The Emperor swallowed and smiled the picket-fence grin again and crawled off Ness like a satisfied lover. He stood on the fire-escape landing and brushed off his fancy silk suit with whisk-broom hands.
'Pretend what happened, Mr. Ness?' Willie asked innocently.
Ness was on his feet now. It was a little windy up here, he noticed.
'Are you all right, Mr. Ness?' the patrolman below called up. The fire escape was on the east side of the building and it had taken a while for the man stationed out back to notice the struggle.
'Everything's under control,' Ness yelled down. Then to Willie, with a gesture of the. 38, he said, 'After you, Emperor.'
Willie stepped back inside.
'Them indictments is comin' down,' Willie said, 'ain't they?'
'Let's put it this way,' Ness said. 'You're about to be deposed.'
Ness led the man through his apartment, where the girl stuck her pink pointy tongue out at the safety director; Ness, Rushing, and Lewis went down the elevator and out front, where a Black Maria was waiting.
Lewis stood eagerly by as the paddy wagon officer closed the back door of the buggy on the glumly seated Emperor, and Ness checked his watch.
'We're on schedule,' Ness said to Lewis, 'but barely. Let's go.'
CHAPTER 15
The Demo League Hall was at East 71st and Central, a huge yellow-brick two-story building that came right up to the sidewalk in a thriving ghetto business district. The lower floor of the building was taken up by small businesses- liquor store, delicatessen, tavern, drug store. Curry stood, in the light of the moon and streetlamps, studying with a tourist's curiosity the cluttered display behind the iron-grilled window of Cohn's Drug, an array that included blood tonics, skin bleaching creams, and electric hair-straightening irons.
Finding a place to park the unmarked sedan had been a trick; both sides of the street were thick with parked cars. They left it in the alley behind the massive building, Moeller saying it wasn't a bad idea blocking the alley, anyway. The windows up on the second floor were dark and shut tight, but the sound of a raucous party going on was seeping out none-the-less.
They needed to move fast; they'd just been given the go-ahead from Ness on the police radio to make the hit, and that meant a paddy wagon would automatically arrive in five minutes, ready for a load of reluctant passengers.
The small sign that extended over the street said DEMOCRATIC LEAGUE HALL in red letters on yellow, with a smaller black-letter notice: Available for Rental. Stocky vice cop Moeller-in plainclothes tonight-led the way, with Toussaint Johnson next, and Curry bringing up the rear. One uniformed man stayed down on street level, and another was in the alley with the car.
It was a narrow, steep, dark stairwell, with the only light at the second-floor landing above. The door was unlocked, but just inside the door a cigar-smoking, beer-bottle-clutching heavy-set Negro in a white shirt and suspenders sat at a card table with an open cigar box full of dollar bills and ticket stubs.
The burly Negro in a gravelly voice asked them if they had tickets, but Curry, as he stepped into the hall, barely heard the man. He was overcome by the sights and sounds and smells confronting him. The air was blue- gray with cigarette and cigar smoke which mingled with the stink of body odor, beer, and bad breath.
The high-ceilinged, many-windowed hall was crammed with banquet-style tables at which at least three hundred men-at least a third of them white-sat applauding and hooting as down on the stage at the far end of the hall a voluptuous young yellow-skinned stripper in a G-string and tassels was doing a bump and grind to a blaring version of 'St. Louis Blues' from a scratchy record that was playing through a distorted but loud sound system. Several other strippers, of various Negro shades, were wandering through the audience, specifically enticing a group near the stage who were seated not at tables but on thirty or forty folding chairs; the men were grabbing at the women, stuffing money in their G-strings, generally playing grab-ass. Occasionally a stripper would light on the lap of one and wriggle. A good number of the men up in front. Curry noted, were white.
The fat Negro ticket-taker was almost yelling, now. 'I said, do you boys have tickets? If not, cash will suffice.'
Toussaint Johnson edged out in front of Moeller and said, 'We're the men.'
'Christ,' the fat man said, knowing that Johnson meant they were cops. 'Is this a fuckin' raid? You're raidin' the Democratic League smoker? What the hell's the idea?'
Working to get his voice heard, Moeller said, 'We have warrants on six men who we believe are present in this hall at this time.'
The formality of that struck Curry as strange and even silly, as he watched two strippers scamper out of the audience up a staircase at either side of the stage and the three women began bumping and grinding in tandem. The yellow girl, who had bosoms that looked formidable even from this distance, was twirling her tassels, one in one direction, one in the other. It was the goddamnedest thing Curry had ever seen.
But he was cop enough to snap out of it and he stepped forward and touched Moeller on the arm.
'This is trouble,' he whispered right into the man's ear. 'We got political people here, Negro and white-the boss is going to have a shit fit, if this gets out of hand.'
Up on the stage, the central girl, the yellow one, was plucking off her tasseled pasties and flinging them into the eager audience; they were whooping and hooting and generally behaving like cheerful but hungry lions being tossed slabs of meat. The other girls followed suit-birthday suit, that is.
'It's already out of hand,' Moeller said, watching this.
Curry could read him; Moeller was a vice cop, and Curry knew what he was thinking.
'Don't do it,' Curry said.
The girls were sliding out of their G-strings.
'Shit,' Moeller said.
'Let it go,' Curry said.
'He's right,' Toussaint Johnson said. 'Let's wait downstairs by the exit and nail the boys we want as they come out.'
'We have two more pick-ups to make,' Curry reminded them both.
'St. Louis Blues' ended and 'Hold That Tiger' took over, just as scratchy, just as loud, inspiring even more frenetic gyrations from the strippers and even wilder response from their appreciative audience.
'Go on ahead and leave me behind,' Johnson said. 'With one of the uniforms. I'll nab 'em.'
The girls were flinging their G-strings into the audience.
'I can't look the other way on this,' Moeller said, shaking his head.
Curry couldn't look the other way, either, not in the literal sense anyway, but he said, 'The boss just wants the policy suspects.'
A very drunk white man, his tie loose around his neck, his shirt half unbuttoned and hanging out, danced up onto the stage and began fondling the bosomy yellow-skinned stripper. She laughed. Curry couldn't hear the laugh, over the hollering and distorted sound-speaker music, but he could see her laughing, and now she was starting to undo the man's pants. The crowd was going berserk.
'That's it,' Moeller said, shaking his head. 'This is lewd and indecent conduct. I'm hauling all their asses in. Johnson, go downstairs and call over to the Third Precinct and get every goddamn spare squad car they got over here-and every paddy wagon.'
Curry said, 'Don't do it!'
He wasn't sure if he was talking to Moeller or the woman on stage who seemed about to perform an act of oral sex on the inebriated but obviously capable male dance partner. Curry had heard of audience participation before, but this was ridiculous.
'And tell 'em to come with their sirens blaring,' Moeller said, 'so I know when they're here. We're going to shut this fucker down.'
'You say so,' Johnson shrugged to Moeller, and went out.
Moeller turned to the fat man on the door, still seated at his card table, and said, 'Not a word out of you.
