The crowd erupted gleefully, more than one pastor cringing.
The sound of those hoots and claps made their way to three men at an apartment building under construction that overlooked the facility. Liberty Hall, which tonight was filled to capacity, was a sprawling one-story building with catwalks and warrens in its upper reaches. From the vantage point where the three killers sat watch, they looked down on the rooftop section where the main auditorium was. The unexpected presence of the police had caused the plotters to reassess their plans, but they were still going forward with the job. Because really, what choice did they have? These men worked for Dutch Schultz. They’d brought with them a prototype of yet another way for human beings to destroy one another. But this method was unlike any other heretofore seen. It was a version of Tesla’s Electro-Pulsar. It was a death ray.
But different from Tesla’s design, this version looked more like a bazooka with cables connected to it leading to a squarish generator the size of a living room radio. Smartly, the generator had a built-in handle and wheels like a dolly. Tonight, the experimental device was to be used to slaughter a number of Harlemites, particularly the rivals of Schultz—Queenie St. Clair and Daddy Paradise being the number one and number two targets. Schultz would also not bat an eye given the ray would cause the death of a goodly number of notables and would serve as a lesson that he would brook no opposition. He knew that it wasn’t just Daddy Paradise who invested with Harlem’s gangsters to provide capital to those denied capital. Schultz also calculated should either of his main targets survive in the resulting devastation, either one of them would be seen as a pariah, a jinx. He’d be finished as a would-be black messiah and therefore the natural order of things would be secure.
“We just gonna blow up the roof with this thing?” one of the hoods had asked earlier. They knew from a supplied floorplan approximately where the main auditorium was located.
“It would bring down part of the building but that’s no guarantee we’d get Queenie,” another said. A side of his face was marked from a childhood bout with chicken pox. They had considered letting fly with a blast or two as people milled in. But a number of Klieg and other types of carbon arc lights, including some of Edison manufacture, were on, and they feared being spotted by the law. Now the lights were off and the police less concentrated. There were, however, lights illuminating the hall’s entrance and one of the men had a set of binoculars. The idea was the police would think a bomb went off inside the place giving the hoods time to clamber down from the construction site and disappear in the dark and the confusion.
“There’s either gonna be a break or we wait till it’s over,” the third one said. This was Eddie, the machine gunner Henson had bested when he rescued Destiny Stevenson. Eddie, wearing another colorful tie, was determined to even the score. “Once we spot her lordship, we let her have it and we’re dust.”
“Okay,” agreed the first one. He badly wanted to smoke but knew not to take the chance of lighting up and giving away his position. He and the others sat waiting, conversing now and then to pass the time. Some minutes later he began looking down at the entrance to the hall through the pair of binoculars they’d brought.
“You hear that?” he said, lowering the binoculars.
“Yeah,” Eddie said, “is that a plane?”
Before the other one could reply, a spotlight suddenly blazed from overhead.
“Shit,” cursed the pockmarked one.
Overhead, Bessie Coleman brought the Skhati into hover position. Henson was strapped upright on the wing operating the spotlight recently attached there. He highlighted the three on the apartment building. Unknown to the hoods or Henson and Coleman, the building was owned by Casper Holstein through one of his fronts. He had not shown for tonight’s speech.
“Is that the cops?”
“Can’t be, they ain’t got nothing like an autogyro do they?”
“Then we shoot it down,” Eddie said.
A gunshot rang out from Henson causing the three to duck. He’d surmised from previously reconnoitering the hall and its environs with Dulane this site might be where the gangsters would zero in on the hall. There was a feral glint behind his eyes as the wind tore at him on the wing. He supposed Destiny had spoken a truth about him in the garage. He couldn’t help it, putting his fate on the line was exhilarating. The Grim Destroyer be damned. Tonight, he was laughing in his face…tonight he was dealing justice from the skies. He almost laughed out loud, but caught himself.
“Come on, blast them with the ray, then do the joint and let’s get the hell out of here before this place is crawling with cops,” one of the other hoods yelled.
“Dutch warned maybe we might get three or four blasts out of this thing. It ain’t perfected,” the other said.
“I know,” Eddie said. He brought the weapon to his shoulder, aiming at the light. A stream of white light shot from the tube. But even as this happened, he knew he’d missed. Coleman had maneuvered the plane out of harm’s way. But the ray didn’t dissipate. It reached its apogee, then curved downward just as rapidly, striking a parked car, exploding the gas tank. Several other vehicles went up, and a storefront was blown out. A section of vehicle spun through the air and sheared off the top of a hydrant, sending up a stream of pressurized water.
Up in the plane, Henson put the light back on. He said, “I’m gonna fix these birds before they hurt somebody. Swing me over the top floor.”
“All right,” she said, “but even though that thing has limited range, I ain’t looking to get fried.”
“I hear you, sister.”
Now the hoods were shooting back with their handguns. But Coleman zoomed the plane around and Henson shot back. A round sizzled the air less than inch from his temple as the aviatrix brought the plane back to hover momentarily over the partially completed fourth floor, the top.
“Whoop halloo,” Henson yelled, dropped onto a section of wood framing.
“We’re bust, let’s get out of here,” Pockmark said, already moving toward a ladder. Down below there was shouting and running around. The police were trying to assess what was going on and maintain order. Because of the explosion, patrons were already rushing out of Liberty Hall as internal security tried to prevent people trampling one another.
Pockmark was wheeling the generator, and Eddie carrying the ray tube. The third hood trailed. The spotlight snapped back on, and now the cops on the ground could see him. They began firing up at the building. But since this was only revolver fire, there was little chance of being hit. Still it was only a matter of minutes until the police converged on them they knew.
“We gotta leave the generator,” the third one said. The plane could be heard receding.
“I’ll still be able to get a shot off at the hall when we get to the ground,” Eddie said. He’d been instructed the device should be able to store enough energy that even uncoupled, it would fire once.
Pockmark and the other hood yanked the wires free from the generator. They’d used ropes to get the thing up here.
The three moved quickly, descending the ladder to the exposed second floor and from there, they’d take another ladder. Only, now a policeman was climbing up and was shooting at them. They fired back, hitting the officer, who fell.
“Not so fast,” Matthew Henson said. Coleman operated the spotlight with a cable attached to it running into her cockpit. There were voices from below, more police gathering and figuring out how best to storm the upper levels.
“The fuck,” pockmarked said. He brought his gun up and Henson shot him dead with Two Laces’ .45. Henson had a handkerchief wrapped around his lower face. The other two stood frozen. “Drop ‘em and kick the gizmo and the gats over,” he commanded.
“Go to hell, Henson,” Eddie said. “You ain’t fooling anybody with that Deadwood Dick get-up.”
The third hood shot at Henson, and simultaneously Henson shot back. The hood’s bullet missed and Henson’s bullet got hi
m in the leg.
“Bye, bye, Henson,” Eddie said. He had him flat-footed and triggered the ray gun. But the weapon was an inferior copy of what Tesla was working on. No electric beam lanced at him. Rather, the device hummed loudly. It got hot in Eddie’s hands and began smoking.
“Oh shit,” Eddie said, mouth hanging open.
Henson was already in motion. Down below, people reacted to a ball of light suddenly lighting the dark up there on the building under construction. Jagged tendrils of electricity boiled the air, their twisted columns of energy surging in various directors. Some of the bolts hitting the hall, causing damage to the brick work but not the intended large-scale murders envisioned by Dutch Schultz. Two of the hoods were instantly incinerated. Eddie had thrown the weapon away from him but was caught in the resulting fireball. He was blown off the floor under construction and his electrocuted body landed on the ground to gasps.
“What was that?” several people said. The wood planking began to burn.
“Fire, fire!” several yelled.
Using his grapple and line, Henson hurriedly descended the far side of the building as the police arrived, flashlights and guns out. Henson’s form was obscured by black smoke as flames consumed the framing, some of the beams so new they still smelled piney. The whole thing was burning now, and one of the cops, a track runner in high school, was dispatched to a call box to get the fire pumpers to the site. They had to make sure the conflagration didn’t spread.
“Okay, everybody, we’re getting this under control,” one of the officers yelled in front of the hall.
On the ground, a sweating Henson got his grapple loose. He hid his gear in the cab of a pick-up truck and wiped off and left the .45 underneath it. He then jogged away in the semi-light of flickering fire.
There was barely contained milling of the crowd in front of Liberty Hall.
“What the hell’s happening?”
“Is it the end of the world?”
“Where’s my car? I gotta get out of here.”
“Everybody, please” a policeman said, “let’s remain calm. We’ve got the situation under control.”
Peoples’ restlessness increased for several slow minutes as various police cars roared into view and disgorged their personnel. The Klieg lights were put back on, casting bright lights on anxious and fearful faces. Daddy Paradise appeared, surrounded by OD, his large associate and other members of the security detail.
“Please, brethren, let’s allow the police to do their job,” Paradise stressed. He stood atop one of the police cars addressing the crowd. “It doesn’t appear anyone was hurt, and it seems a great catastrophe has been averted.” As he spoke, two horse drawn water pumpers raced around a near corner and arrived at the burning structure.
“You see,” Paradise said, “there’s no reason to panic.”
One of the cops tried to pull him down, and was stopped by a sergeant who’d come on scene. He was the one who’d arrested Henson after the shoot out from several days ago. He tossed aside a dead cigar stump and muttered, “Let him talk. We don’t want a fire and a riot on our hands.”
There was a lot of murmuring and jangled nerves, but at the urging of Daddy Paradise along with Langston Hughes and several of the pastors, an edgy calm settled on the crowd. It helped that water was being sprayed of the flames.
While many watched, unbeknownst to them, the police had begun a sweep of the neighborhood looking for Matthew Henson. He soon emerged from Liberty Hall. He’d changed clothes, having stashed them in the janitor’s closet the day before.
“Arrest him,” the sergeant shouted.
“On what charge?” Ira Kunsler said, having been in attendance, and appearing at his client’s side.
“Suspicion of murder,” replied the sergeant.
“Who?’
He pointed at the smoldering corpse being carried to an ambulance. Photographers’ flashbulbs popped, momentarily illuminated parts of the corpse’s form as he was stowed away. One of the sergeant’s officers who’d tried to get up on the building had briefly seen the outline of a fourth man. A black man, he knew. And who else around here could have probably used a rope to climb the hell down from there so fast?
“I’ve been inside all night seeing to the safety of the event,” Henson said.
“Bullshit,” a cop said as he and two others had their hands on him, their nightsticks at the ready. A palpable jolt of indignation went through the crowd.
“They’re trying to scapegoat, Matt,” someone yelled.
The edgy calm was fast dissipating.
“What evidence do you have?” Kunsler said beside Henson as the law tried to get him into a prowl car. But the crowd wouldn’t part.
“We know he was up on the building,” the sergeant said.
“Yeah, who’s your eyewitness? A night owl?”
“I have good cause.”
“You have a witness to identify him?” Purposefully, Kunsler raised his voice. “You mean you’re going to take the word of one of the hoodlums had tried to assassinate Daddy Paradise at face value? Because there’s a whole bunch of people who will attest to him being inside this whole time,” he bluffed, though knew Henson could get a few on security to lie for him.
“I saw him throughout the night inside the hall,” a new voice announced.
Head turned to gaze at an elderly woman in her best Sunday-go-the-meeting clothes complete with an ostentatious hat with a rainbow plumage. Mrs. Celow stared defiantly at the sergeant. She was the person who’d let Henson use her apartment to drop down on Edie and the other thug holding Destiny Stevenson. She was a righteous woman, but she figured the Lord would forgive her for lying on behalf of Mr. Henson. He was Harlem’s own.
The cops looked around nervously. A captain with a lantern jaw muscled his way over to Henson and Kunsler. There were at least twenty police cars occupying the street. “All right, mouthpiece. You make sure your client comes down to the precinct tomorrow to answer questions. Understand?” He’d already recognized the dead man as one of Dutch Schultz’s underlings. There was also that Two Laces gee they had on ice as well. He was making noise he wanted a deal in exchange for ratting out the cop who put him onto Cole Rodgers. No matter how he tried to keep a lid on all this, it was going to come out and then this business was going to blow up big time.
At the gathered clapped, Henson left in the company of his lawyer, flashbulbs going off in their faces like grenades. The two men went past Venus Melenaux and Queenie St. Clair. The two women exchanged a shared indecipherable look.
“That was close,” Kunsler said, driving away from Liberty Hall. Grey smoke could be seen through his rear window as the burning building was mostly extinguished. “Imagine if that goddamn ray gun actually worked? Something like that in the hands of that coo-coo bastard Schultz.
His friend regarded him grimly. “Think I ought to turn over a piece of the Daughter to Tesla?”
Kunsler drove along, silence building between them. “If another madman should posses that kind of power.” He shook his head. “Isn’t it better we have a way to check him?”
Henson nodded.
“What about Davis?” Kunsler asked.
“He ain’t the type to go back into the woodwork.”
“Yeah. But look, you saved the day, Matt. The black and white press are gonna latch onto the Dutch Schultz angle we feed them. Not to mention the mystery of the thing they had up there and the unknown aircraft.”
The explorer smiled wanly as he sat quietly. That night he stayed at Kunsler’s place as the press was camped out in front of his apartment building. He made a phone call.
“Hello, Destiny,” Henson said when the receiver was picked up on the other end of the line.
“Hello yourself,” she said.
They talked for a long time. Then he went to sleep, gathering himself for the last push.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
As Kunsler had predicted, the black a
nd white newspapers were filled with news about the attempted massacre at Liberty Hall. Though it was the negro press that had the best frontpage pictures of the burning building and the famous Harlemites, their faces a chiaroscuro play of light and dark as they watched the building burn. One of the black presses evoked the Greenwood incident instigated by whites, the Tulsa Black Wall Street slaughter of 1921.
While the dead hood was identified as a known associate of Dutch Schultz, there was as yet no hard evidence linking the gangster to the crime. Through his lawyer, Schultz denied any involvement and expressed his outrage at such a heinous act by clearly deranged individuals. Kunsler was busy fielding calls for interviews for Henson from such outlets as Time and Look magazines, as well as a Greenwich Village illustrator named Elmer “E.C.” Stoner, who it turned out was a negro and was interested in collaborating with the explorer to produce a comic strip based on his exploits. He’d sent over some sample sketches and the two were perusing these. And in further consultation with his client, it was determined that The New York Amsterdam News would get first crack at a Matthew Henson interview.
As to what had exploded up there on the partially completed building next door to the hall, it was put forward by the police the hoods must have had grenades with them and one was struck by a bullet. Various eyewitnesses countered that as they told of seeing a bright flash and discharges akin to lightning. This in turn was the source of vigorous speculations in cafes, beauty parlors and many a speakeasy over watered down gin—in and out of Harlem.
To the chagrin of many in Washington, D.C., including those on the so-called Medusa Council, Daddy Paradise’s stature had increased. He might not be the black messiah, but as he had hired Henson and the latter, the black community knew, had prevented mass killings. The spiritualist at this moment in time was ascendant. As donations flowed in, Paradise announced he’d hired architect Vertner Tandy to design and oversee the building of an all-glass and metal pyramid-like structure. This edifice would utilize the fairly recent process of chrome plating for its details, and would house a spiritual sanctuary, offices, a trade school and local businesses. Further, Matthew Henson was being hailed as the Hero of Harlem in presses of all stripes in and out of New York. Denied his proper recognition after reaching the North Pole, he was now, all these years later, the toast of the town.
Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem Page 21