And he well remembered her when he slid into the booth at Ben’s Chili Bowl across from her brother, Lorenzo Devereaux. Rex told the record producer that phase one had been completed and that the Messenger approved of the recording that Groove Records was making of his speeches.
Ten years younger than the man facing him, Lorenzo Devereaux shifted the conversation to the real agenda for the meeting: the mob’s encroachment on all that his family had achieved. Groove Records had been on a steady roll of soul and sweaty R&B hit records since the 1950s, and these days even the “legit” labels were salivating over their work, wondering how they were doing it: making music and money. Now these wop bastards thought they could just walk in and take over their company because “niggers ain’t shit and had no protection.”
Three days earlier, Lorenzo had met with his step-mother and half-brother, Leon, to discuss the family crisis. Sophia, his half-sister, had been kidnapped by the Gambino family of New Jersey, headed by Carmine D’Ambrosio.
“We need to get some back-up,” Lorenzo urged. “We’re going to get some black people who aren’t afraid of the mob.”
O.K.A.
“Are you crazy!!” Leon had recently assumed the position of president of Groove Records and did not like the idea at all. He wanted to call in the police.
“Yeah, sure,” said Lorenzo, stubbing out his Chesterfield in an ashtray. “Go to the cops, the FBI, the same people who been spying on Daddy and Mama for years! I say we handle this way. I have a contact with the Kingdom.”
“You’re crazy, man!” Leon protested.
But Leon had no real plan other than calling the police. Either capitulate or ask the cops to handle it. It wasn’t fair, he thought. He was just supposed to handle record deals, make money, cruise around in his Cadillac, and go to bed with red-bone lovelies… and show up his bastard half-brother, Lorenzo. In Leon’s eyes, Lo resented the fact that their father had chosen him to run the firm, despite the fact that Leon’s own mother thought the half-brother should be at the helm. Perhaps Lo was more competent as an executive, but doesn’t blood — full blood — count for something?
Betty Lou Compton, the legendary jazz pianist and composer, the woman who had rescued Groove from the dark days of the Red Scare, was silent. This was a gamble. Her daughter’s life, certainly more important than the record company, was in the balance. Yet she understood, as did Lorenzo, that the kidnapping was a form of humiliation, that a family such as the Devereaux could not fully protect itself on its own. The police and the FBI would likely be indifferent, given the accusations the bureau had made against them in the past. They wouldn’t even protect those poor civil-rights demonstrators who were beaten during freedom rides in the South. It was rumored that Hoover thought Martha Reeves’s “Dancing in the Streets” was an underground call for riots and demonstrations.
“Mama!” said Leon, who could see that her slow response to shutting down the crazy idea meant she was considering it. “We’re talking about Sophia. Lo can talk all that foolishness about the Kingdom, but she ain’t his sister.”
“Lorenzo has been just as much of a brother to her as you,” defended his mother. “I don’t recall you changing her diapers, mister. When have you ever taken a real interest in anyone in this family? You got your position as the president of Groove, but the first sign of trouble…? You’re willing to cut a deal with them!”
“We’re talking about the Mafia!” said Leon.
“And they bleed like anyone else,” countered Lorenzo. “I know how we can checkmate them.”
“How?! How you gonna do that? Huh? We only have a few days for Sophia—”
The door opened and in wheeled Rayford Devereaux, the wounded Lear who had retired as the founding president of Groove Records years ago to work on his book. When Betty Lou had recently decided to leave the company’s helm to return to composing, that’s when the mob had spotted something fat and unprotected for the taking.
“What are you two arguing over now?” asked Rayford as he approached them. The very sight of their father in a wheel chair underscored how his two years in prison had broken and discouraged him. He had finally given up, after battling for years to prove that black music was the social glue keeping Negroes together.
No one had yet mentioned to him that the center of his heart had been stolen.
“Daddy,” said Lorenzo, “something has happened.” Lorenzo peered around the room and his eyes settled on Leon, who, as the chief executive of Groove Records, ought to be the bearer of bad news. Leon looked away.
“Sophia has been kidnapped,” said Lorenzo.
Their father’s white eyebrows met in the middle of his forehead as he turned to his wife, who only nodded yes.
“Who?”
“The mob. Carmine D’Ambrosio,” replied Betty Lou. “They have given us seventy-two hours to make a decision. They want to be our, uhm, partners.”
“You mean our masters,” corrected her husband. He turned to the CEO of his patrimony. “What’s your plan, son?”
“Plan? Uh…” Leon stammered.
“You got something up your sleeve or not?!”
“Daddy, it’s the mob,” explained Leon. “They just want the company — parts of it.”
“I’ll give them every bit of money we have to get my baby girl back, but they ain’t getting their hands on this firm! No deal.”
“They’ll kill her…” started Leon, shocked at his father’s ruthlessness. He thought it had been drained out of him.
Rayford Devereaux looked at his son and realized at that very moment that he had made a terrible mistake. Leon saw Groove Records only as a business, not an empire or dynasty, certainly not a way of life, a trust. He himself may have been a tired old nigger in the eyes of many, but he had become such the old way: arrested by the government and beaten in jail because he refused to denounce some of his artists as Communist. He spent two years in jail for Contempt of Congress, and many a patriotic Negro had stomped his ass in bids for early release.
“Son, this is a ship, the USS Groove, and we’re officers. We go down with the ship. Money? Let them Italian crackers have it, but they will not get this company. Not even over Sophia’s body! This is our heritage.”
Leon gaped at his mother.
Betty, however, saw a miracle: Her husband was back. The old Rayford Devereaux, who won her heart forty years before when she was a college student under his tutelage, had empowered her to defy her blues-hating, preacher-crazy father. That man had re-emerged… but at the price of her daughter?
“Lorenzo has an idea, Ray,” said Betty. “It’s risky.”
“Hell,” said Rayford, “if Kennedy could risk the goddamn world over Cuba and make the Russians pull their missiles out of Dodge, I’ll take a chance.”
“Yeah, for your record company,” muttered Leon.
Lorenzo told his father the idea: Call in the Original Kingdom of Afrika. Seeing that the new chief executive of Groove Records had no other idea or plan, Rayford Devereaux dispatched Lorenzo to the temple immediately. Time was tight.
“WHAT?” said Jimmy Falco. “Are you sure?… Damn. Okay… Yeah, I see… I understand… Right. Gotcha.”
Jimmy “the Hydrant” hung up the pay phone at a Maryland rest stop just outside of the District line. He watched the cars along the highway and couldn’t shake off what he’d heard. He had to whack the bitch. It was fortunate that he had brought along Ricci, the sick bastard. It was one thing to follow orders, but Ricci was the kind of sick fuck who actually enjoyed hurting people.