The Black Stiletto: Black & White

by Raymond Benson

  Time to go see Soichiro.

  LATER

  Something terrible has happened, dear diary! Oh my sweet God, oh my Lord, Soichiro’s dead! I can’t believe it! I am just devastated!

  I can’t stop crying. I’m in my room with a bottle of bourbon and I’m slowly getting drunk. This is the most terrible day.

  This afternoon I went to Studio Tokyo for my lesson, as planned. But Christopher Street was blocked by fire trucks and police cars. A building was on fire. A large crowd of people stood on the street and sidewalks, gawking behind sawhorse barricades. Black smoke billowed into the air, but at first I couldn’t tell what building was aflame. Then I suddenly got one of my danger alerts that start at the base of the spine and shoot up to my neck. I knew that could mean only one thing. I feared the worst, so I forcefully made my way closer. After some pushing and shoving, I eventually got right up to the barricade.

  Yes, it was the building where Studio Tokyo was located—and it appeared that it was only the second floor that was on fire. The pizzeria on the ground floor seemed okay, but of course there was going to be some damage to it. The apartments above the studio were also gonna be affected—but from the looks of it, Studio Tokyo was demolished.

  I shouted to a nearby cop. “What happened? I go to school at that studio!” I don’t think my words registered, ’cause all he said was, “Keep back, keep back.”

  “Where is Soichiro? Where is the owner?” I cried.

  The policeman ignored me. A group of firemen held a hose and blasted water at the second-floor windows, which were broken out. A few brave firefighters went in the ground-floor door, prepared to battle the flames from the inside.

  I felt someone tap my shoulder. I turned to see Isuzu beside me. Tears ran down her face.

  “Isuzu! Where’s your father?” I asked.

  She could barely speak. I had to ask her again.

  “Inside,” she answered.

  My heart burst. I felt so helpless standing outside. I wanted to rush in with the firemen and look for my sensei, my teacher, my friend.

  “I heard you say you are a student there,” Isuzu said.

  “Yes, I am.” I put my arm around her. “I know we’ve never met but I know who you are. My name is Judy.”

  She nodded. “My father spoke of you. He says you are his favorite—” And then she started bawling, her head buried in my chest. I don’t think she knows I’m the Black Stiletto. I’m sure Soichiro would never have told her. What does she remember about that night when I rescued her? Probably not much.

  We stood there and waited while the firemen did their work. I prayed and prayed for a miracle, but it didn’t happen.

  After a while, the firemen rolled out a gurney with a body bag on it.

  Soichiro was dead.

  It was then that my acute sense of hearing picked up a conversation between the firemen. The word “arson” was said a few times, along with “firebomb” and “homicide.”

  So it was murder.

  And I was certain I knew who was responsible.

  37

  Judy’s Diary

  1959

  SEPTEMBER 10, 1959

  It’s 3:00 in the morning, I’m back in my apartment, and I’m lucky to be alive, dear diary. The Black Stiletto had quite an adventure tonight.

  Carl Purdy lives in a brownstone, painted white, on West 130th Street, between 7th and Lenox Avenues. That seems to be a relatively affluent area in Harlem. Purdy’s home is surprisingly pretty, I guess, not what I expected. Apparently he lives there with a wife and children. It’s well guarded, though, and I don’t think there’s any way I could ever get in there. There are no buildings butting up against it, so he’s got plenty of space. A wall surrounds the property on every side except the front. He’s got men stationed all around.

  I had gone out as the Stiletto to do my homework. What was the best way to get back at the gangster? As I studied his building from the shadows across the street, I realized I had to think of something else.

  Almost on cue, Purdy and a couple of bodyguards came out of the house. A black Cadillac with fins on the back end pulled up and the men got inside. I desperately wanted to follow them; but there was no way I could grab a nonexistent taxi in the middle of the street, not to mention the fact that I was dressed as the Stiletto. But just before the car took off, a young Negro came out of the building and approached the passenger side of the car. He leaned in to talk to Purdy. Then the Cadillac drove away, leaving the newcomer on the sidewalk.

  I recognized him. He was the teenager Sonny, the cocky leader of that young street gang I encountered the night I busted up Purdy’s bar, Good Spirits. So it didn’t take long for him to be recruited into Purdy’s organization. He was probably a low-level gofer who ran errands for the boss and other superiors. Sonny started walking east toward Lenox Avenue. If my intuition wasn’t mistaken, I figured he’d just been given a task by the man himself. So I followed him.

  There were more pedestrians out and about; it wasn’t very late, maybe 11:30 or so. It was difficult flitting between dark alcoves without being seen, but I must have done all right. I heard no cries of, “Look, there’s the Black Stiletto!” My outfit blended in with the night.

  Sonny crossed 5th Avenue and then turned south, walking on the east side of the road. The avenue was more exposed, and I was reluctant to continue the pursuit. I huddled by a group of trash cans on the northeast corner of 5th and 130th and watched my prey. For some reason, at that point I noticed all the closed beauty shops on 5th Avenue. Now that I think of it, it seemed as if there was at least one beauty shop on every block of major streets in Harlem. Just about all Negro women straightened their hair. I know it’s supposed to be a tedious and uncomfortable process because they have to use hot irons and chemicals that sometimes burn the scalp. Do they do it because they want to feel more “white”?

  Sonny turned on East 129th Street, heading toward Madison Ave. I looked up to evaluate the risk of crossing 5th—the traffic was moderately heavy, and there were plenty of people on both sides.

  Aw, heck, I thought. I just stood and darted across the avenue on a diagonal, dodging the cars and taxis. Someone honked at me. Pedestrians turned to look, but I quickly disappeared into the shadows of 129th. I crouched on the stoop of a brownstone, fingers crossed that no one had recognized me as the Stiletto. After a minute, I felt it was safe to keep going. I peered around the stoop’s short wall and saw Sonny halfway down the block. In the dark he was just a silhouette, but my sharp eyesight picked him up.

  He stopped and went inside a brownstone located halfway between 5th and Madison. I scooted across and down the street to get a better view of the place. It was a fairly decrepit five-story building with no fire escape in front. Lights were on in all the windows, and there were small barred terraces attached to those on higher floors. To get inside, I’d have to find a fire escape in the back of the building, which wasn’t a pleasant notion. After creeping through the last Harlem alley, I swore I’d try to avoid doing that again.

  The brownstone next door, however, did have a fire escape leading all the way to the roof. If I climbed up there and crossed over to Sonny’s building, it shouldn’t be too difficult lowering myself onto the terrace of a fifth-floor window. So that’s what I did. Using my grappling hook and rope, I caught and pulled down the rung ladder from the neighboring fire escape and scampered up. I don’t think the building was inhabited.

  Once I was on the roof, I crossed over and leaned over the edge for a bird’s-eye view of the fifth-floor terrace. A potted plant sat against the bars and light streamed out from inside. I heard music. The window was open! Actually I wasn’t surprised, since it was a warm September night. It was about a ten-foot drop from the roof to the terrace. I could have jumped, but I wasn’t sure about the terrace’s stability. It looked safe to stand on, but not sturdy enough for the sudden impact of weight. Lacking a better plan, I secured the grappling hook on the edge of the roof and dropped a bit of rope
to the terrace. The shimmy down took a few seconds. I decided to leave the rope and hook in place, and boy, am I glad I did.

  The bedroom inside was empty. I climbed in the window and stood in a room that contained a bed, a dresser, and a radio that was tuned to WLIB, a station that catered to colored audiences.

  The place looked just like the bedrooms that were in the 131st Street bordello I busted. I was sure I was in another of Purdy’s dens of iniquity. The room smelled like an unmistakably familiar mixture of perfume and sweat.

  I crept across to the door, which was ajar. Once again, I heard male and female voices floating up and down the floors, some of them talking and laughing, others in the act of you-know-what. To tell the truth, I really didn’t want to be there. I’m still not sure why I thought I needed to go inside the building. I suppose I just wanted to find out what Purdy was up to. Seeing that teenager Sonny was also a motivation. I didn’t like it that a teenager who probably wasn’t yet 18 years old was now working with criminals.

  Then I heard a woman scream. She shouted “No, no, no!” and a man hollered, “Shut up!” My mother-animal instincts kicked in, so I burst out of the room and ran in the direction of the voices. They were a floor below. I skirted down the stairs and was confronted by two Negro women standing outside a closed bedroom door. They shrieked when they saw me. I figured they were prostitutes, since they were dressed only in bathrobes. Before I showed up, I think they were concerned about what was going on behind the closed door.

  “Out of the way!” I said, and pushed them aside. The woman’s protests continued inside the room, so I turned the knob. Locked. Not letting that stop me, I stepped back and kicked the door in.

  A colored man stood over a woman who was on the bed. In his hand was a recently used syringe. His jaw dropped in surprise. Before he could react, I moved forward and delivered a tobi geri—a jump kick—which, in hindsight, probably wasn’t the best choice of maneuver. I ended up knocking the man on top of the woman. He dropped the syringe, though. I landed smoothly on my feet, reached for him, pulled him up, and gave him a powerful punch to the nose. He plummeted to his knees, grabbing my legs as he did so. I attempted to slam my elbows on his shoulders, but he managed to topple me midstrike. I fell on my back—hard. Before he could stand and attack, I performed a back roll, legs over head, and brought myself to standing position. By then he was coming at me with his fists. I blocked, parried, and smashed my ippon ken—one-finger fist—into his abdomen. That took the fight out of him for a second, so I pulled back and gave him an all-American roundhouse to the center of his face. He went down like a sack of potatoes.

  I quickly went to the girl on the bed. Her bathrobe had come open, so I tugged it closed and then examined her face.

  She was Ruby, one of the girls I’d met before. She was back doing the same old thing. Hadn’t she learned something after her arrest? I guess she never made it through rehabilitation. Maybe this was the only life she knew. My heart bled for her.

  I gently slapped her cheeks. She was pretty doped up. “Ruby? Ruby, can you hear me?”

  She looked at me and her eyes widened. “You!”

  “Yeah, it’s me again. Why are you here, Ruby? You had a chance to get out and now you’re back.”

  Tears welled in her eyes and her voice slurred. “I can’t stop it. I need the fix. I gotta have the fix. It’s the only way I can get it.”

  “What about the others I met? Angela? Sheila?”

  She blinked and looked even more disoriented. “Angela dead. She OD’d. Sheila, I don’t know, she stay away.”

  “Ruby, you could stay away, too, but your heart has to be in it. This life is gonna kill you if you don’t do something about it.” I don’t know if she heard me.

  By then I heard heavy footsteps running up the stairs. Company was coming. Since my only exit was blocked, I prepared for a scuffle. I turned just in time to see two colored men enter, one after the other. I immediately went into defensive mode, blocking blows from both sides. The room was just too small for me to maneuver properly; they had me at a disadvantage. One guy knocked me against the wall and started to pummel me. Then the other one joined in. I could barely block the blows.

  “Stop!”

  The booming voice came from the bedroom door. The men kept hitting me. I managed to ram my knee in a groin, causing the owner to back away, double over, and tumble to the floor.

  “I said stop!”

  I looked toward the voice, and there was Carl Purdy, pointing a gun at me. The other man stopped hitting me and turned to face his boss. At least three other men stood behind Purdy in the hallway.

  Oh my gosh, dear diary, one of them was Mike Washington!

  Purdy stepped aside and let them enter the room. “Take her to the basement,” he ordered. “We’ll deal with her there.” To me he said, “Don’t try anything or I’ll just shoot you right now.”

  No one moved for a moment. Then, Sonny wormed his way into the room and helped Ruby off the bed. She was in tears and was moaning something awful. The poor girl collapsed to her knees and threw up on the floor.

  “Goddammit! Get her upstairs to her room,” Purdy commanded.

  By now Ruby had passed out, so Sonny picked her up in his arms—she was so thin she probably weighed nearly nothing—and carried her out.

  I knew if I didn’t do something then and there, they would kill me. Washington and another guy came in the room to grab me. They each took an arm and marched me out toward the stairs. The gun still trained at me, Purdy and another guy strode behind us. As soon as we were standing at the top of the stairs, I resisted taking the first step. Washington and the other guy pulled on my arms as they started to descend. I quickly raised my leg and kicked the man on my right as hard as I could. I then turned, clasped Washington’s arm, and threw him over my shoulder with a basic, never-fail judo maneuver. Both men tumbled down the stairs. Then, with lightning-fast precision, I swung around, ducked, and bull-rammed Purdy in the midsection, beneath his gun arm. The firearm went off and he dropped it as we crashed into the other guy behind him. All three of us crumpled in a heap. Whereas the men reflexively grappled with me there on the hallway floor, I was dead set on getting the heck out of that building. I leaped to my feet—my left boot smashing into Purdy’s chest while doing so—and ran around the staircase to the steps leading up to the 5th floor.

  “Get her!” Purdy shouted.

  All this time the women were screaming and crying. I pushed past them and took three steps at once until I was on the top level. I heard the men scrambling to chase after me, but by then I was in the original bedroom. I wasn’t alone.

  Sonny stood bent over Ruby, who was sprawled out unconscious on the bed. Our eyes met and I could see he was concerned about the girl.

  “She’s not breathing,” he said.

  I almost stopped, but I knew I couldn’t help her. Not then. As I started to slip out the window, he said, “She my sister.”

  I kept going. Outside on the terrace, I tugged on the rope to make sure the hook was snug, and then I climbed hand over hand to the roof. Just before I got there, one of the men slithered out the window in pursuit. Purdy leaned his head out behind him. “Get that bitch!”

  Well, dear diary, I’m faster than they are and my clothing is dark. Up on those roofs I’m practically invisible. The rooftop levels along the street varied in height, but they were close enough that I didn’t have to do any major climbing or jumping. I was all the way to 5th Avenue in less than a minute. I picked the closest fire escape connected to the top of a building, threw my leg over the edge, and ran down the steps until I was ten feet above the sidewalk. Rather than wasting time lowering the rung ladder, I jumped. Landing lightly on my feet, I immediately took off across 5th Avenue, darting in and out of traffic, and disappeared into the blackness.

  38

  Martin

  THE PRESENT

  When John Richardson opened his apartment door, I saw a tall, thin, good-looking elderly gentl
eman with white hair and blue eyes. He reminded me a little of James Stewart in his later years, except that Richardson had a much harder, no-nonsense demeanor. He was dressed casually in black trousers and a flannel shirt. It was difficult to guess his age. He was certainly older than my mom.

  He looked me up and down and then held out his palm. “John Richardson.” The voice was raspy but strong.

  “I appreciate you seeing me,” I said as I shook his hand. “Martin Talbot.”

  He held the door open wider so I could enter.

  “Excuse the clutter. I’ve become less organized in my old age.”

  The apartment wasn’t messy at all. Much of the furniture was arranged as my mom had described it, although I’m sure a lot of it had been replaced and updated since the fifties. The desk against the far wall, however, may have been the same. A computer dominated the top, and I doubted he still had a Dictaphone. I was dying to examine the many framed family photographs placed around the room, but I refrained.

  “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea?”

  Since I’d just eaten and had a huge cup of coffee already, I politely declined. He gestured to the sofa and waited for me to sit. Then he sat in a comfy chair at a right angle to the sofa. I suddenly found myself tongue-tied. He broke the ice for me.

  “I was surprised to get your message. I wasn’t sure how to respond, or even if I should.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “I have to ask, is Judy—is your mother—doing all right?”

  At that moment I realized I hadn’t thought this through, but I didn’t see any harm in telling him the truth.