by Pascal Marco
“I don’t really know any more,” said Clayton. “I’ve been a politician so long, playing both sides of the fence. Ya know, I don’t really know—” Clayton’s voice trailed off.
Stan sat, his glare burning a hole to the side of the senator’s head. Was this just another campaign speech? No politician today spoke more eloquently than his one-time boyhood friend, a candidate who cut equally across both racial and political lines. Senator Clayton R. Thomas stood a very credible chance of becoming the next president of the United States of America, leader of the entire free world. Right now, Stan felt like kicking his black ass across Lake Shore Drive, back to the projects where he came from.
“James, there is something I should tell you.” The senator looked up at him, looking to Stan as if he were uncertain if he should continue.
“Well?” Stan prodded him.
“Pick knows I knew where they were hiding you all these years.”
CHAPTER 38
Monroe “Pick” Clarke strode into The Negro League Café and took his regular seat on a stool at the end of a long, acrylic-coated bar. The Negro League Café had opened its doors for business a little more than fifteen months earlier. Local favorite son, U.S. Senator Clayton R. Thomas, who grew up a mile away, had participated in the ribbon-cutting ceremony that late July day in 2004—the 29th to be exact. A coincident fact not mentioned at the festivities was that twenty-nine years earlier, to the day, Manny Fleischman had been murdered only a half-mile east of the establishment’s 43rd Street and Prairie Avenue address. Thomas had performed his dignitary’s role at the café’s opening far more honorably than his part as accomplice to murder in Burnham Park a lifetime earlier.
The 43rd street watering hole and eatery had become the regular meeting place for the 3rd Ward Democratic Committee. Members of the group included the ward’s current alderman, Bertrand Rhodes, and the ward’s precinct captain, Tyrone Witherspoon. These two typically sat in the café’s lone corner booth under the “Wall of Fame,” the title given to an almost thirty-foot-long mural of legendary Negro League baseball players. The painting had been commissioned by the café’s owner and executed by a former, spray-painting-tagger-turned-hip-Bronzeville-artist-nouveau.
Pick’s bar seat was directly in line with a portrait in the mural of the soulful stare of Ray Dandridge. The diminutive, bow-legged Dandridge, who spent most of his playing days in the Mexican baseball leagues during the 1930s and 1940s, had become a favorite of his.
“Black folks got respect down south of the border. Yes, sir. No Jim Crow down there to keep the black man down. No sir. Uh-uh.”
Using phrases like this from his bar stool throne, Pick regularly pontificated about black pride and expounded his knowledge of the lives of the old Negro players. Those within earshot of his preacher-like sermons who bellied up for a drink at the highly polished bar had a good chance of being recipient of his regular yet uninvited soliloquies. And, if some unknowing patron possessed the ignorance to be in his seat when Pick strutted in at his usual time of two p.m. daily, then Pick would walk up to that person and in his charming voice say, “Sir, that’s the chair, man, for the chair-man.”
The politico, as it were, was referring to his unofficial title of “Chairman, 3rd Ward Democratic Committee,” of which he was a member, ex-officio. Most whom he approached obliged him by getting up, sensing as streetwise folks do that perhaps underneath his seemingly innocent request lurked a devil who’d most likely chuckle after slicing you with the switchblade he always carried hidden in the front of his pants. Others, who didn’t understand the nuance of Pick’s play on words, usually ended up being asked—”told” the more appropriate word—by the bartender on duty to take another seat at the bar.
When Senator Clayton Thomas entered the café, Clarke, Witherspoon, and Rhodes sat in the corner booth, coffee cups in hand. It was exactly 3:00 p.m. Empty now, except for those three men, the café would reopen for dinner in about two hours. Chatting in confidential tones, Pick didn’t look up when the senator entered. As an ex-P. Stone and later El Rukn gang enforcer, he had the uncanny ability to sense things 360 degrees around him, aware of everything and everyone in his presence at all times.
Clayton walked through the dark customerless room, its window blinds drawn closed to block the mid-afternoon sun, passing the diner’s empty tables. He didn’t speak until he reached the de facto 3rd Ward booth.
“Good day, gentlemen.”
“Afternoon, Senator,” Alderman Rhodes said, standing and extending his hand.
“Alderman,” Clayton replied, obliging him back by putting out his hand. He looked at Pick and Witherspoon.
“Senator.” Witherspoon said, acknowledging the Washington politician, too, with a handshake though remaining seated.
Pick neither stood nor returned Clayton’s salutation. “You wanted to see me?” Pick said without looking up.
“Yes. Seems we have a slight problem.”
“Slight?” Pick replied, looking up at him. “That’s an interesting choice of words. Are you using that word in the literal sense? For example, as in ‘Oprah has a slight weight problem.’ Or figuratively, as in ‘Oprah has a slight problem. She just found out she’s going to get audited.’?”
Rhodes and Witherspoon chuckled.
“I’m serious. It’s about Arizona. I’ve been contacted,” Clayton said. “He came by my office. ‘Bout an hour ago. Said he needed my help—”
“And what, might I ask, did you say to him?” Pick retorted.
“I didn’t say anything, just acted surprised. Ya know, seeing him after all these years.”
“Let me get this straight,” Pick said, leaning forward from his slouched position behind the table. “Our little nigger squealer shows up in your office, whom you haven’t seen in over, let’s see, thirty years? And, what? You two talk about the motherfuckin’ weather?”
“What could I say? I told him I was surprised to see him—”
Pick slammed his cup of coffee down on the table. Clayton jumped back from the hot liquid that splashed in his direction.
“‘Surprised to see him’? Did you actually say ‘surprised’?” He pointed his coffee cup directly at the senator. “I told you I would keep him alive, didn’t I? Aren’t I a man of my word? An honest man? Hey. I’m an upstanding citizen of Chicago.” He waved his cup at the others around the table. “Hell. I’m the goddamn chairman of this here organization.”
Snickers rose from Rhodes and Witherspoon.
“So. Where is he now?” Pick asked, settling down and taking a sip from what remained of his double-shot almond latte.
“He’s in Burnham. He went back there—you know—to where—”
Hearing this, Pick slammed his other hand on the table, rattling the salt-and-pepper shakers against the metal napkin holder.
“In the park? What the hell is he doing in the goddamn park?” Pick’s eruption this time even made his two cohorts shrink back in their seats. “Did you let him know that if it wasn’t for you, that if it wasn’t for our deal—” His tone lowered to a whisper as he emphasized his next words to the senator. “—that he and that pretty honky bitch wife o’ his and those two half-breed kids o’ theirs would be dead by now?”
“What could I do?” Clayton replied. “The police came to my office looking for him.”
“Poe-leese? What the goddamn hell the poe-leese doin’ lookin’ for him in your goddamn office for? What the fuck is goin’ on here?”
Pick’s boiling point drew closer.
“I don’t know. But let me find out more. He trusts me. I told him to wait for me in the park. Told him I’d get back to him. But—”
“But, what?” Pick demanded.
“But, he knows.”
“That’s it. Fuck this shit!” Pick turned to Witherspoon. “We still got those two fools Turner and DeSadier down there, right?”
“Yeah. They should be back soon,” Witherspoon replied.
“Soon my ass. They’s probably smo
kin’ and whorin’ down there with all that Mexican pussy.” Pick straightened himself up and sipped from his mug, nodding his head. “I’d be doin’ the same thing myself. Damn straight. Black man’s still treated like a king down there—respected.” He jabbed his index finger on the table in front of him. “Maybe we need to have our boys Pokie and Bobby D pay a visit to that little mo’ fo’s house. Scare the shit outta that sweet little thang wife o’ his. See if that’ll get his sorry little squealer nigger ass outta’ my park.” Pick turned once more to his longtime sidekick. “Tyrone, get ahold of those two down in Arizona and tell them—”
“No. Don’t do that!” Clayton jumped in.
Restraining himself, Pick asked, “What did you say?”
“What I meant to say is that I’d advise against that. This man’s an officer of the law now. We can’t be doin’ any of that stuff. No way. No how.”
Pick leaned over and grasped the senator’s forearm. With a magician’s deftness, the gangster pulled his switchblade from the front of his pants. A swift flick of his wrist revealed the knife’s shiny, six-inch, stainless steel blade. He pushed the senator’s hand down flat on the table and thrust the point of the stiletto between the man’s spread fingers. The razor-sharp dagger stuck deep into the wood top, narrowly missing the web between the fingers of Clayton’s hand. The senator froze.
“Don’t you ever fuckin’ tell me what I can or can’t do! Ever! You understand?”
Clayton nodded, beads of perspiration forming on his upper lip.
“You do what I tell you to do. Just like it’s always been.” Pick’s voice softened. “Okay?”
Clayton made another short quick nod. A bead of sweat dripped to the tabletop.
Pick pulled his blade out from the table where it had sunk in more than half an inch. He pointed the tip of the blade up in the air, right next to the temple of his own head, then went on. “You know. Better yet. Why don’t I go to the park and meet with my old friend Mister James Overstreet myself?”
CHAPTER 39
Before the senator had departed, he suggested to Stan that he stay in the park for at least thirty minutes. Then, Stan should meet him at The Negro League Café, one block west of his office back on 43rd Street. While Stan sat there, waiting for the prescribed time to pass, his head swam with confusion. He stared out at the lake, thinking and wondering about Clayton’s life under the control of Monroe “Pick” Clarke for the last three decades.
The deep blueness of the water had always had a calming effect on him as a boy, but today, the lake’s mysterious powers didn’t work as he tried to comprehend how Pick could’ve known about his whereabouts all these years and done nothing about it. Had he lived in fear all this time for nothing, he wondered?
Stan pulled out his cell phone. Brian Hanley should have arrived by now and the plan was for them to speak by phone within an hour of Brian’s landing at Midway Airport. But Stan’s cell phone wasn’t able to pick up a signal down along the shoreline.
No signal down here on the rocks. I’ll try again when I get back up the hill by the parking lot.
He picked himself up and double-timed it back to the parking lot where the taxi ran idling, sitar music blaring from within. The driver puffed lazily on an unfiltered cigarette.
“Twenty-ninth and Prairie!” Stan shouted through the cab’s open front passenger window as he ran up to the car and jumped in the backseat. “Hurry, please!” Stan then flipped open his cell.
“Police station? Yes, sir! No problem, sir! I step on it—just like in movies!”
The cab driver threw the car in reverse and began to back out of the gravel lot. “Uh-oh, sir,” the cabbie said. “Senator’s limo coming behind me again. No look so good.”
Hearing his words and seeing the shocked look on the cabbie’s face, Stan turned to look out the vehicle’s filmy back window. Clayton’s limo had pulled up behind the cab and hemmed it in the small lot. In order to get out now, the cabbie would have to jump an eight-inch curb less than a foot from its own front wheels. Attempting such a maneuver would necessitate a now-impossible running start. Before Stan could make any suggestions to his driver, Tyrone Witherspoon stood outside the cab’s rear door. He spoke through the open window.
“Going somewhere, James, my man?”
Stan didn’t answer as Witherspoon opened the car’s door.
“Someone back here wants to see you.” He motioned his head back toward the limo behind them. “Why don’t you come with me? Nice and easy. Okay, blood?”
Stan pushed the send key on his phone and slipped it in his pocket as he moved over to exit the taxi. But before he did, he glanced at the cab driver who Stan saw was watching his movements in the rearview mirror. Stan shot a wink at the cabbie. The driver caught his facial gesture and smiled back with a small nod.
“You packin’?” Tyrone asked him.
Stan shook his head.
“Good. Don’ want no accidents out here in dis beautiful park of ours. We’ve worked real hard makin’ this a family friendly place now, ya know.” Witherspoon pointed to a tot lot about fifty feet from them filled with shiny new playground equipment. “Third Ward Democratic Club bought all these swings and bouncy horses. For all the poor children still livin’ ‘round here, ya know. Givin’ back to the community is what they call it.”
“That’s very big of you. I’m sure there’s a plaque dedicated to Manny Fleischman somewhere around here, too.”
“Still the smart-ass little nigger? Still think you’re better than any of us.”
Stan didn’t answer, but merely walked back toward the senator’s black limousine, Witherspoon right behind him, one hand tucked inside his windbreaker jacket, the other holding a cigarette. The back door of the limo opened. Out stepped Pick.
“Well if it isn’t James motherfuckin’ Overstreet. How the hell are you, my man? Welcome home, blood!” Pick extended his hand for a soul shake. Stan stood motionless. “Well, now. Too big and important I see to shake a brother’s hand. Is dat it?”
Stan didn’t reply.
“So. What brings you back to the beautiful Windy City? Back to the old neighborhood here. Wanna see how us poor folk are doin’?”
Stan still remained silent.
“Whassa matter? Cat got your tongue? Or maybe you don’t understand me or sumpin’? Huh? ‘Dat it?”
“I understand you perfectly, Pick.”
“Well, now. You can talk. And it don’t sound like you talk none of that street nigger shit we talk here either. You got that educated sound. White bread is what real brothers like myself call it. Maybe you’s an Oreo now. Huh? Is dat it?”
“Fuck you,” Stan replied.
“Shiiiiiit. Listen to this mo’ fo’, Tyrone. Dat ain’t no way for a big time, smart-ass, white bread, educated lawyer to be talkin’. Is it now?” Pick turned to Witherspoon, looking for a response.
Like a puppet on a string, he obliged his boss. “No, sir. Un-uh. Can’t talk like that in no Arizona courtroom for sure.”
“And I’ll bet for damn sure you don’t talk like that in front of that honky bitch wife of yours neither,” Pick added. He pulled a pack of Kool cigarettes from inside his leather jacket and offered the pack to Stan.
“Those’ll kill you,” Stan said. “Of course, you’ve got nine lives, so I’m sure you don’t worry about that.”
“You got that right, Mister James Overstreet. Got me nine lives. Just like a cat. A real cool cat. Nothin’ ain’t goin’ to keep ol’ Monroe Clarke down. Always one step ahead of the man.”
Pick stood there with the unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. He then lit it with Tyrone’s smoke and took a deep drag on the filter-tipped Kool Light. He looked the epitome of a jive-talking, South Side Chicago, gangbanger, Stan thought.
“Well, I’m here to tell you, your streak of luck is about to come to an end,” Stan said.
“Is that right? And how, might I ask, do you propose to bring about my demise?”
“Well, I think th
e phrase we use in my line of work is, ‘That’s for me to know and for you to find out.’ “
Pick laughed, throwing his head back and looking up at the cloudless blue sky. “Shiiiit. Dat sounds more to me like schoolgirls talkin’ on the playground, not big man stuff we’s talkin’ about here.” He eyeballed Stan with a venomous look. “So, if you’ve come here to play some kind of game with me I’d think twice about it. See, you remember Pokie and Bobby? Don’t you? ‘Course you do. What am I thinkin’?” He inhaled again on the Kool and blew the smoke in Stan’s face. “Well, dem two boys of mine is down Arizona way, doin’ a little work for me and your ol’ friend, Clayton. I asked Tyrone here to ring dose boys up and have ‘em go pay a little house call on the pretty little honky bitch wife of yours.”
Stan remained silent but began to crack his knuckles.
“Oh. Gonna’ play brave now, thinkin’ you won’t let this news upset you. Very admirable. Very admirable.” He nodded and shrugged his shoulders. “‘Ceptin’, I got no control of Pokie when he gets mad. ‘Specially all da way down there in, whadya you call it? Oh yeah—da valley of da sun. Dat’s it. I like dat name.” He dragged again on his Kool and spoke with the cigarette in his mouth. “Well, I mean to tell you dat man Pokie got no discipline. No self-control of his very bad temper. No, sir. It’s a real shame. Real shame. Now, me? I got plenty o’ control. Nothin’ rattles my little world.” Pick pulled the smoke from his lips and pointed the cigarette at Stan. “Not even James motherfuckin’ Overstreet comin’ back into it after thirty some years. The little cocksucker who went to the poe-leese and told them all about what he saw dat day in the park. Matter of fact, not too far from here, if I remember correctly.” Pick pointed south down the path with his cigarette between his first two fingers. “Why don’t we take a little walk down there to the—what’d our attorney, Miss Poindexter, call it again, Tyrone?”
