Dark Stain

by Appel, Benjamin

  “And the wop bars. How much do you want?”

  Big Boy was silent, smoking his cigar. Finally, he spoke. “Four hundred for the church. Double for the ginmills and double that for the cop. The Jew son-of-a-bitch.”

  Bill was compelled to grin. Big Boy had set a price as if making a series of bets at a racetrack, doubling up each time. “Twenty eight hundred. Hell. That’s too much. You ought to do the Jew for nothing.”

  “What do you do for nothin’?”

  “He shot down Randolph in cold blood.”

  “And you’re the lil feller worryin’ your head off about a nigger. Who sent you here?”

  “Dent.”

  “You ain’t answered me. You, the Klan.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “How I know?”

  “Dent’ll speak up for me. He’ll tell you — ”

  “Lots of white folks tell you. I don’t trust no tell you.” His eyes rolled furiously and so swiftly he didn’t seem fat any more. “Okay, cop. Get the hell out of my place before I phone my lawyers about this lousy frame.”

  Bill blinked, speechless. “What? I’m no cop. This is no frame.”

  Big Boy heaved himself out of the leather chair and walked to the edge of the rug. He dropped his cigar down on the floor board and crushed the red coal under his shoe. Over his rounded shoulder, he looked at Bill. “I was just pullin’ your G string. I know you ain’t a cop. But I’m no sucker, white man, whoever you are. You aim trouble here in Harlem. A boycott on the wops, huh. Hurt the Jew in his religion. Kill the son-of-a-bitch copper. That’s no lil trouble. That’s big trouble. You say Dent send you here. That was good enough couple years ago but no more. How I know Dent ain’t sold me out to the whites? How I know you ain’t working for the white numbers? You come here to my place and give me a deal like you was a black man. You got plenty money — ”

  “It’s cash on the line.”

  “I got cash. You the Destiny outfit, ain’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Mister white man, I’m a law ‘biding citizen. I don’t want no part of no race riot.”

  For the first time Bill felt sick. He wasn’t going to make out with Big Boy after all; he’d have to phone Dent.

  “This here Sunday,” Big Boy continued, “all them church colored, all them Councilman Vincent people, they meetin’ in the Silver Trumpet Ballroom to go protest this Randolph killing. They get that ballroom rent free. Maybe I got something to do with that rent free, maybe I ain’t but they get it rent free. They mad as me, maybe madder — ”

  “Do you own the Silver Trumpet — ”

  “I don’t own nothin’ but the clothes on my back,” Big Boy hunched his shoulders and shook his head like a beaten old Negro. “And I’m thankful to the good Lawd for that.”

  Again, Bill was compelled to grin. It was startling how well Big Boy’d imitated “a good nigger.”

  “Since when are you a church Negro?” Bill demanded. “Did you get where you are by going to church? By praying? Or did you fight your way up? You think the cops’re going to stop killing colored people because of that meeting? They need a dose of their own lead like you said yourself.”

  “No.”

  “You can’t mean it. I’ll pay you what you want.”

  “No.”

  Bill sighed. “If I prove you can trust me — Let me make a call to Dent.”

  Big Boy waved his cigar at the telephone on the floor in the corner. Bill walked over and dialed Dent’s insurance office. When he was connected with Dent he said. “This is about that Harlem insurance. Yes. I’m at his place now. He won’t do business. No confidence.”

  Dent said, “Ask him if Aden comes over to okay you, will that fix it? Aden’ll be by in an hour unless he’s out. If he’s out I’ll ring you back in ten minutes.”

  Bill turned to Big Boy. “If Aden vouches for me, would that fix it?”

  Big Boy stared. “Lemme talk to Dent.” He pulled himself out of his chair and took the phone from Bill. Aden, Bill thought; the name was familiar, Aden? Aden? Ahmed Aden. The report flashed in his memory; there was a line in it about Big Boy speaking favorably of anti-white leaders; there was the name of some pro-Jap Negro imprisoned by the Government; there was Ahmed Aden. Christ, what an organization. How could they ever lose? He glanced at Big Boy still talking with Dent and the joy of making the numbers king toe the line poured in him like champagne. But only for a brief moment. Christ, he lamented; he’d been forced to phone Dent for help. He was finished. The bloody nigger’d balloxed him.

  Big Boy returned to his chair, picking up the tabloid from the rug. “We got to wait,” he said.

  The damn nigger, Bill thought. He was finished. He’d never be assistant exec. now. He should’ve stayed in the South. In the South, where you only met with white men on nigger business. Whoever heard of gabbing with niggers as if they were as good as white men? His years in the South rose in him like a big white cloud and the cloud shaped into a white hooded figure.

  It was almost one o’clock when the Negro woman who had admitted him into the house, came into the room. “Big Boy,” she said. “Dey’s a man to see you downstairs, that man Aden.”

  “I’ll go down myself,” Big Boy answered. “You wait here for me.” He left the room. Bill stepped over to the tabloid where it was lying in front of the leather chair. The newspaper was folded open on a story about Harlem’s marihuana dens. Bill picked up the newspaper and read:

  “A cesspool of crime and vice where lurid passions run their course throughout the night, only to end when the sun glints on the water of the Harlem River — these are the marihuana dens where youth is tempted to its ruin, and bodies both white and black are systematically degraded, bought and sold like the reefers themselves. Marihuana dens, bodies and reefers are all translated into cash and Big Boy Bose, Harlem’s Vice Lord, pockets the cash….” Bill dropped into the chair. Out of the tabloid’s pages, the faces of two white prostitutes and one Negro prostitute looked at him The three women had been arrested by the police in a marihuana den. Absorbed by the story, Bill didn’t hear Big Boy returning.

  “Hello,” Big Boy said. “You readin’ the press about me? The sons-bitches plasterin’ me all over their papers. Don’t jump up. I made up my mind. I’m cuttin’ the price for you. Four hundred for the Jew church. Four hundred for the wops. I’m giving you a break on them. Some of ‘em connect with the white numbers crowd. This is how I got it figured. I do the grills on Monday instead of Tuesday. Tuesday, I do the Jew church.”

  “Why the change?”

  “The grills is the big job. The big job, I like to do first. It ain’t much difference to you.”

  “All right. How many grills will you hit?”

  “Seventy about. I’ll need thirty boys. Two grills to a boy. I’ll pay five bucks a man. There’s no buck in it for me. Some of ‘em’ll be pulled in for disorderly conduct but I won’t charge you for that. They’re going to begin Monday afternoon and hit them grills right through midnight.”

  “Don’t you think there’d be less chance of arrests if they hit the wops at one clip?”

  “You’re right but what’ll the dicks think? They think a big guy’s behind those boys. This way, the boys scatter out all over Monday afternoon and night — it look like it runnin’ itself and I keep my skirt clear. You see that paper? They after me all the time.”

  “How much do you want for the cop?”

  “Two hundred. One grand for the three jobs. That’s dirt cheap. I want it now.”

  Bill smiled. “Of course.” He counted out the thousand dollars and Big Boy took them, saying:

  “I want another grand. Not for me but for Aden. He need money all the time for his fight.”

  “One grand. I haven’t got it on me.”

  “You bring it here tomorrow at eleven o’clock.”

  “Why that much? I’ll split it with you.”

  “You split nothin’. One grand.” He yawned and swooped up the tabloid. “One
grand tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER 6

  AS SAM rang the bell outside of Johnny Ellis’ flat on Sunday afternoon, the years in which he hadn’t seen Johnny piled between him and the door like sandbags. Since Tuesday he had spoken to Johnny three times over the telephone; they’d listened to each other’s voices and the years of their separate lives had been between them.

  The door swung open and Johnny Ellis stood on the threshold, his hand outstretched. Sam gripped Johnny’s hand. “How’ve you been, Johnny?” he said and smiled at a brown-skinned stranger who was thinner than Sam remembered. Johnny’s cheeks were sunken but the cheekbones still gleamed like copper-plated wedges; all the bone structure clean and well-defined in the long face and head; back in high-school Sam had thought of Johnny as the descendant of some African chieftain; it was a high-school kid’s romanticism but some of this old feeling suddenly swirled through him and Johnny wasn’t a stranger any more. “How’ve you been?” Sam cried.

  “Can’t complain,” Johnny said, leading the way into his flat. They passed a dark kitchen with a mimosa yellow curtain on the single window and stepped into a living-room that was narrow as a packing-box. A plushy couch was against one wall. There was an easy chair, a walnut table and a polished silver sun filtered through the window on the shaft. “Sam, have you made up your mind about seeing Clair?”

  “No,” Sam said, sitting down in the middle of the couch. “It’s almost too late. The meeting’s coming off in a few hours.”

  “Clair told me he’d be at his home up to half-past three.”

  Johnny consulted his wrist watch. “You got an hour and a half, Sam. How about some coffee?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “It’s no trouble. The wife left a pot on the stove before she beat it with the kid.”

  “You think I ought to talk to Clair?”

  “You’re the doctor, Sam.”

  “That’s what my girl wants me to do. See Clair. Resign if I have to but what am I? A Boy Scout?” He shrugged despondently. “How old’s your kid?”

  “Four and it’s a boy.” Johnny grinned proudly. “A big boy. Sam, I ought to tell you right away that a buddy of mine’s coming here at three o’clock, a guy called Butch Cashman. He’s in Local 65 with me. We’re on a couple committees together in the union. If you don’t want to meet him — ”

  “Is this guy going to the meeting with you?”

  “Yes. We’re going to make a report for the next union meeting.”

  “Holy smoke, it gets bigger all the time. Now your union’s getting in on it. Are there many unions getting in on it?”

  “What do you mean by getting in on — ”

  “Sticking their noses in!”

  “I see,” Johnny said quietly. “Sam, we got white and black in the union. And anything that might end up in a race riot — we got to stick our noses in. Most of our Negro members live right here in Harlem. Sam, why don’t you see Clair? What’s the sense chewing the rag with me?”

  “I don’t feel like resigning. That’s all. I’ve gone over it a hundred times. Every time I got through talking to you on the phone, I’d drive myself nuts. God Almighty, I want to square myself with people like you and Clair but if I see Clair, I’d report it to Headquarters myself. I’m playing fair with the Department. They’ve been fair to me. Okay, I resign. Then, what? I say my piece to Clair, to Vincent. And what happens? They’d think what you thought: Miller isn’t as bad a cop as some; but just the same didn’t he play follow-master when O’Riordan started swinging — ”

  “Sam, I believe you honestly tried to save Randolph.”

  “But I shot him. Don’t forget that.” He stretched his legs. “I ducked out on my girl today. I like her a lot,” he said gloomily. “But she’s one of these tough idealists and I don’t mean maybe. There’s nothing practical about Suzy. She keeps telling me I’ve got to feel right with myself even if I lose my job. You know what she wants me to do, Johnny? She wants me to chase after the people who printed that leaflet knocking me. Boy, is she practical!”

  The doorbell rang and Johnny scowled. “Butch is ahead of time. He always is. What do you want me to do about him?”

  “Let him in.” He sighed heavily as Johnny hurried to the door. On the wall opposite to where he was sitting, he now noticed the framed Van Gogh, one of the prints distributed as premiums by the N. Y. Evening Post in the late ‘30’s. Sam stared at Van Gogh’s ruddy-faced young man in the yellow jacket, yellow as a burst of sunlight.

  Johnny came back with a white man. “Sam. this is Butch Cashman, guy I told you was coming.”

  Cashman’s small tawny-colored eyes met Sam’s. He was a slender man of thirty with a shock of dark blond hair. “Pleased to make your acquaintance as the bullet remarked when it got the Nazi general,” he boomed at Sam in a deep voice that seemed several sizes too large for him. It was a voice that Sam associated with hefty six-footers not with this spry man in a double-breasted blue suit. “Sam, what do you do for a living? That’s something I always ask when I meet somebody.”

  “I’m a cop.”

  Cashman laughed. “That’s a hot one.”

  “I’m not kidding. I’m Sam Miller,” he pronounced distinctly.

  Cashman laughed louder. “You’re the cop who shot Randolph and I’m the guy who shot Lincoln.”

  “Butch,” Johnny said. “He’s not kidding. He’s not kidding.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  Cashman shoved his hands into his pants pockets. “You guys friends?”

  “We’ve been friends for a long time,” Johnny said.

  “How come, Johnny?” Cashman said. “You never mentioned it to me. Boy, you’re a corker. Here we’re going to report on this cop and the meeting and you play clam. How come?”

  Johnny shrugged. “Don’t bother me, Butch.”

  “Just a great personal friendship,” Cashman said sarcastically. He winked at Sam. “You don’t look like a rough-neck but I guess that’s because you’re not in the old uniform. Cee-rist, but you’re in a jam.” His face was animated by a sarcastic humor. Sam was irritated. This Butch Cashman struck him as one of those wise guy hangers-on to be seen on any theatre district corner. He stood up to go. “Not leaving?” Cashman said. “Miller, don’t get sore. I don’t know you from a hole in the ground but you’re okay with me. You’re okay because I find you here. In this flat with Johnny. Looks like I barged in but me and Johnny got to go to the meeting. We’re on a committee — ”

  “I’ve told him, Butch,” Johnny said.

  “Miller, do me a favor and squat,” Cashman almost pleaded, screwing up his eyes. “Cee-rist, don’t let ‘em!”

  “Don’t let them what?” Sam asked.

  “The guys that run the stew pot,” Cashman said earnestly. “I know cops backwards and forwards. I’ve seen young guys like you come on the force, just depression generation kids, good kids lots of ‘em, some of ‘em even sort of progressive. Get what I mean? It’s in the air and even a cop got to breathe what’s all around him. But what happens? The rookie gets assigned to some precinct run by some son-of-a-bitch on wheels with his own ideas but strictly between you and me, they ain’t ideas. They’re prejudices and before you know it the rookie’s another mutt in a uniform — ”

  “Where do you get off?” Sam snapped. “You’re not down in Union Square.”

  Butch Cashman only smiled. “Ain’t you heard? Union Square’s through for the duration.”

  “Butch, lay off,” Johnny begged. “Sam isn’t supposed to talk over what happened with anybody. That’s a po-lice regulation and he isn’t getting in dutch in my house.”

  “Yeh, it’s a great personal friendship.” Cashman sat down in a chair under the Van Gogh print and hauled out a tattered pack of cigarettes. “You guys want one? Sam, have you seen The People’s Advocate or The Harlem Independent News?”

  “I’ve seen them.”

  “Know what I think? I think you ought to come to the meeting with me and John
ny.”

  Johnny shook his head at Cashman. “I need a club for you, Butch. Sam’s in a bad enough spot.”

  Cashman grinned and said:

  “Who ain’t? The whole God damn world’s in a bad enough spot.”

  “He’d pep talk a man waiting for his wife to come to bed on a Saturday night,” Johnny explained to Sam. “He’d — ”

  “Hell I would. I draw the line somewhere, don’t I, Sam? But no fooling, Miller, people in Harlem have just about reached the limit in what they’re going to take from the lil boys in blue. Ain’t that so, Johnny?”

  “Yeh. I’ve heard people saying that what Harlem needs is a riot to show the Mayor. Sam, my wife wouldn’t stay here to meet you. She believes you’re a killer like it says in the Negro press. She thinks I’m wacky to let you come here. That’s how it is all over Harlem. I tried to tell her that a Negro cop, that Detective Wensley, he would have shot Randolph as soon as he smelled the knife, let alone seen it. And she — Aw, what’s the difference?”

  “What’d she say?” Cashman said. “Don’t worry about Sam’s feelings. Cee-rist, we’re not living in no bullshit time. What’d she say?”

  Sam nodded and Johnny continued. “Said I ought to stop being ‘a good nigger’ because Miller was nice to me in high school.”

  Cashman dug his hand into the inside pocket of his jacket and took out several clippings. “This one’s from The People’s Advocate.”

  “Butch, I told you Sam’s seen them!” Johnny’s lips squeezed together angrily.

  “I want to read it, Johnny.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Let him read it,” Sam said. “He can’t get my goat.”

  “I’m not out to get your goat,” Cashman said, lowering his head and reading: “ ‘Just another “N…. r” killed. Well we don’t think so. Randolph was a human being, an American citizen. Today he is dead, the victim of a Hitler Gestapo cop. We the citizens demand immediate suspension of Officer Samuel Miller and all the other officers who were accessories to this horrible crime. We demand an immediate trial. We will accept no less. We won’t take it any longer. We refuse to be law abiding citizens if there are to be special laws for the Negro people. This is the final warning — if the officials of New York don’t make the laws work the same for all people, black or white, they must accept the full blame for any consequences.’ ”