The Bonfire of the Vanities (20 page)

“
I’m
not telling you, Reverend Bacon,” said Fiske. “That’s what the Human Resources Administration is telling us both.”

“I want to tell
you
something. I want to
remind
you of something
you
told
me
. Who do we
want
to run the Little Shepherd Day Care Center? Do you remember? Do we want your Wellesley girls and your Vassar girls coming up here to take care of the children of Harlem? Do we want your social benefactors? Do we want your licensed civil-service bureaucrats? Your lifers from City Hall? Is that what we want? Is
that
what we want?”

Fiske felt compelled to answer. Obediently as a first-grader, he said, “No.”

“No,” said Reverend Bacon approvingly, “that is not what we want. What
do
we want? We want the people of Harlem looking after the children of Harlem. We’re going to draw our strength…our
strength…
from our people and our own streets. I told you that a long time ago, in the earliest days. Do you remember? Do you remember that?”

“Yes,” said Fiske, feeling more juvenile by the minute, and more helpless in the face of that steady gaze.

“Yes. Our own streets. Now, a young man grows up on the streets of Harlem, the chances are the police have a sheet on that young man. You understand? They have a sheet on that young man. I’m talking about a police record. So if you’re saying to everybody who’s ever been in jail and everybody coming
out
of jail and everybody
on parole
, if you’re saying, ‘You can’t participate in the rebirth of Harlem, because we gave up on you soon as you got a record’…see…then you are not talking about the rebirth of Harlem. You’re talking about some make-believe place, some magic kingdom. You’re fooling yourself. You’re not looking for a radical solution. You’re wanting to play the same old game, you’re wanting to see the same old faces. You’re wanting to practice the same old colonialism. You understand? You understand what I’m saying?”

Fiske was about to nod yes, when all at once Moody spoke up: “Look, Reverend Bacon, we know all about that, but that’s not the problem. We’ve got an immediate, specific, technical, legal problem. By law, the HRA is forbidden to issue a license under these circumstances, and that’s all there is to that. So let’s take care of that problem, and let’s see about the $350,000, and then we’ll be in a position to solve the larger problems.”

Fiske couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Involuntarily he slid down in his seat and took a wary glance at Reverend Bacon. Reverend Bacon stared at Moody without any expression at all. He stared at him long enough for the silence to envelop him. Then, without parting his lips, he stuck his tongue into his cheek until his cheek popped out the size of a golf ball. He turned to Fiske and said softly:

“How’d you get up here?”

“Uh…we drove,” said Fiske.

“Where’s your car? What’s it look like?”

Fiske hesitated. Then he told him.

“You should’ve told me sooner,” said Reverend Bacon. “There’s a bad element around here.” He called out, “Hey, Buck!”

Out of the kitchen came the tall man with the gold earring. The sleeves of his work shirt were rolled up. He had tremendous elbows. Reverend Bacon motioned to him, and he came over and bent down and put his hands on his hips, and Reverend Bacon said something in a low voice. The man’s arms created terrific angles where they bent at the elbows. The man stood up and looked very seriously at Reverend Bacon and nodded and started to leave the room.

“Oh, Buck,” said Reverend Bacon.

Buck stopped and looked around.

“And you keep your eye on that car.”

Buck nodded again and walked out.

Reverend Bacon looked at Fiske. “I hope none of those trifling boys—anyway, they won’t fool with Buck. Now, what was I saying?” All of this was to Fiske. It was as if Moody were no longer in the room.

“Reverend Bacon,” said Fiske, “I think—”

Reverend Bacon’s intercom buzzed.

“Yes?”

A woman’s voice said: “Irv Stone from Channel 1, on 4–7.”

Reverend Bacon turned to a telephone on a little cabinet near his chair. “Hello, Irv…Fine, fine…No, no. Mostly the APS, All People’s Solidarity. We’ve got a mayor to defeat in November…Not this time, Irv, not this time. This man, all he needs is a shove. But that’s not what I called you about. I called you about the Open Gates Employment Coalition…I said the Open Gates Employment Coalition…How long? A long time, a long time. Don’t you read the newspapers?…Well, that’s okay. That’s what I called you about. You know those restaurants downtown, down in the East Fifties and the East Sixties, those restaurants where the people, they spend a hundred dollars for lunch, and they spend two hundred dollars for dinner, and they don’t even think twice about it?…What? Don’t kid me, Irv. I know about you TV people. You know that place you have lunch every day. La Boue d’Argent?” Fiske noticed that Reverend Bacon had no trouble at all pronouncing the name of one of the most expensive and fashionable restaurants in New York. “Heh, heh, well, that’s what they told me. Or is it Leicester’s?” He got that one right, too. Leicester’s was pronounced
Lester’s
, in the British fashion. Reverend Bacon was chuckling and smiling now. Evidently he was having his joke. Fiske was glad to see him smile—over anything. “Well, what I’m saying is, in any a those places, did you ever see
a black waiter
? Did you? Did you
ever
see a black waiter?…That’s right, you never did. You never did. In
any
of them. And why?…That’s right. The unions, too. You understand what I’m saying?…That’s right. Well, that’s what has to change…see…has to change. Next Tuesday, starting at noon, the coalition’s going to demonstrate at Leicester’s restaurant, and when we get through with that one, we’re going to La Boue d’Argent and the Macaque and La Grise and the Three Ortolans and all those places…How? By any means necessary. You’re always talking about footage, Irv. Well, I can promise you one thing. You’ll have
footage
. Do you follow me?…Call Leicester’s? Sure. Go ahead…No, indeed. I don’t mind.”

When he hung up, he said, as if talking to himself, “I hope they do call ‘em up.”

Then he looked at the two young men. “Now!” he said, as if the time had come to wrap things up and send everyone on his way. “You fellows see what I got to deal with here. I’ve got the fight of my life. The fight…of…my…life. The APS, All People’s Solidarity, in November we got to defeat the most racist mayor in the history of the United States. The Open Gates Employment Coalition, we got to break down the walls of apartheid in the job market. And the Third World Anti-Defamation League, we’re negotiating with a bunch of exploiters making a stone racist movie called
Harlem’s Angels
. Gangs and drug dealers and addicts and winos, that’s all. Racial stereotypes. They think because they got this black man who leads a young gang to Jesus, they are not racist. But they are stone racist, and they must be suitably apprised of that reality. So the day is coming in New York. The hour is drawing nigh. The final battle, you might say. Gideon’s Army…and
you!…
you come up here and lay some chickensh—some trifling thing on me about the board of directors of the Little Shepherd Day Care Center!”

A fury had crept into the baron’s voice. He had come close to uttering the word
chickenshit
, and Fiske had never known him to say so much as a single foul word, not even a
damn
, in all the time he had known him. Fiske was torn between the desire to depart this house before the final battle began and the hellfire rained down and the desire to save his job, such as it was. He was the one who had dispatched the $350,000 to Reverend Bacon in the first place. Now he had to retrieve it.

“Well,” he said, testing a middle ground, “you might be right, Reverend Bacon. And we—the diocese—we are not here to complicate things. Frankly, we want to protect you, and we want to protect our investment in you. We gave you $350,000 contingent on the licensing of the day-care center. So if you’ll turn over the $350,000 or the $340,000, whatever the exact balance is, and let us put it into an escrow account, then we’ll help you. We’ll go to bat for you.”

Reverend Bacon looked at him distractedly, as if pondering a great decision.

“It is not that simple,” he said.

“Well—why not?”

“That money is mostly…committed.”

“Committed?”

“To the contractors.”

“The contractors? What contractors?”

“
What
contractors? Good Lord, man, the equipment, the furniture, the computers, the telephones, the carpet, the air conditioning, the ventilation—very important with children, the ventilation—the safety toys. It’s hard to remember all the things.”

“But, Reverend Bacon,” said Fiske, his voice rising, “all you’ve got so far is an old empty warehouse! I was just by there! There’s nothing in there! You haven’t hired an architect! You don’t even have any plans!”

“That’s the least of it. Coordination is the main thing in a project of this kind. Coordination.”

“Coordination? I don’t see—well, that may be, but if you’ve made commitments to contractors, then it seems to me you’ve just got to explain to them that there’s going to be an unavoidable delay.” Fiske was all at once afraid that he was taking too stern a tone. “If you don’t mind, how much of the money remains in your hands, Reverend Bacon, whether committed or not?”

“None of it,” said Reverend Bacon.

“
None
of it? How can that be?”

“This was seed money. We had to sow the seed. Some of it fell on fallow ground.”

“Sow the seed? Reverend Bacon, surely you didn’t advance these people their money before they did the work!”

“These are minority firms. People from the community. That was what we wanted. Am I not correct?”

“Yes. But surely you have not advanced—”

“These are not firms with your ‘lines of credit,’ your ‘computerized inventories,’ your ‘pre-staggered cash flows,’ your ‘convertible asset management,’ your ‘capital-sensitive liquidity ratios,’ and all that. These are not firms with factors to go to, like they have in the garment industry, when bad luck knocks on the door with your ‘unavoidable delays’…see…These are firms founded by people in the community. These are the tender shoots that sprout up from the seeds we sow—you, me, the Episcopal Church, the Gates of the Kingdom Church. Tender shoots…and you say, ‘unavoidable delay.’ That’s not just a
term
, that’s not just your
red tape—
that’s a sentence of death. A sentence of death. A sentence of death. That’s saying ‘Kindly drop dead.’ So don’t tell me I can just
explain
it to them.
Unavoidable delay…Say, unavoidable death
.”

“But, Reverend Bacon—we’re talking about $350,000! Surely—”

Fiske looked at Moody. Moody was sitting up straight. He no longer looked very cool, and he wasn’t saying a word.

“The diocese will—there’ll have to be an audit,” said Fiske. “Right away.”

“Oh yes,” said Reverend Bacon. “There’ll be an audit. I’ll give you an audit…right away. I’m gonna tell you something. I’m gonna tell you something about capitalism north of Ninety-sixth Street. Why do you people think you’re investing all this money, your
$350,000
, in a day-care center in Harlem? Why are you?”

Fiske said nothing. Reverend Bacon’s Socratic dialogues made him feel childish and helpless.

But Bacon insisted. “Now, you go ahead and tell me. I want to hear it from
you
. Like you say, we’re going to have an audit. An
audit
. I want to hear it from you in your own words. Why are you people investing all this money in a day-care center in Harlem? Why?”

Fiske couldn’t hold out any longer. “Because day-care centers are desperately needed in Harlem,” he said, feeling about six years old.

“No, my friend,” said Bacon softly, “that is not why. If you people were that worried about the children, you would build the day-care center yourself and hire the best professional people to work in it, people with experience. You wouldn’t even talk about hiring the people of the streets. What do the people of the streets know about running a day-care center? No, my friend, you’re investing in something else. You’re investing in steam control. And you’re getting value for money.
Value for money
.”

“Steam control?”

“
Steam
control. It’s a capital investment. It’s a very good one. You know what capital is? You think it’s something you own, don’t you. You think it’s factories and machines and buildings and land and things you can sell and stocks and money and banks and corporations. You think it’s something you own, because you always owned it. You owned all this land.” He waved his arm back toward the bay window and the gloomy backyard and the three sycamore trees. “You owned all the land, and out there, out there in…Kansas…and…Oklahoma…everybody just lined up, and they said, ‘On the mark, get set, go!’ and a whole lot of white people started running, and there was all this land, and all they had to do was get to it and stand on it, and they owned it, and their white skin was their deed of property…see…The red man, he was in the way, and he was eliminated. The yellow man, he could lay rails across it, but then he was shut up in Chinatown. And the black man, he was in chains the whole time anyway. And so you owned it all, and you still own it, and so you think capital is owning things. But you are mistaken. Capital is controlling things. Controlling things. You want land in Kansas? You want to exercise your white deed of property? First you got to control Kansas…see…Controlling things. I don’t suppose you ever worked in a boiler room. I worked in a boiler room. People
own
the boilers, but that don’t do ’em a bit of good unless they know how to control the
steam…
see…If you can’t
control…
the steam, then it’s Powder Valley for you and your whole gang. If you ever see a steam boiler go out of control, then you see a whole lot of people running for their lives. And those people, they are not thinking about that boiler as a capital asset, they are not thinking about the return on their investment, they are not thinking about the escrow accounts and the audits and the prudent thing…see…They are saying, ‘Great God almighty, I lost control,’ and they are running for their lives. They’re trying to save their very hides. You see this house?” He gestured vaguely toward the ceiling. “This house was built in the year nineteen hundred and six by a man named Stanley Lightfoot Bowman. Lightfoot. Turkish towels and damask tablecloths, wholesale, Stanley Lightfoot Bowman. He sold those Turkish towels and damask tablecloths in job lots. He spent almost a half a million dollars on this house in nineteen hundred and six…see…The man’s initials, S.L.B., they’re down there made of bronze, going all the way up the stairs, instead a spindles. This was the place to be in nineteen hundred and six. They built these big houses all the way up the West Side, starting at Seventy-second Street, all the way up here. Yeah, and I bought this house from a—from a Jewish fellow—in nineteen hundred and seventy-eight for sixty-two thousand dollars, and that fellow was happy to get that money. He was licking his chops and saying, ‘I got some—some fool to give me sixty-two thousand dollars for that place.’ Well, what happened to all those Stanley Lightfoot Bow-mans? Did they lose their money? No, they lost
control…
see…They lost control north of Ninety-sixth Street, and when they lost con
trol
, they lost the
cap
ital. You understand? All that capital, it vanished off the face of the earth. The house was still there, but the capital, it
van
ished see…So what I’m telling you is, you best be waking up. You’re practicing the capitalism of the future, and you don’t even know it. You’re not investing in a day-care center for the children of Harlem. You’re investing in the souls…the
souls…
of the people who’ve been in Harlem too long to look at it like children any longer, people who’ve grown up with a righteous anger in their hearts and a righteous
steam
building up in their souls, ready to blow. A
righteous
steam. When you people come up here and talk about ‘minority contractors’ and ‘minority hiring’ and day-care centers for the street people, of the street people, and by the street people, you’re humming the right tune, but you don’t want to sing the right words. You don’t want to come right out and say it: ‘Please, dear Lord, God almighty, let’m do what they want with the money, just so long’s it
controls the steam…
before it’s too late…Well, you go ahead and have your audit and talk to your HRA and reorganize your boards and cross all the
t
’s and dot all the
i
’s. Meantime, I’ve done your investing for you, and thanks to me, you’re already ahead of the game…Oh,
conduct your audit!…
But the time is coming when you will say: ‘Thank God. Thank God! Thank God we entered the money on the books Reverend Bacon’s way!’ Because I’m the conservative, whether you know it or not. You don’t know who’s
out there
on those wild and hungry streets. I am your prudent broker on Judgment Day. Harlem, the Bronx, and Brooklyn, they’re gonna
blow
, my friend, and on that day, how grateful you will be for your prudent broker…your prudent broker…who can control the steam. Oh yes. On that day, the owners of capital, how happy they will be to exchange what they own, how happy they will be to give up their very
birth
rights, just to control that wild and hungry steam. No, you go on back down, and you say, ‘Bishop, I’ve been uptown, and I’m here to tell you we made a good investment. We found a prudent broker. We’re gonna occupy the high ground when it all comes down.”