Hot-Wired in Brooklyn (20 page)

I walked to a phone booth near Washington Square to call my sister Maggie, bowing out from Saturday afternoon with
the in-laws so I could watch Jorgenson and the grieving redhead a while longer.

His car was still at the curb when I got back, and the Barracuda Brothers hadn’t budged.

After dark, Jorgenson brought the still-weeping woman downstairs and drove several blocks southeast into Chinatown. They parked
and entered a restaurant on Canal Street, spent almost an hour inside, then walked three blocks west to Mott, where they knocked
at an herbalist’s shop. The sign on the door said CLOSED, but not for them. A weedy, balding Chinese in his mid-forties appeared
and escorted them to a curtained room behind a counter. A half-hour later, they emerged with a small paper bag, walked back
to the restaurant on Canal, stayed ten minutes more, and drove back to Fourth Street.

I watched the row house until the lights went out and then drove home. I needed temporarily to slip the protective bonds of
the Barracuda Brothers, and I needed Watusi for backup. I called him from the office phone and told him to meet me in front
of the Stock Exchange in an hour. The plan was to leave the lights on at my house, the car at the curb, and sneak out the
back. Then I’d take the BMT line into Lower Manhattan.

Before leaving, I took another look at Shork’s dirty pictures. The weepy redhead wore only underwear, a naked woman next to
her feigning an embrace. The back of the photo gave the Fourth Street address. There were four negatives with the picture,
each sporting a lewder pose and less clothing. There were dates on the back of the picture and amounts of money. Shork had
apparently held her up five
times for a total of fifteen thousand dollars before someone’d canceled his worthless life.

Below the dates and figures was a smudged line of handwriting, probably Shork’s. The last part was indecipherable without
some very smelly chemicals, but all I needed was the first word anyway:
Sissy.

S
o how’s my ailing godchild?” I asked Watusi as I opened the passenger door and slipped inside. “She was playing with her cat
when I left her with the sitter. Her prognosis is excellent, and the doctor says she can go back to school on Monday.”

“That’s good news, Tooss. Her teacher’ll be happy to have her back.”

“Oh?”

I grinned. “The one with the crush on you. Remember? Just don’t reciprocate.”

“A little vocabulary is a dangerous thing, Eddie,” he said without smiling.

I wanted to needle him back, but the sound of the car starting shifted my mood closer to his, and to business.

“And what is our destination?” he asked as he pulled away from the curb.

“Fourth Street in the Village first, then Chinatown.”

“Chinatown? Is that wise, Eddie? It’s well after tourist hours.”

“If it was a piece of cake, would I ask
you?”

“The compliment is accepted,” he said with a guarded smile, and we drove to Fourth Street. Along the way, I gave him the background
on Jorgenson and the weepy redhead.

“So you’re still trying to get Arnold out of his trouble?” he asked as we arrived.

“I suppose so. There’s no other reason to stay in this.”

“So your opinion of him has changed.”

“Well, he’s a first-class pain in the ass, but he’s not a coldblooded murderer.”

“Nor were you, as I recall.” He was talking about a case from a year and a half ago. I’d had the chance to do murder or walk
away from the impulse, and I’d made the right choice.

“I went to the movies yesterday with Frankie,” I said, trying to think of something more cheerful. “How come you don’t ever
go to the movies?”

“I do go to the movies, Eddie. I don’t go to white men’s movies, that’s all.”

“It was a good Alan Ladd picture, a Western,” I said with a straight face, even though I couldn’t remember a single moment
of it. “So, how come you don’t go?”

He sighed. “We’ve discussed this before, Eddie.”

“But you haven’t given me a good answer yet.”

“And I never will, by your standards.”

“So, what’s wrong with an Alan Ladd movie?”

“Nothing, I’m sure.”

“So how come you only watch those pictures up in Harlem?”

“Because it gives me the rare opportunity to see a Negro man, or woman, play someone who isn’t a domestic servant, a lackey,
or a slave.”

“Those pictures in Harlem, they in Technicolor?”

“Rarely.”

“Westerns?”

“No.”

“You’re deprivin’ yourself of some great pictures, then.”

He didn’t look like he wanted to answer, and the sight of Jorgenson and the girl leaving the row house saved us both an awkward
silence. We followed them back to Chinatown, past the restaurant on Canal Street, and on to the herbalist’s shop, watching
from across the street as an old Chinese woman exchanged angry words with the weedy Chinese owner. Jorgenson was calm, but
the grieving redhead fidgeted with the sleeve of her winter coat and sneered at the old woman.

Jorgenson and the redhead left soon after, but Watusi and I waited a few minutes more before I knocked hard enough on the
door to shake the CLOSED sign. Watusi stood a few feet away, in the dark. A Chinese might open a door to a white man after
hours, but never to a colored.

The owner appeared glassy-eyed at the door, as if he’d treated himself to a little opium. He scowled and pointed to the sign.

“Closed!” he screeched. “No come in!”

“Come in, yes,” I growled back, “or I break down door. Savvy?”

“No come in!”

I only had to glance at Watusi, who stepped from the
shadows and threw a big shoulder into the door. We entered to the sound of splintering wood.

“Pay for door!” howled the Chinese.

“Sure, pal, pay for door, and pay for information, too.”

The old woman peeked out again ready to squawk, but the man spoke abruptly and she disappeared. When he looked back at me
I had a twenty in my hand. “Pay for door,” I said.

Some of the hardness left his face and he asked, “What kind information?”

I described what I’d seen since leaving Carlson’s funeral, then went straight to the point. “Tell about red-haired girl,”
I said.

The Chinese stalled, looked hard at Watusi and said, “Him not wait here.”

“Yes, him wait here.”

“Him wait outside.”

“No. Him wait here. You tell about girl, I pay you. Then he go, I go, too. No come back.”

He nodded, and I asked, “Why woman go restaurant?”

“Look for Jiang. She Sissy friend, many years, since children. Sissy, she upset, look to Jiang, ease pain.”

“And Jorgenson?”

“Sissy brother.” Two broken lines of irregular yellow teeth showed as he smiled for the first time. “She Sissy, he sissy,
too.” And then he laughed.

“And what’re they to Carlson?”

He looked like he didn’t recognize the name, so I repeated it and added, “District Attorney, Brooklyn, blow up in car.”

“Not know,” he said. I took out another twenty, but he repeated himself.

“Okay. Paper bag Jorgenson come out with. What inside?”

“Ginseng root,” he said quickly. “Calm Sissy nerves.” He smiled again at the joke.

“And maybe some opium on the side?”

He shook his head emphatically. “Ginseng root, calm nerves, also brain pills, make sleep.” He pointed to the wall behind the
counter, a warren of small hand-labeled drawers that reached to the ceiling. Individually, or in combinations that only the
Chinese seemed to understand, the contents of those drawers could supposedly cure anything from a headache to lung cancer.

“Carlson die, woman called Sissy weep. How come?” I waved the twenties under his nose.

His smile pinched at the corners. “They friends, maybe.”

“More than friends. You tell, I pay.”

The old Chinese woman emerged from behind the curtain again and shouted at the other Chinese. He shouted back, and she disappeared,
but not before they’d said some words that I understood:
Hip Sing.

I crowded the Chinese back against the counter and signaled Watusi to stand next to me. Intimidation distance.

“You belong Hip Sing tong?” I asked in a menacing tone, Watusi glowering over my shoulder. I knew the answer already. Everybody
in Chinatown belonged to one tong or another. Businessmen joined for the benefits of protection, families for the social advantages,
and the thugs for the anonymity that came with being part of a crowd. On the surface, a tong was just a big, innocent social
club. “Hip Sing,” I repeated. “You belong?”

He didn’t answer, so I waved the two twenties again. “No talk, I no pay.” He looked past me, nervously, toward the street.

I squeezed him further against the counter. “Old woman call Hip Sing on telephone?”

No answer.

“You call tong, I no give money fix door. Maybe make door worse. Savvy?”

The old woman in back heard that and popped out to shriek at the other Chinese again, her shrill words spilling into the empty
street. The Chinese didn’t look like he was going to say more, so there was no point in staying.

I gave Watusi the signal on the way out and he ripped the loosened top hinge from the jamb. The two Chinese followed us only
as far as the sidewalk, cursing us and waving their fists.

“Nice job, Tooss,” I said as we walked up Mott Street toward his car. He was scowling a little differently and examining the
tip of his finger.

“What’s the problem?”

“I’ve broken a fingernail.”

My own attention had shifted back to the street. “You may be breaking more than that in a minute,” I said. Three young emissaries
of the Hip Sing tong were waiting for us on the corner.

T
he young punk who led them reminded me of Arnold. Not the way he looked now, but when I’d first met him: skinny, pimpled,
and ridiculously sure of himself. Just like the old Arnold, this punk made the mistake of swaggering up to me.

“You owe…” he started to say when I hit him flush in the mouth with my gloved left hand. His rows of even, white teeth gave
way like bowling pins, and what was left looked like a split. He wouldn’t know the teeth were gone until he woke up.

Watusi had thrown a rolling block into the other two as his part of our sneak attack. A quick chop to the neck took the first
one out, but the other punk had time to use his knife. The blade’s thrust disappeared within the folds of Watusi’s overcoat,
making him wince and then grunt. Then, the side of his powerful hand hit his attacker a vicious blow just below the left ear.
Watusi watched him crumple senseless
to the sidewalk, and a look of alarm crossed his pained face.

“Eddie,” he called.

I saw the knife embedded deep in Watusi’s thigh. He ignored it, knelt down beside the boy who’d stabbed him and felt for a
pulse. A look of relief came quickly, pushing back his own pain again. “He’s alive. For a moment, I thought I’d killed him.”
He got up, favoring his good leg, and I gave him a shoulder for support as we staggered back to the car. Before we drove off,
I examined the leg.

“Wound’s pretty deep,” I said. “Better leave the knife in until we get to the hospital.”

“No. Take me up to Harlem. I know someone who can tend it.”

“The schoolteacher?”

“Someone else.”

I drove to a mission church on 128th Street that was funded by the King of Africa. The soup kitchen was on the first floor,
the chapel on the second, and the cots, toilets, and showers were all in the cellar. Most people knew about those services,
Watusi explained, but the third floor medical clinic was pretty much a secret. Gunshot and knife wounds were as common in
Harlem as ulcers on Wall Street, so there was no lack of activity in Dr. Cody’s office day or night. But there were no questions
asked, no records kept, no cops involved.

Watusi was limping slightly when he came out into the waiting area. One of his pants legs had been cut away, and his overcoat
didn’t cover it. His left leg was heavily bandaged almost down to the knee.

“Well?” I asked.

“Deep but not serious, Dr. Cody says. No major veins or arteries severed.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“Desiree’s sitter is working overtime,” he said, somewhat abruptly, and I drove him straight home. He said nothing more all
the way back, but the quick ripplings across his ebony brow told me he had something on his mind. When I parked his car outside
his building, he gave me an unfamiliar, distant look that was almost melancholy.

“You okay, Tooss?”

The smile he offered was brief, haunted. “You spoke earlier of white people’s movies, of Alan Ladd.”

“Yeah.”

“And you want to know why I don’t watch them. You’ve heard, of course, of Paul Robeson.”

“Sure. ‘Old Man River.’”

“Paul Robeson is one of the greatest actors in America, Eddie. He can play Othello, brilliantly, to packed houses in fifty
cities, and in half of them he can’t use the public toilet. But your Alan Ladd can.”

“What are you getting at, Tooss?”

“That it’s very hard to be a Negro man in this white country of yours.”

We went upstairs. Watusi thanked the sitter, who didn’t even blink at his bandages, and then we went in to look at Desiree
sleeping peacefully in her pink bedroom. Watusi had the same anguished, near-melancholy look. Maybe he was applying his Paul
Robeson rationale to her. I didn’t know. There were facets of him and his experience that I’d never understand.

I begged off when he asked me to stay the night. This strange mood he was in, I didn’t figure he wanted me there anyway, not
even to give Desiree a good morning kiss and hug. I was his burden. I was both whiteness and violence, and in accepting me
he had to accept them. His knife wound would heal in a week or so, and he’d forget soon enough the young tong thug he’d almost
killed. Maybe he’d even forget about Paul Robeson for a while, too, and Alan Ladd. But the divisive undercurrents would remain.
Whiteness and violence. They had the power to end our friendship in the blink of an eye.