Palace Council

by Stephen L Carter

  “The entire civil-rights movement is built on nonviolence,” he reminded her.

  “It’s going to die of nonviolence, too,” said Aurelia, paraphrasing one of the big black radicals of the day.

  After that she became sullen. Probably they were really arguing about something else. When they parted, Aurie asked him not to call her any more. When he tried to frame a protest, she told him he was a fool, letting life surge past while he paddled in circles, refusing to let himself love anyone he had not loved ten years ago.

  (III)

  THE BOOTH across from his was no longer empty.

  Prison life had been kinder than Eddie expected to Maceo Scarlett. He had somehow imagined confronting a broken man, but the Carpenter, three years into a double life sentence, was broad and hulking and confident even in his prison grays. He sat comfortably, as if Attica was simply another corner of his kingdom. His good eye glared through the wired glass with a clever malice. He knew Eddie must want something, or there would be no reason for the visit.

  “Read your gangster novel,” Scarlett said without preamble. The huge teeth gleamed. The bad eye wandered. “That spozed to be me, boy? Cause your man Redd didn’t get up to nearly enough badness. You tryin to mock me?”

  “No,” said Eddie, reminding himself that he was on the safe side of the glass.

  “Cause I can reach you anywhere.”

  “I’m sure you can.”

  “Good.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, but instead of lighting one, put it on the table. Perhaps he was trying to quit. The sign forbade smoking, but at this moment Eddie would have believed Scarlett capable of anything. “Now, tell me what you want, boy, and I’ll tell you what it’s gonna cost you.”

  Eddie hesitated. But he had come here to ask a single question, and if he chickened out the visit was wasted. “I’d like to talk about the night you threatened to break my hand.”

  “Ain’t never threatened nobody. All of this”—his thick, circling finger took in the prison—“is some kind of frame-up. The white man hates a powerful black man.”

  “We were in your club,” Eddie persisted. “This was 1959. You asked me what I picked up on my visit to South Carolina. I told you nothing, and you threatened to smash my hand with a hammer.”

  “Don’t remember no night like that.”

  “The truth is, I did get something in South Carolina. I’m willing to tell you what, right now, and you can tell—well, I’m sure there’s somebody who’d like to know.”

  “I don’t know nothin bout no South Carolina.”

  “And in return,” Eddie continued, throwing as much earnestness into his face as he could, “I’d like to get one piece of information from you. Just one.”

  The Carpenter had stopped smiling. The bad eye continued to bounce and juke. The good eye drifted to a spot over Eddie’s shoulder. Eddie turned around. In a glass-walled office, a guard sat holding an earphone to his head, pushing buttons. Eddie realized that he could listen in on any conversation of his choice.

  “I don’t know nothin bout no night like that,” said Scarlett. “You up here botherin the wrong nigger.”

  “I would have thought—”

  “I gotta get back to work.” He was on his feet. “Got me a sweet job. I give out the toilet paper. Every nigger in here gets zactly one roll every month, so it isn’t the hardest job in the world.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “One roll.” A snort. “Gonna be trouble over that one day, boy. All kinds of trouble.” For a moment, both eyes seemed to focus on the same spot, and that spot was Eddie’s neck. “Gonna write another novel about me?”

  “Ah, it wasn’t about you.”

  “Bullshit.” A savage smile. “Not for those years you worked for me, you wouldn’t never have gotten nothin to write about. You remember that, boy.”

  “Weeks.”

  “That spozed to mean?”

  “I worked for you a couple of weeks. That’s all.”

  Eddie thought the gangster might lose his temper, but he laughed instead, so hard that the guard looked up from his desk and pushed the button. “So—what’s in it for me?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  The good eye went shifty and speculative. “Say there was some way I could help you out.”

  Eddie nodded. He had thought this over before making the drive. “I work for the President,” he lied. “I’ll talk to him.”

  “President of what?”

  Eddie took out his wallet, held his White House pass up to the glass, hoping the gangster would not notice that it had expired. Scarlett hardly gave it a glance. He was reading Eddie’s face. He smiled. Savagely. “You seen my brother lately?”

  “Your brother?”

  “You seen him lately or not?”

  “No.”

  “You go see him.” Scarlett laughed. “Tomorrow night.”

  He left.

  Driving south from the village of Attica, Eddie turned the problem over in his mind. Maceo Scarlett had no brother. He had no living relatives of any kind. Eddie knew because of the detailed files he had created while writing his novel, carefully timed to be published only after the Carpenter began serving his sentence. Therefore, when the gangster referred to a brother, Eddie guessed he meant his right-hand man, the one who had succeeded him, briefly, as king of the Harlem rackets. That would be Lenny Rouse, Eddie’s old friend, the same Lenny Rouse who had drawn him into Scarlett’s gang, and presided over his beating in the alley behind Scarlett’s nightclub—and to whom Eddie had not spoken since.

  And this led to a fresh problem.

  Lenny Rouse no longer existed—but he was now, undeniably, a brother.

  (IV)

  THE CHURCH HAD BEEN BUILT out of several connected storefronts on Broadway near 125th Street, looking up at the IRT tracks. The windows were whitewashed. The sign read HOUSE OF HOLY REDEMPTION, and, in much smaller letters, BROTHER H. LEONARD PEACE, FOUNDER AND PRESIDER. The sidewalk outside was trash-strewn, but when Eddie walked inside he found the place clean. The furnishings were spartan. A bored woman at a desk peeked inside an office and said Brother Leonard would see him momentarily.

  Brother Leonard. Leonard Peace.

  Amazing what a religious conversion could do.

  Just three years ago, Lenny Rouse had been one of the scariest men on the streets of Harlem. Now Brother Leonard was one of the most admired. He ran two soup kitchens, walked around with other concerned men at night to keep women safe, preached the Gospel to snoring winos. He had put on weight, shaved his head, grown a beard, and declared to all the world that he was starting anew.

  Anything to stay out of jail, said the wags. Some whispered that “anything” might even have included informing for the feds.

  He greeted Eddie with a hug, as if they were old friends, as if the last time they had actually spoken to each other he had not helped beat Eddie senseless. He was not trying to make up for his life of sin, Brother Leonard explained when they were seated at the aged wooden table that did duty as a desk. You could not make up for your sins, he said. You could only ask the Lord’s forgiveness. He had asked forgiveness on his knees, and the Lord had forgiven him, then told him what to do.

  “But not until after Scarlett was behind bars,” said Eddie.

  The preacher smiled. “I came late, but I came all the way.”

  They foxed around a bit, they talked about old times, and Brother Leonard tried several times to get Eddie talking about his own faith. Finally, they got to the point. Eddie told him that Scarlett suggested he come.

  “A simple trade,” said Eddie. “I have some information that Scarlett might be able to use to his advantage. And you have information that I need.”

  “Oh, I know what you’re after.”

  “You do?”

  “You want to know who the white man was in the club that night.”

  “How did you figure that out? I didn’t tell Scarlett.”

  Lenny smiled. “
Not hard to guess. What else would take you all the way to Attica to visit a gangster from the old days, Eddie? When you have your cushy writing career to worry about?”

  Eddie frowned, wondering if Lenny intended an insult. His former friend had always been sly, and smooth. “So, then, what’s the answer?”

  “First you tell me yours.”

  “A bundle of letters.”

  “Letters?”

  Eddie nodded. “Letters to Philmont Castle from a woman with whom he was having an affair. That’s all.” He raised his palms to prepare the lie. “I don’t have them any more.”

  “Wouldn’t matter if you did, my brother. I’m not in the happy end of the business any more. I’m not even in the business.” He seemed wistful. “I don’t care about the letters. I’m not even going to pass on what you said.”

  “Why not?”

  “It would be un-Christian.”

  Again Eddie wondered whether he was being mocked. “Then why did you make me tell you?”

  “Just wonderin how badly you wanted my information.” The preacher scratched his shining brown pate. “Not that you have to earn it, Eddie. All you ever had to do was ask.”

  “All right. I’m asking. Who was he?”

  “Man name of Collier. George Collier. Don’t know where he came from, exactly, but that was his name.”

  “You’re joking.”

  Brother Leonard grinned. “I take it you know him.”

  “Not know him. Know of him.” And he did. Aurelia had mentioned her conversation with Senator Van Epp’s bodyguard. But Van Epp had left the Senate. Presumably he no longer needed a bodyguard. Meaning that Mr. Collier must be working for somebody else.

  “I don’t know why you’re so interested in Mr. Collier,” said Brother Leonard. “But I’d be careful.”

  “Careful?”

  The preacher nodded. “I’ll tell you somethin for free, Eddie. Maceo Scarlett wasn’t never afraid of nobody. But he was scared to death of Mr. Collier.”

  Then the good Brother remembered that he had to go to a rally. He ushered Eddie to the door, offering travel blessings for his ride home. He made Eddie promise not to be a stranger, but both men knew their business was done, forever.

  Back in his car, Eddie could not help thinking that Scarlett was not the only one who was afraid of Mr. Collier.

  (V)

  EDDIE HAD AN OFFICE at Georgetown University, where he taught a seminar. Without the resources of the federal government to draw on, he had to rely instead on the university’s formidable staff of research librarians. Accomplished burrowers, delighted to be challenged, they had an answer for him within days. A woman in her fifties named Margolis briefed him. What George Collier was doing now, the librarians had been unable to ascertain. He was on the military’s books, Mrs. Margolis said. In the Army. There the books stopped dead, without even a unit designation, making it likely, said Mrs. Margolis, that his assignment was clandestine.

  “I see,” said Eddie.

  There was more, the librarian said. Before entering military service a year and a half ago, Mr. Collier had served as an “executive assistant” for a wealthy family.

  “‘Executive assistant’ meaning what?”

  “I cannot venture to say based on nomenclature alone.”

  “This would be the Van Epp family?”

  Mrs. Margolis nodded. “He was with them for almost ten years. Before that he was in Korea.”

  “Do you have a photograph?” asked Eddie, who had yet to get a good look at the blond man’s face.

  “The library does not at present possess one.”

  “What else can you tell me?”

  “Only this, Mr. Wesley. Last year, after his separation from the Van Epps, it seems that Mr. Collier used the facilities of our library. One of our researchers assisted him in his work.”

  “And what exactly was Mr. Collier doing?”

  “My understanding is that he was assembling a dossier,” said Mrs. Margolis, saving her trump for last. “A dossier on you, Mr. Wesley.”

  CHAPTER 32

  A Year of Moment

  (I)

  IN THE FIRST WEEK of November, a coup in South Vietnam overthrew President Ngo Dinh Diem. Mona Veazie called from New Hampshire to ask Aurelia whether her boyfriend, as she called him, could possibly put a stop to this shit. There were only American advisers over there now, said Mona, but the way things were going, it was starting to look as if we might wind up owning the war. Eddie might not work in the White House any longer, but everybody knew—said Mona—that he had friends there. He adored the Kennedys, and they adored him right back. Couldn’t he get the President’s ear for five minutes?

  Aurelia said none of that was remotely funny. She cared nothing about military advisers. She had spent an exhausting afternoon meeting with her dissertation advisers, and now was sitting in the Harlem office she occasionally visited, staring out at the dulling city. Beyond her desk, the newsroom was quiet, and not only because Harlem produced little news these days. Aurie had been forced to lay off most of her staff. The pages of the Sentinel now carried mostly wire copy, gossip, and editorials.

  “You think I’m joking?” Mona demanded.

  “I hope so.”

  “Because people tell me the two of you were seen together.”

  “It was just a drink,” Aurie protested. She looked at her watch. She would have to hurry to catch the Hudson Line commuter train at 125th Street. “One drink, Mona. And it was—oh—four months ago. Five.”

  Five months ago: June, the week after the assassination of civil-rights leader Medgar Evers, which in turn took place less than twenty-four hours after President Kennedy’s magnificent speech to the nation on civil rights, a speech that heavily reflected Eddie’s hand. Eddie, depressed and angry, had called Aurelia to say he would be in the city on business. When they met in midtown, he told her that Southerners were blaming the murder on the harsh language of the speech—

  Mona, relentless, interrupted the moment of memory. “Sherilyn DeForde says the two of you got pretty sloshed together.”

  “Nobody was sloshed, and Sherilyn wasn’t there.”

  “That’s my point. If she heard the news in New Jersey, everybody else heard first.”

  “What have you been doing all these months? Sitting on the rumor, waiting for the right moment to spring it on me?”

  “I called to warn you. After what happened week before last, Eddie’s likely to be calling again. This time, you have to say no.”

  A tumultuous time. In late August, Aurelia had stood happily in the crowd at the Lincoln Memorial, five-year-old Locke holding one of her hands and seven-year-old Zora the other, with Kevin hugging them all from behind, the family together, listening as Martin Luther King addressed the March on Washington. Two weeks later, a bomb went off during Youth Day at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, killing four children and injuring twenty-two others. The city’s former commissioner of public safety suggested placing the blame on the Supreme Court, unless “King’s crowd” had done it themselves. The nation was furious. The tide was turning. Passage of a civil-rights act was thought inevitable. Until three weeks later, in early October, when a car bomb killed a prominent Alabama Klan member who had boasted privately of his involvement. Another bomb, the following week, missed its Klan target, blowing up the right car but killing the wrong man. Agony, long dormant, took the credit, insisting that it would target all those who preyed upon the helpless.

  “He called already,” said Aurelia.

  Mona snickered. “And he was depressed again, right? He wanted comfort?”

  “He was angry.” Remembering his words. “He said everybody was missing the point, and nobody would listen to him.”

  “The point being?”

  “The communiqué from Jewel Agony. All the usual stuff about the fascist parasites and so forth.”

  “What about it?”

  “It wasn’t signed by Commander M.”

  A long
pause over the long-distance line. Mona got the point. “So, where does he think she is?”

  “Somewhere else.”

  The two women got on to other things—Aurelia’s children, Mona’s twins, New England life—and Aurie managed to hang up without mentioning the other matter Eddie wanted to discuss with her. He seemed determined to discover, although he would not say why, what had become of Senator Van Epp’s onetime bodyguard, Mr. Collier.

  Aurelia said she had no idea.

  (II)

  A FEW NIGHTS LATER, Aurelia and Kevin attended a private dinner at the apartment of Richard and Pat Nixon on Park Avenue. Dick Nixon, having lost his gubernatorial race last year, had taken up the well-remunerated life of a New York lawyer. Nobody thought the change was permanent. He was widely expected to make another try for the presidency in 1968, after Kennedy trounced whoever the hard-line wing of the G.O.P. put up against him in 1964. The dinner was quiet. Neither Dick nor Pat provided scintillating conversation, because both were fundamentally shy, and Kevin, although he tried hard, was not Matty. As a result, Aurelia found herself forced to lead. It occurred to her that Nixon still had contacts, and plenty of them, in what had come to be known as the national-security establishment. So, without mentioning Eddie’s name, she raised his concern—that after this last series of bombings in Alabama, the first confirmed attacks by Jewel Agony that had taken human lives, the usual communiqué taking credit had not been signed by Commander M.

  Kevin looked at her hard. Pat said something about how horrible the whole thing was, and wondered why people could not resolve their differences peacefully.

  Nixon laughed. “You don’t see it, do you? This is like Russia’s feud with Red China. They might be fighting with each other, but that doesn’t mean they’re not both going to try to bury us. You know what this is?” Circling a finger in the air, presumably to signify Jewel Agony. “This is just arguing over who gets to hold the shovel. What matters is the big picture.”

  “Which big picture is that?” Aurelia prompted, eyes wide and innocent, an expression she could pull off at the drop of a hat.