Dark Stain (30 page)

“Now, how are we goin’ to wind it up? We got to consider there are two sides here. The nigger side. The white side. The nigger side’ll be taken care of by repeatin’ the 1935 riot. But what about the white side? We want the whites burnin’ up when the nigger riot starts. This Buckles girl’s the oomph in the whole situation. Where is she, Darton?”

“As I’ve mentioned,” Darton said. “She’s in a small house out on Great South Bay.”

“Hayden’s mentioned it, too. But I can’t keep it in my head.”

“She’s out there on Long Island,” Darton said. “About seventy-five miles from the city. I’ve got a white couple out there. The girl doesn’t know they’re in the house. She’s locked in a room and get her meals from a nigger, one of Aden’s men. In fact, the man who went up to Clair’s office.”

Heney wasn’t listening. “Very skillful, very skillful,” he kept on complimenting. When Darton concluded, Heney cried out. “The opportunities are excellent. The war can go to hell, the peace can go to hell!” he almost shouted. “We’re goin’ to teach the whites up here in the North a lesson they won’t forget. No white man’ll let his daughter sleep with a nigger, eat with a nigger, walk with a nigger. We’re goin’ to burn up all these God damn northern whites with this girl. That girl’s goin’ to be raped. Raped by niggers. That story’s goin’ to be in every paper in the land. That’s how we’ll handle the white side in this here situation.”

“Raped?” Darton said.

“Yes. She’s goin’ to be raped before she’s killed. The investigators will find what they want.”

Dent pursed his lips, Hayden was examining his finger nails, Darton was smiling. Bill began to listen.

“She deserves no sympathy,” Heney said. “She’s white and a Protestant but she’s got the heart of a nigger lover. She was kidnapped by niggers. She’s held prisoner as far as she knows by niggers. She’ll be raped by them.”

“If this girl is assaulted,” Hayden said slowly. “If this girl is assaulted and then released — what would she do? She would go to the police and inform them that she had been assaulted by Negroes. These Negroes had become frightened and had let her go.”

“Are you suggestin’ another scheme?” Heney asked.

“In a sense. As I view it, it becomes a question of which tactic will arouse the most violent public opinion. An assaulted murdered girl is always a potent witness. But a girl who has escaped from Negroes after having been attacked by them becomes a continuing witness, as it were. The press interviews her. Her story is splashed everywhere. The story of a white girl, radical in her politics, a believer in racial equality, who now as it were becomes a witness against her own beliefs. I think the propaganda values would be greater if she is not killed.”

“Mm,” Heney said.

Suppose, Bill thought. Here he was in this room with these men and none of them gave a damn about him. He felt that he had always known that he would be in a room like this some day. He glanced at Dent. The insurance man looked as he had on that first day, his eyes pinkish, his neck stringy inside his celluloid collar.

“Mm,” Heney repeated thoughtfully. “I move we adjourn now. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon, Darton. I’ll meet you in the lobby here at two o’clock. Gentlemen,” he addressed them all. “I have every expectation of success. As for you, Dent, and you, Johnson, the organization has every confidence in you. If the worst happens, and as men we ought to admit every possibility, if Big Boy Bose informs on you two, I can promise the best legal talent.” His blue eyes probed into Bill. “As is customary, the organization will deposit to your accounts while you are held in custody, or if you are sentenced to prison, sums of money equal to your present income. I don’t feel that Big Boy Bose will talk. Or if he does, that you will be inconvenienced for more than a year or two. But we must face all possibilities. Other patriots have been sentenced to prison by the Government. They have all kept their oath. You will do the same.” He rose from his chair and slapped Dent on the back. Then he put his arm around Bill’s shoulders as he had done in Washington. “Young man, I have observed your work in the South with deep satisfaction. I was prejudiced at first for you were a man from the north but the more I observed, the more positive I became you were a true Southerner in your thinkin’ and feelin.’ I wouldn’t worry too much, young man. Or you, Dent. The organization is behind you. By the way, all of you are invited to my reception tomorrow night at the Hotel Maurice.” He laughed as if forgetting what he had started to say. “I want you to hear me tickle the back-asses of what the papers call influential people.”

The dread bubbled in Bill like dark red blood, like blood pumping out of his own heart, flooding him from the inside, like blood bursting the walls of veins and arteries. He clenched his teeth together as if there were an informer inside that would bawl out his hate and fear if he didn’t control it.

Later, returning to Isabelle, he unlocked the door, rushed to her through the dark. In the dark, she cried out, frightened. “Is it you, Bill?” He folded his arms around her, bleated. “Only you care, Isa. Only you care. The nigger’ll squeal and I’ll go to jail. I won’t go. To hell with their oath! I won’t go. They won’t scrap me. If anything happens to me — Isabelle, you must know. I didn’t want to work with the nigger. I was right but I have to be the sucker. Dent, me. They can keep their damn money. I won’t go, I won’t. I’d go crazy. If anything happens you’ll help me. Isa, I love you. You’ll help me, darling, won’t you. You’ve got to help me. Isa, this is what’s happened …”

WHERE IS SUZY BUCKLES? VICE RAIDS ROCK HARLEM. HARLEM NEAR RACE RIOT. WHITE GIRL’S FATE STILL UNKNOWN. SUZY BUCKLES’ MOTHER DISAPPEARS. MUGGERS ATTACK WHITE MAN IN PARK. MAYOR ASKS FOR CALM. SOUTHERN CONGRESSMEN DELIVER SCATHING SPEECHES AGAINST POLL TAX ADVOCATES. SOUTHERN LEADERS ARE NOT SURPRISED BY BUCKLES CASE. ‘WE HAVE ALWAYS HAD OUR BUCKLES’ SOUTHERN MINISTER DECLARES.

Clair’s desk was covered with Friday’s headlines. Otherwise, the office was almost back to normal. The crowd of reporters, feature writers and officials had vanished. Downstairs, in front of the building, two policemen, were stationed. Instead of Marian Burrow, there was another secretary. She had just come inside the inner office where Clair and Sam had been discussing developments. The new girl was in her twenties and she spoke to Clair as if aware of his stature as a newspaper personality. “Mr. Clair, there’s a woman outside to see you. She says she read the editorial in
The People’s Advocate
and she has information.”

Sam had sketched to Clair the results of his visit with Marian Burrow; he intended to call on her again today: He had outlined the gist of the Maddigan-Blaine talk. Clair had reported that a Madison Square Garden meeting of all races, colors, and creeds was in the making. There was also to be a goodwill march of labor and religious groups.

The partition door opened and a Negro woman flounced in. She was about fifty, in a shiny purple dress trimmed with imitation lace, a rhinestone belt around her middle. Her floppy red hat might have suited Clair’s young secretary but not her sagging face. She waved her arms and her cheap rings and bracelets glittered. “Mister Hal Clair? Which of you’s Mister Hal Clair?”

“I am Mr. Clair.”

“You?” She stared at his light skin. “Mister Clair, I want to say to you there’s no justice in this city. I was over that
Advocate
and they won’t let me see nobody but the office boy — ”

“A newspaper is a big organization,” Clair said.

“No, no!” she shrieked and her face was as composed as an aging nun’s except for the eyes. “I’ve seen plenty cruelty to colored folks and to cats. When you got a neighborhood where it’s cruel to cats you got it cruel for the colored folks.”

“Have you any pertinent information?” Clair interrupted.

This school teacher, Sam thought; he’ll never learn.

“Hear me out!” the woman cried. “I got information about all the enemies of the black people. I’ve seen it. Those who’d spill our blood, they spill it, they spill it. It ain’t the Jew man or the Italian man — they, the tool of the big white. I find they burn cats in ash cans, the colored do it. Yesterday on the roof there was a man putting out the eyes of a cat. It’s the same. All over it’s cruel because they put the cruel wickedness in the heart of the people. The poor animals suffer and the black man, he suffers more than all.”

“I am sorry to hear about the way cats are treated,” Clair said. “I advise that you go to the magistrate and get a summons — ”

“There’s no magistrate in Harlem,” she wailed. “There’s no justice. How many times I go to that Harlem Magistrates’ Court and I show them affidavits from doctors proving cruelty and I ask for a summons. The poor animals. All the magistrates do is say why don’t I get a husband to take care of and forget about cats. Is that justice, Mister Clair? Not a day goes by without they get hurt and crippled and lose their eyes — ”

“My dear woman I have other work to do.”

“I thought you was no true colored man and I know it. You’re a white man, Mister Clair! Oh, you’ll be sorry. The cats, they’re the souls of the colored who die and they suffer. Stop the cruelty to cats and you’ll stop the cruelty in the world.” She walked out backwards, spitting her words. Backwards like a cat she went, her voice the voice of the alleys and basements.

“She’s my fifth caller this morning,” Clair said to Sam.

“Who were the others?”

“There was one grey Negro who told me that the whites would only stop killing Negroes when the Negroes killed back. There was a woman who told me that two nights ago a Negro soldier was beaten up. His scalp was cut and he received a concussion of the brain. He had gotten into an argument, it seems, with some other Negroes. He had said that the United States was a democracy even though it had faults. This woman claimed that the Negroes who had beaten him had once been members of the Pacific Movement of the Eastern World.”

“What’s that?”

“A pro-Japanese society. This woman finally admitted that the soldier was her own son. She said I ought to investigate the Chinese laundries. She said that Japanese were disguised as Chinese laundrymen and that the Japanese had kidnapped Suzy Buckles. Another caller said I could stop the trouble in Harlem if the police arrested the white big-shots in the numbers racket. He claimed that these big-shots had worked up a crime scare in order to drive out the Negro racketeers.”

“Were all your callers Negroes?”

“Yes. I had a half dozen telephone calls, too.”

“Anything definite?”

“No.”

“Did you get any further word about the white man with the burn scars?”

“No.”

“It’s a crazy world,” Sam said. “I’ll see Marian again. If nothing turns up I’ll scratch her off. So long.”

“So long, Sam.”

Downstairs, in the bright light of noon, Sam thought of Clair’s crank visitors, of the cat woman. Downstairs, there was the sunny surface of the world on top, the chain stores, the liquor stores, the five and dime places, the red and green signs of the daylight world. He looked at the passing Negroes and he felt that the cat woman had spoken for them. She had spoken for the world below. “Well,” he muttered to himself. “Suzy’s still missing.” God, he prayed; protect her. All the time, he walked firmly, his body straight. The plate glass windows reflected his outer self. His outer self showed no inner man just as the outer selves of the passing Negroes showed nothing or almost nothing of their inner men. The outer selves walked and went about their business, carrying inside of them the shapes of maniacs, the shapes of the twisted, the tortured and the doomed, and the pathetic child-like selves of the hoping, the believing, the trusting.

Marian Burrow admitted him into her sister’s apartment without even asking who had rung her bell. She looked at him without recognition. She seemed older. The lounging pyjamas she was wearing were wrinkled. She was smoking a cigarette whose fumes made Sam cough. He guessed at the kind of cigarette it was. “Hello, Marian,” he said. “Don’t you know me?”

“I know you. You’re Miller.”

“I want to talk to you.”

The living room was full of acrid smoke. The windows and shades were down, the serape on the couch was disarranged as if she had slept under it last night. An empty whiskey bottle stood alongside the wall. The fumes burned Sam’s nostrils. He coughed. “Do you mind if I open a window?”

“Don’t go near them!” She sat on the very edge of the studio bed, her spine curving in, her breasts jutting. She giggled. “I got four sticks left. You open the window, you kill the smoke.”

“Only a minute, Marian.”

Her lips wrenched back in a snarl. The snarl stayed on her face. He knew she was lit. She was smoking the sticks, the reefers, marihuana. He was worried about getting lit himself, breathing in the smoke. That was how the reefer salesmen got the young kids. Get the kids into an unventilated room full of fumes and they would get lit; after that, they became customers. Sam sat down in a chair opposite her.

“What’d you do? Run out of booze?” he asked.

The snarl mask blew off her face and another mask, a giggle mask curved her lips and rounded her plump cheeks. Her eyes were full of laughing. She looked more Negro than Spanish in that relaxed second. “My sister forgot to bring me the booze.”

“Where is your sister?”

“Working.”

“Why aren’t you working?”

“I need a rest. My sister stay in my place. I stay here. You ever dream?”

“Sometimes.”

“Ever dream about cops?”

“Sometimes.”

“I dream all the time. Cops all standing there, looking at me. They — ” She giggled some more. “Sometimes, they got their pants off. Sometimes not. They got their clubs in their hands. Ever dream that?”

“No. Where’d you get the reefers?”

“He drop by to sell my sister. Dirty crook charge thirty cents a piece. Stick of tea’s not worth more than two bits.”

She held up her reefer for him to see. Then, she stretched out on the bed, drawing her knees up. Her naked brown feet beat out time on the serape to some tune thumping in her consciousness.

He coughed, cleared his throat. “Have you been here since I saw you?”

“When were you here?”

“Last night.”

“Last night?” She struggled to a sitting position, her lips hanging loosely. “You God damn liar. You were here couple weeks ago.”

“I was here last night. Yesterday.”

She laughed as if at a big stupid lie. She slapped her hand down on her thigh. “All those white cops standing around. All wanting to line me up. Ever dream that?”

“No.”

“Where’s your club?”

“I’m on a leave of absence. I don’t carry a club.”

“Why not?”

“I’m trying to find Suzy. Maybe you can help me.”

“Nobody can help a woman. A woman can only help herself.”

“Suzy’s been kidnapped.”

She shrugged. “Long time ago. She isn’t the only one.” She wiggled her forefinger for him to come closer. “Long long time. That was the time of the show on Broadway. They want light colored girls. And he said he’d think it over.” Her head lolled back on her neck. “He thought it over. See,” she confided. “He was a cop. Only he let out he was the producer. But he didn’t fool me. You should have heard that white man. Said it was no difference if a man loved a girl. They all come back. Him and all the other cops. Lord, it’s funny, dreams are. All those men.”

“Suzy was kidnapped Wednesday afternoon.”

“No fooling?”

“She was kidnapped Wednesday afternoon.”

“She’s a long long long.”

He saw that she was deep in the drug. Her sense of time was a marihuana sense of time; every minute was an hour to her and yesterday was a marihuana yesterday. “I’m trying to find Suzy.”

Her eyes gleamed comprehendingly. She took another drag on her reefer. He noticed that she exhaled very little of the smoke through her nostrils. She kept the smoke down. “I’m always trying to find. Lord. But they got in the way. All them cops. Go away!” she said to the marihuana cops. “I’ll come across when I want to. Not before.”

“Marian, I want you to help me.”

“What?”

“I want you to help me find Suzy.”

“Find, find,” she hummed, shaking her shoulders as if rhumbaing to some jazz band.

“Marian — ”

She snapped at him. “Bring me a stick!” His nerves tingled. He didn’t know whether she was talking to the marihuana cops or to himself. “In the box over there.” So, it was to him. “Oh,” she moaned, her eyelids closing. “I don’t like to drink alone. I don’t like to drink alone.”

He glanced at the enameled cigarette container on the table. The smoke was burning in patches inside his nostrils, hot little patches.

Her eyelids opened. “I seen you before, white boy. Years back, you white bastard. Think I forget how you lock the door and give me the corn about what’s the difference a man loves a girl. You, you. You push me on the bed, you bastard. Pull my dress up but you didn’t give me the job. Go on back to Harlem where you belong. That’s what you said. Don’t honey talk me. I remember. That’s where I belong,” she crooned, undulating her shoulders.

He hoped that she would forget about the reefer. His head felt as if in an iron mesh and the mesh was tightening. It was a joke all right. He’d get high on the damn marihuana.

“Where’s the stick?” she cried. “Get me the stick.” She pointed one stiff arm at him like a movie actress commanding a host of worshipping males and her face took on a “glamour” look so that she resembled the faces of the Hollywood stars on the walls; but her lips hung loosely and she was subtly hideous like some asylum inmate imitating a famous person. “All come here. All the time. I give the orders.”

“Who are you when you give the orders.” He saw her sleek and brown and fire was all around her; she was trimmed with bands of orange fire; the fire bands were the orange of her lounging pyjamas. But he didn’t see her in pyjamas. He saw her in fire, sitting on a studio bed that was a long bright boat and the boat was rocking gently on a fire sea. He forced himself to remember why he had come but it wasn’t so important any more.

“I’m bigger than all,” she giggled. “You know who?” She danced to her feet and ran to the photographs on the walls, placing her forefinger on a picture of Rosalind Russell. “I’m Garbo. That’s who.” She flung over to a photograph of Cary Grant and singsonged. “Gary Cooper’s my ideal. He stands there with the club.” She ran to the enameled box, took out a reefer and brought it over to him. “Light it.”

He glanced at the plugged cotton filter and then he stared at her. She was in a blaze of orange; her face was like the brown center of some giant flower. She grabbed the cigarette from his hand and pushed it between his lips. She lit a match and held it towards him. The match flamed like a torch. Orange burst in his eyes. He inhaled and his nostrils were seared. The smoke was sweet tasting. “I never smoked one of these before,” he said apathetically.

“More in the factory ‘round the corner. More in the factory.” She tumbled back to the bed, smiling a wide, elusive but happy smile. It was a smile of forgetting, and he wondered why he shouldn’t forget. Let the world go by, forget, forget, forget … His head floated off his neck up to the ceiling. Orange clouds flowed across the ceiling. He thought his head was an orange balloon. It made him laugh. “Sam,” a voice called. He looked away from the orange clouds and there was Suzy in the room, across the way. But it wasn’t Suzy. But it was Suzy in pyjamas. And it wasn’t, and it was, and Suzy was smiling, and he thought that under the pyjamas Suzy’s breasts were orange and if he touched them they’d be fire and they’d make him forget, but what was there to forget … A funnel was inside his brain and down the funnel, a thousand thoughts, images, fantasies poured. And he knew there was a funnel. He wondered if he could get underneath the funnel, at the tip, and catch what he wanted as it came through. He wondered if he ought to tell Suzy he was glad she’d come back. “Sam, you bastard! Sam! Hey, you white boy, you dreaming?”