Secret Jones cleaned windows in rich people’s houses during the day and returned to the houses when he knew the occupants would be away and burglarized them. Secret worked alone and made a steady living. He lived modestly in a small apartment on North Avenue but took a two or three week holiday once a year, usually a luxury cruise to either Caribbean or Mediterranean ports-of-call during the fierce Chicago winters.
Nights he wasn’t working, Secret Jones often stopped into Roy’s father’s liquor store to mingle with other characters who used the store as an unofficial meeting place. Secret was one of the few Negroes among mostly Italian, Irish, Jewish and Eastern European men who hung out at the sandwich counter, seated on stools nursing lukewarm cups of coffee, nibbling stale doughnuts and smoking cigarettes and cigars, or just stood around talking or pretending to be waiting for someone. The liquor store was in the center of the nightclub district and stayed open 24 hours. Roy’s father was usually there or in the vicinity from noon until four or five in the morning. Nights when he didn’t have school the next day, his father let Roy hang around “to figure out for yourself what bad habits not to pick up.”
Secret Jones was one of the men Roy enjoyed listening to.
“You know how I got my name?” Secret said. “My daddy was sixteen and my mama was fifteen when I was born and they wanted to keep me a secret, so that’s what my grandmama called me, Mamie June Jones, my mama’s mama. She was the one raised me. This was in Mississippi. My daddy bugged out before I could know him and my mama got on the stem and died of alcohol poisoning when I was four years old. How old are you now, Roy?”
“Nine.”
“I been on my own since I turned thirteen, after Mamie June passed. I come up to Chi on the midnight special with nothin’ but what I was wearin’, no laces in my shoes, no belt for my trousers. Thirteen years old stood in Union Station with nothin’ in my pockets, that’s for real. You’re lucky you got a daddy looks out for you. That’s what life is about, Roy, or should be, people lookin’ out for each other, whether they be blood related or not. Here it is 1956, ninety-one years since President Abraham Lincoln freed my people and there’s still places in this country I get shot or strung up I go there. Ain’t that a bitch! Same all over, some folks bein’ left out or rubbed out and nobody do anything about it.”
“Quit cryin’, Secret,” said Hersch Fishbein. “It ain’t only your people catch the short end. How about my six million Hitler done in?”
Hersch, Secret and Roy were sitting at the counter. Hersch worked days at Arlington Park racetrack as a pari-mutuel clerk and sometimes at night at Maywood when the trotters were running.
“You hear about Angelo’s monkey?” Hersch asked.
“The organ grinder?” said Secret.
“Angelo’s my friend,” said Roy. “Dopo sits here at the counter with me and dunks doughnuts in Angelo’s coffee.”
“Somebody stole him.”
“Why would anyone steal Dopo?” Roy asked.
“Sell him,” said Secret Jones. “Smart monkey like him. People pay to see him do tricks.”
Hersch nodded and said, “A carnival, maybe.”
“How’d you hear?” Secret asked.
“Saw Angelo on Diversey, grindin’ his box. Had a tin cup on the sidewalk. ‘Where’s Dopo?’ I asked. ‘Disappear,’ said Angelo. ‘I can no passa da cup anna play at same time.’ ”
“We should look for him,” said Roy.
“Hard findin’ a little monkey in a city as big as Chicago,” Secret said.
Roy went outside where his father was standing on the sidewalk in front of the store talking to Phil Priest, an ex-cop.
“Dad, Hersch says someone stole Dopo, Angelo’s monkey.”
Phil Priest laughed and said, “A wino probably ate it.”
Roy punched Phil on his right arm.
“Take it easy, son,” said his father.
“You’ve got to do something, Dad. Angelo can’t make a living without Dopo collecting coins and tipping his hat.”
“I’ll see what I can do, Roy.”
Roy remembered the time he was sitting at the counter doing homework and Angelo and Dopo came in and Dopo picked up a pencil and began imitating Roy, making marks on a piece of paper.
“Dopo helping you,” Angelo said.
Roy looked up and down the street. It was ten o’clock at night, not a good time to start hunting for Dopo. Roy would begin the next day asking around the neighborhood if anybody had seen Angelo’s monkey, although Angelo had probably already done that.
Phil Priest took off and Roy’s father said, “If Dopo doesn’t turn up, the organ grinder’ll get another monkey.”
“I don’t like Phil Priest, Dad. Mom says he was a crooked cop, that’s why he was kicked off the force. I didn’t like what he said about Dopo. It’ll take a long time for Angelo to train a new monkey.”
Roy walked back inside. Hersch and Secret were arguing about the best way to fix a horse race. Hersch said you had to have the jockeys in your pocket and Secret said it was better to juice the nags.
“None of the bums who hang around your dad’s store are on the level,” Roy’s mother had told him. “Some are worse than others.”
“Why does Dad let them stay there?”
“Those men are just part of the system, Roy. Being on the game is all they know, they grew up with it.”
“I’m growing up with it, too.”
“You won’t be like them,” said his mother.
Roy’s father was still out on the sidewalk, talking to a man Roy had never seen before. The man walked away and Roy went out again.
“Dad?”
“What is it, son?”
“Mom says when I grow up I won’t be like the men around here.”
Roy’s father looked at him and said, “How does she know?”