“What the matter, offissah? Cain’t us black folks up here in Harlem have us a clock?” Cyril asked aggressively. “We needs us a clock.” The policemen, drawn by the crowd on the sidewalk, didn’t want trouble, so they left, saying, however, that they would have to report the incident. And they did, passing a verbal account of the incident on to the appropriate department, noting that a large clock tower was being constructed on top of a building on 125th Street. Ever since then, the cops had not missed a single opportunity to make fun of the locals, who took it with great good humor, since they knew the white cops were going to end up looking stupid.
After another month, the station was functioning and ready to start transmitting. During those two months — Maria told Christmas, Cyril, and Karl — N.Y. Broadcast had been inundated with letters from listeners who had loved the Diamond Dogs broadcast and were asking why there hadn’t been any more episodes. The management at N.Y. Broadcast met to discuss how best to meet the public’s demands. It never occurred to any of them to suggest hiring Christmas. “He’s an amateur,” they said. Instead they hired two writers to write some scripts; they also hired an actor with a deep voice and flawless diction; and they started broadcasting. The show was called Gangster for a Night. But the stories fell flat; lacking both intensity and realism. The two writers came from nice families and quiet little towns in New England. Now that they’d finished college, they were dreaming of Hollywood, seeing radio scripts as just an expedient. A starched-collar enthusiasm. The actor picked up some additional money reading commercials and spent his days auditioning for Broadway shows that never signed him. None of the three had ever set foot on the grimy streets of the Lower East Side or Brownsville. The language they used was artificial, dredged up from fourth-rate gangster movies. They offered stereotypes that couldn’t engage the listeners as Christmas had in that first broadcast. And so little by little the audience drifted away, N.Y. Broadcast dropped the program, and people had to settle once again for Cookies, with Skinny and Fatso, and their ancient jokes.
“Come on up here,” said Cyril after those two months. They were standing on the pockmarked pavement of 125th Street, on a night when the moon was shining in an intensely clear sky. Cyril crossed his arms proudly over his chest and looked up the antenna disguised as a clock. Then he crossed the street and went into the tenement building, followed by Christmas and Karl.
The climbed to the fifth floor and Cyril knocked at a brown-enameled door.
After a moment a woman of about thirty, provocatively beautiful, in a tight and low-cut dress of electric blue rayon, came to the door and smiled at them. “Y’all come on in,” she said.
“This here is Sister Bessie,” said Cyril, making the introductions. “She was married t’ my brother, but he done loved the bottle mo’. Last time I heard from him, he was down in Atlanta. But we ain’ heard nothin’ fo two years now.”
“An’ since then, I been a ho,” said Sister Bessie, her great dark eyes showing rage and pride. She lifted her chin boldly.
Suddenly Christmas felt ill at ease. His hand went to the scar on his chest, to that “P” for prostitute, carved into his flesh because of his mother’s work, the scar he had carried with him since childhood, like a brand. He looked at the floor, embarrassed. The forelock fell across his eyes.
“Now look what pretty hair this white boy got,” laughed Sister Bessie, flicking it with her hand.
Christmas ducked his head away.
Sister Bessie looked at him. “Don’ you worry none, I ain’t fixin’ t’break yo’ heart,” she said in her lilting voice. “I don’ work from home,” and she laughed.
Christmas felt embarrassed.
Sister Bessie took his hand and beckoned Karl to follow them. She led them to a closed door. She opened it and pointed to two little beds. “Those is my babies,” she said softly.
In the half-light Christmas saw two small children, sleeping peacefully.
Still holding his hand, she drew him inside the room. She stroked the head of a little girl, five years old, asleep with her thumb in her mouth and clutching a rag doll. “This here is Bella-Rae,” she murmured to Christmas. Then she stroked the other child’s close-cropped head.
The little boy opened his huge sleepy eyes. “Mamma …” he said.
“Uh-huh. You sleep, honey,” said Sister Bessie.
The child closed his eyes and curled under the covers. “Dass Jonathan,” whispered Sister Bessie. “Seven year old.”
Christmas smiled nervously. He could see himself, the nights when he would wake up weeping at Mrs. Sciacca’s house, after Vito and Tonia, his New York “grandparents” died, and that woman and her children had stared at him, annoyed, making him feel that he didn’t belong there. Later, when he was older, waking up from a nightmare in his cot in the kitchen on Monroe Street, calling his mother who wasn’t there. He would slip into her bed so that he could at least smell her fragrance on the pillow and under the sheets, until Cetta came back from work.
Sister Bessie led him out of the room. She waited for Karl to come out, too, and then as she closed the door, she sighed, “You ain’t never seen two angels like that, I reckon.”
Christmas felt a deep sadness. The sensation of terrible loneliness he had had as a child seemed to be returning like a sickness. “No,” he said, pulling his hand away from Bessie’s.
“My, my, this boy in a big hurry,” laughed Sister Bessie.
“Sister Bessie, we gots to …” Cyril began.
“Y’all come here to work o’ fo’ to stan’ around talkin’?” Sister Bessie interrupted crossly. “Din I already say you could use dat room? But I ain’t got time t’ make conversation …” She turned away from them and went into her bedroom.
Cyril laughed. He beckoned to Christmas and Karl and went into the room Sister Bessie had designated, directly under the tall antenna. A series of sheathed wires came through the wall and back out again, up and over the roof. Two wooden sawhorses with planed boards nailed across them supported some rudimentary equipment.
“Does it work?” asked Karl, raising one eyebrow.
“Sister Bessie, turn on that radio!” shouted Cyril.
“You wake up Jonathan and Bella-Rae wit’ dat hollerin’, you is all three headed out de do’,” said Sister Bessie, reappearing. And before Cyril could open his mouth, she added, “It already on. I knows when dey see dis mess they wu’nt gon’ believe it work.”
“Go on in there, Karl,” said Cyril. “You too, Christmas.”
They followed Sister Bessie into her bedroom. The whole house was very clean and tidy, Christmas noticed.
“I tole you, I don’ work from home,” said Sister Bessie, winking at him.
Neither did mamma, thought Christmas. Blushing.
Sister Bessie kept the radio on top of a white-painted chest of drawers. It wasn’t a commercial model. “Dat crazy man build me a radio, too,” she said. She turned a knob made out of a cork.
“You hear me, white folks? Sho’ you do,” Cyril’s voice echoed through the room. “You is tuned to Harlem’s pirate station, frequency 549, right next to WNYC at 570, so if you makes a mistake, you finds us … You got yo’self a smart darky! We coverin’ all of Manhattan an’ Brooklyn, too.” A pause. “Awright. I’m talked out now. Come back in here. We is ready to start broadcastin’.”
“No, we’re not ready,” said Karl, coming back into the room and shutting the door.
Cyril and Christmas stared at him in bewilderment.
“What were you expecting to do?” Karl continued. “Just start broadcasting?”
“What else we spose to do?” asked Cyril sullenly.
“We have to get people ready to listen to us,” said Karl.
“What you mean?”
“Let them know we’re broadcasting, Cyril,” said Christmas, who had understood where Karl was going.
“My folks here uptown, they already knows. That’s all they waitin’ for.”
“But the rest of the city does
n’t know. We can’t just count on their stumbling onto our frequency by accident, or when they’re looking for WNYC,” said Karl in a soothing tone.
“You want me t’ go all ovah New York an’ tell people?” Cyril bristled.
“Something like that,” Karl smiled.
“Well, dass a job fo’ you two,” grumbled Cyril. “I already done mine.”
“None of the three of us is going to do that, Cyril,” said Karl, still smiling. “This is my field.”
“Uh huh. If you says so.”
“But now we need money.” Karl was serious now. “I can put up five hundred dollars.”
“I don’t have a dime,” said Christmas, humiliated.
“Me neither,” said Cyril.
“Well, then we need to come up with another thousand from someplace,” said Karl.
“Now what you need all that money for?” Cyril asked.
“I trusted you, Cyril,” said Karl, resting a hand on Cyril’s shoulder. “And you’ve been great.”
Cyril allowed himself to look pleased.
“But now’s the time for you to trust me,” Karl went on. “Help me to raise a thousand dollars.”
“Thousand dollars,” muttered Cyril.
“You too, Christmas,” said Karl, turning to Christmas with a serious look on his face.
“… Thousand dollars, we ain’t gon’ find a thousand dollars layin’ under no rock, mothafucka.”
“I thought we could ask a thousand people to give us a dollar each.”
“What you say?”
“One dollar is the least they can pay to own a piece of our station,” said Karl. “We promise to pay them back at the end of the year. And if we make more money, we might be able to pay them two dollars.”
“Shee-it.”
“No, Cyril — just listen to him,” Christmas said excitedly. “It’s a good idea.”
“I say it be a shitty idea!” stormed Cyril. “We a clan-DES-tine radio station, just how you think we gonna raise money? Illegal advertisin’? What you got in you’ haid instead o’ brains, you two?”
“We won’t always be illegal,” Karl protested. “This is a free country …”
“Look around you, Polack!” Cyril cried. “You think these niggers is free? Free t’ do what? Starve t’ death? An’ you want me t’ take a dollar away from ’em?”
“You take a dollar away but you’ll be giving them hope,” said Christmas.
“So I got to find me a thousand niggers willin’ t’ buy a li’l piece o’ radio?”
“Maybe not a thousand,” said Christmas. “Some people might give ten dollars, some maybe a hundred …”
“A hundred dollars? Oh yeah, shee-it, you two really is crazy.”
“I’ll go see Rothstein,” said Christmas. “He’s rich. He might give me a thousand bucks all by himself.”
“An’ he might not,” muttered Cyril.
At that moment the door of the room opened and Sister Bessie came in, a coin purse in her hand. She clicked open the catch, fumbled through the coins, counting them out. Then she poured a handful of change onto the equipment table. “You got de fust dollah,” she announced.
Christmas looked at her. It was as if he were seeing her for the first time. As a woman. And for the first time he could read in that woman’s eyes everything he had been unable to accept in his mother.
Sister Bessie turned to look at him, as if she’d felt his gaze.
Christmas glanced down, embarrassed, blushing. Then he looked at Sister Bessie again. “My mother used to be a prostitute, too,” he said, hoping he had her own proud look.
Cyril and Karl wheeled around to look at him.
Sister Bessie’s generous deep red lips opened on her beautiful teeth. She came over to Christmas and held his face between her slender hands. With her thumb she stroked his eyebrow and then she kissed his cheek. She smiled again, showing her straight and perfect teeth. She turned to Cyril and Karl. “One son of a ho be worth a hundred papadaddy boys. Just you remember that,” she said firmly.
Cyril and Karl spread out their hands in surrender.
“You mus’ be proud o’ yo’ mama,” said Sister Bessie.
“I am,” said Christmas.
Again she took his face between her lovely hands and gave him another kiss on the cheek. She turned to Cyril, “Well? Is you takin’ my dollar or not?”
“Shee-it,” Cyril yielded, banging his fist on the boards that served as a tabletop. Bessie’s coins jingled. “Bein’ ‘round crazy folks done make me crazy, too. We kin try. I’ma shake down my niggers. Christmas, he gon’ hold up some gangstas.” He shook his head. “Speakin’ to you t’ night from station S.H.I.T.”
Christmas, Karl, and Sister Bessie burst out laughing.
“Oh yeah, keep on laughin’,” said Cyril, finally smiling. “I still don’ know why you needs all that money.”
“You’ll see,” said Karl.
“C.K.C.: It’s going to be great,” said Christmas.
“What?” asked Cyril and Karl in unison.
“C.K.C. That’s what we’ll call the station,” said Christmas proudly. “Our initials. That’s easy.”
“That first ‘C’, what that stand fo’?” Cyril asked suspiciously. “Christmas or Cyril?”
“You want to be first, huh?” Christmas laughed. “Okay, fine: The first ‘C’ belongs to you. You deserve it.”
“You foolin’ wit’ me, white boy?”
“No. Why would I? You’re my partner.”
“Partner,” Cyril tasted the word in his mouth, looking into a dream.
“Partner,” repeated Karl, glowing.
“Partner with two white mens, Sister Bessie. What you think o’ that?” Cyril laughed. “I’m bound for hellfire. Not fo’ long, but fo’ sure.”
Over the following week, Cyril collected eight hundred dollars in Harlem. The neighborhood people dug into their pockets enthusiastically when they heard his proposition. The idea of owning a tiny part of a radio station that symbolized freedom may not have moved them greatly, but knowing they owned a miniscule fragment of the fake clock tower that baffled white passersby made them feel they were sticking it to the enemy in a personal way. Not a single one of these contributors asked for any guarantee that he’d get his money back. It was a dollar well spent if it burned some white ass.
Christmas came up with fifteen hundred dollars. Rothstein alone gave five hundred. Christmas knew how to play him: He told him it was a kind of bet. He hit up Lepke, Gurrah Shapiro, and Greenie, not presenting it as a bet, since they didn’t share Rothstein’s obsession. But as soon as he told them they’d be doing something illegal, they grew wildly enthusiastic at the idea of owning a percentage of something that was against the law and that they hadn’t yet tried. Last of all, his mother, Cetta, gave him eighty-five dollars out of her savings and then she tormented Sal until he came up with a hundred and fifteen dollars to make an even two hundred.
“Two thousand two hundred dollars!” Karl said triumphantly at the end of the week. “With my five hundred, that makes twenty-seven hundred. And my father’s promised us three hundred. Three thousand! We can do big things,” and he laughed like a child, rubbing his hands.
The next day, a series of posters started appearing in strategic but low-cost parts of the city, including Harlem, the Lower East Side, and Brooklyn. In huge letters they announced: “C.K.C. — Your Secret Radio Station.”
The following week, all the posters were replaced, and everyone in New York read: “C.K.C. — Your Secret Radio Station — Start Counting Now! Only 7 Days Left!” And the day after that, the 7 was replaced by a 6, without changing the poster. Then came the five, the four, the three, the two and at last — the one.
Karl had spent nine hundred and twenty dollars on these two cycles of advertising — including replacing the numbers every day. The following week saw him spend the remaining two thousand and eighty dollars on huge new posters in strident colors. In addition to the usual information, the
y announced: “This is the day you’ve been waiting for, New York! At 7:30 p.m. set your dial to 540 and listen to Diamond Dogs. You’re going to meet the gang!” And then CKC, 540, and Diamond Dogs flashed on and off rhythmically.
Harlem was in ferment well before 7:30 p.m. All the radios Cyril had built over the years were on and set. And Cetta, too, had turned on the Radiola, Ruth’s gift to Christmas. Sal was sitting next to her, even paler and more excited than she while the radio sent out only the buzz of its tubes. At N.Y. Broadcast, Maria and the two sound technicians who had participated in the first broadcast of Diamond Dogs had closed themselves in a little room on the third floor, along with a radio set to 540 AM. Cyril was in Sister Bessie’s bedroom, and the two children were clinging to their mother without really understanding why they had to listen to the white man talking through the radio when they knew he was in the next room.
The room that had been set up for the broadcast had blankets hung over the windows to give Christmas the darkness he needed. The window and the door had been soundproofed with hundreds of hard-boiled eggs that the entire neighborhood had contributed.
“Are you ready?” Karl asked Christmas.
Christmas gave him a tense smile.
“It’s going to be fine,” Karl assured him.
“I know,” said Christmas. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He held tightly to one of the three microphones Cyril had stolen from the repair shop at N.Y. Broadcast.
Next to the radiophonic equipment they’d set up an old Victrola phonograph. Karl turned the handle and moved the brake lever down. A record Christmas had bought was on the turntable.