“Both, I hope.”
Jo giggled and tickled her fingers up his arm. Memphis employed the smile with Jo. “ ‘PASSING stranger!’ ” he said, putting his hand to his heart. “ ‘You do not know how longingly I look upon you/You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking (it comes to me as of a dream)/I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you…’ ”
“You write that, baby?” Jo purred.
Memphis shook his head. “That’s Walt Whitman. ‘To a Stranger.’ You ever read his poems?”
“She doesn’t read anything other than the gossip columns,” Alma said. Jo gave her a murderous glance.
“You’re missing out,” Memphis said, aiming his full-wattage smile at Jo.
“This boy lives at the library over on 135th Street. Wants to be the next Langston Hughes,” Alma informed everyone.
“That so?” Jo asked.
“I could read some poems to you sometime.”
“How ’bout Sunday?” Jo said. She licked her lips.
“Sundays always were my lucky days.”
Alma rolled her eyes again and pulled Jo back into line. “Come on, girls. We don’t have time for foolishness. We need to get changed for the moon number.”
“Bye, baby.” Jo blew Memphis a kiss and he pretended to catch it.
“Memphis!” the stage manager bellowed around the cigar clenched between his teeth. “I’m not paying you to play with the girls. Papa Charles wants you. Hop to.”
In the narrow hallway, Memphis passed Gabe and the Count, who were on their way out back.
“Hey, boss,” Gabe said, gripping Memphis’s hand. “We going to that rent party on Saturday? Plenty of flossy chicks and whiskey.”
“Whose whiskey? Don’t get some coffin varnish off someone you don’t know and put us both in the morgue.” It was a fact that disreputable bootleggers sometimes mixed the booze with kerosene or gasoline.
Gabe spread his hands wide and grinned. “Leave it to Gabe, brother.”
Memphis laughed. Other than Isaiah, Gabe had been the one constant in his life. They’d met in the fourth grade, when Gabe had gotten into trouble with the principal for selling cigarettes behind the school and Memphis had been assigned to be his buddy and set him straight. It set the tone of their friendship: Memphis was still there to get Gabe out of trouble, and Gabe was there to help Memphis get into it. The one thing Gabe was serious about was music. He was one of the hottest trumpet players in town. Word was definitely spreading about the skinny kid with the big sound. Even Duke Ellington had come to hear Gabe play. It was one of the reasons Papa Charles kept him on. Gabe was a prankster and a troublemaker, but once he started playing that horn, it was all worth it.
“Going out for a smoke. You want some mezz?” Gabe asked. His eyes were already a little red.
Memphis shook his head. “Gotta keep a clear head, Gabe.”
“Suit yourself, Grandma.”
“I usually do,” Memphis said. He swiped a hand across the overhead light, feeling the warmth of the bulb, and then passed through a tunnel into the building next door where all the offices were. Several secretaries sat at long tables, counting money from the morning’s numbers racket. Memphis tipped his cap to them and slipped into Papa Charles’s office. From his seat behind a mahogany desk, Papa Charles waved Memphis toward a waiting chair while he finished his telephone call.
Papa Charles was the undisputed king of Harlem. He controlled the numbers racket, the horse races and boxing matches. He ran the bootlegging and fixed things with the cops. If you needed a loan, you went to Papa Charles. When a church needed a new building, Papa Charles gave them the money. Schools, fraternal organizations, and even Harlem’s professional basketball team, the New York Renaissance, or Rens, were financed in part by Papa Charles, the Dapper Gentleman. And at several clubs and speakeasies, like the Hotsy Totsy, he showcased some of the best musicians and dancers in town.
“Well, as long as I’m running the numbers in Harlem, it’ll stay black,” Papa Charles said firmly into the telephone, “and you can tell Dutch Schultz and his associates that I say so.” He hung up forcefully and opened the lid on a silver box, selecting a cigar. He bit off the end and spat it into his wastebasket. Memphis lit the cigar’s tip, trying not to cough as the first puffs of smoke billowed out.
“Trouble?”
Papa Charles waved the thought and the smoke away. “White bootleggers want to run the Harlem rackets now. I don’t intend to let them. But they’re working hard at it. Heard the police raided one of Queenie’s joints last night.”