The following morning the jangling phone woke him up. He rolled over, one eye open to see by his clock it wasn’t quite five minutes past seven. He plucked the handset free, clearing his throat.
“Hello?”
“Sorry to call so early, Harry,” said the voice on the other end of the line.
“Doris?”
“Yes, sorry again. Guess I’m a bit flustered.”
“About what?” It was Doris Letrec from Galton Process Servers and Legal Matters.
“What do you know about the Nation of Islam?”
“I know not to mess with them.”
“I was afraid you were going to say that.”
“What’s up?”
“An attorney we’ve done work for previously has called us. He’s out of state.”
Ingram rubbed a hand on the side of his whiskered face. “There’s a Black Muslim he wants to serve a subpoena on in town?”
“No, not a civil action. Apparently the individual in question is named in a will.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “A man owning a lot of acres named Fordis Royal has died in Athens, Georgia. He was white. And Mr. Jones is said to be one of the ones requested to be there for the reading next week. Really it’s just a letter from the lawyer requesting his presence.”
Ingram laughed harshly. “His momma was this old bird’s nanny or could be, you know, the other thing.”
“What other thing?” Letrec asked genuinely.
“This old Confederate who croaked wouldn’t be the first gray boy who had hisself a Black kid or two out of wedlock. Forcing himself on the help.” Now he was getting angry, reflecting on how many times this had happened over how many decades.
She took in a breath. “You think that’s what it is?”
“I don’t know and probably don’t want to know. But since this is good news, why doesn’t he get on the phone and tell this guy?”
“That’s part of the hitch,” she said. “His name is William Jones and it’s known he converted or whatever they call it about four years ago.”
“And the lawyer doesn’t know his Muslim name?”
“He’s not sure,” she said. “It could be William 2X, William 3X or William Muhammad. Or it might be something different. He is pretty sure he’s here in Los Angeles, though.”
Ingram yawned, covering his mouth. “Excuse me. Look, Doris, like I said, I don’t much truck with the Nation except buying a bean pie now and then. But I get it, having a white face show up at the mosque trying to see Brother Jones could be a problem. But even a Black face of an outsider only goes so far with them.”
“It’s two hundred dollars if you can serve him.”
“That’s my end?”
“Yes.”
“Damn. You drive a hard bargain, Miss Letrec. You have some particulars on Mr. Jones the Mystery X to help narrow down my search?”
“Of course.”
“Okay, I’ll swing by.” He hung up and went into the bathroom to get ready for the day.
He drove over to the Galton offices and got the papers and what information she’d been given by the attorney on the former William Jones. Ingram didn’t know anyone in the Nation of Islam, but the money was an incentive to get to know someone, somehow. Though he wasn’t about to go up to a dude selling those bean pies or their tracts on a street corner like they did and ask did they know the man in question. It didn’t take much imagination to see how such an approach could deteriorate quickly.
Back in his car Ingram considered how strange it was that he was so much in demand. Sure, for Anita he’d run barefoot over broken glass to fetch her purse to impress her, but he was fascinated by these radicals she hung around with. In the war it had been drilled into the soldiers to “get those dirty chinks,” and kill the “commie gooks,” but it never got under his skin like it did with others he’d known then. To him the war had been a matter of survival more than fighting the red hordes. Not that he was building a statue of Uncle Joe Stalin in his backyard, but once he got back, things hadn’t changed here. Negro GIs had sacrificed just like the white ones, but it wasn’t as if any of that really mattered once the conflict was over. And it wasn’t like they’d won. The goddamn truce drew a line between the north and south, the 38th Parallel.
Picking up Milo Costas’s camera had literally given him a different perspective. Sighting through the viewfinder had allowed Ingram to take a step back and see his surroundings as a man removed. As if the pictures he took of his fellow soldiers in the thick of it were a stage upon which he’d been set. He knew the lines he was supposed to say, but events changed the script drastically. By the time he accidentally killed that kid, his head was already coming apart. After that there was Harry the dogface and Harry the dispassionate photographer who documented an upside-down world. Was he trying to make sense of the chaos by capturing his stills?
Hunting for a red’s diary or running down a would-be heir, he wasn’t giving up on Ben Kinslow. Not by a long shot. But a job was a job.
Ingram paid a visit to Resolution Blueprint Services, an outfit he did regular business with, to get a photostat made. Leaving, he stopped at a pay phone and called the Bradley campaign office asking for Anita. Given her circles, she might know a Black Muslim.
“She’s out at the moment, can I take a message?”
“That’s okay, I’ll call her back. Thanks.”
Leaning inside the phone booth, the door open, he took out one of his cigars from an inside pocket and lit it, contemplating his next steps. He went back to his car and drove over to Wrigley Field, puffing away. He hadn’t tried his janitorial contacts yet. This time of day the park was closed, and he expected to walk around its perimeter to get a lay of the land before the rally. Yet when he got to the venue, there were a number of cars in the parking lot and the main gate was open. From his trunk he took out his camera and strolled inside. A boxing ring had been set up on the field. There had been several pro bouts at Wrigley in the past, even one at Dodger Stadium as well. As Ingram got nearer, he could see one of the fighters was former welterweight champ Emile Griffith. Last year Griffith had regained the title after defeating Benny Paret in a very brutal fashion.
Ingram had seen the match on television. In the twelfth round, Griffith got Paret in a corner and went to work on him something fierce. He rained blows on him, several to the head. Paret was so out of it he stopped defending himself, his arms lifeless as if the bones in them had melted. The crowd yelled for the referee to halt the fight. He finally did but it was too late. Paret was carried off to the hospital on a stretcher and never regained consciousness. Griffith tried to visit but was turned away. Ten days later Paret died. The pope himself denounced the fight as an example of a barbaric practice that should be banned.
Last month Griffith lost the title to Luis Rodríguez. Observers said Griffith didn’t have the killer instinct anymore given the terrible outcome of the Paret fight. Yet here he was giving an exhibition bout. Unusual, too, as he fought out of New York City. Ingram took shots from various angles. Satisfied for the moment, he went into the stands. Everyone was sitting in the lower rows.
“Hey, Harry,” came a greeting.
“Brad,” he said, shaking the bespectacled man’s hand and sitting next to him. Brad Pye Jr. was the sportswriter for the Sentinel and also did public relations for the Angels, the first Black man to have such a position in the majors.
“Who you covering this for?” he asked.
“I just happened to roll by. Figuring to do a bit of reconnoitering before the big event.”
“Right, right.” Pye had his attention on the match. Griffith slipped a blow and landed an uppercut on his sparring partner that got heads nodding. Ingram estimated the majority of people in attendance were connected in some way to the boxing game. He recognized a reporter from Ring magazine and the sportswriter from the L.A. Times.
As Ingram watched he asked Pye, “Who’s the guy Griffith is sparring with?”
“Local kid, Michael Hodges. He chose him ’cause he’s got moves like Rodríguez and he wants to be in tip-top shape for the rematch.” He made more notes on the yellow pad he had on a knee.
More punches were exchanged. Ingram said, “Brad, you know any Black Muslims?”
Pye gave him a sideways look, a sly grin on his face. “You talking about the rumor?”
“What rumor?”
“About Clay.”
“Cassius Clay?”
“Shh, be cool, keep you voice down. You want these Jesus-loving white folks in here to run us out on a rail?” His smile turned into a wide grin.
“Clay is one of them?”
Pye wagged a finger. “Not yet he isn’t. But Malcolm X has his ear.”
“I was wondering for a different reason.”
“You thinking of joining?”
“Please, I like pork chops too much.”
“Amen, brother.”
Ingram was a fan of boxing, but he needed to be attending to why he’d come here. “See you, Brad. I’m going to take a walk around.”
“Okay. And keep the Clay business to yourself. I’m angling to get an exclusive.”
“Remember me for the picture of you and him shaking hands.”
“You can bet those pretty little green ones I will.”
Ingram walked through the arena, taking several pictures from different angles as the sparring continued. It was only five rounds and drawing to an end. He ascended the steps to a higher position and noted places in his steno pad he might stake out when he returned for the Freedom Rally to capture the sweep of the crowd. As he made his way back to his car in the parking lot, he passed two sports writers smoking and talking. One leaned on a car.
“Yeah, the Tellis Group is backing that middleweight kid Aguirre from Lincoln Heights.”
“That’s that grocery store guy, Stockworth?” his companion said, a tall man in short sleeves.
“Him and a few other businessmen, including a guy who owns a couple of strip clubs.”
Both snickered. Ingram walked over to them. “You said Stockworth, that would be Howard Stockworth?”
“Uh-huh,” said the man who’d mentioned the boxer. “You figuring to get a piece of the action?”
“You never know.”
“Sure,” the other one said, blowing a stream of smoke toward the sky.
Howard Stockworth was one of the names Ingram had written down from the Los Angeles magazine article about the Association of Merchants and Industrialists. Hoyt liked the ponies and apparently this grocery chain man liked the sweet science. There was some sort of symbolism there, he considered. He turned away and was pleasantly surprised to see a hot dog vendor had set up outside the gate with his cart, steam rising from it. He walked over and ordered two chili dogs, extra onions.
Post lunch, Ingram drove over to see Shoals Pettigrew at Shop Rite Hardware. It occurred to him his friend interacted with a cross section of people coming through his door. Everybody had to take a trip to the hardware store at some point, didn’t they?
When he walked in, Pettigrew was selling a woman two cans of paint and assorted items. She was in a pinafore dress, turtleneck and ragged tennis shoes. She was noticeably pregnant.
“Be right with you, Harry,” he said.
“Take your time.”
Pettigrew carried the items out of the store for the woman and loaded them in her car. He returned. “What can I do you for today?”
“Ever get any Black Muslims in here?”
“You looking to do a story on them?” He stood in front of the counter where the morning mail was stacked. A letter from Pettigrew’s bank on top.
“Need to find one of the true believers here in town.”
“Shit, you trying to get your head caved in? You gonna lay a notice on him getting a paternity suit by some chick? Man.” He shook his head in disbelief.
Ingram told Pettigrew what it was about.
“Oh, well,” he said, moving back behind the counter, “that’s different. A time or two a couple of gents in blue suits and bow ties have been in. Mostly getting rat traps or drain cleaner, stuff like that. You can’t forget ’em ’cause they always say that greeting, a salaam . . . however the hell it goes,” he said dismissively. Pettigrew was an active member of his Methodist church.
“Is there a mosque around here?”
“Not that I know of.”
“There’s a dry cleaners a few blocks over them fellas run.”
Ingram turned to see the retired janitor who hung out here emerge from one of the aisles. He was dressed as usual, holding a box of nails.
“Where?”
He pointed east. “On Main, can’t recall the exact block but not far from the Boys market.”
“I appreciate that,” Ingram said.
“My pleasure.” The older man put the nails on the counter.
“Catch you later, Shoals.”
“Not if I see you first.”
Ingram checked the address for the Boys supermarket at a pay phone with a White Pages chained to it. He then drove to the address. Using that as his starting point, he went south then north and soon spotted the business he was looking for. A large sign over the front door announced shabazz dry cleaners no. 2. He parked and walked into the establishment. At the counter was a man in a dress white shirt, buttoned at the wrists and wearing a tie, steam-pressing a pair of pants in a work area behind the front counter. Despite the heat and steam rising around him, he wasn’t sweating. A man dressed similarly was also behind the counter. His glasses were ovals over a keen set of eyes.
“What can I do for you today, brother?”
“I’m looking for a man who used to be named William Jones.”
“None of us go by our slave names anymore thanks to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.”
“Yes, sir, I’m aware of that. I’m representing a lawyer.”
“A white lawyer?” he asked without rancor.
“Yes. But it’s not trouble. It’s for a good reason.”
“From a devil lawyer?”
From his inside jacket pocket he removed the folded-over photostat he’d had made. This was part of the letter referring to the disposition of the will. Purposefully it did not include the name of the attorney nor his location. No sense cutting out his fee as middleman if he could help it. He laid the photostat down on the counter, facing the man so he could scan it.
“As you can see, this is the second page from a two-page letter from the lawyer. There’s to be the reading of a will and Mr. Jones—the former Mr. Jones—is requested to be present.” He tapped his finger on the date. “It’s taking place next week.”
“Where?”
“I can tell that to the man in question. I can say it’s in Georgia.”
“There’s a lot of Williamses from Georgia in the Nation, brother. Even out here in the land of plenty,” he said, sans irony.
There had been physical characteristics listed for Jones in the other paperwork Ingram had been given. “I do know the man in question is about six-one and missing a piece of his earlobe.” He tugged on his left ear. He had no idea how this had come about.
The counterman’s expression didn’t change but he picked up the photostat and read it carefully. “Is there money or land involved?”
“I can’t divulge that.” He didn’t know. Gently Ingram took hold of the photostat and folded it, inserting it back in his inner pocket. He then put his card on the counter. “Time is of the essence.”
The counterman looked from the card to Ingram. “I’m not promising anything.”
“Of course. Thank you on this. Good day, brothers.” He nodded to the man in glasses and the presser who’d been looking on. Walking to his car, Ingram understood the counterman’s question about land or money involved hadn’t been an idle query. The one thing he did know about the Black Muslims was they espoused the separate nation idea: three states including Georgia set aside for Black folks to be left alone by the white devils. If William the former Jones was a conduit to helping make that happen, the counterman, like Ingram, had incentive. He figured the man would talk to whoever it was he reported to in the chain of command.
The following early evening Ingram and Anita Claire had a date at Pacific Ocean Park on the beach in Santa Monica. Given the breeze off the ocean, he wore an aviator-type leather jacket and she a button-up cashmere sweater.
“What, the big tough Army man is scared of a roller coaster?” She delicately inserted a single kernel of popcorn in her mouth.
“I’m just saying, wouldn’t you prefer the diving bell or the Skyway ride?”
“After we go on the Sea Serpent, tough guy.”
“Fine, me Tarzan, you Jane.” He thumped his chest with his fist. “But you know that monstrosity was built before electricity was discovered.”
She chuckled. “Stop being such a worrywart, you sound like my mother.” Claire guided him toward the line for the ride. It was a weeknight but there were plenty of people out to enjoy the amusement park. There was a threadbare quality to the whole thing, like shoes worn too long but too comfortable to get rid of. They stood close in the line, Claire feeding him the occasional piece of popcorn. At one point her finger came to rest on his lip and she left it there, looking into his eyes. They kissed.
“Ahem,” said the roller-coaster operator. “You getting on or not?”
They sat in the car. Right behind them two teenage girls got on, giggling and whispering to each other. Once the cars were full, the retaining bars were lowered and off they went. Per the protocol of roller coasters, the first part of the ride was a slow ascent to build the tension and anticipation among the riders.
“Nervous?” She pinched his arm.
“Ha ha.” He tried to blot out the constant creak of wood as the steel wheels of the cars rode over the rails supported by aging struts and beams. He didn’t recall hearing about any fatal accidents happening on this particular coaster, so he supposed that was partially reassuring. Even when he was a kid he’d never been fascinated by roller coasters like his friends were. His grade-school friend Shoals Pettigrew, for instance, loved them. A few years ago the two had driven to Galveston, Texas, to fetch a car a recently deceased uncle had left Pettigrew, who was also getting over a divorce then. Making sure to map their route using the Green Book so as to avoid unfriendly towns, Ingram had reluctantly made a couple of stops along the way. This so Edwards could ride a specific roller coaster in a particular town. A grown man giddy like the teenagers behind them now, Ingram recalled.
The train of cars crested the first loop then speedily plummeted, riders screaming with joy. Claire latched onto Ingram’s arm, squeezing hard. She laughed at his stoic expression. His stomach was in his throat, but he was determined to show her how manly he could be. She laughed more.
“Oh, hold me, you big strong hunk, hold me.”
He had to laugh too as he put his arm around her shoulders, squeezing tightly as they whipped through a turn to ascend once more before a steep drop. When the ride was over, the teenagers hopped out laughing and ran off to the next thrill. In the last car had been a burly man with a crew cut and his date, a petite brunette with hoop earrings. His face was florid from too many beers and hot dogs, Ingram estimated. With the help of his companion, he weaved to a trash can and bending over the rim, threw up.
“What next?” he asked Claire, smiling.
“The one that takes you out over the water.”
Off they went hand in hand to the Ocean Skyway. Bubble-shaped gondolas rode passengers on a cable seventy-five feet over the Pacific for half a mile out then brought them back to the docking area. After a short wait, they sat close together in their gondola on the bench seat. The doors to each vessel were secured by the operator and off they went. They swung gently to and fro as they were carried out over the dark water. Claire stared down into the depths.
“Can you imagine we were swimming in that millions of years ago? Creatures that one day decided to get out of the muck and came up on land to check things out. Then who knows how many other millions of years it took to develop legs to move off the shore and the lungs to breathe in the air.”
“You mean it wasn’t like on The Flintstones? Riding dinosaurs to work and eating giant barbecue ribs the size of a Mack truck?”
She nuzzled his cheek. “When I was a kid in school I got in trouble with Mrs. Hempel in the fourth grade. The subject of how people came to be was asked and, being a nice Christian lady, she naturally said that God created Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.” She narrowed her eyes. “Until that ditzy Eve was tricked by Satan and she bit into the apple of knowledge. We got kicked out by an angry God, she told us, but that’s why we had dominion over the animals and had planes to fly through the air.” She shook her head at the memory. “I sat there frowning.”
“You being a precocious sort with commie atheist parents,” Ingram said.
“Yep. I blurted out evolution was the reason we walked on two legs and our brains—which had grown along with our bodies—told us how to use our opposable thumbs. Now Mrs. Hempel tried to give me the benefit of the doubt. Asking me didn’t I mean God made evolution happen?”
“And you said?” The gondola began its round-trip back.
“I said maybe, but nobody so far as my parents were concerned could prove God or Heaven or Hell existed and that’s what they’d told me when I’d asked about where you went when you died. I told her they’d also said as I got older, I should investigate these ideas for myself. On their shelves were science books, naturally, but also a copy of the Bible and the Talmud, or they would assist me in whatever else I wanted to learn about in terms of seeking to achieve inner peace.”
“Did her head explode?”
“I was escorted to the principal’s office and my mother was called. I remember clearly he didn’t say much to me but had a worried look on his face. I guess he was concerned about the fate of my immortal soul.”
“Did she yell at them when she got there?”
The gondolas stopped. The couple automatically looked around. Both were relieved the cable was still intact.
Claire said, “Mom was a seasoned organizer, used to confronting screaming bosses and cops itching to bust heads. Particularly this race traitor, a white woman married to a Black man. When she got to the school, she quietly asked what the problem was. By then the vice-principal was in the office too. He was a hard-ass, ex-Marine, was at Guadalcanal and all that old mess.”
Their ride ended and they stepped out and started to walk back along the planks toward the main part of the venue. The ocean broke against the pilings beneath them. Nearby a child squealed with delight.
She continued. “I found out years later he was not on the front lines. He was a supply clerk. But he terrified us kids. Anyway, Mom began with a reasoned approach. She said wasn’t school the place where thinking and asking questions should take place? The principal answered that was true but there were underlying notions, shared beliefs as to how learning took place. One of them being we were a Christian nation. That’s what we affirm in the Pledge of Allegiance, he said.”
“Your folks tell you not to do the Pledge?”
Claire said, “Sounds like a teacher drilled that into you.”
“Yes, ma’am. Mr. Lakefield and his icy glare.”
“Well, just so you know, my parents remain loyal Americans. They had big arguments with their friends over the Rosenbergs. It was one thing to work for equality and certain socialist ideals, but giving up secrets to the Soviets was a line they wouldn’t cross. They would never sell out the United States,” she said proudly.
“But to answer your question, yeah, there’s that part about ‘One Nation Under God,’ but they said I could ignore that in my head if I wished. My dad always said the part to really pay attention to was the liberty and justice for all. Nonetheless I stood, hand on my chest and all that.”
They wandered through the amusement park with no particular destination in mind.
“I bet at some point your gung-ho Marine got excited at this meeting with your mom.”
“Very perceptive. Mr. Ingram. Yes, things soon deteriorated, and the two so-called educators pretty much accused my mother of being a bad parent, and asked if she was even born in this country, her with her Brooklyn accent.”
They’d stopped in front of the ring toss game. Ingram asked, “Did they kick both of you out of the office?”
“I got suspended for a week. Now of course my parents knew a few firebrand lawyers who’d gotten them and their comrades out of hot water over the years. When Mom returned to school with one of them, a tall woman partial to pearls, threatening to sue in violation of my folks’ free speech rights and saying that this had been settled in the Scopes Monkey Trial and so on and so on, I was back in two days.”
Ingram paid for three rings. “You and Mrs. Hempel avoided the subject for the rest of the semester?” He made his first toss.
“Only two more, friend, and you win the lady a teddy bear,” the man in the booth said. He was reedy and balding, wearing a rainbow-patterned vest and straw hat.
His next toss was good too, landing on the neck of one of the upturned milk bottles assembled together in the middle of the booth.
“Way to go, dead-eye,” Claire encouraged.
Ingram did a few practice moves with his arm and let the third ring fly. It bounced off the neck of a bottle and fell onto the dirt floor.
“Aw, too bad, friend. The lovely lady goes home empty-handed.”
“No, she won’t.” Claire gave him a quarter and got three plastic rings. She made all her tosses.
“There you go, ma’am.” The attendant handed her the teddy bear. As he did that, he bestowed a quick sneer on Ingram.
“My dear.” Claire handed the small stuffed animal to Ingram as they walked away.
He gladly took it. “Thank you, darling.”
By the time they left the amusement park they were happy and hungry for more than amusement park food—at least Ingram was. The teddy bear on the seat between them, he drove them from Santa Monica, taking Olympic Boulevard east. They went past the Olympic Drive-In, “Enjoy Movies in Your Car.” At several intervals parallel to the car, they could discern the dark forms of graded earth, heavy machinery and the skeletal framing onto which concrete would be poured to form the lanes of the upcoming freeway. He arrived at La Cienega and pulled onto the parking lot of the Ships Coffee Shop on the southeast corner. It was a twenty-four-hour Googie futurist-designed building suggesting the promise of space-age efficiency. Anita Claire dozed on the seat next to him. Light from inside the restaurant colored her in soft ambers and yellow. She seemed to him a living painting. He touched her shoulder.
“Want to eat?”
“Yes.” She opened her eyes and turning her head toward him, pulled him close.
The two kissed passionately, but eventually went in. Occupying the counter and booths were the denizens of the night, including hotel clerks just getting off work in nearby Beverly Hills and Black and white men in bus-driver uniforms eating prior to their early morning shifts.
The waitress deposited two menus at their booth, as well as several slices of white and wheat bread on a saucer. Each booth was outfitted with its own toaster, the same for the counter.
“Coffee?” she asked.
“None for me,” Claire said, a hand in front of her yawning mouth.
“Orange juice for me, please, and we’ll be getting food.”
“Sure. Be right back.”
Claire took a slice of bread and put it in the toaster. She dialed the timer and plopped it down. “Think we’ll beat the Russians to the moon like the president wants?”
“Sure. You worried we won’t?”
She frowned. “I guess I’m torn. I know full well the horrors of Stalin’s reign and what might be an unsure fate should they get there first. But all that money to reach a hunk of rock and we got starving children in this town, Harry, let alone down in Alabama and Mississippi.”
The waitress returned. Claire ordered half a grapefruit as compared to Ingram’s plate of two pancakes, scrambled eggs and bacon, crisp.
He said to her when the waitress left, “If I can’t win you a prize, at least I can eat like a man.”
She laughed and continued where they’d left off. “But the race is on, ain’t no stopping it now. Maybe some of what gets developed for those rockets and space suits can have practical applications for us stuck on this mudball.”
“I know you don’t mean ray guns like in the Flash Gordon comic strip. ’Cause say what you want, them generals with the fruit salad on their chests are looking to come out of this with better missiles to reach your poor Russian people and take them out of their suffering in a mushroom cloud.”
“Believe me, I know. But did you know there are several colored women mathematicians working at NASA?”
“What?”
“Yep, they’re fondly called the human computers. Figuring out complex trajectories, working navigational charts for theoretical flights and so forth.”
He whistled. “Somebody ought to write about that.”
“I think there was an article about one of them, Katherine Johnson, in an alumni publication.”
“Yeah, well,” he said. “You and four others saw that.”
“There’s a lot about us we should preserve for our future generations. All generations really.”
“Meaning I should do more to broaden my subject matter?”
“I wasn’t trying to be sly, Harry. Now don’t you worry, comrade,” she began, affecting a theatrical Russian accent, “one day you and your images will inspire the vanguard of the lumpenproletariat.”
“Damn right, whatever it is you said.”
After they finished their meal and got back in the car, she put her head against his shoulder.
“Home next stop, ma’am.”
“Okay.” She placed a hand on his thigh and kissed and nuzzled his neck.
As he reacted, she wasn’t shy about rubbing her hand in another area as well.
Back at her apartment they made love and finally found sleep in each other’s embrace around four in the morning. He awoke to the sounds of a shower going. Ingram was momentarily disoriented, as if he’d had a carnal dream about her but hadn’t really been with her. Claire’s bedroom was compact and neat. On a wall were several framed photographs. Getting into his boxers, he walked over to them, recognizing Karl Marx, Ida B. Wells and Charlotta Bass speaking at a podium. There was also one of a Black man in a gray suit and glasses. It wasn’t Malcolm X, as this individual was dark and had dark hair. But he reminded Ingram of the charismatic leader.
“That’s Patrice Lumumba,” she said over his shoulder. “An African freedom fighter who was assassinated a couple of years ago. The Central Intelligence Agency is complicit in his demise. He was the first prime minister of the so-called newly independent Congo.”
“Them whites making sure the darkies didn’t take that business about being our own bosses too seriously, you mean.”
“The power-hungry puppet they helped install is named Mobutu, from the military.” She was standing in the doorway to the bathroom in a terry cloth robe, drying her hair with a towel. “Sometimes,” she sighed, shaking her head, “we can be our own worst enemies.” She wrapped the towel around her wet hair.
There was a lone photo on another wall of a Black man and a white woman. She was sitting and he was standing behind her, his hands on her shoulders. They were dressed in everyday clothes and smiling. Claire looked to be a darker-hued version of her mother.
“Your mom’s a good-lookin’ chick.”
“Shut up, idiot.”
On a tidy bookcase were the types of books he expected to find, nonfiction works such as The Souls of Black Folk; Fear, the Accuser; Anarchism and Other Essays and several textbooks about math. There was also a book called The Second Sex and several fiction paperbacks he was surprised to find with titles such as Women’s Barracks, The Midnight Blade and The Long Wait. Their covers were salaciously intriguing, living up to their exciting titles.
He had one of the paperbacks in his hand when Claire came up behind him, putting her arms around his middle. Her fingers on his flesh reminded him that while he’d already found Kinslow’s pictures at the Y, he should make working out there a routine.
“I like it that you have a wide variety of interests in reading,” he said, turning his head to kiss her.
“Blame it on my curious parents. There were always all kinds of books lying around the house when I was growing up. My mom could read three or four of them at a time. Still does.”
“Lucky I can read my name,” Ingram muttered, overjoyed to be in her arms again.
She’d undone the robe and her hand slipped inside his boxers’ waistband as they swayed together. Sometime later they were dressed and having coffee and sharing a sweet roll in her kitchenette. Ingram ate most of the pastry. Claire had two small pieces at the end of her fork. They were staring at each other when her phone rang. She got up to answer.
“Yes,” she said, listening. “Right, okay, why don’t we meet there in about half an hour?” There was a response, then, “Yes, I know where he lives. See you there.” She hung up and came back to the table but didn’t sit down.
“What’s up?” He finished off the sweet roll.
“There’s a meeting at Reverend Brookings’s house. Hollingsworth has a new ad on the radio touting himself as the negro’s best friend. Actually using the fact Tom was a policeman to hint he’s in the pocket of interests outside of our community.” Joe Hollingsworth was white and when the midterm opening on the City Council occurred in 1961, he’d been appointed among several candidates, including Bradley, who at the time was still on the police force. Hollingsworth had an inside track with certain elements in City Hall. He’d been a construction supervisor working on the development of Baldwin Hills. Now, though, the voters would decide on the first full term.
“Damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” Ingram said. “That’s what the coloreds get for being ambitious.” He’d taken various shots of Bradley over the years, including the time when he was still a cop and was assigned to safeguard the singer and civil rights activist Paul Robeson when he came to town.
A crooked grin came and went on her face. “At least the CIA isn’t involved, just good old-fashioned American capitalists. Which I suppose is the same thing.”
“Go get ’em, Anita.”
She was at a desk in a corner by the window assembling a few of her papers and putting them in a valise with her initials on it. “Stay as long as you want, Harry. Turn the lock and the door locks behind you.”
He stretched, yawning. Ingram was tempted to hang around and laze away the day, waiting lustfully for her return. “Shouldn’t I tiptoe out the back door so your reputation isn’t ruined?”
“Little late for that, baby.” She leaned over him studying his face, his chin held in her hand. “Say my name again.”
“Anita,” he said like cotton was in his throat.
“That’s right.” She gave him all tongue so as not to smear her lipstick.
He had another cup of coffee and turned on the portable TV she had on top of the bedroom dresser. The master of fitness Jack LaLanne was going through one of his exercise routines. He was always in a leisure jumpsuit, today’s being sky blue in color with belted pockets on his chest and the same design on the buckle on the sewn-in belt at his trim waist. Watching LaLanne go through his paces and also visualizing the fabulous and fit nude form of Claire in his mind, he joined in and worked up a light sweat. Afterward he was hungry again but maintained discipline and didn’t open her refrigerator. He left, making sure the door was secured behind him.
Downstairs he had to remember where he’d parked; he’d been too distracted when Claire had her hand between his legs, his fly zipped down. Finally it came back to him and he walked down West Thirty-Seventh toward the corner of Raymond Avenue. He was about to pass by a telephone pole, a handbill stapled on it. He stopped, the image on the flyer having gotten his attention. It was of several stern-faced men and women standing side by side looking out at the viewer. They were Black Muslims, and the wording was about a picket of the White Front department store on Manchester. The action was to take place today at noon.
A few minutes later, dime in hand, Ingram made a call at a pay phone at a gas station, the driver’s door of his Belvedere open and the engine running.
“Hey, Wes,” he said, when the phone was answered by Wesley Crossman at the Eagle newspaper. “What do you know about this protest by the Black Muslims?”
“Nothing.”
Deadline frenzy gripped the newsroom. As he talked to the editor, he heard reporters yelling for their copyedited galleys, cursing about getting a headline rewritten and the other joyous cacophonies of a weekly edition being composed.
With a dry chuckle he said, “It’s happening today at noon at the, get this, the White Front.”
“Don’t know nothing. Just like them to not put out a press release,” he groused. “It’s happening today you said?” The rhythmic tak-tak-tak of typewriter keys being attacked came over the line.
He told him what he’d gleaned from the flyer. “How about it?” he asked.
“Okay, yeah, cover it. We’ll find the room for a shot and a short piece. But get me a juicy quote and you got to have it over here before four.”
“On it.” Ingram hung up and got back in his car. Maybe he could kill two birds with the same stone, he figured as he drove away.
Back at his place he showered again, given his exercising with Jack, and shaved. He put on slacks and a light short-sleeved shirt; no coat, but took his snap-brim hat with him. He got over to the White Front not twenty minutes past eleven. Already there was a grouping of the NOI milling on a section of the parking lot. So far the only other newspaper represented here was a reporter for the Muslim’s Muhammad Speaks.
His Speed Graphic strapped around his neck and his press credentials in his shirt pocket, he approached a huskily built man directing two others. He wore a dark suit, and his silver tie clasp contrasted with his black tie flat against his starched white shirt.
“Excuse me, brother,” he began, “I’m here from the Eagle and wanted to know what brought this about.”
The man regarded Ingram for a beat then said, “The white man and his continuing devaluing of negro labor. The plantation system is over.”
Ingram had his steno pad out. “Could you be more specific? For the record. And tell me your name, please.”
“I’m Kevin Abdullah and I’ve been authorized to speak for the Honorable Elijah Muhammad in this regard.” He pointed at the arched façade of the discount chain. Several shoppers had paused near the doorway to see what was going on. “A salesman in this store insulted one of our women when she came in to purchase a simple vacuum cleaner.”
“What did he say?”
“He was white, of course, and said there must be a lot of dirt in that mosque of yours what with the kind of people you all cater to.” He looked evenly at Ingram, who wrote down the quote. “When contacted about this, the manager refused to discipline his employee.”
Ingram made a note of that too. “I’ll be back.”
The other man nodded and resumed talking to the others. By now several station wagons had arrived with carloads of members. In the cargo area of the cars were placards on sticks. Ingram estimated at least three hundred were already outside and no doubt more were on the way.
Inside the store he took the escalator to the second floor and headed to the manager’s office. He was intercepted at the door by a security guard.
“What do you want?” He was an older gentleman with a bent nose and a wooden matchstick propped in the corner of his mouth. His eyes were watery, and he made no attempt to hide his growing gut.
“I want to get the manager’s side of the incident,” Ingram said, showing him his credentials. The guard didn’t strike him as an ex-cop, but he wasn’t sure.
“This for a colored paper?”
“That’s right.”
“Then it’s not real news, is it?”
“Can I use that in my article as the official outlook of the White Front corporation? They don’t take their colored customers and the press that reports about them seriously?”
His face compacted. “All right, damn, hold your water.” He went inside the office, closing the door behind him, then returned a moment later. Ingram saw past him into the inner office. The manager was standing at his desk, holding the phone’s handset. The guard closed the door to his back.
“Mr. Peterson says he’ll have something to say shortly.”
“Looking forward to it.” Ingram went back outside and walked around, taking shots and looking for a man with part of his left earlobe missing. He stared hard at the side of more than one head and got questioning grimaces for his intrusions. By now he counted more than four hundred men and women from the various mosques in the parking lot and out on the sidewalk. Standing off to one side, Kevin Abdullah reviewed his talking points on several index cards he shuffled in his large hands. Several police cars arrived, taking up position. Abdullah paused to watch this. A news van from local station Channel 5 also appeared. The officers exited their vehicles, conferring with one another.
Ingram took more shots and was about to break away to call Crossman to tell him this was going to be a longer article. It was then the manager, Mr. Peterson, came outside, a few steps from the front doors in case he had to rush back inside, Ingram surmised. The security guard stood next to him, along with a Black woman in a black-and-white-checkered skirt and black sweater.
A sergeant broke away from the other policemen and approached Abdullah. Ingram went toward the two as the TV newscaster stood on the sidewalk. He adjusted his handheld microphone as the cameraman set up his camera on its stilts. Various cables trailed from their equipment back into the van.
“This is an illegal assembly,” the sergeant was saying to Abdullah.
“This is about justice and fair treatment. That’s never illegal.”
“Look, you need a permit to picket. You know this.”
Ingram clicked away.
The sergeant turned toward him. “Get the fuck out of here.”
“I’m press.”
“I don’t care if you’re Old Man River.”
“I have a right to cover this just like they do.” He pointed his jaw at the newsman on the sidewalk.
The sergeant resumed talking to Abdullah. “I’m asking you to take your people and get out of here before this gets out of hand.”
“Not until the manager talks to us about his failure to act responsibly.”
“Jesus,” the sergeant said, “give you people an inch and you take a mile.”
Abdullah grinned. “We learned from the best.”
The sergeant swore and walked back to his officers.
Abdullah started toward where Peterson stood but the manager retreated back inside the store. The security guard and the woman remained. Abdullah talked to her. Ingram took a few shots of them, then pivoted toward the cops. Not needing to look at his camera, by rote he took out the used roll and inserted a new one. He began taking pictures of the gathered cops.
“Didn’t I tell you to get the fuck out of here?” the sergeant reiterated.
“Just doing my job.”
“Do it elsewhere.”
One of the police officers put his hand on his sheathed nightstick. “I’ve seen this nosy bastard around. Always taking snaps of misery and mayhem.”
“Yeah, probably a peeping Tom too,” another one cracked.
“He’s got some nerve,” a third officer added.
There were two Black officers present and they chuckled along with the rest of them.
“Brothers and sisters, how it warms my heart to see you out here today to represent that we will not tolerate bigotry and second-class citizenship.” Abdullah stood in front of the store, though off to the side from the main doors. The Black woman he’d talked to was back in the store. The security guard remained posted outside.
“They sent this colored woman out, and I won’t disparage her, for what choice did she have really? But they sent this lady out who works in the children’s department to hear us out and report back to the white manager who leaned on her to come out here in the first place.” His voice rose. “The manager who poked his head out like a turtle but doesn’t have the courage to come out here and talk to me man to man.”
Applause and yells of approval arose from the assembled.
“What do we do, Sarge?” The cop who’d had his hand on the hilt of his nightstick unsheathed it.
“Fan out, flank the Muslims. But no aggressive crowd control just yet.”
The officers did as directed. Abdullah kept talking. Ingram captured it all, making sure to write his impressions down as well.
“What we are demanding is only right and correct,” Abdullah said, moving back and forth in front of the crowd. “Oh yes, the city fathers give lip service to the imminent arrival of Reverend King, lauding him and his efforts to bring about our rights as citizens for our people down South. Pretending like everything here in the north, here in sunny Los Angeles is all milk and cream.” He raised his arms. “Well, is it?” he called out.
“No,” came the booming response.
“This isn’t a matter for their put-upon lackey in the children’s department. This isn’t a matter of child’s play. This is about adult business, this is about dignity and respect.”
The crowd again reacted ebulliently. Toward the rear to one side of the gathered, shoving erupted between one of the officers and two members of the Nation of Islam.
“Get your hands off them,” a woman said.
Several cops moved in, as well as several of the Black Muslims.
“Keep it together,” Abdullah yelled from the front. “That’s what they want us to do, provoke a fight so they can have an excuse to break heads and limbs. Don’t succumb.”
Harsh words exploded from both sides among the gathered. Ingram was jabbed in the stomach with a nightstick and reacted. Determined to maintain his focus, he managed to take a picture of the snarling cop, who now raised his baton to send it crashing against his skull. It was going to be the great shot he’d fantasized taking as he flinched for impact.
“Maybe we can still reach a civil outcome,” a voice announced over a bullhorn.
The cop’s eyes shifted and then looking back at Ingram, he seemed for the first time to see the camera in his hand. He lowered the baton, glaring at him. Ingram felt cheated instead of glad. A tall man in a gray pinstriped suit stood alongside a black Lincoln Town Car, holding the bullhorn. The car had stopped at the edge of the impending melee, four individuals having stepped out of it, including the man who’d announced his presence so dramatically. It was Tom Bradley. One of the others was Anita Claire. Now he was glad.
“I think if we can all take a deep breath, we might be able to resolve this,” Bradley said. He wasn’t using the bullhorn as he strode into the knot of blue, uniforms and suits and dresses. “Perhaps a conference of sorts can be brokered. What do you say, Sergeant Franks and Minister Abdullah? Shall we try dialogue?”
Ingram’s experience was the cops in Los Angeles weren’t shy about being caught on camera busting open a negro citizen’s head. But Channel 5’s film camera had been repositioned and was on Bradley, a candidate for City Council. That was a different matter.
“A call came into the reverend about this,” Claire said, stepping closer to Ingram.
“Clever move by your candidate,” he observed. “This’ll show us natives he’s no tool of the white man.”
As if she hadn’t heard him, she said, “I saw what that cop was about to do, Harry.”
“All in a day’s work.”
She shook her head. “It shouldn’t be.”
“Remember, I’m Tarzan.”
“Excuse me, you’re Harry Ingram, aren’t you? You’re a photographer for the negro papers, right?” The newscaster thrust his microphone at him.
“Anita, if you please,” Bradley said, holding up his hand and gesturing for her to join him.
“See you later.” She and a small contingent including Bradley headed for the White Front doors.
“That’s right,” Ingram said to the reporter. He was off-balance being on the receiving end of questions. He wondered if he could turn sideways and disappear.
The TV newsman said, “My cameraman said he’d seen you around. Why did that officer attack you?”
“Why do you think?”
He moved the microphone back toward his own mouth. “What do you mean?”
“I mean the police treat colored reporters different than they do white ones.”
“It’s been my experience they don’t have much love lost for white ones either.”
As they talked, Ingram saw that Bradley, and the other man from the car who he assumed was Reverend Brookings and Claire were let into the store. The other woman who’d come with them stayed outside, talking to Abdullah. The members of the Nation of Islam and the police stood apart, glaring at one another.
About forty minutes later Ingram walked away briskly from the store in search of a pay phone. He found one and called in his update to Crossman.
“They’re still talking?” his editor asked.
“Yeah. At one point they sent out the Black woman who works there to fetch Minister Abdullah to come inside. They’ve been in there ever since.”
“Dammit, looks like I’m going to be here late again. You’ve got to get a quote from this Abdullah, Harry. The manager too if you can, but him for sure. Channel 5 still there?”
“They were packing up.”
“Good. They’ll have the newscast but end it with some jive like negotiations are ongoing.”
“You want a quote from Bradley?”
“Think you can get it? Our readers know we’ve endorsed him, but still.”
“Sure,” he said confidently. He imagined he might get slapped by Claire for being so bold to ask to speak to Bradley and he decided he’d like that just fine.
Off the phone and back at the department store, he again studied the sides of faces of the Black males, looking for the former William Jones’s missing piece of earlobe. He spotted the counterman he’d talked to at the cleaners the other day, but the other man looked past him. Ingram moved so as to not be in his line of sight. Probably seeing him in a different context, his face hadn’t registered, Ingram figured as he continued looking at individuals among the crowd. Sure enough he spotted a man in sunglasses with a chunk of earlobe missing not twenty feet away, several people in between them. He was talking with another man, who was bobbing his head. The former Jones was a lighter hue than Ingram but not so much you would take him for being mixed race.
He had a carbon copy of the attorney’s entire letter with him. But good sense told him if he went over to the ex–Mr. Jones now, he’d get about three words out before there’d probably be a reaction he might not be able to control. What if the counterman came over and wondered just what it was that Ingram was up to? Was he pretending to be a newsman to serve his papers and was what he’d said about a will made up? Was it a white devil’s trap and he their Uncle Tom errand boy? Too, maybe the once–Mr. Jones would be embarrassed in front of his fellow members about this white man looking for him. Not that Ingram would announce the dead man’s race, but his name and the fact that he left a will was a neon alert. No, he reasoned, it was best he do this out of the presence of so many Black Muslims.
Tom Bradley opened the double front doors of the department store. He stepped out, scanning about for the television crew, Ingram conjectured. But the man who was versed in containing his emotions, having risen in the ranks despite a prejudiced police department, showed no disappointment as he held the door open for the others to exit. Anita Claire was the last to come out and she smiled briefly at Bradley.
“Brothers and sisters,” Minister Abdullah began, “thanks to the candidate and his persuasive words, the manager had a meeting with me that I will say in all charity was fruitful to some degree.”
Wary murmurs rolled through the assembled. The cops looked from one to the other, unsure of what was coming next.
“While I did not secure the firing of this man, as should have happened, this insulter of our women, he will be transferred out of our community so as not to utter his vileness, at least as far as we, the so-called negro in America, are concerned.”
There were whoops of approval and applause. Ingram started toward the minister, estimating this was going to be his only opportunity to get his quote whereas with Bradley, he might have a chance later today.
“Brother minister, I was hoping to get a quick interview with you for the Eagle.”
Abdullah said, “Always have time for the fine publication Mrs. Bass steered as they continue to serve our people well.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Ingram realized the man from the cleaners was staring at him. Well, there was nothing to do about it now. He asked Abdullah his questions for the article. By the time he was finished, the once–Mr. Jones in the sunglasses was gone, though Ingram had taken a surreptitious shot of him. Concentrating on putting together the article, he also got a statement from Bradley by simply going up and asking him. Given he was running for office, he’d stayed to work the crowd. Ingram wasn’t sure if the Nation of Islam encouraged its members to vote, but nothing ventured and all that, he reflected.
“Got what you needed?” Claire asked him as the picketers and the police began to disperse.
“I can’t be satisfied,” he said, quoting bluesman Muddy Waters.
“Ain’t just men who can sing that, you know.”
He doffed his hat. “Yes, ma’am.”
After she left, he opened his trunk and switched out the white bulb for a red one. He also taped his tarp in place along the edge of the trunk lid to block the light. Ingram then utilized the equipment and chemicals of his portable darkroom, including some bottled water, and developed his pictures.
Sitting in his car, he wrote out the story in longhand on a lined pad of paper he kept in the car. It took some effort, as this wasn’t some sharpie shot dead and lying in the bushes, or two drunken women who went at each other with a clothes iron and a screwdriver. Those crime vignettes took little effort to bang out. The vivid pictures told those tales. But this time it was about an establishment in a Black neighborhood and the implications of having a mostly white staff who had no sense of the area they were in except that it was a colored part of town. He went over his draft, then rewrote it, doing his best to make it sound like the longer pieces he read in the Eagle and Sentinel—articles that told the facts, had a point of view but didn’t hammer the reader over the head with it.
Driving to the newspaper, Ingram felt conflicted. Wasn’t this the sort of story he should be doing more of? Work reflecting the plight and the striving of Black people, and not showing the race in the worst possible light? But those fights and shootings and stabbings were also part of life here. And, as he’d told the woman in Kinslow’s rooming house, he took plenty of shots of white folks doing dirt to each other too. Though they were invariably poor and working people, just like their fellow Black citizenry. If he pursued the more uplifting stories, would that bring in more dollars eventually, get him in the white slicks so he wouldn’t have to cobble together the money to pay his gas bill and buy a pot roast now and then?
“This is good, Harry, I’m impressed. A step above your usual.” Crossman shook the typewritten pages. When Ingram had gotten to the paper, he’d commandeered an Underwood and banged out the story. They were standing outside the Classified Ads room, having wandered there from his desk as Crossman read. Most of the paper had been put to bed, Crossman holding open a space for the article on the protest.
“Trying to get it right, Wes.”
“Well, keep it up. I’ll put in your voucher.”
“Thanks.”
On his way out, Ingram passed by an open door. Keys were clacking away in there as an older man composed metal type at a battle-hardened Linotype machine. His aged fingers worked the keys nimbly.
“Chester,” Ingram said, nodding to him.
The other man nodded back as he reached down to extract a line of cooling hot metal type.
Elated, Ingram next went to El Cholo’s Mexican restaurant on Western Avenue. He sat at one of the tables in the bar area, a portable television set playing on a high shelf in a corner over the barkeep. It was a replay of the events at the White Front store. Briefly he saw himself in the background of one of the shots. He ordered a combination meal and had a margarita before it arrived, then another with the food. By the time he left the sun was down and he was in a mellow mood. As he unlocked his door the phone was ringing, and he hurried inside. He didn’t think it was Claire but maybe her plans had changed.
“This Harry Ingram?” a man’s voice said.
He told him he was.
“You were at the protest today.”
“I was.” The voice was familiar. “This the man from the cleaner’s?”
“That’s right, I’m Harold Ali. I saw you talking to the minister writing up an article. I called over to the paper and they said you did freelance work for them. But you told me you worked for a lawyer. Which is it?”
“I do both. I do work for a process service sometimes.”
“Why?”
“Gotta make ends meet is all.”
“No, I mean why do you deliver bad news to fellas just trying to get out from under?”
“Not always. Like this time, it’s a letter requesting he come to the reading of the will, like I told you.”
“Uh-huh.” It got quiet, then, “How much you getting to find member William?”
Now we’re getting to it, the shakedown. “A hundred,” he lied.
“I want half.”
“That’s not very brotherly of you, brother.”
“You want to find him or not?”
“You know I saw him today. It’s only a matter of time until I find him.” He could show the picture he’d taken of him around at the various mosques and Muslim businesses. But this could get him identified as a police agent, a snitch, and that would have all sorts of consequences for him beyond his immediate problem.
“Yeah, but I bet you need to get him down there sooner than later.”
Ingram stifled a curse. “That’s not acceptable, man.”
“Then you’re out of luck.”
“So are you,” he growled, about to hang up, incensed. Then he got clever. “How would you like to have the cleaners in the press? Minister Abdullah would like that, wouldn’t he? Get you a star on your chest.”
“You’re just saying that.”
“Am I?”
“When?”
“It could be in the next month.” Or never.
“How do I know you’ll follow through?”
“Tomorrow the Sentinel will be out with a front-page story about the protest at the White Front. But I need to see Brother William tonight.”
“Why the rush, smart guy?”
“’Cause I don’t think you can deliver, Mr. Ali.”
“I should hang up in your face.”
“That’s on you, blowing an opportunity.”
“Goddammit.”
“I don’t believe you should be talking like that, sir.”
“You affirm I’ll get the cleaners in the paper?”
“It might be Jet.”
“That publication has women in skimpy swimwear stapled in the middle and not because it’s for a beach story.”
“Your customers come from the neighborhood and plenty of Jets are sold at corner liquor markets where, and this might come as a surprise to you, they buy their liquor. You, me and the minister know that. Look at it this way: you’ll be getting a chance of turning some of those lives around with the coverage.”
“I don’t like where this is going.”
“Neither do I, yet here we are.”
“I’ll call back . . . maybe.”
Ingram sat heavily. It would have been one thing if Harold Ali had laid it on the table that he wanted a finder’s fee, fine. Like 10 percent, the usual. But to try and stick him up like this, might as well have used a lead pipe and knocked him over the head. But then again, he wasn’t closer to getting to the former Jones or however he was referring to himself these days.
There was a throb at the side of his head from his margaritas, which added to his irritability. Ingram considered having another drink but knew better than to compound his woes. He also decided not to turn on one of his scanners as he wasn’t really in the mood to break the positive spell of the article he’d written. To be back on the prowl once again chronicling some poor bastard’s plight. Anyway, Ali might call back.
Though he’d turned on the TV, he wasn’t paying much attention to the western show that was playing. He stared blankly at the screen. The phone rang again and he answered.
“Okay,” Ali began, “he’ll come.”
“My place?”
“The cleaners.”
“You sure? What’d you tell him?”
“That this was for the good of the NOI.”
“That’s not exactly accurate.”
“You want him there or not? He’ll hear you out.”
“Fine.”
“One hour.”
“Tonight?”
“You want that fee you getting, don’t you?” He hung up abruptly again.
Ingram didn’t like the setup but he didn’t have much choice. He splashed cold water on his face and popped two aspirins to stem the dull ache confounding his brain. Eventually he went downstairs to his Plymouth. The after-work traffic was over, and he got to the Shabazz Dry Cleaners No. 2 in less than twenty minutes. He parked in front, remaining in his car. There were no lights on inside the store. He took a deep breath, got out of his car and walked toward the establishment. Stepping out from the side of the building where an industrial boiler rested on a slab of concrete came Harold Ali. He looked unsteady.
“Where’s William Jones?”
“He’ll be here. And it’s 2X now.”
“Put your arms up,” a man said behind him.
Ingram turned to see William 2X standing there. He still had on his sunglasses and was holding a length of lead pipe down by his side.
“That’s not necessary.”
“When it comes to people I don’t know sniffing around for me from some lawyer, I don’t take chances. I’m reformed, thanks to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, but there are times when the old ways serve me best.”
“I don’t have a gun.”
“That’s not what we’re looking for,” Ali said.
“You asking for the money was a test,” Ingram declared. If he’d agreed, they would have been more suspicious if he went along with being jacked up too easily. Their reasoning being if he was a police agent he’d do anything to be in their good graces.
“We are quite aware of those who come to us in our skins but are agents of the devil employing tricknology,” 2X said.
Ingram replied, “Don’t you think we ought to conduct our business inside? Or are you two looking to attract attention? Like from a passing police car?”
The two exchanged a look and Ali took out a set of keys. He unlocked the security gate, pulling it aside in its track, then got the front door open.
“Who is this letter supposed to be from?” William 2X asked him, finally taking off his sunglasses to reveal pale gray eyes.
“The lawyer is representing the estate of Fordis Royal.”
The other man stared hard at him.
The three went inside and the lights were flicked on. Ingram was patted down. The letter was taken out of his jacket along with his wallet from his back pocket. Harold Ali took out Ingram’s driver’s license and wrote down his address.
“In case this is some kind of trap,” he said.
William 2X was reading the letter.
“I’ve done what I was asked to do.” Ingram picked up his wallet and put his license back.
“Is it on the up and up, William?” Ali asked.
“Yeah, I think so,” he said dryly, a faraway look on his face.
“Gentlemen,” Ingram said, starting for the door.
Ali said to Ingram, “I guess you was jivin’ about that article, huh?”
“Guess we was testing each other, brother.”
In his car heading home, the driver’s window partially down and night air blowing on him, his headache had finally abated. Ingram made a decision. He had enough money from delivering the letter and covering the picket that he didn’t have to chase work to make the rent and keep the lights on. It wasn’t going to last but it might be long enough for him to do the one thing he’d set out to do, find out who had killed his foxhole buddy Ben Kinslow.