Ingram heard from his Army buddy Ben Kinslow, who invited him to a party in the Sugar Hill section of West Adams, among the Queen Anne and Beaux Arts homes. The name Sugar Hill, a tribute to the original Sugar Hill in Harlem, had been bestowed on this neighborhood by well-to-do Black folks: doctors, lawyers and those who owned businesses on Central Avenue. Celebrities such as Hattie McDaniel and Eddie “Rochester” Anderson had homes here. They and other actors were often relegated to stereotypical roles, be it maids and manservants on screens large and small, but in Sugar Hill, they were acknowledged for breaking down barriers.
But even here there was no escaping the onslaught of a white-dominated bureaucracy. The Santa Monica Freeway, begun in 1957, would eventually reach the ocean. It had cut a sizable swath through the neighborhood, leveling homes acquired by eminent domain despite residents banding together to try to alter the route.
Kinslow wasn’t here yet but Ingram, used to being an interloper, wasn’t feeling self-conscious. He was in the spacious kitchen of a three-story Victorian adding chips to the paper plate he’d stacked with a salami sandwich. He winced, his bruised arm smarting where he’d been hit with the bat. On the table beside the snacks were a few bottles of hard liquor, including Old Grand-Dad and Wild Irish Rose. Beer was in a washtub filled with ice on the tiled floor. The rear door was open and there were people socializing in the backyard—though he supposed in a house like this it would be called the garden. He’d once been told by the staid Charlotta Bass, the former publisher of the California Eagle, that back in the 1920s, when the residents had been mostly white, that more than one of these fine abodes around here had been the venue for an orgy. Sizing up the racially mixed but sedate crowd chatting away pleasantly, he didn’t figure people were going to be letting their hair down that dang much this evening. He had a camera in his trunk just in case.
“Harry, how’s it hangin’?”
Ingram gazed at a familiar face. “Johnny, hey, ain’t nothin’ up but the rent, baby.”
“I heard that.” They shook hands vigorously.
Johnny Otis was a vibraphonist and bandleader, and had once been co-owner of a nightclub in Watts called the Barrelhouse. He was of Greek origin, but often stated he identified as a Black man and with the negro’s fight for justice. The two stepped out of the kitchen to talk.
“I’m doing a fundraising gig for Bradley if you want to drop by and take some shots,” Otis was saying, munching on a handful of chips.
“For sure. When and where?”
“The date’s still not settled ’cause of the reverend coming to town and Tom’s folks are helping to prep the event. But probably no more than a couple of weeks after that.” He added, “I’m trying to get King Cole to drop by and perform as well.”
“Y’all got a place in mind for this?”
“Oh yes.” Otis rubbed his now empty hands together to rid them of his chip crumbs. “The Hotten Tot has agreed to host the fundraiser.”
“He’s got a chance, right?”
“Should. Hell, he just might be our first Black mayor if he wins this race.”
“Sheet, this is L.A., Johnny.”
They both laughed. Otis turned his head slightly, scanning the room, then tapped Ingram’s arm and pointed.
“Let me introduce you to this chick, she’s got it going on.”
“The tall one?” The woman had shoulder-length black hair and had thrown her head back, laughing with the man she was talking to.
“Yeah, come on.” Otis held up a hand. “Hey, Anita.”
The woman looked over as Ingram and Otis snaked their way through a knot of people. As they passed two of the Dandridge sisters, Dorothy and Vivian, Otis said hello.
When they reached the black-haired woman, Otis said, “Harry Ingram, this here’s Anita Claire.”
“Hello,” she said to Ingram. She indicated her companion, an older white man in glasses and boxy sport coat, and said to the bandleader, “This is Frank Wilkerson, who you might know of.”
“My man, yes, sir, know of you and dig you.” Otis turned to Ingram. “This cat’s been out front on housing issues for us poor folks.”
“I know. We’ve run into each other a couple of times.”
Wilkerson regarded Ingram. “Where?”
“The equal rights rally at the 5-4 Ballroom,” Ingram replied. “It was right after you got out of the joint for facing down Congress, I recall you mentioning. I was there taking pictures.” Wilkerson had been one of the speakers at the event. Ingram knew the photographer, like a waiter or floor sweep, was seen but not seen, his face often obscured by the camera in front of it.
“Right, got it,” Wilkerson said, but not really.
“Anita’s working on Tom’s election committee. She’s a wiz with numbers, stats, that sort of thing.” Otis beamed at her.
“Pleased to meet you,” Ingram said.
“Same,” she said.
Ingram wasn’t going to get caught staring. She struck him as self-assured, and if she knew numbers, she was smart too. Ingram had painful memories of trying to get through algebra word problems in high school, all those trains leaving opposite stations at different speeds. Of course, if he’d had a teacher who looked like her, his mind wouldn’t have been on math any damn way.
He orbited back to the conversation that the other three were having about what sort of programs Tom Bradley might try to institute if he got elected.
“Reining in them damn cops of Parker’s should be his number-one concern,” Otis said.
“Amen to that,” Ingram said.
“When Tom made captain in the Department,” Wilkerson began, “no white patrolman would tolerate a colored man as his boss. He was put in charge of the graveyard shift, a command of Mexican and Black officers.”
“We still got a long way to go,” Otis noted.
The other two nodded.
Milling about later, Ingram struck up a conversation with a white man named Eddie Burrows who did freelance reporting for The Nation magazine. He was in short sleeves and his longish hair was disheveled.
“I’m going to cover King at the rally,” he told Ingram.
“That’s great.” Ingram hadn’t mentioned what he did. He didn’t want to seem desperate to cover the rally, though he was.
“I think the March on Washington is going to be a watershed event, don’t you?”
“Maybe. But crackers digging in their heels to preserve the way of life they like has usually been the response to any forward motion us colored folks have tried.”
“That’s kind of cynical, isn’t it?”
“Or just a realistic observation.”
Burrows nodded. “So, what is it you do, Harry?”
They wound up exchanging cards, and Burrows said he’d see about getting Ingram into the rally. The Nation wasn’t big on photos, but this was a special event, a precursor to August.
“’Course this might paint you as a red,” Burrows said. “Hanging out with the people I know.”
“I’ve been accused of much worse.”
Not long afterward Ingram was out back catching up with Ben Kinslow, who’d finally shown up. From inside the house, riffs from piano keys carried on the evening’s warm breezes. He and Kinslow liberally sipped on the Old Grand-Dad from the kitchen.
“Don’t think I’m going to be working for Hoyt too much longer.” Kinslow winked at Ingram. The two sat near the rear of the walled-in yard in faded Adirondack chairs. Decorative colored paper had been cut into shapes of the Buddha and Day of the Dead masks and hung from a clothesline.
“You taking up the horn full-time?”
“Maybe—that is, maybe I’ll have more time to get my chops back.”
“What are you going on about?”
Kinslow said, “Jus’ talkin’ is all. More of those big dreams we had sitting in a foxhole trying not to shit our britches.”
“You were gonna have your own club.”
“That’s right,” Kinslow agreed. That had been the reason he’d come out to L.A. before. He’d gotten close more than once to making it happen, but things didn’t pan out. Kinslow sat back, arcing his hands in the air as if revealing a title. “How you like the name Club Central? You can be the house photographer, Harry.”
“I appreciate that,” Ingram said, drinking more. A tall man with reddish-blond hair guffawed loudly. A woman next to him giggled, putting a hand in front of his mouth to quiet him down. The two old friends let the silence linger, staring at the cutouts dangling before them, until Kinslow spoke again.
“You ever wonder what she looked like?”
“Who?”
“Your girlfriend, Seoul City Sue,” he said.
“You the one went to sleep at night dreaming of her in your arms, lover boy.”
Seoul City Sue was the name for a propagandist broadcast from Pyongyang in the north during the war. She had a velvety voice and lovingly told the GIs how their cause was lost, read the names off dog tags of dead American soldiers, and spun records like “I’ll Be Seeing You.” Many simply listened to her for her comforting voice, thinking of the girl they’d left stateside. That was the point, of course, but as far as Ingram knew, no one defected because of her.
“She wasn’t Asian,” he said.
“Yeah, she was. I’ve seen pictures,” Kinslow replied.
Ingram hunched a shoulder. “That was more jive from the reds, man. Not only was she not Asian, she was as white as they come. Whiter than you even.”
“You think ’cause I’m tipsy you can bullshit me?” Kinslow drained his glass and set it down beside his chair.
“Naw, she was a Methodist from Arkansas.”
“How you know that, Criswell?”
Ingram held his hands up, swaying his upper body. “I see all and know all.” He then added, “Read it in the Saturday Evening Post.”
“For real?”
“For real. She still lives there in North Korea.”
“Of course. She came home she’d be shot for treason.”
“There is that little hitch.”
“She a knockout?” Kinslow asked.
“You’d sell out your country for a pretty turn of the ankle, son?”
Kinslow affected a commanding officer’s tone. “Patriotism or pussy, soldier. Which is it?”
“No wonder I could barely get through the war.” Ingram’s words came out flat, though he meant them to be light.
Kinslow patted Ingram on the shoulder.
Eventually they wandered back inside. Kinslow didn’t say anything else about his plans. He’d brought his horn, which he’d stowed on a built-in sideboard beneath an impressionist painting. Joe Sample, a musician Ingram had seen at clubs around town with a group called the Jazz Crusaders, was improvising a tune. Nat King Cole stood off to one side behind some others, hands in his pocket, his snap-brim hat pushed back on his bopping head.
Kinslow had his horn out, waiting and tapping his feet as he discerned the patterns hidden within the seeming non-structure of the music. He held off for nearly a minute, fingering the horn’s keys but not putting it to his lips. He joined in when Sample began pounding out a fast tempo. Together they worked their way into a tune that was melodious and involving. Ingram stood on the periphery, digging what the two were laying down. Improvising using spoons on the bottom of an emptied metal trash can, Johnny Otis joined in with understated syncopations. The groove continued for another twenty minutes or so. When they came to a stop, there was energetic applause. The temporary trio took their bows as the din of conversation again rose in the parlor.
“I saw you and the horn player talking earlier.” Anita Claire had come up behind him.
What? Was she checking him out? Keeping his face neutral, he said, “Yeah, we were in Korea together.”
“I see. I had a cousin who was there.”
“How’d he take it?”
“He didn’t make it back.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“I didn’t mean to be so dour.”
“Could be the times we’re in, Anita. When I came back from over there, figured me and all them other negro troops bleeding for democracy and all that would be appreciated. How could Mr. Charlie deny us our due on the home front?”
“But then it was the same old, same old.”
“What a surprise.”
“Let’s get a drink.”
“I’m gonna have something to eat. I might have hit my limit. Me and Ben catching up, I mean. Not that I drink like this normally.”
She was heading toward the kitchen. “Do I look like a nun to you, Harry?”
He almost blurted, “No, ma’am, you look like a dream,” but managed to stop himself. Instead, he gave an embarrassing chuckle and said, “That sounds like a trick question.”
He followed her, noting that he’d sobered up some. Out of the corner of his eye, he spied Kinslow talking with Sample and Vivian Dandridge.
The kitchen had fewer people in it as the evening wore on. There was, though, a white woman in a green swing dress with eyes that matched her attire. Claire put an arm around her waist as the other woman finished mixing a drink.
“This is my running buddy, Judy Berkson,” Claire said to Ingram. Both women showed big teeth at each other.
“Good to meet you,” he said, sticking out his hand. She shook firmly.
“Here’s how.” Berkson tipped her glass to Claire and exited.
Claire got a beer out of the tub, which was now mostly full of water. He handed her a church key.
“So, what is it you do when you’re not working to elect a candidate?”
“I’m a substitute teacher. I teach algebra and geometry in high schools and at a couple of community colleges. But I’m doing more of the Bradley kind of work these days.”
“How does the math work in that situation?”
“I look for the patterns to develop profiles. Frequency of voters in an area—break it down by those who attend church, go to PTA meetings and so on. It’s boring shop talk, but you asked.”
“No, I’m digging it. You break down how segments of the voters vote?”
“Exactly. Ultimately what excites them to come out and vote. Now them cigar-smoking white fellas overseeing the state Democratic Party figure just running a negro candidate is enough to get colored people to the polls. Which admittedly is accurate to an extent.”
Ingram nodded. “But we don’t all think alike. A mechanic might have different concerns than a librarian.”
“There you go.” She smiled at him. “Really it’s about compiling data to predict behavior. In a City Council race it’s more concentrated, but Kennedy used a computer in his race to glean that kind of information to his advantage.”
“He did?”
“Yep. We’re all in this together, but we’re not always marching in the same direction.”
“Like the differences between King’s approach and what Malcolm X is on about?” A year ago, the cops shot up the Black Muslim headquarters, mosques they called them, on South Broadway, leaving one man paralyzed and another dead. Malcolm X had come to town and given a fiery press conference in response at the Statler-Hilton. Ingram had covered the whole thing for the Herald Dispatch.
“Which way for you, Harry?” Her question brought him back to the present.
“Me, I’m just trying to make the rent.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Math is not just abstract formulas on a chalkboard?”
“I know, what does it say about me that I find numbers exciting? But you see, working in local politics is kind of a family tradition.”
“Your folks work in politics?”
A cagey look came and went behind her eyes. “You could say that.”
“Lady of mystery, huh?”
“That’s right.”
Later, as the party finally wound down, Ingram said good night to Claire, who’d come to the party with Judy Berkson. Her car, a convertible two-tone DeSoto, was parked under a streetlight. She was standing off to one side, pretending to be looking for something in her purse.
“Am I being too forward if I ask for your number?”
“I’m nothing if not numbers, Mr. Ingram.”
Making sure to keep expectation off his face, Ingram waited as she borrowed a ballpoint pen from her friend. Claire wrote her phone number on the curve of his palm. The blue numerals glistened on his brown skin under the light.
“I’ll never wash this off.”
“I expect you to be shaved and showered when next we meet, sir.” With that she turned and took Berkson’s arm. They laughed getting in the car.
“You old hound dog,” Ben Kinslow said, walking up, his voice clearer that it had been before. “Bye-bye now,” he said, waving at the two women as the car pulled away. His face was sweaty from drinking.
“You gonna make it home all right, soldier?”
“Son, I was knocking ’em back when you were still figuring out your wee-wee from your pablum spoon.” He dug his keys out of his pocket. His car key held upright, he touched it to his forehead in a salute. “Okay, One-Shot, let’s get us some steaks over to Lo Li’s soon. Maybe to celebrate.”
“Looking forward to it, Ben.”
Kinslow slapped him on the shoulder and walked across the street to where his car was parked down the block. It was a ’59 black-and-red Mercury with moon hubcaps. Turning the car around, he drove back to where Ingram remained standing. He slowed, the passenger’s side window partly rolled down.
“Keep chargin’ the enemy. We do what we do to survive.” The admonishment from their Sergeant Jefferson faded into the early morning as Kinslow drove away.
A contented Ingram walked around the corner and unlocked the driver’s door to his Plymouth. It took several cranks to start the engine. Getting the car in gear, he once again considered buying a newer sled. But then, hoping he might be seeing Miz Claire again, he figured it was best he have folding money available to show her he was no piker. Not that he took her for being a superficial person. If anything she was the sort to zoom ahead, and he wanted to keep up.
He drove past a line of late-nighters at Johnny’s, an around-the-clock establishment on Adams Boulevard. The stand served up not only burgers but hearty pastrami sandwiches, fries and tacos. He resisted the garish neon advertising and made it home.
Not ready for bed, he turned on the radio, tuning in all-night KGFJ. This was the time slot for R&B. From a drawer in the kitchen he got out his S&H green stamps and using a damp sponge to wet the backs, put them in their booklets. Enough filled booklets and he could redeem them for an appliance. Eventually he yawned and switched off the radio, T-Bone Walker’s “Mean Old World” still playing in his head as he went into his bedroom.