One shot harry, p.19
One-Shot Harry, page 19
The older man nodded appreciatively.
The two sat in the dining room. In the living room past an archway the Suttons’ teenage daughter sat before the TV intently watching the Ben Casey doctor drama. A woman with big hair cried into a handkerchief as Casey, emoting empathy, laid the bad news on her about her husband’s condition. Ingram refocused.
The 320th Very Low Altitude Barrage Balloon Battalion was the only all-Black unit to take part in D-Day, though other Black units were involved in the second wave, the mop-up. The job of the ballooners was to get their light balloons aloft on steel cables. The idea was as German fighter planes swooped down at 400 miles an hour, raking the troops with machine gun fire, they would slice a wing off on the cables.
“Charlie, you ought to write a book about what you’ve been through.”
“That’s what I’ve told him over and over,” his wife said over the clink of a pot being set on the dish rack.
“Well, you know how it was,” Sutton said.
“Anita told you I was in Korea?”
“That’s the only reason I agreed to talk to you, Harry.”
“No, it isn’t,” his daughter, Ophelia, piped in. “You love it when people drag these stories out of you.”
Sutton smiled sheepishly and had more of his Pabst bottled beer, carefully replacing it on the coaster.
A beer on a coaster at his elbow as well, Ingram continued making notes. Sutton was the second name on the short list Claire had given him. The first person listed was out of the country at the moment. Ingram couldn’t come right out and grill the man about the missing diary. He’d begun after dinner at a logical place given their shared background of being in the service. Ingram was genuinely interested in Sutton’s experiences and figured he could turn this into an article for Dapper or Ebony. Sutton had various photos from that time, including one with him and writer Richard Wright, who’d covered the conflict.
They talked some more about the man’s wartime experiences, including being shoulder-to-shoulder with other Blacks who’d volunteered for the left-leaning Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the fall of 1937. This included his recollections about a man named Oliver Law, who Ingram hadn’t heard about.
“This gee was from West Texas,” Sutton was saying. “He’d been an enlisted man way before the action in Spain. He was smart and fearless and a flaming red.”
“This is great,” Ingram muttered as he wrote.
“Yeah, there was a sister named Salaria over there too, can you dig that? A nurse. Last I heard she married some ofay, I mean white guy,” he chuckled.
“What about this Oliver Law?”
“He died leading his machine gunners trying to take Mosquito Hill.”
Ingram looked up to see a somber cast to the other man’s face. He recovered and on they talked, at one point going into the kitchen so he could dry the washed dishes and put them away. Ingram helped. They also had a second beer. This seemed like the time to ask him about his more recent activities.
“Not that I’m looking to put you on the spot, but what with being in the Brigade, that got you involved in the Party’s activities?” Claire had told him Sutton not only often printed the informational flyers about their pickets but participated as well.
Sutton was putting away the dinner dishes in the cupboard over a toaster on the counter. “You mean I’m a dyed-in-the-wool commie? This all a bunch of hooey and you’re really working for HUAC? To turn me in?” He was pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket as he talked.
“Hardly.”
Sutton offered a cigarette he’d shook loose.
“I’m a cigar man.”
Sutton placed the end of the cigarette between his lips and drew it out of the pack in that way. The cigarette dangling from his mouth, he said, “Let’s step out on the back porch.”
The house was constructed such that this meant going out a side door in the kitchen. There was a concrete landing and steps as well as a railing made of plumbing pipe. Sutton cupped his hands and lit his cigarette.
“I came up in this piss-poor Southern town, Harry. Never had shit and headed for never having shit to hand down to those after me.”
“I hear you.”
“Anyway, when me and my brother got some size on us, we took the first thing smoking to get the hell away from there. Brian, that’s my brother, wound up in Chicago and I landed in New York. I was doing the usual us colored folks find ourselves doing to keep a sandwich and coffee in my belly. Janitor in a medical supply outfit, hauling blocks of ice up flights of stairs in cold-water flats, man I did it all.” He paused to blow a stream of smoke into the night air.
“Having those kinds of jobs brought me in contact with white people in a different way. Not having to take off my hat and bow and scrape or cross to the other side of the street like how it was expected back home. Hell,” he began, a grin lighting his face as he lowered his voice before speaking again. “I even laid some pipe on this here white gal who was, you know, in the Party.”
Ingram nodded knowingly.
“Yes, sir. Started going to their meetings, getting involved in what they called direct actions.” He looked sideways at Ingram, tip of the cigarette glowing. “I liked that they didn’t just give lip service to negro equality but laid it on the line. Plus, well, I had my head in the clouds over that chick so, you know, the little head does the thinking a lot of times.”
Ingram said, “There is that.”
“Anyway.” Sutton shrugged, tapping ash from his cigarette. “When the call-up came about fighting for democracy in Spain, despite the US dragging its feet what with that premature anti-fascist shit, like there’s a particular time to be against oppression or not, me and some of the others I’d become friends with signed on.”
“You want me to keep this out of the article?”
Sutton studied him for several ticks of the clock, then said, “I ain’t too worried about them Birchers coming for me. Riding up here from Disneyland in their drop-top Caddies with John Wayne on a horse in the lead. Shit.” He flicked the spent cigarette away. The tip sparked when it struck the concrete of the driveway.
He laughed and so did Ingram. It didn’t seem like Sutton was worried about his past activities being exposed, the photographer reasoned.
“Let me level with you, Charlie,” he said as the two stepped back inside. They sat at the kitchen table where they’d left their beers. The bottles were still cool, slick to the touch. The swing door to the kitchen was closed and Ingram made sure to keep his voice low as Sutton had done outside. “I’m going to do my best to get the story placed, but I had a different reason for coming to see you.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah, well, like you said, sometimes the little head does the thinking.” Though his feelings for her were more than that, he realized.
“Anita is a good-looking, smart woman.” Sutton tipped the neck of the bottle toward Ingram then took a sip.
“There’s this diary the Berksons had. My understanding is Don plans to turn these recollections into a book, a memoir.” Lindon “Don” Berkson was Judy Berkson’s father. “They was looking for it not long ago and couldn’t find it.”
“And I was one of the ones who hid some of his books in my shop,” Sutton said.
Ingram spread his hands. He was surprised that Sutton hadn’t gotten angry at his admission.
“I didn’t swipe the diary. It don’t make me no never mind. But since we’re putting our cards on the table, could be your girlfriend has you intentionally looking in the wrong direction.”
“You mean this Emil Freed?”
“Oh, no, not him. I mean Solly.”
“Anita’s dad?”
The swing door was pushed in a degree and Sutton’s wife leaned in to address her husband. “Honey, how much longer are you going to be? Y’all want some coffee? I can put a pot on.”
“We’re okay, we’re just about to finish up.”
“Okay.” The door closed.
Waiting a few seconds for her to retreat, Sutton continued, “I guess Anita doesn’t know about her father. What got him in hot water with her mother, I mean.”
“What’s that?”
“He’s a stick-up man.”
“What?”
“I’m pretty sure he’s knocked over at least two banks in the last six months or so.”
Ingram was having a hard time grasping what was being said. “Is he that hard up?”
“He was inspired by the Bolsheviks. They pulled off robberies to get money for the revolution. Even using homemade tear gas or some such, supposedly.”
Ingram pointed at him. “Were you in on these heists?”
“No,” Sutton said, holding up his hands palms out. “But we used to have these study groups. Reading a book or tract, discussing how best we could use left victories, like even in Cuba, and how we might apply those lessons here. Talking down inequality and so forth.”
“Yeah . . . ?”
“A couple of years ago, and this was when we had a few sessions in the back of my shop, there was one night, and it was just a few of us there—just the men, in fact. Including Solly and Don. Anyway, Solly was gassed up about what had happened to the Wells family.”
“The Sentinel covered that.” A Black family’s white neighbors were drunk and threw beer bottles through the family’s windows. Riled up, they then blew out the glass with a shotgun blast. The husband, Thomas Wells, wasn’t cowed and borrowed another neighbor’s shotgun to citizen arrest the perpetrators.
“Solly saw this as a sign. He was talking about tit for tat. For instance, going after cops if they beat another Black man in handcuffs to death.”
“Man, that’s reckless.”
“Yeah, we talked him back from going off half-cocked, but Solly was determined that another picket line wasn’t going to get it done. He made a point we should discuss at the next meeting how Lenin and his bunch came to the conclusion that ripping off the capitalists’ banks was a revolutionary act. That if we organized ourselves, utilized military training and whatnot, we could use men and women like in Algiers to pull off successful robberies.”
“That could have just been talk.”
“Maybe,” Sutton allowed. “Before the next session he called me and Don and asked us not to bring it up. It seemed like he’d petered out on the idea. But I don’t think it was a coincidence First National got knocked over recently.”
“Why do you say that?”
He fixed him with a look. “Solly had a janitorial service once upon a time.”
“And he used to clean that bank?”
“I’m betting he did.”
“I don’t know,” Ingram began.
“How does the robber identify himself?” Sutton asked rhetorically.
“Two letters, A.M., that and him robbing before noon is why they call him the Morning Bandit.” Ingram recalled from the article he read in the Herald Ex that he wore a full face mask, gloves and newsboy cap. He used a sawed-off shotgun and didn’t talk much. His note he’d hand the teller demanded the bills and was signed with an A and M.
“But what does that prove?” Ingram said.
“I think the letters are for Antonio Maceo, a Black general who fought with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.”
“Aw, come on.”
Sutton hunched his shoulders again. “Dorothy figures the reason Solly hasn’t been around is because he’s taken up with another woman. Probably then Anita thinks this too. But Don and I talked about the bandit and we both came to the conclusion it’s Solly.”
“Hold on,” Ingram said. “That diary was packed away before the Wells incident. So why would he break into Don Berkson’s garage to take the diary?”
“Maybe Don said something to Solly, I don’t know. And maybe he was worried Don was gonna include new stuff, if the plan is to do a book.”
“He wouldn’t rat him out.”
“You’re right,” Sutton admitted. “Solly would know he could trust Don to make sure he didn’t put any of his old comrades on the spot.”
Ingram didn’t know what to make of any of this. He rose, circling back to more familiar territory. “I’m going to take a run at the article and will probably have a few follow-up questions for you if that’s okay. I ain’t putting in anything about the robberies.”
“Didn’t think you would. What are you going to tell Anita?”
“Nothing for the time being. You got my head spinning, man.”
After he said his good-byes, Ingram stood outside on the walkway, hands on his hips. Had Sutton told him a fairy tale to throw him off? Was it just bullshit to cover the fact he’d stolen the diary? But he genuinely seemed not to care if his left-leaning associations were known.
Ingram dug out an El Producto from his sport coat’s inner pocket, carefully extracting the cigar from its cellophane wrapper as if it were a stick of dynamite. Blocking his lighter’s flame against the breeze, he lit up. He’d parked down the block and walked slowly to his borrowed car, trying to sort this strange tale out. Shouldn’t he ask his girlfriend what she believed about her father? Had she tried to contact Solly in the last few months? If he was the thief, wouldn’t he make sure to act normal around her and her mother and not avoid them?
Back home, he wrote further notes. The following day, once he’d prepped his equipment for the rally, he drove to the Herald Examiner building on Broadway in downtown L.A. It was a grand structure done in the Mission Revival style, designed by the state’s first licensed female architect, Ingram recalled. He was about to go inside to look through recent issues in the newspaper’s morgue, but checked his watch and decided on a new plan. He walked north up the next block to a bar and grill called the Driftwood. Sure enough, sitting on a stool smoking a Pall Mall, the remains of his lunch before him on a plate, sat Mike Piedmont. Ingram went over, passing other reporters en route.
“The intrepid Harry Ingram. What brings you down here today? And shouldn’t you be getting your beauty rest for the big day?”
“’Fraid beauty rest won’t help me now, Mike. Have you been covering the Morning Bandit story?”
“I have.” Piedmont drank what was left of his tepid coffee.
“The cops working on any theories?”
Piedmont squinted an eye as he gazed at Ingram. “You got an angle on this, Harry?” He fired up another cigarette.
“I honestly don’t know.”
“Share and share alike.”
Not looking to betray Anita Claire, he measured his next words. Have Piedmont showing up at the campaign office, now wouldn’t that be grand?
“How about this? I’m not asking because I want to do a story. I’m not horning in, it’s all yours to tell.”
“But I get a name before anybody else.”
“It could be just a lead. But if it gets to that, yes.”
Piedmont had wheeled around on the stool, elbows set back on the bar top. “Cops ain’t got squat. Over the last half a year, he’s hit three banks in three different parts of town, always careful to be near a freeway entrance, of course, like any clear-thinking bank robber in our fair city. He’s not greedy, apparently no monkey on his back, and he’s also obviously casing these joints ahead of time. One of the banks, he’d cut the outside wires to the alarm. Which must have been done the night before. Smart guy is the only thing they know.”
Which meant the law and Piedmont thought he was white. If it was Solomon Claire, that would be a reason he didn’t speak much so as not to be identified as Black, Ingram conjectured. He asked, “Anything else?”
“That’s the other thing that’s clever about him,” Piedmont said. “The first time he left on a bicycle and cut down an alley. But as the cops stopped chumps on their bikes, it became obvious he must have had a car waiting. Second time he zoomed off on a motorcycle, but again must have dumped it somewhere to hop in his getaway car.”
Piedmont tapped ash from his cigarette into the cup’s saucer on the bar. His plate had been removed. “But I saved the best for last. This most recent heist, he ran out and got in a waiting car, a Buick, the witnesses think it was. A dame at the wheel. Scarf on her head and wearing dark glasses.”
He didn’t say she was colored, Ingram noted.
Piedmont studied him. “That mean something to you?”
“Not sure yet.” Dorothy Nielson had a Buick, but so did a lot of people. Still.
“But you’ll deliver, yeah?”
“You won’t be sorry.”
“I tell that to the dames all the time,” Piedmont joked. “And look how that turns out.”
“I’ll see you, Mike.”
Walking away, Ingram was even more confused. He’d have to wait to go down this particular road until after the rally.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The following morning the phone rang and he answered the call.
“Harry,” he heard Doris Letrec say.
“Hey now.”
“Got a sweet one. This is from Hamer, Nolvang and Jessup.”
“No shit? Excuse my French.” The law firm she mentioned was prestigious, what they called a white shoe outfit.
“You’ve been asked for in particular. Kind of like the Black Muslim assignment.”
“No kidding?”
“That’s right, and this one doesn’t involve any legwork. The job is delivering a bankruptcy petition to a business partner. The partner is Black, and I was told they asked around and your name came up. The feeling is the one you’re serving, his name is Byron Noomis, will be less on alert if it’s not a white face coming to his house.”
Ingram considered what this made him, using his color as subterfuge to keep another colored man at ease. He was about to voice an objection but Letrec spoke again.
“Your end is three hundred and fifty dollars. I’ve got the address to his home. He’ll be there today.”
