Oakland Noir

by Jerry Thompson

  “Take pictures of what exactly?”

  From there it was easy. Poppy opened the door. “I got a tip from a guy who works the elevator at the Athens Athletic Club.”

  “Yeah? About what?”

  “So, this guy says that there’s some shady characters coming into the club through the back service entrance, who’ve been wheelin’ and dealin’ with the guys running the place.”

  “Dealing what exactly?”

  “He doesn’t know, but it seemed to be something important.”

  Tak waved his arm and headed back to the couch. “That could be anything.”

  “True enough. But most people don’t go to the Athens Club with muscle. In this case, some thick-necked Irish goon. With something heavy in his pocket.” Poppy raised his eyebrows for emphasis and detected a flash of interest on Tak’s face.

  “So, who’s this guy you know?”

  “Just some guy.” Poppy headed toward the bed, suddenly fatigued from a long day that had already ended. The lure had been set in the water. Tak would be up and dressed early. “See you tomorrow.”

  * * *

  The lobby of the Athens Athletic Club may have been serene, but the back rooms buzzed with activity. Negro waiters and busboys bustling through swinging doors, dishwashers orchestrating the flow of dirty dishes into the huge sinks, maids wheeling overloaded linen carts. Negroes ran the back end of this club, although they could never lounge in its plush lobby chairs. Every folded linen napkin bore a Negro’s fingerprints.

  Poppy and Tak entered through the service entrance, past a gang of smoking waiters blocking the door.

  “Say, where’s Willie?” Poppy asked a maid.

  He was directed deeper into the bowels of the grand building. Poppy and Tak waited for the elevator to touch down in the basement, and Willie stepped out.

  They exchanged greetings and Willie sized up Tak. “What’s with the camera? You can’t bring that in here.”

  “Sure he can,” Poppy said, gently moving Willie back into the elevator and pressing a button at random. “Haven’t you ever heard of freedom of the press?”

  The elevator started to move.

  “Man! What you do?” Willie blocked the panel of buttons with his body.

  A call rang in from the sixth floor, so Willie hurried the two men out at the lobby floor, then ascended up to six. They paced anxiously, waiting for Willie to return. Marveling at the detailed painting in the coffered ceiling, Poppy wandered down a hallway.

  “Get back here, man!” Tak seethed through his teeth. “C’mon, let’s take the stairs.”

  Poppy was distracted by all the grand architecture, the enveloping chairs and couches, the insouciant privilege that made places like this club so foreign to people like him. No one was on the hustle here. No one was doubled, tripled, quadrupled up in their living quarters. This place was all summertime, where the living is easy.

  When Poppy turned to rejoin Tak, he found his friend nose-to-nose with a much larger white man. Poppy paused, peeking into the lobby, assessing the situation. Certainly there’d be guards. They wouldn’t look like guards; they’d be in suits, tight across their chests. Poppy knew Tak couldn’t take this guy. He shook off the apprehension and hustled back to his friend. Tak had just enough hate in him not to back down from a fight, even one he couldn’t win.

  “Hey, hey, what is this?” Poppy said as he approached, his left hand already balled into a fist. The man had clutched the shoulder of Tak’s coat and was shoving him backward, toward the corner of the vestibule. By the time Poppy reached them, the man had landed two sharp jabs in Tak’s gut. Tak clubbed the man’s ears with his fists. Poppy grabbed the man’s starched shirt collar and pulled him off Tak.

  “You back the hell off!” Poppy shook the stranger like a chastised dog, then pushed him away.

  The white man stumbled, gasping, and twisted around. He righted himself quickly, ready to swing, but pulled the punch when he saw Poppy had about three inches on him. Tak lunged, but Poppy held him back with his other hand.

  The attacker regained his balance. “Don’t you touch me,” he snorted, straightening his jacket and tie. “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to, you black bastard!” The man pulled his shirtsleeves down, ran fingers through his blond hair. “Neither of you should be here. And what do you think you’re doing with a camera in here? If you don’t leave at once, I’m calling the chief of police.”

  That’s right, white man, Poppy thought, take it to the extreme. Just a patrolman won’t do.

  “C’mon, let’s go,” Poppy said. But when Tak just stood there, primed to lunge again, Poppy guided him away from the white man and toward the elevator. The stranger was on their heels.

  The elevator chimed just as Poppy and Tak reached it. Willie stepped out, putting on a deadpan expression when he spotted them. He stood erect.

  “Willie, did you let these men in here?”

  “No sir. I just came on shift, sir.”

  Poppy sneered at Willie as he and Tak boarded the elevator.

  “Well, get them out of here! Right now!”

  Willie nodded. “Yes sir. Right away, sir.” He looked at his riders with scorn.

  As the elevator doors closed, Poppy regarded the man he had tussled with. A finely dressed business type with pomaded hair he smoothed down with a hand. Indignant, the man met Poppy’s gaze. Something clicked for Poppy. He noticed the sickle-shaped scar that ran from the man’s lower lip to his chin. Incongruous on such a refined, aquiline face. Beads of sweat sprouted on Poppy’s upper lip. It came to him like thunder. He exited the elevator quickly on the ground floor, his heart pounding.

  “Who is that guy?” Poppy asked Willie once they were outside.

  “You gotta be kiddin’,” Willie said. “He’s an assistant DA. In the paper all the time.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Daniel Coopersmith. A real comer, they say.”

  Poppy frowned. “Boy, you wouldn’t know a comer if one fell on you.”

  Daniel Coopersmith had certainly cleaned up his act. When Poppy last saw him, years earlier, the guy was leaving a Buffalo warehouse, wiping off a bloody hunting knife with his pocket square. Coopersmith had been the silent, elegant lieutenant to the area’s top bootlegger. Poppy’s employer of the past few years had gone into the warehouse that night but had not emerged. Young and desperate, Poppy had stood obediently in the shadows, waiting to bring the car around to his boss once a signal was given. But there was no signal. After a few minutes Poppy headed back to where the cars were parked in the rail yard. He stood between his boss’s car and one belonging to the guy his boss had come to meet. The whole thing should have taken no more than ten minutes. He had checked his watch. Something was bad wrong. He’d started to breath deeply, then he began to pant, his heart galloping in his chest. Running liquor across the border had become downright dangerous. It had taken only a few seconds to make up his mind. He climbed into the other car and found the satchel of cash on the front seat that was supposed to go to his boss. He regarded the stacks of neatly packed bills, longing for it like you would an unattainable woman. As he drove away he didn’t think about freedom so much as justice. A life for a life.

  But somehow Coopersmith cheated what was coming to him. Poppy knew someone would be hunting for him soon enough, so he fled Buffalo with his family that night. How many years ago was it? A whole war’s worth and then some. Coopersmith might be legit these days, but Poppy knew he still had to steer clear of him. He knew exactly how lethal the man could be.

  The advantage of being a Negro was that, most times, no one paid any attention to you. You were just a black hand that white folks dropped change into or passed luggage to. You were not an individual, a particular set of physical features and behaviors. Poppy counted on this. He couldn’t afford to have this man recognize him and threaten the comfortable life he had built in Oakland. Running counter to everything he stood for, he now willed himself to be invisible, hoping Coope
rsmith wouldn’t recognize him and set the dogs loose. Or worse yet, come after him himself.

  Poppy fell asleep that night thinking of all the public meetings and social events he had attended over the years, places where Coopersmith must have been. The danger he thought he had escaped was there all along, he just hadn’t known it.

  * * *

  The following morning Poppy woke up in a cold sweat, having dreamed of days spent endlessly driving to feed the bottomless thirst of upstate New Yorkers. He had wanted them to stay drunk, to drown in the amber liquids he transported. Keep drinking! Suits me fine! It had been an adventure, one he hadn’t given up easily. He could finally clothe and house his young family properly. Like a man should be able to.

  An undercurrent of fear coursed through him for two days. He called in sick, something he had never done, and laid low. But three days after the encounter at the Athens Club, itching to get back out into the world, Poppy felt like himself again. After a hot shower and a few cups of fresh coffee, he headed out, striding up Jefferson, then up 9th Street to Fitzgerald’s Diner on Washington. This was the place where deals were made and promises were broken. This was where the political types mingled with police, delivery men, and office girls. Gossip here was as free-flowing as the coffee.

  He wanted to find out how Coopersmith had gone legit, who his political cronies were, if they were alumni from that same unsavory school of business he had left behind in New York.

  He sat at the counter listening to chatter from the red leatherette booths and the nearby tables. He had built his reputation on picking up key bits of information, often without even interviewing people directly. Everybody in California talked too much. This, he hoped, would never change. In the long mirror mounted on the wall that separated the dining room from the kitchen, he could see the people behind him. He was dipping his toast into a sunny-side-up egg when he saw four suits enter. These fellas looked slicker than the usual crowd, more buttoned-down than the regulars. Folks you’d see coming out of the Athens Athletic Club. Here they were slumming.

  “Say, you finished with this?” Poppy said, nodding at a copy of the Post-Enquirer the guy next to him had dragged through spilled coffee.

  The man looked down at the wet paper. “Damn! Sure, take it.”

  “Thanks, man.”

  Poppy snapped the paper open, reading about last night’s fights and the lingering union fallout from the previous year’s general strike. He searched for anything coming out of the DA’s office, anything about Coopersmith. One of Coopersmith’s colleagues, a young cat with lots of promise, had been summarily fired. He had been charged with taking bribes from a developer who had swooped into Oakland after the war to buy up and convert properties belonging to the evacuated Japanese. Now some Japanese families were fighting to get their properties back, charging the federal government with theft and displacement, and this ADA was stalling the proceedings.

  Tak would love to get his hands on this guy, Poppy thought. He took a long gulp of coffee, glancing from the paper up into the mirror again. The hairs on the back of his neck bristled—Coopersmith had joined the group of slick men. Poppy took a deep breath, thought about leaving, then exhaled slowly. He surveyed the room. He was the only Negro in the place, so he figured his departure might cause notice. He studied the group. Coopersmith was the top dog; the others leaned in when he spoke and nodded like acolytes to a great master.

  Poppy wondered how many bloody knives Coopersmith had cleaned off since that night in Buffalo.

  When a group of rowdy workmen came in to grab coffee and day-old donuts, Poppy scurried out behind their hubbub. He headed toward police headquarters, his mind racing as he approached the 14th Street entrance. He pulled the soggy paper from his back pocket and reread the article about the misbehaving ADA. He took out his notepad and scribbled some questions down, not sure of whom to ask them.

  White folks do not like to be questioned. Poppy couldn’t think of a time when he didn’t know this fact, but questioning people was his job. Who’d be safe? He headed to the public library on 14th and Grove and asked the librarian for the newspapers from the past few weeks. He combed the Tribune and the Post-Enquirer for stories about Coopersmith or his beleaguered colleague. The district attorney had been railing hard against corruption in the city and county governments, so this case had legs. Surely Coopersmith’s name would come up soon.

  * * *

  Over the next few weeks Poppy dropped a few lines about the case in the Negro newspapers on both sides of the bay. He got Negroes wondering how much deal-making had impacted their judicial outcomes. Stories began to swirl. Coopersmith and his leadership were called into question, which put the district attorney’s office on notice.

  In no time, patrol cops started to stop Poppy for the most minor infractions: jaywalking, tossing a gum wrapper on the street, loitering while he was waiting for a light to turn green. When he related these incidents to his buddies at the barber shop on 7th Street, they were not compassionate.

  “You may be a reporter but you still a colored man,” the head barber told him. “Don’t let that byline think you above it. You ain’t.” All the fellas in the chairs nodded their agreement.

  When a pair of cops stopped him walking out of the Roxie Theatre on 17th Street, they were unusually rough. One smacked him in the face when he asked why they were stopping him. The other called him Raincoat Jones and said he was wanted for questioning. And though Poppy tried to assure them that he wasn’t Raincoat, they prevented him from reaching into his pocket to pull out his driver’s license or his reporter’s ID. Detective Webster pulled up as the policemen had Poppy’s face pressed against the hot hood of their squad car, his arm bent high behind his back. He grimaced in pain, clenched his teeth.

  “Let him go,” Webster instructed coolly. The cops released him but they didn’t retreat far enough for Poppy’s comfort. Webster shook a cigarette out of a pack, lit it, then studied the burning tip. He was calm.

  “What’s up, Webster?” Poppy asked, straightening his clothes. “Why does everybody all of a sudden have a hard-on for Poppy Martens?”

  “They just like you, I guess.”

  “These guys called me Raincoat when you all know who he is. What am I getting shaken down for?”

  “You piss people off, Poppy. Always have.”

  “What did I do?”

  “Putting your nose in someone’s business, messing in things you don’t understand.”

  “What don’t I understand, Webster?” Poppy felt his anger rise.

  “Lots. You can’t understand how things in a city work. People have to maintain relationships in order to get things done, to keep the city functioning, growing. You get my meaning?”

  Poppy shook his head. He got someone’s meaning, but it wasn’t Webster’s. He knew Webster well enough to know that these were lines he had heard someone else say.

  “You can’t go around getting people riled up about something that impedes progress.”

  Poppy squinted, intrigued by the transformation in Webster’s diction. “Can I go? Are you arresting me for . . . something?” he said with his arms outstretched.

  “You just mind yourself. Stop being a busybody. And know that the paper that hired you can easily fire you.”

  “On what grounds, exactly?”

  “On poking your big nose where it don’t belong!” Webster dragged on his cigarette. He blew smoke in Poppy’s face.

  “Does any of this harassment have to do with Coopersmith?”

  Webster’s eyes widened. “What about Coopersmith?”

  “He’s the one who fired the young turk in his office. Whatever that kid was doing, Coopersmith must’ve known about it. Had to have sanctioned it. Right?”

  Poppy knew he was treading on thin ice. One nod to the rabid cops behind him and Webster could have him pummeled into the sidewalk. But it was a chance worth taking. He realized Coopersmith was now the big boss, with his own henchmen who had their own bloody knives. No
need to get his hands dirty unless Poppy came too close. Like he had at the Athens Athletic Club.

  * * *

  The next time Poppy went to the Athens he walked right through the front door, his reporter’s ID pinned to the lapel of his coat. A man from the front desk stood up, startled, and asked him if he had a delivery to make.

  Poppy looked at his own suit then at the man, but decided to ignore the question. “Is Mr. Coopersmith here?”

  “The whereabouts of our clients are private. This is a private club.”

  “Yeah, I know it’s private. I’m not here hunting a membership. Just Coopersmith.”

  “If I see him, who should I say is looking for him?”

  Poppy had to think on this. Coopersmith must know his name if he was behind these run-ins with the police. He drummed his fingers on the desk and scanned the lobby of potted palms and tranquil white faces. Then he left the building.

  He walked home with images of that night so many years ago coursing through his mind. He felt now that he had been hiding all along. If not from Coopersmith, then from all the rotten shit that he had to endure just to have a life, to thrive in that life. Coopersmith had gone about his business, had reinvented himself, safely, successfully. Poppy wondered why he couldn’t. For the first time in a long while he felt himself unlucky.

  Poppy came home to a darkened apartment. He flipped on the light switch, tossed his keys in an ashtray, and turned to find Tak sitting on the couch. His arms were raised above his face, shielding his eyes. Poppy walked closer and saw that Tak had a split lip and a black eye.

  “Man, who did this to you?”

  “I fell down the back stairs. I told you those stairs were going to kill me one day. Well, today they almost did.”

  Poppy studied Tak’s face. His nose wasn’t broken, but his lip would take some time to heal. “You are the worst liar in the known world. Who did this?”