Okay, he figured, getting up and getting a beer out of the fridge. If he was going to play Johnny Staccato, then he better come at this like a hawkshaw. What would an actual private eye do? Why, he’d woo some dame, right arm around her waist, and use his mighty left hook to beat the truth out of a thug. Or like Peter Gunn, he’d have a bunch of oddball types he would visit in the middle of the night, slip them a five, get the address of where they kept the padlocked goods. Sadly he lacked any such resources.

  The fact, though, was Ben Kinslow did go to the trouble of securing something he hadn’t kept in his room. Could be the lock was attached to a footlocker but that meant it would have to be at a storage facility. There was no way Ingram could determine which one if that was the case. He folded his arms, wishing like in those half-hour detective shows he could get to the bottom of this before the next cigarette commercial.

  Ingram got up, staring out the window, working out where else you could rent space and use your own lock. The YMCA, of course. Now, getting in there was doable.

  He took hold of the White Pages next to the phone and sat down again, paging through the thick directory. He checked to see the exact address of the 28th Street Y, which was known as the colored branch, given the clientele it catered to, even though the national Y after World War II had established a policy to desegregate its facilities. In practice this varied widely from city to city, Ingram knew, from the velvet glove application of Jim Crow in Los Angeles to the more overt methods in nearby sundown towns like Maywood. In general, the Y was where a young negro from out of town could rent a dorm-style room for cheap and not be worried about being turned away like he would from a white motel. Examining the street map in his Thomas Guide, he double-checked its location against his friend’s last known address. As he’d already estimated, the branch wasn’t too far from where Kinslow had been staying. There was another one within the arbitrary ten-mile radius he’d established from Kinslow’s rooming house and he wrote down that address as well.

  From his bedroom closet he took out his gym bag, which had last seen use a year or so ago. He put in his workout clothes and set off for the 28th Street location. First, though, Ingram stopped at Shop Rite Hardware on Hoover. Shoals Pettigrew’s store was sandwiched between Satellite TV and Radio Repair and a secondhand store selling reconditioned appliances. There was a stacked display of various blenders in the store’s window.

  “Hey, man,” Ingram said to Pettigrew as he entered the establishment. Metal trash cans, rakes, shovels, pipe fittings and so on were neatly arranged in the compact shop, which contained several narrow rows of the varied tools repairmen and do-it-yourselfers required. Pettigrew was behind the front counter talking to an older man in faded dungarees. Ingram recognized this individual as one of the regulars who hung around here, a retired janitor who dispensed useful tips on fixing this or that to the customers when they asked for a light switch or some such. He nodded at this man, not recalling his name.

  “What brings you to my den, Harry? Need a set screw for one of your cameras?”

  “No, a padlock.”

  Pettigrew pointed at one of the aisles. “Got combination ones and keyed ones as well. You locking away your archives?”

  Ingram was already looking in the row. “Not today. Just something for a locker.” He soon placed his selection on the glass counter, under which was a shelf of vise grips, some as big as Ingram’s hand, which he found dismaying.

  “You should think about doing something with all those photos you’ve taken over the years, you know,” Pettigrew said. “You got ’em, what, stacked in boxes in your closet, right?”

  “You know I do.”

  “What am I saying then?”

  He shrugged. “A lot of my prints are over in the newspapers’ offices.”

  “But that ain’t preserving ’em. You should talk to a college about that.”

  “Why all of a sudden you worried about my photos? You know something I don’t know about me checking out?”

  “What I’m saying, Harry, is the negro people need to be the keepers of our history, need to pass on what we’ve learned and what we experienced to the next generation.” Pettigrew swept a hand through the air. “For sure no one else will do it.”

  “That’s right,” the older man said.

  “Can I buy the padlock, Shoals?”

  “All right, brother, but don’t disregard my words.” He rang up the purchase on the register. “Did you get the okay to cover the King rally?”

  “Yeah, for Jet and for the Nation.”

  “Those reds? I thought you took care of all of them in Korea, Sergeant York,” Pettigrew cracked.

  “Apparently some of them slipped through,” Ingram said dryly.

  Pettigrew chuckled.

  “I was going to attend even if I didn’t get an assignment.”

  “I hear you.” Pettigrew handed him his change and a receipt. “But it’s nice to have somebody legitimizing you. Let alone get your name associated with covering the event, which is gonna have the white press there too.”

  “See you,” Ingram said, nodding at both men.

  Resuming his trip to the 28th Street Y, he recalled it’d been designed by a Black architect, Paul R. Williams, a man who designed homes, some for celebrities, in areas of town where Black folk couldn’t buy. Ben would have dug what all that meant. The façade was done in the Spanish Colonial Revival style, its whitewashed walls reflecting the afternoon’s bright sunlight on rough-hewn surfaces as if the building had been transported to the present from a century ago. He parked and went inside.

  “May I be of assistance, sir?” the bespectacled man at the front desk asked. He was a tan-colored individual on the wiry side, not so tall, with a set of piercing dark eyes behind the thin lenses of his rimless glasses.

  “I’m considering joining.”

  “Looking to keep in shape, are you? Wrestler, huh?” He pointed at Ingram, a clear-polished nail at the end of a tapered finger. “Those arms, I mean.”

  Ingram had taken off the sport coat he’d worn earlier and was in short sleeves and a snap-brim hat. “Naw.” He laughed. “Want to keep my middle from spreading even more. Okay to take a look around?”

  “Sure. I’ll give you a tour. We have a full gym outfitted with the latest equipment, locker room that’s kept sparkling, a pool and a handball court. Hold on a second.”

  “Okay.” Ingram didn’t want a guide but there was nothing he could do about it but go along. The desk attendant stuck his head through a doorway behind him to ask whoever was in there to watch the front.

  “Come along,” he said, stepping out from behind the inlaid marble counter. “Say, I didn’t get your name.”

  Ingram told him.

  “I’m Brian, Brian Gonzalvo.”

  “Dominican?”

  He brightened. “Why yes, most people don’t pick up on that. And I’m Haitian on my mom’s side. Seems you’ve been around, Harry.”

  “Maybe I’m just a good guesser.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  As they stepped into the gym, Ingram asked, “You give a veteran’s discount?” Several men of varying ages and body types were working out, including a muscular man strenuously exercising on the rowing machine.

  “Oh yes, sir, indeed we do.” Gonzalvo regarded him for a beat. “Korean War was it?”

  “Right.”

  “Had an uncle over there. He was in World War II as well.”

  “And he volunteered to go back?”

  Gonzalvo shrugged. “He’s that kind of guy. Career Army all the way. Said if things keep heating up in South Vietnam like he figures they will, he’ll jump into that too.”

  “He must have a chest full of medals.” They were now in the locker room. Each locker had a number in a circle on it.

  “He has, and because he never married and has no hobbies, he lives for the next call-up.”

  “Just in case I go out of town and leave my lock on a locker, is the policy to cut it off after a week or so?”

  “Well, some of the men upstairs keep items down here, so what we usually do is post a notice if we see a lock has been on for a time and seems to be unused.” He took a quick scan around. “We’ve got a few like that now. I’ll get up a new reminder.”

  They completed the tour and Ingram paid for a membership. You had to commit the money for the first three months and thereafter could go month-to-month. Ingram wondered if playing detective might wind up being too expensive an undertaking.

  Back in the locker room, he took his time getting into his sweatpants and top. There weren’t that many guys currently using the gym in the afternoon on a weekday. At one point he was alone in there. Water echoed off the tiles in the nearby showers. Ingram tried his key on a few padlocks spaced away from the others, figuring maybe they’d been in place the longest. No dice. Hearing bare feet padding into the room, he went to his locker, getting a cross look from the man who’d entered with a towel wrapped around his lower body. Ingram finished dressing and headed toward the gym, aware the man’s eyes were on him. Last damn thing he needed was to be reported to the front desk, suspected of trying to steal wallets from the members. He could imagine the shame of such a headline in the California Eagle.

  In the gym he did jumping jacks, several push-ups, running in place as well as sit-ups. He was huffing and sweating profusely by the time he’d gone through his series of calisthenics. He bent over, hands on his legs. He was more out of shape than he’d figured. He straightened up, patting his stomach and using his towel to wipe his face. Next, he used the barbell with a moderate amount of weight on it to do a set of curls. In all, Ingram spent more than an hour exercising and was proud of himself that he actually got into it.

  The locker room was empty when he returned, and he tried the key again on a few locks. Then someone else came in from working out and he got busy stripping down for the shower. The other man also went into the showers. Ingram hurried washing up. Dripping with a towel around his waist, he was again momentarily the only one back in the locker room. He tried two more locks to no avail. As he was chancing a third one, he heard voices getting nearer. Two men entered in street clothes as the key snapped the padlock open. Ingram grinned.

  The men carrying gym bags passed behind his back while Ingram removed a soft-sided leather attaché case with twin clasps, like what a lawyer might use to impress clients. He didn’t dare open the case in here and paw through it. Casually he put the case in his locker and got dressed. One of the newcomers raised an eyebrow at this but said nothing. Ingram finished tying his shoes and left with his prize.

  In his car he opened the case and took out a glassine envelope and a single piece of lined paper with handwritten notes on it. In the glassine envelope were several shots taken close-up and others from what he determined had been medium range using a close-up lens. They were pictures taken through windows, some of them through a gap in heavy drapes and others where diaphanous curtains had been drawn. Had Kinslow taken the shots? A few were out of focus or blurry from shaky hands.

  The pictures were of men, all white, from youngish to old, in suit coats and sleeves as they laughed and drank with women, also mostly white. There were a few Black and Asian women among the white women as well. To the one, the women were in lingerie or racy underwear and laughing up a storm—paid to do so as part of their services, he concluded. Once more at his kitchen table, Ingram used his magnifying glass to zero in on those male faces. He put aside one of the pictures, a color film shot. Then he picked it up again and put the glass back over it, peering closer.

  This was one of the shots taken through a gap in the drapes. He was looking at an older balding man sitting on a couch as one of the party girls was swaying before him, holding a martini in one bright-red-nailed hand. The grin on the old boy’s face was as big as a crescent moon as he reached out a hand. Under the outstretched arm was what made Ingram take a second look. A white woman was also sitting on the couch, though not in her skivvies. She was wearing a dress, her legs crossed. Her face was obscured but he could see the end of her arm and a sparkling bracelet on it. He stared at the image through the magnifying glass but couldn’t make out her features.

  He looked for the woman in the other pictures. He didn’t spot her or any other regularly dressed female. From what he could tell, given the recurring skimpy attire of the good-time girls, the pictures had been taken on at least two separate occasions but at the same location. This he determined from glimpses of the abode’s eaves and style of the windowsills. Two different dates and two different windows, he also surmised. He got a beer from the fridge and opened it with his church key, stood while he took a pull. If Ben Kinslow had taken these incriminating shots, he’d probably driven a couple of these birds to the location. Wheeler-dealers like Hoyt, he hedged, and for sure a judge or politician in for the fun as well. The image of the older smiling man on the couch tickled at a memory in Ingram’s head but wouldn’t crystalize. Maybe this was a usual get-together Hoyt threw.

  Obviously Kinslow planned to blackmail them. These men had position, were married and had kids, even grandkids for some of them. Had he confronted Hoyt with these and thereby earned his untimely demise? Hoyt wasn’t in any of the pictures. That didn’t mean he wasn’t there, of course. Had Kinslow taken the pics on Hoyt’s orders? Ingram also wondered where the negatives from the photos were. Those were the gold tickets.

  He sat down, sipping and thinking. He studied the piece of paper. There were three fractions on it and words in script. He could make out “vein” and “application,” but the rest remained unintelligible. Kinslow must have written this in a rush. Transcribed, Ingram guessed, from another source—a source Kinslow got a look at but couldn’t remove from where it was. A notebook in Hoyt’s study? Did Kinslow double back on one of the party evenings to write this down? Or was it kept at wherever the sex palace was? For sure it had to be a mansion with a lot of bedrooms for the real partying to happen. Though for all he knew, there could be one big room for an orgy. Imagining such had him chuckling.

  Well, however Kinslow had a peek at these numbers, why write them down, and why keep them with the candid shots?

  Ingram noted the physical characteristics of the pictures. They weren’t developed commercially—not like Kinslow could have dropped them off at an Owl’s drugstore, what with the subject matter. Who would Kinslow have found to develop the pictures? Ingram wasn’t the only photographer, professional or amateur, to take shots in the jazz clubs around town. Kinslow would know a few of those cats and could have gone to one of them.

  As to why Kinslow hadn’t come to him, Ingram figured he knew the answer to the question. If this was about blackmail, Ingram would have told him to drop it. Blackmail was a sucker’s bet.

  Ingram supposed his friend thought of him as a goody-two-shoes. After all, Kinslow had said he’d been back in town for a couple of weeks, yet hadn’t looked Ingram up. Had Kinslow been avoiding him as he worked out his scheme? Afraid if he told Ingram what he was up to, his old foxhole buddy would have tried to talk sense into him?

  Ingram had more of his beer. Was there a point in trying to hunt down how Kinslow had gotten in with Hoyt? There had to be someone who’d been a connection. Ingram doubted Hoyt had placed an ad in the paper for a driver. Working out the steps, Ingram also had to wonder: was it merely coincidence that Kinslow took the job with Hoyt and stumbled onto the potential payday? Or had he been put in place purposefully?

  He sat back in the chair, too many “what ifs” and not enough certainties. Those two men outside the club, now that was a reality. He recalled asking Strummer to inquire about Hoyt. He called him at one of his offices, this one located in a two-story cinder-block building on Western Avenue near Adams. The bottom floor was taken up by an exterminator service. The door to the office was marked renard enterprises, a catchall for Edwards’s many activities. He reached his answering service.

  “Please have Mr. Edwards call me when he can,” he told the pleasant-voiced woman on the other end. “He has my number.”

  “Give it to me just in case, shugah.”

  He smiled as he did so and hung up.

  Glancing at the shots of the men he’d taken outside the Crystal Tea Room, it occurred to Ingram he best tuck the good-time pictures away. He didn’t think those two had been following him but then again, he hadn’t been paying that much attention. He would from now on. He also realized with a degree of calm that Hoyt didn’t know he was a photographer. When he ran into Kinslow at the racetrack, the silver-haired man hadn’t seen him with his camera. He’d set it aside. Except for the initial exchange with Hoyt, the moneyed man had been preoccupied discussing his horse with the trainer. And dollars to donuts, Kinslow hadn’t told Hoyt what Ingram did and for sure Hoyt hadn’t asked.

  Because if Hoyt did know Ingram was a photographer, and he’d had Kinslow killed, he would logically conclude Ingram was Kinslow’s accomplice.

  For the time being, Ingram was an invisible man to him. He gathered up the photos and put them in a large manila envelope, which he taped closed. Then he went downstairs to Whitehead’s.

  “Harry,” Arthur Yarbrough said as he stepped inside.

  “What it could be,” Ingram quipped.

  Yarbrough was sweeping along an aisle, his back turned toward the front door. He knew Ingram from how he walked. There were two women from the neighborhood in here shopping. None of the other workers were around.

  “I’m just stepping in back for a second, Arthur.”

  “Okay.” He bumped into a bin filled with oranges. One of them rolled off the top and Yarbrough stuck out his hand, catching it before it hit the floor.