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.Big Boy was really crazy on the subject of the white man.He knew from his prohibition-time experience that sometimes a mobster went in for defending his race; he had heard of an Italian beer king who regularly dispatched strongarms to beat up Irish gangsters terrorizing Italian storekeepers; of a Jewish gambler who had privately found out the identities of a synagogue-wrecking bunch of hoodlums and had paid a gang who went in for assault and battery for their systematic punishment.But these cases were exceptional and Bill was positive that the Italian beer king and the Jewish gambler didn’t get too emotionally involved.They weren’t fanatics but hard-headed businessmen.But Big Boy was also a businessman, one of the best in Harlem, and it was incredible to realize that he could get hot with the zeal of a cotton belt preacher.“The business I have in mind,” Bill said quickly, “ties in with that Jew cop.There’s a kike synagogue here in Harlem on One Hundred and Fifteenth Street.I want that synagogue taken care of.It’s Saturday now.I want it taken care of this Monday night.They’ve got kike bibles in that synagogue.They’re written by hand and the kikes think they’re holy.I want those bibles cut to pieces.” He took a breath, his eyes on Big Boy.He had outlined the first job.“The idea’s to hurt ‘em in their religion?”“Cut those bibles to pieces.Use their Jew church for a toilet.But the bibles’re the main thing.Why, the God damn Jews hold a regular funeral every time one of those bibles are ripped.They bury them as if they were dead people.”“The Jews’ll holler for an investigation,” Big Boy said.“Let ‘em holler.They’ll never find out who did the job.They won’t suspect you.The cops’ll think Harlem got sore at Miller and took it out on the synagogue.” He studied the big black face eagerly, ready to bargain, to set a price for the job.He discounted Big Boy’s experience at bargaining with night club owners, with detectives, with syndicates who wanted to start up whorehouses.He felt himself a match for the Harlem kingpin, more than a match, because of the glimpse, naked and fearful and baleful that he’d had of Big Boy’s inner spirit.Big Boy? Big Boy was just another nigger afraid that the white man’d slap him down some day and take away his bank accounts.“You ain’t the first who’s come to me about the Jews,” Big Boy said.“Outfit a couple years ago before the war, they come to me.Call themself the Christian Destiny Party.Man, they hated the Jews.You one of ‘em?”“No.”“You somebody like this Christian Destiny?”Bill hesitated.What could he say to that? “Yes.The kikes’ve got this country into war.It’s a Jew war, that’s all it is.No Christian’ll get anything out of it.That goes for the colored people.”“It’s a white man’s war,” Big Boy said slowly.“Those leaflets people given out, they say the truth.”“Yes, but it’s a kike war.That’s what it is.How much do you want for the job?”“I didn’t say if I take that job.”“If you took it, how much?”“Need five, six boys to bust in and do it right.Need to fix the job right so it don’t touch my skirt.Need a deal of money.”“How much?”“Eight hundred bucks.”“That’s too much.”“Take it or leave it.”Bill lowered his eyes.“You’ve been hit by the cop raids, haven’t you?”“What that to you?”“If you take the job, the publicity’ll shift away from you.That ought to be worth something.You said yourself the Jews’d holler for an investigation.You know and I know that you’ve been raided by the cops because your white competition’s getting stronger.They’re out to raid you and the other colored big boys out of the numbers business.They’re out to make numbers a white man’s proposition.This job’ll do both of us good.And it’s only one job.I got two others lined up.I’ve got three jobs for you — ”“You’re worse’n a Jew.You want a cut-rate.”Bill smiled.“Don’t you want to hear what the other jobs are?”Big Boy grunted.Bill said.“On Tuesday I want your boys to hit every wop bar and grill in Harlem.All they have to do is raise a holler about wops not employing colored help.”“Go on.”“There are one hundred forty-eight Italian bars here in Harlem.I’d like to hit every one of them but I’m afraid your price’ll be too high.Half of them, seventy-five or eighty ought to be enough.All your boys have to do is — ”“Holler,” Big Boy broke in.Bill nodded but not so confident any more.It was easy for Hayden to spiel off; wreck the Jewish synagogue on Monday, begin anti-Italian agitation on Tuesday, liquidate the Jewish policeman Miller on Wednesday; easy in the A.R.A.office to spiel orders, big-shot to little-shot, to mouth easy formulas about utilizing Negroes against the Negro cause, to blandly analyze Big Boy’s anti-white phobia.It was more complex out in the field, meeting not names, not reports but the flesh and blood individuals themselves; it had been a queer shocking sensation when Big Boy had cursed Miller and the whole white race; he had felt then like a man who after rowing on a shallow creek suddenly finds himself on a fathomless depth.This room, itself, was disturbing as if it, too, were part of the depth, menacing and unnatural with its broken table and expensive radio, its slum sink and de luxe frigidaire in the kitchen.It, too, pointed to a Big Boy not easily deciphered.“Feeling must be high against that kike cop,” Bill said, uncertain now of himself.Big Boy just stared at him.“If I was a Negro I’d be sore.”“Ain’t the first cop to think he’s Jesus Christ in Harlem.You ain’t no colored man.What’s all this jive you give me.You South
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