Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem

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Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem Page 17

by Gary Phillips


  “They are in how to achieve them.”

  Davis thumped the cue ball and it struck its intended target a glancing blow. The ball struck the pocket point and caromed away. Davis took a sip from his whiskey and, picking up his lit cigar next to it, he filled his mouth with smoke then pursing his lips, exhaled the fumes.

  “No sense revisit our old arguments, Hugo. But you will grant me that human nature given new technologies tend to use them against each other to try and gain the upper hand.”

  “That include your views of the darker races, Davis?” He pointed his cue at the bookcase. “Is that a first edition of Mitchell’s An Essay upon the Causes of the Different Colours of People in Different Climates. I see, too, Kant’s On the Different Races of Man. Preposterous supposed scientific conclusions about the negro’s primitive nervous systems, their superstitions and so on. I imagine there’s a whole shelf devoted to phrenology around her somewhere. Possibly in your office upstairs.”

  Davis laughed and had another sip of whisky. “Hugo, you of all people believe in vigorous intellectual debate. Indeed, up in my office are books by Fredrick Douglass and W.E.B. DuBois. Books I’ve read cover to cover. I ultimately have the negro’s best interest in mind, along with that of all humanity.”

  “Like your partnership with Dutch Schultz.”

  “I can’t ride as tall a horse as you can, hobnobbing with that flying woman and so forth. Progress is messy work.”

  “Meaning I might have to get out of your way?”

  “I had nothing to do with that attack on your airfield.”

  “But you know who did. Some other member of your little cabal, I’m guessing.”

  “Not everyone is as tolerant as I am. You’re employing a woman aviator—a black woman at that—and her Loyal Order of Hibernia mechanic.” He tsk-tsked.

  “One of my competitors figured to cash in on the Schultz angle. Blame him as cover for their deed.” Renwick had been doing some digging.

  “As I said, Hugo, it’s messy work.”

  Renwick shot, dropping one of his striped balls in a pocket.

  “Sit tight, and honk twice if you notice anybody going in.” Henson and Stevenson sat in a seven year-old Chevy Four Ninety he’d borrowed from May Maynard. One of its cylinders needed a ring job. It was night, and they were parked outside the Challenger’s Club. Davis and Renwick’s pool game some hours over. Henson’s plan didn’t include having to make a quick getaway, at least he hoped not. From where the car was, they had an eye on the front of the place. More than one window was lit in its upper stories.

  “There’s people in there, Matt.”

  “I don’t plan to be doing any visiting.”

  “You know what I mean.” She kissed him. Both hands holding his face to hers. Her fingers were surprisingly cold.

  “I’ll be careful.”

  Recalling her rescue, she asked, “You figuring to climb up the side and go through a window?”

  He held up a ring of several skeleton keys. “Nothing that strenuous—until later.”

  They kissed again briefly. “You’re just full of surprises.”

  “Ain’t I?”

  When Henson’s admission to the all-white club had been rejected, he’d fumed and became depressed for a time. After all he’d been through, all that he’d endured, he’d proven his competence by white standards, yet still racist whim and caprice had won out. In the letter sent to him, the message read in part: “While we acknowledge your contributions to the momentous event that is the planting of our flag at the North Pole, you were nonetheless under the command of Captain Peary. And as such, akin to the Eskimos who were his bearers, you did not initiate the fundraising and strategies of these expeditions to northern Greenland. Therefore, at this time, we must humbly decline your desire to join our august body. Should matters change in the foreseeable future, please don’t hesitate to contact us anew.” It was signed by Fremont Davis.

  “Should matters change,” Henson had sneered. “When the goddamn cow jumps over the moon,” he’d railed, drunk. He’d gone on a three-day bender and it was his then-wife Eva Henson, née Flint, who’d snapped him out of his tailspin. It had started with her slapping his face as he lay on the carpet in their apartment rank in his underwear.

  “Matt, you drink yourself to death, and they win. Become a hermit and lock yourself away from the world, and they win. Or you can get your head out of your behind, write the story as you know it, and go on from there with your chin up.”

  Good thing he’d listened to her, as well as her invaluable work in editing and suggestions on how best to translate his diary entries and recollections into the original draft of the manuscript. It then went through more revisions in the hands of the publisher, Frederick A. Stokes, sanitizing several sections, including the mention of the birth of his son, a relationship he’d had before marrying Eva. Stokes was worried if readers knew Henson had relations with an Inuit woman, they might wonder if the married Peary had been faithful. Stokes knew both men had had mixed-race offspring, but decided it was better for the Peary legacy not to bring this up. Henson had disagreed, but Eva had convinced him this first book would put him back out there, and less controversy the better. Later he could return to Greenland and reunite with his kin, and in a follow-up book, more of a memoir of his entire life, he could tell the full story. Grudgingly, he’d gone along with that notion. He was pleased with the yarn-spinner Stokes had brought in, a six-three gent bronzed from his boating in the Caribbean and an all-around outdoorsman. This fella punched up the action passages in the final manuscript.

  Pausing at the delivery door in the rear of the building, he considered whether his wanderings had led to his divorce. Now, Destiny Stevenson sat on lookout, another good woman, it was turning out. Maybe this time he’d get it right. Henson used one of his skeleton keys to unlock the door. As his ex-wife had predicted after his account was published and there was renewed interest in his past, he could finally see his future.

  Easing into the darkened kitchen, Henson was careful not to disturb any of the pots and pans in overhead racks. It was said the kitchen had been redesigned by the famous French chef and restaurateur Georges Escoffier. While Henson wasn’t friends with the likes of the Club’s head chef, he was friends with a handful of waiters and busboys, all of them black except for a few Filipinos. One of those waiters had been in May-May’s that day discussing Negro League versus the white baseball players. Several years before, this man had made a set of keys for Henson on the sly after Henson had gotten the man’s sister out of a tough spot with a boyfriend handy with a knife.

  Leaving the kitchen, he moved along a passageway lined with portraits of the likes of Allan Quatermain, Phileas Fogg, Gertrude Bell, and several other notable adventurers. He reached a turn and went left, having reconnoitered sections of the club over time. It wasn’t as if he’d planned to blow the place up, but had made it his business to know the ins and outs of the establishment. Maybe in the back of his mind he wanted to start a club for the forgotten and overlooked explorers, by definition non-whites, and to needle the stuff shirts of the Challengers Club, steal their layout.

  To reach the stairs leading upward, he had to pass by the main drawing room. At this hour of the evening, although the kitchen was closed, and the front door bolted, there was a skeleton staff, as the club had an around-the-clock policy for certain members. And though he was no longer the president of the board, Henson knew Davis had an office on the third floor given his family claimed roots in starting the organization.

  He had to be exposed to get to the stairs, and he waited, crouching at the end of the passageway. Henson was primed, like being out in the jungle or the tundra, alert for animal sounds—four or two-legged. He heard snoring and grinned. He crept along, the pocket doors to the drawing room were open about the width of his hand. He saw one of the old timers asleep in a plush chair, the bulldog edition of the newspaper wrinkled under his hand. At his elbow was an empt
y glass that probably once held a libation stronger than the ginger ale Henson hawked. Large polished elephant tusks, one on each side, flanked the brick fireplace. In its maw, the charred remains of logs were streaked with blots of red, as if eaten from within by molten termites.

  Henson went past and in the gloom started up the stairs gingerly. From above—paused on the landing at the bend of the stairs—he heard creaks of the wood beneath the runner. He swore softly. If it was a member, he couldn’t pretend to be a waiter. He wasn’t dressed properly to pull that off. If it was one of the staff, he couldn’t put them in the position of having to cover for him, placing their job—and maybe their liberty—in jeopardy. He climbed over the railing, but didn’t drop down, that would have made too much noise. Rather, he hung there, hands gripping the outer string of the staircase. He hoped whoever was descending wasn’t looking that close at the sides of the steps.

  From where he was, Henson couldn’t see feet or legs, but heard the approach. The footfalls faded away again as the person reached the ground floor and walked away. He clambered back over the hand-tooled mahogany railing and continued upward without further incident. He reached the third floor and the locked door to Davis’ office. He tried using his skeleton keys, but was thwarted. Davis had changed his lock since he’d had this set made. At the end of the hallway there was a window overlooking the side street. He went out onto the ledge. With his sealskin gloves on, Henson clung to the rough brick face, edging around the building on the narrow ledge. Fortunately for him, Davis commanded a corner office. He wasn’t as noticeable up here as he might be directly out front. Also, there was partial cover from the overgrown branches and leaves of a looming maple tree.

  Sure enough, the window wasn’t latched, and he let himself into the room. It was spacious and decorated with various archeological and big game items. These included a stuffed and mounted lion head, a Nuxalk totem pole he identified, to an Egyptian New Kingdom sarcophagus. Various amulets, masks, statuettes and a variety of Japanese swords also adorned the office. Off to his right, an inner door was ajar. Soft light and low voices came from in there. Henson stiffened as the shadows got larger. He got unstuck and hid, not in the sarcophagus as no doubt the lid was nailed shut, but behind a 19th century rectangular standing Chinese hat chest. Engraved on its doors were four five-clawed dragons chasing a flaming pearl. It was set near a far corner, and he moved it out an inch or so from where it stood.

  A cord was pulled on a green-shaded lamp. Illuminated in its warm light was Davis and a woman who had Asiatic features. But she was copper-skinned and her hair was frizzy. Davis was leaning into her, and her hip hitched onto the front of the desk. He had a hand around her waist and she held a martini glass. She sipped from it and gave him a quick kiss.

  “Now, you behave,” she said, taking him in over the rim of her glass.

  “How do you expect me to with one so beauteous as you?”

  Henson had to stop himself from chuckling.

  “I am not so easily flattered,” the woman said.

  “Miss Petersen, you wound me.”

  “Not so’s you’d notice. Not like our lion friend there.” She pointed to the mounted head with her martini glass.

  “Ha, he never saw it coming.”

  “That’s what they all say.”

  They kissed again and left the room by the main door, holding hands. Henson stepped out from behind the piece of furniture. He re-considered the racial makeup of the woman and concluded she was part Eskimo. The other part was white, and he’d guessed it must be Danish given her name, but not necessarily. He’d encountered bi-racial Inuit before, but he couldn’t recall meeting one in New York. Her accent suggested she’d been raised among English speakers. She had to be the one Ellsmere had mentioned.

  He went to the desk and was glad to find that wasn’t locked either. Henson scanned through the papers in the middle drawer and found a stack of photographs with him as the subject. These he removed and looked at more closely, holding them under the light of the lamp. The photos had been taken recently, given the models of cars in the shots. More than one was taken from above, showing him leaving or entering his apartment building. He had seen these sorts of shots before, where the photographer used a telescopic lens. There had been a few with them at various intervals of their expeditions, and he remembered one of the photographers showing him that sort of lens. It looked something like a telescope. That fellow, assigned by National Geographic Magazine, used the lens to take pictures of polar bears from yards away. It was National Geographic who’d sponsored their last expedition, the one to finally reach the North Pole.

  Davis was having him followed. But did he believe the Daughter was in the city? He looked through the rest of the photos and gritted his teeth. There was one of him on the grounds of Columbia University. He didn’t think it was the day he’d been out there with Ellsmere’s notes. He’d been on alert then, checking his surroundings and was certain no one had been watching him when he’d gone there to hide the papers in the basement. This shot was taken before then. Henson realized he’d have to be much more careful. Henson returned to photographs to the middle drawer, in the order he found them. Finding nothing else of interest, he closed the drawer and looked through the papers on the desktop.

  On top of a sheaf of typewritten pages—minutes from a recent board meeting—he found a torn piece of newspaper with an address and name written on it in Brooklyn. He could tell from what he could read of the newsprint, this was a recent notation. A horn sounded twice outside, and he looked toward the window then back at the sheet in his hand. Leaving the papers in the desk, he committed the address to memory and had to pull his hand back from instinctively tugging the cord on the desk lamp. His senses heightened like in the wild, he was aware of footfalls approaching from the hallway. This time Henson didn’t rush to his hiding place. He stood still at the door and listened, having determined it wasn’t Davis and the woman returning.

  “I’ll start at the library,” one voice said. Henson could tell it belonged to a woman of a certain age. And that she was black.

  “Okay, I’ll start on them offices on the third and work my way down.” The two voices were heavy with years of thankless labor.

  Off the cleaning women trundled, Henson heard a bucket knocking against a leg. He eased the door open and went along the hall and downstairs swiftly. Back through the kitchen and out the delivery door. At this time of night there was little traffic, and he walked across the street and got into the car with Stevenson.

  “Thanks for the warning,” he said.

  “I saw them walking up, and figured if they were downstairs cleaning they’d see you.”

  “Good for me they were starting from the top down.”

  She got the engine going. “Are you always so lucky?”

  He gave her a sideways glance as they pulled away. “Looks like I’ll be testing that notion.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I think I know where they’re holding my friend, Henrik. But I don’t think me crashing through a window is going to get him out of where they have him.”

  She started out the windshield, glossy streams of reflected light bright against the glass. “What do you plan to do?”

  He paused then, “Make some noise.”

  “Huh?”

  He explained what he’d found. As they neared his place he asked her, “Circle the block, would you?”

  “Okay.”

  As she did so, he spotted the tan Chrysler parked toward the far end of the block. He didn’t see anyone in the car. “Park up here, okay?”

  “What’s up?”

  “Seems a couple of eager beavers might have dropped by unannounced. And you know how I’m a stickler for etiquette.”

  She looked at him askance and parked.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  “Oh no you don’t, Mr. Henson. I’m not getting cut out of all the action.”

  “This cou
ld be dangerous.”

  “I know,” she said, squeezing his knee.

  “Then follow my lead, got it?”

  She saluted. “Aye, aye, captain.”

  Walking up to his apartment building, he put a finger to his lips and pointed up at his window overlooking the street. The shade was down, and the lights were off. But a beam from a flashlight briefly shone in the gap of the end of the shade and the windowsill.

  “Who’s up there?” she whispered.

  He told her about the Mutt & Jeff team who braced him.

  “You can’t go stormin’ up there and beat on them, Matt. They’re government men and could shoot you without breaking a sweat, even in the heart of Harlem.”

  He wondered whether they were only searching his place, or lying in wait to waylay him and carry him off to work him over. “Let’s see if I can flush them out. Come on.”

  They entered through the front door, but instead of going upstairs, he guided her along the passageway to a door tucked away in the dark under the stairs. He took out his skeleton keys, and unlocked it.

  “How many keys you got?” she said in his ear.

  Growling, he said, “I guess all that time in the Arctic taught me the Grim Destroyer can come at you from any direction. All around town I keep stuff socked away that might come in handy one way or the other. Never know when you’re going to be in need.”

  On the floor, in the compact supply closet, Henson had another of his shoeboxes with a few smoke bombs in it. He got this and a cleaning rag out. They had to step back into the street as he didn’t dare turn on the hallway light. But under the glow of a streetlamp he modified one of his bombs, explaining to Stevenson what he was doing— he swapped out the igniter and, using a torn strip of the cleaning rag, made a fuse he stuffed into the smoke bomb.

 

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