The Mobster’s Lament

by Ray Celestin

  She walked till she was footsore, down to the wastelands by the riverfront, into its vast web of backstreets and thin gloomy alleys, rotting piers, glowering, tumbledown factories, nameless diners. Here, too, were armies of the dispossessed. There were a couple of promising leads that turned out to be men stringing her along for the money.

  She stopped at a hash house for a coffee and a sandwich, and it was there, as she sat perched on a counter stool, that the loneliness hit her. The ghostly sense that the stories in this city were not her own. She compared herself to the men she’d been talking to all day, noted how their isolation and detachment mirrored hers.

  She finished her food and left. The afternoon waned and magic hour came. The sky was filled with a million tons of golden light that seemed to press down on the city with malice and glee.

  Night descended.

  Ida wondered how many more junkies there could be on the streets, if she’d already run dry. But more came out as the night lengthened, and she realized what she was witnessing was an epidemic. Just like in Chicago. Addiction rates had dropped during the war, but once peace returned, the smugglers had re-established their routes, and the slums had been flooded with dope.

  No one provided her with a lead. None of the scores of people she stopped to speak to. Meaning either she wasn’t as good at canvassing as she used to be, or that Cleveland’s clientele were located elsewhere.

  She checked her watch and saw it was almost eight o’clock.

  She got to the Temple late. Saw when she did arrive that the door was open and the windows were spilling yellow light onto the street. There were people on the steps outside, Negro men nattily dressed in suits and red caps, the kind Ida had seen Arabs wearing back in Chicago.

  She walked in and signs led her to a large echoing lecture hall filled with rows of chairs. At its front was a short dais, on which stood a man behind a lectern, giving a speech. Along the walls were a few more of the men in suits and red hats. In the seats were a mix of regular folk and down-and-outs. Ida twigged what was going on. Before the hungry were allowed any of the food from the soup kitchen, they’d have to sit through a lecture.

  The man giving it was dressed in the same black suit and red hat garb. He was dark-skinned, portly, had a bushy beard that didn’t sit well with his otherwise sharp attire. Ida took a seat near the back. Glad to be in the warm, felt her skin bristle from the change in temperature.

  ‘There’s a river, my brothers and sisters,’ said the man. ‘A river of dope. It starts in the jungles of Asia, it flows to the sea, across the oceans, through the port of New York, into syringes, through needles, into bloodstreams. Negro bloodstreams. It’s a powerful river, and it can only flow with the collusion of governments.’

  At this many of the audience murmured their approval.

  ‘Governments paid off by the blight of the Italian Mafia, the guardians of this river, the men who make money out of our community’s destruction. The Mafia and their friends in government and their friends in our own community, because, let us not forget, they couldn’t ply their trade if it wasn’t for their colored lackeys. Men such as Bumpy Johnson and his like.’

  At the mention of the name a shocked hush ran through the crowd. Johnson was the Negro mobster who controlled Harlem, who’d gotten rich filling the neighborhood with Italian dope.

  ‘I’m not afraid to say it,’ said the man, waving a finger through the air. ‘We should all know the devil in our midst. Does not Corinthians tell us that bad company corrupts good character?’

  Ida looked around at the audience, noted again what a strange mix it was, the haggard men hunched over in their seats, filling the hall with an overwhelming smell, and as far away from them as possible, the well-dressed men and women who’d come to hear the lecture, looking as prim as churchgoers. Beyond them were the men in the strange hats, standing in the aisles either side of the hall.

  On the walls behind them were banners charting the history of the Pan-African movement, posters salvaged from the Black Star Line, photos of Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, other men Ida didn’t recognize. In amongst them was a photo of a woman, a light-skinned woman in what looked like Victorian clothes. Ida squinted to make out the label beneath the photo. Couldn’t. There were paintings of the Virgin Mary and Jesus. The imagery was all confused – Arabic head-dress, African banners, Christian icons.

  Ida noticed an open door further up, through which she could see another room, smaller – the soup kitchen. At the far end of it was a row of folded-out tables, two women in aprons setting out bowls of soup.

  ‘God bless the junkies,’ said the lecturer. ‘For they are the human oil that makes the machine roll. The Mafia make money selling them drugs. The police make money arresting them. The lawyers and courts make money convicting them. And the prisons make money locking them up. Politicians use them to get votes. Doctors and nurses use them to experiment. A whole, great wedge of our economy is propped up by the junkie. So God bless the junkie. Oil is not the black gold, brothers and sisters. Junkies are the true black gold.’

  The lecturer finished up to a round of polite, if weary, applause. People rose. The well-dressed types stood about chatting. The vagrants shuffled through the door into the soup kitchen and huddled around the food.

  ‘Hello, sister,’ said a voice. ‘May I be of assistance?’

  Ida turned to see one of the men in red hats standing next to her. A man in his thirties, good-looking, dark-skinned, with short hair and a thin moustache.

  ‘I, uh, saw the sign and thought I’d come in.’

  ‘You enjoyed the lecture? Brother Paul’s a good speaker.’

  Ida followed the man’s gaze to the lecturer, who was milling about the seats at the front, talking to a group of audience members.

  ‘I came in late,’ said Ida. ‘But I didn’t catch anything much about the Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christ.’

  The man laughed. ‘Oh, that’s for the second half of the lecture, after the poor brothers have had their soup.’

  He gestured towards the doorway and smiled at her again, but there was something stiff in it, formal. Ida noticed that the well-dressed people were filing out of the hall. She wondered if the gospel was to be preached only to the men in the soup kitchen. With a detective’s cynical mind, she wondered if somehow the Temple was profiting from the men it was feeding, what the percentage in it could be. She’d encountered plenty of similar operations in Chicago. One way or the other, someone ended up getting fleeced.

  ‘I’m going to be honest with you,’ she said. ‘I’m a private detective.’

  She opened her purse and took out her detective’s license, passed it over to the man.

  He frowned, took it, studied it.

  ‘State of Illinois,’ he muttered. ‘You’re a long way from home.’

  He said the last in a cold tone, handed her back her license.

  ‘I know,’ said Ida. ‘I was hired by the parents of Thomas Talbot. He’s the man accused of killing the Powell brothers. They were members here.’

  The man’s jaw tightened.

  ‘We’ve had enough of answering questions,’ he said. He turned and nodded to a group of red hats near the exit, gestured for them to come over. The lecturer saw what was happening and approached, too.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asked, looking from Ida to the young man.

  ‘This sister here is a detective, looking into the Powell brothers.’

  ‘A private detective,’ said Ida. ‘I’m working on behalf of the parents of the boy who was wrongly accused.’

  ‘Wrongly accused?’ the lecturer repeated.

  He turned to the group of young men who had by now surrounded Ida and waved them away. They dispersed, slunk back to the edges of the room. Ida relaxed a little.

  ‘Brother William here’s a little sensitive on the subject of detectives,’ said the lecturer, nodding at the young man Ida had been speaking to. ‘Since the murders we’ve had the police coming here, the press, ev
en some men from the government we had reason to believe were working for the FBI. You can see how we might have had enough of investigations?’

  His manner was soft and gentle. The cynicism and self-righteousness he’d displayed whilst giving the lecture were no longer in evidence.

  ‘Those stories in the paper were lies,’ he said. ‘The Temple’s not a cult. We try and help people, clean them up, wean them off drugs. The establishment tries to shut us down because we’re messing up their plans for profit and a subservient underclass. But all we do is feed our brothers, dry them out, show them the right way to live their lives.’

  ‘The right way being what exactly?’ Ida asked, thinking about the Temple’s mix of iconography. ‘Christianity?’

  ‘We’re a synthesis of Christianity and African religion,’ he explained. ‘We’re not a voodoo cult.’

  Ida nodded, unsure how a synthesis of Christianity and African religion was any different to voodoo.

  ‘And the Aquarian Gospel?’

  ‘A book by the preacher Levi H. Dowling. It contains many truths. Mystical truths. Much of it derived from the akashic records.’

  Ida studied the man, wondered if he was being sincere, realized the conversation had wandered far from the murders.

  ‘Do you know anything about the Powell brothers, or their murders, that the authorities don’t?’ she asked. ‘Something that might see an innocent Negro man set free. I’m here privately, anything you say is in confidence.’

  The lecturer paused and Ida could see he was formulating a lie, that he knew something but was hiding it.

  ‘The Powell brothers were good people,’ he said. ‘It’s a shame what happened to them, and a symptom of the wider evil afflicting Harlem. Beyond that, I know nothing. I’m sorry, sister. Now if you don’t mind, I need to prepare for the second half of the lecture. Let me show you out.’

  He smiled at her icily and raised his hand to the exit. It was only then she realized the hall was empty except for the two of them. She looked around at the stately portraits on the walls, then at the vagrants eating their soup in the adjoining room, and was filled with an unsettling sense of misfortune.

  The lecturer accompanied her to the steps outside. She buttoned up her coat and the whole while he stood there smiling at her.

  ‘Thank you for your time,’ she said.

  The man nodded, gave her an Arctic stare that belied the smile that was fixed to his lips.

  She headed down the street, turned a corner onto a narrow, quiet avenue lined with brownstones. She’d walked a couple of blocks when she got the feeling someone was following her. She checked reflections in the windscreens of the cars parked at the curb, varied the length of her steps, confirmed the feeling – someone was stalking her down the otherwise empty avenue.

  She saw an alleyway up ahead, narrow, dark, perfect. She upped her pace, turned down it, took her .38 from her holster and waited.

  A few seconds passed.

  A chubby Negro man in a gray Chesterfield coat turned the corner to be greeted by the sight of Ida pointing her gun straight at him.

  He jumped back, raised his hands. Ida looked him up and down, saw the corner of a red hat poking out of his pocket.

  ‘You followed me from the Temple,’ she said. ‘Why?’

  He paused before speaking. ‘You wanted to know about the Powell brothers,’ he said.

  Ida noticed he was shaking, his eyes were glassy, spittle was drying at the corners of his mouth.

  ‘What have you got to tell me?’ she said.

  He paused again. ‘Could we do this somewhere warmer,’ he said. ‘Without the gun.’

  Ten minutes later they were round the corner, sitting at a table at the rear of a diner. Ida ordered a coffee and told him to get whatever he wanted. He craned his neck to look around the diner for the fifth time since they’d entered, scared that someone in there might recognize him, might spot them together. Then he ordered eggs and steak, fried bread and an orange juice.

  ‘You don’t eat at the Temple?’ Ida asked.

  The man turned to look at her, grimaced, making Ida wonder what was wrong with the food they were serving up, if maybe they were lacing it with something.

  ‘What did you want to tell me about the Powell brothers?’ she asked.

  ‘Well,’ said the man, ‘it’s real generous of you to buy me dinner, but, uh, food ain’t the only thing I’m struggling with at the moment. If you catch my drift.’

  ‘How much?’ she asked.

  ‘Twenty’ll be plenty,’ he said in a sing-song voice, a grin on his face.

  Ida took a twenty from her purse and handed it over, wondering on the odd way the man’s nervous energy was manifesting itself.

  He put the money in his pocket, nodded his thanks.

  The waiter arrived with their drinks.

  ‘So?’ said Ida, when he’d left.

  ‘I was friends with the Powells,’ the man said. ‘Alfonso mainly. Met them in the old days. They were big-time dealers before they fixed up and went on the square. Used to work direct for Bumpy Johnson.’

  ‘OK,’ said Ida.

  ‘Anyway, a few days before they got killed, they came by the temple, said they’d seen something – a white man coming out of the apartments opposite the hotel they lived in. They were all shook up about it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It wasn’t just any white man, it was some mobster they knew from their dealing days. Some myth from back in the thirties called Faron.’

  ‘Faron?’

  The man nodded.

  ‘Like I said,’ he continued, ‘they were all shook up about it. Got it into their heads he was staking the place out.’

  ‘Staking out the Palmer? Why’d they think that?’

  The man shrugged. ‘Damned if I know,’ he said. ‘But they was sure as hell shook up about it. And in light of what happened afterwards, I mean, I guess they were right to be, no?’

  The man turned to scan the diner once more. Ida studied him. There was something about the way he was talking, the speed of his voice, the glassy look in his eyes, the nervous twitches. She cursed herself for not seeing it earlier. The man was on the sleeve. A former junkie who’d fallen off the wagon, but he didn’t want anyone at the Temple to know, so here he was, telling Ida the Powell brothers’ story in exchange for much-needed junk money. She’d spent all day talking to junkies but hadn’t realized this man was one, too.

  ‘What else did they say about it?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘They say anything about Gene Cleveland?’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Pusher worked out of the backroom of the Palmer?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘How about Arno Bucek? The white boy they found there?’

  ‘The dead kid? I don’t know nothing about that. Like I said, it was just that one conversation, the day after they saw the man. That’s the story.’

  Ida nodded.

  ‘You tell the cops about this?’ she asked.

  ‘You think I’m stupid?’

  Before she could answer the waiter slid a plate of food onto the table in front of the man. The man grabbed a knife and fork and started shoveling egg and fried bread into his mouth.

  Ida rose and put on her coat, dropped money onto the table for the man to settle the bill, resisted the urge to ask him once more what was wrong with the food in the Temple.

  17

  Wednesday 5th, 12.35 p.m.

  Michael exited the subway at Canal and headed into the downtown rush of stop-start traffic and overflowing sidewalks and steam rising in plumes from ventilation grills in the road. At the shoeshine shacks outside a Woolworth’s store, businessmen sat in a line, reading the papers or chatting while their shoes were cleaned.

  Michael passed by them. He trudged down Centre Street and the Criminal Courts building loomed into view, a behemoth covering three whole blocks. It towered over the roadway, rising skywards in a surge of masonry. It w
as newly built, grand, imposing, monolithic, one of those giant government edifices designed to display strength, solidity and permanence, designed to make anyone who looked at it feel powerless and small.

  This was where the District Attorney’s Office was located, where Carrasco worked, one of the dozens of NYPD officers attached to the DA’s Office Squad and its various investigation bureaus. This was where Michael couldn’t be seen with Carrasco lest someone spot them and Carrasco was sacked, or arrested. This was where the faceless state machinery was working to have Michael’s son electrocuted, the same machinery Michael had spent so much of his life serving.

  When he’d first heard of Tom’s arrest, he had rushed to New York on the train, convinced there’d been some mistake, that soon enough it would be corrected. The machinery worked; Tom would be released. But days went by and Michael realized something was wrong. So he got the evidence file from Carrasco, read it, and immediately saw they were up against a conspiracy.

  All those years he worked for the police, the Pinkertons, the government, he dealt with corruption every day, swam in it; he should have known not to trust the system. But he wanted to believe that it would work for his son. If it didn’t, then what did it say for all his years of toil? When eventually he realized it wasn’t going to happen, he felt like a fool. How had he managed to become more naive as he’d gotten older? He realized he needed to take matters into his own hands so he’d called Ida, the best detective he knew. Maybe he’d let too much time pass, maybe his misplaced faith would see his son executed.

  He carried on down Centre Street, turned left, crossed Columbus Park, heading towards the church Carrasco had told him about. A good place to meet, his friend had said, no one goes to church downtown.

  As he walked he noticed more and more Chinese people in the park, sitting on the benches despite the cold, reading, chatting, smoking. He exited the park and came upon a street whose shop signs were almost exclusively written in Chinese, their colors so bright they almost seemed to glow against the pale, autumn light.

  Soon enough he came upon the church. It was a squat building of gray stone with a giant copper tower above it which years of oxidation had turned pale green.