Strivers Row (64 page)

When he got to the street, he saw that it was already dusk again. The crooked, humpbacked Village streets as crowded as Harlem's, filled with sailors and soldiers and their girls trying to crowd into the little Italian restaurants, and coffeehouses, and music clubs. The dream of Elijah still disturbingly vivid, more lasting than any tea dream he had ever had before. His warnings still lingered in Malcolm's mind, but he didn't know where else he could go. He pulled his suit jacket tighter around him, and ran the couple of blocks over to Sheridan Square and down the stairs to her club. Sniffing out the back door and prying it open, sliding into her dressing room before she even knew he was there.

“Miranda!” he whispered at her, startling her where she was sitting, head bent down in front of her vanity.

“Red! Goddammit, don't scare me like that!”

“Miranda, we got to get out of here. You got to come with me—”

“You all right yet, Red?” she asked, frowning, standing and reaching up to place a hand on his forehead. “I thought some sleep might do you good, but I don't know. You still look off the beam from those bennies.”

“I know how I can get some money, get a short. We can go out to Hollywood, you can get into the movies. Miranda, I got—”

—the words sticking in his throat, unable to tell her what had happened, back in her bed.

“Somethin's
happenin'
to me, Miranda. I got to get out of here.”

“You look terrible, Red. You got to go lie down—”

There was a knock on the dressing room door and Malcolm jumped back to one side, fumbling his gun out of his pocket.

“Put that away!” Miranda hissed, waving his hand back into his pocket. “You think he'd knock? Besides, there's going to be none of that anyway—”

She opened the door and a chubby little white man stepped in, looking warily at Malcolm before he turned back to her.

“I'm sorry, Miss Dolan. But there's another gentleman to see you. Says his name's Jonah—”

“Jonah!”

Malcolm started toward the manager, but she ushered the little white man quickly back into the hall.

“Yes, thank you, I'll see him. Just give me a minute—”

“Jonah! So there
is
a Jonah. You said it was a joke!”

“It is,” she sighed. “Look, I can explain—”

But he was already yanking the door back open, his other hand still clutching the gun in his pocket. Stepping out and looking down the hall only to see—
him
, again. That crazy preacher from the night before, still coming after him. Having somehow, some way tracked him all the way down here, even through the parks at night.

He stood where he was, too startled to move—and the preacher coming down the hall stopped, too, as if Malcolm were watching himself in a funhouse mirror. Looking as if he were just as startled. The incredible possibility swimming through Malcolm's head.
Could it be that
he
was Jonah? That same high-hat preacher from the train?

But then the man was moving toward him again, beginning to run, and Malcolm took off running, too, as if released from a spell. Hearing Miranda cry out something, but not stopping, the heavy fall of the preacher's shoes hard behind him. He raced on up the back stairs, back up to the street, looking all around him in the crowded bustle of Sheridan Square. Trying to figure out his options, whether or not to run back down into the subway—even as he wasn't quite sure just what it was he was running from.

He ducked around a newsstand, and the truck delivering the thickly bundled copies of the evening editions. Spotting an open green and red taxicab just pulling up to the curb, grasping at the door, pulling it open and standing back to let out—his brother.

He just stood there for a moment, unable to believe what he was seeing. His brother Reginald, standing right there in front of him—looking impossibly big and strong. Wearing some kind of blue uniform, a seaman's bag slung over his shoulder. Only the face remaining on this big man, the same face of that small, worshipful boy, dragging around his hernia—

“Malcolm!”

Beaming wider, and more boyish than ever now, throwing his arms around him. Malcolm dazedly hugging him back, unsure of what to say or how he could possibly be here, now, in the middle of Greenwich Village.

“They told me to try down here—”

“Who did?” Malcolm asked, alarmed again at once—wondering who else might know where he was.

“That bald guy. Sam, I think he said his name was.”

His little brother shrugged happily. “I been chasin' you around for three days now.
Damn,
but you move a lot!”

“You don't know the half of it, baby brother,” Malcolm chuckled. Pushing Reginald back in the still open cab door just as the hack began to pull his cigar out of his mouth to complain. Following him in and directing the cabbie back uptown, without so much as another look around—even the crazy preacher forgotten now.

“You don't know the
half
of it!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

JONAH

He ran down into the ambiguous yellow light of the club. The basement room already booming with noise—with all the separate noises of laughter and conversation, of glasses and plates and live music that made up the one, distinctive noise of a club full of people. Someone was playing jazz piano beautifully, the sound something he recognized, though he couldn't place where he knew it from. The serious students of jazz were packed in around the bar, trying to listen to it. Severe-looking co-eds and assistant professors, nervous high school students from Brooklyn and the Bronx in their fathers' ties and jackets. A smattering of local artists and hipsters, and musicians on their breaks from El Chico, or The Nineteenth Hole over on Barrow Street.

All of them were united in glaring at the celebrities who were heedlessly talking and whooping it up at the little tables around the floor—movie actors and show people, and newspaper columnists. Joking ostentatiously with the flippant waiters, as if they were trying to live up to the antic, clever murals on the walls above them, the caricatures of playboys and heiresses, ascot-wearing polo stars and Latin millionaires, jumping on tables and dancing with musicians and waiters. The resolutely jolly slogan of the club winding all around them:
Café Society: The Right Place for the Wrong People!

Jonah wedged his way in at the bar, ordering the wildly over-priced beer the bartender urged on him, and listening to more of the music. Out on the small club floor was a stunningly poised, beautiful young woman, playing piano in a gold lamé gown. Her cocoa brown Island skin was nearly flawless, her hair tucked up in a glittery snood. She sat straight as a rod, her face very serious, even somber, her eyes locked on the keyboard, ignoring all the noisy talk and laughter that threatened to drown out her music.

He recognized it then, even above the din—what sounded like classical piano, transformed into long, elegant jazz riffs.
Hazel Scott.
The same music pouring out of Adam's phonograph that last night on Martha's Vineyard, waking up the boy, Preston. Jonah blinked against the fog of smoke filling the room, then closed his eyes for a moment to concentrate on it. Remembering that last night on Martha's Vineyard, all of their easy, friendly talk.

There was a commotion on the stairs behind him. The jazz aficionados at the bar swiveled their necks about angrily, only to see a clump of army officers tumble loudly into the club. Their hats cocked at jaunty angles, obviously drunk. Staring bemusedly at the scene in front of them until one of them, a captain, called out in his slurry, incredulous drunk's voice:
“What is this, a nigger joint? What are all these jigs doing here?”

A phalanx of waiters and bartenders rushed the drunken officers at once, pushing and wrestling them on back up the stairs and out of the club almost as suddenly as they had appeared. The serious young woman at the piano playing on, unperturbed, as if she might play right through the end of the world. But everyone else had gone quiet. The club
was
integrated, the only completely integrated club in the City below 110th Street, which was its claim to fame. But the few Negro patrons who were there—the musicians, the celebrities sitting with otherwise all-white parties, the scattered others who had just dropped down to see for themselves if it was real and who were already standing around uneasily—seemed to Jonah to be limned now by a steely bright spotlight. The white aficionados at the bar and the beautiful people at the tables unable to look at them—suddenly, miserably, united in their righteousness and their embarrassment. Until both were dispelled just as abruptly by a great, mocking belly laugh that boomed out over the music and their pretensions, and everything else. The source of which Jonah could identify at once.

It was Adam—his laugh unmistakable. Jonah saw him now, sitting up at a front table, just to the side of Hazel Scott's piano. Mostly hidden by the crowd, but so close that he could have reached out and touched her hand. Holding court there with three other men, all of whom Jonah recognized as longtime wardheelers around Harlem—his table the only all-colored party in the joint.

Jonah craned his neck forward, looking for some other way past the floor and back to his sister's dressing room, but he could see none. He almost had to laugh at the ludicrousness of the situation.
The first day of his new life, and here was already a whole table full of people who knew him.

It occurred to him, then: No one knew he had vanished yet. He had just left to do his rounds this morning. No note, no luggage gone—even his briefcase back at the hotel. For all anyone could tell, he was still himself,
the Reverend Jonah Dove, Minister, the Church of the New Jerusalem.
It was still even possible for him to go back— if he wanted to.

Hazel Scott finished her last number as perfectly as ever and stood at her piano. Bowing once with typical gravity, a brief, pleased smile crossing her face as a wave of applause washed over her from the now attentive crowd. In the commotion that followed the end of her set, Jonah tried to slip down past Adam's table and into the hall that led to the dressing rooms—but just as he had reached the edge of the floor, the whole party stood up as if on cue, suddenly hemming him in.

“Brother Minister!” Adam cried, pulling him over. Introducing him around to the politicians, who stood scrutinizing him with the smiles of extremely well-mannered foxes. “You know the fellows. Ray, from Carver Democratic—”

Jonah duly shook their hands, feeling foolish. Wondering how long it would take him to make his escape backstage, before Sophia came on. But Adam was already pressing him into the seat next to him, his big hand so forceful on his shoulder that Jonah feared he might break the delicate little cabaret chair.

“Sit down, sit down!”

He saw, though, that the politicians were not sitting back down, obviously on their way out, and he began to wonder with a rising sense of panic just what would happen when his sister came out to sing. Mortified by the idea that Adam would recognize her, watching her sing with her brother sitting right there in front of him—

“So how
is
your father?” Adam was asking.

“Oh, he's getting by—”

“Fine, fine! You know, I hope he can see his way to giving us his support next year. I'm looking for all the help I can get!” he exclaimed.

Jonah was sure that the opposite was true, that he had his congressional seat all but wrapped up by now. At first he speculated that Adam had already picked up the politician's ability to say the exact opposite of what he meant, but then Jonah realized he was only being kind—making him an offer to get on the bandwagon, now that victory was assured.

“I'm sure he will do everything he can. I'd be happy to help, myself,” Jonah told him. Trying to think just what the endorsement of the founder and the heir of the New Jerusalem would be worth once he had disappeared.

“Well, that's fine, fine now!”

The emcee returned to the stage, a mountainous white man who called himself Zero. He seemed able to all but metamorphose into another species at will—a bull, a bear, a gigantic dog. Moving about the stage with alarming speed and menace. Mugging and growling, his eyes bulging wildly, titillating the crowd with his daring, foulmouthed act.

“Zero's not my real name. Who the hell would name their boy Zero?” he barked. “My name is Sam! The commie who runs this joint wanted to call me Zero. I said call me shit if you want, I just want to work!”

Adam howled with the rest of the crowd and rocked back in his chair, looking positively ecstatic, Jonah thought. A glass of scotch in one hand, using his opposite thumb to tamp down his pipe.

“I wanted to tell you, I thought you handled those fellows in the Bronx just right,” he said, turning effortlessly to Jonah again.

“What?” Jonah asked, surprised.

“On that Met Life project,” he said. “Trying to build a Jim Crow housing project in New York in this day and age! We're going to beat them on this.”

“We are?” Jonah asked.

“Sure,” Adam nodded. “They're finished, all of them. Fred Ecker, Bob Moses. All the clubhouse boys, and that little fraud La Guardia. It may take some time yet, but we'll do it.”

He lit his pipe, puffing it quickly to life, then tossed the match away dismissively. Jonah thought he had never seen a more confi-dent man in his life than Adam Powell.

“That's the politics of the past. I've been talking to the unions. The Amalgamated, the Ladies' Garment Workers. Marcantonio and his Renters' League. This is where the power is now. This is the people's century.”

“Don't you think that—”

“There's a different kind of Negro here now,” Adam cut him off, sweeping away the possibility of any doubts with the wave of a hand. His jaw clenched tightly around his pipe. “They can't frighten us anymore. Can't buy us off with a new hospital wing here, a few new apartments there. Sending up MPs, and shutting down the Savoy! Whites and Negroes are going to mix, and there's nothing anybody can do about it.”

On the floor the mountainous emcee sang a short, surprisingly sentimental ditty, then capered off the floor to another storm of applause. Adam stood up, grinning again. Reaching down to shake Jonah's hand, and at the same time letting bills fall on the table like loose napkins.

“Sorry to get on my soapbox,” he said. “Listen, I got to get going, got to get up early tomorrow and back to Oak Bluffs. Feel free to order anything else you want, put it on my tab. And say hello to that lovely wife of yours!”

No sooner had he left than the emcee returned to introduce his sister. Jonah inutterably relieved that Adam had left, but feeling newly uncomfortable—knowing that he would have to sit out in front now, all alone at his table.

He thought that she looked more beautiful than ever when she came out—even better than when she was in high school and college, and he had thought then that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She wore a low-cut, sleeveless white gown, a large matching jasmine of some kind pinned in her hair. Her face a little thinner now with the first turn of age, but her cheeks and lips still slightly swollen and sensual. Showing the crowd a soft smile before launching right into a slow, melancholy rendition of “I'm Yours”.

She sang well, he thought. Her voice was better now than when she was starting out and he had snuck off to see her in little Village clubs like this—better than when she had sung her choir solos of “Love Lifted Me” and “Come Ye That Love the Lord” before the whole rapt church of the New Jerusalem. It was more interesting now, and more mature; husky and knowing and expressive. Yet the set she sang included nothing original—mostly covers of the same numbers that Billie Holiday had been doing around town for the last few seasons. Songs about heartache and broken romance, all sung slow and torchy. “I'll Get By” and “Travelin' Alone”; “I Didn't Know What Time It Was” and “I Love My Man,” and “More Than You Know”.

He knew she had seen him from almost the moment she walked out on the floor—looking straight at him, her eyes widening just perceptibly, then taking no notice of him again. But he kept his gaze on her throughout her set, determined not to look away. Seeing everything about her clearly now—for the first time, he thought. Noticing the calculated throb in her voice, the way she sang almost everything the same way—marking her whole presentation of herself as a slimmer, sexier,
whiter
Billie Holiday. Try as he might, he was unable to shake the feeling of how imitative, how
artificial
she seemed, even as she finished with a perfectly emotional, nearly whispered version of “In the Still of the Night.” Seeing clearly for the first time how very unoriginal his sister really was—

There was more heartfelt applause, nearly as enthusiastic as it had been for Hazel Scott, and looking around the room, Jonah saw to his great surprise that even the aficionados around the bar were clapping and whistling. Understanding, in that moment, why she lived the life that she did—

As soon as she had taken her bow and stepped off the floor, he set off after her. He gave his name to a manager standing guard backstage, was waiting for him to come back from her dressing room at the far end of the hall—when he heard that familiar, irresistible laugh for the second time in the evening, coming from just a few feet away. Sure that he must be mistaken, he looked into the first open dressing room on the hall—and saw Adam Powell and the young woman who had played such wonderful piano, in each others' arms.

The position they were in was unmistakable—Adam kissing fondly at her nose, her mouth, even as Jonah watched. She was aware of Jonah's presence first, directing Adam's attention to him only then with a discreet nod of her head. Pulling back modestly, adjusting her gold lamé gown, while Adam strode toward him. For a crazy moment Jonah thought he was about to punch him, or slam the door in his face—but instead he just stepped out into the hallway, closing it gently behind him.

“Well. Brother Minister,” he said dryly, looking as confident as ever.

“What are you doing?”

“I'm sorry you had to see it this way,” Adam said, as if he were talking to a child.

“What is she? Your back-door woman?” Jonah asked, trying to keep the shock and outrage out of his voice, but not succeeding. Not sure just why he should be so surprised, having heard the same rumors on The Wire about Adam Clayton Powell that everyone else had heard for years, but stunned nevertheless.

“It's nothing like
that
,” Powell was saying impatiently, as if he had been somehow affronted. “As soon as it's viable, we're going to be married.”

“
Married?
What about Isabel?”

Adam shook his head sadly, sticking his hands in his pockets.