He descended the vertiginous steps to the basement club, into a physical reek of stale beer. Pepper disapproved of places with only one way in and out. Trapped smells, trapped people. The bouncer at the bottom of the stairs was a beefy crimson-faced white guy in a leather biker jacket, with a long beard cinched by multicolored rubber bands. In his work clothes （which were his always clothes）， denim trousers and a brown canvas trucker jacket, Pepper didn’t resemble the usual clientele. He gave his name as Zippo Flood, and the guy waved him in. Roscoe Pope’s manager had put the director on the list.
The comedian had not been on set yet—they weren’t doing his scenes until next Monday—but Pepper had already heard tales of the man’s erratic behavior. Noise complaints from other guests at the Hotel McAlpin, an implication of midnight bongos, a transvestite hooker who beat the night manager with her high heels when asked to stop smoking cigars in the elevator. According to Zippo, Pope and Lucinda Cole had some sort of history out in Hollywood, and the hotel manager said that the night she disappeared, the staff had seen her with Roscoe. When Zippo called his room, Roscoe told him to go fuck himself. Hence Pepper’s mission downtown.
He squeezed through the mob and pried open a spot along the wall through a familiar combo of physicality and glares. The room contained nine small round cocktail tables, all taken, and the crowd jostled in every free space. Pope currently had a hit record in Memo from Dr. Goodpussy and while he was in town he was trying out new material in a series of secret gigs, Zippo had said. The secret was out.
The opener was onstage, the Negro ventriloquist Leroi Banks and his li’l buddy Mr. Charles. Pepper had caught him on Red Skelton a few times. Mr. Charles’s Afro had kept pace with the times and now possessed an audacious circumference. Banks had dressed him in jeans and a jean jacket over a red satin shirt with a yellow polka-dot ascot. The ventriloquist dressed square, as befitting a straight man, in dark slacks and a yellow argyle sweater. Cigarette smoke slow-danced in a cone under the stage lights.
Mr. Charles said, “Halfway to Vegas I get up to stretch, dig, and I start rapping to the stewardess. Asks me if I’ve ever heard of the ‘Mile High Club.’？” He had a deep voice, and his head swished back and forth, painted eyelids fluttering.
Leroi whistled. “Man, I hope you kept it discreet.”
“I thought so—but when I got back to my seat, my old lady had my number.”
“She called you out?”
“I had sawdust on my pants.”
You never see a fat ventriloquist. Pepper was of the mind that this reflected the parasitic nature of the relationship, wherein the puppet leeches the life essence of the puppeteer. Which gave him an idea for a diet craze: the mass adoption of puppet sidekicks. Send the price of lumber through the roof. From time to time his mind turned to business ventures.
Pepper crossed his arms through the next routine, wherein man and puppet debated the finer points of romance, with the former endorsing the gentlemanly approach and the latter a more aggressive system. Vulgarities were expressed. “You a sap,” Mr. Charles decided, “a stone-cold sap.” If Pepper had a dummy that talked to him like that, he’d choke the motherfucker. Sitting on a man’s lap.
Leroi Banks and his friend took a bow—Pepper got the sense the applause was more for the approach of the main attraction. There was a white couple seated at a table a few feet away, with an extra chair. The woman wore a dress with a bright floral pattern, and the man a slim black suit, with horn-rimmed glasses. He’d been writing things down in a pad—a critic for a newspaper or a G-man investigating an obscenity case. Pepper sat down and turned the chair away from the table. He nodded at the white couple, who traded nervous looks and moved their cocktails close. Look, his lower back was sore from the movie job. Usually he didn’t work so many days in a row.
A wisecracking yippie type bounced onstage, the MC. He shared a few nasal cracks about mayor-elect Beame （“You have to admire a man who runs for captain of the Titanic”） and introduced Roscoe Pope. Pope took two steps onstage, gasped at the crowd in mock horror, and pretended to retreat in fear. He adjusted the microphone stand. He was disheveled, in wrinkled green corduroy pants and black satin baseball jacket.
“Great to be back in New York,” he said. “The Big Apple. Catch up with some friends. See my man Christian. He’s a smooth cat, always a good time with Christian. But—why do parents name their kids after stuff that’s about them? It’s great that you have God in your life, you don’t have to bring your kid into it. I like a lot of things. Should I name my kid Eating Pussy? ‘Here’s my son, Eating Pussy.’ That’s not right. Hang a sign on a child for some shit you like.”
The audience laughed and Pope’s face changed: They had passed his test. Now he could do as he pleased. It was like when you impress bystanders or hostages with the fact that you’ll hurt them if they get in your way, Pepper thought—they grant permission. Pope pressed on, taunting a couple foolish enough to sit in the front row: “Your man eat your pussy? No?” Relishing the mischief. “These two going to be fighting all the way home now. Why don’t you ever eat the pussy, dear?” He let them off the hook and struck up a bit about a black crime fighter named the Red Conk, who gains superpowers after applying radioactive hair straightener. He has various adventures until he gets lynched by Super Cracker for using his X-ray vision on a white lady. “Strung his ass up. That’s why I don’t mess with white women—when anybody’s looking.” Followed by an autopsy of Gone with the Wind. “This white bitch talking about, Oh, no, they’re going to burn my house down. They should burn your house down, bitch, you’re a slave master. I had a match, I’d burn it down myself.”
He reached for the glass of water on the little stool beside him. “We get movies like that because they don’t teach history right. In school? All sorts of shit you don’t know. ‘George Washington crossing the Delaware.’ It’s a famous moment in American history. They don’t tell you he was crossing the river because he heard there were some slaves on sale. Row, bitch—I got that Founding Father discount!”
A white lady up front yelled “Preach!” and a hulking, potbellied man in hepcat sunglasses along the back wall guffawed in anticipation of every punch line. Knew all the routines. On that coke, probably. He was a fan, but also part of the gang, a generation that took for granted that a black man could talk like that and not get his ass shot. What kind of rooms did Pope play in the South—mixed places like this, or chitlin joints, or not at all? Pepper had heard the comedian was far-out, picturing one of those button-down Bill Cosby types, but a bit rougher. This was a new-type Negro before him, and a room full of people tuned in to his wild style. The Nefertiti film crew, the college kids, now this hip downtown assortment—he was up to his ears with this new breed and their new shit.
Like at this table with the white couple. The man jotted notes, but also laughed along with the room. He wasn’t a Fed; he probably worked for The Village Voice or one of those underground rags where they teach you how to make your own bootleg bomb. （Pepper’s opinion on this matter obeyed the Fried Chicken Principle: Why make it when you can buy it?） Pope must be on a government watch list or two. How many times did they arrest Lenny Bruce? For running his mouth. Treat a white man like that, what would they do to a black man?