“Now, there I’ve had a bit more luck. I’ve got a friend in the morgue who let me in to see the body of the one you put the pig sticker in. His name was Clyde Jessup, a known muscle for hire out of Chicago.”
“Anything on who he was working for?”
“No, and no one has claimed his body.”
“Okay, keep at it, Ira, we’ll shake something loose.”
“Hey, I almost forgot. I got a call yesterday at the office on a more pleasant matter.”
“What was it?” Henson said.
“From Paul Robeson’s agent. They’d like to buy you lunch and talk about Robeson playing you in a movie.”
He chuckled. “That right?”
“That’s what he said. What do you think?’
“I’m flattered. But he ain’t gonna have no white woman call me nigger while trying to get me in the sack an’ hack at my privates with a butcher knife. Shit.” He was referring to a scene in a Eugene O’Neill play All God’s Chillun Got Wings that recently starred Robeson.
Kunsler guffawed. “Christ, I’ll make sure to specify that can’t happen if we draw up a contract. Don’t you worry, old son.” He laughed again.
“Fact, I wouldn’t be too crazy about that O’Neill fella being anywhere near this if it got going. Nobody will remember my book, Ira. It’s the moving pictures that will be what will stick in people’s minds in the long haul.”
“Didn’t know you gave your legacy so much brain space.”
“Ah, you know what I’m saying.”
“Yes, I do. Robeson’s in London doing Showboat but is expected to take a break in a month or so to come back here and spend time with his wife and new son. I’ll see about setting up a time.”
“Okay, talk soon,” Henson said, severing the line.
As he went back outside, he reflected on two things; was the fact the hood was out of Chicago—Daddy Paradise’s base of operations—a coincidence? And on what Ellsmere had said about being held in a big house in Poughkeepsie. About it being near a park and its religious-themed stained glass windows. Poughkeepsie wasn’t that big, and if he could get someone to fly him over its fancy houses, he might be able to find the mansion Ellsmere was held in. And he just happened to know a pilot.
He made a stop at Mr. Greene’s newsstand. The bullet holes from the machine gun had been patched up, the white plaster in stark contrast to the weathered green paint of the wooden structure.
“Not that I like getting shot at, Mr. Henson,” Mr. Greene said, “but business has picked up since then. People love them a sensation, don’t they?”
“Yes, sir, they do.” He bought a copy of the Herald Tribune and went on toward his apartment, but not directly to his front door. Henson stood at the end of his block, scanning both sides of the street before him. He recognized several of the parked cars and trucks, and did not see the tan Chrysler he and his lady friend had passed when they left the RCA building last night. Of course, that didn’t mean there wasn’t a new man watching him.
Upstairs he plugged in his electric percolator to make more coffee. In the bathroom, he started the water in his claw-foot tub, keeping it tepid despite the morning coolness that lingered. He stripped down and relaxed, the bathroom window open to the breezes as he read through the Tribune. He smiled at the antics of Walt Wallet in Gasoline Alley and Tillie the Toiler in the funny pages. This and the business with Robeson reminded Henson of the time writer George Schuyler shopped around the idea of a comic strip based on his exploits. Some black papers—and a few left-leaning ones—were interested, but by then Schuyler was criticizing several of his black literati, the “niggerati” as they were jokingly at times referred to by his Harlemite contemporaries, and had burned one too many bridges. By the time Henson was done, the water was icy cold, but he found it invigorating.
Back in his living room, he sat in his robe in his one plush chair next to a long ago bricked-up fireplace. There were two photographs on the mantle. One was of Henson standing between two Inuit youngsters, his arms around each of them. The younger one was his son Anaukaq, aged eight, and the older lad, nicknamed Luke, had been in his twenties. They all wore furs and were smiling broadly. That was the last time Henson had been north to see his boy.
The other was of Henson seated among celebrities like Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., Booker T. Washington, and Assistant U.S. Attorney W.H. Lewis. The occasion had been a dinner at midtown’s Tuxedo Club to honor his “representing the race well.” White America virtually ignored his contribution to exploration, focusing mostly on Robert Peary. For, while he was alive, Peary made sure it was his name, and his alone, be it in interviews or speaking engagements, that was associated with reaching the North Pole. This, despite his forward to Henson’s book, reading, “He deserves every attention you can give him.” Maybe, Henson had considered over time, the humorless Peary did have a wicked sense of the absurd after all.
Tacked to the wall above the photo was a kaviak, a type of Inuit harpoon made of wood, ivory, and in this case, a tip made of iron. There was no iron ore in Greenland. When they’d first come to the village of Moriussaq, a thousand miles above the Arctic Circle, they couldn’t help but notice the use of iron in the villagers’ tools and weapons. While there had been Danes, Italians and other nationalities in the village before Henson and Peary, the villagers had not divulged the story or location
