Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes (34 page)

“That it?”

“Robert Gene called, he’s hyper. Twenty kids hangin’ out up on Swan Street talkin’ trouble. He wants somebody to go up and help cool ’em down. Can’t do it alone.”

“You send anybody?”

“Nobody to send. Everybody’s out on the street.”

Ben handed Roy two stapled, mimeographed pages. “The new Black John is out. Somebody pushed it under the door. That guy’s cracked wheat.”

Roy read the headline in typewritten caps:
THE EYES OF ALBANY ARE ON YOU, BLACK MAN
. This was a flyer, the third Roy had seen in recent weeks, always anonymous, always crude, race-baiting commentary: “Muslims are holding meetings down on Green Street. Albany doesn’t need them. They don’t vote, they don’t smoke, they don’t drink. But they
kill
! . . . Aunt Jemima of the South End loves her streets and sure does get her gabby self into the papers. But she can’t get along without all those white folks hangin’ on her apron strings. Pour a bucket of white pancake batter on your naps and be happy, Mammy, but watch out when it rains . . . Looks to Old Black John like the Mayor’s being real nice these days—picking up trash in Arbor Hill, all honey and melon, but his political machine’s thugs roam the city—kiss the black man in daylight, kick hell out of him at night . . . I see where Reverend Smathers got hit by a rock but didn’t make a complaint. You know right away the good reverend is black. No white man would stand for that. White man would defend himself
to the death
!”

Roy looked up from Black John’s screed to see somebody getting out of a car and coming across Pearl Street. Shades, muscles, white T-shirt, pressed pants—Zuki came through the door.

“Roy,” Zuki said, “I finally got you.”

“Got me?”

“You’re hard to find. Just want to talk, pick your brain. I see you’re reading Black John.”

“You know John, do you?”

“No, but he’s funny.”

“Funny like cancer of the balls. He’s out to make trouble.”

“Who do you think he is? You think he’s black?”

“He’s black, but he’s carryin’ water for people who want to see us go down shooting one another. What’s on your mind, Zuki?”

“This book I’m doing, I want to get at what’s goin’ on right this minute in Albany. History is happening here. And face it, man, the Brothers is where it’s at and you’re out front, you’re a mover and shaker. I want to see you in action, listen in for as long as you can stand it, hang out for a week, a few days.”

“A week?”

“Three days? Start with a couple of hours when something’s taking shape, like tonight.”

“You want to follow me around and take notes?”

“That’s it.”

“The Albany cops already do that,” Ben said. “Probably tappin’ this phone I’m talkin’ on. They take pictures, too.”

“I could talk myself back into jail,” Roy said.

“Nobody will see my notes and I’ll show you what I write before it’s published.”

“This is a book?”

“It’s a long term paper, but I got somebody who’ll publish it.”

“What are you looking for?”

“See how a guy like you—guy looks ordinary but isn’t—how people pay attention to you—your picket line against the Laborers Union, going to jail for poll watching, doing what you believe in, this is some new kind of gutsy behavior and young blacks look up to you. All the stuff the Brothers are doing—taking on the five-dollar vote, running for office, fighting landlords and police brutality, it’s bigger than life, and kids find it heroic.”

“Heroic my ass.”

“I’m telling you what I hear.”

“We been doing it for two years,” Roy said. “They been doing it in the South a whole lot longer. You heard about Selma?”

“I know Selma. But the Panthers come to visit you, don’t they? Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale? And didn’t Stokely come by, and Dick Gregory, and Ralph Abernathy? Not to mention Ramsey Clark and William Kunstler. Hey, Roy. You guys are a magnet.”

“You’re keeping track. I didn’t like Cleaver. He was too tough on Baldwin. We liked Bobby Seale.”

“See what I mean? You don’t give a damn, you just do it and people know it.”

“Gordon here, and Ben and Clarence, all the Brothers do it.”

“Sure, but you did time.”

“Ben did time, for nothin’. They busted fifteen Brothers in two years, a damn fortune just in bail money. They don’t let up.”

“I’ll write about
all
the Brothers, write about tonight even if nothing happens. But heavy stuff could happen I hear.”

“What do you hear?”

“Cops are out for blood, if there’s a riot.”

“Cops are always out for blood, our blood. That’s no news.”

“Cops are revved. Mayor told ’em don’t take no shit tonight. Keep this town quiet.”

“Who you talking to knows what the Mayor’s saying?”

“It’s all over town. Places closing, boarding up their windows.”

“The Brothers been trying all day to put a lid on any riot.”

“I wanna look over your shoulder.”

“What about Baron Roland, what’s he up to?”

“Teaching at City College, same as always, and still doing his thing at Holy Cross.”

“Where is he tonight?”

“He’ll be at the protest. He set it up.”

“Are you working with him or what?”

“Part-time for the summer. I’ll be full-time at the university in the fall. I was doing a couple of courses at Columbia till I come back up here.”

“Back?”

“I lived in Troy as a kid. House where I roomed in Harlem got torched in the King riots so I come here.”

Roy tried to figure out Zuki’s face. Some white in him. Latin, maybe, but he’s got no accent. Smart eyes, slick and savvy line. Students behave like this? Students got muscles like this? Follow you around like it’s a documentary? Hey, Roy, don’t trust anybody who parachutes in from outer space peddling hero shit. Lose this bird, take him outside. Why did Quinn ask about Zuki—a link to Tremont? Gotta see Tremont. Get outa this.

“Let’s go outside,” Roy said and he stepped up onto the sidewalk and Zuki stood with him. “I got some business, Zuki. I’ll be at the Four Spot later. I’ll think about what you said, see what it’s like out there tonight.”

“It’s five-thirty now. When’ll you get to the Four Spot?”

“Get there when I get there.”

Tremont woke up groggy, fuzzy, but with a lot less pain, and still on a stretcher after two hours of waiting to be admitted. Through the window beside him he saw Zuki and Roy coming out of the Brothers’ headquarters across the street. They stood there and talked, the front window gone, boarded up. He saw them look toward the hospital as they talked and he decided they were talking about him. He moved one leg off the stretcher, felt pain, not that much.

An intern had examined him when he arrived, taken blood and medicated him; and from this, plus being horizontal, he sank into a fadeaway. Matt asked nurses twice about admitting him and was told we need a doctor’s approval; we’ll treat him here for now. So Tremont’s a transient, a short-timer.

Matt pulled up a chair and watched Tremont sleep, he dozed a little himself. Then he went for coffee in the cafeteria and read the
Knickerbocker News
with the latest on riot potential in the city, and the protest against the silencing of himself by the bishop. The protest was set for seven-thirty in the basement of the First Church, Albany’s old Dutch church, and a crowd of irate Catholics, students, and inner-city protesters was expected. It would also be a candlelight vigil for Bobby Kennedy, whose condition remained dire, but no one had yet said he would die. The assassin’s weapon was an eight-shot .22 caliber revolver.

“Hey, Bish,” Tremont said after he woke up, “I saw Zuki across the street. Talkin’ to Roy.”

Matt looked out the window. “Nobody there now.”

“I think he’s comin’ in here to see me.”

“How would he know you’re here?”

“Zuki knows things.”

“We’ll have a little chat if he shows up,” Matt said. And he saw George Quinn coming into the emergency room with a woman and an Albany detective Matt knew by sight, not by name. The detective delivered George to a nurse and left. When the nurse led George to a stretcher behind the screen next to Tremont, Matt went to him. “It’s Father Matt, George, Martin Daugherty’s son. I thought we dropped you at the Elks Club this afternoon.”

George looked at Matt, he looks a little like Martin, and said he never got to the Elks. Vivian told Matt how George got his head wound and what she knew about his Elks detour. She recognized Matt from the news coverage and said that Father was courageous for speaking about the poor and politics, that she never heard a priest talk politics except Father Coughlin back in the ‘30s, a good speaker, but with a nasty tongue and I never liked him. Her brothers wouldn’t even whisper against a politician or they’d lose their city jobs. I like your perspective, Vivian, Matt said, and he offered to call Dan Quinn and let him know his father was in the hospital. Vivian said Detective Fahey already did that and Matt went back to Tremont, who was awake.

“That guy over there, his name George?” Tremont asked.

“Right, George Quinn. Somebody threw a rock at a window and he got cut, down on Pearl Street.”

“Ain’t seen George in a whole lot of years. He wrote numbers.”

“He wrote your father’s hit in 1937, eleven thousand dollars, right?”

“Whoa! How you know that, Bish, how you know about my father’s hit?”

“Quinn told me. George is
his
father.”

“Yeah? I never put ’em together. Quinn, where’d he go to?”

“He’ll be along. You’re feeling better, Tremont?”

“Had to. Couldn’t feel no worse. They got good drugs in this place.”

A nurse came up to Matt with a note. “Father Matthew?” And Matt said yes. “We don’t take messages but the caller said you’re a priest. You’re that priest in the papers.”

“Guilty,” Matt said.

Quinn’s message to Matt: he was heading for the Fort Orange Club. The message came in a few minutes ago. “I have to make a phone call, Tremont, be right back.”

Tremont propped himself up on one elbow. “Hey George,” he said, and George turned to look. “You George Quinn.”

“That’s what they tell me.” A nurse came to bandage George’s cut and said he was lucky, the glass didn’t penetrate, no stitches needed. She gave Vivian extra bandages for later.

“You remember me, George?” Tremont asked.

George took a good look. “Tremont? Big Jimmy’s boy?”

“Yeah, George. That’s me.”

“You ran errands for Jimmy, and you set pins in Jimmy Smith’s alleys on Green Street. They moved those alleys to State Street.”

“What a memory. How you doin’, George?”

“Getting something fixed up here. Had an accident. Your father owes me money.”

“How much he owe you?”

“I don’t remember. Two hundred, maybe. Jimmy’ll remember.”

“Jimmy won’t remember. Jimmy died eleven years ago.”

“Is that so? Sorry to hear that. You got old, Tremont.”

“You too, George. Whole world got old since we saw each other.”

Tremont looked out the window and saw Roy and Ben Jones come out of the Brothers, Zuki not in sight, but he could be outside waiting for me to come out. If he comes in here I’m a sittin’ damn duck.

Vivian had gone to ask the nurse to call them a cab and now she came back and told George people were breaking windows in cabs, so no cabs are running downtown.

“We’ll walk,” George said. “It’s a nice night out, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Vivian said. “It’s a very lovely night, and we haven’t even had dinner yet.”

Tremont got off his stretcher. “Where you headed?”

“The DeWitt,” said Vivian.

“Go down this hallway,” Tremont said. “It’s shorter. I’m goin’ the same direction.” He moved down the hall with them.

“What about your friend the priest,” Vivian asked.

“Makin’ a call. He’ll be along.”

Tremont lifted a towel off a small stack of laundry and put it under his arm, then led them out the hospital’s south entrance, half a block away from Zuki already. He put the towel over his head and walked a step ahead of George and Vivian, blocking the rear vision of himself if Zuki was looking. They passed the Palace with a movie called
Up Against
, a black man’s face on the poster. Tremont wanted a drink, needed a drink, found a few bills in his pocket, seven bucks left from the Zuki seventy-five. The Four Spot was right in the next block, ask George.

“Tell you what, George,” Tremont said, “we go to the Four Spot over there. I’ll buy a drink for you and your lady, pay off a little of what Big Jimmy owes you.”

“We should get to the DeWitt, George,” Vivian said. “They’re probably serving dinner.”

“Never stop a man from paying what he owes you,” George said.

“I don’t owe you, George. My daddy was who owed you.”

“All contributions gratefully accepted.”

George looked at the Four Spot, one of five buildings on Clinton Square. This was Johnny Palermo’s place, steaks and chops, banquet hall in back, Johnny got a new sign. He ran it as a speakeasy in Prohibition with rooms upstairs in the building next door, you could bring a girl and if they raided it you could go up to the roof and jump onto Johnny’s roof, then drop onto Chapel Street. George bowled with Johnny at the Rice Alleys on the corner, but the alleys are gone. Where did they go? Young Negroes going in. You don’t often see them in Johnny’s, once in a while maybe.