City of Dark Corners

“You boys stand down.” They sullenly went back to playing pool. He motioned for me to follow him. We went into his office in the rear, and he shut the door. With an expert spinning toss, he landed his homburg on the coatrack.

“They don’t mean any harm,” he said. “You smell like smoke.”

“You have amazing powers of observation, Cyrus.”

He smiled the finest dental work in the state. “The great Gene Hammons reduced to working as a private shamus. All because he would have told the truth about Ruth Judd.”

“Yeah, well, Ruth is going to hang, and I hung out my shingle.” I sat and he eased his bulk into a fancy leather executive chair behind an expensively appointed desk.

“I was actually coming to see you.” He slapped down a C-note on the leather-edged blotter. “I need to hire a detective. Somebody killed my boy Zoogie Boogie, slit his throat, let him bleed out like a pig. Can’t let that go unpunished.” He stretched out his arms. “As you know, I’m a preacher, among other things. And I believe in forgiveness and reconciliation, communion with the Lord, the New Testament. You still singing in the choir at Central Methodist?”

I said that I was.

“You sing well for a white boy. But, as I was saying, there are times, and this is one of them, when I go Old Testament.”

“An eye for an eye…”

“Exactly.”

Cleveland might or might not have been ordained, but from this tar-paper palace he had presided over the colored rackets in Phoenix for the past ten years. He hovered at the border

between crime and the city’s small Negro business and professional class, which included college-educated doctors, teachers, and ministers.

On the legit side, he owned a funeral home, was a member of the NAACP and Colored Masonic Lodge, and mediated disputes south of the tracks. He was an investor in the Phoenix Tribune, the Negro newspaper, until the Depression killed it. He was also a silent partner in the Rice Hotel and Swindall Tourist Home, which catered to Negro travelers who weren’t allowed to stay at white hotels.

His reputation for violence was enough that he rarely had to use it. The story where he staked a rival out in the desert atop a red-ant mound and covered him with molasses—it might have been true or not, but people believed it either way. And he was the richest colored man in town. I had a grudging respect for him because he was a veteran, too.

This was going to be the easiest hundred dollars I ever made, but I circled around.

“What was Zoogie to you?”

“He collected from my bookies.”

“Why use a white man for that?”

“Because the white man’s ice is always colder, Hammons. Zoogie was a mess, but when he got out of stir he came to me and I put him to work. I’m an equal opportunity employer. I figured my boys would show him more respect when he came calling, and they did. Send a Negro for that, and they’d know him, he might be hesitant. But send a white boy, and they’d cough it up.”

“Maybe one of them didn’t respect him.”

“No way. It’d never happen. Disrespecting him would mean disrespecting me.”

We fell silent. Somebody sure as hell had disrespected Zoogie.

Finally, I said, “I hear you’re Greenbaum’s man now.”

He tilted his head, amused.

“I’m nobody’s man but my own. I do have a partnership with Gus on gambling. It’s a new world, Hammons. The Chicago Outfit is losing out with Prohibition going away and Capone in the pen in Atlanta. He has the clap, you know. Anyway, the profits are going to be in consolidating gambling nationwide through the wire service. They gave me a nice cut.”

“I’m sure,” I said. “But why does Greenbaum give a damn about penny-ante bookies in Phoenix if he’s responsible for the whole Southwest?”

“He likes to keep a tight grip. Wouldn’t look good to the Outfit if his backyard was messy.”

Tight grip Gus.

“Well, I can solve your case easily. Zoogie’s throat was cut by Frenchy Navarre.”

Cleveland’s body tensed. “How do you know this?”