A Rage in Harlem (3 page)

She turned around from the stove and looked at Jackson.

“Is you drunk? If you is, I want you to get out of here and do not come back until you is sober.”

“I ain’t drunk. You sound more drunk than me. She met the man right here in your house.”

“In my house? A man who raises ten-dollar bills into hundred-dollar bills? If you are not drunk, you is crazy. If I had met that man, he would still be here, chained to the floor, working his ass off every day.”

“I ain’t in no mood for joking.”

“Do you think I am joking?”

“I mean the other one – Jodie. The one who knew the man who raises the money.”

Margie picked up the straightening iron and began to run it through her kinky reddish hair. Smoke rose from the frying locks and a sound was heard like chops sizzling.

“God damn it, you have done made me burn my hair!” she raved.

“I’m sorry, but this is important.”

“You mean my hair ain’t important?”

“No, I don’t mean that. I mean I got to find her.”

She brandished the hot hair-iron like a club.

“Jackson, will you please take your ass away from here and let me alone? If Ima told you she met somebody in my house called Jodie, she is just lying. And if you do not know by this time that
she is a lying bitch, you is a fool.”

“That ain’t no way to talk about your sister. I don’t thank you for that one little bit.”

“Who asked you to come here bothering me, anyway?” she shouted.

Jackson put on his hat and left in a huff. He began to feel cornered and panicky. He had to get his money raised before morning or he was jailhouse-bound. and he didn’t know where else to look for Imabelle. He had met her at the Undertaker’s Annual Dance in the Savoy Ballroom the year before. She’d been doing day work for the white folks downtown and didn’t have a steady boyfriend. He’d started taking her out, but that had gotten to be so expensive she’d started living with him.

They didn’t have any close friends. There was nowhere she could hide. She didn’t like to get chummy with folks and didn’t want anybody to know too much about her. He hardly knew anything about her himself. Just that she’d come from the South somewhere.

But he’d bet his life that she was true to him. Only she was scared of something and he didn’t know what. That was what had him worried. She might have gotten so scared of the marshal she’d disappear for two or three days. He could telephone her white folks the next day to see if she’d shown up for work. But that would be too late. He needed her right then to get in touch with Hank to have his money raised, or they were both going to be in trouble.

He stopped in a drugstore and telephoned his landlady. But he put his handkerchief over the mouthpiece to disguise his voice.

“Is Imabelle Jackson there, ma’am?”

“I know who you is, Jackson. You ain’t fooling me,” his landlady yelled into the phone.

“Ain’t nobody trying to fool you lady. I just asked you if Imabelle Jackson was there.”

“No, she ain’t, Jackson, and if she was here she’d be in jail by now where you is going to be as soon as the police get hold of you. Busting up my brand-new stove and messing up my house and stealing money from your boss put aside to bury the dead, and the Lawd knows what else, trying to make out like you is somebody else when you telephone here, figuring I ain’t gonna know your voice much as I done heard it asking me to leave you pay me the next week. Bringing that yallah woman into my house and breaking
it up, good as I done been to you.”

“I ain’t trying to hide my voice. I’m just in a little trouble, that’s all.”

“You tellin’ me! You is in more trouble than you knows.”

“I’m going to pay you for the stove.”

“If you don’t I’m goin’ to put you underneath the jail.”

“You don’t have to worry about that. I’m going to pay you first thing tomorrow.”

“I go to work tomorrow.”

“I’ll pay you first thing when you come home from work.”

“If you ain’t in jail by then. What’d you steal from Mr. Clay?”

“I ain’t stole nothing from nobody. What I wanted to ask was if Imabelle comes home you tell her to get in touch with Hank –”

“If she comes here tonight, her or you either, and don’t bring a hundred and fifty-seven dollars and ninety-five cents to pay for my stove, she ain’t goin’ to have no chance to get in touch with nobody, unless it be the judge she goin’ to meet tomorrow morning.”

“You call yourself a Christian,” Jackson said angrily. “Here we are in trouble and –”

“Who’s any worse Christian than you!” she shouted. “A thief and a liar! Living in sin! Busting my stove! Robbin’ the dead! The Lawd don’t even know you, I tell you that!”

She banged down the receiver so hard it stung Jackson’s ears.

He left the booth, wiping the sweat from his round, shiny black face and head.

“Calls herself a Christian,” he muttered to himself. “Couldn’t be more of a devil if she had two horns.”

He stood on the corner bareheaded, cooling his brain. There was nothing left now but to pray. He hailed a taxi, rode back to his minister’s house on 139th Street in Sugar Hill.

Reverend Gaines was a big black man with a mighty voice, deeply religious. He believed in a fire-and-brimstone hell and had no sympathy for sinners whom he couldn’t convert. If they didn’t want to reform, accept the Lord, join the church, and live righteously, then burn them in hell. No two ways about it. A man couldn’t be a Christian on Sunday and sin six days a week. Such a man must take God for a fool.

He was writing his sermon when Jackson arrived. But he put it aside for a good church-member.

“Welcome, Brother Jackson. What brings you to the house of the shepherd of the Lord?”

“I’m in trouble, Reverend.”

Reverend Gaines fingered the satin lapel of his blue flannel smoking-jacket. The diamond on his third finger sparkled in the light.

“Woman?” he asked softly.

“No, sir. My woman’s true. We’re going to get married as soon as she gets her divorce.”

“Don’t wait too long, Brother. Adultery is a mortal sin.”

“We can’t do anything until she finds her husband.”

“Money?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you stolen some money, Brother Jackson?”

“Not exactly. I just need some money bad. Or it’s going to look as if I stole some.”

“Ah, yes, I understand,” Reverend Gaines said. “Let us pray, Jackson.”

“Yes, sir, that’s what I want.”

They knelt side by side on the carpeted floor. Reverend Gaines did the praying.

“Lord, help this brother to overcome his difficulties.”

“Amen,” Jackson said.

“Help him to get the money he needs by honest means.”

“Amen.”

“Help his woman find her husband so she can get her divorce and live righteously.”

“Amen.”

“Bless all the poor sinners in Harlem who find themselves having these many difficulties with women and money.”

“Amen.”

Reverend Gaines’s housekeeper knocked at the door and stuck her head inside.

“Dinner is ready, Reverend,” she said. “Mrs. Gaines has already sat down.”

Reverend Gaines said, “Amen.”

All Jackson could do was echo, “Amen.”

“The Lord helps those who help themselves, Brother Jackson,” Reverend Gaines said, hurrying off to dinner.

Jackson felt a lot better. His panic had passed and he began
thinking with his head instead of his feet. The main thing was to have the Lord on his side. He had begun to think the Lord had quit him.

He caught a taxi on Seventh Avenue, rode down to 125th Street and turned over to the Last Word, a shoe-shine parlor and record shop at the corner of Eighth Avenue.

He put ninety dollars on numbers in the night house, playing five dollars on each. He played the
money row, lucky lady, happy days, true love, sun gonna shine, gold, silver, diamonds, dollars
and
whiskey
. Then to be on the safe side he also played
jail house, death row, lady come back, two-timing woman, pile of rocks, dark days
and
trouble
. He wasn’t taking any chances.

While he was putting in his numbers behind blown-up pictures of Bach and Beethoven, the girl selling the real stuff played rock-and-roll records on request, and the shoe-shine boys were beating out the rhythm with their shine cloths. Jackson’s feet took out with the beat, cutting out the steps, as though they didn’t know about the trouble in his head.

Suddenly Jackson began feeling lucky. He gave up on the hope of finding Hank. He stopped worrying about Imabelle. He felt as though he could throw four fours in a row.

“Man, you know one thing, I feel good,” he said to the shoe-shine boy.

“A good feeling is a sign of death, Daddy-o,” the boy said.

Jackson put his faith in the Lord and headed for the dice game upstairs on 126th Street, around the corner.

Jackson climbed three flights of stairs and rapped on a red door in a brightly lit hall.

A metal disk moved from a round peephole. Jackson couldn’t see the face, but the lookout saw him.

The door opened. Jackson went into an ordinary kitchen.

“You want to roll ’em or roll with ’em?” the lookout asked.

“Roll ’em,” Jackson said.

The lookout searched him, took his fingernail knife and put it
on the pantry shelf alongside several man-killing knives and hard-shooting pistols.

“How can I hurt anybody with that?” Jackson protested.

“You can jab out their eyes.”

“The blade ain’t long enough to go through the eyelid.”

“Don’t argue, man, just go down to the last door to the right,” the lookout said, leaning against the door frame.

There were three loose nails in the door casing. By pressing them the lookout could blink the lights in the parlor, bedrooms, and dice room. One blink for a new customer, two for the law.

Another lookout opened the door from the inside of the dice room, closed and locked it behind Jackson.

There was a billiard table in the center of the room, and a rack holding billiard balls and cue sticks on one wall. The shooters were jammed about the table beneath a glare of light from a green-shaded drop lamp. The stick man stood on one side of the table, handling the dice and bets. Across from him sat the rack man on a high stool, changing greenbacks into silver dollars and banking the cuts. He cut a quarter on all bets up to five dollars, and fifty cents on bets over five dollars.

The bookies sat at each end of the table. A squat, bald-headed, brown-skinned man called Stack of Dollars sat at one end; a gray-haired white man called Abie the Jew sat at the other. Stack of Dollars bet the dice to lose; took any bet to win. Abie the Jew bet the dice to win or lose, barring box cars and snake eyes.

It was the biggest standing crap game in Harlem.

Jackson knew all the famous shooters by sight. They were celebrities in Harlem. Red Horse, Four-Four and Coots were professional gamblers; Sweet Wine, Rock Candy, Chink and Beauty were pimps; Doc Henderson was a dentist; Mister Foot was a numbers banker.

Red Horse was shooting. He shook the number eight bird’s eye dice loosely in his left hand, rolled them with his right hand. The dice rolled evenly down the green velvet cover, jumped the dog chain stretched across the middle of the table like two steeplechasers in a dead heat, came to a stop on four and three.

“Four-trey, the country way,” the stick man sang, raking in the dice. “Seven! The loser!”

Rock Candy reached for the money in the pot. Stack of Dollars raked in his bets. Abie took some, paid some.

“You goin’ to buck ’em?” the stick man asked.

Red Horse shook his head. He could pay a dollar for three more rolls.

“Next good shooter,” the stick man sang and looked at Jackson. “What you shoot, short-black-and-fat?”

“Ten bucks.”

Jackson threw a ten-dollar bill and fifty cents into the circle. Red Horse covered it. The bettors got down, win and lose, in the books. The stick man threw the dice to Jackson, who caught the dice, held them in his cupped hand close to his mouth and talked to them.

“Just get me out of this trouble and I ain’t goin’ to ask for no more.” He crossed himself, then shook the dice to get them hot.

“Turn ’em loose, Reverend,” the stick man said. “They ain’t titties and you ain’t no baby. Let ’em run wild in the big corral.”

Jackson turned them loose. They hopped across the green like scared jackrabbits, jumped the dog chain like frisky kangaroos, romped toward Abie’s field-cloth like locoed steers, got tired and rested on six and five.

“Natural eleven!” the stick man sang. “Eleven from heaven. The winner!”

Jackson let his money ride, threw another natural for the twenty; then crapped out for the forty with snake-eyes. He shot ten again, threw seven, let the twenty ride, threw another seven, shot the forty, and crapped out again. He was twenty dollars loser. He wiped the sweat from his face and head, took off his overcoat, put it with his hat on the coat rack, loosened the double-breasted jacket of his black hard-finished suit, and said to the dice, “Dice, I beg you with tears in my eyes as big as watermelons.”

He shot ten again, rapped three times in a row, and asked the stick man to change the dice.

“These don’t know me,” he said.

The stick man put in some black-eyed number eight dice that were stone cold. Jackson warmed them in his crotch, and threw four naturals in a row. He had eighty dollars in the pot. He took down the fifty dollars he had lost and shot the thirty. He caught a four and jumped it, took down another fifty, and shot ten.

“Jealous man can’t gamble, scared man can’t win,” the stick man crooned.

The bettors got off Jackson to win and bet him to lose. He
caught six and sevened out.

“Shooter for the game,” the stick man sang. “The more you put down the more you pick up.”

The dice went on to the next shooter.

By midnight Jackson was $180 ahead. He had $376, but he needed $657.95 to cover the $500 he had stolen from Mr. Clay and the $157.95 to pay for his landlady’s stove.

He quit and went back to the Last Word to see if he had hit on the numbers. The last word for that night was 919, dead man’s row.