Toussaint Johnson was well aware that Al Curry was ill at ease, riding around the colored east side in Johnson's used Chevy sedan. Johnson did nothing in particular to add to the young detective's uneasiness; neither did he do anything in particular to lessen it. Toussaint Johnson had spent going on forty years as a black man in a white-ruled world, and he didn't mind seeing any white man get a sample of what it was like to be the minority.
This was their first day on the east side, in their attempt to gather witnesses for Ness, and Johnson had met Curry's attempts at making conversation with polite but terse and sometimes sardonic responses.
"What's it like working this side of town?" Curry had asked, as the sedan bumped over the ruts of Scovill Avenue.
"Lively," Johnson had replied.
"How can these people stand living like this?" Curry had later asked, with no condescension and with considerable sympathy.
"Day a time," Johnson had replied.
So it had gone for a while, and now Curry had lapsed into a morose silence.
That was fine with Johnson. He didn't like conversation for the sake of conversation with anybody, color aside. His wife, Maybelle, was a chatterbox, God bless her, and he had learned how to have lengthy conversations with her without listening to anything she-or for that matter, he himself- said.
He lived with Maybelle and their two boys and one daughter in a white frame house in a mixed neighborhood off Hough Avenue, near League Park, where the Cleveland Indians had played till the Municipal Stadium was built a few years back. His son Clarence was the star quarterback at East High, and his younger son William was an honor student. Johnson felt no guilt about living in a better neighborhood than the colored citizens of the Roaring Third who he served and protected. But he didn't feel superior to those people. Just luckier.
He had grown up in Central Scovill, the Bucket of Blood his backyard. Actually, he'd been born in a small South Carolina hamlet, but had no memories of it; his father and mother had moved north shortly after his birth. His parents had worked as domestics, in the South, and in Cleveland, Papa had got work as a waiter at a chi-chi hotel called Wade Park Manor, while mama worked as a housekeeper-cook for a wealthy white family in Shaker Heights. Both were God-fearing folks and had a Booker T. Washington advance-through-hard-work way of looking at things.
Young Toussaint had learned to read in his own home-a cramped one-room apartment in Central Scovill, at first, and later the top half of a frame duplex-and his primers had been everything from the Bible to W.E.B. Du Bois. He'd attended predominantly black Central High School and got high marks.
But Toussaint Johnson had never completely been able to buy into the Booker T. Washington philosophy. It sounded good on paper, but he saw too many folks of his race struggling and getting nowhere, his parents among them. What finally turned things around for Papa and Mama was when Papa won ten bucks in a dice game in the basement at the hotel, played it on 714 on the "money row" and hit for five thousand dollars.
Papa and Mama had then opened a little restaurant called Pappy's on Scovill and did very well after that-until Papa got robbed and killed in the restaurant, late one night just before closing.
Mama died the year after that. They called it a heart attack, but Toussaint knew that nothing had attacked her heart: It was flat-out broke in two.
What Toussaint Johnson had learned from all this was that life was a matter of luck, good and bad. But this was something he knew in his head; in his soul somewhere his mama had instilled enough of that Booker T. Washington work ethic that he kept trying hard, trying to get ahead, and his father's killing had given him a goal: He wanted to be a cop. He had seen the white cops dismiss his papa's murder as just another "shine" killing. And he saw that there was a need for good Negro cops in this bad Negro district.
The best place to get trained for that, he figured, was the army, and there was a war on, so he enlisted in Company D of the Ninth Battalion of the 372nd Regiment, Cleveland's all-Negro militia unit. He left his younger brother Edward to take the restaurant over, and soon found himself in France in combat.
Even in the army, even in a black company, the white man's influence prevailed. Their Negro commanding officers, Major John A. Fulton and Captain William Green, fine leaders, were relieved of duty and discharged as "physically unfit" before the company was sent overseas. Maybe if they'd been left in charge, Johnson often thought, Company D wouldn't have lost so many men. Johnson, like the other Company D survivors of the Argorrne, came home wounded, and a recipient of France's highest military medal, the Croix de Guerre.
One of Johnson's fellow Company D survivors was Eustice N. Raney, who'd been a few years ahead of Toussaint at Central High. While they weren't close friends, Johnson and Raney liked and respected each other. They had both basked in the glow of the heroes' reception Company D received, including a parade in downtown Cleveland. Raney, however, had gone on to law school, while Johnson had found himself in deep shit.
Toussaint's brother Edward had lost the restaurant in a dice game. Edward had sold the family house and headed out for parts unknown. Toussaint never saw his brother again.
This left the Company D veteran-like so many others- without a job and with few prospects for one. Within weeks his sense of being a survivor, of being a hero and on top of the world, had faded back into the reality of being a young Negro hi an old, white world. He applied to the police department but was turned down. He kept re-applying with the same result, while working a variety of day labor jobs and, for half a year, shoveling coal at Republic Steel.
About the only good thing that happened in those days was meeting Maybelle, a waitress at Pappy's, which Toussaint had continued to frequent. She was a beautiful chocolate-brown talkative girl with a generous figure and a good sense of humor that even getting pregnant couldn't faze, particularly since Toussaint was amenable to marrying her.
By 1922 Johnson's Company D compatriot Eustice Raney was making a name for himself in the colored community; he had graduated law school and with the help of Negro businessmen and politicians got himself appointed the city's first black police prosecutor. Raney's backers included the east side policy kings, and he helped Toussaint Johnson and half a dozen other Company D vets get jobs with Rufus Murphy and others.
Johnson became a bouncer for a Murphy associate, Gus "Bunch Boy" Smith, at his gambling den on the second story of a house on Central Avenue. It was Johnson's job to collect the guns and shivs off players before they were allowed in, and to watch for police raids, pressing a loose nail in the door frame to blink the lights.
During this same period, Toussaint never stopped applying to the police department. He saw no irony in his situation, as certain rackets on the east side-the numbers in particular, gambling in general-seemed only technically illegal to him. He wanted on the force to nail evil bastards like the robber that killed his papa, like the con men that stole old people's money with words, like the muggers and purse-snatchers and other thieves who preyed on the innocent.
One day in 1927, Prosecutor Raney asked Toussaint to drop by his office at the Criminal Courts Building.
Raney, a stocky, pleasant-featured light-skinned Negro with sharp, dark eyes, had sat behind a big mahogany desk with his hands folded like a preacher. His smile was gentle and a touch self-satisfied as he said, "They tell me you apply to the police department about three times a week."
"They exaggerating," Johnson said. "Some."
"I want representatives of our race on the department. There are people in city government who agree with me. White people. And a hell of a lot of Negroes on the east side feel that way. We need Negro cops. You're going to be one of them."
"Good."
"You have a fine war record, and a high school education. Good grades, too. Why didn't you go to college, Toussaint?"
"Money."
"What about your family's restaurant?"
"Lost it."
"Oh. Well, your latest application is going to be approved. Needless to say, your affiliation with Mr. Rufus Murphy will come in handy."
"I ain't gonna roust Murphy…"
"You might on occasion, for appearance sake." Raney smiled slyly. "No, Toussaint, Mr. Murphy is a friend of mine and a campaign contributor. You'll still be working for him, in capacities that you and he will determine. This is the last you and I will speak of it, because there might be, in the eyes of some, a certain… conflict of interests."
"You won't take the fall," Johnson assured him, "if it comes to that. I'm willing to take the job and what comes with it."
"Good!" Raney stood behind the desk and smiled and the two men shook hands. In two days Johnson's application was officially accepted.
The years that followed had been rewarding ones, in just about every sense. With his cop's pay and certain compensations from Rufus Murphy, Johnson was able to move his wife and two kids to the white-frame house on Hough. And he had racked up an arrest and conviction record second to nobody in the crime-ridden Roaring Third. Commendations overflowed in his file.
The gravy train had slowed, though, when the policy kings got overthrown by those tally bastards from Murray Hill. Added to that was the pain and sorrow of losing Rufus Murphy, of having this second father shot right out from under his file-folder-full-of-commendations ass.
But now there was a chance for recompense. Now there was a chance, finally, to revenge himself on those white sons-of-bitches. Now there was a chance, finally, to start putting money in the bank again, maybe put his two boys in college, give them a shot at a decent life.
He'd gone to Raney's law offices just yesterday and the councilman, looking fatter and sassier but with the same sharp hard look in his eyes, had told Johnson to cooperate with Ness.
"Ness works for Burton," Raney said, "and the Mayor needs the Negro vote-both in the council and at the polls."
"Ness don't cut deals," Johnson said.
"I know he doesn't. But he did have a meeting with Reverend Hollis yesterday evening, and gave certain assurances to Hollis."
"What kind?"
"Ness told Hollis he couldn't promise he'd cast an entirely benign eye on the numbers racket, once it got back in colored hands. But he admitted that it would not be high on his list of priorities.''
"That's 'bout as close to a deal as you can get out of Ness," Johnson admitted. "Mayor must've put the pressure on."
"I'm sure he did. You spoke to Ness yourself?"
"Yes-right before he talked to Hollis, 'pears."
"And?"
"Ness had plenty of time to ask me about my ties to the numbers kings-and didn't."
Raney beamed. "Good, good. With the seal of approval of both Ness and Hollis, you may find yourself some witnesses."
"Maybe. But the Mayfield boys killed three men the other night. Two white and a colored."
"So I hear."
"That send a message 'cross the east side that ain't easy to unsend."
Raney's smile disappeared and he said, "I have confidence in you, Toussaint."
"I have confidence in dry ammunition, councilman."
Now Toussaint Johnson and his white companion Curry were trying to put the designs of this unlikely coalition-Mayor Burton, Eliot Ness, Councilman Raney, and Reverend Hollis-into motion. They were walking into a Central Avenue poolroom called the Eight Ball.
Behind a squared-off counter at the left as you came in sat a chunky cue ball-bald Negro wearing a green eyeshade, collarless white shirt, and black vest with a gold chain. He was perched on a high stool, like a frog who thought he was a prince, guarding the cash register like it was his crown jewels, overlording six pool tables arranged in pairs of three. Cones of light spread from hanging lamps, cutting the dark, smoky parlor geometrically. It was the middle of the morning and only a couple of the tables were in use.
Slippery Stevens, wearing a dark suit and a dark tie and dark glasses, looked like a blind skinny undertaker. He was practicing; he couldn't find many locals to play him, good as he was. Johnson and Curry stood watching as Slippery chalked up a cue, placed the cue ball on its marker, stroked smooth and broke the balls, scattering them like gamblers out the back door when a raid was coming down. Five dropped into pockets, and then Slippery ran the rest, balls clicking like castanets. It took about two minutes.
Curry was visibly impressed.
Slippery leaned against the table, chalking his cue; his smile was as crooked as he was.
"Toussaint, my man," he said. He said the name like too-saunt. "Who's the ofay motherfucker?"
Curry blinked. Johnson repressed a smile; he had a notion that this casual term-"motherfucker"-was new to the white boy-possibly the very idea it expressed was new to him. But Curry didn't seem offended-just surprised.
"He's the man," Johnson said.
"Hell, Toussaint- you the man."
"He's the man, too. And he's with me. Call him a motherfucker again and you'll have to squat to take your next shot."
Slippery's smile vanished, then returned. "So what's up, gentlemens?"
"I'm surprised to find you here," Johnson said. "Heard you was out on the road these days."
"Got to be," Slippery said. "Got's to play where my face ain't my callin' card."
"They must know you in a lot of towns by now."
"That they do."
"Might be nice to settle down."
"That it would."
"You ain't been able to light in one place since the old days."
Slippery had been one of the most successful independent numbers operators on the east side, before the Italians moved in.
"That's a fact. Jack."
"Wouldn't it be sweet if them tally fuckers would take a hike."
"That it would."
"Like to help 'em?"
"Yeah, boss, and I'd like to hit my number for about ten grand, too."
"Didn't Scalise and Lombardi themselfs put the muscle on you, Slip? Way back when?"
"That they did. They done it personal. Lombardi watched and Scalise beat the ever-lovin', ever-livin' shit out of me."
"They say Scalise tossed acid in your face."
"That's a fact, Jack. Damn near blinded me."
And Slippery took off his glasses; Curry flinched on seeing the scar tissue around the man's eyes. Slippery was a handsome man, but his scars weren't.
"Good thing I seen it comin'," Slippery said, sliding the shades back on, "and shut my peepers. Or I'd done lost my only other money-makin' knack. Blind men shoot piss-poor pool, you know."
Johnson walked over close to Slippery; he put a hand on the man's shoulder. "We puttin' together a Grand Jury. We gonna boot them tally fuckers outa the Roarin' Third."
"You and what the fuck army?"
"Me and Eliot Ness," Johnson grinned.
Fifteen minutes of explanation later, Johnson and Curry were back in the Chevy sedan, driving to their next destination.
"Sounds like he might cooperate," Curry said.
"He will," Johnson said. "He hates them bastards much as me."
The next stop was a tenement that even by Scovill Avenue standards was vile. Three old men, wrapped in threadbare sweaters and frayed mufflers, sat in kitchen chairs on the sidewalk right up against the front of the dilapidated frame building; it was even money whether the building was propping up the old men or vice versa. It wasn't a cold afternoon, but was chilly enough, and the old men's breath rose like steam. Johnson and Curry entered the building and walked down a long, narrow, dark, urine-scented hallway, the only light coming from one hanging bulb. The walls were whitewashed, or had been once, before filth and obscene graffiti had taken over. Curry blinked at the sight of a gigantic phallus with a comic-strip speech balloon hovering over it, saying, "Fuk fuk fuk." Johnson, a literate man, was dismayed himself-kids couldn't spell for shit no more.
They climbed three floors of dark stairs, occasionally skirting a wino or necking teenagers, and Johnson banged his fist on a numberless door, three times. The door shook from the blows.
"I can't stop you," a ragged male voice from within said.
Johnson opened the door and Curry meekly followed; the white boy's eyes were as round and white as Stepin Fetchit's.
It was a small, one-room apartment with cracked plaster walls, against one of which was a faded red overstuffed sofa that was sprouting its springs. Against another was a battered steel bed, its white paint chipping away, its tattered blankets and dirty sheets mingling in an unmade pile, one of its two pillows greasy with hair oil. Nearby was a chest of drawers with a catalog substituting for one busted-off leg and a cracked marble top bearing a single-burner gas plate. Near that was a small square table stacked with dirty dishes, and under the table was a cracked porcelain washbowl and pitcher. The water source was a single tap down at the base-board, with several feet of garden-type hose attached. A single drop light hung like a noose from the center of the cracked ceiling. In back a rusted potbelly stove crouched beside a wooden box of coal. There was no bathroom.
A skinny black man in a T-shirt and shabby dungarees, thirty-some years of age, stood in the center of the room, just under the hanging light, as if contemplating tying its cord around his neck. His eyes were muddy, his posture stooped, his greased-back hair the only remaining sign of the street-smart slick hep cat he had been not. so long ago.
"The man," he said, hollowly, looking at Toussaint.
"Hello, Eli."
"Can't offer you nothin'. Nothin' to drink right now."
"We'll just sit, then."
Johnson motioned to Curry and the two cops sat on the shabby sofa; a spring jabbed Curry in the ass, and he moved quickly to one side.
Eli stood before them. He looked weak, but he wasn't shaking, and he wasn't tottering,
"Are you on the sauce, Eli?"
"No, sir."
"Stickin' anything in your arm? Up your nose?"
"No, sir."
"What are you doin', then?"
"Tryin' to get myself back on my feet, sir."
"Looking for work?"
"I will be, sir. Can't go back to numbers runnin', not in this town."
"I hear Scalise had some boys beat you up, while back."
"Yes, sir."
"Why is that, Eli?"
"I was diddlin' this little high-yeller gal."
"Ah. Dancer at the Cedar Garden nightclub."
"Yes, sir. They calls her Ginger. Mr. Scalise was diddlin' her, too. I didn't mind. That comes with the territory, don't it?"
"Seems to, Eli."
"But he minded me diddlin' her. They busted me up pretty good."
"What about the girl?"
"She left town. She went to Chicago town. I might look her up there, when I gets on my feet."
"Did Scalise do any beatin' on you himself, Eli?"
"Yes, sir, he did."
"Would you testify to that?"
"No, sir, I would not."
"What if you had immunity?"
"What's that, sir?"
Johnson told him.
"I likes the sound of that. But Mr. Scalise is a bad motherfucker. He'd kill a black man soon as look at him."
"That right there is a good reason to testify, Eli. You heard of Eliot Ness?"
"Sure."
"How 'bout Reverend Hollis, the Future Outlook League?"
"Everybody heard of Reverend Hollis."
Johnson patted the sofa cushion next to him. "Sit down with us, Eli. This is Detective Curry, from the office of Eliot Ness. We want to talk to you."
In the car, Curry said, "I think that fellow could clean up into a damn good witness."
"So do I."
"He'll talk, won't he?"
"If he don't kill himself first."
"Kill himself?"
"He been curled up in that rat-hole healing himself. From that beating. Scalise took his girl, took his pride. Some wounds don't heal over."
Their next stop was a yellow Victorian on 46th off Carnegie, just west of Central-Scovill. The neighborhood was just one small grade up from the nearby slum, and many of the houses-single-family dwellings intermingling with larger rooming-house buildings-were pretty run-down. But the house that belonged to John C. Washington, retired policy king, was well kept-up; it even had a picket fence to make it seem almost idyllic-and to separate it from its more ramshackle neighbors.
When Washington had bought this property years ago, this neighborhood was a real step up from the slums; but the slums had spread like a disease, though Washington's dwelling had remained immune, an island of relative affluence. In the last several years, some buildings of the nearby slum area had been, and continued to be, torn down, as the WPA housing projects inexorably took their place.
"Toussaint, you are always welcome here," Washington said warmly, ushering Johnson and Curry through the vestibule, past the second-floor stairs, into the living room.
The living room was a small but beautifully furnished affair, floral wallpaper, oriental rugs, fringed draperies, wood-and-cut-glass bookcase, fireplace, on the mantel of which were portraits of relatives as well as a large one of elaborately uniformed Marcus Garvey of Back-to-Africa fame. Through a wide archway was the dining room, another small but perfect room, with a long window seat where potted plants sat near sheer drapes.
Dignified and well-spoken, Washington was a lanky, handsome man of fifty-some years; his skin was a dark, lustrous black, his hair short, his apparel immaculate and expensive-he wore a white shirt and blue silk tie with tiny white polka dots, an English-tailored suit and white-and-black shoes. He had a superficial air of culture and the faintest southern accent, hinting at his illiterate sharecropper roots.
"Please sit down, gentlemen," Washington said, settling himself in an overstuffed green chair with doilies on the arms. A standing lamp with a fancy fringed shade looked over his shoulder.
Johnson and Curry sat on a nearby divan.
"You look well, Johnny," Johnson said.
"Life is sweet," Washington said solemnly.
"It could be sweeter."
Washington gestured around himself. "How?"
"You could still be policy king."
He waved that off. "I'm retired from that field."
A small, beautiful mulatto woman in her late thirties floated in from the dining room. She wore a pink crepe dress with a pearl necklace and a floral brooch. A handsome woman with a big fine ass, Johnson thought; Washington's former-showgirl wife Velma.
There were no introductions; Velma knew Johnson, and Curry was regarded as an invisible man.
"Would you men like some coffee, or tea?"
Washington requested tea and Johnson said that would be fine, too. Curry added a nervous third to the tally.
When she was gone, Washington said, "I can anticipate what you're after, Toussaint-the good Reverend Hollis paid me a visit late last night."
"So you know the score."
"I always do. What good does rocking the boat do? I have no yearning to get back in that business. I have legitimate interests now-real estate, a few restaurants…"
"You might be livin' in a better neighborhood, if Lombardi and Scalise hadn't come along."
"I have a nice home."
"What'll this neighborhood look like in five years? Ten? You got a young pretty wife, Johnny."
Irritation creased Washington's smooth, seemingly unused face. "I can take care of myself and my wife, Toussaint."
"You and your bodyguards, maybe. Why does a man who ain't in the rackets no more still move about with body-guards?"
Washington shifted in his chair. "Any successful businessman is at risk. We live and work in a community that has more than its share of risks. You know that better than most-you're in the police business."
"I think it's 'cause you a nervous man, Johnny. Nervous ever since Scalise beat the hell out of you."
"Toussaint… I invited you into my home…"
Mrs. Washington returned with a silver tray on which were three cups of tea and a small bowl of sugar.
"If anyone would like cream," she said, "I can oblige."
No one did. The woman picked up on the tenseness in the air, quickly and efficiently served the cups of tea around, and left with grace and haste.
Johnson sipped his steaming tea. "I think you're still afraid, Johnny."
Washington's tea sat on a coaster on the small table beside him. His face was as blank as a baby's.
"No denying it, is there, Johnny?"
Washington looked at the floor. He seemed to be trying to decide whether or not to get mad.
Johnson sat forward. "There's a goddamn good reason why you should testify. Reasons beyond the fact that you're gonna be safe. Reasons beyond the fact that it could pay off for you, financially."
Washington smiled humorlessly. "And what reason is that, Toussaint?"
"The best reason there is, Johnny. Revenge."
Washington thought about that.
"If black men wasted time revenging themselves on white men," Washington said finally, "where would we be?"
"Where are we now?" Toussaint Johnson asked.