Sugar Pop Moon

by John Florio

  Like every other storefront in Harlem, the Hy-Hat Social Club is decorated for the holidays. Old Man Santiago must have spent the morning stringing lights around the window and hanging a glowing Santa face above the door. Inside, wreaths line the walls and red ribbons hang from the brass lights overhead.

  I’m sitting with Santi at a booth in the dining room, trying to sort out Denny Gazzara’s bait-and-switch. Through the double doors on my left, where four ping-pong tables are lined up, I can hear Old Man Santiago showing Billy Walker how to backhand a slam, which is a joke because the old man couldn’t hit a lobbed grapefruit. The place is hopping; the bouncing ping-pong balls sound like Peg Leg Bates rattling the stage at the Cotton Club.

  I started coming here when I was eighteen, a freshman at City College. I loved it from day one. I would show up after school to shoot pool and then come back after dinner to work with Old Man Santiago and Pearl in the kitchen. Nobody here ever seemed to notice I’m albino. In this place, I’m just another oddball.

  It was a hot July weekend when Old Man Santiago told me he was shutting down the place for good. He was on his knees, cleaning out the inside of the icebox. A canvas work apron covered his flat chest and large belly; sweat lined his thick upper lip and soaked the wispy gray hairs on the top of his head. When he closed the icebox, his bony shoulders dropped and he sighed.

  “There are other clubs, Jersey,” he said, measuring his words as if he were a father telling his son he was walking out on the family. “You’ll move on from this place.”

  I didn’t get it, probably because I didn’t want to get it. He seemed to have enough money to keep the place open; we all paid dues so we were never short on ping-pong paddles, pool cues, pop, hot dogs, whatever we wanted. It took Santi, who at the time was a twelve-year-old kid in knickers, to tell me that the dues barely covered the rent and his old man had been floating us with the little cash he had left over from his tailoring business. I guess Harlem wasn’t missing enough buttons to keep things going. That’s when I decided to help the old man out. He practically raised me—at least during the evening hours. I can’t deny that once I found the Hy-Hat, I spent more time there than I did with my own father.

  That next evening I threw on my nicest jacket, spit-shined my black oxfords, and took the subway to the Three Aces Restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen to see Jimmy McCullough. I stood in front of him, my knees shaking inside my baggy pants, and told him I needed a job. Everybody up in Harlem knew what Jimmy did for a living. He’d show up every Sunday, walk from juice joint to juice joint, and collect bags of cash from the bar owners in exchange for hooking them up with bootleggers like Owney Madden. He was always decked out in a tailored suit and spats, his face clean-shaven and his short sideburns waxed into place. We’d never seen Jimmy raise his hands to anybody, and his droopy brown eyes could almost make him seem tired and innocent, but there was no question as to who pushed the buttons. At the time, I just figured that the poor suckers who got the brunt of Jimmy’s stick deserved it.

  “I’ll hijack trucks, I’ll do whatever it takes,” I told him, clasping my hands together and practically praying to him. He was my only hope at saving the Hy-Hat. “Just don’t tell my father or Old Man Santiago.”

  “I don’t hijack trucks,” Jimmy said, standing in the glow of the neon sign in front of the Three Aces, swigging from a bottle of cherry soda. “It’s distasteful.” As the last word came out, his lips, blood red from the pop, twisted with disgust.

  He brought me into the restaurant, which was more crowded than the A train on a weekday morning. He had his own booth in the back; its padded red upholstery was so new it smelt like a freshly oiled baseball glove. He ordered me a cola and gave me a short lecture on how to be an upstanding outlaw. Being Jimmy, he also had the balls to give me advice on being a respectable albino.

  “I don’t care how white you are, you’re still a nigger,” he said, looking me over and shaking his head. “You know that, right?” He waited for an answer. “You know you’re a nigger.”

  I wanted a job, so I nodded enthusiastically.

  “That’s right,” he said, almost as if he needed to be sure himself. “You’re a nigger.” He spread some butter on a hunk of bread, bit into it, and kept talking as he chewed. “The cops don’t like coons. And they won’t give a buffalo shit that those splotches on your fucked-up face are as white as Sister Hannigan’s ass.”

  I laughed because I thought it was funny—at least the part about Sister Hannigan—but I’ve since found out that Jimmy always talks about Sister Hannigan’s ass, or her tits, or, when he’s really riled, her twat. Maybe she taught him in grammar school or something.

  “You better smile if you even sniff a cop. Kiss their asses with those pink mambo lips of yours.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, my knees still shaking under the table but a smile stretching the corner of my mouth. If he was telling me how to duck the cops, he was going to give me work.

  “I’ll tell you something, kid,” he said. “Those bleached nuts of yours must be the size of coconuts for you to come down here and ask for work. You wanna work for me, you’re welcome to it. But let me tell you something. If you ever think about screwing me for as much as one red cent, I’ll kill you in ways you can’t imagine.”

  That night he gave me a loaded snub-nosed revolver, a pair of brass knuckles, and a grunt job at a watering hole behind a butcher shop on Ninth Avenue. For months, I’d hurry out of class and roll kegs in and out of the stock room. He paid me well, so it wasn’t long before I’d quit college, come clean to my father, and found my own place to live. The Feds eventually shut down the bar, but I’m still working for Jimmy and still using the money to keep the Hy-Hat in ping-pong balls and ice cream cones. And I’ve never stopped smiling my pink ass off whenever I cross paths with a cop.

  Tonight the Hy-Hat is as busy as ever and I’m in the back booth. The kids keep this table open for me because it doesn’t have a reading lamp. My eyes are grateful.

  I lean against the wooden backrest, which rises two feet above my shoulders. The table is littered with pretzel salt and I make a mental note to tell Old Man Santiago to be sure the kids wipe the place down after closing time. I suck some pop and wait for Santi to answer me.

  “What’s my move in Philly?” I ask him again. I don’t want to drag him into my mess, but a chess champ has got to be better than I’d be at planning this out. “I figure I’ll make a ruckus. If I can rile him up, maybe he’ll start looking for me.”

  Santi nods in agreement. “You don’t have many other options.”

  “I also don’t have time. Jimmy’s back on Wednesday.”

  “That gives us six days,” Santi says.

  “It gives me six days,” I say. I feel like Santi’s older brother; I’m not about to let him catch a beating in Philly. “You have to watch the Pour House.”

  “Let Diego run it,” he says. “You’ll need me down there. The minute somebody needles you, you’ll lose your sanity.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I say, even though he’s got a point. I fly off the handle at albino wisecracks, and it’s a safe bet I won’t make it out of there without somebody taking a potshot at me. “I’ll come home the second I settle up with Gazzara.”

  “That might not be so easy,” Santi says. “I suppose there’s a shot you could negotiate some kind of mutual reciprocity. But if Gazzara’s half as mean as Jimmy, he’ll cut your nuts off.”

  “He can’t be as bad as Jimmy. Nobody is.”

  “True,” Santi says.

  The way he looks at me reminds me of how he used to say he wanted to be like me when he grew up. I’ll always love the kid for that, probably because he’s the only one who ever said it.

  “You’re going down there without any backup at all?” Santi asks.

  “I can handle Gazzara alone,” I say. And I almost believe it.

  But I hate to go without the kid. If I were to leave him here, I’d be dumping the only ally I’ve got left. Pearl is a
lready gone. When I went to kiss her last week, she backed off and scrunched her face. “We’re friends, Jersey,” she said. “That’s it.”

  I didn’t know what to say, because she’d gotten awfully friendly the night Old Man Santiago left us alone to close the Hy-Hat. We spent an hour in the kitchen, necking. “You don’t taste albino,” she’d said, which, if I hadn’t been so deeply in love, would have really gotten my goat.

  When she pulled away from me, I felt like screaming and vomiting at the same time. I wanted to drive my fist through my own face and watch myself in the mirror as the blood poured out of my unpigmented skin. Ever since I was a kid in Hoboken, I’ve known that no woman would have me if she thought our kids might turn out like me. I’m not saying that’s what flashed through Pearl’s mind, but I’d have sure felt better if I’d been able to offer her a full set of genes.

  I shoved her out the door, but as I pushed I was hoping she’d cry out that she couldn’t live without me. She didn’t. I watched her walk down 122nd Street and almost begged her to take me with her, just so I wouldn’t have to be alone again.

  Santi is staring at me, hoping I’ll change my mind.

  “I’ve got nothing to lose, Santi,” I say. “But you do.”

  Again, we don’t say anything. We sip our sodas.

  Santi puts his glass on the table. “I’ll lay low,” he says. “And I’ll only stay until you find Gazzara. Then I’ll come back, I promise.”

  I know him, he’s not going to let up until I cave. “Okay,” I say. “But I’m doing all the dirty work.”

  “I’ll just be there for backup,” he says, but he doesn’t look me in the eye when he says it.

  “I mean it, Santi. You’re not part of this. Besides, I can take care of myself.”

  Santi nods, but he knows I haven’t been in a fight since my father taught me to box nearly a dozen years ago. Maybe I can still throw some punches, but the only real heat I’ll be packing is a dusty revolver, a pair of brass knuckles, and a mouth that’s far bigger than the bleached coon standing behind it.

  “Don’t worry about me, Santi.”

  I lean back in the dark and hope the kid can’t read the fear in my face.

  I park the Auburn on Market Street across from the Broad Street Station. Santi’s asleep; he nodded off as we were passing Trenton. His feet are pressed up against the dashboard and he’s using his overcoat as a pillow. I nudge him on the shoulder and he stirs, rubbing his eye with his fist.

  He squints up at the Excelsior. “Is this the hotel?”

  “Yep. And that’s where Gazzara got off the train,” I say, pointing across the street. “Let’s check in and find a bar.” I’m figuring if anybody is going to know a bootlegger, it’ll be the owner of a speakeasy.

  I step out of the car and the cold December air feels like a plague of mosquitoes stinging my chapped cheeks. I’m wearing my chesterfield, so I pull the lapels up to cover my neck and jaws, then tug on my fedora to protect my exposed forehead.

  A few seconds later Santi steps out, his hair still mussed. He’s cold but his skin is immune to the raking chill of winter. He throws on his overcoat and we hurry along the bluestone to the hotel.

  It’s been dark for hours, but a few working stiffs are still heading home from their offices. This city seems busier than Hell’s Kitchen, but I’ll bet the job market’s not booming down here either. A lamplighter is lifting his long pole to reach the corner lamppost. He’s wearing a plaid jacket and woolen cap, but I can see his hands shaking in the cold. The poor guy has probably been freezing his nuts off all week for a lousy twenty bucks.

  “You look like you could use a drink,” I yell over to him.

  “You’re telling me,” he says as the gaslight flickers to life. “I’m frozen stiff.”

  On the far side of the lamppost a Santa rings a bell for the Salvation Army. I’m pressed for time, but I can’t help myself. I unzip my leather bag and grab my flask. I’m about to pass the booze to Santa when he sees my patchy skin and winces behind his phony white beard. Fuck him. I throw the whiskey back into my bag and walk over to the shiny glass doors that lead into the Excelsior.

  A doorman in a red hat and matching jacket hustles up to Santi and me. As he gets closer he stops in his tracks. I’m assuming the place shuts out colored folk, but this guy’s not even twenty, so I ignore him and keep walking. The name Jimmy McCullough won’t go far down here, but I’ve got another ace to throw down.

  I take off my hat and shake the cold out of my bones. The space is so huge it dwarfs the people inside of it. It’s two stories high with a pair of matching staircases that extend down from a small balcony on the mezzanine level. Between the stairs sits a towering Christmas tree done up in white lights and red bows.

  A white-haired gentleman with a long face and bright blue eyes sits at a desk to the right of the tree. He’s reading the Inquirer. His dark gray flannel suit and brick-red necktie scream out that he’s in charge.

  We walk over to him as his radio plays a brass choir’s rendition of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, a stark contrast to the newspaper’s headline about an occult killing in Rittenhouse Square. I suppose he finds the music calming but the photos of mangled bodies make my stomach roll. The blood looks like splattered engine oil.

  Santi looks at the oak moldings that stretch across the ceiling. “Nice place,” he says.

  “Indeed, it is,” the gentleman responds, giving us a look that says we don’t measure up.

  I spot a nameplate on his desk that reads Robert Baines. “Good evening, Baines,” I say. “We need a couple of rooms.” To let him know we’re flush, I add, “Your best.”

  Baines looks me over. He probably can’t figure out if I’m black, white, or plaid.

  “Can’t help you,” he says, turning his attention back to his newspaper.

  “But Denny Gazzara told me you could.” My breath tightens and my mouth goes dry. “He said to mention sugar pop moon.”

  Baines’s white eyebrows rise on his pink forehead. He’s listening, but he’s not convinced.

  “You are Baines, aren’t you?”

  Baines scans me from head to toe. I’m trying to look calm but I’m jumpy as hell. He must realize I’m not an undercover Fed because nobody with a sane mind would hire me to be an undercover anything.

  “All I’ve got are the suites,” he says, opening the desk drawer and pulling out two room keys.

  The bellhop comes to take our bags; I hand him my coat and hat and tell him to take them to my room. Santi does the same.

  “We’re looking to wet our whistle,” I tell Baines as he hands us our keys. “We’ve been driving all day and we’re dry.”

  “You might try the drugstore on Twelfth Street, just past Lubin’s Palace,” he says. “Maybe pick up some cream for that skin of yours.”

  “Thanks,” I say as I start for the elevator. The drugstore is a front, for sure.

  “Hey,” he says.

  I stop and turn around.

  “They’re serious over there.”

  “So am I,” I say.

  The bellhop has our bags so Santi and I follow him into the elevator. He puts Santi in room 1213 and I get 1214.

  When I open the door, I see I’ve got the honeymoon suite. The place is pure elegance, the white carpet is lush and the windows overlook the Philadelphia skyline. A bouquet of roses is on a nightstand at the foot of a brass bed. I toss the flowers into a blue glass wastepaper basket next to the doorway. Then I dump my bag on the bed, pull out my flask, and down a double shot. The whiskey burns going down but the sting in my chest makes me feel like I know what I’m doing. There’s a small marble sink outside the bathroom, probably intended for a young bride to freshen up; I use it to splash some warm water on my face and soothe my skin. I dab my cheeks with one of the hotel’s fluffy cotton towels, and then go next door to get Santi. I’ll take him to dinner and then bring him back here before I head over to the drugstore. Gazzara doesn’t have to find out that my only back
up is a seventeen-year-old Spanish kid who plays a top-notch game of chess.

  The drugstore isn’t anything fancy. Standing behind the counter is a wrinkly old man with a few strands of curly white hair sprouting from the top of his head. He’s wearing a lab coat but I don’t spot a single vial of medicine in the place. There are six tall glass jars on a wooden shelf but they hold only hard candies; the other boxes are filled with kids’ toys, like high-bounce balls and slingshots. The only medical implement I see is a thermometer. If this guy’s a druggist, I’m a sunbather. When I reach the counter, he dons a pair of thick brown eyeglasses and takes a closer look at my face. I don’t say anything; I let him stare.

  “I don’t think we’ve got anything for you, son,” he says.

  “I think you might,” I say. “My problem isn’t my skin, it’s my tongue. I’m dry as a bone. Baines from the Excelsior sent me. He said you have some liquids I’d be interested in.”

  When I mention Baines he nods knowingly. “In that case, head on back,” he says, pointing toward a door marked Employees Only.

  I enter a small office. A typewriter sits on a desk along with a pile of blank paper and a stack of carbons. On the far end of the room is a closet door. I look behind me just to be sure I’m not being set up. If I’m going to catch a bullet, I’d rather not be standing in a bogus drugstore when it hits.

  Everything seems copacetic, so I pull open the closet door and find three short steps leading up to a heavy red velour drape. From the other side of the curtain I hear voices. They’re cheerful voices. Speakeasy voices.

  Hiking the stairs and passing the curtain, I walk into the exact scene I’d hoped to discover: a speakeasy the likes of which would attract Philly’s top bootleggers. Gazzara must help stock the bar because it’s too big for local upstarts.

  I push my hat back on my head and take a look around. The room is three times the size of the Pour House. In the front, there’s a lounge area with three couches, an armchair, and a piano player who’s pounding out a rag I’ve never heard before. Against the back wall is a curved bar with a mirror behind it. In front of the mirror, three shelves hold various liquor bottles lined up like soldiers at roll call. They glitter the way good whiskey should—just looking at them makes my mouth water. I make a mental note to tell Jimmy to hang a mirror behind the bar at the Pour House. I’m assuming, of course, that the next time I see Jimmy he won’t be sticking a blade into my spleen.