the presence of any police types. In late 1942, each of the military services had their civilian-
dress eyes and ears picking up anything of interest to them, such as hustles being used to avoid
the draft, or who hadn't registered, or hustles that were being worked on servicemen.
Longshoremen, or fences for them, would come into the bars selling guns, cameras, perfumes,
watches, and the like, stolen from the shipping docks. These Negroes got what white-
longshoreman thievery left over. Merchant marine sailors often brought in foreign items, bargains,
and the best marijuana cigarettes to be had were made of the gunja and kisca that merchant
sailors smuggled in from Africa and Persia.
In the daytime, whites were given a guarded treatment. Whites who came at night got a better
reception; the several Harlem nightclubs they patronized were geared to entertain and jive the
night white crowd to get their money.
And with so many law agencies guarding the "morals" of servicemen, any of them that came in,
and a lot did, were given what they asked for, and were spoken to if they spoke, and that was all,
unless someone knew them as natives of Harlem.
What I was learning was the hustling society's first rule; that you never trusted anyone outside of
your own closemouthed circle, and that you selected withtime and care before you made any
intimates even among these.
The bartenders would let me know which among the regular customers were mostly "fronts," and
which really had something going; which were really in the underworld, with downtown police or
political connections; which really handled some money, and which were making it from day to
day; which were the real gamblers, and which had just hit a little luck; and which ones never to
run afoul of in any way.
The latter were extremely well known about Harlem, and they were feared and respected. It was
known that if upset, they would break open your head and think nothing of it. These were old-
timers, not to be confused with the various hotheaded, wild, young hustlers out trying to make a
name for themselves for being crazy with a pistol trigger or a knife. The old heads that I'm talking
about were such as "Black Sammy," "Bub" Hewlett, "King" Padmore and "West Indian Archie."
Most of these tough ones had worked as strongarm men for Dutch Schultz back when he
muscled into the Harlem numbers industry after white gangsters had awakened to the fortunes
being made in what they had previously considered "nigger pennies"; and the numbers game was
referred to by the white racketeers as "nigger pool."
Those tough Negroes' heyday had been before the big 1931 Seabury Investigation that started
Dutch Schultz on the way out, until his career ended with his 1934 assassination. I heard stories
of how they had "persuaded" people with lead pipes, wet cement, baseball bats, brass knuckles,
fists, feet, and blackjacks.
Nearly every one of them had done some time, and had come back on the scene, and since had
worked as top runners for the biggest bankers who specialized in large bettors.
There seemed to be an understanding that these Negroes and the tough blackcops never
clashed; I guess both knew that someone would die. They had some bad black cops in Harlem,
too. The Four Horsemen that worked Sugar Hill-I remember the worst one had freckles-there was
a tough quartet. The biggest, blackest, worst cop of them all in Harlem was the West Indian,
Brisbane. Negroes crossed the street to avoid him when he walked his 125th Street and Seventh
Avenue beat. When I was in prison, someone brought me a story that Brisbane had been shot to
death by a scared, nervous young kid who hadn't been up from the South long enough to realize
how bad Brisbane was.
The world's most unlikely pimp was "Cadillac" Drake. He was shiny baldheaded, built like a