market, Angelo Scalise exited the alley next to the Elite Cabaret, wiping the blood off his hands with a hanky. The night was dark and cold and not a soul was on the street; but the Elite was open, and so was the restaurant next door, Pig Foot Heaven, out of which came smells so foul Angelo thought he might puke. A few other storefronts were open on these couple of blocks; several bars, a barbecue stand, and a barbershop-numbers drop, where the 'hep cats' paid to get their kinky hair straightened ('conked') by a mixture of Vaseline and potash lye.
In a black tailored suit with a black shirt and white tie and a black fedora with white band, Angelo looked as dapper as a zoot-suited Negro pimp. But he would have hated to hear that comparison: He had only contempt for 'niggers.' The only thing he liked about niggers was their money. The dumb monkeys were poor as piss ants but they gambled every damn day of their life, trying to hit that, lucky number. He laughed to himself, wadding the bloody handkerchief, kneeling at a nearby steaming sewer grating, where he dumped it. He stood and lit up a cigarette and smiled.
A couple exited the Elite, dressed to the teeth. The man, a big, chiseled-featured Negro of fifty-some years, wore a camel-hair topcoat, under which flashed a yellow silk shirt and a dark blue tie; he had fingers full of jewelry- the gaudiest example being a heavy gold signet with a ruby, which was his lodge ring-but the woman on his arm was equally expensive. A 'high-yellow gal' in buffalo-fur coat under which could be glimpsed a low-cut dress as pink as Pepto-Bismol. Her high heels clicked on the pavement. Both man and woman were bathed in neon, the man's dark complexion and her lighter one turning strange decorative shades.
The man was Willie 'the Emperor' Rushing, one of the policy kings that Angelo and his cousin Sal had moved in on, five years ago. Willie resented the Mayfield gang-of that Angelo had no doubt-but the Emperor was their boy, now. With the expansion beyond the black district that the Mayfield gang had encouraged and made possible, Willie-even with kicking back 40 percent to Lombardi and Scalise-was still making good dough. Not what he had in the old days, Angelo realized; but Willie was alive and well, which was more than Rufus Murphy and dozens of others other could say-if dead niggers could talk.
Willie and his woman stood at the curb; they were waiting for a taxi or their driver, Angelo supposed. Willie was whispering in the giggly girl's ear; she was drunk or hyped on something. Angelo cleared his throat.
Willie looked over sharply; his eyes were as penetrating as knife blades. But his face softened into an insincere smile on seeing Angelo.
'Mr. Scalise,' he said, abandoning the girl and walking toward Angelo. The way he said 'mister' made it sound like 'mist.'
'Willie. Out for a big night? Is that your new wife?'
'I ain't married yet, Mr. Scalise.' Willie's smile was an ivory gash in his charcoal face. The Emperor had been married four times, each time to a showgirl like this yellow bitch undoubtedly was.
'What's the latest on these Pittsburgh boys, Willie?'
Willie shook his head. 'Like I tol' you on the phone, Mr. Scalise, they is cutting in on our business something fierce. We oughta do something.'
'We will. You been approached?'
'Me?'
'You.'
Willie thought about that; tasted his tongue. Then he smiled and said, 'Yeah, I was havin' a talk with 'em just this evening. I tol' 'em they could put their money where the sun don't shine.'
Angelo smiled; he patted the older man on the shoulder and said, 'You're a good boy, Willie.' The Emperor's face tightened, just barely, around his eyes.
Then Willie said, 'The one you oughta talk to is name of Rosato.'
'Rosato. Yeah. So I hear.'
'He's the turkey you're after, Mr. Scalise.'
Angelo gestured with his cigarette in hand, toward the nightclub behind them. 'Hangs out here, I hear.'
'Yes, sir. He in there now.'
'So you were just talking to him.'
'That's right.'
'You didn't mention that.'
'I said they was coaxin' me this evening, Mr. Scalise.'
Tension was pulled tight as a wire in the nighttime quiet. A cat yowled and broke the moment.
Angelo smiled. 'So you did, son. So you did.'
Willie smiled synthetically and said, 'Got to get back to my woman.'
'I wouldn't mind a taste of that little biffa myself.'
Angelo had just referred to the woman as a whore, in street parlance.
'She ain't that kind of gal, Mr. Scalise,' Willie said, quietly. He wasn't smiling now.
Angelo shrugged. 'No offense, Willie. Hey, here's your cab. Don't miss it.'
A yellow cab had just rolled up. Willie nodded and turned to join his antsy high-yellow gal and Angelo called out to him gently, 'Don't worry about those Pittsburgh punks, Willie. By morning they'll be yesterday's news.'
Willie had an arm around the girl's fur-clad shoulder; she was as jumpy as a facial twitch. Willie flashed his ivory grin and said, 'Hope so, Mr. Scalise. Them odds they're givin' is givin' us fits.'
The Emperor held the back door open for his woman, who got in, flashing a well-turned calf in a silk stocking. Yes indeed, Angelo thought, I'd certainly like a taste of that. Angelo's prejudices had their limits.
Angelo sauntered into the low-ceilinged, modern bar. Pale copper wall lighting stained the tables where flashily attired patrons, black and white and many a shade in between, sat smoking, drinking, chatting. Smooth hustlers with conked hair sat playing sex games with their yellow chorus-girl bitches, whose faces were powdered ghost-white, long lacquered nails redder than blood, full mouths bruised a similar red. Blue-gray smoke streams twisted upward lazily through the murkily lit room, blending with the smell of whiskey, perfume, and sweat. The bandstand was empty, but the juke-box was pounding out Count Basic's 'One O'clock Jump,' and some couples, black and white, were cutting up a rug. Angelo didn't mind the music-you couldn't keep your damn toe from tapping to that jungle shit-but he didn't like seeing whites and coloreds mixing like that; but at least the whites were dancing with whites and blacks with blacks. Still, all in all, this old world was going to hell in a hand basket.
This was one place where policy racketeers of both colors, and anybody with money and the inclination, could mingle. But it was not the kind of place where Angelo would go for any reason but business. Eyes flickered his way, though not obviously, as Angelo moved toward the circular mahogany bar. He ordered a whiskey and surveyed the room.
Johnny Rosato was seated at a corner booth with two of his cronies. They were parleying with a colored kid named Freddy Douglass. Douglass was a slickly dressed young man who worked for Frank Hogey, or anyway had, before Hogey got shut down, at least temporarily, by that bastard Ness.
Douglass was (though of course Angelo did not know it) the man who had been standing talking to his girlfriend on the back steps of the house Ness had raided earlier that week.
The four men had apparently not noticed Angelo come in, caught up in their own wheeling and dealing.
Angelo finished his whiskey, waved off the black-uniformed bartender's offer of another. All of Angelo's drinks here were on the house, of course. He had much the same privileges as a cop.
He walked cockily over to Rosato's table. Douglass caught first sight of Angelo, and his eyes were large and white in his dark face. Feet do yo' stuff, Angelo thought, and laughed to himself.
Rosato, a heavy-set, nattily dressed man of about twenty-five, looked up at Angelo, blankly.
'You want something?' Rosato asked, with bland menace.
The other two, also well-dressed, a skinny kid of perhaps twenty with pockmarks and a short, sallow, dead- eyed hood, looked at Angelo with immediate contempt. None of them-except Douglass-recognized him.
'Mr. Scalise,' Douglass said, nervously, starting to get up. 'I was just havin' a friendly drink…'
The white men at the table did their best to show no reaction to the name 'Scalise'; all of them, to one extent or another, failed, although the dead-eyed one did the best job of it.
'Go over to the bar, Freddy,' Angelo said. 'I want a private word with these gents.'
'Sure thing, Mr. Scalise,' Freddy said, and climbed out of the booth quick as a rabbit.
'Freddy,' Scalise said, without looking at him. 'Don't leave the premises. Stick around.'
'Sure thing, Mr. Scalise,' he said, and was gone. Jesse Owens couldn't have beat him to the bar.
'Have a seat, Scalise,' Rosato said.
