by Don Swaim
My name, Tokoloshe, sprang from Zulu mythology, about which I learned during my years in the sub-Sahara: an impish sprite employed to engage in certain behaviors toward others that might be considered malevolent. Legend had it that merely by drinking water the Tokoloshe became invisible—not that I was a sprite, nor did I often drink water.
Thus, I was known as Tokol—or Tokee to my fiancée—which was no more my real name than Janus, The Man With Two Faces, was the actual name of my adversary.
On behalf of my clients I actualized, in strictest confidence, certain results. Such services came at a high price, not because I needed capital, but because my work was uncommonly dangerous. And I put a high price on danger. Usually, I would accept only one or two assignments a year.
Such as a delicate project aimed at forever silencing Huey Long, Louisiana’s share-the-wealth populist, known to be preparing a bid for the White House. After he consorted with radio fascist Father Charles Coughlin, it became clear what the unscrupulous Kingfish’s destiny had to be, the resolution of which would come in due time.
Many of my days were spent giving away my fortune. Anonymously. It was assumed Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration, the WPA, was financed solely by American tax dollars, but my role in its expansion was, as I intended, never publicly acknowledged.
After Winchell alerted me to the pending threat from my potential assassin, I gazed from my office window at the myriad lights of Manhattan while plotting a course of action. I had three options: waiting for Janus to find me, locating him first, or disappearing.
I was not inclined to disappear.
Janus was not a private man. When in town, he quartered at the Waldorf Towers, frequented the chorus-girl spectacle between movies at the Hippodrome, first-nighted the Broadway shows, and attended every bout at the Garden. He was wild about prizefighting.
Despite our once close relationship, we were not alike.
While he tooled about in a Daimler driven by a white-gloved chauffeur, I was a straphanger on the Third Avenue El, and never kept any car I bought. He dined at Passy, I the Automat. Bonwit’s was his preferred shopping mecca, mine Kresge’s. He hobnobbed with celebrities such as Rudy Vallee, Clark Gable, Ted Lewis, and Errol Flynn. I, mostly, reveled in my anonymity—usually disguising myself in a mustache when on the town—although I counted Diego Rivera, Sinclair Lewis, and Ira Gershwin among my cronies, not the least being Groucho Marx. Not being a fan of professional sports, I never had an interest in hobnobbing with athletes, other than an occasional boxer.
I was content mingling with the merchant seamen on the East River docks, the fishmongers on Fulton Street, the Mohawk iron workers erecting the city’s skyscrapers, and the girls at Polly Adler’s whorehouse, the Majestic, on West 75th. Whenever I ran short of cash—I traveled light—Ira was always good for a ten spot. Groucho, on the other hand, was tight with a buck.
Then it came to me like a gloved fist to the jaw.
When I read in Hearst’s American that Max Baer was about to take on Primo Carnera for the world heavyweight championship, I was certain The Man With Two Faces would be at ringside. Because the Garden only accommodated twenty-thousand spectators, the promoters decided to move the fight to the outdoor Madison Square Garden Bowl in Long Island City, which entertained seventy-two thousand. There I could perform my deed and fade casually into the crowd.
Diego Rivera and I met frequently in the tiny Qué Chingados Chili House—four tables—on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, where, only if accepted by the Cojoines family, the proprietors, one could eat authentic Mexican cuisine, which otherwise was unheard of in pastrami-centric New York.
“I worry about you, Tokol, mi amigo. If you do this thing…”
So said Diego after I revealed to him my lethal scheme.
Except for Ira Gershwin, I was as close to Diego as any man I knew, although his English was as shaky as my Spanish. He was still smarting after being shafted by the Rockefellers, who chiseled Rivera’s “Man at the Crossroads” mural out of the wall in the lobby of the new Radio City skyscraper. Why? It included images of Vladimir Lenin and a May Day parade.
“It’s a matter of survival, Diego. He’ll kill me unless I act first.”
“The police…”
“That’s a laugh. Neither Janus nor I can go to the police. Ever.”
“You both did something—how you say?—nefarious?”
“An understatement.”
Despite our mutual affinity, I still couldn’t tell Rivera that Janus and I, when we were in Africa, pulled off the biggest diamond heist in history, abetted by a dazzling jungle princess for whom we both had an unholy attachment—which, through a series of unplanned and egregious acts, led to our rupture.
And her death.
It occurred while The Man With Two Faces was performing his death-defying knife-throwing performance, intending to create a silhouette of knives around our African beauty. He had never missed before, and it’s clear I drunkenly caused his distraction. For which he never forgave me.
I experienced unfathomable remorse—yet our obscene wealth, mine and The Man With Two Faces, had been left intact. If it could only have been the other way…
Although Janus knew me too well, perhaps better than I knew myself, I was reasonably certain he would never find me in New York, despite his unlimited resources. While I had covered my tracks suitably—or so I thought—I had a vulnerability.
That time in Macau in the Pearl River Delta Hotel and Grill when I let down my defenses, and, in the liquid intimacy of our suite, he and I… I’ll say no more, except to admit I revealed, body and soul, too much of myself.
And now he wanted me dead.
How many Automats would his henchmen have to stake out before they came upon me inserting a dime in the slot for a slice of apple cobbler? The blueberry pie wasn’t bad either.
Diego Rivera, of course, had his own problems, notably his marriage to the tempestuous artist Frida Kahlo. That Frida had had an affair with Leon Trotsky didn’t help. Expelled from the Communist Party while at the same time menaced by fascists and their apologists, the besieged Rivera was rarely without his pistol.
Little wonder we were chums.
It was widely speculated that the Rockefellers, despite cravenly destroying Diego’s mural, paid him his $21,000 commission anyway. Untrue. It was I who secretly financed Rivera’s commission, and then reimbursed the Rockefellers another $50,000 to keep their mouths shut. Greedy bastards. Naturally, I never told Diego. He was a man who put a high price on self-respect.
So I waited for my inevitable confrontation with The Man With Two Faces.
At the Seaglades nightclub in the St. Regis Hotel, Vincent Lopez and his Orchestra performed “Nola,” broadcasting their regular live remote on WJZ. There, she sipping mai tais, I gin rickies, I told Diana Dryad everything. Until then she had not known about The Man With Two Faces.
Dressed in slithery satin and wearing a broach of marcasite and onyx, Diana dragged on a Viceroy, her preferred brand, through her six-inch bakelite holder.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this before, Tokee, darling? I thought we pledged always to be honest with one another.”
“A sin of omission not dishonesty, dollface. First, I didn’t want to worry you, and second, I thought it would never come to this.”
“You were wrong on both counts.”
“I was naïve to say the least.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Eliminate him.”
“That simple, darling? Really?”
“Unless he gets to me first. I’ve no intention of allowing Janus to come between you and me.” I paused, nearly choked up. “To be candid, I’ve been through this before.”
“What are you saying?”
“Prior to my entering your world, I lost someone dear to me, and while both I and The Man With Two Faces share the responsibility for what led to her death, he blames me.”
“And are you to blame,
darling?”
“I, I… It’s complicated.”
The music stopped, and we heard the tuxedo-attired announcer, whose voice I knew to be that of André Baruch—or was it Pierre Andrei? I sometimes got them confused—enunciate into the microphone.
“We interrupt this broadcast for the latest news on Amelia Earhart, whose plane has just landed at Roosevelt Field, Long Island. It was her second solo flight across the Atlantic, this time from Brussels to New York in fourteen-hours, fifty-three minutes, surpassing her own record, in a specially-equipped Lockheed Vega supplied with extra fuel tanks.”
The entire Seaglades burst into applause as Vincent Lopez again picked up his baton.
Diana and I were no strangers to flight. Only the previous year we were among the passengers aboard the Graf Zeppelin in a trans-Atlantic junket to London. But the accommodations were not up to her standards—it had no heating and the German food was nauseating—so we returned to America on the Queen Mary.
I explained to skeptical Diana my plans to dispatch The Man With Two Faces at the coming Baer-Carnera bout.
“Too many people on the premises for your purposes, I fear,” she said.
“On the contrary. They’ll be my camouflage.”
“Hmmm.”
She squeezed my hand.
Tipsy, Diana and I hailed a Checker to haul us to her Park Avenue penthouse, where, shedding our clothes, we waltzed naked into the bedroom with the four poster. There we performed our magic, she as a nymph, I as a sprite.
Her lavish apartment was filled with palisander wood cabinets and marble tops, gold-leaf mirrors, clocks of ivory and enamel, hammered metal vases inlaid with copper and silver, glass figurines in fast motion, sculptures of silver and coral, ferro-nickel dishware, bronzed statuary of women in flight, terra-cotta nymphs in majestic poses, wrought-iron bookends of leaping gazelles, framed engravings by Rockwell Kent, bonbon boxes with stenciled designs and silvered filigree, Chinese fans with geometric mother-of-pearl patterns, aluminum and Lucite floor lamps.
Commanding her bedroom was an oversized archery target on which she, from her bed, practiced with her blowgun and, occasionally, her crossbow. Let me not forget her pet king cobra Kyle. I treated him gingerly because he was eighteen-feet long with a bad disposition and had the run of the suite. I was certain Kyle would turn on me once Diana’s back was turned.
Sometimes it all made me dizzy, and I needed to return to my spartan, narrow bed at the Y on West 63rd.
During the day, Diana’s penthouse was turned into a radio factory, where she directed a bevy of writers pecking at Underwoods as they composed, under her name, most of the daytime serials on the Red, Blue, and Columbia networks. “Our Gal Zelda,” “Frank Hummert’s Wife,” “Elaine’s Marriage,” “When a Widow Weds,” and too many others to list. She had the webs in the palm of her hand, and the sponsors locked up: Pillsbury, Procter & Gamble, Post Cereals, General Foods.
Diana’s radio world had conspired with the talkies to kill off vaudeville, and sometimes I missed those grand old comedy teams: Ticknor & Fields, Doubleday & Doran, Harcourt & Brace, Simon & Schuster, and Little & Brown.
As time passed, I remained cautious.
Waiting for that inevitable Thursday night in Queens when I would erase from my life The Man With Two Faces.
One evening, after applauding an experimental play by an unknown playwright named Clifford Odets at the Stage Left Theater on the Lower East Side, Rivera and I made our way to McSorley’s for a brew or three. On Delancey Street, I got the uneasy feeling we were being followed, although when I discreetly turned I saw no one suspicious, which of course raised my suspicions. My instincts were seldom wrong.
Was it possible that Janus had tracked me?
“What’s the matter, mi amigo?” Diego said. “You seem distracted. Is someone behind us?”
“It may be nothing, but—”
“Do not worry. I’ve got my pistol. Probably just some matón—how you say?—goon from the Rockefellers wanting to torment me.”
“Whoever it may be, it’s best we split up, Diego. You go south on Essex Street and fade into Chinatown. I’ll head north. You shouldn’t be seen with me for awhile. It’s not safe.”
Rivera nodded. “I understand and do as you say.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “Buena suerte, mi amigo.”
Clearly, it wasn’t prudent to return either to my room at the Y or to Diana’s penthouse. Instead, I swiped the ratty old coat of a snoring wino sprawled on the sidewalk, while gently draping my own camel-hair overcoat over him. I actually knew the poor bastard. He had the misfortune of being a broker in a Wall Street bucket shop on Black Tuesday. Wearing the alky’s coat and blending in with the bums on The Bowery, I settled for the night on a cot in a fifty-cent cage in a flophouse. It was a decent enough sleep, despite the coughs and shrieks and stench. I’d experienced worse in Africa.
The following morning, I lined up for the free coffee and doughnuts, and in return listened politely to women in rimless glasses and middle-parted hair explaining the blessings of Christ, the renunciation of sin, and the joys of the everlasting. The coffee was almost worth it, but the doughnuts were stale.
Determined to shake off the possibility of a tail, circuitously I worked my way up to Canal Street where I took the Lexington line to Grand Central, closest stop to the New York Public Library. Coalescing among the scurrying commuters in the terminal, and after eating clams at the Oyster Bar, I hiked to the library’s main reading room to examine books on the technique of crafting bronze statuary in ancient Greece.
There I saw a familiar face at a nearby reading table. With his thinning red hair, ruddy complexion, and acne-scared face, Sinclair Lewis was easy to recognize. He might have been considered homely until he began to talk. Then his face transformed into character and animation, which made all the difference. Writing furiously on a pad, he didn’t notice me until I tapped his shoulder.
“Hello, Red.”
“Tokol? Never expected to see you in a library.”
“I make allowances for literature once in a while. I’m thinking about writing a novel of my own.”
“What about?”
“Evil.”
“Terrific idea for a book. Wish I’d thought of that.”
Lewis and his wife, Dorothy Thompson, the columnist, had recently bought an expansive mock-Tudor in Bronxville, an affluent village just above the city line.
I scooted into an empty chair next to him, both of us speaking in the hushed tones expected of a library. He was still intoxicated, in more ways than one, after winning the Nobel Prize.
“I figured you’d be home slaving on a new book, Red.”
“Had to get out of the house. Dotty and me… Sometimes I can’t take her know-it-all nag, nag, nagging, always after me about my drinking. Why does she think I drink in the first place?”
“I thought she was still in Berlin covering the Reich for the Trib.”
“Naw, the Nazis just gave her the boot. I’ve always said that if I divorce her, I’d name Hitler as co-respondent.”
“May I ask what you’re working on?”
“A novel about a right-wing demagogue who becomes president after promising prosperity and greatness, but turns America into a fascist dictatorship.”
I chuckled. “Thank god, it can’t happen here.”
“Say, that’s a great title for my book! I just might use it.”
We said our goodbyes, and as I left the reading room, I saw Red surreptitiously drink from a small silver flask he had secreted in his coat pocket.
I thought I’d given myself sufficient cover.
I was misguided.
Intending to check for messages at my Chrysler building office, I neared Lex and 42nd just as a black Packard Twelve sedan roared around the corner, and thugs wielding Chicago typewriters opened fire from both front and back passenger windows. I dived under a parked Studebaker as bullets sprayed the air like silver locusts, honeycombing my temporary sanctua
ry. I heard the Packard’s rubber screech to a stop and back up so the assassins could authenticate their kill. With visions of Bonnie and Clyde, I somersaulted into a Rexall, shoved my way through the astonished patrons, and escaped through the loading dock.
The Man With Two Faces had tried to kill me and failed.
This time.
I needed a hideout and fast.
It wasn’t feasible to return to my room at the Y, and it was possible I’d been linked to Diana. So afraid of compromising her by going to her place, I grabbed a cab to 33 Riverside Drive overlooking the Hudson where Ira and George Gershwin shared adjoining seventeenth-floor penthouses.
Ira, eyes bulging behind his rimless glasses, met me after I was ushered in by Frank, the uniformed doorman, whose wife’s hospital bills I had recently paid. The brothers were holding a party, and several of their celebrity guests hovered around a piano where George was tinkling “Someone to Watch Over Me.”
I knew the song. Ira had written the verse to George’s melody for their musical Oh Kay.
Ira said to me, “You’re out of breath and, my word, Tokol, you’re awfully disheveled. And where did you get that putrid, moth-eaten coat? Looks like you took it off some bum.”
“You don’t know the half of it, Ira.”
“Come have a scotch and tell me about it.”
George took his hand off the keys long enough to wave to me. I waved back.
“Ira, I need a place to crash. Just until the Baer-Carnera fight. Some people are after me, but it’s all a misunderstanding.”
“That’s mashugana.”
“I know, but I’ll resolve it. May I flop on your sofa?”
“Of course, Tokol. I’m aware of what you did for our doorman Frank so if there’s anything I can do—”
“Dammit, Ira, no one’s supposed to know about Frank.”
“Word gets around. You can’t keep secrets in New York.”
Already I was learning just how prescient Ira was.
I spotted Groucho among the guests. When George finished playing to a round of applause, the Marx brother, wagging his cigar, joined Ira and me.
I said, “Groucho, you appear to be getting younger every day.”