Palace Council Page 3

  Eddie decided it was just coincidence.

  CHAPTER 3

  Emil and Belt

  (I)

  PROBABLY EDDIE SHOULD HAVE FORGOTTEN the whole thing. The cross might have been a mystery, but it was in no sense his mystery. He did not know the family; none of the responsibility rested on his shoulders. He had a career to pursue, a father to impress, and a relationship to mourn. He should have and very likely he would have forgotten the whole thing, but for three events, seemingly disconnected, which only with the benefit of hindsight fell into a pattern.

  The first of the three events began by chance, two months after he found the lawyer’s body, in a barbershop on Amsterdam Avenue. It was an April Saturday, unusually sultry for a Manhattan spring. The women of Harlem brought out their pastels. The men carried their jackets over their shoulders but did not forgo their hats. The darker nation needed this warm relief from a difficult winter. The Southern states had announced their “rejection” of the Supreme Court’s desegregation decisions. All over Harlem, people shivered, whispering of a second Civil War. Then, just days ago, at the end of March, Walter White, legendary head of the NAACP, had died. The race had lost its leader. At the barbershop, everyone was lamenting. Eddie was there to have his hair cut, but others glided in and out of the door because the barber was known to supply mezzroll, Harlem slang of the day for high-quality marijuana. You slipped the barber’s assistant a couple of bills, and another assistant met you near the filthy men’s room in the back. Eddie had no interest in the shop’s sideline. He went for the history. The head barber, Mr. Pond, would fill your head with stories, some of them possibly true, of the jazz joints where he used to play piano before he cut hair—the Exclusive at 136th and Lenox, the Yeah Man on Seventh, even the world-famous Rhythm Club—and the celebrities he claimed to have barbered in the old days, from Lonnie Johnson to Willie “The Lion” Smith to Fats Waller to Jelly Roll Morton. Maybe. Maybe not. Today Eddie wore brightly colored billowing pants with a wide belt, not really to his taste, although his friends assured him they were the latest fashion. A famous writer, they said, should keep up with the times, and Eddie, although not yet famous, ruefully conceded the point. Sitting in the barber chair, characters from his next story shuffling and reshuffling through his head, Eddie heard a couple of men behind him laughing about a belt and for a terrible second burned with embarrassment. When he listened more closely, he realized that the joke was not about his clothes but about somebody whose name was Belt. Doctor Belt, the men said: the title emphasized and drawn out in the wonder typical of those times, especially down in the Valley, where educated Negroes were less common. Doctor Belt had come to Harlem, the men were saying, to general guffaws from the shop, and the bartenders better look out.

  Eddie was not, really, a man who hung out in bars, for he had been bred, much against his will, to a disdain of a certain kind of Negro. He did his drinking in the nicer clubs and the salons instead. But so did Doctor Belt. The name was familiar. Eddie had saved the stories about Castle. Flipping through them later, he found a list in the Amsterdam News of prominent Negroes the lawyer had numbered among his friends. There it was, Doctor Joseph Belt, identified as a “government official.” Eddie learned over the next few days that Belt was a physicist, a former assistant professor at Stanford, who now earned a nice living at a laboratory out west. Eddie was intrigued. He had not met many Negro scientists, although he himself had once hoped to be one. Albert Einstein, the greatest scientist of them all, had died in Princeton, New Jersey, the other day, and periodicals everywhere were running stories on “the technological century.” Scientists had become heroes. Technology was everywhere. Polio had been cured. A new invention not only washed your dishes for you but dried them. There was serious talk of putting a man on the moon. It had become possible to incinerate a hundred thousand people in a heartbeat. The darker nation was caught up in the excitement. There was an editor at the Amsterdam News who now and then still published Eddie’s essays. It occurred to Eddie that he might track down Doctor Belt for a quick interview, a black take on the technological century.

  But Belt was uncooperative. He refused Eddie’s entreaties. He would not meet. Eddie was the sort of man who took rejection as a challenge. From Wesley Senior, past master of politics as well as preaching, he had learned that connections existed to be used, that people of power enjoyed doing favors to place you in their debt. So he approached Langston Hughes, who was owed by everyone. Hughes came through, persuading Doctor Belt to meet Eddie for a drink at the Savoy. The physicist refused to talk about his work, and told Eddie that, had he known this was the subject, he would never have accepted the invitation. Eddie said, no, no, he just wanted to hear what it was like to be a Negro scientist. Belt eyed him disdainfully from behind thick glasses. Science was science, he said, missing the point. There was not Negro science and white science, there was good science and bad science. Belt signaled the waiter for another Scotch. He was a distant, paunchy man, soft and dark like a chocolate Santa. Belt drank heavily but not sloppily. He drank the way men drink to forget their burdens, not to unload them. He was in town to visit friends, he said. He had missed Phil’s funeral. He would pay his respects to the widow before she returned to South Carolina. Eddie kept trying to ask about science. Belt ignored him. He spent a lot of time looking at the door, as if expecting a friend, or perhaps an enemy. The Savoy was one of the most famous music halls in New York. There were as many white guests as black. A couple of movie stars had a table near the band. Smoke hung heavily in the air. The waiters did you a favor by fetching your order. Belt said people were nicer back home, but never said where home was. Somebody dropped a tray of dishes and Belt was on his feet, shaking. He looked around, embarrassed, and headed for the door.

  “What are you afraid of?” Eddie asked in the lobby, where Belt was buying cigarettes at the stand. The scientist said nothing. Eddie tried again. “Does it have to do with what happened to Philmont Castle?”

  Belt focused on him at last, the eyes moist and rejecting behind the thick glasses. “I’m not afraid of anything,” he said, then glanced over his shoulder.

  Eddie tried again. “Does it have something to do with the cross?” He tried to remember his father’s letter. “The Cross of Saint Peter?”

  A flicker in the dark, constrained face. Nothing more. But the physicist definitely reacted. Then he snickered, and the disdain was back. “What is this, some kind of test? The devils are really scraping the bottom of the barrel if they had to send somebody like you.”

  “Which devils are these?”

  Doctor Belt said nothing. He turned contemptuously away, then swung, briefly, back. “Tell them to stay away from me,” he said, and left.

  (II)

  THE SECOND of the three events that set Edward Wesley Junior upon his path occurred in July of that same year, 1955—in the larger history, a few days after Disneyland opened its doors for the first time out in California; and, in Eddie’s personal history, on the day of Aurelia’s fabulous wedding to Kevin Garland. Eddie at first planned not to attend, but his younger sister, Junie, persuaded him. Junie was a law student at Harvard, the only woman of the darker nation in her class. From the time they were small, Junie had been her big brother’s frequent muse.

  “What are you trying to say by staying away?” she demanded, when he called her long-distance on a neighbor’s phone. “That you love Aurelia? Everybody in Harlem knows you love Aurelia. So all you’re really saying is you’re too much of a cad to wish her well.”

  Eddie, feeling trapped, took refuge in silly humor. “What if I lose control and punch Kevin?”

  “Don’t even joke about that.” He could feel his sister’s shudder over the telephone. She had always hated every form of human violence. Back in high school, in the thick of the war, Eddie had teased her, the way big brothers do, demanding to know if she would shoot Hitler if given the chance. Junie had said she might, but would have to kill herself next.

  “I�
�m sorry,” he said now, and meant it.

  “Go to the wedding,” she instructed. “Give the best toast.”

  So he laughed, and went. For that matter, so did Junie, who did not want to leave her nervous brother without an escort. It had been a while since she had seen New York, she said, and it was time. Although the bride was from Cleveland, her family wanted to marry off their daughter in the heart of well-to-do Harlem. The wedding was at Saint Philip’s Episcopal Church on 134th Street. Kevin Garland was a vestryman, and, indeed, the Garlands, grandest family in all Harlem, practically owned the place. Alas, at the last minute Aurelia’s parents were unable to make the trip: her father had taken a nasty tumble, and was hospitalized. Eddie sat stoically, dying a bit inside, wondering how Aurie could marry into the kind of family who would insist that the wedding go on as planned, bride’s parents or no; and wondering, too, whether Aurelia was really being pressured by her family to marry into a senior clan, or if Eddie had been only a last fling: perhaps this storybook marriage was what Aurie had planned all along. When the priest invited the groom to kiss the bride, Eddie shut his eyes, trying and failing to remember who had written that every true novel is about the love you lost.

  Junie, who never missed a thing, poked his ribs and told him to stop mooning. “It’s their day, not yours,” she hissed.

  The reception was in the ballroom of the Savoy Hotel, transformed at enormous expense to resemble the interior of a Venetian palace, right down to the painted ceiling, frieze-covered walls, and gilded pilasters. This was the style of the times. The matrons who ran Harlem society—“light-skinned Czarinas,” Adam Clayton Powell had dubbed them, meaning anything but a compliment—made frequent jaunts to Europe, and returned bubbling with obsolete ideas. A good quarter of the guests were white. Eddie fumbled his toast, but Gary Fatek, his rich friend from Amherst, spoke brilliantly. Gary was tall and graceful and impressive. Even his unruly red hair commanded attention. When he opened his mouth, choirs sang. He kept the room laughing, and worked into his remarks the fact that he and Eddie had met Aurelia at the same college mixer, in November of their freshman year. Thus the celebrants were able to acknowledge the eight-year love affair now at an end, without anyone’s actually mentioning it. This was Gary’s element: not only speaking, but speaking in Harlem. On other days he could be found, by his own description, rabble-rousing in libraries and church basements, urging the glorious alliance between students and workers but Negroes in particular. The Czarinas sniffed that Gary had time for this silliness because he was half a Hilliman and did not have to work for a living. If the question ever arose, Gary, laughing, said he did it to pick up girls.

  When the toasting finally ended, the drinking began. With Junie on hand, Eddie consumed less alcohol than he had at the engagement party. Clear-headed, he watched uneasily.

  “Smile.”

  “I am smiling.”

  “Not like that. A real smile.”

  Eddie did his best, but he was remembering the last time he had sat among strangers celebrating the couple, and how that night had ended. He had yet to tell even Junie or Gary about finding the body.

  “Get out there and have some fun,” Junie commanded, refusing to allow her brother to mope. She wore him out, forcing him to dance one number after another, most of them with a young woman named Mona Veazie, Aurelia’s maid of honor. Mona, at this time considered one of the most desirable Harlem bachelorettes, had been eyeing Eddie half the night, but grew annoyed at the way his glance kept following the bride, and finally switched to Gary. Rumor said she preferred white men anyway. As for Junie, she mostly sat at the table. A couple of the more daring young fellows invited her to dance, but she smiled shyly and dipped her head and declined. People pointed, and whispered. But, then, the senior clans of Harlem found her odd to begin with. The Czarinas did not know what to make of Junie, who studied law and showed no interest in marriage. Family ties might have rescued another young woman from similar strangeness: Mona Veazie, for example, was rather peculiar herself, pursuing a doctoral degree, but the Veazies, architects for six generations, enjoyed a social prominence that excused eccentricity. On the other hand, for all the respect in which Wesley Senior was held for his civil-rights activism, his family was not really—

  And then the whispering stopped, because Junie, too, was dancing, not with a nobody like herself, but with Perry Mount, the Perry Mount, Harlem’s golden boy, the young man every clan hoped its daughters might snare. A roomful of beautiful debutantes of the darker nation, and Perry was dancing with Junie. The Czarinas looked at each other in perplexity. Eddie glared. He had never really liked Perry, perhaps because of the golden boy’s ill-concealed crush on Junie, stretching well back into their shared childhoods. Nowadays Perry went after everybody. Eddie was determined to protect his sister from heartbreak. It did not occur to him that Perry might, at this moment, be making her happy.

  Gary Fatek, back at Eddie’s side, handed his friend a club soda, then, for a while, watched him watching Junie.

  “Look at the bright side,” he said after several minutes. “At least you’re not staring at Aurie any more.”

  (III)

  THE BAND PLAYED a fanfare. Flurry on the dance floor as the guests parted, forming an aisle. Bride and groom were departing the palace, hand-in-hand, wearing their traveling clothes, and Eddie was cheering along with everyone else, because that was what one did; besides, Junie’s fingers were digging into his arm. The bandleader announced that the dancing would continue until midnight for those so inclined. Eddie was not inclined to do anything but lead the charge to the exit. Gary and Mona were very cozy in a dim corner. Eddie looked around for his sister. Perry, bowing like a cavalier, delivered her to his elbow. Junie was glowing.

  Eddie made himself a bet that Perry wouldn’t call her for six months.

  He had almost made his escape, arm around his sister’s waist, when an imperious voice bade him halt.

  Amaretta Veazie, the most senior Czarina in Harlem, demanded his attention. Amaretta was tall and stout and swaybacked, people said from years of sniffing down her nose. Her honeysuckle skin bespoke generations of careful breeding, for the Clans admired such planning. Her tongue was the most feared weapon in Sugar Hill. Turning to face her, Eddie imagined himself being asked his intentions toward her daughter, Mona. But Amaretta was smiling: a friendly viper.

  “Oh, Mr. Wesley,” she cooed, sliding her fleshy arm through his. “There’s a simply lovely man here who insists that he is a fan. He’s too shy to ask, but he would be honored if you would inscribe a dédicace”—which she mispronounced.

  “It would be my pleasure,” said Eddie, bewildered, as she led him across the room—bewildered because he had published nothing but a short story.

  “His name is Emil something,” the Czarina explained as she led the way. “A white man, Mr. Wesley. He came with Kevin’s cousin Derek. Enid Garland’s son. Weren’t you and Derek Garland in school together?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “I suppose they’re just friends. Still, I don’t know that I entirely approve of this business of men attending with other men, Mr. Wesley. Do you?”

  “I haven’t given it much thought, ma’am.”

  “Was Derek this peculiar in school? The politics and so on?” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “This Emil is some kind of artist. And you know how they are.”

  But Emil, when the two men were alone, looked more like a policeman, and Eddie was on his guard. Emil was perhaps fifty, with thinning somber hair and guarded eyes that knew you were lying before you did. He drank only water and spoke with a slight accent.

  Eddie inquired.

  Emil explained that he was a photographer and an artist, and had emigrated from Germany just before the war. Eddie had been trained by Wesley Senior to make every conversation with someone new about the other person. He congratulated Emil, because West Germany had just recently been declared a sovereign nation.

  But Emil either had no small talk o
r did not care about his country of origin, because he shrugged like a sophisticate bored with trifles. Then he got to the point. “This man who died. This Castle. Did you know him?”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “The capitalist attorney who was murdered by hooligans.”

  “I never met him.”

  “I understood that you knew him.”

  Eddie shook his head. “You understand incorrectly.”

  “But you know his friends,” the photographer persisted. “An acquaintance of mine saw you with Joseph Belt. The physicist. That was you, wasn’t it?”

  “What acquaintance was this?” asked Eddie, very surprised.

  A Democratic Party ward boss came over to tell Eddie how much he had enjoyed the story. Eddie barely noticed. The German gave him the creeps. He did not look like the sort of man who attended weddings for fun. Maybe this was the man Belt was scared of.

  Emil said, “I met this Castle. A fine man. Very concerned about how Negroes are treated here, as I of course am, along with my countrymen.”

  “Of course,” said Eddie with a smile, but the German only frowned, as if levity was forbidden.

  “I took photographs for Castle. His son was in some special ceremony. The Boy Scouts, I believe.” A pause. Eddie could feel the other man sizing him up. “Mr. Castle borrowed the original proofs. Those belong to me.” The chilly eyes continued to appraise him. “I need those proofs back. But you did not know him.”