Strivers Row (48 page)

When he finally got home in the early morning, Malcolm would lie in bed and smoke a few more sticks by himself, running through the list of all the stars who were now his friends. There was Sonny Greer, who played the drums for Ellington, and Cootie Williams, and Ray “Blip-blip-de-blop-de-blam-blam” Nance, the scat singer. Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, who did “Hey, Pretty Mama, Chunk Me in Your Big Brass Bed,” and Sy Oliver, who wrote “Yes, Indeed!” for Tommy Dorsey, and who lived up on Sugar Hill, with a red-complected girl who never seemed to smile. Even Billie Holiday would step over occasionally and buy a pack of Luckies off him, a large-armed, brazen woman who lovingly called everyone mother-fucker and told obscene jokes that cracked up the others.

Malcolm would have imaginary conversations with her, with all of them, back in his room. He would tell them how they should try certain standards, or give them tips on their playing—though out on the back steps of the Braddock, he rarely dared to talk to them at all. He just laughed and smiled when they teased him about his red conk, or asked him for more sticks, basking in their attention.

He did so well with the kisca that before long Sammy was pressing him to push Nembutal and Seconal, Benzedrine tablets and opium—whatever else he could get from the sailors and the merchant seamen down at Small's, or his gangster connections. Between the drugs and Archie's numbers, he had begun to clear up to fifty, even sixty dollars a day now, which was enough for him to get into a card game, or play craps in the back room of one bar or another every night. He handed over bread to anyone who put the touch on him, and was playing five dollars on the numbers himself now, every day—sure, now, that he couldn't miss, that he would hit big, and buy the car and maybe even the club that he needed for Miranda.

He liked to tell himself, though, that he didn't really need even her. Not now—not with all the stars he knew, and the money he could make. The first few days she was away, he had not really been able to believe that she was gone, thinking, especially when he busted down, that it must be some sort of trick, or ploy, by Archie. He had even gone back to her apartment house one afternoon, not showing his face to the burly white doorman but sneaking in through the entrance he had made for himself, down at the basement delivery door. He had slipped back up the steps to the fifth floor, and stood in the still hallway outside her door, listening for any sound of activity. Thinking, with a pang of infinite regret, of how good he had felt that evening.

But it was as silent as death in the apartment now, even when he listened for half an hour, and finally even dared to ring the doorbell—the electric buzzer echoing uselessly inside her place. He had slipped back out into the City then, where time had gotten away from him. He worked whenever he wanted to, with both her and Archie away, did whatever he felt like. Coming out of his movies in the middle of the day he felt weightless, as if he were floating above everyone else in the ceaselessly hustling City all around him. The crowds of people rushing down the subway holes to get to their work, hurrying into the bars and restaurants, scrambling up on the crosstown streetcars with their big “X” up front.

He felt at such moments that he was infinitely superior to all of them, especially if he'd already been able to smoke a quick stick or two in the Palace men's room. That he was living as if he were indeed some sort of invisible superhero—as if he had finally obtained that secret knowledge that he was always sure was there in the City for the taking, and he needed no one at all.

Later, though, he would come down hard—there by the window in his single room, watching the beetlelike cars rushing toward him, their headlights feeling their way blindly into the darkness like so many antennae. He would panic and fear that he had indeed become invisible, without anyone in the world to care if he lived or died. He would try smoking still more of Sammy's sticks, but they just made him all the more antsy, and he would flee down into the streets. Feeling the same way he had when Ella had first sent him out on the streets of the Hill—or when he had run across the yards of all those oblivious white homes back in Lansing—and wanting nothing more than to go down and see Miranda; seriously considering even taking the train down to Asbury Park to search her out, though he knew that would be suicide.

Even his work had begun to make him edgy, and nervous. Wherever he went now, he noticed, cops had started to follow him— something that had never happened when he was merely running numbers for Archie. Why this should be he couldn't fathom, but soon plainclothesmen and even uniforms had begun to flash the badge on him, every day. He really had become good at spotting them by now, and whenever he did he would lift his arm and let his stash drop, just as Sammy had shown him.

When the cop caught up and started patting him down, he would shout out that he didn't have anything on him, and that he didn't want anything planted. That never failed to bring the crowd—the people pouring off the steps, and out of the bars and stores, and beauty shops. It was the same phenomenon he had noticed before, the crowd truly angry, pushing in around the police in a way he had never seen colored people do before. The men grumbling, the old women wondering loudly,
What's he done? A finelookin' boy like that—what they stoppin' him for?
until the cops would let him go right there and walk quickly away, not even bothering to take him down for the usual precinct-house working–over.

But before long Malcolm came to realize it was not only the cops who were following him. One evening, when he had spotted a plainclothesman and dropped his stash by the curb on West 127th Street, he saw a seedy little man who couldn't possibly be a detective dart out of a doorway and grab up his crumpled cigarette pack, dodging across the street before the cop could see him, or Malcolm could figure out what to do next.

From then on he became increasingly aware of the others. Disheveled, dirty people, men and women both, who seemed to spend all their time in the streets and alleys. Dogging his every step, just waiting for an opening, their very presence a flag to any cops who hadn't spotted him yet. Other nights he could see them trailing the police, who were trailing him—all of them on one long chase together.

“Yeah, well, that the trouble with junkies,” Sammy had said, shrugging, rolling more sticks with Malcolm up in his apartment. “They can't keep they mouths shut. They get copped, they squeal first thing. It was prob'ly one your musician friends, turned the police on to you in the first place.”

“
My
musician friends?”

“Yeah, well, whoever. But even if they don't talk to the police, they tell each other. They generous creatures, junkies. Give up most anything—'cept junk,” Sammy said, and grinned—then drew a big black .45 out of his pocket, brandishing it under Malcolm's nose.

“Just make sure
you
don' stumble an' fall, you hear me, Red? An' if you do, don't be slicin' your gums about
nothin'.
”

Malcolm tried utilizing his own gun when he went out—the little .25 automatic he had bought from the disappointed-looking man in his building, and which Sammy taught him to keep shoved down the small of his back, just under his belt, which was the one place where the cops supposedly never laid hands on when they frisked you. But even that helped him only so much. The next evening Malcolm had heard footsteps keeping pace with his again—he had grown such rabbit ears that he was sure he could hear even a solitary follow through all the crowds along Lenox Avenue by now—and he veered suddenly, expertly around the corner and into the doorway of an abandoned shop.

There he had hung back under the tattered awning for a moment, waiting to see who the follow was. When another, dirty little man came around the corner, reaching down for the cigarette pack, Malcolm stepped out and grabbed his wrist, and made sure the man could see the automatic in his other hand. But the follow only flicked a knife out of his own pocket—even grinning at him, and clutching the Lucky Strike pack.

“Whassat gonna do?” he hissed, nodding toward Malcolm's gun. “You gon' blow a hole in me right here, with everybody goin' by? You go right ahead, Jack, see how far you get. But if you ain't gonna try it, let go my wrist an' lemme have that gage fo' I cut you fo' yo' troubles. Ain't nobody ever heard a
knife
yet.”

He had let the man run off, what else could he do, and after that he had considered getting a knife of his own, but he wasn't sure where he could hide it, or even if he could use it. He tried changing his routines, and his routes, instead. He would leave the packs of Luckies in the top of ashcans, or behind lampposts, or even in the empty Red Cross bandage boxes that you found on the curb everywhere, then tell his connections where they could find them. But his musician friends didn't take to having to search through garbage for their sticks, and it didn't fool the followers anyway.

He even tried going out later at night, when the City was darkest with the dimout. Yet somehow, they still spotted him, his pursuers— and then his rounds became a blind, frightening chase through the half-lit streets. The footsteps growing louder and nearer, then stopping when he turned around. Men bumping into him around corners, their fingers prying stealthily into the pockets of his jacket and pants, before they stumbled back into the shadows.

By the time he got to the Braddock, most of his connections had already found their connections somewhere else, and they were cool to him now. Malcolm stood around by the bar, feeling helpless, while the capons and butterflies there mooned and giggled at him, making little kissing noises until he stomped out.

He walked hurriedly down 126th Street, toward the east. Not sure where he was going, thinking vaguely of trying to sell off his remaining sticks at Creole Pete's. Before he'd gone half a block, though, he heard the footsteps behind him again. Glaring back through the gloom of the half-light, he could make out only a vague silhouette, though one he thought was probably too short and too dark to be a cop.
Another follow.

He quickened his steps, pushing the light to hurry across Seventh Avenue—some drunken white sailors and their colored glamour girl joyfully screaming curses at him as he ran in front of their Checker cab. He kept going east, sure he had lost the follow now— but to his consternation the footsteps only seemed to multiply, and grow closer.

There's more than one of them,
he thought, as he hustled across Lenox Avenue. Still moving east, thinking he would surely lose them, whoever they were, as he approached the Italian and Jew blocks of East Harlem. Instead, the number of people behind him only seemed to grow. He knew it wasn't a smart idea but he had to look back then, thinking that he must be mistaken, that they couldn't all be following him. But to his horror, now, he saw there were at least six or seven of them, shadowy figures, moving quickly. He squeezed the little automatic in his pocket, but he was sure they would be armed, too, and with real cannons.

He heard them calling to him then—sounds that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Most of them not even words, just high-pitched whistles and mocking, clucking noises. He broke into what was nearly a run, and cut suddenly behind a small knot of people coming toward him. Hoping to lose his followers behind their screen, turning the corner when he got to Fifth Avenue and heading uptown now.

But as soon as he got around the corner, he knew they were still after him. He began to run in earnest then—hearing the feet behind him do the same. Their small, muted cries to each other,
“Get him! Don't let him get too far!”
He dropped his arm, swearing bitterly as he let still another stash that he would have to owe Sammy fall to the ground. Letting it go openly, right in the middle of the sidewalk, hoping at least that that would appease them. When he looked back over his shoulder, he saw two of the wraithlike shadows dive for it, lashing out furiously at each other. But the rest still came on—no doubt figuring that he had more, or that he had money from his stop at the Braddock on him.

He was running as fast as he could now, cursing how deserted Fifth Avenue was this night, cursing even that there were no cops. He kept moving, his breath coming shorter now, hearing the steps gaining behind him. Thinking,
They're more desperate than I am. They need it more—

He ran across 128th Street, right through the traffic, a half dozen horns blaring at him. One of them was another cab, and for a moment he considered pulling his gun and throwing out its passenger, making the hack take him out of the neighborhood. But he could see there were at least three figures in the backseat, large men in uniforms—their hands already on the door locks.

He ran on, toward a lone, dilapidated brownstone, looming by the street corner—and he realized to his surprise that he knew it. The yard filled with junk around its sole forlorn elm tree. What looked like the same taunting sign that he had ripped down, nailed back up on the front door—
This is a Ghost House
—

“Let me in! Let me in!”
he shouted out in his desperation. His cry breathless and garbled, knowing how senseless it was as he stared at the blocked-up windows, the iron-gated doors—still not sure he hadn't just dreamed up the strange slug-white man inside.

But as if on command, the white ghosty face emerged from the ground again, right in front of him. The same old man, in his same old-fashioned black suit with its detachable collar, pulling his same wooden box along on a string. To Malcolm's astonishment he seemed to be signaling to him, waving an arm for him to come inside.

“Come on, come on! They are gaining on you!” he cried, unmistakably referring to Malcolm, then jabbing his finger agitatedly at his box.

“Take the box! Take the box, while I secure our entry!”