Read Online Strivers Row by Kevin Baker - Free Book Online Page A

“Son, you should latch on to the fact that this is the Apple.”
    â€œYou gonna get conked up good, you don’t mind us!”
    Malcolm grinned back at them, feeling as if he would burst out of the cab.
    â€œHey, I’m mellow as a cello, rippin’ an’ rompin’, trippin’ an’ stompin’.”
    â€œUh-huh. This is Harlem , son.”
    â€œSo where is it?!”
    â€œWell, you watch now. Keep an eye out here, when we reach the Main Stem.”
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œOne hunnert twenny-fith street, son .”
    â€œWhat for, what for?”
    He peered avidly out the cab window, wondering if it had anything to do with women.
    â€œKeep lookin’.”
    â€œFor what? ”
    Then he saw him. A monolith. A fantastic hallucination, a human balloon swaying in the waves of heat floating up from the pavement. But there was no denying him—at least six-three and two hundred seventy-five pounds, standing right out in the middle of the street, directing traffic. A black man in a police uniform .
    â€œThat’s Lacy!”
    â€œThere he is! Hey, Lacy!”
    They waved out the window, calling his name, making mocking noises though there remained a note of pride in their voices. Lacy only stared at them balefully, planted inalterably in the middle of the intersection, lugubriously waving the cars on. Malcolm still gawking out the back window of the cab as they passed, unable to get his mind around the sight.
    â€œA cop. A black cop ,” he marveled.
    â€œSure, they got ’em up here, you know,” Lionel snorted. “You should see Big Ben Wallace. Ol’ Mr. Terror make Lacy look like a schoolteacher. Or the Four Horsemen—”
    But Malcolm had already stopped listening, staring out at the amazing sidewalk scene emerging all around them. Suddenly there was color everywhere, as if someone had just switched the screen to technicolor, like in The Wizard of Oz , which he had seen six times back in Michigan. Men wearing green, and yellow, and red sports shirts. Men wearing porkpie hats, and Panamas, and fedoras, men in white and lemon-lime and peach ice-cream suits—even men wearing sharper zoots, he had to admit, than what he had on himself.
    And women . He was sure that he had never seen so many beautiful women in his entire life. There were women everywhere, at least two for every man, not counting the clusters of soldiers and sailors gaping and gesturing at them on every street corner. Women wearing gold and ruby-red glass in their ears, and open-toed platform heels that made them sway with every step. Women in tight violet and red and blue print dresses, held up only by the thinnest of shoulder straps over their smooth, brown backs. Women striding up from the subways, stepping regally down from the trolleys and the elevated, and women, everywhere he looked, strolling out of smoking storefronts, as if their smoldering presence had touched them off.
    â€œWhat—they on fire?” Malcolm asked in bewilderment, squinting at the smoky little shops, the mysterious lettering in their windows that boasted WE OFFER: The Apex—Poro—Nu Life—Hawaiian Beauty Systems—
    â€œMm-hmm, you bet they are,” the cabbie laughed up front. “Those Thursday girls, they always on fire! Even when they ain’t gettin’ their hair straightened—”
    â€œYou in luck, Nome,” Lionel told him. “It’s Thursday . Kitchen Mechanics’ Night. All those maids an’ mammies, an’ calkeener broads—Friday’s they one day off. They be gunnin’ for you tonight.”
    â€œFor real?”
    â€œ ’Course for real, Samuel D.!”
    â€œWhere you think we should take him first?” Willard asked the others. “Up the Savoy, beat out a few hoof riffs? Braddock’s? The Elks? Take him to a buffet flat an’ have a good laugh?”
    â€œNah, man. We gotta take him by Small’s