numbers investigation is different. That's a nice juicy crime story with your popular mug right in the middle of it. That, my friend, will get the usual headlines, black-face players or not.'
Ness glowered. 'A white cop was killed. What about that?'
Wild raised an unconcerned eyebrow. 'It got some play.'
'For a cop killing, minor. Nothing big enough for a byline. And no mention of any Negro connection, other than the address itself.'
Wild shrugged, then scowled. 'Hey, I'm freezing my nuts off. Let's blow.'
Ness looked at him carefully. 'You did write a story, didn't you?'
'Yeah, yeah, I wrote a story. My managing editor killed it. I knew he would, but hell-I thought if I wrote it up snazzy, and mentioned your name a couple times, I'd get my Pulitzer.'
'You do care.'
'Huh?'
'About the people on that side of town.'
'Oh, yeah. I'm a regular missionary. Can we go?'
They got into the EN-1 sedan.
'Got a heater in this thing?' Wild said, rubbing his hands together, cigarette bobbing up and down in his mouth like a thermometer in the mouth of an impatient child.
'Yeah,' Ness said, starting the car. The heat came on immediately; it was still warmed up from driving over.
Wild sighed contentedly. 'God bless the taxpayers. They think of everything.'
'Why don't you invest in some gloves?'
'I already did. I gave 'em away.'
'Gave 'em away?'
Ness pulled out onto Payne.
'Yeah,' Wild said. 'To a colored guy last night.'
Ness looked at him sharply. 'What colored guy?'
Wild shrugged, grinned. 'The one who was gonna find some stuff out for me, by this afternoon. The one we're gonna go talk to right now.'
CHAPTER 13
Karamu Theater was part of Playhouse Settlement, three old adjacent 38th Street buildings near Central Avenue that had been remodeled, over the period of years since 1915, into a recreation and cultural center for the Negro community. Two white social workers from Chicago, Russell and Rowena Jelliffe, had originally intended the settlement house to be a bridge between the white and colored populations of Cleveland; but integrated projects, like productions of biracial plays, fell by the wayside as the Roaring Third became more and more a black ghetto.
Sam Wild had done a few feature articles on Karamu Theater over the years, most recently one about the nationally prominent Negro playwright Langston Hughes, who was based in Cleveland these days and had helped mount several productions of his own works at Karamu with their resident Gilpin Players. Wild knew these occasional articles did not reflect any sense of responsibility on the part of his paper to acknowledge the existence of Negroes in Cleveland; but were rather a sop to the prominent white liberals whose financial backing made the settlement possible.
The nearby Grant Park playground was absent of children on this winter afternoon, its swing sets and slides and such powdered white by the light snowfall. A colored man wearing several heavy frayed sweaters and an equally frayed stocking cap and worn cotton gloves was sweeping the snow away from the wide walk in front of the three old but refurbished brick buildings. Sam Wild led Eliot Ness into one of them, the Karamu Theater itself.
As they angled down the aisle, the two men took in the African-themed theater (Karamu was, after all, Swahili for 'a place of joyful meeting'). Burlap painted with striking, primitive designs hung on the walls, where the house lights were also mounted, set inside carved wooden fixtures resembling West African chopping bowls. On the ceiling shone a bright yellow sun with black rays emanating in all directions, while the proscenium had bold diagonal stripes painted on it. On the bare stage, colored actors and actresses in street clothes with scripts in hand were running through something; their voices boomed in the theater, resonant, well-articulated. Not your usual Roaring Third dialect.
Sitting about halfway down the aisle at the left was a hand-some, well-groomed, chocolate-complexioned, mustached young Negro. He wore tan pants and a white shirt open at the neck. He had his feet up on the seat before him and was watching the rehearsal; he had a pad and pencil in his lap, on top of his prayerfully folded hands. 'How you doin', Katzi?'
'Samuel,' Katzi said, smiling; it was a seductive smile. The man's eyes were dark and alert, amused and sad. He hauled his feet down off the seat in front of him and stepped out in the aisle. He was of medium size, five-nine and slender.
'This would be the director of public safety,' Katzi said, in a tone that mixed respect with irony.
'It would,' Ness said, and returned the ironic smile, and extended his hand. Katzi shook it.
'Why don't you gentlemen have a seat here in my office?' Katzi said, with a magnanimous gesture. 'If we keep our voices down, we can talk.' He glanced back up at the stage.
'They're rehearsing Porgy-the DuBose Heyward play, not that jive-ass musical.'
'Fine,' Ness said, and nodded back up the aisle. 'But let's sit back a ways, so we don't disturb them.'
'Suits me,' Katzi said, and moved up the aisle. He was as graceful as a dancer.
Wild had filled Ness in on Katzi's background, coming over. Katzi was a former policy runner and gambler who had worked for such diverse Roaring Third racketeers as 'Bunch Boy' Smith, 'Hotstuff' Johnson, and Johnny Perry; he had also been in solid with policy kings John C. Washington, Willie 'the Emperor' Rushing, and Rufus Murphy.
Originally he had hung around with a strongarm artist named Ramsey, and the pair had been nicknamed 'Big Katzi' and 'Little Katzi' after the Katzenjammer Kids in the funnies. But Ramsey wasn't around anymore, and now Little Katzi was just plain Katzi.
Katzi, who'd had some college, had at one time possessed a reputation for violence. 'Little Katzi will kill you,' had been the word, from the pimps, hustlers, gamblers, and whores of the Roaring Third. He had packed a. 44 Colt revolver and had once pistol-whipped the white proprietor of a restaurant on the fringe of the ghetto when refused service. A few years back, Katzi had done a stretch at the Ohio pen for armed robbery. He was on parole now.
Wild had only known Katzi for the past two years; but he liked and respected, warily, the charming if unpredictable young Negro. In the pen, Katzi hadn't been required to do hard labor, having a disability pension from the Ohio State Industrial Commission for a work injury years before. Instead he'd spent his time teaching himself to be a writer, and began publishing articles and stories in Negro weeklies like the Call and Post and then in pulp magazines like Abbott's and finally (making Wild somewhat envious) selling short stories to Esquire and Coronet.
Katzi was the only colored reporter in Cleveland; true, he was basically just a stringer, writing vignettes for the editorial pages of the News. But it was a singular distinction none-the-less, and he was currently working on the WPA writers project, writing the history of Cleveland for the Ohio guidebook.
Ness edged into the final row of seats at the rear of the theater; Katzi followed and Wild followed him. The three men sat and Wild asked Katzi if it was okay to smoke in here.
'It is if you offer me one,' Katzi said, and Wild did.
Wild lit Katzi's Lucky, and asked, 'How's the WPA writing comin'?'
'Beats diggin' sewers for 'em,' he said. 'Last year this time, I was dredging creeks in the snow and ice, out in the suburbs. As WPA gigs go, this one's a plum.'
'You going to write a paragraph on Karamu in the guidebook?'
'Naw. I'm doin' a little piece on it for Howard.'
N. R. Howard was the editor of the News.
Wild lit his own Lucky. 'How's the prison novel comin'?'
