Lair of Dreams
Page 117

“What I really need is a Buffalo tube. But so far, I haven’t had much luck finding it. I understand Mr. Arnold carries them?” Sam said, sliding over a folded note attached to a five-dollar bill he’d lifted from a wallet on the way over.
The man’s smile vanished. “Mr. Arnold, you say?”
“Yes. Ben Arnold. That’s the fella.”
“Excuse me for a moment, won’t you?” The man disappeared behind a heavy drape at the back of the store. A few minutes later, he returned. “It seems that we don’t have that part right now, sir. It has been ordered.” The man returned Sam’s note minus the five dollars. “This is your receipt of purchase. But I’m afraid this is the last time Mr. Arnold can order this part for you, sir. Your particular model is very… popular at present. A bit too popular, if you take my meaning.”
Sam grimaced. Sam ’n’ Evie. The spotlight from their cooked-up romance was throwing a little too much glare on Sam’s private life.
“Pal, I hear you like a crystal set,” Sam said.
Out on the street, he opened the note. A key had been taped to the inside. There was no accompanying information. A salesman waved Sam over. “Could I interest you in a Zenith six-tube model with superior musical tone? It’s fully electric!”
“Thanks, pal. So am I,” Sam shouted. He shoved the note and key in his pocket, walking away from the cacophony of Radio Row toward the rumble of the Ninth Avenue El.
Down the street, the men in the brown sedan watched it all.
Every day, the newspapers carried bold warnings about the sleeping sickness.
New York’s health commissioner encouraged citizens to wash their hands frequently, to clean homes daily, and to avoid large crowds, especially open-air markets, protests, and workers’ rallies. Citizens needed to keep clear of buildings plastered with yellow quarantine posters. For the time being, they advised people not to travel to Chinatown or “foreign neighborhoods.” Some parents petitioned to have Chinese students barred from the classroom. Letters to the editor blamed the scourge on immigrants, jazz, loose morals, the flouting of Prohibition, bobbed hair, the automobile, and anarchists. Lawmakers argued about whether to add yet another brick in the ever-rising legislative wall of the Chinese Exclusion Act. They called for a return to traditional American morals and old-time religion. On the radio, Sarah Snow exhorted her followers to turn away from jazz babies and give themselves over to Jesus. Afterward, an announcer assured listeners that “Pears soap is the one to keep your family safe and healthy and free from exotic disease.”
In Chinatown, a large rock painted with a message—CHINESE GO HOME!—shattered the front window of Chong & Sons, Jewelers. An arsonist’s fire gutted the Wing Sing restaurant overnight; Mr. Wing stood in the softly falling wisps of soot-flecked snow, his sober face backlit by the orange glow as he watched everything he’d built burn to the ground. Police broke up social club meetings and even a banquet celebrating the birth of Yuen Hong’s first son. The mayor refused to allow the Chinese New Year celebrations to go on out of fears for public health. In protest, the Chinese Benevolent Association organized a march down Centre Street to City Hall, where the protestors were ordered to disperse or face arrest and possible deportation. The streets smelled of pork and winter, ash from the burnings and incense from the prayers offered to ancestors they hoped would look favorably upon them in this hour. On every street, red plaques appeared outside buildings to guide the dead back home. Talcum powder dusted the thresholds; entrances were watched for signs of ghosts.
Fear was everywhere.
At a eugenics conference in the elegant ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, genteel men in genteel suits spoke of “the mongrel problem—the ruin of the white race.” They pointed to drawings and diagrams that proved most disease could be traced to inferior breeding stock. They called this science. They called it fact. They called it patriotism.
People drank their coffee and nodded in agreement.
As Memphis Campbell made his runner rounds, his thoughts were elsewhere. He and Theta hadn’t spoken since their disastrous night at Small’s Paradise. Memphis didn’t understand how you could tell a fella you loved him and then run out like that. He missed her terribly, but he had too much pride to call. Theta would need to come to him first.
“Memphis, you listening to me, son?” Bill Johnson asked. “You get that number right?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Johnson. One, four, four,” Memphis said. “I’ll put it in for you, just like I did yesterday and the day before that. Don’t know why you keep playing it if you’re not winning.”