by Dale Lucas
“Listen,” the Baron said, and Wooley tried to listen, but his ears were ringing and he couldn’t hear a goddamn thing but his own heart thudding in his chest and the blood thumping in his temples.
“Can’t hear nothin’, baron, sir,” Wooley stammered, snot choking him, tears salty on his tongue, “shit, sir, I can’t hear nothin’...”
“Listen!” the Baron commanded, and suddenly Wooley heard it—the fat lady, a block or more away, screaming into the night, lamenting a lost child. The chill on her soul was clear as a song in his ears, ringing like a cold razor on a communion bell.
“We didn’t mean it!” Wooley spat. “Didn’t mean nothin’! We was just after the runners! Papa said they were too close to our turf! Said we had to put the fear’a God in ‘em!”
The Baron pulled him close and Wooley smelled sour rum and cigar smoke on his breath. “Well, now I’m puttin’ the fear’a God into you, Gordon Woolsey. You feel that?”
He knew his name! The Baron knew Wooley’s name! “Christ, sir, please,” he cried, “I’m beggin’ you... pleadin’... please, my mama...”
“Your mama’s ashamed you were ever born,” the Baron snarled, then threw Wooley down hard. Through the ringing in his ears, he heard the click of the Baron’s pistol and felt the still-warm muzzle as it pressed against his forehead. Wooley closed his eyes and waited for the big bang and the bigger black that would follow.
“You’re a West Indy? One of Papa House’s boys?” the Baron asked.
Wooley nodded, but his voice was gone for good.
“If you can deliver a message, Wooley, you can walk away from this. Can you do that?”
Wooley nodded again.
“Tell Papa House that Harlem ain’t his battleground. Tell him if he wants to wage war on the Knights or the Mount Morris Boys or the Sugar Hill Gang or who the hell ever, he does it without a single drop of innocent blood being shed. He’s got one dead child on his hands now, and that’s enough to bring me down on him. If he lays off, mayhap we can keep the peace and this won’t have to get ugly... or personal. You remember all that, Wooley?”
Wooley nodded. “Yessir,” he managed to say. “Yessir, yessir, yessir, yes I can.”
He heard the mute click of the hammer being eased down on the shiny black Colt. “And one more thing,” the Baron added.
Wooley waited, but he wouldn’t raise his eyes.
“You don’t work for Papa House or any of the bankers anymore, you hear me? You’re turnin’ over a new leaf, Wooley, and you’re gonna make your mama proud.”
“What am I gonna do now?” Wooley managed to ask.
“Just do the right thing,” the Baron said, and suddenly the muzzle of the gun was gone and the Baron took a long step back, and Wooley felt warmer now that the shadow was off him.
“Beat feet, Wooley, before you forget what we talked about.”
Wooley rose and went lurching down the street, leaving the Baron far behind, never stopping, never looking back.
XX
Beau saw the whole thing. He saw the Baron leap off a ledge four stories above, bounce off the roof of the speeding car and land square and upright in the middle of the street; saw the stand-off and gunfight; saw the Baron offer cryptic counsel to the skinny young gunman and then send him running off down the street. Beau knew he should cut and run, lucky not to have taken a bullet or been run down, but it was all too strange, too wondrous, to just flee from.
But he regretted the decision to stay the moment the Baron turned and laid his brimstone gaze on Beau and marched toward him. Finally, Beau found his legs, turned tail, and ran back down the alley he’d used to cut down to 127th Street.
Just as he made the shadows, a huge, immovable wall of darkness melted out of the alleyway before him, and there was the Baron, blocking his path.
Beau tried to skid to a halt, but he ran right into the gravelord and felt the demon’s black grip on him. The Baron drew Beau into the shadows and lifted him off the ground.
“I didn’t do nothin’!” Beau managed. “Those sons-a-bitches sprayed the fuckin’ block! Killed Chester and Lester and Frupp and that fat lady’s kid! Lemme go, man! Lemme go!”
“You’re in over your head, Beau,” the Baron said, shaking him a little. “I know you think you’re on the road to bein’ a swell, maybe runnin’ a gin joint or bein’ a bolito boss for the Queen Bee one of these days, but I’m here to say it ain’t all wine and roses, and you’d do well to beat another path through those tangled woods right now.”
Beau stared, the gravelord’s eyes like open tombs. Still, he saw something like the ghost of concern in them.
“Looks like you took some of Frupp’s window in the spray. Deep cuts on your face and neck.”
“Who are you?” Beau dared.
“I’m the one who’s always watching,” the Baron said. “Remember that.”
He tossed Beau aside, and Beau landed hard amid a trio of trash bins.
“See a doctor about those cuts!” the Baron called, voice echoing through the alleyway. When Beau finally made his feet again and searched the alleyway, the Baron was gone.
XX
Wooley gave Papa House the message, just like the Baron told him. Though he knew that Papa wouldn’t be keen to hear it, he didn’t expect to get dangled upside down by his skinny legs above the muddy pit in the waterfront warehouse where Papa kept his pet alligator, Napoleon.
Still, there he was, Papa’s goons each holding a leg like a wishbone, all the blood rushing to his head. Below him, fat, green Napoleon grinning his reptilian grin, roaring his bull gator roar and snapping at intervals as his head dipped too close to his gaping jaws.
Papa stood on the wooden catwalk beside his goons, snarling in his Trinidadi clip, demanding answers that Wooley didn’t have. “Who the fuck was he, Wooley?” Papa growled.
“He didn’t say, Papa, I swear! I told you, his face was painted like a skull! Looked just like the Baron, Papa! Baron Samedi! From the island stories!”
“You expect me to believe that, you skinny little bastard? The Baron deigned to manifest on 127th Street just to smoke my boys and let your skinny ass go?”
“I was scared and he took pity, Papa! I was cryin’! I nearly pissed myself!”
He couldn’t see Papa, but he heard a smile in his voice. “Looks like you done it now, Wooley. Too bad. I thought you were braver than that.”
“Papa, please! I’s just givin’ the message the Baron gave me! Please, don’t drop me, please!”
“You say you think he took pity ‘cause you were a cryin’, blubberin’ mess, Wooley? That’s your opinion?”
“I don’t know,” Wooley said, choking on the snot that was creeping down the back of his inverted throat. “I don’t know, Papa, I’s just scared, that’s all. I ain’t never seen a man like that! Never looked into a pair of eyes like that!”
“Well, Wooley-boy,” Papa said, voice softening to a velvet purr. “Ain’t nothin’ to be scared of. Not anymore.”
Wooley looked up and caught a brief glimpse of Papa’s broad face; a face sometimes capable of the most radiant, assuring warmth, and alternately of the most terrible, unblinking cruelty. The cruelty of a dictator or a god, mad on his own power and might.
And presently, the face he looked into was the latter.
“Papa,” was all Wooley managed to say, then he felt the grip of Papa’s goons loose, and he fell, and he hit the mud and it was soft and damp and cool.
Then Napoleon closed his jaws on Wooley’s head, and Wooley couldn’t see anything at all.
Chapter 2
The place had been empty for over fifteen years, but Madame Maybelle Merriwether—known to her crew and the people of Harlem as Madame Marie, the Queen Bee, or simply the Queen—got a good vibe off it. Gideon Mann—her lieutenant and chief enforcer—had reservations, as did her bookkeeper and her attorney. But the Queen Bee knew her own mind, and therein, Aces & Eights was a unique solution to many of her problems, as well as those facing a
ll Harlem.
Workmen arranged tables and chairs under the watchful eye of Atticus, the maître d’. Cheedle and Sylvia, the decorators, orchestrated a small army of hands and eyes on stage, while beyond the proscenium, electricians worked on the lighting system and stagehands tested the ropes, pulleys and counterweights of the flies. From where she stood, the Queen Bee even imagined she heard clink and chatter from the kitchens where the chefs and their help planned and organized the menus. Only ten days remained until their Grand Opening, but the Queen Bee had made it clear she wanted things in order sooner for a soft welcome. True to form, her worker bees and drones all buzzed and did as they were told... all to keep the Queen Bee happy.
She thought it over as she inspected her work-in-progress, her crowning achievement. Ever since the welcome-but-abortive interest sparked a few years earlier with all things African—what literary sorts prone to naming things had taken to calling ‘The Harlem Renaissance’—pale-faced mid-towners had been tooling further and further uptown in search of new haunts, new music, new dance, and new thrills. Sure, they were after what they were always after from the quaint little darkies in their Negro capitol city—booze, sex, gambling, narcotics—but for once, the black market stuff hadn’t been the end of white interest in Harlem.
Madame Marie had heard it bemoaned a thousand times, from Gideon himself on down to that Ohio poet she patronized, Hughes: it had gotten harder and harder to find a gin joint north of 125th Street that didn’t have more white faces than black. As if to prove the point, the downtown racketeers had even come uptown and legitimized the white man’s interest in all things black when Harry Flood opened the Jungle Room, a swank supper club with hot black jazz, fine black dancers, great food and service courtesy of an all-black staff—but with a strict NO JIGS ALLOWED door policy. So, once and for all, timid souls with pale faces could cruise uptown to fan their Jungle Fever, but have no fear regarding the color of the company they kept.
But the Queen Bee had her own ideas, and she’d been searching for the perfect empty space to cram those ideas into. Here, at Aces & Eights, she’d found it: a space where she could give the Jungle Room a run for its money; and more importantly, let whoever she wanted through the door—colored, kike, cracker, dago, Mick, kraut, beaner or otherwise. The money would be good, so long as she played the right society connections. And all that money, once it had passed through the sieves of her organization, would flow right back out the doors and onto the streets of Harlem. She planned to beat that Hell’s Kitchen son of a bitch Flood at his own game without firing a single shot. She’d simply pay better, build a better stable of performers, serve better food and better booze (meaning she’d have to pay off cops of greater rank and influence than Flood paid off), and open the doors to anybody with the swag to afford a seat at one of the tables.
Thus, she could feel proud of herself. She wasn’t just an old gangster maid with a head for numbers and a nose for which angles to play. She’d be doing something for Harlem—dragging her whole community a few steps up the ladder toward self-sufficiency, economic prosperity, and personal pride. So what if the same people that she hoped to pay well for their service would also be feeding that money right back into her pockets playing the numbers? She wasn’t twisting their arms.
Green, green, green—a big wheel, going round and round and round. And every time it turned, more money fell into her purse.
Gideon lit one of his brandy-dipped French cigars and took a long, puzzled drag. “You know, I got a hospitable streak, too,” he said, shaking his head, “but this night club business...”
The Queen Bee looked at her number one soldier and confidante. “You don’t approve?”
“There are better rackets to make more money with less risk. Not to mention that those other rackets are straight legit, or straight black market, with no strings in between. But running an operation like this—you’re half above-board, half under-the-table, tryin’ to make sure that everything balances out and that what you’re doing down below doesn’t topple what’s on top...” he shook his head, taking another long drag.
“It’s risky,” she conceded. “But what, worth doing, isn’t risky? Tell me that?”
“You know your own mind,” he said. “I’m not tryin’ to change it. I’m behind you all the way, Queen Bee... I just want you to know I have reservations, and that’s how I’m gonna proceed—with caution. With a skeptic’s eye.”
Marie felt a moment’s warmth and pride as she studied her young lieutenant. He’d worked his way up from the gutter, but he wore the trappings of success and respectability well. She patted his smooth, dark cheek with one silk-gloved hand. “And that’s what I pay you for, chéri. If things don’t work out, I give you permission to tell me I-told-you-so.”
He raised his eyebrows. “I ain’t got the sand for that, Queen Bee, whether I’m right or not.”
She shook her head. “I don’t believe that for a moment.”
She heard trouble’s approach before she saw it: heavy footfalls crossed the carpeted floor from the main entryway, quick steps following. She turned and saw a short, thick policeman and his partner marching toward her. Lamont, the doorman, tried to keep pace behind them. Madame Marie managed a soft smile: she’d known this was coming—she just didn’t know when.
The cop, one Officer Heaney, doffed his hat. Madame Marie knew that had to kill him—paying tribute, even as a matter of course, to a colored woman and her right-hand man—but his Irish brogue and the patently false smile on his broad, pink face told her that he was here on business, and he was doing his best to leave his pride and preferences at the door.
“Top o’ the mornin’ to ye, Miss Merriwether. Here I’ve been passin’ by for months now, and didn’t know, until this very day, that you were engaged in preparing to open a fine new supper club right here in the midst of my beat.” He studied the work-in-progress that was Aces & Eights.
Lamont took the opportunity to break in. “I told him we weren’t open, Miss Marie, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
“That’ll do, Lamont,” Marie said, and her harried doorman bustled away, still looking perturbed at the Irishman’s presence.
Heaney whistled and nodded approvingly. “Looks like a lovely room for music and dance.” He turned to his partner, a young Mickey Finn with early gin buds on his knob nose and ruddy cheeks. “Take note, Leary. Some night when you’re lookin’ to impress one of the many young ladies you’re inclined to dabble about with, you may want to bring them uptown, to this very place... providin’ she goes in for soul food and race music.”
Madame Marie held onto her composure. The man was an artist when it came to making compliments and insults indistinguishable. Young Patrolman Leary, for his part, just nodded soberly and studied the room, perhaps actually considering it as a date destination. There was a long, puzzling silence, then Heaney nodded, and Marie knew he was about to get down to business.
“Well, far be it from me to level false accusations,” he said, clasping his fat hands behind his back, “but I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask: there wouldn’t happen to be any liquor on the premises would there?”
“Not a drop,” Gideon broke in. “But I’m parched at the moment, Officer Heaney. How’s about a snort off that flask you got warming in your left rear pocket?”
Heaney didn’t even blink. His grin just broadened. “Holy water, I assure you, Mr. Mann,” he responded smoothly. “Never know when some heathen jig might need the pope’s own blessings to save his benighted African soul.”
Marie laid a hand on Gideon’s arm, eager to diffuse their pissing contest before it got out of hand. “Gideon, dearest, why don’t you give Officers Heaney and Leary the two-bit tour? Assure them that there’s not a drop of liquor on the premises.”
“Oh, that’s very kind of you,” Officer Heaney purred.
Gideon looked at her sideways, clearly displeased with his assignment but loath to balk outright. Marie persisted. “Some vouchers for free supper
of an evening couldn’t hurt either, neh?” She tried to make her orders clear in her level stare: grease them and get them out the door.
“Suppose not,” Gideon said, and she read his reply: As you wish, Queen Bee—but I don’t have to like it. He turned to the cops. “Gentlemen?”
As he walked on and Heaney and Leary fell in step behind him, Marie heard Heaney’s departing compliment. “Might I say, Mr. Mann, that’s a fine suit! You wear it well and proper!”
For a nigger, that is.
Marie took a deep breath. No doubt, Heaney and his friends on the police force were, somewhere along the way, connected to Harry Flood and his Hell’s Kitchen Irishmen—thus, in turn, to at least one of the Italian gangs for whom the Irishmen worked, and further up the line, Tammany Hall. Marie’s plan had been to warm up to Clayton Carr at Tammany Hall one-on-one and skip the middle men... but Officer Heaney’s initiative had blown that plan out of the water. Her bribes would now have to work their way up a longer ladder, and therefore, start larger than she preferred, to assure that the right amount reached the right hands intact.
There was no way to avoid greasing the authorities when one’s primary concern was getting people drunk. Period.
She did her best to dispel her bitterness and moved on. She caught Cheedle and Sylvia arguing over the placement of a pair of pulpits for the band leader while stage hands stood by with the bulky adornments, eager to put them down. The lights in the flies blinked off and on, off and on, in a whole rainbow of colors. The spectacle struck her as the sign of something being born, and it pleased her.
She moved toward the raised dais that bordered the room, intending to get a feel for the evolving lay-out, the views, and the problems that might be presented by the windows on the west wall. It was on this meandering path through the garden of not-quite-placed tables that the Queen Bee found herself once more interrupted.