C H A P T E R • 43
I waved walking to avoid talking to the Sunday guard standing at the back of the lobby and took the elevator to the Journal office suite. Seeing Daddy’s name was a tiny, quick comfort. In fact, Daddy could have just stepped out to take a walk—nigger watching he used to call it. It was meant with love that was as deep as it was perverse. I shared enough of it to make me glad to be home and then glad to be running away again.
Samantha was beaming. “Imagine. We’ve got two so far. But you know these things come in threes.”
Her body-count didn’t seem to need or deserve a comment. I only shook my head as I went to my office to call Roger in California.
“I found out some more news,” he said. “Not about the bank. But the movie theater complex is real. They’re trying to decide which empty lot to put it on.”
“Those lots have been empty for a long while waiting for a deal like this. They call it land-banking. Are you sure?”
“I got it from an insider.”
“You’re good at this reporting.”
“People like to tell me stories.”
“Me too, actually. That’s how I landed in the middle of that bootleg bust. I found myself in the middle of two murders too.”
“You don’t sound like an interested outsider anymore.”
“Harlem is a universe of small worlds. Everything is connected. It’s amazing.”
“When are you coming home? I thought you were only going back East to take care of your father’s affairs.”
“I’m staying through the Veteran’s Day holiday and to see what happens when the bank opens on Tuesday.”
The pause took a little longer while I decided whether I needed to say it and if I could bring myself to do so. “And, Roger, I’ve spent some time with Obsidian.”
“The old boyfriend.” He whistled. “I thought he was in the hospital.”
“He’s mending.”
“Spent some time? Did you forget the precepts? The training to avoid sexual misconduct is on the Buddha’s list of five training precepts.”
“Damn Roger. What kind of passive aggressive bullshit is that? You’re not mad?”
“I’m mad. I need to squirrel this information back up in my hidey hole to see how it really feels. And you need to stop.” He slammed his phone down.
“Can I make a suggestion?” I jumped. It was Samantha standing in the doorway.
“You have quite an annoying way off sneaking up on a person.”
“That’s how I do my job.”
“You are not using anything you heard on that call. Understood?”
“Damn. I walked in too late. What did I miss?”
She was not a convincing liar.
∗ ∗ ∗
It was almost an hour later when I looked up from my screen to notice the street sounds from across the room through the windows, opened a crack to let some air in.
I reread what I’d written. Then I had to unfurl my brow and relax the grim line my mouth was making. Okay.
I printed both my stories and the caption and popped the floppy disk out of the computer, feeling like Fred Flintstone for having to carry by hand what could have been done so easily electronically. Maybe Daddy was selling the paper; inefficient was not like him. And not telling me?
It was a bittersweet moment to take the familiar walk down the long hallway. I walked slowly and noticed the plaques and framed pages lining the dull lime walls.
The first was the latest. The last was a front page with two wide-eyed kids, who were called colored in the paper then, sitting on the curb eating watermelon. The other half of the page was full of bathing beauties busting out of bits of bathing suit.
A Bootsie cartoon by Ollie Harrington floated in a wooden frame.
During the Journal’s heyday in the 50s and early 60s, there were foreign correspondents on staff, at least monthly a highly salacious front page, and at least once a fistfight in the newsroom.
But Daddy had let the paper drop to second place. A man once thanked me at an awards dinner because the Journal gave him the idea for his successful business. He produced plaques. The Journal is full of photographs of the bestowing of plaques for a job well done, money well spent, or for the hell of it.
In its silver frame was the quote by Russwurm and Cornish from the opening editorial of the original Freedom’s Journal, from which Granddaddy had taken the name of his newspaper:
We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us. Too long has the publick been deceived by misrepresentations, in things which concern us dearly . . .