Pope chuckled at something he said, like he, too, couldn’t believe he hadn’t been strung up yet. “A lot of folks in the ’hood don’t like white people,” he said. “Because of history. But how could you not dig them? They’re everywhere. Like dirt. Can’t hate dirt. You may not want it in your house, but it does good stuff. Plants and trees live in it. For instance.”
Pope sipped his water. “White dude in the back is like, I liked his comedy routine until he started getting racial.” He snickered.
A pale, skinny chick in overalls and a bright green cardigan weaved her way through the bodies. She elbowed a man in the stomach or stepped on his foot and he barked at her. No, it was too packed for Pepper’s taste. Fire breaks out, a crazy son of a bitch with a pistol or a switchblade, cops on the hunt—there was no easy escape if something popped up. Hazel had dragged him to these tiny places a few times, to see music or have a drink, and she made a point of making fun of his skittishness. “What’d you, rob a bank?” He’d grin. It was nice when someone got your number. Not that she knew what he did for a living, but she got a general handle on him pretty quickly. Probably why she split on him.
Roscoe Pope’s body turned plastic—stout and militant, then wilting in cowardice, then staggering half in the bag—and his voice equally supple as he cycled through guises and characters. Preacher, white dude, ghetto dude, angry sister, the neighborhood wino, as if he were a transmitter hooked up to the private thoughts of a cramped subway car. Also Richard Nixon: “Get that nigger Khrushchev on the phone!” Despite Pepper’s certitude that the man was a jerk, he admired the fearlessness. It was like what he felt about Zippo—the kid was tedious but it took guts to fight inside the white man’s system. You had to believe in your invincibility. Be a superhero, like the Red Conk, like Nefertiti. The Red Conk got strung up. Pepper hadn’t read the screenplay so he had to wait to find out what happens to Nefertiti.
“Saw in the paper that the oldest man in Africa died,” Pope said. “Oldest man in Africa—he was a hundred and ten. Can you imagine? Killed himself. No, he did. Left a note saying, God forgot me. God forgot me. I know—that’s heavy. I’d never kill myself. I like pussy too much. Cocaine’s not bad either.” He made a greedy snorting sound.
“Grim Reaper come knocking on my door when I’m fucking, I’d be like, Come back in five minutes, I’m about to bust that nut. Okay—one minute. Fine—thirty seconds. But suicide is always sad. Bible says it’s a sin. Unless you’re a hundred and ten. You make it to a hundred and ten you can do whatever you want. White people haven’t killed you yet, you get a free pass. Look, bitch, I’ve seen everything. I’m outta here.”
Pepper crept as close as he could to the stage before the standing ovation retarded his progress. Then he muscled through to the backstage hallway. If he noticed the irritation and anger of those he jostled and pushed, there was no external indication. In the hallway, Pope dallied with two women who’d been sitting in the front row, his finger diddling the coin return of an old pay phone.
“Pope.”
The comedian scanned Pepper up and down—the clothes, the lines in his face. He refrained from whatever crack he was going to make. “Yes, brother?” He winked at someone behind Pepper and made his fingers into pistols.
“I work for the film company,” Pepper said. “Secret Agent: Nefertiti—”
“Man, I told that fool I don’t know where that dizzy bitch is.”
Pepper touched his arm, lightly.
Pope’s eyebrows bent. He turned conciliatory. “Let me use the john,” he said. “I’ll be out in a minute. That okay with you?”
Pepper nodded and moved out of the corridor, toward the small steps that led to the stage. The room was clearing, buzzing as the audience traded impressions. If white people haven’t killed you yet, you can do what you want. You didn’t have to reach a hundred years to get to that place. In a world this low, dumb, and cruel, every day white people ain’t killed you yet is a win. It was after midnight. He’d survived another gauntlet.
As for Lucinda Cole—had she made it through? Overdosed somewhere. Holed up in a drug den. In need of someone to drag her ass out before something permanent went down. “I’m coming,” Pepper said aloud, he don’t know why. It came out irritated and weary.
After five minutes, he realized he was wrong—there was a back entrance after all. He walked down the hallway. The ventriloquist poked his head out of his dressing room, disappointed to see Pepper and not whoever he was expecting.
“You just missed him,” Banks said. The dressing room opposite was empty. The ventriloquist pointed to a stairwell lit by a red lightbulb. Up the steps it led to the back alley that the Sassy Crow shared with the tiny club next door.
Wring that little bastard’s neck.
FOUR
Pepper lived in a two-room apartment above the Martinez Funeral Home, corner of 143rd and Convent. The sound of the organ swam between the floorboards like a ghost. “The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, Is Ended,” “All People That on Earth Do Dwell,” etc. It wasn’t too bad, living over the dead. It was like living on top of the subway, which he had also done for a time: Commuter or corpse, those below were just people in transit, en route to where they had to be. On occasion he sat by the window and ate egg sandwiches in the Egon recliner Carney got him a few years back and worked on his theory about which mourners are the last to leave the service.
The next morning found him up early, energized by revenge scenarios. A younger man would have stormed over to Roscoe Pope’s hotel last night, manhandled security, and busted into the comedian’s room. With age came pragmatism. These days a good night’s sleep was more important than appeasing one’s taste for payback. The sooner he hit the hay, the more rested he’d be for tomorrow’s asskicking.
The Hotel McAlpin was in Herald Square, thick of it, a twenty-five-story red brick behemoth hunched on Broadway. Decent folks complained about Times Square these days, what with the pimps and hookers and pickpockets and general seedy weather. Pepper thought Herald Square was worse. He had arranged his life to avoid concentrated messes like Herald Square, places where the straight world gathered to conduct their day-to-day. He timed this visit so that he’d miss the morning rush hour and precede the lunch-hour discharge from the dour high-rises. Nine-thirty A.M.—also before the pilgrims from the boroughs and Long Island and Jersey hit the famous department stores, Macy’s, Gimbels, Korvettes, and other shrines.
He had to admit it—the first time he saw Herald Square, years ago, before the war, he was impressed with the white man’s skyscrapers, the white man’s towering apartment buildings, the glass-walled restaurants, those big stores crammed with all the stuff he couldn’t touch. A few miles uptown, Harlem was beginning its slide, in burned-out tenements full of ghosts and stores that never reopened, the schools without schoolbooks. Herald Square had caught up in the years since. It always catches up—the consequences of how you’ve chosen to live, and people all over the city were choosing poorly. The indifferent attitude toward sanitation now included midtown, where gross pyramids of trash ruled the street corners. Newsstand racks gloried over the details of last night’s terrible crimes. EVERYTHING MUST GO and LAST CHANCE and 75% OFF signs were on the march up Eighth and Ninth Avenues, advancing on Herald Square in scattered forays. Pepper had never voted, but the current state of affairs was almost enough to get him to make some inquiries about the process.