Hayden was saying, “Darton’s background is rather checkered. He comes of solid middle western farming stock but you wouldn’t know it. He worked in the Chicago stockyards and went through college at night. He was recruited into the Communist Party — ”
“Really?”
“Subsequently, the organization recruited him.” Hayden smiled. “He was doing a good job for us until the Communist Party caught up with him, expelling him. A very useful man, although he still has some radical ideas. He’s an American equivalent of the left-wing black fronters Hitler was compelled to purge.”
“I consider myself warned.”
“One other point. We have found out that Miller spoke to Deputy Inspector Coombs this morning at Police Headquarters. Miller wanted to resign but finally accepted a leave of absence from active duty. Later, he showed up at the office of the Harlem Equality League and volunteered to work for them.”
One by one, Bill enumerated the sources of information Hayden was so casually lumping together: Some contact at Police Headquarters. Some contact in the Harlem Equality League. Leg-men, ear-men all over, he thought. How was Hayden getting the facts? The bastard was too big to risk a sweat. Christ, how was Hayden getting the facts? It was Dent! Dent was the intermediary collecting the dope and shooting it to Hayden.
“Miller,” Hayden said, “has set himself the task of discovering the authorship of our leaflets. His initiative presents a minor complication.”
“He’ll be out of the way by Wednesday.”
“That isn’t the point. We must always be prepared to exploit every potential. Bose’s competition with the white numbers people and their henchmen among the Italian bars is an example of what I mean.”
“That’s true. But I can’t see how the Jew’s important?”
“Everything is important!” Hayden contradicted him. “Miller will make the headlines this week. His murder will have repercussions throughout the city. Those headlines will reach millions. Isn’t it important for us to influence those headlines?”
“Of course. How smart’s the Jew?”
“We know Miller is a college graduate — ” Bill thought, you know he’s a college graduate, you bastard! “ — A City College product. The standards are fairly high there. Miller should be above average.”
“If he’s smart, there’s a chance, not much of a chance that he might dig up a few facts.”
“Precisely.”
“It’s Monday night now. He’s got one full day or a day and a half to dig up something. Not very likely. But suppose we got somebody to phone him Tuesday morning, Wednesday morning, too, somebody pretending to be a nigger, an outraged nigger griped at Jews and who’ll threaten Miller’s life? Miller, being a kike and yellow’ll tell the police. Then, when he’s wiped, nobody’ll be too surprised. We’ll influence the headlines: NIGGERS REVENGE DEAD NIGGER and we’ll also scare the kike so yellow he won’t get anywheres investigating us.”
Hayden took the pipe out of his mouth. “I congratulate you, Bill,” he said formally.
Bill smiled. Christ, he’d prove to Hayden that he was a brain guy, too. He’d prove that he’d make a good assistant exec.
“How well can you imitate Negro speech?”
“What?”
“You are going to be the Negro telephoning Miller.”
“Me!”
“Phone Miller early.”
Bill stared at Hayden. By Christ, that was his place in this Harlem job. He was somebody to do the two-by-four chores, a two-by-four operative. Dent was ten times more important. Even the nigger Aden was more important. Oh, this bastard Hayden, this pipe-smoking bastard, this cool fish, this blue-blooded bastard stepping on him like dirt! The gall to use him as nigger lips, nigger lips on a phone. Assistant exec? A bastard pipedream, that’s all it was. He’d never be anybody, never get anywheres. “I’ll phone Miller,” he said, racked by the need to demonstrate to Hayden that he had more to him than an operative. “Mr. Hayden, I may be wrong but Big Boy’s a slimy bastard if there ever was one. I don’t know if the organization is shadowing him or not but if it isn’t, I think we ought to.”
“Bose won’t trick us.”
“The report you read me doesn’t report a hundredth of how much that nigger hates whites. He isn’t just uppity. He’s a crazy nigger, as psychopathic as the nigger the Jew shot. We can’t be too careful about niggers. That goes for Aden, too!” he blurted.
“I didn’t ask your opinion concerning Aden. You put your case vehemently but I refuse to accept it. I’ll meet you here tomorrow night at nine.” He stood up. “By the way, this will interest you. Governor Heney will fly north in a few days. We will have a reception for the Governor and perhaps I will meet your wife then. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” Bill said. When Hayden was gone he thought wearily that soon he would be with Isabelle. Only with her, there were no worries, no fears, no frustrations. He grinned sourly, suddenly struck by the fact that Hayden never said ex-Governor Heney. It was always Governor Heney. Governor Heney, Bill mocked: Governor and Grand Kleagle of the South; Governor Hayden, Grand Kleagle of the East, Kleagle of the new American empire in the making. And what about himself? Spittoon cleaner, messenger boy, lowest of the low, another op, a jerk, a son-of-a-bitch, lower than a nigger.
The next morning he was in a phone booth, gazing through the booth door at the subwayites trooping into the United Cigars Store where he was and buying their day’s supply of tobacco. Their coins jingled on the glass counter. They pocketed their change and hurried out to the turnstiles in the Hotel St. George. Fervently, Bill wished he was one of them, a clerk, a real estate collector as he had once been. To be some lousy nobody on his way to some lousy nowheres. A voice buzzed in the receiver he had pressed against his ear. “Hello,” the voice said. “Who is dis?” It was the kike’s mother, he thought.
“I’d like to talk to Sam Miller,” he said.
“He’s sleeping.”
“I’m calling from the Harlem Equality League. Will you please wake him up?”
“What you say?”
“Harlem Equality League.”
“Oh, them. One minute.”
Bill tapped at his teeth with the fingernails of his left hand. So the kike was sleeping, he thought; what was the kike like; he had nerve anyway running to the Harlem Equality League; a real united kike-nigger front.
“This is Sam Miller,” a man’s voice said.
Bill covered the mouthpiece with his hand and through the screen of his fingers mumbled. “Sam Miller?”
“Yes. Speak louder please. I can hardly hear you. Is this Mr. Clair?”
“I got a message for you, you God damn white bastard. You dirty Jew kike. Get out of Harlem if you’re aimen to live. We gonna kill all you white bastards.” He hung up, walked out of the booth into the store, purchased two packs of Dunhill cigarettes for Isabelle.
Outside, on Henry Street he blinked up at the blue sky whipping in the morning breeze and yawned. He had forgotten his earlier wish about being a clerk.
The elevator in the St. George lifted him up to his floor. He strode down the corridor, unlocked his door. In blue and gold sunshine Isabelle was sleeping on the double bed. She was curled up on his side, her head on his pillow, the sun gilding the curved line of her body, specking her black hair. Her face was in shadow, her lips swollen a little from sleep. He smiled at her, glad he wasn’t due at Big Boy’s until eleven o’clock. He stretched both arms and when he looked at her again she was awake. She hadn’t stirred a finger but her eyes were open. “Good morning,” he said.
“Where were you?”
“Out for a morning walk. How about breakfast?”
“Since when do you indulge in morning walks?” She lay motionless as a cat. Only her sleepy coral-colored lips moved, only her eyelids fluttered.
“Since this morning. I’m getting too fat, Isa.”
“You were getting fat but that was before we came to New York.”
“Think I’ve lost
weight here? We’ve only been here since Friday.”
“Since Friday,” she said sullenly.
He stalked to the mirror and peered into his grinning face. He pinched his cheek, poked out his stomach and patted it.
“Bill,” she called.
“At your service.”
“Don’t behave like some grotesque fool.”
He walked to the windows. “You can’t start a quarrel with me, sweet. Aren’t you happy we left the Commodore? What a view.” Below, far below the blue sun-shot air, the green bluish Harbor waters ran with light and he remembered Colonel Bretherton’s speech to him in the A.R.A. offices that first day in New York. He saw water and sky and the red ferries to Staten Island and the coal barges from the tidewater Jersey towns and the New Jersey shore and the puffing smokestacks of the factories and the spring-green hump of Staten Island like a whale on the water and Bowling Green in Manhattan and the skyscrapers white with light, cliffs of ice with a million burning windows and the Hudson River and the East River converging together in the Harbor. “Wonderful,” he said. “I feel optimistic every morning. Unusual, isn’t it?” He ran to the bed, flopped down and bent his face over her to kiss her lips. Her lips were cold and unresponsive and a chill circled his heart for he recalled how sensual her lips had been only a minute ago when she had been sleeping. “Isabelle,” he pleaded with her.
“You!”
Angered, he swept the covers from her, shouting raucously. “Wake up, old girl. Get some life into you.”
She lifted the blanket and sheet back over her body. He had seen her full breasts and upper body behind her filmy green nightgown. She wasn’t alluring to him now. He felt that he could have smashed both fists into her breasts, beaten her with a club, screamed like a maniac at her, anything to change the distant expression in her eyes. “Don’t you want to get up?” he forced himself to speak calmly.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t annoy me.”
“Isabelle, for Christ’s sake, don’t start in sulking on a day like this.”
“What will I do on a day like this? Wait for your highness to get in when and if he does get in.”
“I’ve told you a dozen times to be patient. As soon as we leave this town — ”
“ — you’ll bare your heart to me.”
“I will. Honest, Isabelle.”
She sat up in bed. “What is your schedule for today if I may ask?”
“You got up on the wrong side.” He straddled the chair at the desk, facing her, smiling wistfully. “You were sleeping so snugly on my side of the bed as if you loved me, even asleep.”
“What is your schedule?”
“Oh, Christ, what’s the use. I’ve got an appointment at eleven. I may have to be busy all evening.”
“Bill, why did you bring me to New York?”
“Oh,” he groaned.
“Why did you?”
“I love you. What would I do without you?”
“What you are doing now.”
“Isabelle — ”
“I suppose you needed some woman and I’m it. Somebody to be kept in a hotel room. A hotel woman with whom you can fornicate at your convenience.”
He glared at her. In all their three years together, she had never spoken in such a tone and in such words to him. “You’re completely unfair to me. Damn unfair. Damn, I know where I heard that gem you just used. Theresa! Your cousin Theresa. That damn old maid, that spinster nun! I know. At that wedding Sunday back home. There was talk of what would the young girls do with the boys in Army.” He saw she wasn’t listening to him, pretending not to listen, and his fury was black in his eyes and the black was riven by Theresa’s face, her silver crucifix around her neck. “Theresa! She and her Saviour Lord Jesus! She said something about it being better to burn than to fornicate. That’s where you got the gospel message.” He chose his words deliberately, anything to make her acknowledge that she was listening to him. “Damn good we left home! The holy Carreaus, damn ‘em all!”
“You contemptible person,” she lashed out.
“Hah hah, contemptible. Damn you with ‘em, you bloody Catholic bitch!” White and stricken, he lifted his hand before his lips as if he would snatch back what he had said. Then his hand dropped and he staggered backwards until the desk hit him. Staring at her, he chewed on his lips. “Isabelle — ” Tears were streaming from her eyes but she didn’t wipe them away. Through the tears she stared at him and piercingly, their life together, all the goings and comings, the weekends on the old Carreau mansion owned by her lawyer brother with its pecan and banana trees but no more sugar acreage, all the Carreaus and their relatives, and his prestige with a few of them who suspected the nature of his work, ex-Governor Heney visiting in New Orleans with the local A.R.A. arranging intimate parties in his honor, and always Isabelle with him, Isabelle on his arm, Isabelle smiling at him, Isabelle loving him — everything flickered in his brain that second, all the years and all the days, a host of candles in a darkness. For a darkness was upon him for now he knew that she had loved him truly and he had never given her what her love demanded. That was the darkness at last acknowledged, at last admitted into the most secret coil of thought. Still she stared at him and he felt his guilt, he who had made her childless.
Her mouth twisted open like a drowning woman’s and she flung herself over on her side, burying her face in his pillow. And again he lifted his hand before him as if to give her at long last what she had long wanted and again his hand dropped.
Downstairs, Bill bought a newspaper, folded it under his arm and stepped out to the bright street. The sun was yellow on the cab rank and he climbed into the lead cab. He gave the driver One Hundred and Twenty-Fifth Street as an address in a flat morning voice as if he had travelled there for years. He spread the newspaper across his knees, refusing to think about Isabelle. The black war headlines danced in front of his eyes but he didn’t focus on them, turning to the second page, to the third and a small headline attracted his restless eye: PROMINENT SOUTHERNERS DENOUNCE LATEST LYNCHING. He read through the story quickly. The organization was busy all right, he thought and wondered why Heney was coming north? Hayden hadn’t said. Heney, of course, wanted to be on the scene when things were breaking in Harlem. But why? There must be some connection with the lynchings South and the riot planned for Harlem? Heney would return to D.C. and in a week or so somebody would rise up in Congress and make a speech about the North. Bill knew what would be said. It would be something about the North minding its own business; the North ought to stop all these protest meetings and sending delegations to Washington; the Negro problem was a serious problem and nobody on God’s earth had a right to tell the people of the South that their policy of racial exclusiveness was not a proper principle; et cetera. Christ, Bill decided; that was the real reason the organization was working in Harlem. To rub the niggers into Northern noses. That was the insider’s strategy, Hayden, that secretive bastard, hadn’t bothered to reveal to him. A Harlem race riot’d be a blow not only to all the nigger-lovers up north, the kikes, the Reds, the New Dealers, but to all those turncoat Southerners who were shouting against lynching these days.
He glanced at another headline: ITALIAN BAR BOYCOTT BEGINS IN HARLEM; on the same page there was another headline: TWO WHITE MEN BEATEN BY MUGGERS. He read both stories almost simultaneously. The first story reported that forty-two owners of bars and grills, all Italians, had notified the police of the beginning of a boycott movement and had appealed to all responsible Negro organizations to protest such a boycott in the interest of national unity. National unity, Bill thought bitterly; up in this bastard North, niggers’d soon be eating with whites and taking out white women. The second story reported that two white men had been beaten during the preceding night. One attack had taken place on One Hundred and Thirty-First Street and Eighth Avenue, the other on One Hundred and Forty-Sixth Street and Lenox Avenue. The names of the beaten men were given. Meyer Gershoff. Max Witkin. Bill
gripped the newspaper with tightening fingers, reading: “The shooting of Fred Randolph by Officer Samuel Miller may have something to do with these mugger outrages. Officer Miller is of Jewish faith and both Mr. Gershoff and Mr. Witkin stated that they were called a number of insulting epithets.”
The damn kikes, Bill thought, reading with satisfaction that Meyer Gershoff had been attacked on the same street where Randolph had been killed. Both of Gershoff’s eyes had been blacked, his nose broken and he had been stabbed repeatedly in the arms and legs. At the hospital, he had informed the police that six or seven Negroes had jumped on him as he was coming home from his grocery, that he thought that a Negro in a blue slipover jersey had been loitering in front of his store all day. The muggers had ordered him to get out of Harlem. As for Max Witkin, he, too, like the grocer was accustomed to closing up late at night. Bill folded up the newspaper. The damn kikes should’ve been killed, he considered. But who’d done the job on them? Was it the work of muggers? Was Big Boy operating on his own? Big Boy! It was Big Boy, that damn nigger ape, sly as an animal. Bill slumped into the cab’s leather seat. How in hell was he going to do business with Big Boy? Wasn’t he a white man? How could any white man know what a nigger’d do next?
As the cab drove Bill across Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan, the Negro delegated to do the synagogue job was strolling down Lenox Avenue on his way to a side-street poolroom. His name was Fleming. He was a short squat man of thirty-two, by profession a number book in Big Boy’s organization. His face was scarred on the left cheek. Five years previous, a girl Fleming had tricked into prostitution with the old marriage act — he had promised to marry her but first he had to pay off some debts or go to jail and he knew how she could help him get the money from some friends — had slashed him with his own razor. Fleming was whistling as he walked. His suit was gabardine, his felt hat white as snow and wide-brimmed as a sombrero. In his wallet he was carrying three of the A.R.A. twenty dollar bills. Under his arm, he clasped a bundle wrapped in brown papers. He swung his shoulders as he walked, admiring the better cars. Some day, he would have a big Packard with an octoroon in the driver’s seat. Fleming alternated in his dream life between an octoroon and a white blond.
Dark Stain Page 15