“Tell me the truth, why did Dutch Schultz kidnap Destiny?”
“That’s rather impertinent,” McNair said. “You have no truck prying into this man’s endeavors. Important undertakings all, I must add,” she sniffed.
Toliver held up a hand. “That’s all right, Miriam. I believe Mr. Henson is a man who can keep a confidence.” He turned his head toward his daughter. “And she is of an age to see that one’s folks have—shall we say—dimensions to them.”
The daughter looked expectant as her father continued.
“As you know, Matthew, that Beer Baron of the Bronx has a large appetite, his eyes are bigger than his stomach, as my sainted mother would say. He is known to employ ruthless methods when he wants what he wants, like a tantrum-prone child.
Maybe it was the whiskey, but Henson wasn’t in the mood for a long wind-up. “You have money in Queenie St. Clair’s numbers operation.” Stephanie “Queenie” St. Clair, of African and white French parentage, was among the high-steppers of the Harlem rackets.
Toliver nodded. “I’ve long been a silent partner in her policy banking.”
“Me, too,” McNair said, hand on her hip and jaw thrust defiantly at Henson, daring his scorn. “It’s a way for our hard-working people to get a leg up given being frozen out of white-run institutions who won’t loan to them. You realize how many restaurants, dress shops and who knows what all else wouldn’t be around if not for this informal lending?”
Lending that demanded a healthy interest rate.
But Henson said, “I’m not passing judgement, I simply want to know what I’m getting into.”
“Seems we’re both pawns in a bigger game, Matt,” Stevenson said.
“This is your duty as a New Negro,” McNair said to Henson, taking another sip.
“Miriam,” Toliver chided.
“That’s okay.” Henson hadn’t been a follower of Marcus Garvey, or for that matter much of a follower of any negro advancement leader. He did, though, believe in self-improvement. He respected that Toliver and McNair put their money where their mouths were. Plus there was the opportunity to be around the intriguing Destiny.
“I’m in,” he said, tipping his glass toward the other three. “But we’ll need a crew to cover the hall that night. I’ll take care of rounding up the men, but you’ll have to cover their fee, understand?”
“Miriam?” Toliver said.
She shrugged in ascent.
“All right, then,” Toliver said. “I knew I was hiring the right man for the job.”
Destiny Stevenson stood, and bottle in hand, poured another round for herself and Henson. She leveled her gaze on him, “Indeed.”
Henson was flattered by her attention and more than a little self-conscious of the grey creeping in at his temples.
Given her dusky skin tone, it wasn’t noticeable that McNair flushed.
Daddy Paradise cleaned one of his long nails with the end of an ivory plated
pen knife, smiling at the others.
Elsewhere, in a darkened room in a fleabag hotel on the lower east side, a gaunt white man in his late sixties with a shock of white hair moaned and sweat atop a thin mattress. Laying on its side on the floorboards was an empty unmarked bottle, cork nearby. Until recently, it had contained what was left of his laudanum. He was in wrinkled pants and a dirty undershirt and the effects of his opium-laced alcohol ignited the fevered dreams he so looked forward to each night. For it was in those mindscapes of his imagination that the answers came to him in many forms—from his beloved Elyce, to a talking frog squatting on a jade stone.
He stopped thrashing and bolted upright in the dark.
Hands gripping the side of the bed, he muttered, “The daughter…yes, Henson is the key.”
CHAPTER TWO
“You know about this darkie?” Arthur “Dutch Schultz” Flegenheimer said, nearly biting the end of his cigar off as he gritted his teeth. Schultz had a flattened nose and big ears sticking out from his head. “Killed one of my boys and put the other one in a hospital. And on top of that, you expect me to just sit on my hands? Not to mention that greedy kraut bastard Hoffman upping the ante on me to keep a lid on this.”
“You won’t have to keep in check for long,” his companion Fremont Davis said. “Though, I’ll grant you, I should have foreseen the possibility of his involvement. Mr. Henson does move in interesting orbits.” Davis had close-cropped steel grey hair and a trim goatee.
“Uh-huh,” Schultz said, unimpressed, settling back in his chair. Above him was the mounted head of a stag, indifferent in death to his surroundings. In a corner was an Egyptian New Kingdom sarcophagus. He finished his drink and sat the glass down carelessly. It tipped over. Face contorted in barely contained anger, he pointed a finger at the man sitting opposite. “You better not be trying to pull the wool over my eyes. Bad enough I got Queenie and Holstein to contend with, now this…swartze Tarzan comes swinging in bumping off white men like he pleases. Shit.”
Davis suppressed a chuckle. “This is but a minor setback, partner.”
“Yeah, well, don’t you forget that. Think I’m all weak-kneed sitting in all this?” he indicated the room they were in, “Drinking your fine booze and enjoying your Cubans? I can afford my own cigars.” He tapped twin fingers against his chest. “You got me putting my men
