Viper's Dream, page 4
“So, tell me, Clyde,” Mr. O asked, “which do you think is preferable: to be loved or to be feared?”
They were driving up to Harlem after a long day of meetings downtown. Clyde knew they still had one more business call to make. He was surprised that Mr. O was lighting up before the workday was done. But he followed the boss’s lead and took a hit on the stick. Mr. O continued talking before Clyde had time to consider his question.
“As a leader, I mean. A prince or a president or a boss. Ever heard of Machiavelli, Florentine philosopher? Sixteenth century. He posed the question: Is it more important for a leader to be loved or feared? What do you say, Clyde?”
“Both,” Clyde said.
Mr. O grinned. “Machiavelli says it’s best to be both. That’s what every leader wants. But it rarely happens. Almost never.”
Years later, Clyde Morton would consider this the happiest time of his life. He hadn’t started selling locoweed himself yet. He hadn’t met Yolanda. He hadn’t killed anyone. Sometimes, back in those days, he felt his main job was listening to Mr. O.
“You’re a very clever young man, Clyde. I see leadership potential in you. But clever as you may be, Clyde, almost no leader gets to be both feared and loved. Machiavelli said that you had to choose one or the other. So which one would you choose, Clyde?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s what I figured.”
Abraham Orlinsky called himself an investor. Others called him a dope dealer, a slumlord, a gangster, a pimp, a murderer, a loan shark. He loaned money to men running small businesses, at exorbitant interest rates. And when you claimed you couldn’t make your payments, well, that was when Mr. O showed up with Clyde in tow.
Peewee parked the Rolls in front of a liquor store on Eighth Avenue. Clyde followed Mr. O into the store. He didn’t know this one, didn’t recognize the paunchy, middle-aged white man behind the counter.
“Hello, Max,” Mr. O said. “I told you that next time I came by, I’d bring along some muscle.”
Max flashed a terrified smile. “Abe, now, c’mon. I’ve been hearing about this dusky young associate of yours. He looks like a nice enough boy. You and I know that no violence is necessary. We can work something out. I’m—”
“Max, I’ve supported this enterprise of yours for a long time. I’ve loaned to you at far lower interests than I’ve charged other clients. Because I like you. And because I like you, I’ve been as patient as Job.”
“I’m tellin’ you, Abe. You’re asking too much. I can’t run a business this way. It’s like I’m trying to function with one arm tied behind my back!”
“Well how ’bout we see if that actually makes a difference?”
“Now, Abe, I’m sure we can work something—”
“Clyde,” Mr. O said, “break Max’s left arm.”
Clyde walked behind the counter.
“No, no, wait,” Max said, panicked. “Please—”
“Sorry, mister,” Clyde said as he came up behind Max.
Clyde had gotten quite good at this maneuver, knowing exactly how to grasp the limb, how to snap it quickly, how to brace himself for the agonized scream that always followed the hideous crack of the bone.
“Aaaarrrrgggghhh!”
“Now pay up, Max,” Mr. O said. “Before you’ve got both arms twisted behind your back.”
As Clyde’s reputation grew, the need for violent enforcement diminished. After two years, Clyde’s day largely consisted of sitting outside closed office doors and eavesdropping while Mr. O cut deals with his clients inside. When it came to enforcement, Mr. O never asked Clyde to hurt a black man. That’s because Mr. O never loaned money to black men. He just owned their businesses outright. Take the barbershop: it may have had Gentleman Jack’s name on it but full ownership belonged to Mr. O.
At night, Clyde accompanied the boss as he made his rounds of Harlem’s swingingest clubs: the Savoy Ballroom, Smalls Paradise, the Club Hot-Cha, and of course Mr. O’s very own night spot, bearing his nickname, where Pork Chop Bradley led the house band. On a typical night, Mr. O was accompanied by three or four women. They crowded with him and Clyde in the back of the Rolls. Peewee drove them from one venue to another. Clyde never saw Mr. O with a white woman. All the women he took out were black. Every single one. Every night, he was surrounded by brown-skinned beauties. He always went home with one of them. Which meant that, most nights, Peewee and Clyde benefitted from the company of the women who didn’t get picked. And on nights when Mr. O stayed at home, Peewee and Clyde hung out with Pork Chop and other musicians at parties after their gigs, where folks laughed and drank and flirted and danced amid thick clouds of marijuana smoke.
It was at one such party that a fella folks called West Indian Charlie sidled over to Clyde, holding the fattest joint he’d ever seen.
“Hey, Viper Clyde,” Charlie said in his lilting accent. “You still smokin’ Mr. O’s Mexican locoweed?”
“Hell, yes,” Clyde said. “And it’s still gettin’ me high.”
Charlie was a taxi driver. And he had recently started peddling some kind of dope from the islands.
“Take a toke on this, my friend. Then—hold on to your hat!”
Sssssssssss …
While Clyde sucked on the joint, Peewee walked over.
“Hey, West Indian Charlie, that’s some fragrant shit you got there.”
“Good evening, Peewee.”
“Hey, Viper, lemme get a hit.”
As Clyde exhaled and passed the joint, the high kicked him in the head. “Damn, Charlie.”
“Potent, is it not?” Charlie smiled. His skin was dark and leathery, and he sported a neatly trimmed goatee. “Caribbean grass is much stronger than the Mexican shit you’re dealing for Mr. O.”
Peewee sucked on the joint. Ssssssss …
“I don’t deal reefer, Charlie,” Clyde said. “I’m not in on that part of Mr. O’s business.”
“Ah, but you will be, Viper Clyde, you will be.”
“Hey, man,” Peewee said, “this dope is tasty, too.”
“Hey, Charlie,” a voice bellowed. “I thought I told you not to show up at any party I was at.” Big Al came lumbering through the crowd.
“Well, good evening, Big Al. Would you like to try some of my herb?”
“Fuck you and your voodoo shit. I told you I don’t like Jamaicans.”
“And as I’ve told you before,” West Indian Charlie said in his most musical accent, “I’m not Jamaican, Big Al. As for voodoo, well …”
“Relax, Al,” Peewee said. “Smoke some of this shit and unwind.”
The towering barber loomed over the diminutive chauffeur. “Who the fuck is talking to you, midget?”
“Midget? I’ll kick your ass, motherfucker!”
“Kick my ass? Ha ha ha ha ha!”
Now, keep in mind, Big Al was about a foot taller than Peewee. But that put Peewee at just the right level to punch Big Al in the balls.
“Ouf!” Big Al’s booming laugh turned into a smothered howl.
As he doubled over, Peewee punched him in the throat. Big Al hit the floor, a felled tree. He writhed in pain, struggling to breathe. Peewee grabbed a beer bottle, smashed it against a table, then straddled Big Al’s chest. He held the broken bottle inches from Big Al’s face.
“What you got to say now, nigga?” he screamed in his high-pitched voice. The music stopped. Partygoers froze in place, stared at the tiny driver, straddling the giant’s chest, ready to plunge the jagged glass into his face. “What you got to say now!” Peewee squealed.
Pork Chop rushed in out of nowhere and pulled Peewee off Big Al. “Stop, Peewee! You’ll kill him!”
Pork Chop hustled Peewee toward the door. Big Al lay on the floor, still writhing, struggling to breathe. The music and the dancing resumed.
“Your little friend shows a lot of spirit,” West Indian Charlie said.
“Thanks for the smoke, Charlie. I’m going home.”
“Let’s do business together, Viper Clyde.”
“Good night, Charlie.”
* * *
Early one morning, Clyde received his first summons to the penthouse. Mr. O phoned and told Clyde to come straightaway to his luxury building on Park Avenue and Eighty-Second Street. Clyde had seen the elegant facade of the building, from the back of Mr. O’s car, many times. But this would be the first time he actually stepped inside.
The doorman, a middle-aged black man, greeted Clyde as if he already knew him. “Good morning, Mr. Morton. Please take the elevator on the left side of the lobby.”
The elevator operator, another middle-aged black man, was just as welcoming. “Good morning, sir. Here to see Mr. Orlinsky? Yes, sir, I’ll take you straight to the top!”
An exuberant, uniformed maid swung open the front door of the penthouse and beamed. “Well, hello, Clyde Morton!” She was plump and cinnamon skinned, about the same age, Clyde reckoned, as his mama back in Meachum, Alabama. “I’m Matilda. Come on in! I’ve heard so much about you, child! Mr. O is crazy about you, son!”
Clyde tried not to gawk as Matilda led him through the palatial apartment, down high-ceilinged marble corridors decorated with Greek columns. She opened a set of double doors. The smell of marijuana was overpowering. They passed through the room, where four other black women in maid’s uniforms sat around a large wooden table. Each of them had a stack of rolling paper and a little pile of joints at her side. And at the center of the table was a mountain of Mexican locoweed. The four maids were chattering away as their fingers rolled joint after joint with expert dexterity. These were the sticks that Pork Chop and other of Mr. O’s dealers sold for fifty cents per joint or five dollars for a packet of a dozen.
“Hey, girls,” Matilda said as they passed through the room, “say hi to Clyde Morton.”
“Hi, Clyde!” the maids called out in near unison. They smiled and glanced at him, but their fingers never stopped rolling.
“Hello, ladies,” Clyde said, trying to sound casual.
“Right this way, Clyde,” Matilda said, leading him into a book-lined den. It was a small room, dimly lit, intimate.
“Wait here, Clyde. Mr. O will be with you shortly.”
Matilda left him alone in the den. There were doors on three sides of the room, all closed. There was a couch and a couple of chairs, shelves filled with leather-bound tomes, and a small reading table, on which lay a copy of The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli. Clyde felt a strange hush. He started flipping through the pages of the Machiavelli. He did not hear a door open. But quite suddenly, he felt another presence in the room. He turned. And there she was.
“Hey, killer.”
She was the most radiant person Clyde had ever seen. Skin the color of honey, emerald eyes. She seemed to be lit from within. Even wearing a maid’s uniform, there was something regal about her.
“Why do you call me that?” he asked.
“Just something about you.”
“My name is Clyde.”
“I’m Yolanda. My friends call me Yo-Yo. But you ain’t my friend. Yet.”
“How old are you, Yolanda?”
“I’m almost eighteen.”
“From your accent, I’m gonna guess you’re from New Orleans.”
“You have a good ear. Are you a musician?”
“I wanted to be a trumpet player. But I had no talent.”
“I’m gonna be a singer. I want to go on stage at Amateur Night at the Apollo, but Matilda says she won’t let me until I’m twenty-one!”
“Matilda. The head maid?”
“She’s my aunt. She’s looking after me. I got kicked out of Catholic school in New Orleans a couple of months ago. My parents sent me up here as punishment. But they know I ain’t gonna spend my life being no maid!”
“No, Yolanda. You’re a star. Anyone can see that.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“No. I’m not. You’re a star.”
“I was born to sing. Did you ever think you were born to do something?”
“Right now, I’m thinkin’ I was born to meet you.”
“You are making fun of me.”
“No. I am entirely serious.”
“He’s coming! Bye, killer.”
Yolanda scooted out one door as Mr. O opened another.
“Step into my office, Clyde.”
“Mornin’, Mr. O.”
Mr. O’s office was so spacious and airy, its bookshelves so towering and tidy that it reminded Clyde of the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library (a place he’d visited often after hearing his boss speak of different works he must read).
“Have a seat, Clyde. Let me get straight to the point. Have you ever heard of Adam Smith? British economist. He said the basis of capitalism is supply and demand. That’s how I made a fortune during Prohibition. There was gonna be a demand for liquor no matter what the law said. So I supplied. Now, it seems there is a growing demand for marijuana. Ten years ago it was something only the musicians knew about. Now, people who come to hear the musicians wanna get high, too. White folks comin’ up to Harlem are hankering for it. So I’m expanding my supply of Mexican locoweed and modifying the means of distribution. From now on, distribution will be centralized at Gentleman Jack’s barbershop. It will be run out of a former basement storeroom that has been nicely refurbished as an office. And you will be the executive in charge of distribution and sales.”
“Does that mean I won’t be your body man anymore?”
“That’s what it means, Clyde. Your official title will be business manager at Gentleman Jack’s. The Mexican locoweed will come to you. But you won’t see any Mexicans. Peewee will bring you a satchel full of joints each Monday. You will distribute the twelve-joint packets to a network of dealers who will come by your office every week to stock up and to deliver the previous week’s earnings. They will seem like ordinary barbershop customers, and I will be able to launder the profits through that very legitimate enterprise. Peewee, after dropping off his satchel of joints each week, will return from your office with a satchel full of cash. I will carve up the earnings. Everyone will get a nice cut. But especially you, Clyde. I will also have you personally dealing herb to our preferred clients. This is a major promotion, Clyde. Reefer could end up being a very big business. But it could also be very, very dangerous. So, are you in?”
“Of course, I am, Mr. O.”
“That’s what I figured.”
* * *
And so began the vocation that would make Clyde Morton’s name. To Harlem’s vipers in the know, he became the Viper. The business out of Gentleman Jack’s basement exploded in the first three months of operation. It happened so fast, Clyde got a little anxious. He shared his worries with Peewee during one of the chauffeur’s drop-offs at the barbershop basement office.
“Here you go, Clyde,” Peewee said, placing a satchel full of joints on the desk. “This week’s supply.”
“And here are the fruits of last week’s demand,” Clyde said, placing an identical satchel, but one filled with cash, on the desk.
“Life is beautiful.”
“Lemme ask you, Peewee. You don’t ever worry that some of the dealers are holding out, do you?”
“Holdin’ out on you, Viper?”
“Yeah.”
“Not a chance, man. It’s like Mr. O says: in Harlem, you are both loved and feared.”
“I am?”
“Damn straight. White merchants fear you ’cause you’ve done them serious bodily harm with impunity. Black folks love you for that very same reason. But black folks also fear you. All your dealers is black. They figure if you can assault white folks and get away with it, you’d be even more brutal with one of your own people. They wouldn’t dare hold out on you.”
“Have you been reading Machiavelli?”
“Who he?”
* * *
Clyde “the Viper” Morton had just stepped out of Gentleman Jack’s one evening, when a stocky white guy in a shabby suit walked right up to him. His face was flush and freckled. Two uniformed cops trailed close behind him. He flashed his badge.
“Detective Red Carney, New York Police Department.”
And with that introduction, right there in front of all the black folks on loud, proud Seventh Avenue, Red Carney punched Viper in the face.
“Up against the wall, nigger!” Carney screamed. “Search him, officers. Empty his pockets.”
“What the fuck is this all about?” Viper yelled, feeling his mouth fill with blood from his burst lip.
“Shut the fuck up, nigger!” A crowd started to gather. “Back away, you people,” Carney barked. “Back away.”
“I ain’t scared of you,” Viper said as one of the uniformed cops roughly frisked him.
“Oh, you ain’t? Well, you oughta be!” Carney said. He gut-punched Viper, who promptly collapsed to the sidewalk, gasping for air. “I’m takin’ your black ass to jail. Put him in the car, officers.”
At the station, the cops threw Viper into the cell so violently, his head banged against the wall and he blacked out. When he came to, it was early morning. Two cops pulled him off the cot in his cell, dragged him down a hallway into a small, nondescript office, and plopped him down on a metal chair. His head throbbed. He saw the freckle-faced young cop sitting across the metal desk in front of him.
“Morning, Viper,” Red Carney said, sounding almost friendly. “Jeesh, your face is a mess. Sorry about that, but it had to be done. And we had to make a public show of it. I’m covering for Mr. O in this little business you’re running out of the barbershop. You don’t know it yet, but I’m gonna be the best ally you’ll ever have.”
“Can I go now?” Viper said.
“Of course,” Carney replied. “Mr. O’s waiting for you.”
The silver Rolls-Royce was parked right outside the station. Peewee sat behind the wheel, eyeing Viper warily from under the brim of his chauffeur’s cap as he slid into the back seat, beside Abraham Orlinsky.
