I can't remember all the hustles I had during the next two years in Harlem, after the abrupt end of myriding the trains and peddling reefers to the touring bands.
Negro railroad men waited for their trains in their big locker room on the lower level of Grand CentralStation. Big blackjack and poker games went on in there around the clock. Sometimes five hundreddollars would be on the table. One day, in a blackjack game, an old cook who was dealing the cardstried to be slick, and I had to drop my pistol in his face.
The next time I went into one of those games, intuition told me to stick my gun under my belt rightdown the middle of my back. Sure enough, someone had squealed. Two big, beefy-faced Irish copscame in. They frisked me-and they missed my gun where they hadn't expected one.
The cops told me never again to be caught in Grand Central Station unless I had a ticket to ridesomewhere. And I knew that by the next day, every railroad's personnel office would have a blackballon me, so I never tried to get another railroad job.
There I was back in Harlem's streets among all the rest of the hustlers. I couldn't sell reefers; the dopesquad detectives were too familiar with me. I was a true hustler-uneducated, unskilled at anythinghonorable, and I considered myself nervy and cunning enough to live by my wits, exploiting any preythat presented itself. I would risk just about anything.
Right now, in every big city ghetto, tens of thousands of yesterday's and today's school dropouts arekeeping body and soul together by some form of hustling in the same way I did.
And they inevitably move into more and more, worse and worse, illegality and immorality. Full-timehustlers never can relax to appraise what they are doing and where they are bound. As is the case inany jungle, the hustler's every waking hour is lived with both the practical and the subconsciousknowledge that if he ever relaxes, if he ever slows down, the other hungry, restless foxes, ferrets,wolves, and vultures out there with him won't hesitate to make him their prey.
During the next six to eight months, I pulled my first robberies and stick-ups. Only small ones.
Always in other, nearby cities. And I got away. As the pros did, I too would key myself to pull thesejobs by my first use of hard dope. I began with Sammy's recommendation-sniffing cocaine.
Normally now, for street wear, I might call it, I carried a hardly noticeable little flat, blue-steel .25automatic. But for working, I carried a .32, a .38 or a .45. I saw how when the eyes stared at the bigblack hole, the faces fell slack and the mouths sagged open. And when I spoke, the people seemed tohear as though they were far away, and they would do whatever I asked.
Between jobs, staying high on narcotics kept me from getting nervous. Still, upon sudden impulses,just to play safe, I would abruptly move from one to another fifteen-to twenty-dollar-a-week room,always in my favorite 147th-150th Street area, just flanking Sugar Hill.
Once on a job with Sammy, we had a pretty close call. Someone must have seen us. We were makingour getaway, running, when we heard the sirens. Instantly, we slowed to walking. As a police carscreeched to a stop, we stepped out into the street, meeting it, hailing it to ask for directions. Theymust have thought we were about to give them some information. They just cursed us and raced on.
Again, it didn't cross the white men's minds that a trick like that might be pulled on them by Negroes.
The suits that I wore, the finest, I bought hot for about thirty-five to fifty dollars. I made it my rulenever to go after more than I needed to live on. Any experienced hustler will tell you that getting greedy is the quickest road to prison. I kept "cased" in my head vulnerable places and situations and Iwould perform the next job only when my bankroll in my pocket began to get too low.
Some weeks, I bet large amounts on the numbers. I still played with the same runner with whom I'dstarted in Small's Paradise. Playing my hunches, many a day I'd have up to forty dollars on twonumbers, hoping for that fabulous six hundred-to-one payoff. But I never did hit a big number fullforce. There's no telling what I would have done if ever I'd landed $10,000 or $12,000 at one time. Ofcourse, once in a while I'd hit a small combination figure. Sometimes, flush like that, I'd telephoneSophia to come over from Boston for a couple of days.
I went to the movies a lot again. And I never missed my musician friends wherever they were playing,either in Harlem, downtown at the big theaters, or on 52nd Street.
Reginald and I got very close the next time his ship came back into New York. We discussed ourfamily, and what a-shame it was that our book-loving oldest brother Wilfred had never had the chanceto go to some of those big universities where he would have gone far. And we exchanged thoughts wehad never shared with anyone.
Reginald, in his quiet way, was a mad fan of musicians and music. When his ship sailed one morningwithout him, a principal reason was that I had thoroughly exposed him to the exciting musical world.
We had wild times backstage with the musicians when they were playing the Roxy, or the Paramount.
After selling reefers with the bands as they traveled, I was known to almost every popular Negromusician around New York in 1944-1945.
Reginald and I went to the Savoy Ballroom, the Apollo Theater, the Braddock Hotel bar, thenightclubs and speakeasies, wherever Negroes played music. The great Lady Day, Billie Holiday,hugged him and called him "baby brother." Reginald shared tens of thousands of Negroes' feelingsthat the living end of the big bands was Lionel Hampton's. I was very close to many of the men inHamp's band; I introduced Reginald to them, and also to Hamp himself, and Hamp's wife andbusiness manager, Gladys Hampton. One of this world's sweetest people is Hamp. Anyone whoknows him will tell you that he'd often do the most generous things for people he barely knew. Asmuch money as Hamp has made, and still makes, he would be broke today if his money and hisbusiness weren't handled by Gladys, who is one of the brainiest women I ever met. The ApolloTheater's owner, Frank Schifrman, could tell you. He generally signed bands to play for a set weeklyamount, but I know that once during those days Gladys Hampton instead arranged a deal for Hamp'sband to play for a cut of the gate. Then the usual number of shows was doubled up-if I'm notmistaken, eight shows a day, instead of the usual four-and Hamp's pulling power cleaned up. GladysHampton used to talk to me a lot, and she tried to give me good advice: "Calm down, Red." Gladyssaw how wild I was. She saw me headed toward a bad end.
One of the things I liked about Reginald was that when I left him to go away "working," Reginaldasked me no questions. After he came to Harlem, I went on more jobs than usual. I guess that whatinfluenced me to get my first actual apartment was my not wanting Reginald to be knocking around Harlem without anywhere to call "home." That first apartment was three rooms, for a hundred dollarsa month, I think, in the front basement of a house on 147th Street between Convent and St. NicholasAvenues. Living in the rear basement apartment, right behind Reginald and me, was one of Harlem'smost successful narcotics dealers.
With the apartment as our headquarters, I gradually got Reginald introduced around to Creole Bill's,and other Harlem after-hours spots. About two o'clock every morning, as the downtown whitenightclubs closed, Reginald and I would stand around in front of this or that Harlem after-hours place,and I'd school him to what was happening.
Especially after the nightclubs downtown closed, the taxis and black limousines would be drivinguptown, bringing those white people who never could get enough of Negro _soul_. The placespopular with these whites ranged all the way from the big locally famous ones such as Jimmy'sChicken Shack, and Dickie Wells', to the little here-tonight-gone-tomorrow-night private clubs, so-called, where a dollar was collected at the door for "membership."Inside every after-hours spot, the smoke would hurt your eyes. Four white people to every Negrowould be in there drinking whisky from coffee cups and eating fried chicken. The generally flush-faced white men and their makeup-masked, glittery-eyed women would be pounding each other'sbacks and uproariously laughing and applauding the music. A lot of the whites, drunk, would gostaggering up to Negroes, the waiters, the owners, or Negroes at tables, wringing their hands, eventrying to hug them,"You're just as good as I am-I want you to know that!" The most famous places drew both Negro andwhite celebrities who enjoyed each other. A jam-packed four-thirty A.M. crowd at Jimmy's ChickenShack or Dickie Wells' might have such jam-session entertainment as Hazel Scott playing the piano forBillie Holiday singing the blues. Jimmy's Chicken Shack, incidentally, was where once, later on, Iworked briefly as a waiter. That's where Redd Foxx was the dishwasher who kept the kitchen crew institches.
After a while, my brother Reginald had to have a hustle, and I gave much thought to what would be,for him, a good, safe hustle. After he'd learned his own way around, it would be up to him to takerisks for himself-if he wanted to make more and quicker money.
The hustle I got Reginald into really was very simple. It utilized the psychology of the ghetto jungle.
Downtown, he paid the two dollars, or whatever it was, for a regular city peddler's license. Then Itook him to a manufacturers' outlet where we bought a supply of cheap imperfect "seconds"-shirts,underwear, cheap rings, watches, all kinds of quick-sale items.
Watching me work this hustle back in Harlem, Reginald quickly caught on to how to go intobarbershops, beauty parlors, and bars acting very nervous as he let the customers peep into his smallvalise of "loot." With so many thieves around anxious to get rid of stolen good-quality merchandisecheaply, many Haderoites, purely because of this conditioning, jumped to pay hot prices for inferior goods whose sale was perfectly legitimate. It never took long to get rid of a valiseful for at least twicewhat it had cost. And if any cop stopped Reginald, he had in his pocket both the peddler's license andthe manufacturers' outlet bills of sale. Reginald only had to be certain that none of the customers towhom he sold ever saw that he was legitimate.
I assumed that Reginald, like most of the Negroes I knew, would go for a white woman. I'd point outNegro-happy white women to him, and explain that a Negro with any brains could wrap thesewomen around his ringers. But I have to say this for Reginald: he never liked white women. Iremember the one time he met Sophia; he was so cool it upset Sophia, and it tickled me.
Reginald got himself a black woman. I'd guess she was pushing thirty; an "old settler," as we calledthem back in those days. She was a waitress in an exclusive restaurant downtown. She lavished onReginald everything she had, she was so happy to get a young man. I mean she bought him clothes,cooked and washed for him, and everything, as though he were a baby.
That was just another example of why my respect for my younger brother kept increasing. Reginaldshowed, in often surprising ways, more sense than a lot of working hustlers twice his age. Reginaldthen was only sixteen, but, a six-footer, he looked and acted much older than his years.
All through the war, the Harlem racial picture never was too bright. Tension built to a pretty highpitch. Old-timers told me that Harlem had never been the same since the 1935 riot, when millions ofdollars worth of damage was done by thousands of Negroes, infuriated chiefly by the whitemerchants in Harlem refusing to hire a Negro even as their stores raked in Harlem's money.
During World War II, Mayor LaGuardia officially closed the Savoy Ballroom. Harlem said the realreason was to stop Negroes from dancing with white women. Harlem said that no one dragged thewhite women in there. Adam Clayton Powell made it a big fight. He had successfully foughtConsolidated Edison and the New York Telephone Company until they had hired Negroes. Then hehad helped to battle the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Army about their segregating of uniformed Negroes.
But Powell couldn't win this battle. City Hall kept the Savoy closed for a long time. It was just anotherone of the "liberal North" actions that didn't help Harlem to love the white man any.
Finally, rumor flashed that in the Braddock Hotel, white cops had shot a Negro soldier. I was walkingdown St. Nicholas Avenue; I saw all of these Negroes hollering and running north from 125th Street.
Some of them were loaded down with armfuls of stuff. I remember it was the bandleader FletcherHenderson's nephew "Shorty" Henderson who told me what had happened. Negroes were smashingstore windows, and taking everything they could grab and carry-furniture, food, jewelry, clothes,whisky. Within an hour, every New York City cop seemed to be in Harlem. Mayor LaGuardia and theNAACP's then Secretary, the famed late Walter White, were in a red firecar, riding around pleadingover a loudspeaker to all of those shouting, muling, angry Negroes to please go home and stay inside.
Just recently I ran into Shorty Henderson on Seventh Avenue. We were laughing about a fellow whomthe riot had left with the nickname of "Left Feet." In a scramble in a women's shoe store, somehow he'dgrabbed five shoes, all of them for left feet! And we laughed about the scared little Chinese whoserestaurant didn't have a hand laid on it, because the rioters just about convulsed laughing when theysaw the sign the Chinese had hastily stuck on his front door: "Me Colored Too."After the riot, things got very tight in Harlem. It was terrible for the night-life people, and for thosehustlers whose main income had been the white man's money. The 1935 riot had left only a relativetrickle of the money which had poured into Harlem during the 1920's. And now this new riot endedeven that trickle.
Today the white people who visit Harlem, and this mostly on weekend nights, are hardly more than afew dozen who do the twist, the frug, the Watusi, and all the rest of the current dance crazes in Small'sParadise, owned now by the great basketball champion "Wilt the Stilt" Chamberlain, who drawscrowds with his big, clean, All-American-athlete image. Most white people today are physically afraidto come to Harlem-and it's for good reasons, too. Even for Negroes, Harlem night life is aboutfinished. Most of the Negroes who have money to spend are spending it downtown somewhere in thishypocritical "integration," in places where previously the police would have been called to haul offany Negro insane enough to try and get in. The already Croesus-rich white man can't get anotherskyscraper hotel finished and opened before all these integration-mad Negroes, who themselves don'town a tool shed, are booking the swanky new hotel for "cotillions" and "conventions." Those richwhites could afford it when they used to throw away their money in Harlem. But Negroes can't affordto be taking their money downtown to the white man.
Sammy and I, on a robbery job, got a bad scare, a very close call.
Things had grown so tight in Harlem that some hustlers had been forced to go to work. Even someprostitutes had gotten jobs as domestics, and cleaning office buildings at night. The pimping was sopoor, Sammy had gone on the job with me. We had selected one of those situations considered"impossible." But wherever people think that, the guards will unconsciously grow gradually morerelaxed, until sometimes those can be the easiest jobs of all.
But right in the middle of the act, we had some bad luck. A bullet grazed Sammy. We just barelyescaped.
Sammy fortunately wasn't really hurt. We split up, which was always wise to do.
Just before daybreak, I went to Sammy's apartment. His newest woman, one of those beautiful buthot-headed Spanish Negroes, was in there crying and carrying on over Sammy. She went for me,screaming and clawing; she knew I'd been in on it with him. I fended her off. Not able to figure outwhy Sammy didn't shut her up, I did . . . and from the corner of my eye, I saw Sammy going for his gun.
Sammy's reaction that way to my hitting his woman-close as he and I were-was the only weak spot I'dever glimpsed. The woman screamed and dove for him. She knew as I did that when your best frienddraws a gun on you, he usually has lost all control of his emotions, and he intends to shoot. Shedistracted Sammy long enough for me to bolt through the door. Sammy chased me, about a block.
We soon made up-on the surface. But things never are fully right again with anyone you have seentrying to kill you.
Intuition told us that we had better lay low for a good while. The worst thing was that we'd been seen.
The police in that nearby town had surely circulated our general descriptions.
I just couldn't forget that incident over Sammy's woman. I came to rely more and more upon mybrother Reginald as the only one in my world I could completely trust.
Reginald was lazy, I'd discovered that. He had quit his hustle altogether. But I didn't mind that, really,because one could be as lazy as he wanted, if he would only use his head, as Reginald was doing. Hehad left my apartment by now. He was living off his "old settler" woman-when he was in town. I hadalso taught Reginald how he could work a little while for a railroad, then use his identification card totravel for nothing-and Reginald loved to travel. Several times, he had gone visiting all around, amongour brothers and sisters. They had now begun to scatter to different cities. In Boston, Reginald wascloser to our sister Mary man to Ella, who had been my favorite. Both Reginald and Mary were quiettypes, and Ella and I were extroverts. And Shorty in Boston had given my brother a royal time.
Because of my reputation, it was easy for me to get into the numbers racket. That was probablyHarlem's only hustle which hadn't slumped in business. In return for a favor to some white mobster,my new boss and his wife had just been given a six-months numbers banking privilege for the Bronxrailroad area called Motthaven Yards. The white mobsters had the numbers racket split into specificareas. A designated area would be assigned to someone for a specified period of time. My boss's wifehad been Dutch Schultz's secretary in the 1930's, during the time when Schultz had strong-armed hisway into control of the Harlem numbers business.
My job now was to ride a bus across the George Washington Bridge where a fellow was waiting forme to hand him a bag of numbers betting slips. We never spoke. I'd cross the street and catch the nextbus back to Harlem. I never knew who that fellow was. I never knew who picked up the bettingmoney for the slips that I handled. You didn't ask questions in the rackets.
My boss's wife and Gladys Hampton were the only two women I ever met in Harlem whose businessability I really respected. My boss's wife, when she had the time and the inclination to talk, would tellme many interesting things. She would talk to me about the Dutch Schultz days-about deals that shehad known, about graft paid to officials-rookie cops and shyster lawyers right on up into the top levelsof police and politics. She knew from personal experience how crime existed only to the degree that the law cooperated with it. She showed me how, in the country's entire social, political and economicstructure, the criminal, the law, and the politicians were actually inseparable partners.
It was at this time that I changed from my old numbers man, the one I'd used since I first worked inSmall's Paradise. He hated to lose a heavy player, but he readily understood why I would now want toplay with a runner of my own outfit. That was how I began placing my bets with West Indian Archie.
I've mentioned him before-one of Harlem's really _bad_ Negroes; one of those former Dutch Schultzstrong-arm men around Harlem.
West Indian Archie had finished time in Sing Sing not long before I came to Harlem. But my boss'swife had hired him not just because she knew him from the old days. West Indian Archie had the kindof photographic memory that put him among the elite of numbers runners. He never wrote downyour number; even in the case of combination plays, he would just nod. He was able to file all thenumbers in his head, and write them down for the banker only when he turned in his money. Thismade him the ideal runner because cops could never catch him with any betting slips.
I've often reflected upon such black veteran numbers men as West Indian Archie. If they had lived inanother kind of society, their exceptional mathematical talents might have been better used. But theywere black.
Anyway, it was status just to be known as a client of West Indian Archie's, because he handled onlysizable bettors. He also required integrity and sound credit: it wasn't necessary that you pay as youplayed; you could pay West Indian Archie by the week. He always carried a couple of thousanddollars on him, his own money. If a client came up to him and said he'd hit for some moderateamount, say a fifty-cent or one-dollar combination, West Indian Archie would peel off the three or sixhundred dollars, and later get his money back from the banker.
Every weekend, I'd pay my bill-anywhere from fifty to even one hundred dollars, if I had reallyplunged on some hunch. And when, once or twice, I did hit, always just some combination, as I'vedescribed, West Indian Archie paid me off from his own roll.
The six months finally ended for my boss and his wife. They had done well. Their runners got nicetips, and promptly were snatched up by other bankers. I continued working for my boss and his wifein a gambling house they opened.
A Harlem madam I'd come to know-through having done a friend of hers a favor-introduced me to aspecial facet of the Harlem night world, something which the riot had only interrupted. It was theworld where, behind locked doors, Negroes catered to monied white people's weird sexual tastes.
The whites I'd known loved to rub shoulders publicly with black folks in the after-hours clubs andspeakeasies. These, on the other hand, were whites who did not want it known that they had been anywhere near Harlem. The riot had made these exclusive white customers nervous. Their slippinginto and about Harlem hadn't been so noticeable when other whites were also around. But now theywould be conspicuous; they also feared the recently aroused anger of Harlem Negroes. So the madamwas safeguarding her growing operation by offering me a steerer's job.
During the war, it was extremely difficult to get a telephone. One day the madam told me to stay atmy apartment the next morning. She talked to somebody. I don't know who it was, but before the nextnoon, I dialed the madam from my own telephone-unlisted.
This madam was a specialist in her field. If her own girls could not-or would not-accommodate acustomer, she would send me to another place, usually an apartment somewhere else in Harlem,where the requested "specialty" was done.
My post for picking up the customers was right outside the Astor Hotel, that always-busy northwestcomer of 45th Street and Broadway. Watching the moving traffic, I was soon able to spot the taxi, car,or limousine-even before it slowed down-with the anxious white faces peering out for the tall,reddish-brown-complexioned Negro wearing a dark suit, or raincoat, with a white flower in his lapel.
If they were in a private car, unless it was chauffeured I would take the wheel and drive where wewere going. But if they were in a taxi, I would always tell the cabbie, "The Apollo Theater in Harlem,please," since among New York City taxis a certain percentage are driven by cops. We would getanother cab-driven by a black man-and I'd give him the right address.
As soon as I got that party settled, I'd telephone the madam. She would generally have me rush by taxiright back downtown to be on the 45th Street and Broadway comer at a specified time. Appointmentswere strictly punctual; rarely was I on the corner as much as five minutes. And I knew how to keepmoving about so as not to attract the attention of any vice squad plainclothes-men or uniformed cops.
With tips, which were often heavy, sometimes I would make over a hundred dollars a night steeringup to ten customers in a party-to see anything, to do anything, to have anything done to them, thatthey wanted. I hardly ever knew the identities of my customers, but the few I did recognize, or whosenames I happened to hear, remind me now of the Profumo case in England. The English are not farahead of rich and influential Americans when it comes to seeking rarities and oddities.
Rich men, middle-aged and beyond, men well past their prime: these weren't college boys, these weretheir Ivy League fathers. Even grandfathers, I guess. Society leaders. Big politicians. Tycoons.
Important friends from out of town. City government big shots. All kinds of professional people. Starperforming artists. Theatrical and Hollywood celebrities. And, of course, racketeers.
Harlem was their sin-den, their fleshpot. They stole off among taboo black people, and took offwhatever antiseptic, important, dignified masks they wore in their white world. These were men whocould afford to spend large amounts of money for two, three, or four hours indulging their strangeappetites.
But in this black-white nether world, nobody judged the customers. Anything they could name,anything they could imagine, anything they could describe, they could do, or could have done tothem, just as long as they paid.
In the Profumo case in England, Christine Keeler's friend testified that some of her customers wantedto be whipped. One of my main steers to one specialty address away from the madam's house was theapartment of a big, coal-black girl, strong as an ox, with muscles like a dockworker's. A funny thing, itgenerally was the oldest of these white men-in their sixties, I know, some maybe in their seventies-they couldn't seem to recover quickly enough from their last whipping so they could have me meetthem again at 45th and Broadway to take them back to that apartment, to cringe on their knees andbeg and cry out for mercy under that black girl's whip. Some of them would pay me extra to come andwatch them being beaten. That girl greased her big Amazon body all over to look shinier and blacker.
She used small, plaited whips, she would draw blood, and she was making herself a small fortune offthose old white men.
I wouldn't tell all the things I've seen. I used to wonder, later on, when I was in prison, what apsychiatrist would make of it all. And so many of these men held responsible positions; they exercisedguidance, influence, and authority over others.
In prison later, I'd think, too, about another thing. Just about all of those whites specifically expressedas their preference black, black, "the blacker the better!" The madam, having long since learned this,had in her house nothing but the blackest accommodating women she could find.
In all of my time in Harlem, I never saw a white prostitute touched by a white man. White girls werein some of the various Harlem specialty places. They would participate in customers' most frequentexhibition requests-a sleek, black Negro male having a white woman. Was this the white man wantingto witness his deepest sexual fear? A few times, I even had parties that included white women whomthe men had brought with them to watch this. I never steered any white women other than in theseinstances, brought by their own men, or who had been put into contact with me by a white Lesbianwhom I knew, who was another variety of specialty madam.
This Lesbian, a beautiful white woman, had a mate Negro stable. Her vocabulary was all profanity.
She supplied Negro males, on order, to well-to-do white women.
I'd seen this Lesbian and her blonde girl friend around Harlem, drinking and talking at bars, alwayswith young Negroes. No one who didn't know would ever guess that the Lesbian was recruiting. Butone night I gave her and her girl friend some reefers which they said were the best they'd eversmoked. They lived in a hotel downtown, and after that, now and then, they would call me, and Iwould bring them some reefers, and we'd talk.
She told me how she had accidentally gotten started in her specialty. As a Harlem habitu? she hadknown Harlem Negroes who liked white women. Her role developed from a pattern of talk she often heard from bored, well-to-do white women where she worked, in an East Side beauty salon. Hearingthe women complain about sexually inadequate mates, she would tell what she'd "heard" about Negromen. Observing how excited some of the women seemed to become, she finally arranged some dateswith some of the Harlem Negroes she knew at her own apartment.
Eventually, she rented three midtown apartments where a woman customer could meet a Negro byappointment. Her customers recommended her service to their friends. She quit the beauty salon, setup a messenger service as an operating front, and ran all of her business by telephone.
She had also noticed the color preference. I never could substitute in an emergency, she would tell mewith a laugh, because I was too light. She told me that nearly every white woman in her clientelewould specify "a black one"; sometimes they would say "a _real_ one," meaning black, no brownNegroes, no red Negroes.
The Lesbian thought up her messenger service idea because some of her trade wanted the Negroes tocome to their homes, at times carefully arranged by telephone. These women lived in neighborhoodsof swank brownstones and exclusive apartment houses, with doormen dressed like admirals. Butwhite society never thinks about challenging any Negro in a servant role. Doormen would telephoneup and hear "Oh, yes, send him right up, James"; service elevators would speed those neatly dressedNegro messenger boys right up-so that they could "deliver" what had been ordered by some of themost privileged white women in Manhattan.
The irony is that those white women had no more respect for those Negroes than white men have hadfor the Negro women they have been "using" since slavery times. And, in turn, Negroes have norespect for the whites they get into bed with. I know the way I felt about Sophia, who still came toNew York whenever I called her.
The West Indian boy friend of the Profumo scandal's Christine Keeler, Lucky Gordon, and his friendsmust have felt the same way. After England's leaders had been with those white girls, those girls, fortheir satisfaction, went to Negroes, to smoke reefers and make fun of some of England's greatest peersas cuckolds and fools. I don't doubt that Lucky Gordon knows the identity of "the man in the mask"and much more. If Gordon told everything those white girls told him, he would give England a newscandal.
It's no different from what happens in some of America's topmost white circles. Twenty years ago, Isaw them nightly, with my own eyes, I heard them with my own ears.
The hypocritical white man will talk about the Negro's "low morals." But who has the world's lowestmorals if not whites? And not only that, but the "upper-class" whites! Recently, details were publishedabout a group of suburban New York City white housewives and mothers operating as a professionalcall-girl ring. In some cases, these wives were out prostituting with the agreement, even thecooperation, of husbands, some of whom even waited at home, attending the children. And the customers-to quote a major New York City morning newspaper: "Some 16 ledgers and books withnames of 200 Johns, many important social, financial and political figures, were seized in the raidFriday night."I have also read recently about groups of young white couples who get together, the husbands throwtheir house keys into a hat, then, blindfolded, the husbands draw out a key and spend the night withthe wife that the house key matches. I have never heard of anything like that being done by Negroes,even Negroes who live in the worst ghettoes and alleys and gutters.
Early one morning in Harlem, a tall, light Negro wearing a hat and with a woman's stocking drawndown over his face held up a Negro bartender and manager who were counting up the night'sreceipts. Like most bars in Harlem, Negroes fronted, and a Jew really owned the place. To get alicense, one had to know somebody in the State Liquor Authority, and Jews working with Jewsseemed to have the best S.L.A. contacts. The black manager hired some Negro hoodlums to go huntingfor the hold-up man. And the man's description caused them to include me among their suspects.
About daybreak that same morning, they kicked in the door of my apartment.
I told them I didn't know a thing about it, that I hadn't had a thing to do with whatever they weretalking about. I told them I had been out on my hustle, steering, until maybe four in the morning, andthen I had come straight to my apartment and gone to bed.
The strong-arm thugs were bluffing. They were trying to flush out the man who had done it. They stillhad other suspects to check out-that's all that saved me.
I put on my clothes and took a taxi and I woke up two people, the madam, then Sammy. I had somemoney, but the madam gave me some more, and I told Sammy I was going to see my brother Philbertin Michigan. I gave Sammy the address, so that he could let me know when things got straightenedout.
This was the trip to Michigan in the wintertime when I put congolene on my head, then discoveredthat the bathroom sink's pipes were frozen. To keep the lye from burning up my scalp, I had to stickmy head into the stool and flush and flush to rinse out the stuff.
A week passed in frigid Michigan before Sammy's telegram came. Another red Negro had confessed,which enabled me to live in Harlem again.
But I didn't go back into steering. I can't remember why I didn't. I imagine I must have felt like stayingaway from hustling for a while, going to some of the clubs at night, and narcotizing with my friends.
Anyway, I just never went back to the madam's job.
It was at about this time, too, I remember, that I began to be sick. I had colds all the time. It got to be asteady irritation, always sniffling and wiping my nose, all day, all night. I stayed so high that I was ina dream world. Now, sometimes, I smoked opium with some white friends, actors who lived downtown. And I smoked more reefers than ever before. I didn't smoke the usual wooden-matchsized sticks of marijuana. I was so far gone by now that I smoked it almost by the ounce.
After awhile, I worked downtown for a Jew. He liked me because of something I had managed to dofor him. He bought rundown restaurants and bars. Hymie was his name. He would remodel theseplaces, then stage a big, gala reopening, with banners and a spotlight outside. The jam-packed, busyplace with the big "Under New Management" sign in the window would attract speculators, usuallyother Jews who were around looking for something to invest money in. Sometimes even in the weekof the new opening, Hymie would re-sell, at a good profit.
Hymie really liked me, and I liked him. He loved to talk. I loved to listen. Half his talk was about Jewsand Negroes. Jews who had anglicized their names were Hymie's favorite hate. Spitting and curlinghis mouth in scorn, he would reel off names of people he said had done this. Some of them werefamous names whom most people never thought of as Jews.
"Red, I'm a Jew and you're black," he would say. "These Gentiles don't like either one of us. If the Jewwasn't smarter than the Gentile, he'd get treated worse than your people."Hymie paid me good money while I was with him, sometimes two hundred and three hundreddollars a week. I would have done anything for Hymie. I did do all kinds of things. But my main jobwas transporting bootleg liquor that Hymie supplied, usually to those spruced-up bars which he hadsold to someone.
Another fellow and I would drive out to Long Island where a big bootleg whisky outfit operated.
We'd take with us cartons of empty bonded whisky bottles that were saved illegally by bars wesupplied. We would buy five-gallon containers of bootleg, funnel it into the bottles, then deliver,according to Hymie's instructions, this or that many crates back to the bars.
Many people claiming they drank only such-and-such a brand couldn't tell their only brand from pureweek-old Long Island bootleg. Most ordinary whisky drinkers are "brand" chumps like this. On theside, with Hymie's approval, I was myself at that time supplying some lesser quantities of bootleg toreputable Harlem bars, as well as to some of the few speakeasies still in Harlem.
But one weekend on Long Island, something happened involving the State Liquor Authority. One ofNew York State's biggest recent scandals has been the exposure of wholesale S.L.A. graft andcorruption. In the bootleg racket I was involved in, someone high up must have been taken for a realpile. A rumor about some "inside" tipster spread among Hymie and the others. One day Hymie didn'tshow up where he had told me to meet him. I never heard from him again . . . but I did hear that hewas put in the ocean and I knew he couldn't swim.
Up in the Bronx, a Negro held up some Italian racketeers in a floating crap game. I heard about it on the wire. Whoever did it, aside from being a fool, was said to be a "tall, light-skinned" Negro, maskedwith a woman's stocking. It has always made me wonder if that bar stickup had really been solved, orif the wrong man had confessed under beatings. But, anyway, the past suspicion of me helped torevive suspicion of me again.
Up in Fat Man's Bar on the hill overlooking the Polo Grounds, I had just gone into a telephone booth.
Everyone in the bar-all over Harlem, in fact-was drinking up, excited about the news that BranchRickey, the Brooklyn Dodgers' owner, had just signed Jackie Robinson to play in major leaguebaseball, with the Dodgers' farm team in Montreal-which would place the time in the fall of 1945.
Earlier in the afternoon, I had collected from West Indian Archie for a fifty-cent combination bet; hehad paid me three hundred dollars right out of his pocket. I was telephoning Jean Parks. Jean was oneof the most beautiful women who ever lived in Harlem. She once sang with Sarah Vaughan in theBluebonnets, a quartet that sang with Earl Hines. For a long time, Jean and I had enjoyed a standing,friendly deal that we'd go out and celebrate when either of us hit the numbers. Since my last hit, Jeanhad treated me twice, and we laughed on the phone, glad that now I'd treat her to a night out. Wearranged to go to a 52nd Street nightclub to hear Billie Holiday, who had been on the road and wasjust back in New York.
As I hung up, I spotted the two lean, tough-looking _paisanos_ gazing in at me cooped up in thebooth.
I didn't need any intuition. And I had no gun. A cigarette case was the only thing in my pocket. Istarted easing my hand down into my pocket, to try bluffing . . . and one of them snatched open thedoor. They were dark olive, swarthy-featured Italians. I had my hand down into my pocket.
"Come on outside, we'll hold court," one said.
At that moment, a cop walked through the front door. The two thugs slipped out. I never in my lifehave been so glad to see a cop.
I was still shaking when I got to the apartment of my friend, Sammy the Pimp, He told me that notlong before, West Indian Archie had been there looking for me.
Sometimes, recalling all of this, I don't know, to tell the truth, how I am alive to tell it today. They sayGod takes care of fools and babies. I've so often thought that Allah was watching over me. Through allof this time of my life, I really _was_ dead-mentally dead. I just didn't know that I was.
Anyway, to kill time, Sammy and I sniffed some of his cocaine, until the time came to pick up JeanParks, to go down and hear Lady Day. Sammy's having told me about West Indian Archie looking forme didn't mean a thing . . . not right then.
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