Dark Stain (8 page)

Bill blinked, speechless. “What? I’m no cop. This is no frame.”

Big Boy heaved himself out of the leather chair and walked to the edge of the rug. He dropped his cigar down on the floor board and crushed the red coal under his shoe. Over his rounded shoulder, he looked at Bill. “I was just pullin’ your G string. I know you ain’t a cop. But I’m no sucker, white man, whoever you are. You aim trouble here in Harlem. A boycott on the wops, huh. Hurt the Jew in his religion. Kill the son-of-a-bitch copper. That’s no lil trouble. That’s big trouble. You say Dent send you here. That was good enough couple years ago but no more. How I know Dent ain’t sold me out to the whites? How I know you ain’t working for the white numbers? You come here to my place and give me a deal like you was a black man. You got plenty money — ”

“It’s cash on the line.”

“I got cash. You the Destiny outfit, ain’t you?”

“No.”

“Mister white man, I’m a law ‘biding citizen. I don’t want no part of no race riot.”

For the first time Bill felt sick. He wasn’t going to make out with Big Boy after all; he’d have to phone Dent.

“This here Sunday,” Big Boy continued, “all them church colored, all them Councilman Vincent people, they meetin’ in the Silver Trumpet Ballroom to go protest this Randolph killing. They get that ballroom rent free. Maybe I got something to do with that rent free, maybe I ain’t but they get it rent free. They mad as me, maybe madder — ”

“Do you own the Silver Trumpet — ”

“I don’t own nothin’ but the clothes on my back,” Big Boy hunched his shoulders and shook his head like a beaten old Negro. “And I’m thankful to the good Lawd for that.”

Again, Bill was compelled to grin. It was startling how well Big Boy’d imitated “a good nigger.”

“Since when are you a church Negro?” Bill demanded. “Did you get where you are by going to church? By praying? Or did you fight your way up? You think the cops’re going to stop killing colored people because of that meeting? They need a dose of their own lead like you said yourself.”

“No.”

“You can’t mean it. I’ll pay you what you want.”

“No.”

Bill sighed. “If I prove you can trust me — Let me make a call to Dent.”

Big Boy waved his cigar at the telephone on the floor in the corner. Bill walked over and dialed Dent’s insurance office. When he was connected with Dent he said. “This is about that Harlem insurance. Yes. I’m at his place now. He won’t do business. No confidence.”

Dent said, “Ask him if Aden comes over to okay you, will that fix it? Aden’ll be by in an hour unless he’s out. If he’s out I’ll ring you back in ten minutes.”

Bill turned to Big Boy. “If Aden vouches for me, would that fix it?”

Big Boy stared. “Lemme talk to Dent.” He pulled himself out of his chair and took the phone from Bill. Aden, Bill thought; the name was familiar, Aden? Aden? Ahmed Aden. The report flashed in his memory; there was a line in it about Big Boy speaking favorably of anti-white leaders; there was the name of some pro-Jap Negro imprisoned by the Government; there was Ahmed Aden. Christ, what an organization. How could they ever lose? He glanced at Big Boy still talking with Dent and the joy of making the numbers king toe the line poured in him like champagne. But only for a brief moment. Christ, he lamented; he’d been forced to phone Dent for help. He was finished. The bloody nigger’d balloxed him.

Big Boy returned to his chair, picking up the tabloid from the rug. “We got to wait,” he said.

The damn nigger, Bill thought. He was finished. He’d never be assistant exec. now. He should’ve stayed in the South. In the South, where you only met with white men on nigger business. Whoever heard of gabbing with niggers as if they were as good as white men? His years in the South rose in him like a big white cloud and the cloud shaped into a white hooded figure.

It was almost one o’clock when the Negro woman who had admitted him into the house, came into the room. “Big Boy,” she said. “Dey’s a man to see you downstairs, that man Aden.”

“I’ll go down myself,” Big Boy answered. “You wait here for me.” He left the room. Bill stepped over to the tabloid where it was lying in front of the leather chair. The newspaper was folded open on a story about Harlem’s marihuana dens. Bill picked up the newspaper and read:

“A cesspool of crime and vice where lurid passions run their course throughout the night, only to end when the sun glints on the water of the Harlem River — these are the marihuana dens where youth is tempted to its ruin, and bodies both white and black are systematically degraded, bought and sold like the reefers themselves. Marihuana dens, bodies and reefers are all translated into cash and Big Boy Bose, Harlem’s Vice Lord, pockets the cash….” Bill dropped into the chair. Out of the tabloid’s pages, the faces of two white prostitutes and one Negro prostitute looked at him The three women had been arrested by the police in a marihuana den. Absorbed by the story, Bill didn’t hear Big Boy returning.

“Hello,” Big Boy said. “You readin’ the press about me? The sons-bitches plasterin’ me all over their papers. Don’t jump up. I made up my mind. I’m cuttin’ the price for you. Four hundred for the Jew church. Four hundred for the wops. I’m giving you a break on them. Some of ‘em connect with the white numbers crowd. This is how I got it figured. I do the grills on Monday instead of Tuesday. Tuesday, I do the Jew church.”

“Why the change?”

“The grills is the big job. The big job, I like to do first. It ain’t much difference to you.”

“All right. How many grills will you hit?”

“Seventy about. I’ll need thirty boys. Two grills to a boy. I’ll pay five bucks a man. There’s no buck in it for me. Some of ‘em’ll be pulled in for disorderly conduct but I won’t charge you for that. They’re going to begin Monday afternoon and hit them grills right through midnight.”

“Don’t you think there’d be less chance of arrests if they hit the wops at one clip?”

“You’re right but what’ll the dicks think? They think a big guy’s behind those boys. This way, the boys scatter out all over Monday afternoon and night — it look like it runnin’ itself and I keep my skirt clear. You see that paper? They after me all the time.”

“How much do you want for the cop?”

“Two hundred. One grand for the three jobs. That’s dirt cheap. I want it now.”

Bill smiled. “Of course.” He counted out the thousand dollars and Big Boy took them, saying:

“I want another grand. Not for me but for Aden. He need money all the time for his fight.”

“One grand. I haven’t got it on me.”

“You bring it here tomorrow at eleven o’clock.”

“Why that much? I’ll split it with you.”

“You split nothin’. One grand.” He yawned and swooped up the tabloid. “One grand tomorrow.”

A
S
S
AM
rang the bell outside of Johnny Ellis’ flat on Sunday afternoon, the years in which he hadn’t seen Johnny piled between him and the door like sandbags. Since Tuesday he had spoken to Johnny three times over the telephone; they’d listened to each other’s voices and the years of their separate lives had been between them.

The door swung open and Johnny Ellis stood on the threshold, his hand outstretched. Sam gripped Johnny’s hand. “How’ve you been, Johnny?” he said and smiled at a brown-skinned stranger who was thinner than Sam remembered. Johnny’s cheeks were sunken but the cheekbones still gleamed like copper-plated wedges; all the bone structure clean and well-defined in the long face and head; back in high-school Sam had thought of Johnny as the descendant of some African chieftain; it was a high-school kid’s romanticism but some of this old feeling suddenly swirled through him and Johnny wasn’t a stranger any more. “How’ve you been?” Sam cried.

“Can’t complain,” Johnny said, leading the way into his flat. They passed a dark kitchen with a mimosa yellow curtain on the single window and stepped into a living-room that was narrow as a packing-box. A plushy couch was against one wall. There was an easy chair, a walnut table and a polished silver sun filtered through the window on the shaft. “Sam, have you made up your mind about seeing Clair?”

“No,” Sam said, sitting down in the middle of the couch. “It’s almost too late. The meeting’s coming off in a few hours.”

“Clair told me he’d be at his home up to half-past three.”

Johnny consulted his wrist watch. “You got an hour and a half, Sam. How about some coffee?”

“No, thanks.”

“It’s no trouble. The wife left a pot on the stove before she beat it with the kid.”

“You think I ought to talk to Clair?”

“You’re the doctor, Sam.”

“That’s what my girl wants me to do. See Clair. Resign if I have to but what am I? A Boy Scout?” He shrugged despondently. “How old’s your kid?”

“Four and it’s a boy.” Johnny grinned proudly. “A big boy. Sam, I ought to tell you right away that a buddy of mine’s coming here at three o’clock, a guy called Butch Cashman. He’s in Local 65 with me. We’re on a couple committees together in the union. If you don’t want to meet him — ”

“Is this guy going to the meeting with you?”

“Yes. We’re going to make a report for the next union meeting.”

“Holy smoke, it gets bigger all the time. Now your union’s getting in on it. Are there many unions getting in on it?”

“What do you mean by getting in on — ”

“Sticking their noses in!”

“I see,” Johnny said quietly. “Sam, we got white and black in the union. And anything that might end up in a race riot — we got to stick our noses in. Most of our Negro members live right here in Harlem. Sam, why don’t you see Clair? What’s the sense chewing the rag with me?”

“I don’t feel like resigning. That’s all. I’ve gone over it a hundred times. Every time I got through talking to you on the phone, I’d drive myself nuts. God Almighty, I want to square myself with people like you and Clair but if I see Clair, I’d report it to Headquarters myself. I’m playing fair with the Department. They’ve been fair to me. Okay, I resign. Then, what? I say my piece to Clair, to Vincent. And what happens? They’d think what you thought: Miller isn’t as bad a cop as some; but just the same didn’t he play follow-master when O’Riordan started swinging — ”

“Sam, I believe you honestly tried to save Randolph.”

“But I shot him. Don’t forget that.” He stretched his legs. “I ducked out on my girl today. I like her a lot,” he said gloomily. “But she’s one of these tough idealists and I don’t mean maybe. There’s nothing practical about Suzy. She keeps telling me I’ve got to feel right with myself even if I lose my job. You know what she wants me to do, Johnny? She wants me to chase after the people who printed that leaflet knocking me. Boy, is she practical!”

The doorbell rang and Johnny scowled. “Butch is ahead of time. He always is. What do you want me to do about him?”

“Let him in.” He sighed heavily as Johnny hurried to the door. On the wall opposite to where he was sitting, he now noticed the framed Van Gogh, one of the prints distributed as premiums by the
N. Y. Evening Post
in the late ‘30’s. Sam stared at Van Gogh’s ruddy-faced young man in the yellow jacket, yellow as a burst of sunlight.

Johnny came back with a white man. “Sam. this is Butch Cashman, guy I told you was coming.”

Cashman’s small tawny-colored eyes met Sam’s. He was a slender man of thirty with a shock of dark blond hair. “Pleased to make your acquaintance as the bullet remarked when it got the Nazi general,” he boomed at Sam in a deep voice that seemed several sizes too large for him. It was a voice that Sam associated with hefty six-footers not with this spry man in a double-breasted blue suit. “Sam, what do you do for a living? That’s something I always ask when I meet somebody.”

“I’m a cop.”

Cashman laughed. “That’s a hot one.”

“I’m not kidding. I’m Sam Miller,” he pronounced distinctly.

Cashman laughed louder. “You’re the cop who shot Randolph and I’m the guy who shot Lincoln.”

“Butch,” Johnny said. “He’s not kidding. He’s not kidding.”

“No?”

“No.”

Cashman shoved his hands into his pants pockets. “You guys friends?”

“We’ve been friends for a long time,” Johnny said.

“How come, Johnny?” Cashman said. “You never mentioned it to me. Boy, you’re a corker. Here we’re going to report on this cop and the meeting and you play clam. How come?”

Johnny shrugged. “Don’t bother me, Butch.”

“Just a great personal friendship,” Cashman said sarcastically. He winked at Sam. “You don’t look like a rough-neck but I guess that’s because you’re not in the old uniform. Cee-rist, but you’re in a jam.” His face was animated by a sarcastic humor. Sam was irritated. This Butch Cashman struck him as one of those wise guy hangers-on to be seen on any theatre district corner. He stood up to go. “Not leaving?” Cashman said. “Miller, don’t get sore. I don’t know you from a hole in the ground but you’re okay with me. You’re okay because I find you here. In this flat with Johnny. Looks like I barged in but me and Johnny got to go to the meeting. We’re on a committee — ”

“I’ve told him, Butch,” Johnny said.

“Miller, do me a favor and squat,” Cashman almost pleaded, screwing up his eyes. “Cee-rist, don’t let ‘em!”

“Don’t let them what?” Sam asked.

“The guys that run the stew pot,” Cashman said earnestly. “I know cops backwards and forwards. I’ve seen young guys like you come on the force, just depression generation kids, good kids lots of ‘em, some of ‘em even sort of progressive. Get what I mean? It’s in the air and even a cop got to breathe what’s all around him. But what happens? The rookie gets assigned to some precinct run by some son-of-a-bitch on wheels with his own ideas but strictly between you and me, they ain’t ideas. They’re prejudices and before you know it the rookie’s another mutt in a uniform — ”

“Where do you get off?” Sam snapped. “You’re not down in Union Square.”

Butch Cashman only smiled. “Ain’t you heard? Union Square’s through for the duration.”

“Butch, lay off,” Johnny begged. “Sam isn’t supposed to talk over what happened with anybody. That’s a po-lice regulation and he isn’t getting in dutch in my house.”

“Yeh, it’s a great personal friendship.” Cashman sat down in a chair under the Van Gogh print and hauled out a tattered pack of cigarettes. “You guys want one? Sam, have you seen
The People’s Advocate
or
The Harlem Independent News?”

“I’ve seen them.”

“Know what I think? I think you ought to come to the meeting with me and Johnny.”

Johnny shook his head at Cashman. “I need a club for you, Butch. Sam’s in a bad enough spot.”

Cashman grinned and said:

“Who ain’t? The whole God damn world’s in a bad enough spot.”

“He’d pep talk a man waiting for his wife to come to bed on a Saturday night,” Johnny explained to Sam. “He’d — ”

“Hell I would. I draw the line somewhere, don’t I, Sam? But no fooling, Miller, people in Harlem have just about reached the limit in what they’re going to take from the lil boys in blue. Ain’t that so, Johnny?”

“Yeh. I’ve heard people saying that what Harlem needs is a riot to show the Mayor. Sam, my wife wouldn’t stay here to meet you. She believes you’re a killer like it says in the Negro press. She thinks I’m wacky to let you come here. That’s how it is all over Harlem. I tried to tell her that a Negro cop, that Detective Wensley, he would have shot Randolph as soon as he smelled the knife, let alone seen it. And she — Aw, what’s the difference?”

“What’d she say?” Cashman said. “Don’t worry about Sam’s feelings. Cee-rist, we’re not living in no bullshit time. What’d she say?”

Sam nodded and Johnny continued. “Said I ought to stop being ‘a good nigger’ because Miller was nice to me in high school.”

Cashman dug his hand into the inside pocket of his jacket and took out several clippings. “This one’s from
The People’s Advocate
.”

“Butch, I told you Sam’s seen them!” Johnny’s lips squeezed together angrily.

“I want to read it, Johnny.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Let him read it,” Sam said. “He can’t get my goat.”

“I’m not out to get your goat,” Cashman said, lowering his head and reading: “ ‘Just another “N…. r” killed. Well we don’t think so. Randolph was a human being, an American citizen. Today he is dead, the victim of a Hitler Gestapo cop. We the citizens demand immediate suspension of Officer Samuel Miller and all the other officers who were accessories to this horrible crime. We demand an immediate trial. We will accept no less. We won’t take it any longer. We refuse to be law abiding citizens if there are to be special laws for the Negro people. This is the final warning — if the officials of New York don’t make the laws work the same for all people, black or white, they must accept the full blame for any consequences.’ ”

Between the two union men and himself, Sam felt space, the vast giddy space of the long block down which he’d followed Randolph. Again he was gaping into the maw of that block, hearing the crowd behind him, his nerves again hardening until he knew that in another minute they would burst. What was the meaning of it all, he wondered. Who was really guilty of killing Randolph? Who had really fired the two fatal bullets? Was he guilty of killing Randolph or had he also been a trigger, pulled as the crowd had been pulled by a finger that was blindingly both black and white. “I’ve got those clippings,” he said hollowly.

“Throw ‘em away,” Cashman advised in a softer voice. “Johnny and me need ‘em but Cee-rist what do you want with a bunch of obits? Throw the damn things away and do something.”

“Do something!” Sam cried. “Is your union going to pay my salary if I have to resign?”

“What’re you so down on unions for?” Cashman answered. “Even cops’ve been in unions. They had a union in Boston until Cal Coolidge broke ‘em. No union’s going to pay your salary but a man’s got to do the right thing. How many working stiffs’ve stood to lose their jobs if they did the right thing? But they done it. Come along with us to the meeting.”

“No,” Johnny said. “Sam’s got to figure out what’s best for him.”

“What’s best for him is what’s best for all of us,” Cashman disagreed. “His knocking off Randolph is going to be short-waved all over India and Africa. The butcher Mikado, that good ole pal of the colored man’ll see to it. And that ain’t the half of it. What about the scummy rag knocking Sam as a Jew? Ain’t that a blow-off from some of our fascist buddies? Cee-rist, Miller, you can’t let all those buzzards take a slug at you and not slug back. It’s bigger than your job. There’s a war on. We’re not going to win it until every last stiff goes all-out for democracy, for Negroes, for Jews, for every damn kind of a human mug the Lord ever made. You’re a Jew and a Jew’s got to stand up and let ‘em have it right on the kisser. And that goes for the Negroes and every other minority. If you do that, you’ll encourage the guys like me — ”

“You don’t need any encouragement,” Johnny said dryly.

“Never mind, you. Sock ‘em back’s what I say and encourage the rest of us. You see, Sam, a guy like me don’t get it like a guy like you, or a guy like Johnny. I’m a Protestant. I never go to church but there I am, a Protestant. It’s not circumcized and it ain’t black so I’m on the outside when they start pitchin’ at you guys.”

“Outside,” Johnny smiled. “Don’t they pitch at you for being a union man?”

“Yeh, you,” Cashman conceded. “But you get what I mean. There’s nothing like a scrapper to get a hand. Ain’t that right? Let’s go this meeting. Back at the union hall, we call it education.” And he laughed uproariously, swaying on his feet, his face crinkling like the face of a youngish but wise jockey.

They left the flat and went down four flights to the street and then over to Eighth Avenue. The plateglass fronts were blind with Sunday. On the corners, the tieless idlers looked the town over. Off the corners, in the side street shadow, the Sunday crap games were in session.

Cashman walked in the middle between Sam and Johnny, his voice as booming out in the open as it’d been in the flat. “What a time we’re living in. It can make you puke or cheer depending on your natural constitution. The Mayor and all the big-shots are running this I Am A Free Man shindig over in Central Park and they’ll round up a hundred thousand guys and their girls. I’m not knocking the idea but what I want to know is when are these big babies going to carry their ideas over into the Police Department for example, or into the Army? I got a wife and two kids and the union tells me I’m important on the home front instead of totin’ a gun, but I’d brush ‘em all off if it was a mixed Army. There’s talk of a Crispus Attucks Brigade in some circles, to be both black and white. If it ever happens, me for it. That’d be something as big as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade that fought in Spain.”

Two small boys darted up to Cashman from the curb. “Penny, mister? Gotta penny?” Their black faces were shiny with Sunday. One of them was wearing cheap almost new shoes, the second kid had on his weekday sneakers.