Viper's Dream, page 12
* * *
“Achooo!” Viper unleashed another mighty sneeze.
“God bless you, Viper,” a bunch of jazzmen said.
Viper gave a little nod of thanks as he wiped his nose with his handkerchief. He glanced at his Rolex. It was one thirty on this November night in 1961, the night of the Viper’s third murder. So far, I’ve only told you about his first, the night he slit West Indian Charlie’s throat in 1940. Back in 1948, it was Peewee, as you know, not Viper, who killed Pretty Paul Baxter and Buttercup Jones. Viper’s second and third murders came a little more than a year apart. His second killing, last year, had dark repercussions. Still, he did not regret what he had done in 1960.
But tonight. What he had done tonight had staggered him. Maybe Pork Chop was right. Maybe he was still in shock. Viper felt his eyes starting to water.
“Viper, are you all right?”
He looked up and saw the baroness standing over him. “Yes, Nica,” he said, fighting back tears. “I’m just allergic to your cats.”
Nica leaned down and whispered in his ear. “There’s a call for you, Viper. It’s Red Carney.”
The baroness led Viper to her bedroom, handed him the telephone from the nightstand, then turned and left him alone with the cats.
“Carney?”
“Viper, what the hell did I tell you?”
“That I had three hours to disappear.”
“That was two and a half hours ago. You think because I’m a New York cop I can’t come over to New Jersey and arrest your black ass? After all you’ve been up to the past twenty-five years, you’re a fucking federal case, Viper. The FBI would give me a medal for bringing you in.”
“So, what are you waiting for, Red?”
He heard the rogue cop sigh over the telephone line.
“All right, Viper. If that’s the way you want to play it. You’re better off surrendering to me than to anybody else.”
“Surrender,” Viper said solemnly. “Don’t know if I like that word.”
“Well, you’ve got thirty minutes to change your mind,” Carney said. “Otherwise, meet me outside of the Cathouse at two o’clock.”
“All right.”
“And Viper …”
“What?”
“Don’t make me kill you.”
CHAPTER
8
BY THE AGE OF THIRTY-SEVEN, Clyde “the Viper” Morton had become a very wealthy man. Since the day Yolanda DeVray left for Paris, nearly seven years earlier, Viper had thrown himself maniacally into his work. He now owned two Cadillacs, one silver, one black. He moved into a grand apartment on Harlem’s Sugar Hill. His neighbors were the black elite: surgeons and college professors, lawyers and politicians, prominent ministers and entrepreneurs, celebrity athletes and entertainers. His art deco building on Edgecombe Avenue had a uniformed black doorman (just like Mr. O’s place on Park Avenue), a sprawling marble lobby, and a uniformed black elevator man (just like Mr. O’s). Viper didn’t live in a penthouse, but his fifth-floor domain at the summit of Harlem gave him a sweeping view of Northern Manhattan. Like the folks said: “Life is sweet on Sugar Hill!”
He began dabbling in Harlem real estate. With the support of the law firm Schneider, Miller, and Bloom, he’d bought his old brownstone on Lenox Avenue from its longtime realtors. He rented out eleven of the twelve apartments and kept his old place as a second residence for himself. It felt good to own a building. But Viper knew that he was still a modest player in the real estate game.
Something called “urban renewal” had come to Harlem. Take what had happened to the vast wasteland of rusting metal once known as One-Eyed Willie’s Junkyard. The final resting place, if you will, of Mr. O, became the terrain for one of the housing projects popping up all over the capital of Black America. In what was a typical deal, the local and federal governments paid Wieseltier & Sons Development Corporation public funds to build a complex of massive concrete towers: a dozen twenty-story-high, anonymous-looking edifices that were given (perhaps ironically?) the name Renaissance Gardens. After construction was complete, Wieseltier repaid the government its investment by buying the “public housing” complex from it. The real estate company then condemned several blocks of old Harlem tenements it owned, six-story structures festooned with fire escapes, populated by families that had lived in the neighborhood for generations. The tenements might have been turning decrepit, but they had character. Neighbors sat and chatted on the front stoops, and little kids played on the sidewalk in front of the buildings, under the watchful eyes of elders who were linked to them not by blood, but by a shared sense of community. But once those tenements were doomed to the wrecking ball, all those residents were dispatched to Renaissance Gardens, where their rents were jacked up for the privilege of living in such modernity. Wieseltier & Sons then tore down the blocks of tenements and replaced them with yet more identically anonymous housing projects, stacking more floors of black families high into the sky.
The urban renewers made piles of money. And they said that what they were doing was for the public good, providing desperately needed lodging for the exploding Harlem population of low-income families. While their builders argued that the concrete towers were a triumph of mid-century architectural design, projects like Renaissance Gardens often gave Viper a quiet shiver when he drove past them in one of his Cadillacs. Whatever the Wieseltiers and other renewers said about the projects, he knew that they had to know what the buildings resembled. They looked like prisons. And prison was the one thing Viper dreaded more than death.
Folks would have been surprised to hear that Viper Morton bore any secret dreads. In Harlem, fear of the Viper had returned. It was widely believed that Viper had killed Pretty Paul Baxter and Buttercup Jones for dealing heroin and that, before he shot him in the head, he had sliced open Paul’s beautiful face out of sheer badness. In high Machiavellian style, fear was the ultimate respect.
And perhaps an aphrodisiac. Still a bachelor, Viper didn’t lack for female companionship. In the course of any given year, he bedded more women than he could name. And he hadn’t loved any of them.
Once or twice a year, Viper received a letter from Yolanda DeVray, postmarked “Paris, France.” Viper tossed every letter in the trash, never opening a single envelope, never reading a single word of what Yo-Yo had wanted to say to him.
Viper thrived. But in bitterness.
* * *
While his headquarters remained in Harlem, Viper was spending more and more time in midtown, on what most jazzmen had simply started calling “the Street.” The neon-bathed stretch of 52nd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues was now firmly established as the center of the jazz universe. Strolling past the Club Downbeat, Jimmy Ryan’s, the Famous Door, Viper sometimes felt a twinge of melancholy. When he had arrived in New York nearly two decades earlier, white folks had to come up to Harlem, to our turf, to hear the most exciting music in the world. Now, black artists had to bring the music down to the white man’s domain. It didn’t make the music any less great. But Viper couldn’t help but feel that somehow Harlem—as with the destruction of the tenements and the construction of the projects—had lost something precious it would never get back.
Late one night in February 1955, Viper dropped by one of the hottest spots on the Street: Birdland, the club named after Charlie Parker, founding father of bebop. The club was packed, but Bird himself was nowhere to be seen. Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers were onstage. Viper saw Dizzy Gillespie sitting at a table, surrounded by admirers, holding court. Diz wore his trademark beret and tortoiseshell glasses. He gave Viper a wink and a nod as the reefer man walked past. In the corner, Viper spotted Thelonious Monk, wearing a giant Siberian fur hat. Sitting next to him was an elegant white woman with long black hair, smoking a cigarette in a long black cigarette holder. She smiled and gestured for Viper to come over. Somehow, they had not yet met. But he knew who she was. The jazzmen had been talking about her arrival on the scene for months.
“You must be Viper Morton.”
“And you must be the Baroness Rothschild.”
“Rothschild was my maiden name. But please, call me Nica.”
“Hey, Monk,” Viper said.
“What’s up, Viper?” Monk growled.
“Please sit, Viper,” Nica said. “Have a drink with us.”
Viper took a seat. “So you’re actually living in New York now, not just visiting?”
“Exactly. I’ve taken a suite at the Stanhope Hotel. You should come by sometime. We have jams that go on all night.”
“Excuse me, lady and gentleman,” Monk said. He rose and walked toward the men’s room.
“You’re quite a figure in this town, Viper.”
“Yes, and you’re quickly becoming one, Nica. Cats are already writing songs named for you.”
“Not long ago, I was leading the dreary life of a diplomat’s wife. Then one day, someone put on a recording of ‘’Round Midnight’ by Thelonious Monk. I had what I guess you could call an epiphany. I knew I had to meet that composer. Then I discovered more of the music. And I knew I had to live in that world of musicians.”
“A patron of the art,” Viper said, making no effort to hide his skepticism.
“You and I aren’t so different, Viper. You provide the jazzmen with something they need. And I help them when it comes to making the rent or paying a bill.”
“Or scoring some junk?”
“No, Viper. I don’t give them money for heroin. I want to help musicians to live. Not help them to die.”
“Why don’t you save me, Diz?”
A howl of indescribable anguish echoed through the club.
“Why don’t you save me?”
The music abruptly stopped. All heads turned to Dizzy Gillespie’s table. Charlie Parker stood looming over the table, looking like a bum who had just wandered in from the street. He was wild-eyed, wearing a ratty old raincoat, wailing at his former bandmate.
“Why don’t you save me, Diz? Why don’t you save me?”
It was obvious that Bird was out of his mind on junk. Dizzy stared at his friend helplessly.
“Save me, Diz! Please save me!”
Two bouncers appeared and grabbed Charlie Parker by the arms.
“Save me, Diz!”
Bird wailed and flailed as he was dragged out of the nightclub that had been named in his honor.
“Please save me!”
That was when everyone knew. It would only be a matter of time now.
* * *
“News flash!” the announcer intoned over the radio in Viper’s office. “Bebop king dies in baroness’s flat! Charlie ‘Yardbird’ Parker, the Negro saxophonist known for starting the bop jazz craze, was found dead in the Stanhope Hotel suite of a luscious, creamy-skinned, raven-haired European heiress of the Rothschild fortune. The authorities say no drugs were found on the premises. But they consider the death to be drug related.”
Viper summoned Peewee and Pork Chop to an emergency meeting on the rooftop of Peewee’s club.
“This is the worst thing that coulda happened,” Pork Chop said. “Now Bird’s a martyr. And all the young cats are gonna wanna shoot up to show that they’re misunderstood geniuses, too. Just like Bird.”
“Like they didn’t mimic him enough when he was alive,” Viper said. “You know what I’m thinkin’? We should take out more heroin dealers.”
“We can’t do that,” Peewee said. “Most of them are backed by the Mafia. The I-talians might suspect it was us that got rid of Buttercup, and they mighta let us get away with it. But that was seven years ago. There’s a lot more money at stake today.”
“All we can do is vow to keep resisting,” Pork Chop said.
“Yeah, I guess,” Peewee said. “But sometimes I think Buttercup was right. Junk is in demand. If we were serious businessmen, we’d just go ahead and supply it.”
“You can’t start thinking that way, Peewee,” Viper said. “This is about something more important than money.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m just sayin’ …”
“Pork Chop is right. We gotta keep resisting.”
Viper held out his hand. Pork Chop grasped it.
“All for one and one for all,” Pork Chop said.
“What are we now, the Three Musketeers?” Peewee said with a snort. All the same, he placed his hand on top of Viper’s and Pork Chop’s.
“Damn straight,” Viper said. “United against heroin. Till the day we die.”
* * *
One summer night in 1958, after all his colleagues had gone home, Dan Miller of the firm of Schneider, Miller, and Bloom invited Viper Morton to visit his office on Madison Avenue. The gaunt, young lawyer Viper first met in 1945 had turned into a paunchy, golf-playing suburbanite on the threshold of middle age, satisfied with himself as a successful husband, father, provider … and high-class drug trafficker. Miller broke out whiskey and cigars. He then spent a good half hour praising Viper’s management of the ever-expanding marijuana business before getting to the point of the meeting. “Viper, we’re opening a nightclub in Los Angeles. We’re going to call it Peewee’s West.”
“Does Peewee know?”
“Not yet. But he’ll have little to do with it. The firm has a trademark on his name, as a brand. You, on the other hand, will start spending two weeks a month in L.A., to help our colleagues out there get a gage enterprise running from inside the club.”
“Well, thank you, Dan.”
“You’ll basically be an elder statesman. We think we have a solid team in place, but we want you there to mentor them in the first couple of years of operations.”
“Sounds promising.”
“We plan to fly you out to L.A. next week. But of course we’ll need to have someone help handle your duties here in New York. We have a young fellow in mind. He’s been working in our Kansas City operation. Goes by the name of Randall ‘Country’ Johnson.”
“Country?” Viper said mockingly. “If folks in Kansas City call him ‘Country,’ he must be a real hick.”
“Maybe. But he’s a fast learner. Twenty-one years old. A young man of promise. And he can provide muscle when we need it. He’s smart, charming, and brutal.”
“And you think he’s ready for New York?”
“That will be for you to decide, Viper. He arrives in town tonight. I suggest you meet him tomorrow for a … what to call it?”
“A job interview.”
“Exactly.”
* * *
At eleven o’clock the next morning, Viper and Peewee greeted the interviewee in the kitchen of the Harlem nightclub.
“It sho is a honor for me to meet you, Mr. Viper, Mr. Peewee,” Country said. He was tall and rangy, with a loping gait and an eager, gap-toothed grin. He wore a boxy brown suit, a wide paisley tie, and two-toned shoes.
“So this is your first time in New York, Country?” Peewee asked.
“My first time up North a-tall, Mr. Peewee.”
“All right, Country,” Viper said, “let me get straight to our most serious problem.”
“Yessir, Mr. Viper.”
“Heroin just gets more and more popular. But we do not sell junk. Now, I hear you’re an ambitious young man. What reason do we have to believe that you might not decide to start selling heroin, or allowing our gage dealers to do so?”
“Well, Mr. Viper,” Country said, with an air of humble sincerity, “all I can do is give you my word.”
“Yeah, that’s the question, nigga,” Peewee said. “Why should we take your word?”
Country looked down at the kitchen floor, paused, seemed to gather his emotions, then looked up again and said: “Well, Mr. Peewee, Mr. Viper … my Daddy, when he come home from the war, he had some real bad injuries. Seemed the only thing that would take his pain away was the morphine. So he started spendin’ all the family money on morphine. Then, he started stealin’ it. He become a addict. And he overdosed. I found him dead in the bathtub one morning. And so I was left to raise the family. To support my Mama and the three chil’run younger than me. I was fourteen. So far as I can see, heroin even worse than morphine. So I hate that shit, yessir, I hate it.”
At that moment, Pork Chop entered the kitchen with a drummer called Sticks Anderson.
“Hey, fellas,” Sticks said. Everybody liked Sticks. Fiftyish, short, round, and balding, he had an always amiable demeanor and a dreamy, not-all-there look in his eye. “Pork Chop come and grab me from rehearsal. What y’all want from me this morning?”
“Pork Chop,” Viper said, “meet Country Johnson.”
They shook hands. “Hello, young man,” Pork Chop said.
“It’s a honor, Mr. Pork Chop,” Country said.
“Country,” Viper said, “this is Sticks Anderson.”
“Yeah, I know Sticks,” Country said, his tone suddenly frosting over.
“Sure,” Sticks said, still dreamy seeming. “We met in Kansas City once.”
“You was on tour there. You a hell of a drummer, Mr. Sticks.”
“And a miserable junkie,” Peewee said.
“Which is his problem,” Pork Chop said.
“Our problem,” Viper said, “is that Sticks has been selling gage for us for years. And now, we learn he’s been sellin’ junk as well.”
“Have a seat, Mr. Sticks,” Country said frostily.
Sticks Anderson suddenly looked scared. He sat down at the table. “Now, I’ll admit, I’ve sold a little junk now and then, fellas, but if you want me to stop, I will.”
“Yeah, we gonna see to that, Mr. Sticks,” Country said. “Thing about junk is you start to love shootin’ up more than you love makin’ music, ain’t that so?”
“Look, fellas,” Pork Chop interrupted, “Sticks said he’ll stop.”
“Thank you, Mr. Pork Chop,” Country said. “I know you means well. But Mr. Sticks, you can’t hold no drumsticks if you ain’t got no thumbs, can you?”
Sticks furrowed his brow. “No thumbs?” he said, sounding perplexed.
