by Dale Lucas
“More black cops...” Garrison muttered again. “How do I tell my constituents that the good white folk of this city don’t want to see more Negroes with guns? Even if they are in uniform?”
“You don’t,” Carr answered. His steak arrived and he situated himself, fork in one hand, knife in the other, and dug in. The meat was bloody red and well-peppered and it melted in his mouth. “You can’t tell people like that the truth, because they don’t want to hear it. You tell them what they want to hear and send them on their way. Nine times out of ten, the shiny paneling and fine leather in that office of yours puts the zap on their brains and they go their way figuring they really accomplished something, when all they got was the high hat.”
“It may be—and I’m just thinking out loud, so don’t think I’m getting ahead of myself here—but it may be, that in time, we’ll have to deal with this issue a little more directly.”
“You mean hire more black cops?”
Garrison screwed up his face: don’t be ridiculous, that look said. “No, I mean force a little law and order by other means. Get Gino and his crew into Harlem. Maybe even Michansky or Flood or that Dicicco kid. I mean, fine—let the blacks have their uptown Mecca; but if they think the taxpayers of this city are going to put more Negroes in uniform just so those same blacks-in-blue can start sucking off the uptown rackets and act as enforcers for the West Indies or that brownie dame and her numbers runners... let me just assure you, that ain’t gonna happen.”
Carr decided it was time to see to business. He laid his briefcase on the table between them. Garrison, without a word, or even a bat of the eyes, opened the briefcase, drew out his cut, and stuffed the bundle of bills into his coat pocket. “I should hope it doesn’t come to that,” Carr added around a mouthful of beef. “The Negroes have to learn: they’ve got to render unto Caesar, just like everybody else in this city.”
Garrison managed a little smile. “I’m glad you understand, Clay. Compromise keeps the wheels turning, not demands. And certainly not more spooks in blue.”
Carr knew Garrison’s plan before the mayor even voiced it; perhaps before the mayor himself had even finished formulating it. Garrison was a leader, but he wasn’t a natural strategist. Therefore, nine times out of ten, Carr knew what the big man would be ruminating on before the big man did.
There’d be talk at the Lexington Club tonight with the high-toned sorts that Garrison kept company with. Resources would be earmarked and pooled. In a day or two, calls would go out and someone—Gino Soccorro, Teddy Michansky, Carman Dicicco, maybe even Danny Doll or one of the Flood brothers—would be given a mandate from City Hall to get Harlem under control.
By any means necessary.
XX
But opening Harlem to contractors from one of the other territories was still two or three days in the future. At the present moment—as Mayor Paul Garrison and Boss Clayton Carr of Tammany Hall enjoyed their steak and conversation at Armstrong’s Midtown—Papa Solomon House was already making in-roads with his Mediterranean neighbors in the Upper East Side’s Little Italy. Foot soldiers had been dispatched to scour woptown and find Gino Soccorro so that House could drop in unannounced for a personal meet-and-greet. He was taking a chance, waltzing into guinea territory without permission, but he figured Soccorro—or, more rightly, Soccorro’s lieutenants—wouldn’t listen to reason otherwise. So if he could just find the old greaseball and drop in, he should be able to talk sense.
The scouts paid off. Soccorro rolled into a little trattoria near Second Avenue and 96th Street every Tuesday night for veal and a late-night poker game in the cellar. When House arrived, he was still harried from his trip to the Lower East Side and bearing with him a bundle of bad juju devised by the witch lady. Still, he needed to be on-the-spot if he wanted to win Soccorro. So he centered himself as he stepped out of his Cadillac, marched into the trattoria, and found Soccorro just finishing his pasta course, swilling a glass of red that looked like thin blood, wiping tomato sauce from the pursed corners of his fattened, narrow little mouth.
There was a tense moment as House swept through the door. Guinea eyes all turned on him. Olive-skinned hands dove into overcoats, and suddenly Papa Solomon House was staring down a garden of gun barrels. He saw the old lady that must have owned the trattoria taking cover behind the counter in the back, urging her kitchen help to do the same.
Good thing House told his boys to play it cool when Soccorro’s men skinned their smokers. Papa smiled, showed his empty hands, and gave the whole situation a few ticks to unwind. Soccorro’s chief muscle, a tallish slab of ginzo named Franco Nasario, stood between House and Soccorro, blocking Papa’s view of the big man.
“No pigs feet here, pops,” Nasario said with a smirk. “Beat it.”
“Already supped, Franco,” House answered, and the gangster seemed a little disarmed that House already knew his name. But Papa prided himself on that front: he was big into details; into knowing; into putting names to faces. “I just thought I’d drop in, pay tribute to the big man, talk a little business.”
“You got no business here,” Nasario said.
Nasario moved to lay hands on Papa. Papa’s men knew that that was the signal, and their pistols leapt out of their coats and into their hands. The two contingents squared off, guns pointed every which way, the prayers of the mistress of the house clearly audible behind the back counter.
House held his grin. “Five minutes, and I’ll leave without trouble. You keep runnin’ interference on me, Franco, and trouble there will be. I promise you.”
“Boss?”
A muttered, raspy answer came, and Franco Nasario stepped aside. Papa House stood face to face, across a short span, with Angelino Soccorro, don of the East Side, uptown mob.
He gave the impression of a jowly, thick-lipped, Mediterranean Buddha: head and body round; small, dark eyes sunken into a soft, inscrutable face etched with deep folds and lines; hair slicked fast against his melon head with tonic and oil; a pencil-thin mustache above his blubbery mouth.
House approached and sat himself down in a chair opposite the big man. House knew his own height and broad shoulders often worked to his advantage in face-to-face meetings. He sensed the same sort of advantage in the old don, though in his case, it was his thickness, not his height that worked for him. House did his best to remain bright-faced and cool. The old don didn’t blink; his mouth never even twitched.
The don snapped his fingers. Someone placed an empty wine glass before House, then filled it from the carafe on the table. House drank. “Grazzi,” he said.
“Talk,” the don countered.
“I’ve got a problem,” House said. “I thought perhaps we could arrive at a mutually beneficial solution.”
A long silence as the don mulled this. “Continue,” he rasped.
“It’s the Queen Bee,” House said, and unfolded his dilemma.
Chapter 6
Dr. Dub Corveaux arrived at Fralene Farnes’s row house at six o’clock, and was more than a little embarrassed to realize that she was niece to the Reverend Barnabus Farnes of Harlem’s Mother Zion African Methodist Church. Everybody knew the honorable Reverend Farnes. That Dub hadn’t connected Fralene’s surname to the cleric was just plain careless.
But he enjoyed short words and pleasantries with the reverend until Fralene showed herself, looking lovely and far less businesslike in a purple blouse and periwinkle skirt with a matching coat. She even smiled, seemingly eager to get their evening off to a start. So Dub gave the customary sincere but not-too-eager praises for the young lady’s appearance, bid the reverend a warm farewell, and got them out the door.
They strolled to Lenox, and there moved south to Island Flavors, one of Dub’s favorite evening supper spots. Helena, the pixie-ish West Indian proprietress, did a steady business, but had one of the best kept secrets in Harlem. Her Caribbean fare was to die for, but the little dining room was always mellow and warm, humming with easy conversation and the well-measured swing
of jazz from Helena’s radio on a pedestal behind the counter.
So Dub played the culinary tour guide. He ordered curried goat for himself and Helena’s special fried chicken for Fralene. Both of them would have heaping sides of rice and peas. And if they had room after the meal proper, Dub would buy them each a slice of Helena’s mango bread for the road.
“You look like you’ve got some creole in you,” Dub offered, “what with your light skin and all.”
“Not a drop that I’m aware of,” Fralene said. “Then again, who knows? Whose blood I’ve got in me isn’t more than a matter of hearsay as far as I’m concerned.”
Dub smiled and nodded. “True enough. I just know the folk that claimed my mother back in her parish swore I couldn’t be her boy, ‘cause I was too dark to be Creole.”
“What about your father?” Fralene offered.
Dub nodded. “Mahogany. Antique.”
“You favor him, I guess. He still around?”
Dub shook his head. He forced his smile to remain, as he answered, “No. Died some years ago.”
Fralene caught his melancholy. Concern modulated the light in her big brown eyes. “Sorry to bring up bad memories.”
He looked at her again. She was beautiful. Her eyes were sad now, but her mouth still turned upward at the corners a little, suggesting curiosity. Dub decided to take a chance on her. “It was bad business. We were living in Haiti at the time. Chaco rebels. Didn’t like a North American Negro poking his educated nose into their business.”
He could still hear his father’s defiant curses and the laughter of the chacos; smell their greasy torches and the copper tang of his father’s blood as their machetes rose and fell.
Then dinner arrived, a fragrant feast of rice and brown peas flavored with ginger and coconut milk, a stew for him of chopped goatmeat, roasted in a thick, yellow-brown curry gravy, and fried chicken for her, glossy with a bright red Caribbean hot sauce of Helena’s own devising. The smell of the food and the light in Fralene’s eyes drove the terrible memories of Dub’s father’s death from his memory and he smiled.
“Smell that,” he said.
“Oh my,” Fralene said.
They ate.
She took to the dinner, and the two of them cleaned their plates. Dub was determined to get Fralene a sample of the mango bread, so he ordered a single thick slice to go, and they were off again into the cool October night, the still-warm bread in a piece of wax paper. Dub had some ideas for where to go next, but wasn’t sure if Fralene would be up for it.
“A trip to the islands needs a rum-and-coke,” he said.
Fralene looked at him sideways. “Lead the way.”
“Where to?”
Her smile was sly. “To whatever gin joint you’ve got in mind, Dr. Corveaux. Don’t worry, I won’t tell the police that our esteemed doctor drinks bootleg rum in Harlem cabarets.”
“I’ve got a bottle of the family label back at my place,” he offered.
She tightened her grip on his arm. “I’d sooner be seen in a speakeasy, doctor. After all, how would that look? Seeing your apartment on our very first evening together?”
He swallowed a chunk of mango bread. “It’d look pretty good to me.”
She slapped his shoulder. Dub chuckled. “Fine. Gin joint it is.”
So they strolled down Lenox to 130th Street, then turned eastward. They passed through Astor Row, past the strange, lovely houses that looked more like something from Dub’s New Orleans days with their porches and little green yards out front, and finally made their destination, a little basement ‘coffee house’ called Edmond’s. It was the sort of place where the liquor was imported in bottles from real distilleries—not the sort brewed in bathtubs or basement stills. Gingerbread Mae, the proprietress of the close little basement, welcomed Dub with a hard embrace and kisses on either cheek. Then she studied Fralene queerly and let her pass, seemingly in spite of her better judgment.
They sat at a small table in a corner, as far from the banjo and piano player in the rear corner of the space, who were picking and pounding out old-school ragtime while a pair of young, lanky boys from up Sugar Hill way (Dub had seen them before but couldn’t remember their names) tapped and swayed for the smoking, well-into-their-cups patrons.
Fralene studied her surroundings. “Charming.”
Dub couldn’t tell if she was being straight or joshing him. “Ethel Waters used to sing here,” he said, by way of justification. “Right here, going table to table.”
Fralene let that pass with an accepting smile. They talked some more about all sorts of things. He ordered a Cuba Libre—
a rum and Coca Cola with a splash of lime—and Fralene ordered a coffee with a shot of brandy. Once their drinks had arrived, Fralene grew serious.
“What do you think of everything going on up here?”
“Everything being?” Dub asked.
She shrugged, eyes on her coffee. “The turf wars over the numbers rackets. Drugs. Booze. Seems like a night can’t pass without hearing a gunshot or two. Sometimes worse.”
“Like that mess last night?” Dub asked, knowing where she headed.
“Horrible,” she said, shuddering a little. “As if dead men in the street weren’t bad enough, that poor mama losing her baby like that.”
Dub shrugged, trying to remain non-committal on the issue. Truly, though, he still rankled over the child’s death. He should have been warned. He should have been able to stop it. “It’s a tragedy,” he said slowly, “but there are still worse places to be in the world.”
“Like Haiti?” Fralene asked.
Dub’s eyes met hers. The question was so random, and yet so strangely pointed, that he couldn’t help but wonder precisely what she meant by it. “Pick your banana republic. Or, if you prefer, I’m sure you could talk to some folks in Germany who are still trying to get over the Great War.”
“But aren’t we supposed to be doing something better here?” Fralene asked, and he could tell that she was utterly sincere, and his heart broke for her because he knew she’d never be anything but disappointed in life.
“We as Americans?” Dub asked. “Or we as black Americans?”
“Both,” she answered.
Dub shrugged, sipped his rum and coke. “We try.”
“But it’s getting worse,” she countered.
“Sometimes it has to get worse before it gets better,” Dub said, then forced a smile. “What are you on about, Miss Farnes. You a crusader? Like your reverend uncle, Mr. Barnabus?”
She smiled a little, but the sincere light remained in her eyes. “A little, maybe. It just seems that for a while I saw things getting better... and now they’re sliding downhill.”
“Ebb and flow,” Dub said. “Up and down. That’s the way of the world.”
“But it seems like the up part was so brief. So short.”
“So what’s your plan, Miss Anne?” Dub asked, knowing that the epithet would probably annoy the hell out of her.
He wasn’t wrong. Her mouth set and her eyes grew serious. “Don’t call me that. I’ve heard enough of that just because I haven’t got an antique mahogany finish like you, Dr. Corveaux.”
“But you didn’t answer my question,” he pressed. “What’s your plan?”
“My uncle and I spoke with the mayor today. We’ve spoke with him a number of times. We’re trying to get him to push through a mandate for more black police officers uptown... maybe even some black detectives.”
“And what good will that do?”
“Don’t play dumb, doctor,” Fralene said. “I know you’re not dumb. You know how the people up here see the cops.”
He knew all too well. There were blacks in uniform, but most of the policemen who walked the beat in Harlem were Irish, bolstered by Italians and other sorts to round things out. The Irish cops in Harlem—hell, all over the city—still had ties to the Hell’s Kitchen and Chelsea gangs, and through them, to Tammany Hall. They were almost all on the take. And on the take
or not, their main purpose when on patrol was to keep the white downtowners who came up to Harlem for booze, jazz, and vice safe when they walked the streets. As for what darkies did to darkies when the cops weren’t around: that wasn’t their concern. Queen Bee Marie and Papa Solomon House could fill the gutters with rivers of Negro blood for all the Mickey Finns in blue cared.
So Fralene and her reverend uncle, no doubt bolstered by a few well-to-do and well-intentioned Harlemites, thought that badgering the mayor into putting more blacks in uniform would give Harlem a police force that actually policed.
It was a nice thought, but Dub wanted to tell Fralene that, even if she and her uncle got their way and the mayor hired more black cops, even promoted a few to detective, they’d most likely just end up on the payroll of the Queen Bee, or Solomon House, or one of the lesser black gangsters in Harlem. So they’d still have a police force tied up in the rackets; they’d just be tied up in black-owned, Harlem-based rackets instead of the concerns of the Italians or the Irish downtown.
But Dub didn’t say that. All he did was shrug and say, “I know how the people up here see the cops. And I know how the cops up here see the people. But I don’t see how the color of the cops is gonna change anything if it’s the force itself—and the system it’s part of—that’s dirty.”
“I didn’t peg you for a pessimist, doctor,” Fralene said, a little sadly.
He grinned, though he knew he wasn’t fooling her. “Well, I did peg you for a crusader, Miss Farnes... but I’ll try to forgive you for that.”
She managed to smile, but he could tell she wanted to say more; to convince him of something; to change his mind. Her sort were always after that: changing hearts and minds. Dub Corveaux was past the point of thinking that hearts and minds could be changed.
At least, not without a little hellfire and bloody knuckles.
Someone broke out a cornet and started blowing a hot, staccato melody in concert with the jangly banjo and the tinkly little juke joint piano. The rear of the little cellar dive was coming to life, tables and chairs pushed out of the way, bodies sweating and swaying in the dim lamplight.