“Hey, hey, what is this?” Poppy said as he approached, his left hand already balled into a fist. The man had clutched the shoulder of Tak’s coat and was shoving him backward, toward the corner of the vestibule. By the time Poppy reached them, the man had landed two sharp jabs in Tak’s gut. Tak clubbed the man’s ears with his fists. Poppy grabbed the man’s starched shirt collar and pulled him off Tak.
“You back the hell off!” Poppy shook the stranger like a chastised dog, then pushed him away.
The white man stumbled, gasping, and twisted around. He righted himself quickly, ready to swing, but pulled the punch when he saw Poppy had about three inches on him. Tak lunged, but Poppy held him back with his other hand.
The attacker regained his balance. “Don’t you touch me,” he snorted, straightening his jacket and tie. “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to, you black bastard!” The man pulled his shirtsleeves down, ran fingers through his blond hair. “Neither of you should be here. And what do you think you’re doing with a camera in here? If you don’t leave at once, I’m calling the chief of police.”
That’s right, white man, Poppy thought, take it to the extreme. Just a patrolman won’t do.
“C’mon, let’s go,” Poppy said. But when Tak just stood there, primed to lunge again, Poppy guided him away from the white man and toward the elevator. The stranger was on their heels.
The elevator chimed just as Poppy and Tak reached it. Willie stepped out, putting on a deadpan expression when he spotted them. He stood erect.
“Willie, did you let these men in here?”
“No sir. I just came on shift, sir.”
Poppy sneered at Willie as he and Tak boarded the elevator.
“Well, get them out of here! Right now!”
Willie nodded. “Yes sir. Right away, sir.” He looked at his riders with scorn.
As the elevator doors closed, Poppy regarded the man he had tussled with. A finely dressed business type with pomaded hair he smoothed down with a hand. Indignant, the man met Poppy’s gaze. Something clicked for Poppy. He noticed the sickle-shaped scar that ran from the man’s lower lip to his chin. Incongruous on such a refined, aquiline face. Beads of sweat sprouted on Poppy’s upper lip. It came to him like thunder. He exited the elevator quickly on the ground floor, his heart pounding.
“Who is that guy?” Poppy asked Willie once they were outside.
“You gotta be kiddin’,” Willie said. “He’s an assistant DA. In the paper all the time.”
“What’s his name?”
“Daniel Coopersmith. A real comer, they say.”
Poppy frowned. “Boy, you wouldn’t know a comer if one fell on you.”
Daniel Coopersmith had certainly cleaned up his act. When Poppy last saw him, years earlier, the guy was leaving a Buffalo warehouse, wiping off a bloody hunting knife with his pocket square. Coopersmith had been the silent, elegant lieutenant to the area’s top bootlegger. Poppy’s employer of the past few years had gone into the warehouse that night but had not emerged. Young and desperate, Poppy had stood obediently in the shadows, waiting to bring the car around to his boss once a signal was given. But there was no signal. After a few minutes Poppy headed back to where the cars were parked in the rail yard. He stood between his boss’s car and one belonging to the guy his boss had come to meet. The whole thing should have taken no more than ten minutes. He had checked his watch. Something was bad wrong. He’d started to breath deeply, then he began to pant, his heart galloping in his chest. Running liquor across the border had become downright dangerous. It had taken only a few seconds to make up his mind. He climbed into the other car and found the satchel of cash on the front seat that was supposed to go to his boss. He regarded the stacks of neatly packed bills, longing for it like you would an unattainable woman. As he drove away he didn’t think about freedom so much as justice. A life for a life.
But somehow Coopersmith cheated what was coming to him. Poppy knew someone would be hunting for him soon enough, so he fled Buffalo with his family that night. How many years ago was it? A whole war’s worth and then some. Coopersmith might be legit these days, but Poppy knew he still had to steer clear of him. He knew exactly how lethal the man could be.
The advantage of being a Negro was that, most times, no one paid any attention to you. You were just a black hand that white folks dropped change into or passed luggage to. You were not an individual, a particular set of physical features and behaviors. Poppy counted on this. He couldn’t afford to have this man recognize him and threaten the comfortable life he had built in Oakland. Running counter to everything he stood for, he now willed himself to be invisible, hoping Coopersmith wouldn’t recognize him and set the dogs loose. Or worse yet, come after him himself.
Poppy fell asleep that night thinking of all the public meetings and social events he had attended over the years, places where Coopersmith must have been. The danger he thought he had escaped was there all along, he just hadn’t known it.
The following morning Poppy woke up in a cold sweat, having dreamed of days spent endlessly driving to feed the bottomless thirst of upstate New Yorkers. He had wanted them to stay drunk, to drown in the amber liquids he transported. Keep drinking! Suits me fine! It had been an adventure, one he hadn’t given up easily. He could finally clothe and house his young family properly. Like a man should be able to.
An undercurrent of fear coursed through him for two days. He called in sick, something he had never done, and laid low. But three days after the encounter at the Athens Club, itching to get back out into the world, Poppy felt like himself again. After a hot shower and a few cups of fresh coffee, he headed out, striding up Jefferson, then up 9th Street to Fitzgerald’s Diner on Washington. This was the place where deals were made and promises were broken. This was where the political types mingled with police, delivery men, and office girls. Gossip here was as free-flowing as the coffee.
He wanted to find out how Coopersmith had gone legit, who his political cronies were, if they were alumni from that same unsavory school of business he had left behind in New York.
He sat at the counter listening to chatter from the red leatherette booths and the nearby tables. He had built his reputation on picking up key bits of information, often without even interviewing people directly. Everybody in California talked too much. This, he hoped, would never change. In the long mirror mounted on the wall that separated the dining room from the kitchen, he could see the people behind him. He was dipping his toast into a sunny-side-up egg when he saw four suits enter. These fellas looked slicker than the usual crowd, more buttoned-down than the regulars. Folks you’d see coming out of the Athens Athletic Club. Here they were slumming.
“Say, you finished with this?” Poppy said, nodding at a copy of the Post-Enquirer the guy next to him had dragged through spilled coffee.
The man looked down at the wet paper. “Damn! Sure, take it.”
“Thanks, man.”
Poppy snapped the paper open, reading about last night’s fights and the lingering union fallout from the previous year’s general strike. He searched for anything coming out of the DA’s office, anything about Coopersmith. One of Coopersmith’s colleagues, a young cat with lots of promise, had been summarily fired. He had been charged with taking bribes from a developer who had swooped into Oakland after the war to buy up and convert properties belonging to the evacuated Japanese. Now some Japanese families were fighting to get their properties back, charging the federal government with theft and displacement, and this ADA was stalling the proceedings.