As anticipated, the Freedom Rally had a large turnout. The staff who oversaw the operations at Wrigley Field were of course there early, as were the local and state police. Chief William Parker, head of the Los Angeles Police Department, wasn’t a fan of Martin Luther King, He considered him a self-aggrandizing rabble rouser and possible agent of the Soviets. Negroes needed to know their place and their pace as far as he was concerned.
Lately the chief had heard the chatter from colored preachers and the like for an end to the Cotton Curtain. This was essentially a color line as Blacks were not getting hired for the better-paying industrial jobs east of Alameda Street into the industrial corridor. Parker was concerned. The rhetoric had increased around this issue. That meant there would be more lip from negroes stopped for routine matters like a taillight out or congregating on a street corner. It was Parker’s experience that when they got an inch in one area, they always demanded a mile somewhere the hell else. But as there was radio, TV and print media attention on the rally, he best show he was a responsible leader and have his officers on point.
Conversely Governor Pat Brown was a supporter of King and was aware of Parker’s views regarding the civil rights leader. He’d ordered the state police to be positioned as well to ensure nothing untoward happened to the reverend while he was in town. If that also meant keeping an eye on their brethren who were oft times more eager to use a nightstick on a colored citizen’s head, then that was a bonus. Uniforms were stationed in the sealed-off clock tower to watch the field and prevent the structure from being used by a sniper.
Ingram had also been up early. Already that morning Reverend King had spoken at a special service at Ward African Methodist Episcopal Church to a packed audience. The governor and candidate Bradley were there as well. There were only a few photographers allowed inside, and Ingram was one of them. He’d previously been informed by Shoals Pettigrew, a member of the congregation, that this was happening.
“Remember when we were going to build our own submarine?” Pettigrew said to his friend. The two were on an open mezzanine level overlooking the gathering below. King was just finishing up. The hardware store owner was looking at a painting on the wall up here of dark waters lapping against a rocky shore, a cross glowing atop the rocks.
It took Ingram a moment to realize the painting had triggered the memory. He and Shoals had known each other since attending 61st Street Elementary. The school had a well-stocked library and both grade schoolers had spent several of their library periods paging through a picture-book version of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. They’d also made drawings of what their submarine, the Fantastic, named after the Fantastic Four of Marvel Comics, would look like. How their underwater wonder would be an improvement on Captain Nemo’s Nautilus.
“We were going to sail to all those exotic islands Mrs. Alexander told us about,” Ingram said. There had been a large world map in their room, and she would point to a particular island and tell them about its history, culture and so on. This was how Shoals got his nickname. Pettigrew was always going on in those days about visiting locales like Fiji; Hawaii, which wasn’t a state then; and Madagascar.
“We were going to build robots for our crew,” Pettigrew added. “For when we fought supervillains like the Octopus Master and Serpenticus.” The latter was a giant anthropomorphized talking sea serpent with a genius IQ.
Ingram clicked off several shots of King gesturing with his hands. “And get Reed Richards to build us a force field belt so our crew wouldn’t get eaten by sharks when they were in their diving suits.” Richards was the leader of the Fantastic Four. He could stretch any part of his body and was an inventor of all sorts of gadgets. His superhero name was the rather bombastic Mr. Fantastic.
“Wow, Mrs. Alexander,” Pettigrew said, staring into the past. “Man, I had a crush on her.”
“Yeah, man, you did,” Ingram agreed.
Applause filled the church from below, reminding the two of their duties in the present.
“I’m supposed to help with the reception with the Founder’s Circle. See you later at the Field, Harry.”
“For sure.”
Descending the stairs, Ingram enjoyed the notion that he and Anita could steal away in a garage-built submarine from all this and live the life of vagabonds.
A few hours later he dabbed sweat from his forehead with his handkerchief as he walked around the outer ring of the seats that had been set up on the field. On the raised stage were various celebrities including Rita Moreno, Sammy Davis Jr. and Dorothy Dandridge, who was fanning herself with a folded-over program. Brown and Bradley were sitting up there as well. Actor Paul Newman in sunglasses, along with his wife and fellow actor Joanne Woodward, were now talking at one of the standing microphones.
Ingram snaked his way through a contingent of men in dark suits, holding up the press credentials he’d draped from his neck, obtaining a desirous angle on the stage. Sitting on a folding chair, studying a set of notes, was King, not more than twenty feet from him. No other photographer was around, and he snapped off several shots. There was a bespectacled man he didn’t recognize sitting next to the reverend, but he made sure to get him in a few of his snaps. As he was lining up the next shot through his viewfinder, the images were blocked by a hand on a hip he recognized.
“You better not be trying to take a picture up under my dress, pervert.”
“Hey, sweetie,” he said, looking up. Anita Claire stood at the edge of the stage, bending down slightly toward him. She was in a white dress with black polka dots, cinched at the waist by a white belt. She had on an ostentatious wide-brimmed sun hat with a decorative sash encircling the crown. A gust billowed and she had to clamp down on her hat. How he wanted to be on the Fantastic with her.
“I wanted to make sure to tell you that there’s to be a light reception for the reverend tonight at the O’Dells’ in Sugar Hill. This will be after the fundraiser at the Lancasters’.”
“How many damn appearances can this man make in one day?”
“As many as the cause demands, comrade. He’s gotta be in Chicago tomorrow at their Wrigley Field for yet another event.” She told him the address to the O’Dells’, blew him a kiss and walked away.
Ingram had yet to come clean concerning his conversation with Sutton. He had told her he was pretty certain the man hadn’t taken the diary. Ingram reflected on it, moving off to get more shots of the others onstage. In the last few days she hadn’t asked him about interviewing the third person on her list. But then both of them had been busy, what with this rally coming up. On Ingram’s part in particular, there had been the Wicks problem to deal with. He was still perplexed he wasn’t more bothered by shooting the enforcer in cold blood.
“Him or me,” Ingram muttered. A rationalization he’d made more than once in the last two days.
After getting the pics he wanted of those onstage, Ingram meandered about, spotting Pettigrew sitting with his church folks, Strummer Edwards by himself and Arthur Yarbrough with the woman Ingram had met at Kinslow’s sendoff.
“How it going, Harry?” Yarbrough said as he stepped closer. Even with the voice of Governor Brown booming over the loudspeakers, his blind friend recognized the other man’s muffled footfalls on the grass. “That foot must be feeling better.”
“Like new.”
“I heard that. Oh, pardon me,” he said, turning slightly to his companion. “This is Millicent Mayfair. Millie was at—”
“Yes, I remember her.” Ingram stuck out his hand. “Pleased to formally meet you.”
“Same,” she said. Her voice had a husky, smoky quality. Arthur was grinning like a goof at Ingram. The three turned their attention back to the stage as several musicians began a musical interlude. Up there was Johnny Otis on vibes, Buddy Collette on clarinet, Clora Bryant on trumpet and Dexter Gordon on the sax. Reverend King had looked up from his notes to dig what they were laying down, Ingram observed.
When the musicians finished, Ingram made his way over to Otis, who was talking to Dexter Gordon. Ingram nodded at the tall saxophonist.
“Nice set, gents.”
“Thanks, man.” Otis dabbed at his sweaty brow with a handkerchief. He introduced Ingram to Gordon.
“Real quick, Johnny, you know a chick who goes by Hanisha?”
“Hell of a name,” Gordon rumbled.
Otis grinned broadly. “Yeah, played a few sets with her around town. But I heard she got out of the business to do her soothsayer hustle.” He chuckled.
“Do you know if Ben knew her?”
Otis looked away, then back at his friend. “Yeah . . .” he drawled, “seems to me Ben was in at least one of those gigs back when he was in town then.”
“Did they, you know, go around together?”
Otis hunched a shoulder. “Don’t know, why?”
“Just trying to fill in the blanks. Thanks.” Ingram turned to go.
“I remember I heard she was doing readings or whatever you call ’em for a few heeled white women on the west side. Maybe Ben helped make that happen. But I don’t know.”
“I hear you. Thanks again.”
Onstage comedian Dick Gregory was riffing at the microphone as Ingram again moved around, taking snaps of audience members laughing. After him a handful of other speakers came and went at the microphones until finally King came up to speak. First, though, he received a standing ovation that lasted over a minute. Ingram and Josh Nakano stood together clapping a few yards away from the stage.
“I want to thank Governor Brown, Reverend Dockery and all the other fine people up here today who have brought me back to this fine city,” King began. His next words were drowned out by more enthusiastic applause. When the clapping died down, he continued. “And you all out here today who believe that justice and equality are not simply lofty words but a clarion call to each and every one of us to do our part to bring about a nation that upholds its ideals set forth so long ago.”
The crowd exploded again.
“I gotta tell my mom about this,” Ingram said to his friend.
“Me too.” Nakano grinned.
Soon Ingram said good-bye to Nakano to work his way among those seated to capture the beaming faces of the more than thirty-five thousand in attendance. “Birmingham or Los Angeles, the cry is the same, we want to be free,” King proclaimed to thunderous applause. He looked out over the crowd. “Now is the time to transform the creative energy in this country to form a song of brotherhood to lift the country from the quicksand of racial injustice.”
His words garnered another standing ovation.
When King finally sat down, his shoulders slumped and his head dropped, like a boxer who’d just gone the distance. But when his head came up, he was smiling, and waved to the people. When the stadium again got quiet, singer Aretha Franklin came to the microphone to end the event. As her powerful voice filled the air, Ingram was kissing Anita Claire in a shadowed recess under the stands of Wrigley Field.
“Guess I better get back.”
“Okay,” he said, their faces close.
“Either of those two hoodlums been around?”
“Not lately.”
She pulled back farther, taking her hands from around his neck. “Those kinds of guys don’t fade into the woodwork, you know.”
“I hear you, baby. I’ll figure it out.”
“We’ll figure it out.” With a peck she was gone.
Ingram hadn’t told her about the bushwhacking in Altadena, or Morty. She didn’t know about his car being firebombed and him going into hiding. The last few days she’d been so busy getting things ready for King’s visit, they’d only talked by phone. In this way he also hadn’t had to let slip about his showdown with Wicks. The knife man, he could argue, was self-defense. His pulling the trigger on Wicks . . . a preemptive strike? That was only an excuse in wartime. Yet there had been no mention of either man’s demise in print or over the airways. As to why, Ingram wasn’t sure, but he was certain Hoyt was behind it. He supposed if pressed, the millionaire would send a killer after him to tidy up loose ends, so no sense calling attention to the two goons and Hoyt’s own involvement. This meant, though, Ingram would have to strike first to make sure nothing happened to Anita. Was he seriously contemplating killing a rich white man? If by some miracle he remained alive after being arrested, he’d be sent to death row, waiting his turn to suck in the gas chamber’s fumes.
But today the idea of death at the hands of the law didn’t faze him. Today he had a job to finish.
Ingram and Eddie Burrows, the writer covering the rally for The Nation, had arranged a time to meet outside of gate 7. Ingram walked out to the blacktopped parking lot to keep the appointment.
“Hell of a speech by King,” Burrows said. People streamed past them exiting the stadium, then milled in the parking area, talking about the rally. Burrows was in short sleeves and from the streak of wetness on his back, he’d sweated profusely this day.
“August in D.C. will be even bigger, grander,” Ingram said. He lit a cigar.
“Indeed. Are you going?”
“At first I had no interest, but now, yeah.” Ingram nodded. “Even if it’s on nobody’s ticket, yeah, I might just go.” If he wasn’t sitting in jail, he didn’t add. “How about you?”
“I want to, but looks like I’ll be in Indo-China then. Vietnam, they’re calling it now.”
“Didn’t Kennedy send some troops there?”
“Yeah, these tough bastards that eat nails for breakfast. They’re called the Green Berets. The word now is he’s stepped up our involvement on the sly to help out the French and keep the dominoes from falling.”
“They sold us that bill of goods in Korea,” Ingram said pointedly. Absently, he aimed and took a shot of Bradley talking to Governor Brown nearby.
“I’m tracking down something called Operation Ranch Hand.”
“What’s that?”
Burrows’s eyebrows went up. “Not exactly sure. But apparently it involves a chemical spray to screw up the North Vietnamese’s crops. A way to starve them out I guess.” He paused, then asked, “You think there’ll ever be a Black president of this country, Harry?”
“The Arctic gonna run out of icebergs?”
“No, really. Like King said. We can only aspire to be whatever we want to be when the roadblocks to make that happen are eliminated. Isn’t that the goal?”
Ingram tapped ash off the end of his cigar. “Not sure why any colored man would want to be the president. The aims of the Confederacy are alive and well in plenty of white folks’ hearts, Eddie. Black man as president, well,” he hunched a shoulder, “that fella would be living in a glass house. Every step he took, every sneeze he made would be a reason to find fault with him.”
“But think of how that could mean we’ve turned a corner when it comes to race and race relations.”
“Huh,” Ingram said, “right around that corner will be another white wall. Taller and harder to get over than the last one.”
“I hope you’re wrong.”
“Me too.”
In his shirtsleeves, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sat in a club chair in a corner of the large living room. In a few hours he’d be driven from this home in Sugar Hill to the airport to take an overnight charted flight to Chicago for the rally he was speaking at the next day, Sunday—at that city’s more famous Wrigley Field. He’d had a catnap between the rally at the stadium and the fundraiser with the Hollywood crowd that included Marlon Brando and Burt Lancaster. Ingram had skipped the event in favor of this one at the O’Dells’ home. The O’Dells, Nan and Hal, were an older white couple who’d lived here since the 1940s. Unlike several of their white neighbors, they hadn’t moved away when the neighborhood started changing. Claire had also informed Ingram the husband and wife were contributors to Bradley’s campaign.
Inside the home all sorts of people talked and snacked. It was a small gathering and the house itself was only two blocks away from the previous time Ingram had been in the neighborhood, the last time he’d seen Ben Kinslow alive. He was the only journalist here and had already gotten several candid shots he felt certain he could sell to one of the white slicks.
“I’ll be glad to get some sleep tonight,” Shoals Pettigrew said to Ingram as they stood off to one side of the home.
Stifling a yawn his friend answered, “You and me both.”
Despite a very long day, King was in good humor and chatted with several people who stood near him. Ingram drifted over to where Anita Claire and Judy Berkson were hovering near the spread laid out on the dining room table. Berkson nibbled at a cracker dabbed with a green blob. Given their trim figures, Ingram figured he put away more calories at breakfast than they did between the two of them all day.
“How you all holding up?” he asked them.
Claire briefly slipped an arm around his waist. “You losing weight, baby?”
“It comes from trying to keep up with you.”
“You two are too cute,” Berkson quipped. “Anita says you talked with Charlie Sutton.” She’d finished her cracker and was eyeing another one with a small, boiled shrimp on it.
“Interesting cat. I’m going to legitimately write up an article on him. But as to the diary, it doesn’t seem like he swiped it.”
“And we only have two others, one of them away until next week.” Berkson worried her bottom lip.
“We’ll figure it out,” Claire said. “Don really wants to write this book, huh?”
Her friend said, “He’s already started to work on it. But the diary contains specific dates and such that will help him keep it all organized. He’d like to have the facts to write the fiction.”
Ingram and Claire nodded.
Later, when it was just the two of them in the kitchen, she said to him, “I’ll work with Judy and her folks to get his book in shape. My mom’s got a pretty good memory and she can help fill in the gaps.”
“You’re not worried about the diary?”
“If it’s gone, it’s gone.”
“You was kinda hot to find it before.”
She laid a look on him he couldn’t decipher.
The swing door opened and in stepped a white woman, athletic build, early forties, tawny skin and decked out stylishly in black capri pants, a buttoned-up shirt and matador shoes.
“I’ll get you a beer and something to eat, Martin,” the woman was saying. She smiled at Ingram and Claire and reached a hand to the refrigerator. That’s when Ingram noted the sparkling bracelet on her wrist. The bracelet he’d seen in the photo among the ones Kinslow had stowed away.
“What is it?” Claire asked, catching Ingram glaring at the woman.
“Nothing, tired is all,” he said, trying to sound casual, a hand on her shoulder.
Past her, the woman had removed a can of beer from the refrigerator and placed it on the tiled counter. She rummaged in a drawer for an opener, then used it on the can. She’d also retrieved a highball glass from the cupboard and poured an amount into it. From the way she moved about the kitchen it was obvious she’d been a guest of the O’Dells before. She smiled again at the two as she exited.
“Harry,” Claire began.
A finger to his lips, he turned from her and opened the swing door a crack. In this way he could see into the dining room, where the food was laid out under overhead lights. He had set aside his Speed Graphic but had also brought along his compact Canon. He watched as the woman piled several dainty triangles of sandwiches on a small plate. Ingram held the camera level to his sternum. Just before the woman picked up the plate, she dropped a round white pill into the beer glass and swirled the contents to help dissolve the pill. She then left his field of vision to deliver her goods.
Standing in the kitchen, Ingram frowned at Claire, who looked at him questioningly. “I think that lady is trying to poison the reverend.”
“What?”
“Come on.” He tugged her by the wrist to the living room.
The highball glass and sandwiches were on an end table next to the club chair King had been sitting in. Ingram stared fixedly at the glass. The level of the head of foam seemed to be where he’d last seen it less than a minute ago. At the moment King was standing, a hand in his pocket as he talked to Reverend Brookings. The woman with the particular bracelet was talking to a man and woman across the room.
“Shit,” Ingram mumbled. He whispered to Claire, “I’m going to distract Reverend King and you swipe his beer. In fact, spill it if you can so you have to replace it.” He started off.
“Okay,” she said softly to his back.
Ingram walked over and said to the clergymen, “Mind if I get a shot of you two?”
Brookings looked annoyed but King said, “Make it fast, will you? I’m about dead on my feet.”
“Sure, of course.” As Ingram lined up his shot, Claire was in position. But then King held up his hand.
“Hold on, I’m parched.” He pivoted and picked up the highball glass with a flourish, as if auditioning for a TV commercial to sell its contents.
Like when he was in combat, time slowed for Ingram, his heart racing and throat constricted by fear and anticipation.
King winked at him, saying, “Now you wait till I put this down. Got to keep certain parts of my real self separate from my public image.”
The words came to Ingram as if through a heavy scrim. He watched as King had the glass to his mouth. As he tipped it forward to drink, Ingram had two flashbulbs in hand plucked from his pocket. He threw them with force onto the hardwood floor. They exploded in audible pops, causing wide eyes all around.
“Sorry, nerves,” he stammered.
As if reacting to the mini-explosions, Claire bumped into the reverend. “Goodness,” she declared. Her action caused the contents of the glass to slosh over, wetting King slightly.
“Oh no,” someone said.
“It’s fine,” the prophet of nonviolence said, wiping at his shirt with his hand. “I’m still thirsty though.”
“Coming right up,” the woman with the bracelet said.
“I got it,” a man said, already heading through the swing door.
Someone else had fetched a wet towel and was rubbing King’s shirt.
“I’ve got another one in my luggage,” King assured his helper. “But the good Lord bless you for this beer.” The man had returned from the kitchen and King eagerly took the offered libation, this time straight from the can. He had a sizable sip and sighed satisfactorily. “That’s better.”
The woman with the bracelet had her arms folded, her mouth a thin line as she clenched her jaw. She stared hard at Claire.
With time to spare, King nonetheless said his good-byes about forty minutes later and was out the door, on his way to the airport. The woman had left before then. Ingram had glanced around the curtained window, and had noted the car she was driving. It was a sporty Jaguar XKE convertible.
Afterward at his place, Ingram and Claire unwound and debriefed.
“Maybe it wasn’t poison,” she wondered.
“What, a sleeping pill? He wasn’t driving himself.”
“Doesn’t seem to me the Providers would want him dead,” she said.
Ingram put his feet in his socks on the coffee table. “Four months before what’s going to be the biggest gathering ever for jobs and justice for the negro? Could you imagine how defeated everyone would feel if he were to die?”
Claire observed, “Seems to me that would drive more people to Malcolm X’s militant point of view. Cause riots and whatnot. King is for reform, not revolution. Him being cut down could make people way less inclined to wait for answers from Washington and more inclined to seek it in the streets.”
Shaking his head he said, “We’d need a whole grip of white folks on our side to pull off that kind of action, baby. Unless of course there’s a whole bunch of your running buddies’ secret cells around. And I mean there’d have to be several high-placed ones in the armed forces and all.” He imagined tanks rolling down Broadway, firing into buildings in the ghetto indiscriminately.
“The Bolsheviks built on a series of intense struggles over years, including maneuvering their allies into the governmental structure to pull off their coup.”
“You mean the white Russians. There’s a whole bunch of folks who look like my buddy Josh over there too, right? I mean I know they ain’t Japanese. But where are they when it comes to the Soviets?”
She grinned lopsidedly. “Touché, comrade. Clearly there is work to be done all around.” Her grin faded. “Are we conditioned, though, to accept that the negro’s longing in America is always destined to be dialed down?”
The fact that Clovis Mitchell had attended Pepperdine occurred to him and he told her this, adding, “Maybe the Providers have their own Black leader they’re grooming hiding in the woodpile. Somebody who will not be as forward-thinking as the good doctor. More like, I don’t know, George Washington Carver. Separate is okay as long as we apply ourselves.”
She made a derisive sound in her throat, snuggling next to him. On the coffee table were two squat glasses containing whiskey, neat, and the two surreptitious snaps Ingram had taken of the woman with the bracelet. They were still drying. One was as she was leaving the gathering, in motion on the walkway of the house, furtively illuminated by the porch light. The other was in the dining room, the white, round orb of a pill suspended in the air just as she released it from her hand. The frozen moment in time looked as if the two had rehearsed the shot.
Claire picked up the picture, waving it slightly. “We should at least find out who she is.”
“Hell yes.” He sipped his drink.
The following day Claire made an inquiry to the O’Dells and found out the woman’s name was Elise Duville. She was listed in the White Pages. When they drove to her house in Cheviot Hills, there was a for sale sign staked in the well-tended lawn. They got out and walked up to the abode.
“Ain’t nobody home but us chickens,” Ingram cracked as the two of them peered in the front window, the drapes inside slightly gapped.
“You ain’t never lied.” The furniture was already gone. Back in the car she turned to Ingram and said, “The reason you haven’t mentioned Morty and Wicks lately is they’re dead, aren’t they?”
“Yes,” he said, staring straight ahead.
“I need to tell you something, Anita. It’s been eating me up. Not what I did, but the not talking about it. I killed them both.” Stammering he added, “Two different times. Before the rally. Both times they’d come at me.” He told her about the ambush and Wicks coming to the Eagle to call him out. He didn’t provide further details but would if she asked. Like still-life paintings, they sat there in front of the empty house. His hands were on the steering wheel, inert, seemingly without purpose.
“But Hoyt hasn’t sent anyone else,” she finally said.
“Not yet.” He turned to her. “You know I’d do whatever I could to protect you.”
“I’m a big girl, Harry. I’ve told you that.”
“I know you are.”
“Come on, I’m hungry.”
A few days later Claire circled back with Nan O’Dell trying to unearth any other information about Elise Duville. They sat in the front room of the woman’s house in Sugar Hill having tea.
“Why so curious about Elise?” O’Dell wondered.
“I think I might know a relative of hers, a girl I went to school with. Miss Duville gave me her phone number but it’s disconnected.”
“Hmm,” the older woman said, sipping from her Spode china cup. “I know she’s moved around a lot so that’s not surprising.” She regarded her guest.
Sensing she was holding back, Claire asked, “What is it, Nan?”
“Well, dear, I know a little about you and your sister’s upbringing from Frank Wilkerson and was wondering if it was in one of those summer camps you’d met this relative of hers. Elise being you know, what’s the term, a fellow traveler?”
“Really?” Claire said.
Two nights later Ingram was alone at home and his phone rang. He answered it.
“Hello, Mr. Ingram,” a pleasant voice said.
“Who is this?”
“Winston Hoyt.”
His throat tightened but he said calmly, “What can I do for you?”
“Oh, I thought I’d check in with you. Particularly I wanted you to know I’d advised Wicks to leave you be, but he took it rather personally about his associate.”
“They killed Ben on your orders,” he said evenly.
“Such an unfortunate matter.”
Ingram wasn’t going to utter an unrealistic vow like he’d make him pay. They both knew that couldn’t happen, given Hoyt’s command of resources and his lack thereof.
“Hard decisions have to be made at times, Mr. Ingram. It’s the nature of progress.”
“The brass always says that shit and the soldiers do the dying. You had my friend killed because he knew you were going to try and kill the reverend.”
“What are you saying about King?”
“Be cute. Your girl, Elise. I know who she is and what she tried to do.”
“What are you saying?”
“You heard me.”
A pause, then, “You are an enterprising sort, Harry. Credit to your race. Truly. This city with the proper guidance can be a model for the nation. Once you understand that, I believe you’ll see what we are attempting to accomplish in its proper light.”
“Look, if you’re going to come for me, do it. None of this going on about good darkies and all that hoorah. But you leave my friends alone. Me and you, man to man.”
“Be well, Mr. Ingram. I have no doubt our paths will cross again.” He hung up.
For several moments Ingram remained still, evaluating Hoyt’s words and the reactions behind them.
“I’m not going to walk around with a roscoe in my purse, Harry,” Anita Claire added, “so you can do an article on me in Dapper, ‘Tragic Mulatto Pistol Whips Rich White Man Half to Death.’”
They both chuckled. “Okay, Moms Mabley, I had to suggest it.” The two were in his apartment and had been discussing possible repercussions from Winston Hoyt. They were sitting at his kitchen table eating smothered steak he’d made according to his mother’s recipe. They also discussed his friend’s murder.
Ingram said, “It must have been Ben was hooked up with Hanisha and that square head Clovis trying to work a blackmail angle.” He imagined Mitchell skulking in the bushes to take the pics Ben Kinslow had.
“You said Johnny Otis told you she had an in to the whites,” Claire said. “Who’s to say she wasn’t giving spiritual advice to Hoyt’s wife, sister, someone like that? Hoyt himself for that matter. Plenty of men go to crystal ball gazers. Whatever, she found out something juicy and tried to cash in.”
“Yeah, that could be it,” he admitted. “Hoyt’s boys weren’t looking for Hanisha to give her flowers.” It gave him pleasure visualizing Morty grinding that knife of his in Mitchell’s foot. He forked in more steak, chewing enthusiastically.
“Anyway I think you’re on to something about Hoyt sounding confused when you mentioned Miss Duville. After my tea with Nan, I went to see my mom. She recognized that family name, Duville. We looked through her pamphlets and what have you and found a picture in a booklet the Party circulated in 1938. Back then to score propaganda points over the States, the Soviets were pushing the idea that there was no racism in Russia, unlike here. There was a program to have various people, particularly Black folks, immigrate there, blue-collar workers, artists and so on.” She chewed quietly on her green beans. “Of course the reality of life under Stalin was a whole other thing. Some of these people left, others wound up in a gulag.”
“And some found paradise,” Ingram said.
She nodded. “The Duvilles had been big muckety-mucks in the Party back then in New York, their daughter Elise a teenager. Part of the well-off who’d followed Lenin’s edict and turned against their own class. Elise was part of a kind of one-way foreign exchange program where red kids were sent over there for schooling. The booklet was about that program and showed the smiling Duvilles in the picture. She was younger then of course, but we were pretty sure it wasn’t the woman from the other night.”
“Say what?”
“Yeah,” she said, nodding her head. “Much different face and build.”
“Duville is older,” he pointed out. “And maybe she had work done on her face.”
“Mom made a few calls, looking to see if the husband or wife were still alive. She found out Elise Duville died in a skiing accident in ’56. She double-checked.”
Ingram was several steps behind. “Wait, this program . . .”
Claire said, “For the selected, they got indoctrinated and sent back.”
“To do what?”
“Elise Duville lived well because her folks had money. Could be she was supposed to be a sleeper agent but balked when her handler sought to activate her.”
“The hell?”
“Or maybe it really was an accident. This other sleeper takes her place and infiltrates the Providers.” Claire held her hands wide. “How best to know what the capitalists are up to?”
“But if anybody wants King to succeed, isn’t it in the interests of the Soviets?”
“Again, maybe the pill wasn’t poison. Maybe it was to knock him out and he’d wake up in the sack with a naked white woman draped over him as the photos were snapped. Blackmail him to, I don’t know, be more radical?” She considered her words and added, “I don’t know, that seems like a stretch.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. Then Ingram offered, “What if she wasn’t a Soviet agent? What if she was a government agent, I mean ours? The FBI knew about her and when she died, saw an opportunity. The pretend Elise Duville probably hobnobbed with some radical organizations, gathering information before relocating here. It’s no secret Hoover and his buddies ain’t got no love for the likes of Martin Luther King. And you’re the one that’s talked about the CIA working overtime to overthrow leftist foreign leaders.”
“Their charter says they’re not to operate domestically.”
“Shit, white men running those alphabet agencies all swim in the same pool at the club, don’t they? Having their cigars and cognac later, laughing and joking, sharing ideas on how to keep the darker races down.”
“Something like that,” she said.
Ingram said quietly, “And if it was a setup, we know who took King to the airport the other night. Maybe he was supposed to make a stop first.”
“Oh, Harry,” Claire said, staring at him.
“You’re talking crazy, Harry,” Shoals Pettigrew said. The two were alone in his hardware store. “Your chick has turned your head sideways, man.”
“Were you supposed to bring the reverend to some motel where they would take the pictures of him in the sack with some white woman?” Probably one of the women from those other pictures, he conjectured. “King doped up, not knowing what was going on. Then get him to the plane where he’d sleep through the trip. He’d wake up, not remember a goddamn thing. Figure the pictures wouldn’t show up until after the March on Washington when they would have the most impact, completely gut the struggle.”
“That’s fantastic. You ought to see if you could sell your idea to Alfred Hitchcock.”
“Shoals, for the longest time you’ve had a lien on your shop. I asked the lady at the process server I work for,” Ingram continued. “She checked the court records, that lien was recently erased.”
“You got it twisted, Harry.”
“Do I?”
“I’m no Uncle Tom sellout.”
“Then what are you, Shoals?”
His childhood friend was at a loss for words.
Strummer Edwards looked up from the Sports section he was reading. He was sitting at his desk in his off-the-books club, the Stockyard. Standing in the doorway was a man in a suit and tie. It took him a moment to recognize Clovis Mitchell.
“What brings you around?”
“Mind if I sit?” His demeanor too was different. “I have a business opportunity I’d like to discuss with you.”
“You and Hanisha?”
“Yes.”
“Sure, be my guest.” As he did Edwards added, “This have anything to do with the favor you were gonna ask Harry?” He had a pistol in the drawer but figured he wouldn’t need it.
“Things change,” the other man said, smiling.
Anita Claire didn’t ask Ingram about interviewing the other two regarding the purloined diary.
The Morning Bandit struck again, nearly getting caught this time, pursued by an eager young security guard who worked out at Muscle Beach and had recently applied to the Police Academy. But it turned out the Bandit had a third accomplice with him, also a woman. As the guard ran after him, about to shoot him in the back, this woman seemingly stepped out of nowhere and threw some type of chemical balled in a tied handkerchief in his face. The stuff exploded in a plume, causing him to cough and sneeze, his shots to go wild. The trio escaped.
Ingram framed the photo of the pill dropping into the glass and hung it on his wall. It was the most significant picture he’d ever take.
The next time Josh Nakano and Strummer Edwards came over for a domino game, Jed Monk had replaced Shoals Pettigrew. When they asked about the picture, Ingram told them it was a try-out for obtaining advertising work.