OOC:

Where to next for Walter and Annabel?

Walter hails a cab to take him and Annabel to Harlem.

A cabbie pulled up near where Walter and Annabel were standing. As Walter asked to be taken to Harlem, he looked at the two of them and just said, "Cotton Club?"

    Annabel waved goodbye and left the office with Walter. She gave him a thoughtful look. "So this place is a curio shop? Considering the origin of the stuff I bet it has some really odd things in it. It will be interesting to see them." She gave a shrug and a wink, "who knows, maybe I'll even buy something as a souvenir."

  Getting into the cab with Walter, she was a bit surprised at the cabby's reply to Walter. "Is that where people normally go in Harlem? Well, it would be interesting to see, but no, we would like to go to the Ju Ju house, do you know of it?"

Reaching the outskirts of Harlem, Walter has the cabbie stop at a drug store. He goes inside to the telephone booth and looks up 'Ju Ju House' and 'N'Kwane, Silas' in the directory. When he's done, he goes back to the cab.
This message was last edited by the player at 13:25, Fri 26 Sept 2014.

"That's usually where white people go in Harlem," he said. "I ain't never heard o' no Ju Ju House though. That a jazz place? Sounds like one."

At Walter's direction, the driver stopped at the drug store, allowing him to go and seek out information from the phone booth, but he doesn't find a listing for either the business or N'Kwane there.

   "No, it's a shop," Annabel said to the cabbie, "curios and stuff. Well this is no good," she said, a bit of frustration in her voice. "Maybe we should have got the address from Mr. Emerson. It could take forever going around asking random people; maybe we should go back and ask him."

"I'd rather not let Emerson know we're interested in someone he has business with. Let's head back to Leo's then. I'll make a couple of phone calls and see if we can get a lead on N'Kwame and Ju Ju House"

He gives the cabbie Leo's address.

"Sorry to get you out on a wild goose chase, Miss Ashcroft."

  Annabel gave Water a smile, "Oh no worries Mr. Brandon, it was fun; although I would like to get to see this shop when we do decide to go. I'm curious to see those odd curios."

  She sits back and looks out the window as the cab takes them home. "At least we have something more to contribute to the investigation; I wonder how the others did in their little outings?"

When the cab pulls up in front of Leo's house, Walter helps Annabel out and walks carefully up the front steps, favoring his right side a bit.

[ooc - Can we get a time check on this thread?]
This message was last edited by the player at 13:22, Tue 30 Sept 2014.

OOC:

Probably around 2 in the afternoon.

   Annabel thanked Walter for his assistance and helped him up to the house. The afternoon was still young, it seemed it hadn't taken them too long to do their task. Well it would have been longer it they had known where to go, but that was besides the point.

  As they entered, Annabel asked if there was any news of the others and if any calls had come. Considering how long they have been gone, they had to be having better luck then her.

In the sitting room, Walter takes off his overcoat and hat and lays them over the back of an armchair. He lights a cigarette and pulls the telephone closer. Baldy's voice comes back to him. Sure, Bo, I unnerstand, it's family an' nothing's more important than family. Baldy was the boss and he liked Bo, but Bo wasn't part of his family. Still, he'd had to talk to the man before he left New Orleans. Not to have done so would have been disrespectful, which could be fatal.

He dialed the number of a pool room in East Harlem.

"Hello, this is Bo," he said to the unspeaking man who picked up the phone, "I'm up from Big Easy. Baldy said I should call this number and talk with the man, if I needed something. I need something. I'll be at this number." He read the number off the dial of Leo's phone and hung up. Now he just had to wait to hear from Joe Masseria, boss of the Morello family.

He sat and smoked. After a bit, he dozed.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:40, Sun 05 Oct 2014.

Walter was woken from his nap with a gentle tap on the shoulder from Avery, of sufficient force only to wake a man that was lightly dozing but unlikely to take him from deep sleep.

"Mr. Brandon, there's a gentleman on the phone who wishes to speak to you. He is claiming to be a relative of yours and calls himself 'Uncle Joe'. Do you wish to speak with him?"

Walter blinks several times and rubs his eyes. "Yeah...uh...Yes, thank you, Avery. I'll talk to him."

He takes the receiver and waits until Avery has discreetly withdrawn. "Hello, Uncle Joe," he says quietly into the mouthpiece, "I appreciate your call. I need to know about a guy in Harlem named Silas N'Kwame and a place called the Ju Ju House, also in Harlem." He spells both names.

"When should I call you back? Or is there someone else I should talk to? I know you're a busy man."
This message was last edited by the player at 18:17, Mon 06 Oct 2014.

The man on the other end of the line had a deep, striking voice with a noticeable Italian accent. "I owe Baldy a few favors, and he says you're a good boy, so tell you some things. I don't know nobody named that, but I know about this Ju Ju House. The moulies over there, the African ones, they are strong in that part of Harlem. We send one of ours down there, Cederecci, to talk to them and tell them the way things are - and they kill him," he said.

Walter is quiet for a moment, then he has to ask: "How is it the Ju Ju House is still in business? If you don't mind me asking."

"You're a good boy, you know how this business works. These moulies, they are strong there. We  can put them out of business, but it will be difficult. And then there are the other families, they are still giving problems sometimes. They will move when I am weak. So I have to leave it be," he said, at the end adding in what sounds like profanity in Italian.

"Fuckin' moulies. Who cares about them anyway? Why you askin' about these moulies, Bo?"
This message was last updated by the player at 04:02, Wed 08 Oct 2014.

"You may have heard about a murder at the Chelsea Hotel recently. The murdered man was my cousin. I think the men who killed him may have been connected with this Ju Ju House. Now I know to proceed very carefully in that direction. Thank you.

"If you should happen to learn anything about this N'Kwame man in the next week or so, I would appreciate hearing about him. I won't presume to trouble you otherwise, sir."

"Give Baldy my best," he said. "I tell the boys if they hear more about this place, they call you. Arrivederci," he said, ending the call.

Before Uncle Joe rings off, Bo gets the address of the Ju Ju House from him.

He sits and smokes another couple of cigarettes, waiting for Leo and Stanley to turn up.

Walter goes looking for Annabel, looking at the clock on the mantle to see what time it is.

   Annabel sat in the drawing room, waiting for the others to return. She browsed through a magazine to pass the time. She could hear Walter talking excitedly on the phone some distance away and soon it stopped. A little while later, the man himself appeared in the room.


  "My, you were on there for a bit," she said with some curiosity in her voice. "I hope it was good news. I'm surprised the others aren't back yet. This waiting can get really boring you know." 

Walter smiles at the young woman and decides not to sugarcoat anything.

"The good news is that we couldn't find this Ju Ju House. My sources indicate that it is an extremely dangerous place to visit.

"I hope none of the others have run into trouble."

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