It was getting to be a hot day and Ingram was in his darkroom, developing shots he’d taken of the neighborhood around Wrigley Field the day before. The facility had carried that name before its more famous incarnation in Chicago, which was originally called Cubs Park. The L.A. Wrigley Field was horseshoe-shaped, with a two-tiered viewing deck. At the apex of the venue’s curve was a twelve-story office tower topped with a large clock face. The field was located at Forty-Second and Avalon, not far from Ingram’s apartment. The facility was home to several triple-A Pacific League baseball teams such as the Hollywood Stars and even the Angels when they went pro—at least until they’d moved to Dodger Stadium in 1962.
This was where Martin Luther King Jr. would be speaking when he got to town and Ingram still wanted to get some compare-and-contrast pictures of the place empty. If he couldn’t get inside on his own, he had a contact in the union representing the janitors, mostly Black men of a certain age who cleaned the various municipal buildings around town. Though the stadium was privately owned, its cleaning crew included several who once had been on the city payroll.
Taking his black-and-whites out of the stop bath, he squeegeed off the excess and hung them up to dry. He dried his hands on a rag and clicked off the red overhead bulb. Stepping into the kitchen proper, he was considering whether to fix lunch or go to the Detour diner a few blocks from his apartment. If he wasn’t mistaken, today’s special was meatloaf. An anemic bologna sandwich didn’t stand a chance.
There was a crackle of static over one of his scanners. He’d forgotten he had it on.
“. . . repeat, driver, white, male American, went over embankment through the guardrail,” the unemotional dispatcher was saying. “Ford Mercury, two-tone, red on black, off of Mulholland near intersection of Outpost Drive. Car smashed against tree, witness reports. KMA . . .”
A policeman in a patrol car responded, but whatever he said, Ingram’s impression was as if he were underwater, his voice muffled and incoherent. The car being described over the scanner was Ben Kinslow’s car. He rushed down the stairs to his car, consulted his Thomas Guide street map book and took off. His mouth was dry, and he had a hard time swallowing. He drove carefully, though; he couldn’t be stopped by the cops until he reached the scene of the accident.
He wound his way up Mulholland in a westerly direction, ascending into the Hollywood Hills. Main thoroughfares branching north off Mulholland led into the San Fernando Valley, the homes of celebrities and the well-to-do. If there were any colored people around here, they were the help.
Approaching the scene, Ingram saw a police car parked on the side of the roadway, another with its nose sticking out into the lane. He went past, looking out his side window but only seeing the broken guardrail.
Ingram parked around a curve. Camera strapped around his neck, he swung a leg over the guardrail and worked his way down the slope, stepping on the plants arrayed across the hillside. It wasn’t too steep here and he was able to get closer to the wreck. There was a uniform there poking around the wreckage but one of the other officers called him back to the roadway. Ingram hung back until he left, then moved forward again.
The Mercury was canted at an angle, the undercarriage visible. The vehicle had come to rest against a stout tree. Ingram started taking pictures of the car. He wasn’t eager to see his friend dead inside the car, his neck probably broken from the impact. He managed to get several snaps of the undercarriage, some of them close-ups. As he was sighting again, a voice boomed at him from above.
“Hey, what are you doing down there?”
“Press,” Ingram called back to the cop.
“My ass.” This officer and two others started toward him.
Ingram turned his back to them. It was now or lose the chance. He forced himself to look inside the car. There was Ben Kinslow, his head turned sideways against the driver’s wheel, his open eyes stared into the empty nothing.
Choking back tears, Ingram snapped quick shots of his gone Army buddy. A solid cat who was cool around Black folks because he was a sometimes trumpet player. Or maybe he was cool around Black folks and just happened to play the horn.
“Ain’t no reason to blow your top,” he remembered Kinslow saying. “We all put our pants on the same way, don’t we, Gate?”
A hand latched onto Ingram’s shoulder, turning him around. “Who the fuck are you?”
Ingram showed the cop his credentials.
“Shit,” this one said, blond hair at the side of his head showing under his cap. He looked at the other two. “This guy says he’s a bona fide newshound.”
“Yeah, like Clark Kent?” one of the others said, grinning. “He got an S on his chest for Super Spade?”
“That right?” The third one had his nightstick out and poked Ingram with it.
“You can’t do that,” the photographer said.
Blondie leaned into him. “We can do whatever the fuck we want, Ingram.”
“Give us that camera,” the one with the nightstick said. This time he tapped the end of the billy club against Ingram’s chest.
Ingram handed the camera over. Blondie opened its back roughly.
“Hey, goddammit,” Ingram objected.
“Shut up.” The nightstick slapped hard against his body, causing Ingram to groan.
The cop pulled the film out of its canister, exposing the roll. He tossed it aside and regarded the camera. “This sumabitch needs to be taught not to nose around in police business.”
“He do,” the second one agreed.
Blondie said, “Ah, the meat wagon is coming and probably real reporters. I don’t want to have to explain why this darkie was all beat to shit, crumpled on the ground whimpering and carrying on.”
The other two snickered.
“Have them burr heads in the N double A Coon Patrol all upset and getting them preachers to harangue the captain like last month.” The other two laughed some more. Blondie threw the laminated press credentials on the ground, followed by the camera, hurled with force. Several pieces flew off the frame. But the cop wasn’t through. He kicked the Speed Graphic, bouncing it off the crashed Mercury.
Ingram wanted to cuss the bastard out but knew he’d get a beating or worse. He’d brought that camera back from the war.
Staring at Ingram evenly, the cop said, “Now get the fuck out of here before I change my mind.”
Ingram picked up his broken camera, stuffing the pieces he could find in his pocket, as well as his press credentials.
“Hurry up.” Blondie rapped the end of his nightstick against his open palm. “We got important shit to attend to.”
Ingram worked his way back up the slope, getting a look at the fresh skid marks where Kinslow’s car had taken out the guardrail. He got in the Plymouth. He had half a mind to march back to those crackers swinging a tire iron like Josh Gibson. He could see the headline now in the Sentinel: “Crazed Photographer Shot Down Like a Mad Dog.”
Angry and sad simultaneously, Ingram wiped tears wetting his face. But he had to hold it together. He started his car and drove back to his place. There was one bit of satisfaction. When he’d had his back turned to the police, he’d switched out the film in his camera for a blank roll. The one with the shots was in his coat pocket. This wasn’t the first time Ingram had been braced by the cops over taking snaps where he wasn’t invited. Nor was it the first time his favorite camera had been banged around.
Back home, he put the Speed Graphic on the kitchen table, examining the damage with a practiced eye. The front standard was cracked, the lens was broken, a few knobs had been snapped off and the shutter release arm was bent. From a kitchen drawer he took out needle-nosed pliers, a steel screw extractor and several other tools. From the darkroom he came back with a medium-sized cardboard box containing various parts of cameras he’d salvaged over time. Putting on a Nat King Cole Trio album, he got busy repairing the camera. It took the length of playing the A side of a second record, but he got the Speed Graphic back together. To test it he took some shots of his bookshelf, a chair and out the window of passersby on the street below. He even set up the timer to take a couple of shots of himself. The camera was functioning again.
He regretted not getting a shot of one of the cops, especially the one with the billy club. Or, as he’d heard cops referring to it in the past, my “Nigger Be Good Stick.” What a great shot it would be, him aiming up from a low angle as a nightstick came thundering down on his face. Now that would get him on the front page of the Herald Ex for sure.
Afterward he developed those photos and the ones taken from Kinslow’s crash. By habit he made a brief notation on the back of each shot using a soft leaded pencil so as not to create markings in relief on the other side. Often when he made pictures he knew he was going to sell, he’d make two prints. The shots from the accident were for him, though he might try to get one in the Eagle.
Sitting at his kitchen table, he used a magnifying glass to look more closely at the shots he’d taken of the Mercury’s undercarriage. When they were in the service, Kinslow, who at one point had been the driver for a general, got the two of them out of an ambush. His friend had been behind the wheel of a jeep and he handled it like he and the vehicle were one. Bullets whistled by them, pinging off the vehicle, but Kinslow didn’t lose control as he ducked and dodged mortar holes and ruts in the road. Yeah, that was a decade ago, and maybe Ben had been drinking, but Ingram recalled how Kinslow had handled the Mercury the other night.
Ingram would find out if booze had been in his friend’s system. He knew an attendant who worked in the city morgue, prepping bodies for autopsies.
Peering through the magnifying glass, he zeroed in on the brake line where it originated from one of the rear wheel brake drums toward the front of the car and the master cylinder in the engine compartment. He looked closer at a break in the line. Was it severed, or had it pulled apart, causing the crash after the fluid was expelled? Ingram kept staring, unsure of what he was looking at. He needed an expert’s eye on this. He might be wanting to see foul play where there was none. He’d show this to his mechanic, Jed Monk.
Staring at Kinslow’s face, for the first time he saw the trickle of blood trailing from the corner of his slightly open mouth. It was dark against the stark black-and-white composition. He glared at this for some time, then went to his cupboard and took out a bottle of Jim Beam. It was past four, late enough in the day to have a blast, he reasoned. Hell, he’d earned it. He drank until the sun went down and decided he’d better get something to eat. He walked to a hamburger stand and got a cheeseburger with extra onions and fries. Rather than walk back with his dinner he sat and ate at one of the open-air tables.
At one point a police car rolled by, the white officer in it eyeing him and the other Black patrons. Ingram chewed away as the cop rolled on past. It was then Ingram made up his mind to find out if he was imagining things or if his friend had been purposely silenced. Maybe the police would do a thorough investigation but he owed Kinslow his life; he owed it to him to find out the truth. That time Kinslow had driven them away from certain death, he’d pointed out later, he’d been saving his own butt. That didn’t make any difference to Ingram. Because now he was the one left standing. He couldn’t bring Kinslow back, but he could find out what happened.
Balling up the paper his burger had been wrapped in, he tossed it away and started back to his apartment. He lit a cigar and puffed as he walked along. The evening was turning cool, but Ingram barely noticed. He paused at a campaign poster for Tom Bradley pasted on a wooden fence.
bradley, the only choice was in large red, white and blue letters, a semicircle of stars crowning the words.
“Yeah,” Ingram muttered, “the only choice.”
The next day Ingram went over to the Eagle’s offices on Central Avenue. The newspaper was across the street from the Elk’s Hall, where Ingram had enjoyed sets by jazz musicians over the years. He had a fond memory of being lubricated there before shipping out to the Army, listening to long tall Dexter Gordon coaxing bittersweet ballads out of his sax. Ingram had written up a brief piece to go with a few of the shots of the crash he showed to the managing editor, Wesley Crossman. The middle-aged bachelor worked at the newspaper and did freelance work for various publications such as Jet and a magazine called Dapper.
The latter publication was white-owned but intended for a Black male readership. The articles ranged from the lurid—“Mary Had to Pistol Whip Her Deaf Husband”—to ones about the appointment of a Black judge or a profile of the teacher of the year. Ingram had done words and pictures for Dapper as well. Though it was by no means as rugged as Stag or revealing as Playboy, Ingram had done a few cheesecake pictorials of pretty Black women for the magazine along with other work.
“I don’t know, Harry. It’s not like we don’t run pieces about white people, but you know it’s usually about our allies, like Governor Brown or Supervisor Hahn.”
The two sat at Crossman’s compact desk in his compact office off the equally modest newsroom. Several reporters clacked away on typewriters, the smell of stale cigarette smoke hanging in the air.
“I understand he was a friend of yours,” Crossman was saying. There was a well-used pipe in a worn pipe rack along with several piles of edited copy and file folders on the desk.
“I get it, Ben was unknown,” Ingram said flatly.
“Look, if we need some filler, maybe I can run this photo.” His finger tapped the shot Ingram had taken from above the tipped-on-its-side Mercury. “But I’m not promising anything.”
Ingram stood. “I appreciate it, Wes. Whatever you can do.”
He left, then set out to locate where his dead friend had been staying. He called the musician’s union pretending he wanted the horn player for a gig. But Kinslow hadn’t re-registered upon his return to town so that got Ingram nowhere. That also meant it was unlikely he’d be able to get a piece run on Kinslow in their newsletter.
Ingram then drove over to the Crystal Tea Room on Santa Barbara, where Kinslow had played a few times back when last he lived in L.A. That was about four years earlier. The club wasn’t open yet. Next he drove out to Mission Road, where the morgue was located on the same grounds as General Hospital. His contact, Somerset, was on duty, and for a five spot told Ingram that Kinslow’s body was there. He was an older, gray-haired white man with stooped shoulders.
“Any arrangements for which mortuary he’ll be sent to?” Ingram asked.
“So far, none that I know of.”
“Can I see what was in his pockets and glove box?”
“Christ, Harry, ask much, do you?”
Ingram produced another five.
“Make it quick. I ain’t losing my job over your amateur hour Dick Tracy foolishness.”
Somerset led Ingram past several corpses on gurneys lining the hallway to a plain room. Inside were file cabinets. They had index cards taped on each drawer in alphabetical order and he pulled open the appropriate one.
“Don’t try and leave with nothing. They’ll know.” With that Somerset walked out.
Ingram understood if he was caught, he was on his own. In a paper bag, neatly folded over like it held a lunch, Ingram looked through Kinslow’s effects: keys on a ring, an assortment of papers. There was a small key, like for a padlock, and Ingram slipped it off the ring and put it in his pocket. He found a rent receipt with someone’s name other than Kinslow’s on it. No address but it was better than nothing. He wrote down the name and considered taking the rest of the keys but sure enough those cops who rousted him would remember putting them in the bag. He closed the drawer just as an attendant in a blood-smeared smock entered.
“Hey, how you doing?” Ingram said off-handedly as he headed toward the door.
The attendant frowned at him as Ingram kept going.