Changó's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes

by William Kennedy

  “This assassination talk is very like political theater.”

  “Target practice with an AR-15 is theater?”

  “It seems far too stupid to be real. My man is a wino who’s probably dying and I doubt he could shoot himself in the foot. But if he’s set up as a would-be assassin, any group he’s linked to is trashed.”

  “What groups is he linked to?”

  “You know them and so do all the intelligence agencies, whose fingerprints seem to be all over this. Zuki looks very like a by-the-book provocateur. Did he ask your permission to assassinate you?”

  “I think you should bring your man to see Police Chief Tobin.”

  “You know, Mr. Mayor, that people who give allegiance to City Hall have tried twice to entrap me over what I was writing about race and politics for the newspaper. And somebody offered me a job in Chicago to get me out of town. At one protest meeting I counted five undercover people, not provocateurs like Zuki, more like robotic stenographers, all out of place at such meetings, all reporting back to somebody’s big brother.”

  “You have a conspiratorial flair.”

  The Club steward entered the room with a telephone saying the Mayor had a call and he plugged the cord into a wall jack. The Mayor spoke, listened, hung up.

  “Some news that may interest you, Mr. Quinn. A black man named Tremont is at the Four Spot bar on Clinton Square talking about shooting a politician. They say he’s wearing two-tone shoes. He’s with an older man named George who’s talking about shooting people for throwing rocks. The manager is trying to detain them both till the police get there.”

  “The anarchists have descended,” Quinn said.

  The Mayor smiled. “Ask them to stop by headquarters and talk to Chief Tobin.” The phone rang and the Mayor answered. Then he said to Quinn, “Now a racial fight has broken out at the Four Spot and someone threw Molotov cocktails into it.”

  Quinn stood up. “So the revolution begins. Do you want to go down and make some notes?”

  “I might be assassinated,” the Mayor said.

  “There’s always that risk in a revolution, Mr. Mayor,” Quinn said.

  When George stopped singing he walked a while in silence, then said, “What was all that back at Johnny’s bar? That was some fuss.”

  “I’d say it was the hand of God that got us out of there,” Matt said, “and God was especially handy with Tremont. Did you hear him talk about shooting a politician?”

  “I didn’t know what the hell he was saying,” George said.

  “The bartender did. He called the police and I’m sure they’re looking for Tremont right now, don’t you think, Tremont?”

  “Cops been lookin’ for me half my life.”

  “Those bartenders wanted to keep you there for the cops. We get to a phone I’ll call somebody to come get us, figure the next move.”

  “Who do you want to shoot, Tremont?” George asked.

  “Nobody, Georgie, don’t wanna shoot nobody. Some guy talked to me about it, that’s all.”

  “And he gave you a gun,” Matt said.

  Tremont considered that. “Gotta get that gun. It’s sittin’ down there in the bus station and somebody maybe gonna get at it before I do. Zuki, could be. He don’t know where it’s at, but I ain’t sure he don’t.”

  “What do you want to do with it?”

  “Rub off my fingerprints. Put it someplace Zuki can’t do nothin’ to me about it. Shove it down a sewer.”

  Dorsey’s Cafe was locked and its lights were out. A fire from another Molotov cocktail had left ashes on the wet sidewalk, and part of Dorsey’s front wall was scorched. This was the last black bar on the urban devastation that was Broadway, a few vital blocks for nightlife that used to be called Little Harlem. The Black Elks Club was a couple of blocks up, but nothing started there till ten o’clock and then it went all night. The Taft Hotel’s eight rooms were gone, and so were Martha’s bar, a great spot for music, and the Carterer Mission, a haven for bums black and white. Union Station was boarded up, no more trains in this town. Most white saloons and restaurants had gone broke or been bought out by the city to build parking lots for stores that had also gone bust while they waited to park; and the horserooms, the pool crowd, the bowlers, the gamblers, and the hot mattress hotels had all abdicated to more fertile turf. Downtown was emptying into the suburbs. Broadway’s streetlights were on but nobody was walking the street except these four pilgrims.

  “Can’t get no drink here,” Tremont said.

  “Whole street is closed,” Matt said.

  “Albany never closes,” George said.

  “You right, George,” Tremont said. “Hapsy’s on Bleecker Street, he’s always open.”

  “We should get to the DeWitt for the concert,” Vivian said.

  “You’ll get there,” Matt said. “I don’t want you alone on the street.”

  “What concert?” Tremont asked.

  “Cody Mason,” said Vivian. “It’s his last concert. He’s real sick.”

  “Cody is sick? Gotta go hear him. You need a ticket?”

  “They’re twenty dollars,” Vivian said.

  “I don’t have twenty.”

  “You don’t need it, Tremont,” George said. “I’ll go in with you. We’ll back in and they’ll think we’re coming out.”

  “All right, Georgie boy, all right, you got the moves. What do you think, Bish, cops gonna come to the concert to get me? You see how that bartender at the Four Spot went after Roy? And one tried to get Zuki?”

  “They’ll round up everybody, including me, and ask questions tomorrow,” Matt said.

  “You think they’d arrest me, Father?”

  “I think you’re safe, Vivian.”

  “I don’t feel safe.”

  “We should get off Broadway, walk the side streets.”

  They went up Columbia to James Street, then down James to State where Matt held everybody at the corner until he checked the street. Helmeted cops with shotguns were at State and Broadway, and also on two corners at State and Pearl. North Pearl was blocked to northbound traffic by two police cars and Matt could hear the blurts of squawk talk on the police radios. Three cars and a few people were moving up State. Matt hustled his charges across State to Green Street, which was as empty as Broadway but narrow, less traveled. When they were a block in on Green they heard a siren.

  “Siren,” Tremont said. “Probably goin’ to the Four Spot.”

  “I know how you can get rid of that gun,” Matt said. “Call Doc Fahey, turn it over to him, tell him how you got it.”

  “Fahey the cop?”

  “A good cop. He knows you and he knows me a little, and he’s good friends with Quinn. George knows him real well, don’t you, George? Doc Fahey?”

  “Vincent Fahey,” said George. “They call him the Doc. He’s one of the salts of the earth. When Peg dropped dead putting on her hat going to church, he’s the one I called. Dan wasn’t around, you can’t keep track of his gallivantin’ around the world, so I called Doc and up he came, in ten minutes. They don’t make ’em any better. First water, first water.”

  “Surrendering that gun to Doc is just an idea, Tremont,” Matt said. “But you gotta talk to somebody soon, and I mean the cops. Quinn can get you a lawyer.”

  “Every time I get a lawyer I end up in jail.”

  “The cops see you with that gun tonight you’re a target.”

  “Long as I wipe off my prints so Zuki can’t put it no place and say I shot somebody I didn’t. Zuki’s a bad ass.”

  “You said the gun’s in a black bag. Cops know gun cases. Put it in something else.”

  “It folds up pretty good. Don’t hafta look like a gun.”

  At the Greyhound station Tremont searched four trash barrels and found a burlap sack with oil stains. In the lavatory he soaped up a few paper towels and put them in the sack. He looked in the mirror, buttoned his collar, tucked in his shirt, pulled up his pants and tightened his belt. He stroked a kink out o
f the brim of his fedora and buttoned his double-breasted suitcoat. He went out to the locker and slid the gun case into the sack. Then he rejoined his drinking buddies. Spruced up. Armed.

  They went south on Green Street toward Madison, the city moving into early darkness and who knows what else, and George felt a new urgency to get where they were going, wherever the hell it was. Vivian took his arm and George squeezed her with his arm and remembered that the way you grip a woman is a defining factor. Peg, or no, was it Vivian, whoever it was, was beautiful on his arm, and keeping a grip on her was the right thing. You had to squeeze her, let her know. Is Snyder’s Lake part of it? Make the right moves and you’ll be all right. The saints of history will praise your behavior, whatever the hell it is. George had a feeling it had something to do with love.

  “He was so alive,” Vivian would tell Quinn later. “He sang as we went and he walked me down that dark street with a bounce in his step. We seemed to dance along the sidewalk. When I met him near City Hall in the afternoon he didn’t know my name or anybody’s name, and now I just loved him because he knew so much and didn’t care what he didn’t know. Green Street was poorly lit and it looked truly dangerous to me, but he wasn’t afraid of anything. I was on the lookout for police and crazy bigots with bombs but George was saying, ‘Bing Crosby came down here and he sang “Shine.” I got him a piano.’”

  “Do you think we’re all right, George?” Vivian asked.

  “It’s all very familiar,” he said. “I worked down here. On this street.”

  “Why are we walking this way? It’s away from the concert.”

  “We’re taking the long way around, Vivian,” Matt said. “We’ll stay away from cops till I get us a ride. Also Tremont needs a drink.”

  “Now you talkin’ Bish. Get us a drink and clean my gun.”

  “Where’s that place you say is open?”

  “Hapsy’s on Bleecker, the bootlegger,” Tremont said, “near Trixie’s.”

  “Trixie’s,” Matt said. “I know that house. Hapsy got a phone?”

  “Cost you half a dollar.”

  “I took a vow of poverty, but I got half a dollar.”

  “Big Jimmy’s is just down there on Dongan,” George said. “He owes me money. Let’s go get him to buy us a drink.”

  “Big Jim’s not around tonight, George,” Tremont said.

  “Too bad. Gayety Theater was right over there, a burlesque house, but they had stage shows, minstrel shows. Big Jim got his start there in His Honor the Barber. I used to be a barber. I saw that show twice in nineteen-eleven. That’s where ‘Shine’ comes from. Jim went on the road with that show. The Hawkins girl was the star, Nigger Dick’s sister.”

  “Don’t call him that, George,” Vivian said.

  “That was his name,” George said.

  “We shouldn’t use that word anymore,” Vivian said.

  “What word?” George asked.

  “Nigger,” Tremont said.

  “No, we shouldn’t say that,” George said. “There’s other words to use. Like ‘Shine.’” And George sang:“ ’Cause my hair is curly,

  ’cause my teeth are pearly . . .”

  “That old coon tune,” Tremont said.

  “Just because

  I always wear a smile . . .”

  “You’re singing that because you’re thinkin’ about Big Jimmy,” Tremont said.

  “Big Jim sang that all the time,” George said, and he sang:“Just because my color’s shady,

  That’s the reason maybe,

  Why they call me ‘Shine’ . . .”

  “Nobody calls you ‘Shine,’ George,” Tremont said.

  “You know that song, Tremont?”

  “My daddy taught me. Why you like it so much?”

  “It’s got a lot of pep. Everybody oughta love it.”

  “You in a good mood, Georgie,” Tremont said. “Big Jim used to say you brought luck and sunshine when you come into the club.”

  “Yeah, yeah, it’s always wonderful down here,” George said.

  “Wonderful?” Tremont said. “You talkin’ about Green Street, Georgie? This old street’s fallin’ apart, one of the lowest of the lowdown streets in this town. They’re boardin’ up houses, kickin’ people out, pretty soon won’t nobody be livin’ here.”

  “I was on Green Street when I was young,” Vivian said. “I heard it had houses of prostitution.”

  “That’s a positive fact,” said George, “but it didn’t spoil the neighborhood. Madge Burns had the best house, and Davenport’s was the most expensive. Big Bertha used to sit in her window and wave at you, French Emma’s was the cheapest, and the Creole house on Bleecker was very popular. Very popular.”

  “You know all about it, George,” Vivian said. “Did you go to those places?”

  “Thank God I never had any need of them. But I took their play when I was writing numbers. There were some wonderful girls in those houses, lovely girls, not that I had any need of them.”

  “Those girls been down here forever, Miss Vivian,” Tremont said. “My daddy said they had about a thousand when he was young, even more during World War One. Everybody knew Green Street. People came here from all over. Always been a good business.”

  “Still is, sort of,” Matt said. “There’s half a dozen houses right on Bleecker Street, busiest street down here. There—across the street, the one with the awning on the first-floor window—any house with an awning is doing business.”

  “How do you know all this, Father?”

  “Claudia gave me a tour. Better Streets was trying to get the prostitutes to move off her block so the kids wouldn’t have to grow up with all that, and Claudia asked me to help do it. But it’s tough to close those places down, and if you move them their customers can’t find them and you get a lot of rape. That’s the argument, anyway. The madams pay off the police and the politicians, so they’re well protected. I took a list of addresses up to the bishop’s office—twenty-two houses of prostitution—and I showed it to the chancellor. He said Patsy McCall, the political boss of Albany, would never let such places exist and that I made it all up because I was a Republican agitator.”

  “He say that to you?” Tremont said, chuckling.

  “I was never even a Democrat. Never belonged to anything organized, except the church, if you think that’s organized. I do my thing. That’s why they silenced me. I spoke to a few groups and I did criticize the Mayor in a couple of speeches. And that day you were poll watching, Tremont, my argument with those ward politicians got in the papers and the diocese didn’t like it. I got a big mouth, no doubt about it, and they told me to keep it shut and stay off Green Street.”

  “But you couldn’t.”

  “I didn’t plan tonight, Tremont. You and your gun got us down here.”

  “My gun. Gotta clean it, can’t wait no more, right here quick, sing us a song, Georgie, won’t be a minute.”

  They were on Bleecker, a few doors from Trixie’s and Hapsy’s. Tremont went into an alley between two three-story brick houses, both dark. Matt watched him open his sack and gun case, remove the AR-15’s magazine and put it in his coat pocket. He broke down the gun and with the soapy towels he scrubbed the stock, barrel, pistol grip, handguard, sling, and carrying handle, and then he held part of the gun with a towel and let it drip.

  George took Vivian’s arm and said, “I remember now that we did go dancing out to Snyder’s Lake.”

  “I’m so glad, George. I remember it very well.”

  “You were good and honest and you never let anybody cut in,” he said.”You danced every dance.” Then he sang:“I’m tying the leaves so they won’t come down,

  So the wind won’t blow them away,

  For the best little girl in the wide wide world,

  Is lying so ill today.

  Her young life must go when the last leaves fall.

  I’m fixing them fast so they’ll stay.

  I’m tying the leaves so they won’t come down,


  So Nellie won’t go away.”

  Vivian kissed George, which made him extremely happy. He felt like he’d hit the number. He had made the right moves. Was there anything more he should do? In the alley Tremont laid the cleansed AR-15 on the sack and scrubbed the gun case with a soapy towel. On the opposite side of Bleecker a white panel truck pulled up and parked. A white man and a black man got out and went up the stoop of a house with a first-floor awning. Vivian was holding George’s arms and giving him short kisses. Matt was urging Tremont to hurry up with the gun. Tremont opened the sack and nudged the scrubbed gun case halfway into it with his elbow. He was holding part of the gun with a paper towel when a woman screamed and came out of the house that had the awning, running down the steps with something in her right hand. The black man from the truck was behind her, and then the white man, who was holding his ear and yelling, “Get that bitch.” The black man closed on the woman who turned and lashed out at him with her right hand, without contact. She ran toward Green Street past the pilgrims who were watching from the other side of Bleecker.

  Tremont came out of the alley and said, “That’s Rosie.” He put the AR-15 together, took the magazine from his coat and shoved it into the gun. He stepped off the curb to see Rosie punched by the black man who kicked her as she went down, then kicked her again. The second man, blood gushing from his right ear, said “Kill that bitch.” Rosie rolled away from the black man and with a backhanded sweep cut his leg with what the pilgrims could now see was a linoleum knife.

  “You cunt,” the black man said. As he took a pistol from his back pocket Tremont shot him and he fell, his pistol clattering into the shadows of a housefront.