by Angela Dews
“I’m so sorry Mister Bell.”
I walked him to the door, and on the way back into my office I touched two fingers to my lips for Samantha.
The names on the withdrawal lists were mostly the same players who were handling things when I left Harlem to make the Summer Knight movies. Among them were some not-for-profits and development agencies, some of our electeds, some of our reverends—and my father.
On the last list, Mister Bell gave me so I wouldn’t miss it were the earlier withdrawals that gave my father his place where he belonged—in the middle of things. Substantial withdrawals were made before he died. There it was: The Harlem Journal. He all but closed that account.
Then I got mad. As he would have said, now, there was a fire on the mountain.
C H A P T E R • 8
* * *
I told Adrianne, the paper’s current editor, I had a briefing to give her at the copy machine.
“This better be good. I’ve got work to do,” she said.
“It is. But you need to tell me how good.”
When I handed her the first copy, she said, “I must remind you this infighting at the bank has been going on for some time. Cecelia has been giving Sam bits for her society column. But your father usually wouldn’t let me use the best stuff. He said the bank’s new president needed room to find his way and make his changes.”
I waited while she read. “Damn. This is good,” she said.
“Give me some of these lists to call when you get it sorted out,” I said.
“Damn straight. You’re going to call the A-list. Charlie Washington’s movie star kid will get the newspaper inside some of these offices where the rest of us can’t go. I’ll give you the questions you need to ask.”
The ego that attached me to my newspaper must have put a face on me.
She cleared her throat.
“Not that you don’t know what to ask, but you haven’t been here reporting for several years. There are some new contexts you wouldn’t know about.”
“Okay. While you’re doing that, I’m going to write a eulogy. I saw Cecilia get hit and I’ve got pictures.”
“Just make it short. This ain’t the New York Times.”
“It sure the hell ain’t,” I said. “But, Adrianne, you’ll see, there is a hell of a story you can report using the bank information. And I think it makes sense for me to report about how we got the information. In fact, dividing the story between us will keep it clean. We can leave the conjecture to Samantha’s gossip column. And you all are going to have plenty to do next week. I don’t see any list of loans.”
I tried to say it in a way that wouldn’t set her off.
It set her off.
“You have a helluva nerve. News judgment isn’t something that passes down through the genes. And I know you need to get out of the way and let people who know how to do it run this newspaper, or you’ll be lucky to get ads for some of those raised-from-the-dead mystics.”
When she turned and left the office, I could hear her heels clicking against the tiled corridor. She was probably on her way to the Candlelight III, the bar down the avenue, and would be back to work with a vengeance, propelled by jet fuel. So what? I certainly didn’t drive her to drink.
Samantha was watching with a straight face but dancing eyes.
“How’s your gossip column coming?” I asked her. “And what’s all this paper? I thought you just listen at doors and sit in bars to get the stuff you use.”
“It’s a society column. And I’m not above catching the news on the fly. But writing Kiss and Tell is like making greens. You can’t imagine how much information it takes to come up with those little bits of news.”
Readers called Kiss and Tell, by Sam, her silly column of social events and name dropping, “What the Hell?” because inevitably, when reading, you’d find yourself saying, What the hell . . . I thought so and so was dead, or I thought they would be up to something else by now, or What the hell are those two doing together?
“This just turned into news,” she said with a gotcha voice. “Cecelia and Reverend Garrison broke up.”
“That doesn’t even sound like good gossip. But I’ve got a quote for you.” I read from my notebook: “The great tragedy is that we will not now be able to get to the truth behind the lies and innuendo surrounding Cecelia’s relationship with the bank and with the people who love her.”
“Thanks. That’s a good one. I’ll add the quote.” She was beaming. It takes a gossip columnist to love bad news as much as Samantha does.
“And there’s also this.” Samantha held up an artist’s rendering. “They’re going to build a movie theater on 125th Street.”
“Where on 125th?”
“Either Eighth or Lenox. There’s some confusion. Mostly I’m hearing Eighth, Frederick Douglass Boulevard.”
“Your society column is where your movie theater belongs. I’ve seen drawings for years of glitzy towers in Harlem and they never got built.”
“The drawing will look good on the page,” she said.
When Adrianne returned, she headed to the back without a word. I saw her through the open door.
C H A P T E R • 9
* * *
I got to see what Adrianne could do when she was fired up. She and Al had made the front page a beautiful thing.
BANK INSIDERS WITHDRAWING $$$
Over the last two weeks, large withdrawals have been made from Independence National Bank by a Who’s Who in Harlem and Bedford Stuyvesant. Among them are some of the organizations and institutions getting ready for the latest so-called “Harlem Renaissance.” And the list includes the late publisher of this newspaper.
We ask why our leaders failed to alert the rest of us to their concerns if those concerns are compelling enough to cause them to desert the bank?
One such concern is a National Bid List of 61 banks across the country that the Comptroller of the Currency has invited to buy Independence National Bank. The Journal has obtained a copy.
Bank board member Reverend William Garrison, when asked what it meant, offered: “No Comment.”
“Al?” I called out to my production manager who was wearing headphones.
When he didn’t turn around, I walked along the long drafting table that stretches down one side of the suite’s largest room and waited for him to finish making a cut with the mat knife. Then I nudged his arm and handed him the disk. “I’ve got a publisher’s letter and a front-page story for you to lay out.”
He took off the headphones and asked, “Why don’t you do it? I’ve got some ads to do.”
I could have laid them out. I grew up in that room and not enough had changed in the three years I’d been away for my expertise to be out of date. The only job I never learned was publisher.
He stood up. “Mind?” And he carefully slipped the headphones over my hair.
It was good riding on that beat for a minute, and I shook myself loose from the vague regret when I had to give the music back.
“What is it?”
“It’s a tape from a live concert. One of the ones we could salvage after Bobby broke up the table.”
“Did the vendors give it to you for helping them? I was wondering what you were doing down there?”
He laughed. “Look over here,” he said and we walked over to a page in the train of double pages.
JAZZ MAN BOBBY BOP DESTROYS BOOTLEG TAPES
He was using my picture of Mr. Cool Bobby Bop holding the vendors’ table above his head. I skimmed the story. The musician was driving by and heard the sound of his music coming from a boom box on their folding table. He jumped out of his fancy red Cadillac and shut their business down.
“Your man obviously didn’t appreciate those African brothers stealing his music.”
“They are selling my product,” he said. “That was his concert you were listening to. That’s something else I do. And it’s not exactly stealing.”
Al took my disk and printed my stories and c
lipped them to the dummy.
MILLER REVEALS BANK BIZ
FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE
A package was delivered to the Harlem offices of this newspaper within hours of the hit-and-run death of Independence National Bank officer Cecelia Miller. In it was a sheath of documents about the bank. And it included lists of bank customers who had hit the bank to their advantage and were seemingly running for cover now.
We usually do not use so-called “leaks” that would tell only one side of a story because they are at least biased, and sometimes outright lies. But Miller’s bank story became news when we uncovered some secondary source affirmations.
One of my disturbing photos was perfect for my other story.
Cecelia Miller
Possible Victim of Vehicular Homicide
April 12, 1950—November 6, 1990
Harlem native Cecelia Miller died after a hit-and-run driver mowed her down on 125th Street late Wednesday morning.
Witnesses say Miller looked both ways before she stepped off the sidewalk and the cold-hearted driver knocked her into the air and left her lying in the dirty street. Marcus Bell from Freedom Bookstore said, “She bought two oranges from me. Always does in the morning. Always did. Loved oranges since she was a little girl.”
One witness said it looked like the car might have been aiming at her. The much-loved lady was declared dead on-site by paramedics who rushed to the scene from St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital.
The driver deserted the car around the corner and fled on foot. Police have not made an arrest. [continued on P_]
I had slipped reluctantly, but easily, into my place at the paper and the rhythm and pop of its language. To write the part of Cecelia’s story continuing inside, I got to talk about her with the people she went to church with and socialized with at the 100 Black Women, the Links, and her Democratic club.
I was not always the one who broke the news either. Bad news travels fast, especially on one-two-five.
After the printers picked up the paper, I saw a man through the glass door at the front office. He was well dressed and good looking, like a banker I thought, with some papers in his hand.
“Can I help you?”
“Are you Pearl Washington?”
“Yes.” Although something about him made me want to say no.
“Please sign here indicating you received this.”
“Received what? You don’t look like the post office. What are you, some kind of process server?’
“This is a cease-and-desist order from Independence National Bank.”
“I don’t think I want to sign this.”
“You don’t have to. It’s been served. But will you?”
I looked at Al, who had walked up. He shrugged. And I didn’t sign.
I watched the man walk toward the elevator while I called Daddy’s lawyer Attorney Robinson from the front office phone. He said, “I’m surprised. This does make the bank stories you’ve been reporting seem more likely.”
“It may not be legit. I’ve never seen a process server as well dressed as he was. And the newspaper hasn’t yet hit the street.”
“But you all have been calling all over town. Bring it over tomorrow and I’ll look at it.”
I told Al, “Maybe you should publish the cease-and-desist in the next edition. This means they have something to hide.”
C H A P T E R • 10
* * *
Adrianne, Al and I took a gypsy cab to the Kit Kat Klub. Viola’s club up the hill was a little hole in the wall with live music and a killer jukebox, and it had been one of Daddy’s favorites. But the vibe had definitely changed since the last time I was there. It was charged with anticipation.
Dinah Washington was singing “What a Difference a Day Makes.”
Bobby Bop’s picture was on the sandwich board outside the Kat that night.
Al did the glad-hand, brother hugs as he walked the length of the bar, and he stopped and watched Bobby Bop putting the saxophone’s neck strap around his beautiful sweater. It looked like an Armani. Al let him finish putting the neck on the body and the reed on the mouthpiece before he walked over.
“I will say you have a hell of a nerve young blood,” Bobby Bop said when he saw Al.
“I’m Al Carter and I came to say I love your music.”
“That’s why you chose to steal it and sell it on the street,” the jazz man said.
“I play. I don’t want to be your enemy. I play.”
“What do you play besides copy machines.”
“Drums.”
“Everybody thinks they can play drums.”
“I can’t wait to play,” Al said and fingered his stick bag.
“You would have to play your ass off to make up for this morning.”
“I do.”
I left them to it and walked to the bar where customers were two-deep. The lucky ones were perched on tall chairs with backs, and the regulars had their names on some of them, lettered professionally, worthy of the professional drinkers who earned them. Some of the overflow sat on stools, including what looked like a gaggle of tourists trickling in to mix with the regulars.
There was a poster-sized picture of my father with hand-written messages all over it. Smaller posters of jazzmen and women darkened the windows. Balloons in the black and purple colors of mourning bounced over the bar, and a banner said, Rest in Peace Charles.
Even as Adrianne was sliding onto her stool, the bartender handed her a drink, which had to be the usual. My editor had turned into Miss Personality, laughing, playing the phrase games, swinging a leg, lighting a cigarette.
“Pearl, you just going to stand there and look like you at the theater watching good black people drink some liquor? What the fuck?” And the people around her all laughed.
I thought that’s exactly what they looked like, one of those Negro stereotypes Lt. Summer Knight was always bouncing off of in Hollywood for laughs. I ordered a vodka martini on the rocks. “I’m taking it slow. We’ve probably got a while to be here.”
They thought that was funny too.
Mister Bell gave me his seat and the bartender nodded to a man at the other end of the bar as she handed me my drink. “He said it’s for your father.”
Then she said loud enough to carry over the bar noise, “To Charles Washington.” We raised our glasses.
“And to Cecelia Miller,” she said.
Mister Bell took the seat someone vacated next to me. He picked up one of the drinks spread out in formation in front of him, and we raised our glasses again. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, acknowledging the hands on his back.
The jukebox went silent and the piano man, without any intro, started playing pretty, just running here and there, before the rest of the quartet came in with Al keeping time.
“That boy can still play,” Mister Bell said. “He’s had a hard time. But it looks like he’s back.”
We listened for a moment before he asked, “Has Viola talked to you about investing in the bar?”
“Attorney Robinson said Daddy owned part of the bar. I’m surprised.”
“Vy needed some money and Charlie wouldn’t just give it to her. And he was not a passive partner. Viola was a kind of connection, a kind of harmonic, to the music he loved. She could use your help.”
“I don’t know anything about running a bar.”
“That’s not all the help she needs.” He looked around. “She should be here. I’ve not been able to get hold of her for hours.”
“You all keep up like that?”
“Now I do.”
I drank the rest of my drink and ordered another.
“Here on Harlem’s 125th Street today . . .”
The bartender must have turned up the volume on the television over the bar because it intruded for the first time into the dusky space.
“A hit-and-run accident claimed the life of one of Harlem’s own, Cecelia Miller. The car went out of control and drove onto the sidewalk. Witnesses say i
t was just lucky no one else was killed. The street is too full, people say, and street merchants who call themselves African vendors fill the sidewalks.”
John’s opening shot framed the shot of Mister Bell at his corner.
“I’m here in front of the Theresa Towers on 125th Street and Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boulevard where Fidel Castro moved the entire Cuban delegation 30 years ago when the Theresa was still a hotel. It’s a corner made famous by its preachers and teachers. Malcolm X and President Nelson Mandela spoke here. Today I’m here with Marcus Bell, who was at his Freedom Books bookstore on this corner when the accident happened.”
A hoot went up. “My man Marcus,” someone shouted.
“Shut up. What’s he saying?”
“Cecelia had just purchased some fruit from me.”
“Did you see the driver?” John asked Mister Bell.
“No. It happened around the corner.”
“Why was the driver in the wrong lane do you think?”
“Probably to beat the traffic. People are in a hurry to get across the Triboro Bridge.”
“But he was going the other way.”
“People do stupid things. I see it all the time.”
The reporter looked straight into the camera. “125th Street is a crowded throughway to the highways and to the bridge for some. But it’s Main Street for people who live here. Witnesses say somebody could get hit out here on any given day, pushed into traffic by all the vendors on the sidewalk and the people stopping to look and shop.”
“Only black people would put up with this.” Joseph repeated on camera what he told us at the bookstore. Except now we were black people instead of niggers. “They’re not Africans. Most of these people are from New Jersey or Brooklyn. Makes it impossible for legitimate businesses to exist.”
“We’ll bring you more information as the police investigation unfolds,” the reporter continued. He signed off and we all applauded Mister Bell and Joseph, the television stars in our midst.