Bacall was struck by a Lexington Avenue streetcar in 1911. The townhouse remained empty until it was bought fourteen years later by a trio of distinguished Harlemites: Dr. William T. Frye, physician; Clement Lanford, the famous lawyer and uptown political boss; and Al Gibson, of the Gibson Funeral Home. They had traveled separate paths to a place of prominence, distinction, and influence—time to start a club to mark who was of their rank and who was not. They purchased the property jointly and sold it to the Dumas Corporation a few years later.
The oversized Queen Anne townhouse was forty feet wide and a story taller than the surrounding homes. Against those more modest brownstones, it became a neighborhood landmark. They didn’t make them like that anymore, with gables and green-shingled turrets, the curved windows and broad stoops. The days of such flamboyant design were long past. The days of more relaxed fire codes as well. The tiny basement windows were a nightmare if firefighters needed to ventilate a blaze, and the dumbwaiters, window shafts, and rear servant stairs provided an all-too-convenient thoroughfare for a blaze. An intense fire in the cockloft might destroy the roof supports and cause the top floors to collapse. No, it would never meet code today.
It was nonetheless an impressive building from the outside and a site of local fascination. Kids called it “the Mansion,” on account of its scale and the parade of nattily attired Negro gentlemen strutting in and out of its grand doors. Ray Carney had been one of the neighborhood kids in awe of the place. Who were these men? Their suits were amazing, exquisitely tailored, sober but not without flair, unlike the cheap getups of his father and his crooked circle, garish, redolent of last week’s whiskey and brawls. He needed to know what kind of men they were, and what happened inside. All these years later, after Carney did learn who they were, the texture and grain of their character, and had joined their number, he occasionally took a step back, when the mists of animosity parted temporarily, and appreciated what that generation had accomplished and what it meant to carve out a space for themselves in America. No, they didn’t make them like that anymore.
Pepper parked the Buick on 121st off Manhattan Ave. Quarter past midnight. Last call at the Club on Tuesday nights was ten, the waiters started fussing and straightening up around dawdling guests at ten-forty-five and come eleven-thirty it was lights out and front doors locked. Carney heard the Legend of the Keys soon after he joined, the holy keys to the Dumas Club in the possession of the inner circle. One might bring a woman there after hours, or finalize a scheme to enrich one’s bank accounts or prospects. Oakes’s father had likely been so blessed, and the keys itemized in the man’s will as an heirloom. If the old guard got wind of the late-night confabs between Democratic candidate Alexander Oakes and killer Reece Brown, they would’ve condemned them as a perversion of the club charter, but Carney saw them for what they were: Business as usual.
He asked Pepper where he stashed Oakes’s files.
“That shit’s still in the trunk.”
“You didn’t look at it?”
“What for? I know what it is. Stuff he cares about that pisses him off that he don’t got it. I hadn’t got around to figuring out how to use it.”
“You didn’t look at any of it?”
“These guys, it’s all the same shit.”
Shit: The names of prominent lawyers, judges, prosecutors, the heads of insurance firms, various criminals, firebugs, politicians on the take, big-time developers handing out stacks of cash, community organizers pocketing Albany funds, and whoever else Oakes was entwined with.
He had a point. Shit fit.
Powerful men nonetheless. Carney’s business was in the yellow pages, his house in the white: He was easy to find. “I’ll take it in,” he said. “It’s me they got leverage on.” Pepper didn’t have a wife and kids to threaten. Carney had roped him into his mess. The fire that afternoon, whatever waited in the Dumas—it was Carney’s punishment. Pepper could hop on a Greyhound and set himself up in Maryland—or was it Delaware?—where he knew some people. He didn’t have to go inside.
“No, they got leverage on me,” Pepper said. “They said next time it’ll be your house. Your house? They’re going to fuck with your house? I got a room in there.”
“Okay, Pepper.”
Out on the street, Pepper retrieved the black garbage bag from the trunk and slung it over his shoulder like a crooked Santa Claus. Carney chuckled. Pepper gave him an irritated look.
“Do you have a gun?” Carney asked.
In other words, What was the plan? “I have a .38 they’ll take when we walk in,” Pepper said. “I got it off Hickey so it’s theirs anyway.” Reece and Oakes had to find out what they knew about their business. Who else knows. Did they return everything they stole. “What are we going to do? Got to get in there and have a look-see.”
Not an inspiring report. Before today, Carney would’ve had a hard time seeing Oakes getting his dainty, well-moisturized hands dirty—it was the Dumas Club, for Chrissakes—but they had torched his store that morning and the gangster’s profession was, actually, killing and maiming. The money involved bent all forecasts. “Who’s the Red Conk?” he asked. “Yesterday you called me that.”
“That comedian, Roscoe Pope, when I was working on that movie. It was one of his comedy routines. A Negro with superpowers.”
Carney stopped. “What happens in it?”
“What do you think happens? He’s a Negro with superpowers— they take him out. He thinks they can’t touch him, until they do. I thought Pope was talking about himself. Being famous, the newspapers go after him, or the cops. But nobody’s out to get that guy. When Pope goes down, it’s himself that will do it. He gets himself.”
Two brownstones down, a man on the second floor stuck his head out the window: “Can you shut the fuck up down there?”
Carney tilted his head toward the corner, where the streetlights described the majestic silhouette of the Dumas Club.
* * *
***
Given the circumstances, it was foolish for Carney to expect Carl to open the door for him as on any other day, but he did. “Get in,” Reece Brown said. He quickly closed the door behind them. The drapes in every window permitted no light to escape. From the street, the club was closed for the night.
Pepper had told Carney that Reece favored a Black Panther getup, but in the June heat he’d ditched the black leather blazer and stood before them in the foyer in black slacks and white short-sleeve turtleneck. He wore dark sunglasses, so incongruous in the Dumas atmosphere that for a moment Carney forgot about the gun Reece pointed at him.
The gangster motioned for them to raise their hands. The black garbage bag swung from Pepper’s right hand. Reece made a disapproving face at their choice of carrying case. He took the black garbage bag and patted them down, removing the .38 from Pepper’s windbreaker pocket. “Oakes!” He waved them into the parlor.
Alexander Oakes was mixing a gin cocktail. The sleeves of his crisp white oxford shirt were rolled up and his red-and-navy-striped tie was tucked between buttons. Carney had never stepped behind the mahogany bar; the waiters snapped at members who got too close, in a kind of shtick. It was an entitled display, as if despite the guns Oakes was a little boy engaged in dumb mischief. Dumb, dangerous mischief that got his store burned down.