“No,” came the booming response.

  “This isn’t a matter for their put-upon lackey in the children’s department. This isn’t a matter of child’s play. This is about adult business, this is about dignity and respect.”

  The crowd again reacted ebulliently. Toward the rear to one side of the gathered, shoving erupted between one of the officers and two members of the Nation of Islam.

  “Get your hands off them,” a woman said.

  Several cops moved in, as well as several of the Black Muslims.

  “Keep it together,” Abdullah yelled from the front. “That’s what they want us to do, provoke a fight so they can have an excuse to break heads and limbs. Don’t succumb.”

  Harsh words exploded from both sides among the gathered. Ingram was jabbed in the stomach with a nightstick and reacted. Determined to maintain his focus, he managed to take a picture of the snarling cop, who now raised his baton to send it crashing against his skull. It was going to be the great shot he’d fantasized taking as he flinched for impact.

  “Maybe we can still reach a civil outcome,” a voice announced over a bullhorn.

  The cop’s eyes shifted and then looking back at Ingram, he seemed for the first time to see the camera in his hand. He lowered the baton, glaring at him. Ingram felt cheated instead of glad. A tall man in a gray pinstriped suit stood alongside a black Lincoln Town Car, holding the bullhorn. The car had stopped at the edge of the impending melee, four individuals having stepped out of it, including the man who’d announced his presence so dramatically. It was Tom Bradley. One of the others was Anita Claire. Now he was glad.

  “I think if we can all take a deep breath, we might be able to resolve this,” Bradley said. He wasn’t using the bullhorn as he strode into the knot of blue, uniforms and suits and dresses. “Perhaps a conference of sorts can be brokered. What do you say, Sergeant Franks and Minister Abdullah? Shall we try dialogue?”

  Ingram’s experience was the cops in Los Angeles weren’t shy about being caught on camera busting open a negro citizen’s head. But Channel 5’s film camera had been repositioned and was on Bradley, a candidate for City Council. That was a different matter.

  “A call came into the reverend about this,” Claire said, stepping closer to Ingram.

  “Clever move by your candidate,” he observed. “This’ll show us natives he’s no tool of the white man.”

  As if she hadn’t heard him, she said, “I saw what that cop was about to do, Harry.”

  “All in a day’s work.”

  She shook her head. “It shouldn’t be.”

  “Remember, I’m Tarzan.”

  “Excuse me, you’re Harry Ingram, aren’t you? You’re a photographer for the negro papers, right?” The newscaster thrust his microphone at him.

  “Anita, if you please,” Bradley said, holding up his hand and gesturing for her to join him.

  “See you later.” She and a small contingent including Bradley headed for the White Front doors.

  “That’s right,” Ingram said to the reporter. He was off-balance being on the receiving end of questions. He wondered if he could turn sideways and disappear.

  The TV newsman said, “My cameraman said he’d seen you around. Why did that officer attack you?”

  “Why do you think?”

  He moved the microphone back toward his own mouth. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean the police treat colored reporters different than they do white ones.”

  “It’s been my experience they don’t have much love lost for white ones either.”

  As they talked, Ingram saw that Bradley, and the other man from the car who he assumed was Reverend Brookings and Claire were let into the store. The other woman who’d come with them stayed outside, talking to Abdullah. The members of the Nation of Islam and the police stood apart, glaring at one another.

  About forty minutes later Ingram walked away briskly from the store in search of a pay phone. He found one and called in his update to Crossman.

  “They’re still talking?” his editor asked.

  “Yeah. At one point they sent out the Black woman who works there to fetch Minister Abdullah to come inside. They’ve been in there ever since.”

  “Dammit, looks like I’m going to be here late again. You’ve got to get a quote from this Abdullah, Harry. The manager too if you can, but him for sure. Channel 5 still there?”

  “They were packing up.”

  “Good. They’ll have the newscast but end it with some jive like negotiations are ongoing.”

  “You want a quote from Bradley?”

  “Think you can get it? Our readers know we’ve endorsed him, but still.”

  “Sure,” he said confidently. He imagined he might get slapped by Claire for being so bold to ask to speak to Bradley and he decided he’d like that just fine.

  Off the phone and back at the department store, he again studied the sides of faces of the Black males, looking for the former William Jones’s missing piece of earlobe. He spotted the counterman he’d talked to at the cleaners the other day, but the other man looked past him. Ingram moved so as to not be in his line of sight. Probably seeing him in a different context, his face hadn’t registered, Ingram figured as he continued looking at individuals among the crowd. Sure enough he spotted a man in sunglasses with a chunk of earlobe missing not twenty feet away, several people in between them. He was talking with another man, who was bobbing his head. The former Jones was a lighter hue than Ingram but not so much you would take him for being mixed race.

  He had a carbon copy of the attorney’s entire letter with him. But good sense told him if he went over to the ex–Mr. Jones now, he’d get about three words out before there’d probably be a reaction he might not be able to control. What if the counterman came over and wondered just what it was that Ingram was up to? Was he pretending to be a newsman to serve his papers and was what he’d said about a will made up? Was it a white devil’s trap and he their Uncle Tom errand boy? Too, maybe the once–Mr. Jones would be embarrassed in front of his fellow members about this white man looking for him. Not that Ingram would announce the dead man’s race, but his name and the fact that he left a will was a neon alert. No, he reasoned, it was best he do this out of the presence of so many Black Muslims.

  Tom Bradley opened the double front doors of the department store. He stepped out, scanning about for the television crew, Ingram conjectured. But the man who was versed in containing his emotions, having risen in the ranks despite a prejudiced police department, showed no disappointment as he held the door open for the others to exit. Anita Claire was the last to come out and she smiled briefly at Bradley.

  “Brothers and sisters,” Minister Abdullah began, “thanks to the candidate and his persuasive words, the manager had a meeting with me that I will say in all charity was fruitful to some degree.”

  Wary murmurs rolled through the assembled. The cops looked from one to the other, unsure of what was coming next.

  “While I did not secure the firing of this man, as should have happened, this insulter of our women, he will be transferred out of our community so as not to utter his vileness, at least as far as we, the so-called negro in America, are concerned.”

  There were whoops of approval and applause. Ingram started toward the minister, estimating this was going to be his only opportunity to get his quote whereas with Bradley, he might have a chance later today.

  “Brother minister, I was hoping to get a quick interview with you for the Eagle.”

  Abdullah said, “Always have time for the fine publication Mrs. Bass steered as they continue to serve our people well.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Ingram realized the man from the cleaners was staring at him. Well, there was nothing to do about it now. He asked Abdullah his questions for the article. By the time he was finished, the once–Mr. Jones in the sunglasses was gone, though Ingram had taken a surreptitious shot of him. Concentrating on putting together the article, he also got a statement from Bradley by simply going up and asking him. Given he was running for office, he’d stayed to work the crowd. Ingram wasn’t sure if the Nation of Islam encouraged its members to vote, but nothing ventured and all that, he reflected.

  “Got what you needed?” Claire asked him as the picketers and the police began to disperse.

  “I can’t be satisfied,” he said, quoting bluesman Muddy Waters.

  “Ain’t just men who can sing that, you know.”

  He doffed his hat. “Yes, ma’am.”

  After she left, he opened his trunk and switched out the white bulb for a red one. He also taped his tarp in place along the edge of the trunk lid to block the light. Ingram then utilized the equipment and chemicals of his portable darkroom, including some bottled water, and developed his pictures.

  Sitting in his car, he wrote out the story in longhand on a lined pad of paper he kept in the car. It took some effort, as this wasn’t some sharpie shot dead and lying in the bushes, or two drunken women who went at each other with a clothes iron and a screwdriver. Those crime vignettes took little effort to bang out. The vivid pictures told those tales. But this time it was about an establishment in a Black neighborhood and the implications of having a mostly white staff who had no sense of the area they were in except that it was a colored part of town. He went over his draft, then rewrote it, doing his best to make it sound like the longer pieces he read in the Eagle and Sentinel—articles that told the facts, had a point of view but didn’t hammer the reader over the head with it.

  Driving to the newspaper, Ingram felt conflicted. Wasn’t this the sort of story he should be doing more of? Work reflecting the plight and the striving of Black people, and not showing the race in the worst possible light? But those fights and shootings and stabbings were also part of life here. And, as he’d told the woman in Kinslow’s rooming house, he took plenty of shots of white folks doing dirt to each other too. Though they were invariably poor and working people, just like their fellow Black citizenry. If he pursued the more uplifting stories, would that bring in more dollars eventually, get him in the white slicks so he wouldn’t have to cobble together the money to pay his gas bill and buy a pot roast now and then?

  “This is good, Harry, I’m impressed. A step above your usual.” Crossman shook the typewritten pages. When Ingram had gotten to the paper, he’d commandeered an Underwood and banged out the story. They were standing outside the Classified Ads room, having wandered there from his desk as Crossman read. Most of the paper had been put to bed, Crossman holding open a space for the article on the protest.

  “Trying to get it right, Wes.”

  “Well, keep it up. I’ll put in your voucher.”

  “Thanks.”

  On his way out, Ingram passed by an open door. Keys were clacking away in there as an older man composed metal type at a battle-hardened Linotype machine. His aged fingers worked the keys nimbly.

  “Chester,” Ingram said, nodding to him.

  The other man nodded back as he reached down to extract a line of cooling hot metal type.

  Elated, Ingram next went to El Cholo’s Mexican restaurant on Western Avenue. He sat at one of the tables in the bar area, a portable television set playing on a high shelf in a corner over the barkeep. It was a replay of the events at the White Front store. Briefly he saw himself in the background of one of the shots. He ordered a combination meal and had a margarita before it arrived, then another with the food. By the time he left the sun was down and he was in a mellow mood. As he unlocked his door the phone was ringing, and he hurried inside. He didn’t think it was Claire but maybe her plans had changed.

  “This Harry Ingram?” a man’s voice said.

  He told him he was.

  “You were at the protest today.”

  “I was.” The voice was familiar. “This the man from the cleaner’s?”

  “That’s right, I’m Harold Ali. I saw you talking to the minister writing up an article. I called over to the paper and they said you did freelance work for them. But you told me you worked for a lawyer. Which is it?”

  “I do both. I do work for a process service sometimes.”

  “Why?”

  “Gotta make ends meet is all.”

  “No, I mean why do you deliver bad news to fellas just trying to get out from under?”

  “Not always. Like this time, it’s a letter requesting he come to the reading of the will, like I told you.”

  “Uh-huh.” It got quiet, then, “How much you getting to find member William?”

  Now we’re getting to it, the shakedown. “A hundred,” he lied.

  “I want half.”

  “That’s not very brotherly of you, brother.”

  “You want to find him or not?”

  “You know I saw him today. It’s only a matter of time until I find him.” He could show the picture he’d taken of him around at the various mosques and Muslim businesses. But this could get him identified as a police agent, a snitch, and that would have all sorts of consequences for him beyond his immediate problem.

  “Yeah, but I bet you need to get him down there sooner than later.”

  Ingram stifled a curse. “That’s not acceptable, man.”

  “Then you’re out of luck.”

  “So are you,” he growled, about to hang up, incensed. Then he got clever. “How would you like to have the cleaners in the press? Minister Abdullah would like that, wouldn’t he? Get you a star on your chest.”

  “You’re just saying that.”

  “Am I?”

  “When?”

  “It could be in the next month.” Or never.

  “How do I know you’ll follow through?”

  “Tomorrow the Sentinel will be out with a front-page story about the protest at the White Front. But I need to see Brother William tonight.”

  “Why the rush, smart guy?”

  “’Cause I don’t think you can deliver, Mr. Ali.”

  “I should hang up in your face.”

  “That’s on you, blowing an opportunity.”

  “Goddammit.”

  “I don’t believe you should be talking like that, sir.”

  “You affirm I’ll get the cleaners in the paper?”

  “It might be Jet.”

  “That publication has women in skimpy swimwear stapled in the middle and not because it’s for a beach story.”

  “Your customers come from the neighborhood and plenty of Jets are sold at corner liquor markets where, and this might come as a surprise to you, they buy their liquor. You, me and the minister know that. Look at it this way: you’ll be getting a chance of turning some of those lives around with the coverage.”

  “I don’t like where this is going.”

  “Neither do I, yet here we are.”

  “I’ll call back . . . maybe.”

  Ingram sat heavily. It would have been one thing if Harold Ali had laid it on the table that he wanted a finder’s fee, fine. Like 10 percent, the usual. But to try and stick him up like this, might as well have used a lead pipe and knocked him over the head. But then again, he wasn’t closer to getting to the former Jones or however he was referring to himself these days.

  There was a throb at the side of his head from his margaritas, which added to his irritability. Ingram considered having another drink but knew better than to compound his woes. He also decided not to turn on one of his scanners as he wasn’t really in the mood to break the positive spell of the article he’d written. To be back on the prowl once again chronicling some poor bastard’s plight. Anyway, Ali might call back.

  Though he’d turned on the TV, he wasn’t paying much attention to the western show that was playing. He stared blankly at the screen. The phone rang again and he answered.

  “Okay,” Ali began, “he’ll come.”

  “My place?”

  “The cleaners.”

  “You sure? What’d you tell him?”

  “That this was for the good of the NOI.”

  “That’s not exactly accurate.”

  “You want him there or not? He’ll hear you out.”

  “Fine.”

  “One hour.”

  “Tonight?”

  “You want that fee you getting, don’t you?” He hung up abruptly again.

  Ingram didn’t like the setup but he didn’t have much choice. He splashed cold water on his face and popped two aspirins to stem the dull ache confounding his brain. Eventually he went downstairs to his Plymouth. The after-work traffic was over, and he got to the Shabazz Dry Cleaners No. 2 in less than twenty minutes. He parked in front, remaining in his car. There were no lights on inside the store. He took a deep breath, got out of his car and walked toward the establishment. Stepping out from the side of the building where an industrial boiler rested on a slab of concrete came Harold Ali. He looked unsteady.

  “Where’s William Jones?”

  “He’ll be here. And it’s 2X now.”

  “Put your arms up,” a man said behind him.

  Ingram turned to see William 2X standing there. He still had on his sunglasses and was holding a length of lead pipe down by his side.

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “When it comes to people I don’t know sniffing around for me from some lawyer, I don’t take chances. I’m reformed, thanks to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, but there are times when the old ways serve me best.”

  “I don’t have a gun.”

  “That’s not what we’re looking for,” Ali said.

  “You asking for the money was a test,” Ingram declared. If he’d agreed, they would have been more suspicious if he went along with being jacked up too easily. Their reasoning being if he was a police agent he’d do anything to be in their good graces.

  “We are quite aware of those who come to us in our skins but are agents of the devil employing tricknology,” 2X said.