The Strivers' Row Spy Page 14

  As I watched the patrolman walk the shooter to his police mo-bile, I looked up and couldn’t believe my eyes. Slowly driving by and looking squarely at me were the two men in the ice cream truck. I headed straight for the patrolman and tapped him on the shoulder.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  As I was about to point out the truck, something told me not to. I couldn’t help but wonder if the patrolman was part of their scheme, so I froze. One thing Momma had always told me was not to trust the police.

  “Nothing,” I answered, as the two men glared at me and drove away. “It’s nothing.”

  If this was a setup that the patrolman was in on, and I was the only one who could connect the two men to the shooter, I’d better keep my mouth shut. I stood there with several other UNIA clerks and secretaries—many of them crying—as the gunman was being hauled off to jail and Garvey was being transported to the Harlem Hospital. It had all happened so fast.

  14

  LATER THAT EVENING I SAT IN THE HOSPITAL WAITING ROOM WITH Eason, Hubert Harrison, and William Ferris. There were probably twenty other UNIA officials sitting around and pacing the hallways as well. Garvey had survived—defying the gunman or whoever had sent him.

  “He was likely paid big money by someone,” said Hubert. “Just dumb enough to think he’d get away with it. And the cowardly thug who paid him will make sure he doesn’t talk.”

  “You think it’s that simple?” I asked.

  “Maybe we should find out who this coward is,” said William.

  “We don’t hunt thugs down,” added Eason. “Let the hooligans act like hooligans. We’re high-minded men.”

  “Principled!” said Hubert.

  “But make no mistake,” said Eason, “this will all come to the surface in due time.”

  “Right now,” interjected William, “I feel like taking action—principles be damned!”

  “Listen,” said Eason, “whoever the coward is will only see Garvey’s legend grow. His power will reach unfathomable proportions. And I’ll tell you why, brothers. To the millions who already see him as a hero, they’ll now see him as bulletproof—an ethereal figure who can’t be slain. They’ll call him Black Moses with more conviction than ever.”

  * * *

  Hours later I opened my front door and waiting for me was an empty house. I went into our bedroom and took off my shoes, suit jacket, dress shirt, and tie. It felt good to relax in my undershirt, pants, and socks.

  I headed into the kitchen and grabbed a beer from the icebox, then entered the main room and put a record on. Bert Williams’s “When the Moon Shines on the Moonshine” never sounded so good, so I turned it up loud, which helped to erase all of the ugliness from that day. Williams was one of the only colored singers who’d ever been recorded. I’d been waiting for years for that to change, but to no avail.

  Sipping my beer, I grabbed my Joseph Conrad book, The Secret Agent, from the adjacent bookshelf and headed for the couch to relax and read. I wasn’t five minutes into it before Loretta knocked at the door. I was glad she’d made it home in time for us to share a drink and talk. She had a habit of forgetting her key.

  “Coming!”

  I hustled over and answered. Then I froze because standing there wearing a dark green suit was the lazy-eyed ice cream truck driver. He was holding a gun at his right side. Sensing my uneasiness, he gave me a slight grin and searing glare—cigarette dangling from his mouth.

  “Sometimes fools are just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said.

  My heart was pounding as I stood there defenseless, searching my racing mind for a series of moves I could make. The stare-off between us seemed to last forever—the music and voice of Bert Williams still blaring. I dropped my eyes, focusing on his gun, noticing his shooting finger tickling the trigger.

  He took the cigarette from his mouth with his left hand, extending it toward me—the hot end pointed at my face. I looked at the tobacco slowly burning five inches from my mouth, wondering if he would singe me with it. I froze, studying the ash up close, as if through a magnifying glass—the center of the burn pulsating like cooling lava.

  “I’m offering you a pull from my last cigarette. That’s nice of me. Go on—take it.”

  I didn’t move an inch. The grating, throaty sound of his voice was unsettling.

  “That’s wild tobacco you’re looking at—best in Harlem,” he said. “They roll ’em special for me—fresh—down on La Salle Street—Friday mornings. We spent hundreds of years picking the shit—God knows we the ones ought to take pleasure in smokin’ it.”

  He slowly and creatively flipped the cigarette with his long fingers—the butt now facing me. I gently took it from his hand, put it in my mouth, and smoked for the first time—inhaling a thousand thoughts. It was the only thing prolonging what seemed like my inevitable fate—buying me a few more seconds.

  “I never got your name,” he said.

  “It’s Sidney.”

  “Sidney and Sleepy . . . sharing a cigarette. Who woulda thought it? They call me Sleepy ’cause of my eyes.”

  We continued staring each other down as I handed the cigarette back to him. You could cut the tension with a knife.

  “You see, Sidney, we have a problem. The Negro we sent in to get Garvey was crazier than hell. We knew that. We just needed to drop him off and make sure he went inside. Simple, don’t you think?”

  I nodded.

  “And when we saw you earlier that day sittin’ in that beautiful Chevrolet, we knew you’d seen too much—knew you could connect us three. But we didn’t think no mo ’bout it. We never figured you was headin’ to Garvey’s office. But when Jumpy and me came back by there, much to our surprise, who was standing there with that policeman—hovering over him and that fool who can’t shoot straight?”

  He took a deep drag from the cigarette and blew the smoke directly at me.

  “You!” he said.

  I tried to keep an eye on the gun through the thick smoke.

  “You see the problem, Sidney?”

  “There’s no problem.”

  “I could tell when I first saw you earlier this mornin’ that you was one of them nosy niggas. You’ll keep snoopin’ ’round ’til me and Jumpy is done with. You probably think some high-up man sent us to do the job and you won’t quit ’til you find out who. But maybe it was just us three simple niggas who thought the whole thing up. You think?”

  “Maybe.”

  “But you see . . . my gut be tellin’ me you won’t quit ’til you got the answer. And with you runnin’ round out there in them streets—knowin’ what you know—Jumpy and me will end up dead at the hands of Garvey’s boys, or in jail like that crazy fool who can’t shoot straight. And we can’t have that.”

  I noticed him fingering the trigger again and knew time was running out. Anticipating him raising the gun to shoot me, I attempted to slam the door. But my anticipation came a hair too late, as he had raised the gun just in time to get the barrel jammed between the door and frame.

  I tried to press the door shut, but the barrel was still jammed. He fired a shot, hitting some bottles of wine against the wall. I clutched the doorknob with my right hand and jammed my right foot against the base of the door. With my left hand I grabbed the gun barrel, forcing its angle upward. He fired again, hitting the ceiling.

  Using every bit of strength I could muster, I dislodged the barrel and slammed the door. I then locked it at both the knob and chain, as he began violently kicking. I raced to the bedroom, rushed to the bed, and reached under the frame for my pistol. I could hear the door-wood splitting—breaking open.

  Pistol secured, I made sure there was a bullet in the chamber and that the magazine was full. Operating on complete instinct, as if moving to the rhythm of Bert Williams—his music still providing the soundtrack to this violent scene—I rushed to the bedroom entry, stopped, and took aim at him from about twenty feet away.

  Just as he was stepping through the splintery, dangling
front door, I fired and hit him in his left arm—spinning him around like a top and knocking the gun out of his hand. He gathered his balance and retreated.

  I rushed to the door, picked up his gun, secured it under my belt, and carefully pursued him. I noticed blood on the front porch and began following some drops down the stone stairway—then along the sidewalk.

  It was very dark out with only a few dim streetlights in either direction. Of those, several weren’t working. Still, I saw him laboring along in the distance and gave chase. He began to run, but I was rapidly gaining on him. I crossed Convent Avenue, approaching the section of 140th that began to curve southward.

  Now about two blocks from home, I stood in the middle of the street aiming my pistol at his silhouette. I heard the faint sound of an automobile, then the elevated roar of an engine. Two gunshots rang out, but the bullets missed me. I turned, and in an instant, a Cadillac Roadster was upon me.

  I dove out of the way, barely escaping with my life and managing to get a quick look at the driver’s face. It was his heavyset partner, Jumpy. Luckily for me he wasn’t a very good shot. The car sped up and came to a screeching halt about a hundred yards in the distance. Sleepy jumped into the passenger’s seat and the car accelerated, careening as it turned the corner and disappeared.

  I stared into the night sky trying to catch my breath for a minute. Then I turned and headed home, walking briskly. After about a block, I heard the engine again behind me. I stopped and looked directly into the car lights. Just then Jumpy hit the gas and sped toward me.

  Running as fast as I could, I looked for an alley, but saw nothing except continuous brownstones lining both sides of the street. I ran onto the sidewalk but knew that wouldn’t suffice. They were quickly gaining.

  I wasn’t about to possibly lead them back to Loretta, so I ran right past the town house. As the wind pressed against my face, my eyes began to water. Two more shots were fired at me—one bullet nipping my shoulder.

  The vehicle drew within what felt like twenty feet of me. I couldn’t be sure because I was moving too rapidly to turn and look. Angling to the left, I saw the vacant field that the City College had yet to develop.

  Just as the Cadillac was about to hit me I dove out of the way, landing on a pile of gravel, badly skinning both hands and the side of my face. The automobile screeched to a halt.

  I got to my feet and moved through the field. The farther into the open space I ran, the darker it became. I was out of breath and needed to stop running. Knee-high in weedy grass now and not sure if they were following me on foot, I stopped.

  Perhaps they had decided to drive around the block and meet me on the other side. Or maybe one was following me on foot and the other was driving around the block.

  Looking back and forth, I couldn’t see a foot in either direction. Facing in the direction I had just come, I lay down on my stomach in the thick, high grass, practically burying myself in it. It was silent and I would be able to hear the faintest sound of them approaching.

  Quietly breathing, I clutched my pistol, knowing I still had seven bullets left in the magazine. I heard footsteps and then whispering.

  “Move slow,” one said.

  “Can’t see a damn thing,” said the other.

  “He can’t see nothin’ either. Just keep quiet and move slow.”

  Now there was nothing but the sound of my rapid heartbeat and their feet mashing down the vegetation. My eyes were slowly adjusting to the dark, and I could make out their bodies about thirty feet away. They were heading right toward me.

  Knowing I had only a few seconds before their eyes too would adjust to the dark, I lifted my head just above the weeds, poked my right arm through the thick brush, and took aim at Sleepy. My shooting hand trembled like it was freezing. Such are the nerves of a man who’s never killed.

  With his head as my direct target, some ten feet away now, I fired, then delivered two shots to the body of Jumpy before he could react. Rushing to my feet, I ran to them.

  Sleepy lay lifeless while Jumpy gasped for air. I stood directly over him, contemplating whether to let him live—wanting to—but knowing his intention would always be to kill me.

  “Who sent ya’ll to kill Garvey?” I asked.

  He was choking on his own blood, trying to answer me. He finally forced one powerful word out.

  “God!”

  Pointing the gun at his face, I turned away and fired two shots. And just like that I had become an entirely different man.

  15

  MY GOD, HOW THE TIME PASSED. I’D BEEN IN HARLEM FOR A YEAR now. As I stood in Madison Square Garden marveling at the thousands who were packed in to hear Garvey speak, I reflected on how living a double life had actually become routine.

  I’d spent each day dividing my time between the Black Star Line business and the Abyssinian Church construction site. I filed weekly reports to headquarters, and Hoover seemed pleased with the progress I was making. Learning the details about Garvey’s day-to-day activities—his motives—was enough for him.

  He was convinced that I’d gained Garvey’s trust and that no white agent could ever have gotten so close. I was just pleased to be getting paid by the government to keep an eye on Garvey for Du Bois—at least that’s the way I continued to rationalize it. I’d written and mailed more anonymous letters to Du Bois, keeping him informed about the intentions of his West Indian nemesis.

  But the past year had seen Garvey’s image grow to a level that I never could have imagined. I witnessed him becoming an even bigger threat to Du Bois by the day. The Bureau now believed Garvey’s UNIA to have some five hundred thousand members—far fewer than Garvey’s claim of four million but still an ever-growing and alarming number.

  The year had seen Garvey marry Amy Ashwood, only to quickly separate from her and begin living with another one of his West Indian secretaries—Miss Amy Jacques.

  Much controversy surrounded that relationship, as Garvey had not divorced his wife. But none of it concerned me. It simply provided entertaining chatter between Reverend Eason, Hubert Harrison, and William Ferris on our nights out at Snappy’s Restaurant. The gossip was filled with amusing details about Garvey’s personal life.

  I found it ironic that men who were so loyal to Garvey took such delight in joking about his habits—his quibbles over certain foods, his insistence on selling his likeness to adoring crowds for outrageous prices, and his obsession with collecting fine pottery.

  Sprinkled in with my routine that year had been visits with Professor Gold’s friend, Phil Daley. Daley had taken me to the Civic Club on several occasions, a fancy place on Twelfth Street near Fifth Avenue, where many intellectuals—both white and colored—gathered and discussed politics.

  I hadn’t met Du Bois, but visiting the Civic Club gave me an opportunity to keep abreast of his agenda. “Garvey is becoming more and more dangerous,” Daley had said. “Du Bois feels like he’s undermining all of the diplomatic work the NAACP has spent years doing.”

  The year also brought with it a new home, a massive one at that. Loretta had wanted to stop leasing and buy, and she was determined to find something of quality to invest in. For weekends on end we drove the streets looking at various neighborhoods.

  She asked every person we met where the safest place in Harlem was to live. We kept getting the same answer: Strivers’ Row, which we came to know was an aristocratic area in West Harlem—fairly close to where we’d been living and very close to the land Reverend Powell had purchased for the future Abyssinian Baptist Church.

  Strivers’ Row consisted of four rows of town houses, two bordering the north and south sides of West 138th, the other two bordering the north and south sides of West 139th. The entire community was nestled in between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. The homes attracted well-paid professionals or “strivers.” The colored folks who lived there had supposedly “made it.” In fact, most were involved in the fields of law, medicine, the arts, and even architecture. I was likely the only government
spy.

  We purchased a stunning four-bedroom place for $8,000—a good chunk of Loretta’s inheritance. But she could not have been more impressed with the design and security of the place. There was one room in particular that she believed would be the perfect painting studio. The first day the sales agent allowed us to see inside, Loretta found the upstairs master bedroom, walked out onto the Juliet balcony, and looked out at the view.

  “Daddy would have loved this place,” she said, “the walnut flooring throughout, the magical, high ceilings. There’s just something stunning about the dark wood, white wall contrast everywhere. Simple and clean.”

  “But it’s way too big,” I replied. “A king would be impressed.”

  “We’ll fill it with children. Besides, I can’t think of a better way to turn our money into a lot more . . . well . . . money. And we could live here forever.”

  “Our money?”

  “Stop it, Sidney. Yes, our money.”

  The window framed her beautifully. She put her hand up to the glass and seemed to dream for a moment.

  “This will be my escape,” she said. “This is where I will close out the world and feed my soul.”

  And now, many months later, I had just taken the route from Strivers’ Row to Madison Square Garden, avoiding the massive UNIA parade that had taken place. It had begun at 135th Street, made its way through the heart of Harlem, then down the long stretch of Seventh Avenue. It was all part of the UNIA’s first International Convention of the Negro Peoples of the World that Garvey had organized.

  Eason had asked me to take part but I’d made a habit of not being involved in any of Garvey’s grand, public, ceremonial events. I worked with him behind the scenes only. It was my tireless work that made Garvey see me as a loyal UNIA man, but many folks around town—including Reverend Powell—simply saw me as Harlem’s engineer—a man who didn’t let political allegiances get in the way of those he served.

  Earlier that day, before leaving for Madison Square Garden, I’d spent the morning getting a haircut and purchasing some supplies for Loretta. I walked through the front door at about noon carrying several cans of paint. As I approached Loretta’s studio, I saw the usual cast of characters—around ten, all but two of them colored. Loretta had been hosting a weekly gathering of local painters for months. I stopped at the doorway before entering.