It is 1955 in Las Vegas. Sammy and Satchmo are headlining the big hotels - where the casino operators and the color bar say a black man can't buy a drink or a meal or a room. Until now. The Chicago mob man Mo Weiner is bankrolling ex-boxer Worthless Worthington Lee and the city's first all-black hotel-casino. The Ivory Coast is rising up from the dust, on the wrong side of town. And out of the shadows steps Deacon, a white horn player with a dark past and a genius for jazz. Mo mistakes him for a hitman. Worthless takes him for a friend. Anita, the mixed-race beauty he falls for, wants him for herself. And Haney, the corrupt and racist copy who runs this hot desert oasis of sin and sand, wants him rubbed out. Deacon is holding a dangerous hand, and a dangerous secret, spun inside a deadly web of deceit and double-crosses. The Ivory Coast is coming, rushing this sprawling drama toward the last Sunday in May, when the whole town will be black and white and blood-red all over...
A suspenseful first novel of remarkable imagination, scope and energy, The Ivory Coast is impossible to ignore and, once begun, impossible to resist.
It is 1955 in Las Vegas. Sammy and Satchmo are headlining the big hotels - where the casino operators and the color bar say a black man can't buy a drink or a meal or a room. Until now. The Chicago mob man Mo Weiner is bankrolling ex-boxer Worthless Worthington Lee and the city's first all-black hotel-casino. The Ivory Coast is rising up from the dust, on the wrong side of town. And out of the shadows steps Deacon, a white horn player with a dark past and a genius for jazz. Mo mistakes him for a hitman. Worthless takes him for a friend. Anita, the mixed-race beauty he falls for, wants him for herself. And Haney, the corrupt and racist copy who runs this hot desert oasis of sin and sand, wants him rubbed out. Deacon is holding a dangerous hand, and a dangerous secret, spun inside a deadly web of deceit and double-crosses. The Ivory Coast is coming, rushing this sprawling drama toward the last Sunday in May, when the whole town will be black and white and blood-red all over...
A suspenseful first novel of remarkable imagination, scope and energy, The Ivory Coast is impossible to ignore and, once begun, impossible to resist.
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Overview
It is 1955 in Las Vegas. Sammy and Satchmo are headlining the big hotels - where the casino operators and the color bar say a black man can't buy a drink or a meal or a room. Until now. The Chicago mob man Mo Weiner is bankrolling ex-boxer Worthless Worthington Lee and the city's first all-black hotel-casino. The Ivory Coast is rising up from the dust, on the wrong side of town. And out of the shadows steps Deacon, a white horn player with a dark past and a genius for jazz. Mo mistakes him for a hitman. Worthless takes him for a friend. Anita, the mixed-race beauty he falls for, wants him for herself. And Haney, the corrupt and racist copy who runs this hot desert oasis of sin and sand, wants him rubbed out. Deacon is holding a dangerous hand, and a dangerous secret, spun inside a deadly web of deceit and double-crosses. The Ivory Coast is coming, rushing this sprawling drama toward the last Sunday in May, when the whole town will be black and white and blood-red all over...
A suspenseful first novel of remarkable imagination, scope and energy, The Ivory Coast is impossible to ignore and, once begun, impossible to resist.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781429973892 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 01/01/2004 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 416 |
| File size: | 367 KB |
About the Author
Charles Fleming is a veteran entertainment industry reporter and the author of High Concept: Don Simpson and the Hollywood Culture of Excess. The Ivory Coast is his first novel.
Charles Fleming is a veteran entertainment industry reporter and the author of After Havana (Minotaur, January 2004), as well as The New York Times bestselling The Goomba's Guide to Life and High Concept: Don Simpson and the Hollywood Culture of Excess.
Read an Excerpt
The Ivory Coast
A Novel
By Charles Fleming
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2002 Charles FlemingAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-7389-2
CHAPTER 1
THE FIGHT BEHIND the casino was a nightmare. There was blood everywhere. One of Mo's men had taken a bad knifing. He had fallen into the pool and was thrashing around, clutching at the side, trying to get out. One of Haney's guys was stamping on his fingers. The water was going pink where he splashed in the shadow of the swaying palms. A big ape who worked for Haney had one hand wrapped in brass knuckles and one hand wrapped around another man's throat. He was putting the brass to that guy's face. Music pushed out of the casino like wind pushing sand across the desert.
To Deacon it was all a night at the movies: Haney's men and Mo's men, behind the casino. The big Starburst Hotel and Casino neon from the Strip side of the building blinked a red-gold-green over the desert darkness. A searchlight swept across his horizon, caught his gaze, and pulled it into the stars. The breeze blew hot. He was high and flying and he'd seen it all before. The fight scene. Take five.
It had started over a woman. Mo had sent two gorillas up to Stella's room to find out why she had missed the first set. The gorillas had returned with a report that Stella had a guy in her room — a colored guy. Mo was not asking what his lily-white lounge singer was doing with the colored guy. Mo told his men to give him the gate and get Stella up to his office. Like, now. And quietly.
That had been about eleven. By midnight it was out of hand. Who tapped Haney? Someone from inside Mo's organization. Haney was on it almost before it started. Four of his torpedoes came in through the front, dressed for business and moving fast. Before they had passed the registration desk, their black suits a blur against the turquoise and cream of the casino decor, they had picked up four of Mo's men as escorts. Someone was calling Mo on a house phone. Someone else was calling security. The torpedoes were down near the lounge — they called it "The Sunburst at the Starburst" — before Mo's men had them outnumbered and surrounded. The ruckus itself started there, just outside the lounge entrance. There was shoving and shouting, and it was heated, but it was contained. It didn't have to be horrible, yet. Haney was on one end of a phone line saying, "This is my town and I'm not gonna tolerate any woman ..." and Mo was on the other end saying, "This is my hotel and I'm not taking any more of your ..." And a bunch of brutes who didn't even know why they were fighting were getting the smell of blood into their tiny brains. The argument moved out through the casino and off the floor and then spilled out onto the pool area.
Deacon was finishing the second set. The Sunburst was full. Stella still drew. Even if she sometimes took a powder mid-set and didn't come back from her room, as she had tonight, Stella still drew. The band had finished with a big-production version of "Night and Day." Smoke and hush lay like a blanket over the room until right at the end. Then the audience blew, and turned into applause. A lot of the customers were on their feet and stretching and heading for the door while they were still clapping. They would hit the pits in earnest now, and start losing real money, and they were ready to go. It was time for the Starburst to start collecting revenue.
Between solos Deacon had been sipping Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey, straight out of a Coca-Cola bottle. He was sort of smoky and blue inside when the set ended, low and mellow and quiet. He'd put his horn away and stepped off the back of the bandstand, and slipped out the back door of the club to grab a smoke.
The fight was on. He walked right into it. One of Haney's men stepped out of the dark and threw him a huge roundhouse. Deacon ducked and missed it and went into a shadow. He tossed the smoke and scuttled away from the man with the big fists. Across the patio six or seven more of Haney's guys, in black suits, were shimmering in the seafoam-green light of the pool. Mo's guys were coming out of the dark onto the patio and moving on Haney's guys like chessmen. Overhead the searchlights crisscrossed a big V for Vegas. The air crackled with neon hum and the scrunching of car tires on loose asphalt.
In the shadows Deacon recognized Sumner, a sax player he knew, and four or five other Negro guys from the kitchen. They were standing like statues, watching the fight, expressions of complete indifference on their faces. Did it matter to them that the fight started over a white girl boning a colored boy? Probably not. Deacon thought, That's the only place to be in a fight like this.
But then the owner of the big roundhouse was behind him. Deacon turned and crabbed down, and the punch whiffled over his head. The big man's black shoes skidded on the concrete as he shifted his weight to throw another. Deacon shot away sideways. Across the pool, he saw one of Haney's guys draw a revolver.
All that Kentucky mellow evaporated. Everything evaporated. It was so dry here that running water had to be pumped into the pool at all hours to keep it from drying up. The lawn had to be sprinkled all night long or it wouldn't get wet at all. For a moment there was only the sound of the water hissing. Two more of Mo's men ran out from the casino and then came the crump of someone's fist going into someone's ribs.
Here came the big black shoes again, and the big punching guy. Deacon slipped past the roundhouse again. He could see the man who threw it clearly now. He was a vast brute, maybe a Swede, very pale and not more than eighteen. He probably hadn't been in the desert more than a week. Deacon had been beaten up by much bigger guys, but they were always pretty good fighters. This lug wasn't. As his punch came by, Deacon got behind it and pushed. The big guy's shiny shoes gave out on him and he skidded down onto the ground.
Then a table crashed glass over the concrete decking. One of the guys by the pool was Sloan, a bartender Deacon liked better than most of Mo's men. He was wrestling down the guy with the revolver. Then a burbling howl rose from the man in the pool who was getting his fingers stamped and bleeding into the water. Sloan got the guy with the revolver down, and he had his foot on the guy's gun hand. Four shots went blat! blat! blat! blat! into the pool, where the water was going pink.
Deacon went temporarily nuts. He threw two vicious kicks into the pale guy on the ground and moved poolside. Keeping his left hand low, guarding his horn-playing fingers, Deacon threw sharp right punches at the finger-smashing man, who moved away from the pool to defend himself. Deacon gave good, and got good, and went down hard into a thatch of tiki lamps. So did the creep he was fighting — another Irish cop, like Haney. Deacon thought he was called Harrigan or Harrington or something. They both rose, soaked in lamp oil, and squared off and started again. Deacon hit Harrigan hard, and he bumped into a lit tiki torch and ignited. Harrigan shrieked and then burst into flames — another Sunburst at the Starburst! Deacon shoved him into the pool. The air seemed to sizzle for a second and —
And Deacon awoke.
His head ached. His right hand ached. Something was wrong with his legs. Something was wrong with his bed, too. The sizzling sound continued. Deacon opened his eyes. It was not his bed at all, or his bedroom. It was a men's room. Urinals gleamed at him like rows of teeth. Mirrors shone. Deacon was slumped into one of the shoeshine chairs where, during the daytime, a guy named Fidget polished the leather. The sound of water sizzling was a toilet running somewhere at the back of the room.
How did things get so fouled? The night before had been fine — not just okay, but fine. Cab Calloway's orchestra had been at the Victoria for a week. Pearl Bailey was at the Sands. Sinatra and a bunch of his crowd were rehearsing over at the Desert Inn. Someone had gotten word out that everybody was going to be over on the West Side, at Mamie's Black Bottom, after hours — and it was fine. A horn player Deacon knew from his Chicago days was working with Cab now, and he got him onstage for half a set. Deacon may have been wailin' and he may have been failin', but then Pearl gave him a smile that made his heart stop and he said, "Baby, this is it."
There were lots of nights like that. Everybody was in Vegas. Satchmo and Ella were in Vegas. Both of the Dorseys, Tommy and Jimmy, were in town. Nat "King" Cole was headlining, playing weeks at a time. Lena Horne. Eartha Kitt. Dinah Washington. The Treniers were at the Starlite Lounge at the Riviera, and had been playing the lounges longer than anyone but that nutty Liberace. Duke Ellington had been coming since before they killed Bugsy Siegel.
The place was on fire, from the Strip to downtown to the West Side. Especially, lately, the West Side. The Strip was happening, and downtown was happening, but the West Side was where it really cooked. That's where the colored folks were. It wasn't just Stella's boyfriends who were getting run off the Strip. All the colored men and women were getting run off the Strip. The colored performers who were headlining the Strip could not get rooms on the Strip — not even at the hotels where they were billed as the opening act. Louis Armstrong or Louis Jordan might draw $25,000 a week headlining the Sands, but they could not book a room there, or anyplace else. Pearl Bailey was headlining Wilbur Clark's Desert Inn — had been forever — but she had to enter the D.I. through the back door. She could not get a cocktail or a cup of coffee there, or anywhere else on the Strip. The colored entertainers could work, but after work they had to split. You might be the number one attraction at the Sands or the Dunes or the Desert Inn, but after work you were a Negro and you were out.
When the show was over, Sammy and Ella and all the rest of them had to make with the feet and get off the Strip. And when they split, they went to the West Side. They'd stay with friends, or in rooming houses or boardinghouses. They'd eat where their own people ate, and drink where their own people drank. And that was on the West Side.
And there were joints on the West Side where some of them went for the music. And those joints were jumping. There was Mamie's, and the little lounge at the Town Tavern, and the Victoria, and Slinkys Lounge. And now that Ivory Coast thing was coming. Deacon had never seen anything hotter.
Even by Vegas standards, the West Side was burning up. The whole country was burning up. The war had been over for ten years. The Depression was ancient history. Everybody was working. All those boogie-woogie bugle boys who'd gone into the army and learned to play reveille were pressing sheet metal or popping rivets or selling automobiles or life insurance now. Everybody was making dough. And everybody was spending dough. There was so much to buy, after the rationing and deprivation of the war. People were buying like crazy. They were buying houses and sofas and washers and dryers. They were buying televisions and record players. They were buying cars. Everybody was buying cars. Every joker in America was behind the wheel of his own pile of steel — his own private piece of highway heaven. And inside every one of those big American heaps there was a radio. The roads were lined with cafés, and inside every one of them was a jukebox. There was music everywhere you went — not just for the jazzbos and the rich folks. Everybody was getting some of it.
If you had a nickel, you owned the nickelodeon. If you had a car, you didn't need the nickel. The radio was on and it was free and everyone was listening.
The air was simply full of sound — the sound of music and the sound of commerce. All those jokers in their shiny Chevrolets and Chryslers were customers, and the car was the place to get them. Advertisers were pouring a fortune into radio, trying to talk every GI Bill into throwing some of his money at a Rocket 88 or a can of V8 or a can of Chef Boyardee. America was hungry and thirsty and hot, and there was a new kind of music for that. In Vegas, that music never stopped.
Drifting in and out of consciousness, Deacon was a jukebox, too. His head was a library of tunes, tumbling into one another, one riff rushing in on the next, horns and strings and rhythm sections all caving in on themselves. His fingers twitched over the horn parts, soloing silently as he rose and fell out of and back into the nightmare of himself.
His head played Charlie Parker and Gerry Mulligan. They were working the West Coast now, Mulligan with a new band that included this guy Chet Baker. Everyone told Deke he sounded like Baker, but better. Art Pepper was laying down amazing stuff in Los Angeles. Clubs like the hungry i in San Francisco and the Haig in L.A. were rolling it up every night of the week.
The music on the radio was mostly kid stuff. The McGuire Sisters had a big hit single in "Sincerely." Her nibs, Miss Georgia Gibbs, had a hit single with a cleaned-up version of "Dance with Me Henry." That knucklehead Bill Hayes was big with "The Ballad of Davy Crockett." Deacon would rather have been listening to Big Joe Turner sing "Shake, Rattle and Roll" or Ray Charles do "I Got a Woman."
America was still in love with Patti Page and Pat Boone. But for the jazzmen, the music was serious again, and the serious guys were making a real living at it again. And the guys in Vegas were making it better than anyone anywhere else. And on the West Side, at about three o'clock in the morning, when there was nothing on the Strip but men throwing dice and losing dough, the music was as good as music gets. All the white guys and all the black guys were jamming, and it was like nothing else in the world.
Now the Ivory Coast was coming. Mo was bankrolling it. That black boxer Lee was going to front the thing, just like that tired old Hollywood actor fronted Mo's Thunderbird. It was going to be a special place for all the Negro talent to get rooms and get meals and get happy.
It was going to be fine on the West Side, every night. Stella wouldn't have to bone so close to home when she got beige on her mind. And Haney would have to find a new excuse to send his goons in for the ass-whipping.
Deacon stretched one slacked and booted leg before him and groaned in pain, and tried to stand.
He was twenty-eight and long and tall, and dark and pale — black hair, worn long, over a long, sad face. High cheekbones. Strong jaw. Big black shiner over left eye. That hurt. Deacon squinted at the bank of mirrors across from the shoeshine stand. His dove-gray suit was badly wrinkled, and there was something wrong with his string tie, which was at half-mast and flying sideways. He still had his boots on. His wallet was still in his jacket.
The standing-up part wasn't going to work yet. Deacon rested back, closed his eyes, drifted off.
Later they had all been in Mo's office, shivering in the cold, upstairs at the Starburst. Mo, sleek and silver, said, ?I don't like it and I won't have it. Figure out why Haney wants to be my headache, and do something about it." No one in the room had a clue whom Mo was talking to or what to do about Haney. Deacon was the first to leave. He took the elevator back down to the casino floor.
Fatty grabbed him just as he was coming off the car. He said, ?I need a room."
Deacon said, "So get a room."
"No. Off the books. I need a private room, in the back. Your room."
Deacon said, "I was just going to sack out now."
"Don't," Fatty said. ?I got this couple in from L.A. They're married, but not to each other. They need a place.?
"Get them a room at the T-bird."
"That will take too long. I need the room now. I'll make it worth your while."
Deacon groaned and said, "Forget it. I need some sleep.?
But Fatty had pulled him aside, out of the splash of the casino lights. He held something clutched in his left hand. He said, "Take this and disappear for three or four hours. A favor, Deke. Do it for me."
Deacon struggled and weakened and struggled and lost. He said, "I'll leave the room unlocked." He took the packet from Fatty and walked off.
Fatty said, "You oughta get some ice for that shiner, Deke."
He did not remember what happened after that.
Voices came and went down the length of the bathroom like horns calling through thick fog. One accompanied by clicking feet on the cream-and-white tile said, "Catnappin' in the middle of the day." And another, "Who is he anyhow?" And the first, "That's one of Stella's boys. Horn player they call Crush Velvet." "Crash Velvet now," the second said. "Haw-haw, you got that right." And again the flush. Deacon lifted his lids from the sound of swirling water, but the feet had carried the voices back down the tile.
Stella's boy. Mo's boy. Nobody's sweetheart. All the way awake now, Deacon saw that he was in the staff washroom, in the basement at the Thunderbird — sister property to the Starburst. He was not wearing a watch. Noon? Night? The fluorescent glare overhead told him nothing. He got to his feet and stood and went across to the line of sinks with the line of mirrors over them. Tall, thin men in black hair and wrinkled gray suits blinked back at him. The water was cool, and Deacon was hot, and Vegas was why.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Ivory Coast by Charles Fleming. Copyright © 2002 Charles Fleming. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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