The Best American Mystery Stories 2002

Robert B. Parker Harlem Nocturne

From Murderers’ Row

Mr. Rickey was wearing a blue polka dot bow tie and a gray tweed suit that didn’t fit him very well. He took some time getting his cigar lit and then looked at me over his round black-rimmed glasses.

“I’m bringing Jackie Robinson up from Montreal,” he said.

“The other shoe drops,” I said. Mr. Rickey smiled.

“I want you to protect him,” he said.

“Okay,” I said.

“Just like that?” Rickey said.

“I assume you’ll pay me,” I said.

“Don’t you want to know what I’m asking you to protect him from?”

“I assume I know,” I said. “People who might want to kill him for being a Negro. And himself.”

Rickey nodded and turned the cigar slowly without taking it from his mouth.

“Good,” he said. “Himself was the part I didn’t think you’d get.”

I looked modest.

“Jackie is a man of strong character,” Rickey said. “One might even say forceful. If this experiment is going to work he has to sit on that. He has to remain calm. Turn the other cheek.”

“And I’ll have to see that he does that,” I said.

“Yes. And at the same time, see that no one harms him.”

“Am I required to turn the other cheek?”

“You are required to do what is necessary to help Jackie and me and the Brooklyn Dodgers get through the impending storm.”

“Do what I can,” I said.

“My information is that you can do a lot. It’s why you’re here. You’ll stay with him all the time. If anyone asks you, you are simply an assistant to the general manager. If he has to stay in a Negro hotel, you’ll have to stay there too.”

“I got through Guadalcanal,” I said.

“Yes, I know. How do you feel about a Negro in the major leagues?”

“Seems like a good idea to me.”

“Good. I’ll introduce you to Jackie.”

He pushed the switch on an intercom and spoke into it, and a moment later a secretary opened the office door and Robinson came in wearing a gray suit and a black knit tie. He was a pretty big guy and moved as if he were working off a steel spring. He was nobody’s high yellow. He was black. And he didn’t seem furtive about it. Rickey introduced us.

“Well, you got the build for a bodyguard,” Robinson said.

“You, too,” I said.

“Well, I ain’t guarding your body,” Jackie said.

“Mine’s not worth ten grand a year,” I said.

“One thing,” Robinson said, and he looked at Rickey as he spoke. “I don’t need no keeper. You keep people from shooting me, good. And I know I can’t be fighting people. You gotta do that for me. But I go where I want to go and do what I do. And I don’t ask you first.”

“As long as you let me die for you,” I said.

Something flashed in Robinson’s eyes. “You got a smart mouth,” he said.

“I’m a smart guy.”

Robinson grinned suddenly.

“So how come you taking on this job?”

“Same as you,” I said. “I need the dough.”

Robinson looked at me with his hard stare.

“Well,” Robinson said. “We’ll see.”

Rickey had been sitting quietly while Robinson and I sniffed around each other. Now he spoke.

“You can’t ever let down,” he said. He was looking at Robinson, but I knew I was included. “You’re under a microscope. You can’t drink. You can’t be sexually indiscreet. You can’t have opinions about things. You play hard and clean and stay quiet. Can you do it?”

“With a little luck,” Robinson said.

“Luck is the residue of intention,” Rickey said.

He talked pretty good for a guy who hit .239 lifetime.

It didn’t take long to pick up the way it was going to be.

Peewee Reese was supportive. Dixie Walker was not. Everyone else was on the spectrum somewhere between.

In St. Louis, a base runner spiked Robinson at first base. In Chicago, he was tagged in the face sliding into second. In St. Louis, somebody tossed a black cat onto the field. In Cincinnati, he was knocked down three times in one at bat. In every city we heard the word nigger out of the opposition dugout. None of this was my problem. It was Robinson’s. There was nothing I could do about it. So I sat in my corner of the dugout and did nothing.

My work was off the field.

There was hate mail. I couldn’t do anything about that, either. The club passed the death threats on, but there were so many of them that it was mostly a waste of time. All Robinson and I could do about those was be ready. I began to look at everybody as if they were dangerous.

After a double header against the Giants, I drove Robinson uptown. A gray two-door Ford pulled up beside us at a stoplight, and I stared at the driver. The light changed and the Ford pulled away.

“I’m starting to look at everybody as if they were dangerous,” I said.

Robinson glanced over at me and smiled the way he did. The smile said, Pal, you have no idea.

But all he said was, “Uh-huh.”

We stopped to eat at a place on Lennox Avenue. When we came in everyone stared. At first I thought it was Robinson. Then I realized they hadn’t even seen him yet. It was me. I was the only white face in the joint.

“Sit in the back,” I said to Robinson.

“Have to, with you along,” he said.

As we walked through the place, they recognized Robinson and somebody began to clap, then everybody clapped. Then they stood and clapped and hooted and whistled until we were seated.

“Probably wasn’t for me,” I said.

“Probably not.”

Robinson had a Coke.

“You ever drink booze?” I said.

“Not in public,” Robinson said.

“Good.”

I looked around. Even for a hard case like me it was uncomfortable being in a room full of colored people. I was glad to be with Robinson.

We both ordered steak.

“No fried chicken?” I said.

“No watermelon, either,” Robinson said.

The room got quiet all of a sudden. The silence was so sharp that it made me hunch a little forward so I could reach the gun on my hip. Through the front door came six white men in suits and overcoats and felt hats. There was nothing uneasy about them as they came into the colored place. They swaggered. One of them swaggered like the boss, a little fat guy with his overcoat open over a dark suit. He had on a blue silk tie with a pink flamingo hand-painted on it.

“Frank Digiacomo,” Robinson said. “He owns the place.”

Without taking off their hats or overcoats, the six men sat at a large round table near the front.

“I hear he owns this part of Harlem,” I said.

Robinson shrugged.

“When Bumpy Johnson was around,” I said, “the Italians stayed downtown.”

“Good for colored people to own the businesses they run,” Robinson said.

A big guy sitting next to Digiacomo stood and walked over to our table. Robinson and I were both close to two hundred, but this guy was in a different class. He was thick bodied and tall, with very little neck and a lot of chin. His face was clean shaved and sort of moist. His shirt was crisp white. His chesterfield overcoat hung open, and he reeked of strong cologne.

“Mr. Digiacomo wants to buy you a bottle of champagne,” he said to Robinson.

Robinson put a bite of steak in his mouth and chewed it carefully and swallowed and said, “Tell Mr. Digiacomo, no thank you.”

The big guy stared at him for a moment.

“Most people don’t say no to Mr. Digiacomo, Rastus.”

Robinson said nothing but his gaze on the big man was heavy.

“Maybe we can buy Mr. Digiacomo a bottle,” I said.

“Mr. Digiacomo don’t need nobody buying him a bottle.”

“Well, I guess it’s a draw,” I said. “Thanks for stopping by.”

The big guy looked at me for a long time. I didn’t shrivel up and blow away, so after a while he swaggered back to his boss. He leaned over and spoke to Digiacomo, his left hand resting on the back of Digiacomo’s chair. Then he nodded and turned and swaggered back.

“On your feet, boy,” he said to Robinson.

“I’m eating my dinner,” Robinson said.

The big man took hold of Robinson’s arm, and Robinson came out of the chair as if he’d been ejected and hit the big guy with a good right hand. Robinson was a good-sized guy in good condition, and he knew how to punch. It should have put the big guy down. But it didn’t. He took a couple of backwards steps and steadied himself and shook his head as if there were flies. At Digiacomo’s table everyone had turned to look. The only sound in the room was the faint clatter of dishes from the kitchen. It was so still I could hear chairs creaking as people turned to stare. I was on my feet.

“Sit down,” I yelled at Robinson.

“Not up here,” Robinson said. “I’ll take it downtown, but not up here.”

The big man had his head cleared. He looked at the table where Digiacomo sat.

“Go ahead, Sonny,” Digiacomo said. “Show the nigger something.”

The big man lunged toward Robinson. I stepped between them. The big man almost ran over me, and would have run over both of us if I hadn’t hit him a hell of a left. It was probably no better punch than Robinson’s, but it benefited from the brass knuckles I was wearing. It stopped him but it didn’t put him down. I got my knee into his groin and hit him again with the knucks. He grunted and went down slowly. First to his knees, then slowly toppling face forward onto the floor.

The place was like a tomb. Even the kitchen noise had stopped. I could hear someone’s breath rasping in and out. I’d heard it before. It was mine.

The four men at Digiacomo’s table were on their feet. All of them had guns, and all of them were pointing at us. Digiacomo remained seated. He looked mildly amused.

“Don’t shoot them in here,” he said. “Take them out.”

I was wearing a Colt .45 that I had liberated from the U.S. Marine Corps. But it was still on my hip. I should have had it out when this thing started.

One of the other men, a thin tall man with high shoulders, said, “Outside” and gestured with the .38 belly gun he carried. He was the gunny. You could tell by the way he held the weapon, like it was precious.

“No,” Robinson said.

“How about you, pal?” the gunny said to me.

I shook my head. The gunny looked at Digiacomo.

Digiacomo said, “Okay, shoot them here. Make sure the niggers clean up afterwards.”

The gunny smiled. He was probably good at it. You could see he liked the work.

“Which one of you wants it first?” he said.

At the next table a small Negro with a thin mustache, wearing a cerulean blue suit, said, “No.”

The gunny glanced at him.

“You too, boy?” he said.

At the table on the other side of us a large woman in a too-tight yellow dress said, “No.” And stood up.

The gunny glanced at her. The small Negro with the mustache stood too. Then everyone at his table stood. The woman in the too-tight dress moved in front of Robinson and me. Between us and the gunny. The people from her table joined her. The people from mustache’s table joined them. Then all the people in the room were on their feet, closing on us, surrounding us, making an implacable black wall between us and the gunny. I took my gun out. Robinson stood motionless, balanced on the balls of his feet. From the bar along the far side of the room came the sound of someone working the action of a pump shotgun. It is a sound, like the sound of a tank, that doesn’t sound like anything else. Through the crowd I could see the round-faced bartender leaning his elbows on the bar aiming a shotgun with most of the stock cut off.

The gunny looked at Digiacomo again. They were an island of pallid faces in a sea of dark faces. Digiacomo got to his feet for the first time. His face was no longer amused. He looked at me through the crowd, and at Robinson, and seemed to study us both for a moment. Then he jerked his head toward the big man who had managed to sit up on the floor among the forest of Negro feet. Two of the other men with Digiacomo eased through the crowd and got the big man on his feet. They looked at Digiacomo. Digiacomo looked at us again, then turned without speaking and walked out. The gunny put his belly gun away, sadly, and turned and followed Digiacomo. The other men, two of them helping the big guy, went out after him.

The room was as still and motionless as Sunday in Antarctica. Then Robinson said again, “Not up here,” and everyone in the room heard him and everyone in the room began to cheer.

“Lucky thing this is a baseball crowd,” I said to Robinson.

He looked at me for a moment as if he were somewhere else. Then he seemed slowly to come back. He smiled.

“Yeah,” he said. “Lucky thing.”