Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem Read online

  “Oh my, wonderful, just wonderful,” she said reaching out and hugging Stevenson. Arm around her, the other woman said into the house, “Charles, your daughter is here.” She walked away with Stevenson, leaving Henson on the doorstep. But she hadn’t closed the door on him, so he stepped inside, too, and followed them into a book-lined study. On a cherry-wood table was a small stack of magazines including the Survey Graphic and The Messenger.

  “Destiny,” a man said. He was medium height in a paisley vest and white shirt. The man modulated his usual stentorian tone. His naturally straight hair was combed back from a smooth forehead.

  “Father,” she said, allowing him to embrace her.

  “I was worried sick.”

  “I know.” The daughter looked past her father’s shoulder at Henson. “But thankfully your lummox here sure knew what he was doing.”

  “I’m Miriam McNair,” said the older woman, hand out to Hanson.

  “Pleased to meet you,” he said, shaking it. He’d heard of her. She’d been an early investor in Madam C.J. Walker’s haircare products for black women. The profits had resulted in her owning this brownstone, he surmised. He knew she was active with various negro self-betterment efforts in Harlem and elsewhere. She also conducted salons from time to time at this building under the auspices of her womens’ group called the Bronze Orchids. These were gatherings of intellectuals, writers, poets, and the likes—personnel of equal rights organizations who discussed various topics of interest.

  “This calls for libations,” McNair said. “Destiny, are you of age? Your skin is flawless, I’m so jealous.”

  “You mean hooch?” she grinned.

  “My supplier only gets the best. Is that okay, Charles?”

  Her father waved his hand. “Considering what she’s been through, I’m sure her late mother would understand.” His nails were long for a man’s and an ornate silver or gold ring was on his fingers on either hand. His given name was Charles Theodore Toliver, but many knew him as Daddy Paradise, the well-known spiritual leader.

  McNair excused herself and Stevenson sat on the couch. The two men remained standing.

  Toliver put a hand on Henson’s shoulder. “I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done, Matthew. Let me add, it’s a damn shame you aren’t recognized more for the brave and unflinching man you are. I intend to do what I can to undo the disservice that Peary and Washington have done to you.”

  “That’s not necessary, Charles. I prefer the life I have now. History may yet prove to be the arbiter of the truth. But I see no need to rush it.”

  “Do you ever take off the cloth of humbleness, Mr. Henson?” Stevenson said, crossing her legs.

  “Maybe I spend too much time with my own counsel,” he admitted. Among his travels years ago he’d studied martial arts not only in China, but also Zen teachings with the Buddhist abbot, the hunchbacked Master Hiroki Kodama in Japan. He was quite content to be alone.

  “Growing up on the seas will do that, it seems,” Toliver said. He sat near his daughter. “But now that my baby is returned, and I’m taking steps to ensure her continued safety, what can stand in my way?” He made a flourish with his ringed fingers.

  McNair returned with a tray with a bottle and cylindrical glasses. She sat the refreshments on a sideboard and began pouring the drinks. The label proclaimed the bottle to be Canadian whiskey. Not the bathtub swill that often masqueraded as the real stuff, Henson noted. Taste would tell.

  “Ladies first,” she said, handing a glass to the younger woman who remained seated. Once everyone had a drink, McNair raised hers.

  “Here’s to success in all our ventures—and the progress of our people.”

  “Hear, hear,” Toliver said, clinking his glass against hers.

  Toliver, standing again, set his glass aside after taking a small sip. “Matthew, I know you’re something of a freebooter, but I would like to keep you on a retainer, if you will. Helping keep tabs on the apple of my eye as well as checking in on my well-being while I’m in town. It wouldn’t have to be around the clock, as I said, I’ll take steps in that vein. But a man of your talents looking in on her now and then would ease my palpitations. Be assured I will compensate you as befits a man of your station.”

  Taking a sideways glance at his pretty daughter who was staring into her whiskey, Henson said, “That’s quite the proposition, but just how long would this job take?”

  “Oh, I’m a burden, am I?” Stevenson smiled at the explorer.

  “Until Tolliver delivers his message,” McNair piped in. She was already pouring herself another round. She held up the bottle and the others begged off.

  “Message?” his daughter said.

  Toliver bowed slightly toward McNair. “Miriam embellishes to make me blush. It’s merely a speech.”

  “At Liberty Hall, which you will fill to the rafters,” a joyous McNair added.

  “What’s it to be about?” asked Stevenson.

  “Our freedom, of course.” Toliver answered. “What do you say Brother Henson? The event is in less than two weeks’ time.”

  Since he’d been approached through a mutual friend to meet with a tearful Daddy Paradise less than a handful of days ago, Henson had been wondering exactly why Dutch Schultz had put the grab on the man’s daughter.

  He hadn’t pressed, as the advance was substantial and Toliver had been evasive. Though he did have a theory. For incompleteness had always gnawed at Henson, honed during those seven failed attempts to reach the North Pole. Once he set out on a course, he burned to see things through. And what the hell, this line of work was better than clerking behind a desk. Still, he knew better than to not learn all he could about an unknown territory.

  “Tell me the truth, why did Dutch Schultz kidnap Destiny?”

  “That’s rather impertinent,” McNair said. “You have no truck prying into this man’s endeavors. Important undertakings all, I must add,” she sniffed.

  Toliver held up a hand. “That’s all right, Miriam. I believe Mr. Henson is a man who can keep a confidence.” He turned his head toward his daughter. “And she is of an age to see that one’s folks have—shall we say—dimensions to them.”

  The daughter looked expectant as her father continued.

  “As you know, Matthew, that Beer Baron of the Bronx has a large appetite, his eyes are bigger than his stomach, as my sainted mother would say. He is known to employ ruthless methods when he wants what he wants, like a tantrum-prone child.

  Maybe it was the whiskey, but Henson wasn’t in the mood for a long wind-up. “You have money in Queenie St. Clair’s numbers operation.” Stephanie “Queenie” St. Clair, of African and white French parentage, was among the high-steppers of the Harlem rackets.

  Toliver nodded. “I’ve long been a silent partner in her policy banking.”

  “Me, too,” McNair said, hand on her hip and jaw thrust defiantly at Henson, daring his scorn. “It’s a way for our hard-working people to get a leg up given being frozen out of white-run institutions who won’t loan to them. You realize how many restaurants, dress shops and who knows what all else wouldn’t be around if not for this informal lending?”

  Lending that demanded a healthy interest rate.

  But Henson said, “I’m not passing judgement, I simply want to know what I’m getting into.”

  “Seems we’re both pawns in a bigger game, Matt,” Stevenson said.

  “This is your duty as a New Negro,” McNair said to Henson, taking another sip.

  “Miriam,” Toliver chided.

  “That’s okay.” Henson hadn’t been a follower of Marcus Garvey, or for that matter much of a follower of any negro advancement leader. He did, though, believe in self-improvement. He respected that Toliver and McNair put their money where their mouths were. Plus there was the opportunity to be around the intriguing Destiny.

  “I’m in,” he said, tipping his glass toward the other three. “But we’ll need a crew t
o cover the hall that night. I’ll take care of rounding up the men, but you’ll have to cover their fee, understand?”

  “Miriam?” Toliver said.

  She shrugged in ascent.

  “All right, then,” Toliver said. “I knew I was hiring the right man for the job.”

  Destiny Stevenson stood, and bottle in hand, poured another round for herself and Henson. She leveled her gaze on him, “Indeed.”

  Henson was flattered by her attention and more than a little self-conscious of the grey creeping in at his temples.

  Given her dusky skin tone, it wasn’t noticeable that McNair flushed.

  Daddy Paradise cleaned one of his long nails with the end of an ivory plated

  pen knife, smiling at the others.

  Elsewhere, in a darkened room in a fleabag hotel on the lower east side, a gaunt white man in his late sixties with a shock of white hair moaned and sweat atop a thin mattress. Laying on its side on the floorboards was an empty unmarked bottle, cork nearby. Until recently, it had contained what was left of his laudanum. He was in wrinkled pants and a dirty undershirt and the effects of his opium-laced alcohol ignited the fevered dreams he so looked forward to each night. For it was in those mindscapes of his imagination that the answers came to him in many forms—from his beloved Elyce, to a talking frog squatting on a jade stone.

  He stopped thrashing and bolted upright in the dark.

  Hands gripping the side of the bed, he muttered, “The daughter…yes, Henson is the key.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “You know about this darkie?” Arthur “Dutch Schultz” Flegenheimer said, nearly biting the end of his cigar off as he gritted his teeth. Schultz had a flattened nose and big ears sticking out from his head. “Killed one of my boys and put the other one in a hospital. And on top of that, you expect me to just sit on my hands? Not to mention that greedy kraut bastard Hoffman upping the ante on me to keep a lid on this.”

  “You won’t have to keep in check for long,” his companion Fremont Davis said. “Though, I’ll grant you, I should have foreseen the possibility of his involvement. Mr. Henson does move in interesting orbits.” Davis had close-cropped steel grey hair and a trim goatee.

  “Uh-huh,” Schultz said, unimpressed, settling back in his chair. Above him was the mounted head of a stag, indifferent in death to his surroundings. In a corner was an Egyptian New Kingdom sarcophagus. He finished his drink and sat the glass down carelessly. It tipped over. Face contorted in barely contained anger, he pointed a finger at the man sitting opposite. “You better not be trying to pull the wool over my eyes. Bad enough I got Queenie and Holstein to contend with, now this…swartze Tarzan comes swinging in bumping off white men like he pleases. Shit.”

  Davis suppressed a chuckle. “This is but a minor setback, partner.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t you forget that. Think I’m all weak-kneed sitting in all this?” he indicated the room they were in, “Drinking your fine booze and enjoying your Cubans? I can afford my own cigars.” He tapped twin fingers against his chest. “You got me putting my men at risk.”

  “We are, all of us, taking risks, Dutch. But the payoff—as you would say—will be well worth it.”

  As he rose, he pointed a finger at the other man who remained sitting. “It better be.” Shultz left.

  Outside, the night air bracing him was cool. At the curb one of his men leaned against the gangster’s spotless Packard Phaeton. Vincent “Vin” O’Hara was ruggedly handsome with high cheekbones, hazel eyes and a half moon scar on the side of one eye. He wore a straw hat over his brown hair. Several cigarettes littered the sidewalk near his square toe Oxfords.

  “Let’s get out of here, Vin,” Schultz said.

  “Sure, boss,” said the other, opening the rear door for the bootlegger. The Packard’s eight-cylinder engine caught on the second turn of the crankshaft and headlights springing on, off they went.

  Upstairs, Davis stood at the window of his corner office watching the other one drive away. He let the drape he’d pushed aside fall back into place, blowing cigar smoke toward the ceiling, thoughtfully watching the vapor trail filter upward. He’d told the gangster only what he needed to motivate him to do his bidding. But it wouldn’t do for him to enact his vendetta against Matthew Henson—at least not yet. He needed the first man to reach the North Pole alive a little longer.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Matthew Henson awoke early despite having been up past midnight. He lay under a sheet in his flannel long johns, but his chest was bare. As was usual, he’d left his bedroom window wide open for the bracing night air, just as he’d done since he was young. This adoration for the cold hadn’t begun on his Arctic expeditions. It was from years of seagoing in rugged climes and often having to sleep in the open on the deck.

  Finishing the sixth grade in Washington D.C., and yearning for he didn’t know what then, he’d signed on as a cabin boy off the docks of Baltimore. This was a merchant ship, Katie Hines, bound for China under the command of Captain Childs. That would be his first time experiencing a foreign land but not his last. Over the course of his time as a seaman, he would travel back to China, go to Japan, Manila, North Africa, France, Nicaragua, the Black Sea and on into southern Russia and the northwest Murmansk area.

  Though he only had a grade school education, it turned out Henson had a facility for languages. While not proficient in many tongues, his Spanish and Mandarin were more than passable. Later, when in northwest Greenland, that facility was helpful in learning more than one of the Inuit dialects. He was the only member of the eight Arctic expeditions to do so.

  Various masks, items and totems sprinkled about the spacious apartment attested to his journeys and sometimes stays in these foreign lands. Several of his artifacts—an original Kiyonaga wood block print and a Yoruba orisha sculpture—would be the envy of a museum curator. But the monetary value of his possessions was always far from his mind.

  Getting dressed, Henson reviewed the matters at hand. Like being able to sense the difference between a patch of ice he could step on and one that only looked solid, he was of the mind that Daddy Paradise and Miriam McNair hadn’t been completely leveling with him.

  It was no secret that Dutch Schultz was seeking to take over the lucrative Harlem numbers trade. Certainly to that end what with his volatile nature, he’d use kidnapping, gun play and any and all other forms of intimidation to get what he wanted. And presumably the opportunity had presented itself when Toliver came to town for this talk as he wasn’t headquartered in Manhattan but Chicago. But Henson had also known the Daughter lived in town, had been here for more than four years running a music shop. It was only recently Toliver publicly admitted she was blood, having been raised by the mother. Could be Schultz waited until Toliver was in the vicinity. Could be he had been planning this for some time. But two and two weren’t quite adding up in his head.

  “Breakfast first,” he determined, traipsing into the kitchenette to brew a pot of coffee and fix up some bacon and eggs. Many a Harlemite assumed he only ate whale blubber or sled dog—and he’d gladly eaten both with relish in the past. Mostly, in those days, Peary’s crew would eat as the Eskimos did, fish and pemmican, with tea, condensed milk and biscuits the American additions to such a diet. His apartment had come furnished, but in addition to his keepsakes, he’d added things like the 19th century Mongolian area rug he walked bare-footed across and a slim Russian Empire era bureau made of mahogany and brass.

  After dinner, he put several tools and devices on a round table near a window overlooking the street below. All on top of a letter he’d started that began with, “My Dear Anaukaq.”

  It was a letter he was having a hard time writing.

  He paused momentarily, his fingers touching the paper then he put the sheet aside so as not to get it soiled. He took a deep breath and resumed the maintenance of his devices.

  He’d rigged up a metal apparatus that clamped around his lower arm holding the shu
riken in place by hinged steel fingers. By twisting his forearm, the star would release and drop down into his waiting hand. But he had to be careful, as more than once, the tension would be off and the star would shake loose and cut into his palm or drop to the ground. He adjusted the tension in the fingers, hoping that this time it would work. Using a stone, he sharpened the edges of his ice axes and checked the pull pins of his smoke bombs—which were roughly the size of handballs.

  Once done, he returned the smoke bombs to his closet, nestled in a shoebox lined with cotton swabbing and crumpled newspapers. He didn’t keep any incendiary grenades as they were volatile, and he certainly didn’t want to burn up his apartment or harm anyone else. Though his were not the old-fashioned kind, filled with kerosene and oil, it was the casing itself, made of magnesium and alloy, that burned when ignited by a thermite charge. It was illegal to possess them, and for that reason and safety, Henson kept those grenades secured elsewhere.

  He left his building on 130th and walked toward St. Nicholas Park, intending to cut diagonally through it toward his destination. He needed some dope on St. Clair and Daddy Paradise and had a person in mind as he checked the time on his wrist watch, a gift from Booker T. Washington who’d written the introduction to his A Negro Explorer at the North Pole. It was early, and the working men and women of Harlem were out on their way to their jobs be it nanny, cook, brick layer or soda jerk. Passing behind him as he crossed the street was a hearse from the Palmetto Ambulance and Funeral Service, a company owned by Queenie St. Clair. Entering the park, there was a serious-eyed young woman on the edge handing out informational handbills about the Laundry Workers Union of the Congress of Industrial Organizations.