Fortunately, the friend she’d come to see proved easy to find.
In truth, Big Mag was difficult to miss. A colored vagrant almost as large as Wherrit, Mag was stronger than a bear, faster than a snake, and brawled like some ferocious combination of the two (which made her the undoing of any police officer who tried to arrest her). But she was also quick to laugh, and Augie had charmed her with his imitations some years back.
“Genevieve,” she said upon spying Neva. Mag stood up from the game of street craps she appeared to be winning and clapped her on the shoulder. “The little dancer herself. Boys,” Mag said, turning to her disheveled gambling companions, “you can look at her—Neva’s the sweetest bit ‘a jam you’re likely ta lay eyes on. But if you try ta get a taste, you’ll be answering ta me.”
One of the gamblers whistled appreciatively. Mag glared at him, and he grinned insolently.
“It’s good to see you too, Mag,” Neva said with a small smile. “Can we speak a moment? Alone?”
The same gambler whistled again.
Mag threw an idle backhand his way, but he ducked easily.
“Alone is probably best,” she said. “No telling how these rumbusticators would twist our words.” She led Neva into a dead-end alley and arranged a crate so they could sit and watch the entrance. “So: what brings a nice girl like you ta a pisshole like the Levee?”
“Augie.” She gave Mag a condensed version of yesterday’s events. But even in shortened form, the tale wasn’t easy to tell; the big woman was rubbing Neva’s back by the time she reached the events at the Cold Storage Building.
“I knew Kezzie,” Mag said after Neva closed with a question about Kesiah Nelkin, the girl Leather Apron had supposedly killed in the Levee. “She was nearly as pretty as you. Did well as a ladybird; mostly worked 20th Street. Never noticed any marks on her, other than what some ’a the johns gave her. But I took care ’a them. You might ask Ink, though. He saw a good deal more ’a her than I did.”
“Ink Jacobs?”
“You know any other Negro that black?”
Ink was notoriously dark-skinned; his friends used to say he made coal look pale. He didn’t mind the comparison, but he liked it better when people said he had more ebony in him than an African King.
Ink had also been Neva’s first kiss.
“He’s chasing prostitutes now?” she asked, knowing it fit but hating that it did.
“Every chance he gets. Got that Pullman money to spend.”
George Pullman preferred to hire Negroes to bus his train cars, and the porters—if they were willing to don a mask of servility while on the job—made some of the best wages in the colored community.
Mag jerked her thumb to the right. “Ink’s in Gaffney’s if you want ta talk to him. I saw him headed there about ten minutes before you came.”
“The saloon on State and 22nd?”
“The same. I’d go with you, but I’ve business in the Cheyenne.”
Neva didn’t ask for details. The Levee’s colored district had been dubbed the “Cheyenne” because of its similarities to the most lawless town in the Wild West. Any “business” Mag had there was best left unspecified. “Thanks. I owe you.”
The big woman motioned towards Gaffney’s. “Watch yourself in there. It’s not one ’a your cafés on the Midway.”
“I will.”
Mag clapped her on the shoulder again and left the alley. Neva trailed in the big woman’s wake, drafting on her fearsome reputation. But when she turned north at Dearborn Street, Neva had to make her own way south.
A filthy white man propositioned her within five steps. Neva rolled up her sleeve to reveal one of the rashes. “I’ve got a venereal. A bad one—burns everywhere.”
The man recoiled, but a second would-be-john stepped forward and raised his shirt to display an oozing sore on his stomach. “I got it too. See? Can’t get it any worse. How much?”
Neva dealt with him by slamming a foot in his crotch.
Several onlookers laughed, but no one else bothered her as she hurried the rest of the way to Gaffney’s. The only letters visible on the saloon’s faded sign were “G” and “F,” and the building was derelict even by the standards of the surrounding slum. Inside, the customers were just as dilapidated. Most didn’t look likely to have enough coin to pay for the beers they held.
Not Ink, though. He stood out as much for his cleanliness as his dark skin: his porter’s coat shone so blue it could have been someone’s eye, and his black shoes gleamed with polish.
He waved Neva over as soon as he saw her. “Quite the trip from the Fair,” he said after she’d taken a seat at his table.
“I was already at the Yards. Ink, I need to speak with you about Kesiah Nelkin.”
He raised his eyebrows and then his glass. “Who?” he asked before taking a sip.
“I know you know her, so you must know she’s dead.”
His eyebrows fell, contracting into headbutting caterpillars. “Damn, Neva. Two years hasn’t changed you a bit—still blunt as a battering ram.”
“You cared for her,” she realized. “I’m sorry.”
Ink took another sip. “Now why would I go caring for a Jew-girl ladybird?”
“You don’t have to pretend—I’m only asking because I need to. Did she have any of these?” Neva pulled up her
