One shot harry, p.24
One-Shot Harry, page 24
“You mean the white Russians. There’s a whole bunch of folks who look like my buddy Josh over there too, right? I mean I know they ain’t Japanese. But where are they when it comes to the Soviets?”
She grinned lopsidedly. “Touché, comrade. Clearly there is work to be done all around.” Her grin faded. “Are we conditioned, though, to accept that the negro’s longing in America is always destined to be dialed down?”
The fact that Clovis Mitchell had attended Pepperdine occurred to him and he told her this, adding, “Maybe the Providers have their own Black leader they’re grooming hiding in the woodpile. Somebody who will not be as forward-thinking as the good doctor. More like, I don’t know, George Washington Carver. Separate is okay as long as we apply ourselves.”
She made a derisive sound in her throat, snuggling next to him. On the coffee table were two squat glasses containing whiskey, neat, and the two surreptitious snaps Ingram had taken of the woman with the bracelet. They were still drying. One was as she was leaving the gathering, in motion on the walkway of the house, furtively illuminated by the porch light. The other was in the dining room, the white, round orb of a pill suspended in the air just as she released it from her hand. The frozen moment in time looked as if the two had rehearsed the shot.
Claire picked up the picture, waving it slightly. “We should at least find out who she is.”
“Hell yes.” He sipped his drink.
The following day Claire made an inquiry to the O’Dells and found out the woman’s name was Elise Duville. She was listed in the White Pages. When they drove to her house in Cheviot Hills, there was a for sale sign staked in the well-tended lawn. They got out and walked up to the abode.
“Ain’t nobody home but us chickens,” Ingram cracked as the two of them peered in the front window, the drapes inside slightly gapped.
“You ain’t never lied.” The furniture was already gone. Back in the car she turned to Ingram and said, “The reason you haven’t mentioned Morty and Wicks lately is they’re dead, aren’t they?”
“Yes,” he said, staring straight ahead.
“I need to tell you something, Anita. It’s been eating me up. Not what I did, but the not talking about it. I killed them both.” Stammering he added, “Two different times. Before the rally. Both times they’d come at me.” He told her about the ambush and Wicks coming to the Eagle to call him out. He didn’t provide further details but would if she asked. Like still-life paintings, they sat there in front of the empty house. His hands were on the steering wheel, inert, seemingly without purpose.
“But Hoyt hasn’t sent anyone else,” she finally said.
“Not yet.” He turned to her. “You know I’d do whatever I could to protect you.”
“I’m a big girl, Harry. I’ve told you that.”
“I know you are.”
“Come on, I’m hungry.”
A few days later Claire circled back with Nan O’Dell trying to unearth any other information about Elise Duville. They sat in the front room of the woman’s house in Sugar Hill having tea.
“Why so curious about Elise?” O’Dell wondered.
“I think I might know a relative of hers, a girl I went to school with. Miss Duville gave me her phone number but it’s disconnected.”
“Hmm,” the older woman said, sipping from her Spode china cup. “I know she’s moved around a lot so that’s not surprising.” She regarded her guest.
Sensing she was holding back, Claire asked, “What is it, Nan?”
“Well, dear, I know a little about you and your sister’s upbringing from Frank Wilkerson and was wondering if it was in one of those summer camps you’d met this relative of hers. Elise being you know, what’s the term, a fellow traveler?”
“Really?” Claire said.
Two nights later Ingram was alone at home and his phone rang. He answered it.
“Hello, Mr. Ingram,” a pleasant voice said.
“Who is this?”
“Winston Hoyt.”
His throat tightened but he said calmly, “What can I do for you?”
“Oh, I thought I’d check in with you. Particularly I wanted you to know I’d advised Wicks to leave you be, but he took it rather personally about his associate.”
“They killed Ben on your orders,” he said evenly.
“Such an unfortunate matter.”
Ingram wasn’t going to utter an unrealistic vow like he’d make him pay. They both knew that couldn’t happen, given Hoyt’s command of resources and his lack thereof.
“Hard decisions have to be made at times, Mr. Ingram. It’s the nature of progress.”
“The brass always says that shit and the soldiers do the dying. You had my friend killed because he knew you were going to try and kill the reverend.”
“What are you saying about King?”
“Be cute. Your girl, Elise. I know who she is and what she tried to do.”
“What are you saying?”
“You heard me.”
A pause, then, “You are an enterprising sort, Harry. Credit to your race. Truly. This city with the proper guidance can be a model for the nation. Once you understand that, I believe you’ll see what we are attempting to accomplish in its proper light.”
“Look, if you’re going to come for me, do it. None of this going on about good darkies and all that hoorah. But you leave my friends alone. Me and you, man to man.”
“Be well, Mr. Ingram. I have no doubt our paths will cross again.” He hung up.
For several moments Ingram remained still, evaluating Hoyt’s words and the reactions behind them.
“I’m not going to walk around with a roscoe in my purse, Harry,” Anita Claire added, “so you can do an article on me in Dapper, ‘Tragic Mulatto Pistol Whips Rich White Man Half to Death.’”
They both chuckled. “Okay, Moms Mabley, I had to suggest it.” The two were in his apartment and had been discussing possible repercussions from Winston Hoyt. They were sitting at his kitchen table eating smothered steak he’d made according to his mother’s recipe. They also discussed his friend’s murder.
Ingram said, “It must have been Ben was hooked up with Hanisha and that square head Clovis trying to work a blackmail angle.” He imagined Mitchell skulking in the bushes to take the pics Ben Kinslow had.
“You said Johnny Otis told you she had an in to the whites,” Claire said. “Who’s to say she wasn’t giving spiritual advice to Hoyt’s wife, sister, someone like that? Hoyt himself for that matter. Plenty of men go to crystal ball gazers. Whatever, she found out something juicy and tried to cash in.”
“Yeah, that could be it,” he admitted. “Hoyt’s boys weren’t looking for Hanisha to give her flowers.” It gave him pleasure visualizing Morty grinding that knife of his in Mitchell’s foot. He forked in more steak, chewing enthusiastically.
“Anyway I think you’re on to something about Hoyt sounding confused when you mentioned Miss Duville. After my tea with Nan, I went to see my mom. She recognized that family name, Duville. We looked through her pamphlets and what have you and found a picture in a booklet the Party circulated in 1938. Back then to score propaganda points over the States, the Soviets were pushing the idea that there was no racism in Russia, unlike here. There was a program to have various people, particularly Black folks, immigrate there, blue-collar workers, artists and so on.” She chewed quietly on her green beans. “Of course the reality of life under Stalin was a whole other thing. Some of these people left, others wound up in a gulag.”
“And some found paradise,” Ingram said.
She nodded. “The Duvilles had been big muckety-mucks in the Party back then in New York, their daughter Elise a teenager. Part of the well-off who’d followed Lenin’s edict and turned against their own class. Elise was part of a kind of one-way foreign exchange program where red kids were sent over there for schooling. The booklet was about that program and showed the smiling Duvilles in the picture. She was younger then of course, but we were pretty sure it wasn’t the woman from the other night.”
“Say what?”
“Yeah,” she said, nodding her head. “Much different face and build.”
“Duville is older,” he pointed out. “And maybe she had work done on her face.”
“Mom made a few calls, looking to see if the husband or wife were still alive. She found out Elise Duville died in a skiing accident in ’56. She double-checked.”
Ingram was several steps behind. “Wait, this program . . .”
Claire said, “For the selected, they got indoctrinated and sent back.”
“To do what?”
“Elise Duville lived well because her folks had money. Could be she was supposed to be a sleeper agent but balked when her handler sought to activate her.”
“The hell?”
“Or maybe it really was an accident. This other sleeper takes her place and infiltrates the Providers.” Claire held her hands wide. “How best to know what the capitalists are up to?”
“But if anybody wants King to succeed, isn’t it in the interests of the Soviets?”
“Again, maybe the pill wasn’t poison. Maybe it was to knock him out and he’d wake up in the sack with a naked white woman draped over him as the photos were snapped. Blackmail him to, I don’t know, be more radical?” She considered her words and added, “I don’t know, that seems like a stretch.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. Then Ingram offered, “What if she wasn’t a Soviet agent? What if she was a government agent, I mean ours? The FBI knew about her and when she died, saw an opportunity. The pretend Elise Duville probably hobnobbed with some radical organizations, gathering information before relocating here. It’s no secret Hoover and his buddies ain’t got no love for the likes of Martin Luther King. And you’re the one that’s talked about the CIA working overtime to overthrow leftist foreign leaders.”
“Their charter says they’re not to operate domestically.”
“Shit, white men running those alphabet agencies all swim in the same pool at the club, don’t they? Having their cigars and cognac later, laughing and joking, sharing ideas on how to keep the darker races down.”
“Something like that,” she said.
Ingram said quietly, “And if it was a setup, we know who took King to the airport the other night. Maybe he was supposed to make a stop first.”
“Oh, Harry,” Claire said, staring at him.
“You’re talking crazy, Harry,” Shoals Pettigrew said. The two were alone in his hardware store. “Your chick has turned your head sideways, man.”
“Were you supposed to bring the reverend to some motel where they would take the pictures of him in the sack with some white woman?” Probably one of the women from those other pictures, he conjectured. “King doped up, not knowing what was going on. Then get him to the plane where he’d sleep through the trip. He’d wake up, not remember a goddamn thing. Figure the pictures wouldn’t show up until after the March on Washington when they would have the most impact, completely gut the struggle.”
“That’s fantastic. You ought to see if you could sell your idea to Alfred Hitchcock.”
“Shoals, for the longest time you’ve had a lien on your shop. I asked the lady at the process server I work for,” Ingram continued. “She checked the court records, that lien was recently erased.”
“You got it twisted, Harry.”
“Do I?”
“I’m no Uncle Tom sellout.”
“Then what are you, Shoals?”
His childhood friend was at a loss for words.
Strummer Edwards looked up from the Sports section he was reading. He was sitting at his desk in his off-the-books club, the Stockyard. Standing in the doorway was a man in a suit and tie. It took him a moment to recognize Clovis Mitchell.
“What brings you around?”
“Mind if I sit?” His demeanor too was different. “I have a business opportunity I’d like to discuss with you.”
“You and Hanisha?”
“Yes.”
“Sure, be my guest.” As he did Edwards added, “This have anything to do with the favor you were gonna ask Harry?” He had a pistol in the drawer but figured he wouldn’t need it.
“Things change,” the other man said, smiling.
Anita Claire didn’t ask Ingram about interviewing the other two regarding the purloined diary.
The Morning Bandit struck again, nearly getting caught this time, pursued by an eager young security guard who worked out at Muscle Beach and had recently applied to the Police Academy. But it turned out the Bandit had a third accomplice with him, also a woman. As the guard ran after him, about to shoot him in the back, this woman seemingly stepped out of nowhere and threw some type of chemical balled in a tied handkerchief in his face. The stuff exploded in a plume, causing him to cough and sneeze, his shots to go wild. The trio escaped.
Ingram framed the photo of the pill dropping into the glass and hung it on his wall. It was the most significant picture he’d ever take.
The next time Josh Nakano and Strummer Edwards came over for a domino game, Jed Monk had replaced Shoals Pettigrew. When they asked about the picture, Ingram told them it was a try-out for obtaining advertising work.
Gary Phillips, One-Shot Harry
