One shot harry, p.13
One-Shot Harry, page 13
“Orange juice for me, please, and we’ll be getting food.”
“Sure. Be right back.”
Claire took a slice of bread and put it in the toaster. She dialed the timer and plopped it down. “Think we’ll beat the Russians to the moon like the president wants?”
“Sure. You worried we won’t?”
She frowned. “I guess I’m torn. I know full well the horrors of Stalin’s reign and what might be an unsure fate should they get there first. But all that money to reach a hunk of rock and we got starving children in this town, Harry, let alone down in Alabama and Mississippi.”
The waitress returned. Claire ordered half a grapefruit as compared to Ingram’s plate of two pancakes, scrambled eggs and bacon, crisp.
He said to her when the waitress left, “If I can’t win you a prize, at least I can eat like a man.”
She laughed and continued where they’d left off. “But the race is on, ain’t no stopping it now. Maybe some of what gets developed for those rockets and space suits can have practical applications for us stuck on this mudball.”
“I know you don’t mean ray guns like in the Flash Gordon comic strip. ’Cause say what you want, them generals with the fruit salad on their chests are looking to come out of this with better missiles to reach your poor Russian people and take them out of their suffering in a mushroom cloud.”
“Believe me, I know. But did you know there are several colored women mathematicians working at NASA?”
“What?”
“Yep, they’re fondly called the human computers. Figuring out complex trajectories, working navigational charts for theoretical flights and so forth.”
He whistled. “Somebody ought to write about that.”
“I think there was an article about one of them, Katherine Johnson, in an alumni publication.”
“Yeah, well,” he said. “You and four others saw that.”
“There’s a lot about us we should preserve for our future generations. All generations really.”
“Meaning I should do more to broaden my subject matter?”
“I wasn’t trying to be sly, Harry. Now don’t you worry, comrade,” she began, affecting a theatrical Russian accent, “one day you and your images will inspire the vanguard of the lumpenproletariat.”
“Damn right, whatever it is you said.”
After they finished their meal and got back in the car, she put her head against his shoulder.
“Home next stop, ma’am.”
“Okay.” She placed a hand on his thigh and kissed and nuzzled his neck.
As he reacted, she wasn’t shy about rubbing her hand in another area as well.
Back at her apartment they made love and finally found sleep in each other’s embrace around four in the morning. He awoke to the sounds of a shower going. Ingram was momentarily disoriented, as if he’d had a carnal dream about her but hadn’t really been with her. Claire’s bedroom was compact and neat. On a wall were several framed photographs. Getting into his boxers, he walked over to them, recognizing Karl Marx, Ida B. Wells and Charlotta Bass speaking at a podium. There was also one of a Black man in a gray suit and glasses. It wasn’t Malcolm X, as this individual was dark and had dark hair. But he reminded Ingram of the charismatic leader.
“That’s Patrice Lumumba,” she said over his shoulder. “An African freedom fighter who was assassinated a couple of years ago. The Central Intelligence Agency is complicit in his demise. He was the first prime minister of the so-called newly independent Congo.”
“Them whites making sure the darkies didn’t take that business about being our own bosses too seriously, you mean.”
“The power-hungry puppet they helped install is named Mobutu, from the military.” She was standing in the doorway to the bathroom in a terry cloth robe, drying her hair with a towel. “Sometimes,” she sighed, shaking her head, “we can be our own worst enemies.” She wrapped the towel around her wet hair.
There was a lone photo on another wall of a Black man and a white woman. She was sitting and he was standing behind her, his hands on her shoulders. They were dressed in everyday clothes and smiling. Claire looked to be a darker-hued version of her mother.
“Your mom’s a good-lookin’ chick.”
“Shut up, idiot.”
On a tidy bookcase were the types of books he expected to find, nonfiction works such as The Souls of Black Folk; Fear, the Accuser; Anarchism and Other Essays and several textbooks about math. There was also a book called The Second Sex and several fiction paperbacks he was surprised to find with titles such as Women’s Barracks, The Midnight Blade and The Long Wait. Their covers were salaciously intriguing, living up to their exciting titles.
He had one of the paperbacks in his hand when Claire came up behind him, putting her arms around his middle. Her fingers on his flesh reminded him that while he’d already found Kinslow’s pictures at the Y, he should make working out there a routine.
“I like it that you have a wide variety of interests in reading,” he said, turning his head to kiss her.
“Blame it on my curious parents. There were always all kinds of books lying around the house when I was growing up. My mom could read three or four of them at a time. Still does.”
“Lucky I can read my name,” Ingram muttered, overjoyed to be in her arms again.
She’d undone the robe and her hand slipped inside his boxers’ waistband as they swayed together. Sometime later they were dressed and having coffee and sharing a sweet roll in her kitchenette. Ingram ate most of the pastry. Claire had two small pieces at the end of her fork. They were staring at each other when her phone rang. She got up to answer.
“Yes,” she said, listening. “Right, okay, why don’t we meet there in about half an hour?” There was a response, then, “Yes, I know where he lives. See you there.” She hung up and came back to the table but didn’t sit down.
“What’s up?” He finished off the sweet roll.
“There’s a meeting at Reverend Brookings’s house. Hollingsworth has a new ad on the radio touting himself as the negro’s best friend. Actually using the fact Tom was a policeman to hint he’s in the pocket of interests outside of our community.” Joe Hollingsworth was white and when the midterm opening on the City Council occurred in 1961, he’d been appointed among several candidates, including Bradley, who at the time was still on the police force. Hollingsworth had an inside track with certain elements in City Hall. He’d been a construction supervisor working on the development of Baldwin Hills. Now, though, the voters would decide on the first full term.
“Damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” Ingram said. “That’s what the coloreds get for being ambitious.” He’d taken various shots of Bradley over the years, including the time when he was still a cop and was assigned to safeguard the singer and civil rights activist Paul Robeson when he came to town.
A crooked grin came and went on her face. “At least the CIA isn’t involved, just good old-fashioned American capitalists. Which I suppose is the same thing.”
“Go get ’em, Anita.”
She was at a desk in a corner by the window assembling a few of her papers and putting them in a valise with her initials on it. “Stay as long as you want, Harry. Turn the lock and the door locks behind you.”
He stretched, yawning. Ingram was tempted to hang around and laze away the day, waiting lustfully for her return. “Shouldn’t I tiptoe out the back door so your reputation isn’t ruined?”
“Little late for that, baby.” She leaned over him studying his face, his chin held in her hand. “Say my name again.”
“Anita,” he said like cotton was in his throat.
“That’s right.” She gave him all tongue so as not to smear her lipstick.
He had another cup of coffee and turned on the portable TV she had on top of the bedroom dresser. The master of fitness Jack LaLanne was going through one of his exercise routines. He was always in a leisure jumpsuit, today’s being sky blue in color with belted pockets on his chest and the same design on the buckle on the sewn-in belt at his trim waist. Watching LaLanne go through his paces and also visualizing the fabulous and fit nude form of Claire in his mind, he joined in and worked up a light sweat. Afterward he was hungry again but maintained discipline and didn’t open her refrigerator. He left, making sure the door was secured behind him.
Downstairs he had to remember where he’d parked; he’d been too distracted when Claire had her hand between his legs, his fly zipped down. Finally it came back to him and he walked down West Thirty-Seventh toward the corner of Raymond Avenue. He was about to pass by a telephone pole, a handbill stapled on it. He stopped, the image on the flyer having gotten his attention. It was of several stern-faced men and women standing side by side looking out at the viewer. They were Black Muslims, and the wording was about a picket of the White Front department store on Manchester. The action was to take place today at noon.
A few minutes later, dime in hand, Ingram made a call at a pay phone at a gas station, the driver’s door of his Belvedere open and the engine running.
“Hey, Wes,” he said, when the phone was answered by Wesley Crossman at the Eagle newspaper. “What do you know about this protest by the Black Muslims?”
“Nothing.”
Deadline frenzy gripped the newsroom. As he talked to the editor, he heard reporters yelling for their copyedited galleys, cursing about getting a headline rewritten and the other joyous cacophonies of a weekly edition being composed.
With a dry chuckle he said, “It’s happening today at noon at the, get this, the White Front.”
“Don’t know nothing. Just like them to not put out a press release,” he groused. “It’s happening today you said?” The rhythmic tak-tak-tak of typewriter keys being attacked came over the line.
He told him what he’d gleaned from the flyer. “How about it?” he asked.
“Okay, yeah, cover it. We’ll find the room for a shot and a short piece. But get me a juicy quote and you got to have it over here before four.”
“On it.” Ingram hung up and got back in his car. Maybe he could kill two birds with the same stone, he figured as he drove away.
Back at his place he showered again, given his exercising with Jack, and shaved. He put on slacks and a light short-sleeved shirt; no coat, but took his snap-brim hat with him. He got over to the White Front not twenty minutes past eleven. Already there was a grouping of the NOI milling on a section of the parking lot. So far the only other newspaper represented here was a reporter for the Muslim’s Muhammad Speaks.
His Speed Graphic strapped around his neck and his press credentials in his shirt pocket, he approached a huskily built man directing two others. He wore a dark suit, and his silver tie clasp contrasted with his black tie flat against his starched white shirt.
“Excuse me, brother,” he began, “I’m here from the Eagle and wanted to know what brought this about.”
The man regarded Ingram for a beat then said, “The white man and his continuing devaluing of negro labor. The plantation system is over.”
Ingram had his steno pad out. “Could you be more specific? For the record. And tell me your name, please.”
“I’m Kevin Abdullah and I’ve been authorized to speak for the Honorable Elijah Muhammad in this regard.” He pointed at the arched façade of the discount chain. Several shoppers had paused near the doorway to see what was going on. “A salesman in this store insulted one of our women when she came in to purchase a simple vacuum cleaner.”
“What did he say?”
“He was white, of course, and said there must be a lot of dirt in that mosque of yours what with the kind of people you all cater to.” He looked evenly at Ingram, who wrote down the quote. “When contacted about this, the manager refused to discipline his employee.”
Ingram made a note of that too. “I’ll be back.”
The other man nodded and resumed talking to the others. By now several station wagons had arrived with carloads of members. In the cargo area of the cars were placards on sticks. Ingram estimated at least three hundred were already outside and no doubt more were on the way.
Inside the store he took the escalator to the second floor and headed to the manager’s office. He was intercepted at the door by a security guard.
“What do you want?” He was an older gentleman with a bent nose and a wooden matchstick propped in the corner of his mouth. His eyes were watery, and he made no attempt to hide his growing gut.
“I want to get the manager’s side of the incident,” Ingram said, showing him his credentials. The guard didn’t strike him as an ex-cop, but he wasn’t sure.
“This for a colored paper?”
“That’s right.”
“Then it’s not real news, is it?”
“Can I use that in my article as the official outlook of the White Front corporation? They don’t take their colored customers and the press that reports about them seriously?”
His face compacted. “All right, damn, hold your water.” He went inside the office, closing the door behind him, then returned a moment later. Ingram saw past him into the inner office. The manager was standing at his desk, holding the phone’s handset. The guard closed the door to his back.
“Mr. Peterson says he’ll have something to say shortly.”
“Looking forward to it.” Ingram went back outside and walked around, taking shots and looking for a man with part of his left earlobe missing. He stared hard at the side of more than one head and got questioning grimaces for his intrusions. By now he counted more than four hundred men and women from the various mosques in the parking lot and out on the sidewalk. Standing off to one side, Kevin Abdullah reviewed his talking points on several index cards he shuffled in his large hands. Several police cars arrived, taking up position. Abdullah paused to watch this. A news van from local station Channel 5 also appeared. The officers exited their vehicles, conferring with one another.
Ingram took more shots and was about to break away to call Crossman to tell him this was going to be a longer article. It was then the manager, Mr. Peterson, came outside, a few steps from the front doors in case he had to rush back inside, Ingram surmised. The security guard stood next to him, along with a Black woman in a black-and-white-checkered skirt and black sweater.
A sergeant broke away from the other policemen and approached Abdullah. Ingram went toward the two as the TV newscaster stood on the sidewalk. He adjusted his handheld microphone as the cameraman set up his camera on its stilts. Various cables trailed from their equipment back into the van.
“This is an illegal assembly,” the sergeant was saying to Abdullah.
“This is about justice and fair treatment. That’s never illegal.”
“Look, you need a permit to picket. You know this.”
Ingram clicked away.
The sergeant turned toward him. “Get the fuck out of here.”
“I’m press.”
“I don’t care if you’re Old Man River.”
“I have a right to cover this just like they do.” He pointed his jaw at the newsman on the sidewalk.
The sergeant resumed talking to Abdullah. “I’m asking you to take your people and get out of here before this gets out of hand.”
“Not until the manager talks to us about his failure to act responsibly.”
“Jesus,” the sergeant said, “give you people an inch and you take a mile.”
Abdullah grinned. “We learned from the best.”
The sergeant swore and walked back to his officers.
Abdullah started toward where Peterson stood but the manager retreated back inside the store. The security guard and the woman remained. Abdullah talked to her. Ingram took a few shots of them, then pivoted toward the cops. Not needing to look at his camera, by rote he took out the used roll and inserted a new one. He began taking pictures of the gathered cops.
“Didn’t I tell you to get the fuck out of here?” the sergeant reiterated.
“Just doing my job.”
“Do it elsewhere.”
One of the police officers put his hand on his sheathed nightstick. “I’ve seen this nosy bastard around. Always taking snaps of misery and mayhem.”
“Yeah, probably a peeping Tom too,” another one cracked.
“He’s got some nerve,” a third officer added.
There were two Black officers present and they chuckled along with the rest of them.
“Brothers and sisters, how it warms my heart to see you out here today to represent that we will not tolerate bigotry and second-class citizenship.” Abdullah stood in front of the store, though off to the side from the main doors. The Black woman he’d talked to was back in the store. The security guard remained posted outside.
“They sent this colored woman out, and I won’t disparage her, for what choice did she have really? But they sent this lady out who works in the children’s department to hear us out and report back to the white manager who leaned on her to come out here in the first place.” His voice rose. “The manager who poked his head out like a turtle but doesn’t have the courage to come out here and talk to me man to man.”
Applause and yells of approval arose from the assembled.
“What do we do, Sarge?” The cop who’d had his hand on the hilt of his nightstick unsheathed it.
“Fan out, flank the Muslims. But no aggressive crowd control just yet.”
The officers did as directed. Abdullah kept talking. Ingram captured it all, making sure to write his impressions down as well.
“What we are demanding is only right and correct,” Abdullah said, moving back and forth in front of the crowd. “Oh yes, the city fathers give lip service to the imminent arrival of Reverend King, lauding him and his efforts to bring about our rights as citizens for our people down South. Pretending like everything here in the north, here in sunny Los Angeles is all milk and cream.” He raised his arms. “Well, is it?” he called out.
