Only the Strong Read online

  “Why does someone like him need babysitting?”

  Fisher spun Goode around to face the large wall mirror. “You used to just go out and do what needed to be done, large or small,” Goode said, admiring himself. “Now you ask questions. Why are you all of a sudden so curious?”

  It’s not me you should be wondering about, Guts thought. He was particularly proud of his ability to mind his own business. During much of the past decade, the boss had disappeared nearly every Wednesday afternoon. After they parked in front of Guts’s car, Goode would politely dismiss him, move to the front seat, and drive away. Guts used the spare time to track down debtors reluctant to pay their bills. Never was he tempted to follow Goode, figuring every man had a right to keep some secrets to himself. He had been the soul of discretion. Now his motives were being questioned.

  “Not curious. Careful,” he said evenly. “The streets are changing. No disrespect, but they’re changing faster than you and I are used to moving. I just don’t want us to be caught by surprise.”

  “Hmm. Well, you’re probably right. When I was a young man I barged right into situations and then had to fight my way out. Probably could have saved myself some scuffling if I’d gone in with my eyes open.”

  Guts waited.

  “Okay,” Goode said, finally. “As you know, Virgil Washburn and I are business associates.”

  Guts wondered where this was going but his face betrayed nothing. He’d heard that Washburn, owner of the home team, had lately grown tired of his star player.

  “Crenshaw’s becoming a headache,” Goode continued, “a bad attitude with a big salary. What’s worse, he’s getting into trouble off the field. Picking fights, breaking the law, sticking his dick where it don’t belong. But the team needs to keep Crenshaw in fighting shape or else they got no shot at the World Series. They want to get their money’s worth before they trade him. Everyone would be better off if he kept his partying on the North Side.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s all.”

  Guts nodded. “All right. Got his particulars?”

  “He’s got yours. He’ll call you later.”

  Guts waited until Sharps returned. He smelled him before he saw him. A cloud of perfume whisked under the front door, followed by Sharps’s appearance. Guts studied him through the glass before unlocking the door.

  Twenty minutes later he was heading down Vandeventer, the street now fully awake. Outside the Tom-Boy grocery, two men loaded the Volkswagen delivery van. Through the open door of the laundromat on Labadie Avenue, a slender young woman juggled dimes as she fed them into the slot of a spinning dryer. School kids hung around McCoy’s confectionery, counting down the days until summer and freedom. At Sullivan Avenue, next to the shine parlor where Guts, according to legend, once used a shoelace to silence a loudmouth, the crossing guard shepherded stragglers on their way to Farragut Elementary. Guts could have hung a straight left at Natural Bridge, but he couldn’t resist cruising through the park, barely accelerating as he looked around. His morning regulars were all gone except for the fisherwoman, still and regal in her metal lawn chair, her hat pulled down low over her eyes. Across the street from the park, Sam the barbecue man was already manning his grills on the lot of the burned-out SuperMart.

  Once inside Gateway Cab, Guts passed through the main room and into the inner office, which he shared with two desks, a quartet of file cabinets, and Trina Ames, Gateway’s receptionist and dispatcher. Trina was as beautiful and hardworking as she was sweet, and the drivers often pretended to misunderstand just to hear her sugary voice repeat an address over the radio. As far as Guts was concerned, the most appealing thing about her was her knack for staying out of other people’s business.

  Guts was not much for long phone conversations. Face to face, he could chew the fat with the best of them, even if he spent every exchange casually taking in everything going on all around him, ever alert to dangers. But the phone? Disembodied voices disturbed him in a way he couldn’t quite nail down. So even though he was happy to hear from Pearl—how her day was going, her lunch plans, how she couldn’t wait to spoon more fresh-baked banana pudding into his waiting mouth—he was nonetheless relieved later in the day to put down the receiver and step into the main room, where the men of the cabstand had congregated for lunch.

  Of the three men present, only one had an actual connection to the stand. Cherry, sporting an Afro less out of style considerations than just natural hirsute exuberance, was the in-house mechanic. Good-natured, sleepy-eyed, and skillful, he was adept at hanging around and shooting the breeze, ears attuned to the bell that rang when a cab pulled onto the lot.

  Shadrach, long retired, had made the cabstand his second home. Wearing his customary straw fedora with the gold band, he sat with Cherry at one of the three card tables that served as workplace furniture for the Gateway fleet. The two men attacked a platter of ribs while Oliver paced nearby and read from the paper. Oliver worked at the bowling alley across the street. Nervous, bespectacled, of indeterminate age, he took so many “coffee breaks” that it remained a mystery how he managed to keep himself employed.

  Guts crossed the threshold and took everything in with a quick, sweeping glance. The plate-glass window gleamed adjacent to the front door, through which the lot’s two gas pumps beckoned. Across the room, a doorway led to the service bay where cabs could be hoisted and repaired. Behind Cherry and Shadrach another door led to a restroom flanked by a water fountain and an ancient soda machine. On the wall above the fountain was a framed Ebony cover photo of Nichelle Nichols. Clad in her skintight Star Trek uniform, the curvy communications officer of the starship Enterprise appeared to be climbing from a hatch as she stared into the camera, bright eyes ablaze. Those eyes alone would have possessed the power to command every man’s gaze if not for the presence of her fabulous right thigh, deliciously exposed as she mounted a rung. Over her left shoulder a headline announced, “Scientists Discover Secret of Skin Color.”

  Guts sat where he could keep his eyes on the door. The chair creaked and groaned under his bulk.

  “‘Urban renewal,’” Oliver was saying. “We know what that is. Nigger removal. See, the reason they haven’t built up Franklin Square is because they want to take it back. One day the North Side will be just as white as it was before all you burrheads came up from Dixie.”

  Listening, Guts remembered the buzz of commerce that once swirled around Franklin Square. The convergence of three streets formed a plaza that attracted strollers, people watchers, and shoppers eager to spend their wages at the mom-and-pop grocery, the record shop, the soul-food joint, and the clothing boutiques. During the hot, tense summers of recent years, the plaza had served as a rallying place for the politically awakened residents of North Gateway. Poets recited odes to the people, drummers pounded congas, self-appointed revolutionaries handed out pamphlets calling for armed rebellion, and would-be orators rang the rooftops with phrases cribbed from Malcolm X and H. Rap Brown.

  The buildings all burned in the furious hours following King’s death in Memphis. Only a solitary wall remained standing amid the rubble. The men of the Black Swan Sign Shop responded with a mural that had long been in the works, a Wall of Respect saluting heroic strugglers from the past and present. Occasionally, Guts rolled to a stop across from the Wall and admired the stern faces of W.E.B. Du Bois, Sojourner Truth, Elijah Muhammad, and others.

  It wasn’t much different closer to Guts’s home. The SuperMart was still gone. One side of Vandeventer from Labadie to Greer had retained its bombed-out look, even as folks on the other side did their laundry and bought small items from a corner store. From Taylor to Newstead, Easton Boulevard looked like a mouth with many teeth missing. A notary public, a greasy spoon, a drugstore—here and there businesses tottered in relative solitude, miraculous survivors of the fires.

  “You don’t know that,” Shadrach said. “That ain’t necessarily the future. We might have a black man in charge. Look at Cleveland.
Look at Gary. If it can happen in those cities, it could happen here.”

  “Naw,” Cherry said. “Downtown’s what they want. How long they been serving us at that Woolworth’s? See how much longer it sticks around, now that colored folks can sit at the counter.”

  “All my life I wanted to sit at that counter,” Shadrach said. “I figured white folks’ hotcakes just had to be better. Turns out they didn’t taste no different.”

  Oliver didn’t seem to hear. “Mill Creek Valley. Meacham Park. Used to be just us in those neighborhoods. Now you might find us cutting grass or scrubbing toilets, but that’s it. When they want to move the black man, they just move him.”

  “Where’d all them revolutionaries go?” Cherry asked. “What happened to that liberatin’ nigger? They shoulda told us about this.”

  Guts knew the answer to that one. “You talking about Gabe Patterson? He got married,” he said.

  Shadrach sighed and nodded. “It happens to the best of us.”

  “Better than going to jail,” Guts said. “That’s where Patterson seemed to be heading before Rose Reynolds calmed him down.”

  “Hmm, I’m not sure there’s a difference,” Shadrach said.

  “The Warriors of Freedom they called themselves,” Oliver said. “It was a good thing they didn’t amount to much. This country has no tolerance for revolutionaries. Look what they did to the Chicago Seven.”

  Cherry frowned. “Them singing boys? What did they go and do to them?”

  Oliver shook his head. “That’s the Jackson Five, fool.”

  “I knew that,” Cherry said. “I was just testing y’all.”

  “Well, the revolutionaries, they had their day in the sun,” Oliver continued. “We got us our own congressman now and I bet he’ll do a heap more than a bunch of beret-wearing snot-noses running around talking about ‘off the pigs.’ The streets are not where things get done. The real action is in boardrooms and legislatures. You can’t be marching against the Man, that’s out. Naw, you got to sit down with him, like the siddity Negroes do.”

  “Oliver, you ain’t never been in nobody’s boardroom,” Shadrach said, “except maybe to empty the trash. Bet you never marched in the streets neither. Hell, I can’t even tell if you ever set foot in that bowling alley that cuts you a check every two weeks.”

  “You don’t have to listen to me,” Oliver said. “Ask Guts. He knows what I’m talking about. He rubs elbows with the bigwigs. Take a look at the photo of the week.” He waved his copy of the Gateway Citizen in Shadrach’s direction.

  Shadrach grabbed it and began to read. “‘Here’s local businessman Ananias Goode at a meeting of the board of trustees of Harry Truman Boys Club. To his left is Dr. Artinces Noel, the North Side’s leading pediatrician. To his right is Virgil Washburn, principal owner of the home team.’”

  Oliver crossed his arms in triumph. “See what I mean? From the looks of things, Mr. G. is tight with Washburn—one of the richest men in the city!” He looked at Guts. “Hope he don’t sell us little folks down the river.”

  Guts shrugged. “Not my business. I ain’t into politics. And I don’t bite the hand that buys my pork chops.”

  “Amen,” Shadrach said. “Speaking of pork, Cherry, we supposed to be sharing this plate.”

  The door swung open and a medium-sized man in his early thirties walked in, wearing a safari vest covered with zippered pockets.

  “Playfair,” Cherry said. “What’s happening?”

  The man strolled straight to the framed portrait of Nichelle Nichols, bowed slightly before it, and crossed himself.

  “Boy, you going to hell,” Shadrach said.

  “Ain’t nothing sinful about worshipping a woman,” Playfair said with a smile.

  “Specially one with thighs like that,” Oliver added.

  “She got to be the finest woman on television,” Cherry said.

  “Nope, that would be Gail Fisher,” Oliver said. “If I was Mannix I would never leave the office.”

  Cherry curled his lip in disagreement. “She too dignified for me.”

  Oliver chuckled as if he knew a secret. “Not behind closed doors, I bet. I’m telling you, that chick’s a sex machine.” He turned to Playfair. “What you got in your car today?”

  “Anything a brother needs.”

  Cherry laid a polished rib bone on his plate. “Got any women?”

  “Any women I get I keep for myself,” Playfair replied. “Now, tropical fish, that’s another story.”

  Shadrach pushed his hat back on his head, exposing his furrowed brow. “Tropical what?”

  “You heard right. Freshwater fish. Cichlids, kissing gouramis, neon tetras, and such. Perfect for breeding and a reliable source of comfort, serenity, and companionship. Today I charge half of what I’ll charge tomorrow.”

  “Hmmph,” Shadrach snorted. “Only fish worthy of my attention is the kind you fry.”

  “Amen to that,” Cherry said.

  “Where’d you get them fish from, anyway?” Oliver asked.

  Playfair smiled. “They fell off a boat, of course.”

  “How do you even fit all that ‘merchandise’ in your trunk?” Shadrach asked. “How do you keep them fish alive?”

  “Packaging and display is a complicated art not easily explained to the average citizen.”

  Shadrach ran his fingers across the brim of his hat. “I assure you, Playfair, nothin’ about me is average.”

  “I heard one time you pulled a totem pole outta there,” Cherry said.

  “I can neither confirm nor deny that,” Playfair said. “All I can say is a genuine indigenous carving of considerable length can be manipulated into a seemingly incompatible space. It comes down to a matter of volume, leverage, and surface tension.”

  Guts knew something about that. Once he’d successfully squeezed a six-four man into his trunk. But he’d had to break him a bit to make him fit.

  “Damn, Playfair, I’m telling you,” said Cherry. “You never should have dropped out of Sumner. You’d be a congressman by now.”

  Playfair shook his head. “Aw, high school was just holding me back.”

  Oliver pointed to the lot, where a car was pulling into view. “Play, you got a customer.”

  Playfair looked out the window and nodded. “Excuse me, gents. This here is what the titans of retail call a big-ticket transaction. Back in a bit.”

  Guts watched as Playfair first stepped toward the door, then turned and headed toward him, pulled up a chair, and sat.

  “Let me pull your coat for a minute,” Playfair said.

  Guts nodded. “What it is?”

  “Just thought you should know that Nifty’s smelling himself.”

  “Nothing new about that.”

  “Right,” Playfair agreed, “except he’s spitting shit about you.”

  “Me?”

  “Square business. Say he’s tired of you playing him for a punk. He say…ah, forget it.” Playfair moved as if he was getting ready to leave.

  Guts touched his arm. “No way, Playfair. Don’t try to walk off in the middle. Tell me.”

  Playfair sighed. “He say you’ve gone soft and everybody knows it. Say you used to be Huey Newton and now you Martin Luther King.”

  Guts winced. “Some motherfuckers are shallow.” He heard Pearl in his head: Lorenzo, you really shouldn’t curse so much. “What else?”

  Playfair eyed him curiously. “Ain’t that enough?”

  “Yeah,” Guts said. “I suppose it is.”

  Heading home later that evening, Guts turned up the radio to drown out the taxi chatter still rattling around in his head. He chose R&B because his favorite jazz deejay, the Man in the Red Vest, wouldn’t be on until midnight—another five hours or so. He hummed along while contemplating a shower and a visit to Pearl’s. But first he planned to roll by Nat-Han Steakhouse on Easton for a takeout dinner. The song playing was okay, he guessed, but the composer was clearly no W.C. Handy. He could never imagine the great bandleader s
ettling for such crazy lyrics.

  Closing his eyes for just a second, he idly drummed the steering wheel, singing despite himself, “Thank you falettinme be mice elf agin.” He opened them just in time to see a policemen standing in the middle of Vandeventer, both hands raised. Guts slammed on the brakes, gripping the wheel and willing the Plymouth to a rubber-scorching stop just a few feet from the cop’s outstretched palms.

  The policeman rushed up to Guts’s window, his face red with fury. “You blind or something? Or maybe just stupid as fuck!”

  “I’m sorry, officer. I let the radio distract me. Really, my apologies.”

  “All right already. Take a U-turn and beat it. Road’s closed.”

  “Yes, sir. Was there an accident?” Through his windshield Guts saw the familiar elements of a crime scene: cop cars, flashing lights, yellow tape, a small crowd of onlookers on the neighboring sidewalk. And a cloth-covered corpse sprawled in the middle of the street. One leg poked awkwardly from under the tarp, a sock curling upward from the shoeless foot. Guts’s eyes followed the trail of broken glass leading from the body to the shattered window of Frontier Barbershop. Damn, he thought. Rudolph Fisher.

  “More like a murder,” the cop said. “Say, don’t I know you from somewhere?”

  “Not likely, sir. Thank you, I’ll be moving on,” Guts said.

  “Wait. You’re sure I’ve never arrested you before?”

  “Me? No, nothing like that.”

  “Tell you what. Pull over and step out of the car.”

  “Officer, I hardly think that’s necessary.”

  “Did I ask you to think? Now pull over and get the fuck out of the car.”

  Guts sighed and prepared to pull over. A gloved hand landed on the patrolman’s shoulder.

  “I’ll take it from here.”

  The patrolman turned to see the taciturn face of Detective Otis Grimes inches from his own. Mirrored sunglasses sat on Grimes’s brown face, hiding his eyes.

  “Well, yes, sir. Yes, sir, Detective.” The patrolman reluctantly left. Guts shifted the Plymouth into neutral.