already in rows, practicing a tune. Most of this activity was in the street itself, but there was overflow and parents and such on the sidewalks, including the two white men in white sportshirts and green pajama bottoms who went running through that crowd, knocking people aside, women and children included, and people were immediately pissed. Into that hostile arena I ran, having tucked my nine millimeter away as soon as I saw this mass of humanity, doing my best not to knock into anybody, slowing down accordingly.
And then I was at South Park Avenue, where the parade was in full swing, sidewalks packed; this boulevard, with its four lanes divided by a parkway, was thronged with colored people, in their summer finery, men in straw hats, women in bonnets, kids getting their Sunday duds stained from free ice cream and candy and pop, families filling the sidewalks, lining the parkway, as marching bands and floats streamed by.
Through this pushed my two psyche ward escapees, jostling an otherwise utterly Negro crowd that was too stunned by this Caucasian presence to do anything; I followed after, but was falling back, slowed by the sidewalk swarm. I felt hands on me, touching, slapping, but nobody outright grabbed me, or hit me, or had yet, at least. I couldn’t even make out any cries of outrage, in the general confusion of band music and the crowd noise.
I’d lost sight of them, now. Hopelessness rising in me, I got to the front of the packed sidewalk and looked for white faces in a black world. It was a Klansman’s worst nightmare come true.
And then there they were: they’d moved out into the street, were running alongside a float from Lake View Dairy, where a giant shredded paper milk bottle served as the backdrop for a throne for a lovely high yellow gal in a gown and crown, who was waving to her subjects.
By the time I caught up with the dairy float, Finkel and Leonard had cut across in front of it, and were up running alongside a pack of cyclists on decorated bikes. I cut in front of the float, too, fell in behind the two. They had perhaps twenty yards on me. I smiled. They seemed to be tiring; I was going to catch them after all-I was getting my second wind. People were pointing at us, shouting at us, perhaps some of them not quite sure we weren’t part of the festivities.
Then I saw the two of them veer off the street and back into the crowd, on the parkway side. Getting away from the parade.
I picked up speed, and a hand reached out and grabbed me and my legs went out from under me and I rolled forward, in an awkward somersault, skinning myself on the pavement.
When I finally picked myself up, a colored cop was standing there, glowering at me. He had a nightstick in one hand; the sun was glinting off the polished copper buttons of his blue uniform.
I glanced up ahead.
My psyche-ward escapees were gone.
I felt a hand on my arm, yanking me off the street as the dairy float floated by, the high yellow queen waving, enjoying her moment.
“I don’t suppose it would do any good,” I said to the cop as he pulled me through the crowd on the parkway, “to mention I’m a personal friend of Two-Gun Pete.”
“He’s Mr. Jefferson to you,” the cop said, and folded me in half with his billy club.
In the background, the colored crowd was cheering.
The Pershing on 64th Street, the top Negro hotel in Chicago, drew a lot of white trade at its Beige Room. On most any Saturday night, eight hundred people of both races packed themselves into this basement ballroom that was Bronzeville’s swankiest nightclub. Tonight, Peggy Hogan and I, just the two of us at a cloth-covered table for four, were among them.
“I haven’t been in a black-and-tan in years,” she said, sipping her stinger through cherry red lips. She looked terrific, wearing a stylish beige suit, in honor of the room, a white flower in her pinned back hair; Joan Crawford would’ve killed for those padded shoulders. “And this is the slickest black-and-tan I’ve ever seen.”
“Yeah,” I said, trying to muster some enthusiasm, “slick as a whistle.” I did not look or feel terrific. I was bruised and skinned-up and sore, from marching in the Bud Billikens Day parade (and having it march on me); if Two-Gun Pete Jefferson hadn’t spoken up for me at the Fifth District Station, I’d probably still be in a cell.
Yet here I was in Bronzeville, again-at Two-Gun Pete’s request, otherwise I wouldn’t have come within a mile of the black belt tonight. But Pete had asked me to meet him here around ten, because the Ragen shooting investigation was “really popping.” It was now ten-thirty-something.
I was already set to go out with Peggy this evening, and so I did, even though we got a late start. I had no qualms about bringing her into this part of town: she was a South Side girl herself, though obviously not from this particular part of the South Side. And besides, any effort I made on behalf of her uncle was jake with her. And I don’t mean Guzik.
The Beige Room was the latest, and most elaborate ever, of these so-called black-and-tan clubs to come into white vogue. Such clubs came and went, and only the Club DeLisa, which had been around for almost twenty years, seemed an exception to that rule. I preferred the DeLisa to this place; the prices weren’t jacked up there, even if the surroundings were less ritzy.
A girl with a milk chocolate complexion and a body that reminded me of a certain bubble dancer was leading a Caribbean conga line of colored babes out on the Beige Room’s stage. They had an elaborate floor show here, and if the names of the performers weren’t immediately recognizable, the M.C.-a smooth singer named Larry Steel- would remind you that this chanteuse was with Cab Calloway for four years, and that that comic appeared in a movie with Abbott and Costello.
The floor show had just gotten over and we were deciding whether or not to eat here or elsewhere when Two-Gun Pete strode up, wearing a flashy double-breasted tan suit buttoned over the bulge of at least one of his two guns, with a beautiful young light-skinned Negro woman on his arm. She was wearing a bright yellow dress that followed her curves; when she entered the dark room it was like the sun came out. She looked familiar to me, but I couldn’t place her.
Pete introduced her as Reba Johnson and I shook her small, smooth hand and made introductions where Peg and me were concerned.
“You look pretty good for a man who spent the afternoon in the slam,” Pete said, sitting, a smirk on that sullenly handsome mug of his.
“It was less than half an hour,” I said. “But it did seem like all afternoon. They were understaffed, with the parade and all going on. It’s lucky you stopped by. So. Did you run your witnesses down?”
“Well, yeah, but since it was Bud Billikens Day, it wasn’t no picnic,” he said, and grinned, and his date smiled and giggled. The Billikens festivities ended up with a big picnic in Washington Park, you see.
I wasn’t particularly amused by anything to do with Billikens, thank you. I said, “You showed them some suspect photos?”
He nodded. “About a dozen that Drury brung ’round, with pictures of Finkel and Leonard mixed in. They both of ’em picked ’em out.”
“Both? You had
“I never did track the newsboy down, and I’m meetin’ with the other eyeball, Tad Jones, over at the DeLisa in about an hour. But there ain’t no doubt in my mind. Finkel and Leonard was the boys with the big guns in the big green truck, all right.”
“I wonder if Drury has tracked them down yet.”
“I don’t think so,” Jefferson said.
“The dairy float queen!” I said, snapping my fingers.
“What?” Peggy said.
I pointed to Reba, who was smiling with pleasure that pretended to be chagrin. “You were on that float today!”
She smiled and nodded.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Peggy asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just proves it’s a small world.”
“Yeah,” Jefferson said, “but it’s a big city. And Finkel and Leonard are somewheres lyin’ low in it.”
“I hope your witnesses hold up, Pete. Because I don’t have a thing on ’em, where the attempted hospital hit is concerned.”
Peggy reached for my arm, gripped it. “How can you say that? You told me you caught them dead to
