by Dale Lucas
He appeared on stage: Papa Solomon House, street warlord turned gangster philanthropist; leader of the West Indies; the only serious competition that the Queen Bee knew for total control of Harlem.
Papa Solomon House: the only man that Madame Marie, the Queen Bee herself, actually felt a little twinge of fear for.
There he stood, flanked by his bodyguards, Wash and Timmons. On her stage. In her club.
She’d gotten the word first thing this morning about the hit on her 127th Street bolito drop last night. It was buckshot to swat a fly—Chester and Lester were barely worth the nasty excess of lead that House used to down them.
But sense wasn’t the point, was it? House was making a statement: I’m moving north, and your runners are in my way. If I can’t scare them away, I’ll tear them out at the roots like weeds.
It was an act of excessive force designed to induce fear and create fewer problems in the future—his standard M.O.
The bitch of it was, more often than not, it worked.
She decided to stay right where she was and make him come to her. She wished Gideon were on hand, but he was no doubt still haggling with that fat Irishman Heaney in the back about what booze Heaney would take with him and how much green would be in the brown paper sack that would carry it. She checked the main entrance, saw that Dorey and Croaker were close at hand, but felt no relief. They were hired help. She could probably count on them in a pinch, but they had no judgment to exercise and no ambition beyond living to see next week.
Damn. The dining room was full of drones. The Queen Bee was on her own.
House marched out onto the long, thrusting stage, studying the space as he went. He was tall and broad, but there seemed to be no fat on him. Unlike a lot of street thugs turned bosses, he hadn’t gone to sod. He was still strong as an ox and tight as a steamer’s guy-line. He wore a dark blue, double-breasted suit with light pinstripes, a starched collar, wing-tip shoes, and a dark blue homburg hat. A blue-gray camel hair coat was draped over his broad shoulders like a cloak. Wash and Timmons smoldered on either side of him, eager pit bulls on their master’s chain.
Marie waited. House made it to the end of the thrusting stage, caught her eye, and smiled a bright, Caribbean smile out of his night-dark face. Marie managed a lopsided smirk. The bastard looked surprised to see her—as if this weren’t her place, but his.
“Madame Marie! Good morning!” House offered, voice smooth as coconut milk. “This is good space you got here. Good light. Good air. I’d say you’re gonna blow the Jungle Room out the water.”
“Compliment accepted,” Marie answered, chilly and non-committal. “I thought I was clear the last time you dropped in for a palaver that I didn’t want to see your face without ample warning and approval first?”
His smile never faltered. “Unkind, Queen Bee, unkind. Can’t two business associates have a friendly chat? Perhaps a drink?”
“Awful early in the morning for a drink, Mr. House,” Marie answered, but she was already moving away from the brass rail that ran the breadth of the dais, getting Dorey and Croaker’s combined attentions and waving them near.
House was off the stage now, rounding toward the stairs onto the dais. “Never too early for such as we, milady.”
Croaker arrived first and he got the order: two Bloody Marys for the Queen Bee and her guest—top shelf stuff in hers; basement-brewed turpentine for House. Croaker hurried into the back. Dorey, at the silent behest of Marie, moved up onto the dais and stood close at hand. She waited for House to fold himself into a chair that seemed too small for his big frame, then she sat across from him, her dainty, gloved hands folded in her lap.
“So that answers my first question,” House said, removing his hat and laying it on the table.
“Being?”
“Is there booze?” House answered. “My next question follows: what about the other rackets? You gonna run a game room backstage? Upstairs or down, maybe? Perhaps billiards?” The latter designation—billiards—was a common euphemism among the bosses for a cathouse.
“I’m in the business of hospitality, Mr. House,” Marie answered. “Whatever my patrons want, they can have, so long as they’re willing to pay for it.”
The Bloody Marys arrived and Marie let House take the first sip. He complimented her bartender with a smile and wink. She countered with a stiff drought of her own.
“You need someone to run the game tables or the billiards?” House offered casually.
“You can’t possibly think that I’m not equipped to run my own dice, cards, and whores, Papa. Even you’re not that stupid.”
“But you know I’m better at it,” House countered, smile brightening. “You know I can make more money for you, if you’ll let me.”
“I make out,” Marie said. “I don’t need you. Especially after last night.”
“Last night?” The smile remained. He wanted to hear her say it.
“You think I don’t know it was you? That mess on 127th Street? All you did was seed a lot of ill will, Papa. Maybe the next time you have your goons throw down, you should have them do it where some poor, innocent child in his bed isn’t going to take a stray bullet.”
His smile faltered now. “Christ, you’re a stubborn woman.”
“What’s your angle, Papa? You got balls the size of water-melons to show your face in here this morning, of all mornings.”
He leaned forward, pointing one long, thick finger at her. “A woman talked to me like that once back in Trinidad,” he snarled. “I sowed up her flapping lips, then cut off her teats and curried them. If you want to test me—”
“Oh, I think it’s clear I’m testing you,” Marie said, “and you’re always found wanting. You’ve got a nose for angles and a talent for graft, but you’re just a monkey-chasin’ thug off a banana boat whose only real talent is getting anybody weaker and dumber than you to knuckle under—all because you’re willing to pull insensible shit like that dust-up last night. Well, I’m not weaker or dumber than you, House, and I knuckle under to no man. If you really thought you could waltz in here and charm your way into a piece of this place, you’re even dumber than I thought.”
He looked at his Bloody Mary, clearly wanting another drink, but wondering if doing so was a sign of weakness somehow. She was insulting him, after all. Shouldn’t he toss her drink back in her face?
If he had the sand to do it, Marie thought, I might actually give him the honor of a death at Gideon’s hands. But as it is, he won’t. He’s just gonna fume and play the part of the angry child.
“Who is he? The Baron?”
Marie had no idea what he was talking about. “Baron who?”
“One of my boys told me everything—how some freak in white-face and a top hat took out three of the four associates who I sent up 127th Street to stake my claim. Who was he, Queen Bee?”
Marie felt a twinge of curiosity. She hadn’t heard this part of it. She knew Chester, Lester, and Frupp took lead in the drive-by. She’d also heard that by pure, rotten luck, some poor kid sleeping in a front bedroom next door to the barbershop bought it as well. The new kid, Beau, was laying low. Three of Papa’s boys—the gunmen—were found with new lead jackets a block from the hit, splayed out in the street like road kill, their bullet-riddled, flat-tired Ford nearby.
Truth be told, Marie had no inkling of who’d taken out the shooters. She figured that would come out in the long run—more of her soldiers who happened to be nearby? Pissed-off tenants from the building that took strays? Maybe even the kid Beau—though she seriously doubted the latter.
But what was this bullshit from House? A Baron? In white face and a top hat?
“You’re talking about Baron Samedi? The Cemetery Man?”
“I’m talkin’ about your gunman,” House countered. “Whoever the fuck he is and wherever the fuck he’s from. I hit your boys and you hit back. That’s three and three, so we oughta be even now.”
“You don’t negotiate with the stray dog that keeps kil
lin’ your chickens,” Madame Marie said, feeling her confidence returning because she could clearly see how this talk of the Baron shook House to his wing-tipped shoes. “You set traps and you exterminate him, plain and simple.”
“I’m warning you,” House said, “this time it’s fair and square. But if your hoodoo man comes down my way, I’m gonna see him laid low, plain and simple.”
“You haven’t even considered that he doesn’t work for me?” Marie did her best now to stay aloof and non-committal. Let him wonder; let him puzzle over it.
House chuckled, smiled, and took another sip of his drink. “I may be dumb, Queen Bee, but I ain’t that dumb.”
She was about to say something snide—something piquant that she’d savor for the rest of her days—but a new arrival interrupted the palaver, and the day went from bad to worse.
First, there was his smell: the smell of boiled cabbage, beer-yeast, and sen-sen peppermints. Then, as Marie was still turning to see who had arrived—who could possibly smell like that—he spoke.
“Nice joint, jigs and all,” he said, his accent a shitty mix of Lower East side roil and Old World sibilance. Marie studied the new arrival, and though she didn’t know him by sight, she put two and two together fast and deduced who he was based on his nefarious reputation.
And his smell. She’d heard about that repugnant, beer hall smell with the hint of peppermint to sweeten it from more than one friend and enemy. His mother had named him Adolph von Sturmundranger. Nowadays, he went by Dolph Storms.
He was a big, pasty kike with bad hair plastered down by a combination of too much tonic and too little washing, a complexion somewhere south of Bratwurst, and watery, red-rimmed eyes that reminded Marie of a couple white stones left to molder in a shallow pond. His suit was off-the-rack, rumpled, and sporting mustard on the lapels and small, dark freckles at the sleeves—dried blood, no doubt.
Two more sheenies flanked him—bruisers with better skin and better suits. Nonetheless, his place in the forefront made it clear that he was the alpha dog in this pack; the star attraction, no matter how unkempt and repugnant he might be. Marie remembered the word on him: a Yorkville thug who had, little by little, worked his way up as a brew baron under the watchful aegis of Teddy Michansky, the brains behind the east side Jew gang sometimes called the Dandies, because they all dressed so well.
All except Storms, anyway.
And here he stood, in her club, studying she and Papa House like they were close as cousins.
They all look alike, he was probably thinking.
Storms studied the two of them, then looked at Marie. “I hear you’re the jungle bunny in charge. That right?”
Marie took a deep breath. It wasn’t even noon, but it was shaping up to be a long, trying day. “So rumor has it,” she said coolly. “What can I do for you, sir?”
He smiled. There were crumbs in his crooked yellow teeth. “Yeah, you’re all right. You high yella dames can almost pass for whites, ‘cept for that shovel nose of yours.”
Dorey and Croaker were well behind her, out of her line of sight, but Marie felt them both tense, as if their sudden rage threw sparks into the air. She raised one hand slowly, to tell them both to keep silent and keep cool, then met Dolph Storms’s watery, lecherous gaze. “You got a name, Abe?” she asked, knowing it full well.
“Dolph Storms. Here as an emissary of a popular and well-to-do brew concern that’d like to open contract negotiations.”
“What sort of contract?” Marie asked.
“Whaddya think, Queen Brownie? We brew suds for the whole East Side. Seein’ as you’re in the neighborhood—”
“Your neighborhood’s back in Yorkville,” Marie countered, “south of 110th street. Shit, I’m surprised those nice, well-heeled heebs and huns down that way’d let a pasty-faced white gorilla like you walk their immaculate streets. No, Dolphus—you look like you’re Lower East Side all the way to me. So my question is, what a cheap Five Points hood like you doin’ all the way Uptown?”
He stared, clearly not amused by her patter, or her insults. She took advantage of his momentary silence.
“Shit, boy... something nasty could happen to you all the way up here, so far from home.”
Storms summoned a crooked grin and snorted derisively, managing to follow it all with a sickly laugh. “You’re a smart piece of coon-tail, ain’t you? Well, you listen to me, powder burn—”
She cut him off. “No, you listen to me, you mocky fishmonger: you call me jig, coon, brownie, or powder burn one more time and you’ll see just how smart I can be.” She heard Dorey and Croaker’s hands tickle their pistols under their coats and knew they would back her up. She gave the word, they’d throw down, no questions.
Storms stuck his tongue in his cheek and rolled it around. “Fine,” he said, leaning close, as though talking to a child. His sauerkraut and sen-sen breath blew in Marie’s face. “Let me spell it out for you, Madame... you wanna open the doors on this fine establishment, you gotta have suds and bugjuice. We brew suds. You give us green, we give you suds. You and your darkie friends can play your jungle music and shake your asses while getting sauced as can be on our product, and we leave you be. Elsewise, if you wanna crack smart and try to contract elsewhere for your contraband liquor and deny us the revenue that is rightfully ours, we’ll see this place burned to the fuckin’ ground, and all your little monkey ashes mixed in with the smokin’ coals. And just for good measure, Madame, I might even stumble down here after a night off on a toot and piss on your poor, black ashes myself.” Again, the crooked grin. “Clear?”
“Clear,” Marie answered. “Let me honor you with equal clarity, Mr. Storms: we will not buy your brew. We do not want or need the cheap soap-piss you try to foist off as good beer. You will not have a dime of my money. And if you do not put your hat back on your filthy head and turn tail and leave my club in the span of twenty seconds, I will see you dead, silent, and finally respectful. Am I clear?”
Storms stared at her, shot glances at Dorey and Croaker, even looked to Papa House and his back-up. He was a big, bad bruiser, and he traveled with two dogs close at hand, but he was outnumbered, and in the wrong neighborhood. Marie wasn’t dumb enough to think that she wouldn’t have to deal with Storms or his employer again... but for the time being, her point had been made.
Storms put his homburg back on his head, jammed his hands in his pockets, and spat a neat wad of phlegm onto the floor at Marie’s feet. “You got a mouth on you, Queen Bee. Come a day soon, maybe I’ll get those flappin’ lips of yours around my schvatz.”
And with that, he was gone, and Marie was left alone again with Papa House and his bulldogs. House was smiling. Marie wanted to bust her Bloody Mary glass against his face and watch him bleed.
“Well-handled,” he said.
“Are you still here?” she asked.
House’s smile fled. He leveled a finger at her. “You’ve been warned,” he said, then made a big show of rising from his chair and putting his hat back on his head again. He towered over her, but Marie didn’t move. She decided that to stay where she was, seated, in his shadow, but totally unafraid, was the best of all possible approaches.
Then she heard Gideon’s voice off to her right, approaching at last from the kitchens.
“There a problem, Queen Bee?” he asked as he neared.
Madame Marie looked up at Solomon House and smiled. She saw the fury and confusion on his face; saw that, for the moment, she had the upper hand and had done a fine job mind-fucking him. “No, Gideon, dear. Papa was just leaving.”
House did as he was told, and Marie finished her Bloody Mary.
Chapter 3
The name on his birth certificate was Booker Dubois Butler Corveaux, but the shingle that hung in front of his ground-floor office at 220 West 136th Street, just west of 7th Avenue, said simply:
B. D. CORVEAUX, M.D.
Though he owned the building and had keys to every door, inside and out—a fact unknown to almos
t everyone except for the dentist and attorney who were ground-floor office space tenants—he nonetheless always arrived by the public entrance in front. His secretary and nurse, Cecile, used to think this strange, but she knew his habits well now, and thought so no longer.
Every morning, before the sun was up, the young doctor took a long walk—meditation and exercise in one, he would tell her—then stop for a leisurely breakfast at some cozy little kitchenette, and finally arrive back where he started at around eight in the morning. Sometimes he would have an early morning walk-in, but most of the time his appointments didn’t begin until nine and carried through until one in the afternoon. Then, he went out again for a one hour lunch, and upon returning, saw patients straight through until five or six in the evening. Usually, Dr. Corveaux remained in the office, finishing paperwork, making notes, and considering the health of his patients long after Cecile was already tipping out the door for the evening.
Thus, he was a creature of habit, and Cecile found that part of his personality comforting.
But there was another side to him as well. He could be puzzling and contradictory, moody and mysterious. Cecile made a point of never asking too many questions—he was her employer, after all, and it just wasn’t proper—but she was curious nonetheless, and had extracted some information both directly and indirectly in the six months she had been in his employ.
Observation told her that he was a handsome young man of dark chocolate complexion, with serious eyes and a mouth that could alternately support terrible, ponderous frowns or bright, blinding grins. She didn’t know if he sang, or even if he went to church on Sundays, but his silky basso profundo voice suggested that he could belt a spiritual with the best of them, or possibly even dabble in opera, if he so desired.
He was born in Louisiana, raised by a northern-born Negro father and southern-born Creole mother. At least part of his childhood was spent on a sugar cane plantation in Haiti, and his maternal family name, Corveaux, was well known around the world as a high quality brand of rum. He was also a decorated serviceman of the Great War, having served with Harlem’s own favored sons, the 369th Infantry Division. That part of his past was no real mystery, for the young doctor kept a large photograph on the wall of the 369th’s triumphant return march down Lenox Avenue, and would proudly point to a certain little black dot in the crowd of soldiers on parade in the photo and say, whenever asked, “There I am, right there, in full dress. Bet the white man never saw so many Negroes with rifles in one spot, eh?”
