” I told him at last. “I’m not looking for legal advice, I want to consult a medium. Any medium. If I picked one out of the phone-book you’d have the headache of checking on her, as I suppose you’re checking on the clergymen I saw this morning. So this time just save yourself the trouble, and tell me who I should see.”

“The Bureau doesn’t endorse spiritualists,” he informed me, but the old J. Edgar Hoover spirit was running thin and his heart wasn’t in it.

“I’m not asking the Bureau to endorse anything, not even a candy laxative,” I replied. “Just you tell me the name and address of one reasonably respectable medium and I’ll take care of the rest. And don’t pretend that the Bureau has no record of mediums in New York City.”

“Mr. Tompkins,” he said--and I could fairly hear the hum of the recording machine on the telephone--”The Bureau does not endorse any so-called spiritualist mediums. Naturally, under the leadership of our present Director, the New York office has made a close check on all self-styled spiritualistic mediums in this city. One of these who has established her bona fides for purposes of identification only is Madam Claire la Lune, 1187 Lenox Avenue.”

“Eleven eighty-seven Lenox,” I repeated after him. “That’s in Harlem. Madam Claire la Lune sounds like the dark of the moon to me. Say, Andy, hasn’t she a friend named Pierrot?”

There was a pause at the other end of the wire. “No, sir, Mr. Tompkins,” came the F.B.I. official voice.

“Okay,” I told him. “I suppose you’ll have to check on her as on everybody else but I wanted you to start calling the shots so as to save trouble for all of us. I’m going to consult Madam Lune, so you can tell your agents to rendezvous at 1187 Lenox Avenue. I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”

Eleven eighty-seven Lenox did not seem prepossessing from the spiritual angle. Madam la Lune’s apartment was on the third floor, walk-up, and smelled of cabbage, diapers and African sweat. Madam la Lune herself was a light mulatto with a superb figure and a face so deeply scarred by smallpox that it looked like a map of Southern lynchings since 1921.

She seemed reluctant to deal with me on a professional basis, even after I had offered her a twenty-dollar bill, until I told her that the F.B.I. had recommended her and that I needed her help.

“Oh,” she said. “Tha’s differ’nt. Jest you wait till I turn down my stove.”

She ushered me into a close and smelly little room, with black velvet curtains and a couch covered with black sateen. Madam la Lune lay down on the couch and directed me to turn off the electric light from the switch by the door. Although it was still early afternoon, the room was so dark that I could barely make out the form of the medium or find my way back to my chair.

For a time there was no sound except for the deep regular breathing of the medium. Then suddenly came the shrill voice of a pickaninny.

“I’se here,” the voice cried. “It’s Silver-Bell, mammy, I’se here.”

I smiled to myself in the Harlem dusk. It was so obviously the usual racket. There was the medium in her ten cent trance--the voice of her “control” was coming through. I had only to ask and I would receive a vague and blotting paper reply to any question.

“I’se here, mammy,” the child’s voice repeated. “What you want, mammy? Silver-Bell’s here.”

Madam la Lune snorted and snored on the couch. My eyes had become more accustomed to the dim light and I noticed how she had loosened her blouse so that her superb bust rose in twin-peaked Kilimanjaro against the wall.

“Silver-Bell’s here, mammy,” the child’s voice said again. “What you want?”

“I want,” I said, “to speak to Frank Jacklin. He died in the North Pacific about three weeks ago.”

There was a pause, during which the snorting breaths of the medium were the only sound in the smelly little room. Then the child’s voice rose, shrill and petulant.

“You funning, mammy, you funning. They ain’t no Jacklin over here. Jacklin ain’ dead. Jacklin sittin’ right by yo’ side, mammy. He police, mammy, he police.”

Madam la Lune stirred and I sensed her sightless eyes turning, turning toward me in the dark.

“No, I’m not police, Silver-Bell,” I said. “If you can’t find Jacklin, I want to speak to Winnie Tompkins.”

For several minutes there was a long silence.

Then came an impish giggle.

“Here’s Mr. Tompkins, mammy, but my! he do look funny. He don’ look like he used ter look.”

Again silence.

“Here he is, mammy. Here he is. What do you want to know?”

“Ask him,” I said, “whether he is well and happy.”

The hair rose on the back of my neck and a slow shiver ran down my spine as the answer came. The answer was the familiar barking of a dog--deep, strong, savage.

“Is that you, Ponto?” I asked.

The answering bark came “Woof! Woof!”

“Where is Mr. Tompkins?”

More “woofs.”

“Where is Commander Jacklin?”