“A fella like those in the masks?”
“No, G-man, I’m thinking.” He put his hand on Henson’s arm and they two set off down the street. “In answer to your question, I don’t know exactly what’s happened to your professor friend. I am of the opinion the authorities have put the grab on him. I’d noticed that fella up the street when I got to the precinct. There’s a certain look those boys have,” he said, solemnly. “Anyway, Ellsmere wasn’t in there nor was he listed on the bail sheet. This I found out after I demanded to see you.” They walked along.
“And, loath that I am to admit this, it seems your release had little to do with my formidable skills as your mouthpiece. There’s a reason the cops haven’t charged you with anything—at least for now.”
“Despite me planting a knife into a white man in broad daylight.”
Kunsler inclined his head slightly. “Yeah, bigger wheels are turning.”
Henson weighed his next words. “Ira, I’m not exactly sure what’s going on, myself. I’ll say this, if it’s what I suspect, it’s dynamite. Do some digging and find out what you can, starting with those gunnies in the masks. But be, you know, discreet.”
“My middle name.”
“I’ve got some papers of the prof I need to retrieve, but going to have to shake that tail first.”
“That sedan isn’t following us.”
“No, but there’s a gent in a brown fedora who’s been keeping tabs on us for about a block.” Henson jutted his jaw at a stationary store. “Come on, let’s go in there and make sure we’re seen through the window.” There was a large model of a fountain pen hanging at an angle over the front door. The two entered the shop. Back to a wall, Henson talked with Kunsler in one of the aisles, and seemed to slip the lawyer something he put in his attaché case.
Back on the street, the two split up and the man in the brown fedora followed Kunsler. Henson took a circuitous route back to the newsstand, stopping here and there and doubling back to make sure he wasn’t being followed. It was closed-up, but no police presence. A padlock secured the awning, and another the plywood door to get behind the counter. While bullets had torn through the stand, the damage wasn’t too bad. The destroyed newspapers and magazines had been thrown out. Workmen were already repairing shot-out shop windows nearby. It wasn’t much for Henson to get the lock undone, retrieve Ellsmere’s equations and leave.
He took a bus, but didn’t head back to his apartment. Arriving at Columbia University, he went to the anthropology department and, descending the stairs, passed by one of the janitor’s quarters. Several of the janitors here knew him, just as Henson knew the newsstand owner, bellhops, maids—the invisibles as far as the white world was concerned. Given the time of year, the boilers weren’t in use. Here in the basement it was cool and cloying, like where you’d grow mushrooms. Standing in a specific spot on the floor, he counted down from the ceiling and over then walked over to one of the soot-covered bricks in the wall. Henson removed the loose brick and tucked the folded papers into the space behind. He then re-inserted the brick and departed.
His next stop was Destiny Stevenson’s music shop on Amsterdam near 122nd. She sold sheet music and musical instruments from horns to violins. He entered, a buzzer sounding when he did so. In the corner was an upright piano decorated with fresh flowers. He hadn’t asked, but Henson was pretty sure the put-up money for the tidy shop had come from her father.
“Here’s those reeds you ordered, Jay.”
“Thanks, Destiny.” The musician, a saxophone player Henson recognized from clubs around town, handed over a dollar for his purchase. He nodded at Henson on his way out. There was a copy of Eric Walrond’s Tropic Death on the end of the glass display counter she stood behind. A bookmark was wedged halfway through.
“I tried reading that book twice,” Henson said, pointing at the title. “But he’s heavy on that West Indian dialect.”
“Among the arty types in Harlem and Greenwich Village, the short stories in it are seen as a kind of counterpoint of sorts to Nigger Heaven.”
Henson’s eyebrows raised. The latter book was written by the white Carl Van Vechten. As its sensationalistic title suggested, the novel portrayed negroes in ways that made many critics knock Van Vechten as a literary voyeur perpetuating and profiting from numerous stereotypes. That his soirées included whites and blacks of all stripes was really just a way for him to play street-level archeologist—observing negroes in their abandon and playing that up in his novel. The book had become a runaway bestseller.
“I know I’m not supposed to admit this, but I read that one, too. Finished it.”
Theatrically, she lowered her head gazing up at Henson. “Oh, my.”
“You’re making progress on this one, though.”
“I read each story twice, thinking about it hard in between,” she said. “I’m surprised you made it by today.”
“Yeah?”
“Matt, you do know your exploits of earlier today are all the talk, don’t you?”
“Oh, that.”
“Now I know you aren’t as aw shucks as you pretend to be.”
“You see right through me, huh?”
She straightened a stack of sheet music. “A girlfriend of mine is having a rent party tomorrow night. I might need some bodyguarding what with reds, labor agitators and wild-eyed poets falling through.”
“Happy to earn my keep, Miss Stevenson.”
They smiled at each other over the counter. Henson noted an unusual-looking object with wires attached on the shelf in the glass counter. “What is that?’ he asked, pointing. “Looks like a little motor of some kind.”
She
